HarryInk

Hmmm .. ..really good replies. Even good advice! 1/3 hobbies (ie. crushing your opponents) and something else with the rest, I think. (Though 1/3 seems a little slim, but whatever...) And GJK makes it clear that CM might be bad for your sex life, or at least that it may be a secret sort of prophelactic? I have noticed that staying up late playing CM IP games rather than following my mate to bed does have some sort of effect to that end (but then, we're going to spring baby #2 in a fortnight, so, like most prophelactics, it's not full proof ). But then, having your T-34 put shells through the side of a line of Panthers...ain't that better than sex? ain't it??? I'm a little surprised so many players are so happy. I was wondering if there should be a 'wife's temper' warning on the retail CM box!! Perhaps they're the ones who have gained wisdom with long relationships? I'm 10 years in: a happy 40 to go. Hopefully we'll end up tiddling along together in the hobby room in our dotage.... hmmm...no... by then they'll have invented the WW1 air combat virtual reality game and she'll have to put up with me sitting in the middle of the room blind as a bad with silly goggles on chasing canvas canaries above the trenches. ah well... We'll manage somehow. *L*

Of course, it's no use in this game, but I do believe the most effective personal counter to 88mm cannon in history was to become a supply clerk.

Dear all, A little topic for chatter that popped up on the CMHQ chat room...and *blush* incidently in a conversation I recently had with my best friend and wife (being the same person, you see...so far, anyway). And maybe it'll be instructive for those nice people buying CM in the shops at the moment. How has Combat Mission affected your relationships with your nearests and dearests? Are there any testimonials to the effect that "CM destroyed my marriage, my life, but I still play 5 PBEM battles at a time"? Any wives/partners/children wish to eloqently express their opinions about how CM arrived in their husband/partner/father's life and became an ornament to their deep mutual love? We'd be interested to know. Personally...well....I have literally frustrated my partner to the point of speechlessness with my CM addiction. And I'm sorry for that. I truly am. (But I still often have 3-5 battles going simultaneously!) Is it really a bad thing when my mind wanders during our conversations to calculating the likely outcomes of my next turns? I mean, at least I still remember my kiddy's name: Manstein...er...Milla. Anyway, what light can others shed upon this most important of issues?

I am waiting....soooooo waiting for the Napoleonic tactical/grand tactical game in this 'we go' style. I also think it'd be fantastic because modelling the campaign side of Napoleonic warfare is so much easier. It's a case of supplying armies & corps of 30-100,000 men, not quarters of millions! There are definite supply lines, discrete march routes, no continuous 'fronts' in the C20th sense, etc. etc. This would allow you to fully achieve the Napoleonic scheme of better concentrating your force on the field...organising that 110%+ that enables you to turn the flank and win the battle. The visual style of CM also appeals greatly. Being able to plot actions with level 4/5 views, then pan down to 1 or 2 for the action phases...wow!! See that Prussian cavalry turn the French infantry into salami!! Woo hoo! Hell, hit a unit, view 1, tab, and ride along for the charge!! Being able to do all this in a PBEM format rather than a 'real time' format, like Sid Meier's American Civil War style/Napoleon's Last Battle style game....ah....*sigh*...but are there any Napoleonic buffs out there with BFCs commitment to quality games, knowledge of the era, and computer skills?.. There's the rub. Still, we can dream...

Question for the history buffs: Were the British Wasp flame throwers rare little beasts over represented in CM games cos they're such nasty little beggars, or did they become fairly common during they war in the West? Can anyone enlighten me/us? Cheers HarryInk

Yep....let us know if it was our lousy advice or your lousy generalship (or vice versa).

Brilliant. I knew people around here would have the good oil. Thanks heaps. Harry PS. Still interested in any other source people might know of.

I've done my belated search thru the BFC forum archives *blush* but not a lot of joy: www.stalingrad.net has some reasonable assets Someone suggested http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/soviet_maps.html but it bumps from the Berkeley site. *sigh* Any other suggestions, folks?

