LarsS

I would say it looks about right as is. At least according to the graphic below, which I found when googling WTH a Belgian gate is (and yes, now I want them in the game!).

Of course it is. The pixeltruppen are just in it to add a bit of flavour, kind of like the Godzilla creatures you could unleash on your city in the SimCity games. The name of the game is Construction Modeller: Bocage Neighbourhoods, after all.

Looks good. BTW, what would be the difference of the width of the beach (as opposed to vertical difference of water level) between high and low tide in early June at the landing beaches?

Actually, the difficulty of the terrain the tank traverses has a great impact on accuracy when firing on the move. Since the modelling is "pixel to pixel" and "what you see is what you get", every bump the tank hits will change the gun's vertical alignment and therefore it's point of aim and accuracy if it fires before the gun has been raised/depressed to align with the target. Having said that, there would seem to be no abstraction of "bumpiness" built into the terrain tiles, as is the case with abstracted cover for infantry. So I believe the accuracy would be the same when moving over rocky terrain, light forest or whatever, as it would be when going along a nice paved road. Unless the bumps are actually built into the 3D map, as with ditches, craters, and sudden changes of slope angles, the specific terrain type doesn't seem to be a factor for accuracy when on the move.

Technically, what you do is give the ENEMY a destroy unit objective for your trucks. Then if they are destroyed on map, he scores. If they haven't exited when the battle is done, they count as destroyed and the enemy scores. If they exit as planned, no points are awarded. So, you don't give one side an objective to exit a particular unit, you give the opposing side points for destroying it or preventing it from leaving the battlefield. But the problem is that ALL units that the enemy will get points for destroying MUST exit the battle or count as destroyed, if there is an exit zone anywhere on the map. Therefore, if you use exit zones when making a scenario, you can't award points for destroying enemy units other than using the much blunter parameters tool. Exit zones are basically not designed to be at a friendly map edge.

The problem lies in combining exit zones and destroy unit objectives. In most scenarios it makes sense to award inflicting casualties on the enemy. This is done by assigning destroy unit objectives to parts of, or the entire, enemy force. Usually it's done for both sides. But, if one side has an exit zone anywhere on the map, ALL his units that the enemy has as a destroy unit objective will count as destroyed if they haven't exited the map when the scenario ends. So, adding an exit area at the friendly map edge, actually means unit destroy objectives can't be assigned for the enemy, if the scenario is to work, since it makes no sense at all for one side to reatreat all his units at the beginning of the battle.

If the units you placed were part of an AI group with setup orders according to an AI plan, the AI will reposition them to the designated setup areas for the plan. If you don't assign a unit to a group, or if you don't give the group any orders, it will stay where you place it in the editor.

Nice find! I can already see the low on ammo paratroopers having to fight to get to their airdropped ammo caches...

Helpful, indeed. Also, the load order of the mod files is important, as the latest loaded file takes precedence over any previously loaded ones, if they modify the same thing.

This mod is wonderful! Some of the changes just feel different from the stock terrain and others are great improvements. My absolute favorite is the new pavé road pattern (http://imageshack.us/f/192/52670167.jpg/). Thanks a lot for all your work on this!

In another thread Steve says that "things should go quicker now" with releasing new modules and stuff, than it did after SF's release. To me that sounds like BFC intends for the next expansion to be out closer to 6 months than 12 months from now. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1276496&postcount=8

I was wondering why it isn't possible to fire these weapons from balconies, but I guess the back blast problem would be the same with any wall close behind the weapon, even if outside. Being outside would only help with over pressure.

Good news about BFC starting development on the new modern, temperate game in a few month's time. Can't wait! Well, with BN out, I guess I can. It will certainly be very interesting to see BFC's take on a hypothetical NATO vs Russia conflict.

Hide again to unhide - it's a toggle function.

Weren't the three SF expansions released at a rate of ABOUT one a year from the original game's release? During that time, a lot of work was put into patching the game and also making BN. So, if BFC exclusively worked on the next Normandy module, they could probably churn it out within six months. But the question is how much parallel work will be done on more long term projects and if it makes good business sense to release an expansion too soon.

