Flenser

I stand corrected as well. I didn't think such an important bridgehead would let such a sizeable German force to get that close, especially on the Russian side of the river... but such are the vagaries of urban combat. Feel free to disregard the last few paragraphs of my AAR when it is posted. Yep, nothing to see there... move along... move along.

Minor point: the panzershreck uses a shaped charge, thus range is irrelevant when talking about penetrating power. Major point: Never trust what you read in forums. Unless, of course, it's coming from me.

It makes my left temple throb to say so, but WN is right on this one. At a large distance it hardly matters how you're moving if you get hit by small arms, the effect is pretty slight. Might as well run if you can to get out of harms way and close the distance as fast as possible. Short dashes from cover to cover using run generally work out better than an "advance" as it greatly limits your exposer to fire, i.e. a unit running will only get shot at once, an "advancing" one will likely get shot at several more times and may not even make it to the cover by the end of the round. Might not be realistic, but it is what works within the confines of the game.

No disputing the luck factor. Anybody who bothers to read my AARs will see that.... ... It occurs to me that you might want to hold off publishing the AARs until this RoW is just a faded memory. I see a lot of finger-pointing, hand-waving, angry emoticons, and generally a lot of "what's he doing in the finals?" business in my future. As for this "public" trouncing... you have an odd conception of what is "public". Greetings and good luck to all those in my section. I shall endeavor to get turns out by Monday evening.

Elmar, you monkey! I was dying to read your St. Eduoards AAR. That was one helluva fight, my friend. Sorry to hear about your cat, by the way.

So your choices are: 1) A normalized system (all players score from 0-1) attempts to get rid of the "luck of the draw", but punishes the player "lucky" enough to draw the harder side to play. 2) A NABLA like system, which, perhaps, punishes the player "lucky" enough to draw the easy side, though I prefer to see it as "rewarding the tougher side" (semantics). Either way, the luck of the draw is a factor, as is who gets thrown into your section, and there is no way around that unless you want the tourney to last a decade and require the resources of a small nation. Given that luck is a factor in both systems, I'd prefer the NABLA method, personally, as it tends to reward outstanding achievement. How much that reward should be is up for debate.

If I follow the argument correctly here (and forgive me if I don't, its rather late) you want both sides to be able to achieve the same score. If you do this, then you _will_ invariably punish the side having the harder time of it in the scenario. Take an extreme case (maybe not that extreme given some of the scores out there) where a scenario the Allies score an average of 90%, Axis 10%. Now put some Walpurgis-like player on the Axis side who works like mad, fights like hell, gets a little lucky, etc and scores 100% for axis. By your reckoning, that score would be the same as Allied player who does a mere 10% better than average. Seems a bit unfair to me. Unbalanced scenarios should yield unbalanced scores. I think NABLA does reasonably well in this regard, but there may be improvements that could be made. Its too late for me to delve into it. I am certain, though, that its the right direction to take.

So... what were your favorite scenarios? Mine, from first to worst, and the side I played. 1) Wet Triangle (axis) 2) Maleme (allies) 3) Highlanders in Hell (allies) 4) St. Eduoards Sanitorium (allies) 5) Moltke Bridge (allies) I'd expound on why I liked or disliked the given scenarios, but this forum is hardly the place for that sort of thing.

... and a tip'o'the hat to Redrobin and all the other RoW fill-ins. Twas a dirty job, but thanks for doing it.

"Only their boots left." Nice. My favorite moment came a while back while playing a Soviet Assault QB, I was the Krauts. My opponent was wisely moving his T34s in packs of three and generally causing all sorts of havoc. My lone AT gun in the area had fired at the lead tank of one these packs, missed, and got hosed by return fire. Not good. Thinking that he cleaned out all my AT assets in the area, he decided to rush his tanks foward and flank a group of my infantry that had ambushed him in a previous turn. All three tanks had to move through a small gap in some woods to reach their destination. Covering this gap was a lone Tank Hunter team. I had ordered the team to "hide", and not set a cover arc (I had simply forgot about them, it was a rather large battle). Plus I wasn't expecting such a rash move, charging forward with the tanks without first clearing the way with infantry. So the round ends with a T34 just entering the gap, the other two behind it in a column. The next turn I un-hide the TH and target the lead '34. A mine sails through the air and brews the lead '34, 10 seconds into the round. The next 34 bumps into his now burning friend, stops, and briefly tries to back up. It is interrupted by a second mine blowing it to smithereens. This doesn't faze the last '34, which in true Ruskie form also tries to force the gap. So at the end of the turn sit three burning T-34s, three dead crews, and one unhurt TH team with a grin so large you could see it even if you zoomed all the way out. It's probably still the largest Points Killed/Unit Cost ratio I've achieved (300 pts of T-34 for 12 pts of TH).

