db_zero
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Posts posted by db_zero
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Watch out for para...he is a sneaky devil :0
Looks like the FGM is down or having website issues at the moment. The Blitz is getting a website update so it too is down at the moment.
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db_zero,
Group opprobrium?!
Regards,
John Kettler
Group opprobrium?
I had to google and consult the online library to figure out what that means...
On the topic of a new ambush command. I like that. Going to change the game quite a bit and going to be interesting to see how it all plays out.
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The brilliant people at Google have been quoted. "In a decade or 2 there will be robots/androids more intelligent than humans". Until that time arrives the best AI is another human in h2h play.
At least with the internet its a lot easier that the old play by snail mail that was the norm back in the board game days.
As for the Google prediction-I'm not holding my breath. I can also remember the time when the best and brightest predicted by 2000 we would be putting around in flying cars like the Jetsons.
Then there was Soylent Green and The Omega Man where your opponent for a game of chess was a wooden head....
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....the latest updates for my roku3.
April Fools is 26 days early this year!
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I would argue to the court that compared to the real thing everything about CM is gamey.
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By most accounts I've right from the get go in 41 the Germans remarked the Soviet army was a study in contrast. They could be resilient, tough one moment and the opposite the next moment. They lacked proficiency at the start, but by 1943-44 that really changed. The article posted is Dec 43 so by that time the Soviet army was quite competent.
Like anything else time, experience and the school of hard knocks will weed out the weak, incompetent and otherwise unsuited.
By this time the Red Army had captured and interrogated large number of German officiers with operational experience as well as observing first hand how the other side went about the business of waging war.
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That looks like what I noticed. Gunner gets killed and next in line who takes over the MG is out of position and the MG doesn't get repositioned. It may get fixed when you move to another position, but I can't verify that.
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Don't know if this is a bug and if so if already reported.
It seems when a US HMG team is moved next to bocage they can target to distance provided the terrain allows it. However if 1 man gets killed that no longer is the case and re-positioning the MG team doesn't fix that.
Its seems to have happened to 2 of my HMG teams so far.
Very strange.
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I bet if a movie like Saving Private Ryan or a Band if Brothers series was made that focuses on Italy CM Italy sales would spike.
A modern remake of A Bridge to Far would probably boost MG.
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Interesting discussion. I find it hard to believe NATO or the US would directly engage in a land war in Russia. I could see American forces engaging in Korea, ME or perhaps Taiwan.
It also seems like with the range and lethal nature of modern weapons some changes in the scale of the game engine may be in order?
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MG dead? No need to write a obituary yet. I have an h2h game of Counter Attack at Son going on as well as 2 h2h games of Borderland and Boldness.
Italy is also in play 3 games going on in Hittler's soft underbelly.
I'm sure RT will be a hit and steal some of MG and GLs thunder, but there will always be plenty of players for the other games.
I'm also using a MG map for a urban QB game.
Its always nice to have a variety of locations to fight in.
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Using the edges sounds like a perfectly valid tactic. I consider it similar to probing and discovering the boundary lines between different units which is often where attacks get made due to coordination issues.
IIRC the big 1973 battle at the Chinese Farm was initially targeted at divisional boundries that was discovered by an elite recon unit using captured Egyptian armor to mask the unit.
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Yes, I believe that an in game encyclopedia can add value to the game both for regular BFC customers such as us and help make the game more accessible for newer gamers that are just trying the Combat Mission games for the first time.
As hard as it may be to imagine for most posters on this board there are new players that don't know the practical differences between a Sherman armed with a 75mm or a 76mm cannon, nor do they have any realistic ideas how said Sherman would fare against an Panther at 800m also armed with a 75mm cannon. As it is now, not even the description in the pdf manual gives any meaningful information for a new player to learn.
Once less well known equipment get used even players that have some knowledge of WW2 tanks will be left wondering.
In the Market Garden manual it is stated that the Cromwell VII has 8-101 mm of armor. I might surmise that the tank has 101 mm at the front and 8mm at the back, but is it 101 all over the front? Or is it only 101 mm at the turret with much less at the hull? I have no idea, and no easy way to find out.
In the first generation of CM titles we had an in game encyclopedia that gave armor values for front, side and rear for both turret and hull. It allowed the player to make informed decisions about what tanks to buy and how to use them.
At the moment its pretty much "learn by trying/failing". While some grogs might find this fun and realistic I would think that most non-hardcore gamers would like to have more information at hand to make decisions. If you give the player the ability to inspect the armor and penetrating capabilities of a 75mm Sherman and then compare them to that of a Panther their respective strengths and weaknesses will become readily apparent and the player can make decisions based on facts rather than uninformed expectations. Combat Mission can be hard and unforgiving as it is without making lack of information about the units an artificial difficulty that hit new players extra hard.
Now, BFC has said that an in game encyclopedia is on their "to do list" but it will not be ready for Red Thunder. I can only hope and cross my fingers for that when their next game comes out or 4.0 that they have been able to implement this feature. I know if they release a module for Red Thunder that has Romanian or Hungarian units I would surely love some information about them.
