Tim A

Battle Command is not done by anyone at Battlefront or the Major himself. I have tried to get people from the Tacops community to check it out but nobody really seemed interested. It would be really really good for CPX type games that is for sure. I had some really good games with the developers but not much traction beyond that unfortunately.

It sounds to me that this isn't going to get done in a CMx2 engine. However, I would think that some major rethinking needs to be done on CMx3 engine so that these type of issues are much more easily handled or inherently supported. In this day and age there are tons of game engines that have MUCH more going on than CMSF and can easily handle multiplayer and full playback. Neither of these should be issues at all unless your hands are severely tied due to the CMx2 engine.

Have you actually created any?

Like people have mentioned most games this days have full replay capability. I remember some sims 10 years back that had them as well. For turn based stuff TacOps 4 certainly has full replay and I believe the developer added my suggestion of having FOW and different force perspective views in the replay. It really is too bad that the developers of CM hide behind the game engine quite often for stuff like this.

I can say that there is very little to no spam that comes through by signing up on the TacOps mailing list. I use a different email address for just about every mailing list I'm on and I can't remember a single spam coming through that address.

This is most unfortunate and should have been near the top priority to address for CMBB and/or CMAK. I find the PBEM turn sequence a complete turn-off to this game. So much so that I don't think I can partake in PBEM games. One should look at how it is done in TacOps and copy that model. If one is worried about cheating then a single turn per exchange can alleviate that. I'm not sure how all you guys have put up with it. In any event it most certainly should be an option for playing amongst trusted people.

Max, I think you are correct. I just reloaded the scenario and indeed the units south of the road are 2 teams and when placed near one another during setup become a single squad. Is it normal behavior however for the teams to automatically join each other during a game turn if they are close to each other? So this doesn't seem to be a bug at all.

I thought I noticed a squad disappearing in the scenario A Walk In The Sun so I tried loading it up a number of times and also asked a friend to see if he noticed the same thing. What we have noticed is that about 90% of the time one of the Rifle 43 Squads disappears usually during the setup phase or during turn one or two. The squad in question seems to usually be from the 1st Platoon on the south side of the road leading straight east to the target building. My friend thought that he had a squad missing once from 2nd platoon. But I have verified it to happen pretty consistently with a squad as described above. Scenario is played single player allied with all the default scenario settings. The concern is that this might be happening in any number of scenario's without one actually noticing. Given so few units in this scenario it is easy to spot but with any more units one would likely not notice it especially if it happens on turn 1 or turn 2 or even perhaps before the setup phase.

Amazing getting TacOps running on the Zaurus. Yet another great reason to get a Zaurus. Thanks for the info.

Thanks for the quick response MajorH. We tried what you suggested here but are still in a strange state. It was actually the BLUE player who lost all his files but I'll continue the discussion as it is represented here so as not to confuse things. If you follow this method, this is what we found. The RED player after loading the latest renamed save game file from the BLUE player was at the point where he could receive the BLUE player latest orders. RED did this but then was at the stage of being able to send the next turn (in this example that would be turn 22). However, RED did not see the combat results for turn 21 and BLUE has not and will not receive turn 21 orders from RED. So there is a missing orders file from BLUE that was never generated. So what we tried doing was the same method but from BLUE's 2nd last game turn and orders file. This allowed RED to actually see the previous game results and then create orders for turn 21. However, RED saw different combat results than BLUE for turn 21. So it looks like doing this puts the game out of sync!!! Is there something we missed or is the procedure different since it is really the BLUE player who has lost all his files? I hope this explains it clearly!!!!

Is it possible to resume a PBEM game where one player lost all of his files due to a hard drive crash? If so, what is the correct procedure?

The OPFOR SAM SA16 Gimlet has a SA16 SAM range of 6000m. As well, the OPFOR Mi28N Havoc AT Helo has SA16 SAM range of 6000m. The US AH64 CS Helo has a Stinger SAM range of 5000m. I'm sure I'm not using the terminology correctly but I call that a 1000m standoff. The OPFOR SA16 Gimlet and Mi28N Havoc have a 1000m at the sufficient distance to engage the US helo without it being able to return fire. I just conducted an experiment with visual and thermal visibility set to 6000. Neither the OPFOR SA16 Gimlet or Havoc engaged the US helo at anywhere over 5000m. I danced the US helo around for 5-10 minutes and it was never fired on. As soon as it crossed the 5000m distance it was engaged by both Gimlet and Havoc but was also fired back on as would be expected. Oh, by the way I think I also threw in airstrikes over 5000m and they were not engaged either. If someone has the time to repeat that experiment or all that would be great as I'm sure the Major is busy. I'd like at least one other confirmation of this in any event. With visibility set to 4000m, the above OPFOR units do not engage helo's until 4000m. The SAMs will engage air strikes over 4000m but not greater than 5000m. So Major, I think there is still some design FEATURE in there that needs looking at

I have also noticed that under simple testing conditions, BLUE helo's do drop like flies when flying somewhat blindly into RED AA and SAMs. However, under real gaming conditions I've found this not to be the case at all. It most likely was due to much more careful BLUE helo attack tactics. However, I was still counting on the 1000m standoff distance that the RED helo's have against BLUE but that is negated by this bug. As a comparison, I would think one would consider this very serious if it negated the RED OPFOR slight range advantage of the BMP2 over the BLUE ground units like the M1A1 and M2A2. All tactics I've read involve engaging BLUE at maximum distances if possible to prevent being fired back at so why wouldn't one want to do this with helo's/SAMs as well?? Take this post to be written with some bitterness as this range problem has cost me dearly in a couple PBEM games until I figured it out just recently

Major, any response to my followup on July 11th? Is this a legitimate bug that is going to be fixed soon? I think it definitely should be but you're the boss. I also believe this problem affects helo's and SAM units in the same way as ZSU's. So any air defense range advantages for OPFOR are completely negated by this. It makes for a very dissappointing air defense against helo's in as much as I don't think I'd game anymore scenario's with helo's involved.

Question on an old post here. Major, I assume you have thought this through by now. What was the outcome?