Probus

These all sound like great topics for new threads. Guyz let's move on to hypotheticals about the Barbarossa campaign.

It was an i9-9900K with a GTX-1060 GPU on an ASUS B365-F MB.

That's good to know @BFCElvis. I have been having a lot of problems on my computers with updates doing strange things. The previous update would not let my wife move the mouse to her second screen. Bizarre. The only thing that changed was the Windows Update. It seems to me like Microsoft is pushing these updates out not fully tested or not tested on legacy systems/software. They then get customer feedback to find the bugs with their update. Then push another update with the bug fixes. Pure speculation on my part. That doesn't work too well in the avionics flight software world, as was proven with Boeing's last test of the Starliner.

None were run in admin mode. Yes. That is correct.

I went to play CMCW this morning and it wouldn't load. In fact, none of my CM games would work. Hadn't touched a thing from last night, but I did notice my computer had rebooted. So I'd click on the CMCW shortcut and the main menu screen would flash up on the screen but then it would go back to the desktop. I knew Microsoft must have pushed an update to Windows 10 last night. Sure enough, they had. Three in fact. So I fixed this in two different ways: 1) I ran the game in compatibility mode for Windows 8. Loaded right up. 2) Uninstalled the latest windows update (Security Update for Microsoft Windows (KB5005031) to be exact). Everything started working again. Hope this helps! And if anyone has an idea on why this broke the games, please let me know.

o/ Coun't me in! Some T-shirts with one (or more) of your tank models would be cool. Need a catchy phrase to go with it like Military History Visualized: https://everpress.com/cat-person-tiger-and-king

"Teal Gerbil"

I've never heard anyone suggest this strategy before. This would have really helped the Wehrmacht. Overextending your forces makes them very vulnerable, but would stopping have helped the Soviets more? Why did Germany not cross the river North (and South) of Stalingrad and just encircle the city instead of bleeding it's army dry in city combat? Wasn't their doctrine to bypass strong points and let the infantry deal with them later. I'm guessing a river crossing was not practical?

We can't see your video clip @Warts 'n' all. Hopefully it was appropriate for this age group.

Hi @danfrodo what you say is true, Hitler would have never gone for it. But since this is a hypothetical, The 'evil genius' Hitler recognized that if he could stir up the Soviets against Stalin by helping the Ukraine 'liberate' their lands, He would have: a whole new army at his disposal, Stalin would have one less army His supply lines would be effectively reduced by the width of the Ukraine as that would be friendly territory (1260km). When the war ends, he shuffles off the remaining Ukrainian soldiers to Siberia (or worse). They are still Nazis... If Hitler had played that game, along with fixing Enigma, starting Barbarossa earlier and possibly driving directly to the oil. Would Barbarossa have been a success? Maybe not WWII, but at least Operation Barbarossa?

I don't think that it would be outside the realm of possibility for the 'liberating' Nazis to turn into the 'conquering' Nazis after the war. Goebels could have easily fabricated a reason to turn on 'em. Divide and conquer.

And don't forget the apostrophe either! I still think that if Barbarossa was going to have any chance of success the Nazis should have acted against their nature and went into the USSR as liberators. If Soviet soldiers started to desert and fight with the Germans, that's a 200% change for each deserter. It had already happened once in WWI.

Sounds like government contracts... Prolly only ~3 pages worth of useful non-boilerplate non-legalese verbiage.

I gotta disagree with you @Howler. Now I might be wrong, but this command could really help at the beginning of games. I often get into traffic jams that just compound themselves when in RL, the drivers wouldn't act that way unless they were under fire. This command could get my rear echelon units to their destinations 2-3 turns quicker if there was a Follow AI. Also, this may help with bridge crossings. I also think it would be useful in scenario design for the AI.

Exactly @Centurian52!

Yep. I interpret that as Battlefront is still on the fence. Maybe leaning a bit to the no side, but that could just be my imagination.

Very interesting!

In the spirit of improvement of the Combat Mission games. I thought I would ask a question similar, but narrower in scope, as the general "Engine Improvements" thread. What new commands would you like to see added or added back to Combat Mission and why. Also include a brief description of what the command would do. If you see problems with a suggested command or improvements to it, feel free to add some constructive criticism. If you don't understand an aspect of the new suggested command please ask the author to explain what that aspect. So I will start. Here is an example of the format: COMMAND: Description & Details. Conditionals. ---------- FOLLOW: The unit is commanded to FOLLOW the selected unit at a speed that will catch it up to the unit and then maintain a reasonable distance from it so that the following unit does not have to constantly use the PAUSE command. If the following unit is shot at, it will (stop or continue?) following. Not sure which action would be best. Maybe the algorithm could check the HIDE status to determine what action to take under fire. If HIDE is on then the unit seeks cover under fire. If HIDE is off the unit continues to FOLLOW the selected unit. If the followed unit stops the following unit stops and if the followed unit is knocked out, the following unit seeks cover.

I wonder if Stalin would have accepted a conditional surrender/cease Fire that left him in power from the Urals and to the East. Did/does the Soviet Union have oil to the East of the Urals?

Ok, I lied. It was actually watching two videos, the first by TIK: The second was by Military History Visualized:

@Artkin linked me or told me of TIK's videos and I started watching his channel. But one of his videos reminded me of my WWII class and that's what prompted me to post this thread. Hah! I'll have to see if I can figure out which one it was. That's a great idea and yes, it would be lot of work, but fun! I've heard it said that Germany lost the war at Stalingrad. Because that's when Hitler took control of the army from his generals, and conversely, Stalin released control of his army to his generals.

Interesting. Why do you say that? I've not tried the CMFI campaign.

I wouldn't go so far as that @Bufo, but we are talking hypotheticals. I guess if 'Germany could have kept the USA out of the war' would also have to be added to the list of hypotheticals.

@IanL, Your PBEM tool is awesome BTW. I would love to see one more update with little tweaks for us PBEM junkies. Do you know if the updated version Battlefront is working on for the Steam CMCW will do everything your app will do?

Very interesting! When was that book published? I'm just curious if it was before '89 which is when I took the course.