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I would like to know the reasoning behind each of these rules. Is it meant to be somehow more realistic or what? Not looking at enemy unit's stats seems a reasonable enough rule, but most of them, if you'll pardon my saying so, seem to be just time-consuming and unnecessary. I can think of many reasons not to use them, based on playability and realism both. For example, why should a commander have less control of a squad then he does of a sharpshooter? Why should a tank be prohibited from engaging an enemy unit that suddenly appears behind it? Why on earth should a squad be forbidden to put suppressive fire on a house where enemy had been spotted? Etc, etc, etc...

Awesome! I'm using wolverines in a slooow pbem battle right now, so I'll be getting a lot of use from these mods. Nicely rendered chain on the bow there.

Yeah, my graphics are regrettably somewhat down-res'd also. Well, if it's not my hardware it's my karma. I can live with it.

I was describing CM the other day as 'chess with tanks'. To play chess you have to get pieces with widely varying capabilities to work together, and that's what makes it more interesting than, say, checkers. CM has an extremely dynamic interaction of the 'pieces' on the board. Visually, somehow, the game conveys a sense of motion, potential, and flexibility in the units depicted. Maybe it's the radical fluidity of the player's POV in time and space, maybe its the abstraction and crispness of the graphic shapes. Compare the Close Combat games: they have a sense of sluggishness in the moving units and the player usually feels his orders are being executed vaguely and indecisively. In CM, even when your infantry is pinned and your tanks are bogging in vinyards, you never really feel trapped as a player. The energy of the game never gets 'foggy' even if the tactical situation does. Because the prospect of new maps and scenarios is unlimited, the player has an awareness of being on an infinite field of possibility, even when he's just taking an insignificant hill in a tiny quickbattle. It's like a digital Valhalla.

I guess it may be a hardware issue, since now that I think about it, I have the same problem in CMBB. It's an old Imac G3, 450Mhz, OS 9.1. 320MB built-in memory, 356MB virtual memory. The smoke and fog and terrain doodads are always fine, so I don't think it's an issue of sheer processing power. The winter graphics always come up when appropriate, etc. The buildings seem to be the only graphical problem. Weird. Zdenka, do you mean it won't show you any roof or floor graphic from directly above?

Whenever buildings are damaged, however heavily, in my CMAK, the images for the damaged buildings never come up. I checked my bmp folder and all the proper images seem to be in there, but they never appear in the game. Anybody else ever have this problem? I was oblivious to this until I played on a friend's computer, and as my Priests were happily shelling his town I was shocked to see the actual damaged building graphics appear!

Those mods sure look good, especially that Tiger.

Nice one. One sometimes forgets how a wheeled vehicle on a road can move so much faster than the normal rythm of a battle. ( I assume your jeeps went on-road.) Sounds like an exploit worthy of the SAS.

If you're really getting your butt kicked, and you want to save all your forces by retreating off the map, beware of triggering the 15% global morale auto-surrender. The last 15% percent of your forces will be captured and may award the enemy a lot of points. If you have one unit, like a heavy tank, which you're sure is worth more than 15% of your forces, then exit him last and no-one will fall into enemy hands by auto-surrender.

In CMAK, I just found, by accident, that if you press the forward or back 'vcr' key while holding down the shift key, you get a two second jump instead of the normal ten seconds. In years of play, I never knew this. Never saw it in a manual. Am I the first or the last to discover it? Am I a genius, or the most out touch person around here?

In CMAK, I just had a squad hiding with a covered arc, and when a captured enemy crew passed through their covered arc, the squad stood up. Now they've been spotted and are about to get plastered by the enemy. Strange I never noticed this little quirk before. The lesson- cancel or move your covered arcs when prisoners are about to pass by.

"A Writer at War" is very good. I recommend it.

The firing rates per minute sounds like something you'd have to test for yourself. Don't think I've read any posts about it before. You could also see if leaders with combat bonuses increase the number of times the squad fires.

They emailed back and said their research indicates that during the war the division was in fact known as "The Red One." Go figure...

Why not put them out? Why doubt your work? The more variety available, the better.

It's a cool-looking print. I emailed the company to ask if they are aware of the error. There's something sneakingly comical about the sound of "The Red One!"

Thanks for that, Jason C. By AI, do you mean your opponent was the AI, or that the AI was overriding your human opponent's hide or covered arc commands? A few interesting things did happen during my debacle. In a rare event in the history of the Marmon-Herrington, I succeeded in killing about 8 enemy armored cars while losing only a couple of my own. My opponent, an eager beginner at CMAK, allowed several many-on-one shootouts involving masses of M-H's. He benefitted from his lesson, though, and changed his methods. His forces often misidentified my M-H's as Stuarts, which was kind of interesting and helpful. With the little boxy turret, flexible MG on top, that seems quite realistic. Also the boys ATR was surprisingly accurate out to near its maximum range, to the chagrin of at least one overtaxed PSW222. The PSW 233 did heroic service for my newbie opponent, one of them surviving at least 4 Boys and 40mm full penetrations over several running mini-engagements. It's fast and it packs a blast, especially at close range where the slow-flying shell isn't a handicap. There was a lot of exciting racing and fighting for hull-down advantage on the crests of those bumps in the sand. I'm at 17% global morale now, the next tank I lose will be the end of my fighting spirit. So much for the desert...

