m0317624

And the suicidal tendencies don't seem to be restricted to IFVs either. I've just noticed Humvees eagerly opening up with their machineguns against both tanks and IFVs at long range, once again resulting in nothing more than their immediate deaths.

That's exactly the problem: 25 mm banging off the turret of a T-90 gets its attention, and the very last thing an IFV should want is to get the attention of a MBT. The small chance of breaking some outside equipment on the turret is not worth the massive risk of getting shot at by a 125 mm cannon. In the WW2 titles this was somewhat useful, as the suppressed tank would have trouble spotting, but with modern optics and laser warning receivers it's quite simply suicide that achieves nothing. From my limited experience about 1/5 of launched TOWs will actually kill a T-90AM, the rest gets spoofed, destroyed or fails to penetrate. I tried following the briefing, which stated: "best to keep the Russians at long range". A platoon of Bradleys with Javelin teams in overwatch on each flank, ready to take on the Russians before they entered the valley. Spotting was indeed intermittent, which caused some missiles to miss. But this was caused more by the T-90s' smoke launchers thanks to the Bradleys helpfully lasing them (and the Bradleys' smoke launchers from the return fire caused by said lasing) than due to the range. I ran this part of the scenario 5 times, and each time the Bradleys were far more eager to fire their cannon than their TOWs. Maybe it was the change in Bradley TacAI from patch 1.1 that caused this, if you found it functioning well during testing?

I've been playing the Valley of Death scenario as the US, and I've come across a major frustration. Without spoiling too much, in this scenario a bunch of Bradleys in hull-down defensive positions under tree cover get rushed at high speed over a few km of open terrain by Russian T-90AMs. Moving at high speed these Russian T-90s lack the optics to spot my well-hidden Bradleys at such long ranges. One would think that a bunch of tanks charging headlong into such a decent defensive position would take some serious losses, but apparently most of my Bradley crews are actually Russian undercover agents hell-bent on committing suicide for the Motherland. You see, instead of using their rather stealthy (SACLOS means no warning to the target) and effective TOW missile launchers upon spotting a Russian tank at a range of 2 km, most of my Bradley crews insist on firing their 25 mm cannons. Not only do those cannon rounds barely scratch the paintwork on a modern MBT, but aiming a cannon at such long ranges is hard. So my Bradleys happily use their laser rangefinders, at which moment the Russian laser warning receiver will happily point that nice 125 mm cannon straight at my Bradley. And that 125 mm round will do more than scratch the paintwork on a Bradley. Oh, and the Russian tank will also happily fire its smoke launchers now, messing up the aim of the occasional Bradley which did manage to launch a TOW. This really makes Bradleys near useless in an anti-tank ambush role. In the Valley of Death scenario I've had 8 Bradleys simultaneously engage a column of 10 Russian tanks from excellent ambush positions only for them to mess it up every single time. The end result is always the same: 2-3 dead Bradleys, the rest of the Bradleys retreating under smoke cover because they got lased by the Russian tanks, 2-4 launched TOW missiles, at most one dead Russian tank. Can we please get some adjustments to IFV targeting logic so they don't consider giving away their position just to scratch the paintwork of a MBT a good idea? Especially not when they have far more suitable weapon systems available to them.

Same problem here. Several hours of downloading at ridiculously low speeds and then the download just aborts itself in the last 5 minutes. And now a new download won't even start anymore. At least throw up a torrent or make a dedicated downloader with auto-resume next time, this is a really amateuristic way to make your customers download files of this size.

No offence taken if that was your intent, and no offence meant either. But there have been certain commenters in this thread who tried using both the "age" and the "behaviour" interpretation of immature to simply dismiss posts made by the Steam supporters here. And I don't see Steam as less freedom, at least not in the case of Battlefront. If these games were on Steam, we would no longer be limited to a handful of DRM activations without having to beg BF support for more. We would not have to go through complicated installation and licensing procedures to update our games, it would happen automatically. We would not have to search patches on third-party websites. We would have unlimited downloads of the latest game version at far faster speeds than BF provides and would continue having so even if BF went out of business, while in the current case all CMx2 titles become uninstallable without BF's activation servers. That in my opinion is a lot more freedom than we have today.

The comments of that RPS article would prove otherwise. In a quick glance I counted at least 5 different people who used to play CM titles (even the original CMx1 titles), who used to be Battlefront customers, and who are no longer because BF "is a trainwreck", "is run by dinosaurs", "has an atrocious webstore",... (their words). All claim they would gladly become customers again if BF went to Steam. Are you going to dismiss them as immature just because they disagree with you, as so many others have already tried in this thread?

The number of Steam accounts is currently around 65 million, with a daily peak of nearly 8 million online at a single moment. The difference in exposure would be immense.

Obviously that is complete nonsense and those people are clearly figments of our imagination. Steve and his decades of savvy business experience have proven decisively that everyone who will ever be interested in Combat Mission is already buying it from this site. Good to see Tim Stone butting in on this. His articles also played a pretty major role in convincing Matrix to join Steam.

