A Canadian Cat

Spot on. Pretty much ever game I have played I am aware that I have gone further than a real force commander would go (or indeed the squads themselves would go). But it is fun and I do it anyway because it is a game. One thing that I would like to do to reduce our tendency to push to far is have the ability to play campaign's head to head via PBEM*. I think that would allow the creation of campaigns where pushing your troops too far would be a bad thing for your long term success. The fact that you, as a commander, know you and your troops must fight another day would put a natural damper on you willingness to sacrifice them. * I realize that there is some support for head to head play but I (and my regular play partners) really cannot play anything other than PBEM when it comes to head to head play.

Well I am not sure if this is a glaring hole but we already have multiple types of fortifications: sandbag walls, fox holes, trenches, wire etc. So I am not sure how adding fortifying buildings and barricades would be prevented by the current system - they just aren't there at the moment. Or are you saying you don't buy fortifications because of the setup experience where you have to think a head and purchase the right amount of each type? I am not sure if redoing the system of purchasing fortifications really buys us end users much. It certainly would require significant programming effort. I would rather BFC add barricades and building fortifications to their current list. Even that would be far from free.

^^^^^ Well they spot my guys approaching from the side and rear pretty easily in game. It sure seems like they have windows on the side

Fire mission behaviour and wait times are the same for Warrior, Elite and Iron. Elite is the same as Warrior but removes specialized unit icons from the enemy (which is good because how would your guys know that guy the can see between the trees is a AT Gun amo bearer? Iron is the same for Elite but it adds FOW visibility to your units. If you select one of your own units you will see only friendly units visible to the selected unit and contact icons for your friendly forces that are near by. If you have none of your units selected then you can see all your units. Try Elite it makes figuring out the enemy force composition more difficult.

Yep, I like the *idea* but find too muck clicking needs to happen and extra turn views are needed. I continue to always have an iron game going. I am getting used to it. I would never reject a game based on iron (and I would reject playing a game on Veteran). But iron is not my first choice.

Drones are now used to "scout" ahead of your forces as well. So troops know if there are enemies on the other side of the wall, ditch, hill etc. before they even get into a position to get their own eyes on the area. Makes it easier to find the enemy if you know more or less where to look.

True, it is quite a bit more complex than previous versions. I have a QB going now where a Sherman spotted two PzIVs and a Panther trough a key hole and KO'ed the Panther and immobilized the PzIV before being dispatched. I have moved another Sherman up close by and to me it looks like the LOS is as good but neither side has spotted each other. Indeed thanks for your insight - including the other examples you gave later. Interesting thoughts. I agree that size matters too. I often spot those big 88s before they even fire but smaller guns not so much.

Oh, that is true. We might have to wait until the game ends and get some of those details plus the thoughts from the players.

OK let me ask the question that needs asking - cause I want to know. What is it that GAJ did wrongly or poorly so that his forces failed to spot Bill's infantry in the open? It is a serious question. For the last couple of days we have been doing the "spotting in game is broken" / "stop complaining there is nothing wrong" dance. Yawn, heard it before. There could be stuff broken - it is possible. But there is defiantly stuff we can learn here too. For example the recent discussion about bunkers deforming the hill slightly. Or the fact that GAJ did not have the HQ unit for his TD platoon. So, lets start with a specific example. Several times GAJ thought his guys had good visibility into an open kill zone and Bill's infantry just disappeared into it. What did Bill do that was so good in those cases and what could GAJ have done differently? Seriously I am at a loss for ideas.

+1 to *not* doing doing this (but again I am OK with a tri state "only selected unit path", "all paths when when there is a selection", "all paths all the time").

They might be but I am not Like I tell my kids if you cannot have fun loosing at a game it is time to quit playing. Even the best loose games and matches sometimes. Hey, you have done a damn fine job IMHO. Some bitching *is* part of the fun - right.

Bummer - but that is what I thought. I'll make official then: BFC could you please have the camera unit assignments save with the game. It would make the feature even more useful. Thanks.

I am no MG gunner but as a landscape photographer (hobby) I have setup a lot of tripods outdoors (with as much as 10 plus pounds of camera and lens on top). It is usually trivial to get a stable footing. All I might have to do is turn a few degrees if I don't like what the feet are on. Worst case scenario move over a meter or less.

I am currently playing a couple of large games (one is the subject of my current AAR with Dungeon Tiger - we have not forgotten just I was slow because of work and now he is in the same position). Monty's Butcher in particular is giving my machine fits - panning boggs down as more units come into view or more tress. So moving around the battlefield is painful. Once I am where I want to be I'm OK. A last week I remembered that we have camera groups. Hey, I said, that will largely solve my problem. If I assign a group to a unit involved in the 4 actions I have going on I can skip panning around the battle field and just jump there. I set it up and tested that it worked and then saved my PBEM turn. When I got the next turn back the jump to group did not work. WTF, did I not set them up properly? So, I did it again, verified it again, sent my turn. Next turn, same thing no groups set. So, I was not dreaming. I have tried it in CMFI now as well, with the same result. And I just tried it this morning in a game vs the AI. As long as the session is running the camera groups are remembered. As soon as you save and exit - when you start again they are all gone. Is that what I should expect? The manual does not say that the groups are not saved for PBEM - but it also does not say they are saved. This is not really a useful feature if it is not saved between PBEM turns. Is this a bug? Is just me? Am I about to make a feature request?

