mjkerner

There, fixed it for you, domfloff and Erwin

Sounds like 3j2m7 is looking at the enemy and seeing only some of, say, a squad. Which reflects what your men can see, and a bit of the fog of war, of course. Can't imagine what else he's seeing.

Sounds like 3j2m7 is looking at the enemy and seeing only some of, say, a squad. Which reflects what your men can see, and a bit of the fog of war, of course. Can't imagine what else he's seeing.

Sounds like 3j2m7 is looking at the enemy and seeing only some of, say, a squad. Which reflects what your men can see, and a bit of the fog of war, of course. Can't imagine what else he's seeing.

^^^^This.
Second time today, Erwin.  I'm getting the heebee jeebees, lol!

What's the big deal. Old guard, new guard, your opinion, my opinion. V 4 is better than V 3, V 6 will be better than V 5 and so on. Fun's a poppin', just play the bloody game, life is to short as it is.
 

My initial thoughts...this movie will bite the big one.
 
I didn't bother to go see it in the theater.  I read about a dozen "professional" reviews, and literally hundreds of wargamers' and military history buffs' reviews on this and several other forums.  I knew it would suck--from all the hype it received.  I knew it would suck when I saw the trailers--from the grim seriousness of the actors' portrayals (and the actors' commenting on the making of the film. I knew it would suck because it is a Hollywood production with no doubt an anti-war message as big as the Goodyear blimp. I knew it probably would suck when my youngest son and his girlfriend said it was great and that I really should go see it. (He's never been interested in military history or wargaming, and is quite the pacifist, bless his heart.) And I knew it would suck when I read about the crossroads battle scene. I knew it would suck because in one way or another, every Oscar-bait Hollywood movie usually does.
 
Last week, when it became available on Pay-per-view, I figured I would give it a shot just so I could take the moral high ground when dissing it later (can't do that if you don't actually watch the movie).
 
I wish I had gotten over myself and seen it in the theater! I really, thoroughly enjoyed it.
 
LemuelG and slysniper hit the nail on the head, as far as I'm concerned.  The crew was surprising believable...2nd Armored, been in the war since North Africa, would tend to have an older crew, and with the ravages of war, they look close-enough to late 20's for me. (My Dad was 23-24 years old in the Pacific, and the pictures of him after hostilities ended on Saipan show a man somewhere between 30 and 40.) There in-fighting at the dinner table rings true to me, just like my extended family when we get together on the Holidays... someone is always bitching about /fighting with someone else--usually over politics--but woe to the outsider who tries to diss one of us.  I wonder about the forced execution scene, and how likely that type of thing would occur, but who knows. More importantly, the war-is-hell and we are gonna have to take it to the enemy with balls to the wall sentiment rang true to me.  Again, only going by my Dad's experience, his outfit had that attitude in spades in the Pacific.  can't imagine it would have been much different in Europe at the end..."let's kill as many of these bastards as possible, as quickly as possible, and get this damn thing over with. I want to just get home already." 
 
The overall dialogue was way above what I thought it would be.  Face it, SPR's dialogues was mostly hokey, corny and cliched as hell. And Matt Damon just plain sucked.  Band of Brothers and even The Pacific did a much better job in that department. And frankly, so did many of the great movies listed above (and I like or love them all).  To me SPR is only good in the first 20 minutes and the last battle scene.  And come on, both have WTF? moments--in the landing scene, a German in sandbag emplacement on the ridge gets shot, falls forward, and the whole emplacement just falls apart by the weight of his body. How the hell did it stand up to the pre-invasion bombardment, fer chrissakes??? And the last battle scene, unhistorical and relatively improbable to boot.  But regardless, both those battle scenes were excellent eye candy, and were so far ahead of any depiction of WWII combat than anything before it, who can not enjoy them?
 
Fury does that for armored combat, in spades!  (Battle of the Bulge, anyone?) Those freaking awesome AP ricochets were freaking awesome, the crews' teamwork was well done, and to be expected in a crew that survived that long together, and the tension and intensity of combat was well depicted and believable.
 
Note to sound modders...Oddball, Waclaw and AKD and anyone I missed...I hope you are thinking of lifting sounds from this movie.  There's a particularly good, close-up rrrrriiiiippppp-ing MG 42 in the crossroads battle, hint, hint. And did I mention those awesome AP ricochets?
 
