LongLeftFlank

If we can sweet talk the CMCW design team into including in some uncons ('Gladiators', partisan militias and GI remnants in Berlin, spetsnaz operating deep in West Germany) teams and pickup 'technicals' in a module, that opens up a sandbox of Eighties what-ifs, e.g. - 1981 Solidarity uprising; Jaruzelski can't keep the Polish army onside, triggering a Soviet invasion. But in the RPG/Stinger era that ends up less like Hungary or Czecho, and more like A'stan; fed up Poles take to the hills and hollers, where Third Shock Army's heavy mech is hunting mosquitoes with a sledgehammer. - Speaking of A'stan, @Sgt.Squarehead and a few fedayeen will rapidly solve the CMA update conundrum the moment you give them something to mod Mujahideen out of. - 1982-1983 Lebanon expedition goes even more sideways than it did historically. - 1980s era Bloc kit plus Uncons gives you pretty much everything you need to wade into the Yugoslavia mess of the 1990s. - The nukes fly in Germany and 'Twilight 2000' arrives early. Regiments and battalions, shorn of their command structures and supply trains, live off the land, recruit locally and devolve into multiethnic warbands as the new Dark Ages descend upon radiation-poisoned Europe. Whose dragoon mods are you using? Yesssss. Horses. Cavalry. The ultimate CM forbidden fruit, for those of us Olde Ones who have been here since CM days of yore (2000). You know you want them, Steve. It is your Dessstiny....

OK, back in the game. Combining the great mods by @Kieme(ITA), @Pete Wenman, @Aquila-SmartWargames, @JulianJ (Allah's praise be upon them!), and my humble self, into a CMSF2 'Ramadi Pack'. Giving 'the Big Suck' some life, before driving it off the streets with gunfire.... This is the city's sole operational filling station, near CP296, c.2004, before this stretch of ASR MICHIGAN became 'Little Hiroshima' due to the ongoing war against US convoys. I'd forgotten what a time suck all this stuff is though. Time for some suitable music....

Oh, and 1979-81 Europe is simply not complete without Klaus! Atomkraft nein danke!

A lot of tradeoffs though, since you aren't going to get uncons in CMCW. All praise and hail to Bil and the Captain (and Teneille), but it will be a very, very mech-centered game. Infantry is at best trying its best not to rip its chemical bunny suits and at worst merely greasing the treads of the tanks.

And this is a remix, but actually rocks harder than the original.

Note to the design team: be sure to get plenty of pornstaches on both armies. And sideburns! the Seventies weren't as 'high and tight' as it got by the Top Gun era. Oh yes, and reflector aviators.

I have a few rules to live by, and one is: never turn your back on a Rottie.

Yes! I've been advocating (politely) for some time for putting this kind of 'paint a route that units will tend to follow' feature in the Editor. (Even better would be a feature where a unit waypoint for any move but FAST automatically 'snaps to' a road or ditch or hedgeline when the route roughly matches it. But that's a rather more complex brainjar coding task, and I am trying to keep my wishlisting to what seems like tweaks to existing functionality). Such a feature seems readily doable. The TacAI already causes pixeldogs to 'follow' a fence, trench or hedgeline even when it wavers back and forth a bit across their waypoint, rather than hopping back and forth over it. For example, I have put hedge segments into ditches and streambeds as a hack to get troops to use them (staying in good cover), rather than their default behaviour of moving alongside in 'easier' ground where they get shot up. The Pont du Hoc CMBN scenario cleverly used a fence to get the Rangers to 'climb' a cliff they would otherwise circumnavigate (at their peril). 1. So basically, the idea is to let a designer paint a kind of 'invisible fence' over road terrain, inside buildings, etc. It has no LOS/cover effects, but units will tend to follow it as they would an actual fence rather than defaulting to 'easier' (but more exposed) terrain. 2. Another helpful and versatile add would be to be able to paint map squares in the editor that are invisible to the player but that AI forces will not enter; as if they were invisible marsh or deep water hexes. That way you can effectively tell the AI troops 'don't run up that particular alley because we already know it's swept by enemy fire.' Find a different alley, or maybe use this series of breaches in rowhouse walls, instead of getting gunned down in the open like idiots (thinking Ramadi, or F&R Berlin here!)

I expect it's the same word used by their fellow Arab Iraqis: jundi. Nice mod, many thanks for creating it.

