smbecket

I like a lot of the OP's suggestions and I give a plus 10 to the water ideas. Aside from those I would love to see round building add on features: grain silos (were there round grain silos in France?), round towers for a chateau or castle, oil tanks, etc., etc.

OK, OK, I understand that I am the one that everyone loves to hate right now. I can bear the burden. But I will reply to Oddball E8's comment that "It implies that you do not think that they care because they have not fixed this issue within the 10 days that the module has been out." Those are your words, not mine, and they are not accurate; just as there was no "hysteria" in my post or "requests for daily updates", there was no expectation of an immediate fix. My main concern was that BFC was not aware of the problem. My first thread had 160 views but only one response that was not on the mark. I assumed that there must have been some BFC staff or beta testers that saw it but, if so, no one bothered to post an acknowledgement. Communication, after all, is a two way street. After my first thread slipped into oblivion on the second page of my browser and knowing that assuming anything can be a recipe for disaster I decided that a new thread was required to insure BFC was aware of the problem. Steve, I knew very well that once you knew the issue existed it would be resolved in due course. My irritation got the better of me in the title but this was a very important issue for me. I have been working on my two maps since CMBN was released. And to suddenly find that almost 40 of the bridges on my river map were unplayable was upsetting. EZ's video was exactly what I witnessed when I tested a half dozen of my bridges; no matter how big the gap the tanks would get on the bridge but they could not get off! OK, enough said...as he slinks off into the shadows.

I, too, have been paying attention the past 12 years and I know BFC will fix any issues as fast as time and resources permit. That is why I began this thread after my first thread did not seem to get any notice. The problem, in my estimation, was a serious one and after the first thread slipped to page two I wanted to highlight it more dramatically. I used a title I believed was sure to get attention. If that offended anyone no apologies offered; the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I did not state the BFC turns out "buggy products", and as far as "hysteria" is concerned I was not hysterical when I wrote the first thread or when I began this one. I will admit I was somewhat upset/irritated that I did not receive any acknowledgement that the problem had been noted. A simple "the problem is recognized and is under review" would have made me a happy camper. Now I am! And I do not expect "daily updates" or any updates at all. Now that BFC is on the case it will be resolved in due time. ASL Veteran's observation that putting a plain grass tile at each end of the bridge hopefully is a clue. Also, the fact that it does not appear to affect the narrow stone bridges may be of some importance. I will continue to work on my 4x4 km river map, improving it with the new paths and ditch lock features until this problem is resolved. I will reiterate the plea from my first thread: BFC, if you release any packs for CMBN please, please consider including some 100 - 300 meter road/RR bridges! The monster MG bridges are great for MG but are not very appropriate in the context of a rural setting in France.

See the thread "BFC, Do You Care" which addresses the bridge problems.

On 10/16/2013 I started a thread titled "More MG Bridge Issues". In it I explained what I considered to be a new, and very serious problem with the Map Editor in MG, that all bridges on previous maps had been ruined. I included pictures of the change between the original bridges and how they were after MG was installed. There were 260 views of that thread but only one response. I found it very difficult to believe that someone from BFC and/or one of the Beta Testers had not been among that 260 but the problem obviously did not elicit enough interest for a response or an acknowledgement that there was a problem. I continued to research the problem: my friend that I play the game with checked his map files and the same problem was evident. I checked the Scenarios in CMBN and found one called "CW-Through the Loop" that had several bridges. They also had the same problem, to the point where I believe that scenario would no longer be playable as intended. I made a test map and built some new bridges to see if the problem only existed for old, pre-MG, maps. The issue exists in the new bridges. See pictures below: , , , , I assume that every scenario that has bridges will be compromised. The only bridges that I found that were not screwed up were ones that were very low and close to the water or where a substantial part of the bridge structure was on land. This apparently buried the downward curve under the bridge. It appears that Steve's statement that "As with any new feature (and these bridges required a lot of new code)..." is the key. Apparently the new code introduced a change that causes the land where the bridge would connect to curve down regardless of its set elevation. On the picture of the test bridges all the elevations are the same along the points where the bridges join the land but there is a steep curve in the center AS that prevents a connection with the bridge. One anomaly that arose is on the Test Bridges photo: the stone bridge (last one at the top) has no problem. The connection is normal. I do not know why. Can anyone else confirm that they see the same issue with maps they have designed or in scenarios with bridges? I only checked a few scenarios. I would really like to hear from BFC as to whether this is recognized as a problem and whether a fix is possible. I spent hundreds of hours creating my 4x4 km river map; it has over 40 water/land bridges and I am not enthralled at the prospect of spending dozens more changing all the bridges if this problem can not be fixed. I would be ecstatic if someone could point out a simple fix or that I had just screwed up some how!

