sburke

No offense, but though that may be your view, it is not reality. Fact is they are separate games and not just modules. As to the view of marginal utility, that is a subjective perspective. You are certainly entitled to your view and should spend your dollars accordingly. At $35 though I can't say I really understand the constraint. It sounds more like you are trying to convince yourself (and more than likely unsuccessfully in the end) that you don't need it. C'mon, how can you not want to fight the battles in Nijmegen and Arnhem? You know you want to. As to them all being the same essentially... well I bought a whole lot of the Gamers tactical games. They were all essentially the same "engine". They didn't price them down though because I already had the rule book and they were "just" providing counters and a map. Check out the prices of board games and compare that to the level of work in CM and it's replay capability, map and scenario creation possibilities etc. At $35 it is a steal. Oops did I just say that out loud?

Interesting.... that sounds like the makings of a good scenario if one already doesn't exist.

The other aspect is having EZ's makes every defense essentially a holding action. Your troops will always be looking over their shoulder when the reality is they may not have permission to withdrawal at all. We all have our own perceptions as to how to handle this and that I think is one reason the campaign layer may never truly exist integrated into CM. Broadsword and I play based on a general agreement for what we are looking for. We operate based on an agreed perception of what the implications of events were at the OP level and their impact on our battles. In at least two - La Luzerne and Hamel Vallee, I was in a position where either my ability to withdrawal was constrained by terrain, unit cohesion and lack of mobility, or I was simply in a hold at all cost position dictated by higher command. In those cases an EZ made no sense, I had to fight until my position was either untenable (and surrender) or the allies called off their attack. We do not play by the typical CM casualty levels and that alters everything about the game, which in our eyes is the point of having an op layer. In those battles where I did have an option to withdrawal I have actually done so I think once and we did a bit of figuring to understand based on the specific battle what the impact was on those units that withdrew. That can vary greatly depending on the state of an attacker, their ability to pursue, the terrain, the timing etc. You are trying to create an actual rigid set of rules to allow anyone to have an OP layer with as little book keeping as possible. Both are equally good things, however I am sure you will have battles w/o an EZ. What are the mechanics in game if a unit is surrounded?

That's easy to say for our "Mordish" brethren. Hey wait a minute, does this mean you are from Mordor?

No actually they probably wouldn't. They are two different game families so the existence of anything in one is irrelevant to the existence of anything in the other. By your logic the East Front games should be half priced based on the German units being already mostly done. The only thing that would guarantee is BF would never visit the Eastern Front in CM. Once again folks are premising their arguments on value based on a very narrow window of where the labor involved is based on their own limited perception of what BF is doing. The reality is you really have no idea where the truly labor intensive stuff is.

That is correct, the file structure in CMFI is different and actually has two folders you can put mods in. One affects all installs of CMFI and the other only affects that specific install. This is pretty useful if like me you run multiple installs for different games. Things that you always want to see go in one and mods specific to one install go in the other. I actually prefer the structure for CMFI over CMBN for that reason.

Well that's your problem right there. You need to get rid of that rational thing. This isn't a game, it's an addiction. Hi my name is sburke and I am a CMaholic.

Don't know if there is a uniform answer to that In the case of my map there is an expanded version I have in the works.

I was one of those testing this scenario. Our initial feedback I think did help confirm a couple things for Jon and some of my feedback was specific to the allied side as that had been my role. One of the things I tried to focus on was the intent of the scenario. In this regard Jon's briefing was really important as it laid out the situation and what issues I would need to deal with. Basically my situation initially was supposed to be complete chaos. I needed to start organizing my defense and while doing that I needed to grapple with the ammo shortages I was supposed to be facing. What I found was my ammo situation was not as critical as it should have been partly due to the presence of the artillery units. Their vehicles carried some 3000 rounds of 9mm which is exactly what I needed for my sten guns. The second thing we found was the British defensive position combined with the vast number of automatic weapons I had meant the Germans faced an extremely difficult task. In short we knew pretty quickly the map was too large and the "stationary" forces provided the allies with far too much in the way of resources in HTH play to create the conditions the British should have been facing. I have been traveling for about a week and haven't seen the new version. I expect the Germans still face an uphill battle, but considering the quality of the British force this is as it should be. The Germans were throwing ad hoc forces against a very highly trained and motivated force in dense terrain. I honestly don't know how much we contributed to Jon's design he hadn't already figured out, but we at least confirmed some of his thoughts and also showed some of what a human would do that could totally distort the battle using forces not intended to be part of the fight. Personally I initially wanted the gun line as it gave a real gut check to know that if the Germans were to reach that point it would mean the collapse of the 1st AD defenses. However once it became clear the battle was never going to go that far and those resources were going to be used regardless of Jon's intent, they would need to be removed. And that is another thing I have learned from a number of other designers and testers. If anything is in there that isn't contributing to the battle and is just extraneous, delete it. As an example in working on the Venafro scenario for GL the map actually started outside the town and the initial part of of the scenario was taken up just trying to enter the urban portion. As was pointed out to me, the urban portion was really what the scenario was. Net result, the map was cut down and edited to focus on what was important. Whether anyone is actually enjoying it is a different question, but I learned a lot about AI plans while doing it despite it being a tiny scenario. Cutting down map size seems to be a recurring phenomenon.

Well to repeat something I mentioned earlier that Jon had taught me - start small. Your first scenario should not be to attempt something like Oosterbeek. A platoon scale battle would be much more feasible and a good place to learn the basics. The process is pretty much similar, but with a lot less overhead at each phase.