Just did this. It's USD25 for the 2 upgrades. Submit a help ticket if you have trouble with your old codes and Elvis will take great care of you.

Car and truck flavour objects have been needed for some time in the modern Titles. Every town should have at least 2x as many vehicles as buildings; it would also go a long way to making maps look less sterile. And even though they don't offer much in the way of hard cover, they do have significant LOS effects for a street fight. And even though most AFVs can shove aside or crush them, there is a bog risk. This new game is a nice surprise, btw, although I will likely wait for the demo before I make a buy decision.

Couple of additional queries: did anyone ever work up a more beat up looking 'high walls' mod? That brick one especially looks just too tidy next to Kieme's hovels. I know the Squalor mod did a nice rural stone wall. And I see CMFR has derelict wrecked car doodads, and I saw Blender do buses, rolling stock and some similar stuff. Anything like that ever get done for CMSF or CMBS? I'd love to sprinkle Ramadi with more of those to make it look more 'lived in'. And some beat up shipping containers too, even if they don't block LOS (I can interpose wall segments).

Yup, I would love to see all that assignable to a platoon (plus 'attached' units) in a '1 paint (map) + 5 click' sequence similar to how artillery is called now.... But I also don't want perfect to be the enemy of good. A crude rewire giving a player the same 'blunt instrument' functionality the AI has right now (4.0), plus ability to repath without dumping the entire order set, would make a huge playability difference already. Skirmish lines, etc., if feasible, can be left to a future version. I mean, heck, I want all that stuff too. And I know this is (another) wishlist thread, but I also want what's possible in finite time. And it's close, soooo close. TL:DR, we must go to war with the disembodied brainjar we have!

End of an era, CMSF staybacks? At long last, and with a welcome assist from @BFCElvis, I have come down out of the jungle, upgrading my CMSF and Marines to CMSF2 over the weekend. Ramadi looks and navigates great! especially with Kieme's shabby buildings sprinkled in with the base textures. However, I need to update my Shopfront and Mosque collonades, then figure out mod tags to make it look right again. 1. I may release a new version of my Ramadi master map, but don't look for me to be right angling all those Mulaab compound walls (not sure that's a good idea anyway, from a pathing/playability standpoint). I'm starting a new job shortly, likely in a new country, and so this is just a breather. 2. Did anyone ever prevail on one of the Blender gods to do a minaret object (even if nonfunctional?) That has been an egregiously missing item since the original CMSF1 release. Seems pretty basic, just take one of the stripy road posts and supersize it (not all minarets are super pointy). But Blender-fu is not part of my life plans at present.

Been playing with the AI (CMBN 4.03) a bit as well, and noticed a couple of issues. (In my proposal above to let the player issue simplified AI plans to platoons, these can be addressed by manually repathing waypoints for egregiously 'dumb' moves. Or not.) 1. Units in an AI group pick their Order destination square at random from those painted on the map. So if you paint a linear or oval zone (phase line) perpendicular to the axis of advance, you commonly get units criscrossing or 'fanning out' across their fronts, with potentially lethal consequences. 2. Units may also pick a destination square with no cover, ignoring good cover in a nearby square. (It would be nice for all AI orders to conclude automatically with a 'seek cover nearby' routine even if the units aren't under fire. But not essential.) 3. Units frequently become Exhausted trying to fulfil AI orders, even when objectives are not hugely distant. This is especially true in Assault/Max Assault mode. The primary causes seem to be that: a. they QUICK move right through dense terrain (rather than pathing around). b. they try to cover long stretches in SLOW crawl and ASSAULT mode. ... But I also think it's realistic that troops get worn out quickly by executing stressful orders under fire, then need a break before moving out again. Here again, extreme cases can be dealt with via micro, or not, as desired. Lastly, @Bulletpoint's comment above that an intrusive know-it-all AI can be a drag as well is *very* well taken. Just as BFC kept WeGo there should always be an option to micro forces in good order.

Yes, agreed, there is a good bit of randomness in the AI behaviour that remains a black box, and the behaviours can also be nonsensical (suicidal) at times. Perhaps there's a more experienced scenario programmer out there who can give a more accurate description than me. But at this stage, I think I've pounded this nail through the board and am becoming repetitive. Thanks for listening.

