Bartokomus

valael what you need is a seminal moment; taking out a KV with a satchel charge; knocking out a KV with an '88 when all your light German armor is cowering in scattered trees. And finally, the most challenging, knocking out a KV with flamethrower unit. Once you complete any of these tasks you will jump up from your chair and do the victory dance, family members staring on in fear and trepidation...

So i am playing Boots and Tracks "Punch/CounterPunch" in a pbem. There is a flag situated in the center of the map in the middle of a large factory complex. I have taken the bulk of my soviet forces, who were stationed near or in the factory and removed them, knowing my opponent would pretty quickly clue in that that was where he needed to drop his arty for any preparatory barrages. As soon as turn 1 commences the flag shows itself to be in my possesion. Here is my thought: I think the VL flags should remain neutral until one side has determined that the other does or does not have posession of it. I think this would stop some of the gamey tactics of flag rushing and recon-by-Kubelwagen. it also seems much more realistic; if there is a hill that has been designated as an objective, it seems to me that i shouldn't know if it occupied or not until my forces have determined that with their own eyeballs. I think this would be a great way to increase the tension that should naturally be there. imagine the difference: Lt. Smith: "Sgt i need you to take your squad up that hill and investigate why there is a large glowing nazi symbol up there; oh, and Bob, be careful. i smell trouble" OR Lt. Smith: "Sgt i need you to take your squad up that hill; check it out and be careful. just a thought...

Thank you sir; they're beautiful

That is beautiful, but it actually echoes something i keep wondering. I've got a P4-2.53 o/c to 2.85, with 768 of rdram 800 and a GeForce Ti4200 64mb DDR. To the Volga still runs like a dog. that being said: what did the playtesters use to test that battle? And where can i get a machine like theirs... :confused:

Just finished a QB (combined arms, human picked forces). The two t34's i had were knocked out pretty quickly from some pretty lucky shooting. i figured oooohhhh crap, that's it for me. he had like 2 Mk IV's, 2 Mk III's, and a couple of PzJaeger's (i think) left. BUT... that ugly KV proceeded to win the day by slowly destroying every single one of his armor pieces. it withstood infantry close assault, numerous flank shots, and just a whole bunch of misery. i could not believe it. every time i thought, "he's dead" he just kept going. it salvaged a draw out of what looked like a Total Loss

Quote "Yeah, but who can read in Texas?" Visitors...

i think 3000pts on a good size map is about right; i have found that cmbb has redeemed the Meeting engagement, as out of the 15 or 20 PBEM scens i have played they are by far the most enjoyable. i also enjoy the forced being committed piecemeal, as long as they are out of LOS of the enemy.

Hate to speak after BFC had their say, but my thoughts focus exclusively on the designers of the scenarios rather than the game, which to me is an exponential leap in quality. I think what needs to happen is that the scen designers are going to need to start evaluating whether a particular battle or engagement is NECESSARY to model in a scenario. When i say necessary, i really mean "do both sides have even a small chance of winning?" I have found myself disappointed with the types NOT quality of scens on the cd's. i can recall very few scens in cmbo that were as wide open as many of the ones in cmbb. Maybe Taurus over the Odon would be the most open i can recall. the wide open nature of many of the battles can be problematic because of the better modeling and horrendous disparities of forces that occured. My point can be made with many of the cd scens: i am playing Approach to Sevastopol right now as the AXIS in pbem. without being a SPOILER, the armor that the reds have is too much for what you have. their guns are better and more of them. i have already tried to go hull down and duke it out with the few Stugs i have, but i lost 4 to his 1 t34. now some KV's have shown up and i have 1300m of open ground to cover with all my HT's and light armor. Here is the crux of it: i am totally confident that the designers are modeling the situation correctly, but how much fun is it to advance under heavy fire with infantry and light AFV's while 10 heavily armored long distance guns shoot at you? Please don't focus on the fun word; if you don't that word you can use something "tactically feasible"!! I would guess that the Eastern front is a much more difficult front to model over the West for two reasons: 1) much of the landscape is composed of huge, wide open spaces, that give the advantage to the bigger gun/better optics. 2) there is a much greater disparity of equipment. you can see a Mk II against a T34 or KV quite realistically. These two points combined make for a difficult mix. I know the Shermans were problematic against the big cats, but the terrain was usually condusive to hiding and maneuvering to get closer for a kill shot. I am starting to find some scens, especially at B and T, that have poor LOS and therefore are really enjoyable. So to shut up now, i will summarize my confused rambling: 1)the game is great 2)the scenarios are a high quality, but; 3)designer might need to ask sometimes: "is this going to have any element of fun/enjoyment?". i know sometimes it's not about fun, but if you're going to spend 35 turns getting the #$@^( shot out of you, with no where to hide and nothing to hit back with, it will probably suck. Murray

and then we would see the advantage of armor/inf formations with radio comms over forces that do not have them. this would make fighting the Russians MUCH more easy, as a platoon of german tanks could respond much more quickly when the fur starts to fly

"I read it as Topic: Pizza Hut. Can a Tiger go to a drive thru Pizza Hut?" More importantly, how long for a Tiger to deliver FROM Pizza Hut?

very very very nice

I guess this begs the question how did they playtest it?

try the CMBO scenario "Big Valley"; you should get to 3mb pretty quickly. My opponent and i had to stop because his ISP wouldn't let him have attachments that big! :eek:

the new hp's are excellent for video; i played Medal of Honor on one for several hours at 1024x768. i think it was a 32mb card. sorry i don't have the model number, a user had loaned it to me to configure their pricing is good, and while i prefer my Thinkpad, the hp's definitely rock for games. hope this helps

The site just times out for me, which is funny since i could get to it the other night :confused: