Field Marshal Blücher

I doubt the next module will include them; Commonwealth AND Fallschirmjaeger AND SS is quite a lot of forces on its own. I think if they are included at all they'd be in the last module, the tentatively-titled "Battle Pack," that just has some odds and ends that didn't really fit into the other modules. BTW, while CMSF definitely had resistance-type fighters, there would be a ton of work to do to get them in CMBN. They'd need textures, new TO&E (which of course would still need to be mostly made-up), possibly new weapon modeling depending on what sort of weapons the Resistance was armed with, and so on. To be honest, I don't know how often the Resistance engaged in direct CM-style action against the Germans, and personally, I don't really care if we ever see them. But fortunately for you, I don't decide what goes into the modules, so I wouldn't rule them out!

No, since it's in the base game. Maybe you haven't seen it in any scenarios, but open up the editor and fiddle around with a US Towed AT unit--the 76mm M5 is definitely in there.

Yeah, to be honest I think a lot, if not all, of the official campaign maps were grabbed by MarkEzra for QB maps as well, so I'm not sure that would help.

Me too, I've already gone back to CMSF for the foreseeable future. Not to say that I won't be playing ANY CMBN, but CMSF is back at the top of my "to play" list, at least for now.

Yep! Except maybe on low difficulty settings (I don't know, I haven't played on anything under Elite since the CMBN beta started), only friendly units flash when they take casualties.

Yes and no. On PC and Mac, users are not supposed to be able to edit campaigns; only the designer can edit them. This is by design.

Really? I'm not too familiar with the Mac port for CMBN, being a PC guy, but I'm pretty sure it's not anyone called "Clayton."

No, while the .50 round was originally intended as an AT weapon, by WWII it was no longer effective against tanks. Anything lighter than tanks, though, was fair game. EDIT: gunnergoz also pointed out something quite relevant, which is that the Germans don't have .50s anyway! My guess is either artillery or concealed AT guns. Panzerfausts have extremely short range; I believe most of them to be either 30 or 60 m. Panzerschrecks are longer ranged, although my guess is that if you didn't know what it was that killed your tanks it's probably either artillery or AT guns, since Panzerschrecks tend to get spotted rather quickly.

I have one active project, Die Letzte Hoffnung (The Final Hope), a campaign with Devils' Descent-like mechanics centered around a depleted Panzergrenadier (mot) battalion from the 116th PzDiv in the Mortain counterattack. The first battle is done and I'm working on the second, but there are a lot of maps yet to go and I have no idea when I'll be finished. I've also got two more projects in the back of my mind for when some more modules come out. Yep! At present I'm working on one campaign with Bulgaroktonos centered around the US Army's 1-66 Armor (1 mission done, maps for two more being worked on), and I have several more on the drawing boards.

Huh, well, it would be awesome if it did work. Unfortunately, I don't have any saves from the campaign (deleted them all when I got a new machine), so I can't test this myself, but if someone else wants to try this out, go hog wild.

Yes, I did create a new campaign. It's called "Devils' Descent (Clean).cam." The mission titles are also slightly different so that I could preserve the originals. For example, the first mission's file name is "DDCam 01.btt". The clean version is designated "DDCam 01C.btt" in order to not overwrite the original file. So not only is the campaign file name different, but the mission titles within the campaign script are also different. I highly doubt that the campaign UI would be compatible with the Shift+Click methodology for importing save games.

Actually, the two versions are completely incompatible; according to the game's logic, they're different campaigns. I'm sorry about this, but I had to do it in order to preserve the original campaign. You will need to completely restart if you want to use the clean version.

Guys, guys, guys--the clean version is there because people requested it, and that's all there is to it. If you want the war movie version, play the original. If you want a perhaps more realistic interpretation, play the clean version. Choice isn't a bad thing.

Well, the clean version of Devils' Descent should be up on the Repository soon! Thanks to BloodyBucket for the "translations" . . .

Several people have, for one reason or another, be it historically accurate low levels of profanity in WWII, or to introduce the little ones to CMBN, requested a version of my Devils' Descent campaign with less R-rated language in it. Well, it's here, and it should be up on the Repository soon! Special thanks to BloodyBucket for doing what I did not have the time to do: editing the many, many .txt files to clean up the characters' vocabulary.

Not quite, but send me a PM with your email address. I can email you a .zip file with the briefings in it. You can edit them, send them back to me, and I'll re-compile a "clean" campaign.

I'm not trying to be annoying, but that is the difference. CMx1 and CMx2 are completely different game engines. CMx2 shares (if I understand correctly) approximately zero code with CMx1; everything needed to be built from the ground up. And my guess is, either something in the way that terrain or campaigns (or both) is handled makes it difficult/time consuming to code persistent terrain deformation in CMx2. Probably the only person who really knows is Charles.

OK, in that case . . . There is some resupply at some point.

How spoiler-y do you want my response to be? I can give you very precise information or just a general sense of how things will turn out.

Yep, Broadsword's concept is probably what I'm going to do should I decide to go for the narrative angle.

As Rokko said, I would have to do this myself to edit the whole campaign. I'm going to leave it as is for now, though. If I was going to edit the campaign, this is exactly what I'd do, though--excellent suggestion.

Yeah, I actually do know that. Basically, I had to make a choice between going for period-accurate dialogue, or dialogue based on real people that I knew. I knew that each one would sound forced to somebody (since the period-accurate dialogue would be harder for me to write convincingly), so I went with my gut and wrote it based on dialogue that I hear every day. Thanks for pointing this out, though. It's an interesting conundrum, and this ties in nicely to my response to thejetset's post below yours: Basically, the main reason I'm debating writing a narrative for the Germans is that it'll be harder for me to do it convincingly. Not only would it be difficult to accurately capture the mannerisms of 1940s German soldiers, but I'd also need to tread VERY carefully around the ideology of Nazism and how to portray it. I'm not ruling out the dialogue, it's just an issue I'm still debating internally.

Then you must know classier people than I do. Seriously, the reason the characters talk like that is that real people that I know talk like that. There's one sequence in particular in a later mission where Evans and Bautz exchange two lines of dialogue that contain a horrific percentage of profanities, but that's based on an actual exchange that I heard between two of my friends. One thing that you'll note as you get deeper into the narrative is that the characters are distinct. Evans and Bautz are very, very profane, Ford and Johnson less so, Spurgin swears very little, and Blaes does not swear at all.

Heh. I did say the campaign had meaningful choices. If you guys enjoyed the campaign, you might want to play it again and make a different choice in the second decision mission; it can substantially affect the way the campaign plays out. To everyone in general, I have some more comments: First of all, I'm overwhelmed by all of the positive feedback. I put a lot of effort into this, and I am so happy to see that you guys are enjoying the campaign this much. Second, regarding difficulty (or lack thereof ): I think the campaign came out a little easier than I intended it to be, but I'm going to leave it as is for now. There are a couple of reasons why it's so easy. First, it was always intended to be in the "Medium-Easy" range of difficulty from the start. Second, the vast majority of scenario design and testing took place during the early to mid Alpha testing phase. I'm afraid of going into specifics, but suffice to say that there were some bugs around back then that made the first three missions substantially more difficult than they are now. Not only are those missions easier, but the last few missions were designed with the mindset that the player would have taken heavier casualties in the first few missions than you guys are experiencing. Overall, I'm OK with the result, as it produces an entertaining campaign that's accessible to CM newcomers, but my future CMBN campaigns will be a step up in difficulty. Third, there are definitely some more projects in the works. At a bare minimum, I hope to continue this specific storyline into Market-Garden when that module comes out. As to more current projects, I'm in the process of designing a campaign with similar decision mechanics (I'm not sure yet if there's going to be a narrative for this one) about the 116th Panzer Division in the Mortain counterattack. I'm also considering a new CMSF campaign using the decision mechanics as well (although there will almost certainly be no narrative due to the inflexibility of the CMSF briefing format). So rest assured, there will definitely be more like this on the way. -FMB

Absolutely! I have four projects in various stages of completeness that I'm working on right now. Let's see if I finish any of them . . .