Ultradave

Correct. At the time we got them to go to the Sinai for peacekeeping duties after the Camp David agreements, but other than that, we didn't get them to go the NTC for training. At least that's how it was in the 82d. Dave

There is a worldwide shortage of chips of many kinds right now. Many of the newest amateur radio transceivers (SDRs - Software Defined Radios) are also affected and back ordered. Dave

A "follow" command is on the wish list, but as yet, a successful one hasn't been developed. Still on the list When it was last worked on the testing community felt that it was not ready for prime time. It worked, sort of, but there were too many times, or special instances, where it didn't work. So, keep hope alive. Dave

Feel free to make a detailed list of them and post. Really. I'm not being sarcastic. There are quite a few people on the beta team, however the deadline was short, not everyone tested or even opened every scenario (I haven't even opened the NTC campaign, for example because I was busy on other things). As was said, not everyone is a native English speaker or even if they are not a US English speaker so some military terms and organizations names were constantly being corrected. Most of us were on the beta team for a short time, compared to "normal" (like FR for instance). So sure, typos are there. And while everything IS read over, and corrections made, sometimes new errors can creep in when a correction is made and it doesn't get caught. BF always looks for quality, so if you posted a list of errata rather than insulting everyone involved in the entire process, it will definitely go into a list of things to be fixed. My constructive criticism of your criticism. Take it or leave it Dave

By specifics what is being asked for is a detailed description of the situation, and then exactly what happens. If you can provide a save game that illustrates the behavior then that would really help in trying to narrow this down. The update to all the games that Red Thunder just got and is built into CW pretty well eliminated that behavior as far as testers and users can see. If you have a save that shows soldiers running from cover TOWARD the enemy, please post it here so someone can take a look at it. Thanks. Dave

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's always been the case. Have to already be inside the vehicle to Acquire. Many is the time I've wished to speed it up Dave

That Soviet AI plan certainly did a job on me. And while don’t claim to be a CM whizz player I was an Army officer during this whole time training for exactly this so I employ what we trained on. More or less. Personally I really like this scenario. And I like ones like this where the enemy does the unexpected and waxes me. Then I’ll play it again with hindsight figuring , ok I’m the squadron CO and smarter about Soviet possible advances. Let’s see what I can do. The fact that road and bridge are death should be obvious from analyzing the map and figuring out likely enemy positions. Dave.

I wasn't going to go through the kind of explanation that @ASL Veterandid but now that he did I'll say that I playtested this as the US and I saw how the Soviet AI approached it, which is very close to his description. I never saw all that infantry cross the river. I had to move those Bradleys off that ridge on the right before that. They got off a shot or two before being driven back/destroyed. All that dismounted infantry showed up on my side of that large patch of woods and started pitching ATGMs left and right into the town and it was impossible to suppress enough of them. There are too many of them and I'd reveal a keyhole tank or TOW and it would come under fire. I did cause a few wrecks near the bridge but didn't block it. So the Soviet tanks took a beating from my TOWs and tanks, but the infantry eventually accounted for the vast majority of my forces and I called a cease fire when it was obvious a non-suicidal commander would have retreated. You might get lucky and block the bridge, but the majority of the force got across the river and forced me out of the town. In real life that's a victory. Someone can come along now shortly and shove those wrecks aside and the way is clear for the 3d line to motor on through. (If you play the US, click on the FO that is your starting position. Voila! There I am, SGT Anderson. Bit of a demotion but hey, I'm ready for war.) Dave

Please make a note of anything that you see that seems "off" that may be due to M1. Should work fine but none of us in the beta group have an M1 Mac. My MacBook Pro is only 2 years old, so I'm not ready to shell out for a new one yet. This one still works really well. It's good to hear that it runs on the MacBook Air though. For Big Sur though, there is the issue of the blue progress bars not appearing for scenario load and turn processing. It's on the list of things to fix. Also the licensing screen is pretty wonky. I imagine those two graphic issues are related. Dave

MUCH harder. We all cried. I didn't design it, but I can tell you that using a couple of tanks for fire support to clear the woods really helped. How to do it is up to you. Dave

As a Fire Direction Officer, our battery once spent 14 hours straight in MOPP4. The only good thing about it was that it was FREEZING cold out and it made us warmer. But calculating artillery firing data and transmitting it to the guns and talking to the FOs on the radio was challenging to say the least. Hard to see, hard to talk and be understood. We ended up using a runner to the guns with slips of paper with the firing data (two actually - one for each 3 guns), because it was too easy for the gun crews to not be able to understand us on the field telephone speaking through the mask. Deflection error wasn't so bad, but an error in elevation could kill our own troops too easily. Made completing fire missions much longer - probably twice the time. Dave

There are also some trail/paths/jeeptracks through the woods that aren't immediately obvious unless you scan on #6 view or use the partial trees hotkey. Those can be a huge help in moving forward. Dave

