Paper Tiger
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Posts posted by Paper Tiger
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The next step as far as you guys are concerned will be an email in your inbox (if you're a pre-order customer) that the game is available for download, followed a few hours or so later with the official Release news.
We know what the problem is and that you guys are busting your asses to solve that horrible installer problem and so we're just supposed to wait patiently now until that email arrives in our inbox. Yeah, that's fine if it's during the working week but we're now into Friday and we already know that you guys won't release it at a weekend. So, if it's not out later today, that means Monday minimum for us... Tuesday for me here in Indonesia. And, frankly, it seems like it's no sure thing that it will be this month anymore. So come on, it's Friday. Tell us if we're going to have to wait until next week...:eek:
Okay, I'm just horribly frustrated with this unending wait but I already know that once I finally have this module installed on my hard drive all will be forgoven and forgotten and I'll be as happy as a pig in s**t again.
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How big will the download be?
That's a VERY good question. I'd like to know that too if possible.
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Well, I'm pretty much 'mapped out' with my new campaign at the moment and I can't do any more playtesting until I get the Marines. So this morning I loaded up the Saudara Part 2 map to have a look at it. It's weird how your perspective changes after some time so when I had a look at the map I thought that the Saudara village was just rubbish so I've almost quadrupled the number of buildings within the same area. I've also made some other changes to other parts of the map, most notably the Islamic cemetary on the hill to the east of the village.
If there's STILL no Marines tomorrow morning (not unlikely), I'll spend some time working on the flavour objects. I used far too many lamposts in the first iteration of that map. I have to confess that it's already looking much better now and it should make the assault phase on the village itself MUCH more challenging. With far more places to hide and the reduction of the blast effect of big explosions in v1.10, I expect that we'll have to work to get that victory now.
I have no plans to do any more substantial reworks of any other maps at this moment. However, if there are still no Marines over the weekend, I really won't have anything else to do but redraw Hasrabit maps.
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I have some nice pictures tho
... of haddocks perchance?
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I'm at work just now and I quickly had a look at my email account and found that I had an email in my inbox. My heart was literally thumping as I negotiated my way to my inbox only to find that it was a letter!!! This waiting really isn't fun.
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About a month or so ago we witnessed the brief lifespan of the Marines own dedicated forum. It was quickly taken down though for some reason that I can't recall offhand. But it's a very safe bet that the CM WW2 series of games will get their own forum when the first game makes it's appearance.
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Sorry, wish I could offer you some advice but it sounds like you've done everything properly.
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Well, that's now Tuesday come and gone and there's still no news or module on the horizon. The Video competition is still open. Before the puppy and pussy holocaust begins in earnest please, please please throw us a bone here. The Marines module has been gold now for nearly two weeks!!! and yet it's still not here and you're saying nothing. I'm no longer convinced that it will be here before the weekend. What's happening fellas? Perhaps getting it ready for downloading is proving more difficult than you anticipated?
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Well, that's Monday gone with no download or an announcement of progress. Heck, even the Video competition is still open. What is going on?
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'Hasrabit' is down at the moment as I'm getting it v1.10 ready. However, Red on Red is not to everybody's taste so I would like to point you to two other offerings that are played as the US side:
There's Webwing's very popular 'In search of a Ghost' campaign which is pretty much an infantry-centric affair. People who have played it loved it and it's not too long either.
The second is Bardosy's TF Narwick which was also very popular with the community too.
I haven't played either of these campaigns (or the stock Thunder campaign either) as I'm more into Red v Red actions. But hang on another day or two and you'll be able to play the new Marines campaign. I suspect it will be THE campaign to play for quite some time.
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Not least it prevents perfectly legitimate uses of area fire on potential or suspected enemy positions while advancing. Any time you want to cover an advance by shooting up the few areas where enemy units might be waiting for you, you are suddenly slapped with long delays and ineffective fire.
As a rule, you don't want to go around blocking legitimate tactics to prevent occasional misuse.
I have no problem with the legitimate use of area fire at all. It's simply that it is a one sided feature inasmuch as the computer player is incapable of using it. It's the gamey use of area fire that I'm discussing as detailed in my first post.
As to fragmenting the PBeM community, I don't think it would have that big an effect. I would imagine that the vast majority of the games being played just now are either Veteran or Elite. And when the new elite mode comes along, most folks will probably opt to play Elite rather than Veteran. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if a more restricting Iron Man style wouldn't become the most popular style for PBeM players as it would prevent both sides from using these gamey exploits.
