sburke

no sweat, looking forward to it. however we expect that villa cleared by 1300, we have to stop the invasion commander. it all rests ON YOUR SHOULDERS. No pressure though.

Umm ouch? Geez is that the best you could come up with? Well it explains the poor state of your fiction. and what's with the quotes again? As a literary device you really need to be more restrained and learn how to use them for appropriate affect. Here a freebie for you. sburke, are you so short of jokes you have to steal Gary Larson's? (yeah I admit, I am nowhere near as funny as that guy) Better, but you see that wasn't a slam. It was a statement. And to my knowledge JonS never went to school.. ever. He is a total miscreant wandering around picking fights with used car salesman, televangelists and snake oil salesman, but he tells the truth. Also when you ask him something he doesn't barrage you with a mountain of irrelevant unfiltered google excrement and pretend that indicates he is knowledgable. I am still going to run my tanks over his stormtrooper posers though. Seriously. You can identify the label on the danged button but not the year (much less a specific date)? C'mon now John, Russians were there so they obviously know and an entire Carrier battle group of sailors was there, they should certainly know. You have an inside guy in the CIA and you can't pick up a sailor? I am sure you can pick up a sailor. the name of the carrier? Again why? With thousands of people knowing and there only being at most 15 carriers around at a time. Oh yeah wait, because then we could actually verify WHERE THEY WERE Did you actually read the link you posted on cubic hour? How many pages did you have to flip through in google to find some 11 year old comment in his diary from some student at MSU? Is THAT why it took you so long to post a reply? Really I am sorry. I should never have brought it up, now we've lost time from saving the world. I won’t be sure if this post makes any sense or not until tomorrow, because I haven’t gotten any sleep in the last 30 cubic hours. (Scholar’s Note: One cubic hour equals time * the Residence Interval (RI) of floods in Arizona * the % hypertextuality—which is almost always 100.) Fortunately, in only 218.7 cubic hours, I will be done with Sweeps Week. That’s a relief, because Sweeps Week is awful waffle. Hmm I'd actually have suspected that was your diary, but I think you are too old to fit the bill. John you may actually be a decent guy, but I suspect maybe you just can't or won't filter what you hear. So all the white noise of our world for you becomes critical info. It isn't. Because some college burnout uses some bizarre statement of a cubic hour does not suddenly make it a valid unit of time. For the rest of us, that deluge of unfiltered info eventually becomes really annoying. It's like going over to a radio tuned into nothing but static and cranking it up to full volume. Of course you are gonna get a negative reaction. Look we could go round and round like this forever, You make outrageous claims, then say you can't provide proof because THOSE pople would be at risk, but somehow I don't see you disappearing. I also see you have a ton of time to sit around on this forum playing a demo copy of CMBN. Does it strike you as odd that this reflects no urgency to worry about the world that is supposedly at risk? Sorry guy, not buying it. Assuming you really knew all this stuff, it is very obviously not urgent and the gov't that so much wants to shut you up still keeps giving you money. Yeah I heard the sob story, but plenty of folks have trouble getting money out of the gov't. That is the nature of bureaucracy. So back to book reviews. Edit - kudos on this one, that is actually funny.

Interesting. Sept Hope actually differs a bit. In this one the Dutch civilian didn't mis lead them, they chose to follow him through town despite orders to the contrary. I don't recall reading anything about regiment telling them to halt, rather they ran headlong into a growing number of German reinforcements that simply had more firepower. Interesting to see the variations. How much of that is the confusion of battle we may never know.

LOL and probably a few more in between. I think I am closer to the second. I enjoy watching my opponent win as long as it is interesting and especially if I learn a trick or two. It also helps that a good part of the games I have played aren't basing victory on a specific VL. They are more battles driven by an overall commanders intent which my opponent and I have usually discussed to set the context of the battle. Hell I'd gladly lose if in doing so I gained enough truly cool moments watching the TAC AI in action.

Thanks, very interesting and not quite as bad as the book implied. I knew about the comms issues, not about Hacket getting peeved.

oh man what a great year. CMCW, CMFI, Version 2 and CMMG? Unfortunately for BF, there won't be any fanboi's on the forum to overeact to all the totally unintended slights , we'll be too busy playing. LOL And the really cool part is it looks like next year will be more of the same. Don't burn yourselves out guys.

