yuvuphys

Glad to see this thread is still going; I just picked up playing again a week ago and had a few thoughts to share, in no particular order. (Some of these may have been mentioned before, apologies if I missed them) I. Restrictions on Naval Repairs In Jan. '42, Saratoga took a torpedo which forced her back to the mainland for repairs. This took her out of action for several months and risked another submarine attack on her transit to the states could sink her. If she'd been repaired at Pearl, she might have been available for the battle of the Coral Sea or the battle of Midway, significantly changing the balance of power in those engagements. Currently, if I have a ship whose strength is reduced to 1, I can sail her into any port (say, Wake with supply 5), and repair her to strength 8 in one turn. Given the facilities actually present at Wake (i.e., no drydock, lack of material or experienced shipwrights), this seems unrealistic. I see two possible modifications which could provide an interesting solution. One is the addition of a new rule that would only allow the repair of a ship if the port supply was greater than 10 minus the ship strength. Now my badly damaged ship of strength one needs to make it back to Pearl or the west coast for repairs, and could be intercepted by the enemy or encounter bad weather and sink on the way back. In addition, if a port my ship flees to is damaged by bombing, I'll be unable to repair my ship in that port until it recovers. Another possible change is to split ports into "regular" ports and drydocks, and requiring ships damaged beyond a extent to be repaired in a drydock (perhaps even over several turns) instead of a port. II. Convoy Raiding One of the principal damages of convoy raiding was not simply the loss of material, but the loss of shipping capacity. Next time the attacked convoy of ships moved goods, it would move fewer goods unless the sunk ships could be replaced. I think it would add an interesting dimension to the game if the throughput of a convoy route was reduced for several turns as the result of a raid, rather than just for the turn it was raided. Raiding these routes would be similar to strategic bombing of a production center, reducing a city's MPP production from 10 to 5 causes the city to underproduce by 15 MPPs over 5 turns. Likewise, a raid on a convoy route which destroys 5 MPP of shipping could reduce the throughput of that route for 5 MPP for several turns, until new ships are built to handle the cargo. III. Economic vs. Military Manpower Nations were often faced with problems in allocation of manpower: larger armed forces lead to a lower economic output to supply those armed forces. I've never come across a game which models this well, but I think it would make for an interesting dimension to the game if it could be implemented well. I'm not sure I have a good solution in mind, but I do think it's work putting some thought into. Options might include reducing MPP output for each manpower intensive unit created beyond N units, with a small 'restoration' rate to mimic young children 'coming of age' and becoming economically productive. This could be simulated using events, too; i.e. the Japanese could be given the option to mobilize their population for the defense of the homeland in the event of an American force landing on the home islands, giving them a number of free units, but at the cost of permanently reducing the MPP production of their cities. I could also see connecting MPP production to national morale, or to the number of units lost and rebuilt. It's complicated to do right in a simple, intuitive manner, but manpower allocation was one of the most critical strategic decisions a nation could make and would fit nicely into the game. IV. Amphibious Limits I've seen mentioned before the desire to limit the number of units which can be amphibiously transported each turn; I do think this is a good idea, as sealift capacity was a critical bottleneck in amphibious operations. I think the most efficient way to do this is to create a new unit, the 'amphibious landing ship'. Any land unit can be loaded onto this unit for an amphibious attack. This naturally limits amphibious attacks to the size of the sealift capacity you've decided to build, and having these units sunk means you have to rebuild them, reducing your ability to conduct seaborne operations for a time. V. Barbarossa - Alternate Scenarios The timing of Barbarossa ('41 vs. a later year) and the near capture of Moscow provide some interesting bifurcation points in WWII, and I think are some of the most important strategic decisions not modeled by the game. A scenario which can completely capture these turning points would be exciting to play, but a beast to make. More specifically, giving the player an option to start Barbarossa in either '41, '42, or '43 would add some interesting variety to the game play (I usually modify any scenario I'm playing so I can start Barbarossa in '42, if I so choose). This is arguably one of the biggest and most important strategic decisions of WWII, and giving a player the flexibility to make that decision would, I think, be a step forward. Another potentially 'game-changer' is the Russian reaction to the capture of Moscow. It would add an interesting dimension if the Russians could either surrender, offer a negotiated settlement, or continue fighting (at present I believe they always continue fighting). The probabilities of offering one of these options could be dependent upon the date at which is Moscow is captured; the sooner Moscow is captured, the larger the chance they surrender or offer a negotiated settlement. This provides a strategic opportunity to gamble on taking Moscow while ignoring other, more economically rich areas, with the hope that Russia will surrender; it may or may not pay off. It also provides the Russian player more incentive to hold on to Moscow (depending on how this is implemented with humans playing the Allies), as the fall of Moscow could lead to the surrender of Russia.

