Childress

Go ahead, laugh yourself silly. What other WW2 movie showed NKVD/Smersh 'barrier troops' in action?

Enemy at the Gates was good, imho. At least, entertaining. The Stalingrad youtube clip shows a Soviet soldier crossing himself. An unthinkable detail under the Soviet regime.

Same here. But then they can't recycle existing models.

Who cares? The Bad guys against the Worse guys! That's what we want.

IIRC, there were moans- in CMBB- over outgunned tanks reversing too quickly. So, perhaps in CM2, BF 'sinned' too much in the opposite direction with the goal of not taking control out of the player's hand.

BF has mentioned that they intend giving more love to buildings in future releases. Currently a floor occupies an entire action square within a single square structure. If you blow out a floor with HE the entire wall on that level turns into a gaping hole. It wouldn't be surprising if they divided up the floor into several lateral divisions within the AS. Which alleviates the problem.

A skirmish line if it gets implemented would probably be a rough and ready approximation- its use being highly modified by terrain. Also anecdotes referring to this formation in WW2 are rather sparse. The current Hunt command is a not an unreasonable facsimile. And I don't think the game really requires an Ambush command. Cover-arc endowed troops that are Hiding just need to 'peek' more effectively.

From some website: Skirmish Line is a battle formation used by motorized rifle squads, platoons, and companies during an advance. In such a formation, troops are deployed in a single line along the front at intervals of 6–8 m (eight to 12 paces). An individual may move slightly forward or to the side to improve his fire position or to better adapt himself to the terrain, as long as he neither breaks the general continuity of the formation’s front nor hinders his neighbors. First used in the second half of the 19th century, the skirmish line appeared in response to the widespread use of rifled weapons, against which troops in columns sustained heavy losses. Sometimes referred to Line Abreast which is actually more of a nautical term. If SL on the squad level ever sees the light of day in CM one suspects it will restricted to battle tested troops.

Agree with Womble and Emrys. They gotta to be vary careful introducing more commands. But Steve has hinted at a couple of potential ones: Ambush and Skirmish Line. They can make way for these by eliminating the baffling Hide Vehicle command which, in biology terms, persists as a rudimentary or degenerate structure.

You can't go wrong with Atkinson, he's masterful writer. Not much groggy stuff in there, however.

If your looking for a riveting read Guy Sajer's The Forgotten Soldier in which the author, a young Alsatian, joins the Grossdeutschland Division in Russia, is unsurpassed, imo. Arguably the greatest book to emerge from the war that hasn't been turned into a film. Caution: due to a spate of historical inaccuracies, the accuracy and authenticity of Sajer's autobiographical work has been questioned, with proponents on both sides. http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Soldier-CASSELL-MILITARY-PAPERBACKS-ebook/dp/B005M3U2CG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385928780&sr=1-1&keywords=forgotten+soldier Sajer is still alive and working as a cartononist in Paris.

Naturally curved roads would impact the way you play? Why?

Great minds think alike. CM games (particularly CMSF) would enhance their sim cred with more surrender events- like unhorsed tank crews, for example. An additional causative factor may be the excessive resilience of the troops which some posters allege. But coding a plausible surrender algorithm gotta be hard , it's so... situational.

Battlefront is da bomb.

That's what they're sayin'. Personally I'm not interested in the concluding months of the Italian campaign. The really meaningful action was, at this stage, taking place elsewhere. I wish BF would back up in time and issue a Tunisia module- NOT a new game. I'd buy that one. CMFI: Gothic Line, no.

Speaking of the upcoming Huertgen, I'm requesting a new feature, or rather, a limitation. I'm reading an account of this miserable campaign (fun factor: probably low) and a major headache- on both sides- was deploying mortars under the heavy forest canopy. It was not uncommon to preemptively bombard scattered clearings in which these weapons were likely to set up. Therefore, I propose the restriction that mortars should be prohibited in deploying in Heavy Forest tiles.

'Fire' is on the to-do list. But the implementation is considerably more daunting in CM2. First, the underlying terrain is several magnitudes more complex. And fire needs to 'spread' - or not- modified by the weather, the time of year, the theater and wind. And units will need additional coding to know they need to abandon a burning structure. In CM1 building damage was explicitly depicted with incremental '*' or '**' symbols. One suspects this on-map info will return with CM3. However it turns out, BF won't go about it in a half-*ssed manner. You can take that to the bank.

Take your time, Phil. It's still functional. And not a big deal.

Good luck, Phil. Especially when CM gets around to the Huertgen Forest: screenshot

Screenie of Dense Fog from CMFI 1.12. Well, it does appear 'denser'. image hosting

Is your anti-virus Avast?

This just may be the revenge of Karma for all the mockery we dumped on the Norton loyalists.

Avast is the number one Anti-Virus worldwide by users. You don't want to get on their bad side.

That worked. But the CMFI patch still won't download, even with Avast disabled.

Are we all using Avast?