Colonel J Lee

I don't know much about 'puters, so I was wondering if it makes a difference to leave on or turn off a anti-virus program when playing a PBEM game of CM.

Thanks Schrullenhaft. It's an HP psc 1200. It seems I cannot locate any text that states what type of driver I'm dealing with. I easily accessed the Printer information under properties though. :confused:

Can you print the manual in black and white if you have a color printer? I hate to waste the color ink, but can't figure it out from the available print options in my HP printer program...I'm guessing there's a simple way to do it and I just haven't figured it out.

I agree wholeheartedly with Michael Emrys' comments. Excellent. Good graphics ARE important, but when they are good enough, then all I want to know is how REALISTIC is the game play. And CM is the best out there. Period. In all categories except maybe graphics (and the graphics are VERY good if not the best). Mods are great, but I'm afraid of them. Lots of extra time could be absorbed which I don't have for a small "net difference" in enjoyment. However, of course, I'll take the more detailed graphics in a new release if all other categories don't suffer as a result.

Michael, I never heard of the Yaquinto version. Was it much different from the one to which I refer? Actually, the one I had a box with the rising sun on it and the red rays extending around the entire box cover and sides.

Question about the 3D glasses, Herr V..... On March 29, 2004, you posted the following: I'd been having problems with my machine taking a few minutes to boot. So, last week, I decided to blow my machine away and start fresh, hoping it would fix the long boot. No such luck. So, I spent part of this weekend finishing the reinstallation of some of my software. I looked at the drivers you mentioned and found them to be newer than what I had. So, I installed bothe the video and 3d drivers. Now, my machine is back to the 30 second boot time it should have been at. I didn't get much of a chance to try anything. I loaded Silent Storm for a minute. It looked pretty good, but I got summoned by my wife and couldn't mess around with it to see how it played with the 3d. I was wondering what you found out as I really want to order these glasses ASAP, but am reluctantif their are going to be "graphics interface complications" and wierd things like the unit highlight box going left or right of the units, etc. DID YOU GET A CHANCE TO TRY OUT CM WITH THE UPDATED DRIVERS AND GLASSES RECENTLY? WHAT DID YOU FIND OUT IF SO? Greatly appreciate your input before I make this "investment".

RICHIE: Flat Top was the best naval board game I ever played. It represented the carrier battles beautifully, yet simply. And those old massive carboard backed playing boards were awesome. I used a Ping Pong table with the net down to spread 'em out for gaming against a neighborhood buddy. That was 25 years ago!! Did anyone else play Avalon Hills' Flat Top?

Thanks for the reply Joachim. Answers my question in part. However, if one is doing poorly on the attack, can that person "withdraw", "cease fire", etc. to move on to the next battle wihtout finishing the first one? :confused: I can't find the answer anywhere. My friend is having a bad time in the attack and wants to pull back and save what he has for joining with reinforcements in the second battle.

A buddy of mine and I are playing the "Mortain" Operation of CMBO and we cannot find any objective flags or exit points on the map edges. HAS ANYONE PLAYED THIS ONE AND IS THIS JUST A SEARCH-AND-DESTROY MISSION WHERE THE AMERICAN HAS TO GO UP THE ROAD TOWARD MORTAIN WITHOUT TAKING ANY OBJECTIVES? I've never seen a map without objective flags AND without exit points on a map edge. PLEASE EXPLAIN. THANKS A LOT.

Thanks! GREAT!

I'm clueless but would like to take some battlefiedl pictures....help would be appreciated.

Is this the same 85mm Russian gun that was used by the T34/85s? If so, I am surprised the US 76mm is that much better.

I totally agree, Some God; there is no war movie that surpasses it in intensity and realism that I've seen.

I tried it as the Germans but only got a few turns in before I was losing interest. I just hate playing the computer is all armor battles....

Michael and I weren't getting heated; I sure wasn't. We were just having a somewhat separate "language discussion". I agreed with him the whole time that there were no Jagdpanthers in the movie. It's just that sometimes you can't tell the TONE of someone's remarks because you can't HEAR them or SEE them. Anyway, I guess we got our conclusive weigh-in from Wicky.

Michael: Yes, I know it's Jagd, not Jag, and that it's pronounced "y". I took quite a bit of German (but wasn't very good at it!). But my response was based upon what American soldiers would have said, which is JAG with a "J" sound since 99% of Americans don't know the "J" is pronounced as a "Y". Nevertheless, I was just saying that it could not possibly have been a Jagdpanther based on what Jackson allegedly said since "Jagd" (or "Jag" as he may have pronounced it) does not necessarily mean Jagdpanther. As for what he actually said, I don't recall as it has been awhile since I saw the movie.

I think I have the answer guys. Jag is the German word for "hunt" or "hunter". Panzer is the German word for "armor" or "tank". A Jagdpanther is a "hunting Panther" (a specific type of tank destroyer based on the Panther chassis). However, a Jagdpanzer is a "hunting tank", which could be ANY tank destroyer including Jagdpanthers, Jagdpanzer IVs, Hetzers, etc. It is a general name, not specific. So, IF one of the guys in the movies says "Jag" it does NOT rule out a reference to the tank in question being a Marder. AND it WAS DEFINITELY A MARDER. Jagpanthers were twice the weight and size (almost!) and not open-topped as the tank in the movie was. So, Jackson was saying "Jag" (tank destroyer), not Jagpanther. In sum, all Jagdpanthers ("hunting panthers") are Jagdpanzers ("hunting tanks"), but not all Jagdpanzers ("hunting tanks") are Jagdpanthers ("hunting panthers"). To confuse a Marder and a Jagpanther is like confusing a domestic cat and a Siberian Tiger.

