Canada Guy

This is cheesing me off. Once again I phoned the game store (EB Games) that already has my $40 in their pockets and once again the game is delayed. Now until Aug 24th. This is the fourth time that they have delayed CM:SF. I looked at EB Games website and they do not even have it listed anymore. Does anyone know what is going on? Paradox fails to inform its customers (and I am assuming that they are the ones responsible for shipping it to the games stores in Canada/USA) and it is frustrating the hell out of me. I might as well wait for the Marine/Brit/Zulu module at this rate.

I think though that this sums up many of us. We are nuts. How else do you explain our devotion (my wife would say obsession) with a game that has been out for 4 years. Crazy as this sounds I would still pick up the gold edition if they produced it (and I still have 3 copies of CMAK sitting in my shelf that I have not been able to give away to interested friends yet). My hope is that the CM:C will breath new life into the game and offer support (as they will have to, to support Vista etc) to maintain their product. The Wego PBEM is the best implementation I have found yet and have convinced enough people that I have 3-4 PBEM games going at any one time. Will this devotion change BF’s mind, No, but it may give them pause for thought if CMx1 come up with an insurmountable problem.

I probably make up for all the guys that downloaded the CMx1 games off of bittorrent. I have bought 1xBO, 3xBB and 5xAK. and given my extra copies away to my friends. This resulted in me now having 3 PBEM buddies that I would not have had otherwise (and worth every penny) I am surprised at the negative comments that seem to be coming out of people. CMx1 (and now CMx2) is what it is. I do not play BO as I am not interested in the subject matter (who wants to play as Americans when you can play as the Finnish!!) but I do not rail against BF because of it. I am sure that I will buy CMSF (as I have already put down money at my local EB Games store) and when it goes down in price, I will buy a few more copies. The best thing to do for any of us (call it enlightened self interest) is to try to get more people to play (and thus buy) the game. Yes, I know I am the core customer and that to be a commercial success they have to forgo some of our wants to be more accessible to the general gaming public. I would rather lose a little of what I want than lose everything because BF cannot make a commercial go of it. I also think that we did get some bang for our buck. When was the last time you guys played Close Combat, Panzer General or even Starcraft? I will still play CMBB/CMAK for years to come. I love the idea of CMx1 becoming open source. When BF thinks that the amount of sales does not justify the support, they should look into this. It could also spur on sales for CMSF et al. because of the unique concept.

That so far is the 3rd change of release date they have made. Can Paradox chime in and give us a more accurate date (assuming that they are the distributors of the North American version). At this rate v1.05 here we come.

I know that the release into North American retail stores was delayed. I think Paradox mentioned a date of Aug 10th. I have actually put money down through EB Games but they keep pushing back the release dates. They now have it released on Saturday Aug 18th but this seems a little strange as I have never heard of a Saturday release. Does anyone have any further informtation? I guess the good thing is that many of the problems that I have read about on the board will have been cleaned up as I do not expect to get CM:SF before the release of the 1.03 patch.

I have had trouble with downloads in the past and prefer the cold hard box in my hand (anyone remember Steam downloads?) I understand that things do get delayed but 2 weeks seems a long time when the disk went gold a while ago. I am not complaining (well, not much) but after waiting for years it would have been nice to have. I guess I will just have to read everyone's AARs to wet my appitite.

I read the Paradox post of the delay of 1-2 weeks for the retail box but with no info about why. I could not find a thread that answers the question so I am curious. Are they waiting to incorperate the 1.01 patch into the retail version or what? Not that it is anyone's fault but why not a little more info. I tend to have more sympathy for people that can explain the reaons behind a snafu rather than just saying there is a problem.

I have to go for WEGO. I played CMx1 by myself for 3 years before I finally convinced someone (now 2) to PBEM against me. Since we have such different schedules (1x married, 1x soldiering, 1x cats) it is hard to play head to head except WEGO.

I am Canadian but do not have a real big interest in playing the Canadian side. Not to say that I do not find it interesting but I still prefer the whole Russian front - From Finland all the way to Berlin. Having read the threads and noticed that a lot of emphasis was put into the statement that the American market is the most important and they need the whole good vs evil concept, what about Korea. Small in scope (compared to Russian/Western Europe), less hardware, common terrain and a shorter time frame (Korean invasion until stabilization of lines about a year later). Much of the equipment is WWII vintage (T34/85s, bazookas) and the subject matter is something that has not been done to death.

