Philippe

Already answered that question two days ago. Go back and read over your earlier threads a bit more carefully. This doesn't work like on-line flight sims. What is in your computer is in your computer, and stays there. Same goes for his. You'll never know how ugly you look to the other guy. Then again, he'll never know how ugly he looks to you. Bottom line: the bmp files don't move. The only thing that is getting passed back and forth are movement and combat instructions for your troops. The game is being played out semi-independantly with the same orders and outcomes on both computers. So if you give his guys really good camo uniforms and play at realistic magnification with the bases off inside a realistic terrain mod, you may have a hard time finding him. Or your own troops, for that matter.

I was playing around with the scenario icon bar yesterday and noticed that one of the Soviet icons is used by the NKVD. Since I had just made decent looking icons for the Romanians, Finns, and Italians, I thought I would take a shot at the guys in the blue hats. My first attempt was based on the shoulder patch image of a dagger, hammer and sickle, and the letters NKVD (in Cyrillic) at the bottom. I didn't care much for the cloth versions that I had seen, but I found two very nice metal badges, probably post-war, but for making symbols that doesn't matter (semiotics exists outside of time and space -- and doesn't, which is why it's fun). After stripping the best one out of its background I reduced it to 20x20 pixels and tried mounting it on several different colored backgrounds (red, green, blue, and blackish-brown, all for different reasons). It looked terrible: the reduction made it visually unrecognizable. This morning I happened to notice that I had saved an image of a chekist commemorative badge with old Felix in profile against a waving red banner (your agit-prop has moved my heart!). Looking at it I realized that it would probably still be readable when very small, so I did a reduction number on the patron saint of the Gulag, repression, and terror. And it worked. Right now I've got him on a dark green background, but at the end of the day deciding which color to use is a design decision, and has to be based on how he looks surrounded by the other icons I'm planning on using. So I need to see him in game. Mumbling out loud to myself that I wasn't sure if this icon was supposed to represent the interior troops, the Frontier troops, or both, I took a look at my scenario menu and came up with nada. Then I got the bright idea of trying to set up a QB and saving it, so I could see what the icon looks like on the menu screen. I've only looked at a few months, but I'm not finding anything. Which brings me to my question. I'm about to pay a visit to the Scenario Depot and start poking around in the scenario editor (which should be fun because I've never been there before). But am I on a wild goose chase? Do NKVD troops (either frontier or internal) actually appear in CMBB? Seems like they should be there since there's a way to make SD troops show up. And if they do show up, are they supposed to represent the Gulag guards and deserter execution squads, or are they from the infantry and cavalry divisions of the Frontier troops?

You make a folder called grass, with six or seven different folders inside of it named after whoever made the grass you're interested in. One of the folders should be the back-up of your original. Repeat for every moddable object in the game. Or you can download CMMOS and install the CMMOS mods. Go to cmhq, go to the cmmos section, download cmmos 4.03. And don't keep asking for links that we've already given you.

CMHQ can be found at combatmission.com. You can find this information by clicking on "resources", going to the Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord weblinks, and clicking on the first item.

Have you tried downloading the demos yet? It might clear up a lot of your questions. The game uses bmp skins stretched over a hard-coded frame. The frame is 3-D. Not to be confused with 3rd Party Mods. Please spend some time over at CMHQ (click on "resources" in the upper-right hand corner of this screen and follow the link) and everything will become much clearer. As I mentioned in another thread, you can mod the demo but can't add scenarios to it. You might want to try downloading CMBO and tossing in a few mods to see how it works. Easiest place to start is CMHQ -- lots of pictures, and Madmatt's essays on mods is very good, even at this late date. What other games have you modded, by the way ?

I don't recall seeing instructions on how to patch a Euro-CDV CMAK written in Spanish. There are several spanish language websites with forums, and someone there may be able to help. You might want to start with http://www.puntadelanza.net/Foro/phpBB2/ . I don't have CMAK so I don't know what I'm talking about. Is the Euro-CDV CMAK 1.03 patch even out yet? I'm not sure you can use the US-market patch on the Euro-market product. But as I said before, I don't follow this because I don't have CMAK (and don't know what I'm talking about). [ January 21, 2005, 08:31 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

I seem to recall that my favorite U.S. Civil War cavalry commander once commented that a sawed off shotgun was the finest possible weapon for a cavalryman.

