Ultradave

I'm not sure I understand your question? A) Are you saying you've played 2 hours and nothing has happened? The scenario is 2 hours long total, and I'm pretty sure there are AI plans for both sides.. There is a 105 battery at the start along with a bunch of on map mortars, and you get more in 40 minutes, plus a 155 (which is actually medium artillery, and 105 is light artillery but that's just words. All artillery is good). For the ones currently available I was able to select any of them with a HQ unit. B ) Same comment. Selecting a Tiger tank, for example, no fire support available. Select a HQ and I can call from a number of mortars and a 105 battery. [edit] There are AI plans for both sides. I went back and checked the play testing notes, because I only played this one from the Soviet side. Dave

The good news is that there is no inherent problem with running CM in Sonoma. I've been doing it since it came out as a beta, including CM beta versions and everything works great. In fact, on my M2 MacBook Pro, everything screams right along, even the biggest scenarios. Dave

Back to your original question - the answer I believe is "no". There are many RT mods in The Few Good Men, and some of them are aggregations of some things - terrain, vehicles, and some are individual things. This is true for every title. But if you don't like the all in one you have, then you'll need to go find individual mods for the things you want improved and see how you like them. Swap things in and out of your Z folder. The all in one just means it's all in one package. It doesn't prevent you from manipulating every mod in it to find what you want. Go look at RT terrain mods, read the descriptions and there are usually screen shots, download and experiment. People have different tastes, so just because one person says, "yeah, this mod here is the bestest ever", doesn't mean you'll even like hit. Incidentally, BN probably has the most mods, because it's the oldest. The stock game looks much better as time goes on to the newer released titles. RT is kind of in the middle there. Dave

Try reinstalling the hotkeys.txt file that John provided. Is there a chance that the file you currently have installed is not readable as a .txt file? Did it somehow get corrupted? Try looking at it in a text editor and compare to John's file he posted. If it is in the Data folder, for some reason it's not being read. Dave

You do not need to issue 50 separate movement commands per unit to get to the objective. No way. Well, read on here and you'll find some ways. Have you tried issuing movement commands to higher level units? Double click on member of a platoon, for example, and give the unit you click on a movement order, or a movement order with legs, that ends in the cover you want to be at. All the other platoon members will have the same order - parallel lines. Then just move the endpoints of the rest of the units so that they end at good cover spots. That cuts down the workload A LOT. Yeah, you have to adjust, some, but that's less work than plotting every unit from scratch. This is a great scenario to use that on, as you are going to spend the first part moving to a jump off point, probably out of contact with the enemy. 90 units: A bunch are riding, so you only select the vehicle to move and the riders go along for the ride. You only need one movement command per unit to get that attack force over to the middle-ish on the map, moving to the left. Use the method above. The units in the middle aren't doing anything for a while, so that's less to move. But try all this on smaller more manageable scenarios to get the hang of movement commands. Then you'll find larger ones easier to handle. I recommend again Bil's Battle Drills. If you think this scenario is unplayable then you are going to think that 75% of the available scenarios are unplayable. There are many scenarios with large maps and many units but you don't need 50 movement commands per unit to get from your start point to the middle of a map or to an objective. Not even close. That's where your real issue is. Your first turn may be a bit tedious plotting all that movement to the middle where your defensive ring is, but once you do that you can sit back and watch for about 10 minutes or so. Then plot the next set of moves. And I'll emphasize again, you should not be charging the objective with every unit you've got. This isn't Guadalcanal and a Japanese Banzai attack. You need to have a base of fire established to keep the enemy's heads down and hopefully pick off a few, and a maneuver element to assault the objective. Again, that cuts down on the "50 commands" because a number of units are going to be sitting in place and firing, not moving. Again, Bil's Battle Drills. Dave

