Vanir Ausf B

I tried asking about the missing options yesterday. Nobody knows anything...

Is this a bug?

There seems to be some confusion as to what we are talking about. The options we are referring to aren't even on the unit purchase screen. They are, or are supposed to be, on the previous QB setup screen where you select the Date and Weather. The Quality pulldown you refer to is simply a quick way of making sure units have higher or lower quality equipment when you are purchasing. It places no restriction on what you can purchase. Since it seems the Wiggum and I are the only 2 people who have read the QB section of the manual here is an example: Type: this defines the rough composition of the unit based on the previous choices. For example, for an Infantry Branch, the choice could be Heavy Infantry, Medium Infantry or Light Infantry. If you guys can find those options anywhere in the game, please tell us where they are.

Baneman, Those are not the droids we are looking for. These options are supposed to be on the previous main QB screen and are intended to place restrictions on what you can choose in the screen you're looking at, i.e. Quality restricts what quality you can select. Without those options the player, or the autopicker, can choose anything!

Nope. Doesn't work. I've tried every other option on the screen. If they are supposed to be there then there's a bug preventing them from showing.

It's actually more flexible than the CMx1 screen and quite powerful once you get the hang of it. But it's not very user friendly. I especially miss the unit stats summary at the bottom. You pretty much have to be a WW2 OOB grog and just know how many men are in a US Pioneer squad, for example, and what weapons they carry.

I'm reading the section of the manual on QBs, pg 52 specifically. There is a list of adjustable parameters listed under Unit Options and a description of each. The problem is that some of those listed are not in the game, or at least if they are I can't find them. Between the Combat Force and Unit Purchase options there are 3 other options listed in the manual. Type Quality Max. Fitness But on the actual main QB screen they are not there. Were they cut at the last minute or is there some trick to making them show up?

I did play the CMx1 games, but not CMSF. I booted up the demo and was completely lost. So I bit the bullet and read a chunk of the online manual. I started on page 62 and went through page 110. After that I had little trouble doing what I wanted to do. I've found holding down the mouse buttons gave me the smoothest movement. Using the keys is very herky jerky.

Great post! One minor typo: That should be the covering fire group.

I noticed this is also modeled on tanks. When the radio operator is firing the bow machine gun the tank loses radio contact.

I think .50 MG are not considered small arms for purposes of FF. So if you are targeting light with a Sherman tank near friendlies you need to button the commander so he can't fire the AAMG.

I doubt they listed the 5200 as the lowest spec card supported by mistake. The 5xxx series supports hardware accelerated shadows. I'm guessing the Geforce 2 series does not.

Perhaps having foliage moved by wind should be made a separate toggleable graphics option, like shadows currently are.

Although the post by Krilly quoting Ian Hogg suggests that the accuracy of WW2-era mortars was significantly lower that modern versions.

It should be pointed out that shadows causing a major fps hit isn't necessarily indicative of anything not working correctly. That's not unusual.

I don't know how simple the shadows in CMBN are, but if that graphics card can't handle them nothing can, unless it's a driver issue. I'd like to see how a top end AMD card compares.

Be careful of blanket statements about the game being CPU bound or whatever. What is holding performance back will vary from system to system and what graphics settings are used. For example, if shadows on/off makes the biggest difference in performance then it's not your CPU holding you back because shadows are rendered by the GPU.

I'll have to see how much the TacAI has improved (hopefully) in CMBN, but in the CMx1 games it wasn't an issue of them wasting their silver bullets on halftracks, but of them obsessively hoarding the stuff to the point they would rather die than part company with their last HVAP.

I did some reading and it appears my memory has failed me. The UK does use a computer to pick theirs randomly. This is what I was thinking of. The US uses a computer database that assigns a range of possible words to various commands, but the final decision on what to use within that range is made by that command. So yeah, it could be a reference to the SEAL emblem.

Just to be clear, as far as I know only the names of operations are ever computer generated. "Neptune Spear" certainly sounds generic enough to have been random.

Agreed. I wonder, is that modable?

It would be really cool if there was.

The Taliban are certainly a deeply religious bunch.

War is a messy affair, bump.

It's funny you should say that, because although the article claims 4 helicopters the ABC report they link to as their source says: My understanding is that there were 4 helicopters total for the operation: 2 Blackhawks that carried the assault team, 2 Chinooks on standby just outside Pakistani airspace. When the one Blackhawk went down one of the Chinooks was called in. Although it may be possible to fit 25 members of a midget circus on a Blackhawk they are only rated for 11 troops + equipment. So when the Times says there were 79 members of the "assault team" I think they are using the term rather loosely. I think there were 24 or 25 SEALs who were the assault element that choppered in and everyone else would have been pilots or CIA (probably) operatives in the area surrounding the compound who were already on the ground long before the SEALs arrived. I doubt any of them would have entered the compound before the SEAL assault element had secured it, if indeed they ever did enter it. So the article's questioning of the size of the assault force is itself a misstatement (lie) since it seems to imply there were 79 dudes and a dog standing around in bin Laden's bedroom deciding what to do with him.