sburke

I almost always play Iron and yeah the manual description is incorrect. One of these days that line will get fixed. You only have to deselect your unit to see where everyone is. Why I started using it was to get better situational awareness of my units. Only Iron shows what they can see of both sides units.

woot!! Very cool.

oh crap, you didn't tell me you were a grunt, that explains everything! Carry on. Yeah that is one issue with posting on the net, it really is extremely difficult to discern what is possibly language issues, forms of expression that don't carry well in written form versus verbal etc. It is one reason for making sure you have a thick skin when going online.

Actually they do, but within the constraints of making sure it does not interfere with game development, which I would think you'd agree is a good priority. Now the fact that they don't comment on every "this MUST be in the game post" is more likely a combination of that and that they simply disagree that your must list drives production. Don't be offended, none of us has a must list that drives production. They almost never comment on those posts. Thank god or we'd never have a new game. Also again note another slam at BF not caring "anymore". That is just such a "head up the a**" proclamation that even you have to agree it is over the top. Can you at least get your critiques down to "I'd really like to see this in the game" level and not make every suggestion a shot at BF. The number of things that have been added or changed since CMBN (much less what was in CMSF) is huge. Acting like BF never fixes or alters or adds anything is just pretty ridiculous. It would also probably help your long term health as honestly you sound kind of stressed out. BF has a track record of not bothering to reply to folks who so consistently slam them. Why would they? You are behaving like a "shi**y" customer and they have better things to do with their time. (I said like, I did not call you a shi**y customer). You aren't on my ignore list because no one is. If I feel there is absolutely no point in responding to you I won't. Or at least rarely when you post something that isn't just ridiculously over the top hyperbole. Seriously if you just changed your approach I think you'd find there is more agreement with you than disagreement. It isn't the content of what you say, it is how you say it that generates most of the negative reaction you get. A lot of folks on this forum are past middle age. We have been around the block a few times and our threshold for what is generally viewed as immature behavior (I want this now! I have been asking and asking and I don't get an answer!) that would never fly if we were all actually sitting around face to face is kind of low. It might help when posting to visualize that sort of face to face contact and think how you would actually converse in that environment. If you post the way you'd actually do that type conversation, then I wouldn't be buying the next round. I'd ask if you could rachet it down a notch as the bartender is eyeing us like he is about to ask us to leave and the waitress is avoiding our table. More than likely I'd go sit somewhere else. Maybe Ian has a spot open at his table...or better yet maybe with C3K's intern. Now perhaps you simply don't care what folks think about your tone. Fine, that is entirely up to you. What you will find though is your ability to actually converse with folks on the forum will decline as folks will just not want to converse with you. Ian is a good guy. There are a ton of things I know he'd like to change in game and he has some really great ideas- like the command line interface for launching a game that popped up again recently. That request is like 4 years old now. I don't see Ian jumping up on his chair and throwing a fit. That isn't because he wouldn't like to see it nor that he thinks after 4 years it is overdue. He simply takes into account everything else that has been done and figures it just isn't on BF's hit list yet. He is patient because he knows BF has a list and it is likely far longer than any list we individually have.

Somebody needs to be sent to their room or given a time out. No iPad for you tonight young man.

Not that I don't want any of that, hell that and more frankly. However one does need to keep perspective in order not to build for disappointment. Hope is good, but hope with a dose of as reality gut check is also important. Snow for example. What textures do you mean? If you are looking for some kind of depth perspective, I suspect that is an engine limitations. I don't know that BF can give us any feel for depth with stuff tied to the map surface. They are able to do somethings for grass, tall grass etc so perhaps they can. I am hoping, but also trying to keep my hopes in perspective that there may be very straightforward issues why they can't do those things. Personally I'd love to see a post from BF about what they can and can't do with terrain tiles that provides us a better understanding of what is even possible. Also this thing of "fixes I've been waiting 8 years for". Wiggun does the same thing. You'd think from those types of comments the engine has made no progress at all in 8 years rather than simply BF hasn't addressed a personal peeve. One example alone - Map overlays. I can't tell you how cool of an item that is and how much of a difference it has made for designers. For those of you who drooled over the HASL maps for KG Peiper just think of the kind of stuff we will start seeing with this family. 3D to scale maps of battles we have read about/gamed for years. I don't really care if it is a straight feature port. I can't wait to see these.

