molotov_billy

That's true, but I think it's a pacing issue as well. Such modeling of infantry combat would be hard to convert to a video game - we'd need 8 hour time limits and a far heavier reliance on artillery and air assets. In most scenarios, we don't have the option to withdraw and just call in an airstrike, or wait an hour and a half for a Bradley to reduce an entire structure to pieces. I do feel that the 30 minute stuff is ridiculously short and in no way a function of reality, but the full realism side of it would be the complete opposite of the spectrum. It has to be playable at some point.

Give the campaign that was just released a try. It deals with mostly infantry combat in non-MOUT settings - the engine seems to deal with that type of combat much much better than the typical scenario included with the game. The longer ranges reduce lethality a fair amount, and maneuver becomes far more worthwhile. Lots of tactical thinking involved.

Excellent campaign so far! Infantry battles, just what I love, they haven't been done right yet. My only complaint is lack of ammo, mortar support, and air support. The maps and tactical spaces are excellent. Thanks for doing this!

But wait! Before you declare victory - I was actually the one baiting you the entire time. Thank you for providing my day's entertainment. Dance on, court jester. Heh. Does that mean I win?

That makes sense. The value is certainly different depending on if you're a casual customer who just plays the game, or a scenario designer.

Flamingknives - that's fine. I haven't seen any user made campaigns, and it's my belief that a feature doesn't have value until it exists in the form of playable content. If those types of things hold value to you - then let me say this - I have the perfect wargame in my head, it just doesn't exist yet. I'll take your money as soon as you're ready

I hope you at least understand that you could put a piece of cat dung in a box, ship it, and make the same argument. My confusion is that the statement that "there's nothing unfinished" about CMSF doesn't jive with the literal fact that the Battlefront team continues to fix bugs and finish out blank features every working day. I don't believe I've ever mentioned any type of obligations - you're legally within your rights to never touch the game again. My opinions have been about what would make a CMSF campaign better. Sure, it's a long post, so I haven't digested it yet and haven't figured out if there's anything useful to add to it.

My interest is discussing a topic with like-minded people. I do not think that is in any way a waste of time - you've done the same thing with unrelated topics in this forum - discussing the merits or failings of the Stryker vehicle, or US military doctrine in Iraq, or whatever else. The people deciding those things are not on these forums, and your opinions will have zero effect on the design of the Stryker, or US doctrine in Iraq, or anything else. There's nothing wrong with that and there's nothing wrong with anybody sharing their mind on any topic. My point was simply that if you're uninterested in my opinions, or that you think they are simply random rantings, or that your goal is to let people know that you disagree with every point they make and that what they say is not important because they are merely opinions, or if your goal here is to reaffirm over and over that each decision your team made was the only correct one - then why waste my time and yours replying to anything that I say? Doesn't make much sense, to me.

Flamingknives - my opinion is that an uninteresting campaign is one that requires more work or a rethinking in terms of design - my opinion is therefore that CMSF is an unfinished product. It is not an unwarranted conclusion. If an advertised feature doesn't exist in the final product, it literally holds no value to a person playing the game - ie, the customer. I do not understand how this is flawed logic. "Small child throwing a trantrum" - you may say whatever you wish, the more obscene the statement, the less likely people are to care about what it is you're saying. I think the key difference is that my points are about the topic at hand, and not merely a critique of a person's personality or writing style.

I wasn't whining. My intention was to provide a useful piece of information to somebody that I had thought was making a statement.

Where does this keep coming from? Did you literally not read the post where I explicitly pointed out that everything I had said was an opinion? I understand what your opinion is, it's sitting on my harddrive. If you do not want my opinions on the game's successes and failures, you are absolutely free to not read or reply to a single thing that I write. I am not requesting responses from you, writing you a personal email, or knocking on your door, insisting with a gun to your head that you do anything. I'm having a debate with some like-minded people in a forum built for the discussion of the video game that I purchased.

This type of stuff doesn't seem alltogether useful. I suppose that in this example, the cupholders would exist in the blueprints, but not in the final product - and most people like cupholders.

Not true. My interest here is in expressing my opinion and seeing what others have to say about it. On the other hand, you've explicitly dismissed people's opinions for one reason or another in nearly every one of your posts. I've repeated numerous times that these things are my opinions. Did you see me previous post at all? I put an (OPINION) tag in front of everything that I wrote. I'm not sure what else I could even possibly do. Strange statement, considering that your team has been working on a series of updates and patches for 6 months, and is even doing so as we speak. Even considering that direct contradiction on your part, I will simply repeat again that it is my opinion that the product is unfinished. I've never seen anything different from you. You need not repeat yourself, because I haven't asked for it. It seems like the topic and content of nearly every other post on this forum would disagree with the sentiment that there isn't anything to fix. Your own actions contradict your opinion. [ January 03, 2008, 11:33 AM: Message edited by: molotov_billy ]

"CMSF is not fine" isn't a terribly strong or offending statement. It is clear and to the point. Please point out the flawed logic or unwarranted conclusions. I'm not interested in walking on eggshells. It's far more useful to make statements as clearly and succinctly as possible, so there's no confusion.

Sounds in the game that should exist do not. The sound for the A-10 cannon does not exist. Existence of sound. Here's a good example of exaggeration: "Fer crissakes, can you even crack a joke around here without somebody whining about their pet missing feature?" Strange how that works. An A-10 gun sound is neither my "favorite" nor "most preferred" feature. It is not a pet feature.

Nice! I missed the humor in your 'joke.' It looked like a statement, to me. I was letting people know that there isn't a sound slot for the A-10 cannon, so it cannot be modded or replaced. The existence of sound is not a pet feature.

