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sandman2575

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Everything posted by sandman2575

  1. Thank you for taking the time to explain the installer issues, Ian. Especially with Battle for Normandy, it's a bit of a nightmare. I think I'm just going to stick with v.4.00 for now and try work-arounds like using the pause command that you suggested. Though I do hope some patch for the infantry behavior will arrive sooner rather than later. Doubtful anyone's going to revoke our grumbly grognard status around here. If you play CMx2, you are by definition a gumbly old grognard.
  2. The only all-in-one installer I can locate is the "CM Normandy 4.00 Full" (4.3GB). Where can I find the all-in-one for v.3? I appreciate your help but, especially when it comes to CM Normandy, I throw up my hands in despair over the many multiple modules and engine upgrades and packs and wonder how I ever got the game to run on my PC in the first place. OK thank you for this -- this is a clever work around that I will try out. I completely agree with you that the pixeltruppen should not be supermen and should not make perfect decisions. The problem is the 'autonomy' as exercised by the truppen, esp. in v.400, just stretches beyond credibility. It's one thing to run into an ambush out of recklessness. It's quite another to choose to run headlong into enemy fire, which is what I saw in Abbaye d'Authie and caused me to put things aside -- a squad in a good position, putting good fire on the enemy, which then decides of its own accord to run *out* of cover and into a wall of bullets from *known* enemy positions. Willing suspension of disbelief terminated. I was under the impression from reading other posts that the problematic 4.00 infantry behavior mostly pertained to troops under HE bombardment. What I saw was my troops 'exercising autonomy' simply during an exchange of fire. And they weren't pinned or panicked. They were in the advantageous position, and decided to give it up in favor of a completely disadvantageous position, leading to heavy casualties. Anyway, I appreciate the responses from everyone who has weighed in here -- and that the comments have been admirably civil all around.
  3. I appreciate the response, Erwin, both yours and Warts'n'all's -- but correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't the 4.00 patch released in Jan. 2017? That's over a year ago. I'm not sure how to take "BF is working on fixing it" then ... "with a grain of salt" seems appropriate and, indeed, generous. It's dismaying that one can come back to CMx2 after a hiatus and discover, within less than an hour of play, a major problem that still hasn't been addressed, 13 months on. It's equally dismaying that it's by no means clear that the standard work around -- 'roll back to version 3.00' - is possible. Given the headaches associated with BF's 'activation' process and confusion over version numbers and order in which modules need to be installed... I wouldn't even know where to begin. This truly is not meant as 'Battlefront bashing' -- I fully recognize I haven't been part of this community nearly as long as many of you, but I own all the CMx2 games and have poured a lot of hours into each of them, and don't regret that in the slightest. Still (and I know the phrase gets thrown around a lot) this really does seem game-breaking to me. I can't see the point of spending hours carefully plotting out tactics if your squads can just move about of their own accord, making the stupidest of decisions and getting annihilated in the process. If there really is no work around for this, then I guess it's back to the shelf for CMx2, and will check back in 6 months to see if BF has bothered to sort any of this out.
  4. So, I've been away from CMx2 for a while, but jumped into the Abbaye d'Authie battle. Game is updated to v 4.00. I'm alarmed to see units breaking cover of their own volition. These are not green units either. They're veteran SS-panzergrenadiers with good morale (often +2). I just had a squad in a good position, and not under heavy fire but giving pretty heavy fire to the Canadians -- they just up and decided to run out of cover and straight into an open field, where most of them got shot up. Is this part of the new infantry behavior for v 4.00? Because if so, it's pretty game breaking.
  5. @Battlefront.com (or anyone else knowledgeable) -- I installed engine 4 for FI/GL when you did the 'soft launch' back on April 8. Is there any reason I'd have to re-download and reinstall -- i.e. was the 'April 8' release (what I have installed) identical to what's currently up on the website? Thanks.
  6. Hmm so I tried the Activate New Products shortcut .exe -- entered my Upgrade 4 code, got the "Success!" message, showing upgrade 4 and other components activated, but then when I launch the game, I get a "License Failure - Game Engine 2 is required" message, and then returns to desktop. Something's not right.
