A Canadian Cat

You are welcome thanks for the kind words. It turns out you cannot rely on that alone for figuring out whose turn it is. There are a couple of variables that trip that simple thinking up. One is the odd for you even for me pattern does is not guaranteed. For example, consider the case where your turn files are odd and mine are even. If I open turn 004 that you sent me and do some work on my orders but decide to save and come back to finish my orders the default file name will end in 005 then when I am done and produce the turn to send to you the default number becomes 006. Now suddenly your turns are now even and mine will be odd. So you cannot assume that one side's turns are even and one is odd. The other problem is some times people have two separate directories for turns like this sfhand vs ian /forian /forsfhand But some must have the one directory sfhand vs ian In one case you have two turns to compare in the other you do not. So what I do is look at what is in your game directories (Incoming Email and Outgoing Email). Then I look at the file sharing directory and see where the higher number is. Then I decide what, if any file copying needs to be done. After that the program can tell whose turn it is by looking between the game directory folders for the higher number. So if you where to edit the turn numbers and reduce them you would confuse Whose Turn Is It? Also you have to watch out for date time stamps too. It seems like Drop box does a good job with managing time stamps but I have seen negative turn ages in WTII? a few times. In those cases if I was using the time stamps it would have messed up the file copy. That is a good idea. I had that on my to do list but forgot about it. I will look into that.

Oh, and it can get worse too. I watched in horror as a two man Shrek team in a small barn (this is the half AS shed in CMRT) take a shot at a T34. The loader was killed by the back blast. Then after a few moments the gunner recovered from the initial launch and loaded and fired again. He died too. Learned my lesson there - no rocket firing in small spaces. LOL oh man that is a sad tale.

Did I miss something? I am not aware of *any* changes to the game that fundamentally effect forest fighting. I do not experience forest fighting differently between CMBN and CMRT. It is tough in both games. Yes, more automatic weapons makes some forces tougher in the forest but nothing unexpected. IMHO.

I am not sure what you mean. As long as the force selection is set to human both players get to make their own choices. If some one sends you a Quick battle that was auto selected and you did not expect that it's time to have a chat:D Yes, for quick tests or a quickie game against the AI. If I am fighting for real I never use it. What I have found is that the larger the battle size the more likely I will be happy with the auto force selection. I don't thing that is necessary but you can if you want. The size of the map changes how much maneuver you can do. For Attack (and Assault and Probe) QBs going with a smaller map will make it easier for the defense and a larger map will make it harder.

Wild. I was expecting a more dramatic recoil effect. But some of those Toyota trucks are really tough. Top Gear tried to kill one a few years back (note not exactly the same model but similar) with hilarious difficulty: You can see why they would prefer to drive those turrets around on Toyota pickup trucks rather than the original chassis - they are damn near indestructible.

I am happy to announce that, after a longer than anticipated delay, Whose Turn Is It? version 1.0 has been released. You can read about it and download it here: http://www.lesliesoftware.com/products/WhoseTurnIsIt/index.html Thanks to my two Mac testers, I really appreciate your help. In the end what they showed me was that I really need to get a Mac to make it work, so I did. This program requires Java 1.7. The Windows installers can check your machine and download Java from the Oracle web site. For the Mac you have to have Java 1.7 installed your self first. I could not resist adding a few final touches: The new features you see are turn list sorting, detection of new turn files added to drop box by your known opponents and hint text to say where WTII? is getting / sharing turn files. Full details can be found on the New and Noteworthy page. Enjoy, Ian

Correct, although no one actually uses email any more. Mostly Drop box but any network sharing app would do the trick. My sentiments exactly.

Sounds like you don't really have a problem then correct? When you say everything balanced do you mean the 3D texture and 3D model quality are set to Balanced or are you referring to something else that is balanced?

Yeah, that is a lot of additional control and UI. If that is going to be done with tanks then we need to be able to order individual soldiers what weapon to use and where to shoot. I don't think I want that. As @sburke said this is just where the level of control ends. There are times when it can be annoying but mostly I just go with it. The platoon commander does not get to direct the gunner five tanks over he just has to trust his guys will do their best. So do we. I have some suggestions on what to do in this situation, see below, but in general this is a design philosophy for the game - where to draw the line between player control and Tac AI control and there is precious little we can do to change that. Personally I am OK with it, I made my peace - actually I like it. I like the feeling that I can directly my guys as best I can but I have to leave it up to them to get the job done. Humm, I think you are better off setting your ambush up so that your guys do not have LOS when the enemy is moving towards you but only have it when they get next to you. The problem with having LOS to the front of the enemy while they are moving towards you is they might spot you. To get an ambush on the side or rear of a tank I would look for places where you are covered as they come towards your position. Setting a cover arc protects them not you:) OK so a couple of things you can do here. As someone said if your guys cannot see the enemy tank chances are there is no good shot. The other thing to remember is that an enemy tank that has more cover than yours might be able to get a shot out of the woods before you can get one back his way so if you are in less cover than he is consider moving. Actually don't be afraid to shooting HE at the enemy tanks. You could immobilize his tank or get lucky. I did manage to destroy a Soviet SP gun with HE when I could not see him. The other thing HE will do is kick up so much dust and smoke that you will bind him. Also and this is critical don't aim at the bush aim behind it. If you aim behind the bush then the round has more chance to actually hit the enemy vehicle than drop in front of it. I have a game going right now where the enemy has two tigers and a panther (probably other nasty stuff too) in the woods on a high point. After he dispatched a couple of my tanks I blasted the area with HE for several minutes with HE from many tanks. I don't expect to KO anything but they have been quiet for a while now and the smoke is still heavy. In the mean time I have several infantry units that are now in cover and I executed some repositioning of other assets to get a better LOS on their location. When the smoke clears I hope to have an advantage.

