Ultradave

The AI force picking was greatly improved back a while ago, HOWEVER, it still does bizarre things, and it gets weirder as the battle size gets smaller, like small and tiny. Still needs work. One thing they are good for though, is to practice tactics. Set up the AI played side as defense and pick their forces, pick your own offensive force, and practice a company assault with a few supporting tanks against a village defended by a platoon with 2 AT guns, for example. You'll know what they have, but not where they are, although you can guess likely locations, which in a lot of real life cases might not be that far off. If you pick reasonable forces for the AI, it will usually do a halfway decent job of setting up, I've found. Or even if it doesn't, you won't know where they are until you find them.

Sure, and like I mentioned, he could be impeached - even a Republican House would, I imagine, if they did in fact declare war. Would he be convicted and removed from office? I don't think there's any guarantee of that, even in that situation. But assuming the Senate convicts him and he's out, then what? His hand-picked VP, whichever MAGA sycophant that is, takes over. Does anything change? Or does everyone suddenly throw off the yoke and act "normal" because he has no power anymore? 50/50 - there's still the 8-10-12 however many die-hards in the Republican Party who want to stop everything. On the other hand, if Democrats take over the House, then that crew loses ALL power they have. Sorry for being pessimistic, but if Trump gets elected, it will be messier than last time. He (or more really his closest advisors) won't make the mistake of putting anyone with any integrity in any position of power. I'm also pessimistic about the election in general. If Trump wins, well, we've covered that. If Biden wins, does anyone think that Trump will just say "Congrats" and go home? Nope. We could easily see worse than Jan 6. I'll stop now and get back to play testing and reading everyone elses' commentary, which is always interesting, no matter the viewpoints. Dave

Changes? Well, Democrats used to have a majority in the House, and Nancy Pelosi, whatever you may think of her politically, was a masterful Speaker of the House. So things like aide for Ukraine could make it through the House. The Senate, being (supposedly and usually) the more rational of the two houses, had broad support for Ukraine. Now, Republicans control the House, with a weak and vulnerable Speaker, who has to do a lot of the bidding of the 8 or 12 or whatever the number is based on subject, rebellious Republicans - rebellious to their own party - or lose his job just like the last one did. The Senate remains more or less the same, at least on issues like Ukraine and NATO. Still supportive, but as we've seen just recently with the border security bill, scared witless of Trump, and ready to drop support at his bidding. Maybe that would change after election, should he win. Maybe not. And the biggest danger that I see is that because of legislation Congress passed, a president cannot remove the US from NATO without the 2/3 consent of the Senate (an impossible hurdle to overcome, IMO), he could effectively render US participation in NATO non-existent. He could, by himself, remove all troops from Europe, or anywhere else. He could refuse to support with arms or troops a NATO ally under attack. He could, as he signaled just recently, invite Russia to do "whatever they Hell they want". He could send home our representatives to NATO's organizational structure and not replace them. He could gut the State Department. ALL of these things are functions of the Executive Branch, under the President's control. All he has to do is give orders for any of that, without Congress being involved. So while I'm pretty sure their is very broad support for NATO in the Senate, and probably in the House, even with the Republican fringe trying to throw wrenches in the works, they themselves can't order troop movements, or provide aid even if it was voted for successfully and a president signed it. Again, the implementation of any of that falls under the Executive Branch. Congress only other recourse should a president not honor NATO obligations would be a formal declaration of war against the aggressor. That is in Congress's control. But then, what would a president do, if he didn't agree with the declaration? I think, theoretically, he could just ignore it. If Congress passed bills and a president ignored them, the president could be impeached. But we see how that went, with a closely divided Congress. This is how I currently see it, anyway. Dave

"is possible" How, exactly is winning accomplished that way? Spoiler alert: No winners, 2 losers.

OOh, then you could combine it with the new CMO Showcase:Icebreakers.

Sometimes it's just someone's lucky day, I think. A near miss, a glancing blow. Maybe the TC saw the shot being fired, and had just enough time to duck and pull down the hatch enough to avoid the flying tree splinters. Mantle hit - glancing blow (looked pretty direct though), happened to hit the heaviest armor on a lightly armored tank? Like board games, while each bullet/shell is intricately tracked, when it hits, there is some element of chance as to what happens, as there is in real life as well. Think of a real person being shot - a half-inch either way might have been fatal, but "tis but a scratch" And since in a different thread someone said I can't say such things without the meme, I bring you, the Black Knight.

I'll have to try it later with good headphones on. Couldn't hear it on my laptop speakers (which are pretty good). Even turned up to the loudest volume all I hear is the squelch break of the radio handset at the end of each transmission. Dave

Mac is already 64-bit. I don't know the logistics of changing the PC version. CMO just did it fairly recently and while there were a couple of hiccups, the new version runs great.

