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No, it is me. My point was were is the suspense in read a murder mystery which I authored. So, now I create this scenario, and play it. But it suffers from fore-knowledge even worse than playing someone else's scenario three times.

Here is something I don't understand. Isn't this like trying tickle yourself?

I decided what I am going to do. Just play the scenarios I can win or lose under normal circumstances. At most 2 tries. I like playing smaller stuff; right now Tiny. But those suffer from the fact that shots taken at you are not Tiny. Thus, casualties are far more costly when you only have a few squads. Otherwise I do plan to spend more time with QBs. Is there a way to save or convert a QB into a scenario so that you can do further edits on it? Like the idea of adding reinforcements immediately comes to mind for spicing up.

I thought omission was a convention. Well, I am not saying this is the gospel ... it's my way of looking at it. I think designers make CM what it is. Yes, there is much you can do with the tools, but most people don't want to dig to that level. I am a software engineer. I read the manual to see what I own, but I don't plan to master it. I often read manual without ever building things with the products. Honestly, I just want to play games.

Given the way 98% of CM has played through the years. The setup zone is out of LOS/LOF due topography or cover or both. And then there is an an exciting movement to contact. The reason I say exciting is that some maps can be big, and the pace at which you cover dead space is going to determine if you win or lose. The clock is one of the scenarios designers tools. One would assume many can be won with "no clock". So, you most conduct recon to avoid losses that result in mission failure, but you must do this quick and keep the troops moving and not bunching due to the ever present threat of in the distance with mortars with direct LOS or an FO. (or planned fire) If a scenario designer wants you to get shot up in the setup zone. I think the briefing should be clear. YOUR FORCE IS PINNED DOWN AND UNDER FIRE. MOVE OR DIE. (It might interesting to have pre-planned barrage called in seemingly by the players side of smoke one minute too late to save everyone. I don't know if the designer can create pre-planned barrages for the player. This would open interesting missions of staying on schedule and moving behind a rolling barrage. Did they do that in WWII? Reinforcements in trenches could simulate defenders taking deep cover.) I guess my point is that I don't like scenarios that break conventions that we all understand like movement to contact/recon. I gain nothing by a scenario where I was suppose to recklessly sprint across the map. I gain nothing from a brief that tells me that 2 Panzer 3s were spotted when they are Tigers. You will say that in RL Americans thought every tank round that missed them was fired by a Tiger ... perhaps that is true. Sadly, it is a convention that briefs probably are more accurate than RL which was probably very FOW. But then in RL, you have the option to get on the net and say you need tank support. This is not possible in CM. It just becomes part of the scenario design which means you are not probing, but assaulting fortifications. How often does the mission change in the middle in RL? I know in business I am assigned to add a key feature to a system only to uncover a key system design flaw which if not corrected will spell system failure in just few weeks when the database grows to a certain size. It create a whole new and much more urgent project. This is a true story that happened to me my first 2 weeks in a new job as CTO. I didn't make the conventions. RL did not make the conventions. The community has. Things might have evolved differently where immobile setup units were already in contact when the scenario starts always, but that has not been the pattern. I suppose someone could do a paper on the unwritten rules. They are unwritten, but certainly known when someone breaks them, because the scenario just does not feel right. Like an allied unit showing up in the middle wearing German uniforms who are OSS. I don't think you can do this in WWII titles; maybe in SF2 with Red and Blue. CONVENTIONS - it is the culture of our CM community

Okay, I am moving on to a different scenario. Hopefully, the designer of the one I have been playing has had enough laughs. Some comments: * Don't put the deployment area in the enemy's LOS/LOF. After 20 years of CM, this is the first scenario I encountered men dying in the deployment area. Just like war, scenarios have conventions, and in CM setup and reinforcement tend to be special areas. (quiet areas of contemplation; not a sniper/HMG shooting fish in barrel) * Someone said here scenarios have replayability as you discover their little twists which permit victory. Sorry, I want to learn realistic tactics, and not tricks. I would have bought Myst in the latter case. Example of what I consider is of zero value to my CMx2 maturation. There is a tall wall and a sniper. There is a 2M gap in the wall. Things are such that you get a triangle action square looking at the sniper's square. The 60mm mortar with 5 rounds of HE has LOS to the sniper's action square, but sniper does not have LOS to the mortar team. So, due to the magic variability of area fire of a mortar's 5 rounds will kill the sniper team ... otherwise the sniper team can easily take out a whole squad. Now, since CMBO I am fully familiar with keeping tanks out view and using near area fire to kill an ATG due to blast effect. But this is not even that technique ... it depends on facing and where individuals set up in the action square. This is NOT RL combat technique, but game engine modeling behavior that makes for a guaranteed kill. I am moving on. This scenario taught me nothing about being a better player. I used RL techniques that I had learned that failed to work: * Smoke * Suppressing fire with a SAW (high rate fire creates suppression). * The entry teams each had a Thompson. A short range MG which you want in a close fight. But the suppression failed, and my entry team following game mechanics don't cover angles, but head right to the action point and neglect the guy standing right behind with a weapon. I watched 2 YouTube videos on how 2 guys could enter a room and fairly safely clear the angles (from outside) and make it in alive without a grenade or flashbang ... assuming 1 hostile and perhaps 1 non-combatant. If you encountered multiple hostiles, you were suppose to back off and get some support. In CM entering a door is a video game haunted house. (Why do they throw grenades at 20M outdoors, but don't want to break the china when fighting in doors?) It even covered that you don't hold your rifle straight and sighting as the rifle's barrel gives you away. The rifle should be pointed down just slightly in front of your feet to reduce profile.

