Zemke

Is there a map making guide somewhere. The manual seems very vague.

I recently purchased Black Sea, and find it is really good. Other than Shock Force, it is the only second/third gen CM engine game I have. I have been VERY pleased with the game, playing it a lot. Matter of fact, playing the Americans gives me a bit is post Afghanistan PTSD when I see "my boys" laying dead or wounded. I love building maps, and after finding the current QB maps too small or restrictive, I started making my own, or expanding the currently QB maps. I have had a few issues, I cannot seem to solve, mostly I am sure due to my lack of computer skills or maybe I am just too lazy to wade through learning a new program. (1) I cannot seem to take screen shots of the map. Yes people have suggested two different programs, both I could not make heads or tails out of. Surely there is an easier work around to taking a simple screen shot. (2) Bridges, I have gotten ONE bridge to "drop" into place lined up east to west, all other bridges I have tried on other maps, seem to drop north south and I cannot get them to do what I want. I have changed the height, size surrounding squares, I think I am missing something simple, just not sure what.

Thanks John, you seem very gracious. I have been playing like crazy since I got the game, played 5 scenarios, many QBs, started the Russian campaign, and designed two small and quick scenarios, (although I cannot get printscr to work, so I only have text briefings, and started making two of the QB maps larger. Like I said at the start of this thread, I started messing around with Shock Force again after updating it with all the latest patches and was impressed with how much it had improved over time, so I decided to get this. So far I love this game!

Now how to you get a game around here?

I took the online name "Zemke" back in the 90s because I had heard not to use your real name, so wanting something "secure", I sat there thinking about what to use, and on my desk was the book "Zemke's Wolfpack", and I thought, "hey Zemke is different, I will use that." So it came to be.

How about adding pics to see what these mods look like.

Well I broke down and got Black Sea, as did a friend of mine. We used to play CM1 TCIP and PBEM all the time. So far I like the game a lot. This is the first title I have purchased of CM since Shock Force, and I must say I think Battle Front has got this pretty close for a tactical game, nice work.

This thread is out of control, so I am throwing more fuel on the fire, stirring the pot....oh yeah baby! (1) Russia does not have a free press, all the media outlets are now under the governments control, so nothing coming from them should be considered as creditable information. (2) Russian has created this problem by interfering in a country that is not their own. Certain parts of eastern Ukraine with large Russian populations have declared their own country/territory/state/ whatever, and Russia has taken advantage of the situation by providing arms and clandestine troops to aid in this cause. Which is like parts of Texas deciding to join Mexico or form their own country, not going to happen and is illegal by all standard of international agreements, standards and law. (3) This war will last a long time. Watching some of the videos from both "rebels" and Ukrainian "forces", neither looked very competent or professional, and reminded me of what I saw in the middle east, very poor infantry tactics, poor combat discipline and technique. Which tells me, this "little war" will go on for a long time, as neither side seems to be very good at fighting, much like the Syrian war. Not surprising, considering Russian performance in recent history, Afghanistan, Chechen War 1994-1996 and 1999-2000, Russo-Georgian War 2008, (the best Russian troops proved to not be Russian troops, but Russian mercenaries). Also, both Russian and Ukrainian military tradition/doctrine IS Soviet Army doctrine, which has little NCO tradition of small unit leadership, tending to be "top down" lead, with conscripted soldiers. I saw this first hand myself helping to train some former Soviet Republic forces in 2011. In other words they do not have a western tradition an NCO corps, a professional military and their forces suffer competency accordingly. If Russian were to cause Article 5 of NATO to be invoked, (BTW article 4 HAS been invoked currently due to Russian actions in Ukraine), I suspect the exchange rate between NATO and Russia would look very much like WW II between Germany and Russia, quality verse quantity, and particular so against US forces, combat experienced after 14 years of war, (granted mostly doing light infantry counter-insurgency work and LOTs of MOUT). It is not equipment and technology that decides the day, but leadership, training and doctrine. Russia has some good equipment, but cannot match NATO man for man, NCO for NCO or Officer for Officer. Last, this entire thread should never have been allowed to remain in the game section, and should be moved somewhere else, and it seems to have hijacked the Black Sea GAME forum to talk about Russian policy. Also, it should be no big surprise that Russia is classifying casualties, the US would do the same if the US were adding a pro American separatist force in Mexico for example, which is crazy talk, but 10 years ago if someone had told me Russia would try to annex parts of Ukraine, I would have said that is crazy talk. Last, I think Battlefront has a secret crystal ball they can see the future, how did they know this war would take place? What other secret information about the future are they not telling us?

Well it is good to know the later CM2 games have this feature. It is one of the things I always loved to check at the end of a CM1 battle, how well units did, interesting enough a lot of it was just right place right time.

I guess Shock Force does not have it. All the units I look at just have what they are doing, or status, spotting, casualty, no list of kills.

I was in the map review after the battle, and clicked on several units, and never saw anything like damage inflicted. What am I missing?

Where do you see that in CM2? I am playing Shock Force and do not see each selected units kills. The game list total kills and wounded for each side, but I can find nothing looking at individual units. I would love to know how to see this.

Didn't CM1 give a roll up of kills by how they were killed, like small arms fire, or how many kills a unit got, or am I thinking of a different game, or something I wish it had? Anyway, I love looking at end of game stats, not sure of this was in Steel Panthers or Combat Mission.

