Foxbat

I think this is the crux of the matter. No, the game would have had to be sanitized regardless of the nationality of the distributor. At least if BFC wants to sell their games in germany (and I guess they do) that means they either needed to "sanitize" the english version, or release a seperate "sanitized" german version. Since BFC has (apparently) decided that it doesn't neccesarily want to have wafflegrenadiere for everyone, there was going to have to be a german release (not to mention the fact that there is a big demand for german-language versions of games). So from the point-of-view that they were going to have an international and a german release it makes sense that they went ahead with a german distributor.

The soviet 76mm started life as the Rheinmetal 7.6cm Flak gun, so it's a a pretty close match for a small 8.8 The 37mm AA gun is the 40mm Bofors adapted for 37mm, the german gun is the Bofors..

CMBB troops are also more likely to keep fighting back once they started engaging enemies, so I guess this not a bug.. it's a feature Pretty realistic imho, troops that are already engaging the enemy may "panick" but that doesn't mean they will engage in cartoonesque stereotypes of panicky behavior (throwing away their rifles, running around in circles with their hands raised up to the sky shouting "Mommie, Mommie!" ). They are rather more likely to keep shooting and even intensify their efforts (all guns blazing, using ammo like nobodies business) until they snap ("rout" in CMBB) and go into shock. Nice Screens btw, these lil' armored cars are just sooo cute [ October 03, 2002, 09:13 AM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

And Diesel was heavily prioritzed for the Navy, so I don't think there was ever a realistic choice for the army (the Marines OTOH got diesel Shermans because they were in the Navy logistics system).

Cavalry charging across open plains against machine guns.. ouch. I'm surprised that some actually made it at all.

I don't think it was a gender issue, just the difference between trained combat pilots (90% males) and pilots with limeted civ-only training. Besides flying a 'sewing machine' at night to drop 10kg of HE on sleeping germans isn't exactly a glam career, so I guess it was a major turn-off for the men

Ok I see what you mean. It's all a bit fast*/coincidental, but by and large planes coming in for a strafing run are pretty easy to spot and if one TC sees the guy next to him button up and the infantry bail out he's going to have a pretty good idea what is going on (and if he doesn't there's a good chance he'll button up first and ask questions later ). * Buttoning up tanks litteraly no time in the game, we'll have to live with that. I've seen massed tanks stop look around and start hammering away in EFOW when ATG's started firing, especially in Zitadelle Schwerpunkt where you have that enormous mass of tanks and a few unspotted ATG's taking potshots at them. When CMBO came out and I still had my ancient (and even at the time outdated) compu I had things like this happen. But I guess this is just the time it takes for the inf to dismount, or did you also do it with "unencumbered" tanks?

While I agree that planes shouldn't be able to pick of experienced troops first I don't think the opposite is true either. There isn't much cover to use if you're in a tank (besides you only see the a/c coming when it's to late to start using cover), and anti-aircraft fire would apply only to units that have aamg's (Shermans) and that are actually willing to use it (I know that among Panzer crews in France at least this was a big- no-no).

So you want your virtual tankers to look up at the sky spot the yellow line and do something that in real life would have been absolutely impossible? The direct fire comparison doesn't hold, when engaged by direct fire the tanks have a pretty good idea who's being shot at, while that incoming plane could drop it's ordanance on each and every of these tanks (the tankers can't tell where the ordanance is going until it starts coming down). Where they freezing because they stopped, or because they had to let the animation play out? This can cause situation to appear visually different from how they actually occur (think Arty still falling after the 60 second mark has been reached).

Squeeze bore weapons. Thread on them: Taper-bore weapons and everything you wanted to know about them [ October 01, 2002, 10:46 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

To add to what Jon said (which sounds like the ultimate achievable solution*) to save precious VRAM the following things could be implemented: The overlay BMP's are added on top of the cvehicle and the user can choose between off (no overlays shown at all), default (shows the default overlay BMP for each vehicle type), full overlays picked per vehicle. And all vehicles that are in the same command structure (same platoon or company) get the same overlay. That would give a lot of variation still while still limiting the number of different bmp's that have to be displayed. Also has interesting tactical "applications" in that your enemy could try to find out which AFV's belong to the same unit * The only thing better would be IL-2 style vector overlays, that actually calculate the correct and unique vehicle number for each vehicle and display it in the proper style for that vehicle in that period... But that is of course totally unrealistic at the combat mission scale of things

Forgot the main point [duh]. The problem isn't rarity itself but cases were equipment inherent to a unit get high rarity penalties, that shouldn't happen as the fact that these weapons are inherent should generally mean they are available.

