Lend-Lease stuff coming soon?

[Aragorn2002]

48 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Tolkien wrote his books during WW2, so I'm sure the war weighed heavily on him and influenced his works.

As an aside, I think it's quite interesting how the idea of the "Evil in the East" (Mordor) is usually thought to refer to Nazi Germany. But the Nazis themselves also thought they were fighting an evil in the east - the Soviet empire that Nazism was in many ways a reaction to and a consequence of.

And yet most of his inspiration seems to have come from the Celtic/Germanic past, the fall of the Roman and the Byzantine empire and the Middle Ages.

For me Mordor is definitely Soviet Russia, as it was for many people (not only Nazis!) before the war and became so again for many people after the war.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Aragorn2002

[Michael Emrys]

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Tolkien wrote his books during WW2...

He began them early in the war but wasn't able to get very far due to the pressure of events. After the war, he took up the task again and pressed on to completion. BTW, have you ever read Michael Tolkien's analysis of the writing of the Trilogy as well as other Middle Earth-related fiction? Fascinating.

Michael

[MikeyD]

Ah, look at the unexpected topic that I stumbled upon!

Tolkien the conservative academic was envious of German national epics in the vein of the Nibelungenlied, which he borrowed very heavily from to create his own British national epic. The dwarves and dragons, invisibility, gold hoards and magic rings all came from the German epic. Oddly, the last half of the Nibelungenlied is as grisly as a freakin' Quentin Tarantino movie. Its an usual national epic for anyone to envy.

In the 30's much of upper class Britain was heavily intermarried with Nazi elites on the continent and was sympathetic to the ethnic ultra-nationalist cause. This caused considerable difficulties when war started, even within the royal family. Here in the US Charles Lindberg resigned his commission rather than fight Germany.

[Apocal]

On 7/15/2017 at 10:38 AM, Michael Emrys said:

I am not an avid fan of the East Front, so my information may be distorted by that fact, but my sense of it is that most players who like myself have only a casual interest in it are lukewarm towards any game devoted to the last months of the GPW. From certain perspectives it looks like merely the coup de grace of an already defeated Germany. Such players are more interested in the period Barbarossa to Kursk. BFC has given their reasons for working the timeline as they have and those reasons are cogent in my view. But I fear that it might have cost them some sales.

Michael

There are a lot of casual wargamers out there who have little or no interest in the East Front (for a variety of reasons) but will begrudgingly play it as long as the "cool" stuff is fielded. We're talking IS-2s, SU-152s, T-34/85s, Panthers, Tigers, etc. I blame World of Tanks and War Thunder for somewhat killing the interest of new wargamers in the early war; grinding early war vehicles is awful and by time you can drive something late war, you never want to even look at another stub-gunned, HMG-vulnerable early war track again.

[Jumpete]

On 10/7/2017 at 2:11 AM, Battlefront.com said:

As for announcing what is coming out and when... well, we're working on that.  With Chris gone it's put a bit of a wrinkle in our plans.  Nothing is getting cut, but things might not be coming out in the order we had intended.  In the works right now are:

1.  CMFI Rome to Victory (2nd and final Module for CMFI)

2.  CMRT Module One (yet to be named, but takes the game through to the end of the war)

3.  CMSF2 which brings the original content into the current Engine 4 environment

We have several other things being worked on this year, but the above are the three we're focusing on at the moment.

Steve

 

Thanks for all the info, Steve. Really I'm very interesting in  the WW II modules. Which one of them will be released first? I suspect than italian module has most advanced work, but the Chris's health problems (best regards for him) will delay the work. So, can be another project released first? RT module has not name but looks like that the work is very advanced on it.

[Bulletpoint]

On 7/17/2017 at 2:25 AM, Apocal said:

There are a lot of casual wargamers out there who have little or no interest in the East Front (for a variety of reasons) but will begrudgingly play it as long as the "cool" stuff is fielded. We're talking IS-2s, SU-152s, T-34/85s, Panthers, Tigers, etc. I blame World of Tanks and War Thunder for somewhat killing the interest of new wargamers in the early war; grinding early war vehicles is awful and by time you can drive something late war, you never want to even look at another stub-gunned, HMG-vulnerable early war track again.

