Pelican Pal

Because Valve/Steam adds an incredible amount of value to games. I have 412 games on Steam (thanks cheap humble bundles). Having those games on Steam makes my life easier. Steam gives an incredible amount of added value that makes it worthwhile. The Steam almost monopoly does not hurt me. All my friends who play games have Steam accounts so we can easily arrange games, I can easily reinstall and uninstall any game I own. A number of my games use Steam for multiplayer which is a ton better than just about any other service. A lot of them use Steam to save my settings and saved games to the cloud so I can access them on any computer. A number of my Steam games use the workshop to make it much easier to download mods. Oh and I can now stream games from my gaming PC to my living room TV. On top of all that I get to have every single one of my games behind a single service. Why would I want to have my games split between Steam, GamersGate, Direct2Drive, Impulse, Games for Windows Live, Desura, and GameStop when I could just have them on Steam? gog.com is my only real exception that I'll make. Some games I do appreciate having DRM free so I have a decent sized collection their, but it is nowhere near what I have on Steam.

I'm going to do a proper write up once everyone stops responding/the thread dies. However, from what I've read so far nearly everyone here is a relic of the early to mid 2000s. The newest people are circa 2010. Which is what I expected, but is still a little unfortunate. Although once again this is the forum population. So we don't really know super well how this conforms to the rest of the CM community.

While I think in the company sized game it isn't that much micromanagement. CM seems to be going more and more of the direction of company+ to two company engagements, and as battles get larger what is too much micro becomes stricter.

I'm a big fan of Against Me! Hard to beat a good punk band live.

So discussion in the Combat Mission on Steam thread has got me thinking. Where do people hear about Combat Mission? So I would like to make a poll of sorts. Detailing when you first heard of CM, the first game you purchased, and when you first heard about CM. I originally read a CM:BB AAR in a Tom Vs Bruce article in Computer Gaming World. The magazine was a few years old, but I read it in 2008. I later found a copy of CM:SF in the bargain bin of my local gamestore sometime in 2009 and purchased it.

See I don't think this is particularly true. Like I got into CM because of a cheap copy of CM:SF in the bargain bin and an old article in Computer Gaming World that I remembered reading in middle school. But where do new players find out about CM? Like I said before CM has precious little traction outside of some backwater review sites and very niche gaming sites. And I don't think CM is a niche game. It looks nice, it is relatively intuitive, it does something few other games do. I'm sure more people are interested in CM than know about it. I just don't see how they can know about it.

majorbly50 - Prices are set by the developer/publisher not Steam. Paradox is also not giving away profits. You can't give away what you don't have. There exist a population of people who will buy a game at a certain price. After those people are exhausted sales drop. If you drop the price you then have a new population of people who are willing to pay. To put it simply not everyone will buy a game for $50. In fact there are people who will pay $5.00 for games that they don't really want. Now you have a choice of whether or not you want to do this. Paradox does, and it appears to be working out great for them. They are releasing more games of higher quality than ever before. It won't necessarily work for BFC. Selling games for less is not always a bad thing. Sure 10 people buying $80 worth of product is going to net you $800, but 100 people buying $20 will net you $2,000. Erwin - That is provably false. Steam sells Close Combat, Arma, god knows how many Paradox grand strategy games, and much more. Hearts of Iron 3 is not a race to the lowest common denominator. H1nd covered most of the player benefits for a game like CM. Steam also allows for a single purchase to work on any supported platform. For example, if I buy Civilization 5 it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux without me having to buy multiple copies. It also allows me to stream games I play from my gaming desktop to any computer in my local area.

Of video gamers in general. Most of the demographic stuff that I have seen has ignored P&P and tabletop folks. PC and consoles combined. Console release dates: Nintendo Entertainment System: Released 1985 - 61 million sold Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Released 1991 - 49 million sold Nintendo 64: Released 1997 - 32 million sold PlayStation: Released 1994 - 102 million PlayStation 2: Released 2000 - 155 million XBox: Released 2001 - 24 million That is 423 million consoles sold between 1985 and 2001 (ignoring the considerable number sold by Sega, Atari, 3DO and a number of other companies). Assuming someone was a 10 year old when they got the console they would be somewhere between 38 and 23 right now. This is also ignoring all PC gamers. Point is that people grew up with games and they didn't necessarily stop playing them when they got older. Even if only %10 still play games with any regularity that would be nearly half a million people over 23. A few edits: This list of million selling game consoles on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_million-selling_game_consoles gets us to 792 million consoles sold from 1976 to 2001. That also expands our age range to 23-47. I also question how well the word gets out about CM. Mainstream PC magazines/websites don't review the games and as far as I can tell don't mention them in previews. If you look at the CM:RT reviews they were all done by what I would call backwater websites. How does someone who is a casual PC gamer who enjoys strategy games (lets just say they play Company of Heroes, Unity of Command, and Close Combat) how do they find out about CM? I don't know.

