Hister

Hi Hister
I did give the player a couple of 'Red Shirt' scout units in the first mission - just to ease them in!
Aye the discussion re recce is an interesting one and full of variables. There is no 'one size fits all' approach. As a designer, I'm aware players often like to lead with scouts...
Hence there will be a counter in place where it counts... BTW snipers are excellent spotters - you don't have to get within firing range - the fact they have scopes and binos is their key strength I think. So keeping this team out of harm was a good move - you'll find them very useful in future missions so treat em right!
Re the victory conditions - yup how this works in CM for victory conditions if the enemy spot a marked unit they get points (much like how they would if they 'killed' the unit).Does not matter if you kill them after they spot you. This reflects these Soviet units as recce in their own right. Their job is to get intel on where a German attack is coming from and what strength.
I'm still working on the other campaign - taking a bit longer now my wife and I have a wee baby. I've way less free time than I used to have. The campaign is coming along though.
Cheery!
George

I've read this thread fully and got a much better idea how to approach the first mission using my available units.
I wasn't using the two available scouts and the sniper at all thinking they are a too valuable asset to squander in the first mission already as only attracting fire props. Knowing scouts are there just for the first mission this makes much of a difference... 
I haven't finished the first mission yet but I'm sure it will be a draw since I employed all my units against the enemy thinking that if I kill all the enemy that then them spotting my units won't count, lol. 
George MC, have you finished that other campaign that you had in the works after this one?

I prefer playing large maps in CMRT so 500m is pretty close range. In western Europe you'd struggle to get ranges above and beyond that in RL - there is often too much stuff cluttering up line of sight.
In recent scenarios I've been playing I've 2000m engagement ranges with most tank fire taking place at 1200m.
The trick with using armour is not to use em as targets. You can always dismount a crew (and I do this a lot) to take a look (just make sure you are certain there are no enemy infantry lurking just ahead...
If the unbuttoned vehicle commander has binoculars then yes they'll spot just as well, although you only have one pair of eyes spotting with binos.
Mind any player worth their salt will not expose an AT asset to plink at some infantry scouts. You have to get the scouts really close to spot a hidden AT asset and then, any player (or scenario designer laying out the AI units) will ensure that the AT assets have dismounts guarding their perimeter. I've not said I don;t use infantry scouts just I'm really particular where and I how I use them.
In this campaign (von Schroif) your infantry are pretty precious so potentially using em as targets is and itself wasteful. In this case I'm all for recce by fire on possible enemy locations. I don't need to lose a scout team to tell me where key terrain locations are cos, a/ I've ID this terrain at the start b/ assume if I have ID key terrain so has the enemy, so I assume they are there and use area fire accordingly. Or avoid that terrain and the zones it covers.

I am - working on a campaign based around Kampfgruppe Muhlenkamp in Poland summer 1944. Taking lot longer due to RL stuff but making steady progress.