I don't think that representing rarity through cost is a problem in itself, sure it can make obsolete items expensive meaning they are unlikely to be picked by players. But that's the point isn't it? Such a unit/weapon can still show up in a pre-cooked secnario, and it's a better option then giving discounts on obsolete equipment, which will slew the balance towards buying them in ahistoric and unbalancing numbers (especially if the opposition is mainly inf being able to buy xtra guns/tanks/mortars or a mix of ubertanks and mopping up tanks will be quite nasty). One possible "fix" or option would be to give obsolete equipment a small chance of getting a bigger discount, to simulate left-overs, 'gefundeness Fressen' and stuff forced on your unit.

I did a quick and dirty count on images of soviet medium tanks, and about half of them carried any kind of tactical marking. Broken down for early (41-42) and late® war it works out as: early war: </font> 75% of the tanks has no tactical markings</font>10% has a basic vehicle ID marking (ie one that only made sense within the platoon or company)</font>15% has proper tactical markings (about a third of those actually had the diamonds, the rest had 3 or 4 digit numbers) </font>later war: </font> 10% unmarked</font>15% had only basic vehicle ID markings</font>10% carried a diamond style marking</font>55% had 3-digit style markings, and another 10 had 4-digit markings </font>

That's because those TC's are not Borg, they don't have the same view of the battlefield as you do. Hence they occasionaly pop-up to see what is going on around them

The story of an AA-gunner seems a good way to bump this thread: The story of Gunner Gennadii Shutz At the Russian Battlefield. "It doesn't seem like much, right? But what is our task? Not to let the enemy bomb while aiming at the guarded objective. Sure, it's great to shoot a plane down, but that's not the main thing, the main thing was that the covered infantry, tanks, or a crossing don't get hurt from the raid."

Yep, the reason that the T-44 is in is the same as with the Jagdtiger. They were available (in fact the sovs were reequipping several units with it) even if it didn't see combat.

Unfortunatly the 100mm was just a bit too much for what was essentialy a reworked T-34. Besides with the T-54 entering testing in the mid 40's there was no need for it.

Given that your rifles have probably been used in war and been "refurbished" at least once in their career (quite possibly by putting a new bolt in the existing rifle) I would also be a bit worried until it was checked by a gunsmith.

The Americans weren't in russia to fight communists, but to protect allied ports and stocks And they were issued Mosin's for a very good reason, the US governement had warehouses full of them. These american-made mosin-nagants were bought by the US governement after the soviet governement defaulted on a czarist contract with Remington and Westinghouse.

Why not? They really do look pretty, better than a Mauser imHo.

The Mos -NG, or Mosin-Nagant (or just Mosin) is a basic bolt-action rifle in calibre 7.62x54R. It is roughly comparable to the Kar98, but with a lower average quality and some idiosyncrasies like a straight bolt handle, and fixed sights. Magazine is a fixed mag that holds 4 rounds (5 if you count the one in the chamber) and is loaded via a 5-round stripper clip. The SVT is a self-loading rifle using the same 7.62x54 rifle round, and basically it wasn't the POS it is often thought to be it wasn't very good either. They were more complicated, more expensive, more vulnerable, more sensitive to the enviroment and less accurate than normal rifles. Although supposed to completely replace bolt-action rifles in the early forties they were slowly phased out during the war. Magazine was a 10-round detachable jobbie, square ugle and functional. Maybe the 15-round mag for it's predeccesor the AVS could also be used, I'm not sure. [ September 28, 2002, 09:22 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

RPG in this case doesn't mean Rocket Propelled Germansheperd but "Reactiveny Puhpupuh Grenadski" (or something like that) meaning shape charge warhead. It's a big grenade that is weighted to hit armor at a certain angle when thrown. So it was indeed thrown on top of the tank and penetrates the thin top armor downwards. [EDIT]RPG=Rucharnaya Protivotankovaya Granata, in english: antitank handgrenade. [ September 27, 2002, 07:12 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

I really liked the BOOM-on-click options in CC, but a bit to gamey/cartoonish for CMBB. Besides do you know how real-world soldiers learned to distuingish the sounds of the battlefield? That's right, experience, there just ain't substitute for experience (well a good FAQ maybe)

AFAIK there was no NKVD TOE (this is where a real grog comes into show that there was some obscure TOE issued in 1934 that was still in effect as late as 1956 ) and NKVD Divisions were raised as regular rifle divs. Although probably subject to change depending on mission/theatre etc, I would speculate that they were generally light on organic artillery and other secondary assets but I have no OOB to confirm that.