ASL Veteran

The only one who could answer that question would be Steve and I'm pretty confident that he's not talking. So, with that in mind, my completely uninformed guess would be that they would space the releases of stuff being ported over to Steam a couple of months apart. Maybe four to six months apart would be my guess, but that's just me guessing. I would also guess that perhaps since they started with Shock Force 2 that they would go in order of original release for each base game. You probably wouldn't want to just put them all onto Steam all at once because your customers wouldn't be able to buy them all at once so it seems sensible to space them out. I'm sure there is also a lot of conversion work that needs to be done on each game before they can go onto Steam and since Shock Force 2 is the first one and nobody but BFC and Slitherine know how long that work takes there is no way for us to know how long that process is. Whatever work it does take is doubtless going to be applied sequentially to each game as it's next in line for release which would also contribute to the time it takes between releases. judging from the popular new release information on Steam it does seem like the release was a successful one, but I'm not sure that Steam actually shows exact sales figures (I don't think so but I don't know for sure) so there is no way to be certain.

Maybe the OP is pointing out a possible typo rather than the sale price? Certainly if they are saying that Show Force 2 is on sale then I'm not sure what game that is . Unless that's the OPs typo - not sure.

Ultimately any designer has to make personal choices about the soft factors that he assigns to the units and those soft factors may / should be influenced by how the scenario or campaign plays out during testing. However, Ts4ever and Bulletpoint bring up some excellent points to consider. I will generally start with a sort of baseline from what I know about the units involved and modify to match that. I do follow a couple of general guidelines though. Because of high turnover I have adopted a policy of almost never assigning any experience level higher than veteran. The only exception that I will make is with small units such as tank crews, HQ units, snipers, and various teams if the situation is warranted. These units are small enough that they could develop a level of cohesion and continuity that would be consistent with how I view the various soft factors. A full strength rifle squad would simply be too large a unit and subject to such turnover that assigning anything higher than 'veteran' seems unlikely to happen even in what might be considered 'elite' units (which aren't always as 'elite' as some might think). I never paid too much attention to command values until, during the course of creating one scenario with late war German units, I found that the German conscript and green troops armed with lots of automatic weapons would simply cause US squads to rapidly melt if I didn't adjust the command rating down from +2 to either +1 or 0. The firepower effectiveness of the command value is fairly dramatic when combined with an abundance of automatic weapons. For the HQ units a higher experience can be justified in some cases because, for example in the Soviet army, apparently tank unit commanders would hand pick their own crews and unless the tank was damaged or destroyed those crewmembers would stay together for as long as the commander retained his position. So you could theoretically see a big experience disparity in a Soviet tank platoon for example - you might see a Veteran platoon commander with a good modifier but the individual tanks in the platoon could be rated as green or even conscript in some cases given the level of training common during certain time frames. How would you rate a squad that had a veteran core of a solid squad leader, maybe two or three long term veteran squad members, and five new green replacements (or even Ukrainian 'Booty' solders)? How much weight do you give the squad leader in that situation and how much weight do you place on the replacements? If a unit hasn't had any replacements for a while then you might be able to justify a rating higher than veteran, but only in situations where perhaps a battalion has been in continuous combat and had been reduced to 100 men or something like that. In that instance the continuity could justify a higher experience rating, but then the morale factor comes into play. How motivated are those survivors to keep on fighting? Ultimately you have to just take a stab at it and see how it plays out during playtesting. How the campaign plays out is ultimately more important than some notion of 'historical accuracy' because the reality is that there probably isn't any sort of solid guide to what is accurate or not accurate. I suppose that if you just made a blanket setting for all of a certain side's troops to be 'Elite' then some gamers would look at that as odd or maybe off a bit, but short of doing something dramatic like that you should probably just do what's best to have the scenario or campaign play out the way you intend it to play out.

IIRC, the few good men took over all the other places that had mods and scenarios because the other sites weren't able to continue operating. I'm pretty sure the BFC one was absorbed during that process. The guy who runs the few good men stepped up to the plate and took on the project of saving everything and setting it up on his site. At least, that's my vague recollection. The guy who runs the few good men checks these forums occasionally so he can confirm that or I guess say that I'm not remembering it correctly if I'm mistaken.

the ARMA player video is probably the one that can be found on the video tab when you click on the Shock Force game on Steam. It has something like 83k views in one or two days when I last checked.

Yeah, apparently the time to edit was increased from when I tried it yesterday. I was doing it while all the upgrades were happening though so it might have been related to the upgrade process and not necessarily whatever time was assigned for the allowance of edits.

Yeah, I found the button, but when I typed my edit and saved it (my post was three minutes old) I got a message that the time allowed for editing was past and my edit couldn't be saved

Is it just me or did the forums just change? The layout looks different and the ability to edit a post seems to have dropped to less than a minute after posting or something.

I have some memories of when I first tried CMSF. I had purchased and played all the CMx1 games but because modern didn't appeal to me I didn't get CMSF. One day a friend and I tried the CMSF demo in Real Time and it was way too fast for me to keep up with. I then tried another demo scenario against the AI and I asked a few questions on the forum. The first thing I recall asking about was something about not being able to move the view during a certain phase or something like that. Maybe the view was frozen prior to movie playback and I said I wanted to be able to reposition the view prior to starting the playback? I'm not sure. I also asked what happened to the 'Blue Bar'. Everyone on the forum was pleasant and respectful and I seem to recall that shortly after my questions Steve announced that the 'Blue Bar' was going to make a reappearance. There was much rejoicing.

An engine upgrade would be CM3. Hopefully that will show up eventually.

