Myles Keogh

If there is an upcoming CMFI battlepack, then I hope is that it features more fighting from late 1943/early 1944 which was arguably the embodiment of the war in Italy (mountains, mud, bad weather, and not yet a strategic backwater) and is currently not very well-represented in the game. The New Zealanders and Indians at Cassino? The Free French leveraging the Gustav Line? The Canadians at Ortona? The Americans at San Pietro which was made famous by the 1945 John Huston documentary film?

What about the people who do really gamey stuff? There is a video by a once-prominent CMx2 YouTuber in which his opponent used trucks to both scout and be "bait" for the TacAI. He was placing trucks near his armor in the obvious hope that opposing tanks would choose to fire at the trucks and thus open themselves to a retaliatory fire by his armor. (It also appears he dismounted the truck drivers in order to keep TacAI from retreating the trucks (i.e. keep them in place as bait.) Of course, that's allowable by game engine and maybe even "smart" gameplay, but it's a total cheese/gamey tactic. (Frankly, if an opponent did that in one of my matches, then I'd never play that person again.) Do people make house rules about the "appropriate" use of trucks/jeeps/damaged vehicles?

A follow-the-leader/convoy-like command was announced as a possible feature inclusion for the 4.0 upgrade. However, somewhere between that upgrade's announcement and its release that featured got shelved. Apparently, BF couldn't get it to work within their code. A shame because plotting vehicle road movements has got to be one of the worst parts of the game. All the waypoint setting and using the pause key to both keep vehicles on the road and to avoid traffic jams. And It's really annoying when playing scenarios/campaigns that feature waves of reinforcements on a large map. (When playing such scenarios, I often save and quit upon receiving a company plus of armored/motorized reinforcements because I usually have to feel pretty energized to spend all the time plotting their road movements to "the front." So, I take a break from the game then until I feel more in the mood to do so.) Since, unfortunately, they've already tried but failed to fix this issue, it appears we're stuck with it until maybe CMx3, if that ever happens.

I played the opening scenarios for both Allied campaigns. Here are some thoughts that I wrote mainly to amuse myself: (POSSIBLE SPOILERS). Both were small/medium sized engagements fought in pre-dawn/early dawn darkness in rainy weather. The Kleves campaign: although your core forces will eventually consist of our old pals from the "The Scottish Corridor" campaign- the 15th Scottish Division- the opening scenario features a non-core battalion of French-Canadians of the Maissoneuve Regiment. Being non-core with no bonus for force preservation should have a big hint as to how to play this scenario. I didn't take it. Unfortunately, I acted like General McClellan again by being way too cautious. So, I ended-up with a draw and still lost 100 men! Those dug-in Germans showed little inclination to run. (One thing I did note that upon reviewing that Canadian battalion was that it contained three Lightfoots as unit commanders. Surprisingly, there were no Twains, Adamses, Lees, Murrays, Dions, Morissettes or even a Bieber.) The Cologne campaign: a small scenario with a single platoon of 3rd Armored Division tanks supporting an infantry company of the 8th Infantry Division. Really fast moving and pretty easy. The Americans are all veterans which certainly helped. One also gets a battery of 105s, and I was very glad that the extremely poor visibility kept me from using it because its ammo level carries over into the next scenario which I don't recall being mentioned in the briefing. I shouldn't have expended the few shells that I did. I won a major victory for taking the objectives but not a total one due to not ruthlessly tracking down the remaining hapless Volksturm.

Experience and fatigue can improve or degrade spotting. Conscript/green troops don't spot as well as elite/crack ones. Exhausted/tired troops don't spot as well as rested/ready ones. (One of the bigger reasons of why NOT to run your pixeltruppen ragged without reason.) And, as already stated, units equipped with binoculars have improved spotting. I don't believe there is any spotting "bonus" for units labeled as being scouts or recon. They spot only as well as their fatigue/experience levels allow them and whether or not they're equipped with binoculars which they usually are.

Yeah, this is a nearly 8-year necro-bump, but any chance this UI mod gets an update with the release of Downfall? I know JuJu moved-on, but others took on the task of updating his mod for both CMFI: Rome to Victory and CMRT: Fire & Rubble. So, is anyone planning on doing the same for Downfall? I was able to take a lot of stuff from the CMBN and CMRT UI mods to fill-in a great deal of Downfall's branches/ranks/weapon slots/silhouettes, but, of course, a lot of the new late war stuff is missing. (Not surprisingly, very little, if any, got sent to Italy so the CMFI UI mod is a rather scant source to fill in the missing stuff.)

