A Canadian Cat

Exciting developments - I now know precisely were two prongs of the attack are coming from. Kraft's 3 squad I sent to meet the Western most advance just about ran into an artillery barrage. If I had sent them there one minute earlier they would have been right under that. More artillery shells land on - nobody. But it tells me which field the enemy are planning to enter. Not just because of the artillery but also the access points. First I get Kraft to back 3 squad away from the artillery. He will be ready when the enemy arrive. The squad that was hoping to attack a Stuart needs to be redeployed to face the infantry that are coming. I will move one of the Shrek teams to take their place and keep and eye on those Stuarts. This is where they will form up to defend against the enemy coming in via that farm. Through that tan field next to the orchard.

Not much changed again. The AT gun and the nearby MG42s fired at the infantry. One new development was a previously unspotted Stuart tank appeared on the North front and proceeded to unload on one of the Shrek Teams. They are now pinned but unharmed. The thing that is strange is that the Stuart would have had to pass right in front of one of the key hole LOS locations the AT gun has. I will get the Shrek team to pull back a bit and wait for a target before crawling back. This is why the Stuart was able to get past the AT gun - the gun's LOS changed after setup. During setup you saw the two directions this gun had visibility. Now it does not. Notice the blocked colour starts right at the bocage line so the gun cannot see out of the field in that direction. I very specifically sited that gun so it could fire in that key hole. I hate it when that happens.

I keep tell my men help is on the way to keep their morale up.

Sweet. Is that what is coming to save me

Another quite turn. My men take very little fire. In fact the only fire happening is at nothing (that is one of the Stuarts way back there): Or breaking a wall. Here you can see that it does not get them much. I do see now that if they breach a second wall they can get further but they still have only one way out on to the North road at that farm. This is the view from 1 platoon Gelband's command post. I make one tweak this time. I am sending 1 Platoon 3 squad (Kraft) West to shoot at the flanking enemy. They will get into a place where they can send some rounds out and then pull back. I want my enemy to continue to shoot at nothing. So, I need him to think it is not nothing. I find it interesting that I have not had any artillery dropped on me this game. I hope that is a good sign.

I should have posted this first off. Her is the break down of forces along with names. Platoon 1 Gelband 1 squad Horter Schumacher - scout team 2 squad schafer Reiser - scout team 3 squad Kraft Robbe - scout team 1 team Hornung 2 team Ober AT squad A (gun) Ruppertz AT squad B Schussel Platoon 2 Kraft 1 squad Haberfellner Hartenstein - B team 2 squad Zimmermann Schmidt - scout team 3 squad Penzel 1 team Dietzel 2 team Altner AT squad A (gun) Beerbauer AT squad B Jacob As you can see I broke off five scout teams initially. Beerbauer's AT gun team have the Stuart kill and Ruppertz's team have been firing at the number 2 Company in the open field. Note. I have no idea what the enemy companies are numbered I'm just calling them 1, 2 and 3 company.

This was a pretty quite turn. The one thing that bugged me was I kept hearing explosions and yet none of my men were under fire. It took me a few run throughs to figure out what was happening. The fourth Stuart that has not been fully spotted yet was firing at the high wall at the Easter edge of town. Odd. All that gets him is access to a field with only one other exit - on to the North road but you can access the North road from the end of the wall. I really don't get what this is about. If tanks go through that wall they come out on the road right in front of that burning Stuart. Schmidt makes it to saftey. Over near the first AT gun Horter's men open up as well. No confirmed kills but those guys in the open have be concerned. My forward scout teams continue to pull back to fighting positions. Here is the overview. I believe I see the enemy's plans forming. It looks like we are facing a battalion. Each company is assaulting the village from the North but the intention is to surround us. It looks like the Stuart tanks' job is to keep us from leaving and perhaps join the fight later. Well, news flash that is what I figured would happen which is why their final fighting positions are back to back bocage fields defensible from all directions. We will go down fighting and take as many of them with us that we can.

Makes perfect sense as soon as you said it :-) And indeed if a big name popular game used that API... Sucks when a vendor does not live up to an API. Makes me think I should lean towards Nvida for my next card. Indeed. Thing is that is exactly what I thought. This issue with plotting way points has come up multiple times. When it comes up someone chimes in with the "point the camera down over the bridge" workaround and that is the end of it. My bad for not sticking to a thread and making sure we figured out who had and who did not have the problem. It just seemed like even though it was not everyone there were lots of people experiencing it. It is one of those times when having a formal way of tracking issues would help. I know, I know the down sides are bigger than one or two lost issues. Ian

Well that method solution is way better than mine. Hell I have been frustrated with this for months. Flipping the camera up and looking down on bridges is such a habit I problem will not stop right away:). Any idea what that option actually does? What I mean is am I loosing something else by flipping it off? Or should we ATI guys just turn it off.

