Melchior

That was not the intent of the comment or its meaning. It's meaning was that when you bully people it turns out they don't like you very much. How you and him concluded that it was a physical threat is wrong and i'm sorry if you got that impression.

That it is both rude and in poor taste to demand evidence from people you previously insulted is lost on you. You'll never learn why now sadly. I pity the fear you live in. The world you occupy is embattled and that is why you lash out at people with smug arrogance and then act as if you are the victim when they refuse to just allow you to run roughshod over their self respect. It's pretty sad that their are people who would come to a forum only to chalk up other contributing members to a /ignore list for any reason ever. That's clearly not what it's for.

Apparently i'm only ever trying to say what you put in my mouth. Whelp your snark and insults do bother me and in the real world that would be the sort of thing you'd have to deal with from now on. Luckily you have the internet and can just /ignore people who say things you don't like. Some adults take responsibility for their actions and live with the consequences. I understand if you don't want to though. By the way you owe JasonC a (late) apology too.

Joke is that's not what I said.

Where's BFC? All I see here is you acting like the self appointed attorney for them, again. If you want pictures and evidence of overlong deploy times i'll provide them in due time. Just as long as we both understand here that we're not really doing this for BFC's sake, but yours.

I've got something better than slack for BFC. It's called money. I've given them quite a bit of it and plan to give them more. It just so turns out I also have an opinion too, and given that BFC operates a forum it seems rather logical to me that it'd be the place to go to talk about the game for better or worse.

And conversely for *our* argument those re-enactors are not veterans who underwent weeks of intensive training doing just this sort of drilling. So make it an actual range and not arbitrarily long every time. Look, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB1QaYP_kxk Yes, fine reenactors fortunate enough to be pulling this drill in the 21st century not actually at the Battle of the Somme. Time from start to deployment was about 28 seconds. Don't you think a 5x increase in that time is a little much over deploying it on the bed? I'll be damned if guys weren't even faster in an actual fight. Pressure has that sort of effect on people who are thoroughly trained. As I thought, "competitive" balance. This is really knee-jerk reaction balance. Machine guns > rifles. You want to balance this? Drive the cost/score factor up for the crews and their weapons. I don't know for certain but i'm willing to bet the game doesn't score kills on Flak 36s all that high. Even though that gun was heavier than some tanks and required far more specialized crew. Very valuable weapon system that the Germans would frequently risk at the front, but at their own peril. So make that the player's peril. Once it's found it becomes an objective in and of itself. Killing it might alone turn the attacker's situation from "Minor Victory" to "Major Victory". You see what i'm getting at here?

I never played CMx1, I don't see how it's affecting JasonC's views here. I don't agree with everything the guy says but in this case he's absolutely right about how impractical machine guns and crewed weapons are made by needlessly long deployment times. In game they're statics that can sort of re-position, even though you can watch videos of re-enactors scrambling field guns around like it won't be cool tomorrow. Yeah just not seeing the whole need to cripple heavy weapons here.

I'm rather clearly not talking about a +/- 5 seconds here Luke.

I'd trade crew fatigue for higher movement speeds any day. The abstractions against ATGs and machine guns in the game are biased against movement and flexibility they very really did have. A crew just changes everything, take it from someone who pushed 2,000-3,000lb airplanes around a muddy grass airfield for years. Look how about this. What if instead of giving the player a fixed deploy time, what if the deployment times were a forecast of a readiness time. They'll probably deploy inside that time, they might not. Much could depend on troop quality.

I'm not addressing my machine gun woes here with that. What I did though was start off on a tangent about game balance knee-jerks that isn't really relevant to my point. The relationship between the machine gun and equivalent number of infantry is linear, the machine gun is mostly just better. If Armies could've magically hand waved a Browning M1917 into everyone's hands i'm sure they would have. You want to balance this? Make the gun as expensive as it should be. Like i've said, I can sort of see the 12 second indoor deployment time as too optimistic. But two minutes is way out there. Because of this consideration I usually end up having to avoid the use of structures as a base of fire because of the dreaded deployment time. Can't take an action I would've been able to take under legitimate circumstances. Hand forced by balance. Meh.

