JulianJ

Thanks @SteppenWolf@sbobovyc I didn't texture the thing. Doh! I thought it would just turn up as a grey shape. So much to learn! I am likewise hoping to do a bit of work on this over Crimbo, when the mince pies and reruns of It's a Wonderful life have palled. If the lure of Shockforce 2 doesn't pull me away: "Go to beautiful foreign countries, meet interesting and exotic Jihadis....and kill them." OT I dunno if you have noticed, some sites are calling those lovely people, "Orcs" - I thought that was amusing.

I've been fascinated by this topic. Like Long Left Flank I am more interested in buildings and flavour objects. @sbobovyc Having modded some buildings I have added the CM2 MDR plugin to Blender and started bumbling around with 3d objects, not particularly successfully. Then I discovered readymade Blender objects. Hey ho! A quick workaround. I opened a simple rowing boat in Blender, it all looked OK. I exported it, firstly it failed several times - but the error message flashed by too quickly to read. Then it exported an mdr file. I called it atm5.mdr, put it in the Z folder and booted CMBS. I was hoping to find a grey untextured little boat on the grass in the scenario editor. No good. Looking in the MDR file with Notepad ++ it is only 4 bytes and says Nul Nul Nul. Obviously something went totally wrong: I am using Blender 2.79 with sbobovyc's plugins. Any ideas anyone please?

OK, that's a good start, but it's still nowhere near as squalid as those vids! It could be my road on a Saturday night.

Thanks for posting in this topic. I found those videos fascinating, horrifying and rather boring in places (note to video editors: film is like real life with the dull bits cut out ;-)). There's a lot to take away for us as realism gamers. In a slightly sicko way. In modern CM all those vidcam guys would have been spotted and blown away by the tanks. I wondered why there seemed to be no infantry support. Surely it is bad doctrine to use armour unsupported in urban areas? Or has the SAA lost too many grunts? It appears the game makes modern tank sensors much more effective than they are in RL - the uncons and their camera crew can easily get within 100 m of afvs (yes I know some was using long lenses from a distance). The tank/IFV battlegroup did try to cover arcs together. The exhaust smokescreen was used a lot. I assume the imaging in the tanks can see through it? I saw how it was effective in covering retreats. CM doesn't model that, nor the ejection of spent main gun shell cases. The sheer amount of devastation was breathtaking. I assume the pools of fetid-looking water are from burst water or sewage pipes - we should look to model that. I dunno how anyone can say "God is great" while looking upon a once-prosperous town now reduced to hell on earth. Part of some great eternal plan? I think not. I think someone should model the smoke then flame coming out of a tank gun barrel as it brews up. Then the ammo cook off. It seemed one crewman survived although burned. A brutal ending.

I just came across this. Very vivid. The narrative is in Russian. Perhaps our russian-speaking members could help a bit on what's going on, but it gives very stark impression of AFV fighting in Syria. Quite a lot of it is for a GoPro (or similar) mounted on top of a tank, which gives you a POV. I learnt some things - how close some of the action is, how totally devastated the environment, it's like a dusty Stalingrad, how much firing the main gun produces clouds of crud which makes targetting very hard. I don't want to give you spoilers but they stop the frame when ATGMs come in so you see what has been fired "at you". Some of the tanks have improvised stand-off armour made of building rubble in a cage. Call me old fashioned, but I don't think that will stop more than harsh language. 8.45 and 12.50 are worth watching. You might well flinch like I did. There is some film showing the damage to tanks , particularly ERA, at the end which is interesting.

LOL! Call me callous, (or perhaps Tony Bliar....accidental but brill mistype) but I don't care. They are there to die for me, and quite frankly all you sensitive snowflakes should harden up. . Apparently there are 13,000 homeless British Army veterans...OK, we can't win wars any more but we are still putting down markers on how to mistreat our cannon-fodder. It's a military tradition around here (read The Recollections of Rifleman Harris). So I am being realistic,in the CM tradition. Do you notice any medics, casevac or field aid centres. No, they are only for wimps. CM rightly disdains them. Perhaps you should stop playing CM and try Solitaire if it is too stressful.

