George MC

<Yawn>......

Ah that's the uniform that saw GIs being shot at by their own side thinking they were SS troopers. hence why the camo uniform never really caught on I guess with the Allies. Will check our your file when I get back from work

Well spotted It's intentional - but from a gameplay POV. I found setting the ground to damp that the Shermans could bog down. Given it seemed at the time (when designing this) that it happened often I changed the ground to very dry. Unrealistic I know but it solved the bogging issue whilst keeping the atmospherics

Great wee AAR - nice to see how others play scenarios out. The brief for this one, as it was going to be part of the demo, was to make it representative of bocage fighting, potentially lot's of fighting, shortish timescale and all that anyone new to CMX2 would not be overawed by the game. You can get further into the German HKL but you lose tanks and infantry at an alarming rate! By adopting the tactcis you did (which are pretty true to life) and taking your time you can slwoly chew your way through the German HKL with minimum loses. But the risk is running out of time. I'd liked to have made more time to achieve this but having a demo scenario that runs for two hours may have put new players off hence the shorter time frame. Anyways glad ya liked it - I'm about to start a PBEM game of one of your scenarios shortly. Will let you know how I get on Just to finish up - The AI Plans for the Germans do have some interesting options. OK now possible SPOILERS coming up.... # POSSIBLE SPOILERS # # # # POSSIBLE SPOILERS I set some of the German AI Plans so that the front most troops will start to pull back and regroup. So if you move slowly the Germans will have a chance to pull back and eventually form very sturdy positions deeper in their map zone. So the US player moving slowly and methodically will gain ground but it allows the Germans to slowly pull back and regroup. Thus at some point the US player will face a very strong defence. If the US players pushes harder and faster they stand to take heavier casualties but are more likely to encounter Germans who will stay in position and therefore are easier to kill. So if the US player can manage their casualties they can break through the German HKL and eventually encounter less resistance i.e. more mopping up than full on combat.

Yup This is an exit battle for the US - so grab a crossing and hold it, push on through and exit as many units of the map. Coutance is the village OFF MAP not the one on the map. Getting into a knife fight with the Germans in the on-map village would be bad. Very bad

This thread has details about Out of Memory issues (OOM): http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=99521 A couple of things worth keeping in mind: Everyone's PCs are differant (no branier eh?) but therein lays lot's of possible configurations etc which may or may not have an affect on the game. In that respect, like when CMX1 came out some people with older or less highly spec machines may find that there are some scenarios they just cannot play i.e. their PC cannot cope with the demands the scenario makes on the game and hence their system. So some OOM issues are down to a low spec PC plain and simple. Other OOM occur on higher spec machines that should, in theory, play the game. That's the puzzling bit - which, looking at the thread, is being looked into. CMBN maps are way more graphic intensive than most CMSF maps - all that greenery and variety of 'stuff' comes at a graphic price. Also I think players are starting to look at playing with larger OOBs - more units doing more shooting = more demands on the game engine to compute. Cheery!

Not too sure what is meant here so I’ll start at the beginning – apologies if this is teaching ya to suck eggs. AI Order Plans are a bit of a Black Art for sure. A few points to take into consideration when creating AI Plans. The TACAI is separate from the Strategic AI i.e. your AI Plan. The TACAI will tend to do ‘stuff’ in reaction to threats real or perceived on the battlefield. For this reason micro-managing the AI Plan is not always a good thing. Carefully crafted timings can easily be upset by enemy activity. Sometimes less is more i.e. simple AI Plans with broad bandwidths of time for the AI to undertake your orders. ‘Exit After’ and ‘Exit Before’ times relate to the game clock e.g. an ‘Exit After; time of 00:05:00 means that the AI unit will leave that painted position on the map when the game clock is 5 minutes in. ‘Exit Before’ time of 00:10:00 means it will then endeavour to reach the next painted spot before the clock reaches ten minutes. This time is relative to the start of the scenario. Now depending on the behaviour you allocate to the AI unit will depend on how fast and in what degree of alertness it travels. So in this case allocating ‘fast’ would mean the AI unit would sprint to that next spot, taking less care (spotting or engaging) any enemy unit en-route. Giving it an ‘assault’ behaviour would mean the AI unit would move it’s constituent elements (assuming it’s more than one vehicle or section etc) in a staggered manner keeping an eye out for any enemy and engaging them if need be. So when creating your AI Plan you need to take into account how long it may take an AI unit to travel over that specified piece of ground (and take into account any enemy action and what effect it may have on the AI unit). If you don’t give your AI unit enough time rather than sit at the next point it will tend to barrel onto the next painted waypoint and so on until it’s back on ‘target’ with the timings. As you can see with all the possible variables creating effective AI Plans does involve some trial and error. Also you do need to take into account the limitations of the AI Plan routines. There is little or no point in trying to create grandiose and complex AI Plans that are put out of kilter the moment the AI encounters any enemy. So my top tips: keep it simple use sweeping ‘brush strokes’ rather than small detailed strokesDoing this generally allows the TACAI some scope for choosing it’s own routes and reacting to enemy activity thus introducing some elements of uncertainty for the opposing human player.

