Jack Carr

Mike, All things being equal, everyone crapping there pants, breathing heavy, heart pounding and shooting at nothing, the infantryman armed with a weapon that can be accurate when required and also capable of putting more lead towards the enemy is going to have a greater chance of hitting something. Why is it that every modern army in the world issues it's infantry with semi-auto/full-auto weapons? If the logic behind, "It doesn't make a difference what type of weapon the infantryman has he just has to be there", is sound then why doesn't every modern army in the world go back to five shot, bolt action rifles? Your right, I have no practical military experience. I have never been in the military. I have never been in a firefight. If you have this type of experience then you have one up on me. To add just one other point, in reference to Sgt. Goody's post, you don't consider bolt action to auto feed revolutionary?

Look at K_Tiger's response. The average German soldier fired a shot and then had to take his aim off of the intended target to cycle the bolt and then re-aim. With a weapon like the MP-44 this would no longer have been necessary. I understand what Sgt. Goody is saying in his post and there is some truth to it, however, I honestly feel that his point does not capture everything that needs to be considered. As to your Canadian observation, I am not stating that predominately bolt action armed squads could not be effective, I am saying that a squad predominately armed with full/semi-auto rifles can and would be MORE effective. The Allied casualty rate would have increased to some degree if from late 43 on most German soldiers were equipped with such a weapon. Thank God Hitler was a fool and could not see the value in such a weapon being distributed to the Wermacht. You can quote from any book you want about revolutionary vs evolutionary but when it comes down to it, just ask yourself, "Would German squads have been more effective when armed mostly with MP-44's vs the same German squad armed with bolt action rifles?" If the answer to this question is yes, then throw the revolutionary vs evolutionary concept out the window. A higher Allied casualty rate would have slowed the progress towards Berlin.

If the Germans had mass produced/issued the MP44 when it became available it would have prolonged the conflict. Even if only by a few weeks. If Combat Mission teaches you anything about tactics then it would be that overwhelming fire superiourity wins the battle. Grenadiers cycling bolt action K98's were rarely able to achieve fire superiourity against there semi-auto rifle toting enemy, specifically West front. What were the Soviets using in late 1943 to the end of the war? Moisin-Nagant bolt action rifles? How common was the issue of the Soviet semi-auto rifle? I realize that other factors played into this including artillery, armor, air support, etc. But if the average grenadier was armed with an assault rifle instead of a bolt action, 5 shot, WWI throwback, this would have certainly helped.

Kamerades, For what it is worth, I am going to take my own advice on this thread. I just ordered the Chaintech AGP4X GeForce Ti4600 128mb card from Googlegear.com. I'm not rich, It just bothers me having to alt-tab my way through things. I'll put the AGP8X card in the closet. Can anyone post a reply explaining what AGP8X provides over an AGP4X card? Is it simply a matter of speed or resolution? Thanks.

What terrific news. Your post really uplifted me today. Take care and God Bless.

Phil, I hope your gut feeling is right on the 50.XX driver. Alt-tab stinks. You have to do it quite a bit when you are designing a scenario.

Your best bet is to get an Nvidia card that is capable of running the 30.82 drivers. This would mean that the card you select should be an AGP4X card. If you get an AGP8X card you will run into the "driver dilemma". If you can find one for the price range you specify, I would recommend purchasing a GeForce Ti4600 AGP4X 128mb card. Googlegear.com has a Gainward and a Chaintech version of this card for reasonable prices. On one of my Combat Mission PC's I have the Jaton version of this card. Runs great with 30.82, all the fog you want, super fast, no driver work arounds like alt-tab. If I was rich I would go buy one of the cards I just mentioned and put it in my other machine which has an EVGA GeForce Ti4600 AGP8X card. The card on Googlegear runs about $220.00 American money with 2nd day free shipping. Not bad. Looks like the Chaintech make is a tad less expensive than the Gainward card.

I created a restore point before applying this driver. Good thing that I did. When I first fired up CMBB it looked good with the same basic problem, no text had to alt-tab. When I got into a scenario to play, it crawled in setup mode but then I remembered that someone posted after they hit "GO" everything kinda loosened up and the refresh rate improved significantly. I tried this and it seemed to be great until my machine started to lock up hard in the middle of a game. Bye-bye 43.51. Hello 41.09. Didn't work for me. I'm no PC guru but this driver did not help the situation at all as far as I could see. Good Luck All!

If you have the time, I would like to take a look at your "Kursk" scenario. Thanks.

Couldn't agree more. I will say that with the future release of CMAK, this will really give the Combat Mission player a real plethora of choices. The guys at Battlefront really know what they are doing. To me, the difference in the game engine from CMBO and CMBB is like night and day. Although CMBO is very good, CMBB just takes it to another level. If the game engine in CMAK stays on par with the one in CMBB, and I see no reason why it wouldn't, then Combat Mission players are really gonna find it hard to break away from their PC's.