This is great work! Thanks a bunch! If you have time, please do update the mod to use the panzer officers' hat for infantry officers. LLF ruined the stock hat for me;).

I'll just list some small things that come to mind. Stuff like AI triggers and scripting kind of goes without saying. In SF you could use several unit orders like aquire, split teams and bail out when setting the sides up in the editor. In BN you can't. I just can't understand why this change was made. E.g., in SF I liked how you could set up empty veichles that you would crew and get rolling during the battle. This also meant that you could put the "wrong" crew in some of the veichles (like technicals, humvees and those cool British WMIKs or whatever they are called). You could also aquire all the goodies from veichles (and then remove them from the battle, if you wanted to). This was important since the AI can't use the aquire command. Please, please, please oh-friggin-please randomize the facing of the more "natural" types of flavour objects when placing them. Having to multiple-click-turn a mapful of rocks, logs, stumps and junk piles to give them a randomized look is, well, living death. Why the fixed roof types on the different kinds of modular buildings? Why not allow the designer to choose between red tiles, black tiles or plate by cycling all the varieties for all modular houses? Same thing with the exterior wall textures for both the modular and independent buildings. Oh, and change one of the haystacks to a big stinking pile of manure. Guess it is easily modded though...

I've run in to the same issue that cyrano01 mentiones in his linked thread. On three or four occasions in single player QB have I had to play as the American attacker even though I picked the defending Germans. I choose "human" for both sides' force selection in all instances, and did not use the "suggested" force option, but instead bought all units manually. It has never happened when the AI automatically picks his force.

The five levels of supply give you 100, 80, 60, 40 and 20 % of the full ammo count.

I think taking things slowly is indeed the key to using snipers on the offensive. Haste gets them killed needlessly. Since there are only two in the team, it doesn't cost that much to give them crack or even elite motivation, and this seem to help with everything from spotting and hitting to concealment. Hard to judge to what extent, though. And since you can make them part of any platoon, it's easy to send up a split-off scout team from another squad in that platoon to resupply them with ammo when they are gettin low.

IIRC, the US engineers that arrive at minute 20 are in the A1 group, which is probably a mistake, since that group has a chain of "exit before" orders for early in the battle. So when they show up, those orders have already been executed and they therefore just sit out the fight att the map's edge. The rest of the US forces attacked, though.

Just making sure: the AI can't pre-bombard units it knows about (or should know about) from intel, right?

Funny and actually a potentially useful find. At least I did not know that flavour objects could be blasted with demo charges. I tried a bunch of others and found that haystacks and shelters can also be blown up. Not fountains, large fountains, street lights, telephone poles, benches, drums, boxes, sacks, carts, or other stuff that I already forgot, however.

I tested this. Had two identical American companies face each other, one behind a 500 m stretch of bocage, the other in a 500 m continous trench. Did a couple of battles at 100 m, 200 m and 300 m range, respectively. It wasn't even fun to watch. Massacre sure is the correct word for what happened in every case. Consistently the guys in the trench got wiped out within a few minutes, while the boys behind the bocage usually suffered around 10 casulties. As a reference, I tested the same forces (minus mortars), but this time in a full row of buildings (1-story modular) vs the bocage at 250 m range, for a couple of battles. The bocage gave decidedly better cover, but the losses here were more like 100 to 30-40, and the battles petered out due to the lack of ammo. To get the fight started I had to do some area fire on the bocage, since the opposing forces could not spot each other at the start of the battle. Also, I kept sending my guys in the buildings back after they had bugged out and sought the safty behind them. Lessons learned: always put your units behind bocage. I guess the bocage combination of thick earth/rock/root cover with nice concealment is more or less an ideal defensive feature. And that's why the bocage in Normandy was such an issue. Someone should test concrete bunkers vs bocage.

Also, the supports of the steel railroad bridge could give the unwary map designer some troubles since they end up in the middle of the tiles instead of at the edges. Not at all related, but I just found out that the maximum height of a bridge is 20 m.