Pelican Pal

Just like to add that I would be interested in seeing this back on the store.

Is the CM:SF2 demo running on Engine 4?

Yea, reading anecdotes from American combatants I often saw variants of "we waited for the Germans to advance out of 'insert cover/concealment here' before opening fire". It seemed that many American units managed to keep their heads long enough to wait for the German infantry to enter good fields of fire before engaging. While German Infantry, on the other hand, often did not have a clear idea of where the American line is.

CM's dichotomy is that while WeGo removes your ability to unrealistically micro units when you are wearing the hat of Platoon commander or above the player is quite often wearing the hat of a Sergeant, Corporal, or even Private. In those cases wego is unsuited to the situation. At the top of the minute a fireteam spots five tanks and a platoon of infantry crossing a ridge. 9 times out of 10 that fireteam isn't going to sign their own death warrants in reality, but in CM those four men have no conceptual understanding that they are massively outgunned. That Corporal will have to wait an entire minute before telling his fireteam to do anything reasonable like crawl away or hold fire. Instead they'll fire a few rifle rounds before being pulverized. An RPG team fires a rocket and then, against all logic, proceed to not move and get plastered by return fire. Etc... Neither WeGo or Real-Time is always realistic or unrealistic. They just happen to have moments where they are the most realistic choice and some where they are not.

The tension between Real-Time and Turn-based will likely continue to exist as long as Tac-AI is primarily reactive. - Turn-Based probably gives you the best experience when you are wearing the hat of a mid/high level position. A Company or Battalion commander. You have an orders delay without being able to micro the individual men. However, turn-based is easily the worst for wearing the hat of an individual unit. People have mentioned shoot & scoot, and that is an obvious example of where turn-based fails. Especially in a modern setting where an RPG team will quickly be killed if they don't move. - Real-time while giving you a better unit level hat gives you a more unrealistic and worse mid/high level hat. There is often too much to do and it also gives you the ability to game the system a bit more when interacting with multiple units. - My personal favorite is real-time w. multiple pre-determined pauses/command timings. Its essentially a house rule where depending on the units scale and breadth of the order I have a timer before I can give it. Individual/local scope is whenever. This covers any sort of order that a Squad Leader or lower could reasonably give. Platoon scope. These I limit to every 20 seconds. These are orders that a Platoon Leader could reasonably give. Company Scope is at 40 seconds and Battalion is at 60 seconds. It takes some rules setting for myself and can only be done solo but it provides interesting gameplay outside the norm.

The key difference being that 3 mortar bombs landing within rapid succession will grant you greater suppression and a better chance at routing the enemy unit. 1 mortar bomb ever 20 seconds is going to be much less likely to give you a good suppression effect.

I believe CM:BS was covered. Flare Path covers a lot of content and usually that means whatever new release is hitting is going to get attention and older games are going to get less attention. Battlefront hasn't released a new module in like a year+? so they haven't had a lot of coverage. I'm sure CM:SF2 will get covered when it launches.

Yea the nice thing about CMSF2 will be that you get something like 2-5 years of development in a single release. So as far as content goes it beats literally every other release that BF has made and will likely ever make unless they do a similar rebuild of CM:BN or something. Tech wise you are essentially playing with low tier CM:BS units and different OOB for Red and Blue.

Flamethrowers are generally better weapons in real-time play. Their short range and tac-ai priority make them very vulnerable so they need to have a lot of personal initiative allowed for them. The 60 second turns generally don't allow for them to have that sort of initiative needed for success. When playing real-time I've been able to more easily get them to operate with support of friendly troops in a cohesive way that allows for success. Most often a platoon moves up to relatively close range to the enemy with the flamethrower team and they begin to suppress enemies with fire and 5-10 seconds later I have the flamer team FAST to within the 30 meter range and quickly target enemy positions in order. Firing a quick burst of flame at each one, before having the flame team FAST to cover. In real-time this is relatively easy and can be done in a matter of 30 seconds, give or take. However, doing this in turn-based is almost impossible as it requires a bunch of very specific move, pause, and target orders that you can't really reliably get to work. Generally I prefer turn-based but in situations like these where you are simulating the decision making of small groups of men acting independently (a small flamethrower team in this instance) real-time does a much better job of giving you a realistic result.

The general thrust that most CM scenarios are not scenarios where recce units excel I would agree with fully, but in addition to that the 1:1 nature of CM + the rather static animations makes gun turrets more dangerous than they probably should be. The gunners in most vehicles stand essentially upright with a decent portion of their bodies exposed to enemy fire and switch between unbuttoned and buttoned in a rather binary fashion. You can see it in this video where both the men firing from the half-track, the man sitting in the track, and the .50 gunner are relatively high up. More so than would be absolutely necessary. The Bren gunner is firing from a fully standing position when huddling below the armor deck and resting the Bren on the vehicle would likely be more stable. Around the 1:10 mark the gunner engages infantry within 20-30 meters of him who are using an identifiable object as concealment. The gunner maintains an upright position on the gun while engaging and remains upright between bursts. He is not receiving return fire, but if he was it seems possible that he could drop down behind the gun and spray the object with fire dynamically popping up and down to check his fires. Compare that to this video from a gunner who is taking fire. (2:28 mark or so) After receiving near misses the gunner is only exposing himself to fire a burst at the enemy and is otherwise below the armor. This sort of dynamic up/down action isn't seen in CM and even the base stance in CM is relatively high. In CM the gunner also has to be up on the gun to fire it. In most combat videos you see the gunner will also be on the gun when firing, but occasionally you will see a gunner firing from a position that keeps him largely below the armor. This is a limitation of programmer/animator time, and I wouldn't expect to see gunners dynamically moving while firing on targets. However, I think its important to understand this limitation so that the player can make decisions not only around tactics but also with better knowledge of the tool they are using.