Maybe that goes for competitive online shooter games. But in CM, if you have a Tiger, you can be sure the enemy has several guns like the 17 pounder that will go through it like wet cardboard. So there's usually no real advantage in having more powerful tanks. Everything just scales.

[Bulletpoint]

On 7/15/2017 at 11:08 PM, MikeyD said:

Tolkien the conservative academic was envious of German national epics in the vein of the Nibelungenlied, which he borrowed very heavily from to create his own British national epic. The dwarves and dragons, invisibility, gold hoards and magic rings all came from the German epic. Oddly, the last half of the Nibelungenlied is as grisly as a freakin' Quentin Tarantino movie. Its an usual national epic for anyone to envy.

I think he was also heavily inspired by the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, which he translated.

Generally, I see Tolkien's books as not dealing with the particular politics of his day but rather lamenting the modern way of life in general. There's a theme running through the books about the world gradually losing its former magic. The orcs are basically a charicature of industrialisation and industrial warfare. At the end of the books Frodo even returns to the Shire and finds the orcs have been cutting down trees and setting up factories.

[Michael Emrys]

35 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

At the end of the books Frodo even returns to the Shire and finds the orcs have been cutting down trees and setting up factories.

There are no orcs involved in that. It is all due to Saruman and his henchmen subverting the weaker Hobbits to do all the damage.

Michael

[Apocal]

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Maybe that goes for competitive online shooter games. But in CM, if you have a Tiger, you can be sure the enemy has several guns like the 17 pounder that will go through it like wet cardboard. So there's usually no real advantage in having more powerful tanks. Everything just scales.

Both those games employ match-making systems that ensure the same scaling. What I'm saying is a different thing entirely though. The point was that a lot of early war tanks were, by any objective measure, actually bad tanks and by having large numbers of people running through them and seeing exactly how bad "bad" can get. I've always been somewhat lukewarm on the early war, but having situations where fifty cals were knocking out my full AFV (and this being realistic) pretty well soured me on the potential early war armor fights.

"Guess they couldn't pony up for that last bit of steel, eh?"

Anyway, the plus side is that a lot fewer dudes these days have an aversion to playing the Soviets, which seems like it is more a thing with older people. And we can easily play against actual Russians, since games aren't as actively offensive to their sensibilities (depicting drunken Siberians with arms linked attacking in literal waves of flesh, etc.) as they were about two decades ago.

Edited July 18, 2017 by Apocal

[Bulletpoint]

2 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

There are no orcs involved in that. It is all due to Saruman and his henchmen subverting the weaker Hobbits to do all the damage.

Michael

Hmm.. maybe I'm mixing it up with Frodo having a vision earlier in the books, about a potential future orc invasion of the Shire.

In any case, evil powers are causing industrialisation, until Frodo returns it to the bucolic status quo...

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, Apocal said:

The point was that a lot of early war tanks were, by any objective measure, actually bad tanks and by having large numbers of people running through them and seeing exactly how bad "bad" can get. I've always been somewhat lukewarm on the early war, but having situations where fifty cals were knocking out my full AFV (and this being realistic) pretty well soured me on the potential early war armor fights.

I get what you're saying, but I guess I just have a different approach to this. I like playing with inferior gear and try to make the most of it.

Also, was .50 cal used much in Europe in the early war ? I thought that calibre was basically something the Americans brought to the fight later. But I'm no military expert at all.

[Apocal]

24 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Also, was .50 cal used much in Europe in the early war ? I thought that calibre was basically something the Americans brought to the fight later. But I'm no military expert at all.

AFAIK, not really. The Soviets had their DShK around that time but that was pretty much it. I was referring more to it in-game though -- matches feature ahistorical mixes between nations, so you might be in a BT-5 and get roasted by a M2A2 (the pre-war tank), or you could be in one of the thinner Panzer IIIs facing off against a early Sherman and have it's commander's fifty blast through the thinner areas of your sides. There was an element of hyperbole, though.

[Michael Emrys]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

Also, was .50 cal used much in Europe in the early war ?

The Brits had light tanks that carried .50s as their main armament. They were still in use at least as late as 1941. I forget what the Italian tankettes carried, but possibly in that range too. And several minor powers started the war armed that way.

Michael

[Erwin]

Um... "Early war" mean no Americans and their 50 cal.  They always came in late as in WW1. 

