Pak40

I find it funny that this is supposed to be a "realistic" combat simulation yet all of you are asking for this completely unrealistic feature. A unit could not possibly know if there was LOS from point A to point B unless it was actually at point A. But for some reason, most of you want this magical feature implemented in the game. You already have the ability to zoom down to eye level and make a judgement call, something that real world units don't have the ability to do.

Yes, this sounds like a really fun mission. Honestly, the German AI probably wont be too difficult. Since they are on the defensive I'm assuming they will be static. However, you could certainly have different setup plans so that there is some variation when a person replays the scenario. If you design it to be played as the Germans, then you're in for a much more difficult task to make the Allied AI plans. I recommend you just focus on humans playing the allied side. It's very hard to balance a scenario that can be played from both sides.

#1 - yes, you can take an HQ unit, then reduce it to 10% for example. It should be down to 1 man at that point. #2 - Yes, that's probably your best option although it's rather easy to touch the objective and then run away. Another rout to take is to make the hut a destroy objective. I'm assuming that they were ordered to destroy the hut once Niessenthall learned all he could about it. The time it takes to destroy the hut can simulate Niessenthall's "learning" of the system. I've never used a destroy objective, so I'm not sure how/if this will work on a building. You'll have to make sure all the allied units have demo charges. Also, make a secondary 'touch' objective to simulate the cutting of the wire. This will give some bonus points to the allies. They have telephone pole flavor objects that can be used. #3 - probably not a good idea because the Germans didn't know anything about Nissenthall. You could, however, make it a hidden objective for the Germans that gives them some bonus points. #4 - I don't think you'll have to worry about Nissenthall getting captured, especially if you give him high morale/motivation, he'll probably fight to the death. #5 - As I see it, you have 4 possible outcomes: 1)Total failure - Allies fail to capture hut, fail to cut telephone wire, Nissenthall is killed. 2)Failure - Allies fail to capture hut, fail to cut telephone wire OR Nissenthall is killed. 3)Moderate success - Allies capture hut, Nissenthall is killed or does not make the exit. 4)Total Success - all objectives are completed and Nissenthall is exited. Also, to make case 3 plausible you might have to award exit points to the other allied units. (at least one unit must exit to bring back valuable info learned)

Yes, an import of Digital Elevation Models (DEM) would be an incredible addition, but one that is probably impractical to develop. Honestly IMO, the Elevation editor is the absolute best part of the entire editing experience. I found it very easy to recreate historical elevations based on topographic maps. The way BFC has implemented this is pure genius. This would be remedied with an overlay feature. It would also help to change the entire map making to a vector format so we could do those curvy medieval street layouts but this isn't going to happen. Good idea. I am often counting tiles to judge distance and this would help a great deal. I have learned to use the XY position to help judge distance but a 100m grid would be even better. You can easily create a template yourself and just load the template any time you want to make a new map.

by your description, the tank did not see the infantry until it stopped. "it drives by a hiding inf. team. SO, the Sherman stops, rotated and point engages them" Well, I've done the testing and based on your description of what happened, I think it's just coincidence. If you do some testing yourself and see that Tanks are spotting hidden infantry behind hedgrows while moving then present us the evidence.

My point is that the move order just happened to end right in front of your squad. Then it spotted the infantry after that. It didn't spot your infantry on the move and then stop.

In response to your points above: 1. I have found the opposite. Every time I've used armor I've had a hell of a time spotting infantry from tanks, especially behind hedge rows. I'll have infantry easily spotting enemy targets and freely engaging them while my tank next to the infantry can't even spot anything - I have to resort to area fire. 2. Isn't this what the difficulty levels are for? I always play on Warrior but assumed the two harder levels offered less info. 3. I haven't seen this type of spotting. If I PM you will you email the saved file to me?

Tread Head, I setup a simple test scenario, you can do the same. I made a tall bocage lane with a road down the middle. I put two german squads on either side behind the bocage in hide mode. The squads were staggered about 30-40 yards apart. I made a simple AI plan for the Sherman to go down to the END of the road with a QUICK order. BTW, run the test in the SCENARIO AUTHOR TEST mode. This allows you to see all enemy units and, more importantly, click on them to see their current movement orders. I ran this test only twice because I know what happened in your case. The order I plotted for the tank was to go to the end of the road. However, the AI doesn't order a direct move to the end of the road. Instead, it randomly plots 1 movement somewhere along the rout. Since I ran the test in WEGO this leave the tank to sit in the lane between the bocage once it completes it's order. It has to wait until the next order phase to plot the next order that will eventually bring it to end of the lane. I know this because in the SCENARIO AUTHOR TEST mode you can click on the Sherman and see it's current move order even during playback. So, I actually knew the tank would stop halfway down the lane before it got there. TEST 1: Sherman movement order was plotted right in front of the first squad. When it stopped, there was about a three or four second pause until my squad opened fire on the tank, killing the unbuttoned commander. TEST 2: This time the Sherman move order was plotted between my two squads. It passed the first squad without spotting it and then stopped until the end of the turn. On the second turn the AI gave the tank a new order to the end of the lane. It passed the second squad without spotting it. So, undoubtedly what happened in your case, is that the AI just happened to plot a move order for your tank right in front of your squad. It didn't stop because it actually saw your squad.

I've done a similar thing with a professional mapping software ArcGIS. I made a vector 8x8m grid for a full square km and then used 1947 imagery from this French site mentioned in another thread. I georectified the 1947 imagery using already rectified modern day imagery, then I overlay my square km grid anywhere I want to. I have been printing out the maps instead of using a second monitor. It works well but still is a slower method that heads up tracing. I suppose I could print the map onto a transparent film and then tape it to my monitor but it would have to print exactly to one of the available zoom scales that CMBN uses and I wont be able pan.

