Online magazine posted BF's game screenshot

[sburke]

On ‎7‎/‎31‎/‎2019 at 8:48 PM, Battlefront.com said:

 Slitherine has spent years working hard to break into the defense contracting world, Battlefront has spent two decades developing Combat Mission.  Partnering together on military contracts makes sense.

Steve

In a small industry that kind of cooperation is a very good thing.  

[Aragorn2002]

On 7/31/2019 at 9:28 PM, Wicky said:

Looks like the image was originally published at wargamer.com  > https://www.wargamer.com/reviews/combat-mission-shock-force-2/

Unless BF are secretly working with MOD / Dstl.... might explain some of the delays.

Indeed it might...

Edited August 3, 2019 by Aragorn2002

[Aragorn2002]

On 7/31/2019 at 10:21 PM, Battlefront.com said:

Let me correct your quote for you...

Now that there's some info out there, not so secret any more

Yes, we are working on a customized version of Combat Mission for use within the British military establishment.  For the most part it will be used as an analytical tool, not a training tool in the usual sense.  It's purpose is to experiment with various options and measure the results to better inform decision making.  This is something that Combat Mission is very well set up for due to its underlying "science based" simulation methodology. 

The extra workload is certainly affecting our overall timeline, but the work with Dstl comes in waves and that means we are able to work on other things concurrently without too much interruption of our commercial work.

And before anybody says it, the work with the British MOD does not mean we're moving away from commercial development.  Making games for you guys is still our priority long term.  Defense work isn't predictable or lucrative enough to become our only product line.

Steve

Long term indeed.

Edited August 3, 2019 by Aragorn2002

[CarlWAW]

On 7/31/2019 at 10:21 PM, Battlefront.com said:

Now that there's some info out there, not so secret any more

So I guess that's 100 points for me and zero for the fanboys.

One really has to be as wise as a rock for having believed the lies about the delays...

[Combatintman]

1 hour ago, CarlWAW said:

So I guess that's 100 points for me and zero for the fanboys.

One really has to be as wise as a rock for having believed the lies about the delays...

That and making sense of barely decipherable threads on the forum.

 

Edited August 3, 2019 by Combatintman

[sburke]

3 hours ago, CarlWAW said:

So I guess that's 100 points for me and zero for the fanboys.

One really has to be as wise as a rock for having believed the lies about the delays...

Sad what it takes for some people to feel good about themselves....  and oh yeah you'd still be mostly wrong.

Edited August 3, 2019 by sburke

[Battlefront.com]

On 8/3/2019 at 11:45 AM, CarlWAW said:

So I guess that's 100 points for me and zero for the fanboys.

One really has to be as wise as a rock for having believed the lies about the delays...

Ah, so you're saying we're lying?  What exactly do you think we're lying about?  As the one you are accusing of lying, I am genuinely curious because unlike you I know all the facts.

Steve

[sburke]

43 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Ah, so you're saying we're lying?  What exactly do you think we're lying about?  As the one you are accusing of lying, I am genuinely curious because unlike you I know all the facts.

Steve

Seriously Steve, you have nothing better to do?  I may have to call your wife and suggest some yard work, house fixtures or just about freakin anything rather than this.  Hell get that Marine icon added back into the CMSF UI, there ya go.  Do that or I'll sick @Mord on you about the spies issue in CMSF 2.

[ncc1701e]

21 minutes ago, sburke said:

Seriously Steve, you have nothing better to do?  I may have to call your wife and suggest some yard work, house fixtures or just about freakin anything rather than this.  Hell get that Marine icon added back into the CMSF UI, there ya go.  Do that or I'll sick @Mord on you about the spies issue in CMSF 2.

Oh yes, the spy portrait issue please. 

[Battlefront.com]

Post got flagged, so duty called me away from trying to figure out how to deal with the complexities of Free French uniform appearances in the game.  Sorted out the Sikhs a bit earlier today, so got that one checked off the list!  Plus, this week I fixed our well pump (water is taken for granted until it ain't there!) so I have some credit rolling forward. 

Steve

[A Canadian Cat]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

 Plus, this week I fixed our well pump (water is taken for granted until it ain't there!) so I have some credit rolling forward. 

LOL credit is good to have.

[Aragorn2002]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Ah, so you're saying we're lying?  What exactly do you think we're lying about?  As the one you are accusing of lying, I am genuinely curious because unlike you I know all the facts.

