Sgt Joch

I have been playing with "Elite" and it has a nice feel to it, closer to real battlefield confusion, especially when you try to play the whole scenario without pausing, although admittedly that limits the size of playable scenarios. I agree though that the friendly intel limitations on U.S. forces maybe too restrictive, although they would make sense for Syrian or WW2 forces. I like the way the intel and spotting interact also. For example, I had an infantry team which spotted a red ATGM team on top of a hill. A nearby Bradley had LOS, but could see nothing, then over a few minutes, an unidentified marker appeared followed finally by the enemy ATGM Icon, at which point it opened up with its chaingun. I presume that represents the time until the info from my infantry team filters down to the Bradley.

Exactly how am I pouring virtual gasoline on myself and setting myself on virtual fire? Do you really think I'm trying to commit virtual suicide in order to attract attention? Exactly how does this analogy work? </font>

With all due respect, Bahger, pouring virtual gasoline on yourself and setting yourself on virtual fire, 72 hours after the game has been released is not the way to resolve the issue. CMx1 had major pathfinding issue, I have griped about them in the past. There appears to be an improvement in CMx2, although it is still hard to tell since the game is brand new and we are all still trying to figure it out. I have no doubt BFC is doing the best they can on this issue.

Redwolf...ah, never mind.

I am still absorbing the game, but I am very impressed so far, it is much better than even I had hoped. Some of the things I like so far are: -relative spotting: "Borg Spotting" is dead. The best way to see it is in the tank battle scenario (I forget the name); -elite FOV: getting closer to simulating real battlefield conditions; -air&artillery modeling: much more options than before; -new map editor: much more options than before; -1:1 representation: I thought this would be a gimmick and some things could be improved, but it is alot more immersive than the CMx1 stick figures; -graphics are much improved, certainly not FPS quality, but light years ahead of CMx1; On the minus side, there are some stability issues, especially with dual-cores, but that is to be expected with a brand new game. p.s.- by the way, as anyone noticed that some of the american voices and the backgound environmental noise is recycled from CMAK?

That number just means that your CPU does not need more than 50% of one core to run CMSF. It means you could also run much bigger scenarios with no problem.

I played it from the Blue side, 1st time playing CMSF, blundered into the ambush, lost 50% of my forces; 2nd time, after playing the training campaign and a few other scenarios, keeping my bradleys behind cover and using Javelin equipped teams to spot, totally wiped out the syrians in a hail of 25mm chainguns and Javelins with only two wounded as casualties. As other have pointed out, if US forces are used properly, they are nearly invincible, if you don't know what you are doing, they are dead meat.

If we did not grumble all the time, you would not have any reason to constantly improve your products, so I submit that we serve an important social function, acting as a sort of greek (or geek) chorus to keep you on your toes.

after removing the dual core optimisation & setting CPU affinity to one CPU, I am able to play most scenarios with no problem, just did two in a row. I did however get one freeze 20 mins into the 1st campaign mission, so the problem is not completely gone. In that case I had set 3d quality to best rather than balanced.

-AMD Opteron 170 (2 ghz dual core); -NVIDIA 7900 GTX; -ASROCK 939 Dual-Sata mb; -2 x 36 GB Raptor HD RAID array; -2 GB DDR ram; -Audigy 2 ZS; -Win XP pro sp2; -playing at 1280x960, 2xQ FSAA, 2x Aniso; "balanced" 3d settings. The training campaign was nice and smooth. I am one happy camper, now back to Syria.

I had the same problem, but i seem to have found a solution, my system: -AMD opteron 170; -NVIDIA 7900 GTX (latest drivers); -XP pro SP2; I first tried the ATGM ambush, it froze after 20 mins. then applied the reccomended fixes: -MS hotfix; -AMD dual core optimizer; -AMD cpu exe; the problems got even worse, overlapping voices, teleportation, freezing after less than a minute; -then on a hunch, I uninstalled the dual core optimizer ( it had given me trouble when I used it in the past) & set CPU affinity to one processor and zipped through the first 3 training missions with no problems whatsoever. great game, by the way.

well its 9:05 a.m. here and still no email. I have to go walk my dogs who have been patiently staring at me staring at my computer screen for the past hour...with my luck, the email will come in as soon as I leave.

there is one of these threads everytime a new game is released, so I figured I would start my own this time.

just got the email, downloading NOW!... ...no wait, its just more hardcore porn (as if i don't have enough already), sorry!

