GJR144

YankeeDog, since CM is a simulation modelled after the real world models, there is no need to access any ingame data. Just a routine that calls a window and reads text from a txt-file. In this file anything can be written. From "Fans don't need any improvements" to the real world armor data of the selected unit. Zebulon, I don't know how long you have been playing CM, and I don't know how many platoons you are cramping into an action square, but in the thirteen years playing CM I never had the problem of too many movement paths, but the problem that a unit must be clicked to see the paths appears in every order phase several times. The system with paths shown without a unit selected in CMx1 IMO was way more user friendly and it takes years to see any improvements in this regard, while game content is produced faster than anyone is capable to play. If you say that you don't know what the unit info data can be good for, then you probably do not care about the nuances of tank combat. This data is essential to know the safety distance or to get an impression at which distance a certain angle could be penetrated. And besides this, i always found it interesting in CMx1 to study and compare the data, especially with rare or new units. With today's computers it would be so easy to even load pics or video, or a history with production numbers. This would not only be very teaching, but it would add to the atmosphere, too. Gladly Marco Bergman did what he could to get the data into the unit pics, otherwise with the factory pics, it is very arcade style and does not reflect the simulation aspect.

Without doubt this should return, and there were numerous suggestions, that the data could be read from a TXT-file without the need for BFC even invest time on it to fill the data, the modding-community would fill the missing data in no time. With such a slow development of the user interface and core engine, for me the attractiveness for buying the upgrades is shrinking from time to time. This is not a FPS which lives from new models, this is more of a sim, which lives from user interface and the engine improvements. Now soon there will be another module out and still no movement paths will be visible without clicking a unit after so many years - and for another year to come. And no unit data to learn one or two things about the units for at least another year. If so tiny improvements take ages for a sim, it's no wonder that the community is not growing. They could bring out a new module every month and the community would not grow.

Bil, when checking AA, use a low resolution. Use the 1024 resolution and you will immediately recognize if AA works with MM.

para, it's very easy: if you are against crimes with guns, don't support politicians that leave the criminals unharmed.

If guns shoot, then cars drive. The NWO globalist agenda needs disarmed nations.

Because you have nothing to hide, correct? Do you have a door for the WC? Why, if even complete foreigners working for the NSA know with whom you conversate, where you move, when, what you buy, what you talk about on the phone. Oh, and don't ask stupid questions, if your daughter doesn't get a certain job. You shouldn't have bought that book at Amazon, which rendered your family as not trustworthy... And also don't be afraid of the 1% criminal state workers. Surely never anyone at the NSA will empty your bank account or sell the private data or use it for personal reasons, since only angels are working for the enemies of freedom... You are correct, it isn't as bad as it seems. It's much worse.

Möbelwagen or Moebelwagen ö = oe ä = ae ü = ue

Absolutely. IMO Ken's use of the map and some other things we should not discuss here, IMO is excellent. But Bil's (concealed) use of his tanks against tanks in the (open) dunes was even better. The better is the good's enemy but doesn't turn good into bad.

JPzIV rulez!

Bil, in case you haven't tested the Wirbelwind against infantry yet, here are the results from a test in the other thread you can't read: "One moment of slackness, one burst, one wasted unit. (The time span was even shorter than pictured. It takes a few seconds for those crosses to appear.)"

Very nice and quick response, but I see disaster looming! Can I ask you a tactical question without spoiling anything? To me it seems, the enemy tank in the dunes is more or less paralysing the development on the left now. Correct? Using the Wirbelwind is probably cool, but probably also a very short fun against such a tank. I guess in reality you would never ever do that if there are alternatives available, wouldn't you? It's a quite suicidal move and maybe you decided for it only for a good show for the audience, but it probably will cost you your best weapon against enemy infantry without gaining anything positive from it. My question: Why don't/didn't you move PzSectn.2 right of PzSectn.1 and then attack with 4 tanks simultaneously the dunes? The WW could play the perfect bait.

Thanks, very appreciated!

I wouldn't take my opinion as representative. Many CMers probably are happy about new cool pics, text and videos, even if the action doesn't make tactically much sense. Or have you ever met a director of action movies to quit a project, because there are movies that make sense, too? CM has a lot in common with chess and I think it will be very good for sales, that BFC this time has chosen two good players, presenting the excellence of CM. IMO we should be glad about it and demand more DARs from masters presenting CM. Everyone should profit from it.

Maybe, but's my opinion. This is the first DAR where i can see, that BOTH sides know what they are doing. Watching chess between a master and a novice will never be as interesting and thrilling as between two masters.

Excellent! Finally two good players worth watching.

Excellent reading. What gun and armor does the Chromwell and the Challenger have?

