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Glukx Ouglouk

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Posts posted by Glukx Ouglouk

  1. You'll get a much quicker answer by actually contacting BFC's support (after all, it's their job to help you with those issues) rather than complaining here... AFAIK, BFC are usually quick to answer support requests. If your key doesn't work for some reason, they're the only ones who can issue you a new key, for instance...

    As for the DRMs... IMO, any kind of DRM is always a big pain in the ass at one point or another, and the ones used by BFC aren't much worse than many others on the market. I hate DRMs in general, but sadly, very few game publishers are willing to avoid them, so I wouldn't hold it against BFC specifically.

  2. One thing that helps to get used to the alt file is remembering that the letter usually relates more directly to the action.

    Most are obvious:

    F for Fast

    Q for Quick

    Some are not so obvious, but are easy to remember once you get a mnemonic:

    O for Orient (i.e. Face)

    Not to mention that it's easy to figure out mnemonics that work better for you and change the keys used if you don't like the default. For instance, I use K for Smoke, because it somehow makes sense for me.

    The "alternative" keys are actually the "sane" keys. Relative key mapping is some of the most ass-backwards way of controlling a game I have *ever* seen (in about 20 years of gaming.) And it's default?!?

    I couldn't agree more. The relative shortcuts aren't just hard to remember (you need to remember the position of the buttons, instead of remembering pretty simple mnemonics) , they also mean that you have to know in which tab you are, and use another shortcut to change tab if needed, so they waste your time... Relative keyboard shortcuts just don't make any sense when you can avoid them.

  3. The 88 mm Flak 36 isn't "near to an actual AA gun", it's an actual AA gun. And a quad barreled AA gun isn't any more "traditional looking" than any other AA gun - in fact, the German light/medium AA guns were all single barreled at the start of the war, and they only started to introduce a quad 20 mm gun in late 1940.

    Anyway, German light/medium AA guns (20 & 37 mm) aren't in the game - I hope that we'll get them in a later modules (the Market Garden one, or the final "odds & sods" one)...

  4. Incorrect, Brits should try and engage at ranges from 500.000000000000000000000000000000000001 - 503m.

    Or more correctly, they should engage at a range comprised within the ]500 m, 503 m] interval.

    Your notation is incorrect, because you effectively say that a range of 500.0000000000000000000000000000000000009 m would be too short, which is wrong. We have to :

    - either assume that any distance strictly longer than 500 m is sufficient, in which case a distance of 500.0000000000000000000000000000000000009 m is sufficient;

    - or consider that there is some margin for error, but then, that margin is going to be higher than 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001 m (we can expect at least a few millimeters) and the minimal safe distance would be something like 500.005 m (assuming a 5 mm error margin, which seems reasonable enough).

    Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to editing some awfully misguided Wikipedia articles about World War II, which don't mention the importance of the British 3 m range advantage in rifle fire and its impact on the tactics they used.

    edit: Funnily enough, I had to look up Wikipedia to write that. :D

  5. The main difference would be more frequent re-loads due to a 20 round magazine on the ZB series vs 30 round on the Bren, the ammo used and also some differences in appearance.

    The ammo difference would depend on the exact version used for the ZB series, so it would be a bit of a mess to implement (unless there are good sources on which exact versions found their way to Afghanistan - I honestly have no idea). The relatively small difference in magazine capacity would probably make a very small difference on gameplay at CM's scale, which is why I said they would be "pretty much" the same thing - I do agree that it would add some different flavor to the game and would be nice to have, I just don't think the difference was big enough for the developers to bother...

  6. According to Wikipedia, there were DDs at Juno, though not as many as planned :

    On the Canadian Juno Beach, The Fort Garry Horse and the 1st Hussars were equipped with DDs, but only those of the 1st Hussars could be launched. They were assigned to the 7th Canadian Brigade, at the western end of the beach. Some of the tanks were launched at 4,000 yards (3,658 m) and some at 800 yards (700 m); twenty-one out of twenty-nine tanks reached the beach. The 8th Canadian Brigade, at the eastern end of the beach, was forced to land without DD tanks because of rougher seas. They suffered heavy initial casualties, but were still able to make good progress.

    Of course, Wikipedia isn't exactly an authoritative source, and i guess that those who are more knowledgeable will chime in with some good sources to check...

    edit : The First Hussars' website mentions DD tanks used on D-Day on its history page.

  7. Cant agree more on the ZB26. This remarkable light CZ machinegun was very popular since WW2 in Asia. But maybe the game designer thought Bren is enough for the Mujahideen. This also brought many realistic case of low ammo problem for the Muj, because of different 7.62 mm balls.

