Jammersix

Actually, if you don't run a Mac, you know that you have "several" Mac opponents. You don't know how wide-spread the problem is. If I'm the only one having problems, (I'm not, I'm just the most vocal) then it's obviously something with my computer, and I'd be interested in help fixing it, from any source.

Uhm... Is that good or bad?

My suggestion is that if you run a Mac, wait until they fix it. Although you could be waiting a long time, they never did fix the 81% bug in Shock Force.

Bunch uppity Red players... If you don't know what I mean, that tells me you run Windows.

Because I have never been able to get a PBEM game to work with Black Sea. I've put in three tickets on it, and it has been "referred to the Mac programmer" for suggestion. That luminary has yet to contact me or respond. Battlefront is not interested in fixing the problem. They have a long history of this behavior, going back to Combat Mission 1.0. (Now everyone currently involved will point out that they weren't born when Combat Mission 1.0 was released. While that may be true, the lack of support has been present in every single release since then.) One has merely to recall the 81% bug in Shock Force, the furor it caused, to recognize the pattern.

It's a shame Battlefront can't build a game in which I could play you guys. I guess you'll just have to live knowing that I'm out there, and that I'll bring the Bradleys.

You might want to think that through, John. I'll concede a small re-wording, though: whoever wins will have the Bradleys.

Basically, the key to remember is that whoever has the Bradleys wins.

My problem is always the opposite. My squad takes small arms fire from the second story of a concrete building, and answering with an AT4 or a Javelin seems like the perfect solution to me. There's no such thing as overkill from a grunt's point of view. Given a problem that is happening and a problem that might happen if we live through this one, I know which one I'll solve first.

Morning Calm. The smell of kempshi still repulses me.

"Run up there, throw this down the barrel." [crickets] "You run up there and throw that down the barrel."

How does a COLT - Fire Support Vehicle - Command Vehicle affect time and accuracy? And does an individually purchased, single FSV include an FO?

I wish we had someone with some real inside information on these systems...

Ah. I play Black Sea on Real Time. (Also a setting. I thought "Iron" included it, but looking it over, it's a setting.)

No idea what "Company of Heroes" means.

Two of my Abrams were killed. I play on iron, so there is no "rewind, rewind, how did that happen?" option. One of them burst into flame, the other was immobilized by artillery, and then shot to pieces.

Lovely. Except that Stingers can't shoot down UAVs in game.

I just finished the scenario for the first time, and lost a minor victory to the AI. So I can see how the Russians can win it. They overran everything, went clear to the end of the map, killed my mortar carriers, then came back through the field, killing my company CP.

Are TOW missiles non-starters? Go ahead, make a Russian's day. Take a Bradley, launch a TOW missile at a T-90 from three clicks away. Poof. No more Bradley. TOW misses because well, it's hard to control a TOW missile when you're nothing but an expanding explosion. Particularly when your Bradley is part of the same 'splosion. The time it takes a TOW to travel three clicks is plenty of time to focus the whole platoon on the firing Bradley. Back In The Day, before any of the officers here were born, TOW was sold to us as the way we were going to win at the Fulda Gap. That isn't what this game shows.

Okay. Problem. Shock Force does not let a human pick the map for a Quick Battle. I suppose one way I could coerce the game into choosing our map would be to remove all other choices... Another issue is that Shock Force has a weird naming scheme that I believe it uses in determining which maps are available for a size and type of battle. I'm interested in huge assaults, and would like the AI to choose huge forces against me. It looks to me like there are only three maps in Shock Force that have "assault" in their name. So you'd probably need to add "assault" to the name of our doctored map, if it starts life as a non-assault map. That all said, I like the map named "QB Assault Village". And thank you in advance for the work you're about to invest. If this works, I hope others choose to develop QB maps. For something different, I also like the map named "QB Attk Large Forest 269", but that probably suffers from the naming convention I mentioned.

The CMBS manual states that if forces are purchased and placed on the map, they will simply be ignored. All the reinforcement groups and all the groups can be used, but the AI will assign forces to the groups randomly. I thought of another way-- I pick a QB map, I purchase and place my forces, I send it to you. Well, wait, it will ignore my forces. I was going to say you purchase, place and build multiple AIs, but I don't think that will work.

I have Shock Force. When I check the documentation, I'm not sure what you're asking me to look for-- it sounds like you want me to see if the OOB itself is removed, and it seems to me that one, it would have to be removed for the map to be used in a QB, because a human would want to build his own on both sides, two, the QBs have an option to have the computer build an OOB, and three, I'm not sure they'd document what the game would do if you built a QB map complete with two OOBs. Can you think of a way I can run some tests to find out what you want me to find out?

Oh. I see. The AI designer doesn't know the Red force OB. Duh. So the map would come to me (the player) with restraints on how to build the Red force? And if you (the designer) create the Red force OB, then it's a scenario, and I can't build my force, right? I think I see the problem. I think I could live with building the Red OB. One way would be to build a couple dozen different Red OBs at a time, and assign them random names, save them, and then just pick one to play. So if I had a bunch of OBs on a map with a bunch of AIs, I wouldn't have any idea about what was about to happen, and I'd still have to come ready for anything.

I'm interested in Red AIs for the two biggest maps. Lots of AIs. I like Quick Battles, I like building my own force, and I like playing U.S. So if one of you geniuses built lots and lots (more is better) different, scattered, diverse, weird, huge, wise, foolish, uninhibited, classical, strange, standard, completely unhinged Red force OBs and AIs, life would be grand. Use all the points. Follow the doctrine or break all the rules. Call in the airstrikes or dig the infantry in. Order a cavalry charge with the armor or set perfect ambushes. I have demonstrated rather clearly that I have absolutely no talent for building AIs. Playing one of my AIs is like listening to a dog with one nut stuck in the gate "sing". My AI commanders wait patiently for the enemy, and when they see them coming sit down for a nice cup of tea. Then the survivors throw up their hands and leave. So I need a real AI commander to go wild.

You didn't need to, I did. And I do.