altipueri

Well the translation thing above says it was kept in the box with the gunsight so I guess the crew could sit around ticking off their kills "Lee, Sherman, Matilda, Crusader .......hey guys only two more and we've got enough kills on the card to win us a 24 hour pass."

I suppose I've been playing serious wargames then for about fifty years. Back then we had a huge file with all the armour thickness, angle and equivalent thickness data we could gather together with armour penetration data at various distances. I guess that's why I still hanker after those CMx1 tables - they were just like the pages we had on each vehicle and gun. CM is still by far the best game of this type for WW2 and it is the basing as much as you can on real data that I appreciate. Luck both good and bad has a much greater bearing on life than people want to accept. There's sometime a burden of feeling that if only you did everything right you could get all your guys across that stream with no casualties.

Thanks Michael. Pity the illustration didn't copy. It would be great if somebody could find these leaflets for the bigger guns like the 50mm and 75 mm that most of us like to play with. Also - any similar things for Allied tankers.

German jokes: If you can see silver aircraft the're American; If you can see khaki planes they're British; If you can't see any planes then they're German. version 2: If British planes appear, we duck; If American planes appear, everybody ducks; If the Luftwaffe appears, nobody ducks.

I've wondered if anybody has copies of the booklets used? I came across the link below - I would post the content if I knew how to without getting all the adverts and other stuff. http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt09/recognition-leaflets.html Now some people say the old CMx1 look up info on tanks armour etc. is unrealistic because troops didn't have such things. Well, I think they did. I feel sure the UK and US must have had similar booklets. I know anti-aircraft crews had plane recognition booklets because my mother was in charge of an anti aircraft gun in Belgium in 1944 and it didn't stop her hitting a Spitfire, much to the pilot's annoyance. (He survived and came round to complain).

Good, my impression too. I'm sure I read about it somwhere. After all it is a game and modelling hours sitting in a hole shivering and wet wouldn't be good for sales.

No it doesn't inform you, it asks you to discuss. What else could they have had for breakfast? Given that it was a clear sighted shot from a stationary tank - how would CM decide on a rear suspension hit? Is there a lot more hanging round waiting for something to happen in real liife than is modelled in CM?

"Also near Livarot, a troop of the Inniskilling Dragoon Guards joined a company of the 1st/5th Queens soon after dawn. The company commander waved them to a halt. The troop leader, lieutenant Woods jumped down. "Would you like a Panzer Mark IV for breakfast?" the infantry officer asked. He led him down a track to an orchard. 'Moving hesitantly in open ground on the next ridge about 800 yards away was the quarry, which clearly had no idea that he was observed.' Woods brought his tank through the apple orchard thick with foliage and fruit. They spent a seemingly endless time manoeuvring so that both the commander and gunner could see the target, which drove Trooper Rose, the driver, to distraction as the tension mounted. 'The minutes ticked by; the dialogue in the turret verged on the acrimonious.' Finally, they had a clear shot. The first armour-piercing round hit the suspension towards the rear. The panzer's turret began to traverse round towards them. The second round also struck, but the gun continued to turn towards them. Only after the third strike did it stop. At first there was just a wisp of smoke, then flames appeared and the crew baled out frantically." Discuss, with reference to CM timings and hit calculations. PS - quote taken from Anthony Beevor's D-Day.

I've seen in a couple of threads about hitting moving targets and other accuracy things the statement along the lines of "we don't do dice rolls, it's all physics." Er, surely it's all dice rolls and probabilities isn't it?

TOE is OCD. I,m with GSX. oops me missus just returned. Back later

I want a Hello Kitty army. I want a Pink Panther.

Hello Kitty Go and look at the Juju TweakedUI Skinpack thread in the mods forum. I want the Hello Kitty setup and I want it now. Quick BFC this is you instant route to getting the game popularised. Somebody more clever than me could try posting examples here in the main forum. Kitty is way to go boys, not least because it will drive all the hard core players nuts.

Perhaps this explains why I've found QBs so useless in CMx2. Sometimes the enemy just doesn't show up. It's actually why I still play so much CMx1 because a quick QB after work is a blast. I suppose it says somewhere in the manual about selecting battle type or whatever - I just went ahead and clicked on random this that and the other, hit the button and wondered why I spent half an hour creeping round a deserted town.

Does Hello Kitty really work? If so that's the one for me.

