Ultradave

I hope you bought a lottery ticket :-)

Yeah, that's the idea. Make REAL sure the flyboys know where you are and where the bad guys are. :-) Although I jest about the Air Force in my comments, I used to be a field artillery officer in the 82d Airborne, and as such, especially as a young 2LT FIST Chief, I LOVED the Air Force. What firepower at your disposal on the other end of that radio! The infantry CO I was attached to knew it to, and his instructions were that if he turned around and his elbow didn't hit me I wasn't close enough to him. Just thought I'd add that in case we come across as insulting the Air Force in any way.

And things haven't changed much. Even today, you want plenty of room between you and the Air Force. :-) That's not a slam against the Air Force... it's just that they carry a big, big punch and you want to be well clear when they arrive. (at least when the subject is bombs, not rockets) 1. They are moving very fast and therefore dumb bombs have a large probable error that is football shaped, like naval gunfire. We were taught that you NEVER EVER want it coming in with the line of fire/drop the direction you are facing (coming over your head). Always from as much of a right angle to your line of view as possible. That way the error hits the bad guys. 2. 500lb bombs are big. That sounds silly but my point is that the destruction they cause is amazing compared to artillery and it's much more dangerous to be close than "danger close" artillery. For example the warhead of a 105mm is about 35lbs, a 155mm about 95lbs, and an 8" about 250lbs. 3. Hold your position until the air strike is over. Nothing is worse than having the situation on the ground change before the pilot(s) get there. Back in WWII I don't think there was much chance , if any, of communicating changes to the pilots on the way. Obviously today's modern precision guided munitions alleviate some of this, however, the basic principles are still valid and there are plenty of uses for inexpensive dumb bombs. A fighter bomber low and fast has a split second many times to determine where to drop.

That assumes they can get a shot off before being knocked out. Playing the In the Shadow of the Hill scenarios in series and the last one and the one before have left me with smoking wrecks of Churchills all over the battlefield.

Getting back to the original question though about Civil War books. If you have read many histories and after that want something for more "flavor" and light reading, I recommend "The Killer Angels", by Michael Shaara, and the prequel and sequel by his son Jeff Shaara, "Gods and Generals" and "The Last Full Measure". They may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I thoroughly enjoyed them. "The Killer Angels" was the basis for the movie "Gettysburg". Seems odd to say that but the books concentrate on several of the key characters of the campaign and the movie stayed true to that and followed that storyline. They are definitely not histories as the events are real but the dialogue for the most part (except that which was accurately recorded at the time) is imagined. Imagined but quite plausible. So they are classed as historical fiction. They probably do more than most books on the Civil War to try to get across a feeling for the thoughts and motivations of many of the main military characters of the war. I would read these though, after having read a few of the real historical books. Hope that's helpful. Dave

I didn't mean it to come across as a correction as I realized you were talking about earlier times. Sorry if it seemed that way. Just thought it was an interesting tidbit. I didn't know it until that petition came about as it was pointed out to those petitioners, something like, nice effort but it's unconstitutional :-) Not related to anything Civil War-ish, and at the risk of being too political, NC politics today has gone off the deep end, so I wouldn't put much store in anything that comes out of here lately :-). There was also a move from some town in the western part of the state that tried to establish an official religion for town/city/county meetings. Their argument was something like the state is not required to recognize federal rulings on the 1st Amendment and that federal courts are not authorized to decide what is Constitutional. Civics class, anyone? It didn't get very far, other than in the press where it was widely ridiculed.

Interestingly, though, where I live in North Carolina it actually IS prohibited to secede now. The prohibition was added to the state constitution after the Civil War.

I have a spot for 105s but it's more because it's what I used to do than any tactical reason :-) And it was long enough ago that we did all the calculations with "charts and dart" - no GPS and computers, so I feel like I know exactly what's going on behind the scenes. Of course, same goes with 81mm mortars because early on I was an FO, but my branch was FA.

That animated Civil War site is amazing. And that's not the only thing there either. I can see much time spent there - thanks for mentioning it. I had no idea it existed.

For some reason my experience is that I lose my AT guns to the first one or two rounds from a Sherman. Maybe my bad luck.

