Pelican Pal

More detailed information about vehicles and units. A little encyclopedia article (think a wikipedia article) that gives you some basic background about that type of unit. Maybe with additional info related to the time period that the game/module covers. If anyone has played the Total War games, especially the first Rome game, you'll be familiar with this. In addition to that basic info about the unit's capabilities would be nice. During QB purchase you don't no that a PSW 222 as a 20mm autocannon and a PSW 223 has a MG34. What is the diff. between an early and late PzIV?

My experience has been the opposite. An infantry grenade attack will result in heavy track damage at minimum if not something worse. The bigger issue is getting infantry within that grenade throwing range and then getting them to throw the grenade. My biggest issue with the current abstraction is that it can occur as long as the men are in grenade range. So up to 25M and maybe a little more.

Speaking of blue lines. When you have a blue targeting line and your men are then unable to fire is probably the most frustrating occurrence in the game. It is the one time when the game straight up lies to you about the state of the game.

Action squares and spotting cycles (it would be fabulous if this was an user settable option) mean that there can be a lot of weird spotting things happen. Personally I don't often run into many issues where my guys can't see something they should see. Generally I find odd moments where a guy jogging through a field spots an enemy tank 300M away through woods, buildings, burning wrecks, and more woods. But generally I think spotting works adequately well and while I occasionally have to work around vehicle spotting and action spots it usually isn't an issue. The game isn't perfect by any means and playing within its confines means learning the ins and outs of the system to some extent. As a side note regarding night combat. If it all possible try going outside on a moonless or near moonless night in an area with few or no lights. Your ability to see is incredibly poor. Barring that check out this gameplay video from Arma 3.

I'm with Womble on this. With just small arms you will generally need to have your lmg section pin the defenders down while you have another section move to finish them off. Whether the defender will vacate their position solely based on your firepower depends pretty heavily on you causing casualties which isn't the strong suit of small arms. If at all possible I would use a Bren section with target light to suppress the occupants and then have an assault section close and grenade them. If that isn't possible target light should keep their heads mostly down while not burning all your ammo. So you can maneuver around the enemy without worrying about them for now. And finally. Explosives are your friends.

I really appreciate that a new user can be jumped by so many people on their second post in the forum. Seriously guys grow up. No one has adequately answered his post and everyone is surprised is when he reacts negatively to a facetious comment. For a second I thought I was part of a welcoming and friendly community. I will now illustrate how someone should have answered his post. Each game that Battlefront releases comes with two campaigns. One from the allied and one from the axis perspective. So while there is a lot of campaign content they will only release two campaigns per release. It is what you are paying for. Scenario makers are free to create additional campaigns. However, campaigns take a long time to adequately test and design so they are generally out of the reach of individual designers. If you want some more campaigns you will have to wait for the release of the next module which will once again contain two new campaigns. ... But seriously guys. Grow up. Be adults.

I'm fine with BFC charging whatever they charge. It is their product to sell. I'll put money into it until it is too expensive for me and I am also fine with that. I totally understand that they have a system that works and I do not begrudge them that system. I've said that repeatedly. What I am arguing against is this dogmatic argument that BFC must charge a premium for their games. That they must charge $10 for updates, that CM is so niche that this is the only option. That if they charged less money they wouldn't be in business. I'm arguing against comments like this: I'm not begrudging BFC their marketing choice, but what I am saying is that it is not the only one. Furthermore, I don't see why people need to go around justifying the marketing strategy. ASL Veteran, yea I get that. What you can charge is dependent upon your target audience, their income, the number of them. Personally I think that CM has a bigger audience than we realize or at least a bigger potential audience than we realize. Personally I think CM could do well on Steam. It looks good enough and with a decent in game tutorial it could do pretty well. Test the waters with CMBN + modules at some point. sburke, if RO doesn't count then look at Paradox Interactive. They've been around since 1995 selling grand strategy games of all things. Not two months ago they were selling most of their games for $15 or less on Steam. Womble, I always wish they took the Company of Heroes route, and allowed users who owned content use it against those who did not. If I bought Commonwealth let me play with those formations against my opponent who just has teh base game.

I would enjoy reading it.

Ian. Leslie, I'm not sure how I counted you. I would have to go look up your post again to see what you said. Generally speaking I labeled their intro game as the first game they purchased. This poll of course just gives us a look at who makes up the forums. I also I think we can probably extrapolate it to some of BFC's core customer base. However, there were only 54 respondents and even if every single person purchased every CM product BFC would only make $21,600. So obviously BFC must have more customers. Actually assuming that BFC has 5 employees that each make $40,000 per year (a fine sum as long as you aren't living in a large city) they would need 4,000 customers to buy a single $50 product per year. Now after taxes, even at a rate of 50%, they would actually only need 8,000 people to purchase a $50 product per year. So I suspect that they could actually survive only a relatively small customer base as long as they base consistently spends between $50 and $100 per year.

