Zarquon

There's also the good ole Onion Wars IV campaign: http://www.onionwars.net/forum/YaBB.pl It's a strategic campaign about the epic struggle between the Emerald Empire (good) and the Union of Smoked Salmon Republics (evil). We're in Turn 22 now, and the campaign has been going on uninterrupted since May 2003.

Maybe I'm the umpteenth poster to suggest this, but there are some great tips in there about what is, hmmm, currently an issue with the game. There are more such valuable tips buried in other threads. Now if somebody started putting together a FAQ thread with problems and workarounds instead of just bitching about how retardad da game iz, it might scare some potential buyers away, but it would also be a great help for any open-minded newbies who just had their first frustrating experiences with the demo. Put in a quote or two saying that "we know, we're sorry, and our entire coding department (a.k.a Charles) is working night and day on fixing these" and you might not only score some points for honesty, but make a number of people give the demo a second or third try. Give them a chance to discover what goodies are actually hidden in the package.

Maps are here: http://www.onionwars.net/maps.html You'll get a rough idea when you see the ownership map; the pre-war borders are visible. Actual frontlines are on the detail maps. A GM change caused a long hiatus in 2005, but we're in Turn 19 now, that's July '44 in game time (CM scen editor time).

Just wanted to mention that with CM:Campaigns half-dead and the game engine being older than my gandfather, there is a grand strategy campaign still going on, and it started in early 2003. We've had our share of GM burnout and player dropouts, but, like Rocky, we fight on. There's always been someone to jump into the breach when we needed it the most, and that's more than I could say of any other campaign I know of. And so the fight for the tiny, fictional backwater island of Fea Cebola continues. And CMBB still lives. www.onionwars.net

Re BigDuke/BlackJack: I'm feeling a little strange quoting 18th-century philosophers on this, because usually it's a little too high-brow for me. But it has all been said before (and much more stringent than I could possibly put it): Wikipedia That's why BlackJack's saying "I'm far from wanting to make it official policy, but in that case it was OK" drives me mad. It's just illogical. If is justifiable, then it will be justifiable the next time, too. For example when someone summarily executes all members of the Mafia, or the KKK, or the Baath party. There can be no reasonable doubt that they all willingly and knowingly joined a murderous club, can there? If you allow it to happen once, you allow it once and for all. And even if those men shot only the guilty ones (accidentally, because they had no way of knowing it), it doesn't change anything.

Just trying to sum up the arguments here: Blackjack says that a) Anybody belonging to a highly criminal organization (like the SS) is guilty of all crimes perpetrated by the organization and can be shot on sight. It is the individual soldier's right to decide what a criminal organization is, whether this organization's crimes justify killing all its members and therefore, who can be shot on sight. c) The state should not interfere with that process because an individual's sense of ethics is sufficient to justify killing somebody. BigDuke does not go quite so far and argues that a) putting people on trial has its merits, except when it's impractical to do so. In such cases, BlackJack's version of justice is appropriate and justified. being a prisoner of the US Army in 1945 does not qualify for a), i.e. by all practical means, the army wasn't capable of putting them on trial. Otherwise it would have been wrong to kill them. Am I getting this right so far?

The game shows both tanks and their ammo to be identical, yet the Germans score much higher than the Russians. That could either mean - that the game engine is unfairly biased towards the Germans, or - the tank stats (unit info screen) do not always reflect the actual numbers used. What if the numbers in the info screen were hardcoded somewhere, instead of being calculated every time the players clicks the button? They just copied the data from the Russian T-34 and then somebody else came up with penetration numbers for German-made ammo, forgetting to update the captured tank's info screen. Mind me, I have no idea what's true but plain old sloppiness is a possible explanation that has nothing to do with untermenschen bias.

MX accuracy (CEP) is stated as 50% landing in a 400 feet circle. Incredibly inaccurate, even compared to a shotgun. It means you can't use it in close combat or you risk hitting yourself! As soon as the enemy learns that, he'll just hug you close and the weapon becomes virtually useless. Also, it would have a very notable signature, making it mostly unusable for night combat.

MX accuracy (CEP) is stated as 50% landing in a 400 feet circle. Incredibly inaccurate, even compared to a shotgun. It means you can't use it in close combat or you risk hitting yourself! As soon as the enemy learns that, he'll just hug you close and the weapon becomes virtually useless. Also, it would have a very notable signature, making it mostly unusable for night combat.

Imagine fighting a Tiger in CMBB, 1942. As the Russian player you don't have anything that can kill it frontally. Now imagine a Tiger with 80%+ hit chances, even while moving, a 1500 hp engine and thermal-sight night vision equipment. Perhaps a late-war 128mm gun hit to the side or rear could kill it. And you could still stop it with an AT mine or damage the tracks with direct fire but that's it. Basically, you're screwed. The result is that you as the defender are forced to develop new tactics. In the Onion Wars CMBB campaign http://www.onionwars.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl, the green team began to field Tigers and won almost every tank battle from that on. Tigers in 1942/1943 rule everything in sight. After two turns of suffering, the pink team suddenly responded by switching to night attacks where a Tiger cannot rule more than its immediate surroundings. And pink SMG troops overran green positions while the fearsome, extremely expensive Tigers stood nearby. Ouch. So much for getting cocky. The lesson for us was that super-weaponry is good for a couple of easy victories, until the enemy adapts to the new circumstances.

