AdamActual

Thanks!

Thanks for the replies all! A game master similar to Arma would be great! And yeah, an explicit co-op mode would be really nice. So just to clarify, to do this you can't play online at the same time, right? You have to save and share the save file?

Hi all, Apologies for the potentially silly question, but my search ability is failing me. Is it possible to play co-op with a friend against the computer? And if so, is there a reasonable amount of pre-built scenarios to do so in? Thanks very much!

Apologies for the ridiculous delay. (If it's etiquette to not revive the post, apologies. Just wanted to thank you all!) @IanL that's basically what I was asking: is it a matter of risk management, or ideal solutions. e.g. If I do the exact same thing in the same circumstances, will I see identical outcomes? It seems the answer is no: there will be varying casulaties etc., but the idea is to employ strategy to minimise risk to your own units (supporting fire, numbers etc.) Ultimately a good strategy will win, but what the cost is can slightly vary. Thanks again!

Thanks for the reply! (And sorry for my delay.) I'm actually not especially "into" (feels like a weird word in the context) World War II. I prefer more modern combat (~80s onwards, I suppose), but there seem to be few options. And thanks for the recommendation! Looks like it also ticks my boxes! So one more question, just for my curiousity: how chance-based is CMSF2? That is, if you and the AI/another player do the same thing in the same place etc. a few times over, how varied will the outcome be?

@Mord Wow, that's probably the best pitch I've ever read for a game, you should write their marketing copy! Haha. @37mm That, accompanied by Mord's answer is really useful, thanks very much! I think I'm going to take the plunge. Historically I haven't been great with returning to games (let alone completing them, once they drift over 15ish hours), but I have been looking for a turn-based, modern-era war game (I was initially looking for something like Panzer Corps/Order of Battle, but in the modern-era) for a really long time and only stumbled upon this because of an RPS series. Your screenshots do illustrate the difference really well. Personally I don't think the increased draw distance is worth the FPS trade off. I like it to feel smooth moving around, and the units seem relatively unaffected by quality adjustments anyway. (Save for Mord's addition, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.) @MikeyD From your descriptions, I probably fall more into the interactive board game, I think. I have only played a little so far, but trying to 'solve' each scenario optimally appeals to me. Perhaps misguided? Hehe.

Hi all, and thanks again for your replies! That's all really good information! The shortcut to turn off the shadows did the trick! The tree shadow pop in was far too intense for me. I did somehow manage to turn tree shadows off, but leave vehicle and building shadows on. (I thought it was disabling VSync in game and enabling it in the NVIDIA Control Panel, but after restarting that doesn't seem to be the case.) I wish I could trigger that reliably, as it's exactly what I'm after, hehe. Otherwise, thanks to all of you I've got the game running in a way I'm happy with. I don't require flawless performance, just enough that it doesn't feel unwieldy trying to control things. There are still some quirks I'm sure I'll get used to, e.g. making minor adjustments to the camera position with the keyboard is a bit challenging. I also can't see any major difference between the Fastest models setting and Balanced, let alone Best. I do notice some rims and windscreen wipers on the Humvee, but that's about it. Is there something major I'm missing? Maybe when there's human characters around it's more obvious? But I don't know that it's worth the performance hit moving it up to Balanced when I can barely tell the difference to Fastest. So I suppose my final question is about purchasing the game. The price of the full package is fairly high in AUD (~$180), and I'm not exactly flush with cash. It would be a couple of months of my game budget. But it's also such a big saving compared to buying it all piece meal that I'm struggling with the decision. I often don't finish games, and might return to one later on, so if I just picked up the core game will it keep me entertained awhile? And/or are there more interesting scenarios in any of the expansions that are more fun, if it's possible I'll never play everything? (Though it is my goal to find a game, hopefully this one, that compels me into returning to it frequently.) Thanks for all of your help, again!

