sburke

That one begins to make me doubt the source. I find it really hard to believe that the Panther was this hardened fighting vehicle whose engine that could catch fire on it's own initially with no help from artillery was now proof against rounds exploding on the deck. Track damage as well seems to be somehow impossible to this guy? I am not sure I can buy this as an unquestionably valid source. If this is the one source we are gonna use to countermand a lot of what else has been said about armor and artillery effects I am gonna have to take this one with some salt.

yep and they can go back to just being creeped out by us. Wait was that my outside voice?

We quickly spotted a Sherman tank. Our 88mm gun commenced firing and the tank was soon knocked out. . After proceeding a little further, one of our accompanying tanks asked about our position. It was then that I suddenly realized that my map of the town had disappeared. Just then another Sherman appeared so I ordered my men to shoot. Nothing !!! The gun didn't work, what could we do ? I ordered the other tanks to slow down and cover me, but to keep on firing like crazy. And than I found out that my map, which was in a thin plastic sheet, had slipped under the barrel when the gun recoiled during our last shot. When gun sprang forward again, the plastic sheet blocked the electrical contact of the firing mechanism. Even the emergency-firing system failed so our main weapon was useless !!! Our 88 was gone !!! Now what ? How long would it take to get the gun working again ? The tremendous force holding the gun in place made it impossible to get plastic map away from where it was stuck. Maybe by pushing the gun against a firm object, the plastic sheet could be pulled loose. Well, to make a long story short, a few farmhouses in Kommerscheidt came tumbling down. I simply drove straight through a few buildings, but even that didn't work. And then I found what I was looking for in the middle of a field. It was a giant tree !!! If this wouldn't work, nothing would work but it finally did although it took awhile. We pushed and we pushed and the tree kept bending to the ground. And just when we thought that even this attempt was in vain, I finally managed to pry the plastic sheet loose. So we put the gear in reverse again to back away from the tree. Our vehicle lunged back quickly and then the rear end slid into a large manure-pit !!! The guys came flying out of the tank in an instant. it was a stinky business !!! I can tell you, it really was a complete disaster !!!

Was that a range issue or firepower? As far as I understand it the range of the German 50 mm was pretty short (568 yards compared to the US 60 mms 1,935 yards).

Farmville, trying to rebuild the barn he destroyed while trying to program fire.

note your other team in that bunker is probably stuck there for the duration as well. BFC is looking at that one. As to why your squad got split, I expect the bunker wasn't capable of holding all of them and that once the turn started they defaulted to where they would have been during initial scenario creation prior to set up. Unfortunate but it may have been remedied by simply splitting the squad initially and only placing a team in the bunker. One of those, if you know about it, fine, if you don't you are buggered.

Hard to tell with you guys, and that's Mr Spork. Live long and uhh .. err.. something anyway.

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=1534

there is a sound mod with it :-D

Hey, can we get one of the custodians in here please? Somebody left the door to the Peng thread open again, and for christ's sake bring a mop.... oh gawd that's just disgusting...

Yeah really finally something new on this ongoing debate, a barker competition!!! I need to grab a beer, some chips and a good seat! C'mon Squatdog, you need to give this some serious focus. A one liner isn't going to cut it, though it's a good start.

I went out and built one for the game..hey I was due anyway and the laptop motherboard fried right as I bought the game. Running windows 7 64 bit AMD Phenom II x4 965 ATI HD 5700 series 1gb mem 6gb Ram And I just hit the wall in my Huertgen map as I added the trees...lots of trees. Friggin forest full of trees. I edited the map to just have the forests outlined and can reopen the map now in 3d view. My map elevations vary from 200-460, pretty rugged terrain. I am gonna start back on adding buildings and see how far I can go continuing to work on the full 3.2x4 km map. Interesting thing is the file size is no reflection of the map being rendered in 3d. I have larger versions of this same map that I can still open, but they don't have any trees. My first graphics memory notification suggested turning off anti aliasing (already off) lowering my resolution (already at lowest) and setting 3d texture quality to fastest. I did that but it keeps returning to fast. However I was able to get to 93 percent on the 3d rendering before it crapped out (before that I could only get to about 60). The actual battle maps would be a smaller piece of this, maybe about half. Still a pretty large map, but in doing so I would probably be eliminating a good portion of the Kall gorge. Kind of takes away the dramatic effect. Even then I think a battalion plus battle isn't going to perform well. Still it is fun just to look at the map and see an actual 3d rendering pretty close to scale. Man I'd have hated to be a GI in the Huertgen. Normandy was probably a fond memory.