I am not too worried about the edge of the world but perhaps areas off the map where retreat or reinforcements etc could be placed. It would take 5 turns to get from one off board box to the map but they would have no terrain and just be a holding box (including no fighting). If it took x amnount of turns to get from the holding box to the main map, you could counter edge creep and create a basis for CMx2 Campaigns. Just a thought.

I apologize for this post but I cannot find specific info. What are the effects of a gun/tank crew being reduced from its full complement of men? If the full complement is 5 men and you now have a gun/tank with 4 men, how is this modeled? For each crewman lost, is this the same as reducing your experience level by 1 for each man lost, or does it just reduce firing/reaction times by x amount of seconds or what? Jason Doell

This I have to give this point to Steve. When I first saw the CM series I was only interested in CMBB. I love the German vs Soviet scenarios and played them exclusively. I had no interest in playing anything related to the US. (I still really only enjoy it if I am playing the Germans). I finally bought CMAK and can say that I enjoyed it immensely. Maybe not to the extent of CMBB but it is a great game by itself. I have played "Melfa" 3 times in PBEM and loved each time. I plan to give CMSF the same consideration. I was bummed when I first heard the topic (I was hoping for Korea) but I have lurked on this board and have to say that I am surprised that people will not at least try this without complaining (or maybe they are complaining to make sure that it fits what they think of as better and not out of malice). I am sure that Steve et al will make this game enjoyable. They want us to come back for module after module and play balance and enjoyment as well as a host of other things will be taken into account. Even if I love it half as much as CMAK, I will still buy the modules as this is one company that has tried to cater to us, the grog wargamer. Something that C&C Generals/Act of War/Codename Panzers etc will never do.

There are tears in my eyes at the thought of reading any more about PBEM. I have decided that I will request PBSS (Smoke Signal). PBIM is too technical but give me some gas and a blanket and I am set. Thank goodness the guy I play against is only 4KMs away.

Can we stop beating a dead horse until it is nothing but bloody mist? There are more important things we could talk about until BFC has determined whether PBEM will be in or not. I just want to move the discussion along to newer, brighter and better things rather than just a re-hash of past arguments. What about a screen shot of the TOE screens or some snaps of the terrain. Anything to stop talking about PBEM.

38ish and counting. My only hope is that I have 2 sons that one day might take up the strategy game mantra. Recently I have not seen much that I would consider interesting. I went to EB games with money in my pocket but came away with nothing. Half-Life 2 was still $59 and what else is there to buy. I played Act of War, C&C Generals, Battlefield 2 and World At War and though interesting, these do not hold my interest for more than a few hours. I have played Dungeon Siege II but it also gets monotonous after a while. I would love to try War In The Pacific but for $84, I will have to love it and have the time to spend playing. So I am back to CM and ASL Solitaire again. Now if I could only get “Across the Dnepr” as a stand alone game I might be willing to invest the time and effort. All I can say is that the weight of expectations for Battlefront is mighty huge with CMx2.

Dear Michael Dorosh, You will have to forgive some grammatical errors as it is difficult to write a long post with co-workers hovering over your shoulder. (This would include the lack of checking for grammar - there vs their) :confused: Actually I am not complaining about it being US vs Syria. I am just not especially interested in playing as the Americans in most theatres of war though I would make exceptions for the Korean War. And who has the time to create their own wargame to get exactly what I want? I applaud Steve and Co for going this route, creating games and consistently giving us quality products. If it was not for them I would be playing ASL solitaire once again. As for Idiot Savant, I was referring to any town south of Saskatoon including Calgary (but not Regina as they are just idiots). My diatribe about culture was meant to say that Canada (or Australia or …) just does not have the economic clout in most areas to have any effect on American marketing decisions. One of which was to create a game that was focused on the American military. Jason BTW Just read your article on Canadian Soldiers and it was enjoyable.

