A Canadian Cat

I just tried it myself and I believe that you guys are thinking of the word "select" differently. I can set an circular target arc (or radial - that part does not matter) on a unit and then click on the target or target light command (again does not matter) once I do that I get the nice blue line that I can play with and at this point the target arc is intact. If I left click on some actual target (area or another unit) then the target arc is cleared and the unit is just targeting that area or unit. If I right click when I am done exploring LOS and distance the target or target light command is discarded and the target arc stays as it was. So, if by "select" you mean click on the command chiclet then selecting target does not clear the original target arc; but if by "select" you mean select another target then the original target arc is cleared. Yes I am looking for a "Ian is correct" quote to add to my sig line:)

Oh man I cannot believe I forgot that very important item. Conditions are hazy but no rain. My feeling was that the ground was not muddy, which is why I thought I would offer this saved game. But if the ground is soft then I can grok what happened. This is a quick battle - is there a place I can read what the ground conditions are?

I think this was acknowledged to be a bug earlier - here is a link to the most recent discussion on the subject: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=99872

In a recent PBEM game one of my Sherman's became immobilized half on the road and half off (not sure what type of terrain is next to the road). At first I thought it was due to the fact that it drove through a breach in the bocage. The lead tank is a Rino and this one was the fifth tank through the breach the first tank made. But I checked its tracks and they are showing green but the tank is immobilized so I don't think the fact that it drove through a breach in the bocage is a factor. I know there was some discussion recently here about tanks getting immobilized on roads and there was a request for saved game files. If anyone on the testing team or at Battlefront needs another example just let me know how and where to send the file.

Thanks for doing this testing. The up shot is that all buildings except the cathedral and its tower are destroyed after 8-12 105 rounds. Very interesting. Can I step back and ask - couldn't we argue that is about right? Eight 105 rounds is a lot of HE power. Are we really just wishing that some buildings could stand a bit more and other a bit less and that the lack of variability is the issue? Or are you arguing that eight to 12 rounds is too few for total collapse?

+1 to that. I am installing each of your weathered vehicle mods as the become available - awesome stuff. Branches are not looking good flat like that.

+1 to that. I am playing a QB now where my men and tanks are setup in a staging area waiting for the pieces of the plan to come together. They are in some woods they are getting picked off by, and doing some picking off of, my opponents guys 300 - 700m out who are on the other side of two rows of trees with forest cover. That should be through the band of tickets they are behind trough four more of those bands (plus two sets of forest 50m across) and out the other side into the open. There are no forested areas around here that you could do that with. Don't get me wrong I knew what the visibility was when I sent my guys there - I'm not complaining about my tactical situation because I knew what it was like. I'm just saying it is hard to imagine this happening unless these forests were part of a park or manicured estate. This discussion and the one about how to create a forest with a ticket band is informing my map building activities. If only I could stop playing the game long enough to get it done:)

Oh we would really like that. Here is one person's solution: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=98602 I am hoping that one day it will be added. The amount of time it would save scenario authors would be amazing.

That is standard business thinking (I see it all the time in high tech businesses - it is usually the wrong way to go). But if you look at the success of some products, it is the openness to a community that made or bolsters their success. For an example look at the Apple iPhone. Sure it is a good phone and if Apples and a few partners were the only ones developing apps for it it would probably still have some success. But open it up to any developer to join in and you can amp up our success. They can only use the tag line "There's an app for that" because of that openness. The preceding comment is not meant as a criticism of GaJ but as encouragement for BFC to question their standard business thinking and move towards a better model.

Excellent - welcome to the forums. My understanding is that this was fixed in the 1.01 patch. I can say I have not seen an enemy force consisting of only AT guns in the patched version. There does not seem to be away to save during unit selection. Sorry.

Excellent thanks for sharing! Just so I am clear are you saying the 10 rounds are never fired? So once the mortars are done firing and they say empty there are still 10 rounds left? Some how I have not had 81mm mortars when playing the Americas so I have not seen this.

Someone pointed me to some source code a while back. I am not sure if it was for PBEMH or if it was for something similar. Anyway it used VB to do its magic. I looked at the code for the button pushing and password entering and you are correct it will not work for CMBN. The older CM games used standard windows controls / dialog boxes to open the game file and there is lots of examples on how to manipulate a standard windows file dialog. However the new CM uses its own custom screen with a page scrolling area for game names. To a helper app it would look like a bunch of pixels - if you could even get at those. So finding the game name and scrolling the list on screen while theoretically possible would be way to much work than I am willing to under take.

