Erwin

That's just poor/lazy design. That's why increasingly I stick with the designers who have a track record of making very good scenarios and campaigns. (It's kinds like the Hollywood "star" system.)

Yeah. Some charities will offer something for a "suggested donation". But, it can't be obligatory legally IIRC.

Well... better late than never... If you want people to play it, where can we d/l it from?

Yup. Could not agree more. Hopefully we'll see this in CM3. However, in the meanwhile all that designers can do with CM2 is create a scenario that only experienced players can win, but with reinforcement options that players who need extra forces can call in voluntarily. For example, the reinforcements can stay hidden in their set-up positions with no VP penalty. However, the enemy gets points for spotting any of these reinforcements. So, if the reinforcements move and are spotted/used in combat, the player loses VP's. This is how I play as well. In RL one has to assume that every bit of cover or building has an enemy waiting in ambush... so need to act similarly in this simulation. But that requires roleplaying, a lot of patience, and a longer scenario time duration. The problem is that many players (perhaps weaned on wrist twitch FPS games) just want to rush in and get some action, start shooting asap and do not care about friendly casualties. How to satisfy both markets is a challenge for BF.

In the game, have found the 2 man scouts to be useful as they are harder for the enemy to spot - and when spotted and fired upon, (esp if they HIDE) they seem to be harder for the enemy to hit. When using 4 man scouts they invariably seem to be spotted quicker and in a firefight one is usually going to lose one or two guys - there are more targets for the enemy to shoot at. The downside is that without binocs the scouts can't spot as well. Am wondering if some of the small MG teams have binocs - that's why have thought about using them up front to back up the scouts - if the scouts draw fire, the team with the binocs can spot. I suppose even the HQ or an FO could be right behind the scouts for that reason. But, generally the FO is one of the most important units one has so don't want to put it in harm's way. The other tactic, and this is where scenario length is important, is to move the scouts much slower than we players tend to do. ie: At each waypoint, let the scouts sit for 5+ minutes and just look around - rather than continually move them forwards with only a few seconds pause at waypoints. However, scouting "carefully" can take a looong time. And scenarios generally do not allow for that, and most players want to "get into action" asap.

Yeah. Using a 2-man scout team is pretty much the only way I know. What we can discuss is whether you use a back-up team to observe what happens to the front team (to hopefully spot what kills em), or keep the rest of the squad in close support of their 2-man scout team so they can provide immediate covering fire. How many meters ahead should the scout team be etc? Or, should a scout element consist of a two man team plus a 2 or 3 man MG team to cover them? When playing with 2 or 3 man MG teams is using them to back up a scout team the best use of the MG teams?

Disgraceful that there STILL is no "Tomb of the Unknown Furry Person" to commemorate all those who fought alongside our soldiers!

WriterJWA: "We typical DON'T know what's in front of us, other than a rough unit ID, size, and general location..." That is exactly the point was trying to make. We know there is an enemy in front of us cos it's a game scenario. But as players, we are rarely given any other recon info re enemy dispositions that would be useful to planning our attacks. It's a huge challenge for designers to create a scenario that is fun for experienced as well as non-experienced players. When playtesting am very conscious of not reporting that some aspect of a scenario is too easy for that reason. When testing either one has to deliberately make silly moves to see if one can recover from errors, or (my preferred SOP) try and accomplish a mission with negligible if any casualties. I have played otherwise very good campaigns where one comes across one or more missions that one has to replay several times to win and advance to the next mission, and that is the biggest PITA. Going into the editor to increase time is ok, but also a PITA and can ruin the scenario design. It may not be possible in CM2 to provide the player with a button to "add extra X minutes to the scenario" like one can for PAUSE - but that would be a wonderful feature for CM3. Also: CM1 featured "Battalion, Regimental and Divisional Reserves". I can't recall if this feature was only for campaigns or also worked for scenarios. However, the CM1 game engine/AI could figure out in the middle of a mission if you were unlikely to win and it would (automatically IIRC) provide levels of reserves depending on how badly the player was doing - with a reduced victory level as penalty. While CM2 for some reason doesn't have that feature, designers like MOS are working on workaround schemes to provide the player with the ability to voluntarily call on reserves (at the cost of victory points). So perhaps a SOP for designers would be to design a scenario for experienced players for a certain length of time, but provide reserves that less-experienced players could call upon if required.