I seem to recall that my favorite U.S. Civil War cavalry commander once commented that a sawed off shotgun was the finest possible weapon for a cavalryman.

At the risk of going from the sublime to the ridiculous, do I detect the possibility of taking cover behind a tank in the more advanced LOS/LOF ?

1. The mods stay on your computer. If you compare screenshots you'll discover that no two people see exactly the same thing. 2. Mods overwrite files. You have two choices: a) lots of files organized by subject, mod author, and back-up; or a mod manager. 3. Modding is very easy and can be done in Paint, Photoshop, or Paintshop Pro. Almost all the graphics are stored in a folder as bitmaps, making them incredibly easy to inspect and manipulate. Naming lists of essential mods seems to be a favorite topic of threads. If you poke around in the game-specific forums you'll come across them. Or start your own, if you like. About ten minutes after I finished downloading the CMBB demo I started modding it. Certain historically inauthentic visual features can only be removed by mods, and that's probably one of the first things most peope fix. After that it's just a question of deciding which textures bother you enough to make you feel the need to do something about them. The websites you'll need to visit are CMHQ (a semi-official site), CMMODS, and Mark Gallear's site (the inauthenticity fixes). Tom's CMHQ also has very good material and should be visited. Unfortunately one of the most useful sites closed a few months back: CM Outpost had illustrated catalogues of all the mods for CMBO and CMBB, and was a great record of what was out there. Almost everything gets posted to CMMODS these days: you'll need to register and log in every time you visit, but it's an essential address. You don't need sources of scenarios at this point, but almost all of the finished, available scenarios can be found at The Scenario Depot. In addition there are several smaller design sites with collections of very high quality work, like Der Kessel and Boots and Tracks. These scenarios won't run in the demo, however -- you'll need the full game.

There's a site on the web that has photographs of most of these things. The link to a Mauser HSc that looks just as effiminate is http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg103-e.htm and most of our other favorite suspects can be found in the index down the left side of the page.

Juju's small arms mod, of course, shows all three. The Mauser is useful to make sure you've got the mod working correctly because you can tell without looking closely whether it's been installed or not. But I was under the impression that it was a bit of an antique by WWII, and that most officers were armed with Walthers. There were a few Lugers around, and they are very popular in movies with German villains because you can tell at a glance that the weapon is too foreign to be a Browning.

With regards to mods, note that the modding community for all three games is pretty much the same group of people. CMBO is already 99% modded, so you won't see many new CMBO mods coming out these days, largely because it isn't necessary. I still have a few CMBO-only horizon mods on the drawing boards that I probably won't finish until I play a scenario that would use them (at which point I'll go nuts until I finish the mod). CMBO is also 95% covered by a fully matured mod manager. (For the other two games you really need to use two mod managers, which is a nuisance). Some of the CMBB mods can be retro-fitted to CMBO, and the same goes for a few of the CMAK mods. Fully modded CMBO looks better than out-of-the-box CMBB and CMAK. Un-modded out-of-the-box CMBO looks like Playmobiles. And just so we're on the same page, mods only affect the graphics, not the underlying game mechanics. Some prefer the subject matter (Americans, British, Canadians, Poles, and French fighting their way from France to Germany), and many of the battles take place in familiar locations that you might have visited on your summer vacation (Paris and the south of France). The game engine lacks a few of the enhancements of CMBB and CMAK, but the game has a really great feel to it. You'll spend a long time playing it before the things that were changed in CMBB and CMAK start to really bother you. And I don't find anything confusing about switching back and forth between CMBB and CMBO. Another thing that CMBO has is tremendous scenario depth. Over 1700 scenarios have been written for it, more than you will ever want to play. So if you want an unfamiliar battle to play with a live opponent, just fire up the Scenario Depot search engine, feed in the parameters you want, and you're bound to turn up something that you haven't seen before that you'll like. CMAK and CMBB don't have as many scenarios written for them, and unfortunately a fair amount of the CMAK work seems to be conversions of CMBO scenarios into CMAK. It's a pity that that design effort isn't directed more towards researching battles in North Africa and Italy. CMBO is a matured product and a classic. Most people have it, many of those that have it still play it from time to time. So though you won't see many new players looking for games (there are more than enough, though, if you search), there are plenty of older players who will be quite happy to give you a game for nostalgia reasons, and it will usually be quite a good learning experience. So the short answer to your question is get all three and appreciate them for their differences.

