ClarkWGriswold

Wait a minute.... I preordered the steelbox based upon that video. Are you guys saying there's A GAME INSIDE TOO!?!?:confused:

The screenshots on Page 6 are incredible. I especially love to see the physics of the ricochets. The shot that bounces off the Panther turret and lands over by the American machine gun is cool, but the coolest thing I've seen yet for CMBN is a shot penetrating a PzIV, shooting out the back, and hitting a second PzIV's weapon mount! Awesome!

My CMx1 buddies have been talking about something like this for CMBN already, and the game isn't even out yet. It sure would make mapmaking less of a chore. That would be a really nice feature to have. Coming from a CMx1 background, I was floored to see the size of the turn files in CMBN PBEM games. Emailing these monsters back and forth just isn't going to work well. I'm going to setup a solution using Dropbox, but it sure would be nice if the game would take care of some of this. Shuffling PBEM files was always a pain in CMx1 (I dunno how it is in CMx2).

Many of us don't like the modern setting and extreme lethality of modern weapons. Many of us don't like asymmetrical warfare. Many of us don't like a vast, open, sand fillled landscape with little to look at (or take cover behind) outside of the odd palm tree. Myself, I dislike all of the above. No interest at all in CMSF or its modules, but can't wait for CMBN.

They do kneel down. Watch Video AAR #2 around the 26:00 mark and you'll see the soldiers kneel in the foxholes. Once arty starts falling, a Hide order is given and the guys get completely down in the foxholes. It's pretty clear to see the difference between the guys who are kneeling and the few poor souls who abandon their foxholes and start running.

Just buy trenches instead. All the goodness of donuts, but the shape of a churro!

I believe that the popped smoke also blows depending on wind direction and velocity. edit: You can get a good view of it happening on the second video AAR. The smoke that the Germans launched at the beginning of the game can be seen drifting back towards the American's lines.

Probably more like one in a million! (So you're saying there IS a chance </lloyd>) Oh how I wish there were impact markers in the game so that we could see exactly where that shell hit. Gotta be the luckiest shot I've ever seen in all my years.

On Page 3 we see PFC Anglen's 1st Squad, B Team shooting out of a 2nd story window with a rifle grenade (you can actually see the grenade mid-flight in the screenshot). The round hits a PzIV, but doesn't penetrate. That squad also has a bazooka. Had they been outside of the house, behind that hedge, they probably would have gotten a kill. I wonder if the player doesn't know about not being able to fire bazookas/shreks/fausts indoors? edit: Looks like the same thing happens on Page 5. Durant shoots at a PzIV from the top floor of a building using his rifle and is silenced by HE. Again, he had a bazooka but couldn't use it indoors. Too bad the player didn't realize that limitation or he could have probably had two easy armor kills.

Not sure what gives you the impression I'm worried about it (or perhaps you're simply being snarky). But when you've got thousands of people all trying to download a gigabyte+ file, a torrent is a good solution. It requires relatively little bandwidth to start seeding, and then takes care of itself from there. I'm sure BFC will do what is necessary to ensure adequate bandwidth on D-day, but wanted to point out that swarming is a perfect, legal, and nearly free solution to these sorts of issues. My guess is that demand for CMBN is going to blow away every other Battlefront product to date.

I have to disagree that the movement points were "awkward", and the space wasn't really all that cramped. There was easily and entire vehicle's worth of space between the two tanks. In fact, when the orders began neither of the two vehicles was even on the road. Almost immediately upon moving, the right Panther starts doing the go-stop-go dance, as does the halftrack behind and to the left. There's about 20 meters of space between these vehicles, and the Panther is well enough ahead of the halftrack that the latter shouldn't cause concern to the former. I could buy the excuse of "awkward move orders" or "cramped space" if the vehicles were three wide, or if one vehicle was physically blocking the other, but neither of these is the case. If this isn't a bug, it's poor AI behavior. I sincerely hope (and believe) BFC will have addressed the issue before release.

A torrent would probably work well. The mad rush that's virtually guaranteed on release day is tailor made for a torrent solution, and BFC wouldn't even need much in the way of seed servers.

I just read the CM:SF manual (demo) for the first time last week and noticed that same text. Sure would be nice to have, but some of the things said in the forum over the last month of waiting make me think that's not the surprise.

I agree about the scenario difficulty, but it IS a beta and the scenario may not have been finished, or it may be a "beginner" scenario designed to go easy on noobs. The two previous videos (three battles), seemed to be much more challenging, and one of them was even a QB.

