Cpl Steiner

Hi all, I am working on a 1.5 x 1.0 km rural terrain map which has quite a few farms on it. One of my favourite eras for wargaming is the American Civil War, and the maps in those battles often had farm landmarks named after the owner, e.g. "A Spangler", "B Herr" etc. I was thinking of doing a similar thing with this rural map, but with Ukrainian surnames, e.g. "V Lysenko", "P Melnyk" etc. I think it looks kind of cool and makes the map look like it's inhabited but maybe the allusion to 19th century battle maps would be too "in your face" and look a bit goofy in a modern setting. What do you think? Should I leave the farms as they are or rename them to more boring military map type names like "Farm A", "Farm B" etc?

This implies that being inside a building in CM:BS is "safer" than being outside it, or behind it. Bugging out the back door and using the entire building for cover IS safer in most situations. It's just that the TAC-AI isn't smart enough to identify those situations when it would be suicide.

I think you just got unlucky there, In my experience, when soldiers panic they do usually get themselves into better cover. When they don't I just shrug it off and figure they must have really lost it due to not knowing what the f*ck is going on and just running away from the immediate threat. In war throughout history the most casualties were incurred when one side routs - i.e. runs away in blind panic. Following your logic no side in history would ever have been decimated after having routed from the field. We have an automatic "fight or flight" response to danger that evolved when the threat was a wild animal or spear-throwing cave-man, not a supersonic sniper round.

BFC would be crazy not to expand this game. I predict USMC for first expansion, with a campaign that sees them assaulting into Crimea as per the backstory and coming up against Unconventional forces (A.K.A. Separatists) in this predominantly Russian-speaking area.

Well, I still think there is something "iffy" about triggers and QB maps as I tried a little experiement. I took the QB map I had created, added some units for both sides, and saved as a Scenario. I then played this scenario and this time the trigger worked. No other change except to add some units and save as a scenario instead of a QB map. I did not even assign units to AI groups (the scenario just defaulted them to "A1" or AI Group 1). I would suggest people see if they can prove that AI triggers work in QBs as I am pretty sure my experiment proves the opposite.

Me too. Feels incredibly "now", even more so than CM:SF ever did.

Just for the record I don't dislike CM graphics in their entirety. If I had to pick one thing I don't like it would be the terrain, and in particular the trees. They don't look very real to me. Troops and vehicles are all gorgeous even without mods. To be fair to BFC, nature is a hard thing to do well. The best I've seen was in a game called "Big Game Hunter - Pro Hunts". The terrain in that looks amazing.

Just checked out Steel Beasts 3.0 on You Tube and I would not rate its graphics that highly either. The infantry in particular look a lot worse than they do in CM in my opinion.

Yep - all the reports I am seeing is that the town has fallen to the rebels. Ukraine government claims their forces withdrew in good order but does not dispute that the rebels have taken the town.

Map is "Red Assault" Blue Terrain Objective 1 is "AI Trigger (Enemy) called "Trig1" and is a filled rectangle just short of a village occupied by Blue. Blue AI Plan 1, Group 1, has two orders, Setup and Order 2 Setup order has "Exit between 0:00 and 3:00:00 Wait For Trig1 Order 2 is an area on the edge of the village facing Red's approach Expected Result: Blue waits indefinitely until enemy (Red) units enter Blue's Trig1 terrain objective Actual Result: Blue immediately leaves Setup and moves to Order 2 area.

I am loving CM:BS but I would agree that the graphics are nothing to shout about. I also get some odd graphical behaviour, such as a kind of temporary "hang" when something big happens, such as a powerful explosion on-map somewhere, or a kind of "refresh" effect in which the entire display seems to randomly redraw. CM gameplay with "Skyrim" quality graphics would obviously be very welcome but I know that is not going to happen.

Well, I give up! I cannot get it to work. I have tried all possible combinations of timings and it seems clear to me that the "leave after" setting is the ONLY thing that the AI unit takes any notice of. If "leave after" is set to 0:00 they will immediately move out of their Setup zone; even though the enemy is miles away from their trigger objective. If "leave after" is set to 10:00 they will move out of their Setup zone after exactly 10:00 minutes have elapsed, regardless of the fact that the enemy have been parked on their trigger objective for the previous 8 or 9 minutes. I would love someone to make a very simple test QB map and see if they get the a same result as me.

Do AI Triggers actually work in QB Maps? I am designing a map for use in a scenario and just for fun I decided to turn it into a Quick Battle map to see how it looked with units on.I made it into a "Red Assault" type battle and created a Blue Terrain Objective of type AI Trigger (enemy) and then added Order 2 to Blue Group 1, with the Setup "leave" conditions set to between 0:00:00 and 2:00:00 and "wait for" set to the trigger I had created. When I tried the map as Red in Scenario Author mode, the Blue side just moved off straight away, without waiting for my own men to activate the trigger. In case there was something funny about Group 1 in QBs I changed the map so that it was Group 2 that had this triggered order and tried again. Same thing happened again - when Blue units were randomly assigned to "A2" they immediately left their Setup zone without being triggered by my approaching Red force. I hope I'm just doing something wrong and this isn't a bug but I just can't get it to work. Any ideas?