Umm yeah I read it... that is why I posted it.

hmm well he just caused me to change my profile so that I now have to accept "friends".

See this is where you have blinders on. You assume because people don't agree with your particular perspective that they aren't critical of aspects of the game. Fundamentally just wrong. Just the tiny example of the UI. Steve himself has said he wants to redo the UI. He just wants to do it when he can focus on it. Your response above is a blatant alteration of what has been said to fit your own "victimization" perception. Perhaps you should look back at your own posts. When are you ever positive and how often do you repeat the "it has been broken for 7 years" mantra? Folks aren't even responding to the content of your posts (of which there isn't much) but their tone. Simply put you are ALWAYS negative and it is always this over the top "BF doesn't give a s**t about us and are just taking our money" tone. It gets old man. And then it just gets weird- why the heck did you make Ian and I "friends"? I don't mind, I am not even sure what that does on the forum, I haven't marked anyone as a friend. It is just a little weird though considering you have come darn close to calling us both "fanbois". This forum does not have a "particular reputation among the non fan boys" excepting maybe it is far less tolerant of trolls.

Hey Kieme, Actually the rationale for what makes a new title versus a module has never been about what gets added.CMBN could have tank riders, but it is a lot of work coding the hotspots on the vehicles. However BF could have added CMRT as a module with Russia as a region and no availability of western allied formations. Add the hot spots on the vehicles for the Russian front and we would have had CMBN, with a Russian front option. The underlying game engine is the same. The rationale though is that from BF's side there are two things. 1 - Business decisions. How much labor is involved and how much do they charge. They could have added RT as a module and charged the full price. There would have been some complaining, but if there is one thing we could be assured of here is someone is always complaining about pricing. 2 - Managing the game itself. This is more the basis for BF's decisions as far as I can tell from the couple of times Steve has commented. Trying to pile too much into a title create it's own issues. BF seems to feel pretty strongly that there will only be so much content per title/family and that seems to be more a coding concern. What the concern is and impact of trying to just keep adding content I don't know. Personally I would much prefer if Bulge were simply an extension of CMBN, but the decision to go with a new family has been made by people who know far more about what that means to the game than I do. BF has always made decisions that I think are well based in the two most important things to all of us - 1- BF survive to continue making the series and 2 - that the game be as rock solid stable as possible. CM does not crash on me almost ever. In fact beyond stuff in the process of beta testing I don't think I have ever had the game crash since the very early days of CMBN.

when you say "denied" you mean that is what is showing on the unit when it tries to use the air support function correct? Almost always that is a C2 issue. Not sure what will show if they simply have an arrival issue but in a QB that shouldn't be a problem. Lock and load has already asked the most important question. W/O a save there isn't anything for anyone to look at or turn in to BF though.

ha I was just being a smart ass and rising to the challenge, the thrown gauntlet, the... well you get the picture. glass of wine will do that. I am curious as to what the numbers really represent, but not enough to put it before anything else. All I really need to know is those are the guys who won't show up in the next battle of a campaign assuming they were core units.

sure I can. That is not enough time to fix them. * * Assuming BF doesn't care to make your priorities theirs. See that was quite easy.

Actually Steve did talk about doing work on the UI, he just said however that was a project in itself and wasn't sure when they would get to it. Not just re skinning it but a revamp. So first off you are again probably wrong, but we are used to that. You just have to be willing to accept BF owns the game and they will decide when that particular project hits the top of their priority list. Saying are we there yet over and over won't get us there any faster nor will hyperbole about what BF is capable of doing within either the scope of their workload or financial considerations of changes. CMBS added a lot of features that could eventually make it into the WW2 setting and BF will do that when they are ready DUKW anyone?