Sadly, no, there is not. Mac version from Battlefront is the only option, and will remain that way, at least for the foreseeable future. Dave

What's not shown is that because of the shear mass of the Tiger, it sheered the tree off at ground level and it's just about to topple over. The TC got a little squeezed in the process though. Dave

No one goes into the artillery impact areas. They are not normal training areas. Dave

I'm on a Mac so dissecting those files is not a thing for me, so I wouldn't know whether either of those are correct TBH But I did create scenarios with Sherman Vs and look at them and the bow MG appeared to look ok to me. Dave

Oh, I would too, but at the time it was more rare than VT fuses! Maybe there were huge stockpiles of it somewhere but we got very little for training. Dave

VT fuses of the CW worked great, but we didn't have a large amount of them. I don't know if we had a WW3 in Europe if we would have been provided a lot more or not). You can't fire them over water because they'd get a very strong return off the water and explode too early. And by firing over water, you're probably ok if the body of water is at the apex of the trajectory. If it's closer to the target you may get premature firing. A small stream isn't going to do it. A wide river, small lake definitely would. The same can be true over forested areas if the tree cover is very dense. Strong return off the forest canopy means the fuse can fire too soon - above the canopy. A snow covered canopy would be even more likely to prematurely trigger the fuse. Firing at personnel in heavy woods we would have used Time fuses so that the fuse explodes at a preset time of flight. That flight trajectory is adjusted when computing data so that the shell explodes in the air about 7m above the target rather than impacting the target (basically lifting the trajectory so the point of impact would be behind the target). With time (Mechanical Time) fuses, there's no "radar" component, just a clock, so no chance of that VT premature triggering. You can also use "Quick" fuse (point detonating/impact) and get good results because some of them are going to go off when hitting a tree, creating an airburst in the middle of the woods. (think of the Bastogne perimeter episode of Band of Brothers where they are in their foxholes and trees are "exploding" around them.) So that tracks pretty well with the in game results above with VT fuses into woods. The game doesn't model mechanical time fuses at all. It's either HE Quick or VT, or later, some time of precision munitions. Pretty good but very short article on US designed fuses. The mechanical time fuses I saw were the MTSQ-564 - first pic, left hand fuse. Rotate the top to select the time. They'll still go off on impact if for some reason the time doesn't work - either failure or hitting something before time expires. http://www.inert-ord.net/usa03a/usa6/fuzes/index.html Dave

I think it DOES work, but I just can't seem to get the hang of it. The Hunt command with picking my own Hull Down spot, usually does the trick. Dave

Nope. My experience was similar so I gave up. No matter how I fiddled, the tank I tried to get hull down went too far, which of course led almost immediately to explosion and fire. So I do it by eye now. Set an end point for the move, move the camera there and look, and then tweak the endpoint if needed. After a while you get pretty good doing it by eye. Dave

Ha! Never heard that before. No, I meant the book/movie "The Road" - post apocalyptic wasteland wandering.

1. In real life - absolutely. Just need the map with the references on it and a radio. You don't have to see anything. Dave

This made me think that if they get so far down the list that they come to my name, well, building entry doctrine is not going to be the issue we're concerned about. We'll be in "The Road" territory by then.

Yeah, imagine being there for real, eh? Nightmare.

#2 is a no. Windows only on Steam, so no PBEM++ for Mac users. Unless you find it works ok in Parallels Desktop (I don't and I can live without PBEM++ and tournaments). Dave

Field Artillery chiming in. I think I have a solution to the method of building entry and clearing discussion. Guess. But seriously, we had no real MOUT training back then - not as you think of it today. They did build a plywood "town" out on the ranges, but it was brand new. Any village/town training we had was for very small unit, hostage rescue type situations - things that are more likely handled by SF troops today, but back then there was no Delta Force (formed while I was there), and that was not the SF Green Berets focus. So 82d and Rangers trained for that sort of thing. For general town clearing though, our main mission at the time was assumed to be part of REFORGER, in which case, it's a pretty much a free fire zone ahead of you. Plus we'd be on the defensive. We didn't use the fake town for that kind of training. All of this "stack up" building room entry tactics is more new than my background, and shaped by Iraq and Afghanistan rather than Cold War experience where combatants are mixed with civilians almost constantly, so you can't just knock buildings down. My solution above is in jest, in case there is any doubt. It's mpractical in many situations due to the likely presence of civilians. Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza are great examples. In Germany in a hypothetical WW3, it would have been very different. We'd assume the civilians had evacuated west behind us, and quickly. Soviet forces were unlikely to be occupying towns, but rather bypassing them and continuing forward. Dave

No, but it's on the "wish list"

Two questions: 1. Pardon the dumb question but did you download the 2.10 patch? There's no Downfall without the patch. 2. Are you on a Mac? If so, there is a 2.10b patch that needs to be installed to fix the Activate New Products. The one in the 2.10 patch is broken. Dave

Mac user, so once there was no more Rosetta, no more CMBO. That was quite a while ago. And I never had CMBB (which sounds like it was great). Many many hours of fun with CMBO though. Dave