ZPB II

Great, thanks! I consider your sound mod one of the must-haves. The only niggle I have is that atleast in 2.0 I think, the one for CMBN&CW, all the small explosions have this minor side sound to them that makes it sound like not an explosion. Hard to explain. Keep up the good work!

Oooooo, thank you very much! Good stuff.

Michael Emrys has yet again proven to be a worthy connoisseur. I was lucky to crash-land here.

Looking good, interesting to see how this will pan out. Hate to venture off-topic, but Baneman, have there been tests on this topic? I play a lot and there is a clear trend that I perceive. When I'm on the offense and my tanks are moving, they are spotted first. When I'm on the defense with stationary tanks they spot the enemy first. There are outliers but I can't shake the general impression I get. Moving tanks shoot far too accurately, but I can't say I feel spotting to be broken. If moving tanks and units have an inherent advantage, shouldn't the tank rush be the most viable tactic in CMBN? I played a lot of Starcraft & Starcraft 2 and perfected the zerg rush in my peak. I still can't get the tank rush to work in CMBN.

I don't know about Basic training, but is it possible to play PBEM in Scenario author test mode? Since it has no fog of war at all it might be worth trying. Good to get to know how the game works while actually seeing what's going on. I'm not sure what else it affects other than FoW.

Does anyone know the song that was used in Snowball's CMA trailer? I would love to find it.

Regarding zooks, yes, I'm worried about the magic bullet. What I mean is that it is a bad habit to park vehicles 200 meters away from cover and be in the general mindset that it is a safe distance. In my long run it has cost a lot of men and AFVS. But I must admit that my view is slightly skewed due to playing against Crack/Elite troops with Fanatic/Extreme motivation most of the time. They have had a lot of practice and don't mind the suppressive fire coming downrange. There is also some residual fear from having played a lot of CMSF. Oh, those RPGs...

Now, a couple of tricks from the gamier side of things, quick battles. First of all, to have truly great battles against the AI I do a couple of things. I give them more points and buy troops for it myself. I know, it kills the FoW but it ensures a perfect tactical challenge for my guys and I can set them to Crack/Extreme motivation to compensate for the AI's lack of finesse in it's movement. The random AI picker doesn't do so well in small battles due to the way TO&E works. In the Quick Battle maps (much kudos to their makers, thanks!) if the AI has artillery which is often, it will fire some of it at the prebattle bombardment zones. This is nearly all the time the first piece of cover or the obvious avenue of advance from your setup zones within reach of the first turn but never the setup zone itself. I have accustomed of the habit of sitting still in the setup for the first couple of turns and watch my own artillery as it gracefully follows gravitation. There are a couple of real steals on the QB menu. The most obvious ones is the US rocket artillery. You can get a battery for 60 points if you're lucky. That's almost 10 batteries for the price of one German howitzer battery. In my first ever CMBN TCP/IP game I immediately spotted this gem and had to try it out. All my men had to do was walk to the craters previously occupied by a German company. Needless to say gentlemen do not use them. Always buy small teams as elite since the price increase is marginal. US Airborne infantry are tough as tiberium nails. Light mortars are an excellent investment. You can get an elite US light mortar for 57 points and it's not a rare sight to see one with 50 kills after a battle. Air support can be rather cheap and extremely useful, especially on open maps. TRPs are godlike, use them. I think Panzergrenadiers usually have 2x MGs and 2x Stg44s per squad, very nice. Some of the heavier artillery can take 20-30 minutes to deliver all their munitions on target after the mission has started without melting the barrels, best avoided. Light vehicles are much more realistically vulnerable to damage than in CMx1 so don't expose them to rifle caliber fire or mortars. Shrecks and Zookas are dangerous even to 200-250m as I have found out many a times. Don't risk it, fist it! The faust only comes in the 30m range variety so it doesn't pose as much a threat. The user usually goes with it following a complete kill. The Wespe is a steal at 113 points of mobile, lightly armoured 105mm HE with 30-40 rounds, I always buy atleast one. Also remember to hide your men if the situation is right and artillery is afall. I've seen shrapnel kill pixeldudes from 300 meters away. The more they lie down the better.