The only alternative is not to make less money. Like that isn't how business works. Would BFC make more money if they sold each game for $150 and each module for $75? Cause that is what you are saying. Right now I've spent $75 on CM and I've gotten CMBN and CMRT. I am not going to spend another $150 dollars for CMFI and the CMBN modules. Now I might spend $75 for all of those items. In that case BFC didn't lose $150, They made $75. Which is the basis of price points. Not all of their customers will buy everything they are able to. So while at the current price 10 people might be buying at a lower price 25 people will. Per item this is less but in total it is more income. Okay, Red Orchestra 2 and I'll throw the original in just to meet your time requirement. RO1 has literally been free on multiple occasions. While RO2 and the expansion for that game has been under $10 multiple times. Now combined I've played those two games 7 years and I have a logged (cause Steam tracks time played) 410 hours in RO2. They even release free content fairly regularly. Tripwire Interactive (the developers of Red Orchestra 1/2 and Rising Storm the Pacific expansion for RO2) were founded in 2005. Unfortunately the year is only 2014. So they have only been in business for just short of a decade. However, they seem to be doing quite well. In fact they are preparing to release more games as we speak. Another pretty stellar example is Paradox Interactive. Anyway the point is charging more money for a game does not equal a higher income. If I only have $40 to spend I won't be buying your $50 product while I will buy a $40 dollar product. And while CM is pretty unique (the only real competitor being Graviteam tactics. Although I think I also remember another game called Panzer Command or something?) Now BFC has survived this long on their current pricing model and as far as I am concerned they can continue doing so. However, it is not the only way to market these games. It is one of many options. Any number of these options could cause BFC to make more or less money than they are currently. It depends on some pretty in depth market research stuff to make the right decision. We don't have that info and BFC might not even have it. I totally understand that they do not want to rock the boat. They have a system that works, but it isn't the only system that can.

We all to some extent accept the price BFC is charging. It does mean I spend significantly less money than I might on CM. And I will also say that I don't know BFCs current monetary situation. None of us can know that, and if they are doing fine and dandy charging what they currently charge then I see no reason for them to stop. They can charge whatever and I will give them money according to what I think it is worth. However, I will say that the idea of CM being so niche that it must have high prices, that CM must have high prices due to free updates, that CM must charge for upgrades ($10 nowadays will get you games you can literally spend 100s of hours playing), and that CM is an amazing value are not truths. These pricing policies are more in line with boardgames than digital and it has been proven that niche games can sell for non-premium prices, that they can provide free upgrades(even free content), that $10 can get you a game that will last 100s of hours and provide the above. Now I understand the BFC doesn't want to rock the boat. They have a system that works for them, and why fix what isn't broken. However, nothing about CM makes the BFC system the only viable option.

yep http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods

Paying the premium price that CM games are (especially with multiple modules) I would expect BFC to do a better job at avoiding community fragmentation. This is literally the same system that Call of Duty uses every year to get hundreds of dollars out of players.

So i finally went through the thread: found here http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=115676&highlight=Pelican+Pal Some info I put together real quick. There were 53 useable responses in the 7 page thread. 83% of respondents found the CM series before 2006. Of that 70% found CM before 2003. CMBO was the first CM game for 64% of respondents. Only 7% of users had a CMx2 game as their first game. I tried to format this list several times but it only gave me trouble. So this is what y'all get. Date From Game 2008 CGW CMBB 2004 local game store CMAK 2000 local game store CMBO 1999 gaming mag CMBO 2000 PC Gamer CMBO 2002 BF store CMBB 1998 search CSL CMBO 1998 BF store CMBO 1999 Close Combvat forum CMBO 2002 ? CMBO 1999 Bfstore CMBO 2013 BF store ? 1999 computer gaming world CMBO 2005 magazine CMAK 2001 CGW CMBO 2000 forums CMBO 2000 forums CMBO 1999 BF store CMBO 1999 BF store CMBO 2000 BF store CMBO 1999 CGW CMBO 2000 NY times CMBO 2000 PC gamer CMBO 2009 word of mouth CMAK 2004 pc gamer ? 2011 internet wom CMBN 2002 ? ? 1999 SPWaW CMBO 2000 WOM CMBo 2010 forums CMBN 1999 AFV News journal CMBO 2010 PC Gamer CMBN 2003 forums ? 2014 bf store CMRT 2000 CGW CMBO 2002 CMAK 2009 Good Old Games CMBO 2003 PX CMBB 2002 magazine ? 1999 web CMBO 1999 BF store CMBO 2000 Panzwe Elite Dev Group CMBO 2001 pc gamer CMBO 2000 forums CMBO 2000 pc strategy games CMBO 2004 WOM CMBB 2006 PX CMBO 2001 store CMBO 2003 BF store CMBB 2000 pc gamer CMBO 2001 forums CMBO 1999 WOM CMBO

