DeeYay

Well I am pretty wealthy and i could easily afford the game but I didnt get wealthy by wasting money on overpriced products. To me Combat Mission Shock Force was like a 2008 Toyota Prius, Combat Mission Red Thunder is like a 2008 Toyota Prius with red paint. I mean I have been readin the forums and the suggestion demanded by the community to be implemented but nothing important seems to have come true: - Are aircrafts visible? - Do the soldier animation behave more natural and less clumsy? - Is there any cinematography at all? Intro into a campaign? Descitpion of objectives by a narrator? And so on? - Any updates about the special effects? Turrets and parts of vehicles flying of when destroyed? Buildings loosing pieces and parts when hit? Rain? Snow? Trees falling down and objects getting crushed when driven over by a tank? - Are vehicles and soldiers individual? Various faces for each soldier? Different turretnumbers and amount of damage to individual vehicles? - Are the maps living? Civilians? Birds? Animals? Real living rivers running across the landscape? The map is not a piece of "land" in the middle of a pointless universe? - Is there a meaningfull campaign? Do you feel that the decisions you make affect the course of further campaigns? Can you decide what units shall take part in the next battle like in Close Combat? Is there any strategic aspect to it? - Are the doctrines of the axis and the allied taken into account? Soviet soldier routing when loosing the leader? NKVD kommisars overwatching the battles? German forces applying their Blitzkrieg. Order 227? - Is there any weathereffect? Rasputitsa? Do vehicles and soldier get restriced in movements? General Winter? Do the German soldier freeze to death? The german weapons fail to operate in low temperatures? - Do vehicles operate in their intended role? Amphibious vehicles going through water? Mine clearing vehicles clearing minefields? Ambulances recovering the wounded? Ammunition and foodsupplies during very long battles? It just doesnt feel there is any usefull substance added to Red Thunder. There is so much more to add to improve the game and make it more fun and impressive. Come on am i the only one complaining about the lack of substance?

Hi guys I just checked out Red Thunder and though it looks like a nice expansion. Well expansion my ass.. this thing costs 55$? I mean I have checked out Combat Mission Shock Force before and judging by the content, nothing impressive or new has been added to justify that price? Is the game worth the money?

Thank you boys you are so nice :-) I will try to make a new campaign for this game soon just for that :-)

Yeah thanks :-) I am now planning my third campaign.. unfortunately not about Combat Mission Afghanistan but instead Combat Mission Shock Force, the Syrian Civil War. However since the war is still going on its hard to get reliable sources and documents to create truly historical scenarios. So it may take time.

The IEDs are very hard to spot and can look like unexploded artillery shells or big oilbarrels. You can see them in the setup menu with a blue square as you can any other friendly unit or an explosion icon during battle if you have these options on. Well I have tested it and according to the manual this is how trigger teams work: Each trigger team is assigned one IED. You place your IED during the setup menu anywhere in the ligh-blue sector. To activate the IED you must select it during battle and then choose "target" and target anywhere on the map. The IED is wire-detonated wich means that your triggerteam must fullfill four requirements to detonate it: 1. It must not be more than 100m away from the IED 2. It must be able to see the IED. At night this means you must be much closer than 100m to the IED. 3. The IED has a failrate of 50%. This means it can fail to detonate. 4. It will only detonate if an enemy is nearby and your IED troops can see the enemy near the IED. So this is a very advanced weapon to use. Actually you can't get close to russian troops but the russian troops can get close to you. Just make sure your engineers are hidden and dont fire. When the enemy unit comes within 30m range tell your engineers to engage and they will probably throw a satchel charge at it. Be carefull the blast can sometimes even kill your own engineers. If they are to die make them die for something big and juicy. To remind you for every battle in this campaign. Your troops are superior at close range. If you engage the Russians to early they will simply bomb you to death from long range. Let them come as close as possible before opening fire.

Awesome! Thank you for the nice comments! :-)

Well as long as you keep destroying the trucks you are doing good. You are not required to destroy anything else. The mine unit is just sthere to give covering fire no to deploy any real mines since there is no time no access to mines.. at least not at this stage. If you fail level 3 you shouldnt advance. You loose the campaign. I dont think you meant level 3? The point in level 4 and 5 is to destroy the trucks from the hills. This is acually how the mujahideen sometimes targeted the convoys on the roads. They didnt borther going close to the road they just took the high ground and shot at the trucks.

