Blow2

Registration doesn't make arty more accurate, just faster to bring down unsighted fire on co-ordinates, in my experience. It would also get round the fact that, currently, you can't get near dust even in LOS, since it treats arty fire as unsighted. Dust should allow spotters without a direct LOS to treat the target as sighted. That's why dust was so dangerous. At the moment, it is only useful as an indication of where the bad guys are - you can't actually DO anything about that with arty unless you can see it directly and plan fire for where you think the bad guys causing the dustcloud are heading. Even then, chances are the arrival of the dustcloud will cause your arty fire to be unsighted and land klicks away. Treat dust as a registration mark and watch how that focuses the mind - correctly, imho - on how to move across desert or on dusty roads.

I wasn't aware of this. In my experience, my hidden mortars pop away quite happily on their own provided they have contact with a platoon CO who can see the target. I can only remember giving specific orders if I see a specific target I want hit. Alternatively, I have just assumed this is what they have been doing all this time!

I have also found this and what we need is exactly the opposite - all dust should be treated as a target registration mark. That's why they posted all those 'don't make dust' notices all over Normandy. Every time one side or the other created it, it brought down a stonk on that spot. If I see a big cloud of dust in the distance, I should be able to call down accurate artillery fire on it in pretty short order. Maybe a patch?

Thanks Ron .. a voice of reason at last. I have played CM since it first came out - loved CMBO, loved CMBB even more and consider CM:AK a work of technical art - all save for the Ops. What annoys me is that everyone has had at least three years of working with this game engine and should know the limitations. The worst one is the AI's attempt to handle front lines. It can't work out anything much more than the basic, which is why I think Assault On Leros is flawed. After 20+ Turns of scrambling around gathering forces, the German player is faced with all of the ones he fought with being cut off, his reinforcements and one Crack Platoon being on what is now the right (east) side of the front. In between, little pockets of trapped Brits, clearly indicated because they are neatly boxed in green dotted lines. I have known the problems of airborne landing Op scenarios since CMBO. I scrapped a CMBB Ops one involving airborne forces supporting an amphibious landing on an island in the Gulf of Finland for the very reason this one fails. Better to have started it as if it was Turn 2 - Germans in the East, Brits facing them, with padlocked airborne forces, suitably depleted in men and munitions, behind them. That way, by Turn 3, the Germans may have joined forces, or been mopped up and the front-line problem resolved. Not a major fix, but like I say - hundreds if not thousands of scenario designers out there and yet we end up with basic Flaw 101 on the biggest Op on the CD. Of the two North African Ops, one offers three 30+ Turns on a huge map of mainly soft ground. If you play, as they suggest, the Germans against the AI, you will meet an insane advanced guard of Brits at the base of the first high ground you cross. If you allow Free set up, you may encounter some suicidal Bren carriers, but not much else for 30+ Turns except Brit arty fire. In short, the map is too big, the forces too far apart and the Turns too few . Again this is Design 101 stuff. The second NA OP is a three-Battle fudge. Doesn't really much matter what you do in Battle One, since you know what you have to do in Battle 2 and the AI front-line practically takes you there, even if you don't achieve anything. Same with one of the Italian Ops - and that's just indicative of what I have been saying all along and my original point . CM designers seem to favour Battles to the point where few want to tackle designing an Op because it throws up too many problems they can't solve easily. I have said enough. There have been three years of CM scenario-building with this engine and I expected better from the people who invented it. If you want to see an Op I did, try Kubyshevska from The Proving Grounds. It's the last CMBB one I posted and it had some nice comments from testers. And, of course, like all the available scenarios NOT on this CD - it's free.

Kingfish, you are the guy paying out the money for it, that's what gives you the right to complain, or say that one designer is better than another. Just as I am. Just as anyone is. Those who post their work, for free, to be judged by their peers, deserve to be cut a lot of slack. THAT"S a labour of love. Those who post duff Ops IN MY OPINION, on a CD I have paid good money for deserve to get the rough edge of my annoyance. Anyone else is free to come back and say I am wrong. No-one is free to accuse me of whining, or that the people who designed should not be impugned because they are nice and worked so hard. I am nice and work hard, but if the final product I produced pissed paying customers off, I would expect to hear about it. Having said all that, its only the Ops that annoy me and I started this thread because it seemed clear to me that most CM fans don't like Ops and, consequently, Ops design suffers as a result. The ratio of Battles to Ops in CM:AK lends weight to that. The ratio of Battles to Ops posted in Boots&Saddles, the SD and The Proving Grounds lends weight to that. My fault was in thinking that the people who designed CM could either design good Ops or pick people who did. IN MY OPINION, they did not do either.

I would also be interested to hear views on the Ops in CM:AK and have read, with interest, all the comments my post started. The gist of them seems to be that I am whining because, as someone said, I got an etch-a-sketch instead of a Playstation for Christmas, that saying the Ops in CM:AK suck is not proper criticism for Ops and Battles and that the hard-working designer/playtesters, giving up their weekends and days off to bring us this game, deserve better. Fair comment - if this was Scenario Depot or The Proving Ground, where I have an Op called Kubyshevska, so you can go along, play it and call it crap if you like. Politely, since I gave up my weekends and days off to do it, like all the others who contribute their work for inspection. The BIG difference here is ... Iam not charging you money to do it. I didn't get something as bad as an etch-a-sketch when I bought CM:AK, but I didn't get what I was expecting for the money either. Those nice people who designed and playtested CM:AK didn't do it entirely out of love, let's not forget and the only way most of us find out what the game is like is if we buy it first . In my opinion, they didn't do a good job on some parts of it. If you want specifics, I will give them - just ask. You can burn me up for being abusive, if that ever happens, but I can't believe many of the flamers out there accusing me of whining and dissing the nice people at Battlefront would, for a moment, put up with buying a car that immediately needed fixing, or, as I said before, keeping quiet about their favourite band producing a duff album. If I am wrong, of course, I have a gold brick here for sale ..

