A Canadian Cat

I am using Dropbox for several games. I describe how here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=97839 But that is just for moving files around and it does not remove old files like you want. I'm not sure if I want to remove older files since I like to go back and take videos of older turns. I tend to delete only once the game is done (after archiving). With the above Dropbox setup I can play my turns and press a button to copy files. No attaching files to emails (and picking the wrong ones) no waiting for the mail to be sent before walking away from the computer. Ah file micro managing is over. The problem I have left is remembering whose turn it is? So, I spend to much time looking at file numbers in the Incoming Email and Outgoing Email folders. My plan instead of deleting the older files after a turn is played is to instead have an app that will show me the PBEM games I have in my folders and whose turn it is for each. I am in the middle of writing the app now when I have it I'll let people know. My plan is to keep things simple but I am also writing the code that looks at the email files and figures out what games are there and whose turn it is generic so others can use it in their PBEM apps if they want. We'll see how it goes.

That is a feature I would like to see provided in the map editor. Surely it could be done better, simpler than projectors or third party apps. Not saying your method is bad it looks fantastic compared to what we have. Given that I spent a couple of hours this morning very slowly drawing contour lines and <alt><tab> flipping back and forth I would take a projector or a third party app right now. I'm just saying given how much time must be collectively spent making game maps from topo maps I don't think there would be any feature that would be worth more bang for the programming buck than image overlay in the map. After all they could support zooming on the map -> zooms the overlay, scrolling the map -> scrolls the overlay. All other methods could not offer that.

Groovy - now there is a word. That looks fantastic I will be trying this out tomorrow.

LOL I am partial to my defeats actually - good for more laughs. Do you know which QB map this was on? If so can you describe where the reverse slope you used was? For example on the left side of the objective from the setup zone.

With the demo version I played the Road to Berlin scenario several times. When moving my tanks across the first open field on the left towards the wide opening in the bocage I lost a TC over half the time on the first couple of turns turn from MG fire form the cross roads. First and last time I did that I lost two tanks in the first two minutes to an AT gun that they never saw. I spend the next n minutes working away at the edges with tanks and infantry trying to find it. Sadly it was "found" by one of my squads because it opened up on them with HE rounds. Bet the AI wishes it had the armour cover arch command available to it:)

Two ways: 1) If you want a platoon of them then you have to buy a whole battalion that includes assault guns and then delete the stuff you don't want. Select and delete the companies you don't want. Then you can delete the battalion HQ. Expand your remaining company (that has the assault guns) and delete the platoons you don't want then you can delete the company HQ. You should be left with a platoon of assault guns and your points should be a lot less. 2) Switch the drop down on the left from "Formations" to "Vehicles" (I think I have those names right) and then select the assault gun you want and press purchase a couple of times to buy the number you want. I believe that you can only do this if you have an HQ selected on the right hand side to assign the vehicles to. So even if you buy individual assault guns you still need to buy a whole formation and whittle it down like in number 1).

That would be fantastic. +1 from me

I have four PBEM games on the go right now in CMBN and some games are going smoothly with one turn per day and others slower. I have to keep looking at file numbers in my Incoming Email and Outgoing Email folders to correctly determine if I am waiting for a turn or I owe a turn for the various games. I have things setup nicely for most of them to use Dropbox and a file sync tool to automatically get and send turns. See this thread for an explanation of how I have this setup: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=97839 I am planning to write a little app to help me identify which game(s) I need to play a turn for and which I am waiting for a turn from. Of course then I thought about all the other things I could do. One of which is start CMBN with the right ema file open. So I tried executing the game passing the ema file path as a command line argument and it did not use the file path. I found this thread which seems to indicate that there is no command line support but there was nothing officially stated: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=96968 Can someone officially say that there is no command line arguments supported? Can someone official say that there are and here is how to use them? How about unofficially? Is this something that is planned? Typically the work involved in supporting a command line interface is one of those things that can be simple if you only offer a few options but can quickly grow at an astonishing rate. But given how good the CM developers are at prioritizing feature work I am sure you guys could come up with a few useful command line options that would not cost a huge amount of work.

I do not yet have experience rotating a trench but for tanks etc you can use the face command on the Combat commands tab (pp 85 in the maunal). Is that available for trenches?

Interesting idea - sounds like it could work. If anyone can try it let us know (in my PBEM game the off target barrage is over so I cannot try right now). Sounds pretty gamey though.

Sounds broken to me. Not sure what the priority should be though.

LOL - he must have said to himself "that's close enough"

That sounds quite reasonable and makes perfect sense - I was just trying to be funny:)

Excellent. Some how I missed that file thanks.

Good points. Perhaps it is just not realistic to be calling fire when you can see so little of the area around your target. I can see the conversation now: FO: Are you guys there? When am I going to get spotting rounds? Battery: What are you talking about? We fired spotting rounds two minutes ago. FO: No one knows where the spotting rounds landed. What do we do now?

