Glubokii Boy

One thing that is a tricky detail to get right with campaigns like these is to get the difficulty level for each individual scenario to be 'right'... Many different players...Many different playstyles...... What will the average casualty level be ? what will the average ammo situation look like ? In a campaign with limited reinforcements and limited resupply that spans over a decent number of scenarios...this is tricky indeed and only a few talented designers are able to pull it of... If you get this wrong the campaign will not 'work'... More or less a requirement to be succesful with designing such a campaign will be to have a significant playtester group to provide feedback... That is a luxery few community designers have a fear...

Hello... Sorry for nit-picking here (and i appologize if i missunderstand your intension with this answer...) but i think you ment to say that the - ALLIED - side should recieve extra artillery... right ? If soo...i agree...This is a neat Little trick to simulate friendly artillery ordered by higher ups. I have used it a couple of times in scenarios a have made. It works quite well and ads a nice touch to the immersion. There are a few Little things though to keep in mind (atleast i have not found a good solution for them): - If you want to specify a certain artillery unit to be part of this initial barrage ordered by your higher ups you will need to set all other AI artillery assets (i think also the onmap mortars...) to arrive as reinforcements ( min 5 perhaps). If they are avaliable to the AI at the start of the scenario any of those units may take part on the initial barrage...kind of random. If you want the barrage to be from a 10.5 cm battery or two...Only those artillery units can be part of the AI force from min. 1. - One downside (minor) with this idea...The artillery Shells can be seen comming from the wrong direction....

Slysniper, thanks for your detailed description I'm sure a well placed, and well supported, bunker under the right curcomstances can be a good choise of weapon. I fully agree with your point that " there is no one answer for all situations " It is probably true that machineguns will not defeat a bunker in all situations...but what weapon will ? If your bunker is well placed and well supported things like tanks or armoured cars with 20mm auto cannons will not do a great job either if your bunker is supported by a few hidden AT-guns or perhaps a TD for example. A - well placed - and - well supported - bunker will most likely be a tricky nut to crack regardless of what weapon you decide to use...If you can not outright overwhelm IT and other supporting units completally by massivly supperior forces. Given the right curcomstances though i have found that using machineguns aginst them works rather well (although i have only played vs the AI). Like has been mentioned...There are not all that many scenarios around that features bunkers so like many i have not had to deal with them all that much but when i do... machineguns are one of my prefered weapons... Having an ISU 152 or a Brumbär or two would be welcome i'm sure but they are not always avaliable when you need them...machineguns usually are...

"I'm surprised by the suggestion to use MGs against bunkers. In my experience, it takes a very high volume of fire to suppress a concrete bunker, and it will always be located way back, supported by other units. So even if you manage to suppress it, getting close to it won't be easy." Yes...other supporting enemy units will obviously complicate things but the task of the supressing machineguns are not to defeat the entire enemy possition... It is to supress or possibly knock out/rout the bunker... Other firendly troops will need to deal with the supporting enemy units while this is happening or possibly before if the enemy possitions have been identified. "As for it working, maybe that is a good tactic vs the AI" Thats what i have been playing... "I know for a fact that I can hold a concrete bunker vs a ton of enemy small arms fire with out a issue whatsoever. I will not be firing from it much, but you sure not likely to clear it or remove it as a threat that way." . If you are not firering it is not much of a weapon but rather just a lump of concrete sitting in the terrain. "A player can use the hide command and avoid losses. Only exposing his men when a juicy target looks worthy of the risk." True...But will your crew happily pop up and start shooting if something like 3 machineguns are pouring fire into their firering slit ? I guess this depends on the quality/motivation of the crew....

I have also found machineguns to be a good solution against enemy bunkers. If i can sneak up 2 ( or even 3 ) friendly MGs to get LOF to the enemy bunker from different locations and then start firering simultaniously then the enemy fire comming from that place will be very limited (if any at all)...allowing me to move past or close in on it.

You have put alot of effort into this one... Many thanks ! Will try it out soon...

Unfortunatelly Combat Mission Shock Force (and CMA i belive) have not been part of the continues updates that the other games in the CM-family have seen during a number of years. Battlefront are planning to release a new, fully up to date version of Combat Mission Shock Force (CMSF 2) i the not to far future i belive. To give yourself a fair impression of how the game-engine works at present you will need to try one of the WW2 titles or Combat Mission Black Sea if you are more a fan of modern warfare. These games are using the latest game engine and have recieved significant improvements compared to Shock Force. There are still some things that may not work to perfection but if you give the game a chans i'm sure you will find that you will be able to live with any shortcommings that might still exist. If it is a tactical wargame you are looking for you will find no better. It might take some time to fully learn to apprisiate the possitives of the game (wich are many compared to the competitors) but hang in there... Don't just play it for an hour or two and through it away. Give it a decent chans and you will most likely come to the same conclusion that most of us already have.. that this is the most REALISTIC (and fun) wargame avaliable. And above all.... Take the time to read the manual...Check out the forums...Many gameplaying tips and explanations to be found here. If you still have questions...post away in these forums and someone will most likely help you out asap...

