Carl Puppchen

Wow so we definitely know it works on m1? Hmmm I think I may buy an M1 mac now. They are only 999...

Has anyone tried it yet with an M1 mac? Like as a regular app, as it works today? I am not an expert on emulation. I was just about to buy an M1 mac so maybe I am going to be the beta tester...

Thanks very much your tip worked! The screen looks slightly different on the new mac - it basically asked if I wanted to open the package from combat mission and I said yes.

I have been playing CMFI and had a problem that has occurred 4x now. It occurs when I am on defense and I carefully place a gun, generally right behind a wall (not on the wall, behind the wall). Then, when I am playing, all the sudden I have no forward LOS and cannot target any enemies. I can traverse all the way around and shoot behind me, but not forward. Another aspect of this that occurred recently is that my gun and crew were invulnerable - my opponent came right up to me with MG's blazing and I had no casualties (but I couldn't shoot back, either). Eventually a side shot killed my crew which never shot back despite having many targets. I have the turns for this and can post screen shots or send them along if that helps too. I am on the second to last patch for CMFI and have been playing CM products for a long time so I wouldn't post here unless it is a real problem

I did hit the tank and the sherman was immobilized but not sure if it was from the mortar or some proximity HE fire. It was fun!

Hello all. I used to play Combat Mission back in the day and build my own scenarios but stopped playing for a long time (10+ years!). Recently I got back into Combat Mission and started playing CMFI. I have played maybe 6 or so games since the patch was applied. I noticed that the observer for off-board artillery actually adjusted shots! I had an 81mm mortar that was shooting at a Sherman tank and the observer actually moved the fire when the tank switched positions. I hadn't noticed this behavior previously and when my shots were falling away from the target they never seemed to get any closer or adjust. In reading through some of the older posts I saw that people said that they rarely saw AA fire as being effective. I started playing against my usual opponent with "rarity off" and now I'm buying a lot of the AA halftracks in our quick battle scenarios and I had 2 on a small map and I actually shot down and allied strafing attack aircraft! It was the 37mm gun - the 20mm gun (quad) put up a lot more noise but the 37mm was the one who received the "plane destroyed" note. One airplane shot down isn't a large sample size I realize but it was heartening to see that happen.

I am working on a scenario and I keep receiving an "unhandled exception error" that stops me when I try to load the scenario. It must be something in particular with the scenario because I can open all of the other scenarios that I started. I have tried it on 2 of my computers and it doesn't work on either of them. The culprit may be that I have 25 "reinforcement" groups for each of the axis and the allies... it used to open and save until I reached that threshold. Has this happened to anyone else? It isn't a giant map but pretty big about 9000 points on each side. Also a decent amount of fire. update - after reading some other tech support posts I went out and updated to the latest directx drivers and tested them in case it was a graphics error. No improvement. Once again I think it might be something in the application in scenario mode because I can open all of my other scenarios with no problem. I usually have 10-15 reinforcements per side... don't know if there is some kind of trigger that you hit at 50. I was able to open / close it at 40 or so. May be something else... [ July 15, 2006, 01:00 PM: Message edited by: Carl Puppchen ]

I hadn't seen the tanks pushing each other. That is a good tip

There is a new Rolling Stone magazine with Keifer Sutherland of "24" fame on the cover. On page 54 they have an article about US basic training called "The Killing Factory". Here is a quote "During WWII an army historying named SLA Marshall decided to study combat behavior... 75% of American soldiers, he claimed, had failed to shoot back when fired upon... the firing rate during the Korean War roes to nearly sixty percent. In Vietnam it was ninety percent, and in the first Gulf War it reached 98%. In Iraq, the number of soldiers who fail to fire is thought to be statistically insignficant. American forces never lost a major engagement in Vietnam, and they have not lost one since." The article is semi-interesting... I like their description of the town where the training occurs and some of the other elements but they make someludicrous comments: "a single, inexperienced modern combat soldier, with full combat support, has as much death at his fingertips as a 300 man company did in WW II" Also "the army's infantry schools graduate nearly 20,000 soldiers a year. No institution in history has come close to training so many people to kill so effectively in such a short time" Sorry I can't seem to find a link to the post or I'd put it in here. Once again not defending their items but find it fascinating that Rolling Stone, a magazine that basically doesn't know squat, quotes Marshall.

