Andrew Kulin

So would it be easy for you guys to go forward again with a hypothetical Western Allies vs. Soviet Union in 1945-1946?  Seems like you have all the pieces in place now to be able to do that.

So would it be easy for you guys to go forward again with a hypothetical Western Allies vs. Soviet Union in 1945-1946?  Seems like you have all the pieces in place now to be able to do that.

So would it be easy for you guys to go forward again with a hypothetical Western Allies vs. Soviet Union in 1945-1946?  Seems like you have all the pieces in place now to be able to do that.

So would it be easy for you guys to go forward again with a hypothetical Western Allies vs. Soviet Union in 1945-1946?  Seems like you have all the pieces in place now to be able to do that.

I was thinking same thing. I have been lucky having drawn nine different opponents across three tournaments who have returned turns and played out the games to the end.  But I feel real bad for others who are getting hosed by no shows or quitters.
For others who

In 2000 forum was as much fun as the game itself.
Now not so ......

Just to put a quantitative point on it, Steve has posted around 65 times in the last week in the Ukraine thread.  He's averaging about 10 posts a day in a topic that right now has nothing to do with the game.  And no where else in at least a month, and maybe more.  Its his company and his time to do with what he likes.  But based on some of the counterpoints that communicating with people is exhausting, he either is doing heavy doses of uppers or he is completely exhausted.
BFC has gone through this before.  Back when CMSF 1 came out and was almost a disaster of a CM product for the first few months, Steve was spending all of his posting energy for weeks at a time prolifically debating the concept of the Stryker brigade in one thread.  It finally hit a point where enough established players were vocally walking away that he shifted his comms from his Stryker tirades to addressing game issues.

The point was that a poster said its hard talking to people.  I'm just pointing out Steve obviously doesn't think so.  Everyone gets time off, but maybe instead of 10 posts a day in the Ukraine thread, 9 posts a day and one day a month post something on the games he produces.

I think you have it.  I am not going to catch you. 
I expect to end up with 800 points as German in my last game with my opponent as with 1 minute left I have units on the main intersection, and I don't think he can rush any forces there in time from where he is presently at (but not sure of that of course), and I am not sure where my side is with the less than 30% casualties, and I am certainly not at >70% US casualties.  And neither of us control Favre though he should be able to move something onto that objective as I don't have the forces there to do so and survive.

Maybe also allow soldiers from the same side speak freely with other troops from the same side.  Seems to me that if I have infantry within 10 feet of a tank, and the infantry sees enemy tanks moving towards their position while their own tank does not (in my experience, a very high probability with Soviet Forces in CMCW for example), that information is not passed onto the tank.  You would think there should be no problem hollering this out to the tank crew parked nearby. 
Seems to me this does not happen because of chain of command things - information has to be passed up the chain and then back down again.  Which is fine for information from a squad 500 m away from said tank reporting tank movement near their position and that this information then eventually makes it way to said tank as a contact in that area 500 m away as it gets passed up to the overall HQ and then back down to other units.  But it just does not look like these same infantry units directly relay the information to other units within voice range of them, at least not to units under a differnt command chain.

MHerm:
What version of the game are you running?  Is it the Steam version (bought or downloaded/installed via Steam) or the BFC version with files downloaded/installed from BFC website.  And has this only happened with Red Thunder or other CM games too?
Have you or your opponent recently updated version of CMRT while playing your games?  As I recall, you can do this, as long as when you do, your save game file is in the Orders mode, not replay action mode.
Are both you and your opponent running the same version of the game?
Can you provide information about your computer - e.g., Win 11 Pro, Intel i7-13700K (not overclocked) on Z790 mobo, 64 GB Ram, RTX4070 GPU (12GB), ...
Here are some other suggestions:
Have you turned off the game and then restarted it?  I leave games running for days in the background and over time they can become unstable. Can you install the game on a different computer and try loading the defective turns on that PC? Uninstall and then re-install CMRT on your affected computer.  Try loading the game files again and see if crashes continue. Maybe there is corruption in some Windows files.  Here is a web-link to a discussion on ucrtbase.dll which I see listed in your error output.  It might be helpful:  https://www.partitionwizard.com/disk-recovery/ucrtbase-dll.html I will say that I have had similar issues crop up with CM PBEM games in the past for me (pre-PBEM++) with files not loading up, or me not being able to complete a game save and the game hangs up (I need to shut down in task manager) or just shuts down on its own (no windows error messages or BSODs).  In those cases if this happens after 3 tries or so I would contact my oppo and ask him to resend the turn, and that has always solved the problem (so far...).
But, I will add, that since I have loaded the Steam versions of the game (with PBEM++) on my new computer (since the summer) I have noticed some odd little bugs, the most rememberable being that at random times (and after game has been running a long time (days)) the keyboard commands don't work (like pressing "T" for targeting).  So I have to shut the game down and restart it and then things are fine again.

