General Jay

Big disappointment, editor is junk, game is pretty but not fun. I'll never pre-order again. Costly lesson.

This game is nothing like CM, in particular I find its editor useless. It would be miserible to use even if it worked--it does not allow me to save games so there is no point to it anyway. I may be able to get some enjoyment from it after I learn the new interface, but this is not going to replace any of the CM games for me. If I had known anything about the editor before I pre-ordered I wouldn't have purchased this.

I'm 47 and I got started with 1/285 scale minatures on tabletop games like Squad Leader in the early eighties. An old gaming buddy of mine introduced me to CMBO and I was hooked, it had everything that I liked about minature games with automatic rule enforement and judgement--and better terrain. There was no arguing about that shot, or if that weapon could kill the tank--what a break through in technology! I have been gaming on the PC since 91 and the Combat Mission series is my favorite. I normally need a while to finish a game, so I am hoping this new version will work with my playing style. Since the computer lets me play against it when ever I have time, I normally play off line. I would like to try a play by mail game with someone.

The editor is a big plus for me--in CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK almost all the game play I did was on custom maps that I created. I normally spent more time building maps and scenarios than I did playing them. I enjoy exploring the capibilities of the units--and custom scenarios enable me to do just that. It sounds to me like the mission editor will allow me to do that--although I am slightly comcerned about not being able to build them from scratch. Still, given the pleasure that the previous games have given me, I have preordered the game. This company has a reputation for excellence and I don't beleive they will disappoint me. In fact I am pretty sure I will be delighted.

Me too! I am excited about this game-Thank you for creating it. I can hardly wait.

With Video cards one of the most important specs is the interface bandwidth between the video memory and the graphics processor. Many inexpensive cards with 512MB of memory use a slower 128 bit connection (some even use a 64 bit meager connection) to this memory. A card with 256 MB of memory and a 256 bit interface will out perform a card with 512 MB of memory and a 128 bit interface. Most cards selling in the 100$ range have this limitation, and most cards selling for over 300$ do not. The cards in between may have either connection bandwidth. I am currently using a Geforce "Golden Sample" 5900 that supports directX 9 which was only offered for a short time (the 6000 series came out soon afterward and bumped them from production). So my advice is to look for 256 bit memory interface in the specs, and be cautious about buying a inexpensive card just because it offers 512 MB of RAM, 256 MB will perform very well on a good quality card and 512 MB will normally be under-utilized (but more than 256 MB will be used). Video cards can be a big investment, and some of them are dramatically over priced. It is normally hard to see the difference between a 300$ card and a 600$ card--provided that the 300$ card is carefully selected.

Expecting to run a new game on old hardware? Gamers have always needed up to date hi-end hardware, these minium specs are very modest for 2007. I will be using a ~3 year old -water cooled dual CPU Xeon 64bit 2.8 GHz with 2 GB of DDR dual channel ram and a 256 bit IO Vidio card with 256 MB of DDR VRAM--I built this system for CMAK (choosing 2.8 GHz to save money over the premium 3.0 GHz offered at the time) and it was about 30 times faster than my old dual 700MHZ P3 (turns took about 1 minute or so to compute vs the 1/2 hour or more for the old system. I suspect that older systems will work but the play will be very slow and the fluid play quality will be compromised. MIT recently advised buyers to wait on Vista, XP is still the best Windows version for most of us. Memory is very important--my system uses 1.7 GB when playing large CMAK scenarios. Dual or Multi core CPUs tend to increase system stability more than speed (lock-ups are rare). Water-cooling also improves stability (my system --which is always on-- runs the CPU's at room temp and needs a reboot about once a year). I also consider a UPS essential to avoid crashes--I have an APS 1600 VA unit. Some good news is that CPU's probably won't be getting much faster in the next few years--they have reached the limits of the Silicon based CPU (~4 GHz).

Will the editor come as a patch later if it doesn't ship with the initial release?

I want to thank you for the hard work on this game. I have enjoyed CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK and still play them. I am looking forward to this new addition.

I want to thank you for the hard work on this game. I have enjoyed CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK and still play them. I am looking forward to this new addition.