Dschugaschwili

Of course, anybody living in Germany right now could have guessed that from your weather description. Dschugaschwili

I have seen squads throw a second demo charge before the first one even hit the ground. You can't really do anything against that. Dschugaschwili

So I could take a PBEM game during the orders phase, save it, open the savegame in an editor and screw around with my and the opponent's troops, load the savegame in CM and continue playing. Great. Limited to savegames of finished games and protected by both players' passwords it may be ok, but there may still be side effects that could diminish the security of the file format. Dschugaschwili

How do you want to make sure that the marketing claims are valid? I doubt that anything short of forcing the manufacturer's marketing guys to wear the armor for a live test will bring some sanity into marketing claims. Dschugaschwili

Another option to keep the bully away would be to get hold of a weapon to be able to hurt him if he gets at you. Of course the bully also has weapons at home, but he's hesitant to bring them to the playground because using them may mean losing all of his friends who don't want to see excessive bloodshed, especially if it's caused by somebody who could win without them anyway. Now the bully obviously doesn't want anybody except for himself to posess weapons and will try to prevent everyone from getting them, but once he knows that you have one, he will be very reluctant to go after you. You won't make any friends that way either, but since it's the only means of defence that actually succeeds at keeping the bully away, more and more weaker kids start copying your strategy. And after some time the playground is a much more dangerous place than ever because of all the weapons floating around. And all that only because the bully once thought it was funny to beat up weaker kids...

Having the wire on the missile has the added advantage that any part of the wire is exposed to the heat of the exhaust gases for only a fraction of a second compared to several seconds if the fixed end was on the missile.

Why has nobody mentioned Nethack yet, although it's probably the perfect example of the trend outlined above? No graphics at all, but still way above pretty much every other game in terms of breadth and depth. Almost everything is randomized, so the replay value is almost endless. A true classic that I still play from time to time. Dschugaschwili

So, it should not be a problem to offer different turn lengths for WeGo. Will there be an option to use a turn length other than 60s in CMX2? Dschugaschwili

So, does this mean that you can't issue orders in a RT game when it is paused? If you can, we need a way of getting around the X-Com Apoc/Baldurs Gate method of just pausing the game all the time when the action starts and only have it run fractions of a second at a time until the smoke clears. Enforcing a certain (configurable?) minimum of time before the next pause can be invoked could help in that case. Dschugaschwili

This optional Real-Time mode reminds me of the X-COM series. The first two games were strictly turn-based. And when I heard that the third one would include an optional real-time combat mode, I didn't think that I would ever use it. The truth was that I never went back to the turn-based mode once I had tried real-time combat. And I'm not a fan of RTS games. Although being able to pause the game every millisecond always felt like having too much control. I'd like to see a system where (at least for multi-player games) a player who has just paused the game may not pause it again for a certain amount of time after he resumes the action. He may still issue orders while the time is running or when his opponent pauses the game. That way there would be at least some guaranteed minimum of flow in the action. Dschugaschwili

Do we even need earthlings in a fictional setting? I could do well without them.

This is already included in operations, so it shouldn't be difficult to extend that to single battles. Remember, CMC will come with a new CMBB executable. Dschugaschwili

Hmmm. I would have expected the long time customers to have an especially large amount of trust in BFC's ability to deliver a great game. And in BFC's ability to pick a setting that will sell. Not for everybody, of course, but not everybody will buy a WWII game either. Dschugaschwili

I'm hoping for that promised Space-Lobsters-Of-Doom game coming sooner rather than later.

A 5,25" disk sounds nice. At least those still work after all those years. And my drive can double as a hammer if I need one. Dschugaschwili

Actually, we may need two sets of tutorial scenarios. Depending on how much of the handling of the game will carry over from CMx1 to CMx2, CMx1 players may already know some things while having to unlearn other things. Those who have never played a CM game before will approach the game differently. One tutorial for both groups may be difficult. Dschugaschwili

If you have the CMBO beta demo in mind, that one had Riesberg and Last Defense for scenarios. Dschugaschwili

Will CMX2 benefit from dual-core processors or will it run faster on a higher clocked single-core CPU?

Deliberate friendly fire is only a part of the problem. In CMx1 an infantry squad can happily walk around in front of a friendly MG firing at some enemy infantry in the distance. Not exactly realistic. I hope BFC can do something about that for CMx2. Dschugaschwili

The missions may also be a problem. A friend of mine who never owned CMBO or CMBB bought CMAK recently, and he regularly gets clobbered by the AI if he tries a scenario designed by a CM veteran. Please have a couple of newbie-friendly missions ready that can be played like a multi-lesson tutorial. Dschugaschwili

Just please don't require an active internet connection to be able to play solo or PBEM. Dschugaschwili

Great post. Thanks for getting me informed again after my vacation! Dschugaschwili

Onboard mortars (teams and vehicle-mounted) under control of a HQ can fire indirect, but not guns. Dschugaschwili

You don't actually play God. You play every single unit in your force. Not just the commander, but also the tank crew, the infantry squad and the AA gun. And because of that you are allowed to give every unit its orders in a way the unit might interpret something that it has been told from above. The command delays could be more variable, but basically there's nothing broken here. Dschugaschwili

You don't actually play God. You play every single unit in your force. Not just the commander, but also the tank crew, the infantry squad and the AA gun. And because of that you are allowed to give every unit its orders in a way the unit might interpret something that it has been told from above. The command delays could be more variable, but basically there's nothing broken here. Dschugaschwili