ASL Veteran

Well, technically there is an opponent finder forum located near the bottom of all the forum listings, but nobody really goes there.

I don't have a Mac so I don't know on those. Hopefully one of the Mac players can tell you.

what kind of computer and operating system are you using?

Scenario time can be tricky for designers to figure out. Some players will have plenty of time while others won't have enough time. So the option is there to allow some 'variable' time to be added to the end of the scenario by the designer if they choose to allow it. It's a random amount of time from zero extra time up to whatever the designer chooses to add. If the game continues into the variable extra time period that will not have any effect on the outcome of the game other than what you can accomplish within the extra time allotment. The difference now is that the game will end suddenly when the new time limit is reached without you knowing when it will end.

Did you actually test the global conditions without the use of the muddy terrain tiles? In other words, did you ever take an average quick battle map and set the global ground conditions to muddy and then drive stuff around on it? I would be curious to know what you got if you tried that. With no mud terrain tiles - just with the global conditions set to muddy and with an average QB map.

You are assuming that the game knows he's firing to no purpose. However, it's probably as simple as target armor arc and he's targeting armor. In other words, when he tells the sniper to fire using a target armor covered arc then he's telling the game to have his sniper fire at the tank itself, not necessarily the commander if his head happens to be poking out of the hatch. Therefore, whether the commander's head is poking out or not is not accounted for by the game since the tank itself is the target.

He's talking about AI plans. Just make sure that you set the correct friendly sides and you should be fine. Your AI truppen will align on the side of the wall that corresponds with the friendly edge for walls at ninety degree angles. For the diagonals it's pretty easy to get the troops on the correct side of the wall by not placing them on the wall action spots. Place them in the action spots in between the wall action spots on the side you want them to go on. The AI troops will then gravitate towards the corner of the action spot that touches the wall and they will line themselves up along the wall for you. There will be cases where you just can't get them to line up on the correct side because the friendly map edge isn't going to be on the correct side of the wall, but you should be able to get them to line up correctly the majority of the time.

Look, this is obviously a big issue for you and it's really irrelevant for me. I like it the way it is and you want it changed. I don't know about the initial poster, but everyone else who's in this thread supporting your position are quick battle players so that should tell you all you need to know about who this is important for. If you've never made an actual scenario from scratch then you wouldn't understand where I'm coming from or why points in the editor are irrelevant. You can take it as a put down if you want to, but it's not intended as one. It's simply a different way of doing things and a different perspective on what something is or isn't. If you want to put two trucks from opposing sides on a flat map and call it a scenario, who am I to say otherwise. Call it what you want to. So feel free to take your case to BFC - although I suppose you just have by posting in this thread. If they decide to make a change then so be it. As far as point values being simple to add - like anything we just don't know how simple it would be to add point values to the editor. It seems to me that it would be even more simple to increase the amount of points each player can spend for the different sized battles. You can already make your own quick battle maps and you don't need points in the editor to do that. So that's it, I'm going to check out of this circular discussion because it's obvious to me that no minds are going to be changed. Just be aware that there are opinions out there that don't match with your own. I'll now give you guys the last word if you want it.

Except that if they are just playing quick battles, then wouldn't it be better to make some alterations to the quick battle generator that will allow them to do what they want to do using the quick battle menus? That way you don't even need to go into the editor at all or alter it. I mean, if you aren't going to do even the basics like write a briefing or do an AI plan why would you even want to go into the editor if you could create what you wanted using the quick battle menus.

You are playing a quick battle then. You can call it a scenario because you are setting it up in the editor, but you aren't playing a scenario you are playing a quick battle. Ditto for Womble. You are both quick battle players who want to mess around in the editor - and that's fine. It's just not scenario making in my book. It's making quick battles.

Also known as a 'scenario'. There is a fundamental difference between a 'scenario' and a 'quick battle' and the approaches players make to each is different. If you are using point values to make a scenario then you aren't making a scenario. You are making a glorified quick battle. By adding points to the editor all you would be doing is have the designer 'buy' each sides forces rather than having each player buy their own. A designer who used points to make his scenario would more than likely be using a quick battle map for his battle. The result of that would be a poor man's scenario that's half quick battle and half scenario and satisfying to very few. Scenario players would immediately pick up on the lack of depth and quick battle players wouldn't be able to buy their own force. It would be like driving a Ford Pinto.

I can make just about any point combination 'fair' through the manipulation of the victory conditions for one thing. The terrain is another big factor. If you have a King Tiger positioned at the end of a billiard table that's 3000 meters long then it could hold off many times it's value in points without breaking a sweat. If you have a King Tiger in the middle of a dense forest, then one engineer squad with a demo charge can ruin the King Tiger's day. So yeah, using point values for scenario creation is almost useless. I can see that perhaps if there is someone new to the genre maybe they might get some benefit from it, but the factors I've just pointed out will probably outweigh the raw point totals involved.