Even though I am not in love with the ameri-centric universe (I could care less about the Battle of the Bulge) You have to admit that it is just something that must be put up with until either the expansions come out or the modders get their paws on it. I love CMBB and even like CMAK for Italy but if we want CMx2 to succeed so that it can be expanded later we must allow it to be a commercial success. I have posted before that I am not in love with the subject matter but it is a great step in the right direction. CMBB was an abstraction (20x20m squares, elevation very picky) and even though CMSF will also be an obstraction it allows us to portray the battlefeild to a greater degree of accuracy. If this means putting up with US vs Syria then so be it. It it eventually allows me to create more accurate East Front maps then I will support it. I feel your pain as I live in Canada (try living next door to the idiot savant) but it is not their fault that there culture holds so much attraction. Fulfilling the desires of 270 million people with money/god in their pockets is a more powerful force than 30 million people with cultural views on guns/drugs...or even what the subject matter should be in popular entertainment.

When you are the only person around that knows a T-34 from a Titmouse, you tend to play against the AI. When you have to give the AI 5 T-34s so you can have 1 PzIVH, it takes away from the historical realism. I love playing against a PBEM opponent but we have played 1 operation for 2 months and I need a stronger fix than that. While I am at it, I would like the AI to rain arty down upon an area that I actually have troops in. In an operation, it continually called arty down on an area that I had vacated in Game 1. Giving the AI arty is a useless waste of points.

I would like it if the computer defended a map better than it does. In CMx1, I have a large map as an operation with multiple objectives and it situated 80% of its forces in the farthest 200m of the map. Someplace that even if I run my troops I will not reach until 3 battles later. It was crazy to play a game where I had PSW222s and the computer T-34s but I ended up covering much of the board without any opposition. Placing 1 AT gun near the edge of the set-up area would have slowed me down considerably. I am really hoping that this will be corrected in CMx2. I have owned CMBB for 2 years and only found a PBEM friend in my area 3 months ago. I am getting my clock cleaned as I have picked up so many bad habits playing against the computer. He is acting more from a logical point of view and I from a "vs. computer AI" point of view.

Dillweed, You have a great record of predicting upcoming games as long as we ignore that perdiction you made back in 2003 of "Combat Mission - Himmler in Tights". You are right though that the new CMx2 engine should give us the ability to make old battles new again. Though I am waiting for the new look of house to house fighting, I think just the additions to the AI and new objectives would have improved the old CMx1 engine let alone what it will do for CMx2. I hope that no longer will the AI sit 1000m from my starting line just to crowd around a lonely victory flag.

From the post it seems to be saying that US troops will panic but seems to imply that they will not break or rout. I hope I am reading this wrong.

I would like to clarfiy what is to be offered in CMSF. I understand that there will be a campaign (US forces only) and quickbattles (both sides) as well as a scenario editor? to create personalized scenarios (both sides) but what will the structure be? It might be too early in the coding to say for sure but I was hoping that when BFC is refering to scenarios they also mean "Operational scenarios" like in CMBB. Or are they saying that operations will be scripted and playable from the US side only i.e. oparational scenarios = campaign ? If we can create our own operational scenarios, I would also like to have the ability to allot points for each side in each battle rather than having to pre-determine forces like in CMBB.

That should be "Devil's Guard".

Have any of you read "Devel's Guard" by George Elford? I have heard much aboout these books (3 in the series) all based upon the true story of an SS battalion conscripted by the French after WWII into the French Foreign Legion (i.e. join us and shoot vietcong or we will shoot you). From what I heard from my Profs, they were the most sucessful unit to serve in Vietnam including even the Americans. Hard book to find though as it is out of print and the asking price on eBay os astronomical when I checked a few months ago.

I have to say that I was disappointed with the subject matter in CMSF but nothing like PP. I was not thrilled with the idea, am still not, but the vitriol I have seen is amazing. The good thing is, I have heard that Canada is going with an all MMEV force. http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1120721&C=america They are apparently going to replace all the Leopard I tanks in the arsenal with these vehicles. I guess the good news is that is should be easier to model the upcoming Canadian Army into CM:SF and Canada should have a viable stike force. The bad news is that Canada will no longer have a tank force. BTW Bought CMAK today and it looks great. Cannot wait to try some Operation Torch or Ortona scenarios at least until CMSF comes into play and I can create scenarios for that. Also: if BFC can release the subject matter of the CMx2 II game (ETO) will they release info on the upcoming modules of CMSF which In suppose will be available sooner to us??