Zarquon

We didn't mean you should *play* the test setups; that could take days. Just add a lot of different tanks to an empty map, click "Preview", select one and taget another. That gives you exactly the information you're looking for. Otherwise, CM could prove to be a very slow learning process for you as you will learn only through mistakes.

Hmmm, works fine for me. Must have been an ISP hiccup, or somefink. And hurry, the roster is close to being full.

The only thing moddable in CM are the graphics.

Sure we do. It's a lot of reading, though.

There's the Opponent Finder subforum, right here on the BFC board. Did you try that?

1. It depends. Sometimes there are clear objectives. For example, this turn Emerald defended a very important bridge that had been captured by paratroops last turn. Half a dozen pink (Salmon) tanks (including a very rare IS-3) and an infantry battalion attacked in open terrain. The infantry was cut down by very heavy MG fire, almost to the last man, but Emerald had only a curious mix of tanks and AT weapons to get to the tanks - Italian tankettes, a Turan II (there is a shady arms dealer named Colonel Pepper, who comes by once a month to sell junk at fire-sale prices), a StuG or two, 105mm recoilless guns, 42mm popguns, AA guns, a few Shreks, stuff like that. The relieving force had been held up by another Salmon force south of the bridge and was engaged in another battle. If even one Salmon tank had gained LOS to the (light) bridge, it could have destroyed it. That was quite a nail biter. Then we had a mountain battle. Infantry and some light guns and mortars only. We don't know the outcome yet, but the point was to occupy as many enemy-held hilltops as possible, because that would determine sector control. Sometimes we have partisans attacking a small garrison force. Sometimes we have "spoiler" battles, where one side attacks only to bind forces and draw reserves from more important areas. Sometimes it's clear that one side was beaten so badly that the survivors will retreat and lose the sector. Sometimes it's inconclusive and the frontline will remain static. It's up to the GMs to decide the outcome, but they have a lot of experience it that now. 2. Always hand-crafted by the GMs, roughly according to the operational maps. That's one reason why it can take a while to set up all battles in a turn. The GMs take pride in creating interesting maps. 3. Every unit, down to the last flamethrower, is tracked in a database. All in all, I'd say that most battles are *roughly* winnable. But yes, battles can be very uneven. That's the whole point, isn't it? Sometimes you don't have a chance to win. But you never know exactly what's coming. It's up to the players or the team to decide what the goals of a battle are - hold to the last man, advance cautiously, capture a specific piece of ground, etc. Hey, getting out alive can be a very worthwhile goal in itself. And sometimes, you know... "DROP EVERYTHING ON OUR POSITION!". Sometimes you know your small defending force will go down, but then you manage to knock out five enemy tanks out of ten before you do. And once in a while, you see a small miracle happen.

Sooner or later, you *have* to "game the game" if you want to become good enough to win when playing against another human. Or the AI, for that matter. You need at least a rough idea what it takes to take on a T-34/76, a StuG, a Pz IV etc. It's not too much to learn because there are quite a few different tanks in the game, but much fewer different gun models. For example, the German kit has mostly: 50 short (early Pz III) - popgun. Use against light tanks, or hope you'll get lucky against a T-34 50 long (later Pz III) - a better popgun. A T-34 outguns you. Don't buy it if you can get a 75 long. 75 short (early Stug and Pz IV, late Pz III) - meant for anti-infantry work. Might or might not kill a T-34/76, not recommended for serious tank duels or longer ranges. Think of its AP and HC round as self-defense ammo. 75 long (lots of models) - very good gun. Can kill about everything until the late-war Russian tanks appear. You might see rounds bounce off a T-34 once in a while, but this is your workhorse for most of the war. 75 very long (Panther etc.) - even better. Does not kill a SU-100 or IS-3, but about everything else. Good range (i.e. good hit chances at longer range). 88 short (Tiger) - about the same class as 75 vlong 88 long (late-war übertanks) - great fun (and about every tank gun has its equivalent AT gun version) 105mm/150mm: meant for digging out infantry. HC rounds are effective, but have a low muzzle velocity (= low range) and are meant for self-defense only. Then you need to get an idea what protection levels your tanks have, with the turret front being the most important aspect. <50mm: stay out of trouble 50mm (Pz IV turret): stay out of trouble if you can - a 76mm gun can get you. Maybe a 45mm at low range, I don't remember. 80mm (most StuGs): now you're in business Side or rear armor (all tanks): don't present it. It's as simple as that. Russians have slightly better side armor, but the rule still applies. Always keep your turret pointed at the enemy, that's what covered arcs are for. Late-war Superheavies against superguns: look it up when you need it. The scenario editor is your friend. As are the comprehensive CM Excel tables somebody made. Do a forum search for "Excel". But the editor gives you a quicker answer. If you know at least that, you're in the game. Other guns are less important. For example, I don't remember much about 20mm penetration. You might get lucky with it against a really light tank, but don't count on it. Look this up when you need to. To get an idea what a gun can do, I usually look at the 500m/30° penetration. That's about the most common range and angle. In your example, it's 19mm. A T-34 has at least 40(45?)mm armor all around (most Russian medium tanks have), so forget it. Maybe you can knock out a BT-type tank from the side, nothing more. I know some of this is incorrect or incomplete, but my point is not to write a comprehensive guide, but to say that you want to know what weight class you're fighting in. And that means a line-up in the scenario editor.

