Destraex1

you mean the demo we all got from the live previews Will?

Nice Steve. Crystal for me actually. We get the SS and the FJ where they were deployed most.... against the commonwealth. Thats going to be a cracker of a module. But in the base game its vanilla US and German. Which is no mean feat in and of itself.

Yeah sorry guys. It was a quick battle setup we were shown. Poorly written on my part. With the tiger2 hypothetical example I was just trying to accentuate the "special" vs the normal units. I certainly did not see any tiger2 units in the preview. Sorry for any confusion.

I did a really tiny one with no screenshots in the sydney debrief post. Probably too small for what you are looking for. I too enjoyed the AAR stickied on this forum. Their can be a point where their gets to be so much information though, that you are not excited about the gamed when it comes out. yes?

no problems scottie. I certainly know what its like to be fumbling around in the dark waiting for some news.

Better late than never, my feedback from the Sydney preview; I greatly enjoyed meeting fellow Combat Mission players. I can say that they are certainly a cut above what I have met for other more cliche computer games. Others have mentioned the intro along with what generally happened on the day, so I will skip this. Instead I will get straight on to some of my observations. The terrain is great and presents many more challenges than the shock force terrain did due to the more complicated nature of what Normandy geography is. There are low hedges, high hedges. Infantry pass through hedges through small openings that are somewhat hard to spot. This gives the effect of the hedge appearing unbroken as it should. It also means that men path through it by almost "feeling" their way through. Also as it should be. German tanks cannot break hedges, however in the short skirmish we played our ze Germans were able to use pioneers to punch holes in the hedge enabling tanks to fire through the hedge. We did not test whether this meant that a tank can then drive through the hole. Infantry seemed to be able to fire through hedges somewhat by setting up directly behind then. Since infantry cannot sit in the hedge itself this makes sense. We were shown a few of the maps and in one ridges were shown to be both highly visible and almost invisible depending on how the map maker tiles them. Another was a very large map with a massive complex landscape. It looked a little like Arhnem with nice looking water complete fords and bridges. The bridges were mined in this scenario. Pre-Marked Artillery markers were also visible. Artillery is a product of ww2 and can only be called by an FO or a unit commander. Otherwise it works fairly identically to what we currently see in CMSF. As the Germans Fenris and I hit the emergency, heavy buttons a lot With devestating results. Command Structure is vastly different to that of CMSF for obvuous reasons. For instance, for a infantry unit standing next to a tank to point out a target they must use their radio to call the infantry commander and have the sighting filter back down the chain of command into the tank's radio. At least from what I saw of the German side. In some scenarios it was also possible to cherry pick your formations and then add "special" units under any of the command trees. For instance choose a infantry unit and a panzer grenadier unit and attach a king tiger to the panzer grenadier unit from the special unit pool. This King Tiger would then report to the Panzer Grenadier unit commander under his personal command Vs the over all army commander for that mission. The last thing we did hands on was play a quick battle. I think this took us around 30 minutes. Fenris and I in command of the German forces and Willight and Bodkin in charge of an American force protecting a village. The map was one with many maze like hedges. A road down the centre entered a town that dominated the map, the road exited town and then forked in two directions off the end of the map. On the forked end their was a river to one side with a ford allowing one to cross to the other side. All round the town were hedges in a maze. Some hedge squares were filled with forest, but most were just grassed. Each hedge row had 4 or 5 places a side for infantry to squeez through a man at a time. I thought the holes were really neatly done. It looked so natural. The germans started on single narrow road at the end of town. Two panthers and a few HTs with infantry. The tanks could not move through the hedge and so were forced down the road into the centre of town. This meant the Ami would know exactly where to wait with every AT weapon at their disposal. We dismounted our Panzer Grens and forked out on each side of the road probing for enemy positions and ways through the hedge maze. On the right the infantry were stopped in their tracks by a particulary large field between hedges. Many Ami fox holes had been dug just behind the opposite hedge. Apart from the the village had clear view into the field. Most of the Grens on the right with hunt orders did not make it past here. On the left even though the infantry met with fairly heavy fire from the town and hedges while flanking we were finding our way through the hedges. Grenades were flying back and forth over hedges and pioneers were making large holes in hedge rows. Meanwhile the two panthers approaches town peaking around corners and feeling out the main road. Since we were playing on the medium difficulty setting sighting the enemy is a little more lenient and the FO had a field day plastering the town and the trees on the right with emergency heavy barrages. Fenris and I pretty much used everything we had as quickly as we had. It was a small town and their was no sense waiting until we were entering town to use the arty. Several AT guns were disposed of this way along with many infantry units hiding is fox holes dug all around town. Mark had a little chuckle at one of our Panthers doing what he called "kissing" enemy infantry in a building 5m away from its main gun. I was using the panthers as close combat assault vehicles. Very unconventional and a good way to get them killed. Fenris and I were lucky though being cautious about how many lines of fire were exposed to our panthers at once. Shortly after this more German forces started to arrive. Another Panther and some more HT loads of infantry.Fenris and I decided that the left offered less resistance and sent most of the infantry that way. Setting up a flanking tri-pod heavy MG on the way. Firing into the town. The infantry made good head way past a few hedge rows and blew holes allowing a tank to move over and fire into the flank of the town as well. While covered by the tank the infantry moved in form the left flank and took the centre of town. Mean while down the centre road, half tracks, which had no particular use in this battle. Not being able to move through hedges and not able to withstand the punishment down the main road. They were used in a penal battalion style lead scout and mobile shield capacity. Much to the horror of Mark who was spectating on a large flatscreen TV. A Panther and support upon making it to the end of town started beating up on a re-enforcement column coming in for the Americans. Three of four M10 AT carraiges, including one coming down the flank on the opposite fork to the panther's direct right were destroyed. American Greyhounds and their sister ACs with the 50cals also got cleaned up in fairly short order. Not long after this the Americans threw in the towel. The Germans declaring a major victory. The scenario was one chosen at random by Marc and undoubtedly the Americans were completely outgunned. It served its purpose however, demonstrating a lot of the games functionality and feel. The terrain and models actually imho look better than the screenshots can do justice. I recommend that anybody who likes shock force and ww2 go along to a Normandy preview. It is certainly worth a chunk of weekend time. I have to thank Mark and his Wife, who was very understanding, for their hospitality.