Uh, well what would be the point of explicitly stating an expiration date or a download limit if you could download the game an infinite number of times until the day you die? Answer - there wouldn't be a point. You seem to understand the policy. You don't like the policy - we get that. You want to download the game again for free in spite of your understanding of the policy - we all get that too. Now all you are doing is stomping your feet and rolling in the aisle of the grocery store because mommy won't get that bag of candy for you.

Oh but it is preferential treatment. Two gamers, both with broken games, one gets a replacement and the other does not. The game is identical for both players. The only difference was how they chose to take delivery of it when they initially purchased it.

So if you buy the game and select digital download only you haven't bought the game? I suppose it would be theoretically possible for you to buy the "download link" and then not actually download the game within the 365 day time frame, but if that's the case then why are you paying anything in the first place? You are trying to split hairs on something that's effectively irrelevant.

Well my friend, there are probably many BFC customers who didn't buy a digital copy. What you are then saying is that someone who bought their game digitally is to receive preferential treatment if their game is damaged or lost over someone who bought a hard copy. "I got the game digitally because I'm suave and debonaire, therefore I'm entitled to a lifetimes worth of downloads. You got your game as a hard copy so if something happens to it you are out of luck because only hillbillies living in the mountains buy hard copies these days." From a sales standpoint, there is absolutely no difference between a hard copy and a digital copy as far as BFC is concerned. The game is the same no matter which way you purchased it. The only difference is the way in which the game was delivered to you.

Let's assume that you bought a game CD (hardgoods) and played the game for two years, then for whatever reason your dog got into your storage bin and chomped the CD into little pieces. What do you figure the company that sold you the CD two years ago is responsible for? Note that I'm not referring to BFC specifically. I'm just asking a general question and depending upon your answer I would be curious to know if any company selling software commercially has a policy that matches your expectation.

I think you would find point values to be less useful than you might think.

You could probably make an argument about coaxial mounted MGs on tanks, but a GI firing a .50 cal over open sights from a halftrack is a different set of variables. He's more than likely going to be firing with the weapon at about chest level walking the rounds into the target. The .50 cal isn't typically fired at the same ROF as the smaller caliber MGs either, although it's recommended that the gunner use longer bursts. I'm sure that BFC will be looking at further improvements to MG behavior in the future. The way it is now is probably not the end state of where it's desired to be taken so fear not.

The difference between MG fire from bunkers and HMGs in the open with a tripod is simply a coding limitation in the game.

There is no way to know for certain unless the designer indicates something somewhere. All the scenarios that came with CW or CMFI 'should' be playable from either side. At least I don't think you will have one where an AI attacker just sits in place doing nothing. I don't think that all scenarios that came with CMBN are playable from either side and very few CMSF series scenarios are playable from either side. There is usually something indicating how to play it though. I'm not too sure about CMA. Scenarios that you download from the depository are going to be a bit of a lottery I think for whether you can play it from either side. I'm going to guess that most are not because it can be a bit tricky to make something playable from either side. I think a good indicator of whether a scenario is playable vs the AI for a certain side is whether a briefing exists for the side that you want to play as. If there is no briefing for your side then there is very good chance that there is no AI plan for the opposing side.

Your post has some conflicting information in it so I'm going to make a few assumptions about what you are doing. You purchased a concrete MG bunker and compared the results to an HMG placed in a trench or foxhole of some type. You noticed that the ROF for the MG bunker was lower than that for the HMG in the open. That's the way it's supposed to be. It's not the way that BFC would like it to be, but the game treats bunkers differently (I'm going to guess that bunkers are treated like vehicles) and the ROF increase that was applied to other HMG was not applied to bunkers for technical reasons. Your result of a lower ROF for bunkers therefore is not a bug but known and operating as intended. As a trade off for the lack of an increased ROF the bunkers were given an accuracy boost since it can be presumed that a bunker crew would have a nice range card filled out for the area that the bunker covers. I'm going to guess that once you saw that the bunker MG has a lower ROF than an HMG in the open, you purchased a shelter bunker and attempted to place the HMG in the shelter bunker either so your bunkers would have the same ROF as an HMG in the open or to compare an HMG in a shelter bunker to a bunker MG. You could then say "Hey look, if I place an HMG in a bunker the rate of fire is higher than if I purchase an MG bunker". However, when you attempted this the HMG would not deploy. This is also working as intended. You can't deploy HMG in shelter bunkers. You are stuck with the MG bunkers. So there are no bugs here. There are just results that you find disconcerting. What you have identified is a limitation with the way the game can treat bunker MGs and it couldn't be coded around. So nothing to see here, everybody just move along.

This typically occurs if you don't install the patches and upgrades in the appropriate order. First, your CMBN + CW (if you have it) needs to be patched to 1.11. CW only takes you to 1.10 so you still need to patch to 1.11 even if you have CW. You then apply the 2.0 upgrade and then patch your game to 2.01.

When you select a waypoint it allows you to give instructions for the unit to follow once they reach that waypoint - such as 'Hide', 'Face', 'Deploy', or add pauses etc.

No, Steve mentioned that AA units will not be able to engage aircraft.