Yes, for one, because machine guns are disproportionately important weapons for their invested manpower and cost. Most of the time I play Large and Huge scenarios so I'm not talking as someone here who's whole game is made or broken by the placement of a individual weapon team. IE: This is not a feeling from emotion over lost scenarios. This is just not limited to machine guns either. One wonders why a Pak 40 crew would apparently go through every step of their deployment procedure with T-34s mere feet from unmasking. Two, because I feel in game design that you are better off placing penalties on player inaction rather than player action. Don't tell the player he "can't do" abc or xyz as much as possible. If it's within the technical capabilities of the game you should bias towards allowing something than disallowing it. I get that it's tempting to restrict player action due to balance concerns but it seems to me what works best for balance is allowing more actions rather than restricting them. Extra Credits calls this "incomparables" in game design because it's impossible for one player to restrict another player's options when neither range of options is on the same spectrum. EC explains it better than I do.

So what you have here is a really indecisive bunch. Yeah that sounds like just what I'd expect weeks of training and drilling to produce. Hey you think the stairs actually go upstairs Heinz and not into some alternate M.C. Escher-esque dimension? Careful Private don't gear near that wardrobe the last guy who looked inside came back babbling Satyrs and Turkish Delights. Moreover how would any of this *not* apply to setting up a machine gun in a berm line or trees or an undulating field? One might as well make the excuse you can't just tell where dry ground is so the machine gun team needs an extra minute to dig a better defile for the gun. Again, all I see here are forced penalties. But fine let's say the relatively average homes of western Europe and peasant huts of Russia-structures which the depicted troops are well acquainted with- have suddenly become the Homes of Tomorrowland or Capsule Corp and our GIs can't be expected to just know the couch of the future might be bolted to the floor now. I see an extra 30sec or so of that determination. Two minutes is still ridiculous so I say a compromise makes more sense here. Indoors deployment times should be knocked down to 45 seconds - 1 minute at most.

Between a team of 3-4 guys, and oh I don't know, war, I don't buy a 2 minute deployment time for something like an MG42 or even a Browning M1917 in a house because omg furniture. No way. Doesn't take me and my dad two minutes to move the kitchen table around a room. You're telling me a 4 man team of burly GI vets would need 2 minutes for that? No, this is forced balancing. Come on, are they moving the family dining table around real respectfully or something? Careful Vlad you'll knock over the wine glasses! That's a fine 1901 Chardonnay!

The games are way too cynical about the mobility of all deployables and to me its all just forced balancing. I still see no good reason for machine guns to require a freaking 2min deployment time in buildings. What, is the crew field stripping the weapon every time they go upstairs? I feel like I always see this in games because of some bizarre perception that crewed weapons are supposed to suck or something. You want to balance heavy weaponry make it more expensive to the buyer and worth more score to the opposition.

ITT LukeFF plays the buzzkill.

Martin Bormann, Hjalmar Schact, Albert Speer, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Heinz Guderian, Gerd Von Rundstedt, Ernst Rohm, Gustav Stresemann, Anton Drexler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Erwin Rommel. These are just a short grab bag list of names on top. One might notice a rather disproportionate tendency for the letters H and G to appear in Nazi circles. With the letters R and S represented slightly less often. Vyacheslav Molotov, Lev Kamanev, Kliment Voroshilov, Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrenty Beria, Georgy Zhukov. I'm seeing something of a preference for the letters K, V, and M in Stalin's circle. One wonders if this was really a conscious move on the part of either dictator or more just the result of culture and background. For instance in Germany isn't a name like Heinz essentially the "John" of German names?

