J Bennett

ChrisND gone too ? Not very good news. I thought he was a mainstay.

Well , I guess its possible, even likely someday Steve and all the BF staff will say "Thats it guys, We're retiring" then they sell the source code to another company or maybe some modders and they keep the game fresh with new content. That wouldn't be so bad either eh.

Kohima, Imphal, Okinawa, The Phillippines , both loss of them and retaking them, perhaps Guam, Saipan, Peleliu, Guadalcanal, New Guinea. All big enough you could skip the beaches, similar to how we dont have D-Day landings in CMBN. Ok I'm sold. Thats two copies. How many more can we get?

I agree on this point, I favor more theaters and time frames over retooling the game, if I have to choose. The variety of different weapons, AFV's and troops of more nationalities, The Russian front is obviously necessary , Even without a second front, the Soviets still would have defeated Nazi Germany. The rest was a sideshow. I want the PTO too but I guess its too much work for too little pay off. Amphibious landings, A relatively static defender, few AFV' s for Japanese. Maybe too boring. Banzai charges would be interesting though. I dont think it would sell enough.

Excellent suggestion. Put all WW2 stuff in one forum and the modern combat in another one.

I dont really understand a lamentation on the demise of a forum. If things are that bad, well, it had a good run. I'm not sure it was so much BF had to release more games, rather the "community" pleaded, requested, begged for more. They probably could have just kept the CM game in Normandy and France and kept making new engines but I think people would have got bored with that and the forum would still pass away. You will note I put quotes around "community". I have never been a big fan of that term given to describe groups of players or gamer forums such as this. But it says at the top of this page "Battlefront.Com Community" That is what the Battlefront company has chosen to call it, this is their house and I respect it. To me its a place to read and post messages about a very fine game. The thing is I have seen a lot of them come and go over the years "Air Warrior" "Steel Panthers" "Warbirds" "War-Clouds" and some others...and the world keeps on turning.

Some things I hope for. probably all been mentioned before but the game needs fires. burning buildings, wheat fields, woods etc. with spreading fire affected by conditions, wet or dry, windy or not, with varying degrees of the aforementioned. And maybe with squads that get targeted heavily and casualties, there is a chance they might surrender. A whole squad with their hands up and a white flag walking toward enemy lines. And maybe in addition to or replacing "buddy aid" we have medics with the armbands and correct helmets. If you could see them treating troops and and maybe carrying them on stretchers haha I know I am dreaming , far too resource intensive, I barely have acceptable frame rates as it is. Here is a graphical change that might be doable. Can we get some other types of infantry entrenchments and foxholes? Those things we have now look like big rubber rafts on the ground. I guess they are supposed to be big sandbags? I dunno they just dont look right.

As much as I would like to see North Africa, the Blitzkrieg, Russo-Finnish war, Pacific war coverage; and after much travail of soul, instead of expanding to more theaters and time frames, I hope BF instead focuses on making better and improved versions of the game 5.0 CMx3 Cmx4 etc.

One programmer left ? Gulp

Just some mixed thoughts. 1. Someone mentioned a Chuchill AVRE bridgelayer. A long time ago I suggested a Valentine bridgelayer, the British had one. At least they did in Panzer Leader (Another old Avalon Hill board game). Just a hunch on my part but I think BFC would prefer to continue to make better versions of the game CM3x, 5.0 etc. as opposed to expanding to more theaters and timeframes. After all they are BATTLEFRONT not FRONTS right? Anyway, "I think we can leave strategy to those with egg on their hats".

I'm not sure I agree with the premise about how much "the intel should be limited" Seems to me, Commanders had a pretty good idea what they were going up against. Now they probably did not know exactly what enemy units were in a particular sector, but if the objective was strategic: An important town, bridge, hill top, or whatever, they knew they could expect certain units there. They knew that the Herman Goering division, or 12th SS Panzer, or whatever division had been deployed to the general region, and so knew the quality of tanks, troops and support units. A lot of intel was from aerial reconnaissance which seems to be overlooked. Was the mission of the recon units to do long searches in vast areas? I'm not sure that was so common. Armored cars were more like mobile scouts trying to draw fire and run away in hurry. You have to be really careful using them because they die easily.

So there is a fellow who feels burned out because the game is not evolving fast enough and/or may never become what he hoped for. But there are those, or at least one who appreciates this Combat Mission series and how far it has come. I remember well the days I played Advanced Squad Leader using map boards, cardboard counters, hard bound THICK rule book, and dice. My games simulating a firefight that took 20 minutes to an hour in real life but it took 6 - 8 hours to "simulate" it. So I appreciate CMx2 for what it is. If Bulletpoint's suspicion is true, that we wont see Cm3x , but coverage of the whole war (or most of it); what if we were offered a choice: 1. Battlefront continues CMx2 to cover other parts of WW2 OR 2: They make a CM3x covering only the theaters we now have. I wonder what the majority of players would prefer?

