vbfg

If it's to be a fictional situation I'd like it to be as early as possible rather than later whilst the weapons are as much under human control as possible.

When I first played CM I thought the graphics truly sucked. I've since discovered that they are far more immersive than just about any other game I've ever played. Part of the reason why they suck is part of the reason why they also rule, they allow the development of a fantastic modding community that do us all such a great service. The ability to lock onto a specific unit and view the battle from the viewpoint of that unit is fantastic, I still get a kick out of it. The modifications made in CMBB that let me do that and revolve the camera around the unit as though I was still riding the tank and turning my head has added a lot for me. I sometimes have problems working out line of sight in games, especially when the possible location of the enemy is some distance off. I don't seem to have much of a sense of distance, even with gridded textures.

Worth a bump, this is very good.

Thought this was worth a bump.

Nope, no good.

I've got SP1 installed. This is the same update level I was at previously. I'm careful not to mess around with Windows update because there's a post SP1 patch that modifies the behaviour of Media Player in a way I don't want it to but I don't know which one it is. The original reason for having this machine is for it to function as my DVD player so that's quite important to me. For the sound I use a Creative Extigy, one of the external USB versions of the Audigy. I've only ever installed the software for this from the CD that came with it. I've tried the different resolutions already too. Same issue. I tried earlier on after switching the video drivers and I got three turns out of CMBB. That's the most progress I've had so far, I almost made contact with the Russians. The chipset drivers are a good bet I think though. I'll give those a try. Thanks for taking the time out mate, really appreciate it.

They have the latest and previous versions available and both give me the same problem. It's the one area of diversion from what I had before I can imagine. There are a few things I had installed that I don't now, Office for instance. It's XP Pro though and was before so any DLLs Office might try and replace ought to be more recent in the OS anyway. Damn. Now I'm annoyed. I want to break something.

Hi there, My main PC blew a gasket last year so for a while I've been using a Shuttle SV25 small form factor PC as my main desktop. It's temporary until I sort out new bits for the other machine but it's temporary for a while yet. This wasn't a problem because I could just about play CMBO on it. I was encouraged enough to g out and buy CMBB. This too worked but I had to uninstall CMBO to get it on. Rather than have to choose, I re-formatted the PC to get rid of unwanted crud (well, wanted but less important), re-installed from scratch and then installed them both. Boy was that ever a bad idea. Now when I play either game lasts one turn. Everything appears to be going normally until I hit go gor the second time. It then gets part of the way through the first of the two calculations and the machine either locks up or restarts completely. I'm sure it's a driver issue but I have no ideas what drivers I was using successfully before. Video is on-board S3 Twister. Terrible for purpose but, as I say, temporary. I can't put anything else in unfortunately as the PC has one PCI slot (and no AGP - that's on board) already occupied by a NIC. If you have one of these things and CM working can you post your driver version? I just did the rounds and got the latest drivers for everything I have last week. Failing that, any other suggesstions? I'm facing a couple of months without CM here. I need your help.

Saddam is a dictator, and dictators want two things: their own lives and power. For a dictator loss of one almost invariably involves loss of the other. To lose power and not lose your life is in many cases much worse, and for Saddam I suspect that is the case. Not that if he is captured he will necessarily be treated badly, even if it's by vengeful countrymen of his, but because he has been shown to lose power by the actions of the US. I think much of what Saddam does isn't because he 'hates the US'. I'm sure he does, but he was the same guy when he was an ally of the US and Britain as he is now. I think he does what he does to play the strong man amongst Arab leaders. When he speaks to the US he isn't speaking to the US, he's speaking to the rest of the Arab world. Not the governments either, the people. If that's the case, here's what I'd do if I was him. Pull back to the cities and fight there. I reckon he can remember the early nineties and knows if he fights in good tank country and open spaces susceptible to large bombing campaigns that he's screwed. If to comes to war he's lost and the power and position are gone anyway. By fighting in the cities he puts the US and allies in a position where they either have a siege of Baghdad which would cause great hardship in Baghdad and consequently great anger across the rest of the Arab world, or they go in and try and get him which would have much the same effect. He'll be hoping for the latter since irrespective of how accurate the weapons are there *will be* mistakes and innocent people *will* die. He has to persuade his troops to fight for him of course, which is the only down side of such a tactic for him I can see. Since he is likely to have calculated that he is screwed once the shooting starts I think he'll go for the option that will hurt his enemy the most. In the current political climate making the US look as much like an ogre as possible amongst the Arab world is the best he can hope for. Going for the oil to wreck the economy makes sense but is a misnomer. Oil leaves Iraq via a pipeline into NATO member Turkey or via ships through the gulf. One you turn both off with a switch and the other is already swarming with US ships.