Dropped mortars based on pre-battle intel, and took out the AT gun and mauled a few squads. Look for the question marks during the setup phase. Then 1 squad+1 sherman down the main road, with the rest of my force down the left. Moved everyone up to the shrubbery in front of the farm, hammered the whole area until it's quiet, then stormed the farm with flanking fire from the units coming down the road. Then advancing up to the crossroads through the field on the left side, placed squads on the shrubbery on the right (directly to the left of the road), which allowed them to put flanking fire on the squads on the right side of the road. This leaves you with good cover/concealment while eliminating the enemies cover/concealment. Ran out of time with 3KIA, 9WIA, and 70 enemy CAS, the rest broken and hiding. Very well done, Battlefront; don't believe I ever had this much fun with CMBB, CMAK or CMSF.

US mirror seems like a truncated file. German mirror is a bigger file, trying now: http://www.worthdownloading.com/download.php?gid=5100&id=23310

US mirror seems bad, try the german mirror here.

Ooops, same link; anyone confirmed legit yet?

Interesting... http://www.gamefront.com/files/20323791/CM_Battle_for_Normandy_Demo_Setup.exe 15% and counting...

Just finished Hasrabit, breathed new life into CMSF for me. Getting this one right away; thanks!

When my CPU starts to overheat (no A/C, playing for ~1 hour), the game stutters and then stops during an action phase, and nothing new will be displayed until that action phase is over. Usually it'll complete the action phase like normal but without displaying anything, but occasionally each unit will keep moving forward at it's present speed for the remainder of the unseen turn, as if the remainder of the action phase were a single time step. During replay it looks like unit teleporation when the game transitions from the freeze point to the end of replay instantaneously. Never had an explosion the instant this has happened, but it might be related.

I've had the floating icons disappear, making me think some of my units had just disappeared, but if I zoomed and searched around a little, I could usually find a guy to click on, and the floating icon would reappear. Whether this is what happened in your case or not, I don't know.

Has anyone noticed MG teams getting stuck in trenches? At least 3 times on 1.06 the soldier carrying the MG tries to run out of the trench he's in, and can't make it. Usually he gets out if I change the movement order to a different direction, but if the movement order is to load into a vehicle I can't cancel the order and that unit is stuck for the rest of the game.

Oh, I understand why they do it that way, but on the order website I thought I'd be able to download SC2 right away. I'd have done D/L-only option after it came out and saved another 20 bucks if I'd have known I couldn't download SC2 right away. *shurgs* It's just 20 bucks, but still quite annoying.

Ditto.

Steve, This LOS abstraction may cause some significant problems when taking a squad around a corner. If I understand correctly, when the center of the squad switches from the hidden action spot behind the corner to the visible action spot around the corner, 4-5 guys will suddenly be exposed in LOS of the enemy without warning. Will some sort of work-around for this be possible?

Actually, I just checked, and there's a couple CMSF torrents on the Pirate Bay...haven't DLed them, so don't know if they're cracked or not...

Hi Steve, Just had a similar issue in the second campaign mission (airfield). I start CMSF, try to load the game, and it crashes. However, if I start another CMSF game first (just load and quit a scenario), then try to load up the campaign, everything works OK. Campaign started under 1.03, which I'm still using. I've tried to load the game 6 times with no success. Have 1Gb of RAM, 565M in the page file when starting CMSF, and have 2.5G of space alloted for page files, so that shouldn't be an issue. I've set the turn aside if you want me to send it.