Sorry BP, but this is not quite true. I don't know how much time you've spent in the AI Editor and then playtesting the results, but you will find that the computer doesn't just have the units QUICK or SLOW directly and all at once in a nonstop beeline to their (randomly chosen) destination square. 1. The units in the AI group set off at different times (it seems, although I've never quite confirmed, that rifle sections jump off first with other units - HQs, MGs, etc. - following after a delay of as much as 3 minutes). 2. When there's cover terrain along the way, even if it's not quite in a straight line, the computer will, with no human instructions needed, have the units pause in it long enough for lagging pixtruppen to catch up before taking another bound. 3. If they come under fire and become ALERTED or worse, they will go to ground, but once the shooting stops and they aren't too shot up, they will usually resume their advance as before. ... So, as previously stated, I'd find it a *vast* playability improvement to be able to access a powerful toolset that already exists in the game, right now! Painting an objective plus a couple of parameters for each infantry maneuver platoon, and then letting them go to it as best they can, lets us spend our precious game time evaluating the unfolding tactical situation, or micromanaging the key decision points -- that is, being a tactical commander! rather than spending hour after tedious hour herding, reherding, reherding 50+ cats. Then realizing it's 3am your eyes and back hurt and you're barely 1/3 of the way through. And as I said before, if I'm going to say eff it and just banzai charge my guys around to save time, then why on earth am I playing a 'historically authentic' tactical wargame again? There are far more visually appealing shooter games out there to play digital paintball. This isn't just me, I think. @Aquila-SmartWargames had that exact experience playing my painstakingly historical Makin Atoll scenario which he was kind enough to share on Youtube. But the huge micro burden of landing and pushing a reinforced BCT of Green troops inland in complex terrain was just too crazy. He got hungry and cranky and just started QUICKing his grunts around, screw their casualties and exhaustion. Which I can sympathize with because I've done it myself. But that isn't wargaming. And it doesn't have to be that way.

OK guys, reel it in please; at no point did I say or imply that this would ever amount to a 'take the controls and do what I would do' panacea instruction to the AI. It just isn't, and never will be that way (or else we all have bigger problems because Skynet is self-aware and we're all AA batteries or sumfink). ....But being able to order units (platoons) to path themselves to destinations in a manner akin to the way a scenario designer programs AI maneuvers for the computer OpFor is a *distinct* playability improvement. More important, it seems actionable to introduce, a feature where all the parts are in place now.

Disagree (respectfully). You seem to be thinking about a fix to vehicle pathing, which has been asked for again and again since CMx1 ancient times. But a 'follow me' order doesn't help infantry behave more 'tactically' than they do today, which is my priority (maybe it isn't yours). 1. Right now, for both infantry and vehicles, you can double click a platoon (or company) leader and then assign every subunit an identical move order along a vector and distance that exactly mimics the leader's. That's what passes for a 'formation order' today, and that hasn't changed since 2007. So then the units just mindlessly walk/crawl/run along in as straight a line as the terrain allows until they: (a) reach their end point and stop; (b) get exhausted and slow to a leisurely walk, which happens quite rapidly with any of the self-protective commands (SLOW/HUNT/ASSAULT) when covering any kind of distance; (c) are forced to ground by enemy fire, at which point they dump their orders and putz around in place until they take enough of a beating to panic and break for cover. .... Until I happen to notice and intervene. Which in a battalion scale action in complex terrain means me constantly cycling through, checking and adjusting. Which becomes freekin' tiresome after about 12 WeGo turns, as I realized after playing my first not self-designed CM scenario in 3 years (the Hampshire 'Elefant' hunt, out of the CMFI demo) and realizing it was 3 am and after 7 hours of play I was feeling irritated and cranky, even though I had only lost 1 man lightly wounded and was doing well. And that's just 1 company! 2. Again, what *I* am asking for (by all means feel free to ask for something different mate!) is for us as players to be given a few of the AI programming tools that already exist in the editor. You have duly noted the ADVANCE AI command, but for most purposes in the AI that basically means a series of QUICK moves, so to quote an old saw 'I don't think it means what you think it means', unfortunately. That would let us assign the units a reasonably granular plan of attack which, while it will never be as good as micro-ing every last move path and pause, saves a bunch of time at least until things 'get real', and is a lot kinder on the pixeltruppen than (1) above. IMHO.....

Well sure, but the convenience of the scenario design subcommunity isn't how BFC expands its gamer base. We oddballs already 'speak the language' anyway, such as it is. Now that CM is on Steam, it's about lowering 'barriers to entry' asap for gamers who want the authenticity but didn't grow up with ASL counter stacks and multi-volume rulebooks.