Erwin’s comments are useful info, and an approach I’d take in close terrain. However what I’ve struggled with in the past is how to recce over more open terrain, or where there is a great deal of real estate between your forces and the objective and where this approach will take forever and an age to accomplish or where MG fire from long range enemy MGs can pretty much stall this type of recce..
I think that any intel you get at the start of the mission is key, as, hopefully, this may well give you an indication of the direction the enemy are in, maybe what sort of force and the context of your mission – are you conducting a move to contact in a  hyperdynamic fluid combat situation or a set piece attack against a well-fortified and dug in enemy, or any degree thereof. This is the key part of the recce puzzle in my view as this will inform your whole approach for at least the initial stages of the mission. The key part of conducting your movement to contact is using the terrain to your advantage.
Also when it comes to recce there are several options I use most often and a few variations around them.
‘Eyes on’ – this can be achieved from cover and/or distance and when done can ensure your ‘spotters’ or ‘spotter’ are concealed.
‘Recce by fire’ – in this approach you are looking to persuade the enemy to either unmask their position by engaging back, or to force them to relocate. This can be a wee bit risky when it comes to direct fire especially if the enemy have assets that can drill your armour from long range. With direct fire it works better if you can stand off and use the long-range shooting capability of armoured assets. However worth minding it can also be used (assuming you have enough arty assets) by FOOs (arty spotters) or equivalent e.g. platoon HQ calling in mortar fire.
So if I’m attacking/moving across open terrain the first thing I’ll do is scout out terrain on the map and check at what point my units are most likely to come into range from hostile fire. Most times your set-up zone (hopefully!) will be out of initial contact, so you just have to slowly move your lead elements up and into position where they can get ‘eyes on’ the next bit of terrain. So Erwin’s description of moving infantry scouts forward works well. I’ve a slightly different take on this (call it another option) I tend to play armoured based missions more, so my lead units are often at least two tanks with others keeping watch. You can move armour into a ‘turret down’ position which with the commander unbuttoned means he can spot without the tank being spotted. The key here is staying put for a while allowing your commander time to survey the area. SPW troops with everyone unbuttoned can do the same.
Once I’ve checked the ground ahead out I’ve several options. This next bit is where the work you’ve done pre hitting the ‘go button’ will reap benefits. You should have at least a vague idea where your enemy is lurking.
So if no immediate contact is expected I’d have one element move fast from cover to cover and ensure I have other units in overwatch. If I’m moving into where I think the enemy may have LOF then I’ll consider how to neutralise any possible enemy fire OR mask my approach.
If dealing with PAKs then MGs targeting likely spots as suppressing fire work very well. You’ve loads of MG ammo especially on tanks and SPW so use it! Mind you are banking that the enemy PAK will hold their fire until the last minute, so this approach assumes you are engaging at long range say 1000m+ and from hull down positions so if anyone opens fire back you can back out of fire.
For masking then you might wish to cover possible enemy flanking spots or your approach using smoke. You've got a few possible options for using long range smoke – in this campaign, your Panzer IVs have lot’s of smoke shells; your SPW cannon have smoke and your mortars. So I’d suggest using smoke to mask your flanks/front if the possible enemy firing positions are numerous and you’ve no hope of neutralising all of them using MG fire.
As and when the terrain/LOS/LOF becomes more complex with close range ambushes more likely then this approach relies more on dismounts (as described by Erwin) going ahead and checking approaches.
Hope this short outline helps for some other options – particularly for using on larger maps with mech heavy units.

If you still have a fiancée, you're not playing the game properly.  

I can tell you why...because modding is an OCD that grabs you and won't let go and no matter how hard you try you'll keep wanting to perfect whatever it is you are doing. LOL. Your particular disorder happens to center around "explosions".
 
I wouldn't know, I have never messed with fire or smoke, the stuff I like to think of as the ethereal areas of CM modding. Vein would be a brain to pick on that one.
 
Mord.

Yes, fully comprehensable. 😋 Where I come from its only about 2 milion speakers of my language but we have around 50 dialects here which differ so much between each other that you could easily not understand a speaker talking in his dialect from the other side of our (tiny) country. Pretty crazy eh!? 

Hi @Hister
I've been following your FPS woes on the forum. Interesting findings though, but glad you have managed to get up and running.
Re the campaign TBH i don't think it will make any odds. Without giving too much away the AI plans coupled with the new behaviour might make some missions a wee bit easier but others might be a touch harder, Overall i think it'll balance out meaning if you command your unit well you'll still have a good chance of completing the campaign. So kick the tyres and fire her up!
For the first mission, my top tip is read the briefing. I don't want to give any spoilers, so I'll leave it there. Although your plan (in concept, not detail) seems sound...
Be keen to hear how you get on.
Cheery!

Hi George MC, I fired your campaign again. Previously I was put off from it due to low performance - have set the 3D model to lowest and am now getting 25+ frames in the first mission so I think I'm good.
Do you think the 4 game engine changes the gameplay too much from how you set it up and I should wait for the patch or am I clear to fire your baby up?  
I don't know really how to handle the first mission. What would be the wisest way to approach each touch area? Send one platoon with one tank each as a support, near the area disembark the troops from the half-trucks and close in on foot, neutralize any enemy lurking there, hop back on the halftracks and move on to the next area?   

+1 to @Schrullenhaft!!

Previously I forgot to test the game as per Steve's suggestion with lower then native ingame screen resolution on my ultrawide 1080 monitor. I have chosen the lowest possible ingame resolution of 1024x768, exited the game and restarted it. Ingame options set to the usual balanced/balanced as per other tests I made. The framerate as I expected was low also in this small resolution -> only 24 to 25 so by lowering the ingame resolution to 1024x768 I got 2 to 3 more frames only which testifies my screen resolution is not the one bottle-necking the game and it also says Steve's first most likely suspect is now likely excluded.  
Screenshot attached - game can't be played in this resolution any way because it gets stretched too much but this can't be observed in the screenshot because it gets unstretched when it is taken. Playing in this resolution would be possible if the game would not stretch and remain in it's native size window with black bars being applied on either side of it to fill the native monitor size like the starting menu is handled. In my case though it wouldn't help at all since again screen resolution is not what is making my game throttle. 

