ASL Veteran

It's my humble opinion that the scenarios for the campaigns should all be targeted towards player vs AI but that all the individual battles / scenarios should be targeted for player vs player. After you make a scenario just ask yourself if you would want to tangle with a human opponent as either side and if you could win as either side. If your answer is yes to both questions then you might have a winner on your hands. A focus of player vs AI can be limiting for player vs player, but a focus on player vs player is not necessarily limiting for player vs AI. The focus on player vs player is the superior option but it's also probably more difficult to do while still keeping the AI vs player portion workable and if your scenario will be on the CD it obviously has to be functional vs the AI. That's where the scenario designer's talent really comes into play. I like your stuff on the CDs. Your briefings in particular are superior. I don't like the whole misdirection briefings and the philosophy behind the 'trick the player' mentality some briefings have. What I want is an estimate of the size of my opposition and the approximate location as to where they are at (ie, in the village or 200 yards to the east) . A reference to the composition of the opfor is good too. So if I face a company sized force tell me I face a company sized force. If there are enemy tanks known to be in the area then I should probably know that from the briefing. It doesn't have to be exact info, just approximate so that I at least know what I'm up against and I can formulate a realistic plan of action. I find briefings where the designer says "you haven't seen enemy soldiers for miles and it should be a cakewalk" then you end up fighting an armored division to be tedious and unproductive. It's just trying to be cute and really nobody buys it anymore. Briefings are more of a personal taste thing though and it's harder to pin down exactly where the balance is between 'good' and 'average'. As long as you are revisiting Rahadnak Valley though, in the briefing for Red you say that I have to keep commander X alive, but there is nobody by that name on the roster that I could find. I'm assuming that it's the Elite commander but there are two Crack commanders too and I can't be 100% sure who the big enchilada is. Of course he could just be off map sawing off heads or something I guess. I'm currently playing Rahadnak vs Meach in a PBEM but our game is on hold because he was dragged kicking and screaming into some kind of testing (maybe for his video card or something). He's down about seven AAVs and one Marine Platoon and I have a few Insurgent teams who have run out of both ammo and grenades after only ten minutes, but my casualties have been relatively light so far! He is flinging those ridiculous automatic grenade launcher things around pretty liberally though. He better hope congress doesn't send the government accounting office investigator down to check out his operation. The most important thing I've learned playing that scenario as Red is that it takes just a bit under ten seconds for an RPG man to spot, aim, and fire his RPG at an enemy vehicle. Move RPG into position, let him aim and fire with ten second pause, ten seconds later hoof it to a new position baby . Oh, and if you have adjusted the setup zones for Red in Rahadnak Valley you probably want to make sure that the Red player can't setup that 'ahem' one team in the boondocks 'ahem' into position to have a LOS to the blue setup area or it could throw the scenario off. You don't want blue stuff exploding as soon as he hits the go button .

Yes, the multiple AI plans do help replayability but the problem with fixed units still remains even with the multiple AI plans. The only difference is that the AI is blissfully unaware of the fact that you know exactly where it's fixed units are located and the AI doesn't mind if you blow them all away.

Thank you for your typically unhelpful and pedantic reply. Yeah, I am aware that there is an editor in the game. I made fifty scenarios for CMBB so I know how to make a scenario and use an editor too. I've even messed around with the editor in CMSF. The editor obviously isn't the issue though, although I guess you may not know that if you never play scenarios PBEM vs other people. Let's say you and I are playing a PBEM game and you decide you want to pick the scenario and let me pick the side. Okay, I think it's safe to say that you don't know me and I don't know you and we would be playing a scenario for the first time against each other. So let's just assume that you pick Brandenburg and say that you want to play that. Are you suggesting that the appropriate thing for me to do would be to say "okay, I'll play Brandenburg as Red, but I want to paint new deployment zones for everyone first." Or let's say I pick "Along the Euphrates" and let you pick a side, but I say "But before we start I want to add another entry point to every building in the scenario". Maybe you will agree to that or maybe not. If you want to play as Blue and you have a certain attack plan in mind then maybe you don't want me to add another entry point to every building and you say "No, I want to play the scenario as is without modification". Now I suppose I could go and make my own scenarios. I have in the past and might do so again in the future. Once again though that's not the point. What if my prospective opponent doesn't want to play against me in my own scenario (a natural and sensible course of action)? If my opponent chooses to select the scenario and let me select the side what option do I have if my opponent doesn't select one of my scenarios? Besides, I don't always want to make and play my own scenarios. I want to play scenarios I haven't made as well. I will basically be paying for TO&E and scenarios in the modules I buy so I don't think it is unreasonable to want to play a scenario or two off the CD if the scenarios are made well enough. Do I need to explain the situation further or can we just discard the "The game has an editor function." canard now?