Possible solution: Soldier A has an MG Soldier B has a Garand Soldier A gets killed. His MG icon turns red to indicate his KIA status. Soldier B happens upon Solder A's MG and picks it up. Soldier A's weapon icon changes from a green Garand to a green MG. Soldier A, who is dead, doesn't get Soldier B's Garand, so his weapon icon turns to "Looted" or "Weapon Retrieved" or something similar. Now, not only can I see, at a glance, that Soldier A is KIA, but I can also see that his weapon has been picked up by someone else. Heck, even just red text showing "KIA" or "Wounded" is better than simply having his status disappear completely!

that's exactly what I'm talking about. Once a guy goes down there's no way to see what weapon he had or even that he was part of the squad. It's like he never existed. If I start a game with depleted squads (something I often do now in CMBB), I'll never know how many guys are wounded/KIA because they simply disappear from the UI. Showing the weapons in red would be immensely helpful. I was hoping this was a toggle or something that could be set in the game preferences, but it sounds like it's not.

Thanks for posting another VAAR, tyrspawn. I, personally, really liked this one. Some moments that really made me cringe (and mostly feel sorry for the Americans). I'm sure someone is going to bring it up sooner or later, so I might as well be the first to say it: What in the heck is up with Stuttering Stanley the Panther driver? Is this another case of "You first. No, after you. No, no, I insist"? It looks like there was plenty of room, but the two tanks at the beginning of the video seemed as though they couldn't decide which one was going to drive down the path first. I also found the nose-to-nose Panther and M10 at the end quite comedic. I know it's been brought up before, but I found the exaggerated movement of the tanks very bothersome in this video. Especially the stuttering Panthers in the beginning and the M10s at the end. The M10s really moved a LOT. With that out of the way I'll say that the rest of the AAR was really, really great. It was awesome to see the Pioneers blow holes in the bocage. I'm curious, can they blow a hole big enough for a tank? I'm also curious how the player is supposed to know which hedges are short enough to jump over and which ones require blowing up or going around? Even though the Germans don't have any hedgecutters on their armor, is it safe to assume that they can roll over the short stuff anyway? I'd think a 40 ton tank wouldn't have too much trouble with a 3' tall bush. The artillery in this AAR was especially devastating. I thought we'd seen the worst of it during the second video, but I actually felt sorry for the Americans in this battle. They got *hammered*. One guy had a mortar round land practically on his helmet, and another got shot in the back by a Panther HE round. Not a fun time for the Allies. The crumbling buildings were especially satisfying to watch (at least for the Germans). We had a bit of discussion in one of the other threads about TRPs and their effect. The mortars starting falling VERY fast once they were called in. How close does a target need to be to a TRP to get the bonus? I noticed a lot of ricochets when German guns were firing at buildings. Is there any chance of penetration through building walls by small arms fire, or will it just always bounce off unless it hits a window?

The American soldiers getting bombarded by mortars and overrun by German infantry probably didn't think it looked quite so pretty. Especially the guy at 28:47 who has a 60mm round land right on top of his head. :eek:

I have a question concerning the weapon icons in a squad. By default, if a squad member is alive and in good health their weapon icon is shown in green, if they're injured their weapon icon is yellow, and if they are KIA their weapon icon disappears completely. Is there an option to show KIA soldiers' weapons as red or greyed out while keeping them visible in the UI? The reason I ask is because it would seem to make it much easier to keep an eye on how many casualties you've sustained, and tell at a glance the condition of a unit compared to "full strength".

I was waiting for tyrspawn to make a new thread, and I didn't want to steal his thunder. But it's been up for a while now, so maybe he's busy with other things. I just opened the older videos and kept refreshing, watching for his "Uploads" to change from 78 to 79. No HD version available (at least right now), and even the 480p version is coming down really slowly for me over a 6mbps connection. It probably hasn't propagated across multiple servers yet. edit: Of course, right after I respond I refreshed the page and 1080/720 are now showing up as options. But they might be slow, given how slow my 480p stream is running.

There are two TRPs on map, but only one of the three targets was within, say, 80 meters or so of them. I haven't played CMSF beyond a couple of demo missions, so I'm not sure how TRPs work in CMx2 compared to CMx1, but if this were CMx1 I'd say the designated targets were outside of the TRP "zone". edit: Scratch that. I just went back and looked at the TRPs again and they are actually pretty close to the targets. Well within 50 meters, so that would explain how fast the shells started arriving.

I'm watching the third video right now (it's up, but there's no thread yet), and the mortar fire is VERY quick. It's about 20 seconds elapsed time between designating targets and the first rounds (probably spotting rounds) begin to fall. Very, very fast.

Hush, you! I don't want my PC owning friends rubbing my nose in the fact that they get to play before me!

The Mac version of CM:BN is now available for preorder in the Battlefront Store!

It sounds as though the attacker doesn't get ALL of the info about your forces, but rather they get to see what is visible from their setup area. I think this is a big improvement over CMx1. If you put troops out in the open, you can expect them to be seen by the enemy. I highly doubt that the German AI could see the Americans in the treeline (though possible, since they were fairly far forward and not hidden), but it's an obvious spot to put infantry and would have likely been shelled by a human player at the first hint that there was infantry dug in there.