TheVulture

As I've said in another thread, companies who wish to do so can buy good reviews. They can (literally) buy places in the sales charts for games. These sorts of things stopped being about reflecting the quality of the game for the benefit of gamers some time ago. They are almost purely extensions of the advertising and hype-market designed to generate sales - a tool used by companies and nothing more. There are exception of course, particularly in more niche markets like wargaming, and there will always be reviewers who give honest opinions on games (particularly in the age of the internet). But to echo Mord - buy the game, make up your own mind (or in my case, get the demo, see if my machine has a prayer of running the game, and make up my own mind).

On the other hand I think the philosophy of 'finish the game, release it and then work on the demo' makes more sense than creating a demo as part of the development and getting the game out at a later date. Ultimately, the point of the demo is to increase sales, and unless you are going for impressive first day sales to get to the top of the sales charts, it doesn't matter if the demo comes out a week after the game - it's not really going to lose them any sales. (And games charts are worthless anyway - as one guy in the business I know said "You basically buy positions in the top 20 sales charts from the shops, and if you want a better review you pay for the reviewer to go to a strip club.") Would you rather have the demo out today and the game out on the 1st of August, or the game out in 2 days and the demo out on the 1st of August?

As I understood it there is no randomly generated strat AI (I may have missed something). The map designer has to create some kind of very general plan that should work tolerably for more or less any force mix for each of attack, defense, ME.

Whose desk mod is that? sorry, don't shoot me. So, since going to the trouble of mocking up a box to take the photo and fool us seems rather pointless (unless you are really bored), looks like he might have something...

I've never been in a position to make that comparison personally...

Just to be completely pedantic (what, on this forum?), I saw the ballbearing sandblaster cleaning an M1 hull on TV in a documentary about 2 months ago, and since it was an American documentary on UK TV, I can only assume it had been on US TV some time before that. Not that it matters...

The absence of Gooddale threads is a good thing. Undoubtedly. It was just something of a surprise that it happened, like finding money down the back of the sofa.

But to open up another can of memes, whatever happened to the "Master Gooddale's Cheery Waffles" threads? Peng threads and Cheery Waffle threads used to account for 90% of the posts here, and now we are Waffle-less.

I doubt the map size is going to be much of a problem. Sure you might have trouble representing the kinds of engagements where tanks are getting kills at 2-3km regularly, but then, they're very likely to be the exact kind of one-sided turkey shoot scenarios that everyone was dreading (Syrian player has to KO 1 M1 while keeping at least 10% of his forces alive to win). ISTM that BF have said repeatedly that the point of the game is to simulate those engagements that are tactically 'interesting' - where conditions create approximate parity between the forces (although I dare say creative scenario designers will come up with all sorts of situations that are interesting and well balanced in their own sweet way). Armoured engagements in open terrain with 3 km lines of sight just don't fall into that category within the setting of the game: they are the portion of the engagements that are dull an predictable in their outcome. Almost by definition, the tactically equal battles are going to take place on a smaller scale than that, since the US technology advantage will dominate on the larger, open scales. I'd rather play e.g. a campaign where e.g. a town has been encircled as the US drive pushes past it, but a pocket of resistance remains in e.g. the souk (old market area packed with close together buildings and narrow alleys). Unfortunately the area is well supplied, still has an unknown number of civilians, and apparently is the source of SAMs or other AA capability. The US can cordon off the area with armour, but the vast majority of the streets are too narrow for an M1 or Stryker to get down. SO the infantry have to fight their way in and at least find and eliminate the AA capability (so the nearby airfield can be used, say). Artillery support is limited or non-existent due to the presence of civilians in the market area. I'm not a grog, so I have no idea how plausible that is from a military standpoint, but in my naive way that's something off the top of my head that the Syrians might try to nullify the US advantages and force tactical parity (or in this case, clearing house to house in an absolute maze of alleys and buildings against a force that has had time to prepare its defences and lines of retreat through buildings where necessary, the US troops might even be at a serious disadvantage if the Syrian forces were of decent quality). It's the kind of battle the Syrians would want to fight, and the kind the US wants to avoid (give them the turkey shoot option any day). Who knows, this precise idea might not work that well as a scenario for one reason or another, and there are plenty of other ways of creating interesting scenarios. But the idea that the game might be limited because of 4klm x 4 km maps when an M1 can kill at 3km seems flawed to me precisely because it is only going to be a problem in unbalanced scenarios no sane person would play.

