A Canadian Cat

The Shrek team that fired is going to sneak away while at the same time the other teams nearby are sneaking forward. The tow Stugs and the supporting infantry are getting into the treeline. I want some trees between them and those two Churchill tanks. I am also setting the Stugs up to get LOS both down the road and into the field. With any luck they will get the drop on both Churchill tanks. More infantry teams moving into town. They are presently working their way to flank the Achilles just visible at the top of the screen shot. On the edge of town, my flank protection force are working their way towards what I suspect is an immobilized Churchill tank.

In the town a Shrek team spots an Achilles and fires… They come up short. But the Achilles does not. One less Shrek team. One of my MG teams gets caught in the open.

Exciting turn. First the good news: My Stug got up onto the road and struck home with its first shot. Rear penetrating hit… …that ended in a big explosion. Something rarely seen in this game associated with a Churchill tank. The excitement is not over near the farm in front of that destroyed Churchill is another one. And off to the right coming back around in the field behind the farm is the third. You can see it here at the other tree line in the back of this picture of the Platoon HQ. On the other side of the farm another Churchill tank approached. One of the farm Shrek team fires and comes up short. The barrage continues at the far end of town.

And we wonder why there are DRM licensing libraries out there. Adobe did *not* make CS2 available for free. They made a DRM free version available for current licensed users (not the rest of us) because they decided to end of live their license servers. This way no one who is a licensed user is out of luck now that their servers are turned off. http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2013/01/07/download-adobe-cs2-applications-for-free/

^^^^^ Yes CMFI does use the same method

Having said that you could create your own mod of the icons. They support transparency so you could draw smaller versions and fill in the space with transparency. Heck you could just make smaller versions that might work too. Probably not what you were looking for but possible.

You would think there would be a better way but I doubt it. I have worked at companies that used two different systems now and support had issues with them both. Considering the costs involved you would think someone would come along and create a good robust system. My impression, and I am no expert, is that there is tension between a system that allows for computer changes and one that is hart to fake out / beat. Thanks for filling me in on the joystick names. Interesting I wonder if they get different treatment than US HDs.

While this is not quite what you want; but when you have a choice for the make up of a unit it can be there. For example if you have selected a Sherman formation you can see which variant of Sherman it is and the 76mm and 105mm and 17lbr variants all have an indication in their name. It is at the bottom of the UI where you can tweak the vehicle variants in your selected branch of the formation.

Just for my own curiosity what are "X52 for the Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS"? You referred to USB devices. I have an elaborate back up system that means one of three back up drives is connected to my machine plus we have two or three USB keys that are swapped in and out constantly. So far that has not triggered a problem for me.

Yeah, I hate licensing code. The vast majority of the time it annoys legitimate customers and usually provides little barrier for a determined thief. I understand the motivation and it is a reality, especially for games, that piracy is common place. I wish it weren't so. But I still hate licensing.

Oh good one I totally forgot about that. I would add allowing for "flowing" rivers / streams. By that I mean I would like to have water from a higher elevation connect to water at a lower elevation to create a stream. Yeah, I am not holding my breath for that one but I would like it. No, no, no. This is called "stopping the proceedings with idiocy". Yes, it is frustrating when this happens by accident but I can tell you now a stupid confirm dialog box popping up the 99% of the time you *meant* to press the big red button will piss you off. And if you can live with the interruption then think of people like me who get angry when they see those ridiculous dialog boxes. Not that it is actually my decision Seriously, being tempted to add those dialog boxes is an indication that you have an user experience issue that should be addressed *before* you get to that point. In this case the issue is that people make a mistake regarding what mode they are in / there is button that is used for two purposes. Hang on you say the button is not used for two purposes just one "move to the next phase". Sure you can look at it that way but each of those next phases are quite different it would be just fine to have two separate buttons one for each job. Off the top of my head I would suggest: A power off VCR button to end the play back phase (stop is not really correct) and a save button for saving the turn. Yes, that is a good idea. I would like a cancel button here that would put you back to command phase. There have been times that I pressed the big red button and was staring at the save screen thinking to my self "did I remember to so X with unit Y" and I wish I could go back and check.

Yep, not being able to tell a tank has been destroyed is modeled. I posted recently that I was concerned that a PzIV had survived a crazy number of penetrating hits at close range. Investigation showed that the tank was destroyed by my Sherman did not know that and continued firing. This was in thick woods and the PzIV did not catch fire so it made total sense that the buttoned up Sherman would not be sure if the tank was destroyed or not.

Great, I was not 100 percent sure about that. Count me in for that at least. It sounds like @noob intends the top level decision making to be democratic like a city council (tie breaker to the mayor) rather than having a General in charge.