And seriously, even if you didn't care for the movie, you gotta hand it to the set directors and costuming departments--everything just looked right, tanks, equipment, uniformsoy the sets, uniforms, etc., etc.  Those 41st Armored Infantry fellows looked like I would expect them to after just coming through a gruelling winter campaign in NE Europe.  (As an aside, I loved the armored company CO.  Well done.).  
 
So for me, grog factor, production and drama, as LemuelG categorized the movie elements, all worked for me in this movie.
 
That said, a lot of the tactics sucked, as they do in most war movies.  But even there, there is some saving grace.  The attack straight at the AT guns, as has been pointed out, was done to cover and pull out a trapped infantry platoon.  I really liked the tactic they used--uncovering the platoon, and having them get behind the tanks, but of course could be argued that they should have tried flanking the German line.  Who knows, maybe more enemy covering their flanks? And, apparently, Wardaddy did came at them from a flank, or at least not directly at them down the road which the ATG's had covered  (his comment to the infantry company CO).  
 
The Tiger scene was believable in that they were ambushed and then were backed up against a tree line, with only one recourse left...to charge forward and hope to get a flank shot.  Those trees looked pretty skinny, and should have been easy to retreat through  (but I assume there were heavy forest tiles underneath ).  The worst part was the Tiger's tactics.  It was in a covered position. If they wanted to get out from the smoke, then they should have reversed and gone left or right and sat there, blasting the 3 Shermies as they advanced. And was it supposed  to have come direct from the factory...no camo, unit markings, or anything?  In fact, the paint scheme looked like it came direct from Sicily. 
 
The crossroads battle was preposterous as executed, but their orders were to stop the SS battalion from getting to a supply column.  What ya gonna do?  A wiser course would have been to blast them with all guns blazing while they were in march column, set charges to blow the tank, and run like hell before the Germans regained their composure.  But it's a movie, and many others (SPR for example) suffer from the same type of unbelievability in parts as well. And for what it's worth, the actual number of German casualties depicted in that fight appears to be around 50-60, which if they had blasted them in column could probably be about right...just saying.  When I saw Pork Chop Hill as a wee lad in the theater, I remember thinking that practically the whole company was wiped out in the initial attack up the hill--how could they have gone on and captured and held it? (It was after all, basically a true story.) When watching it again years later, I counted the actual number of men depicted as being hit, which was only about 25--manageable under the circumstances, it would appear.   If you assume that the SS troops were likely green and yet fanatical, I can see their initial tactics actual being as depicted, and casualty numbers reasonable. I remember one story from A Bridge Too Far, and many from books about the Bulge, that relate green German infantry committed to similar disastrous frontal attacks.  Still, I have to agree with the detractors of the movie that it was just too much of a stretch. 
 
So, overall, I wanted to hate the movie before i saw it, and ended up truly, thoroughly enjoying it.  In fact, I purchased the full HD package off Netflix, and it is well worth it if you liked the movie.  I have watched the first two battle scenes (but not the last battle  ) about 8-9 times over the last week.  There are about 50 minutes of deleted footage, too. None are added battle scenes--well, there's an extended scene showing the plastering of the plaza area when the girl and her apartment block get blown up, that shows the armored infantry CO getting killed.  But there is an important 7 or so minutes of exposition when Wardaddy and Norman are shooting the **** sitting on top of the tank as they are headed to what will be their confrontation with the Tiger, in which Wardaddy reveals why he has taken a bit to Norman, wants to toughen him up, etc....has to do with Wardaddy's girlfriend and his younger brother...and it goes a long way toward explaining Wardaddy's motivations.  It is one scene that I think should have been included in the final cut.  
 
Anyway, I rambled more than I planned, but put me in the column that enjoyed the movie--really enjoyed it.  I have seen almost every known WWII movie in existence that I could get my hands on over the last 55 or so years, including many foreign language ones.  I own about 45 on DVD, last count (Belle and Blade video is an excellent source for all war movies of any era).  Many of them are overall better in either screenplay, or acting, or whatever, but this one will remain solidly near the top, despite my initial desire to hate it.
 