  7. Activation does not appear to be working. Entering the serial code for the 'Update 4 Big Bundle' when prompted isn't activating. Anyone else having that problem?
  8. You're amazing, Dragonwynn. I recently got through the first mission of your "Thunder over Ponyri" campaign for Red Thunder. Epic engagement! Looking forward to giving this a try. Thanks very much for all your hard work and dedication.
  9. That was certainly true of the game in its first iteration as 'Achtung Panzer: Kharkov '43,' where unit density sometimes felt more like a single platoon per sq. km. But for Operation Star and Mius Front, you absolutely can get several companies deployed per sq. km.; in the game Settings, the "Combat Radius" setting should be set to "unlimited," else the game (rather arbitrarily and artificially) limits the number of eligible units in a battle -- presumably does this for computer performance reasons, cut down on lag (?). But it's not at all unusual to get clashes with battalion strength forces or larger in a 3x3 sq. km. battle in Mius Front.
  10. I was thinking about weighing in on this topic, but kraze summed up very nicely several of the points I'd make. Pretty much in total agreement here. I also completely agree: it doesn't have to be a question of "Combat Mission VS. Graviteam Tactics," one or the other. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Both are superb, serious games. On that note, I'd weigh the strengths accordingly -- speaking strictly of the Single Player experience: Graviteam Tactics - Mius Front / Op Star ++ Dynamic campaign on large-scale maps, beautifully rendered with persistent damage (You shell that village to smithereens, it stays that way) + Vehicle modeling with visually rendered damage. + UI. Many will probably disagree here, but I think Mius Front's UI is quite elegant and functional, and frankly puts CM's to shame. Yes it's idiosyncratic. But once you learn it, it's a quite flexible, powerful tool. Even just being able to give vehicles a "follow road to this point" command eliminates a good deal of micromanagement necessary in CM. + Overall visuals. Graviteam is simply the more impressive looking, up-to-date game, in terms of environment (including dynamic weather) and vehicles. An artillery barrage in Mius Front makes the same in CM look cartoonish. Infantry is a push - I don't think visually either game clearly outshines the other + Modeling airstrikes. Watching a formation of Stukas / Sturmoviks dive in and wreak havoc is a sight to behold. CM's "bullets and bombs out of the clear blue sky" is primitive by comparison. CMx2 ++ Infantry, combat and modeled behavior. Here is where Combat Mission shines by comparison with Mius Front. You simply have much more flexibility with infantry in CM. Infantry-only battles in Mius Front often feel a bit dull. In CM, they are often intense, gritty affairs. + Overall challenge and difficulty. CMx2 is simply harder -- more demanding, less forgiving of mistakes -- than Mius Front. This partly reveals one of the weakness of Mius Front's otherwise great strength: dynamic campaigns. The AI often is not smart enough to be able to adapt to all the new situations Mius Front creates in the course of a campaign. The scripted AI of CM means less flexibility, but undoubtedly makes for a more challenging game. ++ Moddability and user-created content. No contest here. + Save game system. Small point, but Graviteam Tactics' "One save only, and quit on save" system is, in my view, a travesty. Especially since the game has been known to crash during saves...leading to many hours of lost work. Luckily, I'm finding Mius Front rock-solid stable... can't think of a single crash (ditto for CMx2).
  11. Wow, fantastic interactive website. Thanks for posting the link!
  12. Yup -- and this touches on what for me is one of the biggest frustrations with CMx2: the lethality of unbuttoning. Drives me crazy. I essentially never unbutton tank commanders anymore -- it's just too risky and not worth the supposed benefit in spotting. There's no surer way to draw the AI out of an ambush than to unbutton. It's like dumping a giant bucket of chum in shark-infested waters. And for tank commanders and HT gunners, it's pretty much as deadly as jumping into said waters. Just to be clear, I'm not taking about unbuttoning in obviously (or even potentially) dangerous situations. I'm talking about unbuttoning when you are hundreds of meters from possible enemy contacts. The sniping power of your average grunt to pick off unbuttoned tank commanders from improbably long distances is breathtaking in CMx2. End rant...
