medlinke

I've never understood the wargamer guilt argument or the attitude that "you must love war" to play it. A huge chunk of popular entertainment is based on conflict of some type. Whether it's football, or Mortal Kombat video games, there's some level of conflict at the root of a lot of entertainment. The fact that I choose to my entertainment based on my interest in historical settings isn't called into question when I read historical fiction like the Sharpe's Rifles series or the Aubrey Maturin series! If I read a biography of Rommel, it doesn't make me a Nazi sympathizer. Why would my choice of interactive entertainment somehow create a new line of logic that would lead to such ridiculous false assumption? Guilt? Absolutely not. Empathy and Compassion for the position both soldiers, military and civilian leaders must have faced? Absolutely. I can't imagine a higher stakes leadership challenge than wartime leadership. That said, I also can't imagine studying history that's 1 year old, let alone 75 years old, without some kind of interactive component to experiment for myself. Video games and board games make excellent lab settings for this despite their obvious shortcomings.

Given how "beat up" Battlefront gets upon every new release, I can't imagine from a human standpoint wanting to put the game out before Christmas. There's just too much hassle and timing everyone's schedule around holidays from now until after New Year, at least in my world, can be a total bear (pun intended). I'd love to see it sometime in mid-December, but I'd much rather have Battlefront comfortable with their product and ready to give it the red carpet treatment for the rollout and hectic period following any release in separating the actual bugs and technical issues from the chaff. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. CMBS will be with us soon enough I'm sure!

I'm still waiting on those space lobsters.

I thought Steam was optional. Are companies forced to sell through their marketplace? Does this restriction apply to companies who choose direct sale only as their delivery and sales methodology?

Just a big thanks to BFC. Been around a long time. I'm a lot quieter now than I was back in college when I chanced upon this series from an article previewing "Computer ASL" in some forum or another... After nearly 15 years of playing and enjoying Combat Mission games I think it's worthwhile to just say a simple thank you. There's plenty to grouse about, but at the root is still love for this game series and the company that continues to put them out. Thank you!

I remember back in the CMBO days people liked to try the 101st D-Day night drop scenario from as close to the unit's perspective as possible in order to try to re-create the feeling of Command and Control issues faced by the units. The First Person view, aside from bing a boon to folks who love swanky screenshots, will be that players who want that extra challenge can get back into it again. I cannot wait to see it in action.

Very cool. Just curious about when the 3.0 engine releases might happen for the rest of the series. I realize that's probably coming later, but I was wondering if anyone knew what kind of timeframe. Can't wait to try this one out though!!!

What scenarios is this based upon?

I'd like to see: Blackhawk Hind Troop carried AA weapons I wouldn't envision scenarios loaded up with these options, but deployment via chopper or a scenario featuring an air component makes good sense. I know BFC has a hard time with coding up anything in the Z axis, but these would be incredibly important weapon systems in even company sized engagements and would create some awesome scenario design opportunities.

AFAIK, there is no way to do this. I'm not even sure that something like Parallels on Mac would solve your issue because I don't know what 3d libraries are being used by BFC.

Not in my experience travelling in Europe. lol

Do you have a source for that? I'm very curious because all I've ever read and seen modeled in tactical level games like ASL and ATS suggests otherwise. I'd love to pick out an epic mistake to lord over my friends!

I'm talking about dropping Demo Charges on them. Anything with a backblast wouldn't get fired from within an enclosed structure without at least a MAJOR chance for injuring others in the firing. I can see why they've not allowed that within CMBN. In terms of driving in a city with impunity, I think the issue comes down to how credible the detection model employed by buttoned up tanks would be. If the tank is crew exposed...sorry to say it, but every infantryman would try to be Bobby McDermitt (an NBA star of the time) with their nades. You don't need to blow up the tank when you can kill the guys driving it after all.

A shared folder in Dropbox already automatically notifies folks of updated files if they're running the Dropbox client on their computer.

I'm surprised there's not some bonuses for infantry vs. AFV in "city" terrain because of the vulnerability of AFV in cities. Likewise, open top vehicles SHOULD be susceptible to attacks from a higher elevation since units would be shooting down into the vehicle.

That's some great praise for the campaign. I'll have to check it out.

I'm stoked to see SF isn't dead. I'm not keen on a NATO vs. The World scenario because it really just seems kind of absurd. How about something like near future Korean peninsula conflict with Japan, Russia, China, and possibly Aussie interdiction.

I'm definitely jonesing for some variety as well.

I second that emotion because elevation contour lines can be tricky as you jump between the editor and 3d Preview to check out the LOS issues, etc.

I'm trying my hand at creating a little engagement based on the actions near Dead Man's Corner. Basically just putting the player in the role of the 3/501 trying to stave off Germans fleeing south from St. Come-du-Mont on the 8th of June 1944. I'm basing the map on both a WW2 source and Google Earth with elevation data as well as pictures from the crossroads from today. From what I can see so far, the editor makes it tricky to nail the scale of things properly so I'm going to call it "based on." Real location, real units, real action, but somewhat fictionalized placement of individual buildings that only represent roughly where those locations actually were.

I was just editing up a scenario's map. I was about an hour into it when... I accidentally clicked EXIT instead of SAVE!!! My fault. That said...I'd LOVE to see a dummy message that asks "Are you sure?" Thankfully I have a hand drawn map to go from so I can re-create my map, but this seems like a useful change that can save much pain!

I think the CM:BN dev team nailed it with their treatment of bocage and fighting in Normandy. I'm incredibly impressed with the game despite a few personal nit-picks. The one thing that stands up is just how frustrating an experience this must have been for troops fighting in this dense terrain. The frustration of defense and attack is well portrayed as is the challenge of C2. If you're not keen on bocage battles, I think you're going to be seeing a lot more non-bocage stuff coming out of the fan made scenarios and campaigns. It seems reasonable that the majority of the scenarios provided with the game feature it quite heavily as it's a defining feature of Norman terrain and is something the uniquely identifies June 44 in France from other periods/locales of the war.

I'm moving all my updates and posts over to Tech Support, where I've got a specific thread about this. I will definitely give that a shot Rune. I've just been messing around mostly to see if it's a feature and not a bug with my troubleshooting.

I'm running a Core 2 Quad 9400 2.6GHz with 4gb RAM & a PCI-e GTX 460. I can run ARMA 2 at full detail and over a mile draw distance at a smooth framerate and if you've played that one you know how intensive it can be on computers. I still get this issue. The problem isn't one of graphic power. When I click on the part of the battlefield where the soldiers are they suddenly appear. Then troops in other parts of the battlefield disappear and I have to click on them. I can still see the tracers and smoke, etc. from the invisible part of the battlefield, but not the troops or icons. It's very annoying and strange.

I think Battlefront's approach for CM:SF was pretty solid. They spent a good while just patching and fixing the core game. After that point the releases seemed pretty regular. Having said that, there isn't near as much to fix in CM:BN as there was in CM:SF. So perhaps we'll get some "feature" patches for the core game as the development on the next module happens to prep CM:BN prepares for CM:SB (Space Bunnies of course! Still waiting on it Steve...) There's a ton of content in the game that belies the number of released scenarios and campaigns so that should hold ya over!