LJFHutch

Contours could certainly be interesting, you couldn't really translate the points plotted to create the map though, at least not my maps, you'd end up with more of a contour "bowl of noodles" But drawing a line for 10m, 20m, 30m, 40m etc would be possible wouldn't it?

Oh no, I definitely agree, I myself play both. I was referring to the strange antagonism toward real-time.

Why do so many people run around sprouting so such hate for RT? You'd think it killed half your family members or something. You're playing exactly the same game in WeGo and RT in [almost] exactly the same way and literally the only way it can become a "click-fest" is if you're playing with too many units, which in many situations would be venturing a fair way into tedium if played WeGo anyway. Besides which, if you don't like it, don't play it. Nobody is forcing you or making any changes to dumb the game down - I defy anyone to claim CMx2 is more "gamey" or simplistic than x1.

This is just from my own study and from photo reference, but I think one of the main things I'd love to see changed is the brightness, contrast and overall colour of the game, as well as atmospheric fog. It seems to brown and dark in my opinion, but correct me if I'm wrong. Left: Pure screenshot, Right: Edit

Absolutely, even if it was outside the game and you ran a little "CM Normandy MP.exe" that had an external lobby which booted the game and entered the IP and all that by itself it would be great. You could specify RT/Wego or even Pbem, match size, max/min duration etc and filter by opponents who meet your criteria, maybe start a chat and/or invite to MP. It's the same here for MP as well: I really couldn't be bothered trying to set up a game, it's a real hassle.

Re-worked colour, brightness, saturation and hue as well as atmospheric depth, a fix to the strange foliage bug and ambient occlusion (SSAO)!

I didn't see anything bigger than those tractor APCs when I tried the demo yesterday but the infantry (well, everything to me) felt as though it was just two forces marching toward each other and shooting until one won. I found myself just sitting there looking at trees and infantry all the time and hardly any of my experience was actually doing anything. The most I could really do was selecting my units and then moving them at the enemy, hoping that they would win.

Yeah I agree, I also find Iron doesn't go far enough with this.

Flashpoint was awesome, it was a bit more authentic than the others, especially now they're doing a war on Greece in 2025 over super weapons or something I'm really interested in AP but CM has so much detail in unit positioning, damage etc I don't think I could play another RTS ever again AP certainly does have some awesome features though, and it would be cool to see some make it into CM. I suppose my hesitation comes from ToW2: it looked and sounded cool but I felt like it didn't want me playing it, I had so few choices that I felt I may as well let the AI play it for me while I watched the pretty explosions. I the problem with many games is the lack of re-playability and content. I was looking at Graviteam's latest game - the tank sim - and while it looks cool I get the feeling I'd play it for an hour or two and then that'd be it: I'd have seen everything there is to see.

Mine is usually: ?...?...?...?...?...?.. ________________ ...[1]....[2]....[3].. ......[support]....... When I find a weak point on the enemy flanks I move in a unit to engage and destroy and then envelope the enemy, pinning them down with fire from as many angles as possible, this makes follow-up attacks far easier.

Tiny QB's are the way to go

You can do it multiple ways though, PR has the whole "you no play team we kick" but it also has the game world pushing you toward teamwork: you really can't do anything on your own (whereas in RO and ArmA even more you can, I found going solo in the hills with an M16 and Acog worked well even against a trained clan), you can't even be a guerrilla fighter. It's certainly not for everybody though, I don't really play it all that often because of that, even though the teamwork is astounding (10x more teamwork than literally any game I've ever played). Killing people isn't all that easy and if you're up against a squad you're not going to do much more than slow them down, you kill one but then the remaining 5 guys drown you in bullets and revive their teammate and then it's you 0 them 1. You also can't do all tasks so you need to be in a squad just to do anything in the first place. There's also the general atmosphere produced by the "teamwork or kick" and the "go solo and die" which promotes teamwork even further.

RT is awesome, you just have to learn to not micromanage your units. Focus on the important stuff: your attacking forces, units that are in combat and need adjusting etc. Most of time most units don't need to do anything but wait for orders anyway so it's not much of a problem, especially in meeting engagements. And as for the realism of RT: player controls all forces because they can't control themselves properly and if they could and the player didn't it would either (A not be fun at all or (B be a first person shooter.

I stopped playing them after playing CM Shock Force, that's what made me realize all these "realistic" first person shooters weren't realistic at all - though I enjoy just shooting stuff in BF3. The main thing they get wrong however, especially true of RO2 (stats and unlockable weapons certainly don't help, to say nothing of the lowered realism/authenticity compared to the first), is that although they've got a bit of realism the game doesn't do anything to promote authenticity in how people play the game. There's no teamwork, no tactics, nothing, even when I played with an ArmA2 clan there weren't really any tactics. You can have realistic weapons but that doesn't mean anything if the game is being played like Call of Duty. It's not the fault of the people playing it either (well, to a certain extent it is), take Project Reality (BF2 mod): it's not exceptionally realistic but the game is designed to promote teamwork, moving in squads/teams, following orders etc and it works, incredibly well I might say. That's one of the huge strengths of CM as I see it: the equipment is realistic but what's also realistic is how everything interacts, as a result the effective way to do things is more often than not the same as what was effective in '44 and so it does a good job of promoting authentic behavior from players.

I played RO2 briefly (used to play #1 a lot though) and couldn't really get into it, it's in an awkward position between a standard "arcade" FPS and a realistic one and I couldn't enjoy either side of it. Also yeah, despite their claims of good damage modeling I definitely got the feeling it was primarily hitpoints, in both RO2 and 1, location/angle/weapon/armour didn't seem to matter all all.

A motherboard certainly would, but I just put in a new GPU and it was fine with it.

Definitely, was a good watch

I want better looking explosions (TOW has fantastic effects for instance), atmospheric fog and some extra "blending" between the "board" and the background image would be nice too.

I generally try to have at 3 core formations on the battlefield, these I split into three different areas of the battlefield to form a solid front line. Usually this is 3 infantry platoons. Next, I assess what I'm likely to encounter and throw in special units to counter that threat such as AT guns, tanks, TDs, extra AT infantry, MGs etc. A setup I've found works particularly well (this is for SMALL battles, can be scaled though) is: HQ and support * 1/2 Infantry platoon * 2-3 on-map mortars * 2 HMG teams * ?? Tank destroyer/AT gun/s Group A * Infantry platoon * ?? Medium/light tank * ?? Extra MGs, AT inf Group B * Infantry platoon * Medium/light tank * ?? Extra MGs, AT inf Group C * Infantry platoon * ?? Medium/light tank * ?? Extra MGs, AT inf ?? = only if you have enough points left after buying core units.

No mp kind of killed APOS for me, same with Graviteam's other one, Steel Fury? Even though I don't play much CM MP anyhow

Opponent: 'Nah just post it up here, we can all verify it then ...'

Absolutely agree Mord, I tried a few times to see what I could create in the editor in exactly 60 seconds and it was pretty impressive

RT or PBEM?

Definitely, though personally I find it hard going back to MoW after having played the CM series. Theatre of War had a great atmosphere, graphics and brilliant sounds but it just didn't work in so many ways. In terms of those it is superior to CM, however the game itself felt like a huge letdown for me, the random battles were extremely limited (so little control it makes me wonder why the even let you choose anything instead of just a "generate randomly" button), multiplayer seemed completely dead and so it seems the guts of it were in the campaign, but that wasn't great either and I lasted only about 6 missions in.

I'm Spartacus and so's me wife!