thewood

You could argue that any turn-based game with opportunity fire as a major engine component is heavily abstracted. I was looking at unit sizes.

SPWAW and its relatives have a similar QB maker.

Huntar, the main issue at least some of us have right now is we post a question about how something is supposed to be or whether its a bug or not, and we get no real acknowledgement. The game's design is what it is. I don't think I have much influence on that. What I should get when a buggy premature release is put out is at least some response to real game questions. Manual is only slightly helpful because of its inconsistency. Until BFC went dark, the only way to get a detailed response from anyone in this forum was to question military doctrine of some kind. There should be no risk to BFC posting a real FAQ or even a list of stuff they are investigatiing. At that point I can set it aside and see what results. What we get is a group of beta testers waving 1.04, 1.05, etc. in front of us saying something is fixed. If the beta testers can do that, can't BFC come in and give us some detail? Instead, if I were a potential cutomer, it would kind of look like BFC says if you don't like the way we play, we're taking our ball and going home. If the beta testers and BFC were really that concerned about potential customers getting a negative vibe, a little more frankness about the release, AT release, would have been better. Now BFC looks like any other game company. Shove it out the door and worry about it later. I know they will fix CMSF, they have to. But the pawning problems off on complaining customers driving business away smacks a lot of American corporate head in the sand thinking. Doctors call it looking at the symptom not the root cause.

I was really looking to see if BFC would come out at some point and clue us in. I have heard before from beta tester about soon and a couple of days and was just curious if asking nicely would get something.

Since its my thread, a bump to see if we can get any info

Sox to win the Series...oh sorry...

read em all already. Looking for non-fiction

Can you recommend a good book that covers the more military side of the wars of napolean? The ones I find in the local stores in the states tend to focus too much on the grand strategy and politics.

I am very interested in Histwar. Haven't looked at it recently, but its one of those games I hope is very successful. Phillip, ever read any of the Sharpe's novels that were mostly about the Peninsular war.

its bliss

SP has reverse I thought. either spwaw or spww2, can't remember.

Yeah, I tried TOW scenario building for a while and could never quite get it. It was incredibly powerful though.

Did you also do the TOW tutorials? Those were cool too.

One thing I agree with Dale on is that most of the lacking features we expected in CMSF were more than likely left out due to time constraints. It is possible to do them, but BFC found itself in the position of having make a very short list of things to include and hope there would be time later to add in. A few may just require too much effort at this point, but to retain or recover interest in CMSF, I hope they can get a lot in. Many of those "left out" things Steve admitted to and I am hoping this time they are taking is to do it right. Our enemy in CMSF is not Syria, but lack of time due to the Paradox committment.

I still play with a couple of regulars in CM1 but our CMSF experience has really turned us off CMSF. I still play it solo, but still have issues in PBEM in 1.04.

Great testing. That helps a lot.

I think the scenario editor is a great step forward, but have to agree that lack of triggers of some kind really limits it. I also don't think squad battles is a great example of AI. None of the HPS SQB series have good AI.

I keep hearing people talk about this. Has this been acknowledged? Has anybody been able to get it to work? I have tried a few PBEM games but seemed to have a number of issues with keeping both sides synched up.

I can't even speculate on that. Maybe turn the question around to get a partial answer. If CMBO were released today, would it catch fire like it did? I think yes for a couple of reasons: scope is pretty broad great map editor great scenario editor pretty bug free good mechanics Graphics would be the only major tuen off, but I think you wouldn't lose most of the wargame customers over it. Still not sure how broad the appeal would be. The other part of the question may be if CMBO had been released in a modern middle east setting with a limited scope. I would hazard a guess that it would have sold as well, but not be as long lived.

The problem with how it works is it keeps losing and reacquiring and you get that constant chatter from every unit. At this point its the soldier who cried vehicle.

If CMSF had come out without CM1 preceding it, BFC would not have had the reputation of producing product that is not released before its time. With that said, it would have been revolutionary as a wargame. The scope and bugs probably would have kept it from catching on like CMBO. I think it would definitely been better recieved than it is now because of expections set by CM1, but the release state would have turned a lot of people off. Don't forget that EYSA and TOW have tried to do similar things, and in my opinion, less successfully than CMSF. If CMSF had come out in relatively bug-free form with complete documentation, I would declare it head and shoulders above all else, but in its current state, I have to say its only a little better than EYSA and thats mostly because of the editor and a community around it. [ November 28, 2007, 06:42 PM: Message edited by: thewood ]

Mud, when BFC talked about CMSF being the next stage of development in the CM franchise, those are the kinds of things I was hoping for. Not taking away things that had already been put in. Granted 1:1, RT, and better graphics are a step forward, but the rest of the things you mentioned are really needed to make those advancements viable.

I look at CMSF as basically CMSF beta demo, but paid for. I still think even the CMBO demo was a little bit better shape than CMSF.

I have seen the same thing consistently when bunkers are about, even though no vehicles are in the game.

It wasn't people asking for it that got it released, it was BFC's agreement with Paradox. 1.01 was released because even BFC admitted it was unplayable for a large number of people. After that, you may have a point that releases came to quell the noise.