Paper Tiger

noob Okay your Panther pics beats my Panther pic hands down. Your other 'cat' picture is better IMO though. If only we could persuade them to take off their glasses so that we could see their eyes.

Aha. But the Real Time engine means that there are other game design features that were not possible using CMx1's old WEGO engine It's been a VERY long time since I read some of Steve's posts talking about the benefits that the RT engine would confer. I believe that one of them was that artillery no longer had to start and finish in the same turn. I guess, if I'm right that it means ballistic tracking can be maintained across turns. So it's not all just for the benefit of the 'teenagers' in our midst (like me )

I haven't seen the new shaders in CMFI yet so I don't know if they've improved the look of the game or not. But, agreed, improvements to the lighting would bring out the beauty of the current set of models. The models themselves are beautiful. (Personal favourite was CMSF's Jackal) I edited my post just to add this one screenshot that was taken while testing the Commonwealth module. This is a 100% untouched screenshot and I think it's not too shoddy.

Well, my bad because my post wasn't clear. There's no doubt that the original screenshot doesn't look as good but I have (had ) much better ones and that was what I had in mind when I posted. The KT I see in the game is better than the one your screenshot shows.

I don't believe it! I appear to have lost every screenshot that I took while I was working on the Commonwealth module. I had some cracking pictures of the KT which are much better than the one you've posted above. I play the game with the Best quality models and when I'm playing for screenshots, I have shadows turned on as well. Perhaps the KT is not the best vehicle model in the game to make comparisons with though. I doubt that any other game has better Tigers in them, especially after Aris has modded them. I only single out the Tiger because he's posted some cracking screenshots of his Tiger mod for CMFI.

BTW, ASL halved the gun's calibre to get the mortar's firepower. I think a 60mm gun had a FP rating of 8 and so the 60mm mortar used the 4FP table or something like that. However, ASL was very abstract and so isn't a very useful comparison. One thing that I'd suggest is that the game gives units greater protection from artillery when cowering on the ground while the rounds are falling, especially lower calibre rounds*. Units that are ASSAULTING should get a morale boost using that order (the got one in CMx1 and I assume that this is still the case) that will keep them moving through the falling artillery, to a point. So maybe better protection from grovelling would help? * I doubt grovelling would provide much protection from a 150mm round though.

It's true that a GUN doesn't get any benefit from being placed in a foxhole or trench but its crew does. The crew will hunker down in the fortification when the mortar/artillery rounds are coming in and then get back up when the threat stops. That's quite realistic. It's quite hard to knock out the gun itself so the gun in a foxhole/trench has a greater survivablilty than one that is not. Sandbags seem to be good against incoming fire but not so good for artillery. Of course, when you're playing the stock scenarios, you may not get any/enough of these lovely foxholes/trenches but it's worth bearing in mind when you're purchasing your own OB When I was testing missions for the 'Scottish Corridor' campaign (stops for applause) I noticed that infantry in foxholes were actually quite safe from artillery especially when they were hiding. There was one mission where the Brits set-up zones were set to be targetted by some medium Nebelwerfer rockets at set-up. As long as they were hiding, the rockets didn't inflict many casualties at all. We're talking about 1-3 on average. If the rocket hit the foxhole itself, well, that's tough because I wouldn't expect it to provide much benefit in real life either. Funny because I've often thought the same thing. I'm back working on something using US PIR units and they have one 60mm mortar per platoon and I've decided that the best way to tone these blighters down is to set their ammo to Scarce. And that has helped a lot. Perhaps the Full ammo loadout is a bit over the top. It's something like 48 rounds IIRC and I've already posted a screenshot demonstrating what a single mortar can do in the right set of circumstances.

To the OP I'd say that OFFBOARD artillery is one of the things that CMx2 largely gets right. (Not NAVAL artillery though) I think you'd find it worked as you'd expect it to if you played on very large maps (2+km x 2+km) with a minimum of a Battalion a side, even against a well set-up AI defence. TRPs are a mixed bag. Not only do they allow a FO to call in artillery on, or near, their location at any time without LOS, they also permit onboard mortars which can fire indirectly to do the same, even after they've moved in the game. Further, the owner gets a bonus to fires on enemy units in the vicinity of a TRP. So you have to be careful with them.

Funny, the original King Tiger model that came with the Commonweath module already looks like the KT in that picture. CMx2's vehicle models stand right up there with the tanks in those screenshots. Now the trees, and their level of detail models (LOD) are better in those screenshots but that's about it.

I guess it all boils down to whether you want to play a FPS game or a wargame. You can't have both the graphical excellence of a FPS and the Battalion+ sized actions.

I could lay a barrier of mines across three tiles, one in the centre of the road and the other two on its flanks but that means that troops moving on the other side of the bocage would trigger the booby traps as well and that's not what I want to happen. TBH, I don't really like using minefields very much and try to avoid them as much as possible when I'm designing. Although they do come in handy from time to time Ecoqueneuville and Le Ham being two examples. (There are others though) I believe it's a Roman road and so it runs straight as a ruler for quite a way beyond that map. With regards to the next mission, Labrynth, I usually play it slowly at the start of the mission, scouting with infantry and having the scout cars moving behind in support. You have quite a lot of artillery support to help you out as well so it's good to wait up and let the big guns do most of the work for you.