Well, maybe I see part of your problem here. Or maybe a few problems. 1. It sounds from your posts like you don't have a lot of CM experience. Both scenarios you are "complaining" about are from BP1, all of which were designed by @George MC, who is known for creating challenging and difficult scenarios, with excellent maps, and usually with ugly surprises somewhere when and where you least expect (maybe that's just me, but he's a devil, and I mean that with the utmost liking and respect) They are great, however, they are not the best to cut your teeth on. That one in particular requires a lot of movement to get to a jumping off point for attack, and yes, it can be a bit tedious, and it's a very poor candidate for a real-time scenario. It's not by any means unplayable, or that would have come out in play testing. The guys who play tested that one are knowledgeable CM players. I'd recommend sorting scenarios by size when selecting one and working on some of the smaller ones first. Smaller does not equal trivial. There are good tactical challenges in them all. Same goes for "Cat and Mouse". It doesn't have that many units but reading the briefing will tell you it's a scenario that requires some finesse, and not a shootout. It's a poor one for RTS IMO because you need to literally play cat and mouse, and do a lot of sneaking around. The map is very large, so things can be happening "over there" while you are attending something and the first you'll know of it is a loud boom and smoke. 2. Someone else suggested @Bil Hardenberger's tactical series. These are excellent, small scale, so they are easy to control. They are here: https://battledrill.blogspot.com 3. If you like that BP, then start with the 3 PzGr lessons. They are manageable size. Lesson 1 is even a pretty good candidate for RTS, I think. Small number of units. I just wouldn't plot too far ahead, so that they pause and give *you* a chance to catch up. 4. Speaking of which, if you really like RTS, then don't plot too far ahead. Plot relatively short moves, not all the way to an objective (that's just death waiting anyway - you have no idea what will happen and it will happen so fast you can't react). The units will pause, you can hit ESC and pause and issue some more orders. Make it manageable on yourself. 5. There isn't "Nothing you can do about it" You can pause, change orders, the units themselves will react on the spot to, say, taking fire from the flank. The will shoot back, go to ground, etc, giving you a chance to pause, issue new orders, and then continue. This isn't CoD where you can't ever stop. Even if you don't pause, you can select a unit, cancel its order (just backspace), and then quickly give it a new order. Yeah, takes practice, so again, start small, work your way to more complex. Just seems like you are diving into more than you are ready for, from your posts. Good luck. Dave

Late reply but as we were always told "it depends on the situation". If you are operating in very closed terrain, you may have no choice but to dismount and make your way through the woods, clear whatever is on the other side, and then eventually meet up with your drivers when it's reasonably safe. Especially if the only alternative is driving down a road in the open that the enemy has good lines of sight to..... hypothetically speaking, of course The other possibility is setting up a strong overwatch position that covers the open ground you need to cross mounted, so that you can respond to anything that fires into the open area. And we're back to recon bait there. But they may help you locate the major threats without doing to much damage to you. Dave

In the last several days there have been visits or major entreaties by Lord Cameron, PM Kishida and Pres. Zelensky. In addition there has been a pretty vocal group in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, advocating for passing the aid bill. Their words were all publicized, at least for anyone who cared to see what they said. It's possible it's having some effect on public opinion. Dave

There ya' go. It's but a small step from ICM munitions to deploying a bunch of drones instead. Just have to make them tough enough to survive the setback of firing the round. Gets a bunch of drones 10 miles away in 30 seconds. Dave

UK trying to cover all the bases as Lord Cameron visits Mar-a-Lago, Biden administration officials, and Members of Congress, presumably the ones swallowing the Russian propaganda that need convincing. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/david-cameron-donald-trump-us-aid-ukraine-russia-war-h3w687nkb As for Russian propaganda, some comments from rational Republicans in Congress on that subject: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4579289-intel-chair-turner-absolutely-true-russia-propaganda-infected-us-congress/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/06/when-top-republican-says-russian-propaganda-has-infected-gop/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email Not that this is any great surprise, but it is refreshing to hear at least some Republicans calling out their colleagues for promoting misinformation. For The Times and WaPo, I have subscriptions, but I think you still get a certain number of free looks per month without a subscription. If you can't and really want to read them, PM me and I may be able to "gift" the article to you. Dave

Yeah. I can't see what possible reason Ukraine would have for doing that. Dave

Apologies if this has already been posted. Having a hard time keeping up and just skimming. Three drone hits on the unit 6 containment dome. No real damage ( containments are VERY strong), but this is still not great. The reactors are all shut down at least, but decay heat and spent fuel still exist and must be mitigated. Really you could do more damage hitting infrastructure OUTSIDE the containment, like incoming power lines, diesel generators, secondary water supply equipment from the river/lake. Containment? “‘‘Tis but a scratch” https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-drone-a28710a691f3259b5dd6586787838b60 Dave

I forgot one instance. Airborne unit's 75mm PAK howitzers can indirect fire from on-map. Probably the minimum range is so short that it falls within most maps. Dave

Yes, for artillery (but not mortars), if your artillery assets are on the map, they are there for direct fire support, and can be really effective at that. For indirect fire, the minimum range possible would exceed the map length in almost all cases. Dave