As for feedback... Yes ! it is limited, unfortunatelly The main thing that is holding comunity made scenarios back i fear. Many threads have been posted trying to find a solution to how to increase the feadback on new/ WIP scenarios but it is a difficult thing to solve it seems...

I may be wrong about this but i think it will be up to the scenario designer himself to post the - finished - scenario to TSDIII when he consider himself to have made the final version of the scenario.

Honestly...I'm not so sure. Yes ! they will probably see a number of posts complaning about a projected release date not being met but i don't know if it is all that much better to have the phrase "Battlefront ! any news about CMFI ?", " Battlefront ! any news about CMRT ?", "Battlefront ! any news about CMSF2 ?" posted over and over... Perhaps it would be better to make an annoncement and describe the current state of things to put those questions to rest for a while atleast. They have done it before...Posted some pretty indepth future-plans threads... I think they got pretty well recieved...

The expansion of how reinforcements and objectives are used have been on my wishlist fro quite some time. Atleast to a non-programer changes like these seems like a fairly simple thing compared to many other things that we want to see improved It will require no changes to the AI as far as i can understand and will have very limited impact on game performance. Getting the UI to work in the editor feels like the biggest problem with these ideas. I'm sure that if we gets option like these it will inspire the scenario designers to come up with many creative ideas on how to use them to make intresting scenarios.

cool idea !

Yepp ! Stuff like 'timed objectives' is also a nice way to add to the flexebility of the editor imo. In a scenario that starts with a small recon force on the map and using this option things could work in the opposit way compare to the idea of using a trigger (terrain/ unit) to put player reinforcements on the map ones, and only ones, the trigger conditions are met. No matter how long it takes the player to achive said objective. Using a 'timed objective' option the player could be given a maximum of 30 minutes for example to achive the objective given to the initial recon force. When 30 minutes have past the main fighting force will arrive regardless if the objective have been achived or not. If the player failes to achive the recon objective he will miss-out on points. Timed objectives would be a very nice thing to have ! The more options the designer has the better...

Maybe Battlefront could provide us with a situation update as of mid 2017... What are they currently working on ? Any rough release Estimates ? How is the personell situation looking ? now and for the future ? What is the main thing they are currently struggeling with (if any) ? I apologize if this has been mentioned in some thread and i have missed it. But maybe it would be a good thing to make an entire new sticky thread and describe the current situation in some greater detail. Thanks !

Exactelly my wiew on this... Let us have it ! I really like the idea of having more options when i comes to reinforcements. Not only being tiggered by terrain objectives but also things like UNIT SPOTTED and UNIT KILLED. Like you mentioned. This could make things like the recon part of a scenario more tailored towards that to start with and then followed by a full assult. Kind of two scenarios in one...

Their buisness model may not be wrong and there may not be a zillion would-be wargamers out there that are willing to pay a hefty sum to get a massivly updated game engine. But... i can't quite shake the feeling that... "Is the company, Battlefront, currently 'danger small' ?" Are they to few ? Will they be able to maintain the intrest in this game among a sufficient number of CM:ers considdering the current rate of progress with the game engine and the rate of wich new playable contents are released. I sure hope so ! There are however some reasons for concern imo. I have not followed this especially but IIRC one of the main programmers have left the company and this has resulted in the delay we are now seeing when it comes to new releases. Some time back BFC described their goals and projected schedules when it comes to releasing new stuff like... Game-engine updates, base games, modules and battlepack etc We could expect multiple releases each year... These goals seems to have failed. BFC mentioned that the rate of wich new products would be released should see a noticable increase during the next few years. That has not really been the case. As i understand it their plan was to be able to work on several projects simultaneously. Hopefully BFC have a number of projects that are far along in their development but not much have been mentioned about them as far as i know recently... A new module for CMRT scheduled to be released later this year, a module for CMFI maybe and some hints about CMSF2. These will no doubt all be very good add-ons to the CM-family but will it be enough ? and when will they actually be finished ? Unfortunatelly we need to rely on Battlefront and a few 'outsourced' scenario creators (doing stuff for BFC) to provide us with new playable content. The amount of new community made scenarios and campaigns are- and have been, for quite a long time, very limited. I very much doubt that the community made stuff will be able to maintain intrest in this game on their own. It is just to limited. We need Battlefront ! A few things on their to-do list.... - After we do get the next/last module for CMFI we will need additional CMFI-battlepacks from BFC to keep the intrest alive in a sufficient way i fear. - We will most likely need additional battlepacks for CMBN to keep that theatre intresting(playable content). - The eastern front will require multiple new basegames and modules to provide us with playable content for the entire war - CMBS will need a new module and CMSF2 will no doubt require a massive amount of man-hours put into its development. To add to this the game engine would also benefit from continues upgrades. There are many things still that could be improved. We need a constant flow of new stuff to be made avaliable to us to keep up the intrest in this game. Will Battlefront be able to handle this in a timeframe that is acceptable to the majority of players ? Judging by the activity on the BFC forums during the last year(s). Maybe not ! The activity amongst the forums have been very limited and for long times almost dead. Take away the post made by the 10 most active forum posters and there really is not much being discussed on these boards. Happily though there seems to be a slight increase in forum activity though in the last few months imo... Good ! Besides being under presure to deliver more stuff for the products already avaliable BFC might also miss out on many potential new theatres and historical and fictional wars that would be well suited to simulate with this game-engine. The possibilities are massive for new products to be released if only BFC had the capability/manpower of making them. Unfortunatelly they don't. That is a shame...They would sell just fine i'm sure if only they could be procuced. I konw i, along with several others, have mentioned this before but i feel that BFC may not have much of a choise other then to find a way of increasing their manpower if COMBAT MISSION is to survive and atract new players.. And the answer is...NO ! that is not possible But maybe it will be neccesary...The progress may be to slow right now. After all these "negative waves" let me just say...that i love this game. It is the best ! and that i will most likely keep it on my hard drive forever... But i'm a little bit worried for the future...Can't be helped...

