Erik Springelkamp

I am very much looking forward to the game. Will it include Kindergärten units for the Germans?

So you are as uninformed as I thought. A random sample of information: http://time.com/4493/ukraine-dmitri-yarosh-kiev/ But I am not going to let myself draw into long discussions here.

Well, that was the President, and he was driven off by a violent revolt by a coalition that included a lot of neo-nazi's and foreign support. Edit: and of course he was a cleptocrat, but so were his predecessors including the heroin of the opposition.

Looks like the billy_sp icons of CMA and CMSF form a good start for the Russian symbols. I love them, also because the are transparent outside the symbol itself, so they float like letters in the air, much closer to the units because they are small as well. For CMSF there are four sets in different colours, and I move one of them into the Z folder depending on which allied nationality I play.

And in Fort Bragg you can assess his standing in the world? World powers do show their force, like with economic blockades, or with drone attacks that violate sovereign nations. And it all depends on the local propaganda whether that is viewed as a good or a bad thing. The removal of the Ukrainian President was unconstitutional, but whether people condemn it or not depends on the propaganda they are exposed to. Putin is a thug, but so are all leaders of powerful nations.

What Russian minorities in Rumania or Poland? They were never part of the Soviet Union, unlike Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia etc.

I had to read that a couple of times before I understood it the way you meant it. :eek: But I actually wanted to say that I enjoyed the AAR very much and it made me play CM again!

Step one executed, RAM increased and new hard drive, no problems with current activations, so that is fine. Next step will be going from XP to Windows 7 (x64). Any advise on the installation procedure wrt administrative rights? I don't install an aggressive Virus Checker, just the free Microsoft thingy. My account will be in the administrators group. I plan to install to D:\Games\Battlefront, not to C:\Program Files\Battlefront so I assume I don't need to enhance the installer to 'run as administrator'? And I will not have to run the game 'run as administrator'?

I noticed that sometimes one sees one of the crew members 'deploying' for a while, and then the gun will finally be deployed. But at other places no crew member was deploying, and I think, but I am not sure, that the deploy command button was no longer in the down position.

NATO will tell Putin that he is no longer welcome at their parties.

I don't think you see tracers when you don't spot the fire. Same logic for the flamethrower: the flame would give away the firer's location, and if there are no other witnesses than dead bodies, you shouldn't know where they are.

I think there is a little error in the briefing, as it mentions D and E company of 2/505 as core units, but in missions 1, 7, 13 and 16 it is company E and F that are fighting, so it appears core units D and E should be E and F. Which would make my question about spending more of company F irrelevant.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/member.php?u=16026

Such a pity that BigDuke is no longer here to inform us from the inside, like he did during the war in Georgia.

Invasion is not necessary, they are already there. This is just the public confirmation that they will stay, and a warning to Ukraine not to resist.

I think the Russians are quite reliable when you assume they will protect their interests. It is now clear that the Crimea will not be part of a Western oriented Ukraine. The big question at the moment is what will happen to the Eastern provinces. Although I think Russia doesn't have a very friendly government, the case of Edward Snowden proves that the presence of independent strong nations does have its merits.

*** SPOILERS FOLLOW *** I started the Road to Nijmegen campaign. First of all, the map is beautiful. I lived in Beek near Nijmegen for a while, which is located between Nijmegen and Groesbeek. I often cycled to Groesbeek on sunny days and then I passed directly through this battlefield when I made the hook to the German village of Wyler to return around the Duivelsberg. This map captures the very un-Dutch atmosphere of the rolling fields of Groesbeek perfectly. Unfortunately, but understandably, the map is too small to include the dark and infamous Reichswald on the horizon that forms the Eastern border of these fields. The final approach to the exit area of this map is today occupied by the National Liberation Museum Groesbeek, which is mainly devoted to the US airborne forces. Anyway, I finished the scenario with a minor victory, and I am aware that I handled several aspects less than optimal. And I have some general questions about campaigns in general. I used battalion mortars with a medium duration heavy mission to destroy the AA guns, used two mortars of Easy company to pummel the Germans at Hendriks farm and the machine gun behind the AA guns, as these positions caused a lot of casualties on my troops in the open, but decided to save the rest of the mortar bombs for future missions, as the American troops were strong enough to attack the other Germans by just advancing in a broad mutual supportive line. That took only modest casualties. I also tried the air support, but I reloaded a save when the plane massacred my two leading platoons in their jump-off position. At least I learned to keep a larger distance when calling in the air force. In the end my victory was diminished by too many own casualties (blue circle instead of green mark), and too few enemy casualties (also blue circle). I got a bit impatient at the end, when I thought the battle was over, and instead of carefully mopping up the whole exit area, I moved the whole of F company running to the exit point when there proved to be another German unit in ambush near the end. That gave me extra casualties. So my questions, because given the reputation of Paper Tiger, I will need a perfect start to have a chance at the later missions: - for how many missions do I have to save my artillery ammunition? Or can I just use all those bombs to do the dirty work? - I discovered later that E Company is a core unit, while F company that has to exit is not. Most hard fighting was done by E Company. I should probably have made more use of F Company, or is that gamey? Or do casualties count double when they are part of an exit force?

That just makes me wonder: I am going to upgrade my PC next week from 2GB to 4GB RAM and add a second hard drive. That will probably be enough to unlicense my Combat Mission copies? (SF, A, BN, FI plus all modules for all games). This is as preparation for a change from XP to Windows 7 next month, so I will use two licenses for everything in one month?

The RT AAR's inspired me enough to get into this game again. I played CMSF quite a bit, but with CMBN I never really got into the slugging match of the bocage. (I was shocked by the lethality after playing all those NATO troops in Syria.:eek:) But I just acquired version 2 of CMBN together with CW & MG, and I also own FI and GL. Now I would like to start a campaign, preferably one with a bit of room for manoeuvre, but one where you can go forward even if you make mistakes. Which one(s) would you suggest?

Reading the RT AAR inspired me to take up CM again after a long pause. So I patched up my copy of Fortress Italy and Gustav Line and started a quick battle. An Italian defence against a US infantry attack on a small map. The AI gave me 8 HMG's and two SPG's with which I defended against a horde of infantry men. Game time 30 minutes. While the assaulting GI's suffered horrible losses, they started to overwhelm my defences in waves of men, but I barely kept my objectives. At zero hour I was still holding on with a few men. Then the time went into the red, and each turn I hoped it would be the last, but after 5 minutes overtime one objective fell. Then I played on, and on, and on, until after 30 minutes in the red I called a cease fire. (Still a stalemate, because the defenders in the second objective had beaten the attack). As I couldn't find it in the manual, I ask here: is there no limit on the overtime in a quick battle?

CM2 version 3.0

In the street I grew up there were several new buildings because of a German 20 mm defending from behind a canal there in April 1945. That piece single-handedly blocked the Canadian advance for several hours.

Very promising. Maybe this will get me back into the game. It reminds me of the series of instruction-scenario's that JasonC wrote on CMBB, and that got me going into CM1. I hope your series can do the same to me for CMx2 WWII.

I think hard line CMSF players that still play the game - or bought the Apple version - and are in need of more scenarios can be expected to own all modules.

Customs might wonder why you are carrying 50 CD's of the same game. But if you pay the taxes, you would still save on the postage.