I am a scenario player and I generally don't play quick battles. BFC has provided a lot of great tips in the manual about good scenario design, but there is one thing that I don't think they addressed and that's replayability. Some scenario players like to play through a scenario blind one time and then once they've completed it they don't go back to it again. In those cases then the scenario design can have all kinds of gimmicks and fixed deployment areas and it doesn't really matter that much. Most of your "human vs AI" focused scenarios probably fall into that category. Especially if the 'human' player is recommended to play as one specific side. However, aside from all the basic tips outlined by BFC in the manual that's taking the scenario design only to the first level. As an old ASL player I view a scenario as a chess match between two skilled opponents. In ASL almost none of your or your opponents forces are hidden. Yet in spite of the fact that almost none of the forces are hidden there are a lot of scenarios that I've played multiple times and had a lot of fun playing every time. So for me, when I play a scenario I don't mind how many times my opponent has played a scenario when I play against them. In fact, I expect my opponent to at least take a look at both sides before beginning a game. My standard procedure when selecting a scenario is basically "He who picks the scenario does not pick the side." I've only deviated from this a few times and since Red is generally the weaker side in CMSF I don't worry about that rule too much with the CMSF scenarios. If I'm selecting Red then I figure that I'm playing at a disadvantage. Once we get into Normandy though I will probably reinstate that rule of thumb. This usually forces a prospective opponent of mine to select a scenario that they think they can win as either side because they don't know which side I will pick if they pick the scenario. This also assumes that both my opponent and I will at least glance at the force mix and deployment areas for both sides in order to determine which side they want to take or which scenario to pick. So for the way I play, and for replayability purposes, set up areas are a critical component of scenario design. The larger the set up area the better. Fixed units are almost a complete scenario breaker for replayability purposes. If your opponent knows exactly where a unit will be deployed, in CMSF in particular, you will probably get a turn one artillery barrage directly on top of your troops who are in a fixed location. Placing troops in fixed locations may be great for playing a scenario vs the AI one time. If you are playing against a human opponent in a situation where that player may have played the scenario previously, then having fixed units is probably a death sentence for those units. In some cases the scenario can still be playable with fixed units, but if those fixed units are an important part of your defense then it can damage the scenario's replayability. Small set up areas are better than fixed units, but they can still be problematic as small setup areas can limit a defender's options. Options are important for replayability purposes because if the setup area is large enough no two players will deploy their defenses in exactly the same manner. This leads to unpredictability during replays of that scenario even though the force mix and terrain are known to both players. If the designer gets too cute with the setup areas and gives the defender one little set up zone to deploy their HMG team and another little setup zone to deploy their Sagger team then you've hamstrung the player's defensive creativity. Just because the scenario designer would deploy unit X and Y in a specific location doesn't mean that a different player would think that those locations are the most optimal areas to deploy those weapons within their defensive scheme. Making several little deployment boxes for specific weapons systems forces the human player to play the scenario designers game the way the designer wants you to play it. Once again it can crush replayability. The only time different deployment zones makes sense is if you have separate forces that are either on attack along a different route or a separate defensive force that is independent of another force and they are both assigned different defensive zones. For example, you have a force trapped in a factory and you have a relief force fighting to their rescue. Obviously you have to have separate defensive zones for those two forces in that situation. I felt the need to start this thread because most of the scenarios from CMSF and Marines seem to be designed for player vs AI play and almost all of them have critical design flaws regarding player vs player games. I'm hoping for future BFC designed scenarios to account for this and to make scenarios that players can play against each other multiple times if they want to. For example, I really like the Rahadnak Valley Search scenario from the Marines module. I think it's the best scenario on either CD. Unfortunately the Red forces have several fixed units that are important to the defense and can easily be taken out by a Blue player who has played the scenario already with a first turn artillery barrage. While it's possible for Red to play with those assets destroyed in the beginning, it would be much better if Red could deploy those assets rather than leave them 'fixed' and vulnerable to a Blue opponent. Following the Euphrates has a lot of potential for multi player gaming but those buildings ruin that scenario. That's not really a set up zone issue although in that scenario there are two conscript platoons in the trenches where one squad in each platoon is outside of the setup zones and are 'fixed' in position. That leaves the Syrian player in the position of either leaving the entire platoon in place or redeploying the platoon and leaving the individual 'fixed' squad in place to fend for themselves. Now about those buildings! The Red forces really need to be able to redeploy from position to position or they get annihilated from Blue firepower. In Following the Euphrates most of the buildings only have one entry point and all the entry points are facing the road for the buildings along that side of the town (and for several buildings behind that). Not only does it make it difficult for the Syrians to get into those buildings alive but the buildings then become death traps for anyone who actually make it into those buildings. It also makes it difficult for Blue to advance in the city because the entry points for the buildings are all on one side. Just adding one more entry point to every building would make that scenario fun to play as Red. The Passage at Wilcox could be an interesting scenario but it has too many gimmicks for Red reinforcements. Why do the little insurgent guys have to pop up in the middle of town as reinforcements? Can't Red just start with those guys so the Red player can deploy them where he wants to? This just makes the scenario needlessly difficult for Red because it basically 'fixes' a good portion of his force. Attack in Brandenburg doesn't have any setup areas from what I remember. The entire force for both sides is fixed. The scenario is useless for multiplayer gaming and replayability is almost zero. I only pick those four scenarios out because they looked like they could have had potential for multiplayer gaming if the designers took the scenarios to the next level. I look forward to the Brits module and I hope that most of the scenarios in the Brits module will be targeted at player vs player gaming.