    I don't know which one was most commonly used by the Mujahideen, but I wanted to point out that the Bren and the ZB26 would be pretty much the same thing in game terms, since the Bren was a license-built ZB26 with some minor modifications to fit British requirements... There were some differences, but I don't see how they would change anything at CM:A's scale, except for the type of ammunition used.

    And even in terms of ammunition used, it would depend on which exact variants found their way into Afghanistan: the Bren was originally produced to use British .303 but was later converted to use Nato 7.62 ammo (as the Bren L4); the ZB26 used the German 7.92 ammo, but there were export variants using other calibers too. To make matters worse, there were other variants too: the ZB30 (a ZB26 with some improvements) and the ZB39 (based on the Bren, but offered for export by the Czech after WW2)... And of course, a Pakistani copy may not even fit any of the "official" versions anyway, if it was a local variant.

  8. huh? I dont understand. A single German soldier with bad teeth qualifies to be called vampire?

    Especially if you consider that vampires should actually be more likely to have good teeth, considering that there should be a rather strong selective pressure on vampires with bad teeth, because of the important role played by vampires' teeth in their habit of feeding on live humans. Though maybe that's the reason why the Germans lost the war: their vampire corps was plagued by poor teeth conditions and, as a consequence, were at a disadvantage against US vampire GIs, benefiting from superior dental hygiene standards? Does anyone have good sources for evolutionary biology studies of vampires' teeth?

    Of course, that still leaves out the question of the contribution of nazi dinosaurs to the war - but this discussion is already a step in the right direction to understand the factors behind World War II.

  9. I recall in the early '60s the SAO had the slogan, "The Mediterranean runs through France as the Seine runs through Paris." Their view was that Algeria was an integral part of France.

    Michael

    Yep, Algeria was the exception (since, administratively speaking, it wasn't a mere colony or protectorate), and its independence was a sore point even for some who had come to reluctantly accept the rest of the decolonization (hence the SAO and all).

    That's also why conscripts served in the Algeria war (since it officially wasn't a colonial war, but basically a police operation on French soil...), and why there was a war to begin with (compared to Tunisia and the French part of Morocco, which got their independent in the mid-50's without such a bloodshed). Of course, there were also some more down-to-earth reasons for refusing Algeria's independence (namely, the discovery of important oil reserves in in the mid 50's).

    That being said, it didn't make any difference when it came to 'native' Algerians serving in the military - they could only serve in colonial units, got an lower pay than French soldiers, and so on. Basically, Algeria was considered an integral part of the French territory, but the majority of its population were subject to the same discriminations as in colonies or protectorates, so Algeria's particular status didn't actually matter much for discussions about the composition of the Free French Forces...

  10. I'm doubtful about that, the colonies were supposed to be (almost) fully a part of the French Republic after all (and even today all Euro banknotes include the map of Europe plus French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Reunion - which are nowhere near Europe).

    I don't know if we can say that the colonies were supposed to be part of the Republic - I believe the situation was more ambivalent than that. The colonies certainly belonged to the French Republic, but they had a different administrative organization (except Algeria, which was organized in departments) and weren't really fully part of the French territory (except, again, Algeria). That's why, for instance, conscripts couldn't be used during the Indochina war, because they couldn't be sent to serve abroad, even though Indochina was a French colony. Of course, there's also the matter of "indigenous people" not being French citizens (even in Algeria), so it could always be said that they weren't really French anyway, even if their territory had been considered fully French...

    As for today's overseas departments (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion and, since March of this year, Mayotte), they're a whole different kettle of fish, because they are part of the French territory in every way (administratively and politically speaking) and the people there get the French citizenship the same way as in mainland France (and they don't always take it too kindly if you somehow imply that you aren't "in France" when you're on their island... :D).

    The 'real' modern equivalent to the status of the colonies back then would be the overseas communities (formerly known as overseas territories): French Polynesia, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and Wallis and Futuna. Those have a specific status and specific political systems compared to 'normal' parts of France.

  11. About the pensions frozen in 1959: it actually took until 2002 (!) to finally raise them, after the French State had been condemned by an administrative court (which ruled that the 1959 law was discriminatory, based on the European Declaration of Human Rights), and even then, our 'wonderful' government thought that it could just make the pensions 'equivalent' based on the local standards of living, rather than actually making them equal... It's only in 2007 that the pensions were finally made equal (probably because the 2002 law would have been found illegal one day or another anyway - not to mention that the movie Indigènes had helped raise awareness on this issue).

    Of course, there would also be tons of things to say about how the harkis were treated after the Algerian war, but that may be even more depressing...