Yeah of course. But the enemy is not stupid either and stays put. The more you improve, the more the enemy improves too. Its a race between guerilla warfare and firepower.

Yeah it took quite some time testing to find the perfect balance for point allocation. Some things I am not very satisfied about but due to restrictions I was forced to do so. One example is the inablity to script the AI behavious more precisely. You can't, for example, tell the AI to move a specific path and take a different path if the first path is blocked. You cannot tell the AI to call in reinforcements or do cinematic transitions between battles either wich gives the game a little "dull feeling" but I have tried to work with the editor and squeeze as much joy as I could out of it. Somehow the world does not feel authentic. If you zoom out of the map you see the edges and "below the terrain". If you have played Company of Heroes you see a better solution to mapedges, and I think they should have choosen this type because it just looks better. If you like the map pelase VOTE on the repository webpage :-D

Sure :-D Its always more motivating to continue when you get such nice comments. Feel free to give me feedback too boys :-)

What a suprise the published it on christmas :-P

The cmapaingh as been send for checkup but I guess it will take some time before its published

Well this scenario has nothing to do with the campaign but sure :-)

Yeah I wanna just inform that I am still working on the next campaign. But due to problems with the ai (the ai never want to do as I wish) I have to refine and finetune. The editor really needs a serious overhaul.. Anyway.. planned release is instead somewhere in december.

Thank you. By the way.. as far as I have researched Afghanistan do not mix up the Taliban and teh Mujahideen. They are two different factions. Until 1992 they fought the D.R.A government together but split up and began fighting each other until 1998 when the Taliban took power. Only small parts in the north where by then held by the Mujahideen. The irony is that the US supported the Taliban who in turn supported Al Quaida. So to make it clear.. the Mujahideen are the good guys, the Taliban are the bad guys.

Thank you for the advice sometimes when you create something you become blind and its good to get criticism because then you know what you can improve. The first mission was meant to be pretty easy. But the second one should have been harder. However the resupply is random, sometimes you have the chance to get shells and new reinforcements and sometimes you dont. Well I guess the supply for your arty or your btr's may not have come through, maybe it was ambushed on the way to the area? Who knows. I really do not want to be 100% to sure about whether reinforcements and supplies are going to be able to arrive or not. Thats how it is in real life. You hope they will arrive when you suddenly realize the Staff has decided to send them elsewhere. The casualty factor is really hard to set but I have experimented a little with it. It was set that you loose points of you loose more than 10% of your troops.. but I am suprised that you lost less. Even if you would have lost more you wouldnt have lost more than 250 points. So maybe I should have more points or less than 10% casualty factor. There are 11 battles available and with the different odds taken you can be able to play up to 6 during one campaign. The enemy has the same factors to resupply themselves. However because it is an AI he has to take less casualties to be allowed to resupply and replenish. The enemy is also fairly defensive in this campaign. I am not able to make changes to the campaign for now because I am allready working on a new one. The research is done, mapping is in the progress. Texting, applying units, creating minimaps, scripting, testing and finalizing are left to go. Thanks again for the valuable info!

I have tried the demos and I think that the editor has a little more potential in CMBN and CMFI than in CMA (for example weather, bridges). I am a student so I cant really afford CMBN or CMFI yet but I will definately get them as soon as possible and start creating some campaigns. Thank you very much for the kind appreciation! Btw does anyone know how I add thumbnails to the repository?

yeah I have absolutely though of that. But you can also see it like this: that spg section was fully hidden in the bushes until later that day or maybe the enemy brough it up while your forces where busy? But nevertheless the reason for that section is that I wish to place it on a good position to overwatch and dominate the area. I take that feedback into account. Thank you.

Thank you good to see that some still like it. Good and bad critics are always welcome because I use them to improve my mapping skills. I think I will make one more until the end of the year. Probably the Salang Pass but from the Mujahideen point of view. Btw I am the author of the campaign if you havent figured out allready :-)

Hi again. I am working on this campaing and I am not completely satisfied about how the reinforcement appear. As for now I have tested several battles and sometimes it goes well and sometimes it goes bad, depending on what battleplan the AI chooses. To make my question short... is it possible to deploy reinforcements depending on objectives, not only by time. I want to give the player reinforcements if he does not manage to capture a certain point after, lets say, 1 hour for example.

