TSword

Can only second most other posters. - If fumbling of vehicle turnrate is necessary, please check out the brilliant www.jagdtiger.de Panther videos before (The beast turns fast on the spot, much much faster then an Abrams for isntance which almost throws his track,hehe). - Marders can transport a halfsquad, if you don't believe i'll send you the photos. - Even a vector blob would be suffice to me, to emulate horses for towing. (6th German Army for instance had around 300'000 horses !!!!), or in another word something which though being slow doesn't bog outside a road.....How should i emulate a retreating inf-column with support weapons in the open now ?????! - Because the bikes hadn't made it in, we need something else with a MG being small and fast. How about VW-Schwimmwagen with an MG, and able to transport a 2-men section ??? (On the russian side the jeep with the same feature). Now i have no vehicle for recon, and by recon i mean to race to a spot in cover and then leave the vehicle take the glasses and observe. Why that ? In real one can easily recon even with a KT if deployed turret down, the observer then either can observe from the open hatch or climb onto the Turret, or park the beast behind a house leave the vehicle and observe. As all this can only be brought in with a lot of programming into CMxx the Schwimmwagen/Wheep-solution with passenger AND MG is the cheapest. (What in hell should i do with footslogger Recon units ???) - Ari-Observer with radio can of course man a vehicle and do his duty. Ever heard of the flying Ari-observers which terrorised the germans in WWII ? - For AI controlled vehicles the collision detection should be disabled or better by user choice even a command line para would be enough . Maps even with only a bit of wood or other obstacles (like road bends) hopelessly clog the AI-vehicles for turns without end, which makes their already tiring slow attack speed in general even slower (not to be misunderstanded as to low vehicle speeds in detail)..... - It's now quite difficult to plot waypoints within 2-story buildings. (Maybe i missed some new tweek ??) - For unit selection in scenario design mode a general ammo selector would be great. Example i buy an Inf Cpy and adjust the ammo count for all the squads and units. It's extremely tiring to adjust levels for a multi Inf-bataillon force. A short and cheap method would be a single checkbox in the HQ-unit's edit-screen "adjust all units", if checked adjustment of the HQ-unit then automatically adjust ammo counters of subordinated units, the same for morale and the like. This way one can quite fast adjust levels for a bat, cpy and platoon to a satisfactory level. Greets Daniel

Andreas, Obviously haven't looked through the vehicle list carefully enough yet......... 30 points, oh my F..a.. !!! Will check rarity immediately, hopefully it's not to low, or definetely the multibarreled MG-pest brakes out invariably in Multiplay.... Greets Daniel

Uhhhh, Hetzer curved armor, and ISU152 not (So much gun, one asks where is the tank) ???!! BUMP Greets Daniel

Playing now is much more fun then with CMBO, because one has much much more possibilities in the kind of gameplay possible. CMBO was nothing more then the entry drug, the real deal has now arrived with CMBB..hehe.. Let's be honest in CMBO battles followed always the same limited basic pattern with tree huging and arty against, in fact slow slugging matches, nothing elegant or exhilirating. Now things changed dramatically with better concealment possibilities for stationaries, no no brainer arty anymore, realistic tankgunnery (much improved longrange shooting and better hitprob at all ranges), lowered acuracy while moving. Now it's perfectly possible for a single AT-gun to knock out Heaps of enemy tanks (Only limit in my case was ammo). Speed and manouver will become a completely new meaning in tank vs. tank battle. City-fighting is pure fun now and never did i felt this kind of excitment before in CMBO. A single 2-men team holding off a platoon whoohooo!!!. In general the attacker's life has been made a lot more difficult, exactly the way it should be. The days of only Meeting Engagments in Multiplayer are soon over.... Greets Daniel

The Panther G has a rounded 100 mm Cast armor mantlet which has somewhat lowered penetration resistance vs. rounds near it's thikness and above. (Compendiums are a bad source of exact armor thiknesses, take a Jentz book about it or THE Panther book Spielberger's. The point with the Panther G mantlet was it's roundness, so only a comparatively small area gives a low angle shot -> inreasing probability of a deflection. It's equal to JS-2 mantlet. However a T-34/85 will only be able to achieve a weak penetration at ranges > 800 m which may injure someone in the turret and jam the gun (The gun and holder gives some additional protection), so quite a good protection. Stay outside 1000 m to T-34/85 and use concentrated fire from different directions (split platoon into sections). A Panther in confined space won't be happy just like all big cats, so don't waste money on small maps and buy NUMBERS of veteran or better Stug's instead, intermixed with P4 when on attack course. In CMBB the blind rush days will forever be gone.... Greets Daniel

