hoolaman

man, quote this post and devote your analytical skills to understanding the code. Actually, here is the arcane process involved:

I don't really understand all the maths, but don't forget that once a playing piece/tank is killed, all their missiles are destroyed too. Each offensive shot that is not defended will compound the odds in the favour of whoever is lucky enough to make the first kill. So choosing not to defend seems like a terrible strategy, whoever fires first will win, as their missiles will hit first, and leave them time to defend against their opponent's first salvo. There will be no second salvo, because the high kill chance means the whole opposing team is dead. I think Jason says it above, with equal limited ammo for each team, there is no advantage to overkill on one target, or manouvering. As long as you play the odds and defend against every offensive shot, the game will come down to a roll of the dice.

If I remember correctly, the paradox copy protection system is a disc in the drive type of thing, and all references to elicense are erroneous references to the BFC version. So you should be ok... As far as I remember. EDIT: Well since two people simultaneously posted that they vaguely remember that, it must be true!

http://www.youtube.com/user/Battlefrontcom You could look at the BFC youtube channel. There are some AARs there that might give you some ideas, but no "hold your hand" tutorials. Even with the manual, I guess if you never played the earlier CM games, it would be hard to get the hang of CMSF.

Mord, nice mod. Is it possible to do it like a ring instead of a circle? If so, consider this a mod request!

Reading between the lines, I guess the idea is for all the effort of programming and modeling to build up and leverage off itself in these later titles. So I guess at some point active development of CMSF will have to finish so the guys can move on to the next big thing. The WW2 game and its modules will take precedence. When they have terrain suitable for Europe, and all the models for modern vehicles from CMSF, it should be a lot quicker to put out a new temperate modern game with all the improvements of the ww2 title. In maybe three years time I expect we will have a trilogy of games that look a bit like CMBO, BB, AK, with a sprinkling of modules in between. The poor antiquated cousin will be CMSF. The real gold standard will be CMx2:WW2, then the sort of a rehash of stuff from the other two will be the temperate modern game, a bit like CMAK. Who knows, maybe if they make a modern game set in Europe, they can add Space lobsters as a module: The world unites to face an alien invasion across the Russian steppes.

Ok, to summarise: Game grid ~100x100 squares 8 playing pieces per team (I'll call them tanks) Tanks move at 1 square per turn. 4 Balls per tank (I'll call them missiles) with a max range of 12 squares. Missiles move inexorably to their target (which can be tanks or other missiles in flight) at a rate of 3 squares per turn. On hitting missiles have a 90% chance of destroying their target. The aim is presumably to destroy the other team, and the team with the most kills wins? I would say almost all games would end in a draw. The high odds of being destroyed by a missile would lead you to always defend yourself, and the high odds of defensive missiles being effective means that it is very likely that both sides would use up their ammo and everyone would still be alive. The only way to avoid this outcome would be to have a localised two-on-one matchup where a tank burns up its ammo against its two opponents who still end up with ammo to make the kill. But then the survivors of this battle would have to face the other players, and every tank who uses an extra missile to kill someone will end up with one less to defend themselves, so making a kill would be a death sentence. Out of 16 attacking shots vs 16 defending shots it is likely that only one or two will result in a death due to the roll of the dice. Whoever beats the odds and gets a kill will win. If one or both teams were stationary, the outcome would be the same. In fact just thinking about it, whoever gets first kill can destroy some enemy ammo on board the tank, so one kill will result in a snowball effect too, leaving the other team less ammo to defend themselves with. Reducing the maximum range makes things a little more interesting, if you can get two tanks in range and make a missile burn out without hitting you will have an ammo advantage. This is where the tactics might come in, setting up localised firefights hoping that you can entice your opponent to fire at a range where you can outrun their missiles. Winning the game might depend on your opponent making a silly mistake. Games like chess and command and conquer set up different styles of units for just this reason. Identical matchups can result in everyone on the board dying or in this case maybe nobody on the board dying.

So if the balls travel only 3x faster than the players, would be easier to dodge them? How do players fire and hit with a guaranteed 90% accuracy? How do players fire a defensive salvo and have it hit with 90% accuracy? It seems like the path of the balls must be tracked along some predetermined trajectory for them to take 3 or more turns to hit their target. If that's the case they are only as accurate as their aiming. Interesting simple concept, but I don't understand the above points.

Or at least donate FIRST. I think you are ruled out of donating for a couple of years after a tattoo.

