sandman2575

I'm still working on Storm! -- it is a *huge* scenario -- battalion strength vs. battalion in terms of numbers of units. Not sure how many hours I've poured into it so far -- easily 20 or more. A real test of endurance. Protip -- if initially everything seems a little too quiet, that's because it is.

These are all amazing, but the pic with the Moebelwagen and Hetzer -- Holy Hell! Gorgeous. Worghern, I would love to know how you achieve the shading and lighting effects. As if we're not asking enough of you already -- I wonder if you'd consider including whatever shaders / filters / 'sweet fx' settings or tools when you release the landscape mods. Simply amazing work.

Yeah, I'm in the thick of Stoumont now. It is indeed a hornet's nest. A Koenigstiger or two would definitely have come in handy...

Taking the Square is... not easy. You *will* lose precious vehicles and men, no matter how well you 'prep' the area with bombardment. (This was one mission where I really felt more time -- 30 minutes or so -- would have been appropriate.)

Just gave this a spin. Fun, intense scenario! I don't think it's a spoiler to say that, if you're playing as Wehrmacht, it really makes you rue the German infantry's relative lack of automatic weapons in '42. The urban map is terrific. Just incredibly impressed by the hard work that went into creating this amazing mod. Here's hoping the next scenario features a little more armor! : )

Is taking the main city square of Stavelot the only way to get access to your Koenigstigers in later missions?

Thanks grunt_GI. I wonder if one solution might be to title the folder something like "ZZZZ_StalingradMod" or some such, i.e. making sure it's the last group of modifications that get loaded and hence overriding my other installed mods that may be in conflict. (CM still follows this protocol, doesn't it -- load order of your Data\Z directory is determined alphabetically-?) And then just deleting the folder when I want to play 'regular ol' Red Thunder' ?

Sorry to be obtuse, but just have a question about installation -- I unpacked the 4 .zip files into a single folder, "Stalingrad Mod" -- placed this is my Data\Z directory with my other mods. My question is: will my other mods interfere with the Stalingrad files? I have *many* mods installed -- vehicle, building reskins, "Vein's special effects," sound mods, etc. etc. Are the Stalingrad mod files specially tagged to prevent interference with my existing mods?

This is really extraordinary. Congratulations to the development team and more importantly, thank you! Question -- is part of the vision of the project to eventually create a proper campaign for Stalingrad (whether German or Soviet focused) -- or is the idea to provide 'one off' scenarios? I recognize that a full campaign is an enormous amount of work to produce, but I was just wondering what sort of thing might be in the works. Thanks again !

Without wanting to have too much given away -- can anyone tell me how many missions there are in total for the KP campaign? (I know the campaign terminates early at certain junctions if a mission turns out a failure -- so I'm talking max. number of missions if the player succeeds throughout?)

Given that the game gives you no way to recover from an immobilized vehicle at the crucial juncture of the bridge -- and that crossing the bridge is something you need to accomplish very much nearer the beginning of the 1.5 hour scenario than later, and with more than just a handful of AFVs and halftracks -- I'd say it's a flaw, especially since the scenario makes the likelihood of immoblization high, between the (SPOILER) several intense arty strikes in the bridge vicinity and ease with which vehicles get bogged in the craters. If the bridge gets blocked, there's little you can do besides throw up your hands and say, "well, now there's no way I can take the objectives. That was a fun campaign, I guess..." I resorted more than once to re-loading saves because of immobilized vehicles. It got to the point that I was saving *every* turn in order not to have the entire campaign come to an premature and highly anticlimactic conclusion -- generally something I don't like to do. It is a game, after all, and to the extent that the game throws up barriers to being able to complete the game, over which one has no control -- I'd say that's not great design. Regardless, like I say, I think the KP campaign is overall terrific, as is Final Blitzkrieg in general.

