Vet 0369

I usually find it much easier to just say 1300 ET,CT,MT, or PT and let the other guy figure it out. When it's the same time for 6 months, why bother to specify standard or daylight savings? By the way, the concept of different times have been around for a long time, and everyone you ask why we use it gives you a different answer. The one I like the best is that it started in Scandinavia so people could have an extra hour of sunlight in the parks in the summer evenings!

What is the difference between being cynical and being experienced? When you're cynical, you expect something will be late. When you're experienced, you know it will be late!

Well then, I stand corrected and apologize for the misinformation I received and then distributed. Information can vary widely depending on what sources come up on a search. Again, my apologies.

If the Cold War turned hot in the late 70s or early 80s, I don’t envision many USMC amphibious assaults taking place outside of Norway. The USMC just isn’t large enough. The primary Marine area of operation was defense of Norway. That’s why we trained there starting in 1976. In 2020, the total strength of the USMC was 219,458 Marines. That’s 180,958 Regular Marines and 38,500 Reserve Marines. Those are the numbers allowed by the Congress, who set the manning limits for the U.S. military. To put it all in perspective, of the five largest Marine forces in the world, Russia’s Naval infantry is the largest, followed by the ROK Marines. The USMC is number five in size. Even the Netherlands Korps Mareine (spelling is probably incorrect, but you get the gist) is larger than the USMC. The entire USMC is only about 30,000 larger than the U.S. Army Reserves. People think we’re larger because we do more with fewer. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil, for I’m the meanest S.O.B. in the valley!

Following is a quote (perhaps not exact) by a very famous man: ”We don’t stop playing because we get older, we get older because we stop playing.” Benjamin Franklin

It might be because East Prussia and West Prussia were separated by Poland after WWI. If I had to make a geographic determination, I’d put East Prussia in Eastern Europe along with Lithuania. Since CMRT covers the battles from Operation Bagration (sp?) to the battle for Warsaw, which is west of the East Prussia region, I’d expect East Prussia to be covered under the base CMRT.

I believe that Steve posted, in another thread, that a smaller patch file will be available, but I got the feeling that he was anticipating a while before it’s released. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is when BFC releases the patch with the new Slitherine multiplayer system after Slitherine releases it’s version in June or July.

Well, that’s probable, however, if you open the CMRT Fire and Rubble manual in the game folder, the Schwimmwagen is detailed on page 27 under Unarmored vehicles. It might just be me, but the manual for an expansion to an existing family is always the first thing I look at after downloading the expansion. It helps me to understand what has changed, and new advantages and disadvantages in the expansion.

I just installed F&R on my mid-2010 MacPro and didn’t lose a thing. When asked for my install path, I specified my Combat Missions directory on a drive where I keep all my games. It’s installer created a new “Applications” directory, and put the new CMRT in that Applications directory. Then I dragged the new one out of the Applications directory and dropped it into my CMRT directory (I have a specific directory for every Combat Mission game). It replaced the old files with the new ones, but left my existing Data, Mods, and zCMRT directories alone except for the new files. Or, at least that’s how I remember doing it.

You are most welcome!

Well, I don’t know what your real life military background is, or you have any real life military experience, but honestly, it rather galls me to hear someone say that the infantry in CM is not “realistic,” meaning too brutal. I on the other hand served in the USMC and USMCR from 1969 to 1981. The last 8-years of that were as a Weapons Section Leader and as a Rifle Platoon Sargent. You complain that the Axis defensive position was selected to make the assault as deadly as possible for the attacker. That is how you select defensive terrain in reality! You then complain that “Hollywood” depicts the Soviet soldier as a brainless beast that was simply thrown at the enemy in vastly superior hordes. While the Soviet Soldier was largely uneducated, most were truly dedicated to saving their “Motherland,” that is how they were actually used. Of course, the fact that the Commissar political officers stationed heavy machine guns behind the lines to gun down any soldier who ran from the assault or the defensive position didn’t hurt the soldier’s resolve to continue the assault or to stay in the defensive position! You complain that the combat is unrealistic. You are absolutely correct! It was much, much worse than depicted in CM. If you doubt me, read the accounts of combat on Peleliu where Marines and Soldiers pushed bodies in front of them to stop bullets allowing them to advance a few yards, or Okinawa where if you slipped in the mud on the Naha/Shuri line, you most likely ended up sprawled in the mud amid rotting dead and maggots! Please try to refrain from making those types of “judgement” statements unless you have the actual experiences and knowledge to back them up.

