Erwin

Things that CMSF appears to teach (as opposed to RL which may or may not correspond): The Brit stuff is ****e compared to the US (altho am enjoying playing the Brits due to the increased "challenge"). But, Vectors are only glorified trucks. Scary to think of soldiers being sent into combat in one. CMSF also teaches that the WMIK is only good for transportation. Hard to see its use anywhere close to combat.

So one can't even delete an old one and update? That's a shame actually.

Avoiding casualties is probably the best way to assess one's success at playing CMSF. With CM1, one really didn't worry as much about em. If you are serious about improving play I recommend that you pick a smallish scenario that you like, and play it vs the AI several times and as both sides. That way you'll get a "feeling" for what each side experiences, and their different capabilities.

I wanted to add extra comments re a campaign I was playing, and after writing a mighty tome and pressing the button it didn't appear as "You already have left a comment." Is there a way of editing comments or adding extra ones?

Yes, I just got back from a few months in London and picked up and played a cardboard game called "Where there is discord..." (I think). It was a solitaire game of the naval, air and ground challenges of Falklands, and clearly showed what a close run thing it was. Some of the best graphics and production values of any cardboard game I have ever seen btw if others are into that. I recall back then during the "Thatcher war" cynically thinking that there must be oil or minerals out there someplace for the UK to care so much - even tho' at the time all that was strenuously denied. But, now, guess what... And I see the Argies are raising the whole thing again. Plus ca change...

Thank you... I noted: "The Vector PPV was found to have unreliable supension and wheel hubs as well as poor protection against improvised explosive devices. It quickly lost the confidence of field commanders and was withdrawn from service.[5]" From this and CMSF one really gets the sense that aside from the Challenger tank, the poor Brit soldier really has crappy stuff - awful feeling of sliding into 2nd world status - I guess like the Romans after their empire crashed. How long for the US I wonder.

Maybe try to break up the battlefield into separate mini-battles and create temporary task forces to accomplish each goal. After a while you get an instinct on how to have each mini-task force or unit able to support each other in certain locations. Some of the best advice I received when I started playing CM was that as soon as you spot an enemy unit, maneuver to bring overwhelming force against it and kill it asap. Then "rinse and repeat". ie: Don't try to accomplish too many things at the same time. CMSF is much more tricky and "sensitive" than CM1 in that it is very unforgiving of errors. CMSF requires very patient and methodical play - rather boring for most folks. That's why this is a tiny niche market heh...

Was reading a book about a Brit unit in Afghanistan by Andy McNab of SAS fame, and they keep referring to their armored vehicles as "Vectors." Anyone know what sort of vehicles they are?

The thing to remember is that CMSF is a game, and unrealistic/non real life tactics can win. You are playing against the game system. There is no "one tactic fits all situations" solution. You have to assess each situation re its own unique challenges. And that comes from experience playing the game. For example, in another thread elsewhere some folks were commenting how hard the British campaign "Warriors in the Sand" is. I am finding it too easy - losing less than 10 inf in each the 4 battles I fought so far - I think because I often use the unrealistic tactic of grouping armor tightly together and advancing as a bunch. The second any enemy fires, there is a huge and deadly response. Is that realistic? No. But, it worked in CM1 and it works in CMSF (most of the time).

Actually, I don't think the problem is AdAware at all. I found that Zone Alarm had reinstalled its cursed Toolbar (that stops CMSF from running) during a routine upgrade. After discovering ZA Toolbar was back from the dead and disabling it, CMSF runs fine. However, when I reinstalled Spybot, it doesn't run properly when I want to start a scan. So something in Win 7, AdAware, ZA or AVG is troubling Spybot... But at least am getting my fix of CMSF at last!

Yes, thanks for the interesting reports... I have to play vicariously until I can get my problematic CMSF running again on my Win 7 machine.

Is that a free download, and URL plz... Actually the problem may not be AdAware. Although it did manifest itself after AdAware windows kept pestering me for months re an upgrade so I broke down and tried it. Not even sure that the upgrade worked, but around that time, CMSF broke. Also, some problem started with Spybot as well (after 10+ years of perfect operation). I keep re-installing Spybot, but now that gives error messages instead of finding problems. Win 7 is nice but tricky.

