A Canadian Cat

Well there ya go - I never even noticed. As for the missing 't' - naw that's just me. I suck at spelling (lets see how many asteriskes there are in my post).

Wow I never noticed that before - we have automated censors on this forum. I typed the full word s - h - i - t - y and it got auto asterisked. Is that a new thing here? I guess I don't swear enough in print to have noticed.

Buron yes that is the place. I cannot pronounce the French names properly let alone spell them. But I am here and yes I have been taking my uppers as provided by command True if all I see are two companies of infantry and a platoon of Stuarts I will be very happy. But I am expecting a battalion and Shermans too.

Interesting. My take on this guys review was that since he had no idea what real tactics were he did crazy things like send his platoon HQ into the field all alone head of his main force. I do not see how a war game can show you that from a blank slate without the player reading something. This I can agree with - the benefits of an interactive tutorial would be quite high for new players. So it has. And I have to admit I am still perplex about it. Yes, I absolutely hate that the camera flies away when the mouse gets close to the screen edge - that pisses me off every single day. But that is not what you are talking about is it? I have no experience (and no interest) in puzzle, fantasy or first person shooter games so I don't know what better is. I asked a friend of mine who plays Battle Field 3 to show me the camera controls and frankly I noticed three things: they were a bit smoother esp compared to the keyboard; they did not seem that different from when you have your view locked on a unit; I do not see how their locked to a unit at all times mode would actually work in CM. We need a free camera too not just a locked on your POV camera. Let me be clear I am not trying to be dismissive - I still do not get the big issue here and I still would like some one to explain it to me. Please use small words and actual examples because like I said I'm not getting it. Sometimes that just means no one has explained to me yet:) Really, my ****ty near the bottom system performs quite well - better than I would have expected. It does have trouble with some of the bigger scenarios and it sure take a long time to load but with a faster machine doesn't it just bet better? Really, terrible. That seems pretty harsh. Now this I have to disagree with. I think it is handled really well. It progresses across the battle field according to weather and being in it seems quite reasonable. What else is there? I do expect someone reviewing a war game to understand that it is *not* a POV game and not a first person shooter. That is the part that I thought was crappy about this review. Well that and the production value - which just sucked.

Schmidt 's team now has eyes on three Stuarts. The look like they are heading towards the North road into town. The lead Stuart stopped short of actually driving down the road. Waiting for his friends perhaps? There is no sign of infantry near them. I do hope they drive in on their own. Platoon 1 HQ spotted infantry crossing the open fields from the north from their second story perch. No sign of what that smoke screen is hiding yet. Reiser's team spots more infantry crossing the open fields from the North. If only we had some HMGs. But no we want the fight to happen in the town where we can isolate smaller groups of the enemy. So, in summary we have tanks coming from the East and Infantry from the north at the moment. 1 Platoon will redeploy to face the infantry coming from the North except for one Shrek team - they will move closer to the North road into town in case those Stuarts drive deep into town. 2 Platoon will redeploy slightly to protect the South road from those tanks and be in a position to get to the North road if needed.

Brilliant. I can see the background to the AAR will be more interesting than the AAR.

Looks like a plan. I would suggest having tanks join the attempt to recapture Buron - and flank to the North of Authie. It is always good to have a combined force in CM - in fact IMHO win the armor battle and you win the CM battle.

Yeah, I have no idea the size of the force coming at me but I am guessing it is big. Withdrawing and worrying about casualties, is one of the things that having this operational layer is supposed to help us do better. Sadly this battle is not going to be a poster child for that. I have no viable way to withdraw - no covered escape route and no transport. So this will be one of those bloody fights. Consider it this way. My troops know this is an important village to the overall defense and they know that help is on the way. They have to hold out at all costs and hope that reinforcements arrive in time. We already know that they are not arriving in at timely manner but the troops do not.

There have been some discussion of this in the past you and other have touched on many of the same points - the target audience understands that paying a bit more for a game that we can play for a long time is worth it etc. So, right now we have a cadre of players who buy many or almost all of BFC's titles. There are slowly more people added to this group over time - e.g. yourself. The BFC team makes a decent living and they get to keep making games. Serious war gamers spread the word and more trickle to replace the few that do loose interest. If all goes well the market grows and they make more money. Otherwise they get to keep making these games as long as they want. Here is the summary of what BFC is afraid will happen: They reduce the price to get more players. But the players they attract really aren't war gamers and they don't get it. Bad reviews are spread (witness this review as a archetypical example of what could happen: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=110779). The game looses reputation because of all the poorly done reviews and they don`t get more customers because the non war gamer market does not buy even at the lower prices. Bad things happen to BFC`s business.

Well so far my plan is working perfectly. I know where the enemy is and they are wasting a smoke screen on an undefended position. Schumacher's scout team is reporting, by runner, that a smoke screen is forming to the North East of town. They will easily be able to see what comes through the smoke screen before with drawing to participate in the delaying action. Schmidt's scout team has spotted a light tank moving rapidly from the East towards the area of the smoke screen. At the moment it seem the assault will be coming from the North East. On the Nothern edge of town Reiser's team has reported sighting infantry but they are not sure how many and have no additional information at the moment. Here is the over all view showing the smoke screen and the spotted enemy units.

