Paper Tiger

Marsh tiles are impassible? I really didn't know that. That is good to know.

I have to confess that I haven't played a Blue v Red situation for at least two months now. My game time is exclusively Red on Red and it's a blast. Red forces require much more careful handling in a battle that US forces and I feel the C2 restrictions more frequently. I'm not a great fan of MOUT but I'm sure as hell going to give it another chance once 1.06 comes out. I prefer battles out in the open, meeting engagements, two forces slogging it out over a small village, etc and these are not really possible to do to my satisfaction with Blue v Red. But Red on Red really works in these situations. The decreased accuracy and lethality of the atgm's and main guns make engaements between two mechanised forces exciting to play. I remember playtesting one of my scenarios as Syrian Special Forces defending a village against a US Bradley company with a platoon of SEPS in support. One SEP took up position and took more than 10 hits from A-14 ATGMS and survived them all. It was immobilsed but it was still combat capable and it took out all four of the Kornet teams. When the other three SEPS climbed up onto the crest I quit. Game over. On the other hand, TURMS are clearly superior to the regular armoured forces tanks but they are MUCH more vulnerable than M1A1's. When playtesting one scenario, I parked them in an excellent firing postion and waited for the enemy tanks to swing into view. Yeah, I nailed the first couple without a problem but then I lost them all to the return fire. They're powerful without being Uber and handling them on the modern battlefield requires more care than the M1A1. Having all that extra armour is a little more forgiving of player mistakes or bad tactics. I would imagine that the reason some PBEM games stop so quickly when the Red player gets disheartened is because playing Red v the Blue AI is a very different baby from playing another human. In most cases, when playing the AI, I feel I have a REAL chance of winning, even when the odds are heavily stacked against me simply because the AI is locked into a plan and can't react at all. But when I feel that I have NO chance of a victory, like in the above situation, I usually quit. I can't imagine it would be much fun fighting on as Red when your best units have been wiped out and those SEPS are bearing down on you. You're just waiting to die. On the other hand, US infantry without javelins versus tanks is equally desperate. I'm SO glad the game allows me to do Red v Red. There are a greater variety of units with different kit to play around with and that will improve when the Marines module comes out sometime later this year. And the new Red resupply option that's coming with 1.06 will make the experience even better. Bring it on!

Quote: There are a bunch of fixes coming in v1.06 that you will probably like, such as Red vehicles having stores of ammunition like the Blue vehicles. There have also been tweaks to all kinds of values to make infantry combat more evenly realistic. I mean, besides the improvements found with Enhanced LOS. Steve Woo hoo! That is GOOD news. I do mostly Red on Red just now because I can't help myself, I like the open terrain warfare, meeting engagements, two forces fighting over a key piece of terrain. Red can't hack it against the US for all the reasons you've stated before. But I can have all this good fun with Red v Red. Blue v Blue is LETHAL man! No fun (for me) The option to resupply Red forces during a scenario will give me more options. This weekend, I've been puzzling how to do a Red on Red MOUT situation without resupply and the only way I could do it was to have reinforcements trickle onto the board. Now, the 'Blue' side will have to work harder to preserve their carrier vehicles so that they can resupply later in the campaign. I'm glad to hear that it's coming so soon and that I'll be able to adjust all my existing scenarios within the campaign to take advantage of these new features. >sigh< more hours of playtesting . Looks like it will be March before I finally get the campaign finished.

vincere thanks for your feedback. I'm trying very hard to keep the difficulty level quite high. I'm currently developing a 'see saw' battle on a large farmland map but it's difficult to find the right balance of forces to make this possible. Since it involves some core units, it's unlikely that you'll have the full OOB with full ammo at the start. Once I test-compile it, I'll test it again. Ammo is the killer for scenario length with RedvRed. The farm scenario is set up as a 1hr 30 min jobbie but the starting forces on both sides tend to run out of ammo after about 30 minutes. I usuually win it after 40 minutes even with the odds stacked against me. There are a couple of relatively easy missions. I've created a new opener and it's very easy as long as you know how to set up an ambush at night. The first time I playtested it, my force got slaughtered to a man. It's an interesting situation because there's only one simple AI plan but each time I play it, it does it differently and sometimes does some dangerously clever things. However, I played it again this afternoon and I got a total victory and lost only 1 man. The background story is a simple one, Syrian Civil War. I have a number of campaigns lined up for this story featuring different forces in each one. The first, called 'Hasrabit' gives the player a Republican Guards task force and some Special Forces to match against the forward elements of a rebel armour division moving into the fictional military district of Hasrabit to the south east of Damascus. (Hasrabit is fictional but the town is based on some real terrain I found using Google Earth.) I've also created a fertile valley to the east of the main town which is not there in real life. And it breaks up the hopefully not too monotonous hilly/desert terrain that the Republican Guards units are duking it out in. Later, when the Marines arrive, I want to do another campaign using the Airborne division that will have some REALLY cool kit. Then, 'The Destruction of the Third' will be an armour heavy campaign, where the player has to fight some very large armour battles. I've got one of those battles done already and I was tempted to release it as a scenario but it's going to have to wait. Another one will be extensively MOUT representing the fighting in Damascus. Syrian v Syrian MOUT operations are quite different babies from US v Syrian situations. I reckon that should keep me very busy until the Brit pack arrives much later this year.

