HarryInk

I'm trawling for a PBEM game or two of CMBO with aussies, if any read this. I'm in Preston, Melbourne. I know, I know, I should be playing BB or AK, but I'm in computer purgatory and the *^%*# wombat says it won't pedal any faster so I'm stuck on CMBO until I upgrade to a kangaroo. Anyway, the offer's there but the export quality beer sadly *urp* disappeared already. Bugger. This prolly rules out Senachai, along with the fact of him not being true blue and dinky die. Spangled. Now that's a word that probably says a lot in his department. [ May 24, 2004, 07:13 AM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

Blue Streak et al Got to endorse all said above. Buy it online via a friends credit card if you have too. : ) I got my copy of BB last year within a week. Very happy camper here. And I too saw a copy of CMBO in a shop here at Northland, Victoria. The box was ****ty and beat up and was wedged in among the dross. Given it's such an ace game, I'd hoped/ expected to at least see the whole box exposed for a while. Still, I'm in my 30s and I expect 90% of the customers don't muster half of that - and prefer FPSs if they do mil' stuff at all.

In these elder days of CM, where lots of sites have been set up but their links list left unmaintained since early 2002(!), I'm wondering which sites still refresh themselves? Any tips? I know this site jumps, so too... CM mod database Proving Grounds Scenario Depot. Any others??

This thread might have tired off but I thought I'd still throw a thought in. Following on from my couple of posts here about a higher command feature for CM operations, I figure that 'moves' for regimental/brigade/kampfgruppe operations would actually be variable. They could shift gears from days/several hours down to hours and up again as action intensified or slackened. The dispatch of companies/batteries etc. could then be decided by the player commanding at these intervals, together with the specific combat mission brief to lower players. I don't play in the onion wars or other campaign systems but do my ideas connect at all with what happens in them? What features of them would it be cool to have incorporated into CMX2?

Yes dammit, they'd just look pretty. This is entertainment, afterall.

One objection to this level of CM game that derives from real life exercises is the hassle of writing detailed orders for units - even ones that you're shuffling around behind the action... times...routes...configuration of columns...ETAs, etc. etc. Must be a pain. In a CM Op, presumedly routes and times can be sorted by the program? Mouse clicks to define waypoints (that could appear with ETAs) just as in the current game. Pauses could add 5 or 10 min to the departure times. The only orders necessary would be for junior COs when the program advises that you've hit a defensive position or collided with an enemy column, and you're going to shift to battle mode. Overall timing could occur on a 'we go' principle still? You plot for a hour or two's action, anything that hits enemy stops for battle while non-engaged units continue to maneuver? Perhaps with a % chance for non-engaged units to 'march to the sound of the guns' or allow you to reconsider your orders....?

Paddington, If you can put in the effort after a game but want to reap the benefits of accelerating your thinking, use Fionn Kelly's debrief 'form' that you'll find in this AAR on CMHQ (ahh... the sleeping site I just can't leave alone). It's thorough and confronts you with how you acted during the battle.

Cool points, and I especially take the point about the AI. I rarely play against it. Humans don't try and charge me with mortar crews, which is an humanitarian relief! But this means I overlook the 'goading' potential of a flag grab when vs the AI. DT, I agree that recon is the key. You've got to fill the 'empty battlefield' with information. Even my enthusiasm for Guderianist "punch 'em don't slap 'em" principles follows as good a recon effort as I can muster. Fionn Kelly's old AARs on CMHQ often consist of a recon screen and sledge hammer reserves. And, as you point out, every now and then you get to take out the support troops. FOs are the complete cherrie, eh! I'm usually happy with annoying a mortar crew. [ April 19, 2004, 03:29 AM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

