A Canadian Cat

Not good for the Allies then

I don't know how to answer because I am not following you. What do you mean by "let them fire manually"? They way things are supposed to work the tank crews are governed by a tactical AI and they should fire at the enemy when they spot the enemy. No intervention from you required. You can see what enemy units they can see, if any, by selecting the tank. You can also order them to fire by using the target command. With that you can pick which spotted enemy they should shoot at or you can get them to fire at buildings walls or the ground. What part is not working for you?

Sounds good. And tool tips too. Very frequently requested. Oh yes that would be nice. Yes, would be nice. It would be nice to either be able to see placed flavour objects in the 2D editor or pick them and place them while in the 3D editor. For some reason I find the trees easier to keep track of - perhaps the icons in the editor are better or something. But sure for consistency it would be nice. Not a bad idea I'm not 100% sold on this. Filling a gap because its there is not always correct. You allude to that later so I guess you are not off base. The more important question is should the terrain, fence, foliage or building actually be present? I'm not saying that BFC always has every thing covered for a given environment just that they usually start from the point of view of what kinds of terrain, fencing and buildings does this region have? Rather than, we are missing a size x fence lets add it. IMHO starting with the what does this region need is the best approach. Like I said that does not guarantee everything gets built though.

LOL I keep doing that too.

ack - never mind - nothing to see here

Cool - I certainly don't speak for BFC though. But you didn't mean that I did I am sure. Carry on with the idea flow.

Oh, but that would be a big change and would mean that you could no longer end a game against the AI early unless you surrendered. I recommend you keep your eye on the ball. You guys want to be able to play your battle through until you are done I suggest you keep your request to "Please, provide a way to toggle off AI automatic surrender" or "Please, make is so the AI fights for longer than it does now". Chances of BFC making a simple single change that does not effect anything else = small but non zero (the more people ask for the same thing the larger the small chance gets:-) Chances of BFC making a change that has ripple effects and changes the behaviour requiring other adjustments = damn close to zero.

OK no one looked up the great list of all files you can mod post that was up so I went and looked (man the built in searching sucks - I should have started with Google because I found it first try, and first in the list - sigh): Basically @Offshoot rez exploded all the .brz files and listed all the files names. Check out the Sounds file list. A word of warning though the granularity of sounds in the game may not be as fine as you want - this is done for performance reasons as every new sound file needs to be loaded when needed (disk io) and then store in memory (more different sounds = larger memory footprint). I personally have never modded sounds and the two sound mods I tried I ended up not liking and I run wit stock so I cannot offer any help on what file goes with what action in the game. Hopefully the names of the files and your willingness to experiment will get you to where you want to be.

Which is functionally exactly the same as "turn off auto surrender" since the AI already accepts any cease fire you offer.

To control both sides play the game in Hotseat mode. What happens then is you take turns giving orders for each side. It is intended for play when both players are in the room and take turns at the computer. But there is no reason you cannot be both players yourself. You are allowed to leave the password field blank - saves a ton of time not having to type passwords.

LOL got it.

@Warts 'n' all's advice is sound. If you want them to perform in an AAA role then keeping them out of the LOF of the enemy but with a view of the sky. So, be careful of putting them next to an obstruction like a building or a steep hill. They don't need to be in the open but if they are on the edge of a tree line on a slope they probably will not have a good view the sky on the otherside of the hill.

I get the "... but I wanted to see how it turned out" feeling. However, don't you guys think that the battle will be unsatisfying even then? The AI usually surrenders when it is in pretty bad shape. There it not really a lot of fun in just steam rolling over a handful of guys that are messed up and run at the sight of the wrong colour uniform. Would that final attack really be enjoyable given there is no real resistance left?

Good. I'll try that save hopefully tomorrow morning and the other maps you mentioned.

I just tried it as you described above. No problems. I let the games run for three minutes and then cease fired and the enemy was all in sane locations and facing towards my troops. Since you can reproduce this could you please fire up a game and before pressing the brb save the game. Then play a few turns and then save again. Then press cease fire. If things are goofy then PM me and we can arrange to get the saves to me.

So, if we have access to the file again could @Mishga submit the file to the scenario depot so it is officially available? I think I am reading this thread correctly and @Mishga is the author. I am sure @Bootie would like to get the campaign into his database.

Oh oh that's not good. The new location for scenarios is the Scenario Depot (http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/) and the location for mods is the CMMods III (http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/) The list of campaigns for Shock Force is here: http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/search-2/#search/category=CM+SHOCK+FORCE+[CAMPAIGNS] It is a short list. I think that @Bootie is still working on transferring things from the old BFC repository but I do not know what happened to campaigns and scenarios that were on the old mod site. Edited to add - I could not find that campaign either in the old repository or the new site.

That seems like a good starting point. You might look at the AI plan and decide that one of the groups would be a better place to put MG teams or mortar teams but divvying them up seems like a good starting point. Yes, creating a couple of battles with the same force selection but different AI group assignments could be very valid thing to do. Your example above is a good reason to do it.

I am glad you have a tester for this. I do have a question for you: what are you doing for AI group assignments? The reason I ask is the QB system has some automatic code that divides up the order of battle into the groups used by the AI plan but if you save a QB as a normal scenario and select some troops by default all troops are part of AI group 1. I'm just sanity testing your process in case you missed that. If you have that covered already then great job and move along with testing.

I think that this is a pretty cool idea. Execution wise there is an issue. To get the map to more or less fill a 8.5x11 page I had to use a scale of 300%. The image is a bit low res / high compression and I can see jpg artifacts on the printed page. Even then the title is so far away from the map that what I did cuts off the title even though the left, bottom and right border are pleasant enough. Personally I would target 8.5 x 11 or A4 instead of half size cards. But if you really like the card size perhaps just creating the image such that others can scale it up to fit a full page. Thumbs up.

The Blitz is running two scenarios this month. Sign up for the July scenario of the Month has started over at the Blitz. This month the scenarios are: CMBN: BP1 - A Crossroads near Brussels CMFI: The Quarry The form post on theBlitz for sign up.

The Blitz is running two scenarios this month. Sign up for the July scenario of the Month has started over at the Blitz. This month the scenarios are: CMBN: BP1 - A Crossroads near Brussels CMFI: The Quarry The form post on theBlitz for sign up.

Dang I searched but could not find any discussion about what blocks what. I know we have had that discussion...

I thought this was the case as well. This has been discussed before here - I'll see if I can find it. My bold. I think this is the key. Because they have limited collision avoidance and guns are not subject to being blocked from turning you can get this kind of situation where a vehicle is behind another but able to shoot through it.

Area fire in the direction you want just before the smoke. Many of the rounds will go through the smoke which is just what you want.