Excellent, welcome to this most fine club. So, where to begin. You must strike a careful balance with movement. You need plentiful time to stay stationary and observe in order to spot enemies, but if you linger in one place for more than a minute even the AI will rain fire from the skies upon your men. I cannot stress the importance of the "Split scout team" command. The movement into contact phase is crucial, if the fighting starts with most of your men receiving lead their way, their effectiveness goes down even faster than one would expect. Master the use of the artillery interface. An especially useful trick is finding 2 spots on the map you have LOS to and drawing a linear fire order between them. Learn the signs. If you see spotting rounds land, get out of dodge. Use reserves. There is a limited amount of meaningful cover for your advancing men. Resist the temptation the cluster up! Artillery is the most dominant arm on the CMBN battlefield (as it should be) so you need to respect this fact to the utmost. If something nasty spots you, shoot smoke in its eye. The target smoke command for Allied tanks is especially useful. Command and control is everything. Learn the distance that units stay in command and disperse your radios accordingly. It's bad to have an area of the front where you can't call artillery because you don't have a radio. And about the camera interface, I use the right mouse button to rotate the camera because it's smoother than the keyboard. Two of the most important camera controls in my opinion are the Control key (holding it down and clicking on the map will jump the camera to this location) and the V key (rotates the view 180 degrees.) With these two buttons you'll be screaming over the map in no time at all. Also: Mods, mods, mods! A couple of things I consider a must. Get a more subdued terrain graphic, the default green is far too bright. Also use ALT+J to turn off Show objectives, they bright objective graphic isn't very immersive. A sound mod is mandatory, since by default all weapon categories sound the same. Having a different sound for different weapons improves your situational awareness. I use akd's sound mod but I'm working on different small explosion sounds, since I don't like the ones he has used. Otherwise it's really good stuff. Good luck on the battlefield. May I challenge you to a small game of PBEM in the future? Something along the lines of a platoon or two, a company at max. I can give advice and commentary as the game progresses.

Yeah, Google Chrome wouldn't let me access the site saying it was dangerous.

I was bored and ran a few tests where a Jagdpanther was poking some holes in Churchill IVs with it's mighty phallic cannon. I was shooting perpendicular to the side at 150 meters with 9 Churchies lined neatly. Not one round in the few tests I ran penetrated more than 1 tank. This seems realistic to me. Running some other tests, I had a really funny turn. A Jagdpanther was shooting at a nearby tank obscured in smoke and missed twice, both shots flying some 500 meters into the distance and resulted in two fiery balls of flames and bits. I had no LOS to this dip in the ground but after the battle there were two smoking Shermans to be found. Also, Focke-Wulfs are awesome, what are they dropping, looks like JDAMs from CMSF.

I've rediscovered CMBN so I'm running into small bugs every now and then at an increasing pace. I discovered that the 250/10 halftracks with 37mm guns are a bit bugged. They carry 2 gunners and a driver. The model is depicted as such the gunner stands proud and tall above his gun, presenting a perfect target instead of, say, hunching behind his gunshield. This is not the problem per se, I understand the limited animation budget. The problem arises from the fact that when the gunner dies, the other gunner/loader or any other soldier refuses to reman the gun even when all systems are perfectly functional. So basically a vehicle that is already extremely limited in usefulness is gutted. I love a wide variety of kit and one of my favourite battle types is a small scale mechanized meeting engagement where these things have their place so it would be nice to see this fixed.

I'd say Russia vs. China or Arabs is more likely than vs. Nato. The kind of future I envision has an allied NATO and Russia. These factions have a lot more in common than with the other big players.

Apple had a visionary innovator in charge. Microsoft is a bloated, stale monster stumbling in it's own byrocratical inefficiency. When's the last time Microsoft came up with something truly innovative? They can't, because every idea has to filter through 30 middle managers before turning bland. I was laughing at their last press conference where they touted "groundbreaking and visionary" stuff that turned out to be, hey guys, let's make tablet versions of existing software and create a cloud service. That's only 2 years behind the competition.

They are Soviet tanks that the Finnish have captured and pressed into service. Finnish tanks were painted with the Von Rosen cross (swastika.)

