JulianJ

@Holien - I'm in the crowd there somewhere! I did go to a lecture by Oliver - the guy who restored the Ha Go and talked to him at length later. It is actually quite nimble as a tank, and made for jungles, narrow tracks, and China - which didn't really have any tanks. One of the rivets on the back is actually a bell push - so accompanying infantry could get the tank crew's attention!

Yes, thanks, really enjoyed it. Am going to post some pix, but have to catch up with work first.

I am going to TankFest at the Bovington Tank Museum on the coming weekend, Fri 17th Saturday 18th Sept. I wondered if any of the CM community would also be going and perhaps meet up for a chat? cheers Julian https://tankmuseum.org/events/tankfest/

@MikeyD I know you are close to the management, so I hope you can convey what I intended (and I think Erwin did too - though I can't speak for him) was that the game would be better if some of the anomalies could be attended too. If they can't because of technical issues, then I think we would understand if we were told, but to be ignored is frusrating, especially as CM has one of the most loyal and supportive player communities.

Thanks Erwin for bringing up some of these issues. I don't know how hard they are to correct, I'm not a programmer. I love CM, but I often seethe as things seem not to be realistic at all. You mention many spotting issues, which do really bug me. There's nothing like spending minutes micromanaging a sniper or ATGM team into the ideal position , to find they can't see anything. It makes no sense. The lack of communication between teams sharing the same Action Sq is very annoying. I find 19 and 23 particularly annoying, On 19 there is a very long thread somewhere which presents very good research that HE is damaging to armoured vehicles, and that near misses can cause a lot of damage. I've absolutely pounded vehicle areas with everything, inc. 122mm-155mm to negligible apparent effect, including direct hits. 23: even today, we get smartphone camera footage from Jihadis which looks like they were hiding (or possibly not!) within 100-200 m of tanks with thermal imagers and not detected. Obviously in WW2 tanks were blind. I've been in a couple in museums and looked through the commander's periscopes. The vision is very limited, and that's in a well-lighted area. Goodness knows what you would see when bumping around with smoke and dust everywhere. I know no game can be perfect, and we have many disagreements, particularly where information is contested, like WW2, but I find it very frustrating when things that are so obviously wrong destroy the suspension of disbelief and reduce the enjoyment of the game. Erwin concentrates a lot on the LOS stuff. I don't know how difficult it is to model but I was on one of my walks in southern Britain a while ago and I crested a rise with a town below. With my binoculars I could see everything for 1-2 km around. I imagined calling in artillery and air strikes on particular locations. CM doesn't seem to model this correctly. Given the huge depth of expertise of the combined "membership" it is rather irritating to me that Steve and Charles don't seem to take much notice of this. I feel they could say: OK we can work on X but we can't fix Y, sorry. I think we would accept that approach.

I think it comes from the stage version of Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall. But if anyone knows better please post.

Hmmm....CM Taiwan does seem to follow in the tradition of SF and CMBS....although for the poor Taiwaese sake, BF's horrible record of prediction doesn't come to fruition in this case!

Yes, surely. There's a whole load of hypothetical militarist mayhem we should be testing out, in a purely imaginary manner. I love the smell of Alternative History in the Morning!

I am open minded about Pacific War CM. A few months ago if you'd said, "How about CM CW?" I'd have replied, "Well, I'm not really bothered. I doubt I'll buy it." Build it and they will come. But I did and I am really enjoying it. I think CM PacWar would have takers and interest. I don't expect battlefront to be interested, but it does have all sorts of tactical challenges, and of course there are both Japanese and US tanks participating in quite a lot of battles. Never say never, huh?

I'd have to tick: "All of the Above". There don't seem to be too many westerns made nowadays. What was the one with Aragorn in? That was good. You know who I mean, but it's been a long day and I can't be bothered to google it, sorry.

The Shane clip is fantastic. "You ain't going to drink that in here." "You guessed it." Smack.

I clicked on this as a new YT tank vid. Bit of mil porn...it was worth it for the laughs. It's clickbait. Nearly every line has something egregiously wrong. I'm sure many of you will spot stupidity I missed. Highlights: random footage of Leopards instead of the appropriate vehicle. Which tank should be competing in F1 instead of warfare?

Funnily enough, like Simple Simon, I was going to pick the Sherman too. Since reading Zaloga and hearing the Chieftain/Nicholas Moran I have come round to the idea that it was a pretty decent and survivable tank for WW2 (that is with the various upgrades, expecially ammo stowage).

I'd like to add this to the list: it's on Youtube for free - the 2019 Russian Film "Tankers". It's not a masterpiece, but I enjoyed it. I think you have to suspend your "military geekness" and not mind the Pz IVs are not 1942 variants (they seem to be full size vismods, not cleverly-done 1/6 R/C tanks, which I thought at first). I won't say anything about the plot for the sake of spoilers, but I thought the characters are well-drawn; because there is a female Russian tank repair engineer there is a romantic element which adds some light and shade to the often all-male war film type. The main tank is a real KV1. Loved that. It seems surprisingly roomy inside . Lots of T34s. There's a lot of the mundane aspect of tank warfare: bogging down in a stream and mechanical issues which make a change from many other films. Several scenes take place while the crew are re-ammunitioning the tank which I found a clever use of drama and realism.

was intrigued but all these pix have disappeared