Lethaface

double post

double post

Guess someone needs to create a screenshot topic Anyway, having a quick spin with the Skirmish at Sichenhausen. I guess doom is right around the bend!

Guess theyre both jealous of eachother and playing hard to get.

I barely managed even that, lol. Basically installed it and looked through the scenario's. But looking forward to hands on time with both! Fwiw I use windows defender/firewall (active while installing) and no issues like you mention. Could also be a permission thing, reminds me about some issues I had with admin permissions/ the virtual store in Windows 7 orso. But I guess Steve will sort you out!

@ArtkinNo grudge but imo he is sort of prone to logical attribution errors. Combined with 'everyone was wrong about X' type of headlines. Anyway probably I'd agree with what @domfluff states, but I can't watch him (TIK) anymore after I watched some of the video's where he has reinvented the wheel as a new innovation.

Hollywood being Hollywood, the difference in the early war was that Germany had been building their army around a cadre of 100K (Versailles) of their best WW1 officers since the 20s. The German army in 1941 was relatively very well trained, with plenty of experienced officers/nco's, got recent experience in the 39-41 period and because of the success well motivated. Inside the military low level leadership was encouraged and part of doctrine. While in 1941 the Red Army was still dealing with the consequences of the purge of the officer corps and while they had some experience in the Winter War that wasn't as successful. On average their troops weren't as well trained. Overall you could say the Red Army wasn't as prepared and motivated to fight in 1941. Over the course of the war the situation reversed, sort of. Inside the Red Army there was also less of a culture of low level leadership and initiative. They were two different armies, organized in different ways. With different 'strengths and weaknesses'. Addressing those and concluding Army X did better in such and such fashion, doesn't automatically mean that person is saying that Army Y soldiers were brainless. Anyone in their right mind knows they were all human and in many cases probably (very) distant relatives.

To be fair I didn't read Steve telling us being proud of a patch a year. Actually he posted this a few posts back: "Our problem with patching is each one is very time consuming, and cumulatively patching across so many games really adds up. That means we can't be doing anything else. For example, if a CMSF2 bug were found last month, do we stop working on Fire & Rubble for 3 weeks to put out a patch?"

Guess I have other issues that I only learned later, or still have to discover And indeed it is good that there are people who (dare to) 'complain', or just dare say that they think things are wrong, should be different and or could be improved (and explain why / how). In my perspective that's not really complaining but just being critical in a positive fashion. Nobody has to like stuff, but then again nobody needs to create fuss unnecessary. Some people apparently believe their criticism is taken more seriously if they combine/spice it up with a touch of drama.

Not really lol.

CMSF2 PATCH FTW!!! (and for the record, the PKM ammo issue is still there for special Forces & Airborne, RPG ammo in QB is like 1 per squad for all branches ). However I do trust what you say, I have no reason to assume you guys enjoy having us wait for patches unnecessarily long. Sometimes things are just 'it is what it is'. If no gross misconduct or negligence is in play, I prefer constructive criticism / suggestions opposed to plain complaining. Because if nothing else 'tone of voice' is an important part of communication, at least in my world. Perhaps it helps I can understand the challenge/time sink involved maintaining several game families with separate executables / installs, even though they share a lot of the codebase, with a small team. Of course I also hope you guys somehow find ways to improve the speed of patching and testing processes. Perhaps for CMx3 with a single 'family' and all content in module form? Anyway even with JIRA, Bitbucket and CI/CD (etc) in place still someone needs to 'accept' new/changed functionality and design/write the tests. And of course that's more complicated to do in an automated pipeline compared to manual tests. Even though i'm a proponent of these things, it's quite the effort and chances are overall progress will actually delay for a good while before it can improve, assuming that hiring the correctly skilled staff etc all goes according to plan. This stuff is not easy for large corporations, perhaps even harder given the employee turnover and more compartmentalized roles and responsibilities. So whether it's a good idea to even go on such an adventure for an existing product/codebase and a small team?? Maybe yes maybe no I'd say, with some healthy experience on the subject

You can already 'move on' now, allowing yourself to be happily surprised when the game releases. Or you could stay getting worked up every day it isn't released, which you'll probably do anyway. All the best whatsoever.

