Lt. Badger

Thanks for the advice, y'all. My concern with MTC was that they could just stop out in the open when encountering enemy units. With Advance, they will often continue their plotted path to cover. Using MTC with Hide sounds like a good idea for advance scouts. JasonC, thanks for the info on fatigue rates, that will help a lot. Lt. Badger

What movement rate do you use for your infantry when they are not under fire but might encounter enemy units at any moment? I thought that Advance was the correct rate for this situation, as it is supposed to simulate careful movement and readiness. Just now I was reading the manual (actually the CMBB manual, since I bought the combo pack) and it says that Advance should be saved for fast movement under fire, such as charging into trenches (when I would tend to use Assault instead). I know that Move does not tire the men as much as Advance does, but I thought that it assumed movement in a relatively safe zone, and might leave the men unready to respond to a sudden attack. Even with leapfrogging and similar movement plans that let each squad rest for all or part of a turn before they get up and move again, I find that they do get pretty tired with Advance, and then I have to let them rest for two or three minutes to get back to ready or rested condition. Is it safe to use Move when you might come under attack? Lt. Badger

Screenshots aren't working. Check your html - you used absolute addresses rather than relative addresses in your img src links. The links appear to be to files on your hard drive, so may appear properly for you, but not for anyone else. Lt. Badger edit: went back to look again - appears your images are there in your directory at earthlink, sae directory as your index.html, so to fix the links just delete the directory reference and just use the filename, such as src=dune%28s%291.jpg [ December 30, 2003, 11:11 PM: Message edited by: Lt. Badger ]

CMMODS.COM has two sets of gridded terrain mods for CMAK. One comes in a single 50 MB zip, the other comes in 4 zips averaging about 4 MB each. I downloaded both sets, and I like the 4-pack (by Limey) better because the grid lines are sharper. The reason for the size difference is that the single zip has gridded BMPs for all kinds of terrain, but Limey's 4-pack replaces only the desert terrain. That works fine for me because it was mostly the desert terrain giving me trouble with seeing the contours. I've been told that the remaining terrain types all use the same identical BMP files as in CMBB, so a grid mod for CMBB can also be used to replace these types in CMAK. There is apparently a grid mod done by Captain Wacky for CMBB that is highly recommended, but I haven't tried it yet. There have been a couple of threads on this topic here in this forum in the past month - search on 'grid' in the subject line. Lt. Badger

I chose the bundle pack for two reasons: 1) I thought that I would probably want CMBB eventually, so I saved $17 by ordering the bundle (bundle cost = $60 + $7 = $67; cost for both individually = $35 + $7 + $35 + $7 = $84). 2) With the bundle, I got the printed manual for CMBB, which also covers most of what is in CMAK (which has only a PDF manual). Can't address your question re infantry behavior, as so far I have been playing only CMAK, not CMBB. Lt. Badger

OK, I'll give that a try. Thanks. Lt. Badger

I think this may have happened to me in Mountain Retreat, too. I went for the monastery first and had a good fight taking it, but I think the AI may have taken all of its defenders out of the town in its attempt to dislodge me from the monastery, because when I got to the town there was hardly anybody there and they promptly surrendered. I think next time I will give the Germans a force bonus, at least 25%, maybe more. Lt. Badger

Is there any switch for turning off the daylight effects? Lighting conditions are listed with weather in the manual, but the shift-W switch does not have any effect on the lighting. I just started to play one of the included scenarios that was set at dusk, and had to quit partway through the Setup phase because I was having such a hard time seeing my units. I even increased size to +4, but their camo was just too good in that lighting, and it didn't help any that the scenario designer had designated brown (rather than the usual red or blue or other bright color) for my unit bases. I had to squint so much to see the units during setup, I knew I had a guaranteed headache coming if I tried to play it out. So, any way to change the dusk lighting to daylight (or even dawn, I've played dawn scnarios and not had nearly this much trouble seeing)? Lt. Badger

Wow, that CM Surrender_AI really makes some complex calculations! I wonder if it also figures in when they had their last letter from home, and whether it was good news or bad? Lt. Badger

Whatever it is that has changed the surrender determinations, it leads to some weird results sometimes. I played Mountain Retreat last night (great scenario, BTW) and had some infantry moving through a wheatfield when they were attacked by an entrenched AT gun and a bunker MG. They managed to take out the gun, and the crew suddenly surrendered - even though he was in a trench, only about 30 meters away from his own bunker, while my guys were about 60-70 meters away in the middle of a wheatfield! Lt. Badger

Turns out that there are at least some times when one side can see the warning signs for the other side's minefields without having a mine blow up or even entering the minefield. In "On the Edge" I played Germans and could see warning signs for Allied minefields. I never went near them. :confused: So, is there some setting that allows this? Does FOW make any difference? I'm playing at full FOW, not extreme, but in other scnearios (such as "Line of Defense" and "Mountain Retreat") I have not been able to see enemy minefield warning signs until I either hit a mine or completed the scenario and went back from the AAR to look at the map. Idea: super-cheap minefields with no actual mines in them, just warning signs visible to the enemy to act as a deterrant! Lt. Badger

They will quite happily keep firing until they are completely out of ammo. They will also keep on with an area fire mission long after whatever was in the area has moved away. You need to keep an eye on the mortars from turn to turn to make sure they are not wasting ammo. Lt. Badger

Can anyone advise on best means of handling prisoners in CMAK? I played On the Edge last night and managed to completely overwhelm the defenders of the AA emplacements and nearby trenches. Finally the last few units in that area all surrendered - several half-strength HQ units, a couple of partial squads, and a 1-man remnant of a Bren team. However, I still had about 12 turns to go in the scenario, and wanted to get as many of my troops as were still in good condition over to where they could support the fight at the crossroads. I left the guys who were really low on ammo to guard the prisoners. 1) The prisoners were very disobedient, considering that they were (presumably) disarmed and surrounded by guys who still had at least enough ammo to kill them all. I wanted to move all of the prisoners into one area for easier guarding, and they would take MOVE orders alright, they just wouldn't move. Well, some of them moved, and some didn't. Some moved a little ways, then sat down and refused to budge. 2) How many men does it take to guard them and keep them from rebelling? I had more guards than there were prisoners, because of the number of squads I had with low ammo after the fight. 3) What happens if you don't guard them? Do they mysteriously acquire weapons and return to the fight, or do they just wander off into the wilderness, or what? Lt. Badger

It's good to have a well-mannered installer that does what it is told. Just this morning I needed to fix something on my son's Hulk game and found the C:\Games\Hulk directory (where I had told it to install) was empty. Checked around a bit and found the game in a C:\Program Files\Universal\Hulk directory instead. So apparently it just created the new folder where I told it to install, then ignored that and installed in its default location anyway! What cheek, eh? Lt. Badger

Don't worry, I didn't forget - just had lots to do past few days with kids, visiting relatives, etc. Just posted review at Depot. One thing about the numbers - since it was a scale of 0-10 I was taking 5 as an average score and working from there, but in looking at reviews on some other scenarios after I posted the review on yours, it seems that there is a bit of inflation and I hardly see anything below 7s. My numerical ratings averaged out a bit over 7, which I intended to reflect that I liked it a lot. If possible, I would re-do my numbers to rate yours higher to account for this inflation effect, give you about an 8 overall. Anyway, I think my text says what I meant to say, so I hope that will count more than the numbers. Lt. Badger