YMM (and it apparently does!) V

No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

Hey good buddy, Merry Christmas to you too and all the CM lovers here and everywhere! I'd congratulate you on your hilarious rendition of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", but I thought we collectively chained you to your computer to hurry up and finish your FB mod?!?!

Lol, I wish I had a nickel for every time I said that! 

You guys are just jealous 'cause I nailed it for him!
And btw, good thing Bethune wasn't Mexican, or the Texan would 'ave chucked 'im out! (One of my favorite movies from that era. That bit by Brian Glover was classic. And then there was Jennifer Agutter....)

Wow, kick ass!  Thanks sburke for the tip, but after more than 15 minutes of Windows still "working on" the search, I opted to look around in the windows folders for the appdata string where MOS found his (sorry, but I was glad to hear I wasn't the only one with the problem...I love company in my misery). I found it in less than 2 minutes manually, right where MOS found his. I sent a shortcut of the folder to the desktop for easy access.
So, thanks a million sburke, MOS, and Johno!
 
PS Do you think BFC should be alerted to this?

Thanks for the kind words, guys!
Well, since the cat's out of the bag on this project, I'll go ahead and post a few more pics. Again, it's early days and this won't be out until after the next CMRT module is released (KV-1, baby! Plllleeeeeaaase!) I've only added temporary foliage in areas where the door networks are largely done so I can get a little test combat going there. Also, I obviously, haven't finished adding all the buildings, let alone fleshing out the other terrain elements in those areas (or most of the areas with buildings). Since I'm going to have to slice up the map, I'll be adding some tall buildings back in later that are currently cut down in size.
Here is an overhead. I just grabbed the Google Map screen on the right, so this is not my working overlay. Currently, my plan is to have the Soviet attacker start in the SE corner. I'd like to thank the people of Kharkov for providing a ready-made setup zone in the form of a large park and cushion of buildings!

 
Here's the elevation overlay I did (which is, of course, matched to my working overlay). I will be doing some polishing work later, once everything else is in. Sorry for any seizures or flashbacks!

 
It's not Stalingrad, but in winter, this area might serve for a little "Fallen Fighters" combat.

 
Another angle on same area:

 
And lastly, a bird's eye of one of the little neighborhood areas. I'll call this shot "Mean Streets."

 
That's it for now. It may be awhile before I have additional pic-worthy content. I'll post it as I have it, along with any interesting combat test results (suicidal rout, path bugs, arty effects, etc.).

The game is correct.  Glider infantry wore regular US infantry uniforms.  Big to-do as to whether they should be allowed to wear jump boots or, IIRC, even if they should wear airborne insignia (para wings). But they were basically dressed as GIs.

How many unique shader files/modes have been posted so far. Would like to keep track of and try them out systematically.
Kevin

Cap'n, it's in the Normandy v210 Market Garden .brz files (just the one without a letter following it----not the "a" or the "b" ones), in soldier/gear folder.

Well put, Ian. My thoughts exactly.

^^^ I think that is where many of us would prefer to be!

Chappy, they should also probably watch some Canadian cultural documentaries like Trailer Park Boys and The Great White North with Bob and Doug McKenzie, and of course listening to Rush.  That's how I became an honorary Canadian.

...that said, I like kohlenklau's ideas, he is always thinking, and for the good of the game with an understanding of its limits.

It looks like the tanks were shown as an example of how they will come with the game...snow camouflaged. If I were BFC, i wouldn't even bother showing or telling anything until release day. They just get incessant whining and baseless speculation when they throw bones.

Don't like it, don't buy it. What's so difficult about that concept?

^^^^ This. Chris was clear that they from the Alpha phase, so I can't imagine they are even close to the final product.

It looks like the tanks were shown as an example of how they will come with the game...snow camouflaged. If I were BFC, i wouldn't even bother showing or telling anything until release day. They just get incessant whining and baseless speculation when they throw bones.

Don't like it, don't buy it. What's so difficult about that concept?

...that said, I like kohlenklau's ideas, he is always thinking, and for the good of the game with an understanding of its limits.

It looks like the tanks were shown as an example of how they will come with the game...snow camouflaged. If I were BFC, i wouldn't even bother showing or telling anything until release day. They just get incessant whining and baseless speculation when they throw bones.

Don't like it, don't buy it. What's so difficult about that concept?