Steve

He thinks you are lying about the endless delays. Pretty obvious to me. Can't really blame him for that, although I resent his tone. Personally I don't think you are lying, just not telling us everything, but then again, why should you? It all makes perfect sense. Business is business.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Aragorn2002

[Thomm]

Since, at this point of my life, I finally start to consider playing video games a waste of time, while, at the same time, I think that making wargames is totally awesome, this thread makes me particularly happy.

Best regards
Thomm

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

He thinks you are lying about the endless delays. Pretty obvious to me. Can't really blame him for that, although I resent his tone. Personally I don't think you are lying, just not telling us everything, but then again, why should you? It all makes perfect sense. Business is business.

I was wondering if there was something specific he had in mind.  Generally someone with the balls to accuse another person of lying at least has the courtesy to be specific.  But that would allow the accusation to be meaningfully disputed, which is not the intention of the original poster.

And yeah, of course we didn't tell you guys a SMALL part of the delay was because of the MOD contract.  Because if we had told you, we'd have had to kill you.  Says so in the contract   More seriously, we weren't allowed to tell anybody until they made it public. 

Not that the MOD aspect is delaying things by much.  Only started real work on it a month ago and there's been plenty of other work done right along side.

I don't think we'll ever try to do another Rome to Victory scale module again.  The "oh, that's nearly the same as that so let's add it" mentality wasn't really smart.  There's so many minor differences between forces, equipment, timing, etc. that we would have been much better off with trying to do less.

Steve

[Sequoia]

Who knows, maybe there's a huge untapped market of Brazilians wanting to play Brazilians in a computer wargame.

[Aragorn2002]

15 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

And yeah, of course we didn't tell you guys a SMALL part of the delay was because of the MOD contract.  Because if we had told you, we'd have had to kill you.  Says so in the contract   More seriously, we weren't allowed to tell anybody until they made it public. 

Not that the MOD aspect is delaying things by much.  Only started real work on it a month ago and there's been plenty of other work done right along side.

 

Well, as Elvis said there's a difference between being passionate and being vicious (not his exact words). Calling someone a liar is vicious.

Can't blame you guys for trying to make a living. You would have to be bonkers not to grab such an opportunity. Just hoping you don't get too many.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Aragorn2002

[Freyberg]

43 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I was wondering if there was something specific he had in mind.  Generally someone with the balls to accuse another person of lying at least has the courtesy to be specific.  But that would allow the accusation to be meaningfully disputed, which is not the intention of the original poster.

And yeah, of course we didn't tell you guys a SMALL part of the delay was because of the MOD contract.  Because if we had told you, we'd have had to kill you.  Says so in the contract   More seriously, we weren't allowed to tell anybody until they made it public. 

Not that the MOD aspect is delaying things by much.  Only started real work on it a month ago and there's been plenty of other work done right along side.

I don't think we'll ever try to do another Rome to Victory scale module again.  The "oh, that's nearly the same as that so let's add it" mentality wasn't really smart.  There's so many minor differences between forces, equipment, timing, etc. that we would have been much better off with trying to do less.

Steve

I'm really sorry to hear you regret including extra forces and nationalities in your games.

I admit, I get impatient for new releases by BF too, because I have a lot of fun playing them - and my favourite 3, which have given me so much pleasure over the years, are CMBN, CMFI and CMSF (1 & 2), precisely because they have such a rich range of forces, some of which are similar but not identical.

It was amazing (for me as a Kiwi) when you added NZers to CMFI, and I'm really looking forward to playing the Free French.
The Italians, NZers, Canadians, NATO forces, the Hungarians in CMBB back in the day - even though I play mostly the British, these other forces are some of what I love most about the BF games. They bring the detail of history to life and are a big part of what makes your games more than just games, but historical simulations.

In fact, when CMGL came out, I remember spending hours in the editor just loading and examining units of the various forces side by side, looking at the minor differences in equipment, organisation, uniforms and so on.

Nga mihi...

[Kevin2k]

52 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I don't think we'll ever try to do another Rome to Victory scale module again.  The "oh, that's nearly the same as that so let's add it" mentality wasn't really smart.  There's so many minor differences between forces, equipment, timing, etc. that we would have been much better off with trying to do less.