According to its description on The Scenario Depot that scenario was created to be played single player as the Germans. As such, there probably is no AI plan for the Germans since they're supposed to be player controlled. "Your Windhund Aufklarungs Zug goes in on foot to try and rip this key bridge from the enemy’s grasp" is its description. Plus, it does state that it's Best Played as Side One [Germans] vs the AI [USA].

As stated in my last post, the company HQ is in CLOSE visual contact with the section HQ. In fact, they're sharing the same foxhole, and both are in CLOSE visual and voice contact with the two mortars. They've been sharing the same foxhole for quite a while. So, it's not a temporary break as a result of the company HQ being in transit. The company HQ radio is up and it's in contact with battalion. And yet those two mortars are still out-of-contact to every HQ/FO on the map except for their section and company HQs. The contact indicators for the mortars and the section HQ show green for every level except company. It has been me befuddled why it worked for a while after platoon HQ bought it in the first minutes of the scenario, but then it didn't after I moved the company HQ and then policed-up the dead platoon HQ. It's all academic now. I finished that scenario. Used up those mortars' HE rounds by calling in targets through the section HQ. (They still have smoke rounds). I'm just going chalk this up to a "glitch" as another poster put it. Thanks to everyone who tried to help.

This is my suspicion as to this issue. That removing the dead weapons platoon HQ somehow permanently broke the link. (At game's start, that platoon HQ was in radio contact of its company HQ and in close visual contact of its section HQ.) After the loss of its platoon HQ, the section HQ was taken under direct command of the company HQ as shown by close visual/voice contact symbols and for a while I was able to call upon that section's mortars from anywhere on the map. However, ever since I policed-up the dead platoon HQ being in contact with company HQ doesn't seem to have any effect in making those mortars available to any other HQ/FO. Both are listed as "out of contact" to all except their own sec. HQ.

Playing a huge CMRT scenario with a number of company-level heavy weapon mortar sections. Early in the battle, one section lost its weapons platoon HQ to an arty barrage which I thought would sever the C2 link between its two mortars and any other HQ/FO, but it didn't. Other HQ/FO's were still able to call upon those mortars. Yet, when I later moved that section's company HQ, the link was broken. After that, the only way I could use those mortars for indirect fire was through their own section HQ. The company HQ was always in visual and/or voice contact with the section HQ (which is why I thought the link wasn't broken when the platoon HQ was lost) but moving it broke the link. I also "policed-up" the dead weapons platoon HQ pixeltruppen through buddy-aid. Did also play a part in the break? After that, I noticed that each mortar's green contact indicators showed that it was in contact with the section HQ, the platoon HQ (??) and the battalion HQ, but out-of-contact with the company HQ despite it being in visual/voice contact. So, how was that indirect fire C2 link still able to work after losing the platoon HQ, but was later permanently broken?

Unfortunately, the out-of-memory issue has been an existing conflict between some AMD drivers and CMx2 for several years now. (In fact, it was the first problem I ever had with them.) What makes it frustrating is that some driver updates have caused the issue and other have not. It seems utterly random. Trying to avoid it, I haven't updated my AMD drivers in almost a year. The 22.5.1 work fine with CMx2 and, fortunately, I don't play games that require recent drivers. So, it's not that that big of an inconvenience for me, but I know it may be frustrating for other gamers.

It's great news that a truly classic campaign is getting an update. It was my first real experience with CMx2. (Sadly, I retain a vivid memory of playing it in May 2011 mainly due that being just weeks after my father's sudden passing.) I have questions: is the update going to include stuff from the Vehicle Pack to make some scenarios more historically accurate? (Example: replacing the PZ IVs in Turnbull's Stand with captured French tanks which weren't available upon CMBN's original release.) Or will it remain playable with just CMBN with no other modules needed?

Do you have an AMD graphics card? If so, then it's a driver issue. Unfortunately, CMx2 and some of AMD's newer drivers are not compatible. I'm using the 22.5.1 driver which was released in late April, and it works with CMx2. It's been like this a couple of years now. Sometimes an AMD newly released driver works with CMx2 and sometimes it doesn't.

The campaign briefing for Five Days One Summer mentions a PDF file with information about the campaign (presumably similar to the ones included with KG von Schroif and other George MC work). However, I can't find it. Neither in the main CMRT files nor in Documents CMRT game files. Does anyone know where to find it? Or was it not included with the download?

Also confirming that the 22.8 AMD driver breaks the game. It's worse than last year's AMD driver issues. With last year's issues, one could still load and play scenarios with small to mid-sized maps. This one screws-up the entire game making it completely unplayable. It is getting worrisome that updating AMD drivers now feels like playing Russian roulette when it comes to the CMx2 games. Fortunately, I was able to roll-back to 22.5.1 to get the game working again.