Pelican Pal

Yea this is a frustrating one, especially when dealing with any sort of mechanized force that can easily throw trash at your line. Having your well placed AT gun reveal itself when dealing with a HT is a pain. The only real solution is to set a covered arc that prevents the gun from firing at all and remove that once you've spotted armor. Although in WEGO that isn't really doable. This is a great example of how a SOP system to allow commands to be edited would be very useful. - Set armor arc - set "only fire at AFVs" for the arc The tacai lacks any sort of context awareness and this would be a good way of giving them that awareness.

Part of the issue is that BF does a fair amount of research, but for most players it doesn't actually matter. CM:FI is almost certainly better researched content than CM:AK. However, for 90% of players directly using the pre-existing CMAK TO&Es would be more than enough. Because BFC is apparently going through hoops to track down the correct information - so most players definitely aren't going to care. They lack the means and the time to do so and that creates a saminess to the proceedings. (Clarifying the above) If BFC has to go through pains to track down the correct information for a time period then the player base isn't really going to care because they: 1. Can't verify or gain new information from the work that BFC has done. 2. Actually be able to tell when something is wrong or right Once info is tracked down that information needs to be shared in some sort of consumable fashion with the audience for them to also become a stakeholder in that level of detail. Right now if the audience wants to be a shared stakeholder they have to go through the selfsame hoops that BFC did to find the info. I was recently playing Graviteam's North Africa game and they have a section of the game that details some basic stats for each unit and also a few paragraphs of relevant info. So when I started a battle and found the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M6_Gun_Motor_Carriage I was able to say "what the hell is that" and then quickly become acquainted some history. All without leaving the match I was in. That connection between the game and research can be content, but CM doesn't really do that. You select the year and month and a rifle squad appears from on high with an STG-44 why? We don't know. To an extant it makes me pine for the in-game information tabs of stuff like the original Rome Total War. Even stuff as simple as terrain differences aren't really known to anyone. If you made a CM:FI style map in CM:BS are there any differences? I get the impression that a lot of people here exclusively, are almost exclusively, play CM. For folks who play other games those other games will offer different experiences and obviously we have limited time. The other day I was the Sherman crewmen who suppressed a German trenchline in Hell Let Loose. Its not CM, but many of the thrills that happen in CM happen in other games. Other than that the tendency for PBEM games to become abandoned by people for various reasons, occasional annoyances setting them up, and the balkanization of the series all can make it a bit of a pain with various engine and module combinations now existing. PBEMs being abandoned or slowing to a painful crawl is my single biggest issue followed by engine and module upgrades. I don't want to come back to a match and wonder "what was I doing".

IIRC their tank sims didn't sell well enough so they started building it out into the Graviteam Tactics series. Steel Armor: Blaze of War is one of my favorites and its a pity we won't be seeing more.

IIRC - at least in the older titles - weather had much more impact than the terrain. Re: Forums I'm sure some damage has been done by the balkanization of the titles. In an absolute sense there is less to talk about and when you are talking about content its going to be limited. Generally though the online presence of CM has been in decline for years. A few years back there were some long threads about the lack of feedback/lack of use of user-designed scenarios which is part and parcel of that decline.

Personally I like the H flag for the South and the G, I flags for the North. Since they share a similar style it matches the Civil War aspect with both forces flags coming from a shared heritage. Since the buildings are converted from CM:SF do they retain the stability of modern concrete and those mud brick structures? I haven't actually done any testing, but I figure the material each building is "made from" has some effect on its protective abilities? RE: CM modding - a lot could be done if a single game could read data from multiple families. From what I can tell a BMP-1 is data in a table of some variety and the game then grabs the visuals from the respective BRZ. There is likely another table with ORBATS that is linked to the respective kit. If that data file wasn't locked down it would probably be trivial combine. It is in some ways ironic that BFC's design of CM makes it perfect for user created content yet we are limited in what we can do. The well done Command and Control modelling makes whipping up new formations that act correctly a breeze and since CM is design for cause (as far as I can tell) there wouldn't be any inherent problems to mix and matching forces. E.G. having a Panzer II and a Leopard 2 on the map wouldn't break anything.

