Big Jim

Or a 'hot war' option- western Allies (and Germany?) vs. Soviets (and East Europeans), May 1945 ono. Roll on CMx2...

Although I see the point about modern situations- 'collatoral damage' is politically unpalatable these days. But would an AI controlled force act with any kind of sense? Would the livestock have different 'skill' levels, and what impact would this have? Would 'crack' cows act more calmly under MG fire than 'conscript' ones? lol

The fact that medics and stuff aren't shown on the map is because they are out of your control, and hence should neither contribute to the number of units you give orders for or be able to appear as casualties on your side. Your victory (or loss) should be decided by the units you control ie. the grunts, not by how good a medical administrator you are. For that play sim-hospital. Same holds for civvies really- although seeing such detail would be awesome, no self respecting soldier would waste perfectly good ammunition on civilians while there are still enemy troops firing back (the time period CM represents). Unless they had serious eyesight and/or psychological problems.

Nice one, it's pretty good knowing what your men are saying- think it'll take me a while longer to understand the Sovs!

I want tank tracks in snow. And little footprints left by infantry.

Yeah, nachladen would make far more sense as a verb, and would mean 'after-load' or 'reload'.

My personal favourites are 'Treffe!'(hit!) and 'Ja, wir haben ihn!'(yes, we got 'em!), usually accompanied by the welcome sound of a T34 exploding. Unless you're playing as the Russians. Other highlights (from the top of my head) include: 'Feindpanzer, feuer frei!' = enemy tank, fire at will 'Feindinfanterie, feuer' = enemy infantry, open fire 'Ammunition sparen' = save your ammo etc. Been puzzled by 'Loch-laven' since CMBO, and I reckon they're actually saying 'Lochladen'. das Loch = hole laden = to load So I guess it means shell loaded or something? What truly baffles me is what the Finns are saying- or the Hungarians.. [ April 07, 2004, 10:50 PM: Message edited by: Big Jim ]

I say more clairevoyants needed for frontline service- your country needs you!

Not bad news- it's one of the reasons I love the game so much. What can go wrong, usually does, after all! I gather .300 is some kind of season batting average?

Unjamming lasted on average until the next turn, with all but one unjamming the same turn and two or so taking two turns to unjam. That's just in desert conditions, but again there seems to be no difference between different MGs.

You know what they say: "Waste not want not"

OK, here we go.. The conditions for my test were: May '45, All Combined, Very Dry, Hot, Arid Rocks, Area Target for MGs 150m to the front, Regular units out of command. In my first test, I got one of each type of MG for British, American and German forces, and got them to fire for seven turns. Figures indicate no. of jams. British: Bren 0, Vickers 0. Americans: BAR 0, 1917HMG 2, 1919MMG 1, .50Cal 1 Germans: lMG34 0, lMG42 0, hMG34 1, hMG42 2 My second experiment was to test reliability (under same desert conditions) of the Vickers vs. MG34 and 42. Letters indicate different teams, six Vickers teams and three each for the German weapons. Vickers: a 1, b 1, c 2, d 1, e 1, f 0. Total=6 MG34: a 1, b 2, c 1. MG42: d 0, e 0, f 1. Total=5 The experiment (which is pretty limited in validity to those conditions and by the size) seems to indicate that the Vickers jams about as much as the MG34 and MG42 taken as an average. The MG42 seems to be more reliable than the MG34, but I suppose you'd be using the MG34 more in the desert due to the time period. Seems to me that on average all heavy/medium MGs probably jam as often, and a lot depends upon the fortunes of the god of war! If I get bored another day I'll run some hypothesis tests, but I don't think the experiment is big enough to be conclusive anyways.

Yeah, I must admit, with the fact that the Vickers dated back to World War I with no need to replace it then I thought it must be pretty solid. And it would make more sense for air-cooled MGs to jam more in desert conditions. Maybe scarcity of water in the desert then- they couldn't replace it, so they have to give the MGs regular rests to prevent overheating? Pure speculation really. Might try running a test one day..