Yeah, big time bummer. I too thought your plan and bunker setup was good. Actually I thought our plan looked good - I am not sure if I would have created a better one so I was looking forward to you chewing up some of Bills forces. The whole thing with not spotting infantry and HTs is weird just weird. I am hoping after the singing is over and both sides can compare notes we can figure out why was up with that.

I see what you are saying - I do play Iron a fair amount. The thing is I find that I am constantly selecting and deselecting units and watching and rewinding the turn more because i keep missing stuff because of what I have selected. Hench my click fest comment. So, for me, it just slows me down and I don't enjoy the good parts.

Michael, What is the difference between this one and the other one (without the GL in the name)?

Yeah the word "skill" is not a great match but it is the label in the UI. I agree iron is an extra click fest that I don't care for (and I play between 10 and 20% of my games in iron because I have a PBEM partner that likes it and I am happy to oblige a partner who has taught me a lot). I like Elite because it leaves the icons for any soldiers generic (no pioneer or amo bearer special icons) and now that AT gun icons are in and there is no identifying info in the UI it is perfect. All you see are enemy soldiers running around. If you see an enemy soldier go in and out of visibility you have no idea if it is one guy popping up again or a second team mate.

That sounds brilliant. You could do this and just tell is you implemented a random map generator. Then see how long it takes us to figure out that it is not a generator but a cropper.

BFC Nailed it! I have posted before about my reasons for not using Elite previously but now with CMFI GL it works perfectly. Colour me happy. As it was: Note the generic infantry icon over the AT gun, even though my guys can see the gun itself the icon missleads me into thinking it is just infantry. That means I have to click to see what it really is. When you do that you get information you should not have - like this is AT gun number 1. And Now: Fantastic. Now my guys can see the gun I get the gun icon. If you see the amo bearers you see the generic infantry icon. If you select the gun or any of the infantry you get nothing - nadda, zip, zilch in terms of extra info. I played a quick battle against the AI just to try this out and I really, really liked it. When infantry pop in and out of view you cannot tell who they are or if you have seen them before. You cannot tell if they are part of a special formation. If you zoom in you might be able to glean somethings but not nearly like before. And now that the icon for important pieces appears I don't even have to click on all the enemy icons any more. Well done BFC and thanks, Ian PS. I had a surprise when I tried to make these screen shots. In 2.01 the AT gun icon appeared in Elite skill level. Wow I missed that - I would have been using it even before not if I had know that. Not sure if I missed something or if not one noticed. To get the screen shot I had to install 1.0. Wow have you guys ever improved keyboard handling since then

It would all be in the timing. Consider this totally hypothetical time line: Market Garden is released - CMBN 2.2 New Eastern Front game is released - CMEF 1.0 with the v3 engine (including flames) Upgrade for CMBN to 3.0 (yep with flames) Upgrade for CMFI to 2.0 (yep with flames too) Release first pack for CMBN with Crocs etc. Totally hypothetical! But I am going to go out on a limb here and predict that this is exactly what will happen (minus the timing of the next CMSF game and various patches - which were omitted for clarity)

Oh I know there are issues regarding tanks and spotting. I was actually commenting that infantry on the ground spot better then buttoned or unbuttoned tanks - at least at some things. Clearly the TC being higher up has some advantage. The big difference is that tanks do not hear other tanks approaching - but infantry do. A case in point I had a platoon of Royal tigers that were over the hill crest waiting for infantry support to arrive and an artillery barrage to end. They thought the were all alone. When the infantry arrived and dismounted the immediately heard enemy tanks in the next field over (separated by a woods and road and more woods). It turns out my opponent was getting ready to attack my flank. Sadly for him his tanks were unaccompanied by infantry so he did not realize I had tanks so close. So because of my infantry hearing the enemy tanks I surprised him and had a wild romp over his flanking force. Just another reason to make sure your tanks have infantry with them. Full video here: It starts out at a very high level and then replays the 3 minutes of action a few times from the point of view of some of the tanks involved. First POV sequence starts at 3:20 ish in the video. I was sure I had a tank with no weapons control that could still shoot with an MG so I stand corrected.

Well I know it is coming later on in their schedule but in the end the stated plan is there will be *more* content for the Eastern Front than the Western. We know of plans for the CMBN game and modules, a Bulge game and modules and CMFI and module(s). For the Eastern front they have plans to make four games each with modules to cover the massive section of the war. You might not like the scheduling choices but I don't think you can call it neglect. If there is neglect it would be for the early years of the war in the West. Perhaps but from the get go there have been loads of people on the forums declaring their interest in the Eastern front. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Yeah the rate of fire is amazing - most fun I have had watching my guys get pummeled. I setup a battle between some Canadian Shermans and recon forces vs quad 20mm AAA guns. The bren carriers were toast very fast if they got under the guns of those AAA cannons. The Shermans were OK but just about every sub system that sticks out of the tank gets cleaned right off in very short order. One had a partial penetration on a side hit and another crew went from OK to Rattled. @ridethe415 is right if you get any kind of fire on the AAA guns the crew falters pretty quick. With all the bren carriers and Shermans to shot at I manged to get a few sections close enough to one to open up with their small arms even short engagements at closeish range ended badly for whomever fired second.

Oh man I laughed at that one. So true, so true.