Bob Willett

IanL, again you are right on for both of our PCs having this mushy sound disappear in 1-2 turns!  Thanks a bunch!

I gotta chime into this discussion.  I am a longtime player of CM and my CM buddy and I have been playing PBM battles back to back since CM's release.  He does a lot of map making and scenario making and I am one of his chief play-testers.  I have to say, I too, as much as I hate to say, lose more of these battles than win.  At first I blamed it upon trying to move forward and attack too fast and learned the hard way...so now I feel I play strategically better but now I blame my losses upon bad luck....skirmishes that have the highest priority for me to be successful I lose out.  I can never rely on timely support attacks ever and accurate arty.  In spite of all this I still enjoy this game and continue to strive to even up my odds.  It's too good to not play and to not to be a big fan of it.  The great assistance of this Forum, Admin, and all the mod makers and scenario makers has made this game even better.
As for this Bloody River scenario I am playing it US vs Ai Axis.  I know it is not recommended but I had missed this recommendation of making the US the Ai.  So far the US is holding them off but I have found this is a very intriguing map and requires a lot of CM experience to prepare a balanced decent set-up.  The reinforcements haven't arrived yet so my entire set-up has not been highly challenged yet.  I recommend this scenario for others to play.  Its got it all and on a small scale and it is not a short battle.
 

I gotta chime into this discussion.  I am a longtime player of CM and my CM buddy and I have been playing PBM battles back to back since CM's release.  He does a lot of map making and scenario making and I am one of his chief play-testers.  I have to say, I too, as much as I hate to say, lose more of these battles than win.  At first I blamed it upon trying to move forward and attack too fast and learned the hard way...so now I feel I play strategically better but now I blame my losses upon bad luck....skirmishes that have the highest priority for me to be successful I lose out.  I can never rely on timely support attacks ever and accurate arty.  In spite of all this I still enjoy this game and continue to strive to even up my odds.  It's too good to not play and to not to be a big fan of it.  The great assistance of this Forum, Admin, and all the mod makers and scenario makers has made this game even better.
As for this Bloody River scenario I am playing it US vs Ai Axis.  I know it is not recommended but I had missed this recommendation of making the US the Ai.  So far the US is holding them off but I have found this is a very intriguing map and requires a lot of CM experience to prepare a balanced decent set-up.  The reinforcements haven't arrived yet so my entire set-up has not been highly challenged yet.  I recommend this scenario for others to play.  Its got it all and on a small scale and it is not a short battle.
 

I gotta chime into this discussion.  I am a longtime player of CM and my CM buddy and I have been playing PBM battles back to back since CM's release.  He does a lot of map making and scenario making and I am one of his chief play-testers.  I have to say, I too, as much as I hate to say, lose more of these battles than win.  At first I blamed it upon trying to move forward and attack too fast and learned the hard way...so now I feel I play strategically better but now I blame my losses upon bad luck....skirmishes that have the highest priority for me to be successful I lose out.  I can never rely on timely support attacks ever and accurate arty.  In spite of all this I still enjoy this game and continue to strive to even up my odds.  It's too good to not play and to not to be a big fan of it.  The great assistance of this Forum, Admin, and all the mod makers and scenario makers has made this game even better.
As for this Bloody River scenario I am playing it US vs Ai Axis.  I know it is not recommended but I had missed this recommendation of making the US the Ai.  So far the US is holding them off but I have found this is a very intriguing map and requires a lot of CM experience to prepare a balanced decent set-up.  The reinforcements haven't arrived yet so my entire set-up has not been highly challenged yet.  I recommend this scenario for others to play.  Its got it all and on a small scale and it is not a short battle.
 

I am Rocketman's initial PBEM's partner for this battle.  For the record with both started playing this battle with him using the CM Helper version 1.7.5 and I the newest (the alpha version).  When the corruption issues occurred we started experimenting and noted this difference so I deleted off my alpha file and used his CM Helper version thinking this might have caused a conflict.  But after retrying this with both using the same CM Helper version we still got the same results.  I then had Live No More try and start this battle with me and he too got the same results as did Rocketman.  Hopefully, the submitted ticket will help figure this out because this looks like a definite must battle to play.  Thanks to all that chimed in to help us try and figure this out.

