Sgt Joch

It is just my personal comments to try to help out. Only BFC can make official comments. If it turns out that tons of player are finding the game unplayable because of this issue, BFC will have to decide if they have to delay the release for 6-12 months to recode the entire game.

Its caused when your CPU can't handle all the action on screen and decides to take some shortcuts in the animation.

We have discussed this issue internally and here are a few comments: 1. Wind has little CPU usage and causes little FPS hit. What is happening with wind is that your card is redrawing the trees and leaves more often which could have an impact, although that is usually more consistent. However we have not seen the massive shift Parabellum is experiencing. It could be caused by a particular combination of CPU, graphic card, drivers, etc. 2. I ran some tests with trees, no trees, wind, no wind. Even when looking directly at swaying trees filling my screen at best/best, 1920x1200, the FPS is almost consistently between 15-20, and my system is less powerful than Parabellum's (Q9550@3.1 ghz, ATI 4890, win 7 64). 3. CM has never produced very high FPS. In almost all scenarios I play in CMSF or CMBN, the FPS when I check it is mostly in the 15-25 range. However, in actual gameplay, the raw FPS number has never been has important as the fluidity and smoothness of the image. I have only played one game where the FPS was so low that the image was choppy and unplayable and that was a CMSF PBEM game on a massive Urban map. 4. If you want to consistently increase FPS, one tip is to drop model/texture quality. Going from best/best to balanced/balanced gives me a consistent 10 FPS increase on a forested map with little noticeable decrease in model quality.

Whether or how it can be improved is one topic. But a gameplay tip which has applied to every CM game since CMBO is to keep most of your defensive line on "Hide" and or with a cover Arc command with a few spotters on the look out. This way you, rather than the AI, can decide when to open up on a target.

I said the most important, having a decent graphic card and decent amount of RAM is also important. If you have a puny CPU, getting the latest video card will give you no improvement.

trees dont have much of an impact since you will get similar FPS in CMSF where there are no trees. the factors which have the most impact on FPS are: -size and complexity of the map, especially urban maps; -number of units; the CPU is the most important component. In CMBN as in CMSF, the program is constantly calculating LOS/LOF from friendly units to enemy units, and that appears to be the biggest bottleneck. shadows is very much driver dependent. It seems with each new card and driver revisions, shadows are or are not a problem. On my card (ATI 4890, cat 11.4) turning shadows on/off has no impact on FPS.

strange I have been testing the Demo and game on my rig which has win 7 x64/ati 4890 with no issues. could you guys turn off your anti-virus and retry the demo? also try it without the ATI compatibility fix in the Options. I don't use it and the game runs fine.

some Beta testers had conflicts with Norton 360. Microsoft security essentials appears to work fine.

In CMSF, routing was handled differently. A routed soldier would simply disappear and an orange "!" icon would appear which would fade away after a few seconds.

not directly, you can give it a "target arc" to limit how far it shoots, but not what it shoots at. I usully give it a "hide" command and a short "target arc". Then remove one or both when enemy infantry is near.

you have to be careful with bocage, infantry can only cross through a bocage "gap" tile (recognizable because there is a shoulder legth gap) or an actual opening. If you order infantry to just go straight through, the AI will plot a path through the nearest "gap" tile or opening. Before going through bocage, I go down to the 1 level to spot the gaps and plan the path accordingly.

it's like that in CMSF. actually, the XO team does not usually serve a purpose. It is there because it was there in real life. It helps a bit with maintaining C2, especially if the HQ team is destroyed.

but we we have 4 more years of "virtual" combat experience..it hardly seems fair.

true, but there is limit to how much detail you can put into simulating bocage, right now you have: hedge, low bocage, high bocage; to which you can add trees and play with the elevation to get many different variations. You have small and large gap tiles. You have trench, foxholes, bunkers, sandbags... Basically, you can setup the same type of defences the Germans used. Foxholes behind a Bocage tile work the same as foxholes dug into the bocage itself. It does not block LOS/LOF and gives the defender a concealment and defensive bonus.

You can see and fire through hedgerows. The game assumes there were enough gaps in the foliage to see and fire through which matches with the available evidence. If you could not fire through, it would be very difficult for the Germans to put up a defence.

I find the keyboard keys: Q-E for rotation; W-A-S-D for moving around give you more precision than the mouse.

and remember that is a Ost Battalion you are facing, pretty much the worst German troops on the Western front. welcome to the new CM.

very, very, very soon*

guys, chill out, the demo may come out today or it may come out soon. very, very, very soon means very, very, very soon. Bfc is trying to get it out as soon as possible

On the effectiveness of Tac Air and the overclaims of pilots, I will refer you to this article. After the 1991 Gulf War, the Russians sent survey teams to Iraq to determine the effectiveness of U.S. Air Power and its implications for the future. As we all know from CNN, 50% of all Iraqi tanks were destroyed by air power, the truth was a bit different: http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/deserted/deserted.htm This is with modern fighters using PGMs flying over a desert. As others have stated Tac Air destroyed few if any AFVs during Normandy: 1. pilots had great difficulty spotting stationary/camouflaged AFVs from the air and the Germans would often protect them with AA guns, making it a dangerous quarry to hunt; 2. the Germans would generally move at night when no air was around; 3. Tac Air preferred to patrol the rear areas where they could bag softer, easier targets like trucks or trains; As many accounts show, the major effect of Tac Air was to delay the arrival of reinforcements and supply to the Normandy area, which had an operational, but not tactical effect. German Panzer divisions were able to get most of their AFVs to the front lines, most losses being due to breakdowns. Even in the great Turkey Shoot in the Falaise gap, most of the AFVs that were found had been abandoned and destroyed by their own crew after they ran out of fuel or were caught in a traffic jam. This is not revisionism, it is the consensus of all historians who have studied the empirical evidence.

The SRAAWs have a maximum range of 600 meters. Wait until the tanks get closer and they should fire on their own.

At BoB? I did not participate in the last round, but that is one of the best tournament I ever played in. Beautiful map of the factory district. However, it is also one of the best examples of the limit of the CMx1 system. In CMBB, infantry does not exist in the 3d world, but only as in a 2d game, so it can enter any terrain or fire into any hex. You can line up your men inside a factory and they can shoot through solid walls at anyone outside; or you can have your men sprint through the wall across the street, through the wall of the opposing factory and have them materialise in front of your enemy. Because of that the mapmakers had to resort to various tricks, such as placing barbed wire around almost all buildings to prevent this. In CMBN, each individual soldier exists in the 3d world. It can only fire in/out of a building through an opening (door, window, hole); it can also only enter a building through a door or hole. You can only go through a wall if your engineers first blast a hole throught it. It raises MOUT to a whole new level. ...just make sure you check where the door is located before you order your men to rush a building..

basically each move you watch the last turn replay AND then plot your move for the next turn, so only 2 files exchanged for one turn VS 3 files exchanged for a CMx1 game.

patience, fellow players patience, you will not be disappointed. I may be biased (would not be the first time), but CMBN will be an instant classic.

That was not my intention, but the topic of whether soldiers in WW2 swore less frequently or in a milder form than people now has also been raised by some here. The Patton speech, which was meant to be a private speech to his men, puts that notion to rest. Now whether swearing should be included in the game is an entirely different subject. It will not, although I am sure some sound mod will come along for those that want it in.