Kensal, thanks for your reply. I do not believe the "anchoring" can be the problem as these are the small bridges not the monster ones added in MG. But to be sure I made sure there was equal elevation all around each end of my RR bridge and it made no difference. A 2x2 base as mentioned in the manual really doesn't work for the small bridges because the base fits on one AS.

I noticed a problem with bridges when I loaded my 4x4 km map in the editor. I wanted to change out a RR bridge for one of the new, longer bridges (impossible, of course, they are way, way too long and massive). To put it bluntly, all of the junctures between the RR/road and the bridge are screwed up; they no longer meet smoothly. See below: , , , , . I have a bunch more pictures but I am only allowed to post five. In the editor I can see that the elevations where the bridge and the land meet have not changed but the road/RR just sinks down. The adjacent land elevations remain as they should be. This is true in all my maps in the editor, including my 4x4 river map which has over 40 land/water bridges. I thought it might only affect old maps made prior to MG but the same problem occurred when I built a small new map with several bridges. Then I wondered if an outdated video driver might be the culprit but, again, updating to the latest driver had no affect (nVidia 680 GTX). It does not affect a game in progress because my friend sent a turn in a game using the same map that has been ongoing for months. The turn loaded fine and the bridges are OK. Out of curiosity I then created a small scenario with a platoon of German tanks to see if they could negotiate the bridges. Without exception, on the six bridges I used, the tanks could drive on the bridges. They would nose down and then pop up on the bridge and drive across. However, when they reached the end they would start to nose down and then teleport (literally) back a couple of meters and drive forward again. They would repeat this until the turn ended without getting off the bridge. After working on the RR bridge in the editor for quite a while I discovered that if you extend the land out so that half of the first arch/section of the bridge is on land the junction looks normal. The downward curve is hidden by the bridge. But that is not a good solution. In some cases with short land bridges it would restrict movement under the bridge. And trying to correct my river map with over 40 bridges would be a nightmare. BFC, please fix this!! And BFC, when you make a "Pack" for CMBN do not just restrict yourselves to units, please, please include some intermediate size bridges: 125 - 150 and 250 - 300 meters would be hugely appreciated and very useful for normal scenarios. Even better would be if the bridges could be linked end to end to whatever length the map maker desired without the necessity of an island. The MG bridges are great for simulating that historical situation but are too large, IMHO, for much use on even a 4x4 km map.

For Womble: the Panther stopped immediately upon spotting the M5A1 or because it had reached the end of its hunt command. I knew where the M5A1 was located so I had plotted the hunt command to a point where the enemy would be visible. BFC, please provide more info on the effect of destroyed optics on German tanks.

I believed that if a tanks optics were fully destroyed (red) that its accuracy would be drastically reduced. In my present game one of my Panthers in this situation (PzVA{Mid}) made a first round kill on an M5A1(Late) through its frontal aspect at 461 meters. The Panther was moving with a hunt command, the M5A1 was stationary. Is this unusual?

Martyr, no that is not possible. I have a save game from immediately before I clicked on the button to process the turn. I have reviewed that save and all the movement paths are there. Interestingly, my friend told me last night that none of his units moved either. I guess I will have to post this on the tech support forum and hope BFC can figure out what is wrong.

