76mm

I had hoped to look at your tests, and maybe run some more, this weekend but got tied up with other things. Hopefully next weekend.

First, you are misrepresenting JasonC's position, he is NOT saying that TC's always and only look to the front--their attention is focused on the front, even if they glance to the rear every now and then. I am a former TC (M1A1, Desert Storm), and I can tell you that if you are engaging tanks to the front, that's where your attention will be focused. Sure, the TC's job is to maintain situational awareness, but that doesn't mean that he is going to do a 360 survey with binos every several seconds while engaging enemy tanks to the front.

Minsk 44 might be the most boring wargame I've ever played--all either fortified lines or river crossings, with plenty of swampy terrain and major rivers, with all movement channelized along a few major roads. I think that it will be difficult to play many of M44 scenarios in a CM context, especially thinking of all the river- and swamp-heavy maps.

thanks for posting this. I'm interested how you're doing the combat resolution, I thought that went beyond vassal's capabilities? Also, I assume that vassal still cannot take movement points into account as you move units through hexes? (ie, as you move units, you have to manually count how many MPs they have left, and the MP cost of entering each hex)

Well, that's the thing--they don't have to agree; I would say that they should agree, but if they don't think of it then they could play games with different versions. And moreover if someone wants to intentionally use a different file I don't think there's any way to even tell. Just to be clear, I don't see this as a very big deal, but I was explaining what JonS was saying.

I think he's talking about swapping out pdt and/or oob files; for instance there are different versions of these for the Volcanoman mods and one person could be using the stock version, and another the alt version, accidentally...

yeah, "coherent" is probably the better word to use... Good point, and the unencrypted text files would make it fairly easy to cheat--just by editing the text file you could replace your losses in that Tiger battalion, etc. On the other hand though, I think that these games are generally played by adults, and cheating (at least intentional cheating) shouldn't be a major concern, at least outside of ladder competitions, etc. To be clear, I don't think that PzC is perfect, just that it could be better than than a new mobile app that might never integrate with CMx2 in any event.

PzC is really more of a "grand-tactical" rather than "operational" game. Hexes are a kilometer across, it would be strange not to have "fire" combat at that scale. I just got into this series fairly recently, and also thought at first that it was a very dated system. That said, the games represent a well-thought, well-designed system which is very stable and which are still being produced (and old games updated) many many years since the series began. And as far as I know it is the ONLY operational level game in which game data is in unencrypted plain text files. COO would only be the "ideal companion game" if it turns out to be a good stand-alone op game (which is what it will be initially) and if then it later gets the CM functionality (which appears far from certain).

I can totally understand your caution about spending resources on data import/export, but I was serious about starting a kickstarter project just for this. I have no idea how difficult this would be, but personally I'd be willing to kick in quite a bit of money. So rather than re-inventing the wheel by inventing an op layer that may or may not later allow data import/export, why not let us just pay you enough to get the data import/export? The op layer itself can be tackled in any number of ways, from board games to Panzer Campaigns to whatever, but if we have to import/export data from CXx2 manually, the op layer will never work well.

Honestly, I'm also not sure about this direction, for a couple of reasons. First I have doubts an operational level game as a mobile-app. Second, the fact that BFC might, maybe, eventually consider possibly integrating this into CMx2 doesn't give much comfort. I tend to agree with noob that Panzer Campaigns is actually a pretty good platform to use as an operational level. I haven't played around with noob's system, but in fact there is a lot of scope for automation in a PzC system, since the game files are unencrypted plain text. Whenever I get a chance I'd like to see about creating some software that will automatically import/export data to the PzC layer (although data would still have to be transferred to/from CMx2 manually). I'd probably rather put something on kickstarter that would pay BFC to hire a programmer to create data import/export functionality, and then the community could create various op layers, although I doubt that BFC would do it. Sorry if I sound kind of harsh, but I was involved in beta testing for CMC, and it was just painful to watch the guy (Hunter?) spend so much of his time and money on the project. One of the problems with creating a viable op layer for CMx2 is that while almost everyone wants one, almost everyone wants a different type of op layer...

I agree that throwing a molotov cocktail (or grenade, etc.) twenty yards from a first floor window would be very difficult. But dropping one from the second or third floor into a scout car right beneath you on a narrow European street would be much easier.

This issue obviously depends on the nature of the urban area--in the center of many old european towns and cities, the streets are narrow enough that you could essentially drop a satchel charge, not throw it. On the other hand, in other areas where streets are wider, you might have to leave the building (and then again, for whatever reason the tank could be right next to the building).

Thanks, hope you like it. Would be curious to hear from some of the other "FI-era" purchasers about whether they've enjoyed the book?

Dunno, in mid-1944 I think they had: T-70 T34/76 T34/85 JS1 JS2 SU76 ISU122 ISU152 SU85 and I guess some armored cars, SP rockets, and some lend-lease stuff. I don't think that's very much but maybe I'm missing something... And those vehicles wouldn't change much going into 1945, I guess you'd pick up the SU100 and JS3, maybe a few others?

Very true, but it seems like the Russians used relatively few types of armored vehicles in any numbers throughout the war (plus the lend-lease stuff, which have already been done other than textures), and you'll have already done the multitude of German vehicles so hopefully you'll already over the hump... Getting the Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Finns, etc. will be nice at some point but I for one can wait for most of them.

I didn't understand your post in general, but the first EF game, plus its modules, will cover through the end of the war.

They've already said that they will do the East Front in reverse-chrono order--mid 44-45, mid 43-44, mid 42-43, mid 41-42. Plus modules and hopefully some packs. I don't anticipate any shortage of content, although I wish they'd hurry up already, and yes, I'd have also prefered chrono order instead of reverse chrono order.

Wow, finally some clarity on CM sales figures! When exactly is doomsday?

Gustav Line blah blah blah. I'm waiting for the surprise, no-warning release of CM: Bagration on June 22, that will be great!

hmm, not sure how you've come to that conclusion (er, no citation). I've read the book that you've cited and found it very interesting and well-argued. That said, I long since gave up trying to understand who was trying to prove what in this thread, so it is difficult to say what the book demonstrates in the context of this thread.

You're asking people for cites when discussing general and well-known issues, and yet don't provide a cite when providing specific numbers, such as above?? In general this is a forum, not a research treatise, so personally I don't expect for every contention in every post to be backed by citations, but I do think it appropriate to provide citations when citing very specific information/figures, as you have done.

uh oh, don't get us started again about "infinite" and maybe about "random" too... While I certainly miss the random maps, I accept that it simply might not be practicable to re-introduce them. That is why I think the best way would be to faciliate creating as many non-random maps as possible, by sharing them among all the games. I hadn't thought of womble's suggestion to use a terrain overlay import and indeed am not familiar with the process, but that sounds worth exploring. But where do you get the terrain overlays which can be used to create maps?

If I had to choose map features, I'd probably choose one that would allow us to use maps from different CMx2 games (ie, use CMBN maps in CMFI or CM East Front); even if incompatible terrain types (eg, bocage in Belorussia) were simply eliminated it would be a huge boost for making quality maps. Automatically-generated terrain meshes would be my second choice however.

Yeah, I totally agree with this--we don't need a map generator to place every building and tree but it would be great to have one that could spit out a map with predefined terrain characteristics (hilly, flat, mountains, etc.).

Well, to move this thread in yet another, but hopefully slightly more useful, direction, how do you add the smilies to your posts on this forum??