Paper Tiger

Funnily enough, that was the entire point of my screenshot/post. They can! One 60mm mortar v an entire German Battalion in the open = Dead German Battalion This is NOT an issue for H2H/PBEM players as they can move their units around when the first round falls. The Tac AI cannot do this... ever.

Yup, that's what happened. No constricting terrain on that map. The mortar team picked its targets, hit them until they dropped out of LoS and then moved onto another. That's what made me take the screenshot. I couldn't believe what that mortar team was doing to the AI.

Here's a fine example of the 60mm onboard mortar's lethality. One single US mortar team has just single-handedly broken an entire German battalion under AI control

Nope, it's JonS' 'Seven Winds' map, a stand-alone mission, but I'm sure he'll be flattered by your mistake. I do have a 'Sept Vents' map under construction though and it looks very different from that one.

Unfortunately, we don't really know how the spotting mechanism works in the game. I suspect it works something like this though. The game creates a LOS map while the mission is setting up that contains info on spotting from each action spot to every other action spot on the map. When a unit occupies an action spot, the LOS map is consulted and it is determined which enemy units are currently 'observable' from that location. If that check proves true, then there comes a series of drs for each 'pair' of eyes currently in that action spot. It might be a squad of 13 soldiers but only two are in a position to see the enemy unit and so two spotting drs are made. There are probably a number of modifiers to each spotting dr. I'd suspect that experience, condition and leadership all contribute significantly to this. Further, the unit's movement status should play a part in it too as well as facing/covered arc etc. The enemy units' situation will play a factor too: behind concealment terrain, moving, firing. So the game ends up with a % to spot dr and one is made for each spotter. If it really does work in this fashion, I'd suggest that the negative modifiers for spotting while the spotting units is moving and the target's positive modifier for moving be raised so that moving units are disadvantaged when spotting. The faster the movement, the higher the penatly. A unit using FAST movement should be almost useless at spotting. This would also explain why a tank with 5 crewmen gets to spot tank hunter teams and ATGs more frequently that they should be able to in the game. There are five spotting drs, one of them probably benefitting from some OPTICS bonus whereas the infantry gus don't get that bonus.

True this. I saw Churchills drive into the LoS of a stationary Panther and get off a first shot before the Panther spotted them when testing the 'Going to Church' mission in the Epsom campaign. Apparently, an unbuttoned tank moving in the open has a better chance to spot than an unbuttoned tank parked behind some low bocage because the bocage blocks the LoS of two of that tank's crew. Number of eyeballs spotting is huge in this game. Perhaps that's why we read posts where people complain that their dedicated Tank Hunters can't spot a tank 30m away from time to time. Only four eyes spotting while the tank has ten if it's unbuttoned. What's interesting about the example in the OP is that the two German PzIVs didn't have any bocage, tall or low, in front of them. Yet they came off second, and were killed as a result.

It's very hard to tell from that video if the Sherman is unbuttoned. I suspect it is and that the PzIV is similarly unbuttoned. The TC didn't appear to spot the PzIV. The Gunner did while the unbuttoned PzIV commander didn't spot a tank move into his frontal arc. If the Sherman's TC DID spot the tank, he communicated the information to his gunner very rapidly indeed. The PzIV icon appears at the same instant as the Gunner starts rotating. These are extremely fast reactions for a NORMAL experience crew. I suspect that the Sherman gunner's spotting value is too high if he's able to spot faster than an unbuttoned TC. The firing and hitting while on the move is secondary here but it makes a bad situation feel worse because of the destruction of the enemy asset.

I don't want to take BigDork's AAR thread off course so I'll start a new thread here to discuss this. I've watched that video a couple of times and I saw that the Sherman was reversing, i.e. moving, when it spotted the stationary PzIV. At 19 seconds, the Regular experience Gunner (no leadership modifier) started rotating the turret of a moving tank and got a shot off within 7 seconds, a shot that hit first time no less. And then, it appears to have spotted a second stationary PzIV, fired off a single shot, hit, and killed it. This seems very modern era to me.:confused:

What kind of movement order did you give that AI group? Vehicles and some support weapons usually move last. Further, vehicles won't move unless there is a clear movement path to their waypoint.

The best fun I had playing CMSF QBs was when I picked an Allied Light Infantry formation (IBCT, Gebirgs, Brit Light, etc) and faced them off with Syrian UNCONs in an Urban setting. That could sometimes be a lot of fun. I had almost no success playing as Red v Blue, especially when the AI picked Styker or Heavy Infantry that couldn't get their javelins. Fortunately, there were so many really good stand-alones crafted for that title that it was never boring.

How true. Normally, I enjoy James Cameron's output in the cinema but that one stank... for nearly three hours. The only Cameron movie I wanted to walk out of the cinema from. I watched 'The Abyss' with my wife earlier this year and she was mesmerised by the sights and sounds in the scene where the US submarine crashed and the scene later when the divers found the wreck. The music is particularly spine-tingling there.

I don't. I think that BFC's scripted AI opponent can provide the average player with a very good challenge indeed. But once you've played against another human opponent, you will probably find the AI opponent unsatisfactory because it is incapable of reacting to your moves in the same way a human opponent can. The AI opponent is going to get better with 16 AI groups to play around with. And once we get triggers...

CMSF with all the modules now or CMSF2 sometime next year? I wouldn't wait that long if you're interested in Modern Era warfare.

Nice maps there. But we're DEFINITELY going to have to wait for BFC to craft unique models for the Arnhem, and Nijmegen bridges for these sort of maps to look and play in a realistic manner. What we currently have to work with just doesn't work, visually or functionally.