I had another occurrence of a problem I had about a year ago, the majority of my units did not move during a turn. This was the second incident in this game and I consider it a critical problem. As background my friend and I are playing on a detailed 4x4 km map with appx. 1.5 BNs each (20,000 pts). The first time was about turn 45 and it is now turn 51. The first time I lost a Panther that stopped broadside to a T-10. This time there was no loss that I can attribute to the problem except the loss of the ground the units would have covered if they had moved according to their plotted paths. And I had a lot of units moving, some were reinforcements rushing to the front and others were at the front and were making risky dashes to positions from which they could observe enemy positions/movement. Some units were moving on roads and some cross country. The units close to the action were primarily in a small city. I started a thread about the problem the first time it happened last year. That was on a smaller map with less points per side. Phil posted in that thread but nothing was ever resolved as to what could have caused the stoppage. I thought It might be my machine but last year I had a different one. My present computer is an Intel i7 3770k with 32 GB of Corsair RAM. CMBN is installed/runs on a 20 GB RAM Drive. I have never seen anyone else post about a problem like this and I am clueless as to what could be causing it. To give more detail about one third of the units completed part of their movement, perhaps 10 to 20 seconds, and then stopped. The majority moved a couple of meters or not at all. One HT moved for a little over 30 seconds on a hard surfaced road. These were tanks and HTs as well as infantry. The majority were out of LoS of any enemy units. Units that had designated targets did fire the entire turn. I have a save game just prior to hitting the button to process the turn. File size is a little over 109 MB. I could put the save and the actual game turn I received from my friend in my Dropbox Public folder if anyone wants to take a look. An interesting point is that when I told my friend about the problem he said he noticed that the file size when he finished his turn was in the 90 plus MBs and he wondered why it had dropped so low. It appears that the game engine had already accounted for my units not moving. I would be happy as heck if someone could point out some mistake I am making that would solve this!

Womble, thanks for your explanation. Obviously this was a design decision and perhaps the only way BFC could do it programming wise but it is not very convenient for the player. I like to split off the AT team first and have them trail the rest of the squad for safety or to send them off to an ambush site. I keep the rest of the squad together for ease of movement until the situation warrants splitting them up. Now that I know what is happening I can work around it but I hope eventually BFC can fix it.

Erwin, please expand your response.

I have been having an interesting problem in my present game that I have never seen reported. When I separate a squad into teams the AT team has an infantry symbol and one of the infantry teams has the AT symbol. This is with the 11 man Motorized PzGrenadier infantry with the PzSchreck. It is not a game breaker by any means but it is confusing when you have a lot of teams running around. Has anyone else ever seen this?

ASL Veteran: IMHO you are taking too narrow a view of the game. Not everyone plays it the same way. I play exclusively with an old Army friend by email. Currently with CMBN. I build the maps we use and develop a different "Scenario" for each game. Sometimes we battle over the same objectives; sometimes we have different objectives. Regardless, we each have the same number of points to build our force. We pass the scenario file back and forth as we each secretly select our troops. Unfortunately, since the Scenario Editor does not list the point values we have to enter the QB menu, setting up a bogus battle each time, and select our units there. Each and every parameter and change in a units status must be written down so we can re-create it in the Scenario Editor. It is an unmitigated agony. The CMBN Scenario Editor and the QB Editor do not list the units in the same fashion; some BNs are under the Armored Inf.(Mech. Inf) in one editor and under Armor in the other. Far worse, however, is the fact that not all the TO&Es are exactly the same from one to the other. Case in point: in the QB Editor the American Armored Inf. BN HQ CO. does not have an Assault Gun Plt. nor does it have any vehicles in the Recon., MG, or Medium Mortar Plt. It used to have them but not now. Further, the number of Recon. Teams are different. There are many other anomalies but I will not bore you by reciting them all even if I could remember them. It is extremely frustrating to try to build a large force other these conditions! Especially when we were building a 20 k point force per side for a game we just started. So let me give a resounding +10 to the idea of having the points listed under the Scenario Editor. I have been meaning to plead for this for the past year but just never got around to it.