The Steppenwulf

More like 250 rounds all round. Well fair enough, I stand corrected. Nevertheless, my inability to provide a more accurate estimate and to have inadvertently replaced it with a wild exaggeration actually serves to illustrate how overly powerful the artillery support is in the scenario. I mean this is how it feels playing the game!! Indeed, I'd welcome an alternative perspective of the scenario from anyone who has played this map and doesn't think it is. And still, 250 rounds on a small map when the three objectives lay within (approx) two hundred metres of each other doesn't invalidate my main point:- No, I don't necessarily entirely agree with the OP; artillery has it's place and is a crucial tactical asset, but I would agree that there are some scenarios that inherently possess unbalance because of bad asset choices. In my view, Le Desert is the most salient example of where inappropriate asset choices, for the map size and layout, nullify what could otherwise be a highly enjoyable infantry engagement with some inherently interesting tactical problems.

Le desert scenario is an example 'ad extremis' of this. Just finished playing this H2H and the sheer amount of artillery (300 rounds on both sides) on a very small map is just mind numbingly pointless and saps any enjoyable tactical gameplay that might have existed otherwise. Is there any way to restrict the number of rounds in the editor? I'm not against artillery 'per se' -it's an essential tool for well-defended forest - but perhaps restricting it to the 28 rounds for a single 'long' strike should be enough for each 1km squared area of map size.

Yeah, I now recollect. Juju's UI mod must have left that one adrift in my memory fog bank. Thanks for the reminder though Badger.

and... I was relieved to read the latter part of this post. As such you should accept the basic truth that there is NO link between aluminum and Alzheimer's disease. This was an urban myth which circulated in the 1970's - but is competely unfounded. There is a brain disease associated with absorption of aluminum sulphate through the gut which can lead to a rare form of dementia but its pathology is distinguishable from that of Alzheimer's disease and moreover is extremely rare - the most famous case being when a water supply became contaminated in the UK in the 1980's and one woman died some two decades later. I looked at some of the sources you have posted elsewhere on many of your other posts - all of which I considered unconvincing and inadequate but each to his own I guess. Nevertheless, what does concern and provoked me to write this post is when I saw a reference somewhere to the "New World Order" conspiracy. Now, I have nothing else to go on regarding your personal beliefs in this area but from my personal knowledge this theory appears to lend heavily on the extreme wacko idea that there is a Jewish Socialist conspiracy that has plotted to subvert "good old old Adam Smithian capitalism" (whatever that really is) and replace it with jewish controlled western corporate capitalism, it was apparently responsible for communism and Soviet Russia, created an entire mythology around the Haulocaust (which was grossly exaggerated, or worse, didn't even occur), is responsible for the growth of "welfarism" in the developed nations (as well as other social democratic ideologies) and is now the hidden hand behind all Govt - by controlling global finance - and is thus ushering in a "New World Order" where Jewery and Zionists will rule the world. Now, being a tolerant guy I don't have an issue with wacky beliefs and ideas but this is one specific area where I am apt to take gross offence. The proponents of these ideas and their works are, entirely without exception, the most discredited socio-political writers/ historians on the block. Few, if any have enjoyed any academic training, are not affiliated to any academic institution or body, or not even recognised by scholars in the academic field. Their claims are spurious at best and a great body of their work is unsupported, unsubstantiated and often easily debunked by even the casual reader via a quick wikipedia search. The problem for me is that; where belief in psi, pyramids on Mars or even an inside job on the Twin Towers I can easily ignore as harmless nonsense perpetuated by crazies, there's something altogether more deeply insidious and alarming about preaching to a guilable readership the falacies that are cynically developed and presented to form the basis for fostering contempt for Judaism and Jewish people by systemically distorting historical understanding in thinly veiled anti-semetic propoganda. In summary John, I hope you'd agree that absorbing conspiracy material is a gauntlet walk for the more impressionable amongst the population. Such persons are apparently very easily duped into believing that the claims have substance & merit where they actually do not. Your story about Alzheimer's cured with bleach being merely an innocuous case in point of a deficit in the capacity of some people to exercise judgement founded on; healthy scepticism; the qualification of available evidence; and the overiding principle of rationality and reason.

Alternative Sils mod? Have you got a link!?!

As a matter of course I get out the paper and pen and write my units down (according to their chain-of-command) at set-up so that I can wrap my head roughly round what assests I've got and their basic structure. In the larger battles, the time taken to acquaint oneself after the battle has started can easily prove fatal and at the very least expensively time consuming for the necessary reorganisation.

