Any modules coming?

[Michael Emrys]

Between them they share a wit.

 

Maybe, but you aren't her.

 

Michael

[BLSTK]

And their offspring shall herald the coming apocalypse.

 

As children of the Devil are wont to do.

 

And it was good. Except for the part where we could no longer look forward to upcoming modules from BFC. (At least one of us is trying to stay on topic).

[BLSTK]

And they moved to Port Townsend (in the state of Washington, where you are not allowed to love another man - but neither Toblakai nor Michael Enema can be considered men, either biologically or otherwise - yet bestiality is kosher) to spread their demon seed and...oh yes, I almost forgot...the word of God.

 

And they lived unhappily ever after. (Hey, don't blame me. Its all written in The Good Book.)

 

Inshallah.

 

(That makes five posts in ten minutes. But then, who's counting?)

Edited March 7, 2015 by BLSTK

[Reiter]

It's a given in light of the many loyal fans and customers of the game who are Finns. All six or seven of them.

 

 

Michael

Eight, including me, since 2001.

[BLSTK]

If, as Myles suggests, it could be 2016 before the next RT release, so be it. If it's as good as the original, it'll be worth the wait.

 

Of course, I'd be more than grateful for any scenarios and/or campaigns that came down the pipe sooner - as opposed to later.

 

Fingers crossed.

[Toblakai]

@BLSTK: It's getting embarrassing ...

[BLSTK]

How do you think the good people of Port Townsend feel?

 

BTW, belated congratulations.

 

I'll look forward to receiving an invitation in the mail (or as you would say, "in the male"). 

[Sequoia]

I think Blstk is lobbying to get his own eternal thread. Sorry Blstk, there can be only one. You and Peng must meet and try and take each others heads.

[BLSTK]

Who or what is this "Peng" of which you speak?

[sburke]

1060 posts and you claim to not know of Peng?

[BLSTK]

Dude, you've gotta set the bar somewhere.

 

I mean, we all have standards.

[Ales Dvorak]

1060 posts and you claim to not know of Peng?

 

Outrageous. 

 

Love,

Alice

[BLSTK]

Blasphemy, I tell you.

[John Kettler]

Zveroboy1,

 

If the Eastern Front is the redheaded stepchild of the CM2 family, take heart that the child was ever born to begin with. Some of us have been trying to get a PTO game since the first CMx1 game, CMBO, came out. But we can't so much as get mating to occur. There are people who've done some amazing PTO mods, but it's hardly the same. We'd be thrilled to have something as simple as a Vehicle Pack, so we could go do the rest ourselves, but that isn't happening, either. If you want more Eastern Front love, then make the kind of argument which will get Steve's attention and magnanimity--greatly improved CMRT sales.

 

It probably doesn't help your cause, though, that the whole area of GPW conflict is presently akin to a pressure cooker with a marginally performing, worsening, safety valve. I could be wrong, possibly hugely so, but sales might be better if 1C, the Russian firm which created CM:Afghanistan, which BFC developed, had done CMRT. I say that because there is apparently a large Russian gaming community and having a Russian firm create it would theoretically have gotten the locals excited, generating a lot of sales from motivated buyers interested in the GPW. This is, of course, pure speculation, since I don't know how many copies of CMRT BFC has sold and expects to sell. Nor do I have even the remotest idea how big the Russian gaming community is and of those players, how many are GPW buffs, care about Op Bagration, and at what price point they would buy. Way too many unknowns, but what I do know is that Steve's not about to bet the firm on a hope. He, like investigative reporters, has to follow the money. Unless and until the European side of the gaming community begins to be a significant part of the gaming market, the reality is that BFC's game and module choices are going to be heavily skewed toward what the principal customers, Americans, want and have shown they're willing to pay for.

 

Also, it occurs to me that Op Bagration may not be floating the boat of the panzerphiles, if you will. CMRT doesn't have much because the German mech forces had been wiped out wholesale in many areas and were mere shells elsewhere. The Germans aren't on the strategic offense or teetering into the strategic defense. They are deep into it and trying desperately to hold things together. Mainly with infantry.

 

This sort of stands Panzerphile World™ on its head. In order to really be able to play with lots of tanks, one has to be Russian. A lot of gamers aren't interested in that (I know someone who always has to be the Germans, as a case in point), so this may be a further factor working against CMRT. There's heavy armor, but it comes with red stars and "Za Stalina" on the turrets.

 

As if that weren't enough, there's the whole Cold War thing. Russia was our ally during WW II but became our enemy after the war. And like it or not, to this day if you call the average 30-35+ American adult male a commie, there's a high likelihood you'll get rapped in the chops, for to us that is an insult and not a small one Thus, taking Russia in CMRT, I suspect, brings up strong negative associations of being a commie. True, calling someone a Nazi is also not going to go well, but the Germans are seen as having the cool toys (oh so many sizes and shapes, forget the logistics nightmare in the real war) and the cool camouflage, too. Russians have only a relative handful of AFV, gun and vehicle types, and they with very few exceptions come in either Russian green or whitewash over same.I guarantee you far more people in the US have heard of a Tiger tank than have heard of a T-34. And hit movies such as SPR and Fury have only made this even more true.

