RockinHarry

Thanks, cool stuff! :cool: Also the brush looks like worth to download!

Hey George, I did something similar for one of the Steel Panthers Mega Campaigns (Lost Victories) couple of years ago, although it was staff radio communication messages and that stuff. Recorded voices in my little home studio and made it sounding like 40ies area audio. No big deal. Let me know if you need some tech support!

Looking forward to it! .. yet have to find somebody who can send me stuff on CD! :eek:

I thought that mouseholing played a big part in Aachen... :confused: </font>

Urban combat is a good compromise in CM IMHO. It still works well with some imagination, when considering that there´s a lot of abstraction (1 terrain type per 20m tile only and no visual tracking of individual soldiers). Same counts for the Steel Panthers game which is even more abstracted and has even larger terrain tiles (hexes) of 50m size. While mouse holing surely was an option when there was enough time and well equipped combat engineers around, I rather miss houses in CM having no basements! I think house to house combat in larger cities still was resolved more commonly the usual way, by moving and entering buildings from the streets or backyards. It also depends upon the opponent whether you had to use the mouseholing methods. In Stalingrad there were fanatic russians and in Ortona there were fanatic paratroopers. Affairs like the battle for Aachen (US vs germans) or Goch/Cleve (Operation Veritable, CW vs. germans) surely didn´t feature (or require) mouseholing techniques. However, for any oncoming CMx version that would be a nice tool to have (beside basements, dugouts, DUKW´s & appropiate terrain, snipers or FO´s up in trees/smoke stacks ect. ect. ect.)

Now that is cool! :cool: I love to play with David´s ETO mod enabled and did a little bit of my own modding stuff for a particular western front project of mine (hurtgen forest camapaign) some time ago. Converting African Desert for something completely different is quite an excellent idea, as I rarely play this theather (no interest in that particular topic) unless a PBEM opponent sends me a particular desert scenario setup. Looking forward to try out your finished works, Mark! Just some food for thought: I modded the CMAK rough terrain tile to look like shattered trees, added few broken trees to the common pine tree assortment and made the sandbag thing to look like something as a roofless pillbox. Other thing that I tried out but did not have released yet is the vineyard terrain to look like a tree plantation/nursery, another common terrain feature in western europe.

Playing the germans (vs. AIP) and now into battle 2. Tough going as well. Those darn KV tanks... :eek: ..looks like I should avoid this particular KV2 if I see it

More than cool! I did like playing IL-2 a lot, since it also had a speedy code! So that means that ToW will probably have a very good frame rate too? Always was astonished what the ground troops were doing in Il-2. Now one can play the stuff CM like as well!

...also scenario makers should make more use of craters! Not just that they add more "warlike" looks on otherwise golf course looking like maps (I encounter them way to oftenly:P), they also offer an attacking AI opponent better opportunities for advancing infantry across a map! A way better alternative than seeing the AI moving from one patch of woods to another and when combined with other good cover terrain, the AI movements are less predictable, thus offering a more fun game! :cool:

The german rifle grenades used in CM are an average of available types used during WW2. From some testing I found they penetrate about 40-50mm near vertical armor. In fact penetration abilities ranged from 30-40mm for the early type and about 70-80mm for the late type (grosse Gewehr Panzer Granate), but as said these are no explicitly modelled in the game. Same goes for the even more powerful types developed for the SS that weren´t produced in nzmbers. Also interesting is that BFC made these available early in 1941, although more realistically these shouldn´t be available before spring of 1942. The original instruction manuals for the german "Schiessbecher" states a max range of 280m for the HE type grenade. The practical range surely was much lower, dependent upon whether you aim at an area target or a point target (window, MG ect.) Practical ranges for the HEAT grenade were below 100m for a "sufficient possibility of hitting" a stationary tank, below 75m for "sufficient possibility of hitting" a moving tank and below 50m for the possibility of aiming at and hitting a "vulnerable" part of a tank. How much of all that works in the CM game, I can´t tell. The max ammo given in the game surely is way to low! The (german) soldier operating the "Schiessbecher" normally carried about 15 grenades (10 HE and 5 HEAT) or even more with him. The game gives just about 1-3. Might be BFC abstracts rifle grenades similarly as it does for hand grenades, assuming "loads" instead of single grenades? However, that would make no sense for the grenade launcher, since it`s only a single weapon, launched by a single man (1 per infantry squad). Clarification re the various Panzerfausts: The 30, 60 and 100 in the weapons name, suggests the maximum range at which the warhead has best chance to hit a tank (=effective range). Real max range is only slightly higher. That means theoretically you still can aim at and hit a tank at range of 40m for the 30 version or 80m for the 60 version ect. The difference between the Panzerfaust 30 and 30k ("Faustpatrone" or "Gretchen") has already been stated correctly. Interesting to notice is that the 30k version was produced until the end of the war! While the warhead was considered less effective against sloped armor like russian T-34 have, it still was to be found effective enough to be used against western allied tank models. Another reason to keep that in production was maybe it took less resources to be built and was very easy to be operated by untrained personnel.

