Solicitor

Very nice. (Although I gotta observe that the odds of an infantry captain being a Ritterkreuzträger were about nil)

Historically the step-off line for an attack frequently was under enemy fire. WWII reality.

...which means I'll NEVER get my Marines vs Japanese.

"The thing about this game is you never really know the condition of the tank or the crew. The game does not show you the yellow base for immobilized vehicles for your enemy's vehicles. Nor does it show the damage to systems list either. Don't get me wrong it is amazing that this Sherman survived all this but I doubt it is good working order. Once the game is over I think you get more information about enemy vehicle condition. What did the end of game screen tell you? Almost all the games I have played I have had no idea what kind of shape my enemy vehicles or soldiers are in. It is part of the beauty of this game. During the battle you can make some suppositions but you cannot really be sure." The same goes for the Tac AI, and you've probably seen the effect in action. Example from Saturday: One of my Cromwells penetrated and knocked out a PzJg IV with its first round. I the godlike Player-General knew this, because I had infantry within 30 meters of the target and thus the PzJg registered as 'knocked out' almost immediately. But my tanks 800m away didn't know this (when viewed from 'their' perspective the PzJg still had an active icon) and so continued to pump shells into the wreck until it finally started to burn.

Correct. The model simply calculates LOF from a point in space, which is as closely as I can tell the center of the turret at the elevation of the trunnions.

The fire-support panel only gives very qualitative parameters for these: "light", "heavy", "harassing", "long", "short" etc. Has anyone worked out what this really translates to in terms of clock time and number of rounds? After all, ammo is limited and I'd like to have some idea what % of my fire support I'm about to expend.

"Any vehicle equipped with a radio should work if parked within 2 action spots. The vehicle need not be occupied." Nope, didn't work. So instead, my mortar team trying to reach a direct-fire position got hosed by an MG42. Grrr!

"I've seen this behaviour with American and German (no CW yet)" Just this weekend my Polish Cromwells had a jolly old time trying to sharpshoot individual Jerries with their 75s. Fortunately for me this was in the pursuit/mopup phase of a total victory and not part of a campaign.

To do 101st helmets in Normandy you really need the white "card suit" markers on the sides (diamond, 501st PIR, heart, 502nd, spade, 506th, club, 327th GIR).

An anachronism in summer '44. The Wehrmacht got rid of the tricolor decals in '41 and phased out the eagle decals a year or so later. The Waffen-SS had already ditched theirs by Barbarossa (over 90% of SS decals on helmets on the collector market are fake). On older helmets, those decals which hadn't simply worn off were usually covered up when re-painted, which most helmets were (even on those which weren't given camo jobs, the original gloss paint was redone in matte).

OK, I've downloaded the new CW demo and started to set up the Brit/Polish scenario. But...aaack! The Brits' heavy mortar section reports to the Mortar Platoon HQ (off-map, red dot), which reports to the Support Coy HQ (also off-map)- and has *NO* C2 contact with anyone at all (no voice/visual icons in the panel)- not even when I place A Coy HQ right beside them! Is this a special mortar team recruited from deaf and blind men? How the heck does one handle heavy mortars who report to a nonexistent chain of command? (No, you don't drag 4-inchers around as direct-fire weapons).

This I suppose really is sort of a CMx1 comment, but it's too late for that <g>, and Normandy is presumably in the oven somewhere. CMx1 crews universally are pistol-armed. Buth this doesn't square with reality: Anglo/American vehicle crews were issued Thompsons/Stens/Grease Guns; and the M1 Carbine was pretty much invented to give artillerymen more personal firepower than a mere sidearm. I believe Panzers had one or more MP38/40s on board as well. I realize that BFC was concerned about the gamey tactic of using crews as miniature infantry squads. But surely gaminess ought to be countered by more, not less, realism. One could for example assign a higher VP cost to crew casualties; or give crews a significant morale penalty (for example, any bailed-out crew is automatically deemed "rattled")- or, appropriately consider a crew green/conscript, since they aren't trained infantry (assuming the engine allows a differentiation- it *appears* to me that from the game's point of view, a Crew is a brand-new unit automatically spawned whenever a vehicle/gun is KO'd.)

<quote>But, the Walther is a double action whereas the Browning is a single action. Even though I consider the Browning HP model 35 to be a superior pistol (and one of the original benchmark pistols, much like Colt's 1911 in .45) if you're looking at it from sheer "throw a ton of lead into the air" viewpoint, then the Walther -or any double action pistol- would have more FP than the Browning.</quote> Not so. The Browning HP and M1911 are only "single-action" before firing: with each round the hammer is recocked by the recoiling slide. In fact, chambering the first round from a new mag also cocks the hammer, it has to be let down to "safe" manually. The ROF is no less than a Walther. And, of course, the .45 has considerably more stopping power than a 9mm.

Ya know, given CMx1's limited graphics demands by modern standards, it's probably easier and cheaper just to pick up an older ATI card from the closeout shop. You can even get one for a PCI slot so you don't have to pull your hotstuff DX10 card.

NVidia is in the *universal* PC hardware market, with attendant software. It's NVidia's job (if they have any sense) to make sure that their products are compatible with the PC world. CMx1 is not by any means the only app that doesn't work with Vista/NVidia drivers, and if NVidia doesn't get their act together ATI is going to eat their lunch. Microsoft, like it or not, defines a programming-environment standard. Everybody else has to conform to it. BFC does, just like every other developer. NVidia is the outlier here.