Tuomio

Luckily these kinds of things will be quite easy to implement (just making general assumptions here) if comparing for example, new tank variant. They wont have much implications on AI behalf, its the user who can entertain himself by going trough the barbed wires and routing enemy troops to get few captures. If anything, it should be easier to define surrender conditions with this new engine because multiple factors can be consulted. But top10 list is probably very crowded still, wouldn't count on having extra features just yet.

Todays world is full of products, which keep pumping the money out from same concept by adding modules to them. I would gladly see Steve getting some money out from his product too (well not too much, empty stomach is what keeps people productive). As long as we have CMxx series with us, we always have a place to challenge our tactical visions. Just look at the Sims for example, i think that one has about 30 modules by now for the same boring concept. They add nothing really new or interesting to it, because it just doesent take that much effort to please teenage girls. Just a new set of virtual clothes will get you 100 000 * 20$. I am pretty certain that if BFC goes under, we will be stuck at playing this version of CMSF for all eternity. If you want a dictionary definition of underwhelm, just look at gaming consoles and its gaming industry. People will buy new console just to get "revolutionary" SEQUEL *Cough* Halo *Cough*. Thats the future, you end up paying lots and lots for essentially nothing.

Secondbrooks, the morale issue was with Abrams HE fire against building, which had Syrian special forces in it. They were on the second floor. They stopped firing for second or two when shell hit the wall, but were quickly back at the task (SF guys). It took several volleys from 2 abrams tanks to silence them. They all died, thats why they stopped. They didn't stop/cease because they were under lethal barrage. I bet their morale was very low, but still they were shooting targets with full effect. I know CMSF has very elaborate morale/pin down system in place, i just wonder why its effects are so subtle now. Its like their reactions is On/Off, full capacity / incapacitated. Because automatic rifles are so lethal in close combat, its even more important to deny your enemies ability to shoot back. Much more than in CMx1, where it was common practice to pin down troops. I see much less of that stuff i CMSF, it needs tweaking.

The enemy was presented in "Reverse Slope" conditions (in trench). This did not hinder the ability to target them. But the more cover enemy has, the more likely it should be that bigger guns are used. I tried to area fire the surrounding terrain, but again i was not able to get them shooting the big guns. We already have 2 separate commands for firing, "Target" and "Target light". If i order any unit to fire with "Target light", naturally it should be MG and similars only. With "Target" command i expect that all assets are used, ESPECIALLY with Area Fire command. This is how it works with infarantry, area fire with target command and they will use every asset they have. IMO its good that we dont get too precise control over the actual weapons, but Target Light = MG and Target = MG is not very logical. Buildings can hardly be counted as reinforced fighting positions. Morale boost or not, even the most fanatic troops should pin down when direct 120mm HE shells are fired at them. When this kind of ammunition explodes within the building, the blast wave will be horrific. Internal walls would blow out etc. If Main Tanks can't pin enemy behind few bricks, then what can? Buildings are now like reinforced bunkers. Even the 20mm bradley gun would get the enemy thinking twice. Those calibers will eat you physically and mentally if the "cover" you are behind is getting 4cm holes in it two times per second. Its like standing in the open, but in the open you would not get brick shrapnels in your eyes. Thats why higher levels (non-keyholed positions) in the buildings should be for spotting only. They are not reinforced and thus trying to play them as bunkers would be the worst idea since human wave over steppe.

1. When target command is given to Bradley, it will fire both TOW tubes empty regardles if the clear target command is given. Only exception seems to be, that the target gets destroyed with first TOW (Building collapsed, vehicle dead etc.). If target is switched, the second TOW is still fired. 2.M1 Abrams refuse to use main gun when target is soft target, or when using area fire, AND the target is not in the building. For instance, ATGM in trench was able to dominate 4 Abrams tanks, because they let the situation drag on by using only MG fire. The enemy was being spotted by them with no effect. Maybe the commander is fiscally responsible for ordinance usage now? Side-note: My troops and enemy troops do not suffer from morale penalties and the cover bonus against high calibers is extremely high now. Rattled troops can be given orders with no visual penalties. For example: One Syrian Special Force unit dominated my assault into town, because 2 Abrams tanks were not able to suppress them with area fire on their floor. They did get killed eventually, one by one, slowly. In the meanwhile they slaughtered all incoming soft waves, unlikely when you are receiving 120mm HE in your face. I would like to see those walls go down more easily, theyre not reinforced concrete.