Actually I think it would be nice if the forum supported a feature whereby whenever someone from Battlefront posts in a thread the thread is marked somehow so people know that a Battlefront response is in that thread. In the "Total War Center" forum they put a little "CA" next to a thread whenever someone from Creative Assembly posts in a thread. It would just make it easier if someone wants to identify those threads with BFC responses in them.

I don't know if you have checked out or play any of the Total War series but according to some of their interviews they apparently had one guy doing nothing but coding water for an entire year before their latest game "Empire Total War" came out. Judging from that I would imagine that water is a difficult and time consuming thing to code.

Wow, BFC has really done a great job on the animations so far. The textures look decent too. That must also be a preview of how BFC is going to implement water in their games because that water looked pretty realistic. My only nitpick would be that I think the space lobster's pincers came off a little too easily during the fight. I think maybe the beta testers should work on that a little bit and suggest some balancing adjustments.

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound He pulls the spitting high tension wires down Helpless people on a subway trains Scream "My God" as he looks in on them He picks up a bus and he throws it back down As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town Oh no, they say he's got to go Oh no Godzilla Oh no, there goes Tokyo Oh no Godzilla Why wouldn't the inclusion of Godzilla in a Japanese Self Defense Forces module be a good thing? Sure, there would be issues of Godzilla's size vs the available map sizes. According to the historical documents I've researched it would appear that the tallest of trees are a bit short of his knees. The ever reliable Wikipedia lists his height as varying between 164 and 328 feet tall and his weight varying between 20,000 and 60,000 tons. Mud might be a problem for Godzilla at that weight, although his feet do look pretty big. I can't think of a more difficult battle scenario than taking a Japanese Self Defense Force tank battalion up against Godzilla. The historical documents seem to indicate that all modern weaponry is ineffective at stopping Godzilla so the player would probably need to be able to use various tricks like power lines in order to try to take Godzilla down. I understand that coding up Godzilla would take up a lot of Charle's valuable time, but if he could only code one of the following three items: Co Play, a linking module for the titles, or Godzilla I think that coding up Godzilla would win out every time.

We've all been talking a lot about CM:N lately, but BFC does have that top secret 'other' game they have been working on in parallel with CM:N namely CMSF2. I haven't seen a lot of official commentary on this, but it seems this will be a modern game set in a 'temperate' zone with a full scale 'regular' battle setting involving major powers going toe to toe. I generally think in terms of Europe for this, but after thinking about Kwazydog's brief comment a while back that they could do a Korea game with a few supporting textures I have come to the conclusion that Korea would be the perfect venue for CMSF2. All the big players could plausibly be represented in a Korea game. For Red forces you would obviously have North Korea, but you could also have China and even Russia could be tossed in the mix. On the Blue side you would have the US and the ROK forces in South Korea, all the NATO rapid reaction forces could potentially be in the mix, Australian and New Zealand forces could be represented, as well as Taiwanese and Japanese forces. Russian forces could also potentially be considered blue in this theater depending upon circumstance. The equipment mixes for these powers would be quite interesting too. Taiwan has a lot of older equipment like M60A3s and M113s and stuff like that, the Japan Self Defense forces have some M48s in the inventory along with their own modern MBT designs so you would have a lot of equipment variety. Of course, no Japan Self Defense Forces module would be complete without a special "Godzilla" and "Mothra" unit thrown in . The ROK has their own MBT designs along with some T80s and BMPs that they apparently bought from the Russians for some reason as well as some older US stuff. There is a lot of unique Chinese and North Korean stuff and there is all the Russian stuff as well. Maybe the French could make an appearance. New terrain like Rice Paddies could be introduced since they will have had water conquered by then. I could see having a lot of fun with a CMSF2: Kim's Bad Hair Day. Maybe we could get some more official 'flesh' on the CMSF2 bones that have been lightly scattered about here and there.