This is due to your mail program "determining" that your file is a text file. The best way to solve this is to use PBEM helper or to zip your files or change the way you receive PBEM files.

What is the opinion on Marshall's comments that stragglers from broken units were extremely ineffective relative to cohesive units? I read the book and definitely remember that element seemed to be important to Marshall. That thread generally leads to the point that during Vietnam the rotation system badly hurt small unit cohesion. But since I am not a military guy and have only seen things through books I don't have a lot of confidence in these opinions. What is the opinion of the board on aggressiveness of fire in today's army engaged in combat in Iraq? Also must be matched against the fact that they often face an enemy intentionally blending in with civilians which makes indiscriminate use of firepower and artillery a difficult proposition.

Duh! Sorry I can't believe I said 16" not 18" for Yamato. I must be getting a bit daft

Duh! Sorry I can't believe I said 16" not 18" for Yamato. I must be getting a bit daft

don't forget that Japan broke the rules big time... how about the 16" Yamato class. I don't know where to find it but remember reading somewhere that someone asked the Japanese if they were building any 40,000 or 50,000 ton battleships. They could legitimately say no because... the Yamato class was over 60,000 tons (63,000 tons if my memory serves correctly). A lot of the impetus of the treaties were to avoid the "arms race" that occurred prior to WW1 between Germany and the UK that raised tensions significantly. In the end, that goal wasn't achieved, obviously.

don't forget that Japan broke the rules big time... how about the 16" Yamato class. I don't know where to find it but remember reading somewhere that someone asked the Japanese if they were building any 40,000 or 50,000 ton battleships. They could legitimately say no because... the Yamato class was over 60,000 tons (63,000 tons if my memory serves correctly). A lot of the impetus of the treaties were to avoid the "arms race" that occurred prior to WW1 between Germany and the UK that raised tensions significantly. In the end, that goal wasn't achieved, obviously.

Thanks I will do that but don't want to miss 3 days of turns while in London

I am in London and wanted to know how to buy a copy in a store. Any UK people have any ideas where I can look in downtown London? My disk is scratched and won't load

Glad you liked my scenarios. I am working on a bunch of CMBB ones that I am going to post up there... switching over in honor of the new combat missions campaign game. They are what they are, and they are supposed to be fun. One thing I really like about going back to cmbb is the return of the factory tile, because I love factories ever since scenarios 1-3 from SL. Also, there are a lot of good mods out there for graphics. Nothing is as easy to setup as the awesome CMETO mods, but very good once you pick through everything. It is amazing that a game from this many years ago still holds up and is this much fun.

There are many books out there that claim varying degrees of information on Stalin's plan to attack Hitler. Go to google and look for them. I hold the one by Pleshakov in my hand. Suvorov is a long standing proponent of this theory, but he has an axe to grind, clearly. Now I am not in a position to put in the hours needed to judge whether these people are right or wrong, and I can't read Russian, but I have been reading military history for 25 years and the # of these books has definitely increased over time, if that is any type of indicator. One thing that is tangibly clear is that the Soviet positions of their forces make no sense from a defensive war standpoint but a lot of sense from an offensive war standpoint. This isn't a smoking gun, of course, but it is a piece of data. It is also tied to their military doctrine, as well. It is also interesting that people expect to find a smoking gun. Stalin operated in intense secrecy on many topics and was extremely paranoid. The Soviet Union today under Putin has no incentive to go into his plans because they remove the sole girder of respectability that holds up the communist historical edifice - that they stood as a bulwark against Hitler. Clearly, the Soviet people defeated Hitler, but the communists derive their legitimacy (such as it is) from their defense against an aggressive war that was forced upon them by an evil dictator. I don't think that there will ever be a clear answer to this question, but to me, if in fact (not proven) the war was going to come to Germany and Stalin was going to attack, then the Germans played not their best hand but a decent hand in striking first.