Just about everyone plays WEGO/PBEM (as opposed to RT) for multiplayer and uses Dropbox to facilitate it. Yes, I would also recommend Hamachi for LAN/internet play but I think you'll still need to find your IP number to connect with another. If you haven't already done so I would suggest, as a starting point, referring to your game manual and reading the chapter on 'game styles'. You can then google Hamachi or Dropbox depending on how you prefer to play. You might be hard pressed to find anyone to play in real time though - CM is just not best suited to that kind of gaming experience.

The human body will very rarely prevent a round fired at effective range from passing through it. However, it is possible that the pre-impact course of the bullet could be diverted as a result of impacting a body - that depends on the area of the body that is hit and whether the round strikes bone - a morbid consideration I know. Additionally, an overlooked factor in this discussion is that combatants could be wearing thick clothing, rucksacks or webbing which can also contibute to velocity reduction of a bullet and/or change its course. Moreover, equipment carried in webbing and rucksacks; billy cans, magazines, utensils, entrenching tools and helmets for instance, are all perfectly capable of deflecting a direct round. Consequently it seems natural, in circumstances of poor cover, that using a cadaver for protection is at least better than nothing at all. I think it's also worthwhile considering that it's not just the direct round that the combatant is attempting to avoid being struck by; shrapnel, bullet ricochet and other indirect flying fragments will possess less penetrative capabilites than a direct round but carry an improportional threat to the level of personal exposure. Thus, in this type of circumstance, even the lowest degree of protection can prove effective against the degree of anatomical damage inflicted. Notwhithstanding the points raised above, I'd be willing to accept (as womble has indicated) that in reality the concealment factor rather than cover may have the greatest effect on survival odds in this kind of combat situation however difficult that is to quantify.

There's no doubt about that. Keeping men stationary definitely improves spotting and also not forgetting the quality of contact ID - the latter of which is another aspect of the spotting debate. I think your supposition is highly likely to be correct and I concur. In fact I would be incredibly disappointed if BF informed us to the contrary. However the game code esp in this area seems suitably sophisticated enough to model such nuances easily enough. Yes this extrapolation makes a lot of sense. Based on this reasoning, can one apply a similar hierarchy to vehicles but substitute bins with open hatches?! At first that might seem straightforward enough, but a deeper consideration throws up even more nuances and difficulties: Slow would likely come before hunting (vehicles don't do belly crawls), yet hatches open during any kind of movement COULD all provide better spotting than stationary & closed. Furthermore, since a TC is the chief spotter, what if he is killed or wounded?? In which case, is there any point in keeping hatches open in the event of a TC being put OOA? Some interesting questions but we are in hypothetical territory here with only personal testament to guide us. Any views anyone - concrete or guesswork!!

I was basing that statement purely on what I retained from having read the manual once upon a moon: [page 80] This could be interpreted in an alternative way, but it does strongly imply and thus support what I had stated. Great stuff, thanks for confirming that!!

Although a unit that is commanded to hide by the player is not the same thing as a unit that is hidden from the enemy. Just to clarify; it isn't possible to tell whether your unit is hidden to all enemy units. Camouflage, range, line of sight, size of unit and whether the unit is attempting to hide its profile are all factors taht help a unit go/stay hidden. Interesting query that popped into my head when reading this though is what contribution binoculars in a unit might make in-game to successfully spotting hidden enemy units. We know that movement types make a difference to spotting the hidden with the 'Hunt' command being the most effective. But what about units with binoculars??

Thanks for clarifiying that. Though I hope that I hadn't indicated that trajectory might be more significant than elevation. My point there was entirely theoretical, as an afterthought, and was intended to be supplementary to my earlier post regarding elevation. I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. I know little about the formulation detail and I'm entirely happy for others to do the math (as I already indicated). So long as it doesn't negate the validity of my substantive point I'm quite content.

Sounds more like Company of Heroes than Combat Mission. Horses for courses though...