BTW, I'm most certainly NOT advocating the introduction of delays to area fire and I know that my own suggestions are pretty worthless to BFC as well. But I am hoping that BFC will bear this imbalance in mind when they are making plans for extra features for the new Iron Man mode, which, at the moment, is simply the new name for the current Elite mode. I am all in favour of any system that keeps the player honest rather than introduce whole new game systems that allow the computer to cheat like we do. the game already has C2 coded into it. Let's see if we can find ways to make it a more meaningful concept in the game.
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It's not something BFC are interested in doing - Steve thinks it'll create it's own problems.
If you don't want to upset your realism, don't cheat.
Yup, it's just something to do while I'm waiting for the Marines module to arrive. I have ZERO expectation that BFC will change the game in the way I've described because I agree that it probably create more problems than it would solve.
As to not cheating, well, I'd prefer it if there was some game mechanism that forced me to play more by the rules than it does currently, for example like the Iron Man rules. I DO try to play by the rules but sometimes it's just too easy to slap down that enemy position with a round or two from a T-62 than to 'do it' properly. The beauty of having a higher, more restricting method of playing would be that it would only restrict those of us who wanted to play it and wouldn't be forced down everyone's throats.
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One major problem that I can see with doing this would be that it would fundamentally alter the entire game experience for all of us. So much so that you could argue against the inclusion of the current C2 system as it would become less meaningful. However, I would like to see some system that would allow the AI to use area fire within the game. Perhaps it could be introduced as part of BFC's new Iron Man play style so that AI units with LoS to a Friendly position that is known to one or more of its units, (perhaps depending on the overall experience level of the computer units i.e. 1 unit for Elite, 2 for Crack, 3 for Veteran etc) were able to area fire upon that position.
BTW, sorry about the large type in my original post but I typed it up on a word processor and the script lookde fine when I pasted it into the Thread box.
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SgtMuhammed
Excellent stuff. Thanks for sharing this. I am planning to do a Marines campaign of my own sometime soon so that will come in handy in building the story line.
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Well, with the Marines supplementary manual posted, that's step 1 of the 'three steps to heaven' completed. Now, when are we going to see that announcement about the result of the video competition?
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How often do you do this? You’re playing a mission in Real Time and some of your troops run into some serious opposition and are taking a pasting. You have a tank or some heavy infantry support vehicle, Stryker MGS for example, sitting somewhere with LoS to that enemy position but they’re as yet unaware of the trouble. The game’s C2 system doesn’t allow you to share information between units that they wouldn’t realistically have. Nevertheless, you target that building with the main gun and wham, the opposition gets taken out. The same applies with any support weapons or other units that have LoS to that building but as yet are unaware of the presence of enemy troops that you use to area fire on that position.
Now, I do this very often when I’m playing and I guess that you could call this cheating. Why? Because I’m taking advantage of my omnicience to artificially react to the enemy outside of the game’s C2 system. Okay, but we’re using area fire and that’s not an unreasonable cheat. But what about the AI player? Can it do this? Of course not. And that’s yet another handicap that the computer opponent labours under that it’s human opponent doesn’t. The computer has to play strictly by the rules, indeed by ‘Iron Man’ rules. It isn’t programmed to take advantage of it’s own omnicience in the same way the human player does.
The AI’s inability to use area fire like this puts it at yet another disadvantage against a Real Time opponent. WEGo players are playing under similar restrictions to their computer opponent only within the span of a single turn and as soon as that turn ends, they too can take advantage of their knowledge to remedy this situation. Personally, I’d be happy to ‘allow’ the computer to cheat and speculatively put down area fire on a building, or even position, that at least one other of it’s units has ‘?’ level info on. This seems reasonable to me because I suspect that we, the human players, ALL do this when we can. If you’re playing any PbeM games against a human opponent, you’ll definitely see him doing this to you too. It would definitely boost the computer player’s ability to give us a bloody nose more often.
Of course, a second, and probably more acceptable, solution for most of the community would be to introduce a more challenging, fourth way of playing the game with some kind of Iron Man rules so that only those of us who want to play it under these gruelling circumstances would have to do so.