"A Germany rational enough to play nice wouldn't have invaded in the first place. Moot point." Uh, I don't get it. The whole point of recent scholarship on the USSR post archives being opened is that, in fact, the Soviet Union was preparing to invade German occupied territories in Eastern Europe. Thus, it was only a matter of whether Hitler would invade Stalin or if Stalin would invade Hitler. Given that the 2 dictators were going to come to blows regardless, the issues become as to how one can proceed most efficiently to destroy the enemy. I can't answer on the various tank production and logistic models but from a political perspective Hitler did not help his cause due to his insane policies vis a vis the occupied territories. The entire key thought is that Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union wasn't some big mistake, in fact it was the best option available to him given that plan B was to take an assault from the Russians in some near term (based on recent scholarship).

I am a relative expert but not enough to say whether or not Germany could have won the ground war. An interesting book I just read is here Stalin's Folly Some times the author makes errors that even I can catch but it is an interesting study of the first 10 days on the Eastern front. I would say that the key element of victory for the Germans would have been if Stalin's government had collapsed, or if there was a serious revolt to his authority. This book assumes that Russia was moving to attack Germany and that explains their (odd) dispositions, but I wouldn't necessarily regard that as fact (no "smoking gun"). The (sad) ironic fact is that Stalin's purges of his military ranks, while they weakened his combat power, also decreased the chance of revolt in the ranks. Hitler compounded his woes with his insane policy of extermination against people who would be his allies, which is pretty much all of the non-Russian people in teh USSR. By the time they started raising a Ukranian army it was too late. I think that the victory could have been in the cards if the purges weren't so terrorizing of their officers and if more informed policies had been in place with regards to the occupied territories (i.e. they would have explicitly called for revolution with exiles and offered some sort of counter-weight to the USSR). None of this happened, and Hitler's insane policies only added to the legitimacy of the USSR goverment's response. But the political side could potentially have gone the other way if some cards had fallen differently, and Hitler wouldn't have so badly misplayed his hand.

This is interesting feedback. Now I know some people that are going to hate my scenarios . I like action. My scenarios are made for action. As such, I usually start the guys in pretty close proximity and jam them into narrow zones where the options are kind of limited. Then I keep the time length down, so that you jump off and smash the enemy or get smashed yourself. I hardly ever use uber-tanks but do like to mix it up with a bunch of not very historical vehicles. I like to give odd stuff that the players need to think about. Since my scenarios are all "random" they really aren't made for playability vs. the AI which makes them easier to setup. Playing vs. the AI means a whole different world vs. humans. I do use planes from time to time but give the defender AA guns (usually locked so they can't be dragooned into AT duty). I do throw in additional HQ's into the pot. I do tweak the ammo loads (I LOVE to load up on CANNISTER). I do try to keep my reins out of sight from immediate fire. Sometimes I fail, and when I do I try to fix it in the next release. If I give arty, I usually give TRP's, too. TRP's make arty more useful in a quick game. I try to use different terrain and time periods, and day / night to mix things up. Sometimes exit scenarios are fun. One thing, as someone who has designed a bunch of scenarios, it takes a looooong time to create one. Give em' a break. And mine aren't even that good Random reinforcement scenarios

Man I used to play JUNTA and it was a riot

I updated my CMBB #2 scenario to give the axis more of a fighting chance. They have 3 companies of infantry against a few heavy tanks and 1 green dug in company of Russian infantry. The tanks just teed off on my guys and sent them packing because the ground has some concealment (grain) but not a lot. I gave the axis some more smoke mortars so that they can smoke the heavy tanks and beefed up their reins a little.

Thanks! Hans' scenarios look great, definitely try them out.