Shoot them? Seriously though, that's the time to hit pause, and issue some new orders. Cancel the current orders and take care of the unexpected threat. What you are describing is not unique. It's what's going to happen. Remember the old maxim "No plan survives first contact with the enemy" This is true in CM, and it's true in real life. Prepare to be flexible to meet new threats. Maybe look up movement techniques. Traveling, Traveling Overwatch, and Bounding Overwatch. Some variations on that will serve you well in any situation where you are advancing. Bounding overwatch mostly because we know contact is expected if it hasn't already happened. One element covers from a good position while the second element moves. Then they cover while the first moves past them. It's basic tactics. One acts as a base of fire while the other moves either to contact or to flank. Dave

"Cat and Mouse" is a whole different experience. You are supposed to find the enemy tanks without being found (and killed) yourself. That requires the opposite of massing your tanks and advancing forward. You need to carefully use covered approaches, keyhole firing positions that you can observe enemy movement from. Position your own tanks to be able to spot to the areas where enemy tanks are likely to be waiting. Treelines especially. You may need to bait them, and get them to shoot at you to expose themselves. You don't want to get into a running battle. Read the briefings carefully. For what you are describing as your problems, pay close attention to the parts about expected enemy forces and intentions. Look at the map and figure out likely enemy locations or approaches before you hit Go. That will help you figure out what to expect. And pause when you need to if you to react to things if you are playing RT. My experience has been that real time is fine for controlling maybe a Company (-) of infantry but beyond that it gets too hard and turn by turn is better. Cat and Mouse to me would be tough on Real Time because the map is huge and it's hard to see everything that is happening. I'd recommend turn based for that one for sure. Also, keep in mind this is supposed to be a fairly realistic simulation of real combat. You aren't going to know everything about the enemy. You'll know general things, but you won't know his exact locations. Good scenario designers will a lot of times design surprises and traps to fall into. Keep that in mind as you are moving and don't get sucked in. Dave

Real time can be fun for some small sized battles. Even then, you are going to want to press the pause button to issue or change some orders. Doing so on the fly while also monitoring what's going on is pretty hard. Real time or turn based is a choice at the beginning - one of the start screens, where you select, real time, turn based, PBEM, etc. Select turn based and the game will run in 1 minute increments. You can also replay each one minute to zoom in on a particular area. This is usually what I do - let it run at view 4 or 5, then re-run close up on a few areas depending on what I saw. Everyone has their favorite way of playing. There's no wrong or right. That's why there are different choices and views available. Dave

What might help your is that there are mods for gridded terrain, that help you see the subtle contours of the ground. Some people like them, others prefer to crawl around the map. Check the repository at The Few Good Men and look under the terrain headings. Dave

Well, I have to disagree with this and @Artkin. What you describe is *exactly* what I'd do in real life. But, hey, make any rules you want in agreement with your opponent. Taking away that capability, to me, would remove a perfectly valid tactic. I'd do that even without the TOW firing from the woods. Ooh, look, treeline ahead. Blast it with whatever we've got to keep their heads down, while I have maneuver elements close in. Is it really that much different than putting a smoke screen in front of the treeline even if you haven't spotted anything? Pretty much accomplishes the same thing. Dave

Can you explain more? I don't get this one. If you are on offense, you would call fire along a treeline, hammer a village you plan to assault, etc. On defense you'd target areas where the enemy could be assembling for an assault. Can't hit a whole patch of woods because you can't get a LOS to the middle of it. I suppose you could target the open in front of the woods and overlap into it. I see nothing wrong with targeting an open area the enemy has to cross to attack you with everything I've got, and hoping that that timing of the FFE works with the enemy crossing that area. Catching enemy in the open with artillery is a goal, not something that should be eliminated. Maybe I'm missing your point or objection (certainly possible - it's early, I'm wet from walking the dogs and need coffee ) Dave

I picked Czechmate with me as US. Gives him a lot of resources and I gave a few hints. It's also less of a long range tank duel, of which we've just played a couple WW2 versions of. This one has lots of woods and hills and I have a thin defense. Dave

There is no PBEM++ for Macs, only PCs. The Matrix/Slitherene versions are PC only. They are the same as the BF PC versions. The Mac version are the same with the exception you get them from BF only (Fine with me) and no PBEM++. But PBEM the dropbox way still works just fine. Dave

If you mean the hotkey settings they are a text file. If you changed any of those, you can edit the text file back to original, or you can copy/paste one from another CM title. Dave

Looks good.

Need more info to answer properly. What version are you currently on? There are all in one downloads for the current version and your license key will still work. Or there are updates up to the current version. However, to do those, you need to be on version 4 of the game engine. How old is "this old game?" and then we could point you in the right direction. And no, there is no automatic update download unless you are on Steam, and I'm guessing you don't have it installed there due to your "old game" title. Dave