There is no useful rule of thumb. The best thing you can and should do is to use the scenario editor to line up the most common tanks of each nation. Select one, target an enemy tank and the cursor will display hit and kill chances.

When playing against some of out esteemed Salmon ("pink") opponents, you might think you're playing vs. the AI. They say the same about us. They're totally wrong. TCP-IP or PBEM is up to you to arrange with your opponent. It happens sometimes, but the norm is PBEM. Tactical player means you're assigned a battle and you play it, according to the overall plan. The plan is usually "kill'em all" or "please don't get everyone killed, if at all possible". The plan usually fails. Strategic player means you spend hours to develop a plan for your theater, dealing with the fact that you don't have remotely enough troops and tanks, they're all in the wrong place, you don't know what the enemy has or is about to do and your most brilliant ideas turn out to be impossible to implement. If you enjoy solving crossword puzzles in a language you don't understand, this is the job for you. Actually, this is the fourth Onion Wars campaign. In previous incarnations, they had Blue vs. Red, Orange vs. Green, etc. Now it's Salmon vs. Emerald, a much more tasteful and sophisticated choice of team colors, if you ask me. And yes, you can lower yourself to the standards of Salmondom, or be a proud defender of the mighty Emerald Empire. It's up to you. In the end, the art of strategy is to avoid a fair fight. In the OW campaign, you can be part of that.

If you want to take part as a tactical player, all you absolutely have to know is: - a 30-turn battle ends in turn 29 (to preserve fog of war) - when it's done, you have to write some brief after-battle-orders (like "stop and dig in near Hill 777", or "pursue the enemy across the river") - write an ongoing AAR, i.e. let the others know every couple of turns what's going on in general. Screenshots and poetic language are entirely optional. - if you're away for more than two or three days, let us know so another player can take over for a while - if a unit withdraws or routes off the map, make a note for the GM so that it won't be counted as a casualty - the enemy always has an ungodly amount of artillery at his disposal, while you have none. Be a man, live with it. At the beginning of a turn, the GMs publish a list of battles. You apply for one that suits you, or your team leaders will assign you one. After that, you're your own boss. Occasionally, the team leaders will give some general orders during the game (usually to prevent more losses). That's about it.

If you like, come to the OW site and we can play a game.

If you're still playing CMBB and you're looking for a fun meta campaign, have a look: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=89895

There's not much you can do. There's an automatic "die roll" involved to see if the unit actually engages the tank. Being unsuppressed, i.e. not being fired upon, helps a lot, as does a higher experience level. But apart from that, you can't influence their actions.

No, anytime is fine. At the moment, all Turn 26 battles are underway or complete. I'd expect the planning phase for the next turn to begin in 2-3 weeks' time, and another couple of weeks until the T27 battles begin. But if you want to know what's going on in the campaign, you can join immediately. Also, there are always experienced players available for fun and training games.

Do a forum search for the RPG - I think JasonC tested it extensively, and I my own tests a while ago. Range is about 40m, about two thirds of TH teams have at least one, and it's deadly.

So do I. But tactical players are welcome as well.

Tank Hunters can be worth their weight in gold for the Russians, but keep in mind that the RPG grenade is overmodeled - it practically never misses, and every hit is a kill.

Do a search for JasonC's "Infantry advance" drill. A detailed how-to, complete with scenarios for practice.