Now that is interesting. I was operating under the assumption that the system in the UK is similar to how it works in the US but it's obviously quite different. In the US that ruling would be a real shock to the system. It looks like in the UK that ruling is just another nudge in a direction the UK was already headed. My apologies for any "the sky is falling" running about on the issue. I think I'll retire until a real lawyer can come in here and clear things up

Except for the US government which has immunity unless otherwise specified. No argument here on that one. Exactly. No civil jurisdiction. Essentially you seem to be equating Article 32 with civil litigation. I don't. I consider civil litigation to be an escalation by orders of magnitude over Article 32. I guess the only disagreement between us then is that you find them to be more or less equivalent from what I can tell. I don't. True enough. Your last sentence sums up my feelings on the topic exactly. I would go even further and say that the reason the US has a military that can work in the field and conduct combat ops is that families can't pursue civil action due to government immunity. I was under the impression that the UK military would be adversely affected through the ruling, but maybe the differences between how things work in the UK and how they work in the US makes the ruling largely irrelevant. I guarantee you Steve, that if that ruling was made in the US all heck would be breaking out. Dogs and cats living in sin. hellfire and brimstone falling from the sky. It would be a disaster.

You may want to adjust your thinking on the topic then. If the government investigates for negligence and finds that a negligent act was committed then whichever civil attorney took up the case would have a slam dunk victory just waiting for him since the government already made a finding for him. All the attorney would have to do would be to file the paperwork and watch the cash roll in. Thus, there is very little motivation for the Ministry of Defense to investigate questionable acts on their own. Far better to let the courts make the determination and fight every action that is brought against you by the various aggrieved parties. The two methods can't coexist together. You can only have one method or the other. I hope your Spider Sense can figure that one out. I never said commanders don't have a responsibility for the men under their care. I just don't think they should be held personally liable from a civil standpoint or subjected to paying monetary damages to an aggrieved party like you believe. I am also not attempting to change your mind on anything. People can decide on their own if this ruling makes sense or not. You have obviously made up your mind and I doubt that our little back and forth on the message board would change it.

I'm baffled that you feel that the only effective means of enforcing accountability for soldier's care is to make the military liable from a civil standpoint through the awarding of monetary damages to soldier's families through civilian courts. Steve's post gives two good examples of how accountability can be enforced without awarding money to the victim's families even though his premise in posting those examples was a mistaken one. The sense I get is that you believe commanders can only properly be held accountable for the welfare of their troops when the government pays monetary compensation to that soldier's survivors through the act of civil litigation. Anything short of that is insufficient. As I'm sure you are aware, the danger level that is present for a soldier while assaulting Monte Cassino in 1944 is not equivalent to a fireman who is fighting a fire that has broken out in your flat. Your reference / comparison is completely meaningless. What's next? Should soldier's be able to join unions just like any other employee of a 'dangerous' occupation? Private Parts, member of soldier's union local 34.