Well I am still not very far into September Hope, but I've already developed this irritation factor. I like the writing style and I think it has a somewhat better balanced perspective on development of MG as a plan. The irritation factor I am getting is from the writer's constant harping on the super Brave General Gavin. Now I don't doubt for a second he was. However what is creeping in at the bag of my mind (because the book has already pointed it out several times) is his complete failure to appoint a second in command. Maybe the book has it wrong and you guys will tell me "well of course he didn't it is automatically (fill in name here)." I suspect the book isn't that hopless though and I can't help but feel that looks like an incredibly bad sign of poor preparation. I mean you are jumping out of a friggin plane! As a sign of what can be the result the book refers to the confusion and paralysis generated in the 1st British Airborne amongst the regimental commanders and the posturing for authority when they lost contact with their commanding officer. Can't say I recall reading anything critiquing that. So I am curious on two points. Was that true about the 1st Airborne and did Gavin really neglect to designate a replacement. So anyway I am just past the point where the first attempt to take the bridge failed and Gavin is pulling his men back to defend the landing zones. So far the book has cleared Gavin of any responsibility for not grabbing the Nijmegen bridge. First because the objectives set for the 82nd were simply too great to be accomplished, second because his officers apparently ignored his specific orders not to go through the city and third because the German forces rushed to defend the bridge were simply superior to what he could commit until the landing zone was clear for the glider drop scheduled. Still a long way to go yet to form a solid opinion.

beautiful, but I would hesitate to go too far. BF had said previously and we are already seeing in CMFI shots different building types. I would suggest only doing basic terrain features, elevations and probably roads for nw. I have been tinkering with a 4x4 map of Veghel. I've got the Canal, River Aar, RR embankments and dykes, but am at the point now where I just may scrap the whole thing if the new mapping tools for CMFI turn out as good as expected. I could probably re do everything I have done so far in a day and have it be far more accurate. Still really looking forward to this. My reading list lately has been very focused on MG.

First wish more vagueness in spotting reports. Some of that looks to be coming and some of this might already be in to some degree or another but it would be cool if: The nature of a spotted unit be revealed sooner/later depending on the relative experience between the units i.e an inexperienced unit would be presumed to do stupid s**t denoting the presence of officers etc versus an experienced unit which would make more effort to conceal such obvious targets for snipers. In general it would be nice if it took longer to ID what an infantry unit was beyond the fact that they are infantry. This would enhance play in all the various styles and AI as well as HTH play. Win win for everyone. Second wish The ability to import the units from a save game into another scenario as opposed to just being able to do so from a scenario into another.

Let me get this straight. You two made one of the biggest decisions of your lives over beers? note to self - get beer, lots of beer.

by the way you may want to stop using that, or figure out how to use it correctly. http://www.unitconversion.org/flow/cubic-meter-per-hour-conversion.html

Hmmm nope no secret info here for ours. It has what 5 minutes left at least on the confirmed time. "you light up my life" - sing it JonS..

Warmer than you think... Let's just say in the next minute or two you are gonna be singing "you light up my life". Yes time is getting short. Hang on to your mauser.

LOL I agree. I understand WriterJWA's point, but it gets split into the mental and the physical reaction. I am never going to get inside anyone's decision cycle in CM in RT. I am a 2 finger typist for crying out loud. I think both styles have their own way of doing that, WeGo just allows us not so fast on the keyboard to also participate.

+1 on that and it doesn't have to even be that extensive (says the neophyte). If you could import the forces from an end battle into another scenario that would take care of a large percentage of the overhead. I think that beyond map creation, which it seems there is some major headway on, that is where Broadsword spends most of the time on our campaign.

