62nd Army

Tom- My units always appear to be on top of the trench unless they are hiding, in which case they are partially covered by the trench graphic. If you look closely at the trench graphic, there is nothing three-dimensional about it...it is just a two-dimensional texture painted on the terrain. This is especially obvious when a trench traverses a slope. There are several terrain-related graphical issues that don't look totally realistic; but the effect that the terrain has on combat is always factored into the game mechanics, whether it looks right, graphically, or not. Just look at the exposure of a unit sitting "on" a trench (0%-10%) as opposed to one sitting on open ground (usually 60% or better). CM is not perfect, but IMHO it is still the best thing going.

I think what you're seeing is just a limitation of the graphics engine. The best way to tell if a unit is in a trench, is to select the unit and check what kind of terrain the unit occupies in the information panels at the bottom of the screen. If the terrain type is listed as trench, then the unit is in the trench...even if it doesn't look like it is. The same is true for foxholes and all other terrain types. I usually use this technique to make sure that my units positioned at the edge of woods/tall-pines are actually in the trees, and not out in the open.

Rowan's Battle of Britain with open-source code improvements from the BoB Developers Group (BDG). They've done some excellent work with a sim that had massive potential, but was shipped before it was finished. I return to this one, myself, from time to time...that is when I'm not too busy playing CM or IL2. [ April 29, 2004, 08:25 PM: Message edited by: 62nd Army ]

Wow, seems I missed the dust-up this weekend...probably for the best. eichenbaum- Sorry for the delay in responding, I was away all weekend with the girls--no computers, no internet, no nothing. It was torture. I do have a lot of ideas floating around in my head, the foremost of which is a series of battles concerning Knight's Cross winners from 2nd Panzergruppe in the opening months of Barbarossa. After that I hope to work on some battles concerning the Soviet 62nd Army's actions in Stalingrad. There's much information out there that I still need to absorb before I can feel that I'm making my battles as realistic as possible. I need to find accounts of the events that led to the awarding of the Knights Cross to soldiers from divisions making up the 2nd Panzergruppe (Summer/Fall 1941). I have a list of the soldiers' names (from feldgrau.com), I just need to find the stories behind the names. This alone will be a time consuming task, especially since I'm "supposed" to balance this time with work and family/social time; all the while trying to squeeze in a few hours to actually play the game. When I do have something ready to show I will definitely be asking around for play-testers, and some constructive criticism of my work. Until then I have much work to do. Thanks again for your help...this NOOB feels welcome. Michael Emrys- Amen to the comment about never assuming that there is little left to know about any given subject.

Reincarnated- The skalman.nu site you posted has been very helpful, thanks for sharing it. Also, the wikipedia.org site is kind of cool too. BTW, the Stalingrad article there cites a single source-"Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege", by Antony Beevor-which if you haven't read, I can highly recommend it. Mr. Beevor's book on the fall of Berlin is also a good read. The onwar stuff is good as well...especially the WWII chronology and the bibliography. jacobs_ladder- I downloaded SP:WaW quite some time ago, and it never even dawned on me to use it as reference material...thanks for the heads up. eichenbaum- All I can say is WOW :eek: . That is a very useful reference site for my purposes. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!! I've only just scratched the surface and already have a head full of great ideas that I can apply to CMBB. I'm thinking of doing a series of battles highlighting winners of the Ritterkreuz during the opening months of Barbarossa (there are a number from 2nd Panzergruppe: July/August/September 1941). Now I just need a similar source for the Russian side.

Thanks for the links. I've only just visited them briefly, they look quite extensive. I'll look into them more thoroughly after work...they could be just what I'm looking for. I'll let you know if I find anything really interesting about 2nd Panzergruppe.

Sounds good, email is in my profile. I too am shooting for some realism...but I know it'll never be exactly perfect. I've been using general goals for my scenarios (i.e take village, cross river, cut road, etc.), and what I think are realistic force compositions. What I really need is some detail, on say a monthly basis, about troop strengths (i.e casualties), and info about supply for units on each side of any given battle...well, I'm rambling; send an email and we can discuss in more detail.

Reincarnated- I am working on a series of operations detailing the exploits of XXIV Panzer Korps. The one I'm working on now details the actions of 3rd and 18th Panzer Divisions around Novgorod-Severskie (leading up to the crossing of the Desna) in August, 1941. I've been using a number of the books mentioned (as well as Guderian's memior) as source material...need to get some time to check out the web site that was mentioned. If you find any other useful material (especially OOB and troop strength details), please post it here so some of us other 2nd Panzer Groupies can make use of it. After we get some work done, perhaps we can exchange files and do some play-testing of each other's work. TTFN -Jojo

CMBB SE is the 1.03 version.

Hi. I'm new to CMBO and have never downloaded anything from cmmods.com, until today. I tried to get a new Panther A mods made by Lucky Strike, but it seems to download very slowly (measured in bytes/sec instead of kb/sec) ; ~59 minutes for a 3.5 mb file. Is this normal? P.S. Sorry if this is a dumb question asked by an ignorant noob.

Wow!! Very nice work: I was going to ask for an early and late G variant, but it looks like you've already done some. Thanks for all the work you've put into these babies.