One of the last messages from Arnhem has come up for sale. There's coverage and a copy of the message in several UK papers. Below is from the Times: It was sent by the commander of the 1st Airborne Division, whose men had been under fire from German troops at Arnhem for nine days and were close to “complete disintegration”. It led Field Marshal Montgomery to shut down the daring operation to seize three bridges across the Rhine. After the war the typed transcript was kept in a private archive by Montgomery’s adjutant, Captain Noel Chavasse. The failure of Operation Market Garden dashed the Allies’ hopes of ending the war by Christmas 1944 and cost the lives of thousands of British, American and Polish soldiers. The message was sent by Major-General Roy Urquhart to his commanding officer Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning on September 24, 1944. Browning, the husband of the novelist Daphne du Maurier, in turn passed it to Montgomery. In stark terms, Urquhart warned that his troops needed immediate reinforcement. “All ranks now exhausted,” he wrote. “Lack of rations, water, ammunition and weapons with high officer casualty rate. Even slight enemy offensive action may cause complete disintegration. If this happens all will be ordered to break towards bridgehead rather than surrender.” The message bears the words “NOT for general distribution” and only a handful of copies would have been distributed. Urquhart’s plight led to the decision to withdraw 1,900 British paratroopers still standing, abandoning the wounded. The 1977 film A Bridge Too Far, starring Sean Connery as Urquhart, told the story of the operation.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

I just looked at Metacritic for some of the games I play: CMBN Hearts of Iron Command Ops AGEODs Alea Jacta Est, Rise of Prussia etc. I probably would have been put off all of them if I had read the scores first. If you ignore the sudden rush of CMBN fans voting 10 in the last few days since this thread started the other views aren't all unfair. Read GreenAsJades user review for which he gave a 7. For me CMBN is CMBO with better graphics but a clunkier interface and RTS. I think the interesting conundrum for BFC is that judging from this forum there's a hard core of players who have had ten or more years of great gameplay for about 250 dollars. Keeping them happy and making the game easily accessible for new customers is the problem. Having drunk the RTS kool-aid I think co-operative play and RTS have to be embraced fully. This means it must really really work fast first time, and at lower levels of difficulty give easy victories to new players. You need Arcade levels 1 to 5 before you even try Basic Training and Veteran. You then get flamed by the diehards for dumbing down the game.

Yawn. Yawn again because more than ten characters are needed.

I think BFC should give the game engine away with a tutorial scenario and one short scenario. Then sell scenario packs. A variation on the free razor but you pay for the blades, although perhaps these days cheap printer and pay for the ink refills is a better analogy. I'm disappointed at the low interest seen by younger people in "serious" wargames, yet these are the kids that are being recruited to fly drones and in the UK - Apache helicopters. Perhaps too much real history games might make them realise what happens on the screen is actually happening on the ground when they blow up another wedding party or a couple of Reuters journalists.

@ian.leslie Thanks for that explanation. I remember looking at JonS' scenario design thread and realising I would never do one but I didn't get as far as the AI section. Now I definitely know I won't do a scenario but I have ever more respect for those who do have the time and dedication to produce them. I did once modify the Hofen scenario for Command Ops - Battles From The Bulge - but only to change the objectives from avoiding Monschau to massively attacking Monschau. This was my revenge for getting a speeding fine from the polizei there in 1973.

Thanks for the replies. I think the AI in wargames these days is excellent. Command Ops and Hearts of Iron 3 are two other WW2 games I play and in both you have the AI operating on both sides and you can micromanage or hands-off pretty much as you want. My initial question grew out of wondering what does happen when the button is pressed. If I order a tank straight down a road for a minute it will try to do that for the full minute will it not, subject to, say, retreating if morale drops if one or two crew are wounded? What I can't do is intervene - you know suddenly realising that was a really bad idea and telling him after 30 seconds to go left into a field instead. But is the AI committed too? There is a difference between reacting to things (e.g. panicking and running) and simply changing one's mind (and once the AI has a mind no doubt things will get very weird). Is the AI situationally aware - e.g. avoiding or planning encirclements? I still don't feel I'm expressing this well enough. In Michael's reply above he says "AI controlled units may panic and run even if not "planned" to do so." But will they change their "plan" and go round the field in my example - and if so do it at any moment - i.e. RT response or only after a minute; other than in reaction to something specific happening to them? PS I am actually sober writing this (I might not have been last night). The ancient Persians, as many of you know, would discuss important state matters twice. First drunk and then three days later sober. If they came to the same conclusion sober as they had when drunk then they would go ahead and declare war or whatever.

No Steam no, please.

I'm just back after playing a few games of squash/racketball, and consumed a few more beers. But really, how do you know, playing WEGO, that the AI is "playing fair" too? The NSA would say "of course it is" but they would wouldn't they? I can see a situation where back in the early days of WEGO it was a cunning way of giving the AI an advantage. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after me.

I might have to plan my moves and then go and get another beer whilst the time unfolds. Are you sure the AI does the same? (And is drinking my beer). How do I know when my back is turned that the AI hasn't changed its mind when that little blue bar started creeping across the screen?

Yeah, Holland is like, so flat. Why are Dutch people so tall?