I used to LOVE playing TCIP Combat Mission 1 games. I particularly liked the time limits on orders, as I felt that added to the pressure to make decisions quicker and was more realistic at that scale, and made for a faster paced game. Does either RT or BS have time limits? I know SF did not, and it's TCIP model was not really the same as the old CM1 games, which was the main reason I left Combat Mission game completely after SF came out. I wanted the same thing we had in the old CM games, but better interface/graphics/improvements, but that is years old news now.

Oh I am very familiar with the lethality of the modern battle field, just would like the option of telling those tanks to "Disregard" and attack! But if one laser designator can stop an entire attack, I can see how that could possibly be exploited. In real life if you knew that, you would try and locate the laser designator, and not sure if these tanks have this, but the laser warning system should give you a back azimuth to make that easier. Anyway, I still could see the need to "order" those tanks forward, if the situation required it. Granted taking the high chance of losing a 12 million dollar M1A2 SEP tank and crew would not be good, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.

Been out of Combat Mission for a long time, bought Shock Force and then lost interest, mostly because I was living the real thing in Afghanistan. I have down loaded both demos and like some of each. I like the east front setting of RT, but I also liked all the modern toys, and complexity of modern combat. One issue I had with the demo, I could never get my M1A2s to attack in the demo scenario, they keep popping smoke and backing up when they got lased, which was/is a turn off. I was like, "Hey I know you are getting lazed, now go kill it or kill something and stop hiding!" Anyway, is there a way to turn this off in the real game? Any suggestions on which game is better? Old School CM Player

Oh and please, please make the manuel easier to read. The current CMSF manual is very hard to read for anyone over the age of 45.

The TCIP/WEGO news made my day! Thank You very much. It there anyway to make the files smaller for easier PBEM play? I don't know the technical details, but right now the file size is a major inhibitor of PBEM games.

I love the M2, but frankly I always preferred to have the M240B up, it was more controllable and thus more accurate. The M2 was great for shooting up a car or building, but for AP, I'll take the 240B or similar GPMG.

Once again as I read this thread, and having not visited the BF site in some time, I see "we the people" asking for more choice, not less, more flexibly not less, campaigns that pull you in and make you hope and prey you made the right choices and the guy you named after your best friend makes it through the battle, a better QB system, inclusion of some of the "little" things that made CM1 so great, allow a built in mod capability.....choice to the player. Give that BF, and you cannot go wrong, I can play my TCIP as WEGO and have great PBEM games going with my dear friends on the Blitz, while others can enjoy immersive campaigns that capture the imagination, or play the AI over and over in all the different scenarios that get made. Give us the option of choice and you will make money hand over fist as we buy up the mods faster than you can make them!

I am in the exact situation as 76mm, CMSF was never what I wanted, but supported the company by buying the product to give them capital to develpe the WWII game. I KNOW in my heart that BF is trying to please as much of us as is cost effective, I just hope and prey the WWII games let me play great PBEM games and TCIP again.

I concur 100% with the above statement. Myself have purchased four games in the last six months, not from BF, (Matrix and HPS) and all are wargames, no FPS. I would gladly pay much more for a WWII version that had all of the "little" things that made CM1 so great, and for me the primary thing that would secure an un-told amoung of my cash is WEGO TCIP.

Now this is cool stuff, makes me want to play this game again sense I started playing the new HPS release of Modern Campaigns, called "Danube 85".

I like what I am hearing about TCIP WEGO. Frankly I seldom played CMBB or CMAK against the computer once I learned the game, nor do I play CMSF very much...because... I prefer to take my game to the next level, human opponents, and there is no better way to do that then TCIP. WEGO in TCIP (with the time limates) makes the game feel very realistic, you feel like a commander under presure to make decisions, but not have to micro-manage everything all the time. Co-Play TCIP WEGO will be the ultimate way to play and the most realistic, players will then have the very real problem of battle field coordination to deal with.

Jason, I guess I should have been more clear. Bottom line, the accuracy in the game for small arms is too high. Jason it is very unlikely you will hit anything at all at 200+ meters while under stress, but I think you are saying that also. What I was trying to say is, take the data for small arms fire, then plug in the variables of stress, experience and training, then reduce again due to less than ideal environments, and you get better results or more realistic results than the game currently allows. The US Army has tons of data on rounds expended and BDA to support this, and BFC should take advantage of this information to build a better model. An example of unrealistic accuracy: While playing last night, (testing the new patch) I had an American Squad should taken out in seconds after dismounting from a M2 by another enemy Squad 200 meters away. My men would have never suffered the number of hits they did, and it seemed body armor didn't do a thing, and even if wounded they still should have been able to react better than the game allows in the game. Also, I don't think the Syrians could ever shoot that well and certainly could not knowing by opening fire they will be getting 25mm chain gun fire right back. I would be scared ****-less to give away my position like that, of course ignorance is bliss. Morale will break long before any unit is wiped out to the last man, examples of fighting to the death are rare in western armies. Some of the recent experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, has show the enemy is willing to do so, but the results have still been very light coalition casualties and the killing to the last man of the enemy, although not necessarily by small arms fire. [ December 28, 2007, 09:28 AM: Message edited by: Zemke ]