Ranger33

Infantry Aces: The German Soldier in WW2 is an excellent read. I'm not sure it's all completely accurate, some creative liberty has obviously been taken with the dialogue. However, all of the soldiers were highly decorated and most survived the war to be interviewed.

What Chainsaw said. I do wish that LOS line from the selected waypoint would actually originate from said waypoint (visually), it takes a bit a mental leap to see exactly what's going on sometimes. Another thing is to make liberal use of the "Face" command. This will cause the individual troopers to seek cover vs that direction as well as LOS.

I didn't mean for this to get heated, I love the game, just frustrated by it in some ways. Your point is valid in most regards. However, you can't tell me it would take that long to add in some "Back" buttons on screens that need them, an optional confirmation screen when ending a PBEM turn, or maybe allowing us to change the keybindings from within the game (a standard PC gaming feature for the last 20+ years). I don't mean I want those tomorrow, but over the course of the last 4-5 years I think it could have been managed. The front end of a game does matter when someone is considering the game as a whole.

It said they do the initial consult for free, so it wouldn't hurt to check it out. I wouldn't expect it for CMBN, but as part of the promised UI renovation for the Bulge it could give the game a massive boost in mainstream appeal (can of worms opened). I know, I know, the classic "not enough time" but I don't really accept it for this one. We still have roughly the same menu system and features (or lack thereof at this point) that CMBO had more than a decade ago.

I can definitely say that the game looks quite a bit better, and performs better as well. As far as immersion, I guess that depends on how much you like WW2. In basic functionality, it's very much the same. In the actual gameplay, it's quite a bit different. The opposing sides are much more evenly matched, there are generally more troops on the field, the strategies must be adjusted accordingly. I highly recommend the demo, the scenarios in it give you a really good feel for the game. They are all about medium in size, but there are much larger and smaller scenarios available, depending on what you like.

They had a Reader's Choice winner (Bastion) and an Editor's Choice (From Dust). If it was up to me, the winner would be Frozen Synapse. While the game's popularity has waned a lot, it was really impressive in many ways. If you aren't familiar with it, basically it combines the tactical plan drawing of old school Rainbow Six with the WEGO of CM (with 5 second increments instead of 1 min). Frankly, BFC could take some lessons from their online setup, since it has every single thing people here have asked for (chatrooms, matchmaking, leaderboards, tournaments, tracks your games, handles the files, and tells you when it's your turn, etc) and a wonderful UI for it all. All this, from a 3-man team. Edit: In fact, after looking at their site in more detail, it seems they hire out to help with all sorts of coding projects. *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*

Fair enough, but I don't think that puts him in the "This game is too deep for their NG minds to understand, and I'm gussing they sucked at playing" group. Which is what I was addressing. It seems there are plenty of people around here who (rather vehemently at times) have stated they still like CMx1 better, or at least they did until they got used to CMx2. I don't think they would be disqualified from reviewing the game either.

I've found it pretty difficult to use these offensively, for the same reasons you've stated. Using them at longer ranges seems to be the only way to make it work. Close up and they either get killed or by the time they set up they are no longer needed. On defense though, this can be a great tactic, especially on longer scenarios. At best, a gun will get a few shots off and maybe some kills, but then it's useless because your oppo will either knock it out or avoid it. However, if you are sneaky you can roll it back, hitch it to a truck, and set it up somewhere different entirely. The best part is he will probably still think it's at the original spot for quite a while.

Rob Zacny, the guy who did the review, is a wargamer from way back. He's also a regular on this strategy/wargaming podcast. Please avoid lashing out blindly, it makes you look silly.

What's really frustrating is that there is no way to clear mines without getting at least one guy killed, or risking immobilizing a vehicle. I understand that you wouldn't know they were there at first, but after finding and marking one field, you should be able to spot the ones adjacent to it. Unless there is some way to do this that I am missing.

Try the Steam group, there is a higher proportion of RT players there. In my opinion, RT is fun for a few games but between the lag and bugs it loses it's luster. PBEM is where it's at, much more tension and strategy involved. If you have H2H Helper and Dropbox it makes it a breeze to exchange files. At least give it a shot, I was all about RT at first, but PBEM won me over 100% after a few games.

If it has the option, turn off "Use Heuristics" (or something to that effect) in ZA, might need to do a clean install of CMSF as well. I know this was a problem with other anti-virus programs. Might help.

