Flying Penguin

Perhaps an inelegant way of saying it, but probably not a million miles from the truth. A better way would be to say the Russians are likely to use "standard" wartime RoE, i.e. shoot it if it is or could be hostile, don't worry overly about collateral damage (obviously they aren't going to gratuitously shell hospitals!), rather than "kill all the things!!!!" I would expect any NATO force to be similarly hamstrung as they were in Afghanistan/Iraq, i.e. only shoot it if it is confirmed hostile, don't bomb anywhere that is likely to cause non-trivial collateral damage, even if it increases risk friendly troops on the ground. How long NATO would hold to principles as casualties mount (and how long their stomach for the fight would last), now that's the million dollar question....

Definitely an awesome scenario Played as the Russians and was thoroughly ravaged by the Hind, that thing must have cost me at least two whole squads at least! My glorious plan for a killing field degenerated into a bunch of heroic mini-ambushes and Mexican standoffs. A tactical victory, but not my proudest moment....

Honestly, I wouldn't bother for WW2 battles, just not enough low level control for me. However where it does shine is covering conflicts that no one else in their right mind would cover. Angolan Civil War (Operation Hooper), minor Russia/China border incidents (Zhalanashkol 1969) and theoretical Russian/Iranian conflicts (Shield of the Prophet). There the lack of density is actually half way credible, and if the idea of stalking T-55's in Ratel IFVs through bush in 80's African proxy wars appeals, you won't find that anywhere else. And yes the interface is an acquired taste....

From the manual: Step 1: V = (A + 10) / (B + 10) where V = Victory Level, A = earned Victory Points of the side with the higher score, and B = Victory Points of the side with the lower score. In other words, take the Victory Points score of each side, add ten, and then divide the higher score by the lower score. The result is V. Step 2: The ultimate Victory Level of the victor is determined by V and also by the percentage of potential Victory Points obtained. Draw: V less than 1.25. Minor Victory: V less than 1.75. Tactical Victory: V less than 2.5 and 30% of potential VP earned. Major Victory: V less than 4.0 and 55% of potential VP earned. Total Victory: V equals 4.0 or more and 80% of potential VP earned. The losing side will always receive the opposite Victory Level of the winning side. So if the winning side receives a Major Victory, the losing side will receive a Major Defeat. Cheers, Jamie

When the cop asks you why you hit that stationary car in broad daylight, your excuse involves the phrase 'spotting cycles'.......

Well, top of my wishlist would be the ability to filter by type of mod (terrain, unit, map, sound etc). It's great to be able to sort by date/downloads etc, but it would be nice to be able to see just the sound mods for example, as they tend to get lost in the swathes of graphical mods. Perhaps as an extension to this, being able to filter by "Modified Object"... Second, when you go into a list of mods (by date, for example), it would be nice if things like column titles were click-able (to change sorting), and the same for Author/Country etc (to change filtering). As it stands, it's a good site, but a few additions it could be much more easy to navigate and find what you need. HTH Jamie

$20 inbound.... Great site ☺

In Red Thunder there is TCP/IP WEGO (turn based), but it doesn't allow rewinding of the turn like you can in PBEM or solo play. This will be coming to CMBN in the 3.0 upgrade in a few months time.

It's a cracking read:

Fascinating, so far it's as illuminating on the psyche of early cold war western generals and propaganda as on the Russian fighting machine....

Pointed questions work better when I'm not talking from a position of complete ignorance Thanks for the clarification!

So (and please understand this is not a pointed question, just trying to clarify) you are saying that the old rule of thumb that you would send a Soviet unit one size up (say a company instead of a platoon) from an equivalent western force to do any given job was based on TO&E of heavily attrited forces rather than any tendancy to send more men to complete the job than the western allies would?