Oh jesus... Really? I greedily want cheaper games from BFC so I am hatching this plan to get them on Steam, and of course you are some great defender of the niche wargame? Really? Edit: Games on Steam are not magically cheaper. The developer still sets the price. It is the nature of most games to have numerous deep price cuts overtime to increase sales. Now this isn't always true, in fact the Call of Duty series and anything made by EA are great examples of a publisher refusing to do deep discounts. Deep discounts are not a requirement of Steam. As for impacting me. A possible increase in sales would result in more income which would result in more money which would result in a better CM. I would also get to have my CM games on Steam which, to be honest, would be wonderful. As a service nothing really compares with what Steam offers. "As for you, go waste your money on them other $20 dollar games and save your money then." Oh, of course I am wasting my money... How silly of me. Thanks for letting me know. "For some of us, the extra price is worth the value and could care less about how they stack up to what the rest of the gaming market does. Some things in life is worth the price. This is one of these cases." Which is why I've purchased $170+ dollars of CM games. Herr Oberst - Judging what people will and won't do from anecdotal evidence and these forums (especially these forums) is a bit hasty. If you are on this forum you are much more invested than nearly every other CM gamer there is. You are spending time not playing the game talking about the game. And once again Close Combat, a series with roots in ASL, was in the top 20 sellers for a period of 3-4 days. At one point being 3rd.

"Most high fidelity computer sims and cardboard wargames sell for that and a LOT more. " Which is why I don't buy them. They are really expensive for what you get. I rarely buy any games for more than $20. A single CM game is equivalent to 3-5 other purchases. it is not a small purchase.

I've seen this discussion come up numerous times and I realize that it won't actually go anywhere. At this point it is discussion for discussions sake. I sometimes wonder if have a cheaper base game would increase total sales dollars. Right now to even get into CM you have to drop $50. Which is a quite a bit of cash. So you have this big impediment to play and then a number of expansions that are also very expensive. Might there be more sales if the base game was cheaper? It would make the expansion more palatable cost wise, and two modules would net $80 in sales? + whatever the base game were to cost.

I actually got into CM because I found a $5 copy of CM:SF. I then spent around $80 on modules from BFC, and went on to purchase CM:BN and CM:RT. Anyway how pricing for games generally works, especially for bigger titles, is that you have numerous different price points that you sell at for a period of time. So a game starts at $60. For the first two weeks you will sell 100 copies a week at that price. After that you are reduced to selling 10 copies a week at that same price point. You now drop the price to $30 and sell 100 copies a week for two weeks. After those two weeks you are only selling 10 copies a week. So you drop the price to $10 and you are back to selling 100 copies a week. This is a gross simplification, but at each price point you have a sweet spot of people who are willing to buy your game. Once that sweet spot has been exhausted you drop the price

Womble, that was true until recently. At this point I believe it is now possible to retain previous versions of a game. Steam streaming works by sending a video codec from the main computer to the computer being streamed to. That computer then sends control commands back to the main computer. So CM is still being run on the main machine. Kendar, game price is up to the developers/publishers. If you notice the Call of Duty games very rarely dip in price.

"and one thing more , i newer sayed we are special but this game serie is madet more or less to adults " So those 70 million steam users are children? The average age of a PC gamer is like 30. I have 356 hours in Red Orchestra 2. The community isn't **** by any means. When there is a free weekend things go to hell because you have a huge influx of new players who have absolutely no experience playing the game. After those weekends are over there is about a week of craziness while people get used to it/drop out, and then everything is back to normal. Looking at the RO2 steam forum right now there are a bunch of threads discussion technical problems people are having, one guy asking for advice, some threads in Russian, and a post by a developer. There are not people complaining about the game. But the more important question is why does it matter that people complain? People are complaining in this forum right now. people complain all the time. CM is not an online experience. You play singleplayer or against a selected opponent. So what if Joe thinks he is buying Company of Heroes. You don't have to deal with him. Steam customer service handles any sort of refund and you can have a demo on the store page.

Once again I'll point out the Close Combat of all things is 3rd top seller on Steam. The idea that the Steam user base is too stupid for CM is bogus. There are somewhere around 70 million active Steam users and over 3,000 games being sold on the service. That is an incredible number of people and games. Games like Call of Duty and Arma 3 are being sold side by side. In fact Arma 3 is currently outselling the newest Call of Duty. At this very moment there are more people individually playing playing Arma 3, Civ 5, DayZ, War Thunder, and Europa Universalis IV than the newest Call of Duty. If you look at top games by player count Arma 3 is #10. Europa Universalis IV is #21. Kerbal Space Program, a game literally about rocket science, has only 200 fewer players than Call of Duty: Ghosts, and there are more people playing a grand strategy game about the age of exploration than Call of Duty... CM players are not some special bunch of more intelligent and more capable gamers. You have a this caricature of the average gamer that isn't true. You are not special.