It turned out that this isn't a bug. The abandoned tank was being pushed out of the way by one tank to its left and one to its right and thus not actually being pushed out of the way at all, more 'dragged along'.

On closer inspection it the gun is down and to one side as though it is dead and it doesn't appear to have engine noise. At least, it doesn't appear to get much louider if at all as I zoom in on the suspect tank. Anyhoo, YHM. Thanks for the quick response! Fabulous game BTW, I won you some converts at work this week.

Hi, I'm playing the Citadel mission as the Soviets for something like the bazillionth time since Sunday at the moment. Two turns ago I was in a really good mood. I've got some AT guns close to the German lines in some reverse slope positions pointing towards my own lines. One was discovered quickly and didn't get a single shot off. The Veteran on my right I thought had accounted for four tanks, two brewed up and two were abandoned. Four tanks for two AT guns, not a bad rate of exchange for my first defensive position I thought. Wait until these fascist bastards see what's waiting for them! However, one of the abandoned tanks is currently advancing with the rest of its platoon towards my next line of defense. I have warning labels on and the 'Abandoned' statement above it is lending a hand in the advance. Is it abandoned but with really well-oiled wheels (it's currently rolling uphill though ), has it been misidentified as abandoned, or is this a bug? There are supposedly two abandoned tanks but having a quick look around I can only see one crew. No survivors though for me in this area so perhaps I wouldn't see them anyway? My nearest LOS troops are 900m away. Can a shaken crew bail and then jump back in? If this is likely to be a bug I've still got the game running and ain't gonna touch it for now. I'm playing against the AI. If there's some way I can get the current game state I have to someone who can take a look at it for confirmation please let me know.

Word Viewer

Speaking of views, one change I've just noticed. Often when viewing at level 1 I like to tab to the targetted unit and follow it around. When I'm doing this I'll notice something out of the corner of my eye and try to 'revolve around' the targetted unit using the mouse. This always broke the lock. Now if you use the lower part of the screen, as you would to move sideways, this breaks the lock. Using the upper part of the screen to revolve does not. Fan-flipping-tastic! Thank you BTS, that's way cool. I just followed a tank sideways across the step watching its companions fire at another target.

The views have certainly been changed, and for my taste to the better. One thing that used to get me in CMBO was coming up high to get a good view of a large battlefield. 4 was the best it could do without going to a bird's eye view. Now 5 takes you to the highest viewing angle with 6 being the first of the bird's eye views. I didn't know these were going to change but I guess it's been done to handle the larger maps. I like it, there's been quite a few instances in CMBO that I wished I could skip to a higher viewing angle and I've got a top down view instead. The actual difference of the angles doesn't bother me so much, I just like the greater choice. I like to make maps from the high views. I only really play my buddy but I like to plan phase lines, etc up front because we have taken weeks over PBEM games in the past. What I'd really like to see is the ability to dump the entire map out to a BMP file (or something) from whatever viewpoint it best fits. That would be sweet, but with a little effort I can do it now myself so no biggie. [ September 02, 2002, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: vbfg ]

...and the sound of the glass breaking when the bottle hits.

