Narses

I'm using a Gateway 2 Quad CPU Q9300 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM 64bit OS Nvidia 8800GT and I'm having no fps problems so far although I've not gotten past the first mission. I've been mostly dealing with the editors and the mission generator and mostly creating my own small, company sized, combined arms task forces. No roblems running these short 1 mission scenarios. Will get back to the campaign and try and move thru several missions to see if fps degrades.

Easiest for me is to use the mouse wheel. The Enter key will take you to a cdr's view (from the cupola) and then you can pan with the num keys 4 & 6 I believe but I find you can't play well as a tk cdr - too much else going on. In this type game you are more a co cmdr directing various elements of your cmd.

Phil, do you recall where the German campaign ends for "GD" in this game? Just curious. It should probably be around Berezovka when the main part of GD turned around to attack to the southwest (reversing about 10 kms from their march towards Oboyan) in order to assist 3rd Pz Div. This was on 10 July with the fighting around Berezovka ending more or less on the 11th. So "GD" didn't participate at Prokhorovka wher the so-called greatest tank battle ever was fought 11-16 July. It was mainly II SS Pz Korps vs 5th Gds Tank Army (but not entirely). We would need an entirely new game called "Prokhorovka." Soviet military history does not use the same dates as German histories do for Kursk. They consider the dates as 5 Jult thru 23 August as they are counting their offensives after Zitadelle was stopped. And it may be Russian history does not have the same fascination we have with the Prokhorovka battle as it was a defensive victory (or at least the Germans halted operations because of counteroffensives to the north and south and because of the situation in Italy)..

I haven't played the campaigns thru yet so I hesitate to complain. So it seems this game's campaigns are mostly about the initial fight to breakthru the tough multilayered trench lines and dug in Pak's and tanks. I agree that it would have been nice to have a major tank engagement. Maybe an add-on disk. There might've been nearly 5000 kms of trenches and tank ditches but there were major tank clashes.

Thanks for responding on Save & Exit as well as on Mission Name. Your system sounds good. I also generally prefer to setup my own small unit battles. I do the same in CM which I've played and still play.

OK ! Thanks guys. What you do is build your mission in Simple Mission. Final step is "Save and Launch TOW2". The mission goes into the Single Missions under Mission file. Next you bring up your TOW Kursk game and your Simple Editor mission will appear in "Battles" along with those you've made in the Mission Generator. Roll on...........

In Simple Editor I get to the Final Step and the choices are: Save & Exit, Save & Launch Editor and Save & Launch TOW2. What do I use? (I seem to get through all the steps correctly although I'm a bit unsure about Mission Directory Name but it accepts the letters I put in. I just put in ABC for one, DEF for another. Is this OK ? The instructions on that page says letters, symbols and digits are OK.) I have tried both Save & Exit and Save & Launch TOW2. But I can't find my game. Where does it go? I don't see any instructions for the SE under Mission Editor instructions.

No Africa was not installed. I show 89.6GB of free space in C. When the startup icon appears INSTALL is highlighted but not PLAY. Odd thing is that when I access the disk thru My Computer it shows the "1943" icon logo like the shortcut for Kursk but correctly states the disk is TOW2 Africa 1943.

This is why the editors are so important. I have been playing the CM series for years and normally (although some scenarios are excellent) I just edit my own or use the generator (better in CM as you generate both sides and have more flexiblkity). But I use the editors almost exclusively in the 3 TOW's (hee, hee, until I got Vista64!! I'm still still struggling with Vista issues in TOW and TOW Africa).

This happened to me (getting all inf when selecting Tank Bn for both sides) but only the first time I used the MG. Next time and every time thereafter I could select from a variety of tanks and arm vehicles and inf. So far.........

I discovered when I first received my Kursk 1943 dvd that it would not load after selecting "install." The install screen came up but nothing happened when I hit "install." After a few tries I went in and deleted the TOW Kursk Demo. The game dvd then installed & properly loaded when I put it back in the PC's tray. Yesterday, I decided to put TOW Africa back in to see if I could get the editor up by using "run as administratot" as I'm doing on TOW Kursk and once again the install pg for Africa came up but nothing happened when I hit "install." I tried it twice and no go. In fact the PC froze and I had to run Task Mgr to get out - twice. Is there an issue in trying to load 2 TOW games? Or what is going on. I have Vista64 with a Nvidia 8800GT and space left for the game.

Will try that. Danke Herr Knokke. Btw, I had no trouble moving thru and setting up a scenario on "Simple Editor" but when I hit "lSave and Launch" nothing happened. Where does this saved game go so I can launch?

I agree both CMBB and AK are great games and easily played and new missions generated. I still play them and there are several good mods out. In case "Phil" isn't aware there is a Normandy game available also, it was the first in that series of CM. Unfortunately it does not have some of the small tweaks added to CMBB & AK. Btw, CMAK is very nice as it permits you to go from Africa to Sicily and Italy.

GREAT !! I can hardly wait. Appreciate your support.