Thanks for the reply. : ) You repeat this again later. The only immediate thing taking a flag does is make the victory % jump in your favour. I admit that that is a nifty little hook... it's information your enemy gets without having to actually spot your troops. But, it doesn't force your enemy to race over to you at all. It's a flag, not a traction beam! Most likely your enemy will attempt to take the flag if you have troops there, but that might be on turn 28 when the bulk of your troops are overrun or pushed well back from supporting the brave squad zealously clutching to the digital flag pole. 2. The Sun Tzu quote is appreciated but misplaced. After all, you are already in a battle. 3. You don't seem to mind the loss of initiative encumbent on seizing flags and setting up defensive positions? Your "real firepower is deployed to cover the approaches to the victory locations." This poses the question of what happens if I fail to try to take the flag and instead attack a section of those supporting troops. Can the other firepower also be deployed to support the attacked non-flag troops as well as the flag-holders/approaches? Cheers

Perhaps this has appeared elsewhere, but for me it came up in discussion last night with mates: Provide a command level in CMX2 above a 'combat mission'; a command level that assigns the combat missions - defining goals and allocating resources. This wouldn't be the usual game, but a mode that allows a development of the concept of Operations. What developments? 1. A larger area of operations. Battles move not along a linear passage of land but from 'choke point' to 'choke point'. A defeated player, for instance, would choose where to make their next stand - which might be kilometers back from a lost position rather than 100s of meters. This requires and encourages a new/extra approach to being a commander for those who take up the challenge, but one not substantially different from the boardgames many wargamers are used to. The operational time frame would extend over a series of days. In 1944, the Operation C.O. player could be in command of a soviet tank corps during one of the breakthroughs of Operation Bagration in 1944, a column of Patton's army in France, SS troops in the Ardenne or the GIs that chased them back. 2. A discrete operational commander mode in which decisions entirely above the tactical hoo-haa of the battle are made - unlike present operations where you stretch yourself from Squad Leader to Major. Decisions like setting goals and routes for discrete bodies of troops; the composition, timing of dispatch, and routes for reinforcements; locating fall back positions, setting local air interdiction missions, paratroop landings, ,,, 3. Perhaps PBEM opponents might just play this mode 2 player and fight each individual battle as well as run the operation. However, it enables other players to be involved for whom the commander must write orders. A formal but simple order process within the game means the CM briefing would effectively be the orders written by your supierior. 4. B&W 'Line drawing' style maps abstracted from CM terrains for the Op.C.O.. These maps could be generated first and then act as the overlaying guide for the computer's generation of each particular CM battle wherever significant forces meet/attack/defend. It is on these maps that the Op.C.O. schematically sets out his troops and orders the groups into action. The process of doing this sort of operation has to be enjoyable rather than just lay as an administrative lump on the fighting. So, what should it avoid and what features of higher level command games should it try to incorporate? [ April 19, 2004, 03:50 AM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

