gatsby

Yep...I've been playing or trying to play this game since it came out..including the demo...and I thought well there must be somethign wrong with me.I am missing something..I just don't like RTS..no? that's not it...but last night I got so frustrated I played a quick battle of CMBO just for fun.. I haven't played it in over a year...I had so much fun..I forgot what a gas that series is...then I finished a turn I had started on VASL playing a classic ASL scenario...that was great too..and then I played Championship Manager and had a great time with that...TOW came off the hardrive...

[ April 20, 2007, 06:16 PM: Message edited by: gatsby ]

Thanks...i am working my way through the map editor doc and the mission triggers doc...I think I want to have a company ..squads etc wander through a map..or series of maps ..running into various forces..like a small recon unit would..engaging..pulling back...maybe bringing support etc..Just dealing with a sniper or snipers could be cool...so I am reading this stuff...LOL Looking at existing scenarios I just find confusing to unpack..Is there a small unit one, where there are only a few squads ..that is what I meant by a template...if not I will continue learning about truggers..its interesting in and of itself... thanks

I would like to create a mission and have a couple of squads take out an MG42...Is there an easy way to do it? A template? I looked through at a mission using the mission editor, and I have looked through the mission editor manual..and the rects and points and such have me a tad confused... I thought it would real cool because you can go to ground with these guys to get a couple of squads to take a machine gun...small group tactivs with individual soldiers..I know the scale of the map is intended for long range fights...but when I heard about the game I thought i would be able to do this..maybe the scale is just wrong... Thanx

Yes one of the problems in any analysis is that the prejudices, assumptions, world view, etc creeps in and if ir is not copped to..there is a problem in the analysis...that was in essence the post modernists downfall..so your point is well taken...however I wasn't feeling superior so it is a fault of my communication skills and I apologize for any hint of that..I actually p fall on all sides of the issue..as i get older this seems to happen more.. I do understand the company's position, the people who were sick of the complaining and the people who were complaining.. in the last 48 hours I have felt all of the above... What I was struck by though was how this forum exemplifies some of the larger issues confronting us especially this resurgence of private power and a kind of misplaced trust in institutions of any kind..and the human desire to be part of a group to find a them for us to identify ourselves against... I do not think history repeats itself at all.. Context always changes...and history is after ll interpretation and that interpretation is more reflective of the person and time that the historian is writing from than of the time they are writing about.. my pal Thucididyes again... there are parallels that can be cherry picked...but of course where you put the frame says more about you than what you are framing... and I don't agree that we don't learn from history...we don't have human sacrifices..we don't believe that we have seven orifices because there are seven planets...we don't have organized slavery...and on and on...human nature is mutable..depending on the environment..as Darwin said all evolution is a local adaptation to a local environment.. John

