Duke d'Aquitaine

Awesome news!!

Ok this was FUN. I definitely going to play this on LAN next time my wargaming buddies and I meet up. Plays almost like COD4, lol.

Awesome map and a great scenario. First time I have played an almost operational size battle in CM:SF. Back in CMMC we had a lot of those 2*2km map battles, but this sure beats it PS. It took almost 5 mins for my quadcore CPU to crunch the map... jeez

Hehe, very funny. I didn't realise norwegians possessed the ability to crack jokes that make sense outside Norway

I found this blog on how independent game developers work compared to big corporations like EA etc. Lots of talk about CM and Battlefront in it, and not bad. He talks about community relations between gamers and independent developers (he mentions Steve's recent 'future' post). It's in danish, so only scandinavians need apply Comment: My favorite scenario always was Chance Encounter. I even played it in CM:SF, still as good as the first edition in CMBO. As for his points about indies vs big players, I think he need to give big players credit for pushing the envelope on the technical aspects of games design, something the small timers are not capable of. I mean, despite fancying myself a wargamer, even a grognard, I love eye candy (don't hate me) and I invested in the latest nvidia card etc, it would be sad if games like Crysis, COD4 didn't find its way on my harddrive too, wouldn't it Good job on the 1.08 patch! link: blog

Intruder, that's similar to a weird spotting bug I encountered on mission 2 of the Ghost campaign: there was a pickup truck sitting on the bridge. Yet my squad, which moved right over it, didn't see it, nor did the 2 other squads which were 50 meters away. Only after it opened fire, did one of the squads see it. It remained unseen by the two others until after it was dead.

Good idea. I also have doubts whether or not you need embarked on the vehicle to unlock the special abilities or if the crew alone can do it.

Yes, 10-15% is where I ended up first time I played it. Good to know It's true going back to single scenarios is difficult - getting to know your guys through several scenarios add a nice layer of roleplaying

I just want to add that we saw the same thing with CM1: we need to learn the mechanics of the game. Once I had them down, or started to have them down, the game started acting 'real'. Same thing with CMSF.

civdiv's post above is pretty much what I do too. Your troops use whatever weapons they have, they even shoot AT4's at buildings when you order them to suppress the people inside. The key here is suppression: if the enemy inside the house is not pinned down, it's suicide to enter. And I'm not talking about scenarios where you have massive US offboard support or armor, but pure infantry scenarios. It can be done. And when the enemy have interlocking fields of fire and you see no way but a human wave attack, then don't. It means the enemy position is too strong That happens in RL too, you know Scouting has its own rules: give your soldiers time to watch the area you're going into - spotting is not instantaneous, by no means.

I went nuts on this one I replayed the first mission until I had no losses, cost me 5 re-runs, damn :-D The tactics were clear: deploy a smokescreen around the left MG house, move left around the hill in front of it, suppress the people inside it from afar, breach the wall from behind, clear the houses. The rightmost MG house you take out with the F-16 and 10 mins of longrange fire from the first MG house. I'm ready for Bravo mission 2, hehe.

Yeah, I see some of the tests you did indicate BFC need to tweak some values. Now when I think of it, I do recall some incidents in what was supposed to be deep woods where troops got killed in seconds from a single source. Kinda mystified me...

Overall I feel weapon lethality is ok. Maneuvering infantry on the battlefield is difficult to learn, but once you get the hang of it, you survive even hard fought battles with low casualty rates. I'll admit that when I first started playing CMSF my squads generally got mowed down seconds after debarking from the AFV's

A clickable eventlist, somewhere discrete, perhaps even with audio cues, would go a long way to increase awareness for the player.

Also, played on realtime: it's actually quite cool. Makes the game even more fluid. You need to concentrate more, though, but that's not a bad thing Fx. breaching walls and searching houses work MUCH better in realtime.

5 killed and 12 wounded on the first Bravo mission. Not too good but there was... some bad map reading on my part, hehe.. Map is really good looking, btw, has a real feel to it.

Lets go!

Perfect timing, I just finished Crossroads :-D

I just finished Crossroads, which was EXCELLENT. I really like playing on the same map a few times, gives the experience tactical depth. I'm really looking forward to your next campaign, mate!

CMSF is the best wargame out there, feature for feature and overall. It's easy to play, hard to master, just like it's predecessors. The amount of details hidden in it only become clear after hours of gameplay. About me: Presently with 25 years of wargaming under my belt (time flies), I clearly remember the day I loaded up Valley of Trouble for the first time. Amazement. 'Almost like being there, the Panther was moving, really moving, not jumping board hexes.' I have participated in a leading role in the Combat Mission Meta Campaign, and I wrote the one and only national daily newspaper review CM ever, to my knowledge, received in the Nordic countries. The editor still wonder how the heck I snug that review into the paper, hehe. CMSF: The gameplay in CMSF is fluid and the sense of realism unparallelled. Infantry is both incredibly easy to get killed, and very powerful, squad for squad. Once I learned how to use them, it took time, I manage big infantry scenarios (fx Webwings 'Crossroads' campaign) with 1-3 men killed + a bunch of wounded, which seem right to me. Seeing how you can split squads, assign different task, and follow each soldier as he sets about his business is good stuff. And the interface is very good and fast. I see how the engine has been revolutionized from CM1. The implications of the new spotting system are very big. Losing a platoon leader and HQ team has never hurt so much before, and the way you can see information travel up and down the chain of command is awesome. And the graphics update it has received is very satisfying too Modern vs WW2: I will never understand the business rationale behind the decision of going modern instead of sticking to WW2, but then again, Battlefront is not Sony, and praise the lord for that. The marketing guys do not sit in on the development process and the whole thing seems driven by interest and passion, which is as it should be. But most wargamers out there need an epic narrative as backdrop to their battles, and the setting of CMSF just doesn't provide that. It's gritty reality, and we see it on televised news all the time. It's almost an educational experience to play CMSF, not a game. I will admit to mourning the focus on realtime gameplay - maybe I'm too old, but I'm simply not capable of controlling and monitoring a company+ worth of troops and vehicles on a big map in realtime. 'Boom' it says on the far side of the map, I zoom over there, a tank blew up, but I have no idea what happened and the units are not really reporting anything to me, neither before or after the fact. Maybe I'm still missing something, though, as I saw Steve comment that he plays in realtime and he is older than me, I believe Also, you should perhaps consider 'flashing' the capabilities of the engine a bit more: some gamers like to sense the underlying mechanics, like we had in CM1 with the damage messages that appeared next to vehicles when they got hit Anyway guys, I just felt I needed to vent my opinion after lurking for years here since my last post. I just never tire of this game.. PS. And if you wonder why my forum account is new, it's because I changed email years ago, and now my old venerable account info is lost.