Unless I'm mistaken there is no mission editor outside of a simple QB system. Most of the gameplay variety is thanks to the excellent campaign system which is the one area where Graviteam emphatically leaves CM in the dust.

Graviteam real-time has more in common with CM WEGO than CM Real Time. Order delays, the independence of the tacAI, size of the maps, lack of exact precision, etc... all preclude you from doing heavy micro that you would in CM given the same situation. Overall approaching Graviteam games as if they are Combat Mission is a recipe for failure. Stepping back and approaching the Graviteam games as their own beast will give you the best success. My recommendation is to focus a lot on the high level of the battle. Who is providing fire support, who is assaulting and from what direction (What cover/concealment will they have), who is the follow on force, etc.... Whereas CM Real-Time has much more to do with the exact movement of a fireteam down an alley.

RE: Scenario design overall What building your own scenarios does, at least for me, is point out the limitation more than just sticking with QBs and premade scenarios. Once you start opening the system up and you realize that there is a lot you can';t do with the limited amount provided. Sure you can do jeeps and artillery if you want, but that isn't particularly interesting. Take 37mm's Heaven and Earth... That is a dramatic change that is only possible because CM:SF has a relatively broad stable of units. CM:SF, in fact, can do a decent job of representing various conflicts outside of its actual ~3 month time period thanks to the existence of so much Cold War Soviet kit. Some of my favorite CM scenarios were African and Middle-East civil war scenarios. These are scenarios which are well outside of the scope of the game as made, but there is sufficent breadth to make possible. And really what you are doing is using basic building blocks (infantry with Warsaw Pact weaponry, T-55s, BMP-1s, etc...) to create interesting engagements that only broadly resemble the TO&E of any actual Nation that would be fighting with these weapons. In fact you can do a modern battle with "Kurdish" forces using American equipment fighting "Isis" troops with stolen American equipment and various Soviet era vehicles even though there isn't anything close to a well researched layout of these forces in the game. You are ignoring the obvious solution here and imagining that you'd have to release some absurd "uber game". DCS, for example, has a Core Launcher and numerous modules which in the end create a single mega game. The layout of CM, as it stands, would be adaptable to that selfsame system. Rather than having ~6 families each with separate launchers and separate modules. You would have: CORE LAUNCHER Which hosted each family Family Module Which would be the base game for each time period. Child Module Which would be individual modules that are financially attached to a family module. This layout is far from ironic and would actual be a pretty rational system if BFC wasn't as far into the separation system that they currently have. Since with a single "parent" you wouldn't have ~6 different engine upgrades and patches but instead just a single. While you could still have CM:BN, CM:FB, CM:FI as they exist. I get the feeling that 76mm is talking more about some of the complete formations. Within the editor there are quite a few formations that you can pick which essentially aren't ever used as a whole within CM, but are instead already being broken up by the scenario designer/QB player.