Aye. There's the rub. I've done a bucket-load of work already on MG maps because BFC want to have this baby ready for selling before Xmas. Therefore, it would be crazy to wait until I've got v2 working for CMBN. I did all the rural maps first as there are very few buildings. However, I've just about finished one with a substantial village. At the very least, I should be able to take a screenshot of the placement of the buildings in the editor and replace them after the new buildings appear. However, best case scenario, it will replace these buildings with their new Dutch counterparts when the scenario month is September+

I sincerely hope that Fire, AI Triggers and Nighttime Illumination (yes, Ken, that includes flares but I also want it to include a burning tank or building too) are on that list of big gameplay stuff.

People who play WEGO think they're playing the game in the most realistic manner while others playing in Real Time think they're getting the more realistic experience. I play RT because I KNOW I'm getting the most enjoyable experience for me. Perhaps it's not to your taste but it's the best for ME! Really, who cares as long as you're enjoying yourself.

Heh heh! You can be sure that the battle for the Arnhem bridge will be well covered in the module content. The real clincher for accurate OMG maps will be how BFC model the important bridges. It will be interesting to see how you will do it though.

I was a miniatures wargamer long before AH's Squad Leader came out. I didn't really warm to SL as it was too much like work to play and have fun. (CoD's bypass movement was a real fun-killer at that time). But I loved ASL when it came out. It was far more streamlined and the rules interfered less with the flow of the game. I had been playing ASL for a few years before I finally got my hands on CMBO in the Electronic Boutique in Ipswich. It played much more like a miniatures game because it displayed percentage to hit, percentage of firepower etc that it was obvious that the hit and casualty tables hidden within the game were more minatures oriented than ASL. Where ASL DID, and still does, influence me when designing and playing missions was its scale. Battles were usually company to a Battalion sized and they battles usually lasted something like 5-10 turns on average. With two minutes per turn, that meant a battle of about 10-20 minutes. There were some bigger ones where the turn counter ran well into double figures but essentially, scenarios covered the climax of the action. I don't remotely feel like I'm playing a game that was influenced by ASL when I play CMx2. It's actually quite a big jump up from CMx1. Only the writing style of the manual is the same really. BTW, REAL Real Time players don't pause the game while playing (except to take a short break and walk around the living room to keep the blood flowing to the extremities) and so it is quite possible to get within someone's reaction loop. The AI can get inside mine when played without pausing.

I just ran three consecutive tests with a large number of units set to arrive at T+05 with a vaiable time of entry of 5 minutes to see how this works and not once did a reinforcement arrive before its Arrival Time. Since this is clearly at odds with the manual, and I'm pretty certain that it worked this way in CMSF, I think we've found a bug...

Heh! I finally got around to reading 'The Runes of the Earth', the first of four intended volumes that will eventually comprise the Final chronicle of Thomas Covenant. I forked out just over five quid for the Kindle edition. I do not feel that this investment of money entitles me to receive the following three novels for free. Perhaps if there were numerous typos and mistakes in the construction of my Kindle copy, I might feel entitled to a free update from Amazon but certainly not to receive the intended sequels. 'What! You mean to tell me that I bought a story that was not complete? <insert expressions of rightous outrage here> When I buy a story, I expect it to be complete. I want to receive all the follow on novels for free! <mutters about the state of the industry today forgetting that Dickens and Hardy among others also serialised their works in this fashion to make money>' I know that this is a different part of the entertainment industry but the thinking still applies.

I'm a bit late to the party here, Hosed10. This sounds like an either/or question, right? If it is, then it's a really hard decision to make. Basically, if you really enjoy CMSF, I honestly can't see why you wouldn't love the modules. They add so much to the game. If you liked it, it will only make your present experience much better. Get them all to get all the units for both sides. As for CMBN with the Commonwealth module... it's WW2 and that's all that matters. Whichever one you chose to buy, you won't be disappointed with it but you will miss something special by not having the other.

Aha! Bingo! Great minds think alike. I've been doing a lot of experimenting doing exactly this with airborne units Unfortunately, reinforcements will arrive in the exact location that they are placed in in the scenario editor. But at least the player has no control over exactly when his forces arrive.

It is just about possible to do this at the moment with the existing reinforcement system. (P132-133 of the manual) What follows will only work if you are playing missions that are no more than 3 hours in duration. The shorter the mission, the better. When you place units in a reinforcement slot, you can set their time of arrival to the end of the mission and apply a variable entrance time, say by as much as 30 minutes. If you create an hour long mission, set the reinforcements to arrive at 60 minutes and a variable time of 30 minutes, there is chance that they will arrive before the mission ends. It is possible to set the reinforcements arrival time to 1 hour 15 minutes with a variable entry time even though the mission finishes at 60 minutes, therefore allowing you to make the arrival of something extremely unlikely but not impossible.

Thank you. I really worked to make it feel like 'Epsom'. I wasn't sure if Epsom was really the best operation for the subject of a campaign. But, after reading Daglish's book, I saw a way to make it doable. However, you will get absolutely no argument out of me that it is not a 'fun' campaign to play. Fun there means feeling reasonably in control with sufficient forces available and plenty of time to do the job. You do have a lot of firepower on call, but you will have to work to use it. I have only crafted one other campaign for CMBN to date and that is 'The Road to Montebourg' which is part of the title. It was designed to be more fun to play, a LOT more fun. In fact, it is the campaign I enjoy playing the most. Both these campaigns are 14-16 missions in length and so I'm not able to turn out much more than one and a bit a year. I'm already at work on my third CMBN campaign and I'd like it to be a reasonably long one too. Hopefully, more fun that 'The Scottish Corridor' and a bit more challenging than 'Montebourg'. BTW, I designed a few campaigns for CMSF if you are interested in that era. The ones designed for the Repository are in my sig below, and I designed the three NATO campaigns.