Oh, nicely phrased and good ideas. I too would like this kind of opening up for other people to create tooling, rules etc that could enhance the game play for everyone. Given that BFC has stated they will not create an operational layer and they seem reluctant to create other supporting tools, it would be really nice if they would invest some in adding hooks to allow the community to create more add on tooling. I would pay double too - we are probably in the minority but you could probably sell more people on 25% more for example:) Yeah, no difficulties but it is work and it is not a small amount. Lots of testing especially when you open up all that info for editing - some kind of testing needs to be done on all those outputs / inputs. I think this feature would be awesome but it is a big chunk of work that would take away from other things.

These be them? No music: http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods/4354/details No background explosions (not quite what you said but all I could find): http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods/4898/details

Sound great. Normally I can do a turn per day but I have to many side projects on the go and a new job so, as my PBEM partners can a test, I am not able to keep up my end at the moment. I do have a few games ending but I still cannot commit to a high turn rate. You can use me if you get desperate but I suspect you will get a lot of takers. My preference would be the allied side.

Bonus points awarded. I suppose that is what our pixel troops do with the dead as well - except they are looking for loose amo.

It has been a while since there was any actual news on this thread. I hope the news portion is only "mostly dead" and not "all dead". I know Steve will give us more when there is more to give but I thought I would ask for some bones anyway. You never know he might throw us one. Can you elaborate on this list. I am curious what variants we could be looking at. So Jon S showed us the ditch lock (I think that was what it was called) and you said there is a windmill - anything else you can add? I would love to see some screen shots of these. I know, I know it is too early for that - We can ask.

Oooo I like it. Given that there are levels of injury and we are talking about retrieving some soldiers from red to yellow we can do even better. Some of the barely brown guys can be revived too. Each side can have a Miracle Max on their side and we would have a sound associated with the action of bringing someone who is mostly dead back to life. Just like in the Princess Bride: Bonus points for anyone who knows what Miracle Max says is the only thing you can do with someone who is all dead. Reductio ad absurdum is so much more fun when it can be funny too. Thanks Billy Crystal (and to @cool breeze for the setup)

At the farm my infantry are moving building to building now with more freedom because the Churchill tanks are gone (not shown). The Stugs and Shrek team will chase after the Churchill tanks and see if they can get lucky. The Panthers have changed orders and are not finding cover in the treeline at the top of the screen below. I will leave a scout team next to the road so I know when they are coming but the Panthers are going to hide perpendicular to the road under the cover of that line of trees and wait for the Churchill tanks. Meanwhile in the town my infantry are going building to building looking for scouts and tank crews. At the same time I have several Shrek teams ready to pounce on any tanks they find. There still is an unaccounted for Stuart tank that cornered itself last turn. I have a squad sneaking around looking for it. My flank protection platoon is almost at the town’s edge.

The squad I sent hunting for the Churchill tank instead run into the Achilles I lost track of last turn. Panzer Faust right in the kisser. But – no effect. The Achilles keeps on coming and then survives two hits from grenades. How is this possible!? It is an open topped paper thin tank destroyer. Man I am in need of some luck. The nearby Shrek team get the job done though. Now it is a burning hulk like it should be. My infantry are clearing the town buildings one tank crew at a time. No uber pistols here – but I was worried. The 150mm barrage has moved to the furthest edge of town giving my infantry room to take more of the town and hopefully causing trouble for some of Dungeon Tiger’s forces. The situation around the farm is now quite interesting and a bit ironic. I am sending my Panthers as reinforcements and it seems that Dungeon Tiger is sending his Churchill tanks as reinforcements as well. Interesting – I thought he had a lot of those tanks left. They are following my Panthers. I think I should be setting up an ambush for his Churchill tanks.

The attack on the fleeing Churchill tanks did not go very well. At least I did not lose anything but the mortar rounds did not hit home or slow them down and each Stug did get one hit both were rear turret and resulted in no effect at all. Rats. One Churchill tank did return fire but missed short. All the other shots fired were misses and the Shrek team never got a round off. This was the last shot and found home but bounced off the rear turret for no effect on the fleeing Churchill tank. The Panthers and their infantry heading towards town.

Quite correct. Weapons controls are destroyed you are totally SOL. Screen shot from the turn I am writing up now... For some reason the red letters have been blurred more than the others by the jpg compression. The first line says the main gun is destroyed and the second one says the weapons controls are destroyed. As you can see both MGs are green but the tank is unable to target anything. And I can say that this Panther has spotted infantry in the town and not fired on them at all.

Interesting article about AI development. CM does not have an AI strategic layer. That article is about AI about strategy. The AI plans for a CM scenario are human made. The strategic decisions are programmed by humans. I am sure there are places that can be improved and some improvements have been suggested in this thread. Bottom line any AI improvements we would benefit from are related to a pixel soldier's minute to minute behaviour. We don't need those guys to be planning 8 days out:) We need them to make better decisions in the moment or have more commands to respond to.

No, buddy aid does not get a soldier back into the fighting. Aside from retrieving amo it does help increase the chances that the downed soldier will end the battle as wounded in action and not killed in action.