Haohmaru

Mmmm, how about now?

That's good to hear that pilots are highly customisable. A big plus in my opinion. So will battlefront have it's own server then where players can chat and organise battles and where all the leaderboard data is contained? Kind of like Blizzard's Battlenet? If so, sounds really good. I might just need to invest in the "target pilot" skill when I'm up against your pilots, Moon

I presume that with the single player game it is possible for the pilot to die right? Then you'll have to start over? How is it determined whether or not a pilot crash lands or is able to bail out, is it dependant on the card played or a random variable? Also with the skills that are available are there enough to really customise your pilot or will most aces end up with very similar traits?

The campaign mode sounds really good. Just one question about this though, can you create your own pilot to participate in these campaigns, or do you just use the ones that are assigned to you? It would be great if you can have at least one avatar, perhaps more powerful than the other pilots and you can rely on to put up a good fight. So, when's the demo coming out???

Thanks Moon, that's good to hear.

Hi there, I am looking forward to getting this game once it comes out. The previews that have been released have been very entertaining and I like the idea of the campaign system. I'm wondering if this game will be playable with a dialup connection? Will I be able to play against someone in a different country just as easily as I can with the CM series? I would imagine it wouldn't be a problem since it's not an action game as such, but will lag potentially interfere with multiplayer if there is a turn time limit set? Cheers, Haoh

Thanks for the screenie Moon, from what you've shown there I really like how the card info is implemented. Believe me, having now gotten over the initial shock of how the game looks (not because it doesn't look good, but because it looks completely different from what I was expecting), I am gradually becoming whipped into a frenzy of anticipation for this game. Now that I think of it, when I originally had a look at CMBO the screenies didn't particularly interest me, but I gave the demo a punt and was hooked instantly. I'm hoping it will be the same for DIF and eventually MNB. Haoh

Thanks everyone for your input. I also fear that immersion will be lost with this style, one of the points of transfering a card game to the pc would I believe be to increase the feeling of being a part of the battle, the feeling that CM is so good at making you feel. However, Moon's explanation is fair enough and clearly the screenshots don't give the game justice, the demo should give us a much better idea of what it is like. With all the animations and hopefully high quality sound effects I'm hoping you can feel involved in the battle quite well. I think I've found a screenshot or two for selecting maneuvers, now this one is surprising to me as well, you just select the name from a list? This is one thing I was expecting would look like the card game, ie you have a deck of cards and choose the one you want. Bring on the demo! Haoh

Great, thanks for the reply. Any chance of getting a screenie or two of how it looks selecting a maneuver? Good to hear that MNB is full 3d! That's funny to me actually, I kind of expected it to be the other way round since ship combat is 2d whereas altitude also comes into play for aerial dogfighting. Looking forward to both demos. Haoh

Hi there. This game looks really cool and I'm looking forward to trying out the demo. Just a couple of questions/observations: How exactly do the maneuvers work? I couldn't see any screenshots there which made it clear how you actually select them, will they be laid out like you have a deck of cards or does it work some other way? Secondly, I was a bit surprised that the graphics are top-down like that, it looks a bit strange all of the planes lined up facing off against each other, I was expecting some kind of 3d representation of the battle. I've noticed that in a lot of the animations they don't actually fit they "box" they are in (such as smoke suddenly being chopped off at the edge) and that really detracts from the presentation, will those graphical defects be cleared up before release? Any plans to ever make it into 3d? Cheers, Haoh

This sounds like a lot of fun and I'm really looking forward to it! I suppose the closest comparisson you can make to this game as far as the pc goes is something like Etherlords? I know that's a pretty loose association ie fantasy game with dogfighting game, but as far as the presentation goes it may be similar ie card game presented with 3d animations? So once this is finished I'm sure the next CM game will be able to have a full 3d representation of CAS

You usually see this when targeting with a gun. It makes perfect sense I think: the gun can see the unit but has no LOS to the ground on which they are standing. So, while it can see them, it has no way to actually shoot directly at them. I've never seen it happen while targeting with squads/mgs etc. This has been around since CMBB, I've never seen it with CMBO though

I would love to see some kind of campaign system. At the moment I'm involved with the Onion Wars Campaign and it's incredibly fun, because the battles that you fight affect the big picture, and you are playing not for yourself but for a whole team of players. At the moment the way CM is you play a battle and you either win, lose or draw, which is fun in itself but doesn't really mean very much apart from boasting rights. A campaign system which affects a bigger picture, and where a poor performance can really set you back in later battles would be great. But there are different things people want I guess, do we want a campaign where we fight battles over a larger map with our results affecting control (ala Onion Wars)? Do we want a campaign where we lead a group of soldiers through the entire war, not really making a difference but just trying to survive (ala Biltong's Campaign Rules)? Some kind of combination of those two things? Is this campaign idea just to spice up single player mode or is it to improve multiplayer too? The fact that all these variations on the way CM is played exist out there just shows how much devotion its fans have for the game, but like someone else said, they probably can't make everyone happy. But whatever BFC can do to expand the way it is played would be greatly appreciated I think.