But what does it sound like? Chirp, chirp ... ?

NOOOOOO.... the bird sounds could be the Northern Bald Ibis  https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2011/03/18/new-hope-for-a-rare-bird-in-the-syrian-desert-explorers-journal/

New Hope for a Rare Bird in the Syrian Desert, Explorers Journal
A few years back, Gianluca Serra found a legendary bird thought extinct in Syria, with funds from National Geographic’s Committee for Research and Exploration. Now Serra is trying to forge a stable population of these ungainly creatures, with a little help from a prince and some first ladies.
The northern bald ibis was considered extinct in Syria for more than 70 years, according to the scientific literature. Tell us about how this legendary bird was rediscovered — and when and where.
We rediscovered the bald ibis on a remote cliff of the Syrian desert in April 2002, following clues from local hunters and Bedouin nomads as part of a general fauna survey of the area. The birds were the oriental subspecies of northern bald ibis, which had not been seen for many years.

Nice video - looks like it will be a great game. Would be interesting to see a "side by side"-comparison with SF1.
One thing though, can we please have some new background sounds? Chirping birds in a desert setting just doesn't feel right.

Love the support Guys. They gave me a link for the base game to so i could play till cmsf 2 is released. All i needed was my key for my bundle to acitvate.. that Made my day..

You could check the forum four times a day.

It is also not a beta tester job per se either.  BF has enlisted folks to test the game and look for stuff, but that doesn't make us the go to guy for anything anyone finds.  We are players just like anyone else and our time is no different than anyone else's  We don't get to charge by the hour to run huge numbers of tests looking for something that may be an extreme outlier. Any player is just as capable of doing verification as we are.  The request for saves is a requirement for BF to even consider looking at it.  So if you see something and don't save it, might as well not bother posting about it.  Kind of like trying to tell people you saw a UFO but you didn't bother trying to take a pic with that smart phone you were texting everyone to tell them about the UFO you just saw.  Beta testers are more than happy to help bring an issue to BF's attention, but it really makes a difference if we have something to start with other than "I saw a UFO".

@Bob Willett  The upgrades basically transform your legit (existing) purchase of the base game / modules from CMSF1 to CMSF2, they do not grant ownership of the base game / module at all. For that you need to buy the game module fresh. So you would need to buy the NATO module, if you want to play that, which is going to be re-released as CMSF2 only - that is, it will already be CMSF2 - no need to upgrade that.
Since you have exactly 2 game modules you need to upgrade, and also the base game, your cost, if you buy individually will be: $10 + $10 + $15 = $35 . And if you buy the entire upgrade pack it is also $35 - so you situation is exactly at the breakeven point (I would just get the big upgrade in that case then). This is what Steve commented on - whether to buy individual upgrades, or the Big Upgrade which essentially just contain all 3 module upgrades and the base game upgrade , and his comment was from what made more sense from an economical stand point. If you have 1 game module, (or none), it would not be wise to buy the Big Upgrade.

Repeating what you said but just hoping to make sure Bob is clear.  The entire upgrade package only applies to the modules you already own. Any modules you do not already own have to be purchased as new. So in Bobs case the full upgrade would give him the base game and the two modules he already owns. He would still need to purchase the NATO module as a new module. 
So $35 to upgrade everything he already owns plus the cost of the CMSF2 NATO module if he so desires. Clear as mud? 😉

In ASL I liked two things not seen in CMBN that I wish could be added besides the fires that spread etc, and that was the process of dropping paratroopers and seeing where they land plus I liked seeing the planes on the board before and after they strafe or drop bombs etc.  CMBN does include the shooting graphics and it is directional so that's pretty close.
 
