Holman

Reloading and pistols? Which units do you mean, and under what conditions?

Fortunately, we don't have to wait for official scenario releases. The tools included with the game are the same used to make the official scenarios, and most of the "official" scenario-makers continue to produce battles long after release. There's a lot of talent in this community.

The CM series doesn't allow any modding of models or underlying data, just surface graphics (and, of course, all the excellent tools for scenario design). Modding the 1980's would be impossible because only 2017 vehicles and troops are included in the game. The Cold War will have to wait for another release.

Nope, never happens. Once a soldier is red, they are out of play. My guess is that people have seen red soldiers disappear from the squad list when buddy aided, and, losing count, they assumed a soldier had gone from red back to OK.

I like the idea of sortable date field, but more for WW2 than Black Sea (where I suspect scenario designers will go "off script" pretty soon anyway).

Terrific stuff, Vein! Thanks.

We-Go at Iron difficulty. People worry that the requirement of "friendly spotting" will make Iron a hassle, but in practice it is really no issue at all--it took me about six turns to get used to it, and now I can't imagine going back. *You* immediately see the location of all of your units when you have none of them selected, but each individual unit still has to deal with limited situational awareness and the morale issues that come with it. Isolated units no longer have Superman confidence, which leads to more realistic results.

WeGo for me, iron difficulty. I can see the appeal of RT, but to me it feels more realistic and immersive to have to plan ahead and then watch the situation play out. I also play a lot of PBEM, so WeGo is standard for me.

Or the story could involve an eruption of winter fighting after months of tense ceasefire.

I'm not BTS, but I would say that winter terrain and conditions will certainly be added in a future module.

Thanks for the quick replies, all!

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I can't see a difference between the APS and ERA Bradley variants. Is the APS system visible as a mechanism on the model? I don't know much about the APS. How does the system depicted in the game actually work? Do we see it in action when the vehicle takes fire?

About $80,000 a shot.

My install must be OK, because I've checked several random scenarios and I don't see anything like this.

Considering the amount of excellent game material this small team has put out in the (just) seven years since CMSF appeared, I have absolutely no problem with their production model.

The forms must be obeyed. We still haven't had a single joke thread designed to make you think the poster already has the game.

Wait--that was it, wasn't it? WASN'T IT??? F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5...

I just want to know when to deploy the Refresh Monkeys. Already I can hear them rattling their cages and gnashing their little Refresh Monkey teeth. They are hungry. Oh, so hungry...

I think the biggest factors influencing strategy in this scenario are political, not purely military. How does Moscow most quickly establish a "fact on the ground" of Russian victory that they can convincingly sell to the world and use to bargain for the outcome they want? In a fast moving modern war, leaving whole cities unconquered in the rear isn't the handicap that it would have been in WW2. In fact, city-fighting that produced civilian suffering would be the quickest way to lose the propaganda war and the narrative in the global press. Would Ukraine decide to exploit this fact by basing appropriate units in urban areas, hoping that Russia would not risk wholesale urban assault? How might the city fighting be conducted? We could see scenarios where the Red player, not just the Blue, needs to avoid destruction of populated civilian neighborhoods. I can easily imagine a scenario or campaign featuring under-gunned Ukrainian troops in an urban alamo cut off by Russians while US/NATO attempt to lift the siege.

Someone always squeals within 30 minutes of the "secret" pre-release.

That AI is not always scripted by time (although it can be); it's often scripted by triggers that react to player actions and the achievement of objectives. Still, putting time pressure on players is a way of making situations urgent and exciting. The CM scenario designers are the best I've seen. I've seldom (in scores of games) encountered a scenario that seemed "broken" because it was too short.

Time limits are a fact of scenario balance--designers have a wide range of choices, and if they choose to give you 45 minutes instead of three hours, there's probably a reason for that. However, you can chuck all of that if you want. You can take any scenario and tweak it in the editor to your liking, including changing the ending time. (I believe the maximum is 4 hours and 15 minutes.)

Ian Buruma's The Wages of Guilt is a good comparative study of how Germany and Japan have dealt with their WW2 legacies. Spoiler: On the whole, the Germans have been a lot better about it.

Thanks for making this available for download! A PDF is much more comfortable than the in-browser flip-book display.

I'm also confused about where to find the new installers if we already bought everything piecemeal.