Well I disagree - this is an issue. Figuring out what is blocking the LOS when targeting from a way point is a big fat PITA. I agree that the amount of programming effort is high enough that they keep prioritizing it lower than other work. I would accept that But I really want then to do this work one day. Yeah, cool idea but wow that would be a lot of work. One thing you can do is put the camera down at the unit level and look for yourself (make sure trees and smoke are turned on or you will be sad). I made a short video about doing that you can find here:

Also don't forget even with the good advice you are getting here it will be brutal and costly and you will think you are loosing the fight. Forest fighting is just nasty. I often see both sides taking casualties and turning tail and running away from each other. With that in mind here are two more suggestions A3 don't bother with the forest just go around A4 don't bother with the forest just shell the crap out of it with artillery I know it seems smart assed but consider if you really need to clear the forest or not. Would it be OK to just ignore it and go around? Would it be OK to leave some men in along the edge to protect your flank and move on? The defender who is sitting and waiting has the advantage in a forest so if you leave a protection force in the edge they will perform quite well against any enemy that tries to come out of the woods.

What problem are you seeing? @Jock Tamson's advice is good if you are experiencing a problem. However, I recently upgraded to a new machine i5 3.7Ghz, 16Gb memory and a GTX760. That is less capable than yours. I have no trouble playing my largest games with maximum quality and shadows on. The camera operates smoothly and I have a frame rate above 20fps which looks pretty damn good to me no matter what is going on. My old machine struggled with larger battles unless I turned down the model and texture quality. Even then I saw frame rates between 10 and 15 at times and the camera controls were a bit sluggish at times. Turning down the Options "3D Model Quality" and "3D Texture Quality" will give you a boost to the frame rate and help the camera controls operate smoothly.

Meh, I don't think I want the added commands that would require. I find that to buddy aid or not is a question I can control pretty well by the placement of my units on the battle field.

LOL no you are not the only one. I personally like a variety of sizes but there are many who stick to smaller battles. Yeah, it can feel a bit daunting some times opening the setup phase and seeing a huge map with 2hours on the clock and a scary number of units to place. Whenever I feel that way I just save where I am and go play a different battle and come back to it later.

BFC is really good at improving things for sure. It is all about priorities. They can only do so much and they have to choose somethings to do and somethings not to do. So, we often have to wait for our personal favourite things to appear. But you are right they do listen and work on things we ask for - over time.

LOL thanks for that, people here at work are asking me why I am laughing at my monitor.

*sigh* it just does not work that way. To get attention you have to do some of the work and initial testing. You may not be aware of this but the issue of HT gunner and his protection or lack there of has come up before. Somewhere there is a couple of long threads - before yours I mean - where this is hashed out over and over and tests done and redone and adjusted. In the end two conclusions were reached: don't use HTs as APCs 'cause you will be sad, keep them at range behind an infantry screen so they can provide some covering fire only the gunner was too exposed and died fast From #1 many people learned to use HTs better. And from #2 BFC adjusted the protection offered to the HT gunner by adjusting his position so he was less exposed. The current thinking is the protection for the gunner is correct and all is well with the world. Posting a seven sentence declaration that this is still not correct after all the work and convincing that was done previously will not be enough.

Good suggestions. Can I add a third: toggle casualty crosses And a fourth: toggle building transparency For when we make screen shots and or movies it would be nice to leave out the crosses and allow buildings to show normally. Just small, helpful stuff.

Yes, the face command it my go to way of getting buddy aid to start. I just find that when the casualties are on the edge of an AS and the aid team is small (2 or 3 man), the face command does not work as well. But for a full squad yeah, face works every time.

I have developed a technique to help with that - in WEGO. Whenever I have a small team doing buddy aid where the casualties are on a AS boundary I move the team to one of the AS and the slow move them to the next one with a pause (45s if they started out in one of the ASs less if they had to move there). Then when the turn ends they will likely be right on the edge of the AS often right over top of the casualty. I cancel the remainder of their move order and next turn they usually help the poor guy out. I agree.

I see @Vanir Ausf B found a more recent quote. The second post in this thread shows some more thoughts from Steve on the subject. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1534534&postcount=2 That did not closeup this discussion at all

I overheard a hallway conversation between two workers just after CMBN was announced (not released). They told me about the older games and I though it sounded great so I bought new copies of CMAK and CMBB and the three of us played those games while we waited for CMBN to be released. Then we switched to CMBN. One of us never made the transition and the other one had been playing with me for a couple of years but has fallen by the way side due to work / life issues. If I had known about them when they were first released I would have been playing for years.

No packs have been announced as about to be released. I agree that a temp bridge would be a great pack addition.

Yeah that has happened on my battle field - towards the end of some games I do have on opponent with which we have agreed that unhorsed tank crews should withdraw to the rear areas. With the exception of HQ team who are allowed to stick around and or mount up a radio equipped vehicle to resume command. For the most part I do that as my SOP now but every now and then when I'm desperate...

Nope no steam installed at my house. And I have no interest either. Very few games appeal to me really. Your points about advertising are valid of course - huge effort. I am not sure how BFC would have reached me frankly because I really was not (and am still not) paying attention to "gaming" or even "war gaming". So, in short, come to think of it, I am probably not a good example If I had a time machine I would tell my self to watch for BFC's new game (plus one or two stock tips as well). Ah well I guess that means I never get access to a time machine