Pete Wenman

No they are clear - you want small arms to have an unrealistic effect on troops hiding behind buildings because you don't like losing troops who enter buildings and are engaged by enemy hidden behind the far wall. There will be a way to solve the problem and yes it might mean you have to fire HE at a Preserve objective or use your sappers to blast into the building.

Here is a preview of the map with the overlay fairly visible.  Did alright on the roads, do need to clean some of them up but i can do that later.  There will be 2 objectives, the police Station, and the government center.  I am going to take liberties with the location of the government center to get it more toward the center of the map.  Between the 2 objectives are 2 main roads with many offices, restaurants, shops etc lining both.   Should make for an interesting meeting point for forces between the 2 objectives.

"A war without Mercy- Another pathetic enemy vet vs your conscripts type battle. Takes place in Herrlisheim. Terrible scenario with too short of a time limit. The game began to skip and serious FPS lose to the point of almost not being able to play when the panthers rolled in and were taken out as quick as they arrived. Artillery never ever hit where i wanted it to. Weather was terrible. Allies skills were horrid. Not playing again."
 
Disagree with the above.  I really enjoyed that one.  The green 12th Armored getting a bloody nose trying to clear-out a town during Operation Nordwind.  I thought it was a lot of fun and pretty manageable even for a huge scenario.  (I followed the advice in the scenario briefing to flank around the town which is a panzerfaust/panzerschrek gallery.  I also ensured that I left flank guards to defend against counter-attacks which the briefing mentions as a possibility.)  Overall, I thought it was one of the better CMFB scenarios.
Also, I had no tech issues with it whatsoever.  My PC/graphics card are both nearly four years old.  They were decent when I got them, but certainly not top-of-the-line gaming PC/graphics card even for 2015.  Yet, they handled that scenario without any noticeable FPS loss or any "skipping."

Hi to all the Battlefront community members. I am a little embarrassed to say that I have been a lurker here for a long time, too long. Hopefully moving forward I can change this by being active and contributing here.
 
I will start by providing a little bit of background about myself and my gaming history.  I am a male as I guess almost all members are in this genre of games and entertainment. Unfortunately I haven't come across too many female wargamers in my time and that extends to my wife who hasn't embraced this passion of mine. Oh well can't win them all. I am Australian but also are a British citizen and lived in the UK for over a decade which is where my wife originates from. We now live back in Australia and only a minutes walk from the beach. 😎
 
I first started getting into wargaming in my early teens having developed a significant interest in military history. The board games and publishers with varying levels of accuracy and or just fun that I played were included Panzer Blitz (Avalon Hill), Panzer Leader (Avalon Hill), Axis and Allies (Milton Bradley), Drive on Stalingrad (TSR), Red Storm Rising (TSR),  The Hunt for Red October (TSR), Assault - Tactical Combat in Europe 1984 (GDW) along with extra modules Boots and Saddles, Bundeswehr, Chieftain, & Reinforcements. In addition I played role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness TMNT (Paladium Books).
 
As far as my PC gaming history the first wargame on any electronic device that I played was a WW2 one covering battles on both the East and West fronts at the battalion level on my Apple IIc computer back in the late 80's so forgive me if I cannot recall the title. Also had some John Tiller titles in my collection on PC I was a big fan of the original Total War series and played Shogun, Rome and Medieval Total War. Also played heavily Silent Hunter III a WW2 submarine simulation. Also been heavily into flight sims such as European Air War back in the 90's, Falcon 4, and now Digital Combat Simulator. I was I guess a fairly late arrival onto the Combat Mission scene and my first purchase was the new engine 2 Combat Mission - Battle for Normandy back in mid 2011. Since then I have purchased every module for it along with then Fortress Italy, Red Thunder and Final Blitzkrieg. I intend to purchase the final module for Fortress Italy and the follow up module for Red Thunder. I do not own Black Sea or any of the other modern titles. For some reason I prefer the WW2 titles and the modern ones have just not captured my imagination and excitement like the historical titles have.
 
