Ranger33

Love the Onion, but it's scary how real articles and Onion stories get more similar all the time. Example: Do We Really Need the National Weather Service? (side note, I noticed that they deleted and disabled the comments, many of which were along the lines of "I love Fox News, but this article is stupid" when I first read it)

Isn't spotting certain units already a possible objective? Would work perfectly. Just imagine this: A scenario could be designed so that if the AI loses an entire platoon of tanks crossing a certain area, the next platoon could be triggered to take a different route! Brilliant! Fleshing-out is exactly what this would be. Just building on what is already there to make the AI actually able to react to the situation, instead of mindlessly trudging on along it's predetermined path, regardless of events.

I would love to at least see triggers. Putting everything on a clock and then hoping the player advances at a certain rate to match that clock makes for uninteresting battles. The framework is already there with the detailed objective system where individual areas and units can be "targeted". Now just allow the scenario designer to connect those conditions with movement orders and reinforcements, and the game would really open up.

They should be carrying ammo if you check their gear. Might want to take a closer look. As long as they are near their MG/mortar team, they will transfer the ammo automatically. Other than that they just provide supporting fire AFAIK.

Still don't get why we have yet to see any reviews from non-obscure places. I would have thought Rock, Paper, Shotgun would have done one for sure considering how they posted a couple previews as well as announced when the demo came out, but no review. If you aren't familiar with the site, they review just about every indie PC game that comes out and have a pretty big following. Other sites that you would expect to do a review, like Out of Eight and SimHQ, never did one either. Did BFC ever send out review copies? I know CMSF was reviewed by tons of sites, but CMBN reviews are nowhere to be found.

I'm sure they are working really hard on all sorts of stuff, but after seeing this answer so many times, I sometimes have to wonder what exactly are they working on. I would love to see the fabled "list of things to do" sorted by priority, so that I can match my expectations to their goals.

Is there a walkthrough on setting this up, the standard CMBN way of doing it, etc? I don't mind waiting on turns, but having to go online, check my email, download the file, put it in the right folder, and so on, is a real hassle. If BF aren't going to provide a program of this sort within the game, they ought to at least make it a sticky... I find playing RT is great for single player, since you can go at your own pace, pausing when you want to set up a bunch of orders, then tweaking them as you go. Online though it's pretty laggy and there are too many bugs like missing weapons and such. I tried PBEM once but it was a real chore, however I will admit there is a certain excitement to clicking that button and hoping things play out the way you planned. Not to mention that playing much larger battles becomes a viable option. Bit off topic, but Frozen Synapse is a game that could best be described as Rainbow Six using WeGo, and it provides a multiplayer lobby with stat tracking, match making, turn notifications, etc, all within a game that costs less than half as much as CMBN. Come on BF, get with the program

Find someone on your friends list or in a group that is playing, then Right Click -> Join Game

All of my MP matches have resulted in both sides knocking the crap out of each other in the first thirty minutes or so, and then whoever maneuvers their remaining forces best usually wins.

I absolutely love it, but it's pretty unstable for me. I usually get a CTD within 1 min of joining a match. About 1 in 10 tries I can play for a few rounds before crashing. Turning down the graphics seems to help some, but doesn't fix it. Hopefully they will get a patch out soon. The feel of everything is awesome. They removed all of the clunkiness of RO1 but left the gameplay. Animations are great, sound is great, cover mechanic works, every time you fire a rifle it has some real *oomph* to it. Some people complain that the minimap makes the game less hardcore, but I like it. It gives you the exact same info as the map in RO1, but without the need to press a key to bring it up. It also shows the exact boundaries of the cap zone, no more searching around trying to find an invisible line.

Never liked Iron because of the friendly spotting. I played CMSF entirely on Elite and started that way in CMBN, until one day I gave Warrior a shot and never looked back. Generic infantry markers are silly, since (currently) you can just click the icon and tell a rifle squad from a MG ammo team at 1000m. What's the point?

These are all absolutely fantastic. They add so much personality to the vehicles that the stock textures lacked.

gog.com (Good Old Games) offers a Win 7 compatible version of CMBO for $10. I don't know why BB and AK aren't on there as well, it's a pretty popular site. Their whole business model is about patching old games to work on new systems. All of their games are DRM free as well.

