Bartokomus

This is consistent; i don't post over one offs to be honest. I play about a dozen games of PBEM at a time, and my own single player QBs and the behaviour doesn't vary. MP40/MG42/Kar98 will get left by a man delivering buddy aid, but one comment i would make is that this seems to be a bigger issue with CMFI than CMBN.

i have no problem with that; this isn't really a complaint as much as confusion (plus me yelling at the screen and pointing at the MP40 or MG42 just lying there). it's the predilection for pistol wearing troops to not discard them in favor of a weapon which much better serves the squad.

I have a squad of Panzergrenadiers which lost a debate with a 60mm mortar, and now the squad is doing buddy aid. My question/confusion is why do the three squadmembers which are alive not take the smg, rifle, or mg42? this happens enough that i thought i would ask. To be clear, buddy aid is being done, but at the end, none of the members of the squad have exchanged weapons, and most particularly, none of the pistol equipped members have. thoughts?

quick clarification; are we talking about any old grunt recrewing or the actual crew coming back to the weapon? i have no strong opinion either way about other units manning a de-crewed weapon, but what i don't understand is why an at/howitzer crew can't abandon their gun and come back. anyone know if that is in the plans to be remedied?

+1 it would be great to read an AAR in it's entirety instead of the 400 accompanying posts.

It's funny you say that, i was thinking the exact same thing; it takes a very awkward system and makes it quite seamless...

I am positive this is how it was in CMx1, at least for campaigns; i don't recall if that mechanism was in for scenarions...

this is incredibly exciting and most welcome news!

Bingo Erwin; i figured this out just this weekend. it was really irritating me...

Sigop those are probably the same damn Browning's we used 20 years ago; we relentlessly hunted sea snakes in the Persian Gulf during the first gulf war with those, up on the bridge or down on the quarterdeck. if a snake was being particularly hard to hit, we sometimes pulled out the C7...

it's funny; i always played at veteran in pbem for years until a friend demanded iron mode and now i can't go back. i like the added difficulties...

ahh well ty; i guess i just missed that overtone to the book or i automatically discount it, not certain. thanks for the tip on the other book, but can i get an author for that title? i can't find any book with Ostkrieg spelled like that (in english that is). thanks much

in total non-snarkiness, please tell of the myths Sir Beevor perpetuates. i hadn't heard of that critique before, and i find his work to be very strong.

We used to have Finn's on this board, are they all gone now? i am curious about their perspective of *both* the SU and Germany. It always seemed to me they must have felt like piggy-in-the-middle with two agressive, psychotic regimes surrounding them. It must have seemed like a bad choice no matter what.

I guess everyone has a different "Holy Grail"; i'm just waiting for CM: East Front to come. Far East, North Africa, and the Western Front are all just ancillary theaters IMO.

thanks for posting that; it was an amazing little video.

I would make one comment; the mortar team in my mind isn't firing at the enemy, they are firing at the piece of ground. Why should the mortar be unable to fire at a piece of ground relayed to it at a certain height and distance from their location. if i can see the hedge to drop rounds on, do i need to see the infrantryman at the base of the hedge? Of course they want to hit the enemy, but coordinate are for a location... i think off-map arty is the real problem in the game personally in terms of lethality and balance, but i have no idea how to fix it other than in my pbem games on a medium map the attacker gets max 300 rounds of off map 81mm and the defender gets 200 rounds rounds. on map mortars/guns are unrestricted.

Clint obviously suspected a ruse...

boiled down question: why do some at dudes with no ammo pull out a rifle and some at guys in the same scenario have no secondary?

I am a little confused at something that seems fairly inconsistent and arbitrary. If a two man team (dedicated or detached from a squad) uses up all its at ammo it seems like: a) half of the time the member with the shrek/zook pulls out a secondary weapon, the rest of the time they simply run around with the weapon Is this experience common to anyone else? What is supposed to happen?

This is exactly my concern as well; there are quite a few issues like this which i would like to see improved in CMBN, but without them the east front module won't be convincing.

I want BFC to know i personally blame them for the death of Pvt. Rawls and his unnamed idiotic squadmate. They were KIA'd in the line of duty, with the last words from Rawl's mouth being "WTF, why did you do that?"...

I'm sure you're right; but there is still a great deal more improvement to be done. but the concept of tank hunting is fairly broken right now.

I *know* this has been discussed; i just don't recall and can't seem to find if it's been addressed/going to be addressed. 2 man team zook team sneaking up on a Panther; after 20 minutes, i finally hunt them at the start of the turn and they make contact. the zook soldier starts aiming, and just to be helpful his good friend beside him decides he's bored and shoots at the buttoned up tank. ridiculous. I like fighting against tanks with inf; i like the challenge and planning. There is no intelligent defense for the AI's behaviour to shoot a Garand at a buttoned tank.

This to me is the crux of it, and probably always will be. We can all argue about the gui, hotkeys, and other features, but the simple fact is with a 5 man team and the massive expense of licensing a big name engine not a lot can be done imo. I think the review conclusion is fair, though i haven't read it. To me the game *does* look very dated, the gui is one of the poorer i've used in 30+ years of gaming, and some of the design decisions suffer from a lack. But having said that no other game is in the same league and i'll continue buying CM games until the lobster module comes along...