What I want to know is how common were Mausers as opposed to Lugers or Walthers. I had always been under the impression that Walthers were the most common, followed by Lugers, followed by Mausers. Can anyone comment on this ?

Using longbows against cavalry charges in the 15th century is gamey. If someone spreads out a squad to keep concentrated fire from hitting all of it, and if, for some reason, the person firing at him wants to spread his fire evenly across all those targets, all he has to do is tell one clump of men to fire at one target, another at another, and so on down the line. And I'm not describing the game. That's how late 17th century rolling volleys worked in Marlborough's army. The fact that you can simulate that response by splitting your own squads proves that the tactic isn't gamey. Unless real life is gamey (which it is). I'm not sure it's a good idea to make gamey synonymous with 'something I don't like'.

I haven't slogged through the list, but I'm pretty sure Gordon whitewashed dunkelgrau as well as dunkelgelb guns. The dunkelgrau guns are on the second page of the Winterfahrzeuge in the CMBB CMMOS section. Are you sure what you're looking for isn't in there?

To continue beating a dead horse, notice that if you can only see what the unit you have just activated on sees, and if you can't see what a unit that is out of command sees, that could potentially eliminate a whole class of Borg-spotting abuses. A jeep sent on a long recon mission will stop giving information as soon as it leaves command. If it ever re-enters command (assuming that it was given orders to drive into and out of the recon area, and that it survives) the section of the map that was scouted will suddenly have a lot of hidden unit markers on it -- the report of the jeep once it has returned. And if the jeep doesn't make it back, then you learn nothing. Add some kind of time delay on receiving that information, and you have something pretty realistic. Another nice feature would be a set of contingent orders (e.g. get the hell out of there) that only get triggered if certain events take place (e.g. coming within 200 meters of more than 100 points of enemy units). The gamey way around this is to send an officer on recon with a radio. That isn't really gamey, and risks the loss of a link in the chain of command. Personally I find scouting and screening to be one of the more interesting activities that goes on on a battlefield. Scouting and the need to prevent enemy scouting is what gives rise to a lot of very small unit actions, and the big picture is really hobbled if this kind of engagement (or the circumstances that lead up to it) is missing.

Notice that if any unit not seen by the unit that you click on becomes invisible, you immediately get a pretty good idea of who can see that unit. So limiting visible units to what the currently highlighted unit can see (or has in command) kills several birds with one stone.

I would agree that part of the problem is that the mind of the player is, indeed, the Borg. But players have poor memories and limited attention spans. Leaving aside what might happen if player aids and detailed hit text were automatically shut off at the highest level of realism, a simple improvement might be to limit what the player sees to what can be seen by the highlighted unit. Nothing would prevent you from clicking on every unit on your side, repeatedly, until you had memorized the positions of everything that everybody could see. Unless, of course, you weren't allowed to click on units that were out of command (and that means letting them get run by the AI until they get back in command). In a variation of this, you could see what a unit sees, and be aware of anything that units in communication with him can see, probably in the form of hidden unit markers. Played this way losing your batallion commander isn't the end of the world, but is a real pain, because he's the only one that really knows what's going on, for the most part. This hypothetical dead major saw his field of view, the units and revealed terrain in it (I'd like to see buildings and other terrain features act like enemy pillboxes in this regard), and a bunch of infantry and vehicle hidden unit markers relayed to him by his company commanders. You can get the same information by clicking on the company commanders, but if you don't see that icon on the map, you might forget that it's there. Especially if there is some kind of time limit in place. So I think the omniscience of the player can be partially counteracted by the fact that most people are mentally sloppy to some extent, and that partial solution (mind candy -- the illusion of greater fog of war) would have the curious effect of distinguishing between the different parts of the chain of command. If, in addition to that, you set up some kind of provision for the logistical tail (ammo and fuel dumps, wounded aid stations, mobile bakeries and mess kitchens) and make them unresponsive to anything below batallion command, losing your major could become a real pain in anything other than a skirmish, even in the limited time frame of a one hour engagement. As for limiting visibility and information to what one particular unit sees, Jagged Alliance used to have a toggle switch that did exactly that, and I always played with it on. And every now and again something surprising would happen.

I would be very surprised it there were any difference in how the two CDV editions handle this. But since I am not in a position to examine both of them, I can't say for certain one way or the other. If you look inside your bmp folder and those two bmp's are there, it will work. That's why I mentioned them by name. There are some differences between the US and Euro CDV versions in other areas: the US version has SS instead of Waffle Grenadiers.

Be my guest.

You have many choices. My favorite is the original Red Twins using the painting of the battle of Stalingrad diorama as background, either with or without the naked girls wrapped in flags. These are both very colorful and replace bmp's 11001 and 11002. I also posted some variations on this recently using WWII color photographs from Signal Magazine. The images are all different, so it's just a question of what you feel like staring at. Having said that, I'm still a big fan of Pavlov's menu screen: he took a color photograph of the capture of the Reichstag in '45, and converted all of it to black and white except the red soviet flag in the middle of the picture. Very dramatic effect. Another interesting pair of screens that got posted recently without fanfare was a very nice collage for the Continuation War and the Eastern Front by Vincent. It made me realize that if anyone ever manages to come up with a menu screen that looks like a period map mounted inside a Joseph Cornell box, I'd use that rather than Red Twins. There are quite a few menu screens built around black and white photographs of German tanks, if you like that sort of thing. I think the European CDV version will probably use bmp's 11003 and 11007. If you want to be safe take a look inside your bmp folder and see what they look like. The US CDV version has a screen with a BFC logo and a screen with a CDV logo. I personally don't care for having corporate advertising inside my computer, so I came up with my Introductory Screen mod. These can be found at CMMODS under a name similar to that (I can never remember), but I also threw them into the Red Twins menu screen mod as a bonus. You can, of course, put anything you want there, as long as it has pretty much the same shape as the originals. And if the CDV European version only reads one of the two images it won't do any harm. All of the screens that I've mentioned can be found at CMMODS.

After reading your post I'd really like to see a copy of the non-CDV manual for comparison. If you have a scanner, could you post some comparison shots of the artwork in the two manuals? The CDV manual strikes me as a bit too small (the pages aren't quite big enough), but workable. There's a consolation to owning the CDV Special Edition, though. You can go to CMMODS and download the two propaganda posters that I have listed as Introductory Screens, and both of them will show up in sequence while the introductory music plays. Very stirring when you're listening to Slavyanka...

On several occasions when fighting the AI I have been on the receiving end of split-squad assaults. I was generally under the impression that the squads, as currently portrayed when unsplit, are actually a bit more bunched together than they would be in real life. This impression comes from staring at the footprint and asking myself if that many men would really stand that close together when they came under fire. They would, but if there was a competant NCO about he would make them spread out. Too good a target for grenades or mortars. So I don't have a problem with split-squad tactics, and probably wish you could spread out more than just splitting in two implies. But I don't use split squad tactics much, apart from digging extra foxholes and setting up expendable points to advancing forces. Why? Two reasons. First, I'm not that good. Second, I'm still mesmerized by late 18th century thinking and want to concentrate attack power at a key point. I've been rolled up too many times on defense when using full squads that were gang-banged one at a time by co-ordinated platoon attacks. I would think those tactics would cut through split squads even faster. Unless I was absolutely swamped, if I saw a bunch of split squads coming at me I'd go light on the artillery but try to organize a few napoleonic infantry counter-attacks. Just because you're outnumbered doesn't mean you can't get there firstest with the mostest.

If I understand what I'm looking at, there's a bunch of Romanian hidden unit markers trying to defend a German victory location from the Russian hidden unit markers. And an oversized unidentified vehicle or two... Very confusing. Sometimes less is more, which is why they invented sketch maps. Perhaps it would be easier if you made a simple schematic drawing in Paint and posted that ?