Zenomorph

Hopefully the post's title says it all. Thx in advance for any advice! Ugh just got my eyes dilated at the eye doc. Can barely see, so I hope this makes sense.

I always feel like I have to start off every post with a "This is an utterly brilliant game...". I mean just the programming that goes into laying down smoke must be mind boggling. Buuuuut.....I so wish I could just issue a "follow" command for pathing purposes. It's a lot of tedious pointing and clicking getting one vehicle after another to travel down the same road. Easy right? I mean if you can do the smoke thing... I'll expect this issue to be resolved in...let's see, what time is it? (ewww...my first emoticon! EVER!)

Umm, sorry a little late getting back to you on this one! But regarding the pure physical nature of the war you're entirely correct Michael. Speaking of Shelby Foote, he mentioned in the Civil War PBS Miniseries (which was truly brilliant if anyone missed it) that the North had essentially fought that war with one arm behind it's back and just would have brought out the other if needed. My point was more the psychological aspect. The Army of the Potomac was losing battle after battle (in the west this wasn't the case but anyway...). War fatigue was running high and without the clear victory at Gettysburg, well, who knows? Remember in the election of 1864 McClellan lost to Lincoln, but not by much. And McClellan's main platform was ending the war and allowing the South to secede.

Hahahaha!! OK, on topic: you know what really bugs me about almost all game review sites? They are not about the games - they're about the graphics. I played Company of Heroes briefly and, gawd, it was horrible! But the games have great graphics. Thus it got an "editor's choice" or some such from Gamespot and most others. Example: I build 4 Sherman tanks (in that game that's a megaforce) and have them all ready to sweep across the battlefield - game over. But then I get some sort of emergency on the other side of the field and spend a minute or two dealing with it. I return to my glorious Shermans just in time to see the last one just sitting there as it's blasted to smithereens by an AT gun. Apparently 1) the AT gun rolled up the millisecond after I left, 2) the AT gun had a range about a millimeter longer than the Sherman's and so 3) the Shermans in no way reacted as the AT gun banged away at them. This same thing happened constantly in the game. And it gets a top rating from Gamespot?!? Come on.

Woohoo! Works! Even the minor characters are often brilliant in Thrones. Forel is sorta like a "zen and the art of swordplay" type character. Now if we could just incorporate him into CMBN we'd really have something.

Hee hee. How much do I love Game of Thrones? Check out the signature. (I hope it works - never had a signature before). Here goes.

Haha! I had it sitting on my nightstand and when I finished a book but wasn't tired yet I'd pick it up and read a few pages. It took forever but I think I'd read ~100 pages before I started thinking, "hmmm, this Tyrion dude is pretty slick". Gawd! I've read a lot of books and Tyrion is by far the best character I've ever read. The miniseries doesn't do him justice. Hey! Sorta like platoon leader Hochholter in the Panzers Marsch (sp?) campaign. Maybe we could start a fan club for him. I'm thinking of all the skeptics I told about those books who later thanked me profusely for turning them to them. I haven't really done that w CMBN. I probably should. Most people like chess at least to some degree. CMBN is like chess...just with a little 'roid rage thrown in.

OK, maybe it'd be nice if the CM games got the metacritic reviews they deserve but I want to thank the creators - and the modders too! - for creating a GREAT GAME! I work in a very busy ER and it's what I consider to be a fairly high stress job - and at times heartbreaking. (Given that what might be a minor error in another workplace can kill somebody in an ER.) When I get downtime I want to think about nothing. These games are perfect for that. So if the creators and modders ever wonder what the heck "it's all worth" day in, day out (as we all do sometimes)...well, it's worth a lot to me! As for the metacritic reviews I might have an interesting parallel. I love to read and a neighbor once gave me a copy of "A Game of Thrones". I'd never been into the sci-fi/fantasy thing and thought I'd never get into it. And the only reviews were from "Jimmy's fantasy book club" or some such. After 5 or 6 false starts I finally got into and, whoa!!, I'm a HUGE fan of this series now. And if you look at the reviews on the new editions of the books they've now gone from "Jimmy" to the major book reviewers. Apparently for once I got in near the ground floor of a mania. The point is that it took years for the brilliance of these books to sink in. And it was all essentially accomplished by word of mouth. I believe the same holds true for the CM games although I doubt we'll be seeing the HBO miniseries for CMBN anytime soon.

