Erwin

"The Unknown Soldier or Unknown Soldiers is a war novel by Finnish author Väinö Linna, considered his magnum opus. Published in 1954, The Unknown Soldier chronicles the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union during 1941–1944 from the viewpoint of ordinary Finnish soldiers." Interesting. Will see if can get on Kindle.

Interesting idea (if it reflects RL).

Firing a main gun like the 25mm when one only wants MG fire to cover one's attacking inf can be fatal to the inf. So, yes, this is an issue one hopes will be addressed.

As an experiment try using the vehicles to blow smoke. In the game, smoke acts as if there are no walls to prevent it from obscuring everything in range including the other side of buildings. Not certain, but might enable your guys to maneuver.

Looking forward to the CM2 mods...

And please don't irritate IanL any more. Many of these relative newcomers to the hobby resent us old-timers. What is confusing is why he doesn't simply put me on his "ignore" list so that the rest of us can carry on in peace.

Yes.... If you don't like the points I am making please do so. That is a win-win.

Don't get discouraged. Unlike nearly all other "wargames" which are easy to learn and allow one to "Rambo" one's way thru, CM has a very steep learning curve. It takes time to learn, train yourself, and understand how to accomplish objectives. Hope you are starting play on the easiest level.

Understood. It's become common for the best of our modders and designers to eventually burn out. The amount of work required requires heroic efforts. Have very much appreciated your efforts.

We buy this game to PLAY not spend countless hours WORKING on it. I tried creating a huge campaign in CM1. After about 3 months I gave myself a minor breakdown and vowed never to try that again. And the CM2 editor is waaaay more complex for regular folks imo. When a designer creates a scenario or campaign am fine with spending hundreds of hours playtesting it and pointing out its problems and how it could be improved. MOS's Tactical Ops Centre is an example of a truly brilliant design that has advanced the state of the art in scenario design. If you haven't yet played TOC then shame on you. However, some designers don't want to hear anything negative. Al they want is reinforcement ie: "Wow, your design is so brilliant." And then when you state otherwise, we hear the same old tired refrain "Why doncha do it yourself?" Like why doncha repair your own car, and why doncha do all your own decorating or house building, or why doncha build your own computer, or why doncha grow your own food..? If there is someone here who does do everything themselves and don't rely on specialized folks who can do the job better and faster, then my hat is off to you. But, hopefully you (finally) get the point and we don't have to go over and over and over this same old tired issue.

Bloody brilliant, mate!!

Very nice... thanks. good to see you around umlaut. what you been up to? anything new for CM2...?

As someone pointed out if it takes hundreds of hours to make a good scenario and even more man-hours for a good campaign, it's really only the professionals and fanatics (bless em all) amongst us who have the time and motivation to get to be really good with the editor. Some great designers do have that time and motivation. But, for the average player, no... Personally, am happy to pay for professionally developed product. I have spent hundreds of man-hours play-testing designs for other folks. But, have no desire to design or mod. It's wonderful that some folks love modding and designing. I suspect those folks have little time for playing. One can't expect others to share enthusiasm for all aspects of the hobby.

That skill may come with experience. I know how frustrating it is when an enemy you'd think was suppressed suddenly pops up and kills you. But, I find that now happens rarely. One has to way "over-suppress" much more (shooting for more minutes) than you'd ever think is required. (Also, I dunno what's up with your guys, but my guys are quite good at shooting enemy running away.) I do make sure my guys are mostly Rested or Ready.

That's odd - why have expensive systems that can kill at 4Km range if that is not required? You'd think that if 500m is the max visibility all over Finland, they would load up with weapons that had that as their max range. Nevertheless it's still more fun when one can deploy with a 2Km+ LOS - as is more frequently found in the more open CMSF1 and 2 landscape..

The CMSF2 DEMO has been updated??? So we should now d/l it again? Is there a version number so we know we have the latest version?

Of course, we have no other option - well... MOS's plan is xnt. His idea is much better (again goddammit!). We've just never seen anyone (yet) use that concept. Should make a lot of players happy as it would make the most difficult scenarios more winnable and FUN (able to mitigate early catastrophic losses) - at the cost of one or more victory levels.

In RL they seem to be successful if TV footage is to be believed(?). But in CM2, after spending hundreds of hours testing MOS's TOC scenario, have found drones to be useless in spotting infantry or moving vehicles. (These were Elite Drones with Elite JTACS!) In CM2, drones are only good at spotting stationary vehicles.

Am simply saying that all designers tend to use only a few of the available vehicles - we see the same dozen or so, and that's all. Am wondering why does BF waste so much time providing so many dozens of different vehicles that are never seen in games. Seems like a waste of precious time that could be used for other issues. (As mentioned elsewhere many of us do not have the hundreds of hours it requires to create a decent scenario. And we do not get any enjoyment from designing. We enjoy playing, not designing.)

Me 2... After CM1, CMSF1 was terrific training in how to win with minimal if any casualties. The WW2 titles were hard as one had to accept many more casualties. And CMBS is horribly bloody. Not sure if CMSF2 will also be much more bloody than the original. Hope it keeps to the same philosophy of giving Blue enuff power to win with hardly any friendly casualties. ie: One loses if one suffers more than a couple WIA/KIA. It is very satisfying to win in that way.

Many have mentioned how good it would be to have access to optional reinforcements that would cost victory points to activate - a feature that does not currently exist in CM2. Would this work(?): 1) Designer places reinforcements (inf and/or vehicles) located in a "fort"-like building/compound with no exits or windows. 2) Designer makes the fort structures "PRESERVE OBJECTIVES" with the highest victory point penalties for damage. 3) Provide the player with engineers and demo charges capable of opening up the fort to allow the reinforcements to exit onto the playable map. 4) Ideally, the destruction of the structures in order to liberate the reinforcements will significantly reduce the player's victory level. Note that AFV crews would have to be kept in separate buildings with no exits so that the crews would have to be blasted out in order to occupy their AFV's so that reinforcement AFV's could not simply blast their way out. This gives the player a choice between using engineer charges for other purposes in a scenario or keeping them in reserve so as to access the optional reinforcements. Hope this may work...

Hopefully CMSF2 will feature the larger maps that are needed to properly feature modern accurate long range weapons systems. In WW2 games it's not so bad to have 500m-1000m ranges. For modern games one needs 2Km+ to do what the weapons are designed to do. Otherwise there is little point in having RL weapons systems designed to kill at 3Km-4Km ranges.

This one of the hardest things to do as it requires discipline. It is so easy to keep reinforcing failure thinking "if I can just get a few more units here I can win". Knowing when to run away (to fight another time at another location) is important.

I bought this game many years ago. Is there a new version or have they upgraded it?