What do I love about the CM WW2 titles? Firstly the accuracy as far as TOE is outstanding. The maps are very well done and the variety of those maps is excellent. I also feel that the command and control elements are well done. The granularity and level at which you can issue specific commands to individual vehicles and squads/sections is excellent. Yes there may be the occasional frustration with your pixel troopen and path finding but I simply explain this away as part of the unpredictable nature of combat. Artillery is also well implemented in my opinion and it really can be incredibly satisfying when you manage to execute a well orchestrated combined arms operation. And the actual content in terms of campaigns and single missions along with the Mission Editor provides an mass of re-playability. Sure the graphics are not AAA title but the actual vehicle models are pretty good and things like the hit decals have added to the immersion.  And sure the development pace is not fast but I think it is important to have realistic and grounded expectations as wargaming is such a niche market and Battlefront is not some massive team of dozens if not hundreds of people working on a title. It is what it is and I am grateful to be able to play such titles as Battle for Normandy, FI, RT, and FB. There are also some great You Tubers that help to promote the Combat Mission series such as Usually Hapless (following his vids right now Heavy Hitters defence and attack), Few Good Men, Panzer PJ's, Real & Simulated Wars blog, Ithikial (fellow Aussie), General Jack Riper, and Ts4EVER. 
 
Now looking to the future I only hope that once the addon module for RT and the final module for FI is done that Battlefront will look at North Africa for the next WW2 setting as the early to mid years of the war are I think very interesting. So that is my story and I hope that I can contribute to these forums and to the community and perhaps play online against some here. Gosh that was longer than I anticipated. ☺️ Anyway back to my FI campaign Conrath's Counterattack. 
 
 

I agree with you totally as to your view of these types of request and as to how well they would work as to creating new scenarios and content.
I like to play around with the editor myself and am always looking for different types of tactical situations to set up.
So I have found it possible to set up pretty much any of these types of missions to some extent.
Now did I find these interesting - yes.
Did I find it hard to get the game set up to mimic realistic results from real life events. (very hard at times, but generally it was possible)
Would many of these battles make a good scenario. No - seldom and getting victory conditions that make it a challenge and possible victory for both sides  is really a hard task to achieve.
 
 
Personally, I think the magic to scenario design and battle building is looking for ways to create and reflect different battles and somehow show or reflect a direct challenge in that situation. There really is no one type of design that is better than others, so when people ask for scenarios be designed a certain way, I see that as their preference, likely because it matches their style of game play. But I don't think designers should think they need to restrict themselves to such request.
 
I do think designers should stretch themselves and try to create unusual battles, just for the sake of providing distinct tactical situations. As for having the game model the units for those limited situations, its not a good usage of the companies time. 
But the game can do it,  I wish I had the time where I could provide some quality scenarios in some of these type of situations. But I find I don't have the time or desire to do it.
 
But anyone who own the game can learn to create their own wishes with some effort. and when you are doing it for yourself, it takes much less time. because there is so much more that does not need to be done to meet expectations of a scenarios to release to others. I find I can create a map and get troop types to reflect what I want pretty easily. I don't care if the troops don't look correct or wear the right clothing, I care about their setting so they act appropriate for the abilities that I think they have. I don't need to worry about AI limits or programming it. I either play both sides or I find someone to play one side and off we go.
The game is a excellent tool for reflecting combat - learn to use the tool and you don't need to hope others provide you the battles you want to play, its within reach of your own finger tips

Waaaaay better. 💪

But why not, if it turns out to be the best game you´ve ever purchased?

I have bought scores of games during the last couple of decades - and CMBN was surely the most expensive single purchase. But most of the cheap games I´ve bought were probably cheap because nobody wanted to pay full price for them. So in some cases I have paid 10 $ for a game I have scrapped after two hours. 10 $ might be cheap for a game - but is 5 $ an hour cheap?

The 60 $ I paid  for CMBN has given me thousands of hours worth of enjoyable gameplay for the past seven years. So in terms of cent pr. hour it is the cheapest game I ever bought.
 

It sure is funny how most of the people who complain about price and why is the games not on sale for bargain prices are people who have a handful of comments on the site and are recent new members.
In other wards I see them as typical gamers expecting the same thing they see with most of the rest of the industry. Expecting to get something for almost nothing after a short life span of the product , with a newer version out and selling again for that company.
They have never played any game for any extended period of time and are just waiting for the next thing on the market that they can consume.
The concept of a game with depth and years of endless playability is not a possibility in their thought process. Let alone a fact that the company is not capable of putting out new versions in a year or two with staffs in the hundreds to do such things. A product with only a handful of guys working on and making adjustments to and no ability to try and push the graphic limits of the present home computer each and every year.
They see it as a unknown logic in the world that they live in and cannot accept it.
I find it funny. BF is two guys that came from that world and hated it, created their own way to run and manage their game and have done what they wanted and made the life they wanted for themselves and provided us with games no one in the all powerful industry want to do.
So Bf keep selling and doing business how you want. I appreciate the games too much to care about sales and how they do business.

Had a couple more thoughts on this. Not really responding to anything in particular. 