It's no mindfulness exercise, please spare me the masquerading of your impatience as delays. The delay in you grasping to understand that the world doesn't turn and tick to your clock is endless. Anyway, obviously you would have set priorities different; I get it. The only 'simple truth' in this is that you (nor me) don't decide on the priorities with regards to BFC. The difference between us is that you are waiting and complaining for years, while I don't 'wait' for things that are outside of my control (unless it would be critical for my wellbeing; releases of computer games are typically not critical to my wellbeing). One day it will release (or not), if all is well I will take note of the release and download the game. You remind me of an observation I made almost 2 decades ago. When in my early 20's I often had to travel by bus. I noticed many people checking the bus schedule at the bus stop and then looking at their watch and becoming irritated/angry that the bus has been delayed. While I never looked at the schedule, because me looking at the schedule wouldn't have any influence with regards to the bus arriving sooner or later. That wasn't a 'one time' observation, I'd often see the same people around the same time getting worked up about the same thing. Conceptually you are doing the same thing. Everyday it hasn't come out you are getting angry at more delays, even though they've said yesterday that it won't come out today Now please excuse me I have something else to do, which is under my control (work).

And TIK is the prophet who knows it all Try playing against a human opponent. They might even do 'worse' tricks than the AI, like hiding on the reverse slope with Pz Schrecks that shoot your tanks as soon as they get over the ridge. Somehow you seem to prefer an AI who would just sit in the open allowing you to take them out at your leisure, instead of giving you some challenge to overcome.

This! I also have my gripes of bugs/issues that aren't given the attention I feel they deserve (CMSF2 QB issues; lack of PKM ammo for SF&Airborne, lack of RPG ammo for all Syrian conventional forces). And yes some releases take longer than expectations. Which is why it is always good to hope for the best but expect the worst! Probably each of the posters here have their own 'gripe list'. We all would like to see the lists addressed and items fixed (sooner rather than later), featuring a public bugtracker with a clear process how to report new bugs. In theory everything is possible, but everything comes at a cost (time, resources, opportunities). So in the end decisions are made and some things are fixed and some aren't, that however doesn't mean BFC doesn't care about the things they didn't fix. Nor does it implicate that BFC wouldn't want to improve certain processes. Would I like to see the bug process improved: yes! Do I think it is possible to improve: yes! Now, if BFC fails to improve it does that mean they don't care? no. It just means they didn't manage to improve it or didn't even try it because they deemed other stuff was more important. In the end it's just choices/decisions that need to be made, BFC can't please everyone. C'est la vie. Unfortunately not many people accept or even understand the wisdom behind this view. If only for their own 'mental health'. Although probably some of the 'complaints' about delays in F&R have become part of a regular routine people need for their coping mechanisms ;-).

My response to your original post 'infantry is useless in CM' would be 'than you didn't learn how to play CM yet'. Anyway regarding the stock campaigns of CMRT, imo sometimes the point of a mission is to show the strengths and weaknesses of the depicted forces. And or maybe force you to still use them in suboptimal conditions (resembling SNAFUBAR 'Real Life' a little bit), perhaps in creative ways, to achieve objectives. For example if you throw enough infantry into the fray you can overcome very sturdy defenses, however you will take heavy casualties. The USSR campaign in CMRT has a couple of scenario's which represent that. I enjoyed them, although I can understand they're not everybody's cup o tea. Still most often the infantry is key (especially in complex terrain) and they are the main tool in dismantling defenses, other assets provide support. In more tank friendly terrain tanks can be the main asset, but they still need infantry to support them for various tasks. But yes in general the infantry task is to do the dirty work: finding the enemy and endure the artillery, dying. There is a reason they called infantry 'cannon fodder', their job is to do or die not to question why And obviously infantry are squishy, especially compared to armored vehicles and usually they don't stand a chance against them 1-1 in the open or at distance. However, go into close quarter combat in complex terrain and the infantry will dominate unsupported tanks. CM has a rather long learning curve, I guess it's reasonable easy to get into the game (although harder than the average RTS), but it takes a long time to master. The finesses of infantry combat are among the more complicated affairs in CM, imo.