Fuser/Aris Glad to see you're back modding for the game again. I was worried that you'd gone off. And that Tiger looks drop-dead gorgeous.

Yup, so if you don't play the game single play against an AI opponent or you only play AI defend missions, it's not an issue and so doesn't need to be fixed. On the other hand, if you DO play single play and you want to have the AI attack from time to time, it IS an issue. After bailing, and depending on the crews' morale/experience, the crew will continue to follow their AI attack plan. To prevent the AI crews from bailing their rides too quickly if they are Regular/Normal or lesser mortals, I often give my AI crews High morale. Once abandoned, the AI will NEVER re-occupy the tank so it's as good as dead for the rest of the mission. So they will recover quite quickly and start advancing. If the crew are Veteran or Crack troops, then they are absolutely deadly pistol troops. The solution to the AI advancing crews is simple. When they abandon their tanks, the tank crews go into a nul AI group. This feature is already in the game to prevent AT guns from following their AI group plans. I had one hilarious screenshot from a CMBN QB of AT guns on the attack which prompted their removal from their AI groups. The accuracy of pistols in the game is a different matter. I'll leave that one for you guys to determine.

LOL! I had the same idea when I read about the unique 82nd Airborne unit models in CMFI. Only one Brit, one Polish and two US airborne units in MG. It's not as easy to implement as you'd think.

I guess if you play the game mostly from the Valkyrie point of view, it's not a great looking game and most of the detail work on the maps and the models is wasted. However, when you get right down into the game, it looks very good indeed for such an incredibly detailed WARGAME. It's not a FPS/adventure game or a 'fun' tank game. Having said that, it could be made to look much better with just a couple of tweaks such as new flames for burning wrecks, skies, and explosions. There are mods for the first two that improve the look of the game but we need some new artwork to make explosions look a bit more convincing.

Historically, there was a fight here with the 2/505 attacking on the right and the 2/8 attacking on the left with some of the supporting tanks from the attack earlier on the Georgian Ridge. But there were no noteworthy actions so it was probably a fairly straightforward fight. However, that's no excuse as I didn't want it to be such a walk in the park. Those are MIXED mines, representing booby traps, so you must have been either very lucky not to trigger them or you hugged the bocage while advancing and so missed them. I guess I'll have to have a look at this again when I do the final revision when v2 comes out. :eek: The solution is probably as simple as creating a couple of 'T' sections in the bocage that will force the player to move into the minefields. Of course, this will look strange. The 'final' revision will have to wait until we get the captured French tanks as I'd like to use them in 'Turnbull's Stand'. I'd also like to add one other 2/505 mission to this series, probably a Ste-Mere Eglise mission. There's not much more I can do with this campaign though as there are only two AI attacks which will definitely benefit from the v2 improvements, 'Turnbull' and the Eroudeville finale. The rest are all defensive missions and so won't need much updating.

Agreed. It's especially close with Churchills and Infantry.

Oh, it's definitely realistic, that's for sure. But coding this behaviour into the game isn't quite as simple as that. And yes, if the mission doesn't give you a foxhole...

It can be done for a vehicle crew but AT guns are not vehicles as they can be towed. So it's not quite as simple as that. For some of us, the flaw was the crew could not be separated from their gun at all before their gun was destroyed. We've got a solution that doesn't go as far as writing a whole scree of new code and for that, I'm grateful at least.

Of course, if you tighten up the time limits in the missions, the player has less time to be so gamey and, as an inevitable result, turn each mission into a boring, samey 'hunt the AT assets with your infantry and artillery and then overrun the hapless suckers with your now invulnerable tanks.' ROFLMAO.

The first part, I agree with. It was riducilous that you couldn't abandon a gun at all without it being destroyed first. That's why we got this feature. I don't know how big a coding issue this is. There might be some reluctance on BFCs part to implement something like this because they wouldn't want us swapping our duff crews for the very best ones much like we can't re-man an abandoned, but functioning, tank with another crew. If you want the crew to survive, why don't you just place your AT gun in a foxhole? The crew benefit from the foxhole's protection. They hunker down in it when they're under fire and they pop back up to fire the gun when they're in better shape. The sandbag wall also helps with survivability as well but not so much with artillery.

No need to fix that. Give them POOR or LOW morale and they will behave like that in the game too. Especially when you reduce their experience a bit too. But then, that's not Fun for some folks.

Not every mission gives your forces 100% ammo loads. I've designed a few myself where the guns have SCARCE ammo and therefore, only 5-7 rounds each. You have to make them count.

Yes, he's right. Vehicles don't back off when they are being targetted by mortar fire. I wish they would as I've been playtesting a couple of missions where the AI side would benefit from being able to do this. Not an issue for H2H/PBEM players though as they can make the necessary adjustments themselves. That's probably true in RL too though . I don't know just how frequently this happened in RL but it seems to happen quite a lot in the game (i.e. more often than I'd expect it to happen). What I don't like is that an onboard mortar can fire directly on an AI controlled vehicle and that vehicle can't spot the attacking unit (2 or 3 man crews don't spot terribly well), button up, reducing their chances of spotting and returning fire and either die or get immobilised (most likely).