Best use for any sort of satellite images is to extract info that you don´t normally have available on topographical maps, that would be type of agriculture (if any), something that did not change during past 50-60 years when considering larger areas in less crowded parts of europe (incl. Russia). One can figure out just by color if a particular area is a pasture or a wheat field, the more if the satellite image was taken in summer (most likely).

Always Extreme FOW for more realism (fun). In scenario testing I rather prefer to place elite snipers in good concealment cover at key locations to watch the enemy (AI) movements. As mentioned before, the AI reacts strongly to what it sees and with FOW = None, testing results differ largely from a game played with FOW Full/Extreme. :eek:

Also worth to know is that you can use Mapping Mission for creation of CMAK maps as well! By use of Map Converter! :cool: http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=002046

I think I saw the "Mooshof Melee" action converted to a CM scenario several times. Can´t remeber where it was, maybe the Scen depot or Boots n tracks ect. No reason not to try again IMO. :eek: AFAIK the heroic action of Major Tilston before the Hochwald layback in 2.45 wasn´t converted yet! (Visited the real place several times during the past years) :cool:

Want me to send the stuff over to UK? Let me know!

File sent!

off topic, but I have place quite close where i reside where a RSO was wrecked, probably in 1945. There was about a dozen of track parts all over a place (a small wooded valley), but now not anymore. Most likely used as flak ammo carrier due to the other remains to be found in the area. :eek:

Some time ago I downloaded a PDF file describing ASL to CM map conversion. It was off one of the various CM sites, probably Der Kessel oder another site I can´t remember. I can send it to your email if you like.

Would be interested, but H2H games take unusually long for me, due to my limited availability of net access! If you need some vs. AI testing, then send at my email that you probably still have.

Thanks for asking. I had planned to give it a try sometime in spring or so, but if you like you can do some modding of my files as well!

@ Slappy: if there´s really not a rule behind the mine spotting behavior and it´s truly a bug, then I would confirm your observations and conclusion. @ Sergei: I made the same observations some time ago. I set up a test scenario (AI attacking/assaulting) to find out whether I could channelize the AI infantry movement paths, by placing AI owned AP mine fields in various terrain types. The map had mixed terrain and I put most of the AI controlled AP mine fields in those wood patches that the AI normally likes to move his infantry units into when approaching flags or the exit map edge. My intention was to deny the AI those terrain types in order to force its movements through other parts of terrain, in particular terrain folds and depressions (rather following terrain contours, not covered terrain types). Well, the result simply was it did not work. The AI still moves his infantry into and through his own known mine fields in order to enter or reach normal cover terrain like woods, rough, brush, ect. A human player normally can´t move his infantry units into his own minefields, but the AI obviously can, meaning it cheats! Also when the AI triggers his own mine fields, they become visible to the human player as you say. The AI mine field "trick" worked fine in the SPWAW game, but unfortunately does not in CM. Still wondering if placing craters in the editors crater placing mode (ALT-F1 to F4) degrades mine field effectiveness. (first place minefield, then put some craters in the tile with ALT-F1 to F4) Actually should not happen, but the game manuals leave that question open. :confused:

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Thanks Leland & J2D!

still interested in this! Any experiences or observations? :confused:

Can´t remember where I read this, but it was reported the MP44 is to use short (5 round) bursts only for auto fire, since longer bursts resulted in very unconfortable self resonating of the whole weapon. End result most likely the same, loosing aim and accuracy, no matter range.