Does full fog of war just let us see dead people then?

MGs jam more in hot weather (in game and historically)- maybe the Vickers isn't as suited to hot weather as the MG34/42. I'm guessing since it dated back to the first world war then it should be reliable to stay in service that long, so maybe it's the different climate? Kind of annoying- noticed similar thing, but thinking about it, not happened as much in Italy.. Just like a Limey like me to blame things on the weather.

Oh yeah, and the WEGO system is fundamental to CM, and what makes it stand out so much from the crowd. We say NO to RTS!

If you wanted to cover a larger scale battle/operation than CM currently does (except in the huge, and in my opinion, unwieldy, scenarios), a different command and control system may be needed. I enjoy micromanaging my units, but anything much bigger than a few companies of infantry and a few platoons of afvs starts to become an exercise in memory and patience. For the current scale though, I think its pretty damned good already! For what it's worth, I reckon that CMx2 will be set in one of two time periods- WWII or modern era (1980-2000 say), as most of the research necessary for units, dates etc. has been done. (CM and TacOps) Modern era may show off the new engine better, but WWII has an almost limitless supply of historical battles, OOBs, armour thickness etc. for us to argue about in these very forums. In an ideal fantasy world where money is no object to BFC, I would love to see a CM series which covered all different wars of (roughly) the 20th century, from World War I through to a future conflict in 2010, with different editions with scenario packs and mods for the seperate wars. :eek: Not gonna happen though! Still, WWII and/or modern era would be sweet. :cool:

I bought my (CDV) version in the shops just after christmas, and that only comes with a quick reference guide and pdf format manual. I'd recommend buying the battlefront version, but I'm sure if you're in Europe (Canada as well?) you'll be able to purchase the version I've got in a software retailer. Oh yeah- and this game is amazing. Buy it. Buy it now- but expect to put your life on hold for a few months!

Have got to agree that the Jagdpanther looks pretty sleek, and with those multiple chunky exhausts, its going to be a contender. On a totally random tangent, I was having a look through all the tanks for the 'beauty contest', and I noticed a monster- has anyone seen the Churchill AVCRE (or something like that) assault tank? I was looking at April '45 or so, and found that beast for the Brits. And who says that size doesn't matter!

CDV strike again... those cheeky chappies! Jwxspoon has got a point though- the next engine is going to be kick-arse, and I can't wait to see what the fruit of their skunkworks(?) may be. Great scenarios by the way Mr JW.

I was just wondering about this myself the other day- I quite clearly says on the back of my CMAK cd case, and I quote: "... Are you able to deploy thunderous tanks like Pershing, King Tiger or Firefly? ..." I guess not- neither the King Tiger nor the Pershing can be found! Would like to see them included, especially since it says so on the box!

I was just playing the scenario 'Knifefight in Cecina' (good scenario- immobilised the tigers, but still managed to lose half my shermans thanks to the air rifle fitted in their turrets), and was wondering what approximate probabilities correspond to the different 'levels'- excellent, very good, good, ok, fair, low, very low, rare and none. It only gives these levels in the manual, and couldn't find the topic in a search. Any ideas? Maybe about (100/8)=12.5% or (100/9)=11.1% for each level?

Use the Germans.

I agree with Brizza- 'bloody british weaponry' has a definite British accent (and surrounding wavs- all sound far too southern for my liking), and the Aussie and Kiwi ones are pretty distinctive- but I've not heard any real South African accents. Good fighters though- give me a tommy gun over a sten any day! Am very dissapointed to find no 00001640.wav file (damned cdv- dont even get me started), but if anyone could e-mail it to me out of curiosity, I would be most grateful. No obscene messages again please.

Must admit, the use of .50 cal rounds is pretty annoying when they're much more useful than regular 7.62mm in certain roles. Didn't think of buttoning (doh!), but then again, if an enemy aircraft turns up its not much use then. Actually, what am I whinging about- I haven't seen any axis aircraft from sicily ono.