Thanks for the feedback! I just thought of another helpful feature for the map editor specifically: UNDO command How many times have we all accidentally placed a big blob of terrain over an already designed section of map? An undo command would be a welcome time saving addition even if it only undo's the last click on the map.

Yes, exactly my thoughts process. Well, the technical reasons are really just a question of how much coding it would take to do it and if BFC thinks that it's worth the time & resources. It's certainly technically possible. And you're correct, you might not always get what you want but you would still have the ability to go back and change what you don't like. Imagine laying out a 45 degree road that's 200 meters long. As it is now, you have to click on every single 8m square with alternating tiles. That's a total of 50 clicks specifically placed. The automated way would be a simple two clicks.

Some of you scenario designers need to chime in on my thread. I've listed some fairly simple but time saving ideas that can really help scenario designers. We need more suggestions and more importantly need to bring these to the attention of BFC and the Beta testers.

I'm making a campaign based on this now . Hopefully will be out sometime after Christmas.

Burgett's books are amazing in detail. Currahee is the best of the Normandy paratrooper memoirs that I've read. Some of the "Band of Brothers" troopers have published their memoirs including Dick Winters. I've only read "Parachute Infantry" by David Webster which is an interesting contrast to Burgett's style. edit: The Black March is excellent if you can find it but it's East Front.

While this would certainly improve the look of the game, my intention of the thread is really about improvements to the editor that would help save scenario designers a lot of time. Sorry, I don't mean to be a jerk, I'm just trying to keep this on topic.

I think you misunderstand. I didn't mean copy/paste between different maps. I mean copy/paste the PLAN in the same map. You can set several different plans in the same battle. As it is now, you have to create each AI plan from scratch. It would be nice to be able to set up AI Plan #1, then copy it to AI Plan #2. At this point you only need change what you want to be different (as opposed to creating the entire Plan #2 from scratch). thanks! I hadn't noticed this or haven't really paid that much attention to blending. Yes indeed! Unfortunately this wont happen until BFC adopts a vector based mapping system, something I lobbied for back in the CMx1 days. Maybe CMx3 will go vector but that's a looong way off.

Road to Montbourg Campaign is very good for beginners to medium difficulty. It is a VERY LONG campaign but during long trek you will learn to be a better player. I'm assuming you've got at least a few battles under your belt. I think I played two battles plus the two intro campaigns before the Montbourg Campaign and it was a perfect challenge for me.

So, in the middle of designing my first campaign, I have some suggestions that would really help designers with some of the time consuming aspects of battle/campaign design. Hopefully these improvements can be added to CMx2 at some point in future modules if not the Commonwealth module. Some of these, I'm sure, have already been discussed on this forum. Feel free to add suggestions or feedback. I'm listing these in order of ease to program (at least in my view, others may prove me wrong) 1. Copy / Paste AI Plan - often I use several slight variations of AI plans in a battle. Sometimes setups are identical or with slight variation, sometimes the orders or start times are varied slightly. I think it would save designers a lot of time if you could make a plan, copy it, and then modify the parts that you want changed in the copy. 2. Bitmap Overlay for the map - The easy way to do this is to enable windowed mode at least for the editor (if possible). This will allow designers to use a third party software cThruview to overlay bitmap images on top of the editor to trace maps or aerial photos. The harder but probably more desirable way to do this is to incorporate a bitmap overlay into the map editor itself. 3. Auto Road/hedge configuration - Place two points on the map and the configurator will automatically draw a continuous stretch of road between the two points with as few turns and as few tiles as possible. Will also automatically add T's and Y's when it intersects existing roads. Designer will still have the ability to edit individual tiles as necessary.

BTW, you do know that if you plan a barrage during the setup phase then it acts as a TRP for all intensive purposes? The barrage will not have a waiting time (unless you manually set it) and you get the increased accuracy of a pre-planned barrage. This can be done in the setup phase of any battle with or without TRPs.

If it's a battle, just open it in the editor and add a TRP to the units. You might also need to go to the deployment screen also, but I'm not sure. If it's a campaign then you're out of luck.

All of this is really pointless since you can't actually change the weapon characteristics and unit formations. You might actually be able to change graphics to look Russian but they're still going to have the characteristics of U.S. units and weapons.

So, I'm currently re-reading Donald Burgett's "Screaming Eagles". There's a part in the book where they're defending a town on D-Day and they lay some Hawkins mines on the road in case tanks attack. Cows were roaming freely in this particular area and cow patties were all over the place. So what do the enterprising paratroopers do to hide the mines? They put cow patties on top of them. It worked well enough to fool a local farmer in a horse drawn cart - fortunately the farmer missed the deadly patties. So, I think in addition to cows, BFC will need to add movable cow patties.

Well, certainly for the upcoming Commonwealth module they should have a "tea time" command where the units will stop in the middle of combat, put the kettle on while munching on biscuits, and complain about the oversexed Yanks infesting all of the Pubs.

Not exactly sure, but I suspect it's because the TacAI can give orders to units. Therefore, if you double click a platoon HQ to give them all a group move, then you would want any previous orders cancelled so that the platoon moves in unison.

Guys, just to clarify something. This is not a UI issue or problem with the game. You're all using this feature in a way it was not intended to be used. The double click of a HQ unit is a "selection" command intended for moving organic groups of units. However, we've all trained ourselves to use this to see which units are under control of HQ units when in fact, this feature can more easily be done by only single clicking on the HQ. So I suggest, instead of complaining about it, retrain your thinking.