Just spit-balling, but a suppressed unit in CM will generally not move if they aren't taking losses. A constant barrage of artillery could suppress the crew of the tank to the point where the high suppression level would prevent them from exiting the vehicle?

Why are you all being such weird asses about his question? IanL and MOS:96B2P were kind enough to answer his questions about content, MOS very thoroughly. However, we are now on page two largely on the basis of people being ****ty that he thinks $60 is a lot of money. Yes he thinks $60 is a bit pricey. Okay great maybe it his for him, maybe it isn't. We don't know. What we don't need to be doing is dogpiling on the dude. And you have to admit that if you didn't follow BFC posts very regularly you would likely be confused as to what is going on. You might wonder what changes have been made since CM:SF. You might wonder if CM:BS, a 4 year old game, is expecting any updates. You may not know about the CM:SF2 update. You might want to come to the forums and ask the nice helpful users some questions so those with more knowledge could concisely inform you. If you look at the CM:BS news page http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=334&Itemid=576 you might be forgiven in thinking that there are no expansions planned. But of course we have to jump down his throat that he dare question spending $60. Imagine replying like this.... Yea $60 is kind of expensive, but I've gotten really good value for the money. There is a lot of content included with CM:BS and a bunch of user made content for you to access. (maybe link to the scenario depot here?). You can see some of the added features since CM:SF on this page http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=338&Itemid=583 and there is always the demo available here http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=340&Itemid=584 Right now we're expecting an CM:BS expansion somewhere around (insert date here). Imagine that, helpful, informative, non-argumentative. But why would we want to do that? When we can reply like this: It is possible for people to hold views that are in opposition from each other without being petty. I mean this guy has posted nine times. Five in the T-72 Balkans on Fire forum between 2010 and 2012 and four times in this thread. I'm sure he has left with a positively sterling opinion on Battlefront and the forum users. And of course we were perfectly right to drag him down as quickly as we can because this 9 post lurker is obviously a troll who wants to destroy Battlefront. Maybe next time someone says something you don't agree with you can not immediately go on the attack. If you are really triggered by the possibility that someone thinks $60 is expensive you can just turn off your computer and not reply.

Ah, yea. I have CM:BN and CM:BS so I might try doing a port one of these days. I'm not sure if you saw these, but I made a port of a series of CM:RT maps that may be of some interest to you.

You don't need to remove every building. Only the unique pre-made buildings. This is annoying but not prohibitive on most maps. Any of the modular buildings can remain. If terrain tiles are causing issues I suspect that you can mass paint the offending area with a basic terrain type.

I did some porting a while back and found that unique, non-modular buildings, would cause the editor to crash. A modular building (2x2, for example) appears to be standard in the code and have a texture per game. While the unique buildings (Orthodox Church, for example) is unique to the game and will crash if brought to a different game. It has been a while, but I also believe that any terrain tile that isn't present in the game will also cause a crash. So a snow tile will crash a game that doesn't have one.

I suspect it also has to do with the limitations of CM's animations. A soldier is hit on a 1:1 basis (does the bullet intersect his model) and if there is a hit saving throws are occasionally had. This means that the standard position for a HT gunner (standing up, back straight) gives him a fair amount of exposure to fire whereas in reality he might be able to make himself a relatively small target. Notice that the gunner could likely lose a foot of exposure by bending down, and could essentially hull down himself to whatever his target is. However, he instead stands straight backed creating a man sized range target. In fact all the men in the rear of the track also move to a full standing position when they could crouch low and rest their rifles along the top of the armor. I tried to track down some images of soldiers firing from HTs, but I largely found in-transit photos. However, here is a German Soldier firing from the cupola of some armored vehicle. While exposed he is much lower to the body of the vehicle than CM troops are.

To an extant I agree with CptMiller, but there is a difference between having entire platoons of Stryker Dragoons and having them as company/battalion level assets, or even as 1 per plt. Does anyone know how these 30mm Strykers are going to fit within the formation? IIRC the MGS was a company level asset that could be doled out when needed, and the MGS itself was a bit of a failure. My only experience with Strykers has been in various sims, but I've often found situations where greater and more prolific HE chucker would have been useful. The Mk.19 often falls short and a Javelin is hardly economical. In those cases either the MGS or Dragoon would be a welcome sight.

