Barleyman

With regards to ram and multithreading. Multithreading helps, can't be real discussion about it. What's interesting is that the more punishing the game is for CPU, the less likely it appears to have multithreading support. This is generally the AI-intensive number crunching strategy titles as well as simulator LOS stuff. Single threading is most obnoxious if the GUI runs in the same thread, some paradox titles were bad about this. New CPUs are even re-optimized for single threading performance, which is a bit silly in the 21st century but there you are. WRT PPC, you gotta bear in mind intel has burned enormous amounts of resources to keep x86 compatible cpus competitive. Given the same resources, a brand new RISC cpu would have eaten it alive. Then again, PPC and Itanium would have sunk parent companies for sure if money had been thrown at them like there was no tomorrow. Modern intel/amd CPU runs kind of hardware translation layer between the ancient x86 code and the internal RISC hardware. For RAM, you get best performance out of the 32bit code only with 64bit windows. A 32bit app running in 64bit windows can get the full 4GB of memory, assuming the box has at least 6GB of RAM. 32bit app running on 32bit windows will get no more than 3GB and that's with an ugly hack. Your video card ram actually deducts from that amount. So if you have 1GB video card, you're looking at about 2.5GB theoretical max. .. All that being said, don't make us wait six years for graphic, onscreen C2 relationship indication like you did for moveable waypoints.

I have another idea that comes to mind in-between screen-cluttering lines and icon shapes. You could have an arrow/caret/line pointing towards the command unit. Going in that direction you could easily change the arrow shape to indicate level of contact if any. As an anecdote, long time ago in eurofighter 2000 simulation the tactical display was uninformative for much the same reason as here. Someone suggested making the sperm (plane location + direction vector) colored according to the mission group. Devs loved the idea and fast-tracked it into the game. Small change technically but improved the situational awareness tremendously. WRT ui improvements generating extra revenues, a case can definitely be made. You could make an another for getting the CM-franchise into steam. Matrix games is a good bad example of limiting their userbase with stiffneckedness. They want to have 100% of revenues going through their website and they almost never have any kind of sale to raise interest. Some of their titles are actually pretty easily approachable like panzer command. You really have to go out of your way to hear of it or buy it, though.

They asked what info we'd like to see in game.

If you (BFC) don't like lines on-screen, it could be implemented using the floating icon(s). Click on unit and the unit and HQ light up. Throw in color coding or whatnot to show how and if they're in contact.

Finally we get to the real decisive theatre of WW2, Ostfront. Normandy was just a mop-up operation in strategy game terms.

C2 lines would be kinda nice. Click on unit and you see what it's connected, or is supposed to be connected to.

Interesting how BFC now serves games on such small slices. Ostfront game would be something like 4 titles by the same logic, from initial blitzkrieg all the way to götterdämmerung.. Althought I do understand we'll get the titles in reverse order due to late war German stuff already being ready.. In any case, I suppose move-able waypoints we might see in a patch, unit hierarchy list + decent c2 representation will likely only appear in next title. If we're lucky, that is.

Just because there is criticism doesn't mean it's baseless and without merit. (Something for you to consider as well, MikeyD) I pointed out issues that came to mind right away which are not camera specific incidentally. Others have issues with camera especially. Somehow it indeed does feel awkward, I guess because where the camera is oriented and/or rotation speed/acceleration relation. In any case, improvements are coming, good! "Bulge game" = next module?

I could make a list of most annoying interface features of CMBN but many of those have already been covered here. So the main point, we've been promised UI improvements when BFC gets around to he "other stuff" in future release. Future release means CMx3 engine with release date out there? Do we have a chance to see something in the CM:Ostfront game? If I had to pick one personal pet hate, It'd be a tight match between missing list representation of units on the battlefield with their C2 relations and much more mundane "cannot move existing waypoint" issue. I quess I'd pick the latter as it should be more straightforward to fix and you run into it a lot. Much additional badness with the waypoint marker/movement vectors in general. It's easy to miss the marker which deselects the unit.. And the cursor does not change to show you've got it.

Hopefully this will get sorted out in a patch. 5min delivery time for 81mm on map mortars incidentally with HQ giving directions from a small hill and tubes in a defilade little bit back. You lose linear targeting with direct fire but I think much faster fire delivery trumps that.

I wrote about the same issue with CMSF in general when it came out. The official answer is that you can make scenario where the syrians will overrun US. Why not give them a couple of dragons while you're at it? The whole setting is heavily lopsided and it's more of "management of war" where you have mountains of firepower but only a handful of men. You then manage your assets to win as efficiently as possible, losing is not really possible, except in abstract "victory condition" sense. Only way to make interesting scenarios without going into fantasyland is to do red-on-red scenarios that are not only on even playing field but are perfectly plausible as well. I don't personally like the "you can level the whole map with your support assets but you can fit all of your guys into one classroom" approach. Infantry oriented street-fighting would be much more interesting EXCEPT CMSF sadly lacks CQB command which tends to get the "best trained soldiers in the world" torn into shreds as soon as they go into buildings. Yes, I read the workaround on how to clear a multi-story building. When you have something like an industrial hall, thought, it won't work. There's a reason why majority of american soldiers are killed by roadside bombs (calling then "improvised explosive devices" won't make them more hi-tech) and odd snipers.