The Onion Wars CMBB Campaign, the Granddaddy of all CM campaigns, is looking for new players. We're a bunch of about 12-15 players and 4 GMs who like playing a stress-free, fun campaign. We are not much interested in replaying WW2; instead, the campaign is about two fictional states fighting for control of a large island. We're in Turn 26 of the campaign, and it's already 1945 (end of the CM tech tree). Have a look, and don't feel shy to ask if you want to know more. OW homepage: http://www.onionwars.net/phpbb/index.php Island maps: http://www.onionwars.net/maps.html The rules: http://www.onionwars.net/Docs/OnionWarsRules.pdf *** How long does a turn take? *** Don't ask. Sometimes we get it all done in two months. Sometimes four. It depends on how much time the GMs have on their hands. And turn means the campaign turn. Battle turns are played by PBEM and you can expect a battle to be finished in two weeks' time. Just one word of caution: if you're not willing to stick with a game that sometimes takes a long time before something new happens... well, you've been warned. The good news is that something *will* happen. Sooner or later. We have been playing this campaign for 6 1/2 years now. That's right, it all began in May 2003. I guess that should be proof enough that we mean it. But over the years, dozens of players joined. Some have stayed, a lot were disappointed when they couldn't play a new battle every week and disappeared (I'm not trying to discourage anyone from giving it a try, I'm just saying that if you already *know* that you want something more fast-paced then this is not for you). There is always something going on, though. We have a PBEM file system that allows you to watch all movie files from other battles and players write ongoing AARs of their games or discuss strategy. And if you're looking for training battles or just want to play for fun, there are always other players to take on. *** Do I have to learn 5,000 pages of rules before I can get involved? *** The emphasis in on fun. We're not like some of those other campaigns which attempted to micro-model every detail (and never got off the ground). If you want to play battles, there is hardly anything you need to know. if OTOH you're interested in strategy and planning, there are openings as well. The rules are quite straightforward and well documented, but you'd better expect to spend some time on it, like with every complex game. *** What size are the battles? *** We have some skirmished with only a handful of squads on each side and we're had the most massive battles, with over 100 tanks and several infantry battalions involved. But most games see about 2-3 companies on each side. And since it's a campaign, there are no flags to take and you never ever know what enemies you're going to face, or how many. *** What's required of me? *** Medium experience in CMBB. None of us is a die-hard know-it-all übergrognard. Some players are quite good, most are just somewhat experienced. Nobody will blame others for losing a battle. Other players can help you with setting up if you like; after that, you're free to do what you like. All we ask is that you have played enough CM to avoid the worst newbie mistakes most of the time. ------> http://www.onionwars.net/phpbb/index.php <------

As for Carell's credibility, you might consider that between '40 and '45, Paul Karl Schmidt (aka Carell) was one of the most high-level Nazi propagandists in the party machine. Of course that didn't prevent his post-war books from becoming bestsellers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Carell

It does, thanks. So let's see if I'm getting this right: A 13-man squad is easier to hit, so it suffers higher casualties and thus takes more morale "checks" or morale "hits" than an eight-man squad. The difference could be linear or not, we don't know. But being a bigger target is bad. Morale is a different matter, because die roll determines if they all panic or they don't. The large squad can take more hits before it is pinned or breaks because a casualty means only losing 7% (1/13) of the squad instead of 12% (1/8), giving it better chances to withstand morale checks. That is, if the difficulty of the check is proportional to loss percentage (a halfsquad is more brittle because the game treats it as if it had already suffered 50% losses). In that case, the last man of a 13-man squad is shakier than his counterpart in the 8-man squad, but that hardly matters. But generally, being bigger is a little worse for your health but a little better for your morale. The large squad loses less FP per casualty, relatively speaking (1/13 instead of 1/8), but the absolute loss is the same (one rifleman down is one rifleman down). Since what counts is absolute FP, there is no difference. But you could buy more small squads for the money and you'd get more targets the enemy has to keep down by fire, and that's good. Also, you can fight more targets with more squads, cover a greater area etc. That would mean there are only a few cases where a 13-man squad makes sense. Sometimes in urban fighting, you can concentrate more men in a small area. Only one squad fits into a small building, that sort of thing. But generally, even if you ignore the halfsquad option, there is no reason to buy large squads. Right?

More CM unit data than you'll ever need: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=4069 And I think the StG is called the MP44 in the game.

From what I remember about the game mechanics, the more men in a squad, the easier it is to cause casualties (not sure if that has ever been verified 100%). But it seems that, you know, that last man of a platoon HQ lives forever, no matter how much lead you rain upon him. Now firepower differences are easy to tell, I know about picking up MGs and such, but does squad size make a real difference in taking fire? Does a 12-man squad (e.g. German assault engineers) suffer less of a morale hit when suffering a casualty than an 8-man squad? Are they really easier to decimate? Is the "base morale" of a split 12-man squad, i.e. 6-man team, higher than that of a 4-man team?

And while we're at it, how long does it take to find a download site for the patch which does not require you to register? You've heard of search engines? Let's see.... 20 seconds. http://downloads.gamezone.com/demosfiles/t9754.htm CMAK... 15 seconds. Etc. etc. Oh, but the link was at the top of PAGE TWO of the Google results, and you never, ever look at anything that is not on the first page? OK, right. You're screwed.

Not sure when these have been added (probably after the OP's whining post), but there is a direct BFC download link now. Oh, and it seems our webmaster at the Onion Wars campaign site has added one, too. BTW, I've played all three games extensively, and I'd say that you can play them for years without ever noticing the difference between the original and the fully patched versions. Which is, ahem, uncommon for computer games. So much for "broken" software.