I did a quick test involving a bunch of tanks and a prodigious amount of medium mortars. German king Tiger: Sustained multiple hits with no apparent damage. Tiger: Sustained multiple hits with no apparent damage. Panther: Sustained multiple hits with no apparent damage. Mark 4: One hit would penetrate and destroy the vehicle. The only P4 that survived was one that had a hit on its sideskirt. Soviet: T-34/76 and T34/85: Could take multiple hits but nearly all hits caused armor spalling. Tanks would be worn down taking track and optics damage and eventually be destroyed.

Well that is a pleasant surprise. I never bothered to check if the policy had changed.

BFC would be able to sell two copies of the game. From the BFC site and Steam. The Steam version would use Steam DRM and the BFC version would use the current DRM. As far as I know the DRM is only on activation so there shouldn't be any problems playing with people who have different versions. Personally I would love to have Steam DRM. BFC's whole download system is frankly pretty terrible compared to what is regularly offered anywhere else in gaming. I mean you have a limited number of downloads and can only download the game you paid $50ish dollars for a year. There are also a whole slew of weird issues that crop up that Steam doesn't have. As far as piracy goes I would be incredibly surprised if it was an actual problem for Combat Mission. The game simply isn't popular enough to maintain any sort of presence on torrent sites or to get cracks out fast enough to provide any sort of real damage to sales. This might be pushing it, but as far as I can find there are no copies of CM:FI or CM:RT on any torrent sites. While there are copies of CM:BN, CM:A, and CM:SF they are several patches behind where the official copy is and there are no modules hosted anywhere. Edit: actually I'm not sure that the current DRM would be forbidden on Steam. Many games still launch with Securom attached to it and Steam DRM. I also want to point out again that the newest Close Combat game, Gateway to Caen, is making money hand over fist. It is currently the 3rd top seller on Steam.

I would suggest not allowing your men to be killed by enemy fire. This is some poor advice and not relevant to the discussion at hand. Right now it seems like medium mortars (possibly artillery of all sorts) might be over modeled against armor. I wish there was an easier way to test this other than spamming massive artillery barrages and hoping for a hit.

Which is just absurd. The people on this forum represent a tiny minority of CM players (they must unless BFC is surviving off less than 100 sold copies per game). Last night Close Combat was in the top 10 best selling games on Steam. It is currently number 12. There is clearly a market for tactical wargames. BFC probably has good reasons for keeping CM off Steam, but I sincerely hope it isn't because CM needs to be protected from the filthy casuals.

I'm not so sure that is true. Looking at the top sellers list on Steam right now. Close Combat - Gateway to Caen is number #6 at $34.79 a copy. Right now it is selling the 6th most copies of games on Steam. Steam has millions of users so this is no small feat. Arma 3 has been a top seller a number of times as have other niche titles like Red Orchestra and a whole slew of indie titles that definitely aren't mainstream. I mean Papers Please has been a top seller a number of times and it is a border crossing simulator. You literally do paperwork. Edit: I would be interested in seeing CM sales before and after a (theoretical) Steam release with all kinds of other data. \ Just throwing a number around, lets say that Steam takes 50% of every sale. Now the first question is does the increased exposure make it a net gain in income? 50 BFC site sales would be equivalent to 100 Steam sales, but as long as Steam brought in 100 + N (where n > 0) BFC would technically be making a gain. However, if you end up cannibalizing your BFC website sales then you would need even more Steam sales to make up for the difference in lost revenue, and I'm certain a number of the CM players who are gamers would purchase from Steam over BFC. I know I would as the current DRM makes a Steam version of CM a purely positive gain on my part. Then you can do all kinds of fun things with sales.

Yea, that is more or less correct. Bug is kind of a fuzzy word without a really well defined meaning in colloquial conversation. IMO the central difference is that a design decision is deliberately chosen by whoever wrote the code while a bug is unintended. Personally I don't care what people call things and harping on about how it is a "design decision" and not a bug doesn't really get us anywhere.

The assumption is that 88 shells passing through the engine shouldn't leave the engine intact a high percentage of the time, and that BFC would agree with that. Therefore there would exist an error in how damage is calculated.

This would be a bug/a problem if it happened often. As far as I can tell this is currently a one off incident. There is no proof that this issue is a recurrent problem. If 50% or more of 88 shots through the engine block did not result in a destroyed engine then we could call it a bug. But right now we are currently in the area of "strange things happen in war"

I play Elite. Personally I feel that Iron just makes the game more annoying, not more realistic. I have to constantly unselect units to select new ones and there is just a whole lot more mental gymnastics that you have to go through.