Since I sat refreshing this forum for the better part of a day and evening I had occasion to actually read most of the posts …excuse me for the length of the post… There has been an interesting meta discussion going on around here...A bunch of people were upset that the pre-ordered promise was delayed and is now actually defunct...They were being called whiners and complainers by a group who profess to be more understanding and mature than the whiners and complainers... Also anybody who had a problem with various aspects of the demo were told to be quiet and have some patience and that they didn’t know anything about anything…Of course those very same problems are being complained about by others now that the game has been released. In fact I have noticed a number of the same individuals who were castigating others for “whining” are now themselves doing the same “whining” but of course claiming that they are trying to be supportive and helpful… Both groups of course have someone to blame...the whiners have the company ...the mature understanding folk can feel superior to the whiners and blame them for their immature behavior... This is of course nothing new in the continuing development between public and private concerns in the modern era...the consumer and the corporation... The corporation demands that the consumer pay money for a product no matter how frivolous and no matter how important(from games to health care)...if the individual reneges on his promise to pay then he is liable for sanctions including criminal ones...and will not get the product or the service. If the corporation reneges on their promise regarding a service or product then they are not liable to any criminal liability but can be sanctioned for pecuniary damages...even though it is rare...The corporation under US law is treated as an individual under the 14th amendment but is also considered to have a limited liability...BTW the 14th amendment was set up in order to ensure that former slaves would have rights under the constitution...out of the first 100 cases brought to the supreme court ..two had to do with rights of former slaves...98 were brought by corporations in order that they have all the rights of individuals but none of the liability... What is interesting however to me here and is a change in the discourse.. is that the consumers have chosen sides...forgetting that there is a business relationship between them and the corporation.. they have decided that the whiners are not being good consumers ...it reminds me a bit of the kids in class who used to argue the teacher's position... The bottom line is that the company screwed up for whatever reasons... somebody who points that out or complains about it or wants to be compensated for a broken promise is not a lesser individual who somehow cannot cope with his craven wants...the whole consumer society relies on craven wants to survive... Empathy is not a tool to understand behavior of an institution which solely exists to make profit...If you want an empathy exercise flip it around...I promise to pay the company 20 bucks lets say.. and I don't...I have good reasons for it..disaster.. tragedy...illness etc...the company will not care why I haven't paid them...they will want their money or they will take action...not a whole lot of understanding when it comes to the consumer...but a company will be the first to ask for understanding because they know that people, unlike institutions will most of the time give one another a break…This company here.. Battlefront …has consistently played the “the little guy” card…whenever there is a problem.. saying in essence.. look you guys are lucky we are even making these games…if we weren’t around you would be stuck with mindless graphics hungry not very realistic games…we are “little guys” so give us a break.. a little slack.. of course we don’t charge little guys prices and of course.. the nature of the market is such that if there is a demand somebody will fill it.. so if we weren’t around somebody else would be.. but still go easy… Its a small trivial thing.. a game...in the big picture...but most things are.. meaning is given.. it is not intrinsic...the public "commons" has narrowed considerably is the last twenty years...almost to nothing...this last century was the first time that the "public" had got their hands on the levers of power and had a bigger chunk of the total wealth circulating around...this happened because of the war this game modeled and another big one that proceeded it and the need for large conscript armies and the full backing of the citizens on the home front.. for this governments and private interests started sharing a little of the wealth… When the entire economic system (depression) collapsed the firewall that protects the private against the public went with it and so between two world wars and the depression…the public got a little bit more access to power than they had ever had...but slowly over the last 20 to 25 years or so.. private concerns have been clawing back the power that was given away by necessity to the disenfranchised…the loss of union power….the disparagement of public institutions, the growth of mega corporations, the sense that somehow public government is inefficient and corrupt as compared to private institutions(even though such private corruption tales such as Enron, the Savings and Loan scandal etc fill the news), and now we have arrived here… One group of consumers decides another is bad… whiners.. complainers.. one group takes it upon themselves to defend an institution which is devoted to profit…and not to the concerns pf individuals unless they happen to coincide… This is what has been happening to the society at large…In the 100 years or so in the US especially…the exigencies of private for profit business had to be mollified by the “public”. Government stepped in realizing that private interests rarely intersect with public ones. Business is supposed to make profit and if it doesn’t the shareholders and the company will complain and the company will not survive.. so it is not in its best interests to police itself unless it has a positive affect on its bottom line… However the public has been fragmented and has lost its traditional role…Instead it has allowed itself to be marginalized because some of its members have taken on the role of apologists for institutions and have turned on their fellows believing that the “whiners” are not as good citizens as they are because they don’t complain… The “market” is the best process we have found to allocate resources. But it has never been the central tenet of any society(including by the way the Phoenicians who were a mercantile society bar none)..it certainly has not been the “gauze” to view the society’s values… You guys probably are all amateur historians…so you should read or reread Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War … Not only is Athens a very good parallel (better than Rome) to the present day United States…(i.e. win good war against Imperial bad guys the Persians(read nazis or Soviets) and then think that any war you fight by definition after that must be good.. and then get bogged down in a ridiculous hegemonic war against Syracuse which scares everybody else in the world)...but Thucydides’s spends a great deal of time taking to task the citizens of Athens for abrogating their responsibilities as citizens and becoming interested in only money and as he put it their own private games…forgetting that the society has values beyond the parochial…forgetting the qualities that bind us…and being unable to see over the crest of the hill of our own selfish interests… Thanks for your indulgence.. I realize it’s a tad long… John

getting about 426,000...21 minutes to go...70 percent done...I am going to miss refreshing every few seconds for most of the day..it reminded me when there were just a few dial up slots in bbs and early internet...you had to keep dialing..waiting for that moment when you didn't hear the busy tone...but instead got that modem connection sound...

so I guess the hours of hitting the refresh button ..finally paid off...

me too thnx

okay that's all well and good.. and yes trying the demo would enable a more informed decision...but at this moment all we have is conjecture...and I have been waiting for somebody reasonably official to weigh in here..and I think the silence is indicative ...other threads I have looked at usually have someone who knows posting within a couple of days ..if not that day... I thought the people here might be interested that I actually had filled out the pre order form..saw this thread and stopped... gatsby

I was just about to buy this game and then I came upon this thread...Definetly not going to buy it now...if this is true the demo will even be frustrating...maybe I will go over and take another look at Strategic command.. You can't have any realistic simulation of tactics without cover..so this essentially is the same as other RTS games except without the resource management I agree..deal breaker... Gatsby

