HarryInk

Put me down for the scans too. harryink@alphalink.com.au Thanks I enjoyed that book. Found it in the La Trobe Uni library here in Melbourne. I'm not surprised that CM wasn't up to the Mt. Altuzzo battle. It's extreme! Look at the photos. You'd only go up there cos it was a war!! Eagles and men with guns in front and behind them and bugger all choice, they're the only one's who go up dem moutains. However, I expect you told the fellas at BTS your opinions, Hans? Also Hans, given your notes on the book, can I have your babies?! er hem There is an battle for the Arnaville bridgehead, or rather for the hills just across the river - where the yanks sat on the wrong hill. I played it. Doesn't quite catch the flavour of a good CM fight - especially vs. the AI. I would have thought the night action where the Tigers and PIVs attack the yank's right flank might have been more promising. Company scale, more varied terrain, etc.

Amidst my thanks for the excellent answers you chaps have provided, might I just add a moment of particular praise for Mick15, a junior member. Very fulsome answer, very detailed reference to sources, and he even rode his pushbike over the ground to get it (sort of) 1st hand. Phew!! Now there's grogginess for you. Sir, I dips me lid to ya! Thanks.

Ah gentlemens, yous is all excellent!! Thanks for such a nifty and fullsome discussion of my innocent question. I praise yous all most highly and thanks yous all from the bottom of my history-luving heart. Knew you'd be able to help.

Ok, I've done the search with the title words, but only found a little. Can the grogs out there give answers to this question? I'm designing a scenario with 2 Brit Btns attacking side by side, 2 coys up (and 2 coys back) as seems to have been the S.O.P. in Normandy, at least. My very rough impression is that battalions attacked on about 1 km frontage. Thus I should design a 2km wide field. Little bits I have found about frontage are that JasonC recommended attacking on about a 2plt frontage when in 2000pt games, and this post on attacking like a Russian noted that 1km wide for a btn was usual until manpower shortages drew it down as narrow as 100m!! I'm happy to hear about attack frontages of Germans, yanks, italians, greeks as well... *G*

Warhammer is MIA. Anyone sees him, please direct him my way...

Damn, I managed to accidently clear the long rave I'd written. *sigh* In short, read JasonC's post - in the Oracle - about the German 'close defence'. It'll give you, in great detail, advice on how to kick butt.

Thanks Lee, but can you explain that point from your first paragraph again? How do you mean the files must be 'opened' as pbem files? Do you mean that they get opened from the PBEM folder rather than SAVED GAMES folder? I didn't realise that the game engine could add an extra plot sequence. I like the system you describe in the third paragraph as a good way around bottlenecks of a strictly sequenced player-by-player process. I can see that it would allow quite a few players to get the files turned around in a day or two rather than each single person taking a day or so. I suppose we could even use it in a 2-per-side game, had we a forum. What forum do you use? This one? Oh, and does that system imply that you're fighting cooperatively rather than with a hierarchy of command? That is, there's no commanding player giving orders to others on their team, which would require that team leader to see movies first so that they can respond with orders to others. [ July 31, 2004, 06:00 AM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

I just saw a post somewhere of software to convert BB maps to AK. I've done the good thing and tried to fiddle BB maps back to BO (changing the .cme to .cmb) but won no banana. Is there any way BB maps can be adapted for BO short of completely redoing them?

Can you explain that last point just a little more? It will obviously become an issue and it'd be nice to know some good habits before we start. : ) Thanks Jag'. I'll have a read of the rules pronto.

Thanks Sarge. Much appreciated. While doing the freeway thing tonight I was mulling over the process. Like you say, teams can differ in their approaches, but here are a couple of ideas I came up with. The first player in each team to receive files from the enemy ought to be the 'Officer Commanding' [OC] as they get to see the turn first. They can do their own plot and pass on the save-game to #2 with any necessary orders. To discouraged the OC from trying to micromanage their team partner's force like they do their own, they can only give orders to the larger formal units in their subordinate's command such as infantry companies, tank troops, or combined arms 'task forces'/'kampfgruppen' that might have been defined at the start of the game. The 'subordinate' player then runs their command as they choose (supposedly) within the scope of the OC's orders. Working within the directions of another player (and one player taking responsbility for the overall shape of their side's battle) is one of the novelties of this style of multiplayer vs. our usual individual CM games. 'Course, if you don't want to do the military hierarchy gig, the approach of dividing up the battlefield ( a la Sarge and buddy) is full legit'. How many times have I read histories of battles that relate how the X Division failed to keep up with Y Division and left Y's flank hanging open for a counter-thrust? Coping with that sort of experience is another attraction of trying for a multiplayer game. Sarge, do you use any change in your turn numbering system (presumedly 001...etc) to designate save-games from GO-turns? Would it help or be pointless? Does anyone know of any AARs online of multiplayer games? How to avoid crap QB maps in CMBO? One way might be to choose an excellent scenario map, delete the troops out of it using the scenario editor, load up (or have a neutral friend load up) each sides' chosen troops, and... would that 'tournament save' function (that I've never yet used) then be the way to go? Hmmm... btw, we're 2/4 of the way to a 4 player game... [ July 27, 2004, 11:18 AM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

If anyone has advice of methods, positives, or pitfalls of multiplayer PBEMs, please drop a line in the Tips & Tricks here or if you're interested in playing (esp Aussies like me) there in the Opp Finder Forum. Any suggestions for suitable scenarios gratefully received. Cheers

Did a Mac version of Mapping Mission ever arrive?

