As a newbie I have the following suggestions/ideas:
1. What about boats? I have seen a couple of very promising maps on these forums of people trying to recreate the Normandy beach landings. I have not yet come accross a game that actually achieves a reaslistic portrayal of these events and can't help thinking that CMBN has the potential to achieve this. In particular overcoming some of the issues with the actual landings (ship artillery falling short, landing craft moving off target etc, armour sinking in the sea!). Would'nt it be good to be able to co-ordinate the artillery out at sea yourselves, load troops on the landing craft and make this a tactical mission where you could actually try and recreate the Omaha landings how they were supposed to be as opposed to it turning into a charge up the beach bloodbath with very little tactical requirement (at least for the beach rush!). I know people may be sick of seeing the Normandy beach landings in games but seeing screenshots of one of the maps in particular got my excited!!
2. Tides for sea - related to the above but as with wind surely it would not be that difficult to be able to customise at least the direction of the flow of water so that rivers, sea etc can flow in the right direction?
3. Seen this before but an option to highlight line of command so you can see where it is broken and how to fix it.
4. Again seen this but keeping dead units on the interface
5. Dedicated medic and aid station where you can take injured troops back for treatment. Also possible improvements to animations that would show troops carrying injured ones out of the action on stretchers/being able to load them on jeeps etc etc to try and preserve some of your KIA's
6. Recon plane ability where you could send them over to ID German positions early Apologies if this is in already and I have missed it!
7. Using the map bit of the editor to make trenches etc as opposed to the unit purchase screen. It would save a lot of time flipping between the 2.
8. Civilians?
9. An option to be able to adjust realism relating to ID of enemy. i.e. if unit IDs something that others have not for amateur players like myself would be useful to have the option that if one identified I can see the enemy on the map regardless of which one of my units has seen it. Or do I just need more practice!
10. Has anyone noticed performance issues using ATI cards? I only ask because I recently changed from long time NVIDIA owner (96oogt) to HD 5770. Playing on my 9600 GT performance seemed to be far better than on my ATI card unlike other games where I have seen a 20-30% performance improvement.
11. And finally a very big thanks to those dedicated modders out there who have already halped make this a better looking and more inutitive game to the uninitiated! Vein and Marco especially to name a few!