Spoilers!!!! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I've played this three times as the Soviet side today. The first time I was wiped off the map because of Trotskyite wreckers and cowards in my front line. The second time about half the German tanks made it to the second ridge. The third time I wanted to play with covered arcs rather than just gawp at the lovely graphics and, indeed, those very impressive volleys of fire from the approaching fascists. I found using batteries of guns and covered arcs to develop a fireplan gave me the best results. Played as German once and got my ass kicked.

Now it's maxing out my cable connection and there's 15 minutes left.

See, it's 1am here and I was about to go to bed. I'm playing rugby tomorrow and I need sleep. I expected to be doing this in 24 hours. So, do I wait the remaining hour of the download and then get lost in the game or do I make an effort to try and win tomorrow? Another few hours couldn't hurt that much.

Thanks mate, much appreciated.

The thing that really, really annoys me about that scene is where they put the MG. I mean, a church tower? What were they thinking? They hang on until the infantry is right beneath them and then open fire, thus giving the opportunity to shoot them in the top of the head or deny that 6" square piece of ground that the bullet hits if you miss. Why not shoot down the length of the street, deny them the whole thing for a period *and* have an escape route when the tank rounds the corner? And why, for blinkin' flip's sake, do you then go and put your sniper in the same tower? Hey guys! Hear that *big* rattling, machine gun noise? Well I'm hiding behind it! Can't hear me breathing, huh? Rant over. Good film otherwise. It was the first DVD I bought after I plugged my surround sound speakers in.

I have this version and use Windows XP Pro. No problems at all. AMD and Geforce 2 MX. I had some problems when I switched to another program and switched back, from that point on I coulnd't call up the scenario briefing in-game. Also if I finished a game and started another after doing this the menus went 'fuzzy' and I could hardly read them. The latest detonater drivers from nvidia.com fixed this. [ July 01, 2002, 06:29 PM: Message edited by: vbfg ]

Hi Folks, I'm a fairly new player to CM. I've had the game for about a month and a half and haven't played any PBEM games yet. I've been setting up a few quick battles recently to experiment with a few things I'm not that familiar with. For example, I know about LOS but I don't know about how well troops can remain hidden in LOS, or while on the move, etc. I want to do this to figure out how well they can see me and how close I have to be before this happens. Also I wanted to see how different kinds of individual units face off against each other in a straight head on fight so I know what to avoid in future and what I might be able to get away with. One thing I've noticed (on a completely flat, no terrain features or trees 1km x 1km map) is that MGs aren't quite what I'd expect them to be. I wanted a massacre so I had five Stuarts lined up on one side of the map against an ordinary German rifle company. I ran one Stuart quickly past where I knew they were to uncover them. It was sacrificial but nothing hit it so I still had fifteen machine guns and 5 37mm all opening up on these enemy positions. I'd set it up as a meeting engagment so they wouldn't dig in. Now I wished I'd hotseated the game so I could have seen clearly what kind of damage they were doing. I didn't do that as I'd normally do with an experiment because I expected the 'Eliminated' tags to start appearing in pretty short order. Five turns later my five crack Stuarts had eliminated one anti-tank team. By the time I'd decided my results were disappointing they'd closed to 200m and I was getting a few more 'Eliminated' tags. Again though, these *appeared* to be (I'm not sure) just two man AT teams. Does this sound about right to you more experienced players? I'm no grog by any standard but from what I have read I had better expectations than this, especially from all those MGs against troops in the open. It didn't matter much in the end, I had five 155mm VT FOs too. Like I said, I wanted a massacre. Got one too. I'm going to do something similar tonight, perhaps advancing an the rifle squads of an infantry company into a dug-in weapons platoon. This time I'll hot seat and see what they're doing to each other. [ June 24, 2002, 05:34 AM: Message edited by: vbfg ]

I got mine from Amazon UK complete with a CD full of mods. Excellent value at however much it cost. I can't remember, but whatever it was it was excellent value.

I'd be interested to hear which troops these were. Always willing to learn something new. Michael</font>