Please don't misquote me, I was not telling you what to do, I was making an inquiry out of curiosity and a possible suggestion within the current situation to at least allow you to be able to play the game. I don't know your travel requirements and honestly don't care. I travel internationally a lot, just ask my pbem opponents. I just don't play CM when on the road. Yes that sucks, but honestly I am usually too busy to consider a game anyway. I frankly don't know if BF actually creates the DRM and aren't using another vendors in which case your real complaint is to a third party. If the price though of protecting BFs software is a choice between your inconvience in an admittedly non typical scenario or BF having a less effective DRM then I know which way I go. I know that sucks for you and I am sorry for that. Perhaps BF will come up with another option for something less sensitive but still good enough, but the security of their product does have to come first for the survival of their business.

Personally I would love to see a pacific game. I would even hope to see it as a stepping stone to doing Vietnam, but as much as you don't want to hear it, BF has so far repeatedly said no and I suspect that is primarily based on financial expectations. They aren't going to lose money to create it. LongLeftFlank actually did a Makin mod which was quite good. Beyond that there is already enough in the pipeline for us to continue debating this for years before BF will even be in the position of saying, gee we ran through everything else, heck maybe we should do the pacific.

Lol nice handle, in the forum updates it looks like Jane's military is commenting.

First off, I am not employed by BFC. That I am a beta tester simply means they ask me to try the game and report issues that I find. It entitles me to no special relationship nor qualifies me to speak for the company. So no it is not official. Secondly DRM IS a pain in the ass, but a pain in the ass driven by the fact that people will pirate the s**t out of software and then think of a million lame ass excuses as to why they should feel entitled to do so. Blame them. Third, I am a gamer and a member of a public forum which is where you posted your comment. I am free to comment however I damn well please as I have no contractual obligation with BFC to support some company line. My post was a simple question as I didn't understand what would cause your average person to be screwing with their PC so much, if you found even that simple request for information offensive, I think you may be just a wee bit too sensitive.

You can create multiple AI plans and place the units in different locations for each AI plan. Net result 5 potentially different locations they could start from. Best starting point is to open another scenario in the editor, check to see if it has multiple AI plans assigned then look through each plan. You can then deactivate all but one, and run them in scen editor mode to see how each behaves. Do that for each plan and you can see how someone else approached it. That was the way I started and while I am far from an expert, I can at this point at least understand how the plans get built.

Look at it this way, I pre ordered CMBN. I would never consider loading it now from the original disk. I have become a big fan of just going DL, but as noted above keep copies to prevent re downloading.

I had an entire campaign idea have to go back to the drawing board because of that very same item. Put that on the wish list for future changes.

Just for informations sake, BF doesn't actually run the d/l hence the difficulty of getting anything more than the normal "have you checked x" messages. The DL service IIRC goes through the Amazon cloud and more than likely from prior experience the issue may be between your provider and the Amazon cloud. There was also an issue with the application that manages downloads on the provider side, Citrix IIRC when CMBS was first released. At that time BF did assist by breaking up the installer to allow for smaller downloads, but I don't know if A.) that is still an option or B.) it would make any difference. Your best bet as always is to open a helpdesk ticket to get direct assistance. This forum is more a self help area that BF may or may not be monitoring depending on their workload.

Yeah as I recall no one saw that coming. In fact I think that was when I became a beta tester. Maybe that is subconsciously why I like that title so much If I recall Steve alluded to a big surprise and only one person on the forum actually considered it might be Italy. Seriously it still ranks as one of my favorites, but I am jazzed about Bulge. Still remember when the HASL modules came out for KG Peiper. 2D maps and they were works of art. Be curious to see what we can do in CM. Damn it is a great time to be a gamer.

You got me killed? WTF!!! Now how am I gonna play CM?

Just out of curiosity, what do you do that you are constantly mucking with your PC? I have rebuilt mine, then upgraded to win 8' then moved to a bigger SSD over the past year and I have yet to have to ask for an activation. Perhaps you should just keep a PC for the game that you don't screw with so often. Maybe not the best answer, but if you KNOW you have little time for the game, it seems your own habits are infringing on your play time.