I just finished the 8th scenario. After 3 hours of playing i just had to restart and start with a fresh plan. Momentum is critical in this big Inf+trenches or otherwise heavy positions are hellish things to beat with 1.07. I had to push with 3 bradley platoons into the city to get enough firebase for my soft troops. That was the easy part, i tried to push into smaller town from its flank (wanted to avoid trench warfare). 6 Abrams blasting at soft targets finally yeilded me couple of clean routes into the hellhole. Artillery feels pretty useless currently, 122mm howizers barely scratched my enemy. Even some troops at rooftops survived solid WW1 like barrages.

Non-game specific graphical artifacts (they usually show as coloured blocks randomly on the screen) are almost always related to overheating. Overheating is, if clocking is normal, result of increased thermal resistance. Check the fans of your graphics gard for accumulated dust. If there is none, the problem is most likely cracked thermal bridge between package and heat sink. Quick fix might be to increase the airfrow trough the heatsink with fans. You have nothing to lose, so i would just pop the heatsink off, scrape old stuff away and glue it back. By the way, when you are on it, check all heatsinks on your computer for dust. Especially after fresh formats, persisting problem means something has fundamentally changed in your hardware. If these won't solve your problem, we can dig further into it. [ February 14, 2008, 01:06 PM: Message edited by: Tuomio ]

The CMSF experience was significantly improved with the 1.05 patch. In my eyes, i see the 1.05 as the true CMSF 1.0 compilation. This 1.01 patch is extremely important as now the focus can be shifted towards the actual gameplay. Of course, i wont be satisfied 'till the 1.52 is out (maybe we could have sticky thread for 1.52 plzzz?!1)

1 KIA and 9 WIA -20 minutes, enemy surrender. Had to replay couple of times tho. The key is to unload MG:s into the forest and leapfrogging with them. Then after a while, you can just steamroll pinned down positions with concentrated BTR MG fire when AT element is wiped away. This scenario is excelent and the lack of large calibers really forces to preserve troops to gain sufficent firebase.

People just wont realize they had all the good stuff untill its taken away from them. Much like the Battlefront.com responses. I dont think there is comparison within gaming industry.

I've had this too and the reason was, that one of my squad members was waaay behind, probably due to some movement bug. The icon is on the center of box tile, generated from all squad members. This should be corrected so, that the icon floats where the squad average is.

Its also a blessing, we can always drool for various combinations of equipment so we can test them out on virtual fieds. I personally would rather see 2 years of pure, under the hood code improvement than 1000 new variants of equipment. What are you gonna do with the uparmored humvee, if its doing eights around the supposed target when youre not watching?

CMSF is excelent game and i have been playing it a lot since 1.04 patch. Now the single player mode is what it should've been on the release, but still waiting for the multiplayer issues to be corrected. Multiplayer is what will keep me playing. I hated the single player modes in CMx1 and played only PBEM games which were super blast. I am waiting anxiously to play against human opponents because this engine can offer so much more. With the realistic, non cherry pickable troopsets, its guaranteed, that only good tacticians will survive.

This priority setting solved mouse stuttering problem, this was most evident in scenario editor.

Quit thinking the terrain bonuses. Thats thing of the past. I myself look for reverse slopes and other, thick obstacles and they work just like they should, keeping casualties in almost 0. TacAI seems to take advantage of them, when i use "face" command. Buildings in far east are made from hay/mud bricks and 12,7mm (50cal) will rip right trough it wall to wall. Most strykers are equipped with AP-I rouds which pack substantial penetration abilities. Wood etc. is just the same. It takes thick, heavy materials to stop the bullets. Try it out with different commands and think buildings as shrapnel/LOS covers cuz thats what they are in modern battlefield.

CMSF is everything i expected, altough some features are still under construction. I have 100% trust in Battlefront for finishing their products so this is no big deal. Just work around the (small) issues and get better, because when i get my hands on you theres going to be some major spanking..

Seems like this problem occurs only with airbursts. Got better results with general munitons which leveled the house down. Cant survive from that..