1. There are two primary locations for custom missions. http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314 ^The repository. Which is Battlefronts hosted location. http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/ Green as jade which is community hosted. They both have different stuff on them so be sure to check them both. 2. Others have answered your MP question allthough I was under the impression that it would not allow your opponent to select forces that you did not own. Apparently this is not true? Perhaps if you created the QB it would limit what your opponent could purchase? ^This is really for those experienced in MP to answer. If it really just lets people pick whatever forces regardless of module ownership it is an excessively poor system. 3. BFC seems to think that high prices are the way to market their games. I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future although I would love for that to happen. Just be very particular about what you are going to buy. There is no reason to drop $90 if you aren't interested in what any individual module offers. Play a lot of demos and find what you like the best. Also while you may enjoy the game now you may not get enjoy it as much as others do so jumping all the way in may not be the best idea. 4. Currently they are working on expansion for the Normandy game, Italy game, Eastern Front game, and producing a modern combat game set in the near future Ukraine. Once again I will say that these games are absurdly expensive if you buy any quantity of them so be very particular about where you send your money.

Green as Jade might have some maps that the repository does not. DO you want AI plans? If not you could open up the master maps in the editor and quickly cut out some open ground QB maps for use against an opponent.

On the otherhand i think that reaction shows the power of having open modding tools for the community. Jagged Alliance 2 with the 1.13 community patch is in many ways better than Jagged Alliance: Back in action. I always wonder what cool things CM could do if it was as moddable.

I would learn with whatever you decide to play with. WeGo and realtime have their own idiosyncrasies that subtly change how you give orders to your men. I know when I give a platoon orders the resulting orders will be significantly different if I am playing WeGo or RT? Also an armor pro-tip that I feel that is often overlooked. Treat a tank platoon like a squad of men. You wouldn't ever send one guy to secure a house. So why would you send one tank to do something? Your tank's survivability increases greatly when they have buddies around to provide support.

On the operational map you control platoons(?) on a square grid. When two platoons meet to engage they can draw in nearby platoons. So you never really start with a gigantic force but as the battle develops more and more troops from surrounding areas will begin to enter the combat zone. So over the course of a battle you'll go from a single platoon to a company sized engagement. I should say that I'm recalling most of this from memory so the specifics might be a little off. However, this is generally how it works. I'm not sure if you can stack up platoons to attack a single sector or assign platoons to support each other. Although I suspect that you can because that makes sense.

I personally didn't enjoy it, however I do know it as a lot of fans. I think the main difference is that in Graviteam tactics you tell the squad to "go to that house" and the squad figures it out as best the squad AI can. While in CM you split the squad into two fireteams and have the bound through the lowground up to the house. You then have them move in short bounds with 15 second pauses and target briefly commands until the house has been secured. In other words CM is much more micromanagement game.

I'm a big fan of all the paradox games. They are absolutely unique in what they do, and they are grand strategy games that aren't made for grogs and I appreciate that immensely.

They are all T-34 85s. The larger turret/gun seems to be the cause of the confusion.

I have an HP Envy 5 somethings series. Really great laptop for work and web browsing, and the build quality is really nice. It doesn't do too hot with games though.

While that may have been a problem in the bad old days at this point that isn't true unless you have some fetish for obscure hardware. Software will work across the board on custom built machines.

I had an old Dell XPS 400 back in '07 or so. It was a pretty solid computer and I didn't have any problems with it. The swap is pretty good. I mean you are getting a better computer out of it. Personally though I think you would be better off not getting a gaming laptop. They are incredibly expensive compared to a equivalent desktop. For $1,900 you could get a comparable desktop and a pretty solid laptop. Probably for less than that price too. Laptops also have a pretty strict life so in a few years when it starts showing its age there won't be a lot you can do to fix it. Hell for $800 you could build a desktop that would get you equivalent performance.