But not before you save your mods and saved games. You naughty, naughty boy @purpleheart23!

LOL, I know exactly what you mean! I was a technical writer for about forty years and remember many times, after pounding a keyboard for 10 hours, exiting MS Word, seeing “do you want to save?” and my finger going for the “N” key, all the while my mind screaming “NO.” Didn’t help though, instinct always override the mind. One lead writer I worked with told me about the time he typed in “/format c.” When asked “do you really want to Format the c-drive” he said to himself “”I said I want to format C,” and hit the y key. Nough said.

Ah, just saw the typo I made. I used “movement” phase instead of “Command” phase. I always save at the end of the command phase. Just reverted back to my ASL days.

A residence in Texas is having a blow-out party tonight

At least until tomorrow when something breaks and it’s the weekend

Don’t really remember what my version number was, but my regular PBEM Partner and I had major issues updating from v2.00 to 2.01 and 2.02. Our Wrob Bridgehead saves just wouldn’t run. We might have stuck with one of the earlier versions. IIRC, it turned out to be something like the update changing some of my units to cavalry which I didn’t have, so the game choked on it. No biggy, I can always restart the “Hammer’s Flank” campaign since I had only about nine saved. It’d just irritating. On the bright side however, it starts much faster, although I haven’t checked whether it deleted my mods. I rather suspect that it has. I’m eating supper at the moment, so I’ll check it in a while.

OK, since I haven't seen a bug topic in support, I'll start one here where most folks look anyway. I started up my CMRT Fire and Rubble that I just installed. I selected a saved turn in my campaign "Hammer's Flank." The load made it to 23% and CMRT crashed to desktop. I tried running ever one of my Hammer's Flank saves, and they all crashed at 23-25% of the load. I always save my game at the end of my movement phase, just before I hit the button. I then selected the Hammer's Flank Campaign and the fight button. It ran perfectly. I haven't tried any of my other base CMRT saves yet, but I will do that. I will also report it in the normal manner in the Support subforum. I just wanted to put the word out in case anyone has the same issue. Just tried a saved turn in my Training campaign. Same issue. It might be an issue with the Campaigns. I just tried it from a saved PBEM turn. It hung up at 25%, froze my screen until I did the Ctrl Alt Delete and I got an out of memory box. That's strange, since I have 32Gb of RAM and 8 GB of VRAM.

Ah, then the M-16 history that I read wasn’t complete as it didn’t mention the forward assist as the main reason for the M-16A1. An article in Gun digest dated 12/16/2017 states that the reason for the Army insisting on the forward assist was not mechanical, but psychological to give the troops more faith and confidence in the weapon. Yes, the M-16 in Viet Nam had a lot of issues with rounds not chambering, but those were due almost entirely to the Army eliminating the Stoner design requirement to chrome plate the chamber, barrel, and gas tube in order to save money, and the neglect of training troops in how important to actually clean the rifle. In fact, troops were actually told that cleaning was usually unnecessary! The main changes to the M-16A1 were to chrome plate the chamber, barrel, and gas tube, after which there was actually no need for a forward assist as the chrome plating reduced the fouling, as was the original design intent. The flash hider was changed from the three prong to the ringed flash hider simply because the men in the field were using the three prong flash hider to break the bands on cases of C-rations, which tended to cause misalignment of the flash hider resulting in the rifle shooting around corners. Some soldiers learned to ride the charging handle and then using the forward assist to seat the round for a “silent” chambering. This however was never the intent of the Army. Think about it logically, if a round fails to chamber, why would one then use a forward assist to force the round into the chamber, running the risk of jamming the rifle big time vs pulling the charging handle to eject that round and trying to chamber another? If that second try fails, you have bigger problems than you can solve by pushing the forward assist. There is a reason we did rifle inspections. In all my years with the M-16A1, I never once needed to use the forward assist. I also cleaned the rifle on a regular basis. I was also not ever in a sandy or dusty environment, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, so I defer to your operational experience with using it in those environments.

