Paper Tiger

Perhaps you should have titled this thread 'I just can't bring myself to play against the AI'. Playing scenarios or playing campaigns against the AI is never going to match the challenge or excitement of playing against a human opponent... NEVER. Indeed, with the exception of chess I can't think of a single strategy/wargame that isn't massivelymore exciting and challenging played against a human opponent. However, I think it's very possible for scenario designers to create missions specifically to be played as one side (normally BLUE) vs the AI opponent and be challenging for the human player. If you want to play missions against the AI you really should try playing Real Time as the computer opponent will have a better chance of giving you a challenge. If you play WEGo where you have loads of time to react to the AI's plan, well, of course it's going to be more boring than playing a human WEGO opponent.

Hey, I understand your pain BillyR. I remember the frustration I was feeling waiting for the Marines module to come out and it was pretty horrible. For what it's worth, if BFC follow a similar path to the release of the Brit module, there'll be a flurry of promo pics released, the manual will get posted up and an announcement that the Brit module has gone Gold will be made. Then the module will follow about a week after the Gold announcement.

One major reason why 'Hasrabit' needs a make over is because BFC have made some substantial changes to the game engine since this campaign was created. Patch v1.11 introduced the 'Bug out' behaviour and also reduced the call-in delay from the start of the mission for AI artillery, (previously it wouldn't start to use it until half way through the scenario) Playtesting the new version of 'Buying the farm' has revealed how much more difficult this mission has become as a result of these two changes. The AI is now very aggressive with it's artillery and so Blue has a much harder time fighting his way onto the board. Another important change that was made is the reduced effectiveness of heavy air strikes on infantry units in cover. A while back, you could get a win in 'BTF' simply by hitting the three VP locations with one heavy airstrike each and that would kill or disable pretty much all the defenders within it's (rather large) area of effect. Now it's not nearly so lethal and I'd like to stick some back into a couple of missions. And that's just one mission out of 10 that I've looked at. This is going to be interesting....

Creating large and highly detailed maps is an enormous amount of work, especially if you use a lot of flavour objects. FO placement is a labour of love... After 15-20 hours, (sometimes even more), you get a realistic looking map and then you have to devise a battle that matches it's appearance. So yes, it's a LOT of work and sometimes it's NOT fun but is it really necessary to make a good scenario? For me, the simple answer is 'no', far from it. It's not the map but the battle that's important. I've played a few 3rd party scenarios that had very simple, bog standard maps that, nevertheless, had really good small fights on them. It's finding the right mix of units to make an interesting challenge that's the real work. Now, whether we like it or not, the fact is that there's simply nothing that any scenario designer can do to prevent other people from doing what dima suggests with their maps. This has actually come up before and the general agreement was that it would be considered very good manners to contact the map designer first to ask his/her permission to use their map. As MikeyD also says, a complete change of the scenario's name would also be necessary. However, the real downside of having new scenario designers take this path is that fewer people will do the map making work in the editor and that'll hurt us further down the road. It's actually not hard to knock together a functional map in an hour or two as long as you don't want it to be photorealistic. Don't be intimidated into not sharing because you feel your map is 'basic' and doesn't look like downtown Damascus replete with traffic lights, street lamps and bus shelters. To be honest, in all my time in this forum, I can't recall anyone getting all 'sniffy' about the quality of the map (the battle, yes) so it's not really an issue for most people. People tend to rave about the battle, not the map. BTW, there are actually a couple of very talented people out there in the community who enjoy designing maps just for pleasure and have posted their work asking people to do what they want with them as they don't really enjoy designing scenarios for them.

So far, there only appear to be mods and they're almost all for CMx1 games. Is it intended to serve as an alternative site for downloading scenarios and campaigns as well?

What mod site is that?

When I'm really enjoying working on a particular mission, I often dream about this game... I occassionally get some good ideas from them too... There's a terrain feature on a map that I'm currently working on which was 'realised' in a dream a couple of weeks ago.

