Erwin

I am now very happy with the way CMBN looks thanks to Aris' terrain and vehicle mods. Even zoomed out, the maps look great in the graphics configuration I am using. I only hope that Aris has the time/energy to complete the 250/3(?) and the 88mm and 76mm guns that (I think) are all that are left unmodded.

Just curious... How did you discover that item is the Toolbar if it doesn't say ZoneAlarm anyplace? Anyhow, I reinstalled ZoneAlarm... It gives one the choice to install the Toolbar, so I always uncheck that box so Toolbar should not be installed. After installation I checked Programs and Services - the item you listed above does not exist there, although yes if you drill down thru the folders it is present in the folder as you say. CMA and CMSF do not load. I moved IswSvc.exe to the desktop but CMSF and CMA still do not load. I reboot, and now both CMA and CMSF load fine. So IswSvc.exe seems to be the culprit. But, since I unchecked the option to load the Toolbar when I installed ZA, what is IswSvc??

That is odd considering CM1 handled FOW better in that respect.

I have played all but one of the campaigns available (RTM coincidentally), but I prefer the Axis side and I am really enjoying A BLOODY RIDE. HOFFNUNG was also very good.

Firstly, I am enjoying the scenario, so plz don't think I am carping. I hope that my feedback may help improve either this scenario or future ones you may do. With HELLUVA ROAD OPENING v2 you give the player many strategic choices at the start which I really enjoy. It also means that scenario is very replayable. ROAD OF ALL FEARS doesn't give many choices from the start and I haven't restarted as it's replay value wouldn't be so good. If I were to replay it, I wouldn't send anything forward except for the dismounted recon. It's fairly easy to suppress the enemy when they fire (way too early for a decent ambush imo). But, it was hard to kill em. I tried sending in an infantry platoon but they got casualties from other unseen enemies. So, the best thing would have been to wait for arty strikes and for the air support to arrive. But, that makes a for a somewhat boring 30-55 minutes till they start arriving. I keep hearing that we should be shooting at all possible ambush sites, but to me there are so many and the Soviets just don't have that much ammo. The AA truck in particular goes thru ammo fast, so I wouldn't want to fire that speculatively. Probably, I needed to be more patient with the recon troops. In CMSF and CMBN, 30 secs to a minute is usually enuff for some sort of enemy indicator to be seen. In CMA I wonder if one needs to sit and watch for maybe 3-5 minutes. BTW: I really didn't like that you had the lead BMP set up a couple meters from where the recoilless was keyholed on. It seemed like too much of a "coincidence" and it was annoying to move a vehicle 2 meters beyond the lead and get it pranged - unless that was supposed to be the start of the ambush situation and designed to give the player a shock. Once again, my overall frustration with this scenario is that there appears to be one way to proceed and if you deviate from that strategic plan, you will get whacked. Once one knows the "trick" one can proceed with efficiency. Also, I am still puzzled why the BMP's were in the recon when they are the ones most likely to die. Again, if I replayed, I would dismount a platoon of inf and use their BTR's as the recon vehicles, since the BMP's possess much more support firepower.

So long as they don't sue for unlawful use of their sounds.

I would disagree. Wars are essentially economic. Russia had and has far more economic wealth, people and land than Germany. German war was designed around Blitzkrieg - rather like western forces today. German manpower would have been like a drop in the ocean of the Soviet land mass. They would have been bankrupted by unconventional wars all over the Soviet Union rather like more recent "experience" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once the Soviets recovered from initial shock, all their factories were evacuated east of the Urals well out of range of German bombers (since Jerry saw no need for long range bombers pre-war). Soviet production would have eventually outstripped that of the Germans, as did Russian manpower replacement. The result would have been the same had the west not helped out, but it would have taken longer. Western aid to the Soviets was a convenient/calculated way of fighting Germany with Russian blood. D-Day was needed as otherwise, the soviets would have ended up in Calais. (Churchill kept insisting till the end that the invasion should have been in the Balkans to stop the Russian advance thru Eastern Europe.)