I don't have any articles off hand but from my experience: Graviteam tactics series: - Tactical battles require less micro from the player Troops are more spread out and you have less control over them. Preventing you from microing units a ton. You tend towards giving sweeping orders and then watching the platoons carry it out. There isn't a ton for you to do during an assault - most of your focus is on getting people in the right place. Once your infantry are moving across the map its largely too late to do much. For example, in Graviteam its on you to get the assault platoons in position, setup the artillery, postion reserves, and support by fire positions. but once you hit the "go" button you aren't going to be telling squad 1 to break off an anti-tank team to move ~50 meters through a field to engage an enemy tank. - Battles feel more authentic If you read any number of AAR or personal accounts from veteran you'll read a lot of stuff that Graviteam seems to get right. The biggest one for me is that you will repeatedly read about armor advancing even after their infantry support has been pinned down. This rarely happens in CM (to the player) but in Graviteam you'll see stuff like this all the time. In CM the player has a ton of control, this can be good, but can also create instances where battles feel too put together. Graviteam does a better job of making battles messy. - Good campaign system The campaign system is a strategic map of the battle area where tactical fights are generated by the movements of units on the strategic map. Its fantastic and adds a lot of replaybility to the series. This is the one area where it beats Combat Mission hands down. You are dealing with postioning of units over a period of hours, resupply, recovery of damaged vehicles, etc... I recently had a very interesting Graviteam Tactics game where I managed to win by sacrificing a tank platoon to draw the German Heavy tank unit (Tigers) into a strategic trap. - You can get more breadth at a lower price Graviteam mostly focuses on the Eastern front, but you can find Afghan War, Iran-Iraq, Chinese/Soviet Border War, and various African conflicts. These are all relatively inexpensive. This is something I like a lot as they are conflicts that you rarely (essentially never) see simmed and Graviteam does them. CM: - More Micro In CM you can find yourself microing a platoon of infantry and 3 Bradleys to surround a compound that holds 7 Insurgents. And that will be interesting. This makes CM a much better small unit and urban combat game. I just played a battle in CM where I knocked down a section of wall to give a T-72 a keyhole position to kill an Abrams. That isn't something you could do in Graviteam at all. - User designed scenarios While the campaign system in Graviteam is better, the standalone scenarios and the few "story" campaigns in CM are excellent and Graviteam doesn't have anything like it. There are a ton of them and there are quite a few fantastic ones that really let peoples imagination shine. - More WW2 and modern content if you want to spend the money CM covers more ground both in WW2 and in Modern. ----- Generally I play them both. I play Combat Mission when I;'m interested in heavy micro or a good standalone battle. While I play Graviteam when I'm looking for a week long campaign or some weird mid-century conflict. They both play very differently and its hard to compare them directly. josey Wales has a decent video:

To nitpick here that is exactly what we've been able to do for nearly a decade. You can cook up a scenario with Elite Insurgent infantry riding Bradleys into battle against a horde of conscripted German infantry manning technical if you wanted. The well done Command and Control system of CM makes it a piece of cake too. The real limit is the launcher Regardless its good to hear that brought some new weapons with them. I was under the presumption that they were fully armed from existing U.S. and British stock. My broader point was the standalone scenarios, campaigns, and master maps are of little interest to me after the base game in a series is released. At which point I would much rather just have access to new weapons and vehicles with which to make scenarios of my own or play in multiplayer. To the point that I would purchase an "early version" with just a basic availability of new stuff and be fine waiting however many years/months it was to get a patch with the campaign/scenarios/more obscure TO&E. Because when it comes down to it I'm going to use the baked in scenarios and campaign system relatively rarely compared to the usefulness of having Panzer IIIs in CM:RT.

Ah yea, although none of those forces add any actual content to the game do they? The Brazilians and French just use American kit and the others are equipped with British kit.

If there was one thing I would appreciate is BFC taking a more "early access" approach to the modules. I generally don't touch the campaigns or really even the pre-made scenarios. So having quicker access to just the units in a module would be great. I'm sure the portion of Berlin being modeled is probably eating a ton of time for the CM:RT module but I couldn't care less about it. Essentially the unit pack from CM:BN but writ large. What game has the most content in it anyway? I'm guessing Fortress Italy '43 to '45 with the Brits, Italians, Americans, and Germans. A full year worth of weather. Its too bad the Soviets didn't make it to the Italian front.

IIRC leadership has an effect on their morale, but not their ability to aim? Generally I lean towards differing morale/experience levels based on the scale of the battle. Low-intensity fighting having higher experience and morale bonuses and hotter battles having lower stats across the board. Reading a number of veteran's accounts what I repeatedly got was that once a battle got to a certain size nearly everyone was physically exhausted, confused, and mentally overwhelmed.

@Warts 'n' all Ts4EVER mentioned that it would be nice to see more captured equipment in the game. In response to that you decided to fill up the thread with your chaff attacking him for some thing or another that happened on youtube. If you think that is defending BF (or that they particularly need a white knight on their own forum) please stop it. If you don't like his content go to youtube and dislike it, unsubscribe, post in the comments section. But so far in this thread you are the one making an unpleasant ruckus and not Ts4EVER. There are 31 posts in this thread - nearly a full 25% of them consist of you complaining. Yet Ts4EVER is the problem. --- I would like to see far more captured weapons, and hopefully as modules finally release for RT and FB we'll see some. One thing I've noticed reading veteran's narratives are that captured equipment were found almost everywhere - although I'm sure that has a bit to do with them sticking out in the minds of the soldier at the time. Its worth pointing out that someone is using a PPSH, and not so much all the guy with MP-40s. Most of what I've read points to the Germans having a general issue getting supplies to men at the front, and not necessarily an actual lack of the item. E.G. many German units were understrength not so much because there weren't men to fill the spots - but that the men weren't where replacements were needed. @Ts4EVER Do you have a link to those reports, I would appreciate it if you did.