My sense is that the base CMSF2 has better-looking models than the base CMSF1. I run a heavily-modded CMSF1 that looks great, and the CMSF2 demo looks similar to me.

Ah... I though that "most" CMSF1 mods were going to be compatible with CMSF2. I rather hope they won't be compatible as going thru many hundreds, maybe thousands of mods to find out what will work would be a major PITA. Starting fresh would be much better actually.

CMBN (IIRC).

The challenge for designers is that in RL recon would have occurred and the attacker would have some idea of what enemy positions were ahead and how manned. It's rare to advance into complete unknown. But if one did, human attackers would be very cautious. This takes time in RL. However, in the game, we already KNOW that there is a significant enemy short distance in front and that combat is imminent, But, rarely do players have info re strong point locations or how the defenses are designed. Also, most players are quite ruthless with the lives of their pixeltruppen. If one roleplays as if every man is precious one would need maybe twice as long as one is (usually) given. But, for the average casual player, that would be way too long as many want to rush in and have a big shoot-out... That's a major reason well-designed campaigns (in which one has to be concerned with force and ammo preservation) are the best way to play. However, some scenarios, like MOS's xnt TOC scenario give one a lot of time (4 hours in TOC) in which one does have plenty of time to be careful and friendly casualties are heavily penalized.

Where where you when you were needed in Syria?

Since they were "makeshift mines" (IED's?), they probably were ineffective after all that time. Still, it would only take one to ruin your day.

There are literally hundreds of GB, maybe close to a terrabyte, of CMSF mods. So, I can't just upload em all someplace like I did with the scenarios and campaigns some time ago. It would be easier/more efficient to put em all on a large Flash Drive and mail it to someone who can host them. If Bootie or GAJ wants em (assuming they are in the US), I could do that.

Lovely pics. I keep wanting to get back to unfinished CMA campaigns but then there was playtesting MOS's brilliant Tactical Ops Center (TOC) scenario, and now there's CMSF2 demo... Too much choice. Not enuff brain cells.

Exactly. In fact, as sburke knows, BF closely monitors (via NSA contacts) my travel schedule and releases product when they know it's most inconvenient for me - like when I am out of the country with no internet. So, you can pretty much go to the bank that there will be a release in December.

Believe it or not I have only played RED or with Strykers (50 cal is their only weapon) in CMBS. Have never played with Bradleys. Hope someone tests it. (I would expect this problem to be the same if all are v4 engine.)

Loading time will get longer if one has a lot of mods (SSD's highly recommended). But, once the game has loaded, it's the size of the scenario/map and number of units plus smoke etc that can slow things down.

Adjusting load-out to what makes sens has been brought up may time b4. Not sure why the editor doesn't allow that like one could in CM1. Yup. Been mentioned a lot. In addition one often wants TARGET LIGHT when one's inf is attacking, and if the 25mm fires it can cause a lot of friendly casualties.

Congrats at the result! Was halfway thru when I had to travel. Looking forward to it again.

Never noticed that. Be sure that there isn't a live one hidden among the dead bodies. The AI is better at spotting them than the human eye.

If you are doing this, you are probably playing it right. I think most of us experienced players went thru this. I try to limit myself now to a save every 5 turns. Sometimes the AI or game system does something unrealistic or ridiculous and my SOP is in those cases to redo the turn. Agreed. A penalty for taking too much time would be welcome in terms of maintaining pleasure in playing the game vs suffering per the earlier comments. After all, this is supposed to be a leisure activity for most of us. For those trying to do some sort of serious training, they could simply keep to the existing strict parameters.

Good video - like the way you stayed down at ground level for the action. It's strange that some seem to play from level 4 or higher as one can't enjoy the graphics etc from up there.

Am traveling away from my game computers right now so don't have access to mods. Originally they were on the Repository. If no longer, best is to keep asking around.