Hi All, I am currently working on a scenario which will see Separatists fighting Ukrainian regulars, with the separatists receiving Russian reinforcements and the Ukrainians receiving US reinforcements. The premise of the scenario is that the separatists commence attacks in coordination with the Russian push into Ukraine, in an area that is far from the primary axis of Russian advance. In other words, an area where predominantly Ukrainian and Separatist forces are engaged, with only token assistance from their respective allies. I found this page in Wikipedia that gives unit names for many Separatist units, so I will pick one of these for the separatists in the scenario. I thought others might be interested by this list so here's the link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Armed_Forces_of_Novorossiya Currently I am still working on the map - a predominantly rural area with some light industry. It is not based on any actual geographic location within eastern Ukraine but is supposed to be representative of the areas where the Separatists are active. When I have finished the scenario I will upload it to the Repository.

Wow - just what I needed! Thanks.

Has anyone else noticed how badly organised some of the flavour objects are in the editor? I tried to put down some "Sheds" earlier, and only about 3 of the 9 variations looked remotely like sheds and even they were more like outside toilets. One of the variations looked like a stack of pallets.

I would definitely buy another CM modern title set in the Middle-East and/or North Africa but I think I would prefer a new backstory. I'm sure BFC could come up with a plausible new backstory set slightly in the future like CM:BS. I would love to see something involving the IDF - perhaps an Israeli invasion of Lebanon vs. Hesbollah - but I won't hold my breath!

Using "slow" move orders reduces the bogging chance I think. Also, if you drive over a fence or hedge at speed you risk damaging the wheels or tracks. I have seen the damage indicator change from green to yellow when doing this.

Yep, I think you have it right. Giving passengers waypoints causes them to dismount once the vehicle reaches its destination, unless the vehicle was given a "Dismount" order before its move order, in which case the passengers will dismount and move off at start of turn instead, so start or end of turn are the only dismount options allowed.

Even an old CM vet like me can learn something new! I just tried "Dismount" command followed by "Slow" for vehicle and "Hunt" for all passengers, in same direction. The effect was that the passengers dismounted at the start of the turn then the vehicle moved off and the dismounted passengers advanced behind it, using the vehicle as cover. This saves me a whole turn as I would normally have waited until next turn to move off.

.. from which we get the word "sabotage" because some disgruntled french factory workers used to put shoes into the gears of industrial machines to cause them to break down. Ain't language great!

In the "Galloping Horse Downfall" scenario as the Russians one of my scout elements got pinned down on the left flank by a strong enemy position. All the rest of my force was committed to the assault on the main objective so I had nothing to spare to help them out except a single bailed out BTR crewman. I though long and hard about it and then decided in the circumstances it might not be unrealistic for this guy to realise that his brothers in arms on the left flank were in serious trouble and he was the only guy not contributing to the fight. I therefore had the guy come over all heroic and head over there to see what he could do. His contribution turned out to be very effective, causing two casualties with his shortened-stock AK74 from behind a wall on high ground overlooking the firefight. In the end he completely ran out of ammo but the yankies cleared out of their building and he was able to reconnoitre the objective they had vacated with nothing left in his arsenal but a single hand-grenade. It was a great little side-story in the battle.

I too have noticed that foliage does not seem very effective at blocking line of sight. If you look at a CM tree that has been heavily shelled, it has lots of little branches, and I suspect that it's only these branches that the game engine treats as blocking terrain. Thus, if your line of sight misses the branches then you will be able to fire through the foliage - and less credibly - spot through it as well. I think this could do with being addressed but the only trouble with that is it might break existing scenarios by making it much harder to engage enemy units in forested terrain. I would argue that spotting should be next to impossible if the line of sight passes through foliage but I would allow area fire through it - assuming the game engine even knows that the line of sight is passing through foliage (which I suspect is not the case at present).

Hi Battlefront! Would it be possible for you to post somewhere on the site a file of graphics for use in the creation of CM:BS Scenario Briefings? In particular, the Strategic Map image of Ukraine, plus icons that can be pasted over Operational and Tactical map images for things like units, road routes (E95?), fortifications, etc., so any scenario briefings made by players look similar to those that shipped with the game. Thanks

I checked out the Ukrainian vehicles and the Truck has no markings so it could be used as a transport for Separatists quite easily. Using Russian vehicles works too if you don't intend to have Russians and Separatists in the scenario at the same time, or don't mind their vehicle crews looking identical. With a bit of modding it would also be possible to give Separatists a unique vehicle type and just drop in a modded texture for that vehicle with the Ukrainian flag removed. To be honest, the flag on Ukrainian vehicles is not that noticeable and in any case the vehicle could have been captured from the Ukrainian Army.