Pelican Pal

Yes, I am familiar with the "saving throw" system. I used to play Warhammer 40k extensively and am very familiar with the mechanic. However, the important thing here is that a 75% saving throw is still worse than no saving throw. Once again the most important factor is straight up not being hit. No saving throw means no danger of being killed at all. Which is obviously the best choice. I strongly disagree with you here. It isn't important that the AI be able to adequately match player capabilities. They currently can't and should not be expected to match human capabilities. All the AI needs to do is to put up a show of competency. That is it. We just need it to appear intelligent, to appear to give a challenge, to appear competent. It will never, or at least, never in our lifetimes be better than humans. So what is the harm in an SOP system that allows us some basic commands based on engagements that are occuring? It will give the player some more commands with which to navigate the battlefiend and come out with them feeling more in control of their units than would otherwise be possible.

CM models thing 1:1. Even if you allow for some amount of fudging (which there is) the actual stance and location a soldier takes does matter. The vulnerability of men in half-tracks is a solid example of that. But they are not. Or to put it differently. CM's hard coded movement commands do a poor job of replicating intelligent movement. This is largely an issue of SOPs so we are probably **** out of luck when it comes to a solution being found.

It is very possible to run cautiously. It won't be as quick as a flat out run but you can do it. You are doubled over and your eyes are watching to your front and scan left and right of you. You put cover or concealment between you and where you suspect enemies are and try to maintain a piece of cover nearby that you can dive into.

Check out the men who spotted the unit. If they are all visually unaided riflemen it does seem like an odd situation. However, most US and German squads will have a couple pairs of binoculars and a possibly a scoped rifle, and any armor will have a scopes through which to view targets. With these visual aids it isn't unusual to spot active men once attention is brought to their position. It is really easy to forget how much a scope or pair of binos can help you see something in the distance when you are just flying around the game map. But most squads will have at least a few items that will help them improve their long range vision. If you happen to have one of the Arma games installed you could easily setup a little editor scenario to help you visuallize the benefits of binoculars and scopes. As far as spotting moving men in a building. I suspect it is largely because most people use quick or faster commands to move around. Eight or more men running quickly though a house will be pretty easy to spot. Frankly I think the game would be really improved by a movement command that combined hunt, quick, and assault into a sort of move quickly but stay low and be prepared for combat command. There isn't a reason that a squad of men can't run quickly though a house without being spotted. We just don't have a command to represent that. All of our movement commands are of pretty extreme types of movement. A nice inbetween would be helpful.

I'd be interested. Send me a PM and we can set something up.

This seems to be an unhappy medium that we have to settle with because of the limits of CM. While these are half squads they definitely should be splittable. The current system leads to an absurd number of unrealistic situations that artificially hamstring the Italians. On the other hand allowing the squads to be split would allow the player to abuse that ability to create a whole bunch of unrealistic situations. Personally going the Soviet route makes a whole lot more sense to me as it seems to allow the player full tactical flexibility while realistically limiting the capabilities of the Italian half squads to operate as quarter squads. *My understanding of the Soviet solution is that a split squad out of CC with their Squad Leader takes a morale hit. Assuming this is true the Italian morale hit could just be much larger than what the current Soviet version is.

I would agree that the current behavior isn't particularly good. MG gunners very often open up only to get picked off. The risk is rarely worth the reward. The only cases where the MG should fire is if the vehicle is opened up or if infantry are close assaulting it from the front.

You just create an insane amount of busywork for the player. They could still literally do the same thing they do by deslecting a unit, but it would takes minutes to do instead of seconds.

If understand your proposal it isn't very good. So You are playing the role of a company commander. 3rd Platoon on the far flank has lost its radioman. Losing its C2 link to the company commander. Under your rules I would no longer be able to tell 3rd platoon what to do. Which is absurd. Because 3rd Platoon is still capable of acting as a independent element in battle and executing actions on its own. They would still be able to actively defend they village they were in and then decide to pull back to the rest of the company if they get pushed too hard. Combat Mission is a game where you command every role from Regimental Commander to Fireteam Leader. Even if the regiment's commander isn't able to maintain c2 to the fireteam leader the FL can still act independently and intelligently.

The current UI also gives you C2 info. No need to play iron. Command lines, if you have 3.0, give you the information, each unit has a C2 chain that displays if they are in contact with their one above, and each HQ unit has a menu tab listing the units under it's control and whether or not they are in C2.

I'm not complaining about my personal experiences. I admit I come off harshly, and I don't particularly care that people comeback harshly at me. Although I try to avoid doing so towards new users. I'm talking about the guy who has 1-2 posts in the forum and comes in a little brashly. Sure you can come back kinda harshly on him, but that doesn't show well on this forum. It wouldn't hurt folks to calmly tell him that his tone isn't appreciated and then legitimately answer his question.

If BFC talked to Steam I believe they are under obligation to not reveal any details of a possible deal. We've gotten some info about what a Steam release actually entails over the years, but it has been in tiny amounts from disparate places. I think the core issues that exists are that they need to have people work on getting the game Steam ready. Which is a problem because there are only two developers. Any work on Steam will take away from their current release schedule. And that they are not confirmed to have a bigger audience. Now we've heard that Steam takes a 30% cut and doesn't force sales and whatnot. So lets say they sell 50 games at $50. That means that here BFC gets $2,500. Now a Steam release at the same price and the same sales would net them $1,750 after the 30% Steam cut. So to get the same income they would need to sell a little under 80 copies. So they need to be aware that unless they get over that number of sales they will be losing money if their current customers buy from Steam instead of their store. The numbers, of course, are made up. However, they need to be sure that if they cannibalize their customers they still come out ahead which requires an certain number of new sales. These new sales can't be confirmed so they are playing it safe. As for DRM. I think a game like CM doesn't need it. There simply isn't enough of a population to make piracy effective. I think right now you can get CM:SF and the Marines module and maybe unpatched CM:BN, and that is only if you decide to wait for about a week to download it.