Sounds very familiar, like when I am modding some other simulations; I generally try limit my hobby-projects to variations of skins and models that are already available, but it takes a lot of time anyways. Of course it is a lot faster then starting from scratch, but still.

Congrats on the Defense contract.

[sburke]

27 minutes ago, Freyberg said:

I'm really sorry to hear you regret including extra forces and nationalities in your games.

I admit, I get impatient for new releases by BF too, because I have a lot of fun playing them - and my favourite 3, which have given me so much pleasure over the years, are CMBN, CMFI and CMSF (1 & 2), precisely because they have such a rich range of forces, some of which are similar but not identical.

It was amazing (for me as a Kiwi) when you added NZers to CMFI, and I'm really looking forward to playing the Free French.
The Italians, NZers, Canadians, NATO forces, the Hungarians in CMBB back in the day - even though I play mostly the British, these other forces are some of what I love most about the BF games. They bring the detail of history to life and are a big part of what makes your games more than just games, but historical simulations.

In fact, when CMGL came out, I remember spending hours in the editor just loading and examining units of the various forces side by side, looking at the minor differences in equipment, organisation, uniforms and so on.

Nga mihi...

I don’t think that was quite what Steve was saying. CMFI is unique in this regard because there is such a mush mash of forces, equipment timelines and organization. It is the perfect storm to give Steve an anxiety attack. Having additional nationalities in and of itself isn’t his problem.   

[Battlefront.com]

Sburke is correct.  We don't regret putting in minor nation forces or obscure formations, we just feel it would have been better to draw the line of what to include a bit differently.

Here's how it started, in a broad way.  "The Canadians use British TO&E and uniforms, so they're easy".  Then we got to "Well, except the such and such only had 2 in their Scout Platoon".  Right there means I have to create a parallel formation instead of reusing the British one as it was.  All set now?  Sure... until someone says "that configuration was only for March 1944, otherwise it's the same as the British".  Dang, now I have to create the conditions to make the switch happen.  All set now?  Argh... the Scout Platoon didn't have one of the options that the British did, so now I have to create a new options list and go plug it in.  All set now?  Sorta, because later on they upped the number of vehicles.  Argh...

Now, take that and multiply it by multiple formations within multiple nations and you get to see the sort of compounding problems that presented themselves.

This is on top of the usual sundry of low level details, like the French use US formations (for the most part), but not the same weapons.  They also wear different hats for officers.  Oh, and doesn't look right having white skinned soldiers representing Arabs, except for some of the formations.  Then there's the Indians... gotta make sure the Sihks get their own look separate from the regular Indian forces.  Then there's the...

It just seems to never end!

Steve

[BFCElvis]

It's like playing whack-a-mole

[danfrodo]

My two cents on some of the detail issues: as the admin above posted, there's a serious resource commitment involved in trying to get every detail of every month of every force exactly correct.  Would I rather have canadians or brazilians or free french be exactly correct and delay all the big picture stuff??  heck no!  I want the team working on the next big release way more than I care whether some small faction used 2 or 3 men scout teams.  I understand that's important to folks but it has a high cost for very little return.  Do I want to delay Barbarossa or N Africa (some day in the future....) because they had to spend a couple months worrying about whether the spanish blue division was perfect??  There's 160 divisions on the eastern front, I'll be happy if 90% of them are correct and the others are a little off, but I want the damn game.  So my vote is put in the NZ, the free french, etc, and re-use the equipment as much as possible and don't worry about every dang detail or we'll never get anything.  90% is good enough. 

[Aragorn2002]

And please don't waste time on Rumanians or Hungarian. Just give us Finns!

 

[danfrodo]

oh, I am NOT saying don't give us romanians, hungarians, etc, but just don't try to be perfect if it slows down big projects.  and heck yes bring on the Finns!  Give them some german gear and funny Finnish names (I work with a finnish guy named Torniaien, figure that one out )

[Battlefront.com]

The problem for us is that a big part of our audience expects "perfection" because that's what we've aimed for these many years.  We don't like to disappoint.  But on a more practical level, where do we draw the line between "good" and "good enough"?  It's difficult to do that when each individual piece doesn't itself take that much time to implement.  Not putting in the correct Sherman mix for the Poles in the Summer of 1944 doesn't really save much time.  Makes it tough to say no!

Steve