yeah team play is a good way to get friends involved. Lots of games do it these days.

I agree. They have done this in the past. However because it was able to be read online only instead of a .pdf it was harder to read. I normally like putting manuals on the kindle in .pdf format personally. Makes for a nice read if you are stuck with some time somewhere waiting.

theatre of war does close combat really well actually.

On Sat 19th, 12:00 is more palatable for me. I have stuff on Sat mornings. I can possibly make 11am in a real pinch depending where in Sydney you are.

Good point.... pausing for 20 minutes and then giving orders that get carried out the moment you press go is more realistic than not being able to be everywhere at once giving commands to everybody. What commander gives commands to every single frontline squad by messenger or radio every 60 seconds?

I understand the conundrum. In WEGO your chain of command is complete and instantaneous perfection. Your "Commander" acts like a perfect hive mind by freezing time and jumping into the mind of every level of command down to squad NCOs. With real time you get back some of that command delay and also that confusion with orders that happens when each commander interprets what he thinks the orders actually mean. Also some of the stupidity that happens to people under pressure. In having real time though you lose some of the initiative for those troops that you cannot control while managing others. I think its a good trade off, especially considering what the AI is. Player VS Player is where you WEGO may have more advantages over real time. Being that in part when you move men against your enemy you may or may not be moving against human controlled men at that point in time. With WEGO you are always moving against a human. However I still consider Real Time to be much more fun and am happy to make sure I am in the right place at the right time. Not that I have ever played head to head with this game. In fact I am kinda a rookie with this game engine in general. Only having paddled with it compared to other games. I had a lot of trouble getting in the mood so to speak to fight a theoretical enemy with modern equipment.

Which, the LIVE WEGO\WEGO PBEM\ discussion or the Real Time VS WEGO discussion? For mine it was just a light hearted jab at what WEGO would look like in a video. It made me think of that simply because people on youtube have been making a lot of videos like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA5D72twIes I imagined a WEGO video like that... with lots of pauses to consult . Freezing while men in labcoates rushed over and made micro changes or measured distances.

My point was that so many people claiming to be grogs are whining about the lack of "god mode" aka WEGO/Turn based. I did not want to derail the thread but after reading the first few pages felt the need to comment. Granted as I get older I will probably prefer the WEGO system. At the moment I am doing it as intended... as real as possible. Which mode is your favorite GreenAsJade?

I swear somebody should do a video of live action wego. It would be hilarious. It seems to me that real time is more realistic, but so called grogs hate it because it does not fit into their meandering ways.. what I like about WEGO is that its marginally better than turn based. This is a game of tactics gents. We are not playing with an army. We are also not playing with perfection and should not try to be perfect. Men in real life do stupid things even with training. Chess like moves do not happen with infantry squads.. snap decisions do.

I don't smoke so thats cool have been under NDAs before so thats cool I may bring one mate if thats ok?..... he will behave. If not thats also ok obviously.

Well I am still easy (don't read into that). Sounds good to me.

On the laptop I currently use CMSF on briefing windows are tiny and hard to read. They just do not resize to the resolution of my screen. Its a horrible strain on the eyes. You will note that the game is fine once loaded into the map. Does CMNormandy still do this? Or is it just me with the problem.

para we have not even got the uniforms down pat. I don't think that level of detail is coming soon.

I'm interested.... just tell me where. they. are.

I actually loved the CMSF manual with the boxed version. It was already printed and a great toilet read

Well I'm a little further south atm.... I believe their is a big coat hanger somewhere near.

I can watch from Au.... just looking up chicago st in the phone book. aaawww crap... you mean America again

ahhh i see. Well if its as open as PC i'm all for it. Just don't let those nasty macs act as carriers for anymore email viruses pls

+1 i keep thinking iphone appstore for some reason. You just don't think mac appstore.