I would not mess with that RM, I think BFC should release the game NOW!

it's almost here...

Talking about rigid artillery plans, it reminds of a story I read about in GW1... ...a colonel was visiting a unit close to the front line when 4 Iraqi shells landed about 200 yds away. The colonel and his staff scattered and hit the deck while the rest of the unit just ignored the shelling. When the colonel, feeling a little sheepish, got back up, he asked the other soldiers why they were ignoring the shelling, he was informed that the same barrage of four shells had been landing like clockwork at the same spot all day and it had gotten to the point that the soldiers hardly noticed it anymore...

I can also recommend THE YOM KIPPUR WAR by abraham rabinovitch, although it deals mostly with the Israeli side and, of course, ARABS AT WAR, for the Arab side. A big reason for the Israeli debacle was their arrogance following their easy victory in 1967. Israel assumed that Mossad would give them at least one week's warning of any arab attack allowing them to mobilize their forces and they counted on their armored forces and the IAF to easily breakup any arab attack. The egyptians and the syrians carried out a very effective deception operation which totally fooled the Israelis, who finally had only about six hours warning about the attack. The egyptian SAM wall was a total shock to the IAF which lost about 30% of their operational aircraft in the first 24 hours and to basically shut down operations over the canal. The egyptians also had specially trained ATGM teams which bypassed the Israeli strongpoints along the canal and setup ambush positions 1-2 km from the canal. These teams completely broke up the Israeli counterattacks on oct. 8-9. One israeli tank unit lost 22 out of 25 tanks in a 5 minute period. However, you have to give the Israelis credit for bouncing back. Many armies in their situation would have simply crumbled, instead they figured out what the problems were and found practical solutions. In oct. '73, there were no effective countermeasures to the Egyptian SAMs, however the IAF pilots figured out that if you did a radical turn at the right moment, you could defeat the missiles..most of the time, although it pretty much required nerves of steel. Furthermore, when the war became more mobile after the failed egyptian attacks of oct. 14, the IDF started to shine, since despite its improvement, the egyptian army simply did not have the skill to match the IDF in mobile warfare.

very nice, the map editor looks like it is as easy to use as the one in CMx1.

If you do a search, you will find a post by Steve on this issue a few months back. AFAIR, they tried to do something about the map edges, but were not happy with the results and dropped the whole project.

I'm quite happy we at least have the capability to do 4x4 km maps even though we may not use it for a while. In fact, it would be nice to eventually have the capability to do bigger maps. Some time back, I tried to design some western desert scenarios in 1941-42 using realistic topographical maps (or what I could find), however even 4x4 km maps only emcompassed small battlefields. I had looked at designing a Alam Halfa Ridge operation for the aug.31 1942 battles, but even the biggest operation map would only cover a small part of the Alam Halfa ridge where the final assault took place, as you can see: You would need 20x10 km maps to have some real elbow rooms, although even with CMx1 maps, no current computer could run it. And if you take the time to analyse real maps, you will see that the real terrain over which the Afrika Korps and the 8th army fought in 1941-42 shows up as nearly flat terrain in CMx1.

I remember when CMAK came out, everyone was excited to play Afrika Korps scenarios. However, it turned that armored units slugging it out from 2 km out on flat desert maps makes for a boring scenario. I presume it will be the same in CMSF, maybe more so given the greater lethality of modern weapons. After all the years of playing CMBB and CMAK, I dont think I ever played on a max size map and I find smaller scenarios on small/medium size maps, the most enjoyable. I think most players will find even 4 x 4 km maps are an overkill, you can create one in CMAK to get an idea of the size.

How long does Madmatt sleep? Don't you guys have a game to get out? Someone should check on him to see if he is still breathing...

Most of us have been sold since day one. I, for one, would have been willing to pay a lot mo... oops, never mind.