I’ve competed in matches with both the M1903A1 and the M1 Garland, and as I’ve said before, qualified with the M-14 and M-16. There’s a reason that the Navy SEALs favor modified M-14s when they need accuracy and stopping power. Unfortunately, I suspect most military planners have never heard a shot fired in anger, so they remain mostly clueless most things except what their superiors want to hear. Politics at it’s lowest form. @Bozowans, thank you very much for posting the article. It is very informative. I suspect most of the Staff Officers in all of the militaries all over the world tend to “train to fight the last war.” I know that in 1978, we were still using “Viet Nam” tactics such as circular defensive positions and such. The break down in discipline was directly caused by officers and NCO (“Leaders”) who failed to enforce discipline in their subordinates. For example, I was in a USMCR light helicopter squadron. Since there wasn’t much maintenance needed on our Hueys, a number of us banded together to do combat training with our Training Gunny to keep up our proficiency (EVERY Marine is a rifleman first and foremost). We ran some aggressor exercises against National Guard troops at the request of their training staff. We always wiped them out simply because we could follow the smell of pot and the sounds of beer can pop tops to locate their positions. They wouldn’t have lasted 15 minutes in actual combat. The fault was with their leaders not doing their jobs. The Marines have a saying “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war!,” and a Marine leader, officer or NCO, is held responsible for the conduct of his subordinates whether he, or she, is present with them or not. Failure is the failure of the leader!

IIRC, the main change to the M16 that makes it an M16A1 is chrome plating the barrel and gas port, and changed the flash hider from the three prong to the ringed flash hider. All they did was correct the issues created by the Army Ord Dept. that eliminated them from the original Stoner design to save money, and that gave the M16 such a bad name in Viet Nam.

Since the USMC are not part of CMCW, Dragon AT missiles will probably at the very least be organic at a platoon level for the US Army. AT missiles such as Dragons and Javelins are organic at the Battalion level and dispersed to Company level at the discretion of the Battalion Commander in the USMC. Marine infantry don’t need organic AT missiles other than AT4s because they have hand grenades and K-bars!

I’d like to add my own USMC and USMCR with the M-14 and M-16 experiences to this discussion. I qualified with the M-14 every year from 1969 to 1973, and the M-16 from 1975 until 1980. With the M-14, we qualified at 200, 300, and 500 yards. With the M-16, we qualified at 360 meters (my memories are up to 50 years old, so please forgive me if I’m off a bit) using known distance (KD) targets. Max effective range was 460 meters (~500 yards) for the M-14, and 360 meters for the M-16. For those who don’t know the term “maximum effective range,” in the USMC it is the range at which any Marine can be expected to inflict a casualty on the enemy (which means hit, but not necessarily kill the target). We qualified with open sights (adjustable aperture and windage on the M-14, and long/short rear flip sight and bullet adjustable front sights on the M-16). We didn’t have any “glass.” Combat ranges are considerably shorter. The max effective range for my trained M-60 gun teams with tripod was 1500 yards. Bipod was probably 500 to 600 yards. In a defensive fixed position, If you can see the enemy at those ranges, you probably want to begin by dropping company level 60mm mortar rounds on them, then your M-203s, and open up with your rifles around 200. Finally, you’ll have your Pigs open up across the line from the flanks. I recommend NEVER opening up with your pigs at range. It just gives the enemy targets.

Most of our play was on earlier iPads (iPad 1s I think), although I also played on a 2010 MacPro, and my buddy also played on a PC. I don’t really remember any issues relating to file size or download/upload times. I honestly don’t remember if the files were kept on the system or in the cloud. It’s probably been 6 or 7 years since we were able to play Battle Academy or Comander: The Great War. Ok except been gaming for the most part on a PC since 2017, but might still have the games installed on my Mac. They won’t run at all on the newer iPads.

This is how I was playing Battle Academy and and a couple of other Slitherine based games with a friend. The problem with them is that if the developer changes platforms or you have issues, it is up to the developer to fix them. I don't think we'll have that problem with BFC though.