Whoops! Didn't realize I was in the mods section! Oh well, I'll put this in the main one too.

OK, maybe it'd be nice if the CM games got the metacritic reviews they deserve but I want to thank the creators - and the modders too! - for creating a GREAT GAME! I work in a very busy ER and it's what I consider to be a fairly high stress job - and at times heartbreaking. (Given that what might be a minor error in another workplace can kill somebody in an ER.) When I get downtime I want to think about nothing. These games are perfect for that. So if the creators and modders ever wonder what the heck "it's all worth" day in, day out (as we all do sometimes)...well, it's worth a lot to me! As for the metacritic reviews I might have an interesting parallel. I love to read and a neighbor once gave me a copy of "A Game of Thrones". I'd never been into the sci-fi/fantasy thing and thought I'd never get into it. And the only reviews were from "Jimmy's fantasy book club" or some such. After 5 or 6 false starts I finally got into and, whoa!!, I'm a HUGE fan of this series now. And if you look at the reviews on the new editions of the books they've now gone from "Jimmy" to the major book reviewers. Apparently for once I got in near the ground floor of a mania. The point is that it took years for the brilliance of these books to sink in. And it was all essentially accomplished by word of mouth. I believe the same holds true for the CM games although I doubt we'll be seeing the HBO miniseries for CMBN anytime soon.

Thx for the responses! I've played the CMBN games a fair amount but not near as much as I'd like and so haven't messed with the Tigers very much. I remember I played the German side in one of the CMBB scenarios and there was a forested road that led up to a bridge. I put a Tiger on the road in the woods so it was impossible to get a shot at it x for directly to the front. But the Tiger would take out anything that tried to get in position to fire on it. It was one of those situations where I guess the enemy just would've had to have found another route - the stream couldn't be forded in the scenario. It makes me think of something I'd LOVE to see in CMBN: bridging. I don't know if the capability to build a bridge within the time parameters of CMBN existed in those days tho.

From my reading I've surmised that the standard Allied tactic in dealing with Tiger tanks was: Don't. The Allies appear to have learned the hard way to use the greater mobility of their tanks to work their way around Tigers. But the scale of this game doesn't work that way so I'm wondering what folks here do to commit Tiger tankicide. It seems like they can be plonked on some hill and just blaze away at all they survey. Thanks for any help!

What continually amazes me about the Civil War is how many times we possibly came within a hair's width of becoming two nations. If Stonewall Jackson had been in command on the Confederate left at Gettysburg instead of (I think) Ewell, that battle likely would have had a very different outcome. Or if, also at Gettysburg, a lesser commander than Chamberlain had been in command on Little Round Top that battle could have ended with the Union army completely destroyed. (I mean dealing with the fact that you're out of ammo by attacking? There ought to be a Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain national holiday). Another irony is the fact the war could have been ended at Petersburg by a regiment composed of black soldiers. Even though the episode at "the crater" ended essentially as a fiasco, there was a brief period where the South's lines were completely wide open. The men of this regiment were begging to go straight thru it. But the white commanders on the scene, not believing their good luck, refused to order them to do so. They apparently feared it'd end in a slaughter and they (the officers) would be accused of recklessly throwing away the lives of these soldiers bc they were black.

Bardosy! Awesome! Where did you find that!? And what else are you hiding?

Thx Jon. I haven't bought that yet but was thinking about it. Have you seen his Mapmods project. Simply beautiful. I do own TOAW. Do you know how the two differ? Building OOB's in TOAW seems fairly cumbersome but I haven't taken the time to delve into it much.

Ugh. Should've thrown in on my above post that I started on the rts theme bc it annoys the bejeez out of me that the rts games often get rated so highly by the critics. The critics seem to love and adore high-end graphics more than actual game play. Gamespot shouldn't be called "Gamespot", it should be called "CoolGraphicsSpot".

Yes. I fairly familiar with Excel. I should have thrown in that I'm fond of the org charts bc they allow easy visualization of what you've got. I'm thinking that simply shading the cells in Excel could help with that tho.

