stoex

With all due respect, this feature seems a really big can of worms to open, and I somehow can't imagine it doing either the player or BFC any favor. Something as integrally important to the battle plan as the ammo loadout of units should not be put into the hands of the AI, no matter how good a job Charles does of coding it. There will be numerous situations where the player will not want what the AI thinks it should do. Example: Having units close to one another without them sharing ammo. Or the choice between which unit is left with the launcher AND ammo in the previously stated example where one unit has a Schreck and the other has the rockets. Sharing ammo between non-related teams is a great idea per se, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, BFC, make it the player's choice when and how it happens. Just like reloading from vehicles. Don't leave it up to the AI. I see trouble brewing with that approach...

Great stuff, Ryujin! Your Photoshop skills really bring out extra drama and suspense in those shots... @ souldierz: Those two shots in my first post are vanilla screenies (no Photoshop etc) from the game at maxed-out graphics settings. Enjoy your new graphics card !

Yeah, +1 on resupply for all infantry weapons, at least via vehicles if not ammo dumps of some kind. This also counts for Blue infantry, notably their large-caliber sniper rifles (as clamored for already)...

I'll chip in again here and let you know that they are in fact TUM WMIKs - the Land Rover based platform - and not the slightly larger Jackals. They do look pretty similar, though, even at close range when seen from the front! Roll cages on wheels, both of them . BTW, while TheVulture complains rightly about bad luck (and pathing) and some bad decision-making costing him heavy casualties this turn - the Audience may be thinking at this time: "but doesn't the opponent putting his squads in the second storys of those tall buildings kind of expose them to the entire Syrian fighting force including the T-72s?" The answer to that very interesting question is coming up shortly, trust me...in particular, I would like to note that while I have taken out tanks as expected, and infantry as expected, and at least seen an MG team or two by this point (also expected), I am still quite unaware of the fact that my opponent has a full detachment of AGS-17 GMGs minus mortar casualties at his disposal. As well as a set of BRDM transports. As a matter of fact, I am rather confident that I am already more or less mopping up the remnants of his forces. I am still wary of his remaining tanks and RPG launchers, but I'm not expecting much stiff resistance anymore, so I am beginning to be a little careless about my overwatch and moving a lot of infantry at once. I'm hoping for a quick surrender so we can rematch on a bigger and slightly more diverse map... Cue a learning curve for the Brits, TheVulture?

Thanks guys, looks like it was done a couple days ago - funny because I could have sworn it hadn't worked the day before yesterday when I tried. Works now, anyway - W00T!!! Sorry to have raised a rucus here - I also didn't really figure out how the helpdesk worked, I guess. I thought I was going to receive an email or something. Anyway, cheers!

Hi, It's been two weeks since the hacker did his stuff. The same two weeks have seen me without one of my two eLicenses for CMSF, which got destroyed by the virus along with my OS. As soon as the main site was back up, I sent an email to the eLicense support address listed there, asking BFC to reinstate my License. Last week I did the same thing at the helpdesk, took a ticket, gave all my information, and asked again. So far I have not even received a reply, never mind a new License...what gives, BFC? I realize your busy and life isn't a garden of pink roses, but at least an answer would be appreciated. Since I don't know what else to do, I am now posting here, hoping someone with influence will see this post and let me know what's up. Thanks

Oh. My. Gosh. Love the cityscape and the details in the Priest. And that bocage does look splendid! Amazing shots - thanks much and keep up the great work! I actually dreamt of playing CM:N recently, just goes to show you ... @Piecekeeper: Check out the tags in the bottom right corner of the screenshots - might answer your first question . As for question 2, expect "WHOOSH" to be a major sound effect, to be heard prominently in the first few minutes of most scenarios (according to Bullethead).

Copy that, it worked like a charm for me now as well. Whatever that setting was that you changed, Steve, that seems to have done it! Thanks

It would realy be my turn to put up something in this DAR for the blue side - unfortunately I was dumb enough to fall into the hacker's trap, and his nifty little rootkit buggered my OS so bad I had to do a full reinstall. This means I have no savegames to watch or make screenshots from, and I can't even play CMSF at the moment because I lost my eLicense as well and haven't been issued a new one yet. Therefore I regret to say that I am effectively out of this DAR except for the odd rim shot...I will have to leave it to TheVulture now to give you guys the lowdown on our battle. Have to say that I am enjoying reading your posts as well, though, TheVulture. Excellent writing! Here's a little 'bone' for the audience, however: remember how I said in the beginning that my Javelins would be screening the open terrain against tank rushes? Seems there is a tank rush coming soon...stay tuned ! Otherwise it might be interesting to know that at this point, my infantry very much mirrors my opponent's as seen on his last screenshot - I am advancing around the north-west while he is advancing around the south-east. We are practically circling around each other, with no-one daring to go into the middle of the map as yet .