Hi all, thanks for the replies! So my performance was certainly poor, I had a very low frame rate even after reducing everything to the lowest. (The only map I've opened so far is the Training map in the demo.) My computer is an i7 4770, 32GB RAM and two GTX 1080s. The link IanL provided gave me some ideas, and I played around with a couple of things in the NVIDIA Control Panel: forcing single GPU and overriding the game's antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, and I have gained a fairly substantial FPS increase. Now, with everything enabled and on high (except for model quality, which is Fastest) I generally hold 60fps (VSync is on, it's likely higher). Model quality appears to have a massive impact on performance, even on Balanced. But seems related to how many trees are on screen? Where I thought that would be controlled by Tree Detail. Nonetheless, the game is now generally very smooth, with just the occasional hiccup during a quick rotation. Sadly the smooth framerate still sees my initial issues, but I think made them easier to diagnose. (Toggling Alt+E to stop edge movement is good! But was not actually a cause of any of my issues.) I'm hoping to confirm a few things, just to make sure there's no roadblocks on my end: In FPS camera mode, the camera always aims towards the mouse cursor when moving, but not static, right? Here is a video of what I mean, I move the mouse near a screen edge, let it go and then press W a couple of times: video. You can see just a slight press makes the camera move towards the mouse without me actually holding anything. (I have since realised the default camera behaves how I want, I'm more curious if this is how the FPS mode is supposed to be.) I get a lot of pop in, there doesn't seem to be a way to increase the draw distance. Is this normal? Video. There also doesn't appear to be a way to disable shadows (which I would prefer over shadow pop in)? My theory for the "erratic" camera is that the accelerates until it's reached its maximum speed, but then will continue to move at that speed, even in the opposite direction. So moving for a short time will move a very short distance, but immediately moving in the opposite direction will cover a larger distance because it has already accelerated. Furthermore, I believe that diagonal motion isn't normalised. So if you hold W+A, the camera moves at twice the maximum speed of W or A by themselves. This speed is reached immediately, with no acceleration. Combined, the camera is moving at differing speeds around the same area, with the same input time. Knowing this (if I'm correct) makes it much less frustrating. I already feel like I have more control because I can compensate myself. But I just wanted to find out if this is the normal experience? Holding right click and aiming the camera has similar acceleration, where the same motion doesn't result in the same camera movement. It appears to be related to the position on screen, rather than the motion of the mouse (which I would prefer). As such I find pointing the camera floaty, and hard to be precise. Clicking and dragging the mouse to move the camera works in the opposite direction to what would feel natural to me. I would like to essentially 'pull' the spot I clicked towards the camera, but instead I have to move the mouse in the direction I want to go, if that makes sense. Is there a way to disable the non-sky skybox? (Low resolution horizon line and ground below the battlefield.) Even just a flat colour would be preferable. So what I'm primarily wondering is whether the demo is entirely representative of the full game, or if there are additional settings to modify any of the above? For example, I have seen some forum posts about disabling shadows, which implies maybe the full version has this functionality? Though now with a normal frame rate is it all a lot easier to compensate for, and I'm sure I'd get used to some of the quirks. I'm just hopeful some of them can be configured in the full game? Thanks again for any help! Sorry about the essay, I promise I did try and condense it...

Hi there! I just downloaded the demo of CMSF2, and found the camera behaviour somewhat strange; I was hoping to find out if this is how it is in the full game, or if I'm having issues? It basically moves at wildly different, unreliable speeds. Sometimes holding W will move at a fairly slow pace, other times it will speed far past where I intended to move. This is on all modes. On FPS mode, it veers (somewhat erratically) towards the mouse position without any kind of input from me (e.g. holding a mouse button). Aiming/looking around with the mouse is also at a seemingly random, variable speed, where angle changes are either incredibly slow, or far too fast. I was just hoping to find out if this is usual for the game, or if it's either a bug in the demo, or a bug on my system? I love the look of the game, but I find it really difficult to control things with these varying speeds. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Hi all, I just downloaded the Black Sea demo and found it a bit unwieldy, both in how it seems to control, and how it runs. However I also noticed that the menu says it's on Game Engine 3, where the website seems to indicate that Game Engine 4 is the latest. Is there a Black Sea demo on Game Engine 4, and/or how much of a change is the new engine in terms of how the game generally controls/performs? I have quite a high-end PC, and the demo ran quite poorly for me. The UI was tiny and I was only able to go up to 1280x720 resolution. Thanks for any help!