Just wondering if anyone is aware of a good and inexpensive org chart software for creating OOB's for CMBN scenarios. I'm surprised how difficult it is to find a decent one. Either they're way too expensive to justify for what I hope is just a hobby (and not an obsession) or they're just too cumbersome. M/S Word has the capability but it's bizarre how tricky it is to use beyond a few boxes. Thanks for any help!

I've played rts games with my nephews (Supreme Commander-type games) and they can be fun for what they are but it's strange to me that game after game in the rts genre are just variations on a theme. They might have fun unit types and/or great graphics but you're so busy pointing and clicking you don't have time to enjoy any of it. It stuns me that in all these years no one's created a single game that marries the rts genre with a game like CMBN. It seems a massive hole in the market that's just been sitting there for years. Strangely enough my 17-yr-old nephews and their buddies agree. I've seen some of the boards for rts games where people ask if there's any way to turn them into a turn-based option because they'd like to, ya know, focus on actual tactics other than pointing and clicking. They're shouted down! People ask, "what's the fun in turn based?". That's bizarre to me. That's like asking what's the fun in chess. If you took chess (or even better: CMBN) and threw in some fun sci-fi type units I'm of the firm belief you'd have a mega-hit. OK, I'm ranting. Haha. I don't get much free time and I love CMBN. But I kinda like my nephews too and just so wish there were a game we could both enjoy.

Yes. It was next to a wall. I was trying to move the gun up next to the wall so it could be at least partially protected. I had "unlimbered" maybe 20m from the wall, moved the truck away and the gun was moving also before all this started. Now that I think of it, I had the same problem with a different gun and it was also next to walls. I finally gave up and just ordered the crew back into the truck. When I unlimbered that same gun later it was next to a house but no walls and the same unlimbering technique worked that time.

Shelby Foote has a multi-volume history titled The Civil War: A Narrative. I haven't read it yet but in total it's ~3000 pages. I know there's another one out there that I think might be even longer but I can't think of it right now. Plus, if you really want in depth information you can go onto the websites of the battlefield park websites for the individual battles. I've visited several of the actual battle sites and have found some really great reading in the gift shops that you'd be very unlikely to find just randomly browsing the web or a bookstore. I found one at Gettysburg that was about 200 pages of nothing but anecdotal accounts taken from letters of the soldiers of both sides that fought there. It gave AMAZING insight into the mindsets of the common soldier. There was one about a wounded Union soldier who gets left in a farmhouse that gets overrun by Confederates. The Confederates are griping to the man that they're so done with the war and would simply surrender but are sure Union troops would just shoot them. The Union man gets angry with them for thinking such a thing and assures them his buddies wouldn't do so. The story isn't verified but what is verified is an incident where during the battle ~200 Confederate soldiers as a group crossed over to Union lines and gave themselves up. Good stuff. Hope it helps.

Well, if it matters, I don't think I was in LOS while I was trying to unlimber. In fact, the vehicle I was unlimbering from had a gun on it that didn't start firing until 3-4 turns after I thought I was unlimbered. Thanks for taking the time tho!

I dismounted a gun crew from the truck they were riding in and then ordered them to move some distance from the truck. A turn later I moved the truck at least 50m from the gun/crew and further moved the gun into a firing pos. I also gave the "deploy weapon" order and even targeted an enemy tank. However the gun shows as still "limbered" and is spinning around back and forth in circles as lots of juicy targets roll past. Is this a bug or am I missing something? Thanks!

I see those half-tracks stuffed with radios and can't figure out what their role is game-play wise. I try to be careful about maintaining comms betw units and assume they'd be a benefit if I knew how to use them. Thanks!

I use it, as one example, when I need to cross open terrain in order to get in close with the enemy. Then I can harass the bejeez out of their AT assets or whatever while the bulk of my force crosses unhindered. It's also useful when you want to disrupt the enemy while they're in the vicinity of, say, a bridge that you need and don't want to blast to smithereens. At times I dearly LOVE the outcome such as when the smoke clears and the enemy gets to say hello to a tank platoon that wasn't there last they checked. Bwahaha.