mjkerner

Sergei, you have a good point. It would be nice if more posters could give the "glass half full" view more often, though, IMHO. But hey, it's just a game afterall.

You can set the scenario to "Scenario Author Mode" on the screen where you pick if you want to play WEGO or RT. Although it is probably obvious to everyone but me, you have to pick the side that is the enemy to the AI you are planning/want to watch. I spent over a half hour making changes/double-checking the before/after times, thinking I had screwed up as I was watching my AI side just sitting there, turn after turn after turn. I even rebooted twice. Then it dawned on me...I was trying to watch the American AI plans, but had picked the American side in the scenario!

Yes. Yes. Yes. Or just leave the default time. This: for example on order 8 (which imagine to be 45 mins into the scenario) will it be exit before 46:00 (So here is how I read it to myself so that I don’t get confused… "exit after 45:00 [has elapsed since the start of the scenario], exit before 46:00 [has elapsed since the start of the scenario])

Jeezus, regarding the comments in that article, does the negativity never end?

Lt Belenko, my real last name is Saunders. Guess who my favorite character was in Combat!

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=102567 Here's one. I'll try to find the others. *Edit* George MC's info is good on this one: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=100225&highlight=exit+before ucg: if you search for "exit before" and for "exit after" you'll get a number of threads about AI planning. The search function won't let you search just for "AI"---too few characters.

Yes, just ask LemoN!

There is also a mod that lets you extract campaign scenarios...don't recall what it is atm, but it works great! I have all the scenarios for all the campaigns (but one..I think it is Die Letzig Hofnung (sp?). For some reason the extraction didn't work for that one.

It's all good. I do remember the "Guns" set, but I had to "settle" for my Marx Civil War set, my brother's Marx Alamo and Fort Apache sets, and various and sundry others. After I got old enough for an allowance, it was the Revell hard plastic US WWII infantry which, along with many plastic models, eventually saw intense action against my BB gun (and firecrackers)! Broadsword, good question and observations. In my small town of about 1500 people, almost everyone of the fathers of the kids in school were in the war; many, including mine, being combat veterans. When the old guys would be gathered around, say at the hardware store, or what have you, they'd eventually get around to talking about it a bit. Not all combat stuff, mainly about other related service experiences. But when they did start talking combat...my town had 3 killed, several score wounded, and a few several captured during the war. Alot of stories--from Italy, Normandy, North Africa, the Pacific. Then too, we had all those documentaries (The Twentieth Century, Victory at Sea) TV shows and movies about the war. Man, those were golden days for me. We are old!

Well, if we're going to clarify , I started at age 5 (in 1958) with my older brother's army men. He was 11 and devised a simple card system for lining them up, comparing cards, high card wins, red=dead, black=wounded. Funny how many times the winner won by one or two guys! Cardboard didn't start for me until around the time Tractics came out...late '60's(?), plus there was a Civil War game in Life magazine during the Civil War Centennial years. Then Blitzkrieg, PanzerBlitz, and all manner of SPI/S&T games and miniatures beginning in the early '70's. Except for IL2 beginning in 2001, and CMSF (found quite by accident while Googling Chechnya combat footage!--I bought it within the hour of watching a CMSF vid of a Bradley firing at a target), this is the only computer gaming I've done, and likely the only I will do. It's fun to reminisce and compare notes, eh?

P.S. I should add that once you do, it is really amazing what you can accomplish. After boning up last week, with the help of some veteran scenario-makers here, I spent the weekend re-acquainting myself with AI plans (instead of the ol' "paint a broad stripe across the map" school of AI planning), and have worked up a (so far) quite successful scenario of a delaying action by a depleted company of Landser against an American infantry battalion with armor support. It's 3 hours long, and so far the first hour is generally playing out as I scripted it, with plenty of surprises. I've found that the old adage "if you're thinking of pulling back, it's already too late" certainly is true!

"Minutes into the scenario". Before 5:00 in, say, an hour scenario, means before 55:00 mins is showing on the game clock. There are some excellent threads on AI plans and orders...some good stuff just last week. It is tricky, and takes a bit to get your head around, since the before/after refers to when the AI unit will begin trying to get to the next map zone/execute orders. Takes a bit to get used to.

Looks and sounds to be excellent. Thanks!