Stupid me, I forgot to pre-plan arty as well.  (and I wish pre-planned artillery could be set for times greater than +15 minutes - Game 5 suggestion). But I also used smoke missions to cover my advance across open areas and that was useless.  American vehicles apparently could see through it as if clear as day so I got decimated.  But the smoke worked great to prevent my tanks from seeing the US forces and firing back at them on my advance.  My opponent was able to do that on his advance while getting beaten down on his and he was able to score 2 or 3 kills on US tanks and TOWs

Yeah.  I left my initial forces only in Mittelsbach and most of my reinforcements I set up on the ridgelines further back.  Sent a couple of tanks into the H-town to get views on the Russian approaches and that was all.  Saw at the end that my opponent had a lot of forces in Mittelsbach (including lots of dragon teams) and thought to myself that was smart.  No way I was taking that town with the meager forces that got close.  Which was pretty much only tanks so even if his armor way back was not picking them off with impunity, his Dragons would have chewed me up.

Looking forward to an explanation from Elvis as to how the first round scores were calculated.  Some big shakeups in the scoring I see this morning on the Matrix Tournament sites.

Don't surrender.  You just give your opponent maximum (100%) points.  Do ceasefires.  At least you have a chance for some points (maybe not the case as Russians the way the first two scenarios were designed but in other yes) and your opponent will get points they earned.
 

I understand that the CM games have no means to provide accurate interim scoring (such as final game scoring type scores) to the Matrix server.  so as a workaround they award scores of 3-1 when there are casualties in a turn, with the person whose side gets "more" casualties against their opponent getting a 3, and the opponent gets a 1.  If no casualties at all in a turn then it is 0-0.  No idea what happens if a tie (e.g., 1 soldier per side is a casualty).  If it scores 1-1 or 0-0 or if infantry units also can score higher than one another (e.g., Regular BTN CO is KIA, vs green private KIA so BTN HQ is worth more points internally, therefore the other side wins that round 3-1).  If you look at the tournament scoring you will see all the low scoring game scores between opponents can be calculated by various combos of 3-1 and 1-3.  So for example in my CMCW match with gkersh I am currently down 10-14 in one game and up 22-10 in the other.  Meaning in first game I won two turns and lost four with all others being ties.  So scoring is 2 x (3-1) = (6-2) + 4 x (1-3) = (4-12) with overall total = (10-14).  In the other game I won seven turns and lost one.
This "3-1" scoring system does not factor into the final score (which is the BFC final scores you see on end game screen).  It is just for fun during the tournament as BFC Elvis told me.
You are therefore better to ceasefire as you will get whatever type of BFC score would show up on their final game screen when you ceasefire in game considering total points in most these matches are on order of 2,000 or so per scenario.  So maybe you get 334 points.  That would be better than 78 points that might be showing on screen with the 3-1 system.  And if you (both) don't ceasefire then the game never ends, and Matrix's server has no way of knowing what the "real" score is, so you are stuck with whatever just for fun (3-1 system) points that Matrix has on their system.
But if you cannot communicate with your oppo, and he is not returning turns or is not aware of this then I am afraid you are pooched.

I do wish that in the set-up phase there was an option to turn the set-up zone shading on and off (like objectives shading in-game).  I find it makes it much harder to assess terrain for setting forces up. 
I have not noticed a performance hit though I may check on that next time I set up a game.
And I do hope that with Engine 5 that BFC spends the majority of effort in optimizing game for newer hardware (e.g., make use of multiple CPU threads).  I hate the draw distance limitations on trees for example on the larger maps as an example.  Have an option to specify draw distances for users to accommodate all types of computer capabilities.