Steve, I'm afraid you are not correct. Note, Steve, that in your linked article about the Ranger Training that the Army Criminal division and Safety inspector launched an investigation. The other link to the Blackhawk incident likewise involves a military investigation. Neither incident makes any mention of a civil suit by the families against the Army that I could see from the articles. English and US common law apparently grants absolute civil lawsuit immunity for the government unless a law is enacted that specifically allows it. In the case of the US that is the Federal Tort and Claims Act of 1946 an explanation of it linked to here http://www.finchmccranie.com/refresher.htm and it's little brother the Military Claims Act which basically extends the Tort act to overseas. Whether a similar law exists for the UK I don't know. If the UK does have a similar law then the lawsuit through the Human Rights Act is a blatant end run around current British tort law. If no law exists then a lawsuit through the Human Rights Law may be the only recourse for the family of the soldier named in the case because of absolute government immunity (I'm not sure why that law would overrule the absolute immunity, but I'm not a lawyer). Before I get into a specific of the US tort law that's directly applicable to this discussion we should probably be clear that what was referenced in the original article in this thread was a civil suit brought through the Human Rights Law that they apparently have in the UK. As usual this is a discussion about a policy or legal spectrum. The spectrum spans from being allowed to sue the government over anything at any time on one end to total governmental immunity on the other end. Where you stand on that spectrum will influence your view on the ruling. The main thing to keep in mind is that the Human Rights Law that was used as the vehicle to bring a lawsuit against the Ministry of Defense has absolutely no limits or structure as to what is open for civil action and what isn't. In other words, the ruling in the UK could mean that anything is fair game for a civil suit at any time under any circumstances against the UK government if a death is involved. It stands on the extreme end of the 'sue anything for any reason' end of the spectrum. In the US, the Federal Tort and Claims Act of 1946 specifies the following limitations (because the government is by default immune from civil suits, the tort act allows suits, the waiver restores the immunity to certain items in the form of limitations) Not within the scope of the act meaning total immunity for the government in the case of that last paragraph. To reinforce the total immunity from civil liability here is a rather tragic story of what could be termed medical malpractice. http://richmond.injuryboard.com/wrongful-death/repeal-the-feres-doctrine.aspx?googleid=263218 The main thing that I want to emphasize here is that the US has a legal structure in place for civil suits filed against the US Government and those lawsuits are filed within that legal structure. The danger with the ruling in the UK is that there is no legal structure in the Human Rights Law and if someone dies for any reason at any time you can sue the government via the Human Rights Act. Marinate in that for a while before agreeing with Jon S again and realize that you are supporting an 'anything goes' view of civil suits against the government through a law that was not structured as a tort and claims law and all the chaos that could potentially spiral from that.

and the judge agrees with you. That's the point I was making. How does the commander know if their action will be considered reasonable and prudent? He or she doesn't - that's why they litigate stuff in a court of law. It's not whether you think it's reasonable or prudent - it's whether a judge thinks it's reasonable and prudent. Not every judge is going to view the situation the way you would - or even in a way that a military commander would. Every person who feels that a soldier's death was the result of negligent action can now sue the government. Who's to say that every soldier's family wouldn't do just that regardless of circumstance. Every single time. No matter how ridiculous their claim may seem. Can you imagine how many lawsuits that would be? Does the cost to the taxpayer to fight all those lawsuits matter to you? You don't think that situation would have an effect on the decision making of British commanders if everytime someone under their command was killed that the commander would have a court date along with that death? Win or lose the litigation that commander would still have to spend time in court, thus taking that commander out of the field (along with witnesses and evidence etc). I can't imagine operating effectively under those circumstances. Maybe the people of the UK are happy with that, I don't know. As an American I don't have a horse in the fight on this, so I'll leave this for our friends in the UK to haggle over.

