A Canadian Cat

At the farm my infantry are moving building to building now with more freedom because the Churchill tanks are gone (not shown). The Stugs and Shrek team will chase after the Churchill tanks and see if they can get lucky. The Panthers have changed orders and are not finding cover in the treeline at the top of the screen below. I will leave a scout team next to the road so I know when they are coming but the Panthers are going to hide perpendicular to the road under the cover of that line of trees and wait for the Churchill tanks. Meanwhile in the town my infantry are going building to building looking for scouts and tank crews. At the same time I have several Shrek teams ready to pounce on any tanks they find. There still is an unaccounted for Stuart tank that cornered itself last turn. I have a squad sneaking around looking for it. My flank protection platoon is almost at the town’s edge.

The squad I sent hunting for the Churchill tank instead run into the Achilles I lost track of last turn. Panzer Faust right in the kisser. But – no effect. The Achilles keeps on coming and then survives two hits from grenades. How is this possible!? It is an open topped paper thin tank destroyer. Man I am in need of some luck. The nearby Shrek team get the job done though. Now it is a burning hulk like it should be. My infantry are clearing the town buildings one tank crew at a time. No uber pistols here – but I was worried. The 150mm barrage has moved to the furthest edge of town giving my infantry room to take more of the town and hopefully causing trouble for some of Dungeon Tiger’s forces. The situation around the farm is now quite interesting and a bit ironic. I am sending my Panthers as reinforcements and it seems that Dungeon Tiger is sending his Churchill tanks as reinforcements as well. Interesting – I thought he had a lot of those tanks left. They are following my Panthers. I think I should be setting up an ambush for his Churchill tanks.

The attack on the fleeing Churchill tanks did not go very well. At least I did not lose anything but the mortar rounds did not hit home or slow them down and each Stug did get one hit both were rear turret and resulted in no effect at all. Rats. One Churchill tank did return fire but missed short. All the other shots fired were misses and the Shrek team never got a round off. This was the last shot and found home but bounced off the rear turret for no effect on the fleeing Churchill tank. The Panthers and their infantry heading towards town.

Quite correct. Weapons controls are destroyed you are totally SOL. Screen shot from the turn I am writing up now... For some reason the red letters have been blurred more than the others by the jpg compression. The first line says the main gun is destroyed and the second one says the weapons controls are destroyed. As you can see both MGs are green but the tank is unable to target anything. And I can say that this Panther has spotted infantry in the town and not fired on them at all.

Interesting article about AI development. CM does not have an AI strategic layer. That article is about AI about strategy. The AI plans for a CM scenario are human made. The strategic decisions are programmed by humans. I am sure there are places that can be improved and some improvements have been suggested in this thread. Bottom line any AI improvements we would benefit from are related to a pixel soldier's minute to minute behaviour. We don't need those guys to be planning 8 days out:) We need them to make better decisions in the moment or have more commands to respond to.

No, buddy aid does not get a soldier back into the fighting. Aside from retrieving amo it does help increase the chances that the downed soldier will end the battle as wounded in action and not killed in action.

I do not think I have seen Steve comment on one of these threads before. He b Has stated that he gets ideas from us, so I suspect he reads them.

I knew was keeping a list of things I wanted to see added to the game. I found this this morning. Amazingly I forgot five things in my previous huge post. Allow area fire on building faces that units can see (not just the ones that you can see the centre of the action square) Oh man I cannot believe I forgot my number one issue with the play of the game. Then again I have written about it twice in detail. Please if my unit can see it I should be able to area target it. If you fix nothing else fix this. Make Cover archs toggle able, and perhaps more transparent Right now target arcs obscure the terrain too much. Making them more transparent might be enough but if testing shows not please make them toggle able. Make crosses toggle able This is the other thing that gets in the way of making screen shots. Yes, I know there is a mod to hide them. The thing is for game play I want them there but for taking screen shots I don't. QB point system available in the editor (just the numbers not the limits) More and more people are making their own QBs using the editor. Our lives would be so much easier if the points were displayed in the regular scenario editor as well. I suspect that scenario authors would not be against this either. Targeting from way points should show line from the way point It would be so much easier to figure out LOS / LOF if the targeting line was drawn from the right place.

Yep that's what we are doing. My list had no consideration for difficulty. Frankly, because it is not possible for me to tell how hard something is to accomplish. That plus it would feel like work then:D I forgot those two +1 for each...