A Brumm has no turret and it cannot cover as much ground as three IGs, not even in wide open terrain. It is a very useful tool for attacking, taking out trenches and buildings, but IMO not for defending.

From what I remember reading, it was a spring. (And I wouldn't be too enthusiastic about igniting a home made powder charge to propel a home made molotov cocktail in a home made molotov cocktail projector...)

Is this a pre-made scenario? If your squads keep crawling *towards* the enemy, it might be due to setup parameters, if the "friendly maps edges" were set the wrong way, i.e. you come from the west but your frindly map edge is set to east.

I agree with Walpurgis. Never open up with anything unless you absolutely have to. If you see three tanks in a group, one or two will probably be in overwatch. Don't fire. Wait for them to close. I find that as a battle progresses, the attacker's forces tend to get more and more disorganized. After a while, you'll find a lone target. And even then, don't fire unless that tank is a direct threat to any of your units or will disappear behind cover soon. Often you can find a single tile one level higher than the surrounding terrain that forms a kind of mini-crest. Placing your gun on the reverse slope of that tiny crest is all it takes to double the gun's lifespan. Buying 75mmIGs for AT defense is interesting. I'll have to try that out. I disagree with not hiding guns. Bad idea. In CM it doesn't matter how many spotters you have. One HMG or HQ with binoculars can cover a lot of ground and is much less vulnerable. Hide everything else or you risk losing it to arty or blind area fire. If your opponent has T-34 or bought lots of cheap Russian arty he can afford to plaster each suspected patch of woods with HE.

Mostly, AT guns die really soon after opening fire so IMO it's best to have a mix of different guns in the defense. For every target the attacker offers, you should have the right caliber. Of course, bigger is better but it's embarrassing to kill a 50-point BT-5 with a 70-point 75mm Pak only to see the gun getting killed by mortar fire the next turn. Better to kill the BT with something cheaper. But what? In a 2000 pts QB, you are defending open terrain as the German player. Let's say you have set aside about 400 points for guns. Rarity is off. What would you buy?

Are you sure the squad escaped unharmed? Perhaps they took casualties. If not, call it a 1:1000 chance, and your game was No. 1000.

Are you sure the squad escaped unharmed? Perhaps they took casualties. If not, call it a 1:1000 chance, and your game was No. 1000.

No. And if they could, you wouldn't expect it to happen during a typical 30 minute firefight, do you?

And then, there's always the Onion Wars Campaign at http://www.onionwars.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl It's, err, semi-historical. To be more precise, it's not historical at all but purely fictional. It's been running for nearly a year now.

There's a quite comprehensive article you might find interesting: "German Defensive Doctrine on the Russian Front During World War II, Prewar to March 1943". http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Wray/wray.asp#blitz This is only a short excerpt: Don't get me wrong, it's not that *I* read all of this stuff...

No, but it there's been a rumour about a code in the game to turn all your tanks completely invisible and another that allows infantry to walk right *through* solid walls.

Strange - mine are much smaller on a 19". But they seem to grow a little when I move my head closer to the screen! Can't remember if they did this in CMBO, too.

And did you ever wonder why, sometimes, your troops are being fired at but you don't get even a sound contact? It's because some experienced oppponents selectively turn the sound on and off. Even the dumb AI does it, sometimes. In a way it is balanced because both players can take advantage of these bugs. But then the game degenerates to a contest of gameyness. P.S.: And I'd like to see a patch that finally allows troops and tanks to fall off the map edge and get lost under the table, like they did in most serious military boardgames as well as in real life.

You have linked to files on your hard drive. And what's the use of putting a Lotus file up for download? We'd all need Lotus or perhaps Works to open it.

Over four years of board history, a million posts, and nobody ever came up with this critical shortcoming of the CM infantry engine before... - When moving perpendicular to a slope, will the taller soldiers fall over more easily? Obviously not. But is there a statistical relation between height and body mass/equipment weight distribution, i.e. center of gravity? Definitely! The current engine does not seem to model this, though. IMO this does not neccessarily influence a battle on the flat Russian steppe but historically, it was a decisive factor in mountainous terrain like Italy, where the notoriously fat German and Italian rear-echelon sergeants were severely restricted in their movement. - The length of your arms is a function of overall height and limits the distance you can throw grenades or molotovs. Not modelled yet. - Being tall neither gives a bonus in close combat, nor for taking out tanks, although taller soldiers can climb on a tank's turret much quicker (to drop grenades through the commander's hatch). - Most importantly, there is still no patch that prevents the extremely gamey use of increasing troop size (by pressing Shift-C). At +4 size, troops become notably indifferent to small arms fire and although they become exhausted much quicker, they run at a completely unrealistic speed! When looking closely at the screenshots of JasonC's infantry advance tutorials, you'll see how he uses that bug to his advantage.