Peregrine

Prior to my thread there is no mention of the voice distance being approximately 45m. There is also no illustration of daisy chaining a Mortar Plt to a Coy HQ via the intermediary Plt leader and the situation where alternate Plt leaders can direct a mortar but the Coy commander cannot. The OP got a put the HQ unit closer response to gain voice "correct" but there are more possibilities than this for his situation.

This is so fiddly. The following asssumes Elite mode. All units are in the same company. Simple situation 1 - 2nd Plt Mortar Team plus 2nd Plt HQ. The mortar must be deployed. The mortar crew must have "Voice" or "Radio" C2 to the immediate superior. Voice C2 maxes out at around 45m or 6 tiles. I couldn't find a situation that broke this distance rule (ie multiple buildings did not hamper voice contact over this distance). Is 46m OK is it 44m tricky to tell exactly as I didn't muck about too much. Pretty generous in my opinion. Haven't tested this to see if in-game sound messes with this once the bullets start flying. I have no idea if visual contact as well may improve accuracy or speed. The artillery relationship icon stays green whether voice or voice/visual In this situation if you select the 2nd Plt Mortar unit and click on the voice "icon" it will take you the HQ unit that can spot indirect fire for it. NOTE - DO NOT think though that a mortar unit must have a "radio" or "voice" icon for somebody to be able to call in mortar support from that unit as below in not so simple situation 2. Not so simple situation 2. 2nd Plt Mortar is deployed. It's immediate superior 2nd Plt HQ is close 70m but there is no radio contact and 70m is too far for voice but they can see each other. Therefore C2 is visual only and the C2 icons in the UI will show visual only. 2nd Plt HQ cannot call in indirect support from this mortar. BUT if 3rd Plt HQ is within the six action tiles (Voice C2) that then 3rd Plt HQ will be able to call in mortar support. If you have selected the mortar team there is no visual cue in the UI to suggest this is available. In the bigger more confused picture of HQ units of other formations I have no idea how it will hold up but in a nutshell: - "Deploy" your mortar - The HQ you want directing must be 40-45m (6 actions squares) away. NOW to get a little more nuts, keep in mind this is all within the 1 Coy. A Coy HQ has voice contact to 2nd Plt HQ which in turn has voice contact to 2nd Plt Mortar. BOTH A Coy HQ and 1 Plt HQ can call indirect support. Without radios 1 Coy HQ can therefore be max out at 90m distant from the mortar and call in support. No-one needs to be able to see anyone else. No testing done re time or accuracy but the link does exist. A Coy HQ has voice contact to 3rd Plt HQ which in turn has voice contact to 2nd Plt Mortar. 3rd Plt HQ CAN call in support from 2nd Plt Mortar BUT A Coy HQ CANNOT. Jarring yes, realistic, NFI. It seems odd that a 3rd Plt HQ can direct fire for 2nd Plt Mortar in the above situation but if A Coy HQ asks then it is denied. Again this is all within the one Coy. Obviously to maximise mortar coverage deploying the Coy HQ in a spot with good visibility then fanning out the Plts from here should enable to decent coverage and keep the crews protected. I seriously wouldn't be attempting or hoping units other than those in the immediate chain of command can help. Even if they can I suspect the delay plus inaccuracy will simple lead to a waste of a precious resource.

I can see how it is working now in that the command chain on the left starts at the immdediate superior and speaks of communications links in a chain going up. The green doesn't doesn't directly relate to which unit the mortar team is speaking which I was expecting. This aspect of the game is a little fiddly allround.

For sure when it comes to "simple fixes". Typically in most organisations there is a layer between programmers and customers so things can be kept civil.

I am not sure how you are going about it but I was a little confused by this as well. The C2 link needs to "voice". Visual will not be enough to direct the mortars. I think this is about 40 metres or less. Also I have noticed there is a bit of a bug. Doing the setup for closing the gap I initially placed a mortar near the Company HQ. I didn't actually want to do this and after I moved it to the weapons platoon HQ the user interface still showed that the C2 was to the company HQ and nothing to the Weapons HQ. The mortar worked as it should though in that the Weapons Plt HQ could call in strikes and the company HQ could not. Read the manual for clarification on the messages as well. If you are moving the mortars around you will need to redeploy them.

