Cpl Steiner

I had not forgotten Chad and the Toyotas. The post-WWII African theatre has seen a huge amount of conflict. Here's the African scenarios from that board game "Test of Arms" I mentioned... 9 Jul 77,1, Assault on Mustali, Ogaden War, WSLF: Inf. Co., Ethiopia: Mech. Co. 19 Mar 87,15, Battle of Bir Koba Pass, Libya v. Chad, Chad: 1 Toyota Co., Libya: 1 Tk. Co. (+) 22 Mar 87, 16, Fall of Wadi Doum, Libya v. Chad, Chad: 2 x Toyota Co., Libya: 1 Tk Co. (+) 21 Aug 87, 17, Surprise at Aozou, Libya v. Chad, Chad: 2 x Toyota Co., Libya: 2 x Tk Co. 13 Sep 87,2, Bridgehead at the Lomba River Angolan Civil War, UNITA: 1 Mech Bn. 3 x med bty. Angola: 1 Mech Bn., 2 x lt. bty

Finally remembered (well, searched for) that game that featured some modern African conflicts. Here it is... https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4935/test-arms

"Force on Force" wargame rules got there first but if it's legally possible I would now favour borrowing from their supplement title and calling the new game family "Combat Mission: Bush War" - subtitle: Tactical Combat in Africa, 1960 to Present. It wasn't all infantry-only stuff either. I own a board game (can't remember the name, possible "First Battle" or "First Fight") that portrayed post-WWII tactical combat, in which there was a scenario featuring an armoured clash in Africa. BMPs were involved. Possibly Angola. If such a game family became reality you could make it a fictional "emergency" scenario in an African state fought between the government and local insurgents with forces intervening from Belgium, Britain, Cuba, France - and if political sensitivities could be addressed - South Africa and Rhodesia. It would give the setting some sort of cohesion whilst providing scenario makers the tools to make whatever historical scenario took their fancy. I can imagine there is probably a < 0.1% chance of such a game family being made but I can dream.

Getting this battle rifle into CM is reason enough for a new game family. One of the most widely used weapons of the modern era. The Brits opted for a semi-automatic version, valuing marksmanship over "spray n' pray", and for a while the British Army was pretty much the only Western military force that didn't have a fully automatic rifle as standard issue. This rifle served in the militaries of over 90 countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_FAL

We need berets. Gotta have berets

It's a popular subject for miniatures wargamers... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bush-Wars-Africa-1960-2010-Force/dp/1849087695/ref=pd_sim_14_6?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=BZ5KH35HTJK89VQQ9ESH There's another big reason I would love to see BFC do such a title. We have multiple WWII titles and some Present Day/Near Future titles but nothing in between. There is a huge wealth of military history between WWII and today that is currently completely untapped. It would be like a breath of fresh air and would reinvigorate the CM franchise.

As someone else posted a desire for a 1980s hypothetical "Cold War Gone Hot" game title I will post what I would love to see. "Combat Mission: End of Empire" (better title needed) The title would cover the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, focusing on theatres outside of Europe (primarily Africa and the Far East but including the Falkland Islands). Belgians in the Congo, Mercenaries, African post-independence Civil Wars, Vietnam, Cubans in Angola, Brits in Aden, etc. I wouldn't mind if it focused on one particular war as long as it gave us pre-1985 equipment (FN FAL rifle for Brits for instance). This was the period of European Decolonisation, when European armies fought several COIN wars in Africa, recently independent African states fought proxy wars (one side communist-backed, one side western-backed), US fought to prevent take-over of South Vietnam (recently independent from France), etc. But most of all, it would allow me to make a "The Wild Geese" campaign (British mercenaries rescue African leader then get sold out by their employers).

I watched a movie called "April 9th" last night about a small group of Danish bicycle soldiers resisting the German invasion in 1940. The country capitulated only six hours after the Germans crossed the border but the lads put up a brave fight, taking out at least one armoured car with a machine gun along with several German soldiers. It was a totally futile battle but they did their duty. In the first contact with the Germans they ambushed a convoy consisting of halftracks, armoured cars, and motorcycles with sidecars. I really wish we had motorcycles with sidecars in CM:BN as I would love to recreate this small engagement (using probably Polish troops for the Danes). Anyway, if you haven't seen this movie (Danish language with English subtitles) I would recommend it to anyone. I wasn't expecting much but was pleasantly surprised.

I think it's kind of ludicrous that in CMx2 soldiers still can't enter a building via a window. Maybe it should slow them down and there should be a smashing glass sound effect to accompany it but it would eliminate the problem of soldiers moving around the front of a building, into enemy line of sight, just to find a door.

Thanks for your reply. In the end I was able to resolve the problem - but the solution was quite weird. I created a profile for CM:SF in the NVidia Control Panel "Manage 3D Settings" tab and made sure it was using my NVidia graphics card rather than the integrated graphics. I also set Antialiasing to "Override" and maxed out the amount of Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering. I then launched the game again but found that if the "Antialias/Multisample" in-game option was set to "On" the problem still occurred. I had to turn it "Off", exit the game, launch the game again, go into Options, set "Antialias/Multisample" back to "On" and then everything was fine. So, it seems it doesn't like launching with "Antialias/Multisample" already set to "On" but doesn't mind you changing it to "On" once in the game. As I said, very weird!

I just launched CM:SF after not playing it in ages and it is running incredibly poorly. In the menus there is a huge lag, with options becoming highlighted several seconds after the mouse pointer hovers over them. Once in game, the mouse is again very laggy and the graphics look atrocious. Anyone else experienced this recently? I used to be able to play it with all settings maxed out with perfectly good performance.

