LukeFF

Getting back on topic... Ideally (IMO), some sort of setup like Digital Combat Simulator has gone to would be great. For those that aren't familiar with it, DCS basically has one "master module," into which the player adds whichever submodule interests them (Black Shark, A-10C, Mi-8, etc.).

Alright, so I finally made it through (almost) to the end, and I ended up with a Minor Victory. This time around I approached from the right-hand side of the map, which was a good idea, given the way one of the flak guns was positioned to cover the left-hand approach. ***SPOILERS*** I made sure I was able to locate enemy positions, especially on the right-hand side, which did pay off. The infantry gun was kept mostly in check, and this time around the stationary flak gun was inside the vineyard. A mortar barrage took care of that one and the mobile one as well. Even so, the Germans proved to be very tough to root out, and they inflicted many a casualty by the end of the game. I made sure to shield my vehicles using the terrain, and in so doing I was able to keep them alive the entire time. I made an attempt to take the monastery, but I knew that, with a lack of fire support it was going to be rough going. Those guys at that objective would not be pinned easily, even when I was spraying them with .50 cal fire from the halftrack. I had two mostly-full strength platoons to try to take the objective, but I knew they would all just get chopped up trying to take out those 2 teams. In the end, I secured all of the other objectives, and that was good enough for a Minor Victory with about 12 minutes left on the clock. In sum, it's a great scenario, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's not played it yet. You really have to maneuver your forces wisely in this one, because otherwise your mistakes will be punished harshly.

Show me where BF has called them bugs, because AFAIK they have said this is a design limitation and not an error in programming.

Martin, I noticed that, after adding my Shock Force installation to 1.2.2, CMH has reverted to showing it ghosted out and not installed. This happened after I exited CMH and then restarted it.

And in that respect the water splashes are no different than being able to see a wall or hedge knocked over / blown through a kilometer away, even though no one on your side was even close to having LOS to said wall or hedge. Somehow we've made it through that just fine.

No, of course I want gameplay improvements, but I also want improvements to the visual presentation of the game. We're not in the era of CMx1 and low-end computers any more, where skimping on graphics was an acceptable thing. Although BFC can be slow at times with graphics improvements (look at how long it took them to implement normal mapping), I applaud any efforts they make to enhance the look of the game.

And my wish is that BFC doesn't follow such nonsensical advice. Whether people like it or not, graphics do matter, and they are part of the overall experience. It's not 2001 and the age of 1024x768 monitors and low-end integrated graphics cards any more. I'll happily take any graphics enhancements BFC offers.

I've seen this far too many times to count. I once dropped a full barrage of German 105s on a 17-pounder AT gun, just to see it get back up after the barrage ended. :mad:

I see. Is that by design? Cool. Despite this little annoyances, the uniform textures do look very good overall.

Sorry, one more question: do the Soviet uniforms have normal maps associated with them? I don't see any in the file I unpacked (red thunder v100a.brz).

Fernando, what exactly are the shoulder straps on the senior German officer uniform supposed to represent? I've looked at them in-game and at the bitmap image, and it's confusing me. It just looks like a pair of parallel white stripes and not the braided cloth seen on the insignia of Major or Oberstleutnant. (I do have shaders enabled in this screenshot):

I get what he's saying: when you look down the barrel of the IS-1, you'll notice that there are no polygons on the inside, so it ends up making the inside of the gun look transparent:

Martin, can you add a feature whereby I can remove a "double-entry" from my list of installed games? Right now, by default, CMH is looking for my CMBN and CMFI installations in a place I don't have them installed, so I had to manually add the games so that they show up in the list of installed games. The end result is that I have two entries each for CMBN and CMFI - one for where I actually have the games installed, and one where the games are listed but grayed out (because CMH is looking for them but can't find them there).

Huh? ...

Excellent, thanks!

Ah, another "business strategy advice for Battlefront" thread. These always end well.

I've also noticed that Soviet Captains wear the rank insignia of a Junior Lieutenant. Is this by design? I know that the game currently doesn't depict every single rank on the uniforms, but I remember reading a post by Steve that said the officer uniforms are broken down into Junior (Lieutenants), Mid (Captains) and Senior (Major and Lt. Colonel) categories.

No, what I'm suggesting is make the sniper TOE be: one 2-man team per company. If the player / scenario designer wants to add more than that, that's of course up to them. Possibly a better idea would be to make the team Regular skill level by default, give both men scoped Mosins, but give the Marksman specialty only to the first man. It wouldn't be without precedent, as there are many formations in CMFI and CMBN that have men with scoped rifles who are not also tagged with the Marksman speciality.

I thought so, yes. The idea that your troops could theoretically fire their weapons indefinitely without running out of ammo was lame.

Two weapon issues which show up in both CMBN and CMFI: The Bren gun is missing its buttplate, just like the Lee-Enfields used to. The Springfield 1903 (both regular and sniper versions) should not have these finger grooves in the stock. That was something that was eliminated when production of the A3 model commenced. Reference the images on this page, which is a great reference for the M1903: http://www.trfindley.com/pgm1903stkid.html

That's why I gave more than one source. Highly unlikely. Well before the war began, the Russians had a well-developed sniper program and trained their snipers to at least the same standard as the Germans were doing (there really was no such thing as Designated Marksmen in the WW2-era Red Army). Everyone that went through sniper training went through the same training program, so in theory everyone was trained to the same standard. To add to that, the M91/30 is a pretty good sniper platform, so it wasn't as if they were being issued substandard equipment. The skill and experience of each sniper, of course, varied.

No, that's not really the case. For one, most wartime photos show Russian snipers operating in pairs, and then there's this: http://english.iremember.ru/snipers/24-nikolai-nadolko.html?q=%2Fsnipers%2F24-nikolai-nadolko.html&start=2 So, six snipers per battalion. And from the same interview: http://english.iremember.ru/snipers/24-nikolai-nadolko.html?q=%2Fsnipers%2F24-nikolai-nadolko.html&start=1 So, unless there is info to the contrary, Russian sniper teams by default should consist of both men having a scoped rifle and having the Marksman trait.

We had that in CMx1, and frankly it sucked. I'm glad that feature didn't make it into CMx2.

You have to choose the Mechanized Infantry option to see the difference between the two. Infantry Only treats all troops as standard troops with no trucks or halftracks, even if the unit panel says they are panzergrenadiers. When you do choose the first option and choose the Panzergrenadier uniform option, you'll see that the troops are wearing the proper green waffenfarbe.

Speaking of the Soviet radio model in CMRT: it has some really bad texture stretching issues on the upper half of the model, adjacent to where the dials and knobs are rendered. It makes an otherwise excellent-looking model look a bit ugly.