I assume that in the course of designing your campaign, you playtested each individual mission as a stand alone and won them all? If that is right then you should just go ahead and release it and make any adjustments you feel are necessary from the feedback you get. If there's one that's particularly troublesome then just concentrate on making it winnable and get it out the door. One full run through of a 10 mission campaign is about 2 weeks of work and in the end, it will still be you. Let others have a go. I'm sure they'll welcome it. cheers PT

It's been a while since I posted anything here as I've been VERY busy working on stuff for the Brit module. However, I want to let you know that the 'Road to Dinas' victory conditions screw up has been fixed and it's all ready to play again, this time right through to the finale... when the v1.2 patch becomes available. However, when I heard that CMMODS was closing down, I considered posting 'Hasrabit' on the BFC Repository and I thought, "Hey, why don't I update it before I do that". When I designed that campaign, I was under the mistaken impression that an AI plan could only have 16 orders per plan and not per AI group. Since the AI is doing a LOT of attacking in this campaign, I think I managed to do a fair job of getting the AI to bring it to you even operating under this false assumption. Quite a few missions just have 8 AI groups with a set up order and a final objective order, making 16 in total and that's not really a very effective AI plan. Missions that suffer particularly because of this are 'Strong Stand', 'Buying the farm' and 'Hasrabit'. I'm pretty sure that I can make the Red attack in 'The Barrier' much more effective too. And, as a result of sticking in BLUE AI attack plans into missions that are primarily designed to be played as BLUE vs AI only, I have learned some nifty new tricks to make the AI attack a bit more effective. So, while I will continue to do some Brit missions, I want to get a new version of 'Hasrabit' ready for uploading to the Repository as soon as it's ready.

I would love to see this method of play too. It would be a very effective way of learning how to program the AI to do things. If the mission doesn't have a BLUE AI plan, that could be your task... I've been sticking Blue AI plans into my current batch of missions and I have to confess that I enjoy sitting back and watching the show. Okay, I'm playing Red but I'm rooting for the AI...

Hmm... sausage grogs!

Random numbers are simply that, RANDOM. I had a unique experience of this a LONG time ago in my board wargaming days... My friend and I used to meet regularly to play AH's Russian Campaign and one night we decided to record all our die rolls to see how much of a factor luck played. (If you're reading this Flettie boy, you'll be able to confirm this story) I rolled 13 '1's in a row during a single turn which pretty much *%$*ed my chances of winning but we both had a good laugh about it. (If anyone's interested in calculating the statistical probablilty of rolling a '1' 13 times in a row, then I'd be happy to know it. I suspect I'll NEVER see that happen again in my lifetime even if I spent the rest of it just rolling die...) What's the point of this rather boring story? If there's very small percentage that something will happen, sometimes, you just get unlucky and it happens. If you spend a considerable time setting up a PBeM game with your opponent and invest a significant part of your points on a killer tank and then, rubbing your hands with glee, you give it a movement order and it bogs almost instantly, who's to blame? You knew that there was a tiny chance that this might happen and yet you chose to take that risk and what do you know, the game's RNG just rolled a '1'. Suddenly, that huge investment in points doesn't seem so sensible, does it? So who's to blame? Getting BFC to reduce the chance of it happening in the game engine won't prevent this from ever happening in your game again, will it? When you're unlucky, you're unlucky and that's it. Just relax, man. When s*%t like this happens in real life then you have every right to get pissed off and bitch about it. It's just a game

Both styles of play have their own merits and drawbacks. If you want to play missions where you control more than a single Company, Real Time gets to be a management nightmare whereas WeGo is much easier to manage. But when the human player has to control a single company or thereabouts RT hits the sweet spot for me.

Discounting that promo screenshot of a Tiger that caused some excitement a couple of months ago, I'd hazard that you'll see the WW2 title about 4-5 months after you see the first official screenshots. Personally, I suspect that it'll arrive sometime in September but that REALLY is just guessing. That's all anybody can give you just now.

Yet it is the ones who are playing CM:SF right now that have the most relevance for discussing those new things yet-to-come. McAuliffe. You'll find it makes much more sense if you read Steve's entire statement. CMSF is a completely new game and the WW2 module will evolve from this new game engine rather than the CXMx1 series of games. Therefore it follows that those who have the most to contribute to the discussion are those who have played CMSF AND perhaps having some of the CMx1 series of games would make their opinions even more valuable. You don't have to pay for anything to acquire some experience of this new engine either. Just download the demo and give it a spin and then you'll have some idea of what the game engine is capable of.