As the designer you have an option to set the pre-battle intel for both sides. How much intel the two sides will get at set-up can be adjusted in several steps ranging from something like - very limited to near full intel on enemy possitions. This is good ! The problem is that the designer have no controll at all over wich units from the two sides that will be shown as contact incons to the opposing player at set-up. The settings only decides how strong the pre-battle intel will be...how many percent of the overall opposing force will be indicated... Wich actual units those are are completally random and are not even the same from game to game when playing the same scenario several times. On of the 'small' things on my wishlist is to include the ability in the editor to exclude untis from being avaliable in the pre-battle intel. Many times it might not matter wich units are shown as intel-incons but every now and then i'm sure there will be untis that the designer would like to remain hidden... ...Having things like AT-gun possitions revealed in the pre-battle intel for example might pretty much ruin a certain scenario...The player should not know about those guns... If he gets some basic information on some of the infantry possitions...fine ! but not those guns ! Having the ability to exclude them from the pre-battle intel-pool (with a quick toggle in the unit editor) would be a nice feature...

My main concern with the new infantry behavior is not with regards to multiplayer (or player-side in singleplayer). It's the AI controlled troops that are more of a problem imo. The AI troops can not use the 'pause function' to increase staying power for example and will most of the time not be as flexible as a human player to adjust to the changing situation on the battlefield. The AI-lead troops will have a more difficult time to deal with these more fragile soldiers i fear.

Hello... I just skimmed through the Windows (10) APP-store and found this little thing... It could perhaps be helpful I have just tried the free test version for a short while but it seems kind of neat. You can cut out any part of the world map you chose and the computer will make a 3D model of that area for you that you can turn/ twist and zoom as you like. Seems like a rather nice way to get some easy elevation help when designing maps for CM. Perhaps googlemaps will do the same thing (i don't know) but this app seems quite nice. Just a quick tip.... Have anybody tried it ?

The unit editor is the best part in the scenario designer imo. It is cleverly designed, user friendly and very flexible. The designer have great freedome (above squad/ team level) to design the opposing forces to look just the way he likes them. Pretty much anything is possible and to have historically correct formations to start with that can be tweaked by the designer is a big help. Good design decition by BFC to do it this way. There's always room for improvements but with the unit editor they have done a great jobb !

IIRC it has already been mentioned that the next module will take us to the end of war in europe. Hopefully this will be the case. It will be a module that covers a rather long timeframe though compared to previous products. Maybe this will be followed by a module to include axis minors.

The one arty-option i use far to little i fear is - SMOKE - Many times i have cursed myself after taking unneccesaryly high casualties... " Damn it ! Why didn't you use your smokerounds, stupid man "

If we ask nicely maybe BFC could include updated uniforms for the previous formations in the release of the next (last) module for CMFI... That would be a nice supprise !

I will do a sweep through the forums and see if anything rings a bell. IIRC the post are among the last ones he did before taking his CM break...

Kohlenklau ( a forum member) experimented with this a while back and did manage to get it to work. I cant remember right now the title of the thread in wich i explained how to do it. I think it was in CMRT forum. But YES ! The AI can be made to blow through barbed wire... Unfortunatelly some RL issiues (i belive) have forced him to take a break from CM but the thread is still avaliable somewhere amongst these forums...