YankeeDog: Just curious. . . I think I remember reading somewhere that CMSF's new calendar and time of day modeling included stuff like phase of the moon... is this true, and if so has anybody checked to see if there's any difference in spotting at night, new moon vs. full moon? Yup, I've tried this. The phases of the moon are accurate and they make a HUGE difference to night spotting. Check a calendar for May-July 2008 and try it out. Clear skies with a full moon mean infantry spots really well at night, certainly to spot targets and exchange fire out to 300m. The map looks quite beautiful in the moonlight too. Apart from that, I have no idea just how much the different phases affect spotting at night. Because infantry spot much better under full moon conditions, I suspect their ability to spot at night is linked to how much light is available. I haven't much time to do lots of experiments on that though.

GSX: "It would be nice to hear some constructive thoughts instead of girlie comments though." Guess I spend way too much time with the ladies then. "Steve has also said that the game is designed around the RT engine." That's a bit misleading. Here's what he said in his reply to you. "Well, this supposes that CM:SF is primarily designed to be played in RealTime, which it most definitely was not. Believe me, if we wanted the game to be that way we would have just skipped over WeGo completely. We could have shaved 6 months off our development schedule, perhaps more. Now, it is true that CMx2's core engine is RealTime. That's something we've been mentioning every chance we could get over the last 3 years. Not only that, we explained in detail as to why that's the case and the benefits it brings to WeGo play." It sounds like you're misquoting him to support your false thesis that BFC don't support WEGO, explicitly stated at the end of your first post... "[nor try to have a bastardised WEGO just for the sake of it]." also... "I was merely voicing my opinion of the WW2 version and how I would like to see it." From reading your posts, I have a hard time believing that you're describing the game that you'd like to see. Perhaps I'm wrong but if I am, it's safe bet that you're going to be very disappointed with CM2 WW2.

That's probably because the scale of TOW is different where each individual soldier is modelled. Therefore, it would make sense to have the ability to 'team up' these individual soldiers.

Wow, you've just finished saying most of this about WEGO and RT in the "My review. CMSF is the best wargame out there" thread claiming that you were misled about the game and you got a solid reply from Steve. You must be very bitter about the perceived (from YOUR viewpoint) lack of support for WEGO to bring up the same thing again. It's a bit of a shame that ToW doesn't have WEGO. The scale of that game sounds more to your taste but it's RT. As to your point about QB's being more like the CMx1 experience, you surely MUST have read by now that that's exactly what BFC are planning for WW2. Agree with you about the loss of the right click menu but it's gone man, and we just have to get over it.

Scenarios or campaigns created with higher level patches can't be played on lower level versions of the game. You'll only be able to play scenarios that were created with the 1.02 or 1.01 engine but not 1.03+. Webwing's excellent campaigns are 1.05 babies. So, get the monster all inclusive 1.05 patch and you'll be fine. The whole game is so much better in 1.05. Good luck

LongLeftFlank: "I worry that CMSF is at risk to develop the same problems as another famous game: AH's France, 1940." Ah, France 1940. I still have that and play it when I return to Scotland for a holiday. It's a good game but no matter how badly you handicap the Germans and build up the French, it's just a question of how big the Germans win. Still, it's fun tp play as the Germans. I agree with everything Steve has posted about what would happen to these fixed positions. However, I am currently trying to design a hypothetical Red on Red campaign and I would really welcome more tools to make Modern Era combat a bit more challenging. But the game's focus is on a modern era lightning fast US strike and not modern era combat per se and BFC only have so many resources available to them so Red on Red isn't a priority for them. This new game engine has enormous potential but it looks like it'll be tied into MOUT for the forseeable future. I also agree that MOUT is the best way to hurt the US. Therefore, the occassional fortified building would go a LONG way to helping out here. There's a post about a Marine MOUT AAR somewhere in the stickies about this. Fortified buildings are not uncommon and a dog to deal with, even for the US so I'd like to see them introduced sometime very soon.