I remember the difference in play of some games when I upgraded from 256Mb to 1Gb ram - incredible. My graphics card in undoubtedly the bottleneck in my laptop. So to what extent is the game playable with really low graphical settings is the question I guess. BTW I lied - it's an FX Go 5300, not a 5200. Although I believe that is a modified version of one of their other chips used in laptops but not directly supported by nVidia.

In fact I've just looked back at how the AI planning tools were described, and the basic version for a ME could be as simple as drawing a target zone 1/3 of the way across the map and another one 2/3 of the way across (which would take a few seconds). Then define a plan of advance to zone A. Wait until turn 15. Advance to zone B. Maybe throw in a 2nd plan of launching from zone A at a different time. Maybe a 3rd plan of advancing down one side of the map only. Not the greatest plan in the world, but would suffice to get the AI moving forward into combat. And could be done in a matter of minutes with anything like a sane editor design. Surely anyone taking the trouble to make a beautiful map could take a few minutes to throw something like that in for the QB fans.

People who want to make maps without plans can presumably do so. The CM community is easily large enough to contain a few nutters who will cheerfully take raw maps and design AI plans for them. It would be easy enough fot the scenario depot (or equivalent) to facilitate that, by differentiating between plan maps and unplanned maps, and allowing people to download unplanned and upload planned (assuming the in-game editor allows such a strategy). But anyone who has designed a scenario for AI play in CMx1 (and there are plenty of them) has wished for some ability to indicate to the AI what the good routes of attack are, or which are the key objectives to attack or defend. Many managed to trick some kind of reasonable behaviour by playing with the flags, and tweaking things like friendly map edges to fine-tune the AIs behaviour as much as possible. Which is more work than you want for a QB obviously. I don't know, but would imagine that a very simple plan (choice of attack here, here or here) with no real strategy would generate a battle with the AI behaving at least as well as in a CMx1 quick battle, and take all of a minute or so in the editor (I'm guessing, but the most minimal plan the the AI will actually do something with can surely be pretty simple). Incidentally, the added benefit of plans and plan-free maps is that a good map will likely have several different people generate plans for it, trying to be cunning. So you could download 4 copies of the same map, and end up with 12 possible variations in how the AI choses to tackle it for each of attack, defense and ME. Not to everyone's taste obviously, but some people find value in e.g. replaying an attack on the same terrain to try out different approaches and refine their strategy, and having even more than the 3 possible plans could give a much wider range of AI behaviour to cope with. At any rate, someone who wants to design maps only can probably do so, and can certainly throw together the most haphazard minimalist AI plans in 30 seconds, which will probably serve the AI just as well as CMx1 QBs.

Demo due out sometime around the launch date (27th July). The game engine is now able to do continuous, real time play, but the wego turn based system is still there the same as previous combat mission games, for those who prefer that.

But about the same as Amazon US, which is $39.99.

I suspect the important question is 'can you save them game while you still have the option to rewatch the movie?' Saving the game whilst setting up orders is easy enough, so you can swap the file back and forth as many times as you want whilst issuing orders. But when you hit 'go' and get the movie, can you save it then? Or do you have to hit the button to take you back to issuing orders before you can save? In which case only one of you gets to see the movie. Possible work-around: You both get a copy of the save with all the orders finalised. You both watch the movie on your computer. (You hope that you get the same results - don't know if the random number generator uses a seed saved in the file that will give the same results on both computers, or whether the seed is in some way randomised from the computer before running). Then one (and only one) of you plots his orders and sends the file to the next one. so: 1) A plots orders 2) A sends file to B 3) B plots orders 4) B sends file to A 5) A & B both watch movie 5a) B throws his save away 6) A plots orders 7) A send file to B and so on.

You can get an idea of the effect of being out of command by looking at command delays. There are happy little charts and tables on various websites of the command delays for a unit of a given experience level and given leadership HQ modifier. A +1 command HQ will make a regular (in command) unit respond as quikly as a veteran unit (in command) under an HQ with no command bonus. And will make a green unit respond as quickly as a regular. Being out of command drops the unit 2 levels - a regular, out of command unit responds as quickly as a conscript, in command one (with no bonuses). It's easy to see for command delays - effective level is -2 for out of command, or +0/+1/+2 for in command. I assume something pretty much the same happens for morale as well. A veteran unit out of command of their HQ will break as easily as a green unit in command of a normal HQ, or a conscript unit under an HQ with a +1 command modifier. Even elite units out of command are pretty fragile. Anything else will not cope with incoming fire at all.