 
Edit: Doing the same test with ingame 1152x864 resolution gave me the same framerate (24/25). With ingame setting of 1280x960 I was interestingly enough given 27 to 28 frames which is counter intuitive due to the bigger resolution being used. 

Oh my, thank you @Schrullenhaft for doing such an extensive test! 
This chapter can be closed now. I can finally "rest in peace" when it comes to CM games performance. Results are very telling. I'll put all the settings that I have changed in the bios and windows back to what they were since no tinkering with them will make any change to how my computer performs with this game. Also this makes me certain my next rig won't be that much of an improvement over the current one and this spared me the disappointment I would otherwise probably have over the future results.
CM is way ahead of it's time - which consumer oriented CPU out there can process 700.000 instructions in a second on a single core and still have room to breath?    
I think the recommended hardware specs should be updated, at least when it comes to the CPUs.
When I upgraded the rig I kept the 550Ti on it from the previous rig and only later on George MC sent me his 660Ti. The similar performance of the GPU's on the same rig is probably because the CPU is the bottleneck here.  I could sport GTX 1080 and got no different results if I also wouldn't swap the CPU. I have my eyes set on the 8th generation Intel Core i5 8600k when it comes available again and mined GPU and RAM prices disappear (will they ever?). If the current price for the processor holds I hear it is the best value for money when it comes to gaming.  
Schrullenhaft, no need to do any other tests for me, very much appreciated what you have done. If you want I can do some testing for you in return if you need anything to learn out of my hardware.  

Hey, @Badger73 now you can up vote his post - check out the heart icon at the bottom of it.