I just had to complement you on the thread title, very nice.

I use both at the same time. WASD tends to start slow and be more dependant on graphics rendering, but they are intended to be a slower fine tuning control. The mouse rockets around. Both at once and you can fly around like you're playing half-life.

They could just have been really useless engineers.

It's that way by design I think. The texture blending applied to closer terrain gives it a blurry look. Don't think it's an error on your part, just that the far LODs don't match.

Cool game. One strategy appears to be to lure the enemy deep into your territory to free up the stacked pieces. The different maps make it interesting. I liked hearts of iron for the same reason, certain regions gave you strategic advantages where you can only be attacked from a few directions.

One more, an elevated firing position can be deadly:

I'll try an answer but it is not exactly a science. Firstly, CMSF is at least in theory WYSIWYG. So the best type of cover in an arid environment, like IRL is dirt, or a ditch, actually getting a "hull down" defilade type position. If you are not familiar with the terrain by looking, you really should make a little test map in the editor and see what tiles are what, just paint a patch of tree A, B, C etc and see what it gives you. As of 1.08 I have observed trees give pretty much the concealment you would expect, they also give good cover. Walls give probably the best cover, with trenches second. Houses give reasonable cover but are a bit "porous" as in some bullets are calculated to penetrate the wall, and windows provide open spaces for bullets. Also at the moment all houses are the same for cover, no heavy and light buildings. Brush and grasses give the relative levels of concealment you would expect, long grain is very good for concealment, but no cover except that afforded by the fact that you can't area fire into grain because you can't see the ground. Flat open terrain has a small dgree of fudge factor applied to simulate small dips and ditches that a man would quickly find if a hail of bullets came his way. All of this is also modified by whether your guys are kneeling or prone. A guy prone behind a wall cannot be touched, but a guy kneeling can have his head shot off. Using a SLOW command at the end of your move will leave your guys in prone positions. I don't need a %cover value like CMx1 had, but it would be nice to mouse over a terrain tile and see what terrain it actually is. I still can't remember them all.

Those Warner Brothers boys were pretty wild, I wouldn't be surprise if it meant something crude then too.

I just saw that, it looks like CMC will be a pretty good wargame on its own terms, even if you don't fire up CMBB to fight the battles.

I guess nobody else marked the occasion, but CMSF is now one year old. It is a credit to Battlefront that they stuck with it and did what they promised, to continue to support the game and turn it into a worthy successor to the earlier games. Hopefully the Marines expansion can get back the momentum and excitement that was lost by a rocky release, I'm sure there were some lessons learned, there should be plenty of good stuff in there. Anyway, congratulations guys.

I don't know what you mean by "past installations". CMSF is a fine game, with graphics that definitely hold their own against more modern games, some of the vehicle models are very very impressive if you crank the detail. The terrain is a bit less detailed than say TOW because 1 it is set in the desert, and 2 the high fidelity of the game calculations means that a lot of fancy bits would make the simulation way too complex. The game engine for the earlier games is now more than ten years old and development for them has ceased. If you get over the graphics (which are not that bad) and think of them like a tabletop miniature board or something there is a mind-blowing game series awaiting you. I don't know what to tell you though. If you hated the original games, CMSF is not all that different in gameplay, and some of the graphical elements are similar too. Download the demo and see for yourself.

There are plenty of Red tanks, but T-72 is the latest model, as BFC tried to put in a realistic Syrian TO&E. Try "Allah's Fist" mission as red if you want a look at them (briefly). Your criticisms of the QB system and other changes from CM1 are valid and have been covered here in depth more times than probably neccesary. Suffice to say battlefront have taken this on board for their next games, but don't let the features missing from CM1 discourage you from playing CMSF. It has evolved into a really nice little game, but you are better off seeking out some good scenarios or player-made campaigns to get the most out of it. See the scenario design forum for more info.

Yeah true, Gandalf was very old by the hobbit era, and still very old in the LOTR era. McKellen similarly was old then and is old now. And really his part in the hobbit is not so big anyway.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/ Use this link to access the forum page directly.

There are a few decent US attempts, but their preference for naming things after old dead dudes doesn't really lend itself to romance. Abrams is ok, Stryker? wtf? Some of the missiles and air defence systems are cool though. I'm a big fan of "Javelin" considering what it does. Sidewinder, Phalanx, Stinger, Hellfire are all great names.

But that's a Finnish wife right? I know during the war Finnish women used knitting needles as long rod penetrators.