To quote a random post from 2003 I dredged up: (not me doing the tests, obviously). This is in CMBB, but I've not heard of any changes in CMAK. But it should give you a ballpark figure. An Elefant has a blast rating of 73, I believe. While I doubt that the bridge destroying algorithm is as simple as (need to get to ~3000 units of blast damage before it fails), it might give a ballpark figure. Which suggests you'd be looking at 40-odd shells before a light/medium bridge collapses. Although I'd guess that a blast twice as big does more than twice the damage, so you will probably need a few more than 40. Of course, if you are looking at a heavy bridge, think 400 or more Elefant shells to take it down. No idea if each individual section of bridge has seperate integrity, or whether the whole thing fall as one. But basically you are looking at a long job with a 71mm gun rather than 150mm+ or pioneer demolition charges, and given that the Elefant only holds around 50 shells, I'd say you are certain to run out of HE shells before the bridge goes.

Mils are for artillery and mortars, not navigation (At least for the infantry). They are used because they are more accurate, 17.8 mils equals one degree. Trust me you wouldn't want me computing a danger close fire mission next to you, using degrees. Especially if I am far away. Former mortar maggot and FDC. </font>

IIRC he said it would be in as an option, but they aren't going to to any extra work on features for it, such as (specifically) Syrian aircraft. Since they're not in the main game for the operational reasons in this thread, they're not going to do the extra work to put them in purely for red on red battles where they would be a factor.

And the prize for most incoherent rant of the day goes to.... And now back to your regularly scheduled thread. I got into the CM series with CMBB (and have never even played CMBO). Having got used to the idea of playing with Russia and Germany (and friends), I tried CMAK, but it never had the same appeal for me (and that is as a Brit, getting a chance to play with the British forces to boot). So in my mind, the Eastern Front is what it's all about, and ironically, that is purely because of CMBB. If it's a niche market, it's a niche that mugged me and dragged me in. So for me it's a great shame that an eastern from CMx2 game+modules is a long way off. That's the price we pay for having minority interests (at least, minority amongst BFCs customers it seems).

RawRecruit's original Knifefight At Cecina was originally posted here, although the first few pages are missing now.

I don't see much real difference between fictional and Syria-with-no-pretense-of-backstory. Ultimately, as has been said already, people are going to make scenarios in any number of settings that have nothing to do with the 'official' setting. I don't care what the country is called. I'd rather the TO&E was based on a real world one (Syria, since you are committed to that) so that it represents something that makes sense militarily (within the economic constraints of that country). But beyond that, I don't care (as a non-grog) what equipment is/isn't there, or what the story is. I just want the challenge of beating my opponent in a fun game. At the end of the day the difference between Syria and Bitemestan is going to be a few lines of text in the manual, a different set of unfamiliar names on maps, and 1% of the player base who care passionately about such thins on principle.

Maybe it's just because I haven't played enough, but I find that simply looking at a CMBB map doesn't contain that much information. You can certainly study it in great detail for approach routes and whatever terrain fun you can extract from it. But for me at least, that has very little use in the actual battle. In the fight, you discover that that one small ridge in the ground is vital cover to get your men to an important position. That the hut that you thought would be a great MG position is just about in exactly the wrong position to reach the one critical open area. I'm sure everyone has been here - discovering that one map feature out of thousands that makes a difference. Some of that depends on the disposition of forces for a given battle - routes chosen by various sides, or where they place their defences. A different setup radically alters which terrain features matter. But no matter how much you look at the map, it seems that some of this information doesn't come until you play it. And some of it only counts for one battle. Which is fair enough. If you've fought hard to gain the ground, you understand the subtleties of the slight variations in elevation, the position of the woods etc. in great detail and can use that to your advantage on the defensive. Now if someone takes the time for fight a TCP/IP battle with a friend on the map they are about to fight a CMC battle on, that's a different matter. That would give you information that wouldn't realistically be available. I guess you have to rely on people not to do that.

Is it possible that the Syrian attack was pushed back, and the defenders thought that there might be a second attack coming soon, and took the time to turn the turrets around so as to not confuse dead tanks (pointing backwards) with live ones (pointing forwards). Assuming that they didn't have the time or inclination to move the wrecks, and that the Syrians would be attacking in pretty much the same place again. Pretty contrived answer, huh?

You should find out if there are any special limitations placed on the map. A priori I see no reason why there should be: maps could in principle be completely independent of each other. But you never know. There may be some strange requirements that all maps have the same height setting, or such things. The obvious way to program things is to have each map completely stand alone, but we don't know yet if there are any features in CMC that use data from the constituent maps, and which require certain limitations (sensible alignment of terrain along the map edges to make sense of line-of-sight calculations within CMC maybe).