Gentlemen from Battlefront,
When i heard about Combat Mission Battle for Normandy, i was expecting great things with this new opus. A few games after, like many veterans of the Combat Mission series, i feel something like a bad felling about this game. A feeling of deception, of mess-up. Why ?
Because of many bugs and irrealistic things that ruin the interest of the game. Here is a list :
- Artillery (even light mortars) is too powerful. 2 rounds of an artillery barrage are enough to destroy half an army or at least, reduce drastically a platoon to a few men harmless group. With this problem, it is difficult to manage a strategy or having a real fight with guns, AT, etc. Everything is destroyed after a barrage. Artillery power must be decreased for at least 30 % of its current efficiency (and accuracy in the same way). The artillery problem is the main problem of this list.
- Path-finding is poor and players have to manage units one by one to obtain proper movements.
- No possibility to select armour cover arc or infantry arc as we could in CMx1.
- Unexpected point of impact on armoured vehicles (for example, hit on left flank when the shooting enemy is on the right side…)
- A.P. shells kills infantry as easily as H.E. shells. I hope it is a bug. For example, a 57mm caliber American A.T. gun shot against a building with men in it. 4 of them died with one shot!!! I thought A. P. had no explosive ability…
- No delay to execute an order whatever the unit’s level is. So, why should we spend points to buy crack or veteran unit? No matter with CMBN.
- units are sometimes very difficult to place on terrain at some strategic points or to give them the best concealment as possible (for example behind sandbags).
- Troops covered in buildings are too much vulnerable under enemy fire (light or armoured).
- Same icon when an enemy is spotted. No matter if it is a tank or a soldier. I mean than soldiers should be able to identify at least if there is a tank or men in front of them. But when the enemy is spotted, we know immediately what kind of unit it is. Is it a new "fog of war" style ?
- Armoured vehicle’s shots and gun‘s shots are too accurate à too many “one shot, one kill”
- During assault against a building, friendly units continue firing on building to cover, with a risk of casualties on assaulting troops.
- What exactly soldiers do with the order "to hide"? Where do they hide? Does this order really mean something?
- A.I. manages troop’s behaviour in a strange way and not with appropriate action. Sometimes, they fire with their gun on a tank, sometimes they did not shot with their bazooka on a tank, and more other stupid things like this.
- Armoured spot enemy infantry too easily.
Of course, there are probably other problems, but those are enough to make me stop playing this game. Unless a patch fix these problems, there is no chance than i continue playing it or i than i buy the adding modules. I think i will continue Combat Mission x1. This one, at least, has been programmed seriously. CMBN is the perfect example of a game which has been thinking only for graphics effects. No matter with realism or playability.
Regards.
JC-CM