Glubokii Boy

i'd buy it to (for the same reason)... I fully understand your point... but i feel that CMFB might suffer from the same 'short commings' that plaig many of the releases...being restricted to a very limited timeframe sort of limits the options for scenario designing ideas. Many of the more 'obvious' ideas for this timeframe have already been covered to some degree by the stock scenarios and campaigns. A CMBB 2 editor pack would not share these 'short commings'...We as the designers would have the entire eastern front conflict at our fingertips...Whatever idea we get into our heads we could do...regardless of timeperiod (as long as we stick to the 41 - 45 timeframe). The options here would be massive ! Quite a difference compared to CMFB currently... personally i have a sh**tload of ideas i would like to try and design for the eastern front in the 41 - 43 timeperiod....both historical and what ifs..

Unfortunatelly simply developing the unit rosters ( OOBs, TOEs, artwork etc.) for the various formations and eqiupments is a pretty lenthy process in it self if i understand previous comments by BFC correctly. If that was not the case i would suggest that BFC would seriously considder releasing a sort of CMBB 2 'light'...or CMBB 2 'editor pack' or whatever one should call it. A simular version to CMBB as far as timeframe and avaliable units are conserned (41 - 45 including minor allies)...BUT WITH NO SCENARIOS AND NO CAMPAIGNS included. Designing the playable content would be up to the community. After the release of the 'editor base-game' BFC could assist in the development of playable content if they are still working on CM 2 at that time... Even without the help of BFC i'm pretty sure we would se a steady stream of eastern front scenarios being made avaliable by the community for many years to come... Releasing a product with no playable content might not be a perfect solution but considdering the alternativ i think it is something that varants some serious considderation... As many have mentioned...given the current releaserate of new products...We ever seeing early eastern front games in CM2 seems very unlikely unfortunatelly...

Yes i hear you ! But this applies to all the titles...cmbn as well as cmfi, cmrt and cmfb... The reason for cmbn having longer scenariotimes compared to the other titled...if that is the case...is not because of any cmbn scenarios being made before 4.0 was a thing. Because the same thing goes for the other titles also. If cmbn have longer scenarios...it is not because of cmbn not considdeting 4.0 and the other titles doing so...

This has nothing to do with 4.0... Non of the campaigns in any of the titles have been designed after the release of 4.0... With the exception of CMSF2...but i don't know if those campaigns where adjusted any because of 4.0...

ooouuch ! kind of looks like mine...That darn piece of leather should refill automatically when empty...imo ...that would have been nice. I agree with previous comments...If you can afford it. the Normandy big bundle will give you the most content...if you find the boccage appeling...Hell ! go for it... A few small things that might be worth considdering though before jumping in (and buying Normandy). - CMBN is one of the first titles to utilize the current game engine (CM2). Both scenario-design and the game engine itself have evolved somewhat since CMBN was originally released. All titles have since been updated to run the latest engine...including CM Normandy...so no problem there. However many of the scenarios included in the Normandy bundle was designed prior to the latest updates and does therefore not utilize them fully. The differences between the early CM Normandy scenarios and the later releases are not huge but both the skill-level of the scenario designers as well as the new features included in the game engine post CM Normandy release does show in the later releases...These are no MAJOR things by any means !!! but still... - The community intrest in the Normandy game have been pretty limited lately compared to other titles imo and might become even more so in the near future. The other titles have additional BFC-content planed for release 'soon'...Normandy has not (as far as i know atleast)...These planed releases will most likely spark some new intrest in the affected titles and to some degree leave Normandy 'in the cold'. If you buy the Normandy bundle you will obviously get a sh...load of scenarios and campaigns to play... that will last you a very long time... But you might not get all that many NEW...community-made scenarios (utilizing the latest game engines features)...as other titles might take priority as far as intrest amongst the community goes...

Buy'em all ! Its christmas after all...you deserv this i'm sure...

IIRC as far as what enemy units any particular friendly unit can se can be checked with the floating incons. To do this simply select a friendly unit and any enemy units that this unit can see will have a brighter shade on its floating incon.. A quick way to get a feel for what enemies your individual units have eyes on...

imo in many situations it is not the scenario designers fault that the AI plans might not seem very well put together. The Editor is fairly limited when it comes to...AI programing. In some scenarios these shortcommings might not be all that obvious and designing a decent AI plan in not all that hard but in another scenario ideas it might be a real pain in the ass to try and get the AI to do what the designer would like them to do... We have a limited number of AI groups and the flexibility with how triggers can be used is very limited. The simple fact that an AI group can only do ONE thing (move to the next objective waypoint when the time is right or when triggered)...or do nothing at all...is very limiting. In some scenarios the designer can handle these limitations quite well in others it will be a lot of compromises to his initial idea i feel...

