JulianJ

Thanks sburke. However I have no idea how to do it. I am quite good with Photoshop. How do I start?

Sorry to raise this thread from the dead. How do you mod buildings to give them a new skin? At least they would look better, because as Haiduk says, they don't look at all right for modern Ukraine and it annoys me quite a lot. I know you can't change the shape or functionality of the buildings but surely it would not be too difficult to "reskin" them with a modern look.

Just finshed it. Enjoyable. Thanksw to CPL Steiner and The Vulture.

OMG the "T34" made me LOL. What happened, the designer lose his specs? (that is spectacles not specifications, though either is valid!)

That's one of the big open days at Bovington tank museum. They are brilliant if you are a tank fiend. Just seeing and hearing them in RL is great.

Bit late but I just played this scenario and it's great. Short but intense infantry action, then you have to exfil your SOF operators before they get mashed by reinformcements.

I've been playing quite a few QBs, to test out different units and equipment. I do think arty is underpowered and I'm now thinking somewhat inaccurate. PGMS seem to almost certainly miss. I was playing Russia v Ukraine most recently. I had 6 SP 82 mm mortar carriers. Because of the length of time for observed fire and my FOOs were not getting into good positions, I moved the vehicles to the edge of woods and used direct fire on targets, where I knew enemy forces were. It seems that the first turn the mortar is setting up, and then it fires next turn. The fire seems to be much more inaccurate than I would expect for direct fire. Also you don't seem to be able to set ground/air burst - it's all ground burst. I expended 201 82mm HE rounds and caused 8 casualties. 8! Many of these fires were on one particular enemy location. Which was - I thought -given a thorough pasting with both direct and mortar fire. After the Ukrainians surrendered, I had a look round the battlefield and there were still around 20 enemy troops at this objective, some quite unharmed. The mortar fire had been very ineffective (similar to the 155mm I mentioned above). I know that artillery can overpower a game and make it not fun, but this seems to have gone the other way. I was under the impression that mortars and arty were great infantry killers.

@HUSKER2142 @John Kettler when I started wargaming/building model kits and soldiers many decades ago it was Airfix, ROCO, Frog and a few others. I don't think the Japanese were on the scene then, although I did build a Tamiya Motorised Chieftain at one point, yes it did have rubber tracks. I seem to recall being very unimpressed with its performance: it crawled along and kept flaking out...a bit like the real thing :-). I haven't made any kits or painted any figures for ages. When I was a kid my non-warlike relatives (horrified at my prediliction for the baddies: Tiger Tanks, ME109s, the Scharnhorst) kept buying me sports cars, civilian airliners, the Queen Elizabeth and the like...I'd open the boxes, have a look, then just stuff them on top of the cupboard with the production line of kits I had bought but not got round to making. Somewhere around when I turned 16, I got interested in something else and forgot about all this. After Uni I was unemployed for a year (hard times) and got completely immersed in D & D (which was an escape that helped me survive) and that brought me back to figure painting and wargaming. Obviously now I rarely am able to meet for F2F gaming, which is a pity. Funnily enough, my parents were wanting to move house and asked me what to do with the unmade kits some years ago. I said "I dunno, I don't want them any more, probably chuck them out." My mum, bless her, went on eBay and found out some of them were collectors items - boxed, unmade. She sold them and gave the money to charity. Which I was really pleased with.

Personally I'd like a day off today! No such luck - we were the ones who lost that little fracas (=Brits). Still for those who can take a day off - good gaming, or barbies, beer, whatever!

Thanks Kozlice and Mord. V. helpful.

Success - I have modded my CMBS with Kieme's textures and Vein's explosions and fires - respect! I can see that the Z folder is going to become overstuffed like a christmas goose if I am not careful. Does the game read subfolders in the Z folder? Or do all the add-ons have to be in that main folder - I'd like to impose some order on the system in case I need to remove or replace mods.

Thanks, Ian.

Actually, Erwin (or anyone else) - I have another question. I love the Separatists. Thanks Blimey. Is there any way I can have them available as a troop type for QBs? I looked in the setup screen but I couldn't see them under the Russian forces. I'm not clear about how the mods work with the regular game.

Panic over, Corporal Jones! I have put the btt into the Scenarios folder and everything seems to be working.

HI all I have tried to install a mod for the first time, into CMBS. It is Neighbours from Hell. I have put Blimey's Separatists.brz into the Mod folder and the Neighbours from hell.btt into the Quick Battles but that clearly isn't right. I have read through the manual section but that hasn't made thing any clearer.

