LJFHutch

Well here's my test, the second time I spotted another M10 and a M20 truck, but as you can see, I had LOS there, I was surprised there wasn't more shooting going on considering there was a battalion of TDs on the other side of the trees.

I'd say that's a very rare situation. I just set up two battalions of armour facing each other and after 2 minutes one of my tigers had spotted an M10 through the woods and knocked it out but that was the only action, some (?) icons (about 5 around the knocked out M10) but that was it. Forces were facing each other stretched across the roughly 500x500m map with a forest running down the center, 4 thick of the thickest forest, a mix of mainly the low tree but also a line of the high. The tiger that got the kill actually did have a line of sight through the trees. From what I can tell at the moment the vegetation actually blocks too much. Many of my tigers should have been able to see under the foliage as there was no undergrowth - visually they did have LOs to their targets. Then again, this was from about halfway down the turret so that may explain it, did tigers have optics for the driver? Would they have been able to get a good view from 450m?

There's lots of other things to consider though, it's a battlefield and not a clean environment. That's surely an easy shot in controlled conditions, but with your life on the line and explosions all over the place it would be pretty stressful. It's true though, sometimes I think "my god man! Learn to shoot!"

I was actually looking for a proper, realistic wargame after I stopped playing Men of War a few years ago and the three candidates were Theater of War Kursk 1943, Achtung Panzer and Combat Mission. I thought AP was pretty good but the lack of multiplayer is a real letdown, that and the two (?) demo scenarios pitted infantry with 1 or 2 ATGs against a full on assault which I lost every time - though AP had absolutely fantastic visuals, some of the best I've seen in a game yet. ToW was better in my opinion, but the truly awful AI, lack of re-playability, the "gamey" feel and the way it seems to be set up to just "sit back and watch the show" kind of bothered me. Normandy has it's issues of course, all games do, but it's a pretty nice little package and it's a fantastic experience

You can apply that to an awful lot though and pretty soon we're not allowed to have anything at all. You don't need games, movies, books, television, the internet, holidays, nice food, sex or anything like that, so we shouldn't be allowed to have them? I realize guns are dangerous, but so are knives, stones, cars, and people. You can't take away everything that's dangerous, and even if you had a magic button that could: who on earth would want to live in such a world? It would be boring beyond imagination.

I'd really like to be able to change the point limits, however I'm not so sure about the objectives and the ratios, I think that could cause problems - too much focus on the objective and you get an unrealistic click-fest where your units mean nothing while too much focus on units would cause issues for many maps. I can't really think of a time where you would want to change it from the default.

And why wouldn't you include RT? If anything RT would benefit more than WeGo for having more players. I hardly see them selling multiplayer as a separate product. Though I'm looking forward to seeing large multiplayer matches in CMx3.

I've used crack crews a bit and in my experience they are most certainly worth the money. First shot hits are quite common even from 500-1000m (1.00 though). I'll have to see if they still go well with the patch.

But how often does 100% armour actually work? It's hard to hold a village, forest or bocage with a tank. I think people who try to use all of something will quickly realize it just doesn't work. You almost always need infantry, just as you almost always need armour. To put things in perspective think of it like this: you could get a medium tank or a platoon of infantry. Your opponent might get five medium tanks yet you get two tanks, two ATGs and two slightly cut-down platoons of infantry including AT launchers. Of course an all tank force will dominate a plain or open field, but if you go anywhere near bocage or a village those tanks will be taken apart by infantry and waiting AT guns. Using all of one unit type is a classic amateur move but in some situations it is understandable, for example on a map that is mostly just a flat plain you would be condemning infantry to a quick death if you used them for anything but a supporting role (provided there was actually some cover for them). ToW:K had a system like this and it was incredibly boring, you may as well press the random force button with the amount of creativity it allowed: almost every single force I ever choose turned out exactly the same.

Absolutely true on both points, also, I play RT without pause in SP and very rarely get a situation arising where I can't properly control my units. I usually play small or tiny, sometimes on medium.