I just posted this opponent request up on the BFC opp finder forum regarding 4 players in one game. It will be my first time admin'ing a 4p PBEM. Any advice from anyone who's done it before? Pitfalls? Pluses?

For me CM didn't kill ASL off. I only ever played it twice and it was awful. A flat board? Hexes? Chits? Matrices and tables for everything, it seemed, from suppression to depression. Nooooooo CM opened wargaming up to an intuitive approach - dammit - and I've been addicted since. All the rules lawyering and arguing over measured distances is gone. Nirvana. I would still like to fight Diplomacy again... maybe even Russian Campaign over a couple of six-packs and chips; but just for the laughs...

lol

Anyone know of a Mac program to do same? *LMAO* As if Macs would have such a thing...

Athanku gentlemens. Very much appreciate your help.

I wanna mod the intro music to CMBO. Can anyone advise me how to change the MP3 file I dl'd from CMHQ to a .wav file on an iMac with OS 8.6? Thanks in anticipation...

Do you think not changing underwear was a significant factor? I'd sure want to change mine after being fired at.

The T-34 was, I believe, also a complete pain to load after your first half-dozen shots were gone. That was about all that was stored of each ammo type ready-to-hand in the turret. Thereafter the loader had to rip up rubber mats from the floor and haul up shells from bins under his feet. Not something worth modelling in CM, I think, but if I was commanding a 34, I'd be hoping that my loader was fit and nimble, and that - were I still cranking after I'd let off my ready ammo - I had breaks in the combat to allow the turret ammo holders to be replenished. Apparently the seats for the turret crew were actually fixed on the hull, so you'd have to squeeze about a bit when traversing. Anyone know if I've got that right? Anyway, sounds like a bitch to be inside of when the world's pitching and rolling and banging on the outside trying to get in!

Yes, I was wandering through a Mall yesterday and saw 22 June up on one of the big screens. I smiled at the thought that those Nazi bastards were just starting to get their arses kicked to billioe 60 years ago. How well deserved! I think it's a fairly solemn occasion in Russia in contrast to the D-Day shindings.

I am fighting the excellent Foy-Noville CMBO scenario. I had 2 Sherm 105s and a couple of supporting 75mms cross a heavy stone bridge and then fire on it. I think it blew apart on the first turn. On tests it took 2 or 3 turns. So DFHE will do it. I suspect that if i'd only had 75s, I'd have been pumping the bridge for about 5 turns.

Forget the bridges. They've got fords anyway, etc. etc. The key to the game is using the .50cals, the ambush function of the zook, and learning to use defilades and 'top hatting' with the Greyhound. You've got to be careful to survive because your armor won't protect you, only the building cover will. Not meaning to teach you about sucking eggs, but defilades - as I understand it - is finding tight corridors to fire down. Means you get to pick single targets and get covered from other dangerous enemies. So use the building cover to pick off his armor one by one. 'Top hatting' is hunting up/over a rise in the ground and then reversing back into cover. Takes a little fiddling to learn to do well, but it pays dividends more often than not. Even if you don't get to kill your target cos the driver reversed back down the incline, at least he didn't get to kill you. Using the Greyhound and M5A1 conservatively like this, you should be able to take out all his armor bit by bit.

Wasn't it a French git wot said: "C'est manifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre". (Not that a frog post or pre Napoleon would have much sense of what good warmaking was like). Yes, suffer the merest hints of reality in the crap maps you're given. Why, in one of my PBEMs at the moment I'm pushing US paras against pillboxes and damned armored cars and I haven't got a cannon or an opposing set of wheels to save myself. Just smoke. Surrender? Run? Die? Well hell *chews cigar* the computer will organise all that for me - and write the letters home. You have to learn through suffering - or better, you'll learn quicker. Perhaps because you'll die quicker, but then, at least, you'll learn how quickly you die if you do THAT silly thing. Next time you'll try THIS silly thing and live two turns longer...etc .etc. Also, the many and varied ways you die will create endless questions for the forum and you seek solutions to these situations quickly rather than suffer needlessly through the next half-a-dozen fights doing variations on the first silly thing. Gosh I was happy when I discovered the FAQs on these forums! And the chaps here are so helpful with suggestions. So I say, get out there, chew Robert Duvall cigars, enjoy the smell of digital systems in the morning, take that damn town/village/pigpen. Don't come wailing back here without it tucked under yer arm, Private!! (or your privates tucked under your arm. Whatever).

Wasn't it a French git wot said: "C'est manifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre". (Not that a frog post or pre Napoleon would have much sense of what good warmaking was like). Yes, suffer the merest hints of reality in the crap maps you're given. Why, in one of my PBEMs at the moment I'm pushing US paras against pillboxes and damned armored cars and I haven't got a cannon or an opposing set of wheels to save myself. Just smoke. Surrender? Run? Die? Well hell *chews cigar* the computer will organise all that for me - and write the letters home. You have to learn through suffering - or better, you'll learn quicker. Perhaps because you'll die quicker, but then, at least, you'll learn how quickly you die if you do THAT silly thing. Next time you'll try THIS silly thing and live two turns longer...etc .etc. Also, the many and varied ways you die will create endless questions for the forum and you seek solutions to these situations quickly rather than suffer needlessly through the next half-a-dozen fights doing variations on the first silly thing. Gosh I was happy when I discovered the FAQs on these forums! And the chaps here are so helpful with suggestions. So I say, get out there, chew Robert Duvall cigars, enjoy the smell of digital systems in the morning, take that damn town/village/pigpen. Don't come wailing back here without it tucked under yer arm, Private!! (or your privates tucked under your arm. Whatever).