Emar

Finished the Al Huqf battle last night and got a total victory on easy level. The camera takes alot of getting used to and working through the other changes but so far so good.

Just installed the game the day before 1.07. I had preordered CMSF before it's release but busy work schedules and then all the negative press kept me from giving it a go till now. Looking to give the game a try but was wondering if anyone could suggest some small easy battles to break a newbie in (and where to download them at). Preferably against the AI to start. I tried a couple off the disc but got shot up pretty bad and it is taking a little time and effort to get used to all the changes to the CM engine. Any suggestions are apprecaited as i will have some play time this weekend.

Sounds great and I have already ordered mine sight unseen cause I know it is going to be another top notch title like the first 3 were. Must say however that I was a little surprised to see the comments on the vehicle pathfinding issues since that was probably one of the top things mentioned to fix in all of the "wish list" threads. Oh well, perhaps it will get sorted out before it turns into too big a traffic jam. Best wishes to all those at Battlefront and I am sure it will be another stellar product. Can't wait to give it whirl

The experiance bonus causes the AI's troops to act at one level higher per level of bonus. For instance at a +1 bonus "green" troops under AI control would perform as "regular" troops, regular as veteran etc. At a +3 bonus "green" troops would act the same as "crack" troops. This would make them less likely to break and reduce command delay times and generally make the AI troops and tanks a little more formidible. As far as I know however it does not change the value of the AI units for end game scoring.

Thanks Richie, fast service!!!

I know that many of the old battles and ops from the original scenario depot were salvaged. I am looking for 3 of my old battles which were lost in a computer crash and would appreciate it if anyone could send them my way. Two of them are CMBO. Specificaly "Gotterdammerung" and "Gotterdamerung 2"( I would like to convert them to CMAK). Also I am looking for a CMBB battle of mine "Remnants of Glory". Thanks in advance for any help. Eric :cool:

The demo has not been my cup of tea either. Not because it does not seem like a quality game but rather I just don't care for RTS games. I just don't find it fun to constantly scour the battlefield clicking on everything and everyone nonstop to make sure all is well. Coming from a panzerleader and squadleader background I like turn based gameplay and CM's wego system is perfect for me. I like to relax with some beer n pretzels, pick my moves, hit go and get down at ground level and watch it play out. I am looking forward to CM shock force and it's WWII offspring but I have to say that I am a little worried on that end as well because of Battlefront's statement that CM:SF is desigened from the ground up to play as a RTS game as well. I know that the game is supposed to be able to be played either way but I can't help wondering if RTS is the priority and if 2 very different styles of gameplay can succesfully come out of one game ( Bruce Geryk, a longtime CM supporter and game reviewer at "Games For Windows" magazine expressed a simular view of CM:SF in the May issue). I will just have to cross my fingers and see with the rest of you :cool:

Renaud, I wish I could remember the book with the photos. It has been awhile but pretty sure it had at least one b&w photo of 2 knocked out Lees with a crescent shaped harbour and some wrecked equipmentin the background labeled as Novorossisk (of course photos are mislabeled from time to time). Since however, there are no Lees in CMBB it is really a moot point and I used Stuarts in my Neptune Op.

Remembered a couple of my sources. "Army Group South" by Werner Haupt has a few pages on the subject and the "Caucusus and the oil" by Wilhelm Tieke. There was another book as well which had some photos of knocked out Lee tanks and wrecked landing craft and equipment as well as some good info but the title escapes my feeble memory. A side note of this campaign is that it was here that the Soviet airforce really began to stand up to the Luftwaffe toe to toe with a viscious air campaign above the hills, forests and vineyards.