"Whoosh" - that's the sound of the significance of this ruling flying right over Flanker's head. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I've been exposed to just enough business law to get a sense of where this ruling is taking the UK. This ruling has very little to do with Human Rights other than said law makes the civil suit possible. Let's have a look at that law as posted by George MC Flanker says that this can't be used in the case of combat deaths because combat deaths are lawful deaths. Perhaps, but the ruling according to the article has already eliminated that as a definition of what can and cannot be covered by the human rights law because what Flanker says is exactly what the Ministry of Defence argued, but that was thrown out. In other words, a combat death does not, in and of itself, eliminate the possibility of the death being ruled as contrary to the human rights law 'right to life'. Why do you suppose they ruled that way? For one thing there is nothing in that section of the law as quoted by George MC that excludes soldier's deaths for any reason, nor does it make a distinction between combat and non combat. None of the exceptions to the law make any mention of combat. However, I think a critical look at the ruling could be helpful here For those who don't see it - it says that the death was caused by a serious failure to recognise and take appropriate steps to address the difficulty he had in adjusting to the climate. In other words, the court ruled that the death was caused by Negligence, and that this Negligence amounted to a breach of the soldier's human rights. The vehicle by which the lawsuit was brought was the Human Rights Law, but that's just the vehicle that is being used to justify a finding of negligence. Here is a link to the legal definition of negligence http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/n010.htm and here is the first paragraph of that definition So the test isn't really whether the death was 'lawful' or not under the Human Rights Law because the Human Rights law basically says that all deaths are 'unlawful' other than three specified instances (none of which mention the military). The test is one of negligence and whether the death was caused by "the doing of something which a reasonably prudent person would not do". Who decides what a reasonably prudent person would not do? A judge of course. So let's take another look at the examples I gave earlier. The Somme. I've read where British soldiers were ordered to attack German MG positions at the walk while wearing full packs. Could that be considered a 'negligent act'? Would a reasonably prudent person order those under his command to attack at the walk while wearing full packs? Maybe, maybe not. In any case whether it was prudent or not would be decided by a man who is sitting on the bench somewhere in London. If an attack under those circumstances was deemed to be negligent then the family members of every soldier killed at the Somme could have a monetary claim against the British Government. How about Gallipoli? It's my understanding that there was a problem with supplying the troops with clean fresh water. There were also problems with having accurate maps of the area. Would a reasonable and prudent person get accurate maps before launching an invasion? Would a reasonable and prudent person make sure that the soldiers had access to a source of fresh clean water? Who decides what's reasonable and prudent? A judge decides. The Sherman tank. Would a reasonable and prudent person put somebody in a tank that was known to catch fire when penetrated by enemy anti tank weaponry? Who decides? A judge decides. It's my understanding that at the battle of Isandahlwanna the British soldiers ran out of ammunition and were overrun. I can't remember if the ammunition was not distributed effectively or if there just wasn't enough. Would a reasonable and prudent person have ensured that every soldier had enough ammunition to fight the battle? Who decides? A judge decides. So if you are a commander in the field then every decision that you make could be subject to a legal test of reasonableness and prudence by a judge if your decision results in the death of someone under your command - under any circumstances. Private Parts was killed by friendly fire? Was your decision to assign him to that checkpoint reasonable and prudent? Private Parts drops that grenade he was about to throw. Was your decision to let him carry a grenade reasonable and prudent? This is why this ruling is a complete and total disaster for the UK armed forces. It will effectively paralyze the armed services and essentially neuter them. I can see the ambulance chasing lawyer ads now: Those who have suffered the loss of a loved one who served in the military have many questions. We have the answers. Call James Sokolov attorney at law for more details. You may have a claim for compensation by the government! Operators are standing by. I can understand that people may be upset that British troops were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan or that the current government may have provided inadequate resources to the military services, but the way to solve that problem is to vote those people out of office. This ruling just punishes the military and makes it less effective, if the military can even function at all under these circumstances. Now hopefully a 'real' lawyer can tell everyone the real deal

I sure hope there is a statute of limitations on this law because I'm sure there are a few thousand relatives of any serviceman who was killed on the Somme who might like to sue the British government for recklessly trampling over the soldier's human rights during that offensive. Gallipoli might be another instance where soldier's human rights were violated. So many soldiers died from sickness and disease there! I wonder if there could be a case made that putting British soldiers in the early Shermans that 'lit up everytime' was a violation of their human rights? Certainly a case could be made that the Sherman was defective due to it's tendency to immolate it's crews when hit. At a minimum it should be brought before a judge so that judge could make an informed decision on the merits of the case. Maybe even some compensation could be granted to the relatives of soldiers whose human rights were violated at Isandahlwana?

I can answer your question from information Steve has posted in the past. No, the two game titles will not link in any way unless ..... drumroll ...... BFC decides to make a 'module' that links the titles together (all titles?). However, as of the last report, Steve indicated that they weren't sure it would be 'worth it' to make such a module.

That's too bad, because I'm pretty confident that you could fit more firewood in a BMP-3 than you could in a Weasel

