kraze

Who said they didn't try? In the first night they launched nearly a hundred missile strikes to take out airfields and air defenses (that's how I learned that an S-300 launch sounds like a salute pop and can be heard 30km away). Most of those MISSED. Because russian precision munitions aren't precise at all. Not to mention all our planes weren't there thanks to US intelligence and, quite possibly, are not operating from Ukrainian airfields.

Looks like numbers aren't everything. Russians, as this weird parody of German nazis, truly believed in their exceptional superiority and the ability to "solve the Ukrainian question" in 2 days - as evidenced by COUNTLESS statements of their soldiers in online talks with Ukrainian bloggers who all were like "we gonna take Kyiv in 2 days tops, whole Ukraine in 2 weeks and then we will kill you all, so that us russians may finally take back our lands". The fact that the other side isn't just insurgents and civilians they are so used to murder and torture - but actually shoots back and kills them came as a shock to russians. And while they are shocked - their troops suffer low morale and will to fight (again, russians are used to kill unarmed civilians and insurgents, not so much an actual army) - so why not plug that hole with troops from the recently annexed Belarus?

I'm sorry what? Russian history can be traced at best back to 1721, when a former tatar vassal state Muscovy got its freedom and decided to suddenly be a part of "civilization". Russia has no relation to Rus. In fact Russia and Rus has literally as much in common as Romania and Rome. Rus and Rossiya are even spelled differently in russian. Rus was never xenophobic. In fact Rus and Lithuania eventually formed an alliance to fight off mongol invaders - actual ancestors of Russia through Muscovy. In fact Rus had the largest political representation in Great Duchy of Lithuania and Rus due to being the most populous part. Muscovy itself was a very savage muslim country that occupied its first Rus territory only in 1578 - Novgorod. Before that Muscovy-Russia had near zero territorial relation to Rus. Russia occupying some territory and stealing its history became a modus operandi since.

Any idea when the Steam release is happening?

Here's my personal all-in-one pack that also includes fixed Kieme's buildings. In his mod Kieme saved window textures with an incorrect transparency layer and as a result they all appear as an invisible square hole in the closest LOD - then immediately jump to fully opaque as you move the camera away. This download has that issue fixed. Also it includes the optional mod that replaces "dubok" soviet-style ukrainian camo with a modern digital one, that army realistically used universally in 2017. That digital one is present as an option in the mission editor / quick battle - but this one allows you to play as digicam UAF in a campaign and original missions. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ffSzeWSXm4wWCnynvm1vd3XwZzOz4-Ll/view?usp=sharing

No Black Sea module? Awwwww

Uh oh

your orders will get cancelled by the squad AI if they feel extremely threatened, get heavily suppressed, get killed en masse or already have broken morale due to being mowed down previously - it's only made worse if they don't have a commander within at least a visual hand signal range (ideally it should be a hearing range). The latter part isn't as critical in modern warfare titles where everybody has radios. Unless there's much stress - they will certainly not cancel orders or leave buildings. Maybe you are missing something? Sending them somewhere alone, without their immediate commander's support and any friendly troops present nearby and them spotting a lot of enemies (and especially armor) may force your troops to break down or panic.

This. This is so incredibly important in any strategy game that doesn't allow direct control over troops for a player. I mean - all those movement commands include an absolute disregard for an incoming fire. The command can just be a "modifier" for a waypoint (like "pause" or "deploy weapon") and would mean that in between the previous waypoint and the modified one as soon as bullets start coming TAC AI deletes all waypoints and hits the dirt. This can potentially save thousands... MILLIONS... of pixeltruppen lives all over the world!

This is interesting (if slightly removes the magic) - so it means that these are timed objectives as it was pre Red Thunder? Because I've played 5 QBs in CMSF2 thus far and somehow AI counterattacks just as I'm entering/occupying the objective... and then as I'm going for the next one - AI is attacking that one too. Am I that exceptionally lucky with timing?

I've noticed one thing is that in all QBs that I play - AI will counter-attack the objective if it loses it with forces it decides to keep in "reserve" (usually at the starting point). Yeah I know it's all smoke and mirrors like triggers and stuff - but apparently this is something I've never noticed in CMSF1/CMBS/CMBfN. So are there any plans for QB upgrade in Black Sea/Battle for Normandy/etc? I now find QBs truly enjoyable in CMSF2, almost like a typical "Battle" vs. AI minus the detailed briefing and more complicated scripting.

I like this change of rhetoric over the past 5 years when Steam was seemingly the enemy of all things money. But eh, better late than never, so :salute: Steam has a fairly large community which is extremely starved for realistic military games. They will "mostly positive" anything that has any kind of bullet drop in it. Combat Mission will be getting those upvotes in droves.

Well what do you know. Looks like Battlefront has finally seen the light.