Oo ooohh...and heres me thinking i was normal. Maybe i should go and se someone about this

My wet dream is that combat mission some day (soon ) will have a triggersystem like the one found in DCS world. My, my, my...what cool scenarios could be made if something like that ever happens. The quality of the AI opponent would be increased massivly...maybe not fully to human level...but darn close

The AI is limited...true But i don't think that the main selling point for having friendly AI troops in a scenario would be so that you could rely on them to swing the battle in your favour in a better way then you would be likely to do with the same troops. If the scenario designer wanted to though he could set it up so that your AI troops ( the friendlies) does a better jobb then the enemy AI troops. The flexebility here is pretty big. How 'good' will the friendly AI be ? It will be up to the scenariodesigner... The main reason for having friendly AI is however that they could add a bit of flavour and varaity to the scenarios. Things like.. - A small AI controlled force of rebells (friendly) have been attached to your troops. In this mission they will guide you through enemy territory to attack a high value target. Can they be trusted ? will they do as promised ? or will they lead you into an enemy ambush ? - You unit have been tasked with providing security in a sector of the city while a supply/medevac convoj moves through (friendly AI unit). Many, many cool things could be made even with very small friendly AI forces...

Something simular have been discussed a while back...having the possibility to add - friendly - AI groups into the scenarios (troops from the same side or maybe civilians). It would be more work for the scenario designer but i think it would be a nice feature that could lead to some intresting/different scenarios. As for the leaders i wouldn't mind to try a few games in wich the leadership traits where more prononced and se how that would work and maybe add a few more ones like stealth, command capacity etc combined with the possibility to assign/reasign troops to different HQs during the actuall battle (this is where command capacity would play a part).

I'm not so sure that such a change should be made to be - default - Many times it is actually a good thing that the troops makes short pauses ( at the waypoints ) to regain cohesion. The risk being that if you plot longer movements with no pausing feature the squad might get way more separated then desired...the slowest guys might even 'get lost'...if they fall to far behind. Having an option to toggle the - no pause - function on though when desired would be good imo...for those SHORT, MULTIPLE, CONECTED orders when precise movment is neccesary and the AI pathfinding is suspected to be...not ideal. Or when speed of movement is the primary concern. One way i could think of to add such a - no pause - function would be to add an additional togglestep to the existing pausefunction that you can place at each seperate waypoint now... The first press would add a - no pause - order to the waypoint. The second a 5 sec pause, the third a 10 sec pause the forth a 15 sec pause etc, etc...and the last toggle would re-add a 0 sec pause...as it is now... Something like this could work pretty well i belive...no more difficult then adding a 5 sec pause at the dedired waypoint...

An easy-to-use way of adding a 'checkbox' that could be ticked when placing any kind movement order wich would instruct the selected unit to NOT halt at the waypoint but rather move straight through to the next one would perhaps be a nice option... No regrouping, no waiting for stragglers...everybody simply moves through without stopping when they reach that waypoint. Such a thing would also be useful in streetfighting for example if you would like to specify a specific point of entry into a building and not have your troops pause in the middle of the street before entering. Previously vehicles used to have this anying 'capability'...to stop and pause at every waypoint for the rest of the turn (atleast AI vehicles)...It made plotting movements along a curcing road...somewhat frustrating. This was thankfully removed a few years ago. Maybe infantry could get a simular treatment but with an OPTION to remove the pause/waiting for each individual waypoint...

This feature could be very useful for something like this to...defenetelly...

Ok... I agree with your suggestion regarding the the 3d map editing...that would be a nice feature...

I would most certanly not mind a smother way to deploy/ organize the troops ones they show up on the map...both when it comes to scenario design but especially for QBs. But i have a hard time beliving this is in any way a significant reason for the shortage of scenarios and campaigns being made... You can sort out and organize a battalion sized force easily in less then 15 minutes...any whay you like...platoon by platoon. Company by company and supportweapons grouped the way you like...no problems... Deploying them into their fighting possitions will obviously take longer but that is not really because of shortcommings within the editor... 15 minutes is not really a very long time when one considders how long it takes to design a scenario or a campaign...

