Erwin

Unless there is verification sounds like BS. Why you post this stuff, John?

It could be that Russia is trying to look "nicer" to avoid antagonizing the west. Also after a series of "provocations" they can still claim the moral high ground when they respond very heavily. Lulling your enemy into false sense of security sort of thing.

I have an entire 1944 Brit armored division in microarmor - painted beautifully and mounted on magnetic bases for miniatures - but haven't looked at em since CM1 came out. Your models must be huge by comparison, 1:72 scale? Hmmm... What's a microarmor division worth these days?

I guess I will wait till you have the final, final, final version... I worry about your perfectionism.

There several good CMSF ragtag and uncon mods. Mord and Jock did a few Uncon and there are at least a couple of US ragtag mods. So... you can do it yourself if you have the graphics talent or the mods.

Had same issue with other campaigns. Designer has set victory conditions where you have to have a certain level of victory or campaign ends. That's fine, but Designer should make that clear in the briefing.

Yes, there is a dismountable MG and a dismountable AGL on just two of the Brit vehicles. IIRC "The Heart of Darkness" campaign and "UK Royal Mud Marines" feature them. Both xnt to play btw.

Holy Sh....! How many reincarnations are you planning on to make em all?

Playing KG von Schroif mission 1. When I ordered offboard smoke, the HE rounds are also used along with the smoke rounds. In the description window it says "General" rather than "Smoke". But, I checked and I definitely ordered "Smoke". Why is HE used with the smoke?

But, the examples given are not directly competing with CM2. One may know about them and have tried most of the ones mentioned. But, they are different types of games. Yes, am all for anything that makes updates and patching easier, and that makes playing the game easier/improved UI. But, do we have to rehash the whole STEAM argument every few months by people who know nothing about game development?? Go start your own company, make it successful, and then you can claim that you "know what needs to be done." It's just childish to keep claiming one knows better when one has no skin in the game (or RL experience). The reason no one listens to you is that you have no credibility.

It's simply a fact of life that when one tries to appeal to a larger mass market, then quality goes down the toilet as more and more people start complaining about even more stuff as in "why doesn't this play like "Battlefield X"? Next, these new people will want CM to be a MMORPG. There is a reason that of all the hardcore wargame developers BF is the ONLY company to survive. Plenty of others tried to go the "expand our market" route. Where are they now? Out of bidness, that's where. BF is doing something that no one else has been able to accomplish. Just like great movies are ruined by know-nothing studio executives who think that their "great idea" will improve something that is already brilliant - there will always be people who know nothing about the realities of game development who think that they know better. But why ruin a winning formula. Presumably if an idea is so good, one can invest in it oneself and prove it.

Thanks for the fast response. However, I don't have a problem as I have another 20 minutes and am pretty confident I can get a tactical or better victory. I simply thought I could CF with 20 mins on the clock and advance in the campaign without more bloodshed. But, am enjoying playing mission 2 very much so am happy to continue. If I do use your new campaign file, can I still load the existing Mission 2 file I have been playing and continue to the end of the mission? Interesting that one can specify the level of victory to advance. Presumably the same is true for a level of loss? Can one specify different subsequent campaign routes for several different levels of victory or loss, or is it only either/or?

Even if I win with a Minor Victory in Mission 2 the campaign ends saying something like " Your forces Have Been Decimated" even though they have done quite well I thought. Does one have to have a better Victory Level to continue? Can one have different outcomes depending on the level of victory (or loss) as opposed to simply Lose vs Win?

"The order from the Army Close Combat Weapons Systems Project Office is worth more than $2.7 million and includes support services." $2.7 million??? Gotta be an error. You'd get a few DOD toilets for that price.

Exactly why one needs to think big. Think of tens of thousands of the little things... That gets us back the advantage since a power like the US can afford tens of thousands of drone pilots. Why won't it happen? Cos the defense contractors don't make $ on relatively low tech weapons systems like this. The want to keep pushing ridiculously expensive nuke aircraft carriers and subs, and planes and tanks... That's where the big profits are. That's a reason why it took so long for (relatively inexpensive) spec ops to get momentum even though many were screaming for that for 20+ years.

The strange thing is that the only person who seems to care about this is you. Not expecting you to be visiting here long.

"...not too sure how happy the typical CM:A player would be if the first Tribal/Mujahideen unit he came into contact with was Elite!" From a designer psyops perspective for AI vs the human player it's a neat idea to have the first (and only the first) AI enemy encountered to be Elite. A player who has trouble with the first enemy unit encountered is likely to be much more cautious.

In my CMA folder I only have "Taking It To The People (v5)".

Internal catastrophic explosion is wot I thought (like the Bismarck blowing up HMS Hood). The implications of this for terrorists everywhere in the world are immense. There are far larger model aircraft that can carry dozens of pounds of payload that could be used anywhere - eg: flown into skyscrapers as in 9/11. Amazed that this hasn't been discussed publicly. Picture the model seen in the video with ISIS markings flying into another aircraft or a building = propaganda coup.

No worries. You can increase difficulty by playing on Iron level. That reduces the C2 info available to you. If you play on the lowest/easiest level you get to see all the enemy units and no FOW.

It's the granularity and detail that is attractive to most CM devotees. CM2 is the tactical version of Grigsby's War In The Pacific if you know that classic game. You kinda have to enjoy micromanaging to enjoy the CM series. What takes time is rewinding the turn video to see what happened to every unit. But, that is also fun for most of us - a bit like watching a war film.

Good point.

Very good article with some wonderful insights/observations like: "Moscow favors an emergent strategy based on “fail fast and fail cheap” approaches." "The Russian armed forces are actually small relative to the size of the country they have to defend..." "The first goal of the Russian leadership is to make the combat zone its own sandbox, sharply reducing the options for peer adversaries to intervene via direct means. America does this in its campaigns by attaining air superiority. Russia’s method is cheaper: area denial from the ground." "Like Pavlovian conditioning, Russia barely has to move a few units around and watch a Western media fueled panic. Moscow has trained the West so well that if every Russian soldier were to depart Ukraine, or Syria, there would be immediate concern that it is only to invade elsewhere (perhaps a “land bridge to Kaliningrad”)." "...most observers expect Russia to pursue maximalist outcomes with a large employment of force and to get stuck doing it. Russia does quite the opposite, typically bidding the bare minimum required for coercive warfare, rather than jumping in chest deep." Essentially the article proposes that Moscow's entire strategy is not about conquering, but about coercion. Now you don't have to read it lol.

"...one more thing to consider, that I haven't seen explicitly mentioned: all those old CMBN maps were designed with old versions of the engine, so they have AI plans -- missions, campaigns, and all the quick battles -- that don't use the improved features of the newer engines. (Triggers is one big feature that comes to mind.) And, to me, the AI just seems better in the newer games." That's a really good point. What's the point of upgrading the older games if there is little or no new content that takes advantage of the newer features? Perhaps professionally made content from BF needs to be developed and purchased by BF customers.

Holy cow... just shows what a couple hundred $ low-tech can do vs all the billions we spend. Can't help but think we should be operating a few thousand of these little commercial drones for pinpoint attacks vs personnel and vehicles instead of the large overly destructive predator systems that almost guarantee large collateral deaths.