That's why I would like to see replays and other stuff accessible on a smart phone.
Whether we like it or not the younger generation is texting and doing everything on their smartphone. Combat Mission may never be portable to a smartphone for awhile, but in the meantime giving an incentive to buy/own a computer that can play CM may be something worth looking into.
Eventually CM will be playable on a portable device.
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All joking aside. I would love to see an encylopedia, more reference material, historical background and how it all works myself. I'd also like to see it exportable or in PDF format to so I could download to phone to look at from time to time.
While we're at it what I would really like to see is a replay feature that is not only viewable on your PC, but also in a format I could view on my smartphone.
The ultimate would be a replay feature where you could save and view an entire battle against the AI or H2H on your PC and smartphone.
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Didn't know the Soviet Armor was overrated...remember the Russian SMG units had some impressive attack strengths.
Was hard to find opponents. Back in those days you could play by snail mail, but I never did. I actually got Panzerblitz, Panzer Leader, Luftwaffe, Tobruk, Italy and some other AH games I can't really recall in a trade.
I gave someone some Playboy, Penthouse and some Hustler mags and I got the games.
If I still had the games I would say I got the better end of that deal, but after moving a round a bit the games got lost in the shuffle.
I do remember a few years later when we moved to Saudi Arabia in 1979-when it was still a backwards medieval place and I had to live without TV or many of the things we take for granted in the west I was allowed to bring a few games and Tobruk was a life saver-cause there was NOTHING to do and being in the middle of nowhere really sucked. Venturing into the cities was facinating for a while, but that too got old. I also spent a lot of time reading books like Foxes of the Desert and Scorched Earth, but playing AH Tobruk was most of my entertainment.
I also shipped Squad Leader, but that somehow never made it
Speaking of Squad Leader a few years later I saw some reference to the effect it was evil and the work of the devil because the American units had the value of the devil.
Someone in some review also railed on the fact that units that failed morale were flipped over with the words "Broke" and said leaders would rally the men by paying them...
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So basically what we need to do is to recruit more wargames for BFC so they can afford to hire more progamers.
Or use Kickstarter. Too bad BF couldn't be classified as a non-profit entity. Donations could then be charitable deductions and tax write-offs.
If I'm not mistaken fans of IL-2 have kicked in more than what is needed to fund an upgrade for that classic. I still have Il-2 1946 on my hard disk.
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You don't know all this stuff in your sleep?
Well I guess that's one of the advantages of being what the younger generations calls "old"...
Back in the day before personal computers were common and the internet was the play thing of universities and the DoD, the rest of us had to make due with plastic model kits from the likes of Revell, Momogram, Tayimya.
Then there were the boardgames from AH and SPI.
I can still remember the days when I dreamed all of the above could be done on something like a computer.
Those days are here...
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Found this to be interesting. Not Combat Mission specific, but the principals do apply. This came out in 2002 and since then a lot has happened so perhaps the authors narrative may have changed...
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I'm playing Counter Attack at Son and when I give a single straight line movement using the move as well as the quick command, my tanks start to move over the bridge then veer left at the end of the bridge, hesitate the ever so slowly rotate right to complete movement over the bridge.
That could end up being a problem later on.
Also it would appear that a tank or any other vehicle that gets immobilized or destroyed on a bridge ends the game as there is no allowance in the mechanics to use another tank or vehicle to push the obstructing vehicle off the bridge.
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JK said...one doesn't walk around with a Molotov cocktail.
Don't know about that. Me and my friends would walk and run with em. We had WW2 bunkers to try them out on.
Wouldn't want to be someone inside a bunker when one went off.
We used to put Styrofoam into the gas to create a gooey substance that would burn for quite a while.
The bunkers were a mile or 2 uphill.
Sometimes I wonder how I survived youth in 1 piece.
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I looked at the screenshots of the Soviet infantry and see an image of what looks like an AK47.
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Well maybe the TOW3 engine is not the way to go. I avoided it in the past when I read the issues users had getting it to start, but today I decided to give it a try...
I just purchased Korea, downloaded and tried to run and it doesn't run. Not good when you spend $45.
You buy, download and expect it to start up.
I've tried running as admin, in XP compatibility mode downloading the hotfix and submitting a helpdesk ticket-which after years being released all of the above should not be necessary.
Wierd as I have TOW Kursk, Caen and both run with no issues.
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The better solution may be to do the opposite. SMGs should be limited to 75 or 100 meters by default and the use of firing arcs to SMG units for when you want to take the long range shots outside of effective range.
If you could also take carefully aimed shots with SMG's in semi auto mode-if appropriate for the type of SMG carried and combine that with firing arcs we may have a solution.
German Halftrack Doctrine?
in Combat Mission Red Thunder
Posted
As mentioned they are basically taxis. I think many like the Israelis who used surplus M3's deliberately removed the MGs to discourage use as fire support vechicles due to vulnerability.
One advantage of HTs is they are more mobile over poor terrain and mud.
Aggressive use in game against any opposition that shoots back never ends well for any HTs.