fabs

All three. The feature that distingushes it is the enclosure of the fields by hedge banks. Frequently these enclose fields on one side and narrow lanes with another hedge-bank facing on the other, creating a sunken lane. In Combat mission the hedge-banks are abstracted as tall hedges(CMAK) or bocage (CMBO). These obstacles represent them well enough for game purposes but are graphically inaccurate, as hedge-banks were earthen banks overgrown with shrubs and trees rather than "garden hedges" as they are depicted here. The other feature was the size of the enclosed fields, which was relatively small with distances between hedge-banks of between 25 and 50 meters the norm.

I have now managed to create a passable Normandy buildings mod by mixing some of Panzertruppen's, some of Magua's and some original CMAK buildings. The Magua and Panzertruppen buildings will look the same as damaged. I worked out that you need to transpose large buildings with inverted V shape roofs and large buildings with "square" roofs. The mod is too amateurish for circulation so I won't bother the original authors for permission. It's good enough for me. I just played the HSG scenario "Purple heart draw" with it on and it looked a treat. The church has to stay the same as the original, but it doensn't look out of place, not as some of the most colorful large buildings in CMAK do. The trees and grass look ok as they are.

As for Winter and CMAK, any representation of Italian or Balkan winter fighting would need ample mud and snow. One more interesting feature that people may be missing is the almost total absence of Waffen SS units from the hotspots of Mediterranean combat. No W-SS unit fought in North Africa or Sicily, and although some main W-SS armored formations were stationed in Northern Italy briefly after the Italian Armistice, before being despatched to other fronts and eventually to France, none took part in the main battles in this theater. A notable exception is the Yugoslav and Greek campaign in the spring of 1941, which from what I gather will not be represented in any way. W-SS units remained active in Yugoslavia throughout ther german occupation of that country. Are we to deduce that there will be no W-SS in CMAK as a result of this?

I tend to agree with the folks that argue that it would not be too much work to include a "bocage" like feature in the new game. In Italy, some battlefields contained features such as terraced fields located on hillsides where the levels were separated by tall, ancient stone walls that represented equally problematic obstacles to vehicle movements. Assuming that one can take care of the one difference they had vs hedgerows (the fact that they only occured on points where there was an elevation change)by using the elevation system, this feature could serve as a "dual purpose" slot where modders could insert "bocage" for BO scenarios developped with this new engines, which would need different style buildings, bridges, trees, tree-bases, fields, grass and brush etc. anyway. My main beefs against "bocage" as it is modelled within CMBO are of a different nature. Graphically, "bocage" hedges look totally differe3nt from how they have been represented. The most glaring omission is the trees that were included in every hedgerow in Normandy. This forces the representation to show the hedges around "tall pine" roads, leaving a few gaps with "scattered trees" to allow for crossing points. The result looks OK from a distance, but very unrealistic in "1" zoom level close up. As for the mechanics, the techniques perfected by the Americans to cope with hedgerows consisted mainly of armor co-operating with engineers to blow gaps in the hedgerows for the tanks to pass through. The "Cullin" device was an alternative method, but by no means the universal one adopted. The game completely fails to simulate the blowing of gaps in the hedgerows. It makes it far too difficult for infantry to cross a hedgerow, and does not correctly reflect the cover value of these obstacles to units sheltering behind them from fire, as well as its concealment potentials. It is to be hoped that in the new engine that is being developped these aspects will be taken into consideration.

I have seen most of the mods there are around for CMBO. As a matter of fact, I have spent more time collecting and preparing mods for installation (I can't get CMMOS to work properly) than playing the game. I have seen the desert mod, but I have not tried it. I can see how they can get around the terrain issues, sort of, but how would they get around the absence of Italians and the dates problem, with OOBs that would be very different to those automatically available in CMBO? If there is a way to hack the OOB files, I haven't come across it yet. Please understand that I am not being critical. I have a huge appetite for this game having got used to its improved look and the game system, but that only makes me frustrated by the limitations.

I am a new fan. I picked up my first copy of CMBO when it first came out, years ago. I could not get into the new game system and the graphics put me off, so I went back to my first love, SPWAW. A few months ago my son put me onto CMBO/CMBB again. He was raving about them, I got curious and bought both from a local retailer. I visited the websites and learned about mods. I tried CMBO out first, and very quickly got hooked this time. Being bored with SPWAW and weary with waiting for its new incarnation helped me make the jump (not that I will give up on SPWAW, like Wild Bill I believe one can enjoy both games). I can see that CMBO is suffering in terms of graphics and other limitations that will make it inferior to the experience one will be able to get from CMBB. CMBB has new types of terrain tiles that make it look more realistic and fun (wheat fields with wherat that stands up, cemetries, proper rubble). It can also be played from the beginning of the conflict to the end, whereas CMBO starts on D-Day and its terrain can't properly represent the North African and Mediterranean theaters where the war was fought for the preceeding four years. Are there any plans to update CMBO or bring out modules that would allow the covering of those other periods/theaters? [ March 30, 2003, 11:02 AM: Message edited by: fabs ]