Tank Hunter

Steve, thx for your explanation, you sold it to me. Considering the size of the file I'm downloading you seem to have spent quite some time on it. Looking forward to changes that allow us to use equipement against other players that have not bought the pack or modules..

Hmm I agree with the previous post regarding the price being steep considering it only contains vehicles. If you could use these vehicles in PBEM against opponents that don't have the pack than it would be worth 20 USD. That would also work as great advertisment, imagine seeing a crab or flamethrower being used against you when and you have not seen them in game before. They should patch all vehicles in and sell codes so people could unlock them. With that said I will probably end up getting them in the end but since it requires a module to be fully utilized and a 3.0 upgrade I would have prefered a smaller price for those customers that have already invested in all the upgrades and modules.

It's always like that. People seem to jump on the latest bandwagon.

Interesting video, nice engine. We have to remember however that CM is not just like any other game. There is a lot of calculations going on under the hood that eat cpu cycles, spotting being one of them for example. Converting current games is probably not an easy task. BF most likely have to pick a licensed engine to go with for the future so they can focus on what we all want, proper simulation of tactical warfare. Unity is the one mentioned and probably on BFs radar due to its´open platform enviroment. We want games and having focus on a new engine would probably mean no new games for couple of years. In order to do both they probably need to increase headcount. Remember also that modern engines require more out of artwork which also increases workload in that dpt.

Has been up for discussions from time to time. Seems most people agree that houses need to be changed to include fortified positions and basements. Have not seen any official comment from BF on this but I think they would agree, there are just so many other things that have been more important so far. I think BF must change how houses are modeled with the Stalingrad familly. They should also include sewers for movement between the apt buildings. That is if they want to model Stalingrad (city) fighting properly. I would also like to see more buildings and extra content so we can build cities that look and feel natural. In my opinion everything above village does not look or feel right in what we have in Normandy, Italy and Russia right now. That's probably why we don't see that many scenarios or campaign that involve fighting in Towns and Cities.

Pretty cool! Thx for sharing..

ChrisND, thx for the preview of the Russian and Ukraine forces. Too bad we won't see the VDV initially since I believe they would lead any kind of invasion of Ukraine but I understand the reasoning behind. We will hopefully see them in a future module. I also thought that Russians would be fielding some T-80s but maybe they are out ot the Russian active service?

My experience with laptops is basically the same, I had high end Sony that I used for gaming ocasionally, it broke down within two years. The graphics card gave up. It was repaired under warranty, three months later the screen gave up.... Had similar experience with previous laptop from HP, it was also high end, the fan failed resulting in overheated motherboard. Will never get another laptop, not high end for gaming at least.....

Hopefully in the future BF may turn to an external engine which would give us CoH graphics with CM realism. If they go ahead and buy a license for a 3rd part engine it would allow them to focus more on gameplay and let the engine handle advanced graphics.

When you live and plan your life in one minute turns.

Crossing a river

Being under tracks of a Soviet tank does not seem to bother this German soldier.

This one is tricky to simulate correctly. There are three things that are important for AT gun spotting. - Muzzle Flash - Smoke/Dust - Sound Someone must see muzzle flash which means someone has to observe that area when the AT gun shoots. Do you have to see flash directly? No, there is Peripheral vision which enables us to react on movement and events outside our direct vision. How do you simulate that? Humans only focus on 3% of our field of view. Smoke/Dust is both depending on weapon/ammunition and the ground. Both will remain hovering close to the gun thus enabling spotting even if you did not see the flash. And there is also the sound, if there is no firefight around then an AT gun direction will easily be determined, if you have heavy firefight with artillery tanks etc then an AT gun sound might just go "unnoticed". For this to work BF would have to make smoke/flash observable or code each gun individually to simulate these factors when in combat. Oh, let's not forget camouflage, most of these AT guns were camouflaged in combat. This was often made so that the camouflage would counter dust/flash/smoke as much as possible.