Regarding the sale of CM scenarios - I don't know about the legal implications of it, but up until now there were market reasons why it was impractical for anyone to try to sell them. Distribution: As long as there is a website available that hosts scenarios then basically anyone can put a scenario up for CM. With ASL you have to produce, package, and distribute your (paper) product yourself. This costs money and serves as a barrier to just anyone making a scenario and selling it for ASL. There is no such restriction in CM. If you have a connection to the internet and a friendly host you can distribute your scenario very easily. Copyright protections: In CM you can basically take anyone's scenario, dismantle it, play around with it, and modify it to your hearts content. With an ASL scenario, while you could easily photocopy the scenario cards it would be a little more difficult to reproduce the maps and various TO&E elements that come with the game (largish maps with cardboard type game pieces). So, if you were an enterprising individual out there who made CM scenarios of such high quality that people would be willing to pay for the pleasure of playing your stuff you would be able to sell a scenario one time before everyone who plays CM either had it, or modified it, or had a modified version of it. It's a total loser of a proposition. With the 'baked' scenarios though, perhaps that has changed somewhat although I'm not entirely sure. In any case, in order to be able to sell CM scenarios at a minimum there would have to be some sort of 'sealing' method incorporated into CM so that scenarios could not be dismantled or modified. That wouldn't solve the distribution problem though, as people would just e-mail scenarios to each other and I doubt there is a way to control that. However, in the case of the modules produced by BFC it's a little different. Modules are basically TO&E and scenarios really. You also have to buy the module to have access to the TO&E and scenarios. There would be little point in having someone e-mail you a scenario from the Brits module if you don't already have the Brits module. You won't be able to play that scenario without the module. So if you are a scenario designer and you have a scenario in a module, you can be pretty sure that unless someone cracked the module itself that your scenarios would be safe from the unauthorized distribution problem. The only problem that would have to be addressed in that situation would be the scenario dismantling or modifying part (I don't know anything about the legal aspects). So I view the modules as an area where professionally designed and built scenarios could work since that's all the module is: TO&E and scenarios. In previous CM games one could argue that the scenarios were basically a throw in as a sort of finishing polish for the players who purchase the game because it was the game itself that people wanted. With the modules; sure you could just be buying a module for the TO&E only (including all the vehicle and troop models etc) but the scenarios are undeniably a bigger part of the package than before and have to be factored in from BFC's perspective. This is especially true with regards to the amount of manhours that are being applied towards the module and where those manhours are being consumed (and by whom and when). So, in my mind, modules are fundamentally different from the base game from a production standpoint. Every day that a module is delayed is costing BFC (bigtime) money (at a minimum BFC would be earning interest on the cash from their sales) and if many / most of your scenario designers have regular full time jobs and only do stuff on the weekends or do stuff for an hour or two on a weeknight evening or something (we all appreciate their efforts and enjoy their scenarios) - well then it seems like you've got a potential problem on the cost side of your business if you end up leaning on those assets too much. Even if they are making the scenarios out of their dedication to CM and the community and Steve isn't paying them directly with a wage, Steve is paying for those scenarios indirectly through lost interest on his sales income if the module is delayed beyond his target date. He is also suffering opportunity costs since he can't use the cash from those sales for other purposes, like expanding his business, hiring a second programmer, or having a BFC business conference in Vegas . He may also suffer losses on his next module too, because a delay on the current module could have a domino effect on the man hours that can be applied to the next module. That next module can't be released as early as it could have been because the first module was delayed thus pushing the release date of the next module back a corresponding amount of time, etc. Regarding a 'professional' scenario designer; there are undoubtedly many very talented scenario designers in the CM community. The problem is that without market forces acting upon the many CM scenario designers it's hard to find a metric for what scenario designer is 'good' and what designer is 'average'. With ASL the market has told scenario designers who is a good designer and who isn't and what scenario designs pack the most fun. There hasn't been any similar vetting process for CM scenarios or designers so it's pretty much a crap shoot and the talent evaluation will be different depending upon who you talk to. So, in the event that Steve ever changes his mind and decides to go with a professional he would have to make a very tough call as to who he wanted to put in that position if he pulled from the CM community pool itself. It's a choice that he really has to nail the first time because they would have to be both good at it and quick enough to get the job done in a timely manner. No matter what he did, I'm sure there would be a lot of disappointed scenario designers out there and potentially some bruised egos. It may be more 'politically expedient' and less risky to his investment if he went with someone that has a proven track record with 'that other game' on a contractual basis. Besides, I'm biased and I like their stuff . Of course, that's just my opinion. Post Disclaimer I keep saying 'Steve', but I'm sure Steve and Charles are in some kind of a partnership of some form so just think Steve and Charles where I say Steve. My constant use of 'Steve' is also not intentionally designed to elicit a response from said individual while he is patrolling the boards because he has already said he isn't currently interested in having a professional scenario designer involved with BFC. I'm simply tossing out random thoughts from the peanut gallery regarding a business operation where I'm not privy to any of the internal workings and no doubt I'm way out in left field on much of what I'm posting due to a lack of inside information . The most important theme of my entire long winded post is - where is the Brits module and why am I not playing it now?

whoosh (passes hand over head) . In case anyone got the impression that I was looking to become a full time scenario designer for Battlefront and I was angling for that spot, then you definitely got the wrong impression . For one thing, I doubt Steve could pay me a salary that would be similar to what I'm making now (I would love to be surprised though). For another thing, Steve wouldn't be getting nearly the return on his investment from me that he would get from a 'real' scenario designer . Besides, I'm happy where I'm at (close enough to Wall Street to see it, but not exactly 'on' it ). As long as the TARP money keeps on coming then I feel pretty safe lol. No, what I was thinking of was a 'real' scenario designer like the people at Multi Man publishing or Critical Hit, or the various original designers on Red Barricades (I believe that was Charles Kibler but it's been a while) Kampfgruppe Peiper, and Pegasus Bridge, etc. People who have designed and published scenarios as a business. That's what I mean by a 'Professional' scenario designer. I'm sure there are people who are in or were in that line of work that would be happy to put their skills at the disposal of BFC. Sure, they design and build scenarios for ASL, but I'm sure there are a lot of skills that would be transferrable to CM. If BFC either contracted one of those guys for X number of scenarios by a certain date or got one guy on full time to do nothing but scenarios I don't see how it would be a bad thing. Well, unless Steve couldn't afford him of course .