I looked at the guns in the UI. I can see that they could be, at a stretch, described as mustard yellow, although I would say brownish. I see how this all fits now. Also, the @JoseyWales posting was excellent and cleared a lot up. I can't see how to give him +1 rep though. I tried clicking on that.

OK OK! Enough with the brown.....I'll take another look next time I play, but I feel quite strongly that the colour is not what I would describe as mustard yellow. :-) I get the picture though, so that is er....cleared up.....

Thanks to everyone who contributed, and particularly to IanL for answering in depth, even if we disagree on several matters.

What makes CMBS less enjoyable for me: I have played CMBO, CMBB since they came out and still have the boxed sets. I also played AK, and also have bought patches and recently the CM1 games on GOG so I could play them on my newer system. So these count as games I have loved and played to death. I’ve got bored with WW2 and so felt like a new challenge recently. CMBS sounded just the ticket. Unfortunately there are numerous areas where I find CMBS unsatisfactory. These can come under gaming and UX issues, as well as what I think are simulation issues. I realise that enjoyable gaming and “realism” or simulation may be polar opposites, but Combat Mission has set a high bar for itself, and I think can do better. Firstly, should I say that I have never fought in a battle, and also that modern-era, well-documented warfare has to reach a level of realism that fantasy battles with orcs or even Medieval 2 Total War’s elephants with cannon on their backs don’t – there I can suspend my disbelief where required. When dozens of 155mm shells fail to destroy or damage BTRs, I find this hard to accept. Note: I was just playing with the US forces in most of these instances, I am not pro one side or another. I think these issues are for the game in general. 1. Gaming Facilities that have been lost: CM1 Had: The Line of Sight LOS indicator (Blue): this was useful to gauge the terrain and could be converted into a target command where necessary. In CMBS you can do the same with the Target command but you have to cancel it all the time when you don’t want to fire. Irritating. The Win/Lose Percentage Bar: this gave you an indication how well you were doing in the battle. It wasn’t always right, you might suddenly jump from 40% winning to 80% after destroying the last enemy tank but it was helpful. If you were losing you needed to consider changing tactics/plans. The Objective Flags. When attacking an objective location you could see an enemy flag change to a ? and then your own side’s flag. It meant that you knew when you had captured a location, even if there were still enemy troops about, they were in a bad way; you also knew if the flag didn’t change you’d missed a bunker or foxhole or something where some enemies were still holding out valiantly. All of the above are missing from CMBS and the game suffers for it. 2. UI issues There seems no requirement to put in the briefing the time when the mission should start. I think that’s pretty obligatory with armies, makes any schedule of reinforcements bizarre. I played several games before I found the time is actually in tiny figures on the Compass in the top right of the screen! Whaaat? What idiot uses their compass to tell the time? It could have just said Time: 0600 or whatever below the compass in bigger type, or had a military watch graphic. 3. Inconsistent interface for casualties Infantry get labelled casualty, but vehicle crew just disappear. Tiny coloured blobs are not helpful. If I set a target arc, it happens at the start of the move, not where my troops end up. You used to be able to click on the end of the move line and add another command. Why do weapons turn brown? Is it because the soldier is pooping his panties? That’s the only explanation I can think of but I haven’t found it in the manual. What is rattled? It says Shaken in the manual. Are they the same and why did it change? 4. Fatigue Some of my troops got fatigued, and became exhausted, when all they were doing was hiding in the woods near the enemy. I moved them around a bit sometimes but not much. Mostly they were having a smoke, talking about women, and how bad the MREs are. Also, an MG team were deployed, and re-deployed twice, not moving more than 100 m, in 20 mins of battle, most of the time lying down. They came under fire a couple of times but were not hit. Now they are Exhausted. I carry heavy cameras around on tripods for much longer than that, and I am overweight and unfit! This is silly. 5. Information Clearly there is a lack of realism about information reaching the commander. I can’t access a breakdown of my own casualties, nor an estimate of enemy casualties as the battle goes on. What battle commander never has this information? Again the earlier Win/Lose bar was helpful, but you could have an Orbat screen where units are listed say from green to red depending on what their state was. My troops never report what sort of attack is going on – e.g. mortar, arty, or air, or small arms fire from a location. This would be helpful. Many other games have an information update, where messages come up in the “dashboard”. This would be easier than recording voices for messages. In WW2, with its much lower amount of comms equipment, especially at the beginning, it isn’t so noticeable but now, with comms at even the lowest military level, it is anachronistic. (I notice DreDay and others, were pointing this out in 2015) 6. Area Fire In CM1 you could target area fire exactly on a particular spot, that is even if you couldn’t see an enemy you could splatter the area around them and suppress them, even if you couldn’t hit them. Or ricochet bullets into somewhere. In CMBS the indicator shifts, so you can’t place the fire precisely. I wanted to fire an MG into a house, with other infantry area firing down the alley outside the side door, so when the soldiers bugged out, they would be cut down. That wasn’t possible and all the fire hit the front of the house so everybody escaped. In CM1 when you targetted something for AF it asked Use Main Gun: Yes/No. This gave you a clear option better than Target Light, IMO. In my most recent QB a vehicle equipped with a 14.5mm MG failed to fire it at all, using the 7.62mm coax instead, which wasn’t what I wanted to penetrate the target. 