I've been enjoying the discussion on this thread, but I honestly don't get the absolute need to convince each other of your positions. Oleksandr has laid out his reasoning several times and you might not agree with it, and that is fine. I personally don't agree with his opinion on it, but I think his line of thinking is interesting to read. I also enjoyed reading the strong replies to his position. BTR, Chudacabra, Erwin, AKD, HerrTom, CptMiller's first post (even if a bit snippy) all added good content to the thread. It created a richer conversation about something that would otherwise not be talked about. I wouldn't have AKD's link for instance without this discussion. But holy **** guys. Do you absolutely need to string together a bunch of snarky, personally attacking posts that don't add any functional content to the thread just because someone likes the design ethos of the BMP-3 (Our IFV is both a weapon and a VBIED), seriously? Like RSulomon, is Oleksandrs' opinion really such a big deal that you have to make some weirdo post asking if he understands opinions can be wrong? Great guys, Oleksandr doesn't like the Stryker, many of you have made cogent arguments to the opposite of that, but do we really need to write a bunch of internet trash so you can "win" your argument? We don't need this whiny internet trash. Now ironically my complaint about internet trash has put further litter in this thread. But I expect better conduct here than some random reddit thread where every user is just trying to declare themselves the winner of some ****ty internet argument. Let **** go sometimes, you don't always need to "win"...

@Battlefront.com I had originally purchased a Paradox Interactive copy of CM:SF, ordered a boxed copy of the Marines expansion, and iirc ordered a digital copy of the British expansion. Would this setup still be allowed access to the discount, or is it limited to CM:SF copies from Battlefront? Or is this information that will be released at a later date? Thank you

I've been away from playing CM since Black Sea was released. However, in that time I've been playing quite a bit of Arma 3 with a group. In that game you have a reasonably good simulation of small scale infantry/combined arms combat. However, the AI is too weak to adequately conduct an attack. This is a problem in Player vs AI scenarios as a platoon of players could easily defeat a force 2 times their size (or greater depending upon composition). The solution that some Arma 3 scenario designers have come upon is essentially to accept that the AI is weak on the attack and enlarge the AI attacking force to compensate for this weakness. A platoon sized attack force is doubled, a company gets another platoon or two attached. While this is technically unrealistic the goal isn't to recreate a battle but to give the defender the feeling of fighting a desperate defense against an enemy. Relating this back to Combat Mission. I wonder if defensive scenarios would be more fun to play if the eschewed realistic force densities in order to give the player the experience of a defense against a stronger opponent. Aim for a realistic experience rather than a realistic setting. Of course this doesn't solve the problem of dealing with an operational layer because force preservation and sizes matter a lot more than in one off scenarios.

The issue is that writing a "smart" ai is really hard, Like incredibly hard. The tac ai doesn't have a super solid view of the map and it has to make the best case judgment nearly instantly and hopefully that works out. It can't know that 10 meters back is safe ground (at least not efficiently and that is the important part here). It does know that woods provides a concealment bonus. So it picked what it knew.

I have noticed that all troops seem to cower more than in the WW2 titles and CM:SF. Its odd though. They seem to cower quite a lot at the beginning of an engagement before any targets are spotted (even from relatively great distance from fire). However, once they spot and enemy and join the fighting the cower much less. Even as the total amount of firepower used increases.

To an extent I think it is important to remember that visually secondaries look pretty tame in CM. A catastrophic explosion that cooks off all the onboard ammunition of a BMP-3 wouldn't be leaving a crater with an almost perfect BMP-3 model sitting in it. A catastrophic explosion just turned a 20 ton BMP into 20 tons of shrapnel.

I didn't mean to imply that and I don't think it is true. Doing AI design for a QB map must be an incredibly hard task. I've done it for three scenarios with hand picked units. It was tough and time consuming then, I can't imagine what it would be like not knowing what is on the field. For example, in one AI plan I made I had two platoons of infantry attacking a fortified position with the support of 2 T-72s. I know that the infantry alone cannot take the position. So I have the infantry move to a concealed location and then wait for the tanks (using a trigger) to reach an overwatch position from which they can lay fire into the defenders. Thereby suppressing them. On top of all of that I know what the defender has so I know that the overwatch position won't be watched by a pair of ATGMs, and that the enemy has no heavy armor. So the tanks arrive at the overwatch position and begin engaging enemies. The 2 platoons of infantry are triggered and begin their attack. The AI attack works out really well and looks pretty intelligent. It took me about 2 hours to get it working perfectly. Now imagine planning that attack when you don't know what the attacker or defender will have. It might be 5 tanks and some LMGs, it might be 3 platoons of infantry, it might be a platoon of infantry and a battery of 105s. There are an almost infinite number of combinations that could be fielded and on top of all that your AI groups are necessarily limited. And what might be an intelligent attack when your enemy has only Mechanized infantry might look incredibly stupid when they are packing a bunch of elite Abrams.

An important thing to remember is that the AI is essentially done by the scenario designer. QBs by their random nature will have worse AI than scenarios all things being equal. It also means that the AI can vary in difficulty greatly between any scenario.