thewood

The opinions in this post are not necessarily the opinions of all naysayers on the forum. (although we agree with the gist)

I meant to ask Steve this, but never did. If you never zoom in and stay at a high level, what's the point of 1:1 graphics. That sounds like CM1 type playing to me. I have to zoom in to keep my units from making completely boneheaded moves. For example, I know my Strykers won't try to protect themselves. Maybe that's why some people don't see all the issues others do.

My brother is visting this week and he is one of my regular CM1 MP opponents. He doesn't have CMSF. He played the demo and has spent the last three days playing my CMSF. I finally watched him play tonight. He says he likes RT, except no replay. As I watched him, he was almost literally pausing every 5 seconds. He says it was because, without the replay, he is worried he was missing something. He said it felt too much like work.

Well said. I been trying to think how to say that.

Dogface, what I meant by initial was up to 1.04 it didn't work. Frankly I don't remember if it worked even in 1.04, its been at least a month since I even played and infantry battle. As far as move to contact, you are correct in one way, but we bascially have a M2C, but no hunt, from a CM1 perspective. This was not done to open the debate about RT vs. WEGO, but my trying to undestand how there can be two completely polarized views of CMSF. I wondered if the dividing line was RT vs. WEGO. As far as these commands being useful in RT also, I definitely agree. But you can compensate for the lack of a lot of these features with micromanaging through pauses. In WEGO, it makes the game pretty frustrating. Without them in, you will basically be stuck with smallish, easy to manage battles without them, or a ton of pausing. IMO, if they had scrapped WEGO, had replays, and workable pauses and some sort of PBEM system from the get go, I would be no where near as disappointed in game play as I am now. Yeah, some people would have screamed, but can't be any worse now. My remaining hope is that the time spent on 1.05 is bringing WEGO up to CM1 standards, or really bulking RT up to the point we don't care about WEGO.

I can't believe anyone can ask why we play WEGO...one word...replays. Also, I meant to say Squad Assault, not Squad Leader.

IMO, it is a big deal for SP also. Its the difference between being CM or being something like Squad Leader. A nice try, but no thanks.

I see, sorry

To me, it depends on setting of interest, WW2, CMBB. If its modern mid east, CMSF. But keep in mind that CMBB has almost 2000 scenarios scattered around the web. CMSF has not broken 70. The community for CMBB is quite a bit more active right now. If you really have to have modern, I would wait for feedback from 1.05 before dropping money on CMSF.

I have been mulling this over since CMSF's release. Afterthought is too strong a word, but it looks to me like the real push was to make sure RT was in and then they either ran out of time for cleaning up WEGO or it wasn't a priority. One piece to cite here are Steve's own comments from the thread talking about Target Light command and why they used that instead of the Main Gun option from CM1: "1. 60 second turns, no RT option. Meaning, the game prompted you to revisit your orders every 60 seconds. Sure, you could forget to cancel an Area Fire order (I did it all the time ), but the game did inherently give you a reminder to reassess and cancel if need be." I don't consider this the "damning evidence", but combined with the following: - No Movement to Contact command - No hull down command - Hunt command now stops and cancels order - initial lack of ability to chain key commands - inability to hide at end of move - Broken replays not showing actual ammo and crew status - no ability to combine hide and arc commands for ambushes - No TCP/IP for WEGO - PBEM broken for a while and even now still having issues - Lack of self preservation for light vehicles especially Now if you primarily play RT, these don't seem like a big deal, but with 60 sec. of no interference, its a killer when all put together. I also think that is why there is a big gap between lovers and haters. I wonder if the majority of people who love CMSF, play RT, and people that are diappointed play WEGO. I play both, and other than the LOS/LOF issues, I can get through a RT game without pulling my hair out, as long as its small. When I try WEGO, I end up shutting it off with 5 or 6 turns.

I have no doubt that crawling makes you tired, just seems there should be something between crawling and strolling down the street.

This may be a stupid answer, but did you get the right patches. There is a difference between the BFC and paradox patch.

CMSF seems to be following the Paradox model like HOI. I love HOI and HOI2, but it was the most painful game buying experience I remember. HOI was obviously released way, way, too early and took probably six months to become playable in any type of realistic way.