yup, they're helpless babes at night. Or at least, the infantry is. Some of the tanks and the BMP-2s have fairly good night vision equipment and the Kornet ATGM teams are really good. But infantry is blind, even the best of them. I'm developing a scenario where Special Forces ambush a mech company at night. The Kornets are fantastic but the AT teams and ordinary squads can't SPOT squat at night even from a few (ie less than 10) metres. This is probably realistic because the US Army has invested a fortune in equipping it's troops with high tech night equipment and and they exploit this by training to fight at night. They are MUCH better at it than the Syrians. Once flares are introduced into the game, this should help them out a bit. I for one, am really looking forward to seeing them introduced. I like night battles. And you tend to get better frames per second too.

How's this experiment of yours going? I'm curious to hear about it too. I find that Syrian snipers under the player's control don't fire at even medium ranges. But give them a target and they'll fire away merrily at range in excess if 750m for certain. They stop when their target's icon turns to a "?". At that range, only vehicles will be returning fire. I'd like to know how effective their fire actually is. Sometimes their targets turn to "?"'s very quickly. I guess I could just watch what happens to the enemy unit when they're under fire but I always forget to do that.

Marwek77 aka Red Reporter: Its so difficult to repaint AH-64 blue badge to Mi-24 red one? Yeah, I'd like to see something like that implemented too. However, it probably won't happen because SF is really about a lightning campaign in Syria in which the Syrian Air Force is knocked out on the first day. We can create scenarios in which Red force fight with other red forces but to do it, we have to use the US air units. I don't think Battlefront are going to budge on this issue. It's a bit of a shame because it does cramp the creative abilities of scenario designers somewhat. But I understand that there's only so much that they can do and this is a bit of a fringe issue. There are probably a LOT of people in this forum who'd like to see some Red air power included later just for such situations. I'd settle for access to be denied to all but HQ units. At the moment, I have a self-imposed restriction where only the Syrian HQ's can do even if the squads can too. Anyway, using the US air power what would be the rough equivilants for the Syrians, anybody?

From the 'Are formations implementable" thread... Steve's final word on the subject. "Formations require extra UI and extra micromanagement. Same for having user defined SOPs. I know you guys think that they would reduce micromanagement, but you have to trust me on this... they will increase it. Adding Formations and SOPs without TacAI ability to change them based on the situation is a very, very bad idea. So if the TacAI is going to be smart enough to change from one to the other, why then should the player have to do it? It's only going to muck things up." That probably applies to this idea too. Smarter TacAI is the way BFC are going, not more micromanagement.

Is there a rough date for the British Module? As far as I know, there's not even a rough date for the Marines module. Ballpark guess for the Brit pack is later in the year, probably in time for Xmas. Bummer!

Yup, I have a 64 bit processor and Vista 64 Home edition. I knew that RAM made a difference but I had no idea that it was so important. I'm one of those people who love using computers but have very little idea about what makes them tick. So you think I'll get better frames with 2+Gb of RAM? That's a very cheap upgrade for me and my wife would probably prefer that option.

Flanker15: We can just turn down the eye candy if it chugs... oh no! I'm afraid to admit that I'm no longer a true grog and that the eye candy has become very important to me . I only play scenarios that will run on my rig with all the graphics settings at best and so I've got used to it. I guess I could lose some fidelity on the unit models as most of the time I'm hovering high over the virtual battlefield like a Valkyrie . But I HAVE to have best quality maps.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm just very intersted to see if a simple increase in RAM will do the trick for me. There's nothing shoddy about my processor but I currently only have 1GB of RAM and that's with Vista 64 Home. Memory is very cheap to buy just now so expanding that to 4GB is not unrealistic. And much cheaper than forking out appx US$500 for a spanking new quad processor with a motherboard to match. Although I reckon I'm heading that way. Who knows, maybe I could swing it with the wife to get all three

Rollstoy: yeah I know. I am very excited about the changes it's bringing. It will give us all more tactical flexibility because we'll be able to hide troops behind walls, small undulations etc. It should even make the 'Slow' movement command useful for infantry again. I'm only nervous because I forsee myself having to buy a new processor to continue to work on my campaign. Some of the scenarios place a pretty heavy load on my processor as it stands just now. I would be disappointed if I weren't able to continue after 1.06 is released until I buy a new processor. After all, it's not JUST a processor, it'll be a motherboard too as well as all the hassle I'll probably get reactivating Vista because it's a major hardware upgrade.

