StkNRdr

one more close up shot of the StuG III. http://www.flickr.com/photos/astaken/10273711995/in/set-72157636517138326/

I think you are reading too much into what is suggested. The way I would see the "Ambush" arc working is that once tripped by enemy units, the game would ignore/delete the arc and the unit would react as if no arc was in place. The game already has very intelligent programming for reaction of units for assessing threats when no arc is present. By dropping the arc once triggered, and relying on the regular threat determination, enemy outside the originally placed arc would/could/might be fired on. The goal is to have units hold fire until enemy cross a predetermined position and once firing begins to allow targeting to any enemy units within the same turn the arc is triggered. The Cover Arc currently does not provide this flexibility. When using the Cover Arc you have to wait until the following turn to adjust a unit's fire, losing the surprise element and giving time for enemy units outside the original arc to return fire or take cover.

I agree and that is what I have to do but I think this should happen automatically in game and not have to wait until the next turn to adjust the arch or remove it. A lot can happen in that minute. Since keeping the current arch and it's fire restrictions may also be of value, I suggest a separate "Ambush" arch that adjusts fire automatically.

I have a question that might fit here. If my assumptions of the game reactions are incorrect, please correct me, but this is the way is see it going down. I set an arch and two enemy units approach, one a two man scout and the other an 8 or 9 man unit. The two units separated by 20-50 meters. My crew has LOS on both enemy units. The two man unit crosses into the arch. My crew opens up on the two man unit. The other enemy unit is still outside the arch and therefore are not fired on although in view in the open. They return fire. In the next turn I must change things so my crew fires on the second more threatening team, after surprise is lost. If this is correct would an adjustment to the arch command be in order or a separate ambush command similar to an arch be of value where once my unit begins to fire the threats are evaluated at any distance and fire adjusted?

Ahh...oops, was going to do this but forgot. Hope all is OK. Thanks for the response. No aminated text mod, mainly just the mod pack.

Looking at buying MG. I have many mods installed for CMBN and CW under 2.01. Wondering if they will work if I install MG.

I would try it out but too little space on my C: drive which is where it has to go.

I support the idea but understand it may be more difficult to implement than it may appear. Although it adds to the immersion, that is not the main reason I think it is important. Damage can vary from a tank being completely taken out and showing very little from the outside to explosions that rip the turret off. There is also the unraveling of tracks. The reason I think it is important is, it is a matter of a unit's battlefield knowledge. A unit that gets the hit, for example in the the case of the tracks, would see this damage and know the tank was now immobile. Currently it is an unknown to the unit. It all comes back to what would the units on the filed know in these cases. The damage they witness would tell them more about the enemy vehicle's condition than is currently known in the game.

+1 nice art work Stele

I did this comparison a while ago. The numbers were averages (and thus vary from anyone's personal experience) from web sites, etc. Yachting.................................$200,000 Hot air balloon...........................$25,000 Keeping a horse (1 year).............$15,000 Aircraft lessons...........................$6,000 Glider lessons..............................$4,000 Golf (set and 1 year fees)..............$3,300 Going to Pub (1 year)....................$3,000 Civil War Reenacting.....................$3,000 CM (all modules at full price).............$190 Knitting..........................................$50 It does assume you own a computer and most would run CM. As you can see CM is a relative steal for a hobby. The alternative is that one could knit.

I have been playing pbem for about 5 months now and running H2H Helper for several turns for CMBN. H2H Helper makes pbem seamless. What a great addition. Thank you for developing this and keeping it up to date.

I had never checked my fps on CM as everything looked great. Then you had to go and make this post and so I just had to go and check. I was really surprised how low my fps were. I unchecked vsync as this does not affect screen quality other than tearing and it really holds down fps. No tearing and I picked up some fps. Everything is set to Best and it looks great. System: Win7 64 HP, Intel i7 920 2.67GHz OC=3.2GHz, 9GB DDR3 RAM, nVidia GTX680 2GB, Corsair TX850w PSU

The Target Briefly command should be stackable from one location within the same turn for a unit. In other words targeting on different locations for 15 seconds each up to 4 times in a minute. Right now you can only use the Target Briefly command more than once in a turn if there is another waypoint involved for that unit. This would allow for a larger area to be suppressed by a unit.