I usually prefer to have a plan for bigger scenarios. Without a General plan I tend to become confused and have difficulties plotting the moves for each and every unit. My plan is often general in the way of helping me with my main thrust and might look something like this. I pixelated the map behind just so I don't spoil the battle for anyone. I look at my forces and create a symbol counter for each formation. I pick the venue of approach based on the map, scenario description and forces available. Each formation gets an arrow with unique color, circled areas are that formation's objectives. Some formations with S above their counter are in supporting role. In the screen above you can see that 9th and 167th Co are to attack first from the deployment area. They are to lead the thrust and seize 2 objectives. The 1st Tank Reg and 4th Sapper Company will support once they reach their first objective. Once the first objectives are secured the 7th Co will deploy and attack 2 objectives in the south with the support of 4th Sapper Co and the MG Co. If possible they will also be supported by the 1st TK Reg hence the dash line. The 8th Co Counter is placed at the bottom right with an R indicating that it is reserve and may be deployed at some crucial stage of the battle. Once the battle starts I often try to stick to the general plan as much as possible but I always let the situation and time dictate the advance.

Yes, I've been asking about this in another thread. I'd like to see a formation tree window where you would get indication of supression and contact of each unit. Maybe have a supression bar and eye/ear symbol when in contact. Clicking on the unit would take you to it on the map. You could also expand this and include information about what each unit is doing, if they have some command, if they are engaging an enemy or if they are routed. All this could be presented with simple symbols next to each unit.

Yeah that would be cool, anyone interested could submit a photo and pick a side.

Here is an update. I survived the first assault dash! A german mortar was zeroing in killing few of my comrades behind. Here I am taking cover with comrade Tom Selleck and aiming for fascists. Here is a quick step by step procedure on how to mod your face into the game. 1. Download the RedFaces mod made by GeorgeMC 2. Extract the files to your harddrive 3. Preview the faces until you find one that best matches your skin color 4. Take a frontal photo of yourself 5. Open it in a photo editing program that supports layers 6. Cut the area from brows all the way down to the chin 7. Paste this area onto one of the selected faces, make sure it is pasted as a layer 8. Drop down the opacity of the pasted layer so you can see the face behind 9. Adjust your face so it matches with the eyes and mouth on the original face 10. Set opacity to 100 again, now adjust layer properties like hue/saturation/contrast until your face matches with the original chin, forehead and neck. Make it as good as possible. 11. Use smudge and clone tool to adjust the area where your face meets the original head. 12. Save it as either soviet or german solider and place it in your z folder.

Depending on the amount of faces in the mod and size of the battle you'll in most cases show up in several different units. What I do is I click randomly on a unit and drop down to level 1, then I roam the battlefield until I see myself. I then assign a group to that unit and follow it more closely during the battle.

Let's start a thread where you show your face in the game, add your face to any side you wish and post your screen in this thread. Here I am as a Soviet gunner assaulting a German position. Will I make it?? Stay tuned.. I spent just few minutes modding a photo of mine into one of the faces that JorgeMC did in his great Soviet Faces mod (http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods/5152/details). It's not perfect but it works for this purpose. Now I'm even more careful with my pixeltruppen . Do you dare to join your pixeltruppen?

I did a test a while ago comparing loading times http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1458946&postcount=10 More content = Longer loading times

I also wonder if Arena will be modeled. Here is a pretty good video showing how it works If it makes into the game, remember to keep your infantry away from your tanks! You don't want to be close when that thing activates.

I guess not, especially now with the fact that you can create mods for specific scenarios in ver 3.0

I wonder if we will have something like this in CMBS since VDV will most likely take part in the game? Yes that is an air-droppable church!!

I almost rage quit the game yesterday when a PAK killed 5 of my men with one shot.

Steve, What's your take on the balaclavas? It appears that they are included as standard issue with Ratnik. In current Crimea events all soldiers are wearing them which probably has to do with the fact that they are "not Russian" more than it being a field requirement. Could it be so that Balaklava is issued for use in colder temperature? Why not include a balaclava face with the standard faces? Maybe make it random, or based on temperature or selectable in QB/Scenario Editor just like you can do with uniforms?