winkelried

you don't need to be with mountain troops to have an edelweiss as a souvenir. being born somewhere up there can be enough (today they would probably get a tattoo ). and dried edelweiss can look pretty nice for quite a while. btw - a friend of our familiy had swiss/german double nationality coming from the mountains and served with the fallschirmjäger - jumped over crete and finally got wounded at cassino. so lots of reasons to keep a dried edelweiss as a souvenir ...

Fully understand this Michael and i am still undecided what shocked me more - the water in the can or the top

mmmh ... i quite liked the KV-2 too

Michael - a bit disappointing this American beach (probably )... water in an aluminium can and the girl still wears a top - most of the girls on french beaches wouldn't do either

Currently we snow too here :mad: we will have to wait a few weeks. usually end of February you can get days with 20 degrees or more in a place without too much wind

probably more sitting with me in a bistro at the sunny beach in "Nice" eating a few mussels with french fries and nipping a little Côtes de Provence and talking about god and the world (even better with a few female companions .

another option is to enforce fire discipline with target light / target briefly and restrictive cover arcs. this is close to RL: as a soldier/squad/platoon leader you would be very much aware of the limitations of your ammo loadout and try to make the best out of what you have. E.g. in RL we sometimes had just about 120 rounds for each assault rifle without much resupply for a mission so this would sometimes make you think twice before opening fire on a target.

just checked the axis artillery in CMFI - nothing to worry about IMHO. The "normal" Italian artillery takes approx 3 to 4 mins longer to call than the German artillery (12 instead of 8/9 minutes). The Italian guns which take longer to call were usually corps assets, the AA guns and the cannone da 105/28 (19 mins) or were even used as coastal defense guns like the cannone da 149/35 (18 mins). So the C2 would be naturally longer, just as with the German 21-cm-Mörser 18 which were used in the Heeresartillerieabteilungen (takes 20 minutes to call).

whatever near Riga means. AFAIK the German lines were already pushed quite a bit West of Riga when the Leibermuster appeared. Are you sure the uniforms are originals? Or not from the Czechoslovak bunch?

my wife says 12 and she usually is right

you mean in the Kurland cauldron/bridgehead (depending of the point of view ;-) )? btw its Leibermuster - seems the name comes from an engineer called Hellmut Leiber ... Leibermuster would mean body pattern if translated literally - Liebermuster would mean "preferrably patterned" - is this correct Fernando?

WEGO - since it was like this in CMBO and it always will be yes I am stubborn.

i first look at the action that will take place. then i select the map area. sometimes i need to make a compromise by scaling the map (e.g. to fit a 5km area on a 4 km map ). then the gathering of the information starts: i try to get a contemprary map (1:25'000 if possible). there are some sites where you can find those - mainly German Maps. then i look for contemporary aerial photographs (IGN or local German government sites) if no contemporary info is available - i use modern maps/aerials and try to find out what has changed (e.g. highways, new railroad lines, etc) based on the above info i create at least two layers for CM (map and photo). A good approach in sizing the overlays is to have on the map 1 pixel for 1 meter and on the photo 2-3 pixel per 1 meter. The map i normally use only for the elevation and the labels. the rest i get from the photo. I use GIMP to create the layers. be aware that there will always be some distortion amongst the layers or the aerial photos - so it's important to stop when things are close enough - if not you can spend hours on this stuff. During the creation of the map the following information comes handy battle accounts where i sometimes find information about specific areas/aspects of the battlefield e.g. ground condition - same is true for combat/post combat photographs - if any exist. old post cards give you an impression of how the place looked at the time. sites of the local town or regional government can be helpful too. google maps with street view may be helpful to get e.g. number of floors, outside aspect of the houses, visibility etc. or to find a cemetary or to identify the specific use of a pattern of houses (e.g. a monastery, school) personal visits to the battlefield to get a view with the tactician's eye. then the map making process: first i do the water (marsh-tiles), road and railroad network. then comes the elevation and bridges then forests and swamps etc then houses and trees then the remaining ground cover at last the flavor objects - if any

There was certainly an idea of standardization. The Leibermuster should substitute all other camos, but the main driver behind the development of the Leibermuster was to improve the camo against infrared devices. The Germans were pretty advanced in the development of IR-scopes etc, so they suspected the Allies to come up with a similar technology and started to develop the Leibermuster pattern. Since production of the Leibermuster started only in spring 1945 it seems that only basic uniform parts (tunics and pants) were issued to some Heer units based in Czechoslovakia.

see my post on the editor - execept for Rhône river on the La Coucourde map i never used water tiles. it's ok to use marsh for me, since most of the small rivers, creeks and gullies in the Montélimar area can be crossed by infantry - especially in August - but are obstacles to vehicles. the elevation needs a bit of work, this is true ...