I ran the same scenarios as Hister using my system with the following specs:
AMD FX 8320 3.5GHz 8-core (4 modules totaling 8 integer, 4 floating point, up to 4.0GHz turbo mode)
8GB of DDR3 1600 (CAS 9)
MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti  - 388.00 driver
Asrock 880GM-LE FX motherboard (AMD 880G chipset)
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD
Windows 7 Home 64-bit SP1 (latest patches)
Running at a resolution of 1920 x 1200.
Using the default settings in CMBN 4.0 (Balanced/Balanced, Vsync OFF and ON, AA OFF) and in the Nvidia Control Panel I typically got about 6 FPS (measured with the latest version of FRAPS) in "Op. Linnet II a USabn UKgrnd" on the German entry side of the map (all the way to the edge) and scrolling right or left looking at the Americans in Richelle. In "The Copse" scenario it measured around 28 FPS behind the allied armored units at the start (scrolled around the map a bit).
Messing around with Vsync (both on and off), anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, Process Lasso (affinity, etc.), power saving settings in Windows control panel, etc. didn't seem to have a significant performance effect on the low FPS of 'Op. Linnet II...'. I overclocked the FX 8320 to 4.0GHz (simply using the multipliers in the BIOS and turning off several power saving features there too, such as APM, AMD Turbo Core Technology, CPU Thermal Throttle, etc.). With 'Op. Linnet II...' the FPS increased to only 7 FPS. Turning off the icons (Alt-I) did bump up the FPS by 1 additional frame (the option reduced the number of objects to be drawn in this view) to 8 FPS.
There are some Hotfixes from Microsoft that supposedly address some issues with the Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture and Windows 7 involving CPU scheduling and power policies (KB2645594 and KB246060) that do NOT come through Windows Update (you have to request them from Microsoft). I have NOT applied these patches to see if they would make a difference since they CANNOT have their changes removed (supposedly), even if you uninstall them. A number of users on various forums have stated that the changes made little difference to their particular game's performance.
I decided to compare this to an Intel system that was somewhat similar:
Intel Core i5 4690K 3.5GHz 4-core  (possibly running at 3.7 to 3.9GHz in turbo mode)
16GB of DDR3-2133 (CAS 9)
eVGA GeForce GTX 670 - 388.00 driver
Asrock Z97 Killer motherboard (Z97 chipset)
Crucial MX100 512GB SSD
Windows 7 Home 64-bit SP1 (latest patches)
Running at a resolution of 1920 x 1200.
Again using the same settings used on the FX system with CMBN and the Nvidia Control Panel I got 10 FPS in 'Op. Linnet II...' while scrolling on the far side looking at the American forces in the town. In 'The Copse' scenario the FPS went to 40 FPS behind the allied vehicles at their start positions. The biggest difference between the GTX 660 Ti and the GeForce GTX 670 is the greater memory bandwidth of the 670 since it has a 256-bit bus compared to the 660 Ti's 192-bit memory bus. So POSSIBLY the greater GPU memory bandwidth in conjunction with the Intel i5's higher IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) efficiency and the increased system memory bandwidth (faster system RAM) resulted in the higher frame rate on the Intel system, but only by so much.
I ran a trace of the OpenGL calls used by CMBN while running 'Op. Linnet II a USabn UKgrnd' on the FX system. This recorded all of the OpenGL calls being used in each frame. The trace SEVERELY slowed down the system during the capture (a lot of data to be written to the trace file). Examining the trace file suggests that CMBN is SEVERLY CPU BOUND in certain graphical views. This is especially true with views of a large amount of units and terrain like that in 'Op. Linnet II...'.
What appears to be happening is that some views in large scenarios of CM involve A LOT of CPU time in issuing instructions to the video card/'frame buffer'. The CPU is spending so much time handling part of the graphics workload (which IS normal) and sending instructions to the video card on what to draw that the video card does not have a full (new) frame of data to post to the frame buffer at a rate of 60 or 30 FPS (Vsync). At 30 FPS each frame would have to be generated between the CPU and the video card within 33.3ms. Instead this is taking around 100ms on the Intel system and about 142ms on the FX system (resulting in the 10 and 7 FPS respectively). Some frames in the trace file had hundreds of thousands of instructions, some reaching near 700,000 instructions (each one is not necessarily communicated between the CPU and video card, only a fraction of them are), whereas sections where the FPS was higher might only have less than 3000 instructions being executed. The low frame rate is a direct consequence of how busy the CPU is and this can be seen with both Intel and AMD CPUs.
So the accusation comes up, is the CM graphics engine un-optimized ? To a certain extent, it is. There are limitations on what can be done in the environment and with the OpenGL 2.x calls that are available. CM could be optimized a bit further than it is currently, but this involves a HUGE amount of time experimenting and testing. Working against this optimization effort is CM's 'free' camera movement, the huge variety, number and size of maps available and the large variety and number of units.These features make it hard to come up with optimizations that work consistently without causing other problems. Such efforts at optimization are manpower and time that Battlefront simply does not have as Steve has stated earlier. Charles could be working on this for years in attempt to get better frame rates. While this would be a 'worthy goal', it is unrealistic from a business standpoint - there is no guarantee with the amount of time spent on optimizing would result in a significantly better performing graphics engine. Other, larger developers typically have TEAMS of people working on such optimizations (which, importantly, does allow them to accomplish certain optimization tasks within certain time frames too). When CMSF was started sometime in 2004 OpenGL 2.0 was the latest specification available (with the 2.1 specification coming out before CMSF was released). Utilizing newer versions of OpenGL to potentially optimize CM's graphics engine still involves a lot of work since the newer calls available don't necessarily involve built-in optimizations over the 2.0 calls. In fact a number of OpenGL calls have been deprecated in OpenGL 3.x and later and this could result in wholesale redesigning of the graphics engine. On top of this is the issue that newer versions of OpenGL may not be supported by a number of current user's video cards (and laptops and whole Mac models on the Apple side).
As for the difference between the GTX 550 Ti and the GTX 660 Ti that Hister is experiencing, I'm not sure what may be going on. The GTX 550 Ti is based on the 'Fermi' architecture, while the GTX 660 Ti utilizes the 'Kepler' architecture. Kepler was optimized for the way games operate compared to the Fermi architecture which had slightly better performance in the 'compute' domain (using the GPU for physics calculations or other floating point, parallelized tasks). The GTX 660 Ti should have been a significant boost in video performance over the GTX 550 Ti, though this performance difference may not be too visible in CM due to the CPU bound nature of some views. It's possible that older drivers may have treated the Fermi architecture differently or simply that older drivers may have operated differently (there are trade-offs that drivers may make in image quality for performance - and sometimes this is 'baked into' the driver and isn't touched by the usual user-accessible controls). I have a GTX 570 I could potentially test, but I would probably need to know more details about the older setup to possibly reproduce the situation and see the differences first-hand.

Gentlemen I'm sorry for this plug but we were exchanging some dope experiences in here and because of that I would like to let you know that I would be happy if you will check out my mod. I was working on this mod and I will work on other mods as well. Since I will be posting screenshots for tactical life hack using these mods Im working on at the moment it would be cool if you will have them as well. First one is ready to download by the way. And that is MABUTA MK-2 uniform in Varan camo pattern. I basically reworked everything including all gear elements so I hope some of you will enjoy to have it in your game. Glory to Ukraine. 
P.S. Other tactical moves are on the way. 