General Jack, if I may speak Sir! Unfortunately it is not possible to cut-and-paste parts of maps to reuse them AFAIK. I'd love to be able to do that, which would speed up map making. It doesn't seem possible, unlike say, photoshop, where you can select an area of a picture and copy-and-paste into another - I'd love to do that in the sceanrio editor.

In the Total War series you can have allied forces commanded by the AI. They usually have the tactical nuance of a three-toed sloth. Often are a liability, to such an extent that I would often commit one army commanded by me, against large numerical odds, than even things up with an allied AI army as they were such a walking disaster area. Sometimes they might be useful, in sieges, where numbers count and it's a slogging match. The other tactic I created was the "counterpunch": I deploy my forces, then I would wait to see what extreme stupidity my AI allies would start on, then find some way to use it. For example, if the AI embarked on attacking enemy deployed on a steep hill frontally, I would wait till they were engaged, then race round the flanks and rear to cream the enemy while they were tied up battering the other army. But you can come unstuck if the allies get really badly bashed before you can intervene. If it is a campaign game, you can see a precious elite army commanded by a 10 star general that you have nurtured for decades thrown away in five minutes by the AI. I think the idea of civilians could be good. in Desert Sniper by Ed Nash (brilliant book recommended by @Bootie) he has the dilemma several times of seeing unarmed civilians who his Kurdish comrades want him to shoot as ISIS (which he doesn't) but then an unarmed man carrying a "baby" walks through no-man's land, and turns out to be a suicide bomber. It is very difficult to know what is the right course of action.

LOL. I find a certain sort of masochistic satisfaction out of that. Sort of the One Unsmoked IFV is king of all it surveys.

Very interesting stuff, thanks @Kaunitz I would add, in European settings, roads are rarely arrow-straight (with the exception of a few major roads like the autobahns, which weren't prevalent during WW2).

Thanks @Wicky

QB maps are my own pet peeve. I think many of the CMBS ones are frikkin awful. It's not just the issues posters have identified above, but the fact that most of the QB maps I have played so far a) bear no resemblance to any town or village landscape I have ever seen b) lack tactical benefits of terrain so games become grinding matches To give an example: the CMBS QB I am playing at the moment - destroyed factory stronghold - is far from the worst, but is virtually completely flat, has only pitched roof buildings and only 1,2,3 storey buildings, so you cannot seek an elevation for snipers and arty observers. It also has four arrow-straight main roads (eh?!). There are no ways to sneak infantry up advantageously, and as Kaunitz says just becomes a short range bloodbath. This is unlike any terrain I have seen, and quite frankly, most factories/warehouses/industrial complexes have many different buildings, from very large flat-roofed ones, to office towers, to small sheds and utility buildings. Where are the shops, filling stations, car parks, workers' cafes, and the odd playing field or billiard hall where the workers take breaks? I've seen more realistic alien planets in games. I was actually today going to propose that some of us here modify the QB maps and make them better, call them Mk2 versions, that would be quicker than starting from scratch and if a few of us did one each it would not become too tiresome. I am grateful to @Kaunitz for raising this topic because it was on my mind too. (note - I like QBs because you can pick your forces, and experiment with different force mixes, vehicles and troops)

hi all, I am going to set up a forum (nothing to do with gaming) and I wondered if the members here have some recommendations. I've looked at the various free forum software apps around, they seem to be much of a muchness, but I don't want to set something up and discover a fatal flaw. I am not a developer, though I do have some computer skills. I just want something straightforward that I can install and get various people to help mod, etc. Any recommendations?

