SlowMotion

If this won't be implemented one solution could be found from Scenario Depot. There you can search for battles that took place during some month and also in some specific country.

I think this would be a very interesting new feature. But it shouldn't be just for defense QBs. In a MeetingEngagement players could make a deal that one player can decide map generation parameters (hillines, trees and so on) and the other player can choose the place from this bigger map.

Forgot one thing: When making a historical scenario - if you tweak things to make it more playable, please mention this in the briefing. Like "In the real battle this side had 60 tanks, but in the scenario they have only 20".

Some comments after designing some scenarios and playing quite a few more: No matter how much you know about some real battle the program (CMBO,CMBB,whatever) can always simulate just so many things. Very many things just can't be done. So the loosely based on history but fun is the historical scenario category I like best. Knowing all these company No 2 or No 3 OOB things takes lots of reading WW2 history. Most people haven't done that and many never will. They just enjoy playing. But sometimes a good scenario may get the player interested in what really happened. So they may do some reading after playing and then maybe compare the scenario to those actual battle descriptions and notice all new things like "so there were also these things called panzer brigades..." May sound funny to people who've studied these things for years, but I think this is one of the best things about historical scenarios. There are also non-historical scenarios. Totally made up battles that may be interesting because they are fun to play. Tactical game play using WW2 weapons. Large scenarios can be awesome, but playing them well takes much more time, concentration and so on. So those big ones just don't get downloaded. I think these huge monsters might be played a little more if the game allowed making notes to the map. Some text notes and simple graphics. If you have several PBEM games going, it's very easy to forget what all these 200 units were supposed to do. Especially if you planned your latest move one week earlier. And last: QBs can be very good as well - I hope CMBB allows people to use predesigned maps as well.

It's good to remember that IL2 has been out for about one month and there has been just one patch so far. People with some HW configurations are having serious problems: lockups, system crashes etc. If Ubisoft can soon release a patch that removes most of those major problems, there should be some really satisfied posts at IL2 forums as well.

I recently converted some new Scipio sounds from MP3 to WAV and they sounded exactly like you described. When trying those slow WAVs in WinAmp I noticed that the kbps field displayed some really small number, 14H I think. Normally that number is much higher. Maybe I did something wrong in conversion, but when I did the conversion using another program, WAVs sounded ok and that kbps also had normal value.

Have you ran 3dMark2000/2001 or some other DirectX benchmarks? It would be easier for other people to know how much room for improvement there is if they knew your score. THat kind of number helps when you're trying to find out whether some tweak has any effect.

My experience from designing a bridge crossing scenario is that in order to get a good defense, the defending AI needs to be shown where to put troops. To see an example of how different such designed positions are from 'AI positions freely', see my Foggy Hills from Scenario Depot. Designed to be a difficult bridge defending battle against AI, but can be played as PBEM as well.

In IL-2 - the East front flight simulator - there is a feature called View Objects. On the left there is a list of units for you to select and on the right you see either the picture of the unit or information about it, much like you asked for. Having access to something like this from unit purchasing screens of CMBB or whatever comes after that would be very useful. Especially in the beginning when you have no idea how all those strange units are like.

Dschugaschwili: It's not that I want to keep people from spying my scenarios as how they are made, but it's not nice if your opponent knows your initial troops and their positions, what kind of reinforcements *you* are going to receive before you know about it etc. etc. Just because he has previewed scenario contents in the editor in advance and you have not. It's very easy to plan risky tactics that may work during the first few turns as long as your opponent doesn't know what you have and thus has to proceed with caution. This is the main reason why I don't play many PBEM scenarios at the moment, just QBs. Password protected scenarios would make this pre game cheating a bit more elaborate because you would have to play through the scenario. If reinforcement placements, arrival times etc. could be randomly picked from a list of alternatives, the cheater would have to play several times in order to know that there are alternatives. And because of this same reason, cheating could never make the plot totally predictable, no matter how many times you played. Rune: I did mean that the same random factors about arrival times etc. would be there. It's alway nice to hear new bits of information from beta testers.