What he said: What I heard: Blah blah blah Rusty Blah blah blah blah Rusty blah blah blah While I can't say I am nearly as offended as JonS at the snake oil blog I don't for a moment consider you a reputable participant on this forum. Why you ask? Is it because you just make all this stuff up? Actually no, that isn't it at all. What bothers me is the level of disrespect you show by making it up so poorly. Do you care even a little bit about how your audience is entertained? What do you mean you ask? Well here is your previous post. I have taken the liberty to edit it for you like an advisor might to try and show you how poorly it is done. (not sure why the use of quotes here like something in a crappy b rated movie, it sounds like you have a special source but since you never provide an actual bit of verifiable data, it is simply needless hype) Again nothing verifiable repeat again borrowing from Watergate this time but still nothing verifiable. What trying to have a real conspiracy somehow lend credence to yours by borrowing characters? Almost like Plagarism. Sounds good, but what the heck is "dangerous surveillance". You could at least suggest a near ramming incident and how about a date I mean suggesting something that happened somewhere over a 40+ year period? Again no name nothing verifiable Not sure why you felt the need for quotes there either like there was some significant place near Antarctica you wanted to imply. I mean after all what is "near Antarctica" other than Antarctica? And that tale there smacks like you lifted it right out of the The Hunt for Red October. which you conveniently neglect to name cause everyone knows it can't really be a good conspiracy theory unless you look like you have some hidden secret info. You couldn't very well tell us you heard it from some drunken, stoned 3rd cousin of a guy who knows a custodian at the Pentagon now could you? Or that you simply made it up. Remove the open source, it removes any reason why you couldn't name it other than it doesn't exist. (wait, what the f**k did you just do to the timeline? "Do I need to keep this s**t straight.. hmm let's see I said sometime during the cold war, that gives me plenty of wiggle room, but when did Russian intelligence ships first start getting aggressive with US carrier groups.. hmm that might limit my time frame and I said decades later so either I found out recently or oh gawd it is so hard to keep this straight when you are making it up on the fly." (again I'll figure out names at some point) (somehow - note to self, make up independent confirmation story) "certain Navy aircraft?" Sorry poor writing style, very poor That should be easy there haven't been that many..oh crap though again no name. "With 5000 drunken sailors hitting port looking for a good time how do I explain none of them EVER having said they suddenly appeared in Antarctica from oh wait where did they go from.. hell they might have been near Antarctica to start - note to self, go back and add something about the North Atlantic" Okay I made that last bit up, it just fits better with the level of disrespect you are already showing your audience. It might even go over well with the punk crowd. okay that last bit is just too friggin stupid, the Capt got a "letter of reprimand" for activating a super secret device in front of several Russian Intelligence ships - oh c'mon now man this is what I mean by lazy. How about this. The Cap't became the first American spirited away and imprisoned in Gitmo starting a long history of secret detentions. See how hard is that, much more friggin believeable. And yet after all that you can't even provide a date? pretty easy cause I haven't actually provided anything yet, not a single bit of fact that you could actually check, isn't this great! okay I am running out of ideas so I'll just grab some others, like who the hell is going to sue me LOL "Give me a bit though cause it is really hard to make some of this s**t up, really you have no idea!" (assuming I ever create any. That is expecting a bit much I mean after all I haven't even been able to even make up a half decent story line. I always wanted to write fiction, but all my professor ever said was "tripe, christ can't you do any better than this? Perhaps you should stick to cleaning the restrooms") cubic hours? where the f**k did that come from? but hey that sounds really cool and scientific like! (brilliant? and yet he couldn't understand a theory we should have had from Maxwell, am I contradicting myself again, oh whatever) (hmm am I saying all the Russians are smarter than my brilliant dad? That would make them .. umm uber brilliant?) blah blah blah blah (unfortunately) and yet I can't seem to name anyone other than some LA cop and "personally heard" could simply mean I heard him interviewed on a radio - see how easy it is to make it look like I have some special secret handshake access? blah blah blah As Church lady would say- Isn't that convenient!! Problem is it isn't "most" it is any. There isn't one single iota of fact presented that anyone could look up. Not one. I mean geez you could make a little more effort at pretending. Throw in some ranks, maybe some initials, a character defect anything at all to make them appear they just might be real. Intergrate what? What did you actually say other than a bunch of completely unsubstantiated BS..how are you gonna make money from this??! Okay again my edit, but it really is more appropriate. Some advice John, get a ghostwriter or take a literature class. This isn't even good pulp fiction, you don't even have a romance story. You are welcome.

I think he may actually have been referring to us, not you guys... And in the interest of being completely honest, yeah we can come off that way sometimes. That the truth might be a little uncomfortable doesn't make it any less true.

Wait a dog gone minute here, you just devalued my purchase by 50% WTF? I paid for a product supposedly worth $10 damn it and I want my $10 value so you damn well better take my other $5!! Well now that you mention it, the backyard lawn is getting a bit high and my tanks are busy squishing JonS little stormtrooper wannabees into little piles of goo. God I love the 95 MM Churchill deathstars. You think you could give the mower a little go round?

Saw your post on the other thread as well. Funny cause if I had to have bet my house I would have been sure you guys had tried ASL and said -"what a pain in the friggin a**, can't a computer do all this for me?". Now it's clear, you never played ASL so you really don't know anything about wargames But getting back to the core point, this isn't about MP and Lobbys etc. No offense to the guys that are interested in that. Fundamentally I started the thread as I think the way you guys put together CMx2 and particularly the TAC AI has for me made CM even more unique in the genre than CMx1 if that is possible. More than anything else I think that is why for me the CMx1 discs have become collectible coasters. (no offense intended)

Of course, what did YOU think we meant? Advanced Senile Laggards?

BTW, Thanks for starting this thread. I think we can all pretty much say we'd rather have discussions like this then rant at one another over stuff that isn't going to change anyway.

+1 on that and thanks for the action report, I love this sort of stuff. Also to BF, this sort of thing is truly the meat of CM for I think pretty much all of us, the confusion and chaos of battle. I think this is why we continuously hear requests and criticisms of the information we get on spotting. It may be something difficult to code, but in terms of return in playability I personally feel it would add more than almost anything else you could do. Having information be more vague would add so much to the game for single players, HTH folks whether they play WeGo or RT. I may go over and post this in the wish list but this kind of thing would be cool Green units find it harder to ID more experienced units More experienced units would get more information quickly against green units The thinking here, green commanders do stupid s**t that makes them stand out, have less appreciation of cover etc. Experienced units would do things to make it difficult to know who is the leader, not have the radio guy running around too visibly etc. This would then add more to the psychology of battle as you wouldn't immediately know - hey that guy is a platoon commander- okay I pretty much know I am not facing a squad, where are the rest of them?

