tdogg

I know this has been talked about but didn't notice it in the new features, did we end up getting select unit from movement path to compliment the moveable waypoints?

I get what your saying about scenario specific time based objects. Case in point would be the navy seals in operation Geronimo, now that's a time sensitive scenario. But in the cm setting this is conventional combat, so if a battalion is ordered to take a hill and 2 hours into the attack they are 50 ft from the objective no way the attack stops because they need 45 more minutes to complete it but stop watch ran out of time so it's game over.

Thats kind of what I'm getting at and why I am so fired up about the addition of triggers. I welcome scenarios that are more dynamic and give the player flexibility. I feel like a lot of these campaigns play out like your on a ride at Disneyland that's on rails and there's not much room for the player to elaborate. If feel like stingy time limits are big culprits. So like I said bring on triggers and here's to a more dynamic and reactive ai that doesn't have to be tied to the game clock.

You can't open campaigns and adjust the time limit with out the third party scenario organizer. If you do open the scenario and simply increase the time you have to mess with the time based ai orders. My point is that now that we have triggers could designers please give us max time so we can take our time and enjoy the work rather than rush to beat the clock like its a soccer match.

So now that we have triggers that allows the ai to react rather than time based orders, can we finally get rid of scenario time limits? Or atleast play past the time limit in sp indefinately.

^ Interesting tool, I think many of us are looking for something that can auto record losses after battles to use with campaign play. Can it do this along with the MP game stat tracking that you mentioned ? If it doesn't, have you ever thought of adding that option ?

We definitely need ai triggers at this point if we are going to see large extended map battles. What's the point at having the capabilities if no one uses them due to size overload and ai that can't respond. It would be nice to have support for these large maps, like coop play, or a friendly ai system that you could give directives to and delegate objectives. On the operational game issue, some have stated that there are already great op games out there, keep CM focused on tactical. That is a good point, all a we need is an import - export function and a quick ai plan builder along with a quick map template builder to help this along. This way all players benefit from the feature and not just op game players. I know some will say that a quick ai or quick map feature will make generic crap, but if it is linked to the editor to touch it up, it becomes a huge time saving tool that all will benefit from. On the topic of UI, can we get an option to use more space in the orders panel? Most of us have 1920 x 1200 or bigger resolution monitors, there is no sense having wasted black spaces on the screen. Let's extend the orders panel so we have all the orders shown on on screen and maybe a better oob / subordinate tree view. I would rather wait on Black Sea and have more features added to the game. I feel kind of stagnate after cmfi, like it's same thing just different settings.

I'm an RT player as well. Why not find a middle ground between the two and allow the player to switch from RT to Wego in game when needed and also have player adjusted turn lengths in game. When the action gets heavy or your trying to support a multi pronged attack, you could switch to wego at 10 second turns. Then switch to RT when the action slows down to speed up the game play. I would love to see more UI support for managing large senarios in RT. Unit formations and on screen messages about events would really help. MP Coop would really rock in this game, just think of how cool it would be if you could play a 2 battalion vs 2 battalion battle with 4 players vs 4 players. It worked great for Wargame Air Land Battle, why not CM. I know....I know.....the same response, we are small indie team and don't have the resources to implement every wild idea about features to improve game play. We will play it safe and just keep pumping out cookie cutter modules that generate revenue with low risk. It's the evolution of the engine I want to see not more modules, here's to CMx2 3.0 and 4.0 and beyond.

@ sburke, not to make it sound so German centric with the buddy aid pick up smg request. You are right I do cringe when my sten toting Brit goes down as well. It seems to hurt less for the US because the garand puts out a fair amount of suppression. It just seems like it should be an added feature for CMEF if it is not going to be a CMx2 addition.

Awesome, you guys are making Crete missions ? Can't wait, loved the Crete operation that was in cmak.

I say allow SMGs to be picked up through the acquire button. I don't buy the this didn't happen in real life, plenty of examples of Germans acquiring ppshs and equipping themselves with them. So at least maybe it should be allowed for the EF. The suppression the SMGs dish out is so important, that it just hurts to loose one. Just wait till we have SMG soviet companies in CMEF.

I guess I will have to double check that when I get home. If I'm correct, I have a save file of it to show.

