phil stanbridge

I'm on Bumper cars at the moment, and can see I'm going to run out of time if I'm not careful. I'm trying a left flank on all the VPs and see where I end up. I'm fed up with separate parties getting mowed down my MG fire so I'm going to try and concetrate my entire force in one armoured fist attacking from the left where possible. I've also lost a mortar team (crew done to one from a mission prior) and my FO cannot get any LOS. So my artillery isn't helpful. I've lost about 250 men so far, KIA and wounded. It's one tough campaign.

Yeah absolutely - I don't know what gives them that idea..

Well, I'm looking after a 6 month old at the same time, maybe this has something to do with it. I will get round the reading the rest of the manual in due course.

I must be mistaken then. To be honest I haven't really studied the manual yet. Unit has red cross to company commander, and a green light to the divisional representative on the map.

Okay guys cheers for clearing that up - I just presumed the HQ unit without a radio and without any obvious method of communication with the men behind him would not be able to call artillery.

Okay, second mission in C&F. I have a HQ Support team of one man, with binocs and a radio, He can call in artillery fine. How come a 60mm mortar takes 6 minutes to call, when the one next to it, from the same platoon, takes 4. I presume this is purely because one mortar is regular, and one is green? Is this how it works? Secondly, I have another XO team, two men, further forward, out out of direct C2 with its company commander. However it still has C2 links to the division. This unit does not have a radio, yet it CAN call artillery. How come?

This is a great thread. If Germany hadn't attacked the Soviet Union in '41 and instead concentrated on a single front, and focussed on building up a strong defensive position in eastern Germany they may have stood a much better chance. If Hitler had allowed the bombing raids on London to continue for a few more days the British may have capitulated. With Britain out of the war Germany would have become unstoppable.

I'm a WEGO man myself, and this I find interesting. If you only let the AI mostly control fire, how do you go about suppressing the enemy? Maybe this is where Im going wrong? Giving my position away.. I've seen quite a big difference in and out of C&C, especially where artillery fire is concerned. Also, I'm not sure if this is the case, but troops recover quicker when under c&c than without.

Now that's interesting - I must be in the minority because I used to love a QB with a 'minor' nation - and I loved the scope of the original game. You felt like you were getting value for money - it's not that I don't feel that now, but perception is a funny thing. I can see where your ethos comes from this day and age however, priorities have changed to meet the demand.

Nice edit! Well, I await with baited breath the fire and flame thrower units, especially the crocs which simply must feature in the commonwealth module. But I've a feeling they wont

It's stupid things that bug me as well - like where is the Kar98k sound? Why does it sound the same as the US weapons? Why on earth was it not deemed important?

Guys, thanks for the feedback. There's some very eloquent replies here, certainly food for thought - just digressing, don't you just love this forum! Michael, great post, and thanks. I think you've hit the nail on the head. I think I'm just expecting a little too much, too soon, if you follow. This is where my original post was heading - I bought into Shock Force quite late in its production cycle, and I guess I was a little spoilt for choice. A lot of hardware available to me straight away - and a very polished game by the time I played it. Kudos to BFC for producing such a fine piece of software in the first place. Normandy is a bit of a rough diamond in my opinion. Which is no bad thing really. It will mature, in time for the Bulge and the Eastern Front I play at Warrior level, and I think if I'm honest, it's a little too steep for me. Maybe I should restart the campaign and try again - I will have a think about it. Believe me, I've tried the QB generator and I can instantly see the appeal - it's powerful for sure, but it isn't exactly 'quick' is it? I miss the days of creating a random map, and cherry picking a very small force within a couple of minutes. Now you need to add this, remove that, change this; I found the generator quite time consuming actually. But I like it's addition for sure. mjkerner, you are probably right. It's always easier to remember the good times isn't it. Maybe you should try CMAK, and see for yourself. It is still very good indeed. c3k, good point. I've played most of the single scenarios and I've played the German campaign to its conclusion and the RTM campaign. I am one of these that hates to see the red cross when your' guys get hit - so I end up saving more or less every turn and replaying. It sucks to be honest, but I feel so bad about losing my units. James, yes, I know what you mean about the lack of 'feedback' - I too find it a little chaotic and confusing. I didn't know that about partial penetration either. I think I really need to play against a human - that's where it's at! But they did away with the WEGO TCP/IP - nooooooo! I also agree that the scenario designers have surpassed themselves this time round - they are obviously a very talented bunch - and have had plenty of practice since SF. But this actually creates a problem in my eyes too as they have created a rod for their own backs. They can make the maps too challenging; the forces too balanced. I was under the impression that the Allied forces have overwhelming superiority in the air and sea, and on land. I've not even seen a mission yet that features air support, or naval support. Instead it's the same old 2 x 81, 2 x 105 etc etc. It gets a bit tedious when we have access to so many nice toys, but we can only look and not touch! I think this is partly where I prefer SF - the maps seem generally larger, and more open, path-finding is better as a result. Plus the forces are much less balanced - which works in your favour. I guess BFC can't win can they