Imo the one thing holding 'good' campaign design back is the HUGE amount of playtesting that is required. Even designing a small campaign with no force preservation, ammo concerns and the like is a big, big undertaking when it comes to playtesting. Many of the comunity made campaigns are made by a single guy i belive. If he is lucky he has a small number of volontary playtesters to help out. A Small campaign...mayby 4 or 5 'stand alone' scenarios linked together into a campaign with pretty much full replenishments between the battles resulting in pretty much a garanteed set of curcomstances for the next battle still requires testing, testing, testing... To get a 'good' campaign Add to this brancing scenrios, force preservation, ammo concerns and stuff...The need for testing increases drastically to be able to try out the different results the previous battle will have on the next one and the next one and the next.... 'Good' campaigns is pretty much not doable by a single person...He would go mad by the need for playtesting...over and over and over again... Things like designing the maps takes time...sure...but it's nothing compared to the playtesting needed for a 'good' campaign. The best improvement to the editor imo to simplyfy scenario/campaign design would be to be able to - load a save-game file into the editor - Tweak it and re-save it to be played again... For example...You have designed a 60 minutes battle...You have playtested the first part of the fight...lets say up to minute 20 and everything is working fine so far. But as the battles continues somewhere around minute 35 things are not playing out as you have intended. Some stuff will need to be tweaked to get the second half of the battle to work the way you like. With the current editor features you would need to tweak the second part of the scenario. Save it and start from scratch. that is minute 1 !. having to play through those 20 to 30 minutes again to get to the part that you just tweaked. Maybe it is working this time. Good for you ! but maybe it is not working this time either or you would like to try something else for the second part of the battle regardless. Tweak the scenario ones again. Save it and ones agian you will need to start playtesting from minute 1.....Uuuurghf !!! What if you could take the save-game file you have from a few minutes before the playtesting showed some undesired results and load that file into the editor....Make your desired tweaks for the second part of the battle and save the file again. Now...when you begin your playtest of the tweaked version of your scenario you will begin playtesting at the same minute the game was on when you saved it...maybe minute 25...and start your playtesting from there. No need to play the first 25 minutes again. Having something like this would be a feature i would really like...

We are not there quite yet but we are slowely getting there...ones the annonced games are released... - the ability to open up the editor and make a scenario or campaign covering your favorit episode of the war...historical or fictional. Whatever that might be - If you own all the games, modules you can do that ! Ones we get these soon to be released products CM2 pretty much have the entire western front covered...from Husky to Berlin. Hopefully the easter front and africa etc will recieve the same treatment As far as the west goes...if you read about something/ watch a documentary or get an idea from somewhere else about a battle on the western front into your head and feel that that would make for a good CM scenario... Open the editor and get cracking ! Will it be a fully historical scenario...very well researched or will it simply be loosely based on the historical events or perhaps entirely fictional...up to you ... The OOB/TOE editor and the map editor is capable of handeling most circomstances. It can be quite enjoyable to research an idea you have gotten into your head and slowely putting it together in the editor... Into a fully playable CM scenario... Not many other games can do that ! Its been a long wait but now we are pretty much there (western front)...and that is cool...

Thanks ! Sounds reasonable...

CM Operation Barbarossa ❤

Hopefully it does not mean that the scope of the individual basegames/ modules will be even more narrow then we have now with CM2. Something like 3-4 months timescale, fairly limited formations to chose from as well as somewhat limited to what theatres/ locations that can be simulated with each CM2 product. That would be the wrong way to go imo...narrower scope that is. What i mean is that the scenarios that would come with such a narrower release might be 'good enough' to SELL but naŕrowing the scope further might risk limiting the room for imagination amongst the community scenario designers...it might become difficult to come up with new cool scenario idea in such a narrow timeframe with limited forced/equipment to chose from. That would be BAD ! Combat mission needs the community stuff to maintain intrest in the game between releases. CM2 is already 'close' to being to limited in scope with each individual release imo...CM3 does not need to be even narrower...

The HUNT command might be kind of a victim of the limitations with the WEGO system. Having the AI run the show for an entire minute in these situations where we use the hunt command is tricky to get right i belive. Sometimes we might want the hunt command to aqctually halt any advance and hit the dirt as soon as the unit spots an enemy or is somewhat close to incomming fire. Other times we might want the hunt command to act more as a 'carefull advance' and not having the troops stop and hit the ground as soon as a few builits start flying in the vicinity but still using the low/ready stance . Having a to sencetive hunt command might very well lead to something that sburk mentioned here... I have had this issiue several times, atleast pre V4, where my hunting troops halt over and over because of nearby fire. Sort of screwing up the timings for my overall avance somewhat. Many times i have decided NOT to use hunt for this very reason and instead used another movement option to make sure that my intended move did not take something like 5 minutes (halted several times) to complete. Maybe it would be a good thing if we could get two seperate orders for these situations. Keep the old HUNT and have it work pretty much as is (or even more sencetive). Having the troops stop and hugg the ground as soon as they are seeing enemy troops or are noticing incomming fire in the close proximity. A second version of this order could perhaps be something like LOW AND SLOW...The troops will move forward in a crouched mode with weapons at the ready and not stop until they take some serious fire/ casualties (like other movement options). This option should keep the stealthyness of the original HUNT command. Should the LOW AND OWING troops stop to return fire periodically I don't know

Macisle, what kind of specs are you running on your machine ? Do you think something like this will be possible...performace-vise ? On atleast 'above average' computers... Or have your testing indicated that using the entire map at once is out of the question...?

And a good point it is...One that needs considdering.