Germans on the other hand required some degree of consent to Nazi rule. The acting and energies toward it were a necessary ruse. Germans were a relatively wealthy and correspondingly well educated people in an unhealthy love affair with their military industries. Hitler combined that with the anxiety Germans had toward existential threats, enabling the establishment of his regime under a guise of legitimacy. (His attempts to launch the Nazi Party into power through coup had failed, disastrously.) Regardless of what all those liars said at and after Nuremburg, fear wasn't the only resource the Nazis had at their disposal. Collaboration, was also an underpinning of the Nazi regime. Stalin needed no such theatrics, but I notice that he did need information. Stalin was a real spy master and had located himself within several, complex and intertwining rings of informants. Conspiracies would come from within the party and had to be defeated by maneuver and intrigue. Hitler struck me, at first, as relatively trusting of his subordinates. He lopped power and praise upon other personalities of the Nazi Party, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler etc. Goebbels had actually conspired against him in partnership with Gustav Stresemenn in the early days and yet somehow did not end up like Ernst Rohm.

Which they weren't going to get in Italy, the land of mountains and swamps.

A statue that perfectly fits Hitler's conjured image of himself as the Great Crusader defending Germany from the Judeo-Bolshevik hordes. That sort of thing is ridiculous to us today but was perfectly reasonable 60 years ago when contemporary historians still seriously believed Rome had been "conquered" by invading hordes of foreigners.

Compared to Hitler though Stalin was something of a hermit king. He was notorious for practically hiding inside the Kremlin or his various summer dachas around Russia. Sending representatives to the reaches of his Kingdom with his explicit instructions. Hitler was more of an actor, who made every attempt to be seen in public to much fanfare. He traveled frequently, and was known for his trips to various HQs which his notorious reputation for micromanaging the military probably came out of. (Made more difficult by his habit of giving vague instructions orally.) The Wolfsshanze is almost as well known as the Eagle's Nest after all. Look at their mannerisms during various PR events. Hitler stands up on the podium and performs his characteristically chauvinistic speech accompanied by violent arm thrusts and gestures implying a primordial rage aimed at Germany's enemies. Meanwhile at Red Square, you can just barely see Stalin's face poking out through his heavy overcoat. He waves a little every now and then but mostly concerns himself with the various members of his team in small talk. It's clear he holds all the strings, and he doesn't seem to think he needs to impress anyone. Least of all anyone in the public. If we're talking about two sides of the same coin, then I imagine each side of that coin would still be substantially different. With Stalin's side featuring an unflattering, crudely etched image of his face like a Roman Denarius maybe featuring a single line along the lines of "Our Great Leader" or some such. Hitler's side is ornate, featuring all manner of eagles, and scenery with a precisely machined reproduction of the Furher's face and its (exaggerated) features. Ultimately I do not envy whoever had to carry this currency around.

Yeah I do, the larger the better with me in fact. The German Campaign in Red Thunder was the best campaign in any of the games to me. I can see how on the smaller missions the missteps of individual units can basically make or break the whole scenario. But then that's generally why i'm disinterested in the smaller scenarios.

I also read Dupuy's book and agree with the assessment here. It's a nice single work on the Bulge fighting but it should be taken lightly. Dupuy really plays up the prowess of the Waffen SS and SS Panzers to the point where he makes it seem like Kampfgruppe Pieper only failed because those plucky Americans held out at Bastonge. His Patton fawning was both much worse and much more tiresome.

The game should utilize some kind of controllable reinforcement system. Like one that allows for storage and use of reserve troops and formations.

I actually lean towards what JasonC is saying in that if anything spotting in the game seems too good in places. Especially against stopped vehicles. The human eye has a tendency to focus on moving objects but it's not very good at picking up details on objects showing no relative movement. Especially with low ambient light. That said, this all more or less a minor issue to me. Fixation on how lucky/unlucky my single Panzer IV got last mission is fixation on minutiae. My mind is on the overall plan usually, with the performance of individual units maybe modifying details of it here and there.