OK, this is an eccentric question: A mate often jokes about how he'd love to have a panzer commander's hat to wear when he's deluding himself on CM. It's a good idea to think ahead for Xmas, I think to myself. So.. Can anyone recommend where I'd look to find a panzer commander's hat? or (& even more eccentricly) does anyone know where I could find the sewing pattern for a panzer unterofficer feldmutze?

God how I HATE HATE HATE :mad: :eek: reading histories of military campaigns without maps -- GOOD maps -- to follow the ebb and flow of events. It was irritating enough doing this with Alan Clark's Barbarossa, but... I'm just starting Erikson's classic The Road to Stalingrad. Can anyone suggest good sources for maps to go along with Erikson's text? As I'm slumming it in Melbourne Australia, and raising a young family, being guided to economic sources of maps would be preferable. ie. I can't afford a $700 deluxe geographer's 1:10 scale of the Russian campaign. *L* Can anyone recommend sites on the net? Or alternatively sources I might find in a decent State/Uni library? (Fairly decent ones here in Melb) Cheers and thanks in advance.

Hey, LE TONDU (etc.) Are there any worthwhile Napoleonic tactical/grand tactical computer games worthy buying at the moment? I'm just about to get a PC after living in MAC purgatory for years and am excited by the possibilities.....

He's right, you know! *L*

The best advice I can offer you on this is JasonC's article on German inf in the close defence: http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=000493 It works, consistently, brilliant, bloodily. Your only risk is letting your opponent flank you. Cheers HH

Haven't had time to read the whole thread, but: Hit and miss devices.had one in a PBEM that was set up to fire, and only got off a single misdirected shot in the whole turn. Still, it distracted the German squad from the flanking doughboys that over ran it. *shrug* In other games, FTs have cracked morale of enemy units quick smart, and if you can get 'em up vs a tank they'll toast it. Crew runs like doggies. But getting the FT close is murder! FTs usually die on me...so the advice of plenty of support is very pertinent. The best use I've found for them is to light up buildings at the start of a defence. You can channel attacks in this way, or deny the enemy a front entry into a town, forcing them into your ambush... Use of them like that, where they're not under pressure is the most reliable I've found 'em. Otherwise,,, grrrr...a hit and miss thing.

Oh... I forgot to mentions Priests. I love 'em. Use 'em down fire alleys. Fire much much faster than Wespes. No armor worth a damn, so don't fool yourself with hull down. But if you sucker him into defending the village, you can take him apart turn by turn, building by building, from across the map. Just an extension of that US mantra: artillery, artillery, ARTILLERY!

My two pennies worth is: Don't leave home with out buying artillery. You buy it first and up to the max. Try and get a 81mm FO for smoke, then the biggest and meanest stuff you can get. You can shuffle options over the various games to test them out. 105 grinds them down. 155mm+ kills and routs. Beautiful. As CMBO doesn't do MMGs/HMGs well, the US weapons coys can be a little less dangerous than you'd like, but .50cals kick arse! They turn your HTs into HT killers, and they'll upset defenders in almost all cover. Yep, the tanks are crappy: Shermans seem to drive on crutches across country, etc. etc. but that's what the 81mm FOs are for...blind him during the crucial parts of the game and sneak about for the flank shots. Overwatch is mandatory, usually with 76mm+ TDs. The 12 man US squads are crushing when they overrun tired/chewed up infantry. So if you've managed the HE battle well and bruised his Landers, your doughboys should be able to clear up his last stands quite neatly. Beware the SMG squads, tho'. You'll know yourself what damage they can wreak. Hellcats are delights. Don't waste 'em on face to face fights. Slice through and bite his bum. The little M8 howitzer carriages are cute. Keep 'em away from armor...so they huge woods and buildings...but they'll really annoy any attempts a German makes to enter towns,e tc. etc. Great close support. In a nutshell, (it's been said above), ARTILLERY is the key. Also search for Jason C's post "how to attack like a German"...it was up here or in the CMBB forum recently. It also has a section on fighting like the US...basically green everything that supports the artillery FOs!! Sounds funny, but I think he's probably on the ball. I like fighting as the US. The zooks rule!!

