marc420

Ah, that explains those AP only Crusaders attacking the AA guns. I was supposed to use Alt-J to launch a joke at the enemy. Let me finish my spam, then I'll try something completely different.

Thanks for the mortar link! I'm a newbie, who last night was playing the CMAK italy demo scenario. (My CMAK/CMBB Bundle is in my backpack waiting for me to go home from work and start playing. Whoo-hoo!). I got my first experience with getting a mortar to fire in that scenario. Got the 50mm that was supporting my infantry platoon on the left to shoot at an ATG that was targetting my Stuarts. Got off a nice round of shots, and that was enough to help get the Stuarts out of the line of fire. The only odd thing was that when I tried to target the mortar, it said LOS Blocked. So I canceled and checked the LOS of the Platoon HQ. That was good, so I went back to the mortar and targeted it anyways. After I said to set the target, I got the "orange" line to the foxhole the ATG was in, and sure enought the mortar cranked off some rounds the next turn. Now I get to go home in a few minutes and play in two big new CMBB and CMAK sandboxes!!!!

Two notes. First I'm a newbie prowling out here while I wait for my CMAK/CMBB Bundle to arrive. Second, I skipped p.2 of this thread. So I apologize if this repeats anything, or sounds stupid to people who know better. From what I can read, the CM1 game engine has progressed a long way since CMBO. So, one rather obvious suggestion would be to do an expansion pak to CMAK that takes the unit research from CMBO and updates that game to the CMAK game engine. After all, it could be that the people who would create that db for the CMAK system might be different from the people working on the CM2 game engine. And it might be an easy way to bring some $$ in. And I wouldn't mind seeing early war west front, or asian pacific modules either. I'd probably buy both if they were available. I'm not opposed to something more modern, but I've noticed that most of the historical actions since WWII are rather lopsided, and most of the fantasy games (yet another US-USSR in Germany)tend to bore me after awhile. Just my own opinion there. And just a hint to BFC, I'm much more interested in game play than graphics. Heck, I'm usually pretty happy with a 2D map and computer representations of cardboard counters. That is if its a great game being played with that. I appreciate the way the CM system plays on real terrain, and what that adds over the old squad leader system. But continually tweaking the AI to give better games, and continually working on the game engine to produce a better sim rank much higher on my list than graphics improvements. To be honest, I tend to chuckle when I see discussion as to whether a unit should be wearing berets or field service hats. From playing the CMAK demo, one thing I'd like is a tighter relationship between the orders phase and the viewing phase. Ie, when I'm clicked on a unit in the viewing phase, I'd like to be able to give orders. Or after I've completed the viewing phase and I'm giving orders, I'd still like to be able to go back and re-view what just happened to that unit. Text reports during turn playback might make it easier to see what's happening. Maybe its because I'm a newbie, but once the battle hots up, I'm spending a lot of time in replay mode seeing what's happening to unit after unit. If I was getting reports during play back like "1SQD, 1PLT: we're taking MG fire", that might make it a lot easier to see what's happening.

From a newbie who's playing the CMAK demo while waiting for his CMAK/CMBB bundle to arrive .... STICKY !!!! please And to both the original authors and the person who started this thread.... THANKS!!!!!!! (oh, and BTW, from other boards I've seen, the hint about editing the first post to include the other listings that people suggest is a good idea. Keeps a newbie like me from having to read through what will probably grow to be a 20 page thread)

I think your link is broke. I clicked on it, and that thread didn't seem to have much to do with mortars.

Hi, I'm lurking out here while I wait for my CMAK/CMBB pak to arrive in the mail. I've read Panzer Leader. Mostly its Guderian's memoirs. So its some of what you are looking for, but not entirely. First, it covers the period between the wars, when Guderian was largely in charge of developing Germany's mechanized forces. I haven't read Achtung Panzer, but I suppose that's the book he wrote while he was in this job. So it covers a lot of what he was doing to build these forces. Then as a division leader in Poland, and higher ranking in France and Russia, it covers his campaigns there. Since Guderian was like most German officers and like to lead at the front, you do get some detailed descriptions of the battles. Varies from operational level down to personal experiences on a tactical level when he showed up at the front with his command car. So up until he gets fired in Russia in 1941, the book probably has what you are looking for. After that, he's retired for a year, then after Stalingrad he becomes inspector general for panzers. Then eventually gets named German chief of staff. So all of those parts of the book largely describes what's happening in Berlin and around Hitler. One book that comes to mind is a book about the 1st SS Panzer Corps in Normandy. The name escapes me. But it describes in great detail the 1st SS Panzer Div and the 12th SS Panzer Division from DDay through the Falaise Pocket. Seems also like Gen. Mantueffel wrote a book I enjoyed reading once. They don't always cover Germany, but I like BH Liddel Hart's books. And he spent a lot of time after the war interviewing German Generals, so it does cover Germany more than you'd expect. In fact one of his books, which I haven't read is entirely about those interviews. And another I haven't read is called the Rommel Papers. Since I like his other books, those might both be interesting, particularly the latter. Let me know what you find. I'm always up to read a new book! [ January 26, 2004, 10:06 PM: Message edited by: marc420 ]

Hi, The two scenarios where I can picture the inclusion of scenarios being useful both show occaisions where civilians can indeed be in the zone CM simulates. 1) Retreat over a river crossing. Perhaps Germany, East Front, 1945. German forces holding a bridgehead around a bridge. Goal is to retreat German forces across the bridge, and then either blow the bridge (if you can do that in CM), or deny the Russian forces the crossing. In this case and time frame, its very realistic to picture a crush of civilians also trying to cross the bridge and flee the russians. It doesn't seem at all out-of-bounds to have a traffic jam of both civilian and military vehicles trying to get across that bridge prior to the Russians breaking through the last of the rear-guard. Perhaps the Germans get VPs for the number of civilians who get safely across the bridge. A Dunkirk scenario could probably have a similar situation. 2) City fighting. In any city-fight, there were always civilian around. Generally they'd be huddled up in a church or a cellar, but its not at all possible that everyone in a city evacuated prior to the fighting occuring in the city. Stalingrad is a well-documented case of this, but it happened all over. Having civilian units on the map would be a way of penalizing players for firing on the locations where they were located. If possible, I'd also want penalties for locating defending troops in the same locations as civilians, ie you can't use them as human shields. But this would definitely create a situation where you'd have to be careful as the attacker in indescriminately opening fire on a city. Lastly, personally I'd be careful about believing too much of the war propaganda myths about either side. In general, the regular German army was probably not as bad as most people think, and the Allies were not as angelic as most people think. To name just two examples, the Germans didn't put any troops in the Monte Casino monestary until after the Allies carpet-bombed it. Ie, the Germans respected the neutrality of that site. And it was only a few years later in Korea that American troops were willing to open fire on crowds of refugees coming down the road, because they suspected there were communist forces hidden in the refugees.