Redwolf, Hard fact as you surely know isn't available to this subject (who would shoot at a flok of pigs with a Quad 20mm ????), but every account related to Quad 20mm Flakvierling in a groundrole emphasizes the devastating effect on men and soft targets in general. Account for instance by Dickfeld (JG52 pilot) where in the struggle of winter 1942/43 their airfield was suprisingly attacked by a russian cav.-battailon in the Night over a frozen lake. They had a single Quad-20mm and otherwise handheld inf-weapons like carabine and MP40 to defend themselve. The bataillon was slaughtered by the Quad 20mm, they counted over 200 dead the next morning terribly mutilated laying in the ice. Account (and several others i don't remember) for instance in Last victory where a town only held by rear-Security troops, again in the struggle Jan-Feb. 1943, was attacked by massed russian infantry in the Night, a single Quad-20mm again stalled the attack panicking the attackers and leaving heaps of dead behind. Take the M17 Quad M2, it is devastating vs. Inf. right ? Now bore it out to 20mm. Now out of a sudden it cannot be used vs. infantry anymore because someone rates it now a cannon. Come on.. Greets Daniel

Although, the germans were not able to deliver enough gaz and spare parts for the small Luftflotte operating at Kursk, where operational sorties dropped off the third day and only the most important ground actions could be supported. (Btw up to 20 August 1943). The germans were not able to maintain a much larger Airforce in the East up to 1943 when they still were deep in enemy territory logistically. Later on this changed of course and there the contributions of the Western allied airforces cannot be overestimated. Greets Daniel

Thin Redline, Of course in real the blast with splinters and pieces of phosphor were a big part of the weapon's effect. However cmbb is an abstraction of the real, and there's certainly no algorithm in it for the effect of incendiary rounds on infantry. The most obvious effect when a inf-group is shooted at with 20 mm is exactly the same as with MG, they hit the ground ASAP panicked by the burning and torn apart bodies around them. So what we need foremost is the suppresive effect of an MG, but with better kill and moral effect. I would warmly welcome a higher blast value in conjunction with suppresive effect, since for the burst (4-6 rounds) only one blast occurs when there should be 4-6, but BTS refused so far. What we have now is the worst possible solution, to calculate one single tiny blast only, no spread suppressing effect. Do a test with a Quad-20mm vs. advancing Inf-plt in the open and a HMG, amazing difference. The result clearly shows the Quad completely ineffective vs. Inf. This "behaviour" of the auto 20mm, true is a negligeable in itself, but becomes a real torn in the back when compared to the M17. Now again it's necessary to debate how many one can take in a Multiplayer game and so on. Fact is the german army was abundantly equipped with Flakguns of all calibres from the beginning, where the Russian army was not (Only higher Level reserves) up to very late in the war. Btw: I would rate a (corrected) Quad 20mm at around 100 - 120 points atleast, and the same so for the M17. It's also very good that hopefully the gamey 20mm lorries (difficult to kill) have been changed. It's just that i like to create scenarios with some historical OOB's such as 20mm cannons vs. Inf or softargets. Now it's futile to do so, a waste of points. OK enough whining, back to the great sides of CMBB !! I'VE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH THE AT- AND LMG- TEAMS !! (Maybe also candidates for the gamey award...) Greets Daniel

aka, redwolf May all be true, but they are infantry and HT butchers for free. 40-60 points how many heavy MG do you get for this price, 4 ? (regulars). I can't understand why it is sooo difficult to handle the 20mm autocannon like a MG with extra punch, it's all it is needed in the first place. Who needs the blast value ?. Does anybody think the 20mm killed by blast value ?? Come on.... There's an imbalance in respecto to Inf-killing power which is because a weapon-system isn't modelled correctly. And this inf-hitting power was the reason it was so searched after by the troops. In short, a request to BTS, delete the quad german and give us a gun looking like a quad 20mm but with the algorithms of a 12 mm with boosted punch and lowered firerate, OK ?? Greets Daniel

The M17 is THE gamey vehicle in the game. Not that it was not that effective it actually certainly was. The real bummer is how the Auto 20mm on the german side is handled, a single tiny 20 cm hole in the ground for a 7-8 round serie (If you once have seen the effect of 4 20mm cannons firing on ground targets you understand me). The SS used the 20 mm whenever possible because it was a terror weapon against Infantry (The incendiary rounds setting on fire the men in the vicinity of the exploding round). Moreover the rarity factors for it in 1943 are extremely low around 20-40% IIRC and extremely cheap 40 or 60 points. I think this weapon was included the way it is now because of the US-customers of the game... Best solution would have been to leave it out or atleast impose severe rarity penalties. :mad: Greets Daniel

