McIvan

Nice work Jon; really enjoyed the battle from start to finish. Superb job at whetting the appetite of everyone reading to fever pitch PS...what is the "parameters" section of the results screen?

No....iirc both British and US armies in the Western ETO were often limited by artillery ammo shortages. Not shortages such as the Germans would have been experiencing, but shortages in terms of the intensive ammo use needed to support an offensive.

Quite right, I did mean to say.....I was thinking it would need a new sort of class for bogging...not immune, but much less likely. Everyone likes discussing bogging, right?

Well, not what I'm actually thinking of, which included lots of Buffalos with 20mm cannon and loaded with infantry splashing over streams and fields flooded with a foot or two of water. I suppose you could call all of that "shallow ford" or "deep ford", but we still wouldn't have the right OOB or the right amphibious capability to stop from bogging in the "fords". The interesting bit comes in because there is not one "other side" across which you charge asap, but lots of "other sides" crossed with supporting fire from the bits you've already got, although there were also strips of solid ground that more conventional forces were butting along with the aid of large numbers of Wasps. It made an excellent West Front scenario in the Campaign Series game system...always thought it would make a neat CM scen if the equipment was there. That's only one instance, however, although there are probably more that I just don't know about or have forgotten due to advancing senility. All by the by.

Stop being such a wet blanket, Snow I'm not saying they were common either. Btw I mean going from high ground to high ground within the context of the same scenario, because of all the flooded ground. Not going from island to island as separate scenarios (although that was often, maybe even usually, the case), albeit that would indeed make a fine campaign. Kapelsche Veer (sp?) is another that would make a great scenario...the fighting is going on over djikes, causeways and flooded polder as the Germans defend the river ferry with the Maas at their backs rather than in front. Look I know it isn't going to happen. Nice to contemplate however.

Well, not quite all...the Walcheren/Schedlt battles are an exception, with amphibious tractors crawling from high ground to high ground. I think (have thought, for a long time) that could be a fascinating campaign. So too would a decent river crosssing...if not the Rhine (too big) then what about any of the lesser river crossings.... I'm sure you'd love to, Steve, and I am cognisant of the point about utility divided by programming resources, hence I 'm not exactly pushing hard.... for what that would even be worth. But still. One day, one day...

Normandy Anzio Salerno Sicily (plus all the battalion sized subsidiaries) Dragoon The Rhine, north and south of the Ardennes Market Garden amphibous assault by the 82nd What-if scenarios to cross the Rhine to reinforce 1st Airborne Added to that, there is an almost completely untapped resource in the operations to clear the Schedlt so that Antwerp could be used as a port. The Canadians and Brits bore the brunt, attackin a myriad of islands and completly flooded terrain impassible to normal vehicles. A wealth of amphibious craft were used, including Buffalos mounted with all sorts of guns. German paras and others defending...a brutal and savage struggle as the Germans well understood the value of keeping Antwerp closed. I reckon there is some very exciting gaming possible....hopefully you might change your minds one of these days One day....one day...

You're only assuming their lives were snuffed out, as opposed to blown to the ground and maybe peppered with fragments. Obviously anyone who got a round directly is either dead or an amputee, but those not directly hit are not necessarily dead or even hit by anything. It sure looks grim for them, but we've probably all read accounts of huge amounts of incoming that doesn't actually do much.....er, albeit that in that situation the people are usually under cover.

I'm more than a bit dubious that any .50cal bullet that bounces off a ROAD is then going to penetrate 20mm of STEEL PLATE...misshapen, tumbling, at an extremely shallow angle. It doesn't make any logical sense. I reckon any claims of bouncing rounds off roads and knocking out tanks are fantasy. Trucks and halftracks maybe. Rounds through an engine grille on top maybe. Setting fire to additional fuel being carried on the back of the tank sure. Setting fire to equipment/tents/baggage/camouflage netting on the back of the tank, sure. Knocking out the tank, extremely doubtful.

Presumably you'll also give the equivalent to the Commonwealth forces, since they certainly had them......?

A lot of action against infantry positions in the desert was of that nature. The 2nd NZ Division had several battalions overrun during the course of a couple of years when caught without tank support. Basically, the Germans would wear down the integral 25 pounder positions at maximum range for most of a day, close in once these were dealt with and knock out the 2pdrs and then overrun the position. There was very little the ordinary infantry could do about it, if the Germans had sufficient time and ammunition.

Computer AI will use area fire for mortars where a commander is spotting for them.

Weeeeeeellll......that could be because crossover players are outnumbered by new players who don't know what they're missing I'd miss it. I thought it really worked well. I know you don't have it in CMSF, but I don't care enough about CMSF to argue about it....I'm just not really a moderns fan. It's not a deal breaker though, far from it, but it is a nice piece of design and one of the things that made CMBB/AK stand out from other games I'd played. Don't ditch it if it works unless there's something better to replace it! Ta

I enjoyed and appreciated the command delay system, even when working against me, because it felt right.....giving a real sense of differentiation between troop qualities and morale states. I thought it was very elegantly implemented....would be nice to see it back. The suggestion about no command delay on the first turn is a good one, wish to second that. While we're at it, a working vehicle "follow" command would be nice too, for those twisty roads?