PBEMs are just like hotseat, only difference is after each turn the game is saved and you send the file to your opponent. Dropbox or any other file transer works fine, which is much more easy to setup than a computer in the cloud. It would also work fine with two computers in different rooms, just exchange the files on a network share. Another option would be WEGO TCP/IP, but that doesn't allow more than one replay of a turn. Literally if you are looking to play on two computers instead of one, PBEM is the way to go. Perhaps just try it out, I think you'll find it great. Anyway I've been playing PBEMs since before 2010 orso and in general don't have issues (plenty of large games among those). As a matter of fact I'm playing a huge game right now, no issues with turns generating correctly. All in all after about 50+ PBEM games I played over the years, I don't need to read a thread about people having an issue, to know that it works fine in general.

This is called PBEM. Hotseat literally is about playing on 1 computer (with one seat, hence 'hot' seat). There is also TCP/IP.

Indeed. Gunny Sgt Elvis I'll gladly transfer my 'allowance' to sport the badge to @BFCElvis. And thanks for mailing the key!

A too small of an arc can indeed be very fatal lol, however often I use more specific (armour) arcs against area's where I know/expect enemy tanks or limit the arc to a certain range. Opening up at 2km might just alert your opponent, causing him to fall back his tanks and call in mortars on your AT gun.

I think most of it depends on the context. In general AT guns have good effect against tanks and good range but not so good protection, so having them far back in keyholed positions (relative safe) with good fields of fire at locations where you expect enemy armor will maneuver helps them actually being able to fire at tanks before they die. Armour cover arcs can be used to control the ideal moment of opening fire. Sometimes it can be interesting to hold fire for a bit, if only with the goal to deceive the enemy that the area is safe while it isn't. Armour arcs will also prevent them unmasking to fire at infantry unwanted. Also often players will scout with infantry first, so during that time it can be helpful to hide the AT gun; minimizing the chance of being discovered without having fired a shot. However these are all situational. There aren't always good keyhole positions far back. Sometimes you'll want the AT guns to be part of the front defense and try to achieve fire superiority from the get go instead of letting enemies get closer. Sometimes you'll want them to fire HE at infantry at will. etc So the best way to setup your AT guns is imo to first decide what role you want them to play in your defense based off the terrain, objectives and enemy forces. Where do you expect enemy tanks to advance and where do you want to engage them? Do you want to deny them any form of overwatch (disallowing combined arms action), or do you want to let them come forward and engage enemy tanks while they are facing somewhere else? Etc Thinking about of those things and answering the questions with the specific battle in mind will answer most questions regarding where and how to ideally setup your guns, whether to use (armor) arcs and or hide and when to change those orders. If you can't prevent or detect enemy infantry scouting close to your AT guns (~couple of hundred meters), they will probably get scouted by infantry anyway (even if hiding) and good chance of mortars incoming sooner rather than later. So in that case hiding and arcs might not be that useful, as there is little merit in trying to hide it; might be better of trying to dish out (area) fire wherever possible.

If the gods allow me some time off to play around with these, I'd be happy! Looking great! I had a bit of fun playing around with the previous version, this sure makes me want to go into it again and play a couple of missions. All involved thanks for the hard work!

Nice vid! I really like the modpack (it is my standard CMSF2 for at least sounds), is there an update to download?

@The_Capt @Bil Hardenberger Thanks for the great AAR! Nice game from both, must have been a real nailbiter to play. Sure was one to read and although I was wrong with my prediction, it was funny to see how the 'odds' at the bookies / peanut gallery changed almost every posted turn.