It was one platoon and an MG actually. No I did not order it they just lite him up on their own. Paid dearly - there's an understatement. The one StuG they were shooting at did not do much to them - he missed hit shots. It was this two buddies that my guys never even saw. By the end of the turn after that one only one squad had operational numbers left and they were totally rattled and pinned. The rest of the platoon and the MG team were totally decimated and running for their lives. It was bad. Really bad. That's when I realized that the bazokas were in the burning halftracks. Oh man learned valuable lessons from that engagement.

There is a tutorial? Link please:)

Since seeing how good arty was against me I have been playing with more of it than I did in the CM1x games. From my experience here is what I think I have seen and thus learned: They need to have and maintain LOS to the target and ideally some more so they can see errant spotting rounds. They need to be happy and calm (by that I mean *not* taking fire on their position) during the receiving and spotting phase. Once they call for the FFE it does not matter any more. In one game against the AI I had a FO call for a barrage from a nice safe place to try to stop an armoured assault. They were safe during the receiving and spotting. They called for FFE just a few moments before the protecting screen of infantry collapsed and they had to run, took fire and lost the FO officer. The barrage seemed to go fine but was to late to save the position. The shells kept falling for several minutes even after what was left of the FO team and his infantry screen were pushed back into the woods. In a different game I was calling some fire on a possible enemy approach from the opposite side of a town. My Company CO (who was making the call) had key hole LOS between buildings to the woods where I wanted the fire to land. Trouble was he could see just bits and pieces of the area not the whole target area and certainly he did not have good visibility around the target area. The spotting rounds were long and to the left. I watched them land way off. I guess I could have checked with the targeting tool to see if he could see where they landed. I believe that he did not see them land because after several spotting rounds - which were all off target the FFE was called and the full barrage came down on the long and to the left location near where the spotting rounds landed. I could have called it off but since my fire was speculative anyway I let it go. At the same time one of the platoon HQs called in fire from a different battery on another suspected enemy approach location. This time the HQ had much better LOS and after the spotting rounds came in the barrage started and was right on target. These two calls were simultaneous and the barrages started at about the same time. It was interesting to see the rounds for one inside the green circle and the rounds for the other a ways long and left from the circle. So to answer your question when the spotting rounds come in use the target tool to see if your FO can see where the landed. The smoke / crater from the spotting rounds should be enough to let you find out if the FO had LOS for the spotting rounds. I have the PBEM files for the above scenario so I should be able to verify that my Platoon HQ could see were the spotting rounds landed and the Company CO could not. Ian

Strange I added a URL link for each which should have taken you to their web page for each image - worked for me. Anyway images are in the photo album here: http://www.6juin1944.com/album/juno/index.php

Peddle peddle peddle - edited to put urls next to the pics. I'm not sure if some can see them and some not or if I'm the only one that can see the pics because they are already in my browser cache. I added URLs for each pic so you can go look at them...

I would hate to crash and fall over those handle bars:)

Oh now that is cool - I'll have to try that.

Yes, I know I'm getting a head of my self. I was doing some preliminary research to see what I could find out about Juno beach. Since there are several people already working on sections of Omaha I thought I should look at Juno. Right now I'm just looking to see if there are good sources of maps that I can easily access or if I need to do more planning and perhaps look for some books to buy. Anyway that's not the point of my question. When I found this site http://www.6juin1944.com/assaut/juno/en_index.php they have an album which has lots of pictures of the Canadian's landing etc. I was struck by the number of bicycles. There seem to be thousands of them. Some pictures from later in the day show each soldier getting off carrying their own bike. Cool I had no idea that was part of the kit. Is this a crazy Canuc thing or did the US and Brits have the same? Check out these: http://www.6juin1944.com/album/juno/pa132930.jpg http://www.6juin1944.com/album/juno/pa132930.jpg http://www.6juin1944.com/album/juno/pa132930.jpg Will CMBN have bikes for the Canadian's. Hey if we cannot ride on tanks maybe we can ride on bikes:)

A 105 round killing a Panther. Well to be honest no one saw it. The Panther and a bunch of his friends (StuG IIIs) were advancing and my infantry were being beaten back. Why do they forget their bazookas in their half tracks? My FO managed to call in a barrage on their position as they withdrew. The FFE order came just at the right moment and I watched as the shells came down. There was the Panther and three assault guns in the area under the shells. The smoke was all over the place and the AFVs were clearly moving around. Then a shell exploded differently than the others and I wondered if it hit something. After a few moments two plumbs of black smoke started rising above the grey cloud. After the smoke cleared as the barrage ended I could finally see the victim - the Panther. My guys still got slaughtered but my barrage denied the Germans a total victory - they had no infantry left to flush my last two squads from their hiding places.

I'm curious too. How many people are using Dropbox for PBEM turns? How many are using something else? If so what are you using?