How do you get the frame rate to display on screen? I had that with Panzer Elite. Maybe still the best tank/panzer game ever but with the OstPak mod that I help work on from 2000 to 2005.

We agree on SH5. What a mess. I'm also back to playing SH3 but I don't have the Grey Wolves mod. Where do I find that?

300,000 civilians labored for months (April thru June) fortifying this area with over 4,200 kilometers of trenches and 500 kilometers of antitank ditches. There were 9 defensive lines (see Glantz pg 66). Tanks were often dug in. 503,663 anti-tank mines were laid and 439,348 anti-personnel mines. The Sovets had a total of 76 inf divisions involved ! The Gernans 28 Inf Div. The trench lines were not linear but snaked around and doubled up to other lines especially on the salient's shoulders where the attack was expected and did come. When you broke through one you might have a kilometer or two open or even 3 - 5 kilometers between major defensive lines so tanks could maneuver around in that space but then there would be another line On 4 May a meeting was held in Munich between Hitler, the General Staff and all the Kursk army and above commanders. During this conference 9th Army's Model showed recently taken aerial photos of the attack sectors showing a huge defensive preparation in depth and strength and said he believed an attack had no real prospects of success and that surprise was totally gone ( Zetterling, Kursk, pg 10). Guderian & Speer agreed while von Manstein said he felt an attack in April would have been a success but that there was not a good chance now. von Kluge (Army Grp Center) and Zeitzler (CofS OKH) remained in favor. The meeting ended without a decision and Hitler even said, "When I think of attacking in the East this year my stomach turns over." Guderian replied, "Then why attack."

I don't see why the Ferdinand/Brummbaer couldn't be added to the editor; certainly not to the base game though. They don't belong in this game as designed and with maps not of the area those machines were deployed in. They were in a diffrent army - 9h Army (Model) not 4th Pz Army (Hoth). But once again in the editor is OK to let you play with them. There were only 90 built and they had not influence here or later deployed in Italy.

You would need all new maps for this as it was in a completely different area of this 43 day battle. You could try going to the old Panzer Elite game that has been extensively modded with new models and skins plus maps. I worked on developing some 40 new East Front scenarios for the Ostpak mod and I did develop a scenario featuring Elefants and Brummbaers. My scenario takes place around the town and railyard at Ponyri on July 9, 1943 and is mostly based on Glantz's book Kursk. Of course in Pz Elite you can enter into your tank and select and fire on the enemy or you can drive as well. You control a zug (plt) and can issue orders to your other zug mbrs. You can also play the Russian side. Unfortunately the infantry are only 2D sprites. But this is an old game that initially came out in 1999 and we modded from 2000 until 2005 but does play on Vista with a tweak or 2. There were other mod groups involved as well in Pz Elite. One group did North Africa 1943 and also the fighting around Gazala to El Alamein even adding Italian armor to the game.

OK, ok I know its a bit early but I'd like the folks at 1C and Battlefront to start thinking of other tactical simulations from the East Front. I'd like to suggest Smolensk/Yel'nya (July-Sept 1941). This is a very controversial battle in Barbarossa. A new study is just out by David Stahel (Op Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East, Cambridge Univ Press 2009) and another book Smolensk by Col David Glantz (due out soon). These authors and some others like B. Fugate have postulated that Smolensk/Yel'nya actually resulted in the defeat of Barbarossa by hollowing-out the Wehrmacht despite the effort and major, but not complete, success of Operation Typhoon in Oct and the gigantic encirclement at Briansk/Viaz'ma (over 1 million POW). Smolensk/Yel'nya stopped the forward movement of Army Grp Center for many weeks in prime campaign weather. Then Hitler decided to clear up the flanks to the north and south (Kiev). I would suggest this as the Timoshenko Offensive. Perhaps 20th Army and as a matter of fact IR "GD" was involved here.

OK, again thanks. It works "as administrator." OK, yes the simple editor is great. I'm somewhat familiar with TOW editors as I have the original and Africa. I didn't have any issues when I was using XP unfortunately the editors in these older games don't seem to work with Vista. Too bad as I particularly like the first TOW editor. 1C I think your doing a great job, thanks !

Thanks Sneaksie and Knokke. Great help.

Appreciate your response. Yes, you are correct, the in-game mission generator does not launch. Pardon my lack of computer knowledge but are you saying to disable the UAC before playing? If I'm in the game how do I "run as admin"? What is "context menu cmd"?

Oh, forgot. When I download the AutoUpdater it extracts to my Download Manager not to Kursk 43?? When I click on "Extract" it shows the file its going to as my name, User, Download Manager and that's why I tried trying to direct it to Kursk. Hmm, I wonder if that's a UAC issue. I'll try turning that off there was something about that in the instructions but I thought it concerned loading the game. Again thanks. I'm still a bit confused by what you call Mission Editor or Simple Editor unless that is a change in the patch as on my 1.2.2 it still says Mission Generator. But I'll relook.

Thanks for all that, I'll give it a go. Much appreciated.