I, as well of others played ASL with a passion.  My biggest problem was I had only a few opponents whom I played against and in time that available time for us to play ASL H2H diminished with our family and work/career priorities etc.  The battles always took a lot of time to set-up and play.  To speed up start times we'd pre-plan our set-ups at home and come to the battle with our set-ups written down or already in place if I were hosting the battle.  We'd try and finish the battles on another day by first writing down all the units in their positions etc on a piece of paper in case the board had to be put away.  If the board could remain up it had to survive little kids or family pets possibly disturbing the game in spite of being placed in what we thought was a secure area.  Back in that day I was fortunate to have a small travel trailer stored in my side yard and I could put an in-progress board game on the table in my RV.  Walking it carefully out and into my RV without knocking over piles of units on the folding map sections, was a big challenge always!  
 
But, always, my biggest obstacle was finding joint time with my few buds who played the game too.  I had a few friends who tried to play but had never bought the game and I ended up spending too much time confusing them with the rules that it made it hard for them to follow and caused us to run out of time to finish the battles always. The rules were just too overwhelming for the non-owners and they were always at a disadvantage while playing the game too in spite of me giving them the easier side.  
 
Finding new opponents who had the time to play was very hard to do.  There was no INTERNET back then but we did have the Avalon Hill "The General" magazine that would come out periodically and there you could try and find opponents on the back page, if you were lucky.  I was fortunate the store where I purchased the ASL games and modules, had "opponents wanted" message boards but ASL players were hard to find on that board that lived nearby.  I tried one time using the board  but I had to travel to a nearby city to play that opponent.   This was not convenient nor was it time efficient but it was fun to find some other ASL addict that wanted to play who knew the rules.  Most of the time I spent several hours working on set-ups for the various battles and even tried doing some solitaire battles to test out my set-ups. In time, the games got stored in the garage along with the storage trays container that housed the game pieces. Unfortunately, after a few house moves they got left behind (shame on me) to make room for stuff my whole family used.  Fortunately, PC games like the "Close Combat" series came about and eventually CMBO-CMBN and the spirit of ASL got resurrected all to be stored on a PC and in a pile of CDs with their instruction manuals in the drawer of my PC desk and we no longer need a human opponent to play against!  And I can play against another human if I want who even lives several thousand miles away from me.  Wargaming has only gotten better in time!

Having recently finished this scenario with Rocketman and won with the Germans I found that the key to the success of the Germans is to get a kill of an Allied tank on the bridge because it will block the bridge from further British tanks from coming across "Joe's Bridge"..to help the Allies to hold that side of the bridge.  As for the 88's, they are basically useless and just a target for the Allied forces early in the scenario.  I was lucky and got a kill with one of the 88's having got a shot off under the bridge to an unsuspecting Allied tank diagonally away from the bridge.  It took about 5 attempts of some shots hitting the bridge but one got between the bridge supports and killed the tank.  Once that happened the Allies also began shooting under the bridge too to repay for their earlier loss!
 
This battle starts heavily one-sided for the Allies and in the beginning the Germans only seem to be a target and get pushed back or eliminated from their side of the bridge and subsequently lose control of both sides of the bridge.  But folks don't leave the theater yet!  When German reinforcements start arriving, and eventually from both distant sides of the bridge they arrive, things start getting very interesting.  With a few key kills the Germans can start regaining what they had originally lost to an eventual re-control of the bridge but not with a Helluva battle.  The key for the German side is to be PATIENT and try not to get completely wiped out on your side of the bridge but try and retreat to a safe location away from the bridge and stay alive til your reinforcements arrive so you can get back what you first lost!
 
I give this scenario a 5-Star rating!

My PBM friend and I played a GAJ scenario a few months ago just before 3.0 came out.  Its name escapes me.  It was a huge battle.  It was a CMRT scenario and we ran across this same problem.  In order to play the game without the PZIV's running around inside moving bunkers upon close-ups we had to change in the scenario editor all these PZ IVs to the "J" 's and we played the game with no more problems.  We never played it with 3.0 loaded.  Are you playing this scenario under 3.0?  If so I believe its just a glitch in that particular scenario because we have played other scenarios since under 3.0 with PZ IV's and there are no problems like this occurring again.  I hope this helps cuz you are not alone with this problem................

For info in the CM Shock Force game there are vehicles that have this mesh on them so CM designers can do this already, but Umlaut great work as always!