I think this is bugged a bit, especially for the Germans. I have one scenario where all of my mortars were in contact just fine, but then I moved the relay HQ away for a few turns (they had a desperately needed P-faust), and when I moved them back I could never establish contact again. I tried three different HQs (including the mortar platoon HQ) with no success. All had radios and everything.

I don't know, it gave me a decent challenge on the first playthrough. I'm not hardcore about these types of games though, I just want to kill things and get loot! +1 to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, it's really easy to learn and offers unlimited replayability. It's also insanely challenging if you want to actually win.

On the first point I agree. It seems the buildings in CMSF offer far more protection, even against heavy weapons. This is something we will probably see tweaked at some point. On the second point, I think this is just confirmation bias. Anytime you lose a leader, you notice it, but when you lose a regular soldier it doesn't register in the same way. Unless someone has done extensive testing to prove otherwise.

Voted for it, since out of all of those it's probably the most technically impressive game. However, a lot of those games are exceptionally good fun. I'm really excited to see how indie games have taken off this year, they fill so many niches that the big boys are scared to venture into. I expect Torchlight 2 to be the winner next year. Who needs Diablo 3 when you can get the same gameplay but with mods, offline mode, no DRM and for 1/3 of the price. Xenonauts could be amazing as well (AAA quality X-COM clone)

The first time I played Barkmann's Corner, the AI rolled right through my infantry on the left flank with a couple of Shermans. This scared me until I realized that the tank had completed it's orders and was now content to stare off into space for the rest of the scenario. A simple trigger like, "No contact for X minutes in Y area" could then send the tank off somewhere else, like right behind my Panther. I posted about this before, but it seems to me that the whole system is already there to track specific units and objective zones, they just need to be linkable to movement orders.

It is frustrating, because at certain angles they can look really good and add a lot to the visual effect, but as soon as the units and camera start moving around things get ugly. Switching back and forth makes me sad so I just turn them off and pretend the option doesn't even exist.

In another thread it was confirmed by Steve that they will not be in until the next module (Market Garden). Kind of a letdown, but in the long term it will be fine since people can still go back and make whatever scenarios they want.

I can't call the AI anything more than "functional". Yesterday I played some scenario where all I had to do was roll a couple scout cars forward and watch them pick off a company of infantry literally one truckload at a time. With proper scenario design, it can certainly offer a challenge, but it's nothing at all like playing a real person.

If CMSF is any indicator, each nationality will get a medium-to-large campaign and 5-10 scenarios. However, I noticed the announcement seems to only say "includes a campaign for exciting play right out of the box" which would be a bit of a shortcoming IMO, considering how NATO included a campaign for each new army. But with all the new gear and troop formations for each side, I imagine the accumulation of user made content will be massive over the long term. I'm just speculating here of course.

+1 for some kind of compromise on the flamethrowers. Would rather see them in action with some decent firing effects and just throw some flames on whatever they are shooting at, looks fine on the burning tanks. I still think the CMx1 flamethrowers are fun to watch! Besides, the game has somewhat iffy performance as it is, just imagine adding more calculations, smoke, effects, etc. It would kill framerates if implemented fully.

Sometimes I wish I lived in the pre-video game era just so I could play all these complex board games I hear about. ASL, Battletech, Warhammer 40k, all look like so much fun but I know if I bought a starter kit I would never have anyone to play with. I live in a rural area so a gaming club is not really an option. Guess I'll just have to live with CM OP, be sure to check out CMSF if you haven't. It's a somewhat different style of gameplay, but a lot of fun once you learn the tactics. With all the modules and downloads available it has a TON of content.

In one of my first H2H games my opponent bought some air support. It strafed one of my empty trucks then bombed one of his tanks. From that day forward I have let my enemies have all the air support they want.

This one might still exist to some extent but in my current games it is not an issue at all, they only fire when it's appropriate for the most part. Now, tanks spotting infantry is still a bit off I think. As well as the "Tanks never miss" issue. At anything less than 1km they seem to have near perfect accuracy. When doing area fire they do over and under shoot sometimes so I don't know what's going on there. An issue I would like to add is the way buildings can "block" clicks, even when your cursor is clearly not on them, as if they have an oversized hit box. You also can't click a unit icon through a building sometimes (especially 2 story buildings). It's weird because this isn't really a problem at all in CMSF. Difficult to explain without screenshots but I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about.