  12. Wasn't there a conversation earlier about modern Euro armies and rifle grenades? From the conversation it seemed they were in the inventory, officers got a little instruction (maybe), but never got any training. Like those stielgranates slid onto the muzzle end of German anti-tank guns, they were considered a catastrophic accident waiting to happen. :rolleyes:

    I know that rifle grenades are still in active use in the French army at least and are actually used in combat. I don't know about other armies - but basically, I think it boils down to either using rifle grenades or under-barrel grenade launchers, each with their pros and cons, with most armies going with the under-barrel launchers nowadays.

  13. Wiki says about 3600 of the division's troops were colonials and that some of the first to enter Paris were with a regiment from Chad.

    The RMT (Régiment de Marche du Tchad - the regiment from Chad you are referring to) wouldn't have included any black soldiers at the time. The other colonial troops in the division at the time were from North Africa, and included both Europeans and North Africans. So there were colonials in the 2e DB, but no black Africans.

    An european film about nort african's troops in WW2...Greetings!

    Indigènes (Days Of Glory for the US release) isn't the most historically accurate of movies, but it's still very much worth watching - and it's a good reminder of the sacrifices of French colonial troops, and of how little they got in return for their efforts... It also helped raise again the issues surrounding the pensions of former soldiers from the colonies which had become independent - that there was still a need for that in 2006 is frankly a shame.

  14. Kingdom = CM

    Phylum = CMx2

    Order = WWII

    Family = Western Front

    Genus = Normandy

    Species = v1.00

    That look good?

    Actually, there's one issue: you don't provide a classification level to distinguish the base game and its modules. I think it would make sense to simply add them as subspecies though, which would acknowledge the fact that they can freely interbreed (as in: play a game with content from various modules) while the different versions can't (as in: can't play a H2H game with one player on 1.00 and the other on 1.01), so it makes sense to have them be different species. Hence, I propose:

    Kingdom = CM

    Phylum = CMx2

    Order = WWII

    Family = Western Front

    Genus = Normandy

    Species = v1.00

    Subspecies = Base game

    That being said, it could also be argued that the subspecies level then wouldn't be needed until there are at least two different ones - in other words, until the first module is released - but since we already know roughly what the first module will contain (and can consider it to already exist as a work in progress, even if only in the planning stage), we might as well add it to the classification now.

  15. What?? The vehicle damage/status is in German??? Give me a break ... that needs to be changed. Just a tad hardcore.

    Yep, when you set the game language to 'German', the vehicle status is in German. That's kind of the point of being able to choose the game language, in fact. :D

  16. Ah, understood. In the interests of discovery, I just flopped out a test QB with a bunch of American towed AT assets from Mech Inf and Infantry Battalions, and the TD (towed) battalion. I couldn't tell which vehicles had extra rounds (if any) because the ATGs seem to start with all of it from bearers and truck. I can't see a team of 6 toting 40 76mm rounds and their gun around. Heck, troops don't seem to be able to carry 8 'zook rounds apiece... :) Yet if you unhook the ATG from its truck and plonk it somewhere else in the setup zone, neither the ATG ammo bearers nor the tow vehicle has any ATG rounds in their inventory... And moving the ATG from its start point doesn't seem to abandon any rounds. Them artillerists must be pretty buff.

    During setup, the interface shows the gun as having available all ammo carried by its own crew and by its ammo bearer team, even if the ammo bearers aren't near the gun. During the game, the interface should show as available ammo all rounds carried by the gun crew and by any units close enough to share ammo (including its own ammo bearer team, other guns' ammo bearer teams, and probably also other guns - as long as they are close enough). I think that's what you are seeing - ammo available to the gun, as opposed to ammo carried by the gun's crew only.

    About AP shells against soft targets: AFAIK, anything in the game bigger than a 37 mm gun (for the US) or a 20 mm gun (for the Germans) fires AP shells with a HE filler, but I'm pretty sure that the fuses used should very seriously limit their use against infantry in the open - those shells are likely to bury themselves in the ground before detonating...

  17. [a whole bunch of unreadable ramblings]

    Please do yourself a favor: try to calm down and explain your issues in a way that is actually understandable by a human being.

    I was under the impresstion that the Armored Cars 20mm only fired AP rounds...in essense focus on Anti-Armor use.

    The German armored cars armed with a 20 mm main gun have both HE and AP ammunition, though they carry a majority of AP. (For what it's worth, when playing the Panzer Marsh campaign, I had no problem getting some PSW 234s to fire their main gun on an area fire order. Actually, I got them to empty their HE loads in the recon scenario before realizing that they wouldn't get resupplied later... :D)

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