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While these missions are all Red on Red missions, it is certainly my plan to rework quite a few of them into a second Marines v Red campaign but that won't happen until the Red on Red is (nearly) finished. I expect I'll have to expand some of the maps to make them work and indeed, I have already started work on expanding the 'Perdition's Flames' map to make it better for a tank duel. I have a feeling that the Marines will be a more infantry-centric experience so I am sure I will enjoy working on this second project.
I plan to give the AI lots of artillery and air support but, as to how much, I'll have to see how effective it is in the game. If it's VERY effective, I'll keep it low but otherwise, expect a lot. Especially when you come into contact with the 3rd Armour.
Since BFC have announced that their Marines campaign has Red core forces too, I will tell you now that there are Red core forces in this campaign too. However, I'm not going to give any more away about them.
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New Mission
I wish I could say that I'd been hard at work at this this week but I haven't done much because I'm waiting for the Marine module to arrive. Instead, I've been half-heartedly working on a new map for a mission that was tentatively called 'Minutemen'. It was going to be a night action between your mech force inf with some tanks in support v some uncons. I did play it a couple of times but didn't really like it so I reworked the map to expand the village and I'm going to make it a late afternoon action instead.
It's going to be a group B battle so you'll have BMP-1 mounted infantry and some T-62s again for this but I'm designing this one to be tough.
I'm getting a bit more confident designing small villages and towns now so this map will be reasonably small but very detailed. I reckon the map is nearly finished now so the real work will begin once the Marines is installed. I need dynamic artillery and air power before I can playtest it in a meaningful way.
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I have.... I don't recommend trying it.
Anyway, Moon has posted that it won't be this weekend but sometime next week, 'sometime' meaning anything from Monday through to Friday I guess. So now I know not to bother checking again until at least Tuesday... oh no... I will be SO happy when the waiting is finally over.
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I expect that the sun is just rising on the east coast of the USA and these guys have to sleep. After all, it is just a game and nothing to ruin your health over so they'll probably get back to work on it in around 3 more hours or so. But please BFC, just give us poor tormented souls out here a bit of a break and tell us roughly when we can expect it. Please put us out of our collective misery and tell us that it'll be later today/tomorrow/sometime early next week.
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Still no news? OMG, this waiting is driving me nuts!
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Yes, they are...
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Dear God
reading some of this really does make me shake my head and wonder if some of you realise that BFC are in this to make money. They are developing a game engine that is capable of simulating 20th-21st century combat at a tactical level and so you can expect them to release a WW2 Normandy game that simulates WW2 combat between US troops and the Germans in Normandy only. Then, we have to buy the Commonwealth forces and get some cool new German gear. Then, we get CM Bagration with Russian stuff v the current state of German stuff already available from CM Normandy. Just because CMSF is set in the desert and it's the same game engine doesn't mean that BFC will give us WW2 desert combat for free with Normandy. Nah, if enough of us want that, then they'll make a seperate game or module out of it and we, the customers, will have to buy all these goodies from BFC so that they'll get a (hopefully) huge return on the investment of the time of their lives in this project. That's bloody good business sense.
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Oh I believe they're working their asses off to get this out a.s.a.p. so it's not impossible that it could be later today. However, I suspect two things will have to happen first that will alert us that Marines module is about to become available.
The first is that we'll get an announcement about who won the video competition. After all, the runners-up will receive a free copy of the module. Unless they're planning to refund the runners-up money, I think it's a safe bet this announcement will happen roughly on the day of the release.
Secondly, Moon said somewhere else that we'll know it's close when we see the Marines supplementary manual posted up. Neither of these have happened yet but I'll be watching carefully today (and tomorrow, and the day after that etc) ...
Marines crashes at startup
in Combat Mission: Shock Force Tech Support
Posted
Okay, I'm getting the same problem with the game. I have both the Marines icon and the v1.1 displayed on my screen and I can select Marines missions but the mission crashes very quickly.
I have Vista 64 Home Premium and an NVidea 8600GT graphics card. I'm in the process of downloading the new drivers so we'll see if that helps in about 20-30 minutes.
I purchased my copy of CMSF from Gamersgate.
I can't open the Scenario Editor. The game crashes instantly.
Missions crash wihin 0-3 minutes of starting. The crash is often triggered by me left clicking on one of my units. I get the generic, this program has stopped working CMSF.exe message and the game ends.
I have tried playing a Marines mission and it crashed during set up when I clicked on a truck.
I also experienced multiple crashes after attempting to playtest one of my Hasrabit missions.
I don't have the option to play Iron Man, it's just Basic Training, veteran and Elite.