7. Morale Few enemy troops, even single crew survivors from destroyed vehicles have no compunction about taking on entire squads in firefights. I find that hard to believe. Individuals manning launchers continue fighting even when there is only 1 crew left. My hellish arty bombardment (see below) fails to deter troops from firing. Even though we know from WW2 etc that soldiers really hate and fear prolonged arty bombardment because they can’t do anything about it. 8. The Tank Gavotte Sedately I order my M1A2 SEP2 Abrams into attack, 2 forward and two back on overwatch. Something paints them with a laser. The front two pop smoke and go backwards. I order the other two forward, they move, then pop smoke and retreat. Repeat as necessary. You can have hours of non-fun with this, I tell you. 9. Air Attack This is particularly important in relation to air attack/defence. In WW2 games it didn’t seem to matter much – the planes just came over and strafed or dropped a bomb, in a stylised manner and didn’t affect the game much. That is no longer the case. Yet none of my troops tell me they are under air attack and it isn’t easy to tell by the rotor blade sound where the aircraft are. Surely AA troops like MANPADS would report things like: “enemy helo hit – that’s a kill, it’s going down in flames” “Missile missed target. Aircraft is retreating south and firing countermeasures” You simply have no idea what is going on, or what to do to counter it. Nor can you call for fighters if you are being plagued by enemy attack aircraft. As the helos often seem to attack directly from the rear, notionally they are in my air defence zone, and should get a hot reception, surely? My own attack helicopters often seem to not attack the target but do not communicate this with the ground, you just hear “ingressing to attack position; coming in hot” or something like that over and over again, when a real pilot would tell ground control what the problem is – no target sighted, too near to friendlies etc etc. If you knew what was happening you could abort the mission or redesignate a target. If this is in the battle AI anyway, it’s just a matter of adding a few pilot voice files. Also, they only seem to use ATGMs, and do not fire the cannon(s) or rockets. I’ve only played a few games so this may be an unusual result. 10. Artillery - (the skanky Teen of Battles? :-) - sorry couldn't resist... I have found that this is hopelessly ineffective, both mine and the enemy’s. WW2 CM1 arty, less accurate surely than today’s and smaller - 105mm / 25pdrs, etc, I found to be pretty deadly, a force multiplier, when aimed well. Modern 155’s are about as useful as flour bombs. General/Personnel: surely this should be ground burst / air burst? That doesn’t seem like proper military language (though I stand to be corrected on this). See Photo You can't see the vehicles here as this is after my drone got whacked, but they are still there. I have fired over 100 155mm rounds ground burst and 12+ PGMs at the main objective town (Tomahawk) in Into The Gauntlet. It has had minimal effect on the BTRs. I knocked out one. Aiming point target on a building (centre left, with HQ flag) didn’t score a single hit. PGMs seem to have about a 10% chance of hitting 3 did for a Tunguska but the rest no effect, and near misses do sod all. All the BTRs have shell craters all around them, yet not a sausage of damage afaik. One of them is 100% OK because when I attacked it with my infantry it reversed at high speed, firing its 30mm very effectively. People have posted here about the real effect of arty on vehicles – imo the BTRs should have their tyres shredded, suspension and engines damaged, sights and aerials smashed and possible gun damage and crew concussion/shrapnel injuries. Not happening. Also, every armoured vehicle just sat there, rather than exiting the beaten zone quickly. The enemy artillery seems pretty pathetic too. http://sill-www.army.mil/firesbulletin/archives/2002/NOV_DEC_2002/NOV_DEC_2002_FULL_EDITION.pdf Hat tip: Forward Observer Quote: “The model predicted 30 percent damage to armored vehicles and tanks; however, 67 percent damage was achieved. Fragmentation from the HE rounds penetrated the armored vehicles, destroying critical components and injuring the manikin crews. (See an example of such damage in Figure 1.) In addition, the HE fragmentation damaged tracks, road wheels, and tank main gun sights and set one vehicle on fire. Interestingly enough, none of the damage to the armored vehicles or tanks was the result of direct hits—all the damage was caused by near hits” 11. Gaming issues It would be helpful in the game, perhaps not the same as in the real world, to know what incoming you are taking. It would be nice to have different colours of tracer for each adversary, I know this isn’t “realistic” but otherwise it can be hard to tell who is shooting at who. Likewise rocket trails for unguided AT rockets and ATGMs. From videos they seem to fly quite slowly and (the Russian ones) spiral in as they attack. If, after your AFV blows up, you see a smoke trail, you would know what hit you. I find it annoying to have no idea what destroyed your vehicle, which I would have thought would be obvious to the troops nearby.* If your tank is hit by a high velocity tank round, then by not seeing other indicators, you would be able to discern what had happened. *If I am wrong I am sure people on this board will enlighten me. Conclusion There are, in my view, serious deficiencies in CMBS’ programming which can make it a grim grind, and a lack of information which unsuspends disbelief and does not make for an enjoyable game. Or at least enough of one that I would have more enthusiasm play it a lot. The sheer deadliness of the weapons makes caution essential, which means a plodding game, which means that you don’t meet the full mission objectives, which in turn means less player satisfaction. I end up not finishing games because the enjoyment has run out. This rarely happened with CM1. So this seems quite retrograde compared to CM1. I’d be happy if points 1, 9 and 10 were actioned. I am a bit disappointed that a newer game from the same illustrious stable did not match up to its predecessor. I hope this doesn’t sound too negative – I realise making “limited edition Grognard-friendly games” is difficult and compromises have to be made, but I would give CMBS only 3 ½ to 4 stars, whereas I rate CM1 as five.