Grisha, Had a pesky IL-2 in the 1942-scenario Sevastopol. The IL-2 attacks as Lindan pointed out. The IL-2 did not generate much material damage, but instead created chaos in my line. Troops dismounted their HTs which brought some chaos. 1 or 2 HTs destroyed, abandoned some with killed gunners. I had two 20 mm Flaks so this may be a reason why the pilot missed with the bombs and rockets. I think planes are great to bring some disorganisation into an attackers formation. A fighter is available for 90 points and even managed to immobilize a T-34 (In this case a 109). Greets Daniel

Matt, got the e-mail to another e-mail adress, and just read it now, sorry Cheers Daniel

Pvt. Ryan, Yes, the method can be used to alter strings in the game, although a bit tiresome. I have no intention to change anything else, because i only NEEDED to change the reinf-counter text so it works. Greets Daniel

Definetely winter mods !!!!

Nippy, did the movie-scenario and it works beautifully. The only problem is that the T-34 always clump and clog in the beginning turns at the wooden edge. A 300 vs. 1000 pt. scenario Of course i took 7 T-34/76, quite frightening and intense ! Kilmore: Wrong, if you've watched the movie carefully you would have noticed that there's a scene where a Hauptmann and a normal soldier talk about the war (The two know each other from peacetimes). The soldier says that he hates all the officers for they made it all possible. This clearly includes the Wehrmacht as a whole. It's certainly no Hollywood-style John Waynee hero-crap, in fact all "heros" die in the end. Greets Daniel

As those know which are creating scenarios, the german version has an error, where one cannot see the turnnumber when using renforcments in the unitselection screen due to excessive long string. A cure up to upcoming patch: FORUM MODERATOR COMMENT: Danial I did email you about this but it appears you did not get it...While what was posted was rather harmless in itself (just a change to a data string table which would not affect ANY other game data) we by and large do NOT condone posts on our forum which instruct on how to modify our game executable. TSWORD did nothing wrong, I want to stress that but we can see already that people are thinking this same approach would apply to *other* areas of the game and that is not accurate. Charles has already confirmed that this issue with the missing turn number WILL be fixed in the first v1.01 patch which we are already working on. More details on that patch to follow. Any more posts with instructions on how to change or modify the executable will also be removed. Thank you... Madmatt Cheers Daniel [ September 23, 2002, 07:22 AM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

Griffin, - June 1943, no Hurricane - No Desert-tile, but open ground is about the same i think. - Trenches seem to give better cover from fire and observation, however tested only in Steppe, have to do a test in open ground. Cheers Daniel

Tankwarfare really rocks now ! It feels much more real now. Manouver now really becomes a meaning (Tanks hit much worse on the move then in CMBO, but much better when stationary -> Good). A good positioned AT-Gun can really wreck an enemy attack with ease. (Had a single 50 mm Pak killing 9 T-34). AI on the attack is slightly better then in CMBO but still more control for the scenario editor would be extremely beneficial (On deep narrow maps the AI is just to slow in the attack and much to easily distracted). -> Not more AI, but instead more control for scenario designer. A great new feature (though graphically a bit poor) are the trenches. This allows for completely new styles of scenarios/battles. Did already a Scenario where one has two new platoons (Beside battle weary low ammo companies in trenches). The player then has to conduct a patrol in force to eliminate/capture enemy outposts. All playing in mainly Steppe terrain. Stealthy sneaking is possible and allows extremely interesting things.... Tomorrow i will make a scene which was in the new Stalingrad movie, the one where the T-34s attack a single Pak40 and some men, perfectly possible in CMBB...hehe One bad thing i noticed is the fact that small calibre autocannons still only produce a small hole in the ground (Fires 4-6 rounds -> one handgrenade hole in the ground.) A single Quad-20mm has no chance stopping a platoon on the open (Very, very sad). On the other side one of the gamey vehicles will be the Lendlease Quad-0.5 inch (cheap and low rarity penalty)..... :mad: Artillery is much more difficult to handle now. Unobserved fire from a veteran 15 cm FO with radio -> 5 turns to wait, 10 m readjustment -> Again 5 turns. Observed is ok around 3-4 turns for the bigger guns. Moreover unobserved fire may have quite considerable error in it (Rounds may land 50-100 m off your aiming point,hehe). All in all a good feature because the allmighty CMBO-arty has gone to a great extent. A little annyoance is the way vehicle riding Inf is handled. The real delaytimes are almost always much longer then the shown ones. Moreover one has to carefully watch that the first waypoint is exactly behind the vehicle, otherwise they won't leave it. At one instance all but one stayed on the vehicles, which necessiated a reload of the game.-> This should be fixed because it makes micromanagment of vehicle riding inf-units a little nightmare. For Stukas no targets can be assigned which is also a bit of a letdown (This makes the Stuka a bad weapon vs. the IL-22, which of course it was not, quite the contrary). Why not the solution: 1. One buys TAC free raiding -> As is now 2. One buys TAC and a liason officer (more expensive), which enables targeting about the same as with arty. Not a tragedy, but nonetheless a little letdown in respect to accuracy (One has to buy really heavy arty to substitute Stuka-attack effect). Liason-officer were assigned to the Schwerpunkt formations no matter what the size. Cheers Daniel

