A Canadian Cat

Very cool thanks. So, infantry lined up on the bocage - how well can they fight through it? Specifically I wonder how well they can see over the berm.

I think there will be a lot of agreement with that. Frankly it is one of the reasons the original CMSF did not interest me much - just my personal preference. My bold. I think this is essentially the root to the coming debate once the new modern CM title comes out. There will be those who say force X is too good and those that say the same force X is way too good. It is going to be interesting. Again I have no actual military experience (sure I drove trucks for a while but I hardly think qualified me to say much of anything) so I will be mostly sitting that debate out. But I am curious what kind of evidence is there to be found regarding the skill sets of various armies? Is there some research that can be done to gain some insight? I am interested in learning more. My only real world context to shed light on this is my Father's experience. His background was an infantry officer with the Canadian forces from the 60s to the early 90s. He was a company commander and eventually a Battalion 2IC before moving to staff jobs and working to run various operations from HQ for many years. So his impressions of the then Soviet armed forces were based on the intelligence of the time and were up to date when he embarked on one of his more interesting assignments. He was one of a handful of Canadian officers who were part of the UN monitoring mission during the Soviet force withdrawal in Afghanistan. So, he got to see them working up close for real which he had not seen before. Of course this was not during combat situations but during a withdraw. His impression was that they were better lead, better equipped and more competent that NATO was aware of. His impressions were of significant interest and he spent a bit of time upon his return visiting various representatives of the US military and intelligence community. My point being how much do we really know about how good force X really is? And is that information correct? And are those that question it really correct in their critique?

Correct you are not the first. If you do a search of the forum you will see lots of discussion and some explanation of the difficulties / effort that would be encountered making things better. I still hope they make some changes to improve things but until then... People have developed strategies to manage things. Here is a post where I linked a few videos I created to show how to manage vehicles in convoy: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1384126&postcount=35 I hope that helps. I just do this now as a matter of course automatically. For small amounts of vehicles it hardly bothers me at all. In fact I often get to the point that the pauses are set spacing the vehicles well from the start and I don't have to do much management after the fact.

I would like to see Canadians too. Yeah I know small potatoes but we did field quite a few combat troops in Afghanistan for an extended period. That and with our PM's support for the current Kiev government there would be many here that would expect us to be involved (plenty here who would not of course too).

Yeah, most people don't have a clue what the difference between a tank and an APC is (or a fire truck for that matter:-). Most people cannot tell the difference between incoming and outgoing artillery fire either. And the list goes on.

The thing about options is you want the choice for the new user to be default and obvious. After that you can let more experienced users learn about a feature and choose different options. So over simplifying things is not helpful as it hurts users who want to invest in leaning to do more or control their experience. The Skill level of "Basic Training" is pretty obvious the choice a new user would select - check. Is it the default? I forget but I think it is - check (hopefully). After a user has played a few games they can think about changing that setting and the manual has a nice description of what the levels mean. Most people will read that and pick a level the think works for them and be happy. That's what I did (well after I and others lobbied for changes to Elite, I changed one more time) That is how things like this should work - so kudos to BFC because it looks like they have it right.

No, that is @Respol's problem. He is having issues with the orders not being followed as seamlessly as he wants. If you have four AI plans set to "Not used" then only one plan will be executed. So there is no need to create something for all five plans.

Good let us know how it goes - I have never had a long stretch of road that "needed" to be driven on. My one published scenario has some truck traffic and the AI did a pretty good job of driving them down the road - not as perfectly on the road as I would have specified but I was OK with it. I like @kohlenklaus's idea for helping the AI a bit.

Hee, hee. I love it when my mother in law has trouble getting something done on her ipad. I alway say "it only has one button, just press it and it will do what you want" - drives her crazy. Now don't get me wrong I have nothing against making things simple or even removing things that are not really needed. I just do not think that two options (or one for that matter:-) will quite cut it. For example we need scenario test mode. I am sure that Iron mode has its followers but I do not appreciate it and do not consider it more realistic at all. I have opinions on what could be done with the skill levels but I personally don't believe this is something that would really cause any confusion to new players. Frankly @poesel71 makes a good argument for an additional level.

I think the reason is simple. It is there to provide support for handicapping. In other words, to allow a more experienced player to be given a penalty or a less experienced player a boost. To do that you really only need one side to be adjustable. Clearly what you want is to be able to create a custom point battle. Now that is a feature I would love to see too. It would be great if Custom was an additional size that would offer the user a UI that allowed them to specify the points allocation for both sides. Then the game would have simple choices that are easy to understand plus something for us crazy people who want to step off the path a bit.

8 in total 1 CMBN 2 CMFI 5 CMRT Technically I have another two CMFI and two CMBN on the go but they are effectively suspended as I have not had turns from them in over a month.

