Erik Springelkamp

Yes, that is confirmed.

That is why LOS is reciprocal, so friendly tanks don't offer cover to other vehicles. Don't know about friendly infantry and cover from friendly vehicles.

What doesn't help the attractiveness of the base CMSF game is that Strykers are really ugly vehicles with their extended armour grids. Abrams and Bradleys look OK, but in most scenarios you will have to play with those Strykers. The other modules offer much more attractive looking AFV's (although the Stryker is tougher than most of those).

CM Afghanistan is probably a better choice for someone who just wants to prepare for CM:BN.

Graphical programs use a special programming interface and the calls to that interface are then handled by the graphical drivers of the OS and the card. For Windows there is DirectX and for more systems there is OpenGL (which is used by CM). What part of the operations is handled by the GPU and how, that can be vastly different depending on the card and its drivers.

This famine was in a way similar to civilian casualties by bombardments of factories or military installations. But in this case it was more indirect.

Through their start of the war and the occupation, yes, of course. And through plundering many resources. But the direct cause of the famine was the destruction of the transport system from spring 1944 by the allied air power. They attacked trains and barges everywhere behind the front, so Holland - the densely populated West of the Netherlands - could no longer be supplied by the rest of the country, where enough food was produced to have fed everybody. The delivery by British bombers was mostly symbolic to improve morale in Holland, the bulk of the food was delivered from Sweden by ship to the Northern port of Delfzijl.

That looks like the base game, so at least you can play a game with it. (but not Canucks). Look carefully at the version that you receive and what patches might apply. There is documentation at the Battlefront site.

I think they are meant to be Dutch Apache helicopters.

The iBot would make a good start.

I hope you did also buy the game itself, because the NATO module itself is not a game. You both need the modules that contain the forces you play. So if you both have the NATO and British module, you can start a fight between the masters and the inmates.

The mod tools are minor utilities and not necessary to create mods. The only thing they do is package a folder structure with mod elements into some archive format. But the game works just as well with the unpacked folder structure. For uploading the mod to a repository you can just package the folder into a zip file. The user can then unzip and put the content into his Z folder.

Yes, 'European' was too wide a specification. I think Germany is closer to the Dutch situation. Debit card payment in the Netherlands has a much lower tariff for the shop-keeper than a credit card and that makes shop-keepers hesitant to accept CC. In shops that get a lot of foreigners they will accept that price, because otherwise they would probably lose trade, but supermarkets for instance will not accept credit cards here. There is also resistance against harmonisation in bank payment tariffs, as in many countries those costs are much higher than here in the Netherlands, so harmonisations would imply an increase in costs. (But the banks would probably like it). For on-line purchases in the Netherlands the preferred payment method is also not the credit card, but a system called 'iDeal' that will take you to the internet banking site of your own bank with a pre-filled electronic form, where you can then order a direct payment from your bank-account to the seller. The overall cost of this system are also much lower than the service of a credit card supplier, and it is inherently much safer than giving a CC number: you don't give any sensitive information to the seller, but you do business directly with your own bank, using a safe token request-response technology. 'iDeal' is currently marketing its system in other countries in Europe.

European bank cards are usually not associated with those American organisations, as those organisations demand a much higher provision. Shops don't want to pay that provision. That is why a credit card is not a popular paying method in the retail sector, and is generally only accepted in luxury case like hotels, and tourist related shops.

The ruins of buildings one sees in the photographs are often the result of fire, instead of the explosions themselves, and the collapse would only follow after some time when the fire would have destroyed the structural integrity. In Groningen where I live there were 200 such ruins in April 1945, but although they were pounded by tanks there, all of those ruins only collapsed because of fire. I also remember the big fireworks explosion in Enschede, where a whole neighbourhood was destroyed, and all the houses were ruins. There also, the houses were not destroyed by the explosion itself, but by the following raging fire. http://www.google.com/search?q=Enschede+vuurwerkramp

Yes, a powerful form of cheating would be if two players decide to help each other in the early rounds by giving each other the order of battles of opposite sides during the setup phase. Knowing what you are up to is very strong knowledge. Of course, even thinking about such a possibility makes me an inferior being.

Well, they did take Goebbels, so I think they will make an exception for you.

And you can package subsets into .rez (probably some form of zip) files with the tools supplied. That way you can just move a .rez file into or out of the Z folder when you want to use a different combination. I have separate files for US, British, Dutch, German and Canadian forces, and I just put the right one into the Z folder and move the old one back in my store. No special tools needed at all.

Maybe you should play a different war then? One with pure Arian warriors?

And I recommend 'Life and Fate' by Vasili. In Russia they call it the 'War and Peace' of the 20th century, treating the battle of Stalingrad instead of Napoleon's Moscow campaign, but in fact, like 'War and Peace', treating life in its totality.

You mean real names?

This information is available in the lower left window. It also tells you what every soldier is doing at the moment. In CMSF you can enhance the casualty-visibility by using a mod that adds a cross to the casualties.

Ah, yes, I already wondered why that posting had disappeared in the thread it was supposed to go :-)

Ah, misunderstanding. I was thinking of this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Grossman And of course like all people of some importance in the Soviet Union his story is complex.