I probably knew that once upon a time. Thanks for the info.

I am sure this is a newbie question, but just curious.

I kept getting notices to upgrade my free AdAdaware and just did so. Now CMSF doesn't start. Suggestions?

Got this recently from BFC tech support: 1.04 will work for both Windows Vista and Windows 7. For some users, 1.03 will work with Windows Vista and Windows 7. New purchases of CMBB and CMAK will be 1.04. This version updates some of the DirectX routines in CMBB and CMAK so that they are a bit more compatible with DirectX 10/11 compatible video cards and drivers. When 1.04 was released Nvidia and ATI/AMD updated some of their drivers to fix the issues that were being seeing by users of DirectX 10 compatible hardware. Other users never saw the problem since their hardware was DirectX 9.0c compatible. Generally we recommend that people upgrade to 1.04 if they see a problem in Windows Vista and/or Windows 7. Again, it will be a bit dependent on whether they have a newer video card or not and what drivers they have installed. 1.04 won't prevent every possible problem, but it does fix a few and MAY prevent some driver problems in the future (but probably not all). === Check out our Knowledge Base at www.battlefront.com/helpdesk

check out scenario depot for hundreds of scenarios and campaigns plus ratings/evaluations.

I don't like .rar, it seems more complex than good old zip. But you can d/l free "7-zip" I think it's called to extract from .rar.

sounds useful. thanks. Do you know if there is a spotting test scenario ever done to establish who/what can see who/what at what range and in which terrain? (Like we used to do with CM1?)

I had assumed that if a game is deigned with a particular resolution, there is no point going higher. ie: The quality of the image won't get better at higher than designed res, but certainly in CM, the text and buttons shrink to make em harder to read or use. I just wondered what is the highest res that CMSF is designed for.

My card and monitor are capable of something like 2600x1800. Is there any point in using this resolution for CMSF? If not, what is the optimal resolution to get the best visuals? Thanks...

Well... just completed the attack and the AI auto-surrendered with 20+ mins to go. Total Victory with 9 KIA, 30 WIA and 3 missing. 6 AFV and one "other" lost. The frustration I have with this campaign after two missions is that the AI seems to get impatient with my slow, methodical attack and decided to instead attack my massed units - thus eliminating much of what could have been nasty surprises in the woods. In both scenarios this led to early capitulation. In the first scenario it was a very early surrender even though the enemy seemed to still have a fair amount of capability. Nice in RL. But, in a game I feel a bit cheated of the fun of actually reaching my destination and accomplishing my objectives. As someone said earlier, often many friendly casualties were suffered when I just got bored and careless, wanting to get it done. As a contrast I highly recommend the xnt Mud Marines scenario for a game that one savors every moment, and I actually like replaying bits to learn better how to play the game.

Thanks for the lead. I scanned all the (many) pages, but I didn't see any answer from tech support or instructions on how to reconfig memory - so it's a bug?? (If I missed the solution, apologies.)

Am playing the same scenario and not having too much difficulty, but I may be going too slow to get the final objective. We'll see... I have been leading with recon units on either side of the path, closely followed by a inf platoon for back-up, plus the scimitars and warriors. Generally, when an ambush is triggered it quickly comes under fire from the inf plus vehicles, and that suppresses the enemy quickly. However, I took my time taking the village with minimal casualties, and after a while the enemy, including their tanks started coming out of the woods to attack my massed troops and vehicles(!) That made it easy to massacre them. I thought it a rather odd design decision. So, maybe I am only encountering the remnants in the woods. Basically, one has to plan your advance and be ready to bring overwhelming fire on any ambush asap. (That is also how to take the village with minimal casualties.)

Agreed. Other than looking at the slope with experience, the only objective way I can find to determine impassibility is when a waypoint at the bottom and a waypoint at the top of the slope seem unusually far apart - and it is impossible to place a waypoint anyplace between them.