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Holman

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Everything posted by Holman

  1. Not to rain on the parade, but it's worth remembering that BTS has indicated that they're not even interested in the WW2 Pacific theater, let alone Mars. But more seriously... The CMx2 engine is perfect for ground combat at the scale where mid-20th to early-21st century dispersed mechanized units, leg infantry, and their support assets come into contact in open, broken, and urban environments at plus-or-minus battalion level. Change any of those variables, and the engine probably shows limitations. Vietnam jungle would be very frustrating in the CMx2 engine, as would WW1 trench raids. The player's control would be much more limited. Terrain and surprise would dictate the result far more than player input would. Likewise, imagined Sci-Fi conflicts would require a different scale and different design assumptions. If every armored soldier is a tank (Heinlein-style), you'd want a game with more intimate choices (individual troopers' weapons, sensors, and systems), and the tech would probably mean that engagements occur at thousands of meters rather than hundreds or dozens. On the other hand, the most interesting engagements would be inside structures or spaceships, and that's not at all suited to CMx2's squad-level and 10-meter square baseline.
  2. Downloaded in less than three minutes here in Philadelphia. No issues.
  3. You're just going to poke the Refresh Monkeys like that?
  4. Log in at Battlefront.com and click on My Orders.
  5. Prolific wargame designer John Tiller has passed away. I'm sure many of us here have enjoyed and learned from his designs over the decades. Rest in peace.
  6. Just a question: Is it possible to load a full 3-D preview of one of the big Berlin master maps, or is that generally not done? I'm not a scenario designer, and I have little experience in it, but I thought I would try to load a preview of Berlin East in order to look around. The loading stalled at 49% and seemed like it would go no further. (I have a pretty robust and recent PC. All scenarios and campaigns load easily.) Perhaps a master map of this size and density needs to be cut down in the 2D interface before attempting to load a 3-D view? Just wondering if my experience is normal or if I should re-install, or somefink.
  7. The modern CM games do have settings for compromised electronic warfare conditions, but I don't think there are settings where soldiers fight in gas masks and chemical protection suits. As far as I understand it, chem warfare would require figuring out how to manage a withdrawal, not an attack.
  8. Using Tac Nukes should delete not just your game but your license key and your hard drive.
  9. The Fulda Gap sector really was the responsibility of US V Corps, with just a small number of German units involved. It would make sense for German units (on both sides) to come with an expansion covering battles farther to the north. And there's the British Army of the Rhine sector as well.
  10. I love everything I'm seeing about Cold War! I understand that an initial release in a new family can't include everything, but one thing I've not seen mentioned is whether there will be a full set of urban terrain options included: tall buildings, city doodads, shopping malls, etc. After all, what's the point of the Fulda Gap if you can't go to Frankfurt?
  11. When combining a "three action-square" unit, it's always best to reduce them to the smallest elements and run them together into a single square. If you combine a one-square element with a two square element, you risk choosing the wrong square, so to speak. Think of it as the leader getting everyone in close for a pep talk.
  12. I fired up the Task Force Thunder campaign for the first time in a long time, and after a few turns I saw that the enemy trenches were all out of alignment. I believe they were that way from the beginning of the scenario (or at least from when I first mounted the berm and saw them.) Rather than connected end to end in the usual continuous way (with the usual angles), all of the trench pieces were placed as separate objects parallel to each other, none of them touching each other at the ends. I played a few more turns and got closer to make sure, and this was definitely the case. It was as the trench pieces had lost their intended rotation. I seem to recall this as an earlier bug in an earlier version of the game. Has it returned? (I am up to date.) Interestingly, I just now restarted the campaign and ran units forward to get a look at the trenches. This time the trenches look right, touching end to end in continuous lines as I've seen when I played in the past. This suggests that the basic campaign file is correct. Has anyone else seen this happen recently?
  13. On CMSF2 patch installation: Double-check your installation folder as you run it. If you're not careful, CMSF2 patches try to create an extra game folder inside the main game folder (so that you wind up with "C:\[wherever]\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force 2\Combat Mission Shock Force 2" and the game will not find the new data there. The other games' patches don't do this.
  14. Here are some instructions for updating Vin's Animated Text Mod yourself. I copied them from this board (I think) years ago, but unfortunately I can't remember who supplied them. (Thanks, whoever you are!) You'll need a copy of the mod itself, but an outdated one is fine, since you'll be editing it.
  15. This was the whole point of a common engine: all the titles/theaters could be kept up to date in parallel. In the old days, CMBB basically made CMBO obsolete.
  16. Something to be aware of: If you manually chose the install location and you pick the "C:\[whatever]\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force 2" folder (as you should), the installer will put the new files in a second internal folder (which will be "C:\[whatever]\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force 2\Combat Mission Shock Force 2"), so the game won't see them. Be sure to double-check your destination folder when installing. The other installers from today don't do this.
  17. Units never come back into battle, but aid helps your WIA/KIA ratio at the end of the scenario. You also collect ammo and sometimes even weapons from aided soldiers.
  18. I think modeling individual starshells/flares would probably be more trouble than it is worth. But as I understand it, map-wide lighting and visibility are not only modeled but are variable with time (as you see whenever you play a dawn or evening scenario lasting a couple of hours). Maybe it would be possible to have sudden battlefield-wide increases and then gradual decreases of lighting to simulate starshells and flares? I think I'd put this lower on my wish list than many other things, though.
  19. [Mad Max] WHO RUNS CHARMINTOWN?? [/Mad Max]
  20. It's a map element problem, so the only solution is to remake the scenario using fixed buildings. BTS can't program squads to see doors where they don't currently exist on the map. If the affected scenario is an official BTS-provided one, it should of course be fixed and officially re-released. User-made scenarios, however, can only be fixed by the creator (or an imitator).
  21. You're really suggesting that FreeRepublic is less biased than the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which runs FactCheck.org?
  22. The respectable FactCheck.org considers NeonNettle to be a highly unreliable conspiracy site.
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