altipueri

Well it looks like with SLR and slysniper Battlefront has the opportunity to get some real info from those who know what they're talking about. I look forward to the patch.

Agreed +1 I feel sorry for the moles, but in my experience it doesn't kill them but does at least give them a bloody big headache.

No, parents are in the basement being kept alive so we can live off their pension. Reverse Austrian joke, or some such. Still acting like a teenager, but who cares.

Didn't something like that happen at Anzio with a jeep patrol getting all the way to Rome?

So grognard I'm afraid I don't really understand the question. But nobody else answered you so I felt someone should. I think there are other sites that do mods etc for CMAK with European and possibly Pacific mods. Anyway I'm playing more CMx1 all of a sudden because having bought the new CMBN too quickly on impulse I'm finding the older game more fun.

Type 3 Almost the opposite reasons for the reply before. I find CMBO BB AK are the ones I can just fire up a random short QB for an hour or so of fun on my laptop. I play WEGO, not realtime, although I don't do nearly as much reviewing as I could, once or twice and that's it. I play Hearts of Iron if I want the big picture; Advanced Tactics for another type of random scenario; and Sudden Strike if I want to play real time blowing stuff up but with the fond memories that it looks just like the table top games I played in London with one of the forefathers of WW2 wargaming, Bish Iwaszko, in 1969. Oh, and we had an equipment look up book a bit like the CMx1 info - about 500 pages. So yeah, way too old.

Parts of Devon and Cornwall in England have sunken roads and small fields very much like bocage country. I was down that way last week and it really is claustrophobic with the hedge towering several feet over your head on either side. The idea of a hedge being something soft you could jump in quickly for cover strikes me as pretty unlikely too. These are thick banks of earth, stones, trees and shrubs. If you got caught in the road you couldn't get out the way quickly. Next time I should take some photos, I should have done so in Normandy a couple of years ago. It's brilliant for defenders; and I seem to recall reading about the Germans having multiple prepared MG positions. Fire from one for a bit then scamper off behind the hedge and fire again from a hundred yards away, then back again. It must have been awful trying to assault it. Basically lead guy walks forward until he is shot at from who knows where. The chance of spotting someone hiding must have been close to nil.

Well today's gem came from my Mum (87). "The last time I drove through here I was towing an anti-aircraft gun." She, then aged 20, was a lieutenant in an anti aircraft battery at Antwerp in December 1944. They were about 10-20 miles from the front line and were ordered to evacuate. (It wouldn't look good girlies being killed would it?). They refused; they hadn't landed in Europe to run away again, so they pretended they hadn't received the order. So there you are Battlefront, when your Arnhem and beyond comes out - model some English girly soldiers in honour of my mum and her pals.

Well this little gem came from my dad (89) today. "I haven't driven a tractor but I have driven a Bren Gun Carrier. Good fun but if you see smoke jump out quick." He's said very little about his war experiences; and his elder brother who saw hundreds of men killed around him in Burma, even less. "Those who have been through a war generally talk about it less than those who haven't." So some research please before the UK add-on about Bren Gun Carriers catching fire. They were petrol apparently, rather than diesel. Then he shut up and nothing more..... We're running out of time to hear from those who were there about what you would or wouldn't do if you saw .......

Thanks for the long reply. I have tried again and I am only marginally changing my feeling that it is still more work. And pressing a letter means I have to put my drink down or take both hands off the steering wheel. Anyway I won't bang on any more. It is still a good game Battlefront so don't despair that you put all this work in only for old farts to bleat that it is not as good as it was in 1947.

Holding a glass of beer/wine/whisky/port (now); and occasionally the steering wheel. Having learnt to drive and read at the same time I'm now trying to drive and play laptop games at the same time. It seems to upset the oncoming traffic occasionally, but no casualties so far.

Why is the new UI better than the old? I have CMBO and CMBN in front of me on separate laptops. Camera movement. CMBO shows me the whole by just using the eight little arrows on the panel. CMBN makes me wave the mouse all over the screen to get to the edges. Unit movement. CMBO Click unit, right click, move place destination. Oh and you can right click to change your mind and move up the other side of the street. CMBN Click on unit move mouse to panel, select move, move mouse to place. Oops too far, have to take hand off mouse and press backspace etc..... Command lines. CMBO I can quickly see who is getting way too far from who. CMBN?? Badly typed on an iPad which is why I can't easily scroll forward to remove the next 'Typed' to remove it as the text box moved up. So help on iPad UI welcome too please! Typed

Well I've loaded up CMBO CMBB and CMAK and they work fine on my Windows 7 laptop so I'm alternating between CM1 and CM2. CM1 is still more fun. It's easier to move with the panel arrows. It's easier to see what a unit has spotted and is firing at or being fired at. Unit bases show me better where my guys are. Quick battles just seem to work better. Graphics are about the same frankly. 3gb memory Intel HD graphics is clearly struggling a bit with the new 1:1 I've got too many games and I'm not good at any of them so I like to find ones where I get about 50% win rate. Those of you who are super expert grognards generally want harder games, but unless it works easily first time for newcomers the market will be hard to grow. CMBN isn't yet an easy recommend for wargame newcomers. And I've been shooting at panthers for 45 years. But now I know CMBO works on Win7 I can play and wait. I have hope BFG will get this upto scratch and kudos for getting a usable game out on version 1.0

There is a magazine called After The Battle which specialises in this re visiting of sites. I find it fascinating. I wandered round Bastogne a few years ago with an issue covering Battle of the Bulge.