A "Target Light Arc" button is what you need it sounds like. :-)

I also recommend Shelby Foote's THE CIVIL WAR - A NARRATIVE Foote writes like the novelist he mainly was, however, the 3 volume books are filled with detailed descriptions of all of the major and most minor engagements, even some of the more obscure ones out West. It took him something like 25 years to write the books. Each of the 3 volumes is longer than the previous so as the war drags on in 1865 you feel it will never end, which is probably true to life :-) They are something like 900, 1100 and almost 1500 pages. But he writes with a style that gives you the uncanny feeling that he was there listening to the conversations he's relating, or that he was an eyewitness to the action described. Very, very well written. I've heard comments that it is sympathetic to the South. I'm not sure I agree with that. I've read a number of Civil War histories and this seems quite even handed to me. Also, Douglas McPherson's BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM, shorter (1 volume) Plenty of detail I think for what you say you want, and it won't take you a full year to read it. Both of these are available as large format paper cover books so you can get them at reasonable prices. My lovely wife gave me the boxed hardcover set of Shelby Foote's history one year for Christmas. (You can tell I'm more of a fan of Foote).

No different than a laptop. My MacBook Pro has a fan that really gets going with heavy graphics use, and it's less than 1" thick. Amazing what they can cram in there. I've had the back off to install more memory and there is NO extra space in there.

Personally, I was in the field artillery. We had the best way to enter buildings. Turn it to rubble first. And of course being FA meant not having to worry much about vaulting walls. :-)

Real time with the scenario I chose seemed still to be within the realm of realism. The original plt that arrives I micromanaged until the reinforcements arrived. After that the original plt was pretty much on it's own (because of the situation this worked ok), and I took over as Company Commander with the other two platoons and support. Those all stayed close enough that the company cdr could reasonably direct traffic on the fly. A single inf co. or something roughly that size would be a great size for real time.

I almost always play a minute at a time, but after reading this discussion I just played MG Out on a Limb in real time. It was a blast (no pun intended). With just a company of 82d Airborne to control, it was very manageable. And being able to quickly halt a squad or team when something unexpected happens was nice, rather than (sometimes) having them continue along a path that is now no longer a banner idea. I did pause a few times, mostly when reinforcements arrived, or I was looking for a good spot to place a mortar team. But other than that I just kept playing. I managed to win too, after almost blundering into disaster and quickly recovering to regroup. (I'm purposely being very vague since it's new and many probably have not played most of the scenarios). Anyway, I'm a convert at least for small actions. I'll have to see what I think for a larger scenario and map. Dave

I left out that the saved game was a PBEM game that was already in progress. Both of us just added MG. Don't know if that makes a difference for anyone investigating.

Mine seems faster too, and CM had already improved in general as I upgraded my MacBook Pro to 16GB RAM a few weeks ago. I actually needed the RAM for research work but the performance boost to CM was an added bonus. 2.4GHz Core i7, 16GB RAM, 1GB AMD Radeon 6770M, OS X 10.8.5 I also had the airplane noise on the first turn from a CW saved game I continued. Lasted for the whole minute. But the next turn was back to normal with no ill effects. Thanks again to Battlefront for bringing this back to the Mac and supporting it so well. So far in MG I've started a few scenarios just so I could see the maps - nice, nice job there. And am trying Out on a Limb real time (which I rarely use). I'm finding it fun in a smaller scenario. Dave

Waiting and watching. Game in progress but this close up won't give anything away :-)

Sent a PM.

Sounds right compared to real life too. If you are in the firing battery and have no confirmation of where your rounds are falling, you don't want to keep lobbing them out there, possibly on top of friendly troops who are too busy now taking cover from your rounds to answer :-) Even when you still have an observer on the line, you have to think hard about the response from the FO "Round unobserved. Repeat, over". ..... wait a minute - did you see ANYTHING? (voice of experience speaking :-) )

I would just like to say that I'm glad you aren't cancelling Market Garden. As an alumnus of the 82d Airborne Division, I'll buy it whatever content it contains :-) And thanks again for supporting the Mac.

Close (relatively) .... Raleigh, North Carolina. I was at Oak Ridge National Lab all last week - does that count? :-)

They are all good. As a long time Mac user, I was glad to see them come back to the Mac, and I've picked up CMBN, CW, CMFI, and now CMSF. Each has their own good points. Which one you enjoy may depend most on what theatre/era you like. Each has it's own challenges. I agree with the previous. I've played plenty of WWII games over many years and enjoy that time period. CMSF however, is loads of fun because it has all the good stuff in it that was just coming out or we had never dreamed of when I was in the Army (M1s and Bradleys were brand new then) I've enjoyed the different challenges of each one. Dave

Oh, I know, I know - just ragging on the troops in game since I'm an ex-paratrooper myself and disappointed with the performance of my electronic troops right now :-)