Hmmm... well, I haven't got to AK yet, so my comments are limited to BO and BB. And I'm not a number cruncher, so take JasonC's advice about cost vs. value (or Beta-tester number crunchers extraordonnaire (sic) like Faustus). I think the 'advanced noobie strategy' is a fair-enough counter proposal, DieselT : ), but doesn't it distract you from (a) drawing your enemy into a tight fire sack; ( the overriding mission of destroying his forces: your flag holders will end up blasted or bullet riddled fairly soon, no? Indeed, are they not candidates for HIS fire sack (pray he has only bought 81mm mortars)? They are unavailable for the main effort while defending the flag and continue to be unavailable as they stream to the rear with 50% casualties. If I invest say two platoons of infantry to hold the main flag, that's 240 odd points subtracted from my main drive. If he pulverises them, I lose a 300pt flag and the best part of 240pts of troops. If I start committing other assets to defend the flag-holders I escalate that situation and probably loose the initiative of maneuver: I'm sucked into to the vortex. Support has to rush to fire-positions ad hoc. I'd rather he was in that situation and I keep the freedom to break his troops elsewhere (weakened by his flag-grabbing). Have you played games without flags? There are a few byte battles where the mission is just to 'take that village', and all operation put you in that situation. I must admit, it's quite a disorientating experience. My god... all too real! No one from 'above' (be they the Major or the scenario designer or the whims of the computer) is telling me which particular woods/building/crossroad to seize. I just have to use the logic of the terrain, my forces, and the likely enemy presence. It's a good tonic to Noobie Strategies A, B, and C which are all a bit hypnotised by the flags, no? Three further points: 1. Task forces. I'm always a little hazy about tasking my troops. I'm think I kinda do it, but never in the neat formal way I see in many AARs (you know...with the circled troops and the arrows and the convincing commentary. *G*). How about you guys? 2. At the end of one of Fionn Kelly's AARs on CMHQ -- I think it's the one where he 'punches some poor saps face in'? -- he has a nifty process for doing analysis on your battle. What did you buy? Did it pay for itself or was it a waste? etc. etc. In this post we've yakked over the planning forward for the battle, but what place does analysis of your last battle have in this? As this is a game, we often get to buy our troops to order (ie. we know it's a village fight... yes please, I'll have two WASPs and a Churchill 95mm thank you very much). What place does this deserve in our planning? 3. I usually assess the CO's of each of my platoons and use them in the Roman manner of noobies in front, followed by the seasoned greens, followed by the veterans. CO's with command stars are, I think, especially good in the third 'rank' as they're fast to insert in that key position that flanks the flagging enemy troops and takes the ground. I don't have to wait 20 or 33 seconds while a situation changes before my reserve is moving. It's there and positioned before the enemy's is moving. [ April 13, 2004, 09:13 PM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

All good stuff, sirs. To spice my restatement of much above, I must add that I often find the flags extremely useful: In my early CM days, I'd run like a greyhound for them. Oh yes, my precious flaggie... oh how beautiful you are... I'm the king of the castle.. etc. etc. and other bathetic drivel. However, after a few old hands were nice enough to utterly remove the occupying company or so with some well placed heavy artillery, I learnt to 'ceed the flags to my enemy and use them as fire sacks. : ) Surely it is typical of the next tatical stage after 'newbie'? You're over tanks and start to love infantry and HEAVY artillery. Thereafter, a nice New Zealander with a talent for mathematics informed me of the place of casualties in relation to flags within CM victory calculations. Freed of the flag fetish, I have been a convert to the kind of attitude detailed by JasonC above. Dead men don't hold ground and a force with a global morale beaten down to 22% won't resist my reserve. Flags are the fruit of the destruction of the enemy forces and not vice versa. Isn't that the point that Hitler missed when he drove South in 1942? Oh.. and JC's point about the simplicity of the plan: yup. And the shift from main effort to reinforced feint is older than Sun Tzu who IIRC called them Chi and Chen. Just as Yin and Yang transform into each other, when your main effort is eclipsed it becomes the feint and the feint grows into the main effort. It's a principle that encourages one to use the enemy's acts as opportunities rather than suffer them as flat negations of your own. When you're faced with 56 tons of Tiger, it's important to see it as an opportunity!! *L* One last note on terrain. Height, on land as in the air, rules. I can't help but factor it into plans of how to spray the enemy. [ April 13, 2004, 02:29 AM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

She's got to be planning to get you back somehow. You wait. She won't return a turn soon.... that special turn...that turn you MUST have... oh yeah... the fall is comin'... just you wait buster!

I'm advised by Jeff Witherspoon (pardon the spelling if I got it wrong) that the movies ain't on CMHQ anymore... *cringe* Anyone able to help out? [ April 05, 2004, 09:09 PM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

I can't seem to download either the German or the British turn movies to go along with Fionn Kelly v. Bill Hardenger Sunken Lane after action report on CMHQ. If anyone out there has the movies on their hardrives, could you email me... but please don't attach the 4mb of movies until I email you back. I might end up with half-a-dozen huge emails turning up from various members of this generous community otherwise!! *L* If anyone else can recommend good AARs about how to defend a position, I'd be very appreciative. It's an area of my game that I badly need to improve.