A few questions: Will there be another patch soon? Will it include the ability to edit squad strengths? Copy OOB's from one scenario to another? Will we be able to edit maps and units once an operation or scenario has begun?(We used to be able to do this) Will we be able to copy maps or parts of maps from one battle or operation to another? If these won't be in the upcoming patch, will it be in any patch or have you decided to wait for CM2... This is important to guys like me...I play a campaign style by myself..I have a company that I have set up in excel...each man has some attributes and every time a casuality occurs excel picks out who and how bad each guy is hit...Its obviously not historically accurate but it gives me a flavour for who survives and who doesn't... I model experience differently than BTS because in my limited exposure to observing combat and studying it I have seen that profiency(survivability)does change based on the intensity of a firefight...I agree with James Jones who posits that crack troops are just troops who have no more adrenaline left and have become numbed to their fight or flight response...the infamous phrase..lets bloody them..The few times I have seen men shoot at one another I'd have to agree...anyway in my little game, experience goes up a little quicker and flattens and then starts to fall..there is a window where experienced troops will not get wounded as readily as green troops but as teir experience mounts their willingness to expose themselves to danger also falls...also their ability to discern danger is heightened so they will not be as likely to charge a fixed emplacement say as a green troop who has no ground to measure potential danger against... I have been asking for some of these things for almost a couple of years and they were on THE LIST...It would just make it so much easier to set up a battle or operation...And not being able to edit the map operation is ludicrous...It just makes sense to be able to tweak the operation without having to replay the entire battle each time...Sometimes I might want a battle to go on...or want to edit out the eastern half of a map..etc...or I want to start some squads with less men or firepower... It seems slightly ahistorical to have every battle every operation start with all squads at full strength....and these restirctions on the editor..well...an editor that can't edit... Its a great game ..Nobody's denying that...But there are indications that the game is being shanghaied by those who want to make sure that nobody can cheat in their net games...I don't care if somebody can cheat.Its their loss.. This happened with ASL when the MMP crowd took over..all of a sudden all the rules were interpreted for tournament play and everybody seemed to forget that we were all just big kids playing a grownup game of army... Anyway would someone please let me know so I don't have to keep checking the board... John

Somebody on this board must know...what were the rogh percentages of replacements in the US Army in the Western theatre..What I want to know is this...the percentage of wounded men who were rotated back to the States? to an evac hospital and then to the pool and back to a frontline unit? and lastly what percentage of men were actually just patched up and put back in the same unit? I know the US army had a threshold..If you were wounded seriously to be evac'ed out so to speak then you were put in a general replacement pool and rotated into whatever unit needed replacements..but I want to know how many were not serious enough and just came right back... Thanks John

A few weeks ago I did a book review about Victor Klemperer's journal I will bear Witness...For those of you who don't know he was a jewish professor who had married an aryan and survived the war. His journal has been called one of the most important documents of the 20th century giving as it does such a clear picture of day to day life in germany... Anyway..I wrote this review and in it I refer to the bombing of Dresden as a war crime. A typo raises the casuality figure from 100,000 to 600,000...but...the letters the newspaper got...Aprt from the people who wanted to correct the error and there were a few.. there were also letters about what an anti-semite I must be (I'm half Jewish) and since Klemperer shows that most germans knew about teh holocaust(something I don't disagree with) then they all deserved to die(something I don't)... Anyway the kind of simple minded black and white ways of looking at the world are of course the offshoot of generations raised on us and them propanganda...but I was suprised to see such vehemence...I mean I gather dropping enough incidenary bombs to create a firestorm on purely civilian targets...children playing with teddy bears ..mother's breatsfeeding...old people rocking...does not qualify as a war crime... I was suprised to see the same reductive reasoning here..For those of you who are interested... http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20000805/362129.html As I said I know the correct death toll figures so you don't need to set me straight..LOL John

teamski LOL Yeah I rtead it along long time ago and again on the can a few years ago...he was in an airborne unit which by its very nature is designed to take heavy losses... Um Guys: These were things that were due to be in CM...Do a search on campaigns or my name(gatsby) and you will see I was discussing this with Steve...This is not stuff that I want added because it occurred to me... I can feel the topic take a swing here as some people are getting defensive about the game...Nobody is suggesting Diablo here...I currently play the board games of Worl in Flames and Advanced Squad leader...so I am not looking for anything that would not add to the realism...If the design team has decided to take this off the table so be it...I'd just like to know...As you can see from Wild Bill's comment ...tyhe beta team has been pushing for it or do ytou think they want to be play Queen's quest in Normandy... John