I just recently changed some BIOS settings on my machine related to AGP factors. After I had done this, I also started to lock up and receive these types of messages. In the BIOS, I had manually set the AGP factor to 8X because I have an AGP 8X card. This was a bad move on my part as it blew my ability to play Combat Mission out of the water. I have since reset this to 'AUTO' and it works well without locking up or throwing messages. Check some of the AGP settings in your BIOS. You may want to surf out to the website of your video card manufacturer to see if they have recommended BIOS settings for your particular card. I have an EVGA card and their page had recommended settings. This is how I realized that what I had manually done was not good. I hope that this helps you solve your problem. Good luck.

I built a CM machine from scratch. Nowhere near the horsepower that your rig has. I like AMD processors so I have a socket A motherboard, ASUS A7V8X, with a 2700+ AMD XP processor (2.17ghz) EVGA GeForce Ti4600 128mb AGP8X 1.5GB of PC2700 RAM Creative labs Soundblaster 5.1 sound card and 5.1 speaker system Western Digital 80GB 7200RPM hard drive with 8mb cache It runs CM good. If I ever do this again I'm going to go with an Intel processor to see what 3ghz is like.

I remember this song from the movie. Great movie. I think that I will give this a shot. Thanks much!

MeatEtr, My heart goes out to you. Quite the rig you've got there. From what you posted, I don't think that you are running 43.45. Although even if you were to download that driver, I don't think it would help you situation with the slow frame rate. If I'm not mistaken, someone posted a success story with this Nvidia supercard using the 43.45 driver. You may want to inquire. Nice machine!

Phil, This sounds great! Let us know how it runs. Good Luck!

Thanks again for your help. This is a great mod.

Tracer, I love this mod. I used it for CMBO and I downloaded it for CMBB as well. I noticed a fair amount of pink on the back wheel of the vehicle. Is there anything that you could do about cleaning up the back wheel? Thanks for any help that you can provide in advance. Take care.

Under Advanced Chip Configuration settings: AGP Capability AGP Performance Control AGP Fast Write Control I had these manually tweaked and had a real hard time even with 41.09. In any case, you found out what your problem was.

To me, including the bocage terrain from CMBO would really be nothing but eye candy anyway. The bocage terrain in CMBO didn't really provide the obstacle in the game that it really was anyway. The terrain that BTS/BFC provides in CMAK should be enough to re-create any West front battle you want, if that is what you want to do. The sticking point for those folks who want to re-create West Front battles won't be, "will there be that neat looking bocage" but "will the vehicles that we had in CMBO be in CMAK as well". MikeyD - Point well taken about North Africa fans. There are those enthusiasts out there that are interested in the African Desert campaign and adding Italy is like watering down their long awaited prize. For these people I hope that the desert aspect of CMAK is great. It certainly looks like it will be from the screen shots!

SuperSulo - Sorry to hear about your difficulty with your new system. Your hardware is very similar to what I am running. I have an AGP8X Nvidia card as well but have no problems with the Alt-Tab solution. It works great. I am also running 41.09 drivers for the video card. My card is an EVGA GeForce Ti4600. Not realy that far off from what you have. I am running Windows XP Pro which is different. Check your BIOS settings for AGP. What are they?

There were so many different variations of uniforms and camo types in the Heer and Waffen SS it would make your head spin. They can only do so much in the game. It appears as though the game determines uniform type by the time period selected. They probably selected the most prevalant uniform from that year/month. Many good uniform mods out there!

I've noticed a distinctive improvement in Soviet main canon accuracy. Specifically T-34/85. Was this one of the tweaks? Thanks. Happy Easter everyone!

Gautrek, I downloaded this Panther A mod and think it's fantastic! I hate to sound stupid but what exactly am I missing as far as this mod goes? Thanks, Jack Carr

I enjoyed reading your suggestions for enjoyable quick battles. I will most certainly try some of them. A few questions I had: 1) Why just small maps? This will limit the ability of the AI to outflank any defense the human player would set up. 2) I noticed that there wasn't much mention of giving one side or the other numerical superiourity. Why? I like to play battles that are historically accurate. Without this setting you never get the feel of what the Germans were up against in late 1944 and early 1945. Using this setting allows you to select the better tanks that were available to both sides. For example, If I give the Soviets +50% in an attack scenario in late 44, historically accurate by the way, I then can select two Panther tanks for the Germans. The two Panthers will find themselves up against 10-12 T-34/85's or 8 T-34/85's and 2 IS-2's. The outcome of the battle is still based on the individual players skill. The players unit placement and usage will still determine the outcome of the battle. If you are concerned about too many of this tank or that tank being selected, then turn on the rarity factor and use realistic numerical superiourity. Although Tiger and Panther were superiour to their Soviet counterparts, they weren't so superiour that they couldn't get knocked out when faced with numerical superiourity. The Russians knew this and used it to their advantage. Don't forget, the 8 T-34/85's that are lost in the battle were very quickly replaced with 15 new T-34/85's or better yet, IS-2's. The Germans replaced their knocked out Tiger tank with a Panzer Grenadier carrying a panzerfaust. This game allows you to understand exactly what the problems were that each side was faced with during the conflict from a combat perspective. To me, it seems a shame to box it in to specific scenario settings. Historical accuracy can still provide some thrilling play time. Not to worry, those two Panther's can have a "field day" and some well placed grenadiers can give the human wave a bloody nose.

I've got your late war Tiger IE from an earlier mod and will be downloading this one tonight. Thanks and well done!