On some of the foliage the textures seem to be acting rather strange (the patch didn't fix it for me). It seems to be a problem with the order they are rendered, often the textures behind are rendered in front of the front textures. I'm not sure if a rare problem or not. It happens with the trunks as well, you can see their silhouette even when you should not be able to see them (when they should be obscured by foliage). This is hard to explain so here's a video: http://www.xfire.com/video/4ab1ec/ (I recommend fullscreen). Is anyone else having this issue?

Yes! Great feature That is also a nice one.

True, however when they were used on me I found them to be quite ineffective, especially compared to Howitzers.

* Ability to multi-select items in the editor (shift + click?) and have the game randomly choose. You could place forests much more easily this way, and ground tiles as well. * Agreed on armour cover-arc. * Have the elevation points show up when you toggle on the show elevation when placing ground/foliage tiles. The elevation is useful but it's often hard to tell based on numbers alone whereas the points really improve awareness. * Road textures (the dirt ones, including paved) seem too dark? * Automatic formation adjustments when ordering multiple units similar to how a single squad operates currently - if you have 5 squads and you order them to move to a line of bocage they should stack up behind it according to initial orientation. * A "spray-can" brush option, it would really help placing terrain and trees realistically without having to switch down to the 1x1 brush all the time. * Separate wind option in QB's - right now it's default to what weather you choose, it would be good if you could change it also, it could even change to the default when you choose a new weather setting.

And some more (sorry for spamming the images, but it's a pain to upload them so it's easier to do it in one go ):

A bunch of screens from the new QB map pack I'm working on:

I think I'm looking forward to the eastern front more than CMSF2 now. The problem [for me] with Afghanistan was that it felt so isolated and small (both the in-game world and the game itself, all alone between WW2 and SF). I think I'll give it another go though, if not just to be able to play as Soviet Russia.

Yes but even in a ME pre-planned can make sense, what if you were moving to intercept the enemy? What if you were moving to take a location and knew that the enemy were going to make a play for it as well? You can't just assume that every ME were two forces bumping into each other.

Have you looked at a free-2-pay game lately? They're nothing but money makers - the gaming equivalent of a poker machine. They're based around never being happy with what you have and having two methods of getting where you want to be (leveling up, getting new stuff): either you pay a *little bit of money (If you got everything in most F2P games you'd spend thousands) or you play it non-stop for days on end and at the end you're still not happy. I played World of Tanks for about 5 hours and then realized two things: 1. The game was not fun for me at all. The only thing keeping me playing when I looked at it objectively was the desire to get a better tank (but this is almost an endless cycle where you're never happy). 2. It was made almost purely for profit. I find it difficult to play a like this. Yes of course developers must be paid and they deserve money for their hard work, but most F2P games are built entirely around the concept of making as much money as possible. I like spending $55 (cheap for a game in Australia where most new releases are arbitrarily inflated to 90AUD or more) upfront on a game I know has been made for people to enjoy.

Woo, I'm looking forward to trying this out, thanks guys

The obvious fix for this is larger maps with larger setup zones. That would also make for some more interesting engagements too.

Aye, would be a great addition.

There's usually some overtime if there is no distinct winner I think, but it shouldn't go to 2 hours, it's usually 15 minutes I think.

I'm going to have to do a test with this ... unless someone wants to beat me to it, which is fine by me since I want to get to sleep now hehe: "medium" battle, work out what you can buy with rockets + 1 FO and then what you can buy with standard artillery + 1 FO vs a company of infantry in medium cover, run the test twice, once with rockets, the other with standard stuff. That should give a good idea of the balance between them, keeping in mind the different uses, so the scenario should represent a mix of "blast that side of the map" with "blast that section of bocage" to get an even result. Although they look devastating I found them to be much less effective than they looked (and considering I saw the entire map almost explode about 4 times over I was a little disappointed).

It's best to do blue/blue or red/red, I did a test with 3 firing lanes and each had 3 squares where units were placed. The units were identical: 3 squads of US riflemen with their commanding units holed away out of sight. One side of US infantry all had foxholes and the others were in the open. Apart from 1 lane seeing almost no action (apparently they couldn't see each other) the rest was pretty good: Sorry for the large image. Basically, foxholes - while not great - are pretty effective at tipping the balance of the fight.