BarbarossaDSS

Good points Hitori: Robert McNamara, one of the minds who engineered the fire bombing of Tokyo and latter the defense sec during Vietnam under Johnson, said had the allies lost WWII, he would have gone up on war crime charges for what he did. Bombing of civilians is one of the most terrible side products of war. "Shock and Awe" doesn't ever work to win a war. And very rarely does it demoralize a people into surrender. It just kills innocents.

You bring up good points and to refer to your comment that was my point to some degree. I was attempting to illustrate that not all German soldiers were Nazis, and of course they don't have to be to do terrible things. The fact that an army doesn't have to be 100% made up of politically indoctrinated fanatics to do monstrous things to me is worse. To some German soldiers it sounded like fighting under Hitler was no different to a US GI fighting under Pres. Bush. Certainly that was partly a result of years of German military breeding towards the tradition to be loyal and apolitical. But dictatorship is one thing, but I see the grounding point that enabled the war is pride. And that was harness by nationalism. Without nationalism on the side of the Germans I don't think Hitler would have had any power base. But anyway, thank you guys for sharing your stories.

Its full title is: "Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier, 1936 - 1949" by Siegfried Knappe with Ted Brusaw Knappe was the soldier and Brusaw the writer

I thought the Devil was in the bottle? At any rate that's why when I write I generally use sci-fiction so I can make up history. Otherwise I could spend a lifetime doing research and still not get it right for some people.

I'd have to dig up my old research papers but as I remember only around 3% of the regular Heer were Nazi party members. But don't quote me on that but it still was a very low number. If anyone is looking for a good read, check out "Soldat" about a german officer who fights in almost every campaign during the war, all the way to the end in Hilter's bunker. It gave me a very different perspective on the war from the german side.

I try not to look at the world in terms of black and white. While I certainly wont ever honor Hilter, but the average german soldier was just a man fighting for his nation. Not to different from the allied nations in my eyes. To ignore their stories, chalk them up as evil monsters is to close your eyes to the possibity that such a thing could happen again in any other nation. "So as through a glass, and darkly The age long strife I see Where I fought in many guises, Many names, -- but always me." ~Patton

I know the germans used kill rings, did any other nations do this as well?

email sent to you gunner

I don't consider the "round" system a feature in CM... It’s the core of the game. The "we go" principal is genius and if you remove that, it’s something completely different. And honestly I've found reality in terms of combat, from reading, my friends in Iraq, and war games I've been in to generally be a lot of hurry up and wait. It’s more slow and tedious than fast and mercilessly if it is combat you're referring to. But I doubt many players would really want to play a “true” war game. If you want a realistic game then you’d have some of your soldiers ignore your orders to drag away a wounded comrade. You’d spend most of your mission doing long patrols and see no action. Elements like that aren’t usually in war games because generally they take away from the “fun.” That is the truth. If they wanted it to be realistic they’d used only first person view, and you would more often than not just get to order your Lieutenants around and tell them what to do in general terms. Not be on the radio and every 30 seconds give orders like: “Go here, and then do this" - "Now move here." - "Ok, now turn around there" - "Open fire then crouch up the ridge line stay low.” I don’t know if any of you have played paintball on a large scale but if you have and have had 100+ people under your command you must have seen how quickly things fall apart once the enemy comes in. Even with radios. You can’t micromanage people because A) There’s never enough time they wont listen to you anyway C) it makes it look like you don’t trust their own skills. Real people are not robots. Now if you played a RTS mission and only allowing yourself say 10 click or “orders” per unit. That would be an interesting test of your forethought ability, rather than raw reaction skills. Bottom line is the games that sell the best, make the most people happy. So if you have a pause feature in, then more people are happy. Don’t use if you don’t want to. But don’t hate on other people for wanting to have a different experience than you. [ September 24, 2006, 06:48 AM: Message edited by: BarbarossaDSS ]

under represented is right. I look forward to the modders who will do the fictional campaigns as well. Operation Sealion anyone?

Guess my 1 gig processor is starting to get dated.... :-P

Nice looking screenshot. I was driven nuts on many occasions when no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get a squad to line up along a hedgerow or fit inside a building completely. There was always one guy that sat out in the open and got popped from the first wave of gunfire. Certainly I had so exciting moments in GI combat, in mostly defense battles. When I did when in some of the attacks I was never sure exactly why. Part of this I again sense was do to the lack of visual reality. I could not see the direct effect of my actions with clarity. In CM I typically and look at an ARR of a game and say ah yes, it was that MG company that finally broke the British attack… etc. In GI I had a harder time doing that. It was as if I could not sense the battle rhythm taking place and that did not turn me onto the game that much. Perhaps this is more “realistic” to actual combat but hey we are playing games still. And I beat the campaign in 5 or so missions. That was a bummer as well. I tried out the demo of squad assault second wave, it seemed more refined but it didn’t stick with me.

Well ToW isn't Combat Misson. So its not like its not gone, it never was there. Now I enjoy some RTS like Dawn of War but yes they are twich gamers paradise and don't always lend themselves to deeper strat. But I think what coudl work for ToW is the pace of the game. Dawn of War has no real scale in a sense, so you can have troops running at each other attacking enemies that in the real world would only be a few feet away. But if ToW has a more accurate scale, then you will have much more time to give out orders as it takes a more realistic time for infantry to cross a field and such. That I think is were a game such as this can still have the intensity of RTS but also the tactics of a wargame.

Not a stupid question I think. Certainly there are two limits that I can see: the total number of units the engine is capable of handling and the number of units the game controls make possible. In CM series you certainly could have whole regiments in there if you were willing to take the time to figure out all the orders for those dozens of units. There really wasn't a system in place to handle mass orders and Company HQs and Battalion HQs didn't several a real purpose besides ralling routed troops or replacing inept commanders. GI Combat was more squad to platoon level. But this was a result of the engine I feel and design. The maps were small so you couldn't fit many troops on there anyway. ToW to me looks more along the Platoon / Company level. Larger scale maps. But I'm just talking about of my butt at this point. Just a guess.

Nice looking piece. I got parts of a Kar 98K myself from Luffwaffe unit. Certainly the tanks look terrific. I like having the ability to play with early war tanks, such as the polish 7TP and french Hotchkis and such.

Hello ToW community. I'm been playing all the combat missions games for past 6 years. I used to compete at the T-House alot and I'm looking forward to Theater of War giving me the RTS WWII experience I've been looking for, one of more on the historically correct side of games. I was very disappointed in GI Combat, the pacing perhaps might have been about right in terms of how fast infantry move in combat but it just seemed so slow paced. The tank path finding was a killer. And infantry could die from apparently random shots. The trouble I think going to full 3D is players need a visual explanation of events. For example, in combat mission if you had a squad in a woods “area” and one trooper suddenly died from fire you'd say that's just bad luck. But at least for me when I was play GI Combat and a guy died from fire coming through a hedgerow I was said "How can they see me?" The visual reality did not always match up with the game play reality which then hurt my confidence in the game. Was it luck? Was it a bug? I hope TOW doesn't have a similar issue with this, but perhaps I am an oddity in that sensation. I'm definably excited about getting to play in the Polish and France campaigns, which weren't available in the combat mission series but I was wondering what about other campaigns like Norway? Or Finland? Greece and Italy would be great to while you are at it! Ah perhaps for TOW 2 or an expansion back but certainly I look forward to playing the earlier campaigns.