Sounds great!!! It probably won't get me playing QBs since I have always found the amount of content delivered with Battlefront's games plus the content generated by the community (THANKS to all) sufficient for my needs. But it does also seem that this system will give scenario designers more options to devise interesting battlegroups, so I have no doubt every CM player will benefit, regardless of which type of engagement one prefers. Cheers!

Just pitching in here to say that I also received my new forum password without any delay, and have been waiting for my main site PW for almost 24 hours now. Will wait some more . using hotmail.com as my service provider, btw

Oops - my bad! Sorry about that...maybe BFC want to move this post to the No. 2 screenie thread, if they can do that, and close this one down. Or just close this thread down, I can repost in the other thread....whatever

TheVulture, you most certainly can use airbursts in pre-planned barrages, and I considered doing so, but decided against it for several reasons: First, my reckoning was that you would have mortars as well, would use them and expect the same from me. Therefore I figured you would keep your infantry away from open ground, in buildings and whatever transports you had available. Second, I thought that with HE, I would have an off-chance of damaging or destroying the odd vehicle as well. Maybe knock out a BRDM or de-track a tank... The real saving grace for you was that my barrage settings were 2 guns, medium, medium - as opposed to 3 guns, heavy, maximum.

I figure that eventually someone from BFC will make an appearance on the forums again, and when they do, they will close down the previous incarnation of the screen shot thread, as it is already well over 300 posts. So I thought I'd open a new one right now with this pretty little scene from an ongoing PBEM: The battle is 'Strength and Faith', and my rebel Syrian army conscripts are trying to defend a government compound against loyalist Republican Guards (or was it the other way round and I'm the loyalists? What the hell, doesn't matter ). Well into the battle, the enemy has outflanked me and shot a hole into the compound wall. His vehicles have begun infiltrating the compound and a veritable scramble ensues: This pesky bugger has taken 5 or 6 RPG's in the face and is still going. His main gun appears to be damaged, but his MG's are wreaking havoc on my infantry in the compound. The tank eluded my own steel beast standing in the middle of the compound two turns ago in a speedy maneuver, and had two BMP's guarding his butt (in the far right of the shot), making it impossible for my tank to follow him. Luckily, in the last turn, my heroic RPG gunners took out both BMP's, so the hunt can begin, resulting in this: Even a conscript crew can make THAT shot! Way to open a tin can ...notice the enemy tank rocking forward from the impact, while mortar shells fall in the background, and the buildings in the compound are pummelled by area fire from the outside. A very dramatic close-quarters fight...

Time for me to pitch in to this DAR... I am TheVulture's opponent in this battle. Before anyone complains, we have been playing for a while, the battle is nearly finished, and TheVulture gave me permission to chip in with some info from my point of view - we thought it would be interesting to offer a DAR from both perspectives simultaneously. Of course hindsight is 20/20, but I will try not to make reference to his posts in mine, thereby hopefully offering the audience a suspenseful and novel experience. Here, then, is my initial setup: Friendly Forces: I have a company of British infantry on foot, a platoon of Challengers, an FO with a module of 82mm mortars (more on this later), and the following support assets: A Javelin section (2 squads of 2 teams each and an HQ), mounted on Jackals (which is new to me - these Jackals actually have Javelin missiles on board for reloading) A section (if that is what it is called) of support Jackals - 3 each with HMGs and 40mm GMGs A section of TUMs for reloading and transport Enemy forces: I expect a company of Syrian Army regulars/veterans, possibly motorized to make up for my transport capabilities (which I am a bit scared of, those BRDM 14.5mm MGs are very lethal to infantry in buildings, and there might be a lot of them), a platoon of modern tanks, plus some kind of support elements. I also expect mortars since I have some, which brings me to my setup: I want to get my units out of the way of a possible mortar strike ASAP, so I have them set up on the edges of my setup zone. Everyone will scramble, two platoons going along the village edge to the right, one to the left. Later they will turn back in to the village, heading for the high ground. Javelins will overwatch the open terrain outside the village to deal with flanking vehicles, my tanks will split up along three of the main roads through the village, and the Jackals will be brought up to support the infantry as needed. Here is an overhead shot at the end of turn 1: As you can see, most of my units are still scrambling for their positions. I was very surprised when no enemy indirect fires showed up, and from TheVulture's reaction via email I could tell that mine had stung. For the record, I offered that we could restart and I wouldn't use my mortars, but he refused. So we continued... In the picture you can also see roughly where my platoons are headed, and where I expect his forces to show up eventually. While I am wary of his tanks and RPG's, I figure that my best strategy at this point is to exploit my advantage from the mortars and hurry for the high ground, to get there first and hopefully be ready for the enemy when he shows up.

