Ithikial_AU

I really hope BF don't do a modern Korea title. Not because it wouldn't be an awesome game/setting, but because of BF's ability to scarily predict where a conflict will be about five years out from the fact.

I think the complexities of CM vs other strategy titles he likes and plays more regularly are the reason here. When trying to explain CM to some of my mates locally, the best way I get them to understand is actually to compare it to ARMA of all games. If Starcraft is equal in complexity to Call of Duty, then CM is the equivalent of ARMA.

Great news indeed. The consolidated squad feature alone should be a big help in the later stages of some campaigns.

Signature block.

Yeah I know that YouTuber... can't pronounce any place name on the continent to save his life. (RL is a bit of a pain at the moment so hope to be back more regularly later this year).

Don't like Diplex and the tactic of 'Charge!' can always try mine.

Whoops. And I just discovered a bug. Was still counting the 2015 member list rather than the updated 2016 equivalent. (Australia is actually beating the Spanish). It's just a fun side count, doesn't have any baring on the main FGM ladder results.

<Sigh> There you go you chart Nazi's. The area chart it's just nice to see the proportions change month to month in a nice continuous series. As long as you realise the different series are being added on top of each other it's pretty easy to read. However CMBN as a proportion has dropped off once CMFB has been released. Our ladder has always been that one step more casual than other clubs as most of our members have vastly different amounts of time to commit to playing games. It's more of an ongoing record of achievements over the long term. The idea is to get this information loaded up onto the website proper as a bit of a player database to help even planners and members find opponents a bit easier. (ie you can easily check who owns what games and what sized battles they prefer to fight with a simple click). RL for Bootie and myself is simply too busy at the moment to push ahead on with this so it stays behind the scenes for the moment. For the super nerdy... our ladder also has a 'Country of Origin' rivalry going on behind the scenes.

Over at the Few Good Men our ladder system maintains a whole bunch of data behind the scenes on the type of games being played by our members. It's a hands down win for the WW2 era games at our club. I honestly thought when CMBS came out that the modern era wouldn't necessarily beat the WW2 games, but I thought it would have a bigger presence that it's actually developed. That's not to say there isn't a modern era player base! WW2 games are the four colours at the bottom of the graph.

Hehehe whoops. Yeah too late for me to edit.

This is a collection of infantry, vehicle crew uniform and gear textures that provides a ‘dusting of snow’ over the base textures from Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg. It was inspired by @Umlaut 's work with the German Uniforms in Fortress Italy. Ever since using those files, going back to clean uniforms while fighting in a snowstorm has appeared a little off. The base textures are 99% from the Final Blitzkrieg base game with a handful of others from the community for increased variety in the snow set. Special thanks also to Umlaut for giving permission to use his CMFI Uniform snow effects where applicable. All files in this package are already mod tagged, so the snow textures will automatically appear each time the ground conditions of a battle is set as ‘Patchy Snow’ or greater. Should encompass all uniforms covered off in the main game. (Even for those odd snow battles in September ). I live in one of the hottest climates on the planet and have spent a grand total of six days of my entire life in snow. If there is any snow grogs out there with suggested improvements just let me know in this thread. US - http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=4474 German - http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=4478 Cheers

Yeah I appreciate all that and it's been the constant thorn in my side for not pursuing it. Breaking down the theatre into smaller sectors and each day up into 6 hours blocks would help a great deal but wouldn't solve all little specific cases.

I must admit this topic has re-raised an idea I had a while ago but never pursued. It was to set up a shared online document that listed the weather day by day across the European theatre that anyone could chip into when they found a reliable source. Probably an excel workbook that had different tabs (where relevant) for: - Western Normandy - Eastern Normandy - British Sector of Advance (inc Holland) - American Sector of Advance across France and Germany. For each location seperate coloums for night, morning and afternoon weather conditions. Something like this would be a great source for any scenario designer when working out weather and ground conditions. Sometimes it's not always clear from source material.

Thanks for the recomendation. Welcome to the community @ironcross13. Even for those with beefy PC rigs, FPS performance has been a contentious issue discussed at length. There are some tips for improvement that you appear to have already found, however it's not so much an issue for a game like this unlike your more streamlined RTS's like Men of War / Starcraft etc.

Any war between NATO and Russia over Ukraine would likely lead to a NATO victory, as discussed at length in other threads. However I think what this General is concerned about is the fact that NATO hasn't fought a conventional war against an opponent that can actually shoot back with modern equipment and weaponary that has a good chance of doing some damage. The US and NATO have over the last few decades been called upon to take on threats which are significantly less than what their own forces can accompish and with comparitively minimal loss. Assuming BF has modelled a modern tactical engagement correctly within CMBS, anyone here can tell you that a straight up fight between a US force and a Russian equivilent is going to be a bloody affair with additional material loss for both sides. Losing 40 soldiers in one engagement is going to be keenly felt from day 1 in the West and would be considered a massacre by some commentators. (Now times that across an entire front day after day). An Abrams MBT may of had a field day in Iraq, but this time when a T90 is down the road... you may still put your money on the Abrams but you'll stick around to see who actually wins. I'm just a keen wargamer and history buff, but even us gamers here have made a comment that within CMBS the US army simply lacks ground based AAA vehicles and are incredibly vunrable to air attack. If we can spot a weakness like the from a fictional recreation wargame, you can bet there are other holes in modern militaries that haven't had to fight a long (more than a couple of weeks) high intensity conflict against a capable enemy. The outcome may not be in serious doubt, but the road to get there would be more painful than Iraq and Afghanistan.