I'm really sorry about the screw up with the Depot mission. While it's a VERY easy fix, my hands are a bit tied as I'm currently using a beta of v1.2 and the fixed campaign wouldn't work. Being a newb playtester, I was a bit hasty installing the beta and didn't make back up copies of the original files. That's not a mistake I'll ever make again. I bought my copy of the base game from Gamersgate and, as luck would have it, they did away with their downloader a few weeks ago and that prevents me from getting a v1.1 game set up on my laptop. My laptop has a slow connection and it's around a 500MB download which = 2-3 days of downloading time during which time my wife wouldn't be able to talk to anybody on the phone... My desktop is MUCH faster bit Gamersgate's new installer will only install it on my desktop. Enough of the excuses though. I'm still trying to find a way to get this sorted a.s.a.p.

They look much better in bikinis. I'm not sure that's quite the kit BFC are looking to model. No screenshots to back up your case? BTW, I still remember my first trip to Sweden a while back and I remember being impressed that the girls really were THAT beautiful.

They're all OCCUPY locations so you'll have to leave something more than body bags behind to earn the points.

There are a small number (The Lakes, Jameela and the final mission) that have only one plan and that's usually when the AI is the attacker. It's so DAMNED hard to get just ONE good AI attack plan that it would take much longer to create the campaign. Most have at least two, and a few 4 or more but they all come later. The 'Road to Amarah' mission has 5 distinctly different AI plans and I've just started playtesting a version of it using REAL Blue forces. It's still a S.O.B!!!

Ach, something was bound to go wrong even with me being so careful to check everything thoroughly first. It's definitely the Depot mission that's at fault. I forgot to add the friuendly bonus so you can only get a draw and that's not good enough to progress to the next mission. How did I miss that?! I was using a dummy scenario to test the campaign script and it was a win/lose proposition. I playtested the individual threads and when I scripted them, I just resupplied the units at the end of the mission before the Depot mission, a totally unnecessary shortcut and now it's come back to bite me on the ass... that means you'll have to wait to see the 'Farmers' mission. I will try to do a reinstall later this week to get my system back to v1.11 so that I can get the corrected version up on the Repository again before the weekend. Otherwise nobody's going any further than Sulit airfield... Mr CB... If you got dumped from the campaign after mission 4, you must have lost the Orchard mission too right? You shouldn't get dumped ONLY for losing Sabatani. I DID test that branch...

Please explain to me what the CMX2 engine really has over the CMX1 engine other than graphics and the ability to play real time? That's an ANCIENT topic and I suspect you bring it up not through a genuine desire to find out what the differences are but rather to say that you think CMx2 doesn't have anything over CMx1 except the pretty graphics and the ability to play RT. If you really care to find out the answer, then download the FREE Demo and try it out for yourself (which you won't) and prepare to be embarrassed by the genuine ignorance you've just openly displayed in front of all of us... Or you can just stick with CMBO.

It doesn't matter what version of CMSF you originally purchased, (from BFC, Paradox or Gamersgate but I suspect your have the Paradox version). The Marines module will work with it, and the Brits will work the same way too. BTW, I have Vista 64 bit Home and I've never had any problems with the game either. Turning off User Account Control is a good idea if you use Vista.

So you're starting a new game and not loading a previously saved game? It also might help if we knew what scenario(s) you can't run. If it's 'Armour Attacks' or some other mission with a giant map try this... Try firing up CMSF again from scratch and loading that scenario first. That always works for me. If it still fails to load then you don't have enough RAM to run that particular scenario.

Are you talking about a 'Fatal Error, Out of Memory' screen here?

I just tested that and I was knocking out tanks with 120mm mortars, that seems wrong...is it? No, absolutely not. First, the tanks armour is very thin on the top (that's why javelins are such effective tank killers) so even an 81mm hit is very dangerous. Second, most western countries have developed special anti armour shells for their artillery.