BUMP ! Yeah experienced the same, this makes scenario creation a nightmare. Did 2 scenarios already. Great new possibilities otherwise !! Greets Daniel

Think cost will vary with year: Mid-1944 T-34/76 (Model 1943) 116-121 (two models) T-34/85 (Model 1944) 151-153 (two models) KV-1 Model 1941 123 KV-85 166 and 200% rarity IS-1 162 and 100% rarity JS-2 (3 Models) ranging 150-190 (late has 100 % rarity) ISU 122, 152 both 144 and 20-50% rarity German StuG III: 111 no or low rarity pen. PzIV H: 134 no rarity pen. Brummbär: 157-168 rarity pen. 40-100% Nashorn: 108 +40% rarity Panthers: 233-239 20-50% rarity pen. Tiger VI E Mid: 203 +10% rarity Elefant: 229 +129 % rarity All given prizes without rarity included Greets Daniel [ September 20, 2002, 08:46 PM: Message edited by: TSword ]

Hurrah ! As i promised my first action after firing up CMBB was to test longrange tank duels betw. KT and JS-2. (Well, i was quite optimistic after the Demo already) I did setup a JS-2 waiting in the open 1250 m from a KT hunting into hulldown covered by a ridge at first. Expected result: No long Dingdong shooting for turns without end Actual result: JS-2 discovered KT first and fired almost immediately (KT discovered JS-2 in that instant) JS-2 missed. KT returns fire and misses. KT got off 2 other shots of which 1st hit the gun (no damage), 2nd hit the upper Hull of JS-2 and shrugged off the angled armor there. JS-2 fired a second one shortly before end of turn which missed. Next round KT 1st shot again hits upper hull to no avail. KT then killed JS-2 with one through the turret front resulting in a brew up. 2nd shot of KT was already a hit (One expects second to fourth with high probability under such ideal circumstences). All subsequent shots were hits also. In a second test: KT executed bracketing, first short, second long, third kill Terrain: absolutely flat and open only two little ridges to hide Weather/Wind: No Wind, warm, dry, clear Crews: Regular Execution: Hotseat with EFOW, only command given to KT, Hunt command to crest ridge to enter LOS to JS-2. Though i did only two tests i'm completely satisfied the way longrange gunnery works now in principle. CONGRATULATIONS TO STEVE AND HIS TEAM !!! Cheers Daniel [ September 20, 2002, 08:27 PM: Message edited by: TSword ]

He Boys, Why all this fuzz about the tiny manual ? I've read it through and have to say it contains all you need to start playing the game. If you want more (as for instance how to use the editor for instance and other subtleties) use the pdf, you can even print it out on your seldom used Superfuzz500HypercolorLaserspit. Btw: In a very short time this forum will be full of detailed thorough discussions about the new game mechanics, strategies, errors aehem..., and every little quibble imaginable. For those having questions come over here. Greets Daniel

Got it ! Took the only copy in the shop,hehe ! They only received one copy today. God i'm a lucky bastard Though, i have to wait after work, quite a punishment ! Greets Daniel

Andreas, thanks for the link !

Andreas, I speak german, so you can send me the whole DV if you have it in digital form....keen interest... Well, great ! So there were not enough prime movers to relocate a 8.8 battery at once, interesting. I think it is somewhat dubious to backup the thesis of only unlimbered deployment on the ground of availabiltiy of prime movers for a game like CM. What matters is the ability to use the gun in limbered position and nothing else. Weapon + carriage + prime mover = One can use the weapon in limbered position. Andreas, i don't want to start a fight with you, so take this as my last statement and personal opinion. Btw. i can life with the way it's now (barely..) Greets Daniel