walpurgis nacht

I was out for a few days, but I don't see any packages as of yet.

Air raid drills? Who has the time to waste on that? Just keep your vehicles spread out and moving. I loved this scenario and played it several times. Monsterous indeed. Favors the Axis decisively in the right hands though. Use the Stugs to over-watch the Elephants! At 1250m the stug is immune to the 85mm. Hang back and over-watch from this range. On the flip side the allied issue is ammo more than anything. You've got a lot of turns to get through, and your Maxim ammo can't hold back the storm for but a fraction of that time. One trick is to give your HMGs cover arcs just ahead of the enemy's point infantry, so he'll walk into the cover arc maybe the last 15 seconds of the turn. This way you can stop the point man, but avoid spending a full minute tossing precious ammo at an already dropped and crawling point man.

Really the way to do this is TCP/ip. Setup Teamspeak or another voice/chat program, and then log onto the newbie's computer via remote connection. This way you can speak real-time and you both have hand's on access.

I placed 10 squads in the open right in front of the main heavy building flag at setup. Took a bong hit. Pressed "go". That's it.

I've knocked out pzIVs with 50mm mortars before. Yes immobilization and gun damage are possible. Though as I mentioned this is rare and should be considered an act of desperation.

Yes. In both BB and AK, though in AK the chance of gun damage/immobilization is increased.

50mm mortar vs tank is certainly an act of desperation-----but you can get a lucky gun damage or immobilization. The way to do this to override the AI is: -target the tank with mortar (red line) -hit shift + V (remove vehicles) -with the red target line as your guide, overlap and "area target" pricisely over the red line target (orange line). Bingo.

Yeah, I skipped most of the exceptions in order to throw a nice black and white rule out there. Like any absolute, it's one of those deals where you can say, you should never do this, unless you should. There are probably hundreds of exceptions. Some important ones have already been pointed out. So, never spend HE on anything unless you're in a position to completely destroy it . . . . -unless slowing down your opponent is more cost effective than killing your opponent. -unless you have an abundance of HE . . . . t34/76s for example---when's the last time you lost one that was out of HE? It almost never happens, so slather everything you can with HE before you start taking risks. I can think of many others. The main reason I even brought it up is I'm continually amazed how many players toss HE at my HMG positions (for example), when their closest infantry units are still 600 meters away. An absolute waste of HE. Take the pain, get close, then spend it.

Never spend HE on anything, unless you're in a position to completely destroy it.

Ah . . . . time time time. That is the trick. Leading with armor, being costless = luck. Well to a certain extent, absolutely. Leading with armor is rarely a good idea. You won't catch me trying it very often. But in this case there were so many other factors to consider. Time---there was no time. No time to trip the 100 cover arcs on the bridge, one by one. To break this defense the attacker had to haul ass. Not only to take the flags in time, but to beat the inevitable reinforcements from getting into the fight at the bottleneck. The latter is actually the most important factor. Observation----what physical ground was available to the defender (with LOS to the bridge)? Not a whole lot in this city! So little in fact, that the possible AT gun positions were really clumped into 2 areas. OK, so here's the deal, prep bombard the holy hell out of those areas, then rush. That effectively (almost) eliminates the AT gun threat altogether. Considering the tank rush was timed to arrive toward the very end of the barrages, and AT gun(guns) that had survived would be suppressed and not nearly as effective. It turns out my arty took out his one gun before the rush, so bingo. But the result would have been the same even if he had lived. I might have lost a single tank, even two. But look where I'm at now-----I've got first rate over-watch support to cross that bridge-----out of schrek range-----guns are dead----my only concern was enemy armor. Sure I spent my FOs on a gamble, but Russians had so much firepower I could easily drop that entire town with what I have left. And here I am early on in the scenario, with the firepower in place to practically sleep-walk my way across the bridge. Anyway if you thought leading with armor was nutso in Moltke Bridge, I think you'll fall out of your chair when you see what I did turn 1 attacking in St. Nazaire----another scenario where the attacker is extremely pressed for time. I took all the flags (one was left tied), and I'm going to guess the next best attacker might have taken half the flags. I'm tempted to post a screen-shot but the tourney isn't quite over yet so it will have to wait.

Hey now, the Soviet flag endured rather well in my match! Just said there weren't very many options, I had to make my own! Actually for all his constructive griping about imbalance, Mr. Reichmann did rather well also.

Richie thank you for it. TV was a spectacular design, and lots of fun. A good scenario gives you options so you when you either win or lose, you feel like it's YOUR work, ya know? That's why TV rocked. That's why LFB didn't.

What he said.