  13. @ Vein -- Huge thanks for updating your essential mods. Just purchased engine 4.0 the other day and the only thing that really put me off not being able to use your modded tracer gfx -- very glad to see this solved! @Astrocat -- am using your explosion / muzzle flash gfx now -- thanks!
  14. This is the first custom made scenario for Final Blitzkrieg, yes? Congrats kevinkin -- and thanks for supplying us with terrific content.
  15. Worghern -- in terms of voting for which image looks best -- I wonder if there is another factor we should take into consideration, namely, the fact that everyone of us has our monitors calibrated in entirely different ways, for gamma, color scheme,brightness, etc. etc. The reason I bring this up is that when I look at your examples -- both here and in your environment mod -- I really love the images that have the SweetFX and shaders ON. The images look spectacular to me. However, when I try to reproduce that -- speaking specifically of your released environment mod now -- the image I get is much harsher and more garish, in short, pretty unpleasant. Thus I've been using your wonderful environment textures but leaving SweetFX and all that off. Surely this must be due to how my monitor is calibrated in comparison to yours? With your monitor specs, your images with SweetFX and shaders enabled look terrific. With my monitor under the same settings, the image looks much to vibrant and artificially bright. Maybe what I'm saying is too obvious to be worth discussing, I'm not sure -- you're the expert and I defer to you.
  16. Wow, very impressive. It's good to know that victory is possible, as you've proven. One question -- after taking the Highway Screen OBJ, did you then assault Stavelot by the main road and take the other 4 OBJ in sequence? Or did you avoid the main road and drive some forces down by the pond / stream area, essentially skirting the town center? I now think it was a big mistake for me to send the pioneer platoon with the 75mm 234/3s on an attempted flanking move through the woods of the hill overlooking Stavelot. They ultimately were able to do very little up there, and even following the paths the possibility of bogging --> immobilization is very high. Although I think sending your FO up there is essential.
  17. All good changes, Chris. And glad to hear some of the improvements may make their way into RT, FI, BN...
  18. I am *delighted* by this one. Probably my biggest pet peeve about CM. Any chance the change also applies to unbuttoned gunners -- i.e. not just vehicle commanders - ? (Any chance we can get this change incorporated in all CMx2 modules? ) EDIT -- I somehow overlooked this similarly excellent bit of news: "* The posture of passengers in most 250 and 251-series German halftracks were adjusted slightly to make them less vulnerable to enemy fire from outside the vehicle. " Looking forward to this patch!
  19. Perhaps that's it then -- only available in QBs. Ah well. I've scoured the FewGoodMen scenario repository pretty thoroughly and added them to my game, although certainly can't say I've played many of them yet. Also, Aris has some (typically beautiful) reskins for the GL Panthers on cmmodsiii -- although seems the odds of actually seeing them in-game are pretty small!
  20. Anyone? Seems I should have specified GL scenarios/campaigns since the Panther isn't part of the Fortress Italy OOB. BFC's storefront page for Gustav Line prominently features a pair of Panthers. They must be somewhere in the game -- ?
  21. So, has anyone actually gotten a victory on Lifeline? It would be encouraging to know if it's possible. I threw in the towel at the 16:00 mark. I had basically secured the 2nd objective, the entrance into Stavelot -- but there was *no way* I was going to have either the time or forces sufficient to capture *3 more*!! My 'battering ram' approach worked about as well as expected, i.e. not very well at all. My Panther spearheading along the main road into Stavelot with my 2 KTigers taking parallel routes on either side of the road beyond the row-houses, with my mounted grenadiers following. It wasn't pretty. As I knew it would be, Stavelot is Ambush Central. You take out the AT gun down the lane only to be blindsided by bazooka teams as you roll by. Can this mission be beaten? I'm skeptical. The deck is so heavily stacked against you -- and the 1 hr. time limit is ridiculous.
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