Pelican Pal

I've yet to find a good reason for standard infantry to not use quick almost constantly. They can cover quite a lot of ground without tiring and move will give your opponent some advantage if they manage to spot them. Which given the vagaries of the CM spotting system isn't totally unlikely. Although the only area where moving fast is a requirement is meeting-engagements. Which, unless sufficiently large, are largely determined on who becomes the "attacker".

Next time please read the thread before joining the conversation.

CM generally makes it worse than it should be just due to the limits of the animation system. Because the model represents the hit box the limited positions a model can take also creates a higher change of being hit. While in a HT troops heads are sticking out above the top of the track. Allowing fire to rack up free kills when it would be possible for the soldiers to keep their entire bodies within the track. Additionally when firing the shooter fully stands up rather than hugging the top of the track. Fully exposing a large portion of their body to return fire when they shouldn't have to.

In the original OP Kaunitz specifically identified player driven borg spotting. Not all entrenchments, but the overall lack of good fortification representation severely degrades infantry survivabillity. Allowing armor heavy formations to push entrenched infantry around. This reduces the complexity for the attacker and reduces the defenders capability to take advantage of the complexity. Moot point. Overcoming tactical challenges with the tools at hand is the bread and butter of the CM series. Play and counter-play. - I place infantry in entr

CM's fortification weakness is tied in quite closely to the effectiveness of any sort of high firepower asset. Be that artillery, machinegunes, or tanks. The inherent weakness of fortifications remove some of the key counters infantry have. There has been a lengthy discussion on player borg spotting and borg control earlier in the thread. With relatively high-velocity guns and relatively large targets (e.g. the tracks of an armored vehicle) it would be reasonably possible to land hits on exposed parts of a vehicle. It would be infinitely smarter than firing center mass w

And no vehicles ever move during a match?

I suspect its almost entirely do to with AI problems. TacAI is only reactive and there is no strategic AI whatsoever so it would certainly cause a ton of problems in any scenario that wasn't a flat plain. Not just for the "AI player" but for the player themselves as 60 second turns would lead to some hilariously bad situation where it would take ~3+ minutes to slightly angle a tank. Personally I would like an exaggerated limit on elevation rather than none. Essentially allow tanks to fudge elevation dramatically, but maybe not fire directly below themselves or nearly vertically int

Given CM's niche nature I'm always a bit surprised that development of some features needs to be a closed loop. Sure an import/export feature isn't going to get you super far, but it gives people access to the information. From that they can develop their own methods of interacting with it. Much like the PBEM Helper programs that made playing MP much more pleasant. Users can do a lot when a hook is available. With the added advantage that what the user comes up with doesn't need to be commercial quality but can still give significant value-add.

To an extant this is already doable. Unit limitation is only an issue within the Quick-Battle selector. Outside of that there isn't anything stopping you from fighting '43 Italians and French forces against Brazilian troops riding Panther's and Hanomags or even going as far as siming the '47 - '49 Palestine War (if you are okay missing some British tanks). Anything within a Family can be used against anything else within that Family.

I don't think anyone here is saying that paying for Engine Patches is inherently bad. CM: Battle For Normandy is essentially a dead game (no new development) and there is work going into keeping it up to date. Fortress Italy though is (well was) alive. It was an unfinished Family that had active development going over a course of 7 years. Now if someone purchased CM:FI in 2012 and wants to get R2V they are going to pay an additional 45%. As an aside: The store pages for Battle for Normandy handle the requirements section in a better fashion. https://www.battlefront.com/battle-for-norm

It just seems weird to have returning users being required to pay anywhere between 30% to 45% more for a game than the sticker price. Not to mention that the requirement is actually posted below the fold on my 1080p monitor under Requirements rather than Product Info. Its a non-standard system, and I'd bet there are people who make the purchase without realizing the requirement. In these cases its required to have the newest engine for the new content. IIRC some of the older modules were backwards compatible. This is likely done to make support and patching more streamlined.

To stay current I get. But, to use Red Thunder as an example, I've no need to stay current. I haven't played a PBEM in yonks and exhausted my interest in the scenario list quite some time ago. I'm essentially a lapsed customer - the last new purchase I made was in 2015. Lapsed customers seem like the people you would want to entice back. Yet lapsed customers would end up paying the most. Someone who purchased CM:FI over half a decade ago and just hears about Rome To Victory is going to get some sticker shock at the $50 price tag. To organize my thoughts better the most active BF customers wou

Re: free upgrades Its becoming significantly more prevalent. Paradox is a prime example, but there are many others. There are series that don't, but with the prevalence of Steam, youtubers, etc... Its increasingly beneficial to sales to have long running updates done to a game. But much of it is driven by systems that BFC doesn't take advantage of so the benefit might not really be there for BFC. Re: CM:FI Is it true that you have to buy-in to the Engine Upgrades to get the new module? I was under the impression that each new purchase would bundle in the newest engine. I'm fine pay

I've had a few experiences with squads not shifting after given a facing order within a building in the past. With only a handful of men moving to give fire until the enemy begins to return fire. In retrospect it was likely just a one off, but since then I've tended to keep better track of my facing orders and haven't really had a chance to see men do it on their own.

Because CM has gone increasingly 1:1 there would be more situations than you might think. A squad in a building giving a facing order will all look that way. So it would be entirely possible for 9 men to be looking East, know that enemies (I.E. spot them) are coming from the North, but be unable to engage because of the given facing order. You could write this off as a player failure, but any squad leader with half a brain could reorient his men within the same floor of a building. Essentially I think you would quickly run into a huge number of problems because CM's scale is such that w