There was a video with the suppression effect on youtube somewhere, can't remember which one. The screen twitchs a bit and everything loses color, there is also a bar on screen (in casual mode, at least) that shows how suppressed you are. A lot like the last Brothers in Arms game. It's not like DH where every time someone fires a gun near you, you temporarily go blind, but looked a bit weak to me overall. Of course, that video was a few months old, so it may have changed a bit (or a lot).

All this thread needs now is that picture of Clint Eastwood saying "Get off my lawn!"

I liked Mare Nostrum as well, but Darkest Hour is great just because of the little things like radioman class, on map mortars, etc. that aren't in the base RO. @undead reindeer cavalry: I don't know if you have played RO1 but many of it's maps have a mix of very close range fighting to extremely long (where only a rifle is effective, and beyond) on every map. The maps are far, far larger than CoD maps. Just look up some RO1 vids on youtube and you will see what I mean. Most vids are at close range just to show off the shooting and effects, I imagine, and because he is playing against easy AI, that won't pick him off with a rifle from 200 yards.

I agree, sometimes I just want to read the briefing and get an idea of the scenario before actually committing to it. Another little thing would be when you finish a campaign mission, having the choice to save and then not automatically the next map. Kind of annoying when I'm ready to quit but have to wait a minute or two for the next map to load. On loading times, RAM and HDD speed are probably the most important things, but won't make it instant. I have 4GB RAM and it takes ~30-45 seconds for a small map, 1-2 min for a medium, and then on up from there depending on the size. Longest I've seen is the Bloody Omaha map, took 4-5 minutes at least. Which reminds me, I need to tackle that beast, I only played it for a couple minutes the first time so I could watch the big arty falling all over the place

+1 to all of this. I prefer campaigns over standalone scenarios and its a real pain to find them. Especially as the repository fills up. Just look at CMSF, there are maybe a dozen user made campaigns but unless you know the exact names it would take hours to sift through there and find them all.

7zip is the best one. Has a lot of features but is very simple to use.

Pre-ordered it up as soon as I heard. Early beta access, TF2 hats, Killing Floor skins, and more, all for only $40. Tripwire is an awesome company. This game is gonna be a beast, it has every feature of the AAA FPS's and then some. Not to mention a slew of mods already in the works. There's a Pacific theater mod that will release along side the game, or soon after. Mods already months in progress include Vietnam, WW1, Poland (including Soviet invasion), and (you didn't see this one coming) Warhammer 40K. I imagine there will also be a Darkest Hour mod RO2.

The biggest mistake I have made is equipping a small team with the missiles and then realizing that they don't have room for the launcher. So then I have to run another team over to pick it up and then move them around together so they can use it. You would think I would learn my lesson, but no I've done it a half dozen times.

They do have an advantage in that each squad usually has breaching charges so you don't have to rely on pioneers or breaching teams like regular infantry do. Makes more of a difference on certain maps than others, obviously.

Clean install will solve it. I don't know what the deal is with CMSF, it seems really prone to corruption. Might want to make sure your anti-virus isn't being triggered by it, that will screw it up for sure.

There's no nothing unrealistic or gamey about it, except in ME, where it is inherently illogical due to the nature of the scenario. A lot of those maps have small setup zones in the corners, which I can only assume were not intended to be blasted with artillery in the first 30 seconds of the match. Like others said though, pretty much everyone will agree to have no pre-planned barrages on those maps.

When you play games through Steam (even ones you didn't buy through it), it lets you use the in-game overlay. Basically, you hit Shift+Tab and the game grays out and you can see your Steam friends list (which lets you see who is online and what they are playing) and open chat windows with them, with the options of voice chat and group chat as well. You can also use a web browser, look at screenshots you have taken (you can set whatever key you want to do this, no need for FRAPS, they are working on letting you record video with it as well), and a few other things. Another big deal is that when you start the game, everyone on your friends list will see "so-and-so is playing Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy" pop up in a little box on their desktop. Steam basically makes for an ad hoc multiplayer lobby, a feature this game sorely lacks. However, it doesn't work with CMBN, for reasons unknown.