Since I have not heard anything on this topic here is my proposal. This is what I would consider to be a bare bones simple as possible set of command line options that would allow many third party helper apps (PBEM helper apps, find scenarios and campaign apps) to offer a much richer experience to your customers. In fact calling it a set of options would be a gorse exaggeration. There would be one and only one command line option passed - the file name. No paths, no drives just the file name. Based on the extension the program will determine where to look for the named file (all under the "Game Files" folder tree). I know this does not allow controlling of game settings, resolution and all the other things you could think of. Nor does it do anything for map / scenario editing but that's the point. I am suggesting a starting point - minimum, simple. The kind of thing that could be implemented in a patch even;) Here is what the hypothetical command line help would look like: CM Normandy [filename] [filename] the name of the single file CM Normandy will open The [filename] must be the name of a file plus its extension found under the game's "Game Files" directory. The game will look in its "Game Files" directory tree according the following rules:*.cam Will load a new campaign using the specified .cam file from the "Game Files/Campaigns" folder. This is equivalent to starting the game and picking the "Campaign" command from the main menu and then selecting the campaign. *.btt Will load a new battle using the specified scenario file from the "Game Files/Scenarios" folder. This is equivalent to starting the game and picking the "Battle" command from the main menu and then selecting the scenario. *.bts Will load a previously saved game from the "Game Files/Saved Games" folder. This is equivalent to starting the game and picking the "Saved Game" command from the main menu and then selecting the named saved game. *.ema Will load a PBEM game from the "Game Files/Incoming Email" folder. This is equivalent to starting the game and picking the "Saved Game" command from the main menu and selecting the PBEM game from the named game list.

Looking at the Shock Force tutorials is a good place to learn how to use the new CM2x commands. For WWII tactics here is a link to a collection of posts based on the old games. If, while you are reading, you focus on the tactics used and not on the game commands there is lots of good information there: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=96905

An excellent point - I keep forgetting about that. I see that others have similar experience too.

No way. I like the fact that the icon colour coding are kept simple. The only highlighting I want is the way it is now: showing who on our side can see an enemy unit and showing the rest of the teams in the platoon. More clutter will not help.

I'm just not feeling this pain. Yes, the colours could be considered ugly but its only during setup so it just does not matter - to me. It has not caused me any problem with actually setting up troops. What issues are you guys seeing during setup? To me it seems like it should be pretty much the bottom of the feature back log.

As someone pointed out earlier the generic game looks really really good. I only consider a few mods really important and a few are just fun. Here is the prioritized list of that I am using. Must haves: CMBN Icons_billy_sp WW2 tactical symbols used by the German and US forces - the German symbols took some getting used to but the US ones are very similar to what NATO uses now so that felt very natural. Overall I really like what it adds to the game. Niessuh_icon_contact_Balkenkreuz Updates the unknown contact symbol to use the star for the US and the cross for Germany z_Juju's TweakedUI I realy like the chagnes he made (except for the black command buttons - see CMBN_Wolfe_Coloured_Command_Buttons below). Juju him self said he liked Wolfe's colour tweaks to his tweak so the above link to 1.01 verison may already have them. CMBN_Wolfe_Colored_Command_Buttons_1-3 Put some colour back into the command buttons - taken out by Juju's TweakedUI. As I said the newest version of Juju's UI might already have coloured buttons so this might no longer be needed. Just for fun: Ramblers_Weapons_v1 Nicer looking weapons for when you take screen shots Veins_tracers_C I just like them Vin's animated text CMBN v1.21 I like the idea of making the text easer to follow but this version actually makes it harder to read (IMHO) but I keep it because it has the teams hightlighted well. I plan to try the 2.0 version and if it works well it will bubble up to the must have section. I also really like the look of Juju's walls and bridges and I want to try them out. There are also a variety of very nice dirty vehicle mods that I would like to try out too. But alas I am too busy playing the game to try them all out. Guess I am lazy too.

I probably should not be telling anyone this but doing this with snipers is one of my favorite things to do. German snipers teams start with only 60 rounds for the long gun. US sniper sniper teams have 123 to share between them. But by tossing the battalion HQ team out of their jeep for a few moments during setup means you can mount each of your sniper teams in turn ad give them another 100 rounds. Load the HQ team back in and everything is as it was. I have done this with 100 extra rounds per team and not noticed any degradation of performance but I am not claiming to have done exhaustive tests and I have a sneaking suspicion that at some point adding more amo to the team would have some detrimental effects. But again I have not tired it.

Just for clarification: do you mean if you see the wrong setup zone in the map preview quit the game and reload the turn file. Repeat until the setup zone is as expected?

If you can no longer look then sadly anyone trying to help would only be guessing. No saved game kicking around some where you could post and let people play with? I know sort of a rhetorical question given your previous statement but a suggestion for future posts would be - if you are having trouble with something in a game keep a saved game around to share with people on the forum.

Well that is very inconvenient. What version of the game are you running? Is it the original 1.00 or the patch 1.01. I believe there were some fixes regarding spotting rounds in the patch. Those situations involved FO's not being able to see the spotting rounds land because they had no LOS to the area they hit. So, this situation is not quite the same but similar.

Hummm there must be something going on. What kind of artillery is it? On page 103 of the manual under section "Matchup" what kind of a match icon do you see for them?

I see you have answers to everything. When I read that first question I interpreted it differently. So, I will add that bazooka teams will not fire when they are inside buildings. I am not 100% sure but I will bet they will not fire when inside trucks or half tracks either. That little tid bit is important to know up front.

Many of us are using Dropbox and other online file sharing solutions to share Play By EMail files when playing head to head. They will work as well for your cooperative play against the AI. Check out this thread: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=97839