 

This split has been true for decades when it comes to WW II models as well. Model competition after model competition in the US will show German AFVs, guns and softskins to be the dominant category, with Tiger tanks of every stripe guaranteed to be prominently featured. I've been a student of Russian armor going back to high school, and I built the Tamiya SU-100 back when models came with rubber tracks and motors, but the meat of the market was the German stuff. I say this not just as a former modeler, but as someone who set up and ran a hobby shop; who knew and dealt directly with all the model builders in a good sized city. Anything German was hot, even if it was a staff car. I'd say the situation has begun to reverse itself somewhat in the last decade or so because Russian and other regional firms have put out a slew of Russian models on every conceivable subject. If you want a T-26 model of a chemical warfare variant that is armed with two big Flash Gordon style mustard gas rockets, you've got it, but there used to be almost nothing. 

 

Summing up, I believe the factors I've listed probably have exerted  a strong negative cumulative effect on CMRT sales and constitute a real and financially significant inertia which BFC has to contend with every time it seeks to do something Eastern Front related. We got Op Bagration because it allowed BFC to leverage a huge outlay in units, models, weapon characteristics, animations and more done for CMBN and CMFI to get us a new game faster than would otherwise have been the case. But I am dead certain that had the first Eastern Front  release been CM:Barbarossa, BFC would be a lot happier with the sales figures. And the CMers and the overall computer wargame market would be a lot happier with BFC. Part of the problem is simple ignorance. American school children were/are taught about the invasion of Russia, but unless it's a specialized history course, even college students (barring those in military academies) won't ever have heard of Operation Bagration. Had to look it up myself. Nor does it help there's been little mainstream stuff on it or, for that matter, much on the Eastern Front in English from the Russian side at all. When Ballantine Books published Jeffrey Juke's Kursk: The Clash of Armor in 1969 as part of the Ballantine Books Illustrated History of World War II, it was practically a revolutionary act, sad to say. The same was true of Douglas Orgill's  T-34: Russian Armor from the same sprawling series. It was published in 1970. These were probably the first times the American and British mass reading public got to see things from the Russian side of the fence, using Russian sources, in a context that was neither exclusively invasion (Barbarossa) nor besieged cities (Stalingrad, Leningrad), and wasn't the Battle of Berlin, either. Yet neither Jukes nor Orgill was  Russian.

 

Though I don't own currently own CMRT myself (resource constraints and successfully seduced by CMBS), I do hope BFC puts out a Module for it. BFC has said it intends to do a series of games for the Eastern Front. But the likelihood of that is very much tied to how this Eastern Front game does, despite what I perceive as a stack of obstacles in its way. My short term solution? Find a millionaire. Have that person buy lots of CMRT games, give them as gifts, sponsor tournaments and the like OR have said millionaire commission BFC to create the desired Eastern Front product, paying for same with a big fat check having enough zeroes following the first nonzero digit to make it worth BFC's while to make it and generate a nice profit, too. Regardless of any subsequent sales. A more practical and realistic approach would be to talk up the game someplace other than here, get people to play the CMRT Demo (the first E-crack's free) buy extra copies as gifts and do anything else you can think of to get people to buy CMRT. Good luck!

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

Edited March 10, 2015 by John Kettler

[kch001]

Fully agree with your points about Operation Bagration not very well known and that it is a much harder sell than Kursk, Stalingrad, Fall Blau or Barbarossa. 

 

However, I am optimistic that Battlefront will put together a package that covers a more well known period of the Eastern Front. 

 

From a marketing/sales strategy then it would probably have made much more sense to start in June 41 and work your forwards, but I guess that required too much extra work  (effort that was probably spent on Black Sea). 

[Banex]

Have to say out of the CMx1 titles CMBB was my favourite so hopefully there will be more for Red Thunder.One thing Red Thunder did do was make me read up on Operation Bagration a bit more.This campaign was the one that broke the Germans back in the East,once and for all.So maybe not as well known but this one was the one that sealed the deal.So i can see that's why BF went with it.The opening of Barbarossa on the other hand was rather one sided and from a game play point of view might have not been so endearing to allied players.BF would have probably needed a whole new set of models also,thus having to spend more time on it.

 

Personally,i'm happy with Red Thunder more modules will be icing on the cake.Like the battles in Russia itself,CMBB scenarios were endless within the modding community.Hopefully this series will get the same love.CM Afghanistan could have been a great title,shame it was a tad broken and didn't receive the looking after it needed.Mind you Black Sea has eclipsed that now anyway.

 

If you're a WW2 Geek and addicted to CM,the period shouldn't really matter.As for getting more sales,a majority of the gaming community are into the eye candy games with their pretty graphics so CM wouldn't cut it with them,whatever the period.CM has never been graphically perfect but then again it doesn't have to be,it's the game play that counts,and on that CM is the best in the genre.Enough said.

[A Canadian Cat]

However, I am optimistic that Battlefront will put together a package that covers a more well known period of the Eastern Front. 

 

From a marketing/sales strategy then it would probably have made much more sense to start in June 41 and work your forwards, but I guess that required too much extra work  (effort that was probably spent on Black Sea). 

