Kuderian

Well done BFC for your well deserved award. An idea would be to scale the soldier models and their carried weapons by , let's say, 90-110%. This might create the illusion of different sized soldiers without the CPU and VRAM taking hits and screwing up the soldier animations. p.s. I am not a coder!

I just watched another of @Hapless 's videos on yt and I am most impressed! It reminds me of a David Attenborough nature documentary with many hours of footage edited down to a succinct twenty minutes. I think the BBC,PBS and BFC should hire him immediately and pay him a King's ransom to boot!

Fantastic AAR, thank you Sir. Your military sketches remind me of Napoleon's with their clarity, functionality (and brevity!) The contrast with your opponent's over produced slick images with fancy shaded 3D directional arrows and mind numbingly boring acronyms is truly stark and imho splendid

I second @slysniper. Conflict of Heroes is so easy to learn but has deep tactical depth. And everything from the artwork to the chits is top notch quality. Go for the 3rd editions. And the solo module is co designed with John Butterfield, one of the team behind the legendary Avalon Hill game Ambush! Do not dismiss Memoir' 44 though as it is, like the above, a joy to play with ingeniously simple rules and wait for it, toy fecking soldiers! And there are numerous games out there using a similar system (Command & Colors series from GMT). I have Combat Commander and the ASL starter kits as well but what you gain in realism is at the cost of complexity.

Congratulation BFC! Sounds like a marriage made in Groginor, so sail West my friends.

The scenario is Battlegroup Attacks! by George MC. (Thank you Sir!). A mix mechanized Syrian and U.K. force face off in Syrian hilly terrain in a PBEM with myself as Red force. A BMP-2 seizes the opportunity to take a pot shot at a Challenger 2 with it's AT-5 ATGM. N.B. The only orders I gave to the BMP-2 were as follows; 1. Reverse out of the Wadi around 20m to gain LoS. 2. Face towards blue Challenger contact. Everything else is the TACai's automatic orders. http:// http:// http:// http:// http:// http:// http://

I think this is appropriate... I'm waiting for my man, Twenty-six dollars in my hand, He's never early, he's always late, First thing you learn is that you always gotta' wait...

Fascinating but I am confused! Is the suppression meter relative or absolute? The OP suggests the former. ( And my instinctive understanding would be the former too).

Yes. My experiences exactly.

I bought CM:SF 2 on it's release date in December with a visa debit card. At the beginning of January I got hit with three fraudulent purchases. The card is now cancelled and those transactions have been now refunded. First time this has happened to me, as far as I can remember.

Here is my poem. It is titled 'Annus horriblis'. There is a company by the name of Battlefront, Purveyors of fine wargames of which I always take a punt, Who's 20th anniversary, this year we celebrate, Though their missed release dates we all love to hate, So three cheers for the one and only Battlefront, And I hope the year 2019 won't be such a c.....!

Good point Michael. But the first iteration of CM 2 was released in 2007. Surely, there is a strong correlation between Moore's Law and Computer Wargame fidelity granularity(and don't call me Shirley)?

2x2m Action Spots. Dynamic non-scripted AI a la Armoured Brigade. False enemy unit identification a la CMx1.

Yes, the lighting is dynamic and realistically portrays the sun and moon positions and light intensity for the time of year, the geographical region, the time of day and the weather conditions. The weather conditions are not dynamic but are preset. Both have a huge impact on battle. To quote BFC's blurb " Fight in a wide range of weather and lighting conditions, all of which realistically impact fighting abilities ". One of the amazing features of CM imho.

Thanks @George MC and @RockinHarry for the informative answers. The HQ that who was running ahead was an Inf. Pltn. HQ of an American Inf. Coy. The whole Pltn. shared the same AI group. I solved the problem by first manually splitting the squads, secondly increasing the time to execute the order and finally painting a more triangular shaped order. When painting orders, do you paint 'broad' strokes and let the AI decide on the best placement or paint small exact action spots? And will the AI ever split and reform squads itself?

I have been experimenting with the new V4 features. The face, area fire and retreat are all great addition, I think. Three AI questions: Often with triggers you can achieve the same thing with both terrain and order triggers. Which is best in which situation? How do you stop your Platoon HQ leading from the front in an advance move? How can you achieve recon in attack/defence scenarios with the AI? Thanks in advance.

Great advice! And then you can decide which Theatre of War you prefer before a possible purchase. And remember the big +1 that the CM series has over it's competition is it's WeGo mode. Once you get used WeGO mode, you'll never look back to the RTS mode. Sometimes I can spend 30 minutes watching the same juicy 1 minute action turn from different perspectives!

US Paras crest the ridge adjacent to an Waffen SS occupied stone building. The darkness and the smoke screen help with the surprise assault.

Good to hear. Me too! And welcome to the forum

doh, double post

Here is my compromise solution that I believe would reduce frustration for most customers and BF. Yearly releases' estimates only. e.g. CMFI module and CM:SF2 2018 and CM:RT module 2019. If the a game looks like it is not going to make that year's release date then a 3-6 month lead forum statement from BF explaining briefly why. Game element developmental updates would be be far less frequent and would have more Suprise! factor (remember the joy when BF and ChrisND released CM:FI ). These rules would be religiously observed by BF so customers always knew where they stood in regard to release dates even if they wished for more frequent updates.

Good Luck Ian and excellent AAR so far! Btw, why did you not purchase any TRP's? ( I seem to remember then not being in the original CM:SF.)

I am very much looking forward to this upgrade. I cut my teeth with CM:SF after eagerly awaiting CM2 for what felt like decades at the time. And after a very, very difficult birth CM:SF grew, with the additional modules into a tour de force. But let's face it; those poor Syrians didn't stand a chance against NATO force in any conventional battle (although the Syrian Special Forces and Republican Guards were ffing fantastic!) The M1 Abrams was even more of an uber tank in Shock Force than CM:BS despite no LWR's etc. What I loved was playing near peer battles between the NATO forces (sorry, I mean 'Training Exercises'!) So roll on late Summer and thanks in advance BFC

I played this via PBEM as Red a while back. I cannot remember who prevailed in the end but it was definitely fun. Looks like you're going for a forward defence. Good luck!

Hey my friend, please don't cross the line into personal attacks on John as you know too well from the C:MANO forums, it is bad form!