First time through I sorta stormed the main village all guns blazing. Then I ran out of steam. The infantry let me down. By being dead. The second time I mostly hid for at least an hour of game time, sent my recon forward. Killed every tank and IFV, some with Javs (one squad got 3 kills with 4 javs before being slotted) some with PGMs from Arty. I bombarded everywhere, especially the far back ATGM positions. When I thought I'd neutralised all AA defences the Apaches came out to play. With about 10 mins of the game left I sent tanks and Brads to capture the last few objectives. It did seem a bit grindy though. Still took more infantry casualties than I'd like. I did lose a Bradley that had been hiding in some woods for the whole game. I moved it out of cover then a turn later it was a smoking wreck. I couldn't work out what had hit it - I think it may have been friendly fire from the Apaches as there weren't any enemies nearby I could find.

Hi all I just found this resource Live conflict maps https://liveuamap.com/ it covers three conflicts: Ukraine, Syria and Israel/Palestine with news and maps/satellites. You click on a news symbol and it takes you to where something happened. I zoomed in on Donetsk and it seemed to have a useful amount of detail. I couldn't find contours unfortunately but that might be me missing something.

I noticed that the Igla only has one missile, and the RPO only four rounds. When I am playing the US, my stinger crews can pop about 6 of the missiles into their trouser pockets from reloads in the Humvee truck. My most recent QB - I couldn't find any spare rounds for these weapons anywhere. Does one have to have a dedicated vehicle or are you stuck with the few shots?

I do think this is a subject I have some expertise in: digital marketing. Some of the work I do is for small niche software companies, not unlike BF. All of them are acutely conscious of marketing, even if they only have small budgets for it - they want to keep their existing customers and reach out to potential new ones. We all know that new versions and patches can be delayed but that is a reason to ensure that customers are kept in the loop. It's not actually a cost, but has an ROI in increased sales and customer satisfaction. BF seem to be shamefully ignorant or uncaring about this, and its Digital Marketing 101. IMO it is a very poor business strategy just to rely on a hard core of ageing customers in a competitive marketplace, but obviously BF sees things differently, [sigh].

I only just started posting on this forum, but I agree with @Mannschaft - I got all excited about SF2, and now my interest is waning. Actually BF you could get some young person, not pay them much, to post updates and screenshots and stuff on this forum and other social media. Keep your core customers happy and inform potential new ones of this new product in development and hopefully to be released soon.... It's part of this Social Media marketing lark we hear so much about. This would take the pressure off, and have a ROI. Get more people to buy the game when it comes out. Gazillions of other companies do this all the time about their products. Why doesn't Battlefront?

@MOS:96B2P Thanks - you were right. My stinger troops had just been firing off missiles into the blue yonder. Then there was an off-map explosion and "Aircraft destroyed" - it isn't up for very long, and my attention is on the explosion, wondering what happened, so easy to miss. Given they must have fired about 7 missiles without a hit, I have wondered if some affirmative action programme sends visually impaired soldiers to AA platoons :-). I like several of Ithkial's ideas, esp about tac ai. CMBS is deadly enough without troops doing suicidal things. In the above battle, several times my troops were getting hit by spotting rounds. I tried to make them run the fack away to safety and hide. But they crawled. And got blown to bits. I kind-of think in RL, however tired you were, you'd be breaking some sprint records in that situation.

Yes, I would favour manually inputting points values to QBs. If you want to do an experiment, or play a tiny game with a handful of vehicles and men, it's a hassle to set it up at present. I have a feeling that you could do this in CM1? This can't be too difficult to implement.

Thanks John, I found that really engrossing. Very grim urban fighting. I was pretty involved so had forgotten about the reveal, so I was pleased when I saw the shot at 48mins and said "Oh yes they're XXXXX!" [spoiler removed]. Yes, I agree, a kind of mini-Stalingrad, like the original, in winter.

I've been down the Dover tunnels too, very atmospheric. I bet it would have been claustrophobic during wartime.

Thanks MOS:96B2P I'm not sure that's happening in my game, perhaps I've missed a patch, although the last game I played was from the demo. Anyway that's good news, basically solved the problem as far as I am concerned.

