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1ADVet

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  1. The CMBO, CMBB series was always a favorite of mine. The scale tallied nicely with the Battalion Task Force training that took place at Hohenfels in Germany, and struck the right balance between management demands and fluid play. And the amazing historical research done by the community of players who created some of the most demanding scenarios was astounding. The scholarship was simply superb and turned a game into a genuine learning experience that gave an insight into the issues and nature of WW2 conflict. The scale allowed one to fight as little more than squad to closely approaching brigade size operations (although managing the amount of "pieces" became a bit difficult ) and you could tailor scenarios to teach quite a bit using see-saw types of operations that challenged single players to make difficult tactical decisions. And not having to micro-manage air and artillery was a strong point. I found the means by which this series simulated Artillery and Close Air support quite good. Has anyone at Battlefront ever given thought to redevelopment of the game, retaining its near perfect scale, but recoding for WIN10, and perhaps addressing things like the issues associated with graphics (for example; vehicles had two sides but both had to be mirror images of each other)? Has anyone tried to do so?
  2. Thanks, Schrullenhaft. So they dropped the fog table. Guess I'll have to see if I can't light a fire under their nether parts. I do have a fallback position. I have an older computer with XP that I use for a media center and Grand Prix Legends (still the finest and still being developed, and many who played GPL were also active in Combat Mission ). I will switch over and see if I can retro-update with an older driver.... although my old CMBB CD has developed some problems and will not always load the game. With respect to CMBB scenarios-is there any way of having the AI force fixed in place for the duration of the scenario, so they do not launch suicide attacks from well-sited, dug in defensive positions. For those who need a shot of WWI aerial combat try Over Flanders Fields (google it, folks). Thought I'd throw that in because I think the Combat Mission community consists of folks who would appreciate the historical research, and the superb results accomplished in both code and graphics.
  3. Actually I was referring to the Achtung Panzer Kharkov demo, Drescher. Sorry that I was not clear. I did not find much immersion in the demo, and felt that the layering of controls was exactly opposite the control simplicity of the Combat Mission series. I must admit I did not spend a lot of time with the demo. But you appear to have played the full game , and full games are often a different case from demos. You mention the infantry act clumsily, but how about key elements like line-of-sight and armor and weapon characteristics? The Battlefront guys did a lot of research in developing the Combat Missions series-does Achtung Panzer exhibit similar attention to actual weapon performance? Are there some tutorials in the full game? But I guess the simplest way to find out is to simply dive in and purchase the complete game and it does seem to be available at a bargain price. I shall try it.
  4. I have tried TOW, including the latest demo of Zitadelle, the new Kharkov demo and many other demos of the pseudo-combat games churned out with eye-candy graphics which are really little more than the old command & conquer resource driven clickfests (with tank engagements at twenty feet!). I first got into this genre when the East Front game series out. I had spend considerable time over the years at Hohenfels, formerly our combined arms training center for mech/armor task forces, evaluating battalions, supporting battalions, and commanding battalions. East Front had a scale that was immediately recognizable if you had spent time at Hohenfels. The WEGO was supportable, with reasonable time increments and commanding at battalion level was quite good tactically. If you accepted promotion and went to brigade command, command and control became tedious and near impossible. Yet there were many good things about the East Front series. Battlefront subsequently released the Combat Mission series and set new standards for a tactical and very realistic wargaming experience. Thanks to a broad range of enthusiasts who contributed extensive vehicle, sound, and infantry mods as well as an incredible variety of scenarios (in many cases developed with an amazing amount of research from which I learned much about various battles little covered in mainstream media), the Combat Mission series was superb and eminently enjoyable. Scenarios could easily be modified and small changes, such as visibility or time of year could make a scenario play out completely differently, forcing the player to develop a new tactical battle plan. Unfortunately many of the gamers who developed those wonderful scenarios have moved on, as have the graphics gurus (which in many cases was far more than adding winter whitewash or mud, instead requiring extensive historical research). To me, Combat Mission (and I must add, WWII) is still the best. TOW and its' successors are missing something. Two things were critical to Combat Mission- the scale ( roughly at the battalion task force level) and the WEGO system. Together they worked to allow a player to make up for the lack of a staff, and a real chain of command. In fact most of Combat Mission's follow-ons have been a step back, because without WEGO you are forced to rely on AI and believe me it is not there yet. I simply do not have the enjoyment I still get from CMBB. So my recommendation is this- buy the Vista versions of CMBB or CMAK, go to Green as Jade's site and add the modifications, sift thru the scenarios or develop your own, and enjoy. Hope that the actual Combat Mission code is released to the public domain (I understand Combat Missions Campaigns may have been) and that we can induce folk to delve into it and work the improvements long time players wanted.