Do you think the workers at BTS print out these sorts of long speculative discussions on toilet paper for later contemplation?

1. It'll never happen, as I believe the BTS boys loath 1st person shooters, but a mate of mine dreams of being able to plot moves and then jump inside a particular vehicle and drive/fire from it through the turn - a touch of WW2Online within the overall CM action. Can't see it workin' meself... 2, For my part, a far better map making process: 3D sculpting, perhaps a land-forming function that allows you to nomiate points and altitudes or indicate rough contour lines and the puter will process the finer detail. This would aid in transferring historical maps to CM. 3. Perhaps tiles could be refined? Quartered in size down to 10m squared so that terrain can be that much more detailed. 4. I'd like bocage to be humps in the ground with tall hedges on them, and I'd like the US tanks to have phosphorus shells to replicate historical tactics in the hedgerows. 5. Squads currently live on little square bases, which I sort of suspect dates back to ASL and/or WRG rules. What about if they were instead plotted into more amorphous areas that stretch and squash up depending on the terrain (e.g. in line along a hedgerow vs. inside a building vs. moving in column). 5. I've also thought it would be cool to have a game that offered the 3D feature of CM but which stepped up a scale. Basic units became platoons rather than squads. The combat mission 'battle' became more like an 'operation', and the operation much more like actual operational warfare. 6. Oh, and of course, the ability to knit all the turns together and watch a movie at the end of the whole catastrophe. As I imagine indulging in this with a couple of mates in my town, the features of this mode would be to view it without FOW, with partial/full/extreme FOW, so that we could swap sides at diff points to see who was aware of what at what moments, etc. etc. Great for a beer and chips evening after the PBEM is done. : ) 7. A formalised and smoothed process for multiplayer games. I'd love this online, but a process within PBEMs would also be cool... Having FOW of units beyond your command, etc. etc. 8. MikeyD mentioned improved AI. Oh yes.. .yesss... please. No more attacks led by 2" mortars...indeed, AI mortars with more sense than to advance on the flags at all when the rest of the attack is failing/failed. I remember games like Gettysburg that let you set the aggression and ability of the enemy AI. In CM it's just how many steps to bump up the troops. Something on the tactical ability of the AI might be nice. But overall, just something that will combine all the lessons about the (fairly excellent for its time) AI that BTS must have learned. 9. Oh.. the early war, of course. Gotta love the few weeks in France stuff. [ April 02, 2004, 01:01 AM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

see the post below.... [ April 02, 2004, 01:02 AM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

*sigh* In Combat Mission, the grin of victory and the heartburn of defeat are matched by the disappointed sigh of an empty IN mailbox. There ought to be a warning on the packaging. [ April 01, 2004, 03:02 AM: Message edited by: HarryInk ]

Combined Arms.... I played CMBB until I had to give back my work laptop. Now I'm back at home minding the kids and pushing 'it uphill on a decrepit iMac that can only run CMBO. Will you send me a new computer? Respond and I'll email you my address.

Hey Cactus. Don't read the manual... just play for a bit... then tour the Tips and Tricks forum... and search the web for the CM Oracle where useful newbie FAQs were all collected. When you get into serious tactical issues, search these forums for anything by JasonC. Amazing spot on advice on how to attack, defend, purify your drinking water, etc. etc. Nothing about how to romance women yet, but we're hopeful. It's also v. good to go through a couple of the After Action Reports (AARs) on CMHQ. Have fun. It's a great game.

Loved this site. One of my CM favourites. You did it so well. I'm v. happy to have now refound it after some distress and the loss. Good luck on future endeavours, Tom. : )

Lazarus!! M/Matt heralds a site overhaul. Bravo sir!

Play along the edge of the map often? Just can't stop yourself from wanting one secure flank? During such a battle where my enemy and I met head on in the edge area of a map, we wondered if a nice feature of CMX2 mightn't be an option for the map to keep building itself out, so that the secure flank option fades? Wank? or a useful tool?

The title of the post pretty well speaks for itself....