High praise indeed from our Defender of the Faith! I'm trying to keep my suggestions in the realm of modifying functionality that already seems well established in the CM2 engine. Notice too, this is all *optional*: nobody is obliged to use it if they prefer the way it works today. Or even use spreadsheets (oof, talk about sounding like work!) 1. The Artillery/Air interface already exists. Add a tab with a command 'flag' on it, accessible by each platoon HQ. When clicked, all subunits in the platoon are lit. You can 'attach' or deselect certain subunits if you wish, via right click. (What the AI is doing in the background is creating an AI group) 2. Once the place (destination) is painted, you get some pages of buttons presenting much the same menu of choices you get when programming the AI Editor: >> Assault / Advance / March >> Aggressively / Cautiously. (Perhaps HQs and mortar/MG/spotter teams are always Cautious and do a 20 second delay so they aren't walking point) >> At Destination: Hide/Set Ambush/Normal >> Seek top floors/low floors/mix (default, but HQs, MGs and Spotters always go to top floors). 3. Set timing parameters for moving out, similar to the arty tab and hit CONFIRM. For new orders not given at game start, there could be an execution delay based on (a) platoon HQ in good order and 'in command' (b) radios - US best, Russia worst (c) unit experience, so e.g. Elite commandos respond instantly (I agree with @chuckdyke, let's not use leader ratings in this) 4. So in effect, in the background the computer is going to assign the selected units to an AI group and auto-assign them movement paths to the objective as though they were computer-controlled. They will follow these orders unless and until the owner alters them. 5. Less important, but still interesting would be to allow a scenario designer to preprogram AI orders to formations on both teams. This would allow, for example, scenarios where the player can just focus on commanding the tanks in support of an infantry operation, which proceeds on its own (although he's also free to intervene). (Or even a 'war movie' where you just hit play and watch the troops slug it out, or just micro one sniper, etc. But that's just gravy....)

Building on Freyberg's point, I'd like to see some incremental features that make the game less 'fiddly' and micro intensive. (The below comments focus on infantry, as I don't play the tank shooter scenarios much -- for me, AFVs are taxis and gun platforms). 1. I'd love to be able to assign Formation Orders to platoons. These are point/area objectives or phase lines, set more or less like plotting artillery missions is done now. Once assigned, the sub units will move on those objectives and continue to do so so for as long as they are in good order/ unpinned, or not overridden by me. 2. In issuing Formation Orders, I can also give choices akin to the existing AI logic: e.g. advance aggressively/cautiously, set up an ambush at the objective, etc. 3. I then hit go and watch my plan unfold (and then not survive contact with the enemy). I can intervene, or not, when and where I choose. I can also cancel the formation orders and issue new ones, but as with Artillery these may take a lot of time to process depending on a bunch of factors. 4. As it is now, we have to set and then tweak long chains of orders and routings, subunit by subunit. These are either obeyed slavishly, with no deviation for self-preservation until they've hit the point of panic, or just dumped, after which the unit sits there until I notice. So even a modest company scale action just seems to drag on and on and on while I cycle through every freekin counter to see what it's doing. Which after a while gets tedious numbing, even for an old time hex gamer like me. Yes, you can certainly just lasso and Zerg rush clusters of units around the map on Quick, dispensing micro in exchange for a bloodbath, but why not just play Starcraft? 6. I get that TacAI is hard to program, and you get unintended consequences like the infamous 4.0 bug. And I don't mind my pixtruppen skulking for a while, especially rattled, exhausted or green troops with poor leaders. But it would be nice for formations that aren't too badly beaten up to revert to their orders on their own after a bit without me doing it all again. .... Failing the above, I'd at least like my troop icons to give me some 'hey, I need some micro here' feedback, beyond just blinking at the moment they're under fire. Just for example: - regular coloured icon = unit is in good order, has orders active or is shooting - translucent icon = unit has no active orders (i.e. needs micro soon) - red background, unit is Pinned or worse (i.e. needs micro NOW) All the above is FWIW, and I make no demands here.

Warning: Threadjack in progress! Hull breach imminent!

Great read, cheers! https://www.zipcomic.com/willie-joe-the-wwii-years-issue-tpb-part-5

Passing note: had the blackscreen problem with the CMFI demo on my 2017 Powerbook and Bud's hack above worked like a charm!