OK, that made sense. </font>

While I agree with facts stated, remember, BFC's mantra for most years was they were better than other developers specifically because they didn't get in bed with big publishers. I know there must have been cash flow reasons for doing it, but the decision at the time must have been, big publisher with cash infusion or scale back CMSF. Looking at it in hindsight, scaling back to match available resources was probably the way to go. One of first memories of Steve posting on these boards was the disdain he had for developers who sold out and pushed product out the door that was not ready due to pressure from publishers. Most of what I know of the game publishing business (not much) came from Steve's tirades (my choice of words). In the first two weeks of CMSF's release, that was what frustrated me the most.

I am not sure your point. Slow makes your troops exhausted either way.

That is actually part of the problem. There is no way to move slowly without exhausting your troops.

I hope for his legacy's sake, he went down in a flaming wreck while jumping the Peng Challenge.

Not a problem Dale. Nidan is keeping me hopping with his British Paratroopers and Crazyivan has BIG assault guns rolling in from what seems like all directions. My Krauts are reeling, rolling and rockin with the break of dawn. </font>

Best post I've seen here in over a month.

Webwing, I think most of us recognize its doable. But when initially asked, Steve came up with a bunch of reasons for kind of "browbeating" us into thinking we were idiots and old farts for asking. I am paraphrasing obviously because most of us are old farts. Sorry to try to speak for you Dale.

For one thing, I know its not your responsibility. It is BFC's. I beta tested a tactical game before and found myself in the exact situation where customers looked at me as a company rep, which at the time is legally true. The game company left the testers out to dry and basically abandoned the forum and we testers took the heat. In my opinion you are better off just posting as a player and not a tester. It makes for a lot of ambiguity and pressure that BFC should not put on you. Trying to run the fine line of being player and producer will only lead to aggravation and a situations like this where you can't win. We had an old saying in the factory, knowing just enough to get into trouble. That is the situation I see guys like you in right now. You really can't win.

Don't take this the wrong way, but many of the answers from beta testers weren't right or were guesses, maybe a little more educated than others, but still guesses. As an example, go back to my original questions about Stryker behavior under fire. Asked three or four times, including a pretty lengthy thread in the tactics section, and not a reposnse from BFC. Got a couple of "guesses" from people who said they were beta testers, but absolutely nothing concrete about how they are supposed to behave. Then, when 1.03 came out a few weeks later, one of the mentions was that reactions to fire were adjusted. Was it because of my question? No one ever came back and said they were looking at it, beta tester or BFC. Even now, no one has really addressed this. Even BFC saying, hey its the best we can do would have saved me time. I probably built 20 different scenarios and run them multiple times to try to figure it out. All I can say now is its broken. There are issues like this acattered all around all the CMSF forums. beta tester input is appreciated, but unless they know for a fact something is recognized and being fixed, its still a guess.

I completely understand that. I have been following BFS/BTS in the Beyond Squad Leader days. I know what they are capable of. I know their communication model is usually great. But, given that, I also thought I knew they would never team up with a big distributer that would force their hand. At that point, the bets are almost all off. BFC's biggest mistake was and continues to be getting caught up in the philisophical discussions and almost ignoring people with legitimate questions. I will bet they lose more future customers through that approach than through negative posts from customers. Many times prospects look at forums, not for positive/negative posts, but how the company responds to questions and issues. What still concerns me is not the negative posts in these or other forums, but the lack of posts in the CM forums around the web. No one is even talking about the negative things. I will bet my house its not because they are heads down playing CMSF. BFC is going to have to do something to reenergize interest in CM2. Now on to beta tester interaction here. Absolutly nothing has frosted me more or made me want to completely give up on BFC than beta testers coming and saying that complaining is driving away customers. I hear that all the time from other companies and it makes me lose complete respect for any company that falls back on that old theme. Yes, I do expect more reasoned responses from BFC. I take a step back and have to realize its beta testers saying it, not BFC. But BFC needs to realize that people not in the know won't know that and think BFC is no different than any other company in crisis. I know better, but there are not many 7 year customers left in this forum.

Was it any good? --- </font>