Beelzeboss the problem isn't that someone might say "gee, this doesn't seem like the same value as I got from GL". That is certainly a viable position- assuming you actually have some real data to work with. However you are trying to compare two products, one of which you don't have based on an initial blurb of things that would be included (but Steve never said that was all that would ever be in it.) So the objection everyone has is you obstinately cling to a position that is based in complete ignorance of what the value of MG might or might not be. When I was into board games I didn't say well gee this game has 850 counters, but that one has 950 counters for the same damn price!! Trying to say well this one has more OoBs than that one without a full picture to compare the two is pretty silly. And as a note on relative value, I just looked on the MMP board game site. An ASL action pack with 3 maps (I mean 3 map boards....yeah a double sided board) and 10 scenarios is $34. Oh crap, Steve might have seen that and is gonna jack up the price!! See what you made me do!

Well first off let's take a look at the few items you listed and understand what they actually mean. New orders of battle - You could simply have a game with generic troops and decide okay my guys are Brits and yours are Germans...even if they all look the same and organizationally are the same OR you could have unique ToEs for units and figures modeled to look correctly. Now you have to actually build those ToEs into the game and model them all with appropriate weapons and uniforms etc. Consider there are a lot of people who buy CM who never actually PLAY the game, but instead are into the aspect of modding them for an almost Diorama aspect. I can't speak for you, but the new OoB and ToE are for me a huge deal. New Terrain - Well all I can say here is you speak from ignorance. I can't say anything more than that. Other than that I am extremely excited. Features from GL- Hmm either you don't play the game much or you don't understand the significance of that. I'd be curious as to what you think is missing. Don't start on fire as we all knew over a year ago that fire is one of those things that likely isn't going to come until 3.0. Yes I am excited by just those 3 things. Partly because I know those 3 things actually represent a lot more than you so blithely pass off as not much. However I also know BF well enough to know there will be more and what they gave was just a basic review of what they knew they were putting together back when they wrote all this. Incidentally that was 5 months ago. Times change. Signed Mr. Lemming

And here we were thinking it was because you resided in the cesspool.

Well you are old now so your "stride" is hobbling along with a cane. Hey but at least you are moving right?!

I do have one question. In setting the contour lines the demonstration seemed to set an arbitrary number of contours. They mentioned 10 feet, but that didn't seem to be an actual contour line as after that they just started increasing the count, but it didn't seem to be an actual 10 foot contour. Am I mistaken in that?

very cool. Too bad we are heading into the flatlands of Holland . Kidding, there is plenty of other use for this.

Frankly it is no different than there being 3 different families for the Western Front: CMBN, CMFI and the eventual bulge game. If you get away from the old EF vs WF mentality you could look at is as 7 families to reproduce the European war.

I think you are referring to HTH Helper that GAJ put together, It does work for CMFI as well, I have a battle going on right now using it and two different installs of CMBN both working with it. I have yet to try it with CMSF however. Just gave it a shot. It apparently does not like the directory structure. I got an error back and it failed to add the install.

Doesn't sound gamey to me, sounds more like figuring out in game how to do something in RL you would be able to do. Sometimes you do have to figure out how to get around some of the limitations in the engine that are not real world limitations. That is a trick I am going to have to remember.

twitter? No? oh I know youtube!!! or maybe that reporter in SF that got burned by an NTSB intern!!

What I did was use smoke grenades to blind my flank so I could get into a position to flank his force while protecting my own. So in effect I used smoke to cover my movement to fire. I now have his force with area fire pointed at him from the front causing him to cower and my additional units on his flank protected from any units he might have on my flank. Next turn my units to his front will advance to that hedgerow and my units on the flank will pull back before my smoke is gone. All his guys should be down and I will have the terrain. Sometimes you just have to adjust your tactics to the battlefield and the game. Basically, everybody is right to some degree

Instructor from US Army Armor school demonstrating correct behavior for "hiding" in an Armored vehicle. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ao9CEYsSIa0/TVJ9-0KwDZI/AAAAAAAAAPk/SxeWSyABX-k/s1600/bag-on-head.jpg

And the really cool thing is once we have them in bulge or EF we will also get them in MG as CMBN will be upgraded to CM 3.0. The key to all this is patience. And before all you youngsters start going off on how long you waited, us geezers have a deadline, literally. We want to see it before we are dead. However you do have to understand including fire isn't about just having fire. It means having the fire interact with material in buildings and terrain, environmental conditions, having the TAC AI know how to respond, knowing that gamey players will deliberately drive jeeps into fields to be shot up, catch fire and then cause the field they are in to go up in flames. Yeah you know you'll do it. BF is well aware they need to introduce fire and they will WHEN it is ready. In the meantime, keep your pants on.

Honestly I think from the perspective of the ill educated (speaking for myself here), the two of you sound like you are saying very similar things. I think however Bil is speaking more to the mechanics of CM vs RL. For example in a current battle I have definite fire superiority over an opponent in the next hedgerow. However due to the rise in ground and the hedgerow itself I have difficulty targeting him. When his guys cower, my guys can't see him to shoot on their own, I can't directly area fire well due to terrain blind spots and those that can fire are just chewing up the ground in front of the hedgerow. I could probably spend the entire game shooting up that terrain and only manage to keep him cowering. Barring having mortars every time I have to take a hedgerow, I HAVE to either flank the hedgerow or advance right up to it to see his guys to eliminate them. That is just the nature of Action Spots, LOF and spotting and how they interact.

MikeyD I think you have been slapped down by a medical testing grog.