Well I couldn't resist getting CMBN, but as I play on a laptop without a mouse the graphics are not fantastically better than CMBO and it's harder to move the camera - I actually prefer the CMBO arrows; also I prefer the CMBO highlighted unit bases - in CMBN with the little balloons overhead I'm putting guys the wrong side of walls and hedges. So I fired up CMBO again - still gives great pleasure and still so many missions I didn't play.

Camera height and movement control arrows on the panel please, like on CMBO. This makes it easier to play the game almost entirely one handed from the laptop trackpad, such as whilst driving a truck for instance.....

Of course if you look at the first large paragraph of my earlier post - there were nine Shermans. If one alone accounted for five of the seven dead Panthers then the others must have been rotten shots. Or there was stuff pinging off everywhere.

17 pdr and an ambush would seem to be good answers. This rather long cut and paste from an article on Fireflies also touches on one of the other threads about Panthers firing whilst moving. "Despite this, the Firefly's increased firepower was much valued, and during many engagements, the Firefly proved its worth, knocking out Tigers and Panthers at long range, as well as less formidable tanks like the Mark IVs and StuGs. One example of this increased firepower was displayed by Lt. G. K. Henry's Firefly during the defense of Norrey-en-Bessin on 9 June against an attack by the 3rd Company of the 12th SS Panzer Regiment of the 12th SS Panzer Division. Determined to capture the town in preparation for a larger offensive to drive the British and Canadians back into the sea, Kurt Meyer ordered an attack by 12 Panthers of the 3rd Company and infantry to attack Norrey-en-Bessin and drive the Canadians out of the town. The attack got under way at 1300 hours with the Panthers racing to the town at full speed only to stop to fire their guns, quickly outrunning their infantry support which was forced to the ground by Allied artillery fire. Within 1,000 m (1,100 yd) of the town, nine Shermans of the 1st Hussars opened fire into the advancing Panthers' flanks. Lt. Henry's gunner, Trooper A. Chapman, waited until the Panthers "lined up like ducks in a row" and quickly knocked out five with just six rounds. The attack was repulsed with the loss of seven of the 12 Panthers. A similar example occurred on 14 June, during Operation Perch. Sgt. Harris of the 4th/7th Dragoon Guards, along with three standard Shermans, set up defensive positions along with the infantry after successfully driving out the Germans in the village of Lingèvres, near Tilly-sur-Seulles. Looking through his binoculars, Sgt. Harris spotted two Panthers advancing from the east. He opened fire at a range of 800 metres (870 yd), knocking out the lead Panther with his first shot, and the second Panther with his second. Relocating to a new position on the other side of the town, he spotted another three Panthers approaching from the west. From his well-concealed flanking position, he and his gunner, Trooper Mackillop, eliminated all three with just three rounds. Harris and his gunner had knocked out five Panthers with as many rounds, demonstrating the potency of the Firefly, especially when firing from a defensive position on advancing enemy tanks. In perhaps its most famous action, a group of seven Tiger tanks from the 3rd Company and HQ Company, Schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 101 supported by several Panzer IV tanks and Stug IV assault guns were ambushed by Fireflies from A Squadron, 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, 33rd Armoured Brigade, A Squadron, the Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment, 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade and B Squadron, The 144th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps, 33rd Armoured Brigade. Tanks of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry and elements of the 51st (Highland) Division reached the French village of Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil on the morning of 8 August 1944 during Operation Totalize. While B Squadron stayed around the village, A and C Squadrons moved further south into a wood called Delle de la Roque. C Squadron positioned themselves on the east side of the woods and the understrength A Squadron in the southern portion with No. 3 Troop on the western edge of the wood. From this position, they overlooked a large open section of ground and were able to watch as German tanks advanced up Route nationale 158 from the town of Cintheaux. Under strict orders from the troop commander, they held their fire until the German tanks were well within range. Ekins, the gunner of Sergeant Gordon's Sherman Firefly (Velikye Luki - A Squadrons tanks were named after towns in the Soviet Union) had yet to fire his gun in action. With the Tiger tanks in range, the order was given to fire. What followed was an almost 12 minute battle that saw Ekins destroying all three Tigers that No. 3 Troop could see; there were actually seven Tiger tanks in the area heading north along with some other tanks and self propelled guns. A short time later, the main German counterattack was made in the direction of C Squadron. A Squadron (less Sgt Gordon who had been wounded and had already bailed out of the Firefly) moved over to support them and in the resulting combat, Ekins destroyed a Panzer IV before his tank was hit and the crew were forced to bail out. One of the Tigers Ekins is credited with knocking out was that of Michael Wittmann, though there is still some controversy over whether Ekins really killed Wittman, as Fireflies of the Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment also fired at the Tigers from a closer range of 150 m (160 yd)."