now finishing the second large map on the 2.0 editor. time for some feedback: the overlay really is the killer! it speeds things up significantly. no more need to have a second screen/computer with the map/aerial photo and a grid overlay and to count/calculate locations for elements on the map - this is a SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT. a key to flip through multiple overlays would improve useability here. the draw tool needs a bit of a learning curve (it's a bit itchy on junctions and when doing long stretches it can tend to make roads with lots of edges that are not very playable - so one needs to carefully plan the roads anyway), but in the end it's a good improvement too. simplifies and speeds up a lot of things. its useability should be improved by showing the road/wall it will lay already before pressing the button the second time so you could adjust before pressing the button. the elevation has also improved - i use mostly the direct method along height lines on the map (thanks to the overlay). this method works nicely now. in the 3D view the gradient chosen by the software sometimes is a bit aggressive - means that you can have steep edges and then relatively flat elevations in between - especially when you place lines rather close to each other. Some improvements i feel would help the map maker even more water - is still the main issue due to its elevation issues - still using marsh tiles most of the time and then having to adjust for the elevation on my own - not too much of a headache, since the gullies and small rivers i have in my scenarios usually can be crossed by infantry. fill to border - creating the ground cover is now the most time consuming task (if you have a good aerial picture). usually i draw the outline of a field and then have to fill it with different brush sizes. to automate the fill part would be a big help - but would also require an undo function when you forgot to close the outline completely ;-) configurable tiles arrangement on the tool bar - for a map i usually need only a subset of tiles so it would be nice to have the ground #1 to #3 tabs to be configurable so i could put my preferred tiles in the #1 bar and then could avoid flipping around the # too much. oblique buildings - oblique (45 degree angle on the map) buildings should be available in the same size and variability as horizontal buildings. fire walls - the editor should have an option where it places automatically a firewall without windows/doors when you put two buildings adjacent to each other.

snake_eye try to fiddle with the mods you have installed. had some issues with stability and removed all mods and reinstalled one by one. left some out at the end...

thanks snake_eye i remember your issues - that's one of the reasons why i waited for 2.0 to finalise the campaign - we'll might still see some of those issues on some configurations i suspect. i use the following platform config to playtest: Intel Core i5 CPU M430@2.27 GHz 4 GB RAM 64-bit OS Windows 7 NVIDIA GeForce GT 320M with 1'024 MB Video Memory Loading times for large maps (w/o units) are in the range of 3 to 8 minutes on this platform at best/best graphic settings. Now running CMBN 2.0 with CW module and had no issues during playtesting till now.

I use dismounted ( )American armored infantry (almost) without heavy weapons (no mortars, some MGs and the odd bazooka). I think this gives them a simple weapons mix (mostly M1 and a few carbines) - and naturally i hope BFC will gives us some FFI in the near future with a nice hodgepot of weapons :-) - and naturally i wait for the traction avante.

no. you probably refer to the Vercors which was not far to the northeast of Crest, but does not include Crest. In the battle of Montélimar the French FFI units were organized along military lines and cooperated closely with the U.S. forces. Relevant units for the battle were the 4e Bataillon FFI du Drôme of the Zone Sud with 6 companies in the Montélimar-Sauzet-Marsanne-La Coucourde area and the 2e Bataillon FFI of the Zone Centre with 10 companies in the Crest - Loriol area. The FFI were deployed in coordination with the Americans as infantry - although mostly in defensive tasks - except for some hit and run attacks on rear echelon units. A bit farther north the liberation of Valence was left to the FFI when the U.S. forces were needed at Montélimar. (take with care - not my area of focus )

There are lots of trees for hiding under

French living in Switzerland ;-) there will be defensive battles (some of them quite desperate) and offensive battles (including the odd night battle). You will see things like holding off an allied attack until the rear echelon convoys have left the area and then successfully disengage. fighting the Maquis when your front line troops are engaged by the Americans. removing American roadblocks with an armour heavy force holding off an American assault until your heavy forces show up to counter attack rooting out entrenched American infantry using third rate Luftwaffe units supported by a few tanks. searching and routing FOs who harass your rear echelon columns with artillery exfiltrating what's left of your infantry after being cut off by the Americans ... getting pounded by 108+ U.S. artillery pieces (never all of them together though ) and ... some goodies :-) even firing a few shots with these before they get captured by the Allies at La Coucourde if you want to learn more read Riviera to the Rhine Chapter IX

I used a high (6-8 level) modular building. First I destroy all walls of the top floor - either completely (=flat) or partially (=edged roof) and then I destroy the roof of the building - et voilà.

as a goodie the actual locations of the maps ;-)

Flybys Crest (WIP) Flying from the west over the Drôme river towards Crest. At 00:09/00:10 you see the craters south and north of the Drôme of the failed aerial bombardement against the railroad bridge of 13. August 1944.