You need to read the thread Bannon. There's been progress made, for sure. In particular, it seems we will have FOW for foxholes and gun emplacements, which is good news. We may also have forms of dugouts (not foxholes) that are proof against 105mm arty and lighter.

Ah I see. Not surprised that pissed you off. That lead me to a further search which failed to throw up any torrents for download-only Marines, so that's a good sign Possibly it's because no-one got around to cracking it....but let's adopt the glass half-full approach.

A quick search shows multiple torrents for CMSF, and a few for ToW (these are the only two titles I looked at), as well as plenty of no-cd patches for the various versions of CMSF (but not, oddly enough, for 1.11). So, erm, don't be too sure. I dislike CD swapping intensely....I have far too many games....so I make sure I don't have to. Counter-intuitively, this means I am almost completely unbothered by whatever security system the developer cares to use - excepting physical stuff like dongles. I would never buy a game that used one. I admit to a preference for electronic internet registration on installation because it saves me some time. Oddly enough I've never had any problems with Starforce, but I know people that have. I think I've only got one game that uses it though.

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing. In other words, quite seriously, if you make enough noise about a problem, sometimes sufficient thought gets thrown at it to come up with an unexpected answer. Sometimes it doesn't. But don't ask, don't get. And what we want to get is the best damn Normandy simulator ever made, and one that is fun to boot.

Re the lid & camou net idea.......what if you just had camou netting over the trenches as a "flavour" object, with no other function than to make it quite hard for players zooming over the battlefield to see the trench underneath...obviously only really effective with trenches in cover. No flag re visibility or not, just an object like powerlines or whatever. Not a solution, but an aid to immersion....and people casually looking over the landscape might well miss the trenches.

Steve has been heard loud and clear on what's possible and what isn't. What we're having now is an argument about how big a problem it is, which is quite separate from whether it can be fixed We like having these kinds of arguments. At least, I do.

Regarding intel on enemy positions, there's a big difference between knowing that there are enemy positions in a wood, and knowing where they are so exactly that you can, right from the word go, bring down pinpoint area fire to the metre. You want to pass on scouting intellligence or earlier contact reports? Do it in the briefing. Meantime in the real world new 3-4 man fighting positions have been dug, units have shifted, light minefields laid at night, wire laid to channel attackers. It's not the same as when your scouts saw it last...and they only saw a few anyway, it being dark, the positions being camouflaged, and the enemy deployed in depth over kilometres....far further than you could ever scout. This idea, expressed by one other poster, that all you'd have to do would be to scout for a few hours and you'd know where all the enemy positions are is complete fantasy that had nothing to do with WWII. Agressive patrolling/scouting over several nights or a week (or even weeks) might give you a decent picture where the initial enemy line was and knowledge of some forward defences. It's not going to help you any further back than that, especially with strongpoint defences could go for 5-10 kilometres in depth, not to mention all the hasty defences thrown up over a couple of hours to contain enemy penetrations. All through the war rifle companies routinely walked into fire from from previously unknown and unseen enemy positions. All you had to do, for that to happen, was to break the intial outpost line and get further into the defences than your scouts had managed. Even if they had been scouted, the odds of losing your bearings in combat were sky high. You might have the knowledge that the enemy holds that treeline, or those buildings....but where are they exactly? Maybe we know that there is a log bunker set back thirty metres or so to the right of that large tree. What is further back in the woods? Mortar positions, certainly. What else? No idea. That's why lack of FOW is a huge problem. I think it is acknowledged as a problem, but these flailing attempts to unrealistically minimise the problem are are bit over the top.

Just by the by it was indeed exactly 200 metres. Inquiring minds with not enough to do tested it thoroughly a long, long time ago. Given the size of maps in CMx1, if you saw enemy defences long before it mattered then your opponent was doing something wrong. But given that no-one actually disagrees that FOW would be a good thing, this is all rather moot.

Steve, Thanks for the answer. I'll have a read of the other threads to see what ideas have already been canvassed.

Slight correction....trenches were not visible until within 200 metres, and depending on how far back they were they often took a long time to become visible.....well after you had committed to a plan.

Have you ever considered having the engine, when the attacker (for example) is viewing the battlefield, deliberately put a seamless 3-D "lid" over foxholes/trenches until spotted under FOW rules? So you're not trying to hide something that for technical reasons you can't hide specifically ....but rather you are placing something on top that has the practical effect of concealing what is underneath it until removed. No decals for foxhoes/trenches....but maybe they can be of use for concealment.