Solved it. If you make your Win 10 icons larger(150% for me) the game will adopted this setting as well.

I did some testing a while back and tried it again with the Linnet example above. To me it seems like one of the biggest loads on FPS are the amount of units on screen at the same time, which is exacerbated when panning. This might include fortifications like in the Linnet setup. One way to improve FPS in this example is to maintain a camera angle but zoom in. The less amount of units the better FPS. In a way this makes sense as in the orders phase no action or movement can put a load on the computer, but I suppose it needs to keep track of where the units are in the 3d environment while redrawing what is on screen when panning. The testing I did before, IIRC, also improved during the action phase, that is a lower camera angle and zoomed in a bit improved FPS. Now, I don't know if that is something that BFC can improve on given the current engine, but one can hope.

That is not what that means.
If as you know there is much more to a smooth experience than memory, or graphics card or CPU it is the combination. If you were to spring for a new Mac I am certain you would experience much better performance but you could do that with new PC hardware too. The nice thing about Macs is you are sure to not get a system with a week link. But you pay a premium for the system.

I did my test at start up too. I had to move the camera across the map to get the same / similar view as @Hister.
The current CM2 games can only use 4Gb of main memory. Having lots of extra memory means you can have several CM games loaded up along with Photoshop too it does not allow all that memory to be used by CM.

About what turn would that be?
In Op-Linnet at start-up I'm getting 27-30FPS, with 'moderate' detail etc.
Intel I7-3770 3.4 - 3.9Ghz, Win7, NVidea GeForce 660GTX (old drivers), 16GB Ram
PS - I've played the 'All American' variant of Op Linnet to completion and don't recall noticing any slowing down or jerkiness. 

Here are my results. I normally run with Best, Best, Tree Detail High and Shaders on

I loaded up the big scenario (BP1 - Op LINNET II (a - USabn UKgnd).btt) and as you can see I got 8fps. Not great by any means. The camera movement was not to bad mostly smooth but slow. It had some jerky moments. This one is big enough that I might consider dropping the quality down to help make playing smoother.

 
The small scenario (BP1 - The Copse.btt) performed excellent. With units in the view I got 30fps and moving around the map was effortless and spiked as high as 80fps. Wait that's strange I thought I had the frame rate limited to half the refresh rate. More on that later...

 
Changing the settings to Balanced, Balanced, Trees on low detail and shaders off.

 
Did not effect the lowest frame rate for the big scenario but with less units on screen the fps rate was better and camera movement was better too.

 
The smaller scenario was even faster. Wait 40fps that's unexpected again. I checked my Nvida card settings and found all my customizations were gone.

 
Luckely I used Nvidea Inspector and backed them up so I could get them back.
Now even the small scenario stayed at 30fps. The frame rate for the big scenario was not different so no additional screen shot.

 
 

@Hister: PM sent with some info on Nvidia Inspector and some more stuff.

to derail this thread a bit more...  Hister and IanL you forgot the most important part,
your Motherboards.... Brand, Type and firmware version.

No, no not at all. What I thought was that you had the wrong idea about the prevalence of what you were experiencing. I get it. Some may recall I had a lot of trouble with movement orders near bridges. I reported the problem several times. Finally I posted a are you guys ever going to fix this post and the response was fix what. It turns out it was very nearly only me that had the problem. I worked with Ken and Steve and we figured out the issue and the fix.
Yeah but there are two classes of issues (my categories) those that think the game is broken if they cannot get 60 fps. Clearly they are both out to lunch and never going to be satisfied. Those that get sub 10 fps and stuttering camera controls. Typically they find game and card settings that resolve the issue. I am not aware of people who cannot get a reasonable frame rate to play. Hence I was surprised by your post. There simply are not a ton of people who cannot play the game due to frame rates. Again not counting people with unreasonable expectations.
Note I am not saying that performance is perfect by any means I am just saying that people have mostly been able to get to good enough.
An added challenge.
Sadly for me my internet is down which means I am spending my day with support and replacing hardware. So, posting on my phone and not able to post screen shots.
What you are starting is a good strategy. 
I have an Intel i5 4670 3.4Ghz with a GTX 760 card. I'll have to report back with the frame rate I see tomorrow ish.
I am not sure if my cpu is more or less powerful but my graphics card is. I am not sure if there are any testers with similar cards. I'll have to ask.