I have been thinking about this lately. I tend to think about these things in terms of: modules or games I would like to see; features to add; playability issues that I would like to see addressed. New modules or games: In this category BFC's current list looks fantastic and will take them a long time to work through (Market Garden, Bulge, Eastern Front, Modern conflict in Europe). That is a lot of stuff and will take a long time to cover off and I am actually pretty happy with it. If BFC wanted to plan longer term I would ask for early war years, Hot war between Nato and Warsaw Pact circa the 1980s and WWII Africa. Features to add: Head to Head Campaigns via PBEM I have so far tried three campaigns but never got into them. I know the majority of your customers play against the AI only but I just cannot. For me play by email is the way to go and I would really like to play campaigns against a human. Please - this is my number one wish. If you only do one thing this would be it. Infantry ability to look / shoot around corners I know that improved maps will make urban combat better but so will allowing infantry to stay in the alley but still target the enemy down the street. Some way to allow them to keep the building between them and the bad guys. Assault Vehicles command I would like a way to tell my squad your target is that tank. Right now all I can tell them is go to this spot. Trouble happens when the tank moves - my men just stand their in the open until the tank takes them out. What I would like form a command like this is for the men to adjust where they go if the tank moves a short distance away. And if the tank drives of too far away for them to reach I would like them to cancel the idea and return to their previous position. Yes, this sounds hard. Copy and paste of terrain / buildings in the map editor It would make life easier if we could copy and paste between maps and within a map. Map resize to the max in any direction Right now the default map starts as a portion at the centre of a virtual 4km x 4km map. This means that if I grow the map to the edge in the North direction and realize I need more room North I cannot add any even though I only have a 2.xkm high map. A max size is understandable. Please let us grow to the max in what ever direction we need to. Road curves It would look so much better. Vehicles follow roads Right now vehicles sometimes get a bit confused and drive off the road only to drive back on again. I am not sure what is happening here from time to time. Vehicles on roads with the next way point that is on the road should strongly favour driving on the road. Flames Yeah, I know it is in the works but it needs to be on a list:) Triggers for the AI (to allow reactive AI plans) Something that would allow a defense screen to fall back or allow a defense to shift to respond to a break through on a flank. That kind of thing. Playability issues: Command line support Third party tools such as H2HH should be able to launch the game and start a turn, start a new battle, edit a scenario etc. Just simple things like that would allow others to create things that will make your game better. I have other thoughts on this area as well but this number one in the theme of supporting the community. Camera group persistence I would love to be able to assign camera groups to units and have that be there next turn. Please. Disable or remove edge camera navigation Believe it or not doing something about this feature is my number one complaint about the game. Not a day goes by that I do not accidentally touch the edge of the screen with my mouse and cause the camera to fly off. This drives me nuts. We have talked about this before and I know that you (Steve) use this feature your self. I accept that it will not be removed. Can you please let me turn it off? Toggle building transparency I take a lot of screen shots and I spend a lot of time trying avoid having transparent buildings in the picture. What I would really like is to be able to turn this on and off. Clearly to play the game this is a very useful feature so I don't want it gone just toggle able so I can get a good screen shot. Toggle compass Ditto the compass. I always crop it out - I just want to toggle it. Toggle UI panel It would be nice to watch a turn / take a screen shot with more screen real estate showing the game view. Therefore I would love to toggle off the UI panel at the bottom. Yes, that can be scary "help I accidentally turned of the UI and now I am stuck". Pause tells you how to get back. But if you do that please also include a documented way to get rid of that message too.

Are you saying that is your plan? Where will you use the M10 in your last stand?

Indeed - next turn I will have a look.

Here are the orders to threaten that Churchill tank a Faust equipped squad will move on the left and a Shrek team will poke their heads around the corner. The Panthers heading for town. After I sent this turn I realized that there is a chance the Churchill tanks withdrawing from the farm will be following this same route to town. I will be assessing that after next turn. One of these tanks has an operational main gun but tracks that are causing it to be very slow moving. I might get more mileage out of it if I setup and ambush with that Panther instead. At the farm I am moving two Stugs and a Shrek team to attack those Churchill tanks from the side. One Stug will go right to a position that they must pass to escape the kill zone of the Shrek team and the other Stug. To add to the chaos I hope to cause the mortar team will drop some rounds onto the road.

The Panther showed mercy on a lone enemy tank crew member in the ruins ahead. Not really it turns out not just the main gun but all MGs are inoperative on this guy – oops I did not read the mechanical status well enough. Meanwhile my flank protection force found some resistance in the outskirts of town and quickly dispatched or routed them. My men should make entry into those buildings next turn. On the far right of that platoon the overwatch team noticed a Churchill tank under the barrage area. It seems unharmed but did not move for most of the turn. They will need to keep an eye on that guy. I should mention that my problems mentioned in the last turn have not changed any. Well both the gun and the load MG gunner are further away from where they should be.