I have to post yet another annoyance. The Al Amarah mission is very high difficulty setup and challenge loving as i am, i have fruitlessly tried to get trough the initial standup. This seems to be mostly because 81mm tubes are like 50mm from the CMx1, altough much less lethal. It is the only heavy asset i can fire on the roof hugging reds, so i just cant shrug this one off. I see few militia squads on the roof, who are getting 10 airburst on top of their heads, but still they dont cower. Oh and one of them just popped my Stryker just in the middle of the dead on artillery fire. Suppressions seems to be nonexistant. Thats just not the way of real life. People die if they stand on the roof and get 81mm airburst on top of their heads, no to mention several. They die, every one of them and nearby jihadis will get shell shocked, even the wannabe Arnold types. Quick tweaking is needed with this one. BTW, artillery orders can be issued during pause in all difficulty settings, which is good.

After 20+ hours under my belt, focusing on the RT playing, i am getting very frustrated with AI pathfinding and building representations. Troops excecute house to house movements in completely unrealistic, unpredictable and unplayable ways. If there is a row of buildings, there is no way to tell whether my troops are going to have party on the street before entering the next building when i order them to do so. Usually there is even a door to the next room, but it beats me why troops refuse to use them. Troops do not utilize windows as entrances in CMSF. I dont mind pathfinding bugs here and there, ie. sometimes 2 of my troops run to the streets when others go to the roof. I dont count that, but when a platoon gets massacred, houston has a problem. These reasons force me to babysit every inch of the automated pathfinding of my troops when they are at foot. REnders WEGO 100% unusable and makes RT commanding the micromanagement this game was not supposed to be! This issue has to be urgently fixed. I have to be able to tell, which door they need to use when entering and if they cannot compute, then its better they sit on their backs and not start duck-walking on street guarded by 10 enemy MG nests. Solution: When selecting troop movement order, buildings should show passageways by 2-d (or any other clear visual and fast representation) arrows, be they room to room, exits or roof entrances. This "compass" would trigger on mouse hover upon the building. This way i could figure out how the pathfinding will end up.

Cannot issue orders while paused, when using the Elite difficulty setting.

I would like to see much improved quick-map algorithms. Ie. CMx1 random patches of sc.trees close to eachothers should be something like scattered trees surrounded by larger smear of bushes etc. I also want a lots of more water in automated maps, streams and ponds. Streams should attract thick bushes and woods alongside of them. You get the idea. Will there be track marks from tanks?

Yea maybe i was wrong about the cheap aspect and i need to rephrase a bit since it was just a quick taught. Now there usually is something like 1 spotter per 1k points available in fight per side, but i'm thinking they should be allowed to command the "artillery pool" and not be dedicated. I find it hard to believe that losing an FO or two in battalion sized battle would end the firemissions for that day. Artillery being so decisive force and all. They were priority targets and had to operate at the front lines, which meant high casualty rates (so i've been told in Finnish army).

I would like to see multiple FO:s commanding the same tubes. Like in SP:WAW, the observers should be cheap as hell and should suffer (usually) high casualty rates. They arent called forward observers for nothing, cant really say the same about CM FO:s, which has to be kept in safe positions so you dont lose your artillery when you lose one spotter.

Hordes of t-32:s shine when they are kept at supporting the infarantry. They have craploads of HE and 3 tanks blasting away at frontline fortifications spells disaster for the defender. Because usually defender is in passive mode and waits you to enter traps, you can chew away its forces bit by bit without exposing your troops much. When the defender realizes this, the morale couldve dropped quite a bit and he has couple of dangerous holes in the frontlines. This spells eventually victory. Also the su-100 infarantry support tanks are wonderful at blasting the trenchlines to pieces. Just keep the enemy tanks out of LOS and you do just fine. Bigger problem is, if the few German tanks have overwatch and there isnt sufficent cover from them. Always have artillery unit(s) that can lay smokescreen and i even buy couple of 81 mortars, they are invaluable in gun elimination and laying emergency smokes. For antitank roles use the cheap AT-guns and leapfrog with them to the flanks. Only hinder is the 2 minute setup time, which means you must walk them to the final position in cover, so he cant area fire your arse accurately. Atleast you force the enemy tanks to worse firing positions if nothing else. Whats even better with the t-32 HE loadout is, that you can barrage probable enemy gun positions with direct fire without need to save ammo.

I had one silly situation, where my regular Tiger was unable to hit for 2 full turns (some 8 shots i think) from 600 meter range, completely exposed t34, while the t34 laid hits on me even when full reverse. The hit % was some 50 when i checked on both plotting pauses. Maybe it has something to do with this bug, the misses were so hilarious, that it was past frustration. I think i have the videos still around.