Hi Buddy Goot hear all is well with you. best bet for getting this dealt with his filing a helddesk ticket. Head on over to the support forum and you will find the info about creating a helpdesk ticket. www.battlefront.com/helpdesk Cheers fur noo George

Sorry mate just picked this up. I assume you are playing as the US? If so then all you have to do is: Seize and secure a crossing point over the river. Continue south and exit this Area of Operations to seize the town of COUTANCES. So all you have to do is seize a bridge crossing then drive for one of the exit zones (not the town of COUTANCE os off the map). I suspect why many players (US) are finding this hard is they are stopping and trying to clear the Germans out of the small village - you don't have the force for that but you can punch your way through a very narrow corridor and get a victory that way. Good luck mate

Hi Handihoc I played this against Sergie PBEM and had a similar experience. The game ended with the small road in the middle jammed full of KOd Shermans and dead GIs. Looked like the Falsise Gap in reverse.... My smoke screen and arty pre was not as effective as I had thought or hoped... Good luck with your next fight

Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Another elements to take into consideration is PBEMs in CMX1 tended to be more binary i.e. catch the flags. Win conditions in CMBN can be/are more subtle. Another factor is how many of these players are used to playing CMBN? I suspect if you are not used to the game engine you can very quickly make mistakes that can cost the player the game big style. But as ND said they are very differant sample sizes. Would be worth comparing say in a year when I would expect there to be significantly more PBEM games to have been completed. Cheers fur noo George

Just a wee note to say the work you are putting into these 'dirty' mods is very much appreciated

The tweaks were to favour H2H primarily making it more balanced. The PBEM files will be pretty large - around 15 to 20Mb. I've just started using dropbox with my PBEM buddy - seems to work well and pretty efficient for exchnaging PBEM files.

Changes are under the hood re victory conditions and objectives, plus several small tweaks to the US briefing and OOB. This was all done in response to feedback that is detailed in the Huzzar! thread (which contains spoilers). All designed to make the scenario a bit more winnable as the US - concerns were raised that it was too hard for the US in H2H. So without making massive changes I went under the hood and tweaked some stuff. The designer notes in the scenario give the background to the changes. So in summary no major or obvious changes but tweaks to the objectives and victory conditions, US brief, and OOB.

Yup remember that moment well

Depends on the size of map and what I'm facing. In 1944 you don't really want to be leading with half tracks. On larger open maps I'd be leading with a few tanks overwtached by the main body. Half tracks and infantry sit tight until AT assets have been ID and supressed or failing that would dismount and enagage on foot. If advancing with half tracks use dead ground, lot's of overwatch, smoke if you have it and move fast. Otherwise on your average CMBN size map what you are doing, in built up terrain sounds good.

1" grid = 1' square. Looks like the grid is set-up for the wargame table being 4' x 8'. No way I can see of working out what that means in RL distances.

Ok chaps I've taken a look over Huzzar and it does look like there were some errors made with the points for the victory conditions. I've read through the thread again and I've gone and redone the victory conditions, briefings, slight changes to the US OOB and a few wee map tweaks. I've renamed the scenario 'Huzzar! Redux v1'. I'll upload it to the repository. Hopefully I've addressed some of the issues rasied in this thread. All the comments and feedback are very much appreciated. If anyone is keen to get involved in playtesting possible new scenarios feel free to drop me a line Cheers fur noo George

Hi Erwin If you saved the game just after the video, in theory, it should be fine when you patch if I recall. Can you open the game - do a quick save then try to load this new save (all done in 1.01). If you can do that then it suggest that your save under 1.00 and trying to open in 1.01 is scrambled. Reckon if you can open, play and save in Utah Beach then it's more likely down to having your FB save done under 1.00 thentrying to load in 1.01. Cheery!

No indication he has or did cross it - that photo shows the Panther just stuck on the hedge I've been down visiting my parents in Fife the past week. Around where they stay is farmland with old hedge systems. I was looking at them thinking how like Normandy bocage they are. very dense (in this case Hawthron) that has been split and wovent together to form very dense and high hedge systems.

It's a beast that's for sure. I designed the thing and I've had no issues with playing it under 1.01 or saving files, or loading from save files. It does seem as if the game is sensitive to differant PC specs. I'm running 4Gb Ram; Geforce GTX 260, an Intel E4800 3.00 GHz/3.01Ghz processor. I've seen people with higher speced PCs struggle to run this. My main advice is be patient. When you load/save just let if do it's thing - don't hit the button again just cos you think it's not doing anything I've seen me do this only to cause the game to crash and found if I just leave it alone is eventually does it's thing. Also it might be worth shutting down as many background programmes as you can. If you keep having problems with Out of Meory (OOM) then there is a thread over in the tech bit about OOM issues. You can post your observations there (also save files are useful as well). Phil Culliton is the BFC programmer looking into these sorts of issues. Hope all this helps.

Hi Guys Sorry for my absence in this discussion - just life is a bit hectic right now. I'm keeping tabs on the general thrust of the discussion. Great to see one of my scenarios provoke so much interest In this case the scenario, as it was being released with the game was principly set-up to provide a fun challaneges against the AI either side. The H2H bit well that came as after thought - there was not enough time to playtest this fully for H2H play for the module release, just not enough days. It had some playthrough - enough to think ah that'll work for H2H (also I gauged how 'hard' it would be H2H depending on how players were doing against the AI for either side). Given it's had a heck of a lot of playthroughs H2H and the feedback in relation to these playtests has been posted here I'm happy to make changes to the scenario and post a version for H2H play in the repository. I've just to find some quiet time at home so sit down, read all the comments, re-appraise the briefings and victory conditions and make the changes. No worries - happy to do that. @Sburke - feel free mate (and anyone else) to use the map for any other scenarios. All I would respectfully ask is I am credited for the map design. Other than that anyone can go ahead and use the map for their own scenario Cheery! George

Yeah Cry Havoc has some more wooded terrain. If you have NATO you could try Panzer Angriffe. It's based on the Armour Attacks map but I added loads more trees etc so it looks more temperate - especially if you are modding your game with the Syrope mods

Another of my scenarios - Cry Havoc - is set in a more temperate climate. Do you have the NATO module?