I have deployed my two platoons in Burton and am waiting for the assault to begin. This is the hardest part - waiting. Once the action starts we will have something else to concentrate on instead of thinking about our predicament. Intelligence indicates that the enemy will come from two directions and our options for retreating are extremely limited. We have no transport and no covered safe rout away from the village. Our only AT guns are only 50mm so to win against Sherman tanks we need them to come in close. I have positioned them to have very narrow key hole sight lines and engagement ranges under 400m. Each platoon has been assigned a final fall back position in the area south of the centre of town. They will start north of their final defensive positions in order to ambush and fall back the attacking forces. The recon elements from both platoons are at the north and western edges of town. All scout teams have orders to hold fire and report enemy movement. If the enemy moves to flank us or decides not to come through the town I need to know so my AT guns can be repositioned. We do not have enough forces to man all the forward fighting positions so, we have left many of the trench works unoccupied. Hopefully between them and the scouts we can draw some artillery fire to locations we are not. The AT guns themselves are inside the last stand positions here are their LOS and alternate positions should they become necessary. The final defensive positions are the Southern orchards surrounded by bocage. My men can defend from the bocage lines and then fall back to interior trenches. At the point we will be fighting from those trenches things will be desperate. I hope to spend time fighting in the village and score some victories before falling back. Let us hope we fight honorably and that some of us will make it to fight tomorrow.

That is my thought too too. I cannot imagine playing it without replay.

Rats and it is too late to edit my post to fix it. Now that is unfare, I mean unfair.

indeed. I knew he was a British general who died during battle in the War of 1812 but I did not recall that we was The British general (in Canada) at the time. Leaders of the British Army in Canada did not fair too well on the battle field - at least they when down during victorious efforts.

Hee hee. Actually the weekend is usually a poor time for me to turn turns around - lots of family stuff going on. This weekend looks not too bad. I should be able to get one per day though this weekend. We are under way. AAR post will have to wait until tomorrow.

I am liking this game. Every time I look something up to make sure my memory is right I learn new stuff. Sir Isaac Brock was the British general who led the British regulars and Canadian millitas assigned to defend Canada from the US. He took the job in 1802 and spent 10 years building up and training local troops. He led those forces to several victories against the US invasion before being killed in battle of Queenston Heights. Brockville - which is 40 minutes away from where I live - is named after him. You could argue that he is the reason there is still a Canada.

Ninja'ed by @Baneman Nice pic.

Check out page 105 in the CMFI CM Engine Manual v2.0.pdf. But I'll add to that: for CMFI you can either add your mods into the instal Data folder (e.g. <programs>\Battlefront\CMFI101\Data) or the my documents User Data folder (e.g. <users>\<user>\Documents\Battlefront\Combat Mission\Fortress Italy\User Data) For mods that work for any version of CMFI (e.g. aris vehicle mods) place them in the user documents folder. For mod that are version specific for CMFI (e.g. vin's animated text) place the in the instal folder.

Hee hee, poorly asked. I meant what size force? I am just wondering if we have any intell coming in. Plus, some bad news the turn file is not showing up in my game - I have verified that it is in the right place but no sign of it in the list of saved games. I sent an email about game version...

Amazingly this looks more difficult than I would have expected. Gamespy looks like it is going through some turmoil and at any rate is not free to use so we, users, could not easily setup something there. Not to mention that with the review site shutting down it is unclear if this will survive. I also found Spring. They have a lobby server that is an open source project. We could do the work needed to get that up and running. It does not look like it would be easy though since it is really built to link Spring engine based games up. The only other thing I found that actually looked really good on paper was Glou which was proposed and started design as an open source game lobby but it never got of the ground at all. Any other solutions out there that anyone knows about? For something like this to be implemented by users it would need to be an open source or other free service that we could run our own server for.

LOL Do we have any idea of the composition of the force attacking us?

You can also select all the units in a platoon by double clicking on a unit (note that also selects any vehicles that are part of the platoon). I once accidentally sent a horde of trucks driving across a field unexpectedly because I group moved a platoon in the cover of woods forgetting they left their transport 500m back. Same goes for higher level HQ units as well. Double clicking a company HQ will select the whole company, battalion same. Those are less useful for bulk moving but might be good for a hide the entire company if they come under artillery fire.

I think if you want a better answer than 401 you will need to spend an afternoon in the scenario editor opening them all up your self looking for the same landscape. Cause I'm not doing it 401 final answer.

Well, I for one only find it annoying the odd time some one tacks on "this game sucks without <pet feature> and I cannot believe it is not already in". That is the only time I get annoyed. When new people come in and ask for the same or similar features I think that sends a good message to BFC - the features are wanted. We just need to make sure that the new guys understands that we thought of it too Keep them coming - that way, as I say, BFC can see what features actually have an interest.

We are there because we move fast and we don't wait for silly stuff like chain of command. Bring it. Let me know when there is a file to play.