Was that the origin of the NRA slogan - "Guns don't kill people, artillery kills people"?

Unfortunately short of playing scenarios without them I don't think there is any easy answer. Am in a PBEM right now of Die Ammis Kommen and for almost the entire 1st 30 minutes it seemed there was always something falling. My opponent probably felt to some degree the same about mine. Unfortunately I am attacking and he knows pretty well where. I have tried a few things like displacing when on defense whenever I had to reveal a unit, but once the stuff starts raining down, if you are under it, you are in for it. Spreading out is probably the single most important thing, it takes a lot more artillery to degrade your force if they are not bunched up.

Sorry Squatdog, but this is funny as all hell. Nothing wrong with being able to laugh even if it is at yourself. Heck I do it all the time.

So you got your medical marijuana card too eh?

The only official word I know is BFC is quite pleased with their sales. That could mean 25k or 250k for all I know.

Don't be so sure about that...

LOL c'mon isn't that a bit of a double standard? Germany took 2 years to produce the Panther and it was an absolute necessity that they come up with a way to handle Russian armor. The US debuted the first Pershing less than two years after encountering the Tiger and didn't actually need it to defeat Germany. As I'd noted in August/Sept 1944 it looked like the war would be over before Christmas, yet you cite the German response as better? Something isn't jiving here. The US didn't really need it but produced it faster, Germany did need it and produced it slower, yet it is the US we are faulting? The allies also had stopgaps in the M10 and later in the Hellcat as well as 76mm and 17 pdr Sherman variants. All arguably more effective than turretless vehicles, though I do admit to a softspot for the StuG. Don't ask why, I have no idea.

Thanks akd. I wouldn't have even thought to consider the effect of attaching them directly to an Infantry platoon or even a company. I have a lot to learn before I consider trying to create a scenario. I'll stick with doing maps, that's hard enough.

The Americans weren't the only ones to be slow about upgrading their armor when faced with superior enemy vehicles. The German Army first encountered the T34 in June 1941. It took until March 1942 before a 75 mm Pz IV would see production. While the Sherman was definitely at a disadvantage relative to the Tiger and Panther, it wasn't an insurmountable issue and the fact that the German Army essentially collapsed in the West in August 1944 would further have delayed the impetus to deploy something better. The Pershing saw it's debut in January 1945, but again any further demand for large scale deployment faded rather quickly. For Germany however it was clear that things were not going well rather early and the German army could only count on tactically out fighting the Russian for so long. Retooling factories and deploying new armor to Europe would be an intensive process (as JonS had pointed out to me previously :-P ) and considering the state of the German Army, whether it could be done quickly enough to alter conditions in Europe was questionable.

LOL that wasn't me! I don't know squat about the fighting at port Stanley other than maybe one book that mostly concentrated on the naval/air power engagement. I just finished Clay Pigeons of St Lo however and in that I think there were 2 incidents in the entire book on HTH fighting. One where a captured American FO kills a German captor with a knife to escape (not exactly the kind of situation we are looking to have CMBN represent) and the second where the troops have a rumor that a Sgt killed a German with his bare hands. The Sgt himself says no, he used a grenade. That is all for 30 days of continuous hard fighting in the struggle to take St Lo. Normandie front with a lot of first person perspective from the 352nd ID is similar. I don't think I read even one incident of anyone doing HTH combat. Personally I think we are getting into more a situation where in CMBN we have a lot more close quarters fighting than you would see historically just as we accept casualty levels much higher than normal because it is a game you are out to win. Our game behavior becomes divorced from reality and causes us to look for features in CMBN that conform to our game behavior not actual combat behavior. That isn't an argument for or against having the feature but more a reflection that the discussion we are having about how often or not HTH fighting would occur in real life has little to do with the context of the game feature request.

How did you figure out my plan? I really need to work on Opsec.

I vote against most things done for "playability" unless it is specifically to make the AI a functional competitor. I realize the sheer numbers who only play against the AI are BFCs primary user base. If houses really wouldn't stop rounds from the weapons of the day and soldiers shied away from using unfortified houses as fighting positions, then it's okay by me if they leave it that way. What would be nice is if there were some type of addition you could do that would fortfiy a house. Say under fortifications you could purchase an item that would add to the defensive value or if there were a specific building type. That would probably make everyone a little happier. It will be interesting as to how we address this in time for the Eastern front.

The thread is still showing there. Great stuff, thanks!