Ultradave

A system within the CM2 game to automate PBEM. Many Slitherine/Matrix games have a PBEM++ system built in. For CM2 when you start a game and pick Single player Real time, Hot seat, etc, there will be a new option for PBEM. You can post a challenge (basically start a scenario and post it for anyone to pick up, or you can password protect it and send the password to a specific opponent - only they will be able to accept). Basically, you then you play your turns, and receive an email when the next turn is ready for you. Your PBEM++ games are separate from your own single player saved games. In each game it looks a bit different visually. I've used it without problems for WitW, WitE, Flashpoint:Red Storm. Currently being tested for CM2 Also, to play PMEM today, Dropbox is not necessary. It's a convenience, and is used with H2H Helper and Who's Turn Is It, to pass the files back and forth. You can still just send emails like we used to in CM1. Dave

The usual was if you were headed into imminent combat you'd leave your backpacks in the immediate rear. For the purposes of CM, any scenarios are of a time scale that that would have already been done and you'd be moving to contact, with few exceptions (an ambush maybe). Dave

When I was in the 82d we did an exchange with the Cdn Parachute Regiment. We paused for tea on the drop zone after a jump. Mess truck came out for the troops and the Colonel's driver brewed up for the officers on the hood of his jeep. Very civilized (it was an admin jump - we weren't doing anything tactical after the jump, but even then there's always tea). I lived in England for some years too (work assignment), which my wife and I LOVED, and we do miss the couple of tea houses in town we used to frequent. One was a very British one, tea and cakes and scones and clotted cream, and the other we really liked was run by the Buddhist monastery in town. Nice tea and really good food. We lived next to the Lakes District in the northwest for anyone familiar with England. Gorgeous countryside, small towns. Idyllic, really. And civilized. We don't just miss the tea - we miss England. It suited us - ocean and mountains, lots of places to walk (nothing like the footpath culture here in the US), and the people were as nice as could be. Dave

To amplify on step 1 of Sgt Squarehead's steps - to extract the compressed installer, you'll need to have a small utility. There are several that are free to download. "7-Zip" I believe should do the trick. That will extract the compressed installer to the same location as your download and it will be an .exe file. You will then be able to run that to install the game. You don't need to move the files anywhere. If they are in your "Downloads" folder, you can run them from there. To get 7-Zip, go here: https://www.7-zip.org There are others but I've found this to work really well on pretty much any compressed file - it handles many formats. Dave

Could the problem bet that the installer is still compressed and you have to expand it before running the installer? Dave

@Probus sounds like my brother from another mother Dave

To get back on track @DownSized, The Few Good Men web site is a good place to frequent. They have their own forums, it's where the scenario depot and mods warehouse are hosted there and maintained by the ever hard working @Bootie, who lurks in the shadows around here too and you can match up with opponents in the forums. They also have tournaments of various kinds. I believe The Blitz is much the same but I've not been there much in years. https://www.thefewgoodmen.com Register, introduce yourself (there's a forum topic for that) and in your intro you can state you want opponents. There are plenty of active PBEMers and one advantage of entering a tournament when they run them is that people are even more likely to see it out rather than default. https://www.theblitz.club Hope that gives you some help and some matchups. I think these were mentioned in passing but here are the links. Dave

I agree. To me, the more avenues available to engage, the easier it is for new players (or existing ones) to find something that fits their interests and lifestyle. The more the merrier. Dave

It was May for me. I love it. You’re right. Time to do things and space them out instead of having to cram all chores into a weekend. Also, I have too many hobbies. This is just one. And my wife and I love each other’s company even still, so being home all the time has been great. I have no regrets. I had a good career doing important work and worked with amazing engineers. Time to turn it over to some younger engineers that I’ve spent the last few years mentoring. They’ll do great. Dave

Ah. Never heard of that. Thanks. I guess I qualify now since I just recently retired from 42 year in the military and civilian national defense. Time now to relax and have fun. Dave

I’m not sure what your deal is but enough with the gratuitous insults

Well, I gave my reasons politely. PBEM fits my life. That’s all. Have fun. Dave

The technology may be old, but PBEM has its place. Many people cannot set aside a long stretch of uninterrupted time to play a direct CM game. The reasons are varied - young families demand a player's time, where it's easy to fit in a PBEM turn here and there. Older people, while not occupied with young children, may have varied interests and demands on their time. It's cool you have 30 people who CAN do that. That's pretty cool. Personally, I can't, and PBEM for me is the way to go. Calling it garbage, IMO is a bit over the top. Dave - battening down the hatches for tomorrow's hurricane/tropical storm. We're about 5 miles east of the projected path they just showed on the 6pm news.