I take it you are giving orders along the road with 0:00 times in the hopes that it would direct the units along the road without pauses. Have you tried just setting up the orders for the beginning of the road and the end of the road and seeing what route the AI plots? I am not saying it will be magical but it might just do what you want. Especially if you set the units stance to something less cautious.

I had no idea. I am trained to avoid it from playing CMBN. Good to know. Sounds really interesting - I second the request for screen shots. Better yet, how about a sample map file? Very cool. I have always wondered about that but never had the occasion to see a tank hit from the underside. Sweet.

?? skill level is IMHO a bit more personal choice than any kind of requirement.

Looks good. Should be fun. Mind you I am still working with your Venafro map - yeah I'm slow.

Well, it depends on what you do as the German player. I have only played against the AI so I have no idea what additional challenges a human opponent would present. --->8--- Spoiler alert ---8<--- In the centre of the map near the German setup zone there is a slight depression in the ground. If the German commander puts a significant tank force there they can get hull down positions to cover much of the map - certainly the central portion. I have found that once in there the Soviets have a hard time connecting and the German gunners can engage at long range. Meanwhile the tree line on the German right offers a covered approach. Which means that if the Soviets try to rush the centre they will find hard to hit enemy in front of them and a surprise on their left flank. Certainly a different attack path by the Soviets would lead to different results.

OK interesting - I stand corrected. I will watch more often. So far I have never seen it. But then again I was not looking for it either.

I concur, Monster Mash is a straight up, slug fest, fun filled scenario. Humm I sound like a movie reviewer trying to get my quote on the poster

This is just the timing of the updating of the game UI. Destroyed vehicles do not show detailed system damage. So if you are watching the turn with the vehicle selected and it gets hit, one moment it will be all systems normal and the next it will be destroyed. There is no "live vehicle with massive system damage" moment before the "destroyed" vehicle state. So, bottom line that near miss totally trashed the vehicle in some way but the game does not tell you what was wrecked.

It could be that the view into the woods is not very good and therefore they did not see the tank until they started penetrating the woods too. What @Michael Emrys suggested about having some of the squad / platoon stationary while other teams move is a good one and could help here too. Stationary soldiers spot better than running ones. To help your guys do the best they can at spotting give them time not moving and realize that they will not do a prefect job even then. A few instances and issues have been found with spotting and there are limitations. Most of the time though people are upset because *their* expectations have not been met not because there is a problem. Just last week someone ran into the side of my son's school bus (he is a passenger not driver). The car driver was stopped at a stop sign and drove into the side of the school bus. The driver did not clip the back they ran into the rear wheel. No one was hurt or anything. But it begs the question how do you not see a buss driving past you and how do you miss it right in front of you as you move forward into the road? Not that this is a good example of what infantry would do but just saying people do not always see things that in hind sight we think they should have.

Totally cool. I am so looking forward to this title.

Oh man wild discussion. We even have @Michael Emrys redefining the meaning of sex - Where have I heard that before? But in all seriousness. What @Yankee Dog said earlier is how to look at it. The current definition of occupy means that scenario authors can paint the village to signify "you need to sweep and clear this whole village and have total control over it" or have a few smaller key areas the signify "you need to be mostly in control of this village but it does not need to be cleared". It gives the flexibility to scenario designers to create the scenarios the way the want. If the game did some kind of weighting then you would be unable to specify the the player that they had to have total control of the village. Sounds like the issue is Quick battles and their use of occupy objectives. It also sounds like Mark is planning to make changes that will make you happier. Frankly when my opponent does a rush at the end with some broken crew member and pulls it off I say well done and congratulate him (and mutter you bastard under my breath:-) Usually when I am planning to take an objective I want to take key near by terrain as well to prevent that kind of stuff and I get right at clearing buildings and woods floor by floor action square by action square. It is an excellent use for those XO and 2IC units that have been buddy aiding during the attack

But it looked really cool doing it I have seen some used for good effect in CMFI but you are right it often gets used against single soldiers and it feels kind of wasted then.

Well I used them on the ridge (and in the tress) to help suppress and cover the advance to wards the town. I agree they were not a huge asset but the did do some work for me. Once in the town they were less useful but I still brought them up.

Yep Yuck. Not wanting to shoot the messenger but this just sucks. I logged a bug about it, we will see if any changes get made. I know why MS made the change but the inconvenience of it has been spreading. There are lots of existing apps that do not play well in the new MS order - big pain to discover and workaround. And then there are new apps that make my life harder by having hard coded directories for stuff that I should be able to control the locations of - big pain to workaround, if it is even possible. I now have a C:\Programs directory (made by me) and more and more apps are going in there the preserve my sanity. I personally am happy to have CMBN in that directory where it (and I) can write files to its own install directory. I wish CMFI and CMRT were like that too. Or at least allowed me to control where the saved games are stored to protect my sanity.