That's the contradiction... We're told to use ammo liberally, firing at every bush or hill that could contain an enemy. However, the Soviets just don't have that much ammo.

I bet it's just an animation abstraction. If you want a real thrill, try reversing a truck full of inf to an impassible bocage and dismounting them.

Thanks. As an unrepentant mod slut, I worry that I may have missed something...

Well I aint going to d/l and install whatever the web page wants me to. All very confusing.

Or does one have to troll the Repository for mods and scenarios etc that are not posted here when available?

yeah the 231/2/3/4 series of 8 wheelers IIRC. Also the Italians had a Sahariana series that also could be driven in either direction.

Pink or dayglo orange with purple strips should be enuff to destroy any illusion in the game lol.

Yeah, I think CM1 sorted this sort of thing out in a much more comprehensible manner where it was not hard to have sufficient power exerted on a flag so that the presence of one or two beat up enemy units was not sufficient to keep the VL neutral.

Something like that, or putting a mud path just to make it more obvious where there are passable gaps. I have been playing this game a LOT since it came out and I STILL have problems seeing all the gaps. Or, I locate a gap I can see thru' but discover too late that it's not a gap that an inf can actually pass thru. A toggle to turn off undergrowth would be great so one can more easily locate features like gaps AND locate missing WIA guys that often disappear into bocage and cannot be located for buddy aid. (And of course saving WIA guys should also count in victory calculations as well since currently they do not.)

What you describe sounds more like a training situation, where there is one solution to the "puzzle" and the lesson to be learned is that if you try anything else you'll get mauled. It takes the decision-making process away from the player and it's like we have to read "the training manual" as to what actions you want us to take as to how we should proceed most efficiently. In a game that's limiting. So many of the set-up decisions have been taken away from the player, and I am realizing that I am struggling to figure out what YOU intended the player to do rather than figure out my own innovative plan. What I love about scenarios like your ROAD OPENING is that there appears to be several genuine "strategic" possibilities re how to set-up and how to proceed, and so lots of decisions to be made which is the essence of a great game. In that game, you allow us to even attack down the road with the Marines and use the ANA to do the flank attacks. I love your new set-up (altho' I am still struggling to complete the last of the CMBN Campaigns so I can return to CMSF and play ROAD OPENING). I think ROAD OF FEARS would be a more interesting scenario if only the recon start on the map with maybe one of the platoons arriving in "x" minutes and the 2nd platoon, trucks and AA truck in "y" minutes so the challenge is to clear the first part of the road sufficiently so that the trucks can arrive safely at least, while the rest of the road is cleared. I think that then the first part of the game would be recon followed by suppression of enemy positions. BTW: I found it odd that the recon vehicles are the best weapons. I would have thought that the BTR's would be recon and the BMP's would be part of the main force. Was that Soviet doctrine?

The first pic is a Marder, the 2nd is a Wespe. IIRC they both used Pz 38t chassis.

I think it's a Wespe.

The thing is that is actually looks like something the innovative Germans would have made...

I hope we'll see a bonus for saving WIA guys thru Buddy Aid. Right now, apparently it doesn't matter re the scoring.

Yes, locating gaps in hedgerows is a huge PITA. As mentioned previously this is not supposed to be CM: LOCATING GAPS IN HEDGEROWS simulation. But, some folks here seem to enjoy that aspect of the game, so... Just consider it as a realistic penalization of your bad eyesight or something...

The Lotus Eater says the game loads from Z to A which is confusing (to me at least). To clarify: IIRC the game loads A first and Z last. So you will see mods that have names that start with letters later in the alphabet loaded in the game. So Zmod loads AFTER Amod, and therefore Zmod appears in the game.

Tried that. Didn't work. No matter what I put in the "Display Size.txt" file, (and then restart the game) I get the bars on the right and left. I can't seem to get it to fill the screen without distortion (widening) of all graphics). Do I need to reboot?

IIRC BF posted that they originally were going to have a whole medic thing going on but it became like a game in itself and so they dropped it for the current system. Works fine imo. I mean, what would would be next? Ambulances, aid stations? Surgery probabilities? I think some folks want to play THE SIMS.