Exactly However one aspect I am always interested in is how much one soldier, or that one MG etc can affect the course of a battle so I definitely don't want to give up semi control over those units. If you checked out Broadsword and my AAR I tended to do the same. I focused on the positions and state of individual platoons as the basic maneuver element. I think this is essential in CM to get you in the habit of taking care of your units C2 at the base level. If you fail there, you are likely failing all the way up the chain.

LOL yes please. All around we have had a couple of threads now where we all got to vent our spleen. There is no right way vs wrong way here. I totally agree there is no clock to play against, but I don't think that is truly a WeGo versus RTS thing. RT is going to get pauses as well. What Wego does for me is stop me from realizing after moving one unit that there is now an MG nest facing the rest of my force and stopping all their movement. I have to make a full 60 second plan and then pay for my mistakes etc. I don't honestly know whether more players use RT vs WeGo. It seems a number of folks at BF play RT which I think undermines some of the expression of it as the stepchild, however not being an RTS player my position on that is probably poorly informed and skewed. Interesting though that you would feel WeGo is more the direct desendant to ASL. I would actually feel WeGo moves away from the ASL model again because in ASL as in RT, you can have your other units react immediately to what one unit discovers, in WeGo you can not. The net effect to me is it would seem WeGo forces you to slow down. Your action decision/cycle is based on 60 second intervals not an immediate RT feed. However that wasn't quite where I was going. (or maybe it was considering how vague I have been trying to formulate my subjective reactions to CMx2). I think there is something in the 1:1 representation that goes beyond the counter feel of CMx1. It isn't just that now individual soldiers react, spot and fire on targets separately. Somehow in doing so I am losing control over pieces of the battle and I have to take that into account when issuing orders. Prior I told a squad what to shoot at and the whole squad did so. Now that may not be the case. The TAC AI takes over a significant portion of what I used to have absolute control over. In a sense I feel like a squad commander. I tell the squad, "MG over there, suppressive fire!!!" In Cmx1 they did what they were told (assuming they weren't cowering etc). In CMx2 I feel like I get a range of reactions from "Yes Sarge, but I need to reload" to "where? I don't see nothin" and sometimes - "screw that there is a guy with an MP 50 feet away!!!" I think perhaps it is the loss of absolute control that has changed the game for me.

Figured I'd launch a discussion NOT about the upgrades, or MP lobby or the stupid friggin Vista patch. In another thread WriterJWA had noted I thought it an interesting topic (and not at all offensive). It actually got me thinking about how much of my gaming perspective for a tactical WW2 game is based originally on SL/ASL. The more I thought about that though I was wondering how much of that is still relevant. CMx1 was certainly for me almost a direct leap. Even the 3 stooges running around looked like the 3 man squad counters versus the 2 man team counters etc. It was a very easy visual transition. The options seemed more streamlined, but the game engine handled all those ridiculous calculations if i wanted to use some option like dash across a street. And I didn't have to figure out who in my 20 mile radius might be interested and not have some bizarre blog that would make me totally uncomfortable. I'd already had that experience dealing with deadheads. Moving to Cmx2 however feels to me like a different animal. It isn't just a visual thing, to me it feels (yes very subjective and totally vague, I know) very different. I also think I play the game different. I know the AS are still there but I do not play the game as if I am on a game board. (I do not use any grid mods, they ruin the immersion for me.) For years folks have discussed the transition to 1:1 and relative spotting and I have been playing CMSF for quite a while. Perhaps though in the return to WW2 I now have a more familiar environment to compare. I think the new engine has gone beyond the obvious and created a really subtle far reaching difference that fundamentally has shifted the game. I realize I am not being very concrete here which is why I figured to open the thread. Am I the only person who feels like there is a significant break in CMx2 with it's past legacy? I am talking about beyond the obvious stuff. Writer JMA I know you said these guys tend to just lurk around the forum, but I'd genuinely like to hear their perspective. I obviously have a very subjective sense about how I view the game and I do have a legacy going back to SL/ASL. Yet I also feel Cmx2 is moving beyond that. I don't think it is a question of MP lobbys and what not. I for one would welcome a multiplayer team game with FOW all the way around so you weren't sure even what the guy on your side was doing. Whether that is something BF prioritizes however is up to them. It's enough that they know there is interest. If they feel they can do it and it is appropriate given their other priorites cool. If not, I am still far too busy playing CM to worry about what it isn't.