Quintus

Well, if I read the Battlefront.com site right, it's due out by Friday. Let's hope the national stereotype for efficiency holds good eh?

AFAIK there are no amphibious vehicles in Combat Mission. Nor is the ability of the European Hamster (Cricetus cricetus) to inflate its' cheek pouches as a bouyancy aid while crossing rivers modelled in the SS-hamstertruppen. BTS pleez fix or somefink

Hmmm, as noted, the CDV patch is not out quite yet. Anyone want to take bets on the size of it?

It could be worse... at least we're not using US navy torpedoes...

I am with SpaceHamster on this one... Being able to field a battalion of Gliderborne Russian hamsters behind enemy lines armed with pouches packed full of molotovs just appeals. Definitely a vote for "Hamster picture mods" here.

Speaking personally, until such times as someone can clearly demonstrate to me that any modified system of PBEM exchange does not contain within it a method of potential gamey exploitation, I am happy to stick with what we have. E.g. I used to play a turn based game called "Emperor of the Fading Suns" and it was a well known habit of certain players to constantly re-run game moves before finishing their turns and emailing them off until they got the result they wanted. One of the MAJOR selling points of the CM* games for me was the PBEM play and the mechanism in place to prevent JUST such a piece of rampant cheese mongering. I'm not a 'Battlefront apologist', I'm just very happy that a game I forked out 30 quid or so for works as well as it does, limits the scope for cheating the way that it does and allows the degree of customisation that it does. To repeat : If CM3, which is billed as a keel-up re-engineered game, contains a more efficient PBEM system, then cool but I'd rather have the system we have now than go back to the days of knowing that somewhere, some pasty faced goo lobber is sitting endlessly re-running his game turns until he can pot my KV-1 with a fluke shot from a skoda 37mm.

this procedure is only for my personnal use Same here funnily enough. All I want to do is make a backup CD of CMBB so that if I do something daft like sit on it, I don't have to fork out for a new one (although, obviously if I was stupid enough to sit on it in the first place, I might be said to deserve the punishment to my wallet).

I suspect this thread will have a short life as the powers that be frown upon attempts to circumvent the copy protection - regardless of the reason. Although, interestingly enough... if you ask CDV, they are more than willing to tell you that it is possible to beat their copy protection with the right software.

Those damned books are horribly addictive. I know the author's personal politics shine through on practically every page and I frequently expect to hear any given British character say "We're totally powerless, we'll have to ask the Americans for help!" but I still can't help but read them. The Race are amusing villains, even if their characterisation has a very 1950's feel to it. The idea of a CM meets The Race mod is really very appealing... Of course, you'd need 'Dora' to re-enact one of the funnier scenes in the early books.

-Looks at preceding pages- Well, my 2penneth has largely been covered by some of the really rather good postings that have gone before buuut... One good piece of advice I was given is "Don't re-enforce failure." I need to remember that one myself, especially after pounding away at a pillbox that I could have bypassed for half a game and losing a lot of my reserves while doing so. ... Qui tacet, consentire videtur. Reminds me of the Paster Niemoller quote I used to have on my door, along with the famous saying of Edmund Burke. Some of Fionn's past stuff has helped me claw my way up from hopeless to the tottering heights of 'mediocre'. If I could only remember the lessons I might be dangerous

Well, like the man said... "When you fight... CLASH"

Hmmm... Ethics.... Well, CMBB is Eastern front, so in the main it's two totalitarian regimes whaling the bejazus out of one another. Find someone from the nearest penal unit and give them the job. To paraphrase "Beyond the fringe" : "Ivanov, we need a pointless and futile gesture at this stage in the war..." 'Da Tovaritch Commisar' "Take a Half track..." 'Da' "Drive it up that road..." 'Da' "Take a look..." 'Da' "Don't come back..." 'Spasibya!'

Let's see if I remember how this goes... Player A creates a QB for PBEM say and selects a bunch of settings as Random. Player A then gets to select his forces but doesn't know what the random factors are. Player B gets the email, which helfully tells her the results of the random conditions and she then gets to select her forces. Player A receives the email back and then discovers the random factor results. It can therefore potentially Suck to be player A. The only clue you get as "A" to such things as bad weather/night conditions is the inability to purchase aircraft. Not much of a solution other than a rewrite/patch of how the PBEM system works OR a higher level of trust between players. I SUPPOSE you could do something like - Player A gets to choose weather, Player B gets to choose time, A gets to select hilliness, B the tree cover. In essence it boils down to taking the slight problem with being Player A on the chin or talking games over with your opponent in advance.