I think you are right about the smoke firing tanks, jjelinek. It seems the ideal would be to have a smoke screen as close to Italian positions as possible, and charge ALL available vehicles through it "all at once." (As much as the factors of vehicle speeds, command delays, and terrain make that possible.) You would have to do this on the shortest 'facet' of the enemy's position, so proportionally your smoke would mask the largest number of his guns. (In the case of my current oppoment's set up this was the Eastern flank of the airfield.) The smoke throwers could potentially be beside a small rise, just out of sight of the enemy, but having LOS to a 'smoke-target' area a few meters beside the enemy. Plus you have to arrange so one tank's smoke mission doesn't block LOS for another's. Don't mean to obsess about this scenario but If it's possible to win I want to find out how.

All your Stuart mods look great. If you can't think of what to do next, what about a few winter Stuarts?

For those of you out there who have won this scenario as the allies, I would be interested to hear how you did it, if you could give more detail than is given above. My problems- Can't suppress a meaningful number of guns at one time. (Can't hardly suppress any at all.) Once heavy fighting starts, crusader CS tanks retreat from enemy guns instead of firing. Have people succeeded in knocking out guns with AP shot, or with MG's? If so, at what range have you done it? Have your CS tanks duelled sucessfully with the enemy guns? With their 200m/s muzzle velocity I wasn't willing to try it. I figured I would have to overrun the guns but it's not working. The situation seems to require a totally flawless attack plan, no margin for error, but half my opponents guns were still hidden when I began my attack... What I've done wrong, I guess- 5 surviving German vehicles were milling about among the Easternmost revetments. They were driving eratically at the sight of my tanks, popping lots of smoke and throwing up dust. I figured that was a better smokescreen than my CS tanks were ever going to manage on their own, so I began my rush without my forces being quite all together in one mass yet. I came from behind cover in the East and Southeast, trying to let the CS tanks fire smoke along LOS's between lanes of my attacking tanks. The enemy opened up with 6 known and 8 previously unknown guns. At this point the doorbell rang. It was the FedEx man. "Package from your opponent," he said. Inside the package was my ass, on fire and shot full of holes. That's a metaphor, OK? Any help with this scenario would be greatly appreciated.

Keyholing means to place a unit in terrain where it can see and be seen only from a narrow angle. For example, far down a forest road and shooting at enemy passing outside the forest. Or far down a city street shooting at enemy crossing the street. The point is to prevent more than one enemy unit being able to spot you and return fire when you reveal yourself by shooting. If you do it sucessfully you might, say, kill a tank with your AT gun without being spotted at all. So you survive to ambush the next tank to pass by, etc. It's also an important method for thinly-armored tank-hunters like Marders, who don't want to be fired at as they shift position after shooting. I'm sure you'll enjoy the results of this method. I'd be interested to see you post a description of what happens when you give it a try. Good hunting, RAM.

Quiz- Name two different ways an abandoned enemy vehicle can still cause casualties- 1- By attracting air attacks 2- By exploding when my flamethrower team stands beside it and hoses it down. Incidentally, you could use an abandoned vehicle as an incendiary device in flammable terrain, by shooting it until it burns, thus (eventually) setting the terrain tile on fire.

Was the issue with Marshal a question of who fired in a particular engagement, or in a day, a week, or a whole campaign? I ask because, in my amateur opinion, it seems perfectly normal for only a limited number of men in a company to get a shot at the enemy, in many types of engagements. Terrain limits how many men can see the enemy, unless you are fighting on a giant chessboard. In the defense, for example, many of the positions may be to some degree 'keyholed' and never get targets. Even when a target is identified, your own available cover will limit how many guys can pop up and shoot. If your house has only two or three small windows, you probably don't want the entire squad crowding up to get a shot. (I don't think the mechanics of the game adresses this limitation, by the way.) Likewise with walls, craters, etc. Also, of course, some contacts happen at ranges that only MG's can reach. This issue reminds me of being on live fire ranges. As a radioman, I would be some distance behind the lead squad, and when they started blazing away at pop-up targets I'd run up to try to get a few shots in. (Not really my job, but, hey...) Sometimes, because all the available cover was overcrowded, I'd just have to accept that I wasn't going to fire my weapon that day, because I wasn't willing to stand out in the open like an idiot to do so. What would Marshal make of that situation?

Looks pretty dern good, as do the Panthers!

I think the only factor influencing jamming in the game is hot and cold weather.