Yes, claims about the slope effect on the Panther vary widely and I won't question any of them only to say that there are as many claims as there are books, articles & documentaries. What we can say with any certainty is that the slope armour adds to protection from penetration to such an extent that it becomes the critical factor. What is frequently overlooked however is that the slope effect can be negated by a shell fired from an elevated position and also that that negation factor would increase out to an optimal range, due to trajectory. I've also considered, though I have never read it anywhere, that the standard defensive tactic of positioning AT guns at short range on reverse slopes would have discovered to have been self-defeating against the T34 in the east due to the undesired effect of actually increasing the effect of sloped plate. Tactical reconsiderations must have been undertaken partly as a consequence of this issue and certainly it's true that the Germans started to use the FLAK 88's in an AT gun role and at distance to defeat the T34 at this exact point in time. Finally, as Vanir hinted, the comparatively superior quality steel used on the earlier German tanks, including the earlier Panthers, is no doubt another reason why penetrating a front facing Mk V with most contemporary AT guns was such a very big ask without AT knowledge & experience or otherwise just a dash of good fortune.

Great post this - highly informative read on the possibilities for coop play. In my view this should be stickied by the moderator!!

Key-point: With 55 degree slope on the Panther's glacis plate, that gives 80mm of armour the equivalent stopping power of approx 180mm. An elevated position will negate that angle proportionately and thus decrease the slope effect. Perhaps a lucky shot was actually the critical factor in this case but still...

Yep - a well documented case of the 'stepford soldiers'!!!

Can anyone tell me what the .sfk files effect upon the audio files and how they are opened and edited? I seem to be having a problem with my CM:BN mod install since upgrading to version 2. This is definitely a file conflict of sorts with the uniform textures being the 'prima facie' number one suspect. However I wish to eliminate the .sfk files from fault as a matter of process, but understanding what they are, how they work and how one is editing them is fundamental to that process. Secondly and relatedly, I'm wondering if anyone is holding a list of the version 2 files - particularly the uniform ones. I am aware that a file list was uploaded to the repository at some point but I'm not sure that they reflect the upgraded version files. Clearly an updated file list will allow me to check off all modded material and help with fault finding. Many thanks in advance for answers & advice submitted by community members

I also think you raise a good point Sardaukar. I have a wargaming friend who was turned off at the demo stage - perhaps because of slightly different reasons but equally as valid. I think some players know what they are looking for in a wargame and when they see it they can see through any other objections - although complexity is rarely one. All I would say is that where the demo might lack, the manual certainly doesn't. It's one of the most comprehensive game manuals I have ever seen in a game of this complexity. If you are persistent and refer to the manual constantly as you gradually acquaint yourself with the game, you won't find the manual wanting. I promise you'll find yourself playing fluently and possessing a broad understanding of the game in really no time at all. I think you have a point about the newbie experience but when all said and done there's a steep learning curve for any tactical command sim - it's just a part of the course.

The licensing agreement provides: "User-created scenarios and other materials like graphics or other mods may be distributed free of charge..." There is no scope in the agreement for the game's executables. As I indicated, that is consistent with just about any other game's software sold under a limited rights licence and much more besides. In effect however, both safeguards serve the same ends: Although a key is a more pragmatic solution to enforce software protection - particularly from mass pirating and direct profiteering - the restrictions outlined in the agreement will likely only ever be enforced through legal representations, which unfortunately is normally too late to protect from losses, hence the key. Still, I'm sure BF will correct any uncertainty should it remain. It's actually not really my place to fix the legal position on their behalf. I just thought I'd be helpful and advise against an unwise action, however well-intentioned.

Uploading and sharing .exe files is pretty much verboten for all games software. It's the only way the devs can protect their product - esp if they are allowing community access to and sharing of all the rest of the game files. Surely you must still have the executable set.up archive on your system though? That is the only thing that needs backing up on another HD or a disc and allows any number of instances to be reinstalled. If you failed to do that, and have in fact lost it or worse deleted it, I don't have too much sympathy I'm afraid. I think you'll find BF's policy is clear and inline with this reply in both instances

I can't believe any v2.00's would stoop so low as to play non-upgraders?!?! I removed them as "buddy's" at christmas and if I saw one in the street I would cross over... Para here's a quote from the CM:BN patches page: I think that clears up any uncertainty on this one...

This is similar to my personal experience - however objectively untested. I feel sure that an assault command with -2 leadership is more likely to whither under enemy resistance than one where the leadership carries a bonus. I'd go so far as to say that I've learned a lesson not to assault with -2 led squads and instead to manoeuvre superior led teams to do the close up dirty work. On the other hand, I would question whether negative leadership gives a penalty when simply receiving fire, but a penalty may be incurred when being assaulted - I've yet to observe enough of the latter situations to hold a view.

A replay editor tool suite!?!

Multi-screen support please. This would leave the UI in centre screen only!! I can see the use of a UI toggle for getting better screenies though...