[Michael Emrys]

45 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Um... "Early war" mean no Americans and their 50 cal.

And your point is? America was by no means the only country producing and fielding a .50 weapon.

Michael

[Erwin]

Well...  I suspect that the Brits would be the primary Allied country we would see simulated, since "they stood alone" for so long.  IIRC they didn't commonly have 50 cal.   Can't see folks wanting to play the Dutch, Belgians, Norwegians, French too much.   Maybe Poles? 

Early war would also be most fun in N. Africa vs Rommel (b4 the US came in and ruined the fun).     Am all for fun in the sun.  

Edited July 18, 2017 by Erwin

[Armorgunner]

On ‎2017‎-‎07‎-‎11 at 9:13 PM, Battlefront.com said:

Good question.  At the time we did CMSF the use of drones was minimal and mostly being done at higher levels.  That changed dramatically soon after we released CMSF.  So I'd have to say "no" to that.  We are also saying "no" to changing things we guessed at which turned out to be wrong.  In particular the Marines incorporation of M32 grenade launchers into their squads.  At the time the plan was to issue two per squad, which is what we did, but that got changed to one.

That said, we will rework some aspects of CMSF1 to conform to new capabilities of CMSF2.  Three things come straight to mind:

1.  reworking certain rifle platoon structures (almost all Syrian, German, and Dutch IIRC) where the real structures have 1st Squad as the Platoon HQ.  As you might recall, for a very long time (Upgrade 3?) the game required the HQ to be a Team, therefore we had to artificially break up 1st Squad into two Teams.  That is something we plan to rectify.

2.  Trenches in CMSF were baked into the maps and therefore had no fog of war or player placement options.  That changed with CMBN v1.00 and we are planning on going back and reworking that.

3.  a ton of artwork is being gone over to take advantage of masking and shader improvements made with Upgrade 2.  Big effort there.

No, sorry.  All CMA content is owned by another party.  We can't use any of it without their permission.

The old code is not anything we want to work with again.  So Afghanistan will remain frozen "as is" for the foreseeable future.

Steve

+1 For all that

And maybe an overhaul of the armour on certain AFV´s. Right now, the armour is the same for M1A1SA, M1A2, M1A2HC and M1A2SEP. The same goes for the very much inferior armour ( In game ) of the Leopard´s. The Leopard 1 C2 has the same armour as the A4, A4+, A6, and A6M. The same inferior armour goes for the Challenger 2, with a minor improvement on the enhanced version.

The CV9035 irl is rated to defend against 30mm AP in the front. In game hardly against rifle bullets frontally.

But now 10 years later, we know that was not the case back then, so a correction might be in Place? Hope so anyway.

Thanks for all your work Steve, and the team behind you. Sorry for Chris, i hope he will return in some way, when he feel he can.

Edited July 18, 2017 by Armorgunner

[Sgt.Squarehead]

8 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

The Brits had light tanks that carried .50s as their main armament.

Michael

What he said.....Other than those nothing British springs to mind, we even replaced .50cal MGs with .303s in aircraft.

[Michael Emrys]

1 hour ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

...we even replaced .50cal MGs with .303s in aircraft.

But then a few years later reversed that trend, at least on fighters such as the Spitfire. I wonder if that was partly due to the increased availability of .50 MGs with Lend-Lease.

Michael

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I wouldn't rule British bloody-mindedness out as a factor either. 

[Michael Emrys]

13 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I wouldn't rule British bloody-mindedness out as a factor either. 

Never!

Michael

[DougPhresh]

Speaking of early war, Polish forces are in CMBN and CMFI, will we see them in future CMRT titles?

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Hopefully in the next release, along with Shermans, Stuarts, Valentines & especially Partisans.....He says, optimistically. 

[Fizou]

I really like how some German units in CMFI have the Italian SMG (Beretta M38) mixed with MP40. Would love to see this reintroduced to CMRT with the PPSh 41 in the next module. The eastern front just isn't the same without it  

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I'd like to see units able to buddy-aid the other side, take the wounded prisoner and steal their gear.....Uncon units wouldn't do the first bit though, any wounded that they get their hands on should go straight to the dead-pool, probably quite nastily.  This latter would give players a real motivation to rescue their wounded in asym. warfare scenarios.

Edited July 19, 2017 by Sgt.Squarehead