Erwin

Wonderful job. Thanks. I think I may use some of the mods in regular CMBN. I love the muddy/faded German uniforms which should be good in any theater. And yes, best thing is to create a new Z folder called Italian Z or summat. One of my surprises in CM2 however, is that after all that work, the buildings still look like' they are toys dropped into a flat base. All straight clean lines between building and ground. No damage, shrubbery to disguise the join etc even tho so much work went int the the bocage and shrubs in the game.

Looking forward to firing this baby up! Wish there were more large/huge CMBN scenarios so that one can consider reserves and operational issues/supplies. Most so far are so small it's hard to do maneuver. (But, then again I realize it's supposed to be Bocage country.)

You forget that the (later) "Allied" nations were rearming at a furious rate. Germany had a sweet time spot to attack before the victim countries got too strong. WW2 was a war of logistics and economics (aren't they all actually). The US alone probably coulda beaten them all once its massive industrial power was fully mobilized into Total War. The US never had to go anywhere close to that extreme and pretty much cruised thru WW2 (economically) with little deprivation on the home front. Also, it's very arguable thay the fall of Moscow would not have ended the war in the east. All their heavy industry had been shipped east thru the Urals well out of range of German bombers. (Since Germany was only equipped for short blitzkrieg wars they had neglected to develop long range bombers.) Instead the East Front would have become like Iraq/Afrghanistan on a much larger scale, until Germany went bankrupt trying to hold onto those massive territories vs partisans etc. as um... we have more recently seen.

Thanks. Let us know when the final update is ready. We're starting to get several files, scenarios and mods that get are uploaded to the Repository and then almost immediately are revised and new versions uploaded. Sounds like people are rushing things out to the Repository without checking. It gets confusing... Plz at least be sure to label all files CLEARLY so we know not to d/l old versions.

I just moved the Z folder to desktop, installed patch, moved Z folder back. Seems ok.

In my experience you can shoot buildings for approx a minute with 20mm-30mm without voiding a "preserve building" requirement. Similarly, 81mm and smaller arty can fire anti-personnel at buildings and not do enuff damage to the buildings. Try it and you'll get a feel for what you can get away with.

Simply create a new folder named what you like and stick the bmp's in it and stick the folder in the Z folder.

I suppose one does not HAVE to order them to deploy at all. And after their mortar ammo is expended they are a useful inf team.

Heh... I may try both suggestions... Thanks for the comments...

Yes, I always thought that a real life command called for a certain number of shells, not just "Give me Light Fire for a Medium length of time please." Also, I must try selecting TARGET or TARGET LIGHT with the mortar crews at ranges LESS THAN the min for the mortars (40m I think), I wonder if then they will use their personal weapons.

Ahhh... You know what... I may simply not have seen the reinforcing core guys, and ran the 25 defenders (who I assumed were the remnants of my core guys.) off the map and cease-fired. Don't think I saved that one either. The briefing was confusing in that I got the impression that I would be linking up with the majority of the US forces, not a measly 25 guys. Seems counter-intuitive. No worries, I enjoyed the other battles. It was a good training campaign. Altho' as I mentioned for some reason I didn't find the ATG's useful or they didn't fire for some reason. I know they were deployed. I may retry the town defense battle. So, is it worth replaying the campaign and making different choices at the two "decision battle" interludes?? What changes?

Lovely map. Clearly a lot of work.

I suspect they may have been more concerned with the fact they probably wouldn't survive anyway. (Presumably their mates in the rear would report what killed the point vehicle.)

It's almost like you need a 2nd "B-Team" of trainees/volunteers to do some of that stuff, while you A-Team guys keep pushing forwards. Am amazed at the young talent out there - and the employment picture isn't exactly rosy. Have you thought about trolling colleges, MIT etc for guys who might do the grunt stuff you don't want to do in order for them to complete PhD's, and other papers?

Yes, thanks....