 

I am optimistic too.  Steve has been pretty clear..

 

From reading his posts about their plans to work backwards I think it is a matter of efficiency. If you have a sub set of the needed models already that will work for the 44-45 time frame you can get a game out faster by using those and adding what you don't have than starting from nearly (I am sure a few models from earlier can be reused) scratch.  That allowed them to get RT out to us faster.  After that each game can reuse some models from the previous one as they work.

[womble]

From reading his posts about their plans to work backwards I think it is a matter of efficiency. If you have a sub set of the needed models already that will work for the 44-45 time frame you can get a game out faster by using those and adding what you don't have than starting from nearly (I am sure a few models from earlier can be reused) scratch.  That allowed them to get RT out to us faster.  After that each game can reuse some models from the previous one as they work.

And if they occasionally throw in the odd collection of "captured/obsolete/second line equipment", they'll gradually build their library of model bases  for the early war titles "as they go" too. And given the amount of "appropriated" chassis the germans used, even some of the ones that aren't in the game "as tanks-like-they-were-in-'39/'40" will have had their running gear and lower chassis done.

[Michael Emrys]

Re the obscurity of Op. Bagration, I believe I may first have heard of it in the summer of 1973 when S&T included as a subscription game "The Destruction of Army Group Center", better known as DAGC. It was a good game in its time.

 

Michael

[Sequoia]

Re the obscurity of Op. Bagration, I believe I may first have heard of it in the summer of 1973 when S&T included as a subscription game "The Destruction of Army Group Center", better known as DAGC. It was a good game in its time.

 

Michael

Yeah me too. In fact I still have DAGC. I even posted a map fix on Consimworld a couple years ago. I've working on a variant for it since then but while I have a good initial Order of Battle I haven't found a good source for reinforcements for both sides which has stymied me.

[mjkerner]

^^^^^ Same here... never heard of it before that summer ('73), because my interest in the Eastern Front was just beginning then, and I had only just finished my first "in depth" book on it (well, in depth for me at that time), Paul Carell's "Hitler Moves East" which IIRC, covered only from June '42 through January '43. I had just gotten married and we had a "bun in the oven", so I couldn't afford to buy the game, but I was always struck by the title because it had such a provocative, ominous ring to it.  I did start reading more on the latter half of the war eventually (when I wasn't playing Panzerblitz!), but ever since, "Bagration" never meant anything to me...it was always the "Destruction of Army Group Center."

Edited March 11, 2015 by mjkerner

[kohlenklau]

My plan: this summer go to eastern Europe. Walk around with sign. Want new wife. Must look like "Sensual Jane" Must have computer programmer brother (s) to hack game. 3D skills also needed. Old grandma can cook also good.

[kohlenklau]

Here were my thoughts in another thread:

 

 

I am 50 now and it seems 7 human years is 1 dog year. No, that is the wrong math!

 

3"HM" WW2 historical months = 12-18-24-36-(?)"RM" real months development/release BFC? Help me take a stab at a number....

 

CMBN released April 2011 <June 44>.  Over 2 years later October 2013 and we got <Sept '44 Market-Garden>. Nothing into October 44 yet, No Aachen, No Bulge yet.

CMFI released August 2012 <Sicily July 43>. May 2013 we get GL and now we have out to <June 44>. Nothing new.

CMRT released April 2014 for <Summer-June 44 Bagration>. Almost a year later in real time. Nothing new....

 

Going back to June 41 from June 44 will be 36HM, Crazy Reverse Chronology! So I predict as much as 144 RM = 12 years.

You're right. I will not be 60. I will probably be 62 and can claim social security just as I pre-order... 

 

and this also:

 

...and the limited BFC resources to do anything are now stretched out over several families so it does not bode well for WW2 fans that CMBS gets more focus due to possibly better sales/financial return. We may get pretty lonesome if we see a CMBS module come out or CMSF2 before any significant WW2 stuff. Or worse we get a quasi-rehash WW2 new family. Snow from CMFI. Waffen-SS from MG, Some of the same TOE from CMBN. but add a bunch of juicy new vehicles and tank riders and it is a wonderful new family but no Fallschirmjager until CM Bulge gets its first module....? Please just lump it all in from the gitgo and tack on a few bucks.

 

Anyway, this thread is about enjoying the game in a new/expanded manner. I don't mind pretending CMFI GL is Bulge 44 if I am on my PC today creating a campaign/operation/scenario.

 

Oh yeah. I also got John Tiller's PzC Salerno 43 for $20 so I can do some fun CMPzC stuff over in the CMFI threads....

[76mm]

My plan: this summer go to eastern Europe. Walk around with sign. Want new wife. Must look like "Sensual Jane" Must have computer programmer brother (s) to hack game. 3D skills also needed. Old grandma can cook also good.

hmmm, I can host you in Moscow for a few days but get dibs on her sister.

[kohlenklau]

OK, I get "Sensual Jane" and you can have her sister "Premenstrual Paula" or cousin "Hypochondriac Helen".....

Edited March 12, 2015 by kohlenklau