On the subject of 'Dummy Mines' I recall reading something about the use of dinner plates and pan lids as dummy a/t mines (In the Warsaw uprising I think). Seems that tank drivers tended to be reluctant to drive over a row of strange flat circular objects in the middle of the road... Of course, the evil thing to do would be to stuck an a/t mine under a sauce-pan lid and watch the 'seen this trick before' tank driver discover his mistake.

I dimly recall something about Goliaths being immobilised by rather brave souls cutting the command cable with an entrenching tool as they trundled merrily along. Not a job I'd fancy, given the likelihood of German covering fire and all that. I think they'd make an entertaining addition to the game.

Given that Russia attacked Finland very early in the "Phoney War / Sitzkrieg" period. It makes me wonder whether or not the not-so-subtle German backchannel diplomacy might have born fruit : "Look Britain, we all know who the real enemy to Western Christian Society is here... it's those stinking Reds." Etc. etc. Given that Anti-communist feeling was quite high at the time (The General Strike was not that long past in many people's memory - Churchill for one) and Hitler had attacked Poland, rather than somewhere closer to home, it's not inconceivable that some sort of 'accomodation' could have been arrived at. Britain and France had been appeasing like nobodies business for years prior to this and if there had been any straw like hope of 'peace in our time' to cling to, they may well have leapt for it. Long term... the consequences might have been terrible - Germany with 'A free hand in the East' and the Western Allies weakened, America perhaps more than ever sure that staying out of Europe's affairs was right. Then again, you never know what would have happened had the Maginot Line been finished and some of the hard lessons learned in France about tactics and the inadequacy of Allied equipment taken place on someone else's soil. I'm vehemently anti-Nazi in my personal views but I do appreciate that to someone in 1939 without first hand knowledge of Nazi oppression, Herr Hitler seemed like a 'Solid bloke who had put Germany back on her feet and didnt like the Bolshies as much as the rest of us'. Hell, the Abdicated King met him for tea... The other 'What If?' that I wonder about is what would have happened if the re-occupation of the Rhineland had been opposed by Britain and France. Hitler is later said to have said that he'd've backed down and postponed his plans for a while... An interesting notion.

Put me down as a vote against eye candy at the expense of anything else. I must admit I would like to see : *) Multi Turreted vehicles (ala T-28) *) Indirect fire on-map cannon *) Motorbike-sidecar combos *) The ability to print out / save the OOB you start the game with so you can compare it with the AAR at the end. *) Truck capacity to be upgraded. Perhaps more types of truck/lorry Real pie-in-sky wishlist *) The ability to perhaps buy 'air cover' Fighters tasked to keep the enemy bombers off your back, rather than bomb the enemy. *) More Light / Medium bombers (Did the Finns ever use those Blenheims in anger?)

A wildly off-target soviet rocket battery landing its' entire load directly in the middle of an otherwise promising looking Company sized infantry Human Wave attack...

Tigers.... -fearful shudder- I suppose trying shoot'n'scoot from two different directions against a tiger is one way to try and maximise your chances of surviving to take a shot (That slow turret rotation is a real drawback on the kitties) Or try and lure them into driving through 'scattered trees' We all know how well Tiger tanks get on with those pesky squirrels putting acorns in the track links and making them bog down...

Never give your cipher clerk the weekend off at a time of international crisis.

Never give your cipher clerk the weekend off at a time of international crisis.

Now I have realised that the CDV version under 2000 needs the original disk once you install the 1.01 patch, it's been peachy for me too. Can I come out of this corner now?

Actually, I'll second that appeal for non-German Axis Mods. I can't mod for toffee but I'd love to see some of the other nations in the Axis get the same lovely modding treatment as their German Co-belligerants!

Sorry to clutter the place up with a rather noob question, but I am trying to locate some winter mods for the Finnish forces in CM:BB. Now that the 1.01 patch actually allows snow on the ground with non-snowing weather conditions, I thought I'd try and get some appropriate camo/paintschemes for 'the lads' when facing all those beautfully winterized Soviet chaps. CMMOS 4.0 may not be everyones' cup of tea but it does rather stop me making a hash of installing new paint-schemes! Do any of our Finnish contingent have any mods to share?

Which O/S are you using? I am guessing that the reg-key arrangement MIGHT be different between say 98 and 2000?