From TheVulture: The tricky part is getting the behaviour of water correct. CMx1 style of all water is one level and completely static is okay, but given the level of detail in other areas of the games and Steve's previous comments, they'd rather have something more realistic to a) be more realistic, and not jar too badly with the other levels of detail as noted elsewhere, the lower level of abstration in troop behaviour etc. causes more complaints in CM:SF because it stands out more due to the representational detail. If you want vaguely accurate water, with the right level of cover (high velocity small arms rounds disintegrate very quickly on hitting water), impairment to movement to waders, effect on vehicles, currents in rivers, waterfalls and a whole host of other things, it gets very, very complex. And without those things, people are going to complain about abstractions and 'bugs' causing results not matching up with what they expect. You raised some very good points there mate. Some people will probably complain if their troops can't swim. I hadn't thought about it from that angle before. Maybe it will be a long time before we get.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm really hoping that 3Ghz will be enough too. I'll just have to wait and see. While I've been working on this project I think I've learned a a couple of things about what hits your frame rates, at least for those of us who play RT anyway. AI reinforcements often give me a temporary but significant drop in rates after they arrive. It gradually gets back to normal but I don't need to be informed when they arrive as the frames often drop to 2 or 3 a second for a couple of minutes. This makes sense to me as the processor will be suddenly burdened with the task of placing them and giving them all movement orders, etc. as I said, after 2-3 minutes, the frame rates climb back up to double figures. Another thing that I noticed was that frames seem to drop when you have more AI groups. Playtesting a large farmland map, I gave the AI a single mech battalion and divided it into 3 AI groups, Company A, B, and C. (Imaginative huh?) I usually do this when I start playtesting a map. Everything worked fine like this. Then I subdivided those groups and the frames plummeted. Again, this makes sense as the processor is having to do the math for more than twice the number of groups. This farmland battle looks like it could turn into a beauty but it's JUST running at acceptable fps on my machine at the moment. The sometimes very long lines of sight (1km+) might mean that more LOS checks will send thos frames per second down to low single figures again and who knows what will happen when the reinforcements arrive. I'll just have to wait and see. Lethalface. I've never heard of PrimoPDF. I'll google it later today when I'm at work and I don't have to pay for my internet access (hey, I'm Scottish, what the hell )

I have to confess that I'm a bit nervous about this change. I only have a single core 3Ghz Intel processor and I like to play the game with all the settings maxed out and have usually been able to in most situations, including my own designs. But a potential 25 fold (that's 2500% not 25%) increase in one of the most intensive processor activities is bound to give us all a significant drop in frames unless the processors are super-fast. Any word on what kind of situations will be the hardest hit? Large maps? Lots of individual soldiers spotting? Mixes of vehicles and footsloggers? Will more closed terrain help or not?

While I'm really looking forward to the arrival of 1.06 I'm also worried that my current kit might not be up to the task of running some of these scenarios with the new ELoS. I was already pushing my computer to the limit with these scenarios and even a small drop in performance will make them unplayable on my computer. A shame as I had some really cool ideas for some of the later scenarios, especially the finale. At present, there's not a map that's less than 1kmx1km and there's usually about four or five companies in action (both sides combined) in some of the bigger ones :eek: , three in the smaller. But they all run fine on my single core 3Ghz intel processor which is a lot less than some of you guys have. But my wife has already given me permission to upgrade the processor (what a sweetie!) so I might be able to make them even bigger and better. But until I see what happens when I install 1.06, I can't inspire myself to do any further work on these scenarios.

Are you the guy who designs those scenarios that bring the computer to it's knees? If you're able to play these scenarios with decent frame rates then I want YOUR kit. Sounds like I'll be going with a quad core then. Thanks for the reply.

I seem to recall reading a thread somewhere a long time ago that the schedule was Shock Force first, then after about 6 months, the Marines module and then work would start on the British Army module (hurrah!). WW2 would arrive about the same time as the Brit pack, perhaps about Aug or Sep later this year. However, it's been nearly 6 months since SF was released and there's been no word on the Marines module so I'm not expecting it to arrive for at least another 2-3 months, possibly even later. And that probably means a later release for WW2. I've seen early 2009 mentioned somewhere. However, don't get depressed. I could be wrong. Corrections are welcome gentlemen.