What worries me about this setup is that I could find myself in a situation where my unit A has LOF to the enemy's unit B, but b/c of action spots doesn't have LOS to unit B, and thus can never target unit B. However, at the same time Unit B may have LOS and LOF to unit A. Is this possible, Steve? [ August 17, 2007, 01:59 PM: Message edited by: yuvuphys ]

Has anyone seen artillery take out armor? I had 2 direct hits and 5 near misses of 81mm (88?) on a striker with anti-armor artillery, and all it did was slightly damage the wheels.

I tried that once, and half the squad ended up on one side of the wall, the other half on the other side of the wall. The squad couldn't exectute any movement commands because they were seperated by a wall and couldn't form any formations, so they became useless for the rest of the battle. They just ran around in circles every time I gave them a movement command! :mad: Before I knew breached walls/pathfinding was messed up, I tried to send a squad through a breach I'd created...they ran for a gate, only to be wiped out to a man by a IED when they reached it. :mad: Hope the pathfinding bug is taken care of in the 1st patch... As far as breaching walls, a short "line" of artillery along the wall will bring it down, which I prefer as I find artillery to be more expendable that MGS rounds.

Had teleportation problem and freeze problems with: Intel Dual Core T7200 2GHz NVidia 7600GT 512Mb 1 Gig RAM Windows XP Changed the CPU affinity for CMSF to only 1 CPU, and all my problems disapeared.

If the only limit is 16km^2, then something like 80km x 200m or 16km x 1km maps should be possible.

Nice website, guys. The bit about morale caught my eye: "Advanced human psychological modeling (morale)". What sort of "advanced modeling" are you incorporating? Will green troops get nervous and flighty hearing the battle nearby, when not actually being engaged? Will undisciplined units run for their lives if they feel their line of retreat is threatened? Well we be able to actually "target" the morale of our opponent, rather than seek to physically destroy him?

How about something like this. There are two levels of spotting for VBIEDs, "Possible Threat" and "Threat". When a vehicle is defined as a threat, the US player knows it is a unit controlled by his opponent, it can be engaged with no fear of negative consequences. If the vehicle is defined as a "Possible Threat", it could be one of two things. It could be a unit controlled by the Syrian player that is not yet positively identified as a threat. The US player could take protective measures and fire warning shots if he so chooses. However, the vehicle could also be a civilian vehicle *not* controlled by the Syrian player, but randomly created based upon the amount of civilian traffic in the area. All of the normal traffic one would encounter does not need to be simulated; only an occasional civilian vehicle that approaches too close to the US forces. (This is less work than simulating all civilian traffic; but I'm still not sure if it'd be too much work. It could be as simple as a car driving down a road, and taking a turn, and no longer being a threat...the car would have to respond to warning shots somehow; but usually by stopping and backing away.) These vehicles would never become identified as a definite "threat", and would stay not perform any actions which would classify it as a threat to US forces under their SOPs. So, here's the beauty of this. The US player can target "possible threats" if he so chooses; if the vehicle happens to be a Syrian controlled vehicles, he'll suffer no ill effects, job well done. But, if it happens to be a civilian vehicle, he suffers the consequences. One could allow the US player to give instructions to his troops on the engagement of these "possible threats"; how to react, to fire warning shots, adn generally how agressive to be in contronting them. Since the Syrian player can't control these possible threats (and can't even see them!), he can't use them in a gamey manner; but it provides the US player with the same difficulties a real US invasion force might encounter. Again, it's still some work, but less work than simulating all traffic, and maybe that's enough?

That depends on what your definition of "are" is...

What about bases at Wake or the Northern Marianas? Even Midway if you don't mind flying a little further. That'd allow at least a little decentralization, though with some distance cost.

Dear Battlefront, Why oh why is there so much off-topic politics around here? I only want to come and talk about CMSF, but I've had to stop becase threads like this drive me nuts. Politics, or no politics? Sincerely, Looking Forward to Screenshots