Back when I was doing research for some Gebirgsjaeger ops I came across some info. I don't remember all of the books I used as it has been awhile but here is the briefing from that op. After the defeat of 6th Army at Stalingrad The Army Group South began to pull back across its entire front. The Gebirgsjager were obliged to come down from the high mountain passes they had been holding and moved into new positions along the Kuban bridgehead. Stalin unsatisfied with the destruction of only the 6th Army saw a new opportunity in the South. If Rostov could be taken while forces advanced from the Black Sea the entire German Army Group South could be encircled. Thus was born the idea for operation Gory/ Morsky (Mountain/Sea). The Sea aspect of the operation called for an amphibious landing of Marines At Novorossisk on the Black Sea. The Soviets did not bother to put too much planning into amphibious operations. They simply would throw together whatever ships were available and do an end run past the defenders (this way of thinking was one of the reasons Stalin did not understand why preparations for Overlord were taking so long). On the night of February 4th, 1943 the Soviet Marines stormed ashore under fire from German and Romanian batteries. Unfortunately, in some great part due to inter service rivalries, the invasion was a complete flop with all the Marines being killed or captured, and 31 American made tanks supporting the landing were destroyed. This was not the end of the story however as a small force of 800 Marines had been put ashore in Stanichka, a suburb of Novorossisk. These were intended as a diversionary attack to draw off enemy forces from the main landing site. They held their ground and the rest of the reinforcements intended for the main landing were instead diverted here. The Naval Soldiers were supplied and reinforced by sea on a nightly basis and due to slow reaction from the German defenders the bridgehead rapidly expanded. When the Germans finally got around to attempting minor actions to repulse the landings it was too late as the Marines were entrenched and ready for them. Hitler then devised Operation Neptun, an assault plan to sweep the Soviet Marines from ther landing sites and from the hills of Myshako where they were fortifying their positions. The 4th Mountain division would attack the Soviets from both sides with armor and air support. The attack was scheduled for April 6th but was called off due to heavy fog, and called off again on the 10th. Finally, on the morning of April 17th operation Neptune got underway. The Russian defenders were determined that they would not be pushed back to the sea. What followed was some of the bloodiest fighting of the entire Kuban campaign.

If you are looking for a Metaxas line scenario try "GP8 Fortress Istibei" at the scenario depot. Depicts the bold assault by Gerbergsjaegers against the fortifications at mt. Istibei. Again, as with the other scenarios used here it uses French forces filling in for the Greek defenders (uses some other nationalities as well for cannon armed pillboxes and bunkers). Hopefully a Greek mod will be completed as scenarios in this campaign are very do-able with CMAK.

Weren't all of the Porsche turret Tigers deployed on the west front? :confused:

Here are a couple of the answers. CMAK is a finished product. Unless some progarmming genius from the CM community figures out a way to add the the NW Europe stuff CMBB does have covered arcs, move to contact and trenches, the main features that CMAK has that CMBB does not (unfortunately)is dust and multi turret vehicles, both of which would have been usefull for CMBB battles. With fog of war off the AI "sees" exactly where you are at all times just as you see the AI's forces. One of the features of the next engine is the ability for designers to play with fog of war off with the AI unable to see forces not in it's LOS.

So its a videocard issue. Dang, the reason I switched from an ATI car to nvidea was so I could have fog back. Looks like I cant win :mad:

Having a problem while editing large maps in CMAK and BB. I have been working on some large maps for CMAK operations and whenever I try to scroll the map in the editor screen it takes forever. After clicking on the compass in the editor screen it takes about 12 seconds or so before registering and for the map to scroll one click(both verticaly and horizontaly). I never had this problem before my motherboard went up and I replaced it with a better one (or so I thought). The games play fine and I have no problems in preview mode, only in the map editor screen. I am running a p4 3.0 gig with 2 gigs of RAM and BFG 6800 GT. I really would like to make another 4kx8k map for another installment in my Normandy battles series but at this pace I dont think its gonna happen. Any suggestions appreciated.

The more I look at it the game does have some good possibilities. But I cant help wonder with a modern setting like this one that points brought up in the earlier casulty thread might not be even more valid. Realisticaly if things started to go bad in a battle or patrol in modern warfare the focus would most likely shift from the initial objective to the removal of wounded(and if possible dead comrades) from harms way, and typically a good deal of the resources and manpower available to the Allied forces would be diverted to that end(would think it could allow for some unrealistic and gamey tactics if not made a factor in the game). Will this be simulated at all either by victory point incentives, abstactions, or some other means?