Sort of my point. The FPS drop is probably part of the graphics engine. Unrelated to particularly high spec/low spec machine, nvidia or ati or other graphics card. Battlefront may or may not view this as a problem. Also unless you implicitly understand how everything is designed and works there is no such thing as a "simple fix". It may be a simple to introduce an option to stop trees waving or it may not be possible without big effort.

Did you press the play now button? It is always grey where the order button is a distinctive orange. I have launched and closed it dozens of times.

Battlefront may be able to improve framerates they may not. From reading the above posts and tinkering with my own settings I get comparable results. 2G ram, dual core E6600 overclocked to 3.1Ghz and a GTX9800+. From reading the other posts people with lesser specced machines also seem to have similar performance. I would brace yourself for this is just the way it is. Considering the demo scenario with the wind only seemed to use 350MB ram anyway I doubt having more than 2Gig ram will make much difference anyway unless your system is swapping for some other reason or the demo has nasty memory leaks.

Real-time isn't necessarily the answer for the poster. Real-time = no movie = missing stuff. I play real-time when playing single player and while I don't mind missing bits of action the most annoying thing is when new stuff pops up and disappears. Was that a tank, a jeep. infantry, AT gun, a space lobster, hellboy? You have zero idea because all you are left with is a question mark. 30 seconds would give the control freaks a video plus the ability to lessen the impact of the TAC AI on the overall gameplay.

Javelin is gone. Biggest haxor weapon in any game ever.

It isn't CMSF

I had some trouble with the TOW demos. It was my sound card drivers. I have a fancy soundcard (EMU1212) that is designed for music recording so occassionally I have trouble with some games. As above it sort of sounds like a driver issue. Have you gone through the CMSF tech support forums?

I think this is a matter of the graphics making it look more passable than it is in reality. In army training you see lots of people jumping over obstacles but if there is a guy with a machine gun or something unknown on the otherside you probably aren't going to do it. Forcing through the lighter versions would be do-able but doing it inconspicuously and quickly wouldn't really be possible.

This is why BF battles are so bloody. The exceptional becomes the not so uncommon. How often would a lone shrek team member pistola a tank crew to death after KOing a tank?

Feels even better if it's two player.

A saw I rattled panther that the TAC AI had taken control of to reverse out of trouble KO an M10 at 750-850m (can't remember the exact range). I was playing in realtime so I didn't see what happened first. I heard the richochet sound panned the camera and then saw the shot on the move. I smiled at first then frowned because it looks like a wasted my "lucky" shot in the demo and probably going to need that in PBEMs in the coming days.

I think what needs to be kept in mind is that this game isn't a First Person Shooter with a massive production team where getting a game engine that supplies good gameplay with a high framerate and still looks good on alot of medium to upmarket systems is the priority. I noticed it is low. Putting the graphics down from best to balanced from my quick tinkering did add 15 to 30 frames per second (from the minimum 11) without a big compromise in graphics (certainly compared to any other type of game - max to middle to low is much more dramatic). That said I will be playing it at 1920x1080 at max settings and taking my 11 to 40 FPS. I am going to save my frames per second angst for shooters. I am not sure if this thread stems from the significantly better graphical performance that a shooter would deliver on a comparable system but things to keep in mind are: - most shooters are multithreaded. So your PC is using lots of cores and the graphics card and is almost entirely focused on drawing a picture for you and not much else. - in shooters you generally have 16-32 individuals shooting at each other (that is all the combat calcualations) and this is almost certainly performed server side. - AI. None. - Spotting. Yourself. CM is the exact opposite. Your machine is doing the spotting and combat calculations for not 32 but dozens of units with much more complexity constantly and also drawing them. It may be possible to deliver a better graphics engine without comprising the backend complexity but there is a balance to be struck. Maybe CMx3 in 10 years time will have the Battlefield/Call of Duty looks with the CM combat complexity. I started out playing Atari Pac-Man and Combat so this is just a matter of time. That time just isn't yet. Congrats to Battlefront for making a wargame where frames per second even becomes a discussion point.