Hangs head in shame for being person B Yeah I know it repeats. It is the repeating person A that drives me nuts. Must ... try ... to ... resist ... next ... time.

With respect. The issues with bridges are come up before - lots. I thought you guys knew about that navigation problem. Here are two such threads but I know I have read more (they also bring up other issues with vehicles driving etc not related to way points): http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=104297&highlight=bridge Fair warning this one is a bit pissy - not as bad as this thread because they are real issues with actual examples but still - pissy. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=108187&highlight=bridge Now that is very interesting. I had no idea that mouse hit detection would be tied into video card drivers. I guess that makes sense. Very interesting. So then the problem could be that I have a driver that works - also running AMD card and @togi does not. @togi I have to say that I watched your video and I am going to have to go back to the game and try again. My issues - when I had them would not have allowed me to put those way points on the close side of the bridge let along the far side. Things were so screwed up for me could not place or manage units with int 75m of a bridge. So in this recent game I have been able to move around on the near side of the bridge and I am sooo happy to have it fixed. But I have not tried to cross it yet. I will try again tomorrow. In the mean time you can work around this by moving your camera angle to point nearly directly down and get up high over the bridge. Now you can do what you need to do with units on and around the bridge. I have been playing like that for months and months while I waited for the fix.

I was just going to let it go but... From my first post " Call in smoke to blind half the enemy and suppress and kill the other half. Once the smoke clears you deal with the other half. Divide an conquer." And that was before either of you guys

Ah, what? This is something I just don't get. The flame reaction comes from the bombastic attitude and the strong declarations that black is not black enough and white is not white enough. This crowd flames back when people sound like toddlers having tantrums. That is what people are reacting to. Read our posts. I, for one, have made countless suggestions for improvements to the game, told BFC about problems I was experiencing and gave my opinions about how thins work and what I would like. I have even expressed my disappointment with regressions when they happen. No one has ever flamed me for it. Same goes for others here that you clam are part of a cabal that worships BFC. Like I said I just don't get reactions like yours.

Yes 100% sure. I was plotting way points for two tanks around a bridge just this morning. I am even having one of them drive just onto the bridge something I would have have dared to do before. Wish me luck with that . I did all this at camera level 2 and 3. It just worked. That certainly is possible. I am talking about CMFI with GL version 1.10. I am not sure what you mean by optimistic approach. It is true I am optimistic by nature though Do I think the devs are looking at optimizing the game where and when they can - yes I do. Do I think it would be good for the game to be faster - hell yes. The thing I was concerned about was your load times are worse than mine and you machine, from the sounds of it, is much faster than mine. That makes me wonder if you might have some things you can do on your machine that will make you happier.

Well then your expectations need a reset. Steve from BFC has been talking about their development process on and off for the last year and he has set expectations quite clearly. Modules don't include features. There your expectations are reset - assuming you listen. It has been a long time since I saw an uber tank crew cut down anybody after bailing. Flamethrowers - again Steve has set expectations - at some point on the eastern front. He did not even commit to having it right away in the eastern front game either. So, don't hold your breath.

Well, they have corrected this issue. The fix is in the patch for CMFI. If you have CMFI and GL you can plot movement orders quite nicely around the bridge. I find it quite pleasant work work with. Fixes in the game are like playing leap frog. MGs get tweaked in CMBN next patch for CMFI the fix is in there. Bridge movement gets fixed in CMFI next patch for CMBN will likely have that fix too. Pay attention - the fix is nigh. Odd. Monty's butcher and my 20 000 point battle don't even take that long on my crappy low end system. Me thinks you have some other issue going on there. Keep in mind, all you impatient people, three months is a minimum for getting any kind of major work done, tested and out the door. Let me repeat that - 3 months is a minimum. I would not be surprised if it takes BFC longer since they only have two guys working on the coding side of things. Having expectations is one thing but come on guys get the in line with reality.

LOL Roger that.

Well Schmidt managed to escape. He as his team mate crawled back to the bocage and then ran down the road a short distance before doubling back to get back into a scouting location. The squad that fired rifle grenades at that Stuart take return fire. The Stuart is right on target but my men are un harmed. The North AT gun keeps firing at the approaching infantry and their MG42 joins in. I have no specific siting of casualties this turn but they must be feeling it a little. From my scouts I can see that one company had come into the village through the smoke screen. And it looks like two more are coming across those fields. So far it looks like the assaulting force consists of a battalion of infantry and a platoon of Stuarts. Interesting. Still a difficult fight ahead but I like those odds better than what I was expecting. I keep forming 1 platoon into fighting positions to meet the infantry that are coming. No real changes in orders this turn.