Am curious about this as well. I too began Stoumont with very low ammo left for my mortars, having used a lot in Stavelot. The idea of 'rationing' some of your arty for future missions, as the briefing suggests, is frankly pretty ludicrous -- you barely have enough arty support for Stoumont, much less subsequent actions. Also -- is the ability to deploy mortars *in* the halftracks a new feature, or did I just never realize you could do this in previous CM games? Overall the Kampfgruppe Peiper campaign is really excellent. Although a minor gripe about the Stavelot crossing. It is *very* easy for one of your vehicles to get disabled at the entrance to the bridge or on the bridge, especially with the propensity for 'bogging down' in shelled terrain. If this happens near the beginning or even the middle of the mission, you've effectively already lost. There's no way to clear the obstruction, and so no way to proceed with taking your objectives. I admit I resorted to a bit of 'save scumming' in order to get through this mission precisely because of this, which is essentially a design flaw in the scenario if you ask me.

Worghern, I think the CM community would be very interested in any graphics mods, texture filters etc. you'd care to share with us!

Truly stunning -- amazing work!

Looks fantastic! Have been spending time with Final Blitzkrieg but am looking forward to trying this out. Thanks as ever for your excellent (and no doubt, hard) work, Dragonwynn !

Agree 100% and look forward to giving it a whirl as well. And sincere thanks in general to GeorgeMC, Dragonwynn and others who keep producing such amazing content and keeping CM fresh. Appreciate your efforts tremendously.

Beautiful. Great work as always.

Good God release this! Amazing work as always.

Thanks for clarifying, Bulletpoint. Still, given how 'expensive' 3d Model Quality is in terms of FPS vs. the actual graphics benefit it confers (which to me seems negligible), I see no reason to crank this to anything above "Fastest." Even one click up "Faster" takes a noticeable hit on performance. Setting to Fastest gives me around 45-60 FPS on average (with V-Sync Adaptive, Half refresh rate) -- on Faster this dips down to around 30-50. The real question though is, why on earth should 3D Model Quality be so extremely taxing on your system? As I said, I have a reasonably powerful PC, and playing at 1920x1080, it handles other graphics-intensive games at highest settings with ease. In fact it's safe to say that in my library, CM is the worst-performing game that I regularly play. Shadow rendering in CM is also pretty abysmal, but 3D Model Quality takes the prize as the most unreasonably demanding graphics setting in the game. Look, I'm not someone who needs all games to hit the magical 60 FPS or better mark. I'd be perfectly happy if CM could run completely consistently at around 35-40 FPS (this compared to Graviteam Tactics, where I get 100 FPS with ease). But if I set things like 3D Model Quality to "Balanced", CM routinely bogs down to the 15-20 FPS range, which is just unacceptable. The lag is very noticeable and distracting.

I recently bought a G-Sync monitor -- and had in the back of my mind the idea that maybe, just maybe, this might improve things with CM's terribly laggy performance. In short, for anyone contemplating a similar purchase for similar reasons -- it does not. In fact, I now disable G-Sync and use the Adaptive V-Sync (half refresh rate) setting when playing CM. I have tweaked CM's settings and the settings in my Nvidia Control Panel a million different ways in a vain attempt to find the 'sweet spot' for good performance. I'm convinced it doesn't exist -- EXCEPT for one setting: 3D Model Quality. Set this to "Fastest", and your game will suddenly perform as you might expect it should. No more dipping into 12-15 FPS for simply panning your camera. Changes to 3D Texture Quality seem to make no difference -- I keep it at "Best." But for whatever reason, 3D Model Quality dropped to lowest setting, Fastest, makes a very big difference. And I honestly cannot see any difference in visual quality between higher settings and Fastest. Vehicles and troops look the same. It seems like 3D Model Quality at lowest setting is disabling some graphics feature that (A) is *intensely* demanding and (B) makes almost no visual difference in the game. I don't know what it's supposed to be doing, but whatever it is, it's not worth the literally 20-30 FPS cost of keeping it on. The only other intensive graphics setting is Shadows -- turning shadows off generally yields a 5-15 FPS benefit. But I can't disable shadows -- it makes the game look considerably flatter and worse. So setting 3D Model Quality to Fastest has for me been the best solution. For anyone interested -- here are my settings in Nvidia CP. I have a fairly robust PC: i7 3770k oc'd to 4.6 GHz; Nvidia GTX 780 Ti; 16 GB RAM, Windows 7 x64. With these specs I can easily run other graphics intensive games at high or ultra settings. For example, by contrast, I can run Graviteam Tactics at a constant 100 FPS -- INGAME SETTINGS: Vertical Synchronisation: On Antialias/Multisample: On High Priority Process: On 3D Model Quality: Fastest 3D Texture Quality: Best Nvidia CP: Anisotropic filtering: 16x Antialiasing - FXAA: Off Antialiasing - Gamma Correction: On Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting Antialiasing - Setting: 16xCSAA Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisample 8X Maximum Pre-rendered Frames: 4 Power Management: Maximum performance Texture Filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Allow Texture Filtering - Quality: High quality Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On Threaded Optimization: Auto Triple Buffering: Off Texture Filtering Anisotropic Filter Optimization: Off VERTICAL SYNC: ADAPTIVE (HALF REFRESH RATE)