LOL, hard to avoid when every bullet is tracked! I used to scratch my head why at times CMSF or CMBN would get overloaded, since I played IL2 Sturmovik and its progeny for 10 years without problems (unless there was heavy, heavy bombing occuring atm)...I mean, come on, the calculations for simulating flight combat in a 3D ernvironment and all. But when you consider every bullet is tracked and calculated, all the options for the environment (the grass sways in the wind, ferchristsakes), and the myriad other options for the AI (both theTac AI and regular(?) AI--you know, the one that runs the animations and stuff), I find it more amazing that I can play a tactical level, good-looking, very well done simulation of WWII warfare in 3D without more problems! From cardboard counters to this sim in 40+ years is a big deal to me.

I have to agree, the Repository is a pain from which to download; why do I continually have to accept the agreement, for instance? Unfortunately, not all modders seem to know about GaJ's CMMODS site.

A bit disappointed, actually. I was hoping for more detail and more and better maps. I kept referring to this thread and other Internet sites when trying to follow the action! But at least they have a number of personal acounts which always makes for interesting reading.

I hesitate to ask, but have you tried a Facing order after movement to a hedge or building? In most cases that seems to handle the issue, especially with a hedgerow.

Pander, you can use a lot of patches of different grasses, some small clumps (action squares) of different dirt/rocky ground and still have open ground. Come on, time to access your feminine, creative side!

Xian, that was pretty much the minimum for the CMSF modules.

I for Item; I thought it was "J" that was not used...because it looked so much like an "I"! About the experience level settings. I would think based on the actual performance of both sides at this time, both should be regular or veteran. FJR 6 had only that Spring been reconstituted from remnants that served in Russia and Italy...leavened with veterans, for sure, but a majority were young recruits. (Coincidentally, I just started reading the "Lions of Carentan" last week, which is about that unit.) And the 101st had had very intensive training and performed well in their first campaign. Just my two cents. I'm looking forward to this, undercover geek, and Broadsword and snake-eye, your input and insight input has been very informative on this battle. It's been a while since I read Rendezvous With Destiny, Don Burgett'sbooks, or anything on the 101st, and the Lions of Carentan is short on tactical maps

Thanks Paper Tiger, that'swhat I thought, from memory. I haven't been able to get to the game much lately to check it out.

Wow, thanks Pete and Pak40! That is really excellent information. There is a lot more flexibility in the editor than I realized.

Paper Tiger, a lot of really good information here. Thanks for that! One question though...where do the reinforcements appear? do they appear at the spot where the existing group is, or the existing group's original set up zone, or where you deployed the R group initially when choosing your forces. I assume the latter, but then you really have to be psychic to get that timed right, eve n after testing in author mode. I hope I'm missing Also, could you weigh in in my questions here?: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=102567 Pander, good luck on this and I for one am looking forward to the finished product.

I game solo because RL just doesn't allow time commitment for H2H atm. So whenI make my own scenarios, I want to be able to surprise myself as much as possible. There has been a lot of good information from experienced scenario makers on the threads lately, which has helped me develop much better AI plans, but I have a few questions I hope someone can help with in order to hopefully allow me to build in more surprises. What I want to do is to have enemy flanking attacks come at me at random, or not at all (makes no difference if I'm defending or attacking). I want the possibility of them occurring, but not the certainty of having them occur. That way, it will keep me honest in my deployments, by forcing me to have flank protection at all times, or chance the devastating consequences. The problem is that you have to set your AI groups, reinforcement groups, and deploy them before you can create AI plans. So, even if I use the work-around of setting my flanking group as a reinforcement that will occur after the game ends, what happens then is the flank attack never occurs, period. There is nothing I can do in setting the AI plans to allow for them to appear in one plan during the game, and another plan not appear at all, correct? If I give the flanking group no orders in one plan, they will still show up in their set up zone, because there is no option to "delete" the set up, only the orders after the set up. I guess I could use the reinforcement time variable to get some uncertainty, but then there is the risk that they come in way too early in any given plan, because that variable is set before you set up your AI plans. Also, am I correct that if I give the flanking group several set up zones (for instance, the default enemy group gets the Red 1 painted set up zone, and the flankers get three Red 2 zones, two on one side of the map and one on the other), then then they will come on randomly into one or more of those zones? But then, I'm going to have difficulty in setting orders for the individual AI plans because I won't know which side of the map they will appear on, which could lead to some funky behavior (unless the zones were basically directly across from each other and the orders simply took them to a place in the middle between them). Am I making sense here? I have the flu, so probably not thinking as clearly as I should. Thanks for any help and comments. Cheers!

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT LOL, H2H! I started playing it last night (solo) as the Germans. I only got in 6 turns, but still, I took casualties just establishing myself across the railroad line in force. The static start up positions of the Americans must be pretty well placed, although things were a little quiet on the left flank. I guess I'll have to go in and add some AI Plans. It's a great map and I like the force sizes. Great job!