Difficulty is, naturally, subjective. I did see a post on Reddit the other day, coining the term "not BGG Balanced" referring to Root. Root is a great asymmetric COIN game, with woodland creatures. A furry insurgency, if you will. Very impressed with the Designer since his work on Pax Pamir and especially John Company, so it comes highly regarded.

"BGG" refers to Boardgamegeek. Root (and the GMT COIN series that inspired it) tend to be asymmetric, with multiple factions that need to bounce off each other to make the whole thing work. Asymmetry implies imbalance, but the point of the games are that if Player A doesn't perform his role, Players B and C might not be able to stop D winning. This means that all players need to be invested and understand the underlying situation, which is asking for a fair bit of commitment from them. Not an unreasonable amount, but more than the average eurogame.

The point of the "BGG balanced" remark was that the balance in Root is something that all parties need to work towards to achieve. They need to be aware of what they're doing, and what everyone else is doing, and to control the imbalance in the overall context, and of a specific turn. Getting this right is a huge part of doing well at the game. A forum like BGG is inevitably a melting pot of people with different backgrounds and expectations, playing groups and experiences, and so a game which asks a lot from the players may not be suitable for everyone in every situation. In fact, you're more likely than not that the consensus will be tilted towards the mean - so any outliers will be emphasised. A "BGG Balanced" game would take that issue away through careful balancing that is player independent. The issue is that this also tends to make it bland, or at least homogeneous.

Combat Mission asks an awful lot from you. It's a brutal and long game. A given mission may take many real-world hours to play out, and you can screw it all up in minutes. It's certainly true that CM scenarios tend towards the difficult, but "balance" is something that's so fickle and subjective that it's incredibly hard to define, let alone implement.

A number of revamped CMSF2 scenario briefings did get condensed to be more concise. I'm one of those who get intimidated by 'wall of text' orders, myself. Other orders got expanded. The purpose of orders is to differentiate the scenario from a QB. 'You're on one side of the map and the enemy is on the other side' is insufficient info.
About scenario times. I've got an old habit of adding 5 min to the runtime... then another 5 min... then adding variable extra on top of that. An added 5-10 min rarely affects the battle but helps the initial approach-to-contact feel less burdensome. Sometimes a scenario needs the opposite. Two hour+ battles where AI movement orders run out after 15 minute. You either have to shorten the runtime or expand the AI orders or both.
There's also cleaning up maps. Its easy to make maps a bit more convincing. For first generation basegame CMSF1 , a standard hadn't been created to measure your work against. Nobody had made a game engine 2 map before! Map makers can work wonders but you first need examples of what a good map should  look like to aspire to.
Discussion about ideal scenario design can sound a bit theoretical, more players should be playing in the editor (which is fun, BTW). Try your hand at creating decent AI orders sets, try constructing your theoretical 'ideal' scenario. Then share the results with the community. You might come to see a difference between an 'ideal' scenario and 'achievable' scenarios

I routinely take scenarios I really like and if they don't have multiple AI plans, I add them.  It really is easy to do with the copy and paste function.  Just copy existing plan, paste, then make a few different edits to each one and bingo, now you don't know for sure how the enemy is gonna behave.
And being experienced doesn't mean I don't get burned   CM has a way of punishing you no matter how experienced you think you are when you get lax.
Also one thing I don't get wrapped up into too much is "winning".  I play mostly to see the action.  If I get to the end of a scenario and haven't met the victory conditions it doesn't much matter to me as long as I enjoyed it.  Yeah I am probably odd man out but the victory point tally at the end of a scenario is the least interesting thing to me (unless I want to see how a specific unit functioned).

Everytime when I bought a computer the last 18 years, the first and most important thing is that Combat Mission is running smoothly on it. I love to plan, see the replays and the unbelivable variation in these games. Best thing since I played wit 1/72 Airfix figures in my youth.

This
Critical feedback is appreciated. It does help a designer improve their craft if done in a productive way, but hearing someone call designers lazy who refuses to open the editor is not particularly productive. 
If you like scenarios done a particular way and you find designers don’t share your vision then maybe you need to try your hand and see if your vision is actually possible.  Designers of official game release scenarios are under specific guidance from BF in terms of making scenarios able to be played in multiple modes and sides. Player community provided scenarios are under no such constraints. 
 

I'm not sure what you are basing this comment on.  The US Navy uses the 5"/54 (127mm) Mk45 on current warships.  The loading system is automatic so the gun can maintain a fire rate of 16 to 20 rounds per minute (not taking into account cooling times), compared to the Marine Corps M777/155mm howitzer, that fires at a rate of 2 to 5 rounds per minute.  As far as accuracy is concerned, we conducted numerous gun fire support missions with the US Marine Corps and UK Royal Marines with exceptional accuracy.  We were hitting main battle tank sized objects from 10+ miles out.  As far as time to call in fire, you may be correct.  I don't have data to support or debunk that opinion.