If you are doing an op and you place a gun or tank inside a building (to simulate turreted bunkers or such) you will find that they will be able to be moved out of that position in the second battle. This will be possible even if you dig in and padlock the tanks setup in the first battle. Trenchs and pillboxes will not be able to be moved however.

Prefer WWII so I would have to be really wowed by the demo before I would consider it. Modern combat could be ok I guess but I am also a little disapointed that the first release is a "fictional" title (and personally I am a little burned out on the whole mideast thing anyway after all these years of having a daily network news deluge of bombings and death from that part of the world). If we were going fictional would rather have seen a hardline coup in the Soviet Union igniting a war or Krazy Kim in Korea or something along those lines. Of course the basic terrain type in the desert will give the developers a break in working out the squad footprint and AI using terrain to its advantage. Even though it might not be my cup of tea I still wish Battlefront all the best as CM has always been great and I will certainly be back around for the second release and any Eastern front release as well.

Grenada!, Cool, now with a little modding we can do some "Operation Just Cause" scenarios too. Can someone mod the church Noriega was hiding out in?

Pretty sure I saw a statement about this engine being made available for 3rd parties in one of the anoucements. When I have time I will try to find it.

Pvt Ryan. Since the new game is on a much smaller scale it will perhaps not be as much of an issue which area comes first. With CMBO it was the whole NW Europe theatre which was modeled. Now we are more likely to get the "American breakout July 44" or "The Battle For The Bridge at Arnhem". So an early engine release will not preclude so much of a theatre when it is upgraded later. I truly believe the first release will be in NW Europe and probably the 2nd somewhere on the Eastern front. But after those 2 I would be willing to bet that WWII will go on the back burner for the next 1 or 2. It would be good marketing at that point to show the engine is capable of other battles. Especially when the engine will be farmed out to 3rd party developers. It would expand your possibilities to branch out. [ August 27, 2005, 09:48 AM: Message edited by: Emar ]

Speculation will run rampant for a few more weeks. I don't really have a problem with the "downsizing" of the scope and unit size in these initial releases, especially if they are in a WWII context. A whole battle on a 1:1 infantry man scale for a city block in Stalingrad or Berlin, or for a couple of fields and orchards in France or the Ardennes could be pretty cool!( is this not the average unit scale for almost all of the most popular WWII movies and TV shows) But with the downsizing of the maximum size battleground to the level of a "tiny" or three quarter size "small" battle in CM1 terms I don't understand how earlier periods would play out. With about a 100 units or so per side and guessing that cavalry units would count as 2 units (rider and horse like a vehicle and it's passengers) don't really see what kind of engagements would be feasible for Napoleon, American civil war, Crimean war, Roman or medieval times, etc. Foraging party? scouting behind enemy lines? local raid on a small town? secret shopping outing? Road trip to Daytona beach? Would think you would want at the barest minimum a battalion size unit to portray these time periods. Of course down the line as hardware improves this would be more feasible and all would be right with the world. [ August 27, 2005, 09:11 AM: Message edited by: Emar ]

Yeah I could definately see the first release being something like the "Road To St. Lo" or something along those lines (would be a good demonstation of the layered terrain). I would think that the second release might be a something like a "Stalingrad" module. Lets face it, the reason there are so many WWII games being marketed is that WWII still "sells" more than any other conflict in history. If they did do Korea I think it would also be on small scale, not something that includes all the nations. "Chosin" or some other battleground.

Sorry Elmer,did not see your post.See you already had it figured out.

I believe that when you play with the fog of war off in CM1 that the AI can see where all of your units are just as well as you can the AI's units. This causes the AI to play the battle differently as it knows where your units are. If I am assuming correctly this test mode would allow the fog of war to be "off" for the human player but still "on" for the AI. In other words the AI would play the game out as if fog of war were on allowing you to see what the computer is doing with its units and adjust the scenario accordingly (move VL's, reinforcements, etc.)to get better performance out of the AI( I know somtimes I have played a battle over and over when designing wondering how the AI ended up where it was and why, this could really help designers). Of course I have been known to be wrong from time to time, I was divorced twice