Rick

Wow, I expected this to be CMSF in WWII, but it's even better than that. Graphics are improved everywhere, even the interface. Lower situationan awareness for your troops makes it an entirely different game. I had an entire advance stalled by one anti-tank gun, only because I couldn't find him, frustrating, but also means this is an excellent game. Unfortunately, I'm in the midst of replacing my desktop and my laptop can barely handle it. For example it was running along fine, until two more tanks arrived, then it was all over.

This is actually one of the most interesting threads on this forum and I wish more people who deny businesses rights to protect their intellectual property would read. The important part being that with the FB/Google business model there is more going on than what the average customer sees, or there is no way they could be making the huge sums they are. In the end, charging a fair price for use of the intellectual property is probably the best approach for customer and business alike.

Saw this in another thread recently and thought the idea merited it's own thread. The main deficiency I see is there should be an easier way to have vehicles traveling at approximately the same speed is our troops. Maybe this could be accomplished through allowing us more precise control of speed. It would also be cool if we could command a tank to stop when a specific infantry unit does. Something like the infantry unit is on hunt, spots an enemy and stops; the tank doesn't see anything but determines that it should stop too because the infantry does.

I don't know. I don't lose that many warriors, Scimitars OTOH.

Heck, I think I find the British Forces expansion to be the best part of CMSF yet, which is a complete surprise to me.

I'm really enjoying the Brit forces. Only complaint is their squads are so darn small. They go from full force to no longer an effective force really quickly.

No joke about time flying as you get older. It doesn't seem possible that I've been doing this for ten years now. BTW, the screenshot looks fantastic. I'm the type of guy that a gameplay detail would've been a much bigger tease though.

Getting about six missions into USMC campaign. Computer goes to load next scenario, gets to 15% and then stops loading. Vista task manager says CMSF not responding. Any ideas?

This issue is the only thing I've noticed wrong with 1.06. OTOH, it's allowing me to kick some serious butt.

There is little that I miss, but I would say that Hull down command, and the gigantic variety of scenarios. I also miss being better at it. My performance at CMSF has been way worse than earlier games.

I knew there had to be someone commenting on those beautiful screenshots, took me a couple of minutes to find this discussion though. Most anxious to see the list of fixed and tweaked things though.

I thought I didn't see any artillery land. Man he must've been responding to the spotter, certainly wasn't anything else on that hill for him to fear. A couple more shots from his main gun and there probably wouldn't have been anyone left alive on the hill.

So I called in an emergency, point, anti-armor strike and a couple minutes later there's this thick black smoke between the spotter and the tank. Was that artillery smoke? I also learned that T72s are complete murder on infantry, wiping out whole squads in a single shot.

Phillip, hope you didn't think I was insulted, just explaining that I would react differently to the two different situations. My feelings on V1.04 are essentially what I was getting at in my fist post. I find it enjoyable and playable although I don't find it as wowing as CMx1. The thing is though in my mind I don't think that is much a problem with CMSF as it is the fact that CMBO was the first 3d, simultaneous execution, tactical level simulation, that tried to evaluate based on real math and data rather than assigned armor values, and it was pretty for a wargame too. CMSF is an evolutionary advancement on that rather than completely innovative. In other words, CMSF is a good game that had expectations placed upon it that are impossible to live up to. Even though I like CMSF, I really wish BFC had applied their innovation to a completey different sub-genre of wargame. Like see what they could do revamping their air combat games perhaps. Apply their innovation to operational or strategic gaming.

The only problem with that analogy is that for photographers a camera is a tool and a game is well, a game. Although, still not a bad point. One thing causing disagreement is I think there are widely varying opinions on the state of the game at v1.04. I think we can all agree about initial release though. Pro level cameras are kind of a niche market already. That's the main reason they cost so much, the camera companies just can't turn much volume with them.

One thing that I wanted to add to the market forces discussion that has been going on here, is that there are some industries that respond strongly to other forces than those commonly considered "market forces." I suspect that wargaming is one of those. I apologize for bringing up the photography analogy again, but there are certainly decisions that I don't let market forces make for me, such as what subjects to photograph. I photograph that which I am passionate about. I suspect that if wargaming were to reach the point where market forces were the only thing driving it, the genre would disappear entirely. This would be some of the logic for stating that the attitude we show developers might impact availability of the games, they're not just doing it for the money, as there isn't that much money in it. No one likes doing stuff for people when insults are the thanks you get. I'm not saying we should happily take our messed up CMSF and be happy, as there still is a customer/merchant relationship here. I'm only saying the attitude that has previously been called the "witch hunt" is quite likely counterproductive. BFC needs to know that we expect CMSF fixed and that we will most likely be more cautious with the next release, but I think that's about as far as the negativity needs to go.

'Card, good points definitely. However, this is a business that without some support from the customers, might disappear. Not like making Windows where most of the world hating Microsoft isn't going to mean that next year we won't be able to find an OS to run our computer. As Dave Dash said, I'd rather have a CMSF that needed some serious help at first than none at all.

