bbaker

This seems like it might be susceptible to modding--the gaps could be highlighted, for instance. Or is that not possible?

The first mission of the Panzer Marsch campaign is a good tutorial for scouting at night, and the third is shaping up to be a good lesson in scouting at dawn. You might want to try those. So far, I've learned that if you let a team sit in place for a few turns, they're likely to see many things they missed at first. Spotting takes time. Seems like very different behavior than I remember from CMx1.

You can also use the "target light" command to reduce the mortar's ROF, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, those look pretty fantastic (and the video is no slouch, either!). Judging from this thread, I think there are at least a couple downloads for the base mods if you ever want to put them on the server.

+1 vote for this in the next UI iteration. This would be nice. I can get by without it, but it would help, particularly when a scenario assigns units to a platoon commander that the player may not expect (e.g., a truck) or when units are widely dispersed (say, a mortar left with the co. commander). As it is now, if you double click on the platoon HQ to move the squads, without the graphical representation of command lines it's easy to forget that across the map there are other units you may not want to move. This would be doubly helpful if BF implements movable waypoints in the future. As soon as that's in, moving platoons by selecting the leader, issuing the mass move, then fine tuning by clicking and dragging waypoints is going to be a (at least for me) preferred way of moving platoons. This is the biggest one to me... or at least, I think it is. I think he means that when you click on an opposing unit, you can see exactly what it is, e.g., "First Squad B Team" or "Mortar Ammo Bearer." With all the attention paid to FOW, especially on Iron, this seems like an odd feature. Has BF said anything about changing this down the road?

Hey, what mod are you using for the unit bases (e.g., at 0:53)? The star for the Ami bases looks great(!), but I can't find this in the Repository.

Without live cows, how can we: 1) Enjoy the scenario "Save the town from a stampede!" or the campaign "Save the town from some stampedes!" 2) Herd cattle from one side of a field to the other as MOBILE cover? Honestly, if the AI is going to rush a dismounted tank driver from the burning wreck of his Sherman at one end of a field straight across 200 yards of open ground at my MG-42, there's no way the gamey basterd is going to make it if he can't rely on the lee of a friendly cow or twenty. Obviously, his tacAI has come to the reasonable conclusion that if he's in a field, there must be cows. Please "fix or do somefink."

Just wanted to add one more voice of thanks, Field Marshall. I've had a blast with the first two missions. Very involving and very immersive, to the point that when I suffered a few WIA in the second mission, I made sure to leave teams in place until they had finished buddy aid or to send a team to an isolated casualty--I didn't want any KIA! The pixeltruppen have never had it so good.

Thanks, Amok. I suppose that means that it's all working as intended. Cold comfort to Seargeant Rice's family, but he knew the job was dangerous when he took it.

<Spoilers, obviously...> About the wire blocking the near side of the bridge: twice I've had engineers use a demo charge to "blast" a hole through it, just as I would bocage, or the wall of a house. Each time, a significant portion of the engineer squad is killed by the explosion. Is this a [edited for the all-important "y":] boob[y]-trapped bit of wire (can you do that in the game? maybe by placing a mine under it...?), or does this happen any time you try to blast wire with an engineer squad? What gives?

Fantastic! Thank you, Bil!

No, he means make a movement waypoint, then right-click to get out of the setting movement commands mode, then left click *on the waypoint* to select the waypoint. It will turn from a sphere into a pyramid. You can then use the target command to check LOS from the waypoint. (The same way, you can also attach orders to a waypoint, like hide or cover arc, etc.)

I think you solve this not by using a universal "hold" that affects all troops, but by adding new functionality to the current "pause" command, "indefinite pause until triggered" --- you issue this order to an individual unit first, then plot its actions. It remains paused and does not execute the orders until the trigger is given. You do this for whichever group of units you want. All of these remain paused until you hit the trigger command. Meanwhile, troops not given the indefinite pause behave/can be controlled normally. This way, if you're interrupted by something on the other side of the map, you can go deal with that and your half-formed attack plans are still on hold while you deal with the crisis.

1. If the scenario has a set-up zone (not all do; the demo tutorial does not). If it does, you'll see it as a highlighted area of the map. You can move units within the setup zone by selecting them and issuing a move order to wherever you want them to be. They'll move instantly. 2. Sorry, I can't help with Macs. I still can't get past the one-mouse button thing. Where the delete key is way beyond me. 3. The waypoint will snap to a grid location. This confused the heck out of me, too. Ignore it, it's a very general location. You'll see that the location you ordered the move to has highlighted spaces, these highlights are the specific positions your pixeltruppen will occupy. You can fiddle with these locations by clicking, e.g., next to the hedgerow and fine-tune by issuing a "face" command. I believe, however, that if you're moving troops down a road that is bounded by hedgerows, they will automatically choose to walk next to one row or the other, and not straight down the middle of the road. There is a bug in the demo that makes the highlights hard to see; in the full version (in most instances) they are MUCH more apparent. 4. You can clear a target command by issuing a new one or by hitting the space bar, which will pop up a menu that will include "clear target." More generally, you can clear orders by deleting all waypoints.

Oh yeah, took a look over at CM Mods and found Mikewhl's mod for CMSF. I'm sure it will be in for CMBN in no time. Good news!

In CMx1 I believe there were mods that varied the tile color based on elevation. There certainly was an extremely valuable mod that highlighted the edge of each tile, so you could see a grid superimposed on the terrain -- really made the 3d "pop." I hope whichever talented modders did those are still around (and can do the same thing in CMx2)!

Watching a squad of infantry vault over a fenceline -- blew me away the first time I saw it.

How is it that it has been released for better than twelve hours and we don't already have a sticky "mod request" thread? I have about half a dozen I'm salivating for. Amazing, amazing game. The 1:1 infantry representation takes CMx1 and dials it up to 11.

+1. I'd suggest the same thing for AT guns, which in my (limited) experience have a habit of popping in and out of view. If you're looking at the position at the right time you can see that, yep, that's a pak-50! and you can watch the pixeltruppen play their loading and firing animations (awesome!) but then five seconds later it's back to being a generic "?" I get that the game models relative spotting and FOW. It's unclear to me how far that should extend from the pixeltruppen to the player. If I have the ability to watch the map from any spot (and, so theoretically, can manually check every "?" every turn to see which decloaks as a gun) it seems odd that the game would hide this information from me, the player.

Are you sure you are using the correct username? Your username for the man site is not necessarily the same as your username for the forum. (For the main site my username was my email address, you might want to try that?)

I liked the tar and feathering suggestion, personally. I understand it isn't always fatal.

Dammit. Sorry, was not intentional. Went back and read the full email after I saw your post. The "warning" was buried in the middle of the email. Better practice might have been to put that IN FRONT OF the download instructions?

"Battlefront Newsletter 17 May 2011 You are receiving this newsletter because you have subscribed to receive updates from Battlefront.com. For a one-click unsubscribe, please follow the link at the bottom. --- Hello Bryce Baker! You are receiving this email because you have pre-ordered Combat Mission - Battle for Normandy. This is a one-time notification (you are not subscribed to any mailing lists). Your Pre-Order Download is now ready! You can download your copy using various methods: [and so on and so forth]

... but lost my main page login info. Bummer.

Clearly you monkeys have not been pressing f5 fervently enough: it's late, the Battlefront Gods are not propitiated, and the game is not forthcoming tonight. Please try to be more insistent tomorrow.