No probs. Still tinkering with mine a bit. When I first start out I also do a bit of word association. I think how my CMBN keys file is now works better than my CMSF. I played with the CMSF a bit but then stopped. "L" never used to be reverse but it definitely works better for me in relation to the other keys so when I started using it "L" reverse became "(L)ets get the %^$^ out of here". It takes about two scenarios to get used to. Should have made a better effort with my CMSF hotkeys file in hindsight.

Not in the CM scale but the large bombing missions preceding the St Lo attacks wrecked the little axis armour left. Most axis tanks that weren't "knocked out" had all sorts of other problems from the amount of HE going off in the vicinity. In CMSF you didn't want you tanks taking hits from anything ever. CMBN not as critical but you won't want to leave tanks hanging out there even if stuff is bouncing of it. It is also possible that the modelling is too sensitive or not sensitive and it could change in the future. Too early to start those sort of arguments though.

The above is also a reason why dropping arty on tanks isn't a bad idea. You may not knock it out through the top armour but bits may stop working reducing it's combat effectiveness. This will be the big difference between CMx1 and CMx2 tank combat. A lot more subtle (or not so) things will go wrong with tanks taking hits even though at a quick glance they may seem to shrug them off. A CMx2 only player is more likely to be careful with their tanks understanding this. The German big cats will be less effective under CMx2.

Ahh the classic unintentional bail. As other people have said go with the alternative hotkeys but still modify it heavily. I wouldn't ever bother trying to bind keys to a corresponding letter (ie h for hunt etc). You will remember pretty quickly and it does also display in the interface if you get lost. I think the priority is to first - group keys together that you use at the same time in a spot you are happy with - then around this group logically (according to your own head) spread out the rest of the keys in relation to their frequency of use. Stuff like blast, bail, mark mines, acquire and dismount are not frequently used so don't bother binding those at all or if you do put them in an out of the way place in the keyboard (I would never have bail or dismount bound anyway). The most intensive key use you will come across (for me anyway) is shooting and scooting a tank with area fire. Fast, Pause, Target, Reverse, Pause. Fast, Pause, Target, Reverse repeat. In CMSF I would often set-up about 10 scoots at once. So for ease of stringing these commands together I have these keys in a little cluster. Here is mine as an example. The keys most used are "u" through "[" and "j" through "'" looking at the keyboard plus "." for change facing. Not much has changed since CMSF but buttoning and unbuttoning will be will more prevalent from what I have seen in the demo. Pasted mine below, but it looks like it didn't preserve that tabs from the text file. Command Keys Direct <E>' // move fast <E>; // move quick <E>h // move normal <E>g // move slow <E>k // move hunt <E>j // move assault <E>l // move reverse <E>t // move blast <E> // move mark mines <E>o // target <E>i // target light <E>u // target arc <E> // NOT USED <E>. // face <E>\ // target smoke <E>n // deploy <E>p // pause <E>y // hide <E> // dismount <E> // bail out <E>[ // vehicle open up <E>] // pop smoke <E>/ // acquire <E>b // divide teams <E>n // assault team <E>m // antitank team <E>, // scout team <E> // vehicle team

The 365MB US one is definitely not right. Time to start are thread - why do the Germans have such ubermirrors and the rest of the world with all it's resourses got it wrong.

Space Marines, (not warhammer 40K) would be better.

This is 100% correct. In CMBB playing big quick battles (1 regular vanilla battalion plus tanks 4-6 tanks in support) it was possible to move large numbers of Soviet troops across open snow. Move in the open in CMSF and whole sqds get wrecked super quick at long range. Not comparable.

If your tank is in a hulldown spot to fight and everywhere else it has to move is "worse" then that is not a good hulldown spot to be in to start with. If the TAC AI does take over and needs to move then it should have had a spot to retreat to safely.