It does not combine different squads it reorganises a squad that has taken casualties. Unless the squad has taken casualties it won't do anything at all. Google translate (hope it works)... Nie łączy różne oddziały Reorganizuje drużynę, która podjęła ofiar. Chyba że skład miało ofiar to nie zrobi nic w ogóle. Maybe this translates better... It combines sections in infantry unit if one lost men. Łączy on w sobie sekcje w jednostce piechoty Jeżeli jeden stracił mężczyzn.

Well, the trouble with changing code is that fixing one issue often creates another. No amount of testing picks up all the problems, so it's up to us dutiful players to play the game and report things wrong since the last update. Just doing my bit as an unpaid tester

In this particular scenario I was behind schedule so careful scouting was not an option. Besides, the recent engine 4.0 upgrade to squad spacing most likely contributed to the high death toll, so it seems fair to me to suggest another small tweak.

Missed this thread before posting my own just now. Yes! A minefield massacred a platoon last night. 10+ KIA in a matter of seconds.

I played a QB last night and watched in horror at one point in the battle when an entire platoon I had ordered to advance down a road walked over a minefield. I lost around 10 KIA to that minefield, because the men kept on going, or else panicked and ran out of it. What they should have done is stopped and crawled out of it - very slowly! The following squads should also have stopped or else altered their path so as not to walk straight into an obvious minefield covered in the mangled bodies of their mates. Please BFC, can you address this issue with the next Tac-AI tweak.

I am OK with just one guy peeking around the corner. If BFC want to tweak it they could allow two guys, one kneeling and the other standing. This would double the firepower without risking too many squad members.

This is a really minor graphical improvement request (and therefore most likely never to happen!). When you see a real life tank moving off road, little clots of dirt get thrown up by the tracks. I would love to see some dirt thrown up, as well as the cloud of dust we see now. The effect would be similar to the particles thrown up by ground-level explosions but much smaller.

The effect is more obvious if the building is rotated 45 degrees (e.g. looking north-south, overhead it would be a diamond shape rather than a square). Normally a squad behind such a building is very far from each of the two corners in front of it (e.g. east and west corner if it is at southern corner hotspot). Actually, ignore me (talking rubbish as the hotspot is never at a southern corner - must have misremembered that). To cut a long story short, like the other posters said, it is not abstract. You see one guy detach and move to the corner (frequently getting himself shot as a consequence!)

Well, I'm a programmer (maybe even clever, but I would not claim so much). To get around the "we don't need orders from HQ as it's bloody obvious what we should be doing" problem, you could use a manual or an automatic approach. The manual approach would be to give you some resource like "Initiative" that accumulates slowly and can be spent on a particular unit to reduce its command delay. The automatic approach is more difficult - the AI would have to be able to understand when a particular order would likely be given by an NCO in the unit rather than higher command. I would favour the manual approach for simplicity.

The scaling issue of the command delay in CMx1 is really just a design problem. If BFC wanted to tackle it, they could program in a "Use Roads" toggle button. A single move order placed further up the road would then become a series of Tac-AI generated waypoints along the road, taking into account bends etc. but the command delay would be based on a single order. I appreciate we can't have everything, and BFC have to prioritise, but better road movement would be a godsend. I really hate having to plot all waypoints along a road as its unnecessarily time consuming. A "Follow" command for vehicles would also be a great addition. You could then plot a move order further up a road for the lead vehicle in a convoy, and "Follow" orders for each one behind. A few clicks could conceivably result in a huge column of vehicles moving off along a bendy road compared to dozens of clicks currently. It would also solve the problem of faster vehicles in the middle of a convoy catching up with the vehicles in front and trying to overtake them.

Interesting film and highlights to me the problems of command and communication. At several times runners and flares are used to communicate orders. I remember in the original CMx1 games there was a delay after issuing an order before it was carried out, and the delay was greater if the unit was out of range of their commander. I don't know why that got removed in CMx2. It would be nice to see the use of runners and flares in CMx2 for communication of orders to units that don't have a radio. Marked approach routes in pre-game setup to help units follow orders more quickly would be great too. If anything, the film shows just how much CMx2 doesn't simulate.

My experience of Engine 4 after playing some QBs in CM:RT (human selection of forces)... "Combine Squad" button: I really love this feature for merging a couple of badly mauled fire-teams into a single team. "Muzzle Smoke": Looks great. "Spread out Movement": One of my biggest complaints with the old engine is finally fixed! No more single columns of men just asking for an MG to knock them down with one burst. "Hull Down" button: Have tried it a few times but it scares me as you are never sure if the AI will get it right. Seems OK but it's not something I would trust to the AI normally. "Green Tracer": Looks pretty. "Fall-back Tac-AI": Sometimes you want the men to stay put but I haven't had any real problems with it. Was already in the last game engine anyway (maybe just tweaked). [EDIT] Forgot to mention... "Peeking around Corners": Works well but have seen the guys taking a peek get gunned down within seconds on occasion. Thankfully no one else in the squad decided to take the guy's place and follow the same fate. "FO Kill Credits": A feature that was in the CMx1 engine that I am really glad is back. Overall experience: Love it!

If you want to play Russian Separatists, I did a scenario that includes the modded uniforms (Blimey's mod, included with his kind permission). https://www.dropbox.com/s/vauw5y8e084hdeq/Neighbours%20From%20Hell%21.zip?dl=0 Actually the above is an old version. The final version is in the Repository... http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=3583

US troops training former Warsaw Packed forces in the use of BMPs. How strange the world is now.