Bahger

Fair enough. I'm supporting the game and will continue to yearn for patches. But once I reverted to savegames and got my forces through the map, destroying all the static tanks and sustaining no losses except for one Stryker which, without orders from me, raced to the compound in a hail mary suicide run, I could not get the vehicles through the bottleneck that is the guarded entrance to the compound. I took needless losses just because the pathfinding glitches created a traffic jam when there shouldn't have been one. Don't get me wrong, I'm still intrigued by this game. But it's trying my patience. Surely the big no-no of any game is to punish the player, not because his tactics are poor but because the program cannot resolve a simple issue like getting vehicles though an entryway. With all that backing up and reversing and getting themselves killed, it was like a Keystone Kops movie directed by Ridley Scott.

I'm on the verge of giving up the SP Campaign after less than one turn of the first mission. Why? Because my units' pathfinding from the embarkation point to the end of the berm is such a disgrace that, in four attempts st the turn, a vehicle, usually a Stryker spotter vehicle, goes up on the berm, skylines himself and gets spanked. This is a disgrace, guys. I'm sorry, I'm one of your staunchest defenders but how the heck can anybody blame Tom and Bruce for eviscerating an otherwise wonderfully promising game when idiotic stuff like this happens with depressing consistency? And it's not as if the map has a chokepoint here; the approach is wide, well-defined and unhindered by enemy fire yet every time I've played it, a vehicle strays onto the berm. It's pitiful.

No clues, just to report that ctrl and shf hang the game for about ten seconds for me, too, and selecting multiple units is a pain.

In the first mission of the campaign I positioned two of the tanks by the gap in the berm near the embarkation zone. Neither could "see" it as a gap and drove along the berm, skylining themselves and getting spanked. Ugly. More seriously, trying to select multiple units with SHF-Left click causes the computer to hang for a few seconds and often deselects units already chosen, seemingly arbitrarily. Trying to draw a box around these units is also glitchy and fruitless. This is frustrating. Can anyone advise?

Ah, sorry about the confusion. I'm going to go back into the first campaign mission because I'm sure I didn't see where the blue zone was and although I managed to "quick place" a unit, it was a fluke and I couln't repeat the feat.

I can't find this in the FM: How do we know when "teleporting" units (i.e. placing them on the map for the initial turn as opposed to moving them under their own power) is permitted and how is it accomplished, please? Many thanks.

Yeah I don't think my ISP will allow a 13MB file as an email attachment...

I feel for you. 14MB is a helluva size for a PBEM swapfile and, personally, I don't want to play MP in this like it's Company of Heroes. FWIW, I bet PBEM works great, it's one of the glories of CM1. But if you do not have a broadband connection you're doomed.

That seems like a very slow d/l with a T1 connection. I'm getting 159 KB/sec rock steady over DSL connection...

Thanks guys. Email me or post here if I can pass it along.

My equivalent of that story: Seeing the "Bankrobber" video and realising that the exterior portions were shot in Lewisham High Street, a quarter mile from where I went to school for eleven years. Oh, that and Mick Jones having two children with Daisy, a glamorous blonde acquaintance from my teen years.

Well the email from Major_Jerkov never arrived so if anyone else would like to oblige (my email address is in my profile) I'd be grateful. However, as I say, no big thang.

Good Lord, now that really is a dumbell move if it's true.

I sent it to the one in your profile. </font>

Thank you Major, I'm PM-ing you my email address now. Much obliged.

No biggie, but I left home this morning (08:30 PST) before my download email arrived so I'm stranded at work for quite a while. I could spend that time reading the manual if it's possible to get it via email or d/l it somehow. As I say, I'm not expecting anyone to open a vein to get it to me but if it's no trouble it would be good to get the recon done while I'm at the office.

Cannot play now but I'd be interested in TCPs or PBEMs in the future. And if you have Teamspeak we can get onto a server and figure out who is the biggest Clash fan. You may just have met your match, Elvis.

Well it appears that Bruce Geryk has taken against the game too, and plans to say so in CGW (albeit in only 250 words) according to the comments section of Troy's blog here: http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2007/07/20/the-eyes-of-the-innocent/#comment-73401 I'm not fazed by any of this. There are always pathfinding and AI bugs in tac-sims that are at the mercy of tremendous variables in terms of movement and tactical options. AI will never "think", it will only simulate thought, at least for the foreseeable future and most experienced tactical gamers understand this. I've been eager to find a modern battlefield sim that takes its high-fidelity tactical gameplay even more seriously than the need to deliver eye-candy and visceral thrills yet is still entertaining to play. My demands seem fairly modest but it's amazing how rarely they are met: I just want gameplay to reflect and reward real-world company-level tactics. I don't expect the game to be highly polished but, precisely because it's not corporate product, lowest common denominator console portage or a movie franchise but is instead the progeny of true hobbyists I kind of know deep down that a really sincere attempt has been made to foster true tactical gameplay. Recently I've played Company of Heroes and admired it, but it's over-scripted in SP. I'll take occasionally goofy AI over scripting any day. I am not snobbish about tac-shooters and I look for tactical opportunities in those games but ArmA's SP campaign is slapped together and an insult to my intelligence and GRAW 2 is a highly polished corridor-shooter with only occasional opportunities to experience the freedom of choice of a small-unit spec-ops commander. So...I'm sure CMSF will have its bugs, its annoyances and its detractors. But these devs are on my wavelength and that's why I refuse to see the glass as anything but half-full.

Thanks for the reassurance re. system specs, guys. Hey Troy, what's Bruce's beef? Bruce who? He says in your blog comments that he's reviewing CMSF for CGW and he appears to be sharpening his knife. I'm optimistic. It may have problems but CMSF is that rare thing, a high-end game that's not corporate product or a movie franchise. I played the living daylights out of the first in the series, SP, PBEMs, and what it did, it did very well. I'm craving authentic tactical gameplay in PC battlefield sims right now and the fact that this game's setting is contemporary makes me very positively inclined towards it.

Eh, that worries me. I had assumed, maybe naively, that the relatively moderate min. specs might enable me to play this on my mid-range but non-cutting edge machine without feeling like I'm playing half a game. But maybe not. P4 2.8 GHz 2 GB RAM Ati x800xl Win XP Pro + SP2 Audigy 2

Is it fair to assume that, in the absence of a training mission, the first scenario or two will be a little less demanding, or at least smaller-scale than some of the later ones?

Thanks.

Will the d/l version have a .pdf manual that we can access before the other material arrives in the mail?

Wow, you really are an a$$hat, Dorosh, and perversely eager to prove it. You display every characteristic of the forum bully: You parade your "credentials" as though they give you moral, let alone intellectual, authority, you browbeat the OP as though your platitudes and unsolicited, overbearing "advice" are actually for his benefit rather than for your own self-glorification, you love the sound of your own voice and you do not know when to shut up. That moment passed when you posted your ill-advised and discourteous response to the OP so I'm fully confident that you'll go on now, as you have nothing to lose.

You mean the d/l may be available on Thursday for those who have ordered from BFC? And I'm assuming they'll send out an email when it's online, right? Again, sorry about the rudimentary questions. I'm an experienced sim gamer but I've steered clear of full game downloads so far. [ July 23, 2007, 04:11 PM: Message edited by: Bahger ]