Well one reason why I played or still play CMBB, CMAK is because the ideas to create large, complex battles with variety are just so many I I still got like dozens of maps I want to create to have fun on. I hope to get the same feeling for CMA.. I like the ability to go more into detail with the mapcreating but I am dissapointed that some cool features are missing.

I think that the pricetag also is different?

Thanks for your share of the comments but I still think that some points may give the game a better overall score and sharpen the teeth.. if you get my point.. Anyway.. I have a quick question. Is there any (official) archive or site where I can download scenarios and campaigns from other players and maybe even upload my own? If someone knows?

Thanks you for the answer. Now I know so I dont have to test it myself. I trust you have tried :-)

Hi guys. The more I play Combat Mission Afghanistan (CMA) the more I realize that the game is not as fantastic as the manual or demo depicted. No weather options, a dull campaign, no aphiboius vehicles, no visible aircraft and many more are just fails and the tip of the iceberg. Maybe it would be a little selfish to demand improvement but honestly said.. I paid like 40$ for this game and it feels like half-finnished. Now I realize that I have to think twice before I buy any future products from Battlefront maybe? I want to share some ideas in this thread regarding possible improvements that could turn this hopeless trainwreck into a usefull game. I appreciate your comments about my ideas and further imput of your own ideas. 1. Buildings are so boring and boxed. No bridges are in the game. Flavor objects are too few. Where is my tanktrench, foxholes, underground tunnels? 2. Weather is boring. It apparently never snows or even rains in Afghanistan. Ohh really? 3. Aphibious vehicles are amphibious and that big fact cannot be ignored can it? 4. Effects are seriously dull. I want to see my Drozd in action, my buildings blow up in a spectacular blast. Helicopters crashing to the ground when shot down. Parts of vehicles and bodies flying around when blown up by mines. I want this bloody war to really feel bloody and horrible! 5. Airborne troops. How cool would it have been to see Mi-24s and Mi-8s dropping of infantry, either by paradrop or airdrop, maybe even vehicles. 6. Aircraft must clearly be visible when appearing on the map. Okay this may not be that important but it contributes to a better atmosphere. 7. Civilians are a vital part of the war. Maybe the manual thinks they are not necessary but I believe that they are since they contribute to complicate operations. How easy is it to misidentify civilians for possible combatans? 8. The editor is too restrictive and cumbersome to use. I have to switch between editor and 3-d preview 1000-times before I am finnished with just the elevation setting to check if every single square meter is as I want it to be. Is it that hard to use terraforming tools to paint and change the terrain directly in the game like almost all other editors do? And what is with the limitations. I dont want the editor to tell me how big my map should be. I want to make it 10km wide or 1m by 1m if I want to. Since when are operations bound to timelimits? The mission is done when the mission is done, regardless if it takes 30minutes or 15 hours to complete. Considering the editor.. I have to change elements like 20 times until my specifications are met regarding unit selection. If I want only T-62 to be on the map then that is my decision not the games.. its not harder than that. 9. Hopelessly dull and uneventfull campaigns. The two campaigns are not very impressive. They may be large but there are no goodies and fun parts. - Maybe movies and animations instead of boring text to explain what you have to do? - I wanna personalize the campaign with my own troops. I am the Officer and i want to decide what forces are going to be in what battle and what forces are resting and repairing for another battle. I wanna make tactical decisions on what weapons I wish to use. Maybe a tankplatoon? Maybe its enough with just helicopters to deter an enemy attack? - Apparently all missions in Afghanistan are 1 hour long? Really? Ususally a single mission or battle can take hours and days to complete not one smelly hour.. - Day and night circulation for such long missions maybe? - The damage of a battlefield is transfered into the next battle if the battle is the same map. Sound like a matter of course... but apparently they decided not to incorporate this neat feature from the early Combat Mission maps into CMA of some reason.. Thoose were my 9 points that can be improved to make this game usefull and fun.. Let me hear what you think and what you would like?