Thewood1

Also keep in mind that your company is probably not the only unit in combat. Artillery is assigned to specific units to support advances. If you encountered heavier than expected resistance and you needed more tubes and ammo than were allocated, that had to go up and down the chain. The FOs were better connected in general, and had a little more authority to get more tubes, but it still took minutes to get anything extra. The short of it is, there was a limited number of tubes and bullets. Once you used up your allocation, you had to make your case for more. That tended to make FOs and commanders a little more willing to make sure they were using them to the best effect.

Artillery as a killer was not at the tactical level where combat is at small arms ranges. Artillery killed mostly just past the MLR and into staging areas and then the big stuff at troop and concentration areas. Its not rocket science. If it was killing at MLR, it was as a planned bombardment as prep for an advance or as a spoiler for defense. Mortars are a different story. But ammo is limited and contact is limited with front line troops for larger mortars. I would imagine it was frowned upon when you dropped half your ammo load on a farm house that no one had eyes on just sa the rounds fall into the garden or some of your own troops who happened to outpace your own unit.

When I talk about ASL, I always assume SL is there in the mix. I really don't differentiate them. I was playing SL within a month of it showing up in hobby stores. Even then I realized the crazy crap that was embedded in its rules. But it was the only game in town then. After Steel Panthers, Close Combat and CMBO, I never looked back, except with derision.

btw, there is a lot of sketchy stuff in ASL (I'm sorry...the most realistic simulation of tactical WW2 combat ever) that has permeated the minds wargamers for decades. I would hazard a guess you could take an ASL gamer, drop them into the middle of a battle in WW2, and they would start screaming about Rule 23.5 subsection 5 paragraph 3 says you can't do that.

I wonder if there is any historical reports of it happening? I have never seen it mentioned. I would think if you were sitting in the open in an HT or M20 and anything heavier than a MG drew a bead on you...it would either be bail or hit the gas.

I don't think its XP vs Win10 as the main issue. Its that CM doesn't take advantage of the power in new OSs, CPUs, and graphics cards. I have have always wondered how much of that is driven by sticking with OpenGL. Let's face it, nVidia, AMD, and Intel pay lip service to OpenGL. Its been that way for years. And its because none to few people use it for gaming anymore. I think the last non-CM game I played that supported OpenGL fully was IL2. And even then, you had to choose OpenGL vs DirectX to play. The OpenGL implementation eventually became unsupported. My last XP machine bit the dust three years ago. And it struggled with CM then. But it ran almost as well as my modern (semi) A10. Now my i7 laptop plays CM fairly well but is nowhere near what I would call smooth. At one time, I had two A8 machines, one with XP and one with Win8. The Win8 machine actually ran CMSF a little faster than the XP machine. So OS has very little to do with it. Its BFCs call to stick with OpenGL and the engine they have built, but I wouldn't recommend anyone get an upgraded system just to play CM. Its most likely not worth the money. Just turn down the graphic settings in game.

I'm thinking someone has never hefted a bazooka or seen a rocket loaded in one...and never been in an M20. Take the 5ft tube, add in the 2+ ft rocket, then then take into account the 4.5 ft open space of the M20. You have the recipe for an awkward loading and firing. Versus grabbing the tube and rocket, hopping out of the top of the M20, and firing from there. What would you choose? And that is not even considering the ring mount for the M2 making it even more awkward. I have attached a pic of an M20. The M20 is 16 ft long. I estimate the opening to be about 4.5 ft. I have actually sat in one and it is very tight with the MG mount and other stuff in the cab. If more than one person is in the cab, I don't see how anyone in a hurry to fire wouldn't hop out to do it. I can't imagine how you would load it in the cab.

Another huge factor for set ups is shadows. On my set ups, shadows look blocky, even at high settings. So I keep them off. Its a 25% boost on my latest rig from shutting them off.

My complements to JonS. I played the Crossroads scenario today and it is awesome. I love small recon fights. I also like more creative objectives and goals. It would make a great starter scenario. A very high quality scenario.

The difference is he's not on Graviteam's website promoting CM. There are plenty of 3rd party forums to have that discussion on. Coming into a company's forum and trying to play up a competitor is just plain rude and actually makes your opinion on Graviteam less credible.

map maker

The main issue is that CMSF, CMBN, and then the follow on games each seem to behave differently. CMFI and CMRT only put data files in documents. CMBN seems to require ALL files in the same folder, preferably in documents.

It is Win10...gotta tell ya, this is the only app I have that has this problem consistently in Windows of any variety. What I usually do is install to my doc folder and then move it to my SSD. But every time I have to update or add on, I have to move everything back to doc and then copy back to my SSD. I just didn't do it this time. I forgot. I have apps that store user files in doc, but the main program can be on the SSD or anywhere else.

Yes, it does. I just found the readme...it ended up on my desktop. It has something to do with trying to run it from my SSD. It only seems to install and run properly from my documents folder. I had a bunch of errors when it installed that said the filenames were too long. I hit retry a couple times and it seemed to work. But I think I am missing QB maps and scenarios. I am am going to, once again, scrap the entire install and install to the documents folder. It's never easy.

Odd, my readme only goes to 3.11

It is. It's in the BP. Read the forums.

Is there a change log on 3.12? I thought since I already installed it, it would be nice to know what the changes were from 3.11.

OK, I just tried entering the BP #. And it worked. Seems strange that the program asks me to enter my original CMBN #.

I am having the same issue on my Win10 PC. The activation exe asks me to reactivate all my modules? Should it be doing that?

Sorry, the you was a general "you"...people getting on BFC and giving Graviteam a pass.

No, but I am saying that you take Graviteam at face value, but not BFC. BFC says there is more to CMFB that you think. They even released the manual. Yet I see a lot of skepticism. I am saying, some people here grant Graviteam a lot of slack on a game taking multiple years to develop, yet BFC being a few months late gets taken to task. Just looking for what is different.

I just looked...not a single AAR, stream, or manual published for Graviteam MF. Boy, I sure wish game companies would do that. What is the world coming to.

I sure hope you grant BFC the same latitude as Graviteam. I mean, you are talking about features that you haven't even seen yet. All things being equal, You should be hammering Graviteam also. And as to communications, they have tended to communicate only recently, and only when people have started talking about it taking so long. I see mostly beta testers showing a few screen shots. Did they publish multiple AARs and the manual. Some companies do that, you know.

I like Graviteam's games and all, but you really want to use Mius Front in a crabbing session about CMFB's release? Either you are lacking a grasp on reality or just a BFC hater. MF has been in development for two or three years. Every couple of months someone dumps a bunch of screenshots and people discuss it. Then it goes silent for months. And people complain that CMFB is just CMBO with snow and few units...MF is even worse. It looks almost exactly the same as the other Graviteam games. So let's not throw BFC under the bus without taking a hard look at the performance of some unmentionable game.

Well just for completeness sake...there was a little game called CMSF (with a core game and three large modules) plus CMA between CM1 and CMBN. And that was the development of an entirely new game engine. I think some people look at it as more the expectations that have been set about a couple games a year and multiple modules. The pace has continued to slow with new releases, but some people still look back on the initial hype around the new engine increasing the pace of releases.