Ah, apologies... I may have got my battles numbered wrong. (During the "choose options phases" I chose ATTACK IMMEDIATELY plus LEAVE PLATOON BEHIND TO DEFEND TOWN options.) What you call "Ambush" I called "Defend the Town" - it went ok altho my guns were not that active and I lost 2. The next battle was what I called "Ambush", which was a German column with Stugs trying to cross a bridge and drive down the road to an exit point. That's where I lost a lot after killing the two trucks and passengers. The last battle was my 25 remaining guys already close to the map edge defending/delaying an overwhelming German advance. I think I just ran em off the map. Was there supposed to be an actual link up with reinforcing troops? Is it worth replaying the Campaign trying the alternative options - do they make a big enuff difference?

Yes, what precautions is BF taking vs an EMP burst?

"If you're talking about the town defense mission, let me know, as I found a crazy good spot to put them that's almost so good as to break the mission on my fifth or sixth playtest!" Yes, all three ATG's were KO'd (surprisingly easily imo) in the Town Defense mission. The ATG's seemed useless. It appeared that bazookas got one or two of the Marders. But, something else was also shooting and penetrating the Marders, but I couldn't figure out who or with what. I think I KO'd all the Marders and forced the Germans to an early surrender. But, the ATG's weren't much help even when they seemed to have clear LOS. Clearly I didn't handle the ambush and delay missions well. In the bridge ambush (battle #4) I had a good time killing the first 2 trucks and the inf passengers. But, then the Germans lined up behind their hedgerow (on their side of the river) and were able to concentrate murderous fire on my squads (who were behind their own hedgerow on their side of the river). My linear mortar strike along the German hedgerow came a bit too late. I should have predicted better. It makes sense that the Germans would do that (I would have) but I still underestimate the smarts of the AI. I had very little left for battle #5 and didn't really think I accomplished anything except get more US killed in that scenario - still got a Major Victory(!) So, there are only 5 battles in Devil's Descent? For some reason I thought there were 6. (I was going to go back to #4 and retreat a bit faster after the trucks are killed and hopefully have enuff men left for battle 6. So, plz confirm there is no battle 6 so I can move on to other scenarios.

Well I have seen mortar crews very effectively defend themselves with their Carbines. What I wonder is whether they can be ordered to function like infantry - ie use their personal weapons rather than their mortar.

dpabrams: Take a look at Band of Brother site (YUKU). Some good, reliable and fast oppos there.

"Remember most battles in WWII were infantry with small amounts of armour support." I agree that was the reality (as it was that most battles were very one sided). But, that also means that "most" battles are not that interesting to game. In a game one looks for the fun situations, and that means those very rare occasions that both sides were about equal in strength and were convinced that they HAD to win or die. I think that is why while I enjoy CMBN it feels a bit one-sided as the Germans are generally in poor shape. Am assuming BF is working on an Ardennes module as well as East Front where things were a bit more equal (at least for a section of the Front and for a limited time).

"The costs of doing all these things far exceeds what we think we could get from upgrade fees." You may well be absolutely correct, Steve. But what would it cost asking customers if they would purchase/support such an upgrade and for how much just to check? Your fan base is pretty hardcore and will buy just about anything you put out. Heck... I'd still pay for "CM Campaigns"...

Generally, for ALL the CM series games, it's always best to lead with recon infantry to locate ATGM's (in CMSF) or ATG's (CMBN and CM1) and ambushes. As Vark pointed out, due to the tactical short range scale of nearly all CM games, leading with vehicles is almost always a suicide mission. The one caveat is if you move a vehicle FAST (say down a road) and then immediately REVERSE to a safe area, you just may encourage an enemy to fire and miss, thus revealing his position. You can simply repeat this maneuver, each time moving FAST a little further down the (say) road until something happens. The only advantage imo of using vehicles like this is that they can travel a lot further than inf in the same amount of time, so you short-circuit the "recon by getting fired on" process. It's useful if your recon vehicles are expendable. And to some degree I think that's what recon vehicles were. I recall reading about Brit AC crews getting drunk before a mission to get courage as they knew they were at high risk of getting ambushed every time they went out on a mission.

Thanks for the info...

"Target light mean 2-3 rounds a minute." Thank you for that info. I too thought that Target Light meant use persoanl weapons. (In Devil's Descent my mortar teams were often using their carbines etc to defend themselves.) So the obvious question is if the range is LESS than the MIN mortar range and you order TARGET or TARGET LIGHT, what will they do?