Military capacity: without the Lend and Lease act, the Read Army would have been finished IIRC late 1942 by their own sources. The US sent more supply only to the USSR, than the whole German army in six years ever had. The German army destroyed soviet material in multitudes higher than it had itself. Caught more Soviet POWs than the Wehrmacht had soldiers in the east, while being attacked on several other fronts. The numbers of material and men thrown against the Wehrmacht are mind boggling. If someone can hardly believe the numbers from the statistics and that any army could withstand that for so long, a look at the globe with the colonies to get an impression about the resources the enemies of the Axis controlled, helps. Alone the successful retreat from the Caucasus over the Taman peninsula (most western people never heard about), without leaving one man behind, accompanied with the self sacrifice of the 6th army in Stalingrad, binding the Soviet forces long enough to allow the retreating operation, is probably the biggest and most outstanding defensive operation in military history. Marching 300 km in ten days in the third year of a total war and not losing cohesion against a pressing enemy? More than humans usually can bear. Even in the operational victorious battles of the Soviets, the Red Army suffered higher losses than the Wehrmacht. In the battle of Stalingrad the Red Army lost more than the Wehrmacht. Even as late as 1945, in the battle for Berlin in 1945, the Red Army had higher losses than the Wehrmacht. Anyone who learns about the dimensions of men and material that were thrown against the Wehrmacht, begins to wonder how the Wehrmacht was capable to achieve this. Ofcourse also the enemies were wondering. Therefore Martin van Crefeld has analyzed the differences of the armies and found essential differences how the Wehrmacht's soldier was trained and how it was organized. One example: contrary to the anti-german propaganda for the masses, Crefeld found out, that the german soldier had the most freedom for decision making in all armies. They were trained to become willing to make a decision (no decision is the worst decision). Already the Hitler-youth aimed to educate a strong male character, upright and willing to make decisions. The will to make decisions instead of avoiding them allowed for the doctrine of only giving tasks to the subordinate and let them decide on their own how to achieve it best. Creveld has found many other differences. Interestingly Crefeld's analytical findings fit to the judgements of alliied officers and WWII veterans: NATO and western studies showed that the Wehrmacht was rated by all participants as the best army. Even from the Israeli military. Fact versus fiction: Fighting Power - Martin van Crefeld

Thinking about it, this could become confusing for users and a mess to keep organized well. A different solution without the need to change the scenario-format and to keep things organized well for the user: Dedicated scenario/campaign mods are simply placed in the scenario/campaign folder in a subfolder, sharing the filename of the scenario/campaign. When loading a scenario, the game simply looks, if there exists a subfolder with the scenario's/campaign's name and loads the content of this folder as the very last mod folder. Savefiles therefore need to include the name and location of the original scenario file. This method IMO has two big advantages: 1. Not only designers, but players could create their own scenario-dependent mods, with ease. 2. The naming of the mod-folders is standardized and therefore keeping things organized well is extremely easy.

A step further would be if scenarios/campaigns can contain a name of a dedicated (unique) mod-folder belonging to the scenario (the scenario designer can decide, if he wants to supply the battle with additional mods). If this info is present in the scenario data, then the game tries to load mods from that folder.

For me this sounds fantastic if the FOW and pre-setup/after-setup LOS problems become solved that way.

I think this was a huge step forward, but the last time I checked that, my impression was that trenches and bunkers still deform the terrain (foxholes not). Most noteable when they are placed on slopes. This makes it quite easy to identify fortifications and the defensive centres on hilly terrain.

Good news. Sadly the world cannot hear it... You obviously understand your business, but garbage sells, if it is advertised well. I have the impression, there are millions of people out there who do not like the shallowness of "wargames" these days, but have no idea that a game like CM even exists. At least this is always my impression when someone opens a thread about CM in a non wargaming forum and people interested in strategy or wargaming chime in. Then the CM players always must explain to them first, what CM is and what it can. It should be the other way around: every player knows it, everyone has tried it. If I would run a business like you do, I'd contact Mike Dillard... Have you ever looked into a conversion tool for Open Street Maps to a proprietary format your map editor could read?