Oh yeah, can't wait for this Fuser, your mods are on every install of CM I have, looking forward to seeing what you can do with the Russians

Oddball, that's pretty much what I saw, but I had at least half the squad doing the musical chairs routine. Cheers, Jamie

Gent, Firstly, cracking job! I haven't been playing long (family visitors put paid to that idea ), but it runs smoother than FI/BN, I love the Soviet options and it's immediately clear this is going to be great fun But a question arose, I was playing the first tutorial mission and decided to mount a squad on a tank (not really necessary, but hey, new toy ), they approached it and swarmed around, about half the squad mounted quickly, but the rest of the squad ran from one side of the tank to another several times, occasionally one of them would get on, but the whole boarding process ground to a halt. The mission ended that turn so I didn't get to see the full sequence play out, but they started the turn next to the tank so I saw enough. It almost looks like they are playing musical chairs with what are (presumably) "slots" on the vehicle and all going for the same one. Is it just me or have other people been seeing this behaviour? Cheers, Jamie

Part 2 is up: www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/04/the-flare-path-a-rumble-of-thunder-part-two/

Only if you are pre-ordering, those of us that don't fancy having to pay lots of shipping and no doubt have a run in with HMRC and Royal Mail are waiting until the balloon goes up to be able to get the download only version.....

I suspect the extra trauma will be of the blunt sort, given the restless natives

Or alternatively, wait until 22nd June, the start of Bagration

Well at least you'll have good tea and plenty of bitter

Perhaps that's just the problem, you don't know why. The timer is just an abstraction for a whole multitude of operational factors which set the tempo required, Battlefront can't possibly code for every scenario so it's up to the scenario designer to explain their limit. If a scenario has a tight deadline. It could be perfectly reasonable in the circumstances but the scenario briefing doesn't generally give an explanation of the operational drivers for the timescale, which makes the limit seen arbitrary. The timer is clearly a vital part of the game and of mission design, but like most abstractions, if the player doesn't understand why it's happening it can easily be taken as a completely arbitrary obstacle. To quote the advert, 'it's good to talk'.... Cheers. Jamie

Please forgive the slightly provocative title, but seriously, what is the point of Bren/Universal carriers? They're not: Small enough to hide Big enough to carry a useful quantity of troops Tough enough to leave in the open Quiet enough to remain undetected Hard hitting enough to be a base of fire I'm struggling to find a use for them that doesn't involve them sitting at the back with the trucks and mortars or performing "recon by death". How are other people employing them? They built over 100k of them in real life so they must have a use, but for the life of me I can't seem to make them work for me in CM.... Thoughts? Jamie

Have you ever seen inside a tank? Pretty much all of them are a mass of solid metal and unpadded sharp edges. There us one bloody good reason why ramming was never a tactic of anything other than desperation (Kursk aside), hit anything of substance fast enough to harm it and you'll probably incapacitate half your crew. Quite frankly unless it is small enough to simply snap or be mounted (e.g. a young tree or a small road car), the resulting deceleration is borne by the crew (remember they are not strapped in). When tanks take out larger objects such as trees, they generally approach slowly then Push with their engines. Not an approach that has much use against anything but an abandoned at gun. The best you could probably hope for is being able to ram similarly sized objects with (numbers pulled out of ass but probably not too far off) 50% chance of crew casualties AND 50% chance of immobilising. Either way it's probably not going to be as useful as you'd like....

Now, having no idea of the underlying codebase (and fully expecting a kicking for this suggestion), but would it be possible to have the road tiles for a different angle? Five minutes with Paint gave the below suggestion with an additional 3-10 tiles plus possibly rotations of them (I'm not sure they cover every combination but beer + trig is a bad mix ). Not perfect but would give us options at least.... Would this cause AI/Pathfinding issues or would it be a (relatively) simple graphical change? I admit to a great deal of ignorance, but as a possible third way it would be a definite improvement Cheers, Jamie Edit: It would be (imho) worth it even if the auto-road command didn't support it Edit2: Top left tile is wrong as the road changes width, but I think you get my gist

Absoulutely! Whilst the cut and thrust part of an AAR is fascinating, I find I learn more from the seemingly mundane.....