Warts 'n' all

Well now you are starting to confuse me because I'm not really certain what your expectations are or how reasonable they are with respect to what is possible and what isn't possible in a computer game of any kind.  As a scenario designer I can recreate, down to the individual soldier, any battle that has been fought where sufficient information is available to recreate it.  I'm beginning to think that perhaps there is a difference between what you term a 'battle' and what I might term a 'battle'.  If you want to fight 'The Battle of the Bulge' as a single battle that lasts for a month and covers several hundred square kilometers well then Combat Mission isn't your game.  A 'battle' as defined by Combat Mission is when the 1st battalion of the 376th Infantry Regiment attacks some German bunkers behind the Dragon's Teeth at the West Wall.  A battle has a start point and an end point and typically an engagement like that (in other words, an individual unit attacking another unit at a given location) might last a few hours at most before the attack has either succeeded or failed.  An individual scenario can simulate a battle just fine.  As far as what you want in a campaign goes - well by definition a campaign will be a series of linked battles.  Sometimes the battles might be in the same location (old way) and sometimes the battles might be in different locations (new way), but a battle is a battle is a battle and has nothing to do with some of the things you seem to be including in your battle calculus.  The odds of actual combat troops running out of ammunition during the course of an actual campaign is pretty low unless your force is facing some sort of strategic difficulties as the Germans faced in the closing months of WW2 where the entire logistics system was failing.  An American unit running out of ammunition?  That's not likely to happen and really that's something that most players would rather not concern themselves with.  Most players would rather just fight the battle without worrying about ammunition availability.
 
Why don't you just download one of the demos and try playing the game yourself then you can decide to get it or not get it. 

I was disappointed not to have the old-style operations too, as I really enjoyed them first time around. 

As funny as "Bring me a shrubbery" was, I think Bud_B was nearer the mark with the "How not to be seen" sketch.

I'm not sure how many of the Kriegsmarine who took part in the Market-Garden fighting would have been fit for " sailing on the high seas". I think that most of them were trainees and based at Royal Netherlands Naval Schools that the Nazis had taken over. There were obviously some officers, and guard detachments, who were happy to "see action", but I suspect that most of the fighting was done by relative youngsters who wished that their training was happening back in Kiel, Wilhelmshaven, or wherever, back in Germany.

Just to clarify... 66mm HE.. are rifle grenades.... 60mm HEAT.. are bazooka rounds.

I don't mind admitting to taking a bit of a beating in the first mission. The buildings tended not to suffer much in the way of damage no matter how much of a pounding I gave them. And the paras cut my troops up when I tried storming their positions. I suffered a Tactical Defeat.

I can't answer for Battlefront but here's my tuppence worth...
 
1. Repairs to immobilised vehicles are not within the time frame of CM battles.
2. This has been batted to and fro in previous threads and can't really be replicated within CM.
3. Simple answer is "No". 

Am putting this here because this Forum is where the Master Installer is being addressed already. Since BFC has committed to making sure the base game is always current, what about the various Demos? Seems to me that it makes good business sense to give the prospective buyer a true picture of how the games work, rather than, shall we say, the obsolete versions of the game. The differences these days are quite considerable, and the absence of certain features now in the games may be a big turnoff to someone trying to make a purchase decision via the game as portrayed in the Demos.
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

If you are going to introduce para drops into the game, where do you begin?   When they leave the plane? When they hit the ground? Or somewhere in between? 
 
I really don't see the point of a whole new pack taking in transport planes, gliders, a "Remove parachute" command etc... The scenario editor allows us to replicate the randomness of parachute operations if we wish. And that seems fine to me.

I have to admit that despite having this game for about 8 months, I didn't know until yesterday that Panzerfaust had instruction labels on them, let alone that the labels come in different colours.
 
I'm a novice when it comes to posting screenshots. So I hope it works.

I've seen spent cartridges being ejected from MGs and rifles quite often. And I do like to capture vehicle crews in mid-air when they are bailing out. But seeing printing on mortar rounds and smoke grenades is something totally new to me. I will certainly be looking harder in the future, providing I'm not spending the "Replay Phase" watching my men getting killed. Haha.

Brilliant pictures. I think I might have to start zooming in a bit closer in the future.