Excellent. I feel like the kind in the back seat "Are we there yet?"

That would be good - should be right next to the vehicle though. I find at times you cannot get into the same action square as the vehicle though so that would need to be addressed. I also think this needs to be a command that takes some time rather than instantaneous as it is now. For example having a squad of 10 guys that are acquiring 1000 rounds of rifle amo and 200 rounds of SMG amo will take quite a lot longer to accomplish than a two man sniper team picking up 100 rounds of rifle amo. Not sure I like this idea. Destroyed is destroyed. I know we don't have wrecked vehicle models but I can see how even a non burning vehicle would be pretty dangerous to be messing around it. Yes, mom, those are sharp rusty metal shards. Yes, mom, I'll stay away from it. Immobilized though that I would like to see changed. Right now you cannot get into an immobilized vehicle to get goodies. Acquiring form immobilized vehicles should be possible. +1 for that. I have a game going right now where one squad is broken and they are the one with the bazooka. The rest of the platoon is OK. I really want to say "look if you will not get up there and shoot that immobilized tank, hand that tube over to corporal MacIntosh right this damn minute". I have mixed feelings about this. I guess it would be cool but I kind of wonder if having amo in vehicles is enough. Given some improvements in the acquire command as we are discussing do we really need a crate on the ground. Now that I think about resupplying para troopers I take it back. It would be cool to have resupply crates show up as reinforcements (in the middle of a feild) so the paras could stock up.

Nah they get used. The issue with grenades is the number you see is how many they will have left at the end of the turn. They do not count down properly as they are thrown but instead the number used in the turn is taken from the last turn's number right away. For example what you can see is a team with say 2 grenades and you give them orders to close assault a vehicle, say a half track. The next turn, right at the beginning, you will see the number of grenades they are carrying is zero. Then you watch the turn and see them throwing their two grenades destroying the half track. Another minor issue that would be nice to see fixed.

Full disclosure I have been asked by the fine people over at the Blitz to help out in spreading the word about happenings over there. The CMx2 Blitz ladder is about to restart the 'Scenario of the Month' project and you all are invited to participate. The goal is to playtest scenarios in order to determine how well balanced they are for H2H play. The scenarios for the month of August are: CMBN: H2H -Breakout CMFI: Casa Nostra If you are interested in participating post a response to this thread: http://www.theblitz.org/message_boards/showthread.php?tid=64735&pid=379162 If you are not already a member you will need to sign up to post. There are more details at that link but you will be paired with an opponent randomly to play out the scenario. The blitz holds a database of all scenarios that have been played by members of the ladder. For CMBN you can see it here: http://www.theblitz.org/scenarios/Combat-Mission-x2/cmbn/action=list&game=153 From it you can see how many games have been played and what the outcomes were. For example you can see that Barkann's corner has been played 15 times and is pretty heavily weighted in favour of the Allied player. No big surprise there. If you look at Le Desert you can see it has been played 18 times and is about as close to evenly split as you can get. The goal of the scenario of the month is to get players playing some new scenarios and increase the amount of information recorded in the scenario database.

Sounds like a plan. Normally I would try to restrict the AT guns to firing at tanks and other vehicles but since in this battle we have nothing else that can throw HE around I decided to let them go weapons free.

Schumacher's team spots infantry who have come through the smoke screen. If you look really closely you can see on guy in the middle of the field and two going through a gap. They will stick around for another minute or so and then pull back to fighting positions. Clearly rifle grenades are not going to cut it at these distances. I get one of the Shrek teams to move up and be ready.

My men get first blood. The AT gun opens up on the infantry crossing the field. The first round drops in the middle of contacts but I do not see any one go down (hopefully we just cannot see the havoc it caused). The second round however scores. Those three spotted Stuart tanks start firing at random places. At first I thought they had spotted the AT gun but the MG rounds were a bit off and kept coming. Un-phased my crew return fire. First round is high. Second round hits home. So does the third but there is no need. No one gets out of the tank. Schmidt's scout team end up all alone in the open hitting the dirt from all the explosions. They also hear another previously un-spotted Stuart near by. They need some luck to get back to cover next turn. My squad sent to greet one of the Stuarts fired two rifle grenades - both missed.