Unfortunately, I don't think aircraft attacks even have sound files to replace right now. I added it to the 1.06 bug list thread.

Probably tells us more about your sensitivity to the subject, considering that other people in the thread are perfectly capable of having a debate on the topic and do so without dismissing others' opinions as "rants." Show me how any of it isn't an opinion. My opinion is that the game is unfinished, in that the campaign provided doesn't take advantage of any of the interesting campaign features that people are talking about. Telling me to make that product on my own isn't an answer to any of it - it's an absolutely useless proposition - I am not a developer of this product, and do not wish to finish it. To make it simple and straightforward: (OPINION) CMSF is not fine. (OPINION) I don't think the campaign is interesting in that it doesn't take advantage of any interesting features - it's a string of unrelated scenarios played in order. (OPINION) CMSF is an unfinished product. (OPINION) If the editor's campaign features are to be of any real value to a customer, BFC should create a campaign that takes advantage of those features and include said campaign into the game that people have purchased.

Put it up at cmmods.com. Plenty of people will check it out.

Sorry for the video spam lately, but this is just amazing - don't believe I've ever seen this quality of video on an A-10 strafing run. A10 in Afghanistan

Absolutely! I'd be glad to give it a whirl!

So I looked through my posts for the term "laziness" or anything remotely related to it. Didn't see it anywhere. Could you provide the quote where I "insisted" that it was laziness on anybody's part? You're probably incorrectly reading into something else I said - I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not just making stuff up. Then again, I may be honestly missing what it is you're referring to. I don't remember saying any such thing in this thread. No, what I'm asking for is a dynamic campaign that changes based on my successes or failures. Battallion-level descision-making would be a fantastic perk. I won't argue semantics with you over "strategic", but the decisions I had in mind and related in my posts were not at that level. The campaigns in Steel panthers were not what I had in mind. Most of the scenarios in the shipped campaign were fairly lopsided affairs, engagements where I generally only took casualties due to the scenario tricks I mentioned earlier, the type of stuff that generally wouldn't happen in the real deal. The 2nd mission, the airport, was enjoyable and challenging. My arguments were based on a solution to this problem. The dynamic features I mentioned would allow a player to continue after such a loss so that the campaign would not arbitrarily end. I didn't ask for the Steel Panthers campaign. If you're suggesting that anything I've said is an unrealistic proposal to the problem of realism, then you haven't read everything I've written, or it wasn't even remotely clear to you. If that's my failing, that's fine, you weren't my intended audience and I have no illusions as to what your response would be if you had been so. It doesn't seem like anybody else here had any troubles interpreting what I was saying. I'll be happy to continue the conversation with those people. [ January 03, 2008, 12:15 AM: Message edited by: molotov_billy ]

I appreciate fully that there are multitudes of ways to approach any problem. Because I was asked, I provided my opinion on what I think would be an effective approach to the problem. It's seems like there's as much or more intolerance to others' opinions in each of your own replies. Laziness and disinterest have nothing to do with it. I am critiquing the product that I paid for, and offering possible solutions to the problems that I perceive. [ January 02, 2008, 11:47 PM: Message edited by: molotov_billy ]

I'm giving my opinion on a forum - you're welcome to leave me alone if it offends you as such. I'm having a conversation with a couple of people here who have used real information as a source of their opinions, not accusations or personal judgements. I'm happy to continue the conversation with them. It's okay to disagree. It's an answer to the notion that battles did not take place unless one side was assured of victory, assured of a 3:1 odds ratio. Here is your quote that, in part, I was addressing: "For example, in WW2 days the attacking side was not supposed to attack unless it had 3:1 (or greater) force at its disposal. If it didn't have such a force, then in theory it wouldn't attack and therefore no battle would take place." You're using the phrase "in theory" here, but at the same time, using the piece of information as an argument as to why a WW2 campaign should consist of lopsided engagements. The information I'm providing to this is that the 3 to 1 notion is a rule of thumb, difficult to apply in situations of limited intelligence, different levels of training, different levels of equipment, different terrain advantages, etc (ie, most of the time.) Equal engagements can and do happen. In a game made for both realism and entertainment, they are optimal solutions. Where did I say titanic, epic, anything of the sort? Balance is not attached to scale. The rest of it isn't addressing anything I've said. You're putting words into my mouth, or arguing with someone else in a reply to me, or merging everybody's opinion into one. You may have missed 5 or 6 posts, then. I've addressed all of this stuff several times over. A couple people have said, including yourself, that lopsided scenarios are optimal. Here are a couple of quotes: ""Historically accurate" battles in CMx1 were no more likely to be balanced than in CM:SF. In a real war neither side wants a balance. " "And yes, the Campaign we shipped with the game is designed to have the Blue win most of the battles most of the time provided there is competent leadership (i.e. a good player)." I've explained my side of that argument very thoroughly, and I do not wish to repeat myself. My critique is of the stuff shipped with the product. Doesn't matter if it's existence is potential held within the editor - the end product is not there. There is a single campaign in existence for Combat Mission: Shock Force, so it's fairly easy to ascertain which one I'm talking about. I am not a developer for BFC, and I have no wish to finish your game for you. Telling me that I can make my own product is not an answer to a critique of your product. I've held up my side of a deal between two parties - I did not pay half price, or promise to pay you in 6 months, I paid you upfront for a finished game, one that was advertised as such. The party that has not held up their end of the bargain is Battlefront. A person is not inferior because they have a differeing opinion. [ January 02, 2008, 11:55 PM: Message edited by: molotov_billy ]

Thanks for the info. I look forward to a campaign that takes advantage of those features. [ January 02, 2008, 11:48 PM: Message edited by: molotov_billy ]