Christ guys - if you don;t like his videos then don't watch the damn things. So far it looks like TS4EVER is the only one posting anything of interest here. If you are just going to be ****ty about it don't post.

My experience was with an AR-15 mounted with a bump stock - but I found perfectly rotate the gun as I fired, and control bursts. Although it was difficult to maintain control if you tried moving the weapon in both the X and Y axis. Vertically along the Y axis was also weird. Single axis movement was quite doable though. Although my experience in more "milsim" games like Arma has led me to believe that against a real human you would be better off leading the target and then placing a burst in their path of movement. Allowing them to run into your fire than try to actually drag your weapon along with the target. As your ability to correctly rotate the weapon to match the targets speed would be difficult. Close combat would likely change that equation - but CM doesn't do the greatest job of that regardless of how weapons fire.

You have an issue like the Engine 4 upgrade (paid) essentially breaking infantry interaction with fortifications for months on end. Not that fortifications are that fleshed out in CM, but the community response was very measured. "Haters" as a group seem largely fictitious outside of like 1-2 actual people. Especially so if you ignore the time period directly around the original CM:SF release. Which I can sympathize with to an extant because man... that release. What CM is, is a game system that is pretty close to being fantastic but is often just pretty good. Which is in many ways is more frustrating than if it were just crap. - There is a powerful scenario editor that lets you do a lot However, it is just weak enough to prevent designers from easily doing really interesting things. - CM has pretty solid 1:1 design Except that commitment to 1:1 can often result in unrealistic situations. Like personnel in a half-track sitting bolt upright when hunkering down slightly would save them from being hit, or weird LOS issues. - CM has some fun campaigns Yet, with rare exceptions, they don't feel particularly connected. - CM has pretty good content If you are interested in a very specific setting/time period you are likely going to have to wait years to see it. CM does a lot right, which makes what it does poorly all the more annoying.

Oh wow has it really been 6 years since CM:RT? What is the first module supposed to be covering anyway - fighting to Berlin? If so that is a bit of a disappointment. I find the fighting earlier in the war a lot more fun than the very late-war period. I'm also a sucker for minors, but I doubt we'll see them.

I know BFC is working on at least one, if not two contract jobs, but that doesn't change my position of there being some sort of project workflow that relies more heavily on their limited programming expertise. (or possibly limited expertise with some sort of OOB generator). My guess is a lot of CM2 stuff is in-house so that opens the gates a bit to where the workflow problem is. It also makes scaling up more difficult because you 1. need to find someone who can be taught your custom **** 2. Sees that as taking them to a worthwhile place career wise. Because doing OOB research, or animating, or even creating 3d models shouldn't be the big hold up. Ostensibly CM1 had rather complete OOBs and within the ~6 games currently released they should have a good cross section of 3d models. Think about North Africa - that should be an easy slam dunk for a few major formations in an initial release. Terrain/Buildings from CM:SF/Italy - equipment from CM:BN,FI,RT with some additions, because it is a modular system so you don't need to do the whole thing at once. The BFC team is undoubtedly skilled, but we've witnessed constant delays from almost the announcement of CM:SF to today. BFC shot for the moon (1:1 modern combat sim)1 and landed in a weird place that they didn't expect. I mean who would purposefully try to be actively supporting ~6 different standalone games? 1 1:1 is a big ask not to mention the C2 system -- but you are adding in all kinds of simming of modern tech. FLIR, NV, ERA, ATGM (SCLOS & MCLOS), Insurgents, various radionets, actually having to deal with air, etc.. Which you wouldn't if CM:BN was released in '08 instead of CM:SF.