I gave this thing a shot. It seems there is a problem with W7 x64 - Specifically the access database comes up as READ ONLY.. So nothing works. There's a button to "save as" the database somewhere else, which does work. The problem is that this is installed to program files and the database wants to write to the same folder. This is big no no in W7 (and vista) .. Workaround is to give full control permissions to the zbee folder for yourself.

Does that really work? At least there's no such mechanism according to the manual.. Does this apply to infantry mortars only or also the mortar carriers? Is there a proximity requirement by the infantry to the mortar?

Yeah. And the problem is you cannot have another unit act as a spotter. Mortar firing with LOS to enemy is fairly easily spotted.. Forward observer or mortar team officer guiding fire and keeping low profile is not. The way it worked in Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin was perfect for on-map and off-map artillery. The problem is compounded by the fact you cannot call in smoke from off-board artillery.

AT guns are/were fine in CMBB, thought, because you had several ways to deal with them - Humble 81mm mortar team can take AT gun out, which is not happening in TOW because you cannot have spotter keeping a low profile and the mortars behind in a defilade. Try to use mortars against AT guns in TOW and they'll fire only with direct LOS, which will naturally give the AT gun(s) advantage as they can fire back with greater accuracy.. Similarly using MGs teams to suppress the guns does not work like it should.

I actually came here to check out what you guys are saying of the new game, WRT if any of the truly crippling problems with TOW2 were fixed. There's no real discussion about it, thought. With my limited playtime with TOW2 I can identify following: 1. Squad controls suck. It's like CMSF "we will not do OOB list gui" except even worse. 2. Maps suck. Designers think it's fun to attack against entrenched enemy with less forces, every time. Difficulty comes from having to face superior number of AT guns in trenches, which leads us to 3. There are no forward observers or spotting. You're facing piles of AT guns and have NO WAY to take them out with mortars without direct line from the mortar to the gun, which is suicide. 4. You can see trenches right from the start. Nice? More RTS than IRL for sure and doesn't help you cope with numerical superiority of enemy due to 3. If 2. was better, maybe TOW2 could still be entertaining in MOW style but now it's just frustrating with bad RTS conventions mixed with pretty faithful vehicle modeling.

Except wikipedia these days objects to huge trivia collections. Still, adding some links to the usual suspects sites wrt gun-fetishists and heavy metal perverts wouldn't go amiss..

Bah! Keep your girly drinks! Me, I want a shot of Vodka chilled in a snowbank in November near Moscow!

I better go and take a look at some of the recent scenarios. I've been holding out on CMSF for a while on hopes of getting proper multi-core support and AI capable of calling in arty in sensible manner. I don't think AI arty fix will happen before the marines module and I'm not sure it'll be there either! BFC attitude seems to be that AI (red) arty does not matter since it wouldn't happen much in syria scenario and nobody would play red vs blue. Ditto for red air farce. As for multicore support, I understand everyone wants it in but they already tried it with 1.05 patch and failed to get the code and compiler to behave..

Google for it

Wow. That's quite a challenge. http://community.battlefront.com/uploads/emoticons/default_biggrin.png' alt=':D'> </font>

MOUT with no-losses-tolerated requirement may be realistic but not very exciting. Also as blue side you're not supposed to level city-blocks wantonly because it'd look bad on CNN. If you look at how Russia handled Grozny, leveling points of resistance is pretty basic tool in your disposal. Not to mention direct fire support by 125mm HE grenades into specific apartments.. Biggest snatch on making realistic red vs red scenarios at the moment is that you cannot call in smoke. It's not like all of those T-72 models serving worldwide have TI upgrade in place which goes for most russian gear in use in general. If you cannot call for smoke on known enemy positions in supposed high-intensity conflict between two roughly equal sides, it gets funky. Then again, since the AI cannot even call in regular arty in a sensible manner, we should do things one step at a time. Yeah, you don't really need all that in the "Syria" setting, but that setting is what I see as the problem to start with. As for conventional warfare, I know it's much more interesting for me, personally! Bit like the CMBB setting is infinitely more intriguing but we're still going back to normandy for the WWII game as you cannot sell in US unless you have shermans winning the war against germans In any case, when british and french (?) modules are introduced you probably should get material to model many kinds of conflicts. Then again. I dare you to come up with a setting where you get involved in Congo without taking the role of a bunch of murdering scumbags.

I think I mentione "significant stockpile of nukes" conditioner there

I think the recipients would be very surprised by such development! However, 500kg bomb delivered by Sukhoi CAS or strike plane would no doubt cause appreciatable consternation. Not to mention all kinds of nasty bomblets or FAE ordinances.. AFAIK Russians are fielding FAE munitions IRL.

meh, double post [ May 10, 2008, 03:55 PM: Message edited by: Barleyman ]