I've only been watching this discussion from the sidelines but it does remind me of my time as a fresh faced history undergraduate back in 2002. We once had the same kind of discussion about those with greater numbers have the advantage. One first year, (not me ) stated this 'fact' more or less along the lines around the ratio arguement listed above. The lecturer responded with: "Yes that's why the Zulu's decimated the British garrison at Rorke's Drift, and the French won at the Battle of Agincourt." A discussion followed about the myriad of factors you as a historian have to take into account before generating generating your wider narrative. In this case, terrain, wheather, logistics, relative quality of troops/command/weapon systems on each side etc etc etc. Essentially it's very rarely purely a numbers game. The raft of different factors (and whether it's from Primary or Secondary source material) that are raised is also why we have multiple interpretations of the same battles. Years later, now I'm an Economist that spends most of his working day warning people about other people's numbers and to ensure decisions are made from combining quantitative and qualitative evidence sources. This fascination of trying to boil everything down to numbers is really a weird 21st Century machination that's become more pronounced. I personally blame this on the rise of the internet/social media and the need to try and get all arguements down to 140 characters before the reader's attention span is diverted elsewhere. (Not to mention Hollywood...)

The HMG and MMG teams are that little bit more difficult to effectively control 'in the field' due to setup times and shifting LOS/LOF when they are on their tripods or not. In effect you think you are fine and then when setup is complete the wall is blocking most of of LOF. The one exception is the German MG34/MG42 HMG teams which can shoot either 'deployed' or 'semi-deployed,' highly versatile compared to the Allied units. I agree with the target arcs mentioned above. A night mission like this, (with fog/mist weather??), with your forces on the defence it means if you are going to spot something, 95% of the time it's going to be danger close so you will always want your guys to open up. Your troops won't fire on sound contacts on their own volition until a confirmed visible contact is made so no risk there. Regardless, in this paticular situation I don't think it would of made any difference since Jerry got the jump on your at point blank range with SMG's.

*Cough* Only two of the armies within the 12th Army Group, the 1st and the 9th.

Looking forward to it. The most under appreciated front of the European Theatre.

Beat me to it. My understanding of 'sniper' reports were overblown by the Allies mistaking any kind of K98 rifle fire against them. Sort of the infantry version of calling every German tank a Tiger. With the same bolt action rifle being used by the Germans for general infantry combat and designated marksmanship (ignoring the rare Scoped G43), it would be impossible on the recieving end to distinguish if the fire was from a scoped rifle or not expect possibly if a great distance was involved. In the ambush friendly Normandy terrain you'd be terrified if the odd shot kept ringing out as you tried to advance - and given you aren't likely to spot the shooter for a while would likely lead to the prevelance to report sniper. Splitting off scouting 'buddy teams' from squads could be the best bet inside the editor to achieve this in game and is, I think, the most likely sources of these snipers in many cases back in 1944. The scouts in all likelihood are coming from the parent company that is holding that part of the line and serving an advance party or forming a very light rearguard. Adding in extra troops from another arm of the German armed forces or trying to give these troops some miracle boost in skill and morale isn't the best way to reflect these roles in game. They are there to be a nusiance, slow the advance, lower morle and get the odd casualty. One guy picking of 20 advancing Allied infantry is probably a bit much.

Whoops! (Well I do use some of his mods as well so... )

http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-red-thunder/cm-red-thunder-add-ons-scenarios/der-ring-der-5-panzer-division/ Recommended. I assume George MC is the same as Jorge MC.

I've been pulled away from RL issues over the last year with work and building a new house, which has meant getting some serious CM time in is a rareity. Still have plenty to play through of the CMFB release and I'm currently pushing through the Aachen campaign. I think in some cases given CM's (worthy) commitment to reality, the line 'remember it's a game' gets lost in some scenario and campaign design. There's difficult, but as it's been said above, if your forces are bled white it's not a lot of fun and can drive players away; especially if they need to replay battles inside a campaign to proceed. I don't think the CM community are the type that are 'Total Victory or nothing kind' of players, but it should never be a case of expecting them to go up against insane odds or be tricked at the last hurdle. The best example to illustrate this I can think of was the 'Scottish Corridor' campaign back in the CW module. Don't get me wrong, a brilliant campaign except for that last mission. In the mission prior, your forces have likely just taken a pounding holding off a determined attack by a company of Panthers with infantry support and artillery support. A fitting climax to the campaign... except then there's one more mission where you take whatever you had left from that battle and fight another, this time at night against fresh German armour and infantry forces. If your experience was anything like mine, you get steamrolled by forces you have no hope stopping. If I had to define the CMx2 scenario design sweet spot - "A persistant challenge where the player always feels like they have a fighting chance." And if I may @Jorge MC seems to be a master at it. In my opinion at least.

If you want to go down the Arracourt route @Holdit let me know via PM. Already have some research to share which may help.

@Holdit if you are volunteering I've been trying to get around to a Battle of Arracourt scenarioidea for some time but just don't have the time to create a master map big enough. Though there is quite a bit of crossover now between CMFB and CMBN, the early Siegfried Line battles in September 1944 is a bit of a gap for CMBN.