A few more photos of the grotto

Yesterday I went to Margate. It is a faded town on Britain’s East (North Sea) coast. Before the Turner Contemporary Art Gallery opened, it’s most famous attraction was a failed amusement park called “Dreamland”, whose rotting shoreline hulk of carousels and roller coasters could be seen for miles around. Although it looks OK in the glorious Autumn sunshine we had yesterday, it really only has an economy supported by fleecing tourists, coastal retirees, and councils sending its druggies and alkies away to the seaside, where it is cheap to support them. It is the sort of place I can easily imagine, in the dead of winter, at midnight, locals ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms, and cavorting about in Goat’s Head masks, overseen by a bankrupt, debauched member of the local petty squirearchy. You may have seen documentaries about this subject, such as The Wicker Man, The Blood on Satan’s Claw or the latter part of Kill List. Or perhaps read some of the estimable Mr Dennis Wheatley’s parables on this particular British subculture. Margate would undoubtedly be twinned with Arkham or possibly Sunnydale, with which it shares many characteristics, if anyone who could find America on a map hadn’t left a long time ago for better prospects. A Historical Note: After Stonehenge was raised on Salisbury Plain by Great Cthulhu himself, Beast People started swimming across from their breeding grounds in New England, (circa 500 B.C.E.), and interbreeding with locals. At first their sanctuary was on the Welsh Isle of Anglesea (Mona). When the Roman Army invaded, their soldiers were so distressed at what they found at the Druidic Sacrifice sites that they (almost) eradicated the worship of Great Old Ones and drove it underground. Unusually, those Romans who had witnessed the aftermath of Unspeakable Rites, didn’t write about it and we have little in the way of records – which is telling as normally the documentation-loving Latins loved to write copious scrolls about the strange practices they found amongst the barbarians they conquered. The Shell Grotto in Margate Discovered in 1835, under an innocuous cottage, this is an underground temple, created from millions of sea-shells, in ornate and complex patterns. It must have taken years to create. It is unknown how old it is. Guidebooks describe it as a “Folly”. I completely disagree with that interpretation. Follies were constructed from the late 16th Century onwards in Britain, as a display of conspicuous consumption by the elite. It was one-upmanship – there were no superyachts to buy so this was a way of displaying you had money to burn. They weren’t secret. They were a public extravagance, where you could have parties to show them off. Exclusively to your fellow elites – the hoi-polloi would only be there as servants. They were mainly constructed in the gardens of great manor houses and palaces. The Shell Grotto, is hidden, underground, and is below a very small, ordinary cottage. We know some of the mosaics were created above ground (easier to do) and then lowered into place – in total secrecy. Most of the sea-shells were sourced locally- edible variants, but strangely a huge number of non-edible shells were transported from Southampton (around 120 miles /160 km away) on the South Coast, presumably by coastal barge or horse and cart. This is a huge undertaking, not something one person or a small number of people could do. So I think this is an abandoned Temple to the Great Old Ones. You could easily have an interesting evening summoning interdimensional beasts to do your bidding, and its cheaper than going to the pub. There’s nothing else to do in Margate on a dull winter’s evening. I assume Cthulhu cultists have some way of recognising each other, a bit like freemasons, eh @Mord? (Please don’t give any secrets away, it would be a bit of a loss to the forum if you were cast into an abyss or eaten alive by Rhan-Tegoths). Whatever led to its abandonment, I don’t know, although usually if one bursts in on Followers of the Great Old Ones when they are in the middle of opening a portal to call Shub Niggurath, they get a bit agitated. Quite frankly, if you don’t slaughter them all and close the gateway, the evening tends to go downhill from there. So probably some intrepid monster hunters sneaked in and rendered the dimensional vortex inoperable and the temple was of no further use. Possibly they died in the attempt or lost their sanity so no records would exist. *note: calling Cthulhu Cultists insane, bloodthirsty maniacs in thrall to evil god-like alien creatures, is quite frankly, language that has no place in 21st Century discourse in a civilised forum like ours. Please remember to treat the Community of Evil Worshippers with the respect and tolerance you would extend to any other minority.