As souldierz' opponent in this PBEM, I can confirm that this graphics glitch appeared exactly the same way in the replay on my machine. Save game available if needed, obviously.

Considering Steve's stellar patience with certain moderately rational and polite forum members, Charles' universal programming skills, the astronomical amount of unpaid effort being put into BFC's games by the Beta Testing Squad (twirling, nay, orbiting pom-poms is no laughing matter for sure), and the supermassive black holes of depression some people here seem to be falling into as they bide their time until the release of CM:Normandy, we may have to consider such timeframes on a more...cosmological level. From that point of view, after all, 'soon' could be anything up to, oh, say a hundred million years or so . Everything is relative, you know!

Darn. Seemed like such a good place to hide 'em, too Well, there goes another one of my grandiose plans for world domination. Back to the ol' drawing board...

As far as I can tell, collective is usually more trustworthy in such cases, but the opposite might also be the case. Collective intel tends to be the "confirmed" kind (the sum of all individual intel, so to speak), whereas individual units will often show '?' symbols in previous enemy locations for a while until info on the removal (by movement or casualty) of those enemies percolates through to them. Generally speaking, you will mostly find that there is nothing there in these cases, but the game can always surprise you .

John, What I thought - which is why I wonder where hcrof's 600mm penetrating HEAT round comes from. Any groggery regarding the Scimitar? As far as I'm concerned, classifying it as a tank is tantamount to classifying a TUM as an APV...or a Toyota pickup, for that matter!

Hi hcrof, Am just checking out your guide, very useful and enlightening, thanks! A few issues and questions have popped up for me, however: 1.) Your chart shows a penetration value of 600 for "Challenger 2 HEAT" as well as a value of 430 for the HESH round. AFAIK the Challys don't carry any actual HEAT rounds, only APFSDS and HESH, at least in the game. Am I wrong? 2.) Why is the Scimitar classified as a tank? 3.) In the section on inf AT weapons, a legend of sorts might be advisable to clarify that the "T" note under some weapons signifies a tandem warhead. Took me a while to figure that out... Cheers and thanks for your work on this!

One of our local lobbyists for the Eurofighter (Mensdorff-Pouilly) recently got arrested in London on charges of "conspiracy to corruption". BAE systems, a company in the Eurofighter consortium, quickly paid a total of € 400 MILLION in fines for corruption offenses in several countries, which magically caused the charges against MR. Mensdorff-Pouilly to be dropped. Make of that what you will...

Agreed and point taken. Seems to me the cost of virtually everything has gone up by a perceived 1000% in the last 20 years .

@ souldierz and Lethaface: Great shots of Blue vs Blue-action! Love 'em...there's something oddly gratifying about a Javelin hitting a Bradley or Challenger, seen from the perspective of someone who often plays Red forces... souldierz: I believe you are right and the lack of flame on some pictures is a graphics cycling issue. Not a bug though, as leaving out the flame on occasional frames causes a flicker effect in the rocket animation which is pleasing and realistic when viewed at normal speed. Hadn't thought of that before...

An idea for folks having trouble with the printsceen key. One reason may be that you have a keyboard with a toggle button/key for alternate uses of the function keys (F1-F12, print, pause). This would usually be located to the right of the function keys, but could be anywhere and have any name. I have one and I have found I sometimes have to switch depending on what game or program I am using to get the correct functionality from the function keys. I even have to switch between the command sets in CMSF sometimes, since the printscreen key works on one command set, but Fraps uses the other command set .