Replayability would be greatly increased if it was possible to define alternative ways of proceeding. Let's say that scenario designer would define that reinforcement1 is either Panther + some infantry at turn 14 behind the church OR 2 pz4s arriving sometime after turn 16 to a different place. Then you would never know exactly how things will go even after playing the scenario more than once. And if BTS allowed "executable only" scenarios (editing them would require a password), then people couldn't just open the scenario in the editor to see what kind of tricks there are.

Sure, but were the phone lines always working say during a heavy artillery barrage? Of course getting these new orders feature added would be the big thing here. That meeting suggestion was just the icing on the cake. Like adding a semi random factor to whether the player gets to read the message or not.

Assuming this was a purely fictional scenario how long do you think the briefing should have been in order to get an OK rating? I mean: could a ten line briefing be as good as a 20 line one?

Captitalistdoginchina: I think your idea about new flags appearing to the map at the same time with new orders would make this perfect. In a scenario lasting 30 turns first you would have to move troops to some point and then after say 10 turns the new info would tell you whether you are supposed to attack the hill on the left or the bridge on the right.

I meant: A good map and force balance can be created by people for whom English is a foreign language.

I would also like the 1-5 point rating more than 1-10. One thing about briefings that seems to be missing from this discussion so far, is that for non English speaking people writing really good briefings is much more difficult than for native speakers. And reading them probably works the same way. It doesn't set the mood as well if you don't know the meaning of each word A good map and force balance can be created by anyone.

I also vote YES. This would be cool - how about some kind of messengers that would bring you the message IF they get to some area (meet troops or something)? Like a jeep arrives to one side of the map, but before the jeep driver can bring the new instructions (to you the player), he has to meet some of the 'old troops'. You're told that this unit has a message, but before you get to read it, you have to get the messenger guy to certain place alive. So if he gets killed, no info available.

Cameroon: Actually there is a minimum distance at which snipers can engage. I don't know what it is off-hand, but I know it's been discussed on the boards before. This includes stories like "my sniper and an enemy sniper were sharing the same foxhole and wouldn't (couldn't) fire at each other" I suppose there is then, but IMO snipers should be able to use their rifle at shorter distances if it really is necessary. Just like schrecks are meant to be used against tanks, but they can be used against infantry for self defense. For this kind of situations it would be nice to have a command modifier 'Don't think, just do it' which would make the unit pretty much ignore anything else but the command it was given.

What about some special units NOT aiming, no matter what you order? In one of my PBEM games I told my sniper to kill a bazooka unit some 15 meters away. For several turns nothing happened, then an enemy crew comes along and kills my sniper without him firing one single bullet! I do understand that normally snipers prefer targets that are far away, but if they are specifically told to shoot the only target at sight, how come nothing happens???

Patgod: There is that kind of sniper sound mod for CMBO as well, made by Scipio I think.

> exactly specify what I don't like to the author, a simple "force balance was not good" will be vague when I really mean that last 88mm AA gun I think very detailed information like that should be hidden under an AAR button or something, like AdmiralKeth hinted. The addition of these AARs will be a very interesting addition. Reading detailed AARs of battles you have also played can be really interesting, especially for scenario designers. >s a score of "9" for something enough, or do they want to hear more? More Reading detailed feedback on what was good and what was not. No matter how many number categories you add, it's never as good as free form text. I wish more people would go and review even one currently unreviewed battle. There are still hundreds of those left.

I installed these 15.70 drivers as well and now things are working again.

On the other hand the opening animation is a good reminder. Before and after MODS!

Does anybody know how to get all the normally allowed refresh rates back to Display Properties? I ran this Fix program and all other frequencies except the one I set just disappeared. Now I'm forced to use 85 Hz and all the bugs are back

Now we can check how many casualties a gun, tank etc. has caused. Sometimes it would be also nice to have the reverse: after the game is over one could select a destroyed vehicle, tank etc. and click "Who killed this?" button. Then the killer unit would be highlighted.