Nope, that's the way it is - sadly. You can try to ZIP them, but I doubt you'll gain much from it since it's already a compressed format. They shouldn't get much larger than that, though.
Yep, this game, now that it's been patched, is a good game. Have played several PBEM's and the one that generated the largest PBEM files were larger armored engagements-which doesn't bode well for CMX2 Normandie PBEM's.
I think Charles is working on reducing file size - if people begin to fight armor engagements and the regualr files get up to over 30, PBEM's pretty much dione for. At this level of detail, realtime play won#t be very fun for most of us and neither will very many have the proper internet connection for it. We could test it with a larger armor battle in CMSF.