  5. Issue: No fog effects System: Win7 Home Premium 64 bit, Nvidia 285 GTX running driver version 196.21 released 2010.01.19, Intel Core i7-920@2.67 Ghz, 12 GB RAM, Asus motherboard (don't see where it is involved). Application:Win7/Vista version of CMBB purchased within the last month from Battlefront.com (download and CD). I am running the complete version as downloaded. I am not running the $5.00 patch as, if I understood correctly, the latest CMBB does not require it, or already includes the code changes. I was playing the Kharkov demo and it actually motivated me to repurchase CMBB and I found that I still enjoyed single player slogging it out with CMBB more than anything else. But some of the fun is gone when fog effects are not rendered. Some of the best operations/missions used fog. I can't believe I have any real video card limitations with the GTX 285 and it certainly is capable of most special effects. I have none of the video issues reported in other posts, such as illegible or corrupted text and I have only found a couple of references to a particular Radeon issue with Win7/Vista and CMBB. Anyone working with the CMBB code? I sure would like to fiddle with some of it.
  6. Thank You. I wondered what Smart Pause meant (before manual posted and left flip corrected) but guessed and disabled it and the casualty interrupt went away. Some observations: - I tried sizing the battlefield and find that the random maps could not be sized while the single titled mission could be sized. Not sure if this just a demo quirk or is characteristic of the TOW series. -Still would like to see some info on flanking unit activity or at least something like "Your flanks are secured by such and such". And standard tactical map info like hills designated by height and villages/features named. -The demo seems sized at company/platoon level which means that maneuver is limited (it usually is at that level unless you go down to fire and maneuver at fire team level or overwatch when moving tanks). But if you are maneuvering individual squads/fire teams/individuals you have no real "feel" developing for a coherent company command executing a mission. At least as far as I've played thus far. Something that CMBB had that I cannot quite define. Anybody else feel like that? It's a demo so one shouldn't make hard and fast judgements, and I won't. I will wait and see how the game develops as it moves toward gold status. -The camera movement is a bit frustrating. I was playing a Soviet defense mission and found myself unable (without considerable fiddling) to see some of my emplacements on the flanks. My camera stopped like it ran into a barrier. Then I had to "maneuver" it to see my units. -Deployment is really limited (the size of allowable deployment "hexes"). I simply could not take advantage of existing terrain features and physical features like emplacements even though I was widely separated from the enemy.
  7. Thank you for the advice on changing the code. I shall try it today. I was wondering whether my demo was different from everyone else's for a bit there. Also, I obviously suffered brain fade in hurrying to the game and missed the fact that the situation/order has a scroll button. There is more there than I originally thought. Is there an annotated tactical map somewhere I also missed?
  8. I reviewed all the SETTINGS: nothing sems to look like it disables casualty interrupt. Do I have to re-install the demo and alter the initial set-up? That seems like going around your elbow to get to your nose.
  9. -a quick one, why are we interrupted by individual casualties and jerked away from our screen? How can I disable this feature? -tactical map? what tactical map? I see no towns or features identified, no intelligence plotted, not even a "goose egg" indicating objectives, or arrows indicating main attack and so on. -mission: who's on my flanks?, what's the general situation?, what do we expect the enemy to do? Where's the analysis on avenues of approach, trafficability and so on? Lots of things I expect in a mission order simply not there. Yeah, I realize there's not much point in adding CEOI and other info like that but the mission order does need fleshing out. Am I wrong or am I just staring at a few units in the middle of nowhere not knowing where anyone is? Not even knowing where the enemy is? I need to know more information because I need to have a plan--that drives my initial deployment. Seems like deployment is driving the plan here. - I was a big fan of CMBB/CMBO-game mechanics/controls matched up well against scale of battles ( really close to Hohenfels Battalion TF Exercises) and WEGO system fitted well, preventing micromanagement from bogging down tactical thought. And others developed some great scenarios and add-ons. I tried earlier TOW and always lost interest--the scale was simply too down in the weeds for me. I mean if I wanted a Command and Conquer style "RTS" that's a different ball game. And I will be the first to admit the WWII is still my cup of tea; not modern warfare unless you consider, for example, the Arab-Israeli wars.
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