Ultradave

"so if you lose your FO's, it takes a long time for an inf unit to call in anything. " Real life. Probably several extra minutes. Was Mission 11 the defensive setup with the big hospital on the right? I did fine on that one. Lost a handful of AFVs, but I don't recall losing any tanks and the tanks cleaned up the opposition. Most of my losses came from the enemy that appeared on the left in and between the buildings (almost on top of my own positions). Dave

They do get tougher as you get closer to Damascus. I found the alternate path where you don't go to Damascus to be somewhat easier. Dave

"Old post" Which scenario is important. The options available to someone building AI plans in the game now are much better, and a canny designer (looking at you @George MC, just to take an example), can provide an AI plan or 2 or 3, that will give you fits. Older scenarios did not have the ability to do so. With SF2 for example, ALL of the scenarios were gone over, and in quite a few cases, completely new AI scripting done. Newer titles will have much more capable AI. R2V and upcoming RT provide more capable AI opponents than older scenarios. Lastly, it could be the designer didn't really intend to have it played in that direction and just added a basic AI capability to it. Dave

Yeah, I'll raise my hand. I've had an on and off issue in beta testing that someone else couldn't duplicate, so I'd be interested in whatever test you come up with. Anything that narrows down the issue is helpful. Documenting what is included in the test is key so that we can do some tracking as to what causes or doesn't cause problems. Dave

Is he out of a vehicle? (Sorry, I can't remember now what the 2d mission is) If so, check his icon for any kind of radio. There are times when I had a dismounted commander of some level and to call fire I had to get him back into his vehicle. Dave

What we always had drilled into us (my Army time covered this time period) is "If you can be seen, you can be hit. If you are hit, your are dead" The modern battlefield is an order of magnitude more lethal than WW2. Of course in SF2 you can be seen pretty easily, HOWEVER, there are many small folds and rises in the terrain and it's essential to make good use of those for covered approaches. They may know where you are but not be able to get a shot at you. Buildings can help the same way. Try to use them as cover. Hull down in ditches. Anything at all to take advantage of what the terrain provides you for cover. Concealment not so much due to the terrain, but covered approaches are a must. Hope that helps. Dave

I have terrain mods in CMBN but not in any other titles. I think the later titles look good enough for me to not bother with them. For me, CMBN benefits quite a bit from some terrain mods. No other reason. I am constantly amazed at the work put in by people creating mods, so hats off to all of you. Dave

And to play ALL, just make sure you have a save at the point where you have to make a choice. Then after you finish one option, you can go back and do the other option from the point of the choice. Dave

New and better enemy AI. Also with the patch improvements to soldiers staying in cover and not running away or toward you, your opponent is tough and fights very hard. Patience, recon by fire, objective prep with whatever fire support you have is key ( of course those are always key, right?) you have plenty of time for each mission. I recommend making use of that and not rushing in thinking you can sweep the enemy away. (Ask me how I know this) Be careful and watch your losses. It affects follow on missions in the campaign and you need plenty of resources for the last couple missions. don’t want to give any spoilers except slow and steady wins the race. I know that’s not much Dave

You're going to like Fire and Rubble.

Note that it's only a PIECE of Ben's absolutely amazing Berlin map!

Can you post the save here? Glad to take a look at it. Dave

That chart is for normal HE mission, it appears. You'd have better results using DPICM, or Copperhead, which was available at the time. Copperhead required a laser designator. DPICM can be fired as a regular fire mission, and doesn't need any guidance. Excalibur too. Copperhead is a tank killer, with a shaped charge warhead. That's what it was designed to do. Excalibur is not as far as I know - HE charge but highly accurate, so better for precision strikes or maybe bunkers, improved positions that an HE PD or Time mission might not do much too. For an HE mission to destroy tanks in the open, you really need a direct hit, which is very likely to immobilize/kill the crew inside, but still has a decent chance of leaving the tank usable in the future. Also, the older model the tank, the "easier" it would be to kill with artillery IF you hit it. Better results in direct fire, but if you are the artillery battery and are in direct fire mode against enemy tanks, well, it's been a really bad day out front of you. Dave

They are there. You can purchase them as individual vehicles after purchasing any kind of formation. This is true for both Heer and selections. Dave

20 meters. Yikes! Can you imagine? It says armed at 20m. Is that actually an effective minimum range? I can't imagine actually trying to shoot it at something 20 m away.

I don't know about Steam specifically but I've run the W10 version of Black Sea on my MacBook Pro with Parallels Desktop with no problem at all. Indistinguishable from running it natively on the Mac. In that case I had a specific reason for doing so, but I normally wouldn't bother just to use Steam Dave

That thing is a beast!

So in answer to my question, "Task Manager" means we're talking W10 installation? This sounds like it could be a virus protection issue (possibly?). I know even stock Windows Defender likes to quarantine innocent things pretty often when updating or installing software. If some piece gets quarantined or blocked the program could be trying to run and just spin because it's missing some piece somewhere. Could that be the issue? I'm guessing because my installations are Mac although I'm also pretty Window savvy too. Dave

PC or Mac? And either way, can you tell if it's running and stalled, or started and quit?

Amen to that!! So much easier to find something.

Can you post a save file? (granted I'd like a few of those guys on my side next time ) Dave

I submitted a bug report for it. Most likely no cause has been found yet for it. (guessing)

No problem at all for a Mac installation. The folder name it creates is different than the full game so there's no chance of overwriting anything. Go for it.

"Deploy Weapon" is the top left button in the "S" tab of action buttons when you select a unit. So let's say you have a mortar section in a vehicle of some kind. You have to dismount them, then click on the white dot at the end of the movement and select S/Deploy Weapon. Depending on the type of mortar, it should be ready to fire the next turn or the one after. Then it will show as available in the fire support tab.

The "hotkeys.txt" file is in the Data folder of your installation (same place all the .brz files are). This is true of all titles. So if you've lost the one for FI because it was overwritten by the patch or new installation, go to another game that still has your changes, copy that file to somewhere safe, and then overwrite the default on in FI. Or if you've already lost them all in all the updates, check what I wrote at the end here. Windows: "C:\Program Files(x86)\Battlefront\Combat Mission Whatever\Data" MacOS "/Applications/CM Whatever/Combat Mission Whatever.app/Contents/Resources/Data" In Windows there might even be a "previous_hotkeys.txt" there in that Data directory. I have MacOS but I have a Black Sea Windows installation under Parallels Desktop on my Mac and it does have that previous hotkeys file. On mine they are the same, so I'm not sure if this would be your overwritten file? I'd take a look. You might not have lost them! Hope this helps. Dave