I personally think the GUI could better use the terrain of the screen. Most users have a wide screen monitor and there is blank space on either side of the unit information and movement button display. Instead of having 4 mode buttons to chose from for Movement, Combat, Special and Admin which slows down the process, why not have the option to spread these across the bottom of the screen to make selection of an action much quicker for those that prefer mouse clicks over key strokes. I think this should be an option as not everyone has a wide screen monitor or may prefer the current set up. Below is a image of what this could look like.

No issue with Deploy switch here. One thing though, I was surprised, while playing CMFN-CW that not all mortar teams had the Deploy button. It seems the 2-inch mortars setup by themselves. Amazing what one finds when one reads the manual. Wish I knew more about when they deploy.

It all comes down to whether the game should give feedback to the player based on what would have been known to the boots on the ground. The main question is whether a WWII soldier could ESTIMATE distances or ESTIMATE the time to traverse a given distance of terrain? I am not, nor have I ever stated, that I am looking for exact distances or times. I also said this would apply to waypoints. I never mentioned estimates for deploying weapons, etc. If soldiers could estimate these, then these should be available info. There are various ways this could be implemented. Each player would have the ability to use them or not to use them. If soldiers couldn't estimate these, then these should not be available. IMHO, I believe the average soldier was well aware of both and his life depended on his ability to assess them. It is possible that crack troops would be better at estimating these than green troops. This could be included by applying variances that depend on their level of experience. I believe the information is critical to planning. It would allow you to adjust your approach based on the soldier's estimate. So why don't I just estimate it myself? Yes, I could time how long it takes for soldiers to crawl, walk or run over 50 meters and then measure each waypoint I lay down for ever unit and calculate it out. But then again, why do that when, low and behold, I have a computer that would do them immediately. Frankly the time is better spent on the tactics themselves versus all the math I used to do on board games. Maybe many have all the time in the world to make these calculation, I don't. If you still wish to do it the old way, have at it, as you could toggle the estimates OFF. Time and distance is critical to every soldier in battle. They are trained in these aspects. To reiterate, I am not looking for any information that would not have been known to the soldier on the field. As far as the full battle replay capability, it sounds like a dead horse. I just thought it would be nice to archive the H2H games that take a while to unfold.

Did soldiers have to use binoculars, etc. to always estimate distance. No. Why should I have to go to another mode to do the same when I am only moving? And as far as knowing how long it will take to get from A to B? No, I usually don't have a clue, I just watch the time tick away whereas they would have had an idea. So what is wrong with letting me in on their estimation?

SlowMotion, I agree with your comments. I am not looking to make this have perfect information of the modern battlefield. WWII soldiers however knew estimated distances (for sighting a rifle) and they also knew whether it would take them 30 seconds or 5 minutes to cover a section of ground. All I am looking for is the game to let me know what they would have known, in the same approximation. Lastly, as I mentioned in the OP, there would be an on/off toggle, for those who wouldn't wish to use it.

The idea is that since the distances are known, per the targeting info, why not make that information available within the waypoints? This way you don't have to keep switching back and forth and you know the total distance the unit has to traverse. Even a basic infantryman would know that a tree that is 100 meters away is not 30 feet nor 1 mile. Even if the game gave distances +/- a degree of accuracy would be nice. The estimated time that I mentioned would be just that, estimated. It would help to get a rough idea. It would not be expected to be perfect, if fact, I wouldn't want it to be perfect. If an officer knows a unit has to cross a 100 meter field, they would also know what to expect it to take time wise for a unit to get there. In the game as it is now I really don't know how long it will take. That is all I am looking for. Right now, the game has neither of these and I think this info would have been known on the field. EDIT: One last thing, more of a question, would it make sense that the distances only be determined if there is a clear LOS?