Okay, so I was not the most competent writer of English to point out errors. I don't deny it. I grew up NY, USA, and a very important debate was taking place in schools while I was a kid. * Penmanship (before computers) * English spelling/grammar I will skip the first, but here is the second: (A) English is the national language and any student presented answer should be written in perfect English or be penalized in score. OR (B) Perfect English is for English and Literature class ... in science and any subjects as long you demonstrated you knew the answer you receive 100%. Position B would win. I don't know why. I have studied linguistics and the history of English. I don't know if B is correct, but languages are far more a moving target than most people realize.

Sorry, MikeyD, I don't like levels and having to study walk throughs. This is why I read these forums, watch YouTube, and other stuff like Bil's blog. At some point, you ship out overseas and the game begins. I had one open battle generator (not BFC) engage me with 7:1. The developer said that's real life and happens. I agree. But as a game, if you can achieve a 2:1 kill ratio before death or retreat, then the game should score you a victory. These are games, and a rule of gaming is that victory should be possible at 1 out of 3 times. I take my games serious ... * I send scouts ahead while trying to keep my main forces spread out or quickly moving behind the scouts so that they don't end up in an arty barrage. * I use over watch and whenever possible try to set up heavy weapons for that. * I have infantry probing 200M ahead of armor for panzerschreck und panzerfaust. Armor also moves in overwatch, and if the maps permits and I am German with superior optics, I will have Stugs deep out to the flanks to hit the weak armor of an enemy. I do my best to construct plans and understand game mechanics. You train so that in RL, you win. I don't consider scenarios training, but graduation day. QBs and the scenario editor is to conduct repetitious tests of what may work. Some aspect of a WG, should exist as a test; not training. If it is not the scenarios? Then what is it in CM?

I have been playing around with QB creation not fighting yet. I let the computer pick a tiny American Army infantry force. Some how, I ended up with a unit of field guns ??? Might have been okay if I was the defender, but I was the attacker. I set up another that I really planned to fight, but when I got to deployment, I noticed many of the buildings were actually submerged underground. I did try a scenario today, but I got frustrated by the riddle like nature of it. This is worse than chess at least because pattern riddles can theoretically re-occur, but I am looking for general strategies in either a top down or bottom up approach which can lead to victory. Are tiny and small scenarios particularly prone to be riddles with a single solution which require lots of experimentation to happen across what in other communities would be called a "a level walk through"? Thanks.

No satchel charges, no priest, no M1A2 ... Just bolt action rifles; 1895 surplus.

My brens will be around 80M. So, you think they will be able to simply do it on their own?

Please if you recognize the scenario I am talking about - NO SPOILERS. Okay, I have a rectangular 1 story building with known enemy inside (Germans - WWII) with 3 large rooms each connected by a doorway. Each room has its own separate outside door. I only have CW small arms. My question is more about game mechanics than RL. I will smoke that side of the build, and deploy 3 Bren teams. The 3 Bren teams will poor suppressing fire (area fire) into each of the units. Now, here are my options. Let's just consider one unit (meaning building module) first. (A) Do I send in two separate teams with quick and 10 second pause on the trailing team? Team 1 has a Thompson and bolt action. Team 2 has two bolt actions. or (B) Do I leave the two above combined and send the 4 man team in via an assault order? I worry about his, because I suspect the mechanics of assault is tuned for the "great outdoors" and not bursting through doorways. So, that there is going to be no one covering the first guys who go in, because they are positioned and looking for shooters who are outside. Also, I worry that 4 guys will suffer a deadly traffic jam at the door. or (C) Do I leave the two above combined and send the 4 man team in via a quick order, and expect that the AI is agile enough to cover the angles while 1 or 2 guys go in first? Let's consider the three units (building modules). (D) Do I attempt to enter all units from the outside doors? I don't like this idea as despite suppressing fire, sending men running in front of a window with potential shooters (with grenades) gives me the shivers. (E) Do I simply enter the first unit from the outside, and enter the next two units from the inside? Again as above? 2 teams and a 5 or 10 second pause? 1 team via assault? 1 team via quick? (F) Is there a role for the hunt command in any of this? Comments? Besides responding, please state your reasons. Thanks.