With respect to OP -- This isn't just a problem for the Halftracks. It goes for pretty much any unbuttoned AFV. It seriously drives me crazy how, in CM, unbuttoning is pretty much suicidal. Recently playing the "Firebrigade von Saucken" scenario in RT -- a Maxim killed the tank commander of one of my unbuttoned Tigers from a distance of over 500m -- in three bursts. This sort of thing is beyond ridiculous. Firstly, unbuttoned commanders or Halftrack gunners will happily sit exposed, unresponsive, for many seconds after it's obvious they are receiving fire. But worse, the commander or gunner is a ridiculous bullet magnet. Unbuttoning in CM is essentially the kiss of death, no matter how safe you think your commanders are. Now, I'm not saying tank commanders should be invulnerable. If you unbutton 50 m. from concealed terrain or buildings that may well contain enemy troops, you're asking for trouble. But that's not how it works in CM. As soon as you unbutton, you will attract bullets from any position with clear LOS, even at distances near the limit of small arms weapon range. Also during Firebrigade von Saucken -- another of my panzers was sitting quietly for many turns in cover, apparently undetected by the enemy. I did a little experiement -- saved the game, and then had that tank unbutton. Sure enough, he unbuttons and immediately attracts small arms fire, and is killed. I was all but 100% certain that would happen, and it did. I *really* wish this could be changed -- it is immensely frustrating and 'suspension of disbelief' killing. I essentially never unbutton my AFVs anymore. The button in the game panel should essentially be disabled or removed if it's going to be this absurdly lethal to unbutton.

Well, the idea that that game can't be mentioned in these forums -- Graviteam's Mius-Front -- is pretty ridiculous, although I'm aware there is plenty of hostility toward it around here. It's a fantastic game. While I can understand why the Graviteam games may not be to everyone's liking, or every fan of Combat Mission's liking, there's absolutely no reason one can't find both the Graviteam games and the Combat Mission games equally excellent. I do. So yeah, pick up Mius-Front -- it's a mere $35 and it will provide you with a different take on the Ostfront from Red Thunder, and something to bide your time with until Final Blitzkrieg. There are things Mius-Front does better than Combat Mission, and things (especially modelling infantry combat) where Combat Mission is clearly superior.

Very informative and helpful indeed, JasonC -- thanks very much.

Many thanks for the link. Fascinating discussion for someone like me who knows too little about the nuts-&-bolts of combat tactics, and the ways doctrines differed by nation --

@JasonC -- Like others, I've found your posts about doctrine extremely informative and helpful -- thank you. I wonder if we could prevail upon you to offer your insights into American and Commonwealth doctrines? I know this is the Red Thunder forum, so likely inappropriate to this setting, but the CMBN forum would fit the bill. Or, if American / British doctrines have already been explained, maybe you could direct me to where those threads are -- Again, many thanks for your efforts --