I think this whole Boggle thing is nothing but a complete Boondoggle!

I totally understand about the more for less thing. It's kind of like "Tastes Great!" vs "Less Filling!" Basically, the way I see it (and sort of how I think Steve has explained it) gets down to basic economics. It costs you so many man hours to produce something and you are only going to make X dollars off of sales of that something. So, logically, the more dollars you can make vs the man hours it costs means an increase in productivity (and better profits). Just to toss some numbers around - if you can sell say 100,000 units at 45.00 per unit that gives you a gross profit of 4,500,000 before Uncle Sam takes his cut, all your employees are paid, operational expenses are paid, Steve gets fuel for his Weasel etc. If you have five employees and if we assume that each has a maximum of 2,000 man hours to contribute per year (assuming four work weeks a month for twelve months at 40 hours a week, plus a little overtime) then that means it cost you 10,000 man hours to produce 4,500,000 bucks gross profit if you complete your project in one year. If it takes you two years to produce your product then it just cost you 20,000 man hours to produce 4,500,000. So, if you want to increase your profits you can either increase your sales or decrease your expenses. By reducing the man hours to produce your product from two years to one year you have basically just cut your expenses in half (just tossing numbers - it's more complicated than that I know). Of course, by cutting your time to finish a project from two years to one year not only do you save expenses on the product you are making but you can also make twice as many products and hopefully sell twice as many products as you could before (assuming your market isn't growing much - which it probably isn't for wargaming niche stuff). Maybe then you can afford a second programmer instead of just having one, which means that you would be able to put another 2000 man hours into future products. Hopefully that would then mean that you can produce even more products even faster. The critical element is to discover the part of the process that is consuming the most man hours and to streamline it so that it takes fewer man hours (such as the TO&E thing). So, perhaps you are paying the same amount for fewer manhours applied to a product, but overall you will be getting more because they can produce more as they make those manhours get used more efficiently. If it really starts to take off, then you may even end up getting more for less because the process may get so streamlined that what used to take 1000 manhours to produce now only takes 500 manhours to produce. So you would be paying for the same product but now it take half the time to make it. So in effect, you are getting way more for less. See how that works? lol It seems like one of the bottlenecks now is on scenarios and stuff like that. Maybe there are some old professional scenario designers from ASL days or other game systems rattling around that they can hire to help with the modules since it seems like that kind of stuff is going to become actual product. If someone were doing scenarios as a full time job then it may eliminate a bottleneck. Who was that guy who made the Streets of Stalingrad ASL module? Just tossing it out there - not sure how it works now obviously. I think a professional scenario designer would probably pay for himself once the module system gets going.

Dammit! I had about thirty minutes worth of typing done and clicked on another link to add it to my post, and instead of opening up a new window it changed the one I was typing my post up in and my whole post was lost!! Oh well, here is a link that I found where someone was taking the Trafficability information and putting it into simulation form for the military http://www.sedris.org/presentation/TTMS.pdf Maybe I'll retype what I had earlier when I have more time and motivation again.

Huh? The OP said that Battlefront was at the top of Wargaming not at the top of all games sold including FPS, and all those console games out there. He said Wargaming, so your statement doesn't make sense with regards to the OP unless you are counting Combat Mission as a sub niche within the Wargaming niche or something like that. In that case, then I guess every individual game is a niche, or perhaps you are defining 3D wargames as a niche within the wargaming niche? Maybe all those hex based, 2D or top down games are another niche within the wargaming niche? If you don't think that Combat Mission is at the top of the wargaming niche then that's a good discussion to have. Who would you put at the top of the wargaming niche if not Combat Mission? That long running and very successful series called Close Combat who are still going strong after all these years? Maybe there is a Talonsoft title that can take top honors ... if they were still around. Is there a Matrix retread title that takes top honors? Go ahead and list your top ten 'wargames', I would be curious to see your list.