I understand that the CM games have no means to provide accurate interim scoring (such as final game scoring type scores) to the Matrix server.  so as a workaround they award scores of 3-1 when there are casualties in a turn, with the person whose side gets "more" casualties against their opponent getting a 3, and the opponent gets a 1.  If no casualties at all in a turn then it is 0-0.  No idea what happens if a tie (e.g., 1 soldier per side is a casualty).  If it scores 1-1 or 0-0 or if infantry units also can score higher than one another (e.g., Regular BTN CO is KIA, vs green private KIA so BTN HQ is worth more points internally, therefore the other side wins that round 3-1).  If you look at the tournament scoring you will see all the low scoring game scores between opponents can be calculated by various combos of 3-1 and 1-3.  So for example in my CMCW match with gkersh I am currently down 10-14 in one game and up 22-10 in the other.  Meaning in first game I won two turns and lost four with all others being ties.  So scoring is 2 x (3-1) = (6-2) + 4 x (1-3) = (4-12) with overall total = (10-14).  In the other game I won seven turns and lost one.
This "3-1" scoring system does not factor into the final score (which is the BFC final scores you see on end game screen).  It is just for fun during the tournament as BFC Elvis told me.
You are therefore better to ceasefire as you will get whatever type of BFC score would show up on their final game screen when you ceasefire in game considering total points in most these matches are on order of 2,000 or so per scenario.  So maybe you get 334 points.  That would be better than 78 points that might be showing on screen with the 3-1 system.  And if you (both) don't ceasefire then the game never ends, and Matrix's server has no way of knowing what the "real" score is, so you are stuck with whatever just for fun (3-1 system) points that Matrix has on their system.
But if you cannot communicate with your oppo, and he is not returning turns or is not aware of this then I am afraid you are pooched.

I do wish that in the set-up phase there was an option to turn the set-up zone shading on and off (like objectives shading in-game).  I find it makes it much harder to assess terrain for setting forces up. 
I have not noticed a performance hit though I may check on that next time I set up a game.
And I do hope that with Engine 5 that BFC spends the majority of effort in optimizing game for newer hardware (e.g., make use of multiple CPU threads).  I hate the draw distance limitations on trees for example on the larger maps as an example.  Have an option to specify draw distances for users to accommodate all types of computer capabilities.

I totally agree.  Just paint a wide swath of real estate for the defender to set up as they see fit within.  Certainly not give hard-wired set up zones with trenches arranged like a trench set up.  Hard to surprise your opponent that way in a mirror match.

The German player has very little option on his set up , no option on the barbed wire at all, and my personal opinion in mirror games you should give the defender maximum flexibility and the largest setup zones so the American is totally is completely in the fog about the defender's position , much more fun to allow the German to choose his defense and not have it provided for him. The same exact reason "Dawn Patrol" was modified.

If you have more kills in a turn you get 3 points and your opponent gets 1 point. If nothing happens it is 0-0. Presume it is same 0-0 for a tie in kills which might be rare if they score kills based on values of units (e.g., tank vs. X soldiers).
I always thought it an odd way to score and figure it would be more logical to do it the soccer way.  3-0 for a win, 1-1 for a tie, and for CM 0-0 if no casualties in a turn.

If you have more kills in a turn you get 3 points and your opponent gets 1 point. If nothing happens it is 0-0. Presume it is same 0-0 for a tie in kills which might be rare if they score kills based on values of units (e.g., tank vs. X soldiers).
I always thought it an odd way to score and figure it would be more logical to do it the soccer way.  3-0 for a win, 1-1 for a tie, and for CM 0-0 if no casualties in a turn.

If you have more kills in a turn you get 3 points and your opponent gets 1 point. If nothing happens it is 0-0. Presume it is same 0-0 for a tie in kills which might be rare if they score kills based on values of units (e.g., tank vs. X soldiers).
I always thought it an odd way to score and figure it would be more logical to do it the soccer way.  3-0 for a win, 1-1 for a tie, and for CM 0-0 if no casualties in a turn.

Thanks. I found it.  And sent you a message to see if I could.  I don't think I have made any posts on the Matrix Forum.