McIvan

Oh, flame tanks...sorry, wasn't reading properly. That could be interesting. If they can hit anything in LOS then they could be a real pain in the backside for the Soviets. Nice AAR btw, the pics are well done.

KV-Is and IIs ahoy? I hope not, but Russian early war players do seem to have an affinity for them. In fact they often seem to have nothing else......every other type of Russian tank usually seems to have urgent things to do elsewhere. Your lead tanks are, I think you'll find, screwed without infantry support. Actually I think they're screwed even with some infantry support, but at least they'd act as a delay, and defence in depth is a good thing. By themselves they're just a speedbump.

Have a go at "A Series of Misfortunes" (I think) if you want to practice that for an entire scenario.

Beg to differ....CM1 move to contact definitely tired troops, albeit slowly.

It's actually quite a large possibility, in the order of 50-60%. Lower for AP tiles.

I disagree. Right now in WEGO you can only issue orders in Pause mode, and cant change them until Active mode plays through. A Real Time with pause, with ability to issue orders in realtime and in pause mode, with ability to rewind last 60 seconds would be Revolutionery, and is not at all what WEGO is </font>

A battle small enough that I can keep track of the whole thing in one screen...thereby not missing anything....is really not going to hold my attention. It may hold yours, sure....don't let me give the impression I'm dissing your preference. Doesn't do much for me though. I want a decent combined arms battle. Pausable realtime with rewind is essentially what we have now (for WEGO) but with rewind allowed anytime. Good idea. That would work for me from a single player viewpoint. I still want to play against another human however, and I very rarely get the big block of time needed to play IP, and my location in New Zealand makes it dificult to match time blocks with players in most other countries. So pbem is important to me. The subset of people for whom pbem is important may however be small. That's Battlefront's job to assess....whether it's cost effective to include decent pbem play. I hope they do, for personal and inevitably selfish reasons.

My biggest irritation with Real Time (and I don't mind pausable real time as such) is that you miss far too much of the action. Blink and your T72 is gone. Where'd that atgm come from....too late. If you aren't focused on it that exact second, you missed it. That's why the cobbled on WEGO, with all its limitations and quirks, has become the way I play the game. It's the only way to actually see what happened. If it is dropped from WWII that really will be the death knell for me. Not only will pbem be impossible, but the game itself simply won't as much fun, by reason of the fact that you'll inevitably be missing a large part of what is going on.

You can change in the middle of the game. It does not need to be started with the CMETO changes.

My recollection was that the Poles got very courageously shot down in droves and "took" Cassino only because the Germans sensibly gave it up, with Juin's outflanking and the Anzio breakout meaning it was no longer tenable. Perhaps I recall incorrectly. Must read Ellis again, that was a very good read.

Well, the question is more like this: Does CEB mean the AI implements smart plans instead of stupid plans, or does it just mean that the troops are more capable of implementing exactly the same stupid plans as before.

What a load of completely uncessary sarcasm. The question is: Does the CEB bonus simply increase the experience level of the Ai troops, or does it alter the tactics of the AI? All you've said is that a good designer can work with the AI's predilictions to create a good fight. Well, hallelujah, and I am (sarcasm aside) deeply indebted to the designers such as yourself who take up their spare time to do so......but I don't think that was really the issue.

I remember Typhoon of Steel and the other version for Europe......they had everything I wanted in a wargame except an interface....it was just HORRIBLE. The interface was so bad they were almost impossible to play. When Steel Panthers came out it was a revelation.

There is one other major "slowing" mechanism, and that is the amount of craters. Set a map to heavy damage and the difference from exactly the same map on no damage is phenomenal.

As far as not shooting when close together goes, perhaps there is a sort of "too-close" parameter, where troops won't fire becuase they themselves are in the beaten zone?

I'm not at all sure there is a traditional layout, but if there is one then that's it. But the MMG could also be found installed into the front left pod....or on top of that pod as per the picture in SO's post.

Yeah, but I think hosing down a building with .50cal fire ought to be fairly murderous, especially against infantry that will be standing up next to a window. There are very few houses I can think of that would stop a .50cal round. Small arms fire, that's a different story.

Yeah, I don't really understand why vehicles do not simply attempt to drive the exact path you lay out for them. I played some of Allah's Fist with lots of tanks. I noticed that when I gave my tanks a move order through the empty desert, instead of driving exactly along the path ordered, they would take an oblique path slightly off to the right, for no apparent reason, then turn back towards the end of the movement to end up on the waypoint I ordered. Why? </font>

I haven't read the manual, and I had no trouble figuring out how to play within ten minutes using RTS. The UI is somewhat irritating......specifically having the same hotkeys for each panel....but not a game breaker.

To be fair, (and I'm quite critical of the present state of CMSF) Firefight is the result of ten years of improvements and has mediocre graphics. It's an unfair comparison to a high graphics game that's been out a few days. Give CMSF ten years and see how good it is. [ July 31, 2007, 08:40 PM: Message edited by: McIvan ]

All I can say is that, to get something even close to that, the person had to have either a)done it entirely on purpose, or hasn't a clue on how to play the game or maneuver forces. Take your pick, because I have a feeling both may be true... </font>

Surely there is some sort of valuing system already, or how do QB's get picked already? You can increase your force by 150%.....well....150% of WHAT?!? That's been picked up on at least twice already in this thread, but it's not being acknowledged. How exactly does it work? I'm unable to see why cross-attachments aren't possible from other units if you are interested in simulating realism. If it's an impossiblity from the programming point of view then fine, can live with that.

Will CMX2 vehicles be moddable by anyone without a spare week or three? With the increased complexity of the vehilce models, I have this nagging feeling that modding will be beyond the patience and time of most....any information on that?

It's not Viennese Waltz, which is a night game with lots of medium/heavy armour...unfortunately I don't know which scenario it actually is that you are thinking of....