Ah, yet another convenient excuse to dismiss the argument. I don't need to post my achievements here, as my arguments tend to revolve around more than simply saying "I've got years of experience, so I automatically know better than you". I've posted numerous examples of companies overcoming their Steam reluctance and profiting from it, they get dismissed and ignored. I've generally discussed possible low-risk avenues to test out the Steam waters, I get insulted for them. Nobody is demanding you to prove yourself, but if you mingle in a discussion you'll get called out if your argument is nothing more than "I'm automatically right simply because I say so, now everyone else shut up". The relevant part is that he was forced to eat those words when it proved exactly how much bull**** they really were, just like you'll probably have to do in a few years time. I'd like to see some examples of that "intellectually balanced discussion'" you claim to want here, because you certainly are not providing it. The first page alone contains how many posts simply trying to shut down discussion based on the line "It's been asked before, the answer will eternally be no, so stop talking about it"? I have in his entire thread done nothing but present argument upon argument, doing my very best to ignore the people insulting me for it. And you are right, that does appear to be behaviour you are discouraging on these forums. If it's an echo chamber you want, just come out and say it openly. Here's another tip for the clever businessman you think you are: it does not reflect well upon a company for its public face to get personally involved in a public discussion like this, no matter who else is involved or what is being said. It reflects even worse on them when the public face actively picks sides with his favourites and revels in them insulting newcomers. No matter how this thread ends, it's pretty obvious to anyone with even the slightest PR experience that it has cost your company money and maybe even customers.

Except there are very easy ways to incentivize the current user base to continue purchasing directly from Battlefront, leading Battlefront's revenue to end up at $53.500 instead of a mere $50.000. (Steam's cut is well-known to be about 30%).

And the question is again asked, how could going to Steam in addition to your current setup possibly lead to lower sales? But you've ignored pretty much every other question or fact inconvenient for your argument so far, so I don't expect an actual answer to this one either. The hilarious part is that I remember Erik over at Matrix saying pretty much the exact same thing to dismiss Steam a few years ago. It was countered numerous times in this thread, but once again that was all completely ignored. As are the insults being thrown around by some of the Battlefront fanboys. Guess this forum's reputation for moderator favouritism is as well deserved as its reputation of aggressively attacking unpopular opinions. I can see why I was warned not to bother coming here.

But in each of those cases the publisher or developer involved is selling something on Steam. Even in the case of f2p titles there typically is some monetary aspect where Steam is getting its cut. Mods are only on Steam for games that can be bought on Steam. Third-party stores selling Steam keys pay Steam somewhere in the process. Battlefront isn't selling anything on Steam, and in your proposal would merely use Steam as a free advertising service to lure customers to their own competing store. Valve gains nothing at all from your proposal, so why would they allow something like that? If Battlefront wants to try this, it'd be a great step in the right direction but I just don't see it happening. Valve has already long won the competition for mindspace. They've become so big, they rarely bother competing with other online stores anymore which is why third-party stores tend to give better deals on Steam keys than Steam themselves these days. They're in it for the profits now.

This has never been done before, and gains nothing for Steam themselves, so will likely be impossible. Steam is still a store, they want products to sell. They are not a free advertising company to direct customers to other stores. Hence my earlier suggestion: put Shock Force on Steam to test the waters. It's got an extensive demo, and its age means it's probably not selling much here on Battlefront anymore. But that suggestion probably got lost between all the insults and white noise generated by certain regulars here.

Steve has earlier in this very thread pretty much admitted that he does not know the terms or requirements for a current-day Steam partnership, and that their reluctance to partner with Steam is based primarily on their past experiences with Gamersgate and Paradox, dating back to 2007 and earlier. So I would say my assumption is pretty much correct. My agenda is merely twofold: primarily I would like to see this company prosper, since that means more and better games for me to enjoy. Secondly I'm bored and like a good discussion now and then, and some of the people here actually offer that.

Being outnumbered isn't a problem. Having one's argument constantly ignored in favour of stupid insults is. The arrogance you perceive in my posts is nothing more than a mirror of the arrogance every unpopular opinion is treated to on these forums, as the behaviour of the forum regulars in this thread so aptly demonstrates. At least Steve is willing to engage in actual debate in between his dismissive posts. And just because Steve's company has survived for a few decades does not make his opinions infallible or correct today. The market has changed too much too quickly, and every other gaming developer or publisher that I've seen using the same "decades of experience" argument against Steam has been forced to admit they were wrong once they actually tried it. Battlefront does not appear to be growing despite the general gaming market and indie developers seeing record sales, their games no longer get mentioned in the gaming press, the last third party developer they sold on their store has left them for a more successful competitor (with upcoming Steam release of SC3). They survive, and that is good, but they could be thriving if only they took the same minor risk thousands of other small development studios have taken in the past 5 years.