This T72 tank crew scored 30 victories in one battle: (all pix have trees removed) In case you can't read it: 66 enemy casualties, 26 BMP 2 IFVs, 2 BM OPLOT MBTs, 1 AA vehicle and 1 command vehicle. Basically this T72 won the battle on its own. Here's the tank (in a group of trees) on the left, with the things he's killed out in front. I've already given the crew a virtual bottle of vodka. :-)

Thanks S It is an ati radeon 5450. Thanks for the fix info. best J

Hi, I just found out that CMAK would work on Win 7. I dug out my old disk and loaded it on my backup computer. I get this strange rectangle in the sky, which is full of distorted text. I can live with it but it does detract from the game, which otherwise works fine. Any ideas how to get rid of it?

Hi all, I've been playing CMBO for about 18 months and thoroughly enjoyed it - with a few reservations. I am a grog for sure, given that I've been playing board & tabletop wargames for 30 years, and I like the relatively few thinking strategic/tactical computer wargames on the market.Clickfests are for caffeined-up teens... So I though buying CMBB would be a no-brainer as I've more or less exhausted CMBO. Having had a few install probs I had time to read through the manual (Joy oh Joy, a manual!) SO far I've been pretty disappointed - my troops appear to act like scared-cats, a whiff of cordite and they're panicking or routed. But these aren't the Italians, this is the Wehrmacht...a Muhamad Ali among armies, and in 1941 at the top of its game... (Martin Van Crefeld's Fighting Power sums up the position). I've found myself getting angry and giving up in disgust. I feel there are serious game-modeling failures. For example Iron Roadblock - with 20/20 hindsight I know it's a KV and I can only penetrate it in the rear - I've dashed across the open ground, taking losses from the Wittmanski in the KV who scarcely seems to miss (don't believe it). My troops panic and retreat exposing themselves to much more fire than if they carried out the high speed dash to the objective woods (don't believe it). My 88 crews panic and retreat (even though they wouldn't know what a KV is) and quite frankly I'd expect them to get their gun into action asap and whack it. I sneaked a Pz 38t round behind the thing keeping out of sight. But the tank commander who must have esp (don't believe it) whips his turret (even though he's facing enemies from the front) round and fires on the Panzer, who could move forward fast to get shot into the rear, or retreat, guess what he does? Yes, I accept that KVs and T34s were excellent tanks and a nasty shock to the Germans, but this thing is invincible, and a dead-eye dick with apparently 360 degree radar, and I cannot accept that. Any help or advice for me? cheers Julian