Now the dust has settled somewhat and we've got our hands on the first patch - what do people think? This isn't meant as a negative post by any stretch of the imagination, I'm just curious what other people think. For me, I really, really want to love it, but there is something missing. I just can't put my finger on it - as it stands CMBB/CMAK were more enjoyable, and I feel bad for saying that. I'm not likely to ever play those games again in the future, but they still feel more 'epic' and I don't know why that is. Perhaps it was simply because they were much larger games. I do enjoy a lot about CMBN, and I can also see where improvements have been made - there's lots of things I like about it - the 1:1, the graphics and animations, but overall the whole experience is somewhat underwhelming I think maybe the difficulty level has soured my taste a little - I find it almost impossibly difficult. I like a game I can win, at least sometimes, and going from mission to mission in the campaigns getting my rear-end handed to me (more often than not), just isn't fun. I think this is part of my problem; the game needs to be fun, and perhaps the fun factor has been removed for me. There seems to be too many little niggles that really ebb away at my enjoyment, and I'm not talking about the bugs. But I don't know what the answer is or why I feel like this really. I've been waiting for this game for 10 years. Perhaps my mind will change once the commonwealth module is out - and we get to see some variation in units. I was a late adopter of Shock Force and I joined the fray once the Marines module had been released, so perhaps I was a little spoilt for choice. But I find myself turning back to Shock Force once again. Yet I prefer the WWII theatre and I really want to immerse myself in the Normany hedgerows. I'm aboslutely positive I will continue to play Normandy, but more and more I find myself easily distracted.

I've seen that in the readme, but I can't understand it - what does 'command' portion actually mean? Is it the part between turns in the WEGO phase, or is it the bit right at the start when you get to place your units? It needs more clarity.

Yep, I realise that - but it is that simple as I didn't restart my campaign, I just loaded it up and continued mid-battle so to speak.

Out of interest, is there any way I can tell if the mission I am playing is patched or not? My guys are still taking what I'd call excessive casualties behind a brick wall.

Yup! And yes, it's a bloody hard mission alright - aren't they all.. I'm only half hour in, and I'm losing men all over the place Fire and Maneuver is all I will say!

Okay that's what I thought - but I hadn't seen it before. Incidentally I haven't located the mines either - I thought engineers would see them? I know they must be there. I managed to set my engineers to work on a different side of the wire and it blew up without loss this time, although the damage to the terrain suggests it was a rather larger explosion than just a satchel charge. Ps. god what a difficult mission! Thank god I can restart

I'm a little confused by something I've just seen - my engineers have set satchel charges to destroy a barbed wire complex allowing my men to cross a bridge - during the explosion one of my engineers is incapacitated and another injured, plus a whole squad of infantry is panicked by the blast. Suppression is at 100%. First time I have seen friendly fire like this - this is the second mission of C&F campaign. Something else I may or may not have done properly - I continued mission 2, post patch, rather than restarting it as such - I presume this is ok? Playing WEGO.

It will depend on a number of things whether it will play at all, but I think the biggest thing is the onboard VGA. Unless it's something like an Intel GMA 3100 I wouldn't bother personally as it will run like a slideshow, if at all, even on the lowest settings. I haven't got a netbook anymore to try; I've got a 13" Dell instead which plays it admirably - is that not an option?. I definitely remember playing CMAK on my netbook a couple of years ago now - it had a Intel 3000 or equivalent and I think it had 3gb of ram too. It played ok on the lowest settings if I'm honest, it was more the size of the battle that killed it - but it would be very dependent on ram and VGA, more than the cpu. Ideally you'd want to run it off mains too.

I have found this also - but what happens if you only have green or inexperienced units available to direct fire? Then you are stuffed basically. What frustrates me is when you are given a FO unit and they are green - they are next to useless if this is the case.

Yay for the panzerfaust! Now I'm going to start the German campaign, and run that one and the Normandy Germany campaign together

I was just somewhat surprised it didn't make it in - the 251/9 with plenty of canister rounds is lethal, and a much better fighting vehicle than one without. They are not all that clever with the 75mm HE in bocage, and they get toasted quite easily by infantry with rifle grenades and small arms fire.

Yeah - it was definitely in CMBO and CMAK but I haven't seen any reference to whether it was used in Normandy. Apparently something had to be fitted to the gun muzzle before they could use it, which is where the 'C' variant of the 215/9 came in.

Canister would have been ideal in bocage and close quarters fighting. I have read that it may have only been the 'c' variant of the 251/9 that carried it and I'm not sure if that model is the one we are using.