Erik Springelkamp

I completely agree. I bought all modules, and in Euros that is really a bargain when I see the line in my bank account. But it is kind of hard to recruit, when there is so little to show on the PBEM front with just the base game.

And I guess information goes two ways, and in a sense the squad is in command of the CO HQ?

Yes, that is one I am playing and enjoying at the moment. But the question was about PBEM against a human opponent. Everybody thanks for the suggestions so far. But one of my opponents only owns the base game, and there the choice appears to be thin. Most interesting scenarios from the repository require one or more modules. I know some NATO scenarios that even strongly favour the Red player.

The situation: red light for communications with platoon commander green light for communications with company commander is rather common in my experience. (or variations, including an off board battalion commander) The question is, what does that mean?

I am grateful the Canadians in 1945 were a bit more careful in April 1945 in my home town. Here it was the SS - even Dutch SS - that took a 'last stand' in Groningen, forcing 3rd rate German soldiers - mostly railroad security forces - to fight to the last bullet. Parents of friends of mine have seen German soldiers throwing ammo-boxes into the sewers when officers were not looking to get to that last bullet faster. So it cost us a good part of the Mediaeval buildings in the city centre, but for the famous church tower active citizens managed to reach an agreement: the Germans would not enter it, and the Canadians would not shoot at it. Active citizens also managed to negotiate the surrender of large groups of Germans who succeeded in escaping their leaders. Still, 200 citizens killed, 200 Canadian soldiers killed, 200 beautiful houses destroyed.

I am digressing here but... I don't get this ongoing French bashing, and in fact it rather annoys me at times. On the Western Front all Allied armies got beaten by the Nazis, the British ran away, and the French fought hard to cover their retreat. But the French, like the Dutch and Belgians and others, didn't have a place to run away to. And of course the French were completely right about Iraq, still I didn't hear much excuses about the abuse they got by the Americans over that affair.

RED ON RED doesn't require an extraordinary imagination to create a backstory. But BLUE on BLUE? Fight the USA with the Dutch army? I wouldn't dare :-)

I place them somewhere on the previous phase line. The commander moving to a place in my games usually symbolises the conquest of that place. Or they act as a small reserve to reinforce a critical point. I don't know if that last use is according to doctrine.

I have now played, or are playing, a number of PBEM scenarios, but in each and every one the Syrian side gets totally hammered, whether I am playing Coalition or Syrian. What are the interesting battles for a PBEM from a balance point of view? Or are we all just so bad at playing the Syrians?

We have the editable hotkeys.txt that solves that problem

I think the automatic surrender only works for the AI.

Yes, can confirm that. A section was seriously hurt when the tank next to their building cooked off and exploded, destroying the building in the process.

With large scenarios and PBEM I regularly get out of memory exeptions when I save the email game and later load the next one. My work around is to always exit Shock Force before loading a game (and as the startup time for the game is tiny compared to the load time of a save game this is no real problem to me). But it indicates that some memory is not released when going back to the main menu.

What I often see is a row of soldiers line up behind a single window, and the one at the back shoot through the ones before them, but all fire more or less through the window.

WEGO is independent of multiplayer. I play WEGO against the AI more often than against a human.

Compare this with the 1940 conquest and occupation of the Netherlands by Germany. For the first six month there was only a token occupation force present, yet these German soldiers went out to café's and cinemas completely unarmed.

A big difference between RT and WEGO is the storage of the events. In RT they are not written away for serialisation, and that seems to be the problem with WEGO TCP/IP, or replay during RT. It doesn't seem to be an easy fix, because otherwise they would already have applied it. So currently the engine seems to be able to either receive orders, or record running events, but not both at the same time. Strange, because during TCP/IP it has to stream all events over the network, so in theory it should be possible to stream that dataflow into a file?

Loading time for a large PBEM battle can still be quite long, but longer will be the time you wait for your opponent to plot his turn. The actual exchange of files is easy enough. Currently I use Dropbox to create a synchronised folder with my opponent and a few shortcuts inside that folder and the outgoing mailbox folder.

I am playing Iron level

The manual states clearly, that nothing the Syrians have can take on the coalition head to head. Isn't it much nicer to learn that important fact with beautiful explosions, than to beat an opponent using intense study of tables?

I went back to an earlier savegame, and yes, while he was in the BTR-60, he did have a radio in his inventory (the C2 panel). Then I parked the BTR-60 safely on one side of the hill, and took the Platoon HQ over the top to call in some air support against some enemy tanks. When he arrived there, I saw he did no longer show a radio in his inventory, but when I tried, he could call the helicopters.

But the root of my question is actually: how did he call in that support, without a radio. He was on a forward observation position, together with a MG team. I think I remember that he did show a radio in his inventory when he was still inside the BTR, and that was the reason I sent him forward, but when he arrived the radio had disappeared from his inventory. Probably it is only a graphical glitch, and in game engine reality he did have a radio.

Both sides are Syrian in this campaign, which describes a coup plot in Syria.

I think it is one of the charms of the game to be able to discover yourself what can kill what. Yesterday evening, in Shock Force, I experienced something I never thought I would see, my Syrian BPM killing an Abrams with its missile! Moments like these are priceless.

Yesterday I was playing a few turns in thesecond scenario of the red on red campaign 'The Road to Dinas' (or is it Dimas, I saw both names in different places). I noticed that I had a Syrian commander of a BRD infantry weapons platoon, dismounted, out of C2, without a radio in his inventory, who could successfully order Air support. I wonder whether this is a bug in showing the radio, or a bug in the ability to call air support, or that this is somehow as designed?