My suspicion is that BFC has a programmer heavy workload which is permanently slowing development down, and we'll never see any major increase in development speed during the lifetime of CM2. Especially given that each series is standalone rather than a DCS model where they all have one parent. ~6 installers, ~6 engine upgrades ~6 series of tests, ~6 patches. CM:FI CM:BN CM:RT CM:FB CM:SF2 CM:BS I also wouldn't be surprised if there still isn't a certain amount of code debt from the "interesting" launch of of CM:SF. And even if BF could hire more programmers I don't think they would have an easy time of it. Working on a niche wargame probably isn't the most lucrative career choice for someone who isn't an owner/operator.

IIRC there was a user-made CM:BN campaign detailing the exploits of paratroopers during D-Day and D+1. The player was nominally the Lt. in leading the men. Small sized units in a campaign format with special "choose your action" missions You would have a standard mission and then the follow up would be a road with two objectives on either end of it. Obj. 1: Ambush the upcoming German Convoy Obj. 2: Stay hidden Which would then change how the next mission played out. Choice 1 would lead to a quick mission where a convoy of German equipment is ambushed. Allowing you to gain an advantage in the next battle if you can keep your losses low. While choice 2 would keep the element of surprise during the next battle although there would be more enemy forces there. --- Using small single man units (detailed in the latter portions of this thread ) and a "choose your own adventure" campaign storyline would allow you to make a very enjoyable series of SF missions. Where watching the town for 2 days could be abstracted out as choices made in the mission selection portions.

I think a lot of it comes back to the animation system not being paid enough attention to when dealing with how it effects combat losses. Load up a halftrack and you have the entire complement of men sitting bolt upright in the back allowing much of their upperchest and head to appear above the protective sides of the hull. The result being that relatively light fire will start to accrue casualties on the men ostensibly using it as protection. With trenches we have much the same issue in that the men when crouching expose a large portion of their body to fire. Additionally the trenches themselves are quite wide and relatively shallow making it easier for artillery to "clear" the line as it were. If trenchers were slightly taller and not so wide their protection would likely increase. Infantry survivability would also increase if their animations weren't so "parade ground" suited. --- What I did find useful for trenches was to build a ditch and then place a trench line within the ditch. Effectively giving the men better protection from both direct and indirect fire. As they are now forced to stand to fire and their basic crouching position is generally safer.

That is an interesting solution to my issue. At this point I've largely stopped playing CM and drifted over to other games. As a result I haven't done any scenario work in literal years. I might comeback to it if BFC releases a particular interesting module - but at this point I've been enjoying games with offer a bit more breadth even if the granularity isn't quite there. I do have CM:SF but need to create a ticket to get it redeemed. I have an odd issue where it doesn't list the base game in my library but I do have two modules listed. I had CM:SF Paradox -> bought the paradox upgrade patch -> purchased the Marines and Brit expansions. However, I only have the Brit and Marine expansions listed in my library. Anyway...

CMx2 is still 32-bit? Presumably there is at least some talk about doing a CMx3 in 64?

I'm assuming the headcount functionality was coded for a formation wide scale and has some play in it. In this case though it seems rather bizarre that 50% can actually net you 100%. I wonder if that is true for large squads? Would 50% of 10 men ever get you 60%? Its even weirder given that the options for different reductions are available and ostensibly seem rather granular, and you would think that granular choices would be expected --- but then they just aren't. I ran into this issues a few years back when doing Squad Battles series in Red Thunder. I took CMX2's 1:1 idea to its logical endpoint and created several scenarios where each man was his own unit. Using the current command structure system but scaled for Company as the largest unit. I had a few testers but this coincided with me becoming too busy to do much scenario making and having to drop the concept. In total I made 2 or 3 scenarios. The teams issue was a bit of a pain for me, but I switched to primarily using truck drivers and such since they guaranteed single man units unfortunately they lacked grenades. Since I was also doing reinforced platoon to company scale I could also stomach far more two man teams where it made sense (lmg, anti-tank, etc...). It played surprisingly well. Its too bad we don't have single man units within the editor OOB for each faction. That would open up a lot of interesting scenarios without all the fiddling around.