Okay, well I have to ask the obvious - sorry. Down by the red button you should see four arrow buttons - those are active when you have a movie turn right?

That alone makes the move worthwhile

August 42 might be Kharkov which just preceded the German attack towards Stalingrad IIRC or perhaps something around Moscow.

doesn't reactive armor look sort of like that? It does look like logs though, although maybe it's some sort of strange looking reactive armor.

Apparently the vision ports and 'spotting ability' from the earlier Soviet tanks are very poor. No cupola? Two man turret as well IIRC for the T34. No radio either. I can already hear the complaints about 'why can't my T34 see that Pz III sitting out in the open right in front of me?'

The only way you would get points for destruction of the enemy without actually destroying them is if they have to exit. So apparently the scenario was designed for the Americans to exit the map somewhere - perhaps you are pursuing them while they are retreating? That's the only thing I can think of - if you start the scenario and the Americans begin retreating then your objective is to destroy the Americans before they can exit the map - presumably the opposite map edge. With exit conditions you gain the destruction victory points for every enemy unit that remains on the map (and no points for the ones that exit) and at the time you cease fired nobody had exited yet thus they are all counted as being destroyed. The game is working as intended - the designer might be able to have accounted for the possibility of an immediate cease fire by using some sort of parameters condition to offset it. At the same time though - who would load a battle up to cease fire immediately afterwards rather than playing it out? Not something most designers would think of or perhaps account for. Maybe in a campaign that is always a possibility, but I generally create standalones and so the possibility that someone would load up a standalone and just ceasefire seems remote. I don't know who made it (wasn't me) but I'm sure they just didn't think of the immediate cease fire option when they came up with the victory conditions or they either would have come up with something different or they would have accounted for it somehow.

On the victory screen shot only one check mark shows so only one victory condition was completed. I assume that was one of the attacker's victory conditions - so obviously not terrain or a unit objective. What was the objective that you were able to achieve, was it just a parameter objective? Theoretically if you had a parameter objective of keeping say, fifty percent of your force alive and you get half the total points for that, then that could cause the cease fire situation becoming a victory for you. Especially if the defender has no terrain objectives and perhaps has a parameter objective that is the opposite of yours. It also appears from the in game shot that the Americans are all sitting on terrain objectives (probably yours) but from the victory screen it would appear that the Americans don't get any points for sitting on those objectives, so they must only be objectives for you (attacker) otherwise the Americans would have gained points for them - and yet they gain no points for anything.

If the scenario is a defensive scenario then you would naturally start on the objectives and get points for them while the AI attacker would have to try and take the objectives. That's going to happen if you immediately ceasefire with any scenario that you are defending in. I'm assuming that you are the defender in that scenario, although I'm not familiar with that battle in specific. If you are attacking and you get a major victory when you ceasefire immediately then yeah, something is wrong. Not so much if you are the defender though since, by selecting ceasefire you never give the AI an opportunity to capture the objectives.

Maybe an ROTC instructor required it for something. Many US colleges and universities (maybe high school too, although I don't remember for sure) have ROTC programs and there are a few military academies outside of west point (what's that one in Virginia - VMI or something?). Texas A&M began as a military academy as I recall and still has a large military presence.

MikeyD might be overstating it a bit, but I have watched videos of players playing a scenario who say nothing when they get the drop on the enemy but complain bitterly whenever the enemy gets the drop on them - sometimes within the same minute of action. It's just the nature of the beast - selective memory.

It just serves as a testament to that weapon's firepower.

It would be more enlightening if you had the team selected during the video so we could see what they could see. If the team was selected then the tank wouldn't appear if they couldn't see it and it would appear if they could see it. As it is, the tank is buttoned up so … not sure what they are supposed to do to it. They could potentially have tossed a grenade after they stopped but it appears that the tank was knocked out already. They aren't being fired upon so no reason to stop moving to take cover. I don't remember if the hunt command stops movement upon spotting an enemy or if they have to be fired upon though so maybe the 'problem' is a valid one depending upon how the command works. Even so, it would have been better to have the team selected so there would be no doubt. Just the act of moving in front of an enemy unit until the team reaches it's destination doesn't really reveal anything one way or the other.

A lot of things are put in training manuals and leaflets, but the actual fact of what happens in the heat of battle seldom matches the ideal of what a leaflet might expect. We have had discussions about what happens when a tank is hit by fire and I've collected as many first hand accounts as I was able to. Here is just one example of what happens when your AFV is destroyed in battle. As you hopefully can surmise reaching around and packing your belongings are one of the last things a crewman is thinking about and in most cases a bailing crewmember would likely be completely unarmed. There are many aspects of the game that is more forgiving than in real life - like the fact that in the game every crewmember who survives the killing hit on the tank gets out. In many cases that isn't true. The only instance in which the number of submachine guns being carried in the vehicle would be relevant would be in situations where the crew voluntarily dismounts and does some recon or something while dismounted.

When CMFI was released it was not possible to close assault tanks with infantry in buildings - the only exception was open topped vehicles from the second floor or higher IIRC. However, a great debate ensued within the beta halls, arguments and sacrifices were made, blood was spilt, and eventually Charles relented and allowed infantry to close assault from buildings. If they aren't assaulting from buildings anymore then Charles changed it back while nobody was looking. So anyway, if someone says that they can't then they either aren't updated past whatever version was released post CMFI base game, or it was changed back for some reason without anyone noticing. Vehicles will usually need to be sitting near the building in question for a period of time before the infantry will assault it - it's not an immediate thing. Vehicles spot so well though that infantry don't usually get to remain for very long in such close proximity.

The Blitz website and The Few Good Men website are good for finding opponents.