Current Steam recommendation algorithm is much better compared to how it was years ago. I've learned about rough gems (with great potential) like U-Boat and Invasion Machine from it. Same goes for Afghanistan '11. I regularly learn about new content for Graviteam Tactics and its spinoffs from it as well. Plus people are actively looking and asking for good combat simulation stuff on Steam, many don't want to buy stuff they hear about for the first time from a place they don't trust. Won't get overshadowed at EGS because there's zero competition for CM/no overflow of trash "games" right now. Also your example is good, but there's another one like that on Steel Beasts forums. A dude learned about an existence of Combat Mission because in his army they've started using it for training (yep, the brits from that video). I mean at least a notable chunk of just as niche Steel Beasts playerbase is full of potential sales right there because simulation fans are very cross-genre as long as it's a realistic game. But they don't know because the only way to know right now is pure luck. I myself first read about Combat Mission (Afrika Corps to be precise) in a local gaming magazine (because at that time Battlefront apparently had a publisher doing exposure things) - but didn't play it due to physical copies of the game being extremely rare in the region (it was 2003 or so, that weird thing that had you download game stuff over dial-up connection called Half-Life 2 was still a good year away). I then got into Combat Mission Shock Force when Battlefront was still having deals with third party publishers through a word of mouth from a DCS World/FSX (of all things) fan - which only proves one of my above points.

It has nothing to do with CMBS being unsuccessful, but with whole Combat Mission being too unknown. Because people waited for that CMFI expack for about as long. And will wait for CMFB module for 5 years too. They have way too many separate titles but not enough people to produce content people actually WANT to buy. I WANT to BUY. There's demand, but Battlefront cannot fulfill it. I still believe Battlefront keeps shooting itself in the foot by staying away from Steam or EGS. Yes they will take the cut. But that will give a huge enough boost to sales to counter that. Look what wonders that has done to DCS World. In 2013 or so that game was barely anything more than a basic A-10C sim and a bunch of arcade planes on a single map. Then they went on Steam. Now it's a huge library with dedicated teams per plane and terrain. Hot damn, Battlefront teamed up with Slitherine and got themselves a real military contract because Slitherine knows how to sell such things. Word of mouth is not enough when you force people to buy an expensive game from a "Web 1.0" website.

I've been waiting for a CMBS module for 5 years now...

To me Black Sea is a lot more challenging game than any other in the series. Any WW2 CM allows for a huge margin of error when compared because of the crude military tech - but in Black Sea a single small mistake makes immediate difference. However one good tip that helps a lot here is - use scouts. Yes, split those two guys out from the squad and send them forward. Much like in real life - smaller groups are harder to spot by the enemy and if they did get spotted - it's better to lose two than to lose half your squad in 5 seconds (which is how CMBS rolls). But keep the rest of the squad relatively nearby to provide immediate support (50m will be enough). In fact do whatever you can to maximize situational awareness - modern war is mostly about who spots who first, not about raw firepower. And, yeah, when moving into combat encounter - always split squads and spread them out. Having an enemy pounded by MGs from several directions instead of one works wonders.

Russia openly attacks Ukraine for the first time under its own flag. The next day VTB, the 2nd biggest russian bank is on a verge of bankruptcy, having just lost $12 bln into the unknown void. Just a coincidence, as any other such coincidence for the past 5 years. Just sayin' Keep calm and blame Ukraine for the things you do - it always works.

So as I understand it - it's not just a graphics update with all infantry and vehicles remodeled, as well as new orders added (and other stuff related mostly to mission design features) - but missions were updated too. What I want to know is to what extent - is it mostly map detail and some visual stuff added here and there (as seen in the demo) - or does it go beyond that and every mission of every campaign makes use of triggers and more advanced AI plans that other CMx2 games have - bringing it to the same standards (and challenge) of CMBS?

doublepost

Games are expensive to make? You gotta love this excuse for any game. It's basically asking "yes, rip me off". Wonder why games were not expensive to make and did not require an inflated pricetag at a time when engines had to be written from scratch, tools for them had to be written from scratch, everything had to be animated by hand and took half a year instead of mere weeks in mocap studios. Nowadays about half of game development process is all but finished before devs even start. If games are expensive to make - how come games, which cost a lot more to make than any Battlefront game, rake in hundreds of millions $$$ (and sometimes even billions) of pure profit - if devs and publishers supposedly struggle financially and can barely make do? And if games are expensive to make and require anticompetitive pricing - then maybe the business model of said developer is messed up? Because a business is about knowing how to do the thing you do. Games like ARK were made for a bunch of proverbial peanut cans instead of real big cash. ArmA2 was a low-budget game (a large chunk of assets was even reused from the previous game) and yet a mere free mod skyrocketed the profits. Yet even before that it was chock full of content and effort. Wargame series are fairly obscure games and yet devs managed to easily handle the financial failure that was Act of Aggression and lackluster sales of Steel Division 1 - because Wargame series still brought in good profits without inflated pricetags. If your product is good - the budget does not matter.

Well the "lore" of CMBS definitely hints at an invasion from the sea, check the manual. And Steve hinted at CMBS receiving the module after CMRT. So yes. The real question here is whether we get it as fast as you got this reply to your thread. Which is not and the game is 4 years old without any module announcement.

Sorry, but releasing your game with half the portraits and flags missing of countries that are already there and then charging money to have them back is BS. Especially since portraits are randomly generated by the code that is there too and you pay for a simple unlock. At one point they had like 12 DLCs to just allow you not to stare at a black silhouette of a face. And let's not forget about the glorious preorder content getting cut for people who dared not to buy the game before it's released.

The bitter bit for me here is a realization that CMBS module isn't happening before 2020

Yes if by "tribal/PMC raid party" you mean professional russian soldiers armed with modern tanks and large caliber arty and yes 0 casualties for US.