Therefore I don't understand why you give away all the upgrades of the game-engine that come with the modules, for free to the base game customers. Whenever I buy a software, I buy it as it is in the current state. And it's also part of the EULA. And since your potential customer base is quite limited, you must maximize cashflow. Giving the upgrades for free for the base-game, in several ways punishes the module-buyers. It may sound strange that a customers lobbies for getting less for free, but the free upgrades for the base title come at a cost for those, who buy the modules: less cashflow and therefore probably slower development. Charging money for game engine improvements probably would have positives for module buyers, too: You could pack more engine features into the modules, if these features must be bought separately for the base title, too. This means module buyers could get more engine improvements at a faster rate. And those who are not buying a module, still have the chance to buy the engine upgrade. Let's take the HMG improvement: this has turned CM into another league. For free. Cool for customers, but business wise an awful decision. Does Microsoft offer big Office features with free updates? Does Sony offer feature upgrades for Vegas for free? Does Steinberg pack new features into Cubase in a free upgrade? No! But you, as small producer with a very limited potential customer base, act in a way, as if you could increase the customer base by giving features away for free? I believe quite the contrary is the case: You have a small but strong customer base. A significant portion buys everything you release WW2 or modern war related. The ones who skip certain modules still know very well, what CM delivers and is worth. Therefore if they want to get the engine upgrades, they would pay for it. I mean which person interested in WW2 would not pay $10 or $15 for the improved HMGs? Those who do not cherish it, probably will not play CM for long anyway. Restricing the cashflow (with free upgrades) usually is not the way to become rich. How big is the percentage of customers that buy the base engine because of free upgrades? And how big is the percentage of customers that want the most improved engine and THEREFORE buy the modules? This brings me to a second point which I believe could be improved: The communication and advertisement of new features. Do you believe, that mentioning somewhere on page 20 in a forum a new feature is maximizing the audience and the propaganda effect? Where are the cool videos explaining the improvement that the new ditch locks will bring? Instead of this a tank driving out from fog has been presented. These days it's not expensive to do good public relations, cool videos and make the audience keen on new features. But mentioning it on page 20 in a forum probably is not the way things get the most attention and impact. And as third point I want to mention the focus of engine improvements. I have no idea how difficult things are to implement, but I don't understand, that certain improvements with a potential big or very big cashflow impact, are not prioritized. For example: WEGO players are suffering from certain limitations because of the realtime mode. Ok. But why isn't then the realtime mode improved that it becomes much more interesting? Although I do stricly refuse to play RT, I could imagine that at least a notification system for the player about significant action would be very welcomed. Or - even cooler - a replay function of at least a handful of seconds, when a tank is penetrated or infantry is suffering losses. Such improvements could have a decent impact on the customer base (those who want to play RT and stopped playing it, because they are missing all the cool action anyway but do not like WEGO), with the positive effects also for WEGO-players, because the increased cashflow because of that feature would allow a faster development of the engine, too. Last but not least I want to raise doubt on the thesis, that people buy modules because of new units to play with. I can't talk about others, but I'm not interested in the units per se, but in the tactical challenge. Therefore engine improvements are more interesting to me. I buy a module mostly because of the engine improvements and because I want to have one or two new units, like Fallschirmjäger or W-SS. But if all TOEs are available correctly, I don't care, because I don't make scenarios, like 90% of all customers. I play them. And I play what is given to me. My personal impression is, although module content is nice, the improvements of the engine are of higher significance in the case of CM. I guess this is, because CM has more common with a simulation and less with a shallow game. When a game is shallow and has only graphics to impress, ofcourse new units and models are everything to keep people attracted. But when a software excels in simulating something, then the users usually do not pay the highest priority how fancy it looks, but how the workflow can be improved, what new features would make the software even more productive and deliver more realsitic results. Therefore I think that reducing the quantity of the content but increasing it's quality (engine improvements), could achieve a more profitable result.

Looks good. Lots of new units. Has the anti-aliasing in movie mode not working bug been solved?

IIRC it was invented already in CMBO days (Scipios Iron Man Rules?). It's the toughest mode CM can be played in. The problem with the voluntary ruleset is, that it needs so much patience and discipline to even reach combat phase (think about the setup phase: often complicated enough with full battlefield oversight; with this mode it's becoming much much more difficult: suddenly you even can't check anymore, how the LOS behind that house down the street will be; you can only guess and look at the unclear map - like in reality... And how often did it happen in reality, that things were completely different than believed and judged from the map?). Because of the necessary self discipline to stick to the voluntary ruleset I think only very few players ever tried this mode and even less will have played a game to the hot phase of the battle or even finished it. Once you have managed the setup phase from ground level, you feel great. You feel even better once the battle begins. And the thrill rises once the battle intensifies. But when suddenly one tank after the other goes up in flames and you have no clue what is going on, without immediately flying over the battlefield and watching the action from ten angles, then that's the point where the voluntary ruleset, at the height of the tension it creates, usually will get a "timeout". The phase when this mode begins to teach it's brutal lessons in tactical realism, is usually the phase when you want to abandon it. But if it was a gaming mode and, once started with no way to escape for the player, I guess more people would reach the hot phase and with no other choice being forced to stick with it until it's played out. Examples of lessons this mode has teached me: I already mentioned the realistic simulation of unclear or wrong maps. In reality often enough with tremendous implications. You develop a sense for the advantage of the one, who knows the area compared to the one who only has his maps (IMM creates terrain fog of war). Or: Winning/losing a height in the standard mode is quite an abstract thing. Sure there are some pros/cons but mostly the heights are taken, because some victory location demands it, not because we as players really need it to win. Playing IMM the player will naturally seek to get the tactically important locations under control because it are not only the unit's but also his personal windows to the battlefield. It's one thing to read in military literature how important a height was and how much blood was shed to get it under control or to defend it. But playing a few battles in IMM means to develop a much better understanding. I think this mode is not only very interesting for those seeking a bigger challenge from the gaming point of view but also for those who are interested in new or deeper tactical insights. The price for the increased realism of this mode is, that it's tough. Really tough. But who plays CM because it's easy to master? Because of the flexible spreading of infantry units, it would be helpful, without reducing the realism, if the view was not locked exactly to the infantry unit in one single spot, but only resticted to the action spot(s) the unit is placed in.