Erik Springelkamp

I just played a couple of Quick Battles, and I noticed that the AI uses its RPG's from a long distance, when the chances to hit are low. So I would show up with my vehicles at a rather long distance, than wait until they had spend their RPG's, or I had destroyed the shooters, without great risk. When those AT teams would hold their fire a little longer, this 'cheap' tactic would not work.

Steve mentioned some time ago that they would try to make the information more general. But if exact identification would be possible by looking at the 3D image, this would be unfair for those who wouldn't take the trouble of looking at the figures. Misidentification would not be in for this release though, because of the inability of the engine to use different 3D shapes for sightings than for 'real'.

As I didn't play in any ROW tournament, I searched about the NABLA scoring system, and I found a hot discussion about it's fairness. I think a Bridge competition has exactly the same problem: the cards are almost never dealt 'fair'. For single pairs - that is when you are not forming a team with another pair - the score is simply linear according to order of result for both sides: When a scenario is played 5 times, the best allied player and the best axis player get 8 points, second best 6 points, and worst 0 points. Equal results share, so with equal 2nd and 3rd places both get 5 points. This system has worked satisfactory for serious competitions for almost a century, so why wouldn't it work for CM? Actually, the more serious world championships are played in a different way, where two pairs join to form a team to play a match against a different team, and the same hand is played on two tables with changed sides. Each team totals the result of both sides, and the difference with be converted to match points (where very large swings are reduced a bit). The team play emphasizes the ability to score big, or to prevent the others to score big, while the singe pair competition favours those players that can just get that result that is a little bit better than most of the others.

Sounds like the license protection scheme.

One can make a blue campaign oneself. For the existing campaigns one could not believably assign units as core mujahideen. A blue campaign would realistically have to focus on a single region.

Look at the shortcut menu item: Alt + something

So a general announcement is not good enough for you, you demand a personal word about it?

In 1982 an American physics professor at the University of Nijmegen introduced me to wargames. I played them during the 1980's through mid 1990's. I have 100's of them, including magazine games like Strategy & Tactics, and complete series, like the tactical combat series of The Gamers, and all of the Squad Leader series and ASL. I also played miniatures wooden ship naval battles, in large teams, playing the great battles with over a 100 ships. And the Civil War Tactical battles of Richard Berg and those of The Gamers. Then I moved to Groningen, and I lost my gaming partners - apart from the occasional long range visit. In 2004 my son - who played a lot of computer games - turned my attention to Rome: Total War. I bought it and it got me interested and I searched the internet for computer wargames: I found good reviews of Highway to the Reich, and Combat Mission (CMBB and CMAK). I discovered they were not sold in the regular game stores, but I ordered them on the internet. I played Highway to the Reich for a few months, but Combat Mission has since kept my full attention, with only a lull during the unfortunate introduction of CMSF, but reactivated by the British module.

It was the best guess of Battlefront based on an analysis of the of the Syrian army.

I am surprised that so many people complain about the graphics performance. I have a real low end processor: 1.8GHz dual core, 2 GB RAM (I built it as a small server 4 years ago). Until recently I ran it on the onboard graphics card, and that was slow, but still playable although for example trenches disappeared at a really short distance. Now I bought a passively cooled ATI 5550 - 1GB DDR2 - absolutely silent, which is still listed as mediocre card, and cheap at Euro 65, but I run CMSF at maximum quality, shadows on, AA on, large maps, large forces, and at a speed that I find perfectly acceptable: around 15 FPS, and moving around the map is completely smooth.

Well, you can shoot through enemy vehicles, recently I had two BMP's destroyed by one enemy tank shot, as they were standing side by side, and the grenade went right through the first BMP into the other.

I think of a situation where it would be probable that a gunner would aim at a specific point, and that would be when he sees his previous shell hit the target, but not killing it. Confident of his aiming point (though probably very nervous), he might then adjust a bit to go for the turret or other weak point.

Well, number 3 got the job done, restoring my faith in the Abrams. That Syrian tank had to go, because it blocked my way, so I was stubborn, believing that the previous attempts were just unlucky. And I had totally run out of Javelins, as the Syrians had about a battalion worth of tanks. And this last one had found a nice bomb crater for itself. Hull down and leaning backwards. The gun was literally all that was exposed.

Only if you have them in place. Just yesterday I played a scenario (Djin Valey) where some Syrian tanks were out of view of my infantry, and they were surprisingly hard to kill with even Abrams tanks. They were perfectly hull down, and relatively close. I lost two Abrams in the process, because they missed their first and only shot, even though they were carefully hunting through the bushes with a narrow covered arc.

Now this will be seriously inconvenient for those people who want to reinstall their system every two months. :-)

When you occupy the closest corner tower of the complex, infantry with a Javelin can easily take out the tank from the upper floor. You do have to hit first time though, otherwise the tank will shoot back :-)

In CMSF you can run out of Javelins, or you don't have them at all (US marines sometimes, NATO members). Red on Red scenarios are very interesting, and probably much closer to the CM:BN experience. CMSF is a very rich game system.

That is in as well, just see the AAR. Track damage from fire is very common. In Shock Force there is also effect from weapons that generally cannot kill a tank, but being sprayed by machine gun fire results in degradation of optics etc. All components have a whole range of damage states. At the end of a battle most vehicles have some form of minor damage. (spectacular effect I saw recently: one tank shot piercing two BMP's that were right next to each other: the shot went right through both vehicles and destroyed them both)

In Shock Force, crossing obstacles can damage your tracks. This is usually a gradual degradation. I have also seen vehicles bog in mud, but sometimes they succeed in getting free again.

The neighbour shoots, but spends the ammunition of the bearer while shooting.

Not supported.

*** spoilers **** Nice scenario with some room to manoeuvre. I was surprised that the Syrians took several US tanks out in one on one head to head duels. Needed all my javelins. I should have taken a bit more time for my artillery to clear out the ATGM's, but still got a surrender with 50 minutes left. I suffered too many casualties, especially Bradleys, for a total victory though.

In WEGO you can, like mentioned before, set the covered arc, and then move in such a way that you end up with the right facing (even by just reversing a tiny bit and moving back)

Great! I wonder, was the truck in mud still driving at the end, because I think I have been immobilized in mud sometimes. Now I should go make a shooting range in a similar fashion to investigate the inherent cover provided by different kinds of terrain. I thought I heard there is some cover - in a design for effect sense, for instance in rocky terrain?

I have experienced various properties of the types of terrain but I have never seen a comprehensive list of terrain types. I know marsh will get you stuck, mud has a chance of getting your vehicles stuck, and I was always a bit careful with rocky terrain, as that could cause damage to your traction in CMx1, but is that the case in CMSF as well? The differences between hard, sand, dirt, gravel: they differ in the kind of dust you produce, probably sand slows you down, especially wheeled vehicles? Grass - short, tall - and grain, I suppose they differ in concealment properties, they make driving a little bit harder? It would be nice to see everything listed in a table, including effects of temperature and climate.