On the ropes= Germany the country. Almost the end of the war. No hope of a miraculous victory. Could they lash out locally and effectively? Sure. And that makes for some scenarios with reasonable balance and interest. Dave

I don't mind this at all. FR is end of the war - Germans on the ropes. I'm fine with a "can you do better than they did historically?" scenario.

Also, if I remember right from play testing, there is a <SPOILER ALERT> German LMG in one of those two closest buildings. That location marked for snipers can be used to snipe away at the LMG from cover and hopefully eliminate that threat. Without getting rid of it anyone approaching those buildings tends to get mowed down. Keep the squads back and see if the snipers can take out the LMG. Everything after that becomes much easier. You have time. You can wait a bit for a main push until your last squad appears and then you'll be able to take the village under fire from 3 directions. That keeps the Germans quite busy. Dave

I play tested the '79 campaign. It's a whole different experience with all the older equipment. Can't go wrong either way One note about "The Citadel" On my laptop, moving the camera around the battlefield to adjust my initial dispositions got pretty boggy, because the setup zone is huge. Once game play starts, the camera reacts much better, so don't be discouraged if you have any issues during the setup turn. May not be an issue if your computer is better than mine. Dave

I would recommend taking on The Citadel as a standalone now. It's quite a struggle, and a challenge to get your US forces to where they need to be the most (and keep them alive). I had fun with that one in play testing. Dave

Whoa. Blood bath even in the air! That's a lot of destruction. Dave

Something that has been asked for (by me and others) is the ability to call fire on a "map coordinate" In game terms I think it would be the same as calling where there is a line of sight, just placing the cursor at a location. That would allow the ability to call fire on say, a sound contact. This is something that was/is commonly done. Currently there is no ability to call for fire on enemy *just* over the crest of a hill where LOS is blocked, even though you know they are there. In real life, the CFF is given using map coordinates, so whether you can ID an enemy at a map coord or not, you still send map coords. Most likely it would come with some variation penalty, since your real life estimate of the sound contact vs reading the map location may not be as accurate as it would for an enemy in sight, but I wouldn't want excessive error. It's sometimes hard to come up with map coords for a target if the ground is large and featureless. Sometimes in those cases you get a round out there and start adjusting. For the out of LOS missions, it would be a FFE mission. No point sending adjusting rounds. I hope this is something that will be added one day. Note that everything I mentioned here applies to WW2 and CW too, but for BS and SF2, artillery fire control is more computerized, GPS enabled, with widespread use of laser rangefinders. Even for CW period actions, FO procedures were not greatly different from WW2 and in many cases true of Fire Direction Center equipment and procedures. TACFIRE (the first really computerized fire control system), for the US was just becoming operational. We had FADAC (Field Artillery Digital Analog Computer) but it was next to useless - 450lbs of deadweight. Dave

Make a duplicate of it now with the name Czechmate-orig and save a copy of that somewhere safe just in case. An update wouldn't overwrite it then. But that way you are covered if you for some reason had to reinstall the game. Dave

Excellent!! Glad to hear it. Dave

Things like this aren't unique to CW. Quick Battle automatic force selection have always given "interesting" results, across all the titles. QBs work best as H2H where each player can choose their own forces and that would eliminate these oddities, barring mistakes by the players. Depending on how you are playing you can choose your own forces, then hit suggestions for the opponent and tweak them to repair anything that shows up like missing observers, etc. You may not want to do that though and lose the element of surprise. I'd say, though, that in the CW era, you probably had a quite good idea of what is in front of you, so it may not be that unrealistic. As far as fixing, the force selections are much improved over what they used to be after they did some fixing up to the logic (which sounds simple and I don't think was simple at all). They are better now as they tend to pick complete formations, minus some items to fit the point criteria. So the lack of supporting items probably shows more in smaller battles than large ones. They are probably about as good as they are going to get at this point. Dave

I put in a request for the ideal solution being a list of different types of text in the game with a button for each bringing up some kind of color picker. Can't hurt to ask I described the ideal. Have to let Charles figure out what's possible based on that. Good idea. Dave

I am as well, but I'm not aware of any mods like that. Dave