Yesterday, I created my first QB in CMFI and was just about go off and fight it. Until I went to examine the map in detail for planning. 241Attk Tiny City (steep hills) 241.btt That a terrain generator created this map like in CMx1, I could believe, but that this was handcrafted --- AMAZING. Each street was maybe 12-16M higher than the one before. Think of mountain terraced rice paddies in Asia. But it was the buildings ...... On one side of the street you had a few floors and doors and windows. On the other side, the land had been filled in with a backhoe covering windows and doors, and maybe you might walk off the street onto a roof. Well, I was looking to try a town clearing exercise, but the town looked like a US Southwest recreation of a pueblo dwelling. My first QB experience. I am off to find another map! BTW, I put in TINY forces, but if you go infantry the budget gets you like 8 platoons which includes heavy weapons teams. It is not what I really considered TINY? The only way I see of getting TINY is ignore the budget and buy for both sides. Comments? Thanks.

I have two divergent thoughts on this: * Perhaps things are overdone in games, since subtle nuance is not well conveyed by a one time battle as opposed to a year of command. or * I have been a manager in business, and I can really say that there is an order of magnitude difference between the best programmer and the worst. Which actually made, the best highly cost effective ... only organizations stuck with HR and no vision determined pay by simply job titles or industry averages. The best rarely even got double the pay of the worst. Maybe 20-30% more.

Also, I might be mistaken, but I thought expertise and in/out command also impacted the delay system.

Yes, I do remember consciously going through my staff and picking what roles various platoons would play based on leadership and also squad experience. CRACK and ELITE were amazing, and CONSCRIPT was good for identifying enemy shooters. Also, good leaders had longer in command ranges which made difference to resilience.

I take that to mean that fires no longer spread?

I think you're right. That should be "principles".

This may be an extension that in both series, you were never allowed to intentionally shoot at prisoners. So, perhaps cowering is a limbo state, since maybe the next state is surrender. And maybe no one would reach surrender if they were to be shot while cowering. But the problem of cowering is cowering with a weapon handy. However, in order to resolve that, capturing prisoners needs to cease being an abstraction, and actually involve time away from combat to disarm, search, and restrain.

I think there are some tense agreement errors later on, but having worked in computers: I still having trouble working out whether it is "goto" or "go to".

I was mainly checking on whether Rubble was out for CMRT. So, you know how you click around ... https://www.battlefront.com/about-us It looks to me like there are some basic English spelling and grammar errors. I assume BFC is incorporated in the USA, and most primaries are native speakers of English. * Thus, this small blurb of text about your most precious enterprise should be perfect. * Also, in the age of spelling and grammar checking on every telephone, given the 1998 founding ... such errors make it look like the company might still be operating in 1998. Thanks.

My guess was it was removed to aid RT play. Do many play CM RT? I cannot imagine playing RT given how much time I invest in just small scenario with planning. REMEMBER: They may have removed Borg Spotting, but among the units on the map there is only one brain.

Yes, CMx2 is far better here. They seem to have some sense of space and time, beyond the pause command. CMx1 spend 15 minutes planning a convoy route, and find all paths shot to h*ll quite literally when something opens up.

You could move, add, delete waypoints. But what I mean is when all paths were displayed, you could click on any path and that would select the owning unit of the path. So, you didn't have to first find the owning unit to edit the path. All QBs and scenarios had difficulty settings beside FOW. So, you increase or decrease the units favoring one side. It would just be more of the same if it was +20%. Also, you could set the AI's skill level. So, +1 meant every OPFOR units was buffed by one skill level. --- In general unlike CMx2, you did not split squads. The sum of the teams were not equal to the whole. They would prove to be more brittle. Due to "borg spotting" or "absolute spotting" you learned to set up ATGs in keyhole LOS. Because as soon as it fired, every tank on the map knew of its existence. The only way the ATG could survive for a while was with keyhole LOS; otherwise everything would open up. --- There were some magic numbers too. Like 200M. This was the spotting distance for most non-AFV heavy weapons. So, you wanted to put HMGs back and screen them with some infantry. Because as soon as an HMG was spotted every tank on the map bring its turret around. The AI had a target hierarchy: tanks, ATGs, panzerschrecks, HMGs, mortar, grunts ... But you could suppress global target fixation by setting up covered arcs. The current CM family may be far better than CMBO/CMBB/CMAK, but those games were great fun. BFC has narrowed their content offering considerably. The CMx1 games covered the entire war, but the Pacific. When you think what you go with one title, it was tremendous value. --- I should say something about Sid Meier here. To the best of my recollection he introduced realtime combat with a 3D isometric map with his Gettysburg series. Sid, broke much new ground in many genres. Many people played Close Combat 1-5 (2D top down), but you lose the whole tactical battlefield like that. It's okay for operations, but not a tactical game.

I think that may be the max it supports. It was born in the day of multi-sync CRTs with a 4:3 aspect ratio.