I am posting this in CMBN but it applies to CMFI as well. Maybe these have been considered before but I didn't find anything in the search. These occurred to me as I play an pbem. First is waypoints. These are currently very flexible to work with, adjust, etc. One thing that would be helpful is the distance to the waypoints and an estimate of time for a unit to reach each waypoint. Showing the distance would be similar to the distances reflected in the targeting. If you click on a unit with three waypoints 50 meters apart it would show the additive distance at each, i.e. 50m, 100m, 150m. The time estimate would be based on the type of movement intended, i.e. Slow, Move, Quick, etc., the current level of fatigue of the unit and the grade of the terrain. In the example above the time estimate might reflect 1min, 2min, 3.5min. It would obviously only be an estimate. Other factors would effect the estimate versus what actually occurs, such as coming under fire during the movement phase, etc. There are times however, when you are just moving over safe ground or coordinating troops and knowing an estimate would come in very handy. There could be keyboard toggles to turn the distance/time estimates on/off. I would think a field commander would have a good idea of the distances involved and an estimate of the amount of time it would take a unit to traverse a certain distance, be it 20 seconds or 3 minutes. The second item is full battle review. Currently, with the turn based game, you get to review the movement and combat resolution of each turn. What I think would be a great addition is the ability of a cumulative review of the entire battle. In flight sims you can record an entire sortie that may last over an hour with many aircraft. You can then go back and review from any aircraft or angle in a 3D environment. Some have a slider to simply get to the frames you are looking for. It's all there, every bullet fired, every bomb dropped. Play back can be in slow motion or fast forward. I am not saying it should work the same way. The current turn playback is fine if it could somehow show all the turns consecutively without interruption. Playing another person is great fun and it would be great if you could save each full battle to be reviewed in the future. It could be part of the game or a separate utility. OK, time to get out the tomatoes.

If there were no civilians in Normandy how was it that 50,000 were killed there? The Germans did not relocate them except back from the shoreline. They did not relocate themselves as the Germans weren't to keen on having civilians moving around in mass. The ones killed and all the survivors were indeed located there, in the cities, towns and villages. As stated earlier, the game would have more immersion with civilians in it. More importantly, wouldn't it be nice if when you made a post in a "Wouldn't it be cool if..." thread, that you would not be belittled for bringing up something that is simply an idea of something you would like to see. I guess it is your job here JonS to make make fun of ideas and have people feel uncomfortable about posting their thoughts in such an important and serious thread. Maybe some others won't even bother posting their thoughts here seeing how they'll be treated. Way to go. I hope you and your arrogant attitude are not representative the Battlefront community.

Well, the civilians didn't bugger off at Normandy. They were there, in their homes, etc. Their presence was a factor. And yes, it would add to the immersion. Main reason I brought it up. Whether they are waiving cloth from buildings, panicking, hiding in buildings occupied by enemy troops, or blocking your advance as they stream away on roads from a city. Can't be too difficult to model as the basic figures, along with movement and reactions are already present. Just change their appearance. It could also lead to some partisans units. Like anything else, maybe it could be an option to have them On or Off, allowing each player to decide for themselves.

JonS, thanks for the response. This article seems like a great article about casualty rates going down among combat units over time. Can't see the whole article however. I'm talking about civilian populations. Now I understand many fled towns as armies advanced but not all. There were civilians in Europeans towns and cities when the armies went through.

Still getting to know CM but one thing that I think would be fairly simple to implement and would add to the immersion of the game is civilians and animals. Every mission I play, the towns and fields are empty, just me and the enemy. Unfortunately, things weren't that tidy. Civilians were in buildings you might shell, animals were in fields you may lay fire across. I am not looking for gore. It is just another aspect of a battle, especially the civilian populations, that could actually come into mission objectives. Too many civilian casualties and maybe it could count against you in the results. If this has been discussed ad nauseum already, my apologies.

Plain as day. Thanks.