Interesting - my work won't be appreciated because I am a whiner. There was a hand-picked team who designed the scenarios but I wasn't part of it and you wonder why. That tells me I am not part of the inner circle of Battlefront/CDV/ Combat Mission's design and playtesting clique. What makes my work better than anyone else’s? Probably nothing - it is all relevant, as someone pointed out. One man's Op is another man's poison. But what is WRONG with you people? These Ops were part of a product you have to pay money for. What other product would you buy and discover that the pleasure was curtailed until you went into the workshop and fixed it? It's fine designing Ops and Battles for amusement, sticking them on a forum and taking whatever flak comes along. That's life and modding. Sticking them on a disk that people have to fork over money for is another thing entirely and, in my opinion, part of this product was badly done. I have every right to criticise – if your favourite group produced an album you thought had some crap tracks on it you wouldn't be slow in voicing your opinions - why is that whining? Maybe if you'd widened the beta circle and stopped slapping each other on the back, I wouldn't have grounds for complaint.

I am not against Ops - just the opposite, Iove 'em and am constantly trying to get others interested in doing them as opposed to Battles, which, to me, have little reason to them (with one or two linked exceptions). I am only disappointed in the Ops provided with CM:AK. I realise they can be tinkered with and I already have. I am in the middle of making one of my own, too. It just annoys me that we have, for a start, some 60 Battles offered and a handful of Ops only and, in my opinion, the Ops are flawed. I realise there is more to CM:AK than the Battles and Ops provided and, even without any it would still be worth the money - but why didn't you issue a limited beta that would have let fans create Ops and Battles for it? I am sure they'd be delighted and we WOULD have no-one to blame but ourselves. Moon, I have had no input on what went into the finished build apart from buying it, so your comments are fatuous. Yes, you have provided an editor for us to create some excellent work on. Pity you couldn’t use it as well as everyone else.

Since I have only just got the game - none. But watch this space. And if I decide on a historical one, it will be - unlike the fantasy that is Beda Fomm Battle, the only one I have played so far. Australians? Matildas? Give me a break! Don't get huffy – I see you are the designer/playtester and I know a lot of work went into this, but I have to ask ... what happened? CMBO and CMBB Ops - and Battles - were much better than this, working, I presume with a lot less easily available info than for the Western Desert and associated campaigns. Overall, the concept and the mechanics of CM:AK are top-rate ... its just a pity that whoever came up with the Ops isn't half as good as most of the modders and scenario designers who were not involved in creating the scenarios for the final game but who will now gleefully start fixing that shortfall. Maybe, in the future, you should throw it open to the CM fans to come up with the goods for the next one, if there is a next one. At least then we'll have no-one to blame but ourselves.

In CMBO and CMBB I have noticed that Ops are a foreign concept to most of the scenario designers and this is now confirmed with the collection released with CM:AK. The battles are fine; the Ops are, almost without exception, criminally bad. The Leros Op falls into the most common problem of Op designing with airborne troops - they scatter them all over, as in the air-drop gone awry. Of course, on Turn 2, the AI levels out the frontline and screws the whole deal. It also wastes Turn One, spent gathering together your scattered forces. Why bother, when you can start the game coherently on Turn 2? Likewise there are two monster maps in the desert, one unrelievedly flat (the desert isn't flat, it just looks it. Like the Russian steppe, it undulates and it cut with gullies). The other has the protagonists so far apart that the three-battle deal is meaningless - unless you leave the sacrificial troops stuck way out on their own, you don't get to contact for most of the first Battle. I am also a little disappointed that you have to fudge the Greek campaign and that there is no Grass tile for 1940, nor the ability to use German troops for that year. With that included you could concievably have stretched this game to include France 1940. It wouldn’t have screwed up the game that much - but hopefully the modders will be at work. I didn't expect wild innovation in this - the dust is a splendid addition and the new tiles are ace, too - so I am not downhearted. But I am a little shocked at how most of the CM fans out there only seem to know Battles.

Took an existing operational scenario (won't shame the originator, because it was crap) and wanted to rework the map a little and the forces completely. I discovered that I could move the Axis forces around en masse in scenario setup, but the Allies only one unit at a time. I have discovered this in other similar situations and can't work out why. The original crap scenario was set up as an Axis attack (static, 5 flags) against a Soviet defence. Changing parameters, units - everything, in fact - made not a jot of difference, you still had to move the Soviets one unit at a time to place them. Is there a way round this?

Are we going to get 1943, 44, 45 in this series? If so, when? B

Try With Our Backs To Berlin by Tony LeTissier,or the truly excellent Forsaken Army by Heinrich Gerlach.Panzer Commander, the personal history of Hans Von Luck is good, too. B

Never mind bagpipes, just give them some Scottish accents. I am tired of hearing Cockney in CM when I am battling with Scottish units in some of the many excellent scenarios!! Having said that, I admit (before anyone pounces on me) that so-called Scottish divisions in Normandy were filled out with drafts from all over Britain. B

Thanks for the positive choose-all-the-mods-u-like suggestion but, on that subject, has anyone come across a mod that lets you see tree bases in snow terrain? I have a VERY nice snow mod which converts the original to snow/mud, but it hides the tree bases and you have to guess where the edges are. I hate that. I'm not into gridded terrain, but I do like to be able to see the wood without the trees.And if I am going to have to reload everything, I may as well include ones I like. instead of ones I am putting up with. Bolo