Good answer. Good info! THANKS. Yeah, the King Tiger thing is overrated unless it's CMBB and they're duking with JS-2s, as in "Death Ride of the 424th" which I stumbled upon two days ago. They're nice to look at, but if CMAK has the Tiger Is, which were slightly more prevalent in France, then that's sufficient. It's just too bad you have to spend all that time making maps, but I guess you can't have everything. I've started playing CMBB against two people now. I know what you mean about MG effectiveness. Turn 1 of Gefechtsaufklarung found my platoon in the staging area for 2 seconds, for on turn 1, a Maxim opened up and they ALL hit the ground. Now I've got to use a STUG IIIB to blast them out of trouble by blasting the MG position. Wow. Chaos on turn 1!! So much for sending scouts out, etc. Thus, it seems that it's harder to advance and coordinate your units smoothly in CMBB. I still can't get over CMBO though; it's great. However, I can sense what's going to happen as I continue to play CMBB (I'll be saying, "it's greater"). CMAK is already in the mail. These games are unbelieveable. A gamer's dream come true with no "stacks" to knock over on a table top, if you know what I mean.

Thanks Jason. A bit of an anticlimactic conclusion to this scenario though....my flanking crew was a "crack" unit. Ironically, a late-arriving Stug fired a round between two closely situated buildings at nearly 700 meters and hit the SHerman just as it passed through a thread-wide position between the two buildings!!! A did try earlier in the scenario to distract with another Sherman which came around a building corner and then reversed. No damage to him, but the Panther did not "bite" and took out the Sherman trying to hit it frontally (through the turret I was hoping as I WAS hull down! I actually got a shot off and it ricocheted. The next round was a Panther round through the front of the Sherman's turret!! What bad luck. However, I had another Sherman busy levelling buildings on the German's flank. He ran up from behind the Panther and hit it in the rear. I actually obtained a major victory in the battle, but it was walking on eggshells from the beginning. With 14 Shermans I just leveled the town and then went in. Did not want to deal with the panzerfaust-toting landsers. THANKS FOR THE INPUT. IT WAS HELPFUL NONETHELESS.

What do you guys mean by saying that you can play almost any CMBO scenario on CMAK? Do you move files from CMBO, or are you talking about the QB function with NW European parameters available, or what? Does it take "work" to recreate a Bastogne battle during the Bulge fro example? I am only 3 months into CM and started with CMBO (which I love); I also have CMBB on the shelf and will get to it when I finish eating the CMBO candy. Now, CMAK....it doesn't make sense for me to buy it YET, unless the CMBO scenarios are there on the disc already. PLEASE EXPLAIN GENTS.

THanks. Good answer. Yes, the first ambush marker WAS ignored. The Sherman opened fire on the 2nd though, as you explain. It's helpful to know that a non-targeted ambush marker disappears after one turn too. Does that mean if you have only one AND it's targeted that to make it disappear, you'd have to "cancel target" for the unit, and wait a turn? THANKS.

Good point Tom. In this case, I do need to deal with it as it is parked right next to the main ojbective flag. Otherwise, you make a good point. Slappy, that very Panther just hammered my bazooka team with one round: KIA. Brother! So...I got some figurin' to do.

By every statistical accounting of German tank guns' effectiveness that I've read, the Panthers L70 is more effective at penetrating armor than the Mark IV's L48. Plain and simple. The King Tiger/JS-2 battle covered in this article is an anomaly. That is to say, there are very few accounts of KTs on the offensive in this manner and in this case they WERE poorly used. Note, quite a few were abandoned in working condition. They were definitely better appropriated on the defensive. The skirmishes with JS-2s that I've read about (along the Vistula river for e.g. in Jan. '45?) resulted in pretty even loss numbers between the two sides. The JS-2 was more maneuverable, so better offensively. THe KT had better long range fire ability. Both were heavily armored. Both could destroy one another at normal combat ranges (as most accounts indicate). So, I would not rush to say which was a better tank unless I knew the circumstances I was fighting under. That's my two cents. I would say, though, that because the KT often broke down in the field and WAS cumbersome and slow that I would take the JS-2 in most cases. But I'm not an expert. Good discussion though.

The problem with that approach, Slappy (at least in my current case situation) is that a bogged tank that was seeking a promising flanking maneuver, but which boggs behind a building in the process, is no use at all. I have an opportunity to take a "crack" Sherman crew around a building and plunk a Panther from behind which is also bogged. However, the Sherman in front of my "crack" unit just bogged too. So I am leery about continuing this strategy. I guess you have to way your options and gauge whether its worth the risk to do something else. In this case, the option is a suicidal frontal approach. Thanks for the input though. Very helpful facts, if not the tactics. When you get a chance will you look at the CMBO Ambushes thread and answer my last query. THANK YOU.

Dear Slappy: I know that, if a platoon HQ sets an ambush, hte units under its command have to target the ambush marker, BUT does a lone tank that set its own ambush marker have to also target that marker? (in other words, is it a two-step process for the tank, too...setting the marker, and targeting it?). Need to make sure. I experimented last night and it seems that the Sherman I had target a German A/C ignored the first ambush marker I set but fired on the A/C when it crossed the SECOND ambush marker just about 20 meters beyond the first.