I take the point because it is your standard defence when someone reacts to a comment you make about scenario design.
The message I, and others, hear over and over again from you are words to the effect of 'scenario designers don't do x, don't do y. It is a pity that there aren't more scenarios with x or y in them. Scenarios seem to be set on small maps'.
If you have no skin in the designing game then perhaps you should consider whether it is advisable to voice opinions as persistently as you do that can be (and are) construed by scenario designers as an attack on their efforts. If you haven't worked it out yet, every time you make such a comment, someone reacts to it. Whether you think the comments are made in good faith or the best of intent, the fact that you persistently get a negative reaction is a pretty good indicator that the comments are not taken that way.
There seem to be three courses of action:
1. Keep on doing what you're doing and accept that you'll get a negative response.
2. Get into scenario design and knock out the missions that you want to play on the size of maps you earnestly desire with the equipment you yearn for.
3. Consider the effect that your comments have on people who provide content for your enjoyment.

So a bit like wasting precious time providing a scenario editor then.

The mission editor is always there for you to use and fill in this perceived gap you see.

Not sure if you quite understand the amount of work that represents or how the scenarios will play out differently but you may want to withhold judgement until you actually see it.  Also I think the interest level is high enough that you likely won’t have to wait long before new user created content starts coming out. 

So did I beat you with the Blue AI plan, or did Redforce win the day ?
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That is your assessment. Troubleshooting however relies on factual information so if it is not behavior introduced in 4.0 that would be relevant from a code perspective. I.e one does not need to look for something introduced as new code.  You are not in a position (nor am I) to say if there is a change in TAC AI behavior that Charles might want to look at but as Ian and I are two of the people you would expect to submit as a ticket to BF we do need to define what it is we might be submitting.  We do know there were changes relative to responses to arty fire for example. If we know that this behavior was evident prior to 4.0 then there is no chance that whatever was done on that isn’t having an impact here  I am certainly not going to open a ticket on behavior in 3.0 however I do need to know if this is new behavior or not    It seems from chops that it may not be therefore....... the ticket we might open won’t cite this as new behavior so it becomes a “simpler” issue of looking at the TAC AI versus the TAC AI 3.12 versus 4.0
So does it seem relevant now? 😁
or I could just say f**k it if folks are gonna blow me off and just ignore it. Honestly I think Ian was justified in his remark as your last comment makes it look like my simple question puts me in the area of people not “contributing to a solution”.  I find that fairly offensive as I was simply asking a question to see if we could clarify a bit of a discrepancy as to his comment and yours. As that is apparently not cooperating with your expectations on contributing I will bow out and leave you to it. 

Chamberlain and Doyle do reference both with the 250 referred to Sd Kfz 250/1 ( s MG). No specific designation is given for the 251
In both cases the vehicles is identified as the carrier of the HMG group of an Armoured Infantry Det.
For the 250 it is stated
Crew 6. This version carried the support Halbgruppe with two MG34 in heavy field mountings.
For the 251
Crew 11. Armament two sMG34, one MG34 or 42. Ammunition 2010
Difficult to determine whether these had different mounts for the MG from which the weapons could fire when mounted in the vehicles or whether they were just the carrier for the sMG teams
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FEEDBACK ON THE DEMO:
The demo is absolutely great! I'm enjoying it so much! Finished the Alamo scenario yesterday and now playing the marines landing on the beach:
Flashes and tracers blitzing everywhere! It's so AMAZING!  Having so much fun - this is probably one of the best weekends in my life! 😄
 
TECHNICS:
I'm running the demo under Windows 10 in resolution 2560 x 1600,  with no problems. The game and models are looking great!
Machine: i7 - 7700 CPU Quadcore, 3.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 1050 Ti. 💻 
Just an honest, not too overpowered, average machine that does the job very good, bought for under 1000.00 Euros on Amazon.
 
DREAMING OF THE FUTURE:
Hopefully there will be a Shock Force 3 one day, another HYPOTHETIC war scenario, of course, but based on/inspired by the events in Syria (plus Iraq) from 2011 - 2018 with Russians, Americans + other NATO countries, several Islamistic Rebel Factions like Al-Nusra etc.,  Syrian Army, Turks, Kurdish Peshmerga etc. There could be endless modules.
I also would like to have more modules for CMBS (especially NATO), because modern warfare, today's armoured vehicles and weapon systems are the OBER HAMMER! 😉 😃
 

Well obderved!

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