Nope, check my profile, I've only made a handful of posts in a couple of years But I was involved in a discussion about this on the CMBB forum a couple of months ago, it was ugly. By the way, CMBB's scenario briefings usually told you what the best side to play against the computer was and I presume CMAK is the same ( don't have it yet ) so you should take its advice and leave scenarios that it cant handle to human opponents

Argh!!!!! Not another "AI is deficient" thread!!!!! Please, please, whatever you do, DO NOT request that BFC make any radical changes to how their ai works, even more important, do not tell them it is easy or "doable" :eek: believe me, casualties will start coming thick and fast at this rate...

Interesting observations about smoke causing all these problems. I am very curious to know then whether this could be a problem when you are firing smoke rounds? Is it possible that your own smoke shell spotter round could block your LOS thereby screwing up the accuracy of the barrage? It would be a pretty rare occurence but if you are using the large calibre stuff I imagine it could happen.

I don't have CMAK yet but I've seen some erratic behavior in CMBB. The worst thing is that if indirect fire is way off and you want to replot you have to wait another 5 minutes or whatever for the rounds to start falling since you can't adjust it. If the spotter is in LOS the rounds SHOULD strike the target, even if it has been broken, but I have seen it fall off many times. After all, that guy's got binoculars and a radio, he should be able to see what's going on and inform the battery of the necessary adjustment by himself right? Having to adjust fire ourselves introduces an unwanted level of micromanagement IMO, if a tank misses it's target we don't have to tell it where to shoot again, it will correct its aim by itself, the spotter should do the same. It ends up making the turn 1 fire plan so much more powerful because that will always be on target and you don't even need LOS.

Exactly. I'm not bringing up this idea merely to prevent gamey tactics, but to introduce new ways that CM is played. I really hope that the next CM game goes beyond fighting over flags and adds more variety to the way it is played. I think some people disagree and want it to remain a war game at heart. What I'd personally like to see is some more direct feedback and intuitive mission goals so that every scenario feels even more different from the others.

Ahh, that's a great idea for a mod of the New Zealanders' flag for CMAK!! Time to run away now....

...The one problem this would create however is that the tacai would have to be programmed to not blow the crap out of a unit which it spots in a building where the penalty is in effect.

I don't see how my idea for penalising the attacker for building damage would create gamey situations. There were a few questions: what about defender's fire? like I said the score could relate only to shells fired by the attacker, so if the defender decides to destroy his own buildings it will make no difference. Someone also mentioned that it would cause the defender to cram all his units into the buildings, well who says the defender has to know about this? It could be made clear only in the briefing of the attacker. Furthermore like I said you could just have one building have this penalty in place, perhaps even have a flag on this building, so in effect no matter what, you have to take this building, but if you damage it the points you will get by taking the flag will be reduced. Take the building intact and you get full benefit from the flag points. This could reflect historical situations such as the taking of ports or bridges, where taking them intact was very beneficial to the attacker. The point of all this really is not to try to eliminate gamey behaviour but rather to try to add some variety to the game. Because, personally I'm starting to get a little tired of chasing flags all the time (we've been doing that for 3 years) and I'd like to see some more factors affecting the victory score at the end.

I think a good idea for future CM games is for the scenario designer to be able to apply a penalty to the attacker for every building that is damaged or destroyed as a result of their shelling, so that if the briefing says "do not cause unnecessary damage to property" it will really mean it. So, for the AAR, minus points could be applied to the attacker's score, say -100 points for every large building destroyed, -50 points for every small building, 25% for light damage, 50% for heavy damage, something like that. Perhaps you could even assign point values to specific buildings, such as "we really must take this church intact, if you destroy it you will be in big trouble!" The attacker can still use area fire to spray the buildings with mg bullets, but it will discourage the use of reckless HE shells and arty.

Obviously shipping the game in a big wad of paper is more cost effective than the traditional plastic case. Or perhaps because plastic cases crack easily...

Doesn't anyone read the manual?? All of the hotkeys are explained thoroughly in there, along with pretty much everything else.

About the aussie accents, I hope they will be good. After all, the non English accents from CMBB seemed to be pretty authentic and convincing (although I've got no idea what they're saying!) so if they can't get an English language accent right, that'll be disappointing.