Another case of perspective I agree with those facts for the most part, some of the bugs were the type that could've easily been missed, many it's hard to imagine that they could've been. I'm not angry about it though. Maybe it's because I haven't had nearly as much time to play the game as I'd like and I find it quite playable now, although still needing improvement. I certainly hope they never let that situation with a distributor pop up again. I can totally see how that could happen. That's why with the book project that I am now working on I haven't even started looking for a publisher until I knew for sure I could deliver. I have now confirmed that to myself, so I will begin to search for a publisher. Granted I can make the book better with more time, but I probably have the material I need to go to press in a month or two, if I an write that fast. Anyhow, doesn't anyone have a solution to my joystick dilemma? I actually read an internet article about this somewhere, where it was discussed how good joysticks are few and far between now because of the shrinking popularity of combat flight sims. What I would ideally like to see is something like the Battlefront guys' earlier air war games but with some sort of easier to manage control system. I've yet to see a game of that type with an intuitive method of controlling the planes. Not that I would know how to set that up. Combat flight sims hold a lot of promise if I could solve the joystick availability thing and find one that the game really emphasizes tactics. Most seem to emphasize hand/eye coordination.

I haven't tried Falcon 4.0. Does anyone have a good idea of where to get a reasonably good force feedback joystick that connects via USB or firewire for a reasonable price? There doesn't seem to be many around anymore, and the ones that are, are quite expensive. Because I would love to try either Falcon 4.0 or the game where you get all of UbiSoft's like Il2 and Pacific Fighers in one package, but my joystick won't connect to my new computer.

The difference in peoples abilities with these games is interesting. The only thing I do well with infantry is if I'm defending I can usually do a good job of making sure that my enemy's tanks don't have good infantry support. I think my weakness is that I'm lousy at foreseeing all the possible locations my enemy might have automatic weapons that will quickly cause me heavy casualties. Oh well, at operational level games I'm just not very good, period. I'm torn as to my feelings toward them too. I like how you can see your impact on the battle better than in a game at CM's level, however, my main interest in the military lies in the equipment and you get to play around with that stuff directly in a CM level game. My main interest is actually naval aviation, but I've never found an air warfare game that I've really been happy with.

I may have been more interested in infantry, but I proved to be so bad at handling it in the CMx1 games. Give me a couple Hetzers and tell me to stop Pershings and Sherman Jumbos, that's where I shine.

Phillip, absolutely there is something here about the perspective issue as I agree with you about the facts you state about CMSF (still broken, infantry behavior sometimes way messed up) the difference is in attitude towards those facts. I'm not sure what is the origin of the difference in perspective, but there you have it. One thing I noticed that seems way more civilized here than in the camera issue I mentioned is that on those forums there was a lot of back and forth about "you're a moron because you like the camera" "yeah, well obviously you don't know what the *&%&%* you're doing because the focusing problem is obviously operator error rather than a hardware problem." There has been a little of that here, but not like over on that forum.

I am not currently involved in PBEM too busy and I haven't been able to reconnect with the opponents I had when we discovered the really bad bugs regarding PBEM. The PBEM bugs were in my opinion the most serious there ever were actual crashes and troops refusing to disembark were what I saw. As to how long I play CMSF all night when I get the chance, Hammertime is a great scenario, athough I'm not playing it well as most of my infantry is dead now. True that the word whining can poison the discussion and I apologize for that. The complaints are legetimate, my only complaint with the complaints is that they tend to be overly dramamtic. Back to the camera analogy, what do people want other than the problem fixed, do they literally want a pound of flesh?

One reason I wanted to write this is to make sure that there are a few voices telling Battlefront, "ok, we're furstrated with the bugs (also lack of artillery smoke) and we expect you to fix them, but in general we really like this game. Another social phenomenon showing its head here is that the unhappy people talk (or write in this case) louder than the happy people.

I am a photographer and Canon recently released a new camera the Mk III and there was great expectaions surrounding it. When released some had focusing difficulties. You would've thought they committed a genocide by the response. Now even after they've introduced a program to fix this problem many are still griping, some saying they just wish Canon would admit the problem; aren't they doing so by instituting a plan to fix it. Personally, I bought the camera, haven't had the focusing problems and am ecstatically happy with it. This kind of reminds me of the way things have played out with CMSF. Tremendous expectations of the game that when release had problems that BFC admitted to. Personally, I still feel this is a good game, with some bugs obviously. I have faith that BFC will work out the significant ones. No software is ever 100% bug free. I think the biggest disappointment is that it wasn't the revolution that CMBO was. Quite frankly, how could it be? I believe that if we'd get our expectations in check with reality, we'd still be frustrated with the bugs, but in general like the game and love it when the bugs get worked out. I just wish I had more time to play it. My real life doesn't allow me to play it as much as I did CMBO when it was released. I played CMBO about 70% of my waking hours upon release. Both situations kind of remind me of Star Wars: Phantom Menace; a reasonably good movie that was very disappointing relative to the huge expectations we had on it based on the first three (I actually think first two films, as Return of the Jedi wasn't that fantastic either.)