I was going to stop reporting and posting pictures for the parts of the battle that are slowing down, like the orchard, the village and the farm. But then Dungeon Tiger decided not to cooperate. The farm suddenly was active but not in the way I expected – he withdrew his Churchill tanks. The Stug cannot quite see the Churchill through the trees but you can bet that Stug is going to move forward and attack those Churchill tanks as the travel down the road. Things could get interesting. Plus, they seem to be following along a path that will put them right behind my redeploying Panthers. Humm I’ll have to think about that. It seems like my opponent is also focusing on the main town. I don’t think that is very good for me frankly I don’t need more tanks to deal with. Back in the Town the Stug that was trying to get away from the Churchill failed to find cover. The squad flanking the Churchill tank’s position have it in view but are still too far away to do anything. Interestingly the Achilles that was trailing it moved away towards the woods and the Stuart that was leading it drive itself into a corner out of site. I wondered what was going on with that and an offline conversation with Dungeon Tiger reviled that he was trying to get it between buildings to get behind my Panther but it would not fit and the path finding algorithm did odd things.

Oh, the British Airborne for sure. Although having said that I'll have fun with it all. Wow, I just realized how long it has been since I watched that movie. I like the scenes of the desperate stand at the bridge.

Interesting. Now if that RAM disk software you are using would allow you to start up the image from a file - thus allowing a RAM disk to boot up that already had the game on it that would be something. Or I suppose you could script it - start the RAM disk and copy the game. Still copying the whole game install must take a while. I suppose if you leave your machine up and running "all the time" it would be an advantage.

Well I admire the idea - I too have fretted with "winning" a game after pressing the attack with bits and pieces and just barely made it to the objective. It some how seemed a bit hollow. But 5-10% as a cut off? Wow you are hard core. Is it even possible to play a game and only take those levels of casualties? For a platoon that's only 2-3 guys. You can loose that with one burst from an MG. One of the reasons I hope that BFC adds support for PBEM campaigns is to create an environment where you need to take responsibility for your casualty levels - for the natural reason: you will need to hold those objectives after you take them. Which is something that would be difficult after taking 50% casualties.

As @Childress said welcome and you will fit right in. Yeah, if someone finds something that seems off, one of three things can happen, after a bit of back and forth, some testing some saved games sent to testers: 1) A defect is found and it will get looked at at some point in the future - the timing of which we will have no idea and BFC might not even acknowledge they plan to fix. Then when they do they might not tell us when it gets fixed. 2) It is working just like they wanted - but you disagree. Then you can argue until you are blue in the face and nothing will change. Then you can decide if you will accept it or argue some more in order to get a different shade of blue. 3) It is working like they wanted and you agree. Then you can watch someone else argue until they are blue in the face or decide to accept it. Overall it is a pretty good system. Chances of actually modding the behaviour - slim to none with great emphasis on none. BFC have stated in the past that they will not allow modding of behaviour only skinning of the look of the game. If they allow modding of behaviour multi-player games become a night mare. Actually when I mention mods to a friend of my he laughs at me and reminds me that players cannot mod this game only skin it. He is so pedantic.

Installing and running from a RAM disk now that would be fast. Oh except re installing the game each time you booted the computer. That would not be fast even with a RAM disk.

The thing is this last year has been much easier to take than the months before CMBN came out. Waiting for CMBN was sooooo hard:D Now, even though I am looking forward to the new stuff, I have great stuff to play while I wait. Thanks BFC

Steve has talked about this before (check out his last post on this thread): http://www.battlefront.com/community/archive/index.php/t-105273.html Seems like they have good reasons for the choices they have made and are open to try new things if they think that will be helpful. And earlier he had other interesting things to day: https://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?p=1203836#post1203836

I agree, pretty cool. Just what @womble said the Sherman crew did not know the PzIV was toast so kept firing. I am still not sure that it should take four penetrating hits to destroy a PzIV, especially that close. I'll leave that to BFC to decide.

I have sent @sburke the enemy turns. Yes, that was a wild ending to a hard fought game. This QB map has two objectives. Part of my force was sent to the other objective with the idea of getting a toe hold but not taking it fully until I saw how things unfolded. The rest of my force was assigned to take this one. As the game was ending my toe hold force was dislogged and this group had not quite secured the last corner of the objective. That would have left my loosing. So yeah very desperate. My goal was to get as much fire power into those woods and into that corner of the objective as possible. I knew he had guys in there that were in poor shape but I also knew he had more coming - including that tank. Fortunately for me his guys were in worse shape than mine and I was able to drive them out thus securing the draw - in the last 30 seconds of the game.

Well it is Ken so it will be quick or even fast - I am sure. For a scout heading out ahead the rest of their unit I use hunt so the hit the deck and get out of the way of friendly fire from the rest of their unit behind them. The rest of their unit is behind them right?