I kind of like this idea, but it will encourage gamey bastards like myself to memorize the parameters that trigger the reinforcements, and hug the walls accordingly. SC has a gimmick like this for the Russians. Works pretty well. I guess if they manage to find a way to do it right . . . .

For absolute precision, first target the enemy tank directly (red line), then remove vehicles (shift + v)and area-target precisely over the tip of the red line. Also make sure your mortar teams don't have cover arcs on . . . that leads them to do strange things regardless of the command they're given. [ October 28, 2005, 05:35 AM: Message edited by: walpurgis nacht ]

when you're 30, OCD as hell, and have logged 5000+ hours of CM gameplay, you'll understand.

We do something along these lines over at CMOC (Anton, you should check it out). German and Brit team commanders make operational decisions using a different game interface, and we grunts fight out the tactical battles with CMAK. Force preservation is essential from battle to battle, because the "dungeon master" notes every casualty, ammo expenditure, and unit placement details every single battle. It is recorded and things are adjusted accordingly. I don't know how Frans finds time to do it as it must be seriously tedious . . .but he does.

Ah, you were talking CMBB. I just assumed you meant CMAk since that is where you posted! The 75IG HC is less than half as effective in BB as it is in AK. In AK, I'd take 1 75IG over 1 pak40. The HC is so lethal in AK, I find it hard to believe that it isn't drastically over-modeled. In addition to this the HC is quite accurate out to 700 meters and beyond. Have you ever seen pics of this gun? I cannot believe it was this accurate or lethal in real life. Then again historical reality is not my area of expertise.

Well I've made this thing extremely challenging. It is very beatable, but really I can't imagine anyone will actually crack it. I'm more concerned about the fun factor. Some of these puzzles are seriously monsterous. That's also why I thought byte battles, obstacle by obstacle, might be better. I'll have a few people playtest it first and see what their take on it is. In my experience playing QBs and such over the years, very few people prefer the slow, chess-like style of CM play. The better players of course do, but not everyone is in it for that. So I guess this will be for the esoteric chess crowd.

No signup is necessary. I'll just make it a scenario anyone can download. I'm still working on it. It's more or less finished but I'll need a few days to wrench out the kinks. I'm wondering if it might not be better to do each obstacle as a seperate scenario . . little byte battle types. Or one grand strategic sweep. You know, Americans are so ADD today . . . .

Mainly tactical puzzles . . . requiring intimate knowledge of the game mechanics. Simple concepts. I am at point "A", I need to get to point "C". Obstacle "B" is in my way and must be dealt with to proceed. That sort of thing . . . .

(Please post any response in the identical post in "tips n tricks") I was thinking about finishing a project I started awhile back . . . a CMAK obstacle course. The idea is, if you can capture the flag before the clock runs down, you're a bloody CM master. The map is laced with puzzle after puzzle . . and they are quite tough! In fact if you can breech the last obstacle we need to talk That said every obstacle can be cracked, more or less with ease. It is a German "attack". The force composition: 1 Plt Pioneers 1 Flamethrower 1 HMG42 1 mortar HT 1 105mm Stug 4 tank hunters (scouts) While that is a tiny attack force, the map I have in mind is long, and would take a healthy chunk of time to complete. I have to test it further but likely 100 turns. So I'm wondering is there any interest for this sort of thing out there?

I was thinking about finishing a project I started awhile back . . . a CMAK obstacle course. The idea is, if you can capture the flag before the clock runs down, you're a bloody CM master. The map is laced with puzzle after puzzle . . and they are quite tough! In fact if you can breech the last obstacle we need to talk That said every obstacle can be cracked, more or less with ease. It is a German "attack". The force composition: 1 Plt Pioneers 1 Flamethrower 1 HMG42 1 mortar HT 1 105mm Stug 4 tank hunters (scouts) While that is a tiny attack force, the map I have in mind is long, and would take a healthy chunk of time to complete. I have to test it further but likely 100 turns. So I'm wondering is there any interest for this sort of thing out there?

Don't let my brother's witchcraft fool you. We had this debate earlier at work and I told him to go to hell. I prefer chess

As far as I'm concerned I'd follow BF into hell with overflowing Jerry cans I've had so much fun with the CM series to date. That said the new theme makes me as squeemish as the next guy. Within the context of giving BF the benefit of the doubt, I have a question. How will game play balance work vs other human opponents? Specifically, how does a war simulation based of a philosophy of technical accuracy make a battle between an antiquated military and an uber one, work (in terms of balance/fun)? Other games get around this by spiking the performance of the antiquated military's equipment. I can only assume this will not be the approach for CMX2.