*Hands Wally a number, points him to the back of a long and distinguished line.* Get you anything while you wait? Some refreshing lemon-drink perhaps?

Speak of the devil... Appologies again for not keeping in touch. Hit with a combination of family matters, urgent business, fiefdom, and a misbehaving email client in the last few weeks. All have been resolved. Ditto on the Sgian front, btw.

I just got a reply from Sgian, apparently he had "one of those weeks"... call off the dogs Elmar, and send me a turn.

Sent the file for Wet Triangle yesterday to your alternate address (though the one that's listed on the RoW admin page). I just resent it to the one in your profile. Enjoy.

Ditto on the password front... no worky. :-(

He probably doesn't accept half-bribes.

... But I bet he wouldn't run countless tests for which iron works best, optimal placement of the iron, and whether two half-irons are better than one.

:eek: (sharpens claws . . . ) </font>

Steve Why did you feel it necessary to drop your intractable problems on us? Have we been bad? Are people not buying enough CMAK? Why lord, why? People tend to get hung up on the "simulation" idea. I've always approached games like these, be it tabletop or computer, as... well... games. Games that try to simulate reality to varying degrees, but games nonetheless. Unless you want to change the scope of the game, the All Seeing Commander is going to be a necessity, otherwise it won't be interesting and fun. Baring some revolution in AI programming I'm rather against delegating companies and such to the computer. I'm all for the multi-multiplayer idea. Back in the good 'ol days, I was a beta tester for Myth, (a medieval/fantasy game where you could order individuals around, for you youngers out there. Bungie's first big hit, before the sold out to M$ and started this Halo nonsense.) and one of its more interesting play modes was a team capture-the-flag style of play where each side had a command who could assign (and more importantly, take away) units to other players on the team, draw battle plans on a map, etc. Great fun. In summary... I don't see any reason to radically alter the current system. It works, its fun. Add a multiplayer option here, a borg-spotting fix there, and I'll be a happy gamer. My two bits.

Was having technical difficulties, the game was crashing every 10 min or so. Appologies to CA for restating the obvious, I'm lucky if I can remember the content of the previous 2 posts. As for this "great minds" business... I don't think, I react.

12 hours.... for the SETUP. Empires have risen and fallen in a shorter span than a game takes with you. Monkey. Back to the subject at hand: For QBs, go cheap, maybe bring a M-10 or a hellcat if you want a 76. You're far more likely to run into paks and stugs, with which the vanilla sherman can deal. If your opponent goes for a kitty or two, then it's at the cost of something else (infantry, support, etc), which ultimately reduces their flexibilty, which you can use to your advantage. All this goes out the window for scenarios, of course. [ December 10, 2004, 12:29 AM: Message edited by: Flenser ]

As much as it offends me to say so, Walpurgis is correct. The 76 will let you kill a tiger via a side shot for a little further away than the 75 and kill it outright from the front at 200m or so... but you're stuck playing the carrot/stick game regardless. Go cheap.

Thank you, Sergei, for ruining a perfectly good day via mention of the dark one. Hope you choke on your turkey.

Jumped into this one a little late, but here's my two (tardy) bits. As a non-grog, but someone who finds the subject matter fascinating, this is hands down the best thing out there. God knows how many hours (and games) I've lost to this damn piece of digital entertainment. Nary a single soul other than Charles is coding? Yeeeeegads. As someone who can relate to being the only coder on a large project, I feel for the man. To this day, hearing the phrase "let's add this" causes the voices in head to start telling me to do very bad things.

Indeed, I've never understood the "guns must be towed rule". People usually say something about it not being "realistic". Nevermind the fact that meeting engagements like the kind depicted in a QB almost never happened.