The UI has a lot of unknowns in it and just isn't very clear. A few examples: We still don't have a good identifier for opened up tanks, when units are sharing tactical information and with whom they will do it, what units will share ammo, and a lack of SOPs which is pretty constantly an issue and force players to rely on a handful of premade commands. Like it works, it just could be a lot better. As for elitism. This forum is pretty rife with it at times. The last time CM on Steam came up there were pretty constant comments about how Steam gamers just weren't good enough for CM. That they needed flashy graphics. That CM was too complicated for them. And then you have the occasional new person who gets pounced on because their tone wasn't perfect, or god forbid they didn't know that forum member X has a vast history of doing Y. So, of course, they should of have done their research on every person in the forum before commenting so that they would know everyone's background perfectly. To pretend that this forum is always welcoming to new comers is to ignore a number of examples where that didn't occur. And sure, maybe that person could have been more polite. However, that doesn't mean that y'all need to start bitching them out. Just answer the question they have in a polite manner. Maybe ask them to be more polite. But I've seen one too many threads that have 2 pages of regulars ****ting on some new guy. ian.leslie, there was a steam group back when CM:SF was newish. I played a few real time games on it. I think it died during the tail end of CM:SF and was never really revived by any subsequent release.

That argument is used pretty consistently here to defend against attempts to expand the small niche that CM currently inhabits. "God forbid the peasants touch our game!" Anyway, would more users water down what CM is? I don't think so. There are solid examples of a series getting bigger but not being watered down. It is mostly up to the designer rather than the community. The UI is definitely passable, but it could use a hell of a lot of refinement. There is a ton of stuff that is poorly documented, poorly displayed, a ton of interactions that aren't properly explained. I agree with BG that CM:SF and CM:X1 provide some great getting your foot wet options.

I wouldn't say one random guy on the internet counts for enough to discount an argument. Last time I checked the moon landing happened even though multiple people can be found you will claim otherwise.

Not sure how you figured that. The new system is decently acceptable but the previous system where a download link would expire was poorly done, and deserved user anger.

How accurate is this information? I'm currently playing Red Orchestra 2. The server browser says there are over a 1,000 people onlince currently. This website says there are 88.

I can get why they don't want to. Cannibalizing their own sales is probably number one. Worst case: Everyone who buys directly from them instead buys from Steam and they get no new customers. Results in the same number of sales and 30-40% less cash. They would need to net an unknown number of new customers for it to start being a gain because they would lose current customers to Steam. On the other hand I think the CMX1 series would do nicely as a Steam release.

Just stopping by to point out that this is Matrix's second game on Steam. The first was Close Combat which was on the top sellers list for a few days.

It is also important to note that the LOS line will always originate from your unit's current location, but will actually be tracking LOS from the waypoint.

Searching through upwards of 5 threads with 100s of posts in three different locations is not something I am going to expect people to do. Beyond that there are three sub-forums each with their own set of threads and people who only read that forum.

Okay so there are three CMww2 sub-forums. During the tank rider discussion I believe there were at least five threads. The initial CM:BN forum thread The initial CM:FI forum thread. The initial CM:RT forum thread. <- not sure why The 2nd CM:BN forum thread. and the 2nd CM:RT forum thread. Now this is probably not an accurate memory of all the threads, but it is pretty close. Steve answered the "why no tank riders" question in like the 5th page of the initial CM:BN thread. So if you were not specifically following that single thread you would never see BFC's answer. This resulted in continuing discussion in every other thread and the creation of new threads as the old ones fell off the front page and went dormant. So if BFC instead made an announcement thread or a sticky thread that stayed around for like 2-3 weeks saying "This is why no tank riders" the entire forum would have that information.

Personally I wouldn't be a fan of using something outside of the forum to collate this information, but to each his own. A simple sticky that addressed much talked about topics or to give general updates on unpleasant bugs though would be nice. If BFC is already answering the question I don't see why they can't just put it in a more prominent location.

Currently BFC answers questions in a variety of threads which is kinda insufficient for the problems at hand. Take tank riders for example. Many players expected tank riders out of the box. It was not clearly communicated that they were not part of the upgrade until after a few days of sale. It was communicated to players because a number of threads popped up on all three CM WW2 sub-forums mentioning or complaining about the lack of tank riders. BFC then proceeded to answer why tank riders were not included in a minority of these threads. This resulted in a number of customers in a number of threads not getting the information and new threads still popping up trying to find answers to why there were no tank riders. If instead of individually answering these questions in a number of threads a sticky post was made explaining why there were no tank riders the entire forum going player base would know. Instead of a subset of it. The use of sticky posts updating the player base on some of the larger issues would go a long way in providing better communication.

I would look carefully at the features list. 3.0 doesn't add all that much to the game by itself and most of the advantages are in scenario design. Which hasn't seem to have taken off that much. Importantly, there are no tank riders and currently no flame weapons.