I'm guessing it will probably work. I had started testing the latest version, but we all ran out of time before release. And it's a long one. I was about 20-30 minutes in I think. No crashes with several saves. Seemed like it was working fine. If it's still in the uploads folder, now that the last 2 weeks flurry has died down, I can go back and play with it some more, if you like @Combatintman If not if you want to pm me a copy, I'll give it a go. It would be good to get it released to the Scenario Depot at least. It's in the category of "You want tanks? I've got tanks for ya' " Dave

John, Did you get this sorted? Dave

Thanks, I'll pass. C-Rations were quite bad enough without trying something that could be worse. I never saw an MRE (Yeah, I'm old), but from what I've heard they may or may not have been an improvement. Most people I've heard that hated them never had a C-Rat, so there's that. In contrast, our mess hall was very good. Dave

It already has been, right? PBEM++ I know. That's probably not what you meant, is it?

The Soviet AI does a pretty good job. So if you are stumped after a while, play as US. I died (a lot) in testing, even though I gave out pretty well. Dave

I never even tried to go there in play testing. Just seemed too much like a place to die. Dave

Those are good points. The attack area being larger would mean that (in real life) a coordinate and radius would be given to a pilot. He's going to go for the middle of the circle and if he can adjust outside of that he will, but there is a limit to 1) how easy for him to pick up a secondary target 2) his maneuvarbility on an attack run. Having a bigger circle would mean that he could hit one spot inside a bigger circle, not everything in the circle in one pass. Linear would be good. No reason that an A-10 (to pick a good example) can't set up on a run and fire that cannon down a line in a pass. They tend to normally use them in very short bursts (burrps) at a target. It goes through ammo REAL fast. Dave

When an aircraft or flight like an A-10 does an attack run, they aren't going to just zip around our CM map attacking stuff. In real life the aircraft has an Initial Point (IP) which is where they start their run, under control of the FAC or FIST. Make the run. Aircraft exit to somewhere near to the rear and possibly loiter. Now if they get new direction in the middle of that, they have to leave the area, loiter, process the new info, and set up again with an IP and a new attack run. Those minutes are not unreasonable in an environment where you don't control the skies and there is a significant AA threat. I think it's unrealistic to just make a quick adjust. Keep in mind the size of a CM map and the fact that even an A-10 which can fly pretty low and slow, is moving at a speed about 10-15x faster than a tank speeding across open ground. Dave

There's no Afrika but FI lets you play with some of the same equipment starting with the invasion of Sicily. With the two modules Gustav Line and Rome to Victory, it takes you through the end of the war and is a huge amount of content. RtV also includes several nationalities - Brazil, France, South Africa - to play with as well. BN probably has the most content of all, if you also count user created content. With the two expansions of Commonwealth Forces and Market Garden, you again have a lot of content. It was the most of any but FI has probably about caught up by now. Final Blitzkrieg is the newest of the three and as such doesn't have the extra content, but if the Battle of the Bulge is your thing, then maybe that's the one. The advice most usually give is to pick the one that you have the most interest in and that's what you'll have the most fun with. Dave

One of the highlights of my military service was an exchange with the Canadian Parachute Regiment. We traded people (I was a LT in an artillery battery at the time). We spent 40 days with them, jumped enough to get our Cdn jump wings. The unit is very "British" in organization/training/attitude. In garrison, "Tea and Toast" at 10am. Out in the field, at 3pm on the drop zone their Colonel's driver brewed up tea on the hood of his jeep for the officers. A big mess truck drives up with tea, coffee and snacks for the enlisted troops. It made up for some of the not so good stuff I went through. The Colonel told us that the whole reason for the visit was that if WW3 breaks out and we found out that the unit next to us getting it's collective a$$ kicked was the Parachute Regt that we'd immediately say "We're on the way to help. Those are good guys. They treated us well" He said "That's why you are here and we're going to make damn sure you go home with that attitude" I don't think I bought a drink the whole time I was there. He pointed out that it's because you are the 82d Abn. People all over the former British empire remember. You're living on the reputation from WW2. (and out of the side of his mouth "don't screw it up", with a smile). Good Colonel. His troops loved him. And they were outstanding troopers. Also, they had FNs and Hi-Powers, which we coveted Dave

It's been discussed here in other threads. A LOT. Especially the one titled something like new things for the new thing.

No, sorry. I meant login to your iMac.

John, By any chance is the user you use to log in not an Admin user? Do you have separate users on your Mac - one as admin, the other for "normal" use. That's when that error can pop up. Which would also mean that it might just exit if you don't get that. Second possibility. Installer package could be a bad download and it can't verify it. Have you tried a fresh download. At some point early in beta development I believe I got that message and it was because the Mac installer was not ready for prime time yet I think. Can't remember now which title that happened on. Been a while. Dave