Yeah this campaign is no fun at all. I think the same guy designed all the campaigns, because they are all stingy on time limits. No extra post limit time at all, which is unrealistic in my book, you think a colonel will stop his attack because a stop watch ran out off time ? Not to be too harsh because they were fun in a sense due to the challenges involved. In battle 4 I was about 20 min away from securing the main object which would have netted me a victory and a battle 5, instead I got a defeat and early end. It was frustrating because I actually conducted a pretty good attack and had 80 % of the hill top objective dominated, but a couple straggler Germans remained which gave them the objective points. I think this campaign needs some tweaking for playability. I mean the parameters should have been set to give the objective points to no one if it's being hotly contested? 5 Germans in the objective compare to 200 poles ? And they get the full 2000 points?. These are well done missions, just like to see some tweaking done so we could have a reasonable chance for reaching mission 5. Some in the other casino thread said that some scenarios are un winnable and you merely experience them as they were historically. Very true there. One thing I will do is use the scenario organizer to open the campaign and play the 5th mission as a standalone mission, no way I'm going back and replying this campaign from scratch.

It took a day or two for me to get approved as well, maybe send another reminder by email. That's what I did and he responded promptly.

I joined the COO google groups forum to support the project. The vibe I'm getting from steve is that the COO is the only project that has any chance of ever having a direct link to cm supported bf. I do appreciate the "why reinvent the wheel sentiment" and use the already developed systems in place, there is just no future with those to ever have any type of link to cm. Something indie needs to be developed from the ground up. While I'm waiting on this project, I will test out noobs system for solitare play. I will have to play both sides of the PzC turn objectively. For the tactical battles I want to try and anticipate which hexes will be most likely contested and max out the AI plans on prebuilt maps (using the huge Caen Map include with the demo) all set to random choice. Interesting to see how the tactical battles might play out in this setting. Kind of like a QB system on steroids.

@kohlenklau I would be just as excited if PzC was the chosen template for the project, but your talking about software owned buy another company. Not sure how we could ever get hps to agree to collaborate with bf to link the 2 games. I'm thinking that bf wants to test the water with this indie development, then decide on if they should support it based on it's success / potential. They want to minimize risk, and continue with the scheduled money making module output. I do like the idea that sburke and 76mm brought up about an import / export function with save game editing and persistent map features paid by kickstarter. This would open up all sorts of games to use. I'm thinking that COO is the closest thing we will get with Bf support, so I want to support it so it can evolve to a point we all want it to be at.

Don't buy it then. I like noobs system too, but there is no support for single player and that's what I play. COO is a blessing for me, I have been dreaming for something like this for a decade. The mobile app avenue is genius, I can have my iPad right next to my pc as I play out the generated cm battles. I will definately support this with crowd funding and from the many posts of others in this thread it seems many will as well. And the possibility of BF creating a link directly to cm if the game takes off is just priceless. My prediction is it will be successful, and BF will end up supporting the app which will lead to more apps for all the various cm games.....it will be gaming bliss. I can't wait...standing by for a kickstarter link.

Yah I don't know if I would put a Kubrick classic like full metal jacket in the same sentence as a cheesy movie like 9th company. I thought it was pretty awfull.

I'd like to have SMGs picked up from buddy aid like MGs are. It sucks when guys with SMGs fall then you got a bunch of dudes with bolt action rifles walking around. The suppression effect that smg has in this game is so important that it just kills me when the smg guy goes down. I mean come on, in RL if a guy with an smg goes down in front of me and I'm carrying a k98, I'm ditching that thing and grabbing the mp40. This is going to have to be addressed soon with the EF around the corner. It is well documented the affinity the Germans had for ppshs. I'd like to be able to pick up certain enemy SMGs as well to simulate Germans acquiring numerous ppshs at the squad level.

I play DCS pretty heavily myself. More so than cm. You can find me on the simHQ servers and simHQ teamspeak. The 2 servers affiliated with simHQ are called Eno's Firehouse and Hollo Pointe. They are dedicated servers that run 24/7, but most of the activity is any where from noon to 10pm pst. All skill levels are welcome, it's more about teamwork than being some kinda ace competion. In fact now that the ground force module is out, I'd like to see some cm guys run the ground forces. Put that grog experience to good use. It's hard to tare myself away from the air to run the ground forces for a mission. Would be nice to have some dedicated ground pounders for that job.

Could it be uploaded to the bf repository ?

I definately want to try this system out when you release it. I also would like to request both noob and fizou make the cm maps accessible for download to save on map making work. It would be great to get a map for most of the hexes pre made in these campaigns. Are you going to include the demo version of PzC normandy '44 that only had the buron scenario like last year. If not I would be game for some kind of group hps purchase to get the 40% discount.

I was wondering about this. I've been following your system since day one, I tried googling your site a few weeks ago to check all the old stuff you had up and it was down. Saw another link where it said you where revamping it. I played the demo system you had up last year in solitaire and it was fun. I wish there was a way to play it in single player, that's mainly why I'm so interested in your system. It's well done and I appreciate the work.

^ yah it is an awesome tool, just wish I could use it.

Have you thought of migrating to 7, most people have that these days.