I had a zug of Stugs on a nice hill overlooking a little village with lots of crunchy targets just waiting for some high explosive fun. Not the best kind of situation to mess around with the roof mounted MG when you should be loading those shells.

I stopped playing World of Tanks after I realized it's an exhausting grind and it's pure Pay-to-win. You have to pay real money for premium ammo and equipment for your tank and when you spend them you have to pay even more. My friend said they also sell some premium tanks for 20 euros that devastate their opponents. A good free-to-play business model that isn't pay-to-win is League of Legends.

Reading this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about buying CMSF when it was released back in the day and all the modules & CMA after that. I loathed the game in it's release state, it was so broken it was really hard to get any enjoyment. But knowing BFC's history I stayed and it was patched into one of the best games I've ever played. Thanks for not dropping it. I like CMSF even more than CMBN. I wish CMSF2 would come out soon.

The ricochet mechanic is a bit broken in CMx2 in my opinion. I remember in CMA a 115mm sabot bounced from a T-62 and penetrated another one some distance away, knocking it out. You'd think a sabot round would be shattered not to mention it wouldn't approach the last plate at an optimal penetration angle... Also this stuff about WW2 era AP rounds going through a tank front to back through the engine block and still retaining their shape, energy and angle is a bit wild. Would love to see it fixed in 2.0! Otherwise the ricochet are really cool, but AP ammunition staying penetrative forever is a bit meh.

I have encountered some rather irritating behaviour from the loaders of these aforementioned vehicles. Even when the AFV is explicitly told to button up, the loaders routinely pop out of the hatch to shoot the MG and end up dead. Could this be fixed in the patch?

I would say the hot discharged gas flying straight into his eyes is another really good reason to wear glasses.

Niessuh, give me your honest opinions. Are the developers of Windows, Office, Cubase, Maya etc. all lying thieves? They demand you to pay for upgrading their products. Am I entitled to a free version of Cubase 6.5 if I have purchased 2.7 back in the day? Don't drag in public relations or any of that stuff. Just give me the basic logic.

There's so much clueless drivel that I stopped reading after a short while. First off, how is it bad that a game is in constant motion and gets added content? It's not about stealing your money, it's about delivering content and you get to choose what you wish pay and play. "It’s unacceptable to charge for engine upgrades. No other company would get away with this" I would like to write something along the lines of "f******* re****ds." Apparently he has never heard of DLC, expansions packs or simply upgrades. Everyone else gets away with them but BFC gets the flak. Developers around the world charge for content. This is just such an outwordly stupid thing to say that it's starting to hurt my head. There's a ****ton of games out there that have expansion packs that cost money to add new features. BFC offers an additional option to keep your older games up to date. The cretins still complain. "I am sad to say that there are in fact other developers who did this and did get away with it. Like Eagle Dynamics with their Black Shark 2.0 for example. Yes, also a niche market company…it is kind of setting a trend here. I doubt these kinds of things are ever “lauded”, but I suppose most of us reluctantly accept the developer’s claims at face value, that those extra expenses are necessary for them in order to continue producing games/sims in their respective niche markets. It is a sad state of affairs, but with the lack of any real competition I am not sure what we can do about it." It's like a neverending loop of idiotism. He admits the market being niche yet cannot comprehend the fiscal realities associated with niche markets. So funny. He just presents his opinion as a fact. "I think that expenses in a niche market can never go up thus this is a fact and the developers are robbing me." As a consumer he has his right to an opinion and I have a right to think of him as a clueless twat. I can't read any more. There's no logic and it's so goddamn stupid it hurts my head. The funniest part is, should all niche developers go out of business and the games stop coming out, these same people would be moaning about that too.

I'm using the default hotkeys and when I press "V" it does a 180 degree turn.

Is there any way to see casualties caused by off-map artillery? The spotter team doesn't show it atleast. If you use several different batteries it's really hard to tell who hit what especially since the casualties will most likely be removed by buddy aid. Also the use of the acquire command from outside the vehicle and being able to chain it would ease the problem of accessing ammo in KOd light vehicles that didn't suffer much damage. It would also streamline turn-based play.