Oh, the sweet joy of taking out a tank with plain infantry. German infantry still in possession of their panzerfausts (you'll see them indicated in the unit info (highlight the unit and hit return, or learn where it's shown in the unit graphic at the bottom of the screen)) have real BITE. :mad: But check whether the fausts have the range of 30m, 50m or 100m. They'll fire off automatically, but if you close assault a tank (from flank or rear, unless you want to die) they'll be guaranteed to punch 'em through. I've done a couple of assaults with allied infantry. It's been a bit 'comme si comme ca' with them: just grenades or BARs which might panic the panzer crews or might not. How about others' experiences? There's a report of a Sgt at the Arnaville crossing of the Dornot River (Sept? 1944) trotting along in the dark behind a Tiger I, firing his BAR into the tracks at virtually point blank range, and still failing to immobilize the big kitty. So, it was by no means guaranteed that even with the best chance you'd do damage. And I've got a question about mortars and sighting them via a HQ unit. I've currently got a Coy HQ in sight of a StuGIII that I want to cause to button up with a 2" mortar just over the lip of the hill (and thus out of sight of the StuG). When I hightlight the two units, HQ in the yellow, and target, I get that the HQ is out of range and therefore the mortar won't target either. Hmmm... Am I missing something??? Cheers

Welcom to the fold, Major. And yes...that question about WERE you happily married before you bought the game....very pertinent.

My email is harryink@alphalink.com.au I've DL'd the byte battles from the Byte Battle site, but missed them from Der Kessel. Thanks so much for your help. CM players continue to deserve their reputation for friendliness. PS. What's the deal with the after Byte Battles. Did someone really seriously patent the idea or is that just a little bit of a humorous wank?

Yep, and (again) I'm slow but I've just discovered that Der Kessel ist kaput!! So, does anyone know where, if anywhere, the byte battles from Der Kessel have gone? Has anywhere else offered to host 'em? Does anyone else have copies they'd care to email me?

Forgive me if I'm ignorant...perhaps CMBB provides this and I don't know, but.... I find designing maps for scenarios in CMBO a real pain, as I have to jump from an 'abstract' top down map view to the 3D preview so that I can actually develop of decent sense of the terrain. I find this a really curious oversight (to my mind) in the game design. Here is the best intuitive wargame I know (hence my addiction), but the design features aren't intuitive. I can't design a map entirely in 3D! In 3D view, I can't raise hills, situate houses or fields or woods, run roads hither and thither. Instead I have to do it in the abstract, and then (time consumingly) check if I got the effect I wanted in 3D preview, then step out to make the next change, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Threre was a recent thread of what could make CMAK or CMX2 new: well, a map design process that stays in the 3D mode in which the game is played would be a feature I'd really like to see. Or has someone already thought that up and done it?? *blush*

For sure you've discovered the Oppenents forum below...and the redirection to Combatmission.com. The chat room there will supply you with eager opponents. Hopefully it'll soon be buzzing with new dudes. : )

Maybe I'm slow but I've just discovered the Byte Battle site: http://www.algonet.se/~jim/ (Byte battles are 1500pt or less total forces on a small map with 15 or less turns; designed to be fought TCP/IP in an hour or less) It's a cute idea. Does anyone have opinions about these games or this style of game they'd like to share with others? They look like a good way to practice minor tactics (eg. clearing parts of villages, setting up support-by-fire bases for attacks, tank hunting, etc.) I'm hoping to test a few of the CMBO ones out from this the site this fortnight....

BFC gets my vote for honesty and integrity. Well done and richly deserved are the returns of your policy. Richly have I enjoyed your work. There's always someone to bitch at every little thing. Gives the rest of us some perspective. HarryInk

Dear Board members ROTFLMFAO! Surely pissant revolutions will deserve attention?!! And the good game of the Spanish Civil War...exhaustively researched etc. etc. .... would suck in all the left over communists and socialists and anarchists with a hidden militarist streak to mix it with the ex-soldier types who haunt these forums. It'd make for fairly colourful if turgid and ultimately pointless wars of words. *VBG* Anyway, I'll duck any further replies....