What would have been a typical uniform for German troops under Albert Kesselring command. Unfortunately i dont have one in my Dragon figure collection to use as a model

Are we seeing too much tropical uniforms in CMFI. Should they be wearing more field grey for Army and maybe some more splinter smocks for falschirm.

Also U.S. vehicles. I just finished "Gateway to Palermo" and saw my tanks jump like that. I thought it was a graphical/video driver issue and and ignored it. It happened maybe 3 times the whole game.

Yeah I got it a couple weeks ago. There did not seem to be a thread announcing it, but I was reading the "any news" thread and people were talking as though they had downloaded it. I had bought the "big bundle" many weeks ago and so followed the download link and there it was with all the other 4.0 files for the other CM titles.

I have Mius-Front and agree with most of whats been said. For me I have trouble in the "Operational Map" area, trying to move the higher echelon units into position for battles. Having trouble replacing lost armor and field pieces, I go into battles with tank crews and AT gun crews in dug in positions with no tanks or field guns. It has been a learn by trial and error experience, The game manual/documentation seems really poorly done and needs to give players a lot more information. Also just a note: You get many versions of T-34's and KV-1 tanks but very few of the Panzers. I also rarely see any variety of German armor on the field except for Stug 3's and Marder II's and a few varieties of halftracks. It does have its fun moments but I prefer CMx2. Now Graviteam decides to skip the whole desert war and go straight to Tunisia? That's a turn off for me. Tactical gaming really needs an up to date tactical scale combat sim akin to CMAK covering 1941 to 1943 imo.

Even though I have all the CM World War 2 titles and modules, I have to say CMBS looks kind of interesting. I got soured on modern combat way back when Steel Panthers 2 was the best tactical war game. I played in a tournament and got embarrassed. My WW2 tactics just didnt seem to work on the modern battlefield. My curiosity is getting to me though, maybe its time to get into 21st century warfare.

Maybe something like: CMFI: Po Valley ?

I had bought the big bundle and not remembering that the download link sends you to a page with like a dozen files to pick from, then i got the one for CMFI after having gotten CMFB, CMBN and CMRT many weeks ago. SO I install and had to copy 3 keys in different orders, I think I had to make 4 attempts. To further frustrate myself I copied and pasted one of the keys from an old email that had my keys for CMBN and CMFI and wouldn't you know I copied the CMBN one instead of CMFI. :Lucky for me I realized the mistake and did it again with the right key so alls well thats ends well. Boy oh boy this game gets more complexicated with every new addition. But I understand its necessary to protect.I will continue to buy new modules and game engines for as long as I can still figure out how to install them.

When I was in the army, we would have called that a "statement of charges - no pay due".

Isn't Lübeck the place where Himmler tried to contact Eisenhower for peace terms? Just a guess but maybe that is how the British managed to beat the Soviets there.

I had an M10 in an ambush position in a certain scenario hoping for a Tiger to pass by which it did. The M10 promptly reversed and tried to pivot and move to another area (Without taking the point blank shot at the Tiger). It was like the crew's morale broke. It was a "Regular" crew. Maybe a "Veteran" or higher would have stood fast and fired. Although this was not a "shoot and scoot" I could see something similar happening. Sure was annoying.

According to my great Uncle, A T-3 mechanic who saw action in the Battle of the Bulge supporting a unit under Patton's 3rd Army, ring mounted .50 cals were used on other vehicles, his 2 1/2 ton truck for example. I asked him about his primary weapon in the war when I visited him 2 years ago. Expecting to talk about the M-1 garand, he said, "my main weapon was a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a ring in my truck" . He got to use it too. It seems the Luftwaffe did not like their trucks hauling ammo and spare parts to the line. I got to hear his recollections of being attacked by Me-109's and FW-190's carrying bombs. He was awarded a Bronze star. I read the citation, it was mainly for his outstanding work keeping all the vehicles going. He was my grandmothers brother, during the time we grew up me and my cousin wanted to ask him questions about the war but she said not too because he had nightmares, He saw buddies get killed and horrible things. But 2 years ago one of his daughters told us we could visit, he was ready to talk about it all. He mentioned bodies piled up like firewood when they finally got into Bastogne. He mentioned how one of his buddies saved his life but lost his own. We had heard over the years how he was asleep in his truck and some Germans woke him up wanting to surrender. We asked him about that too. He said "Well yeah but I wasn't in a truck I was on the ground asleep! There was about 10 of em. We didn't have anywhere to put them so we just gave em a pat on the behind and pointed them to head toward the rear" Sorry for the digression just thought I would share.

Just as a side note. I read about the Battles of Kohima and Imphal a long time ago and there was a painting of 5 Grant tanks going up a hill to attack Japanese positions. They were all unbottoned and the commanders were throwing grenades. I think it said 4 of the 5 commanders were killed. Just thought I would share.