kraze

Eternal Lords OTOH is a DLC that won't run without the base game

Grogheads consider Wolfenstein: The New Order an expansion but AoW3: Eternal Lords a separate full game? Duh?

First thing to prepare yourself for is Combat Mission being a constant learning experience. I've spent more than ~130 hours in Black Sea and still make mistakes/run into trouble. But here are some things I've learned the hard way that may help you start with less frustration: Modern setting of Black Sea is far less forgiving than WW2 - weapons are more precise with modern optics, vehicles (and in case of US - soldiers too) utilize some kind of thermal vision, the rate of fire available to modern troops will pin down and wipe out their opposition a lot faster and at greater distances than slow-firing WW2's carbines. UAVs and modern air assets mean that troops that you keep behind are potentially no safer than their advancing comrades. So Black Sea will play differently in many ways to BfN. Spotting takes time. Being patient in this game is very important (even in the face of the time limit). Your guys may need more than a minute to spot a static enemy, so let them before advancing into an unsafe area. Running into an ambush is deadly. If your guys spotted someone, but don't have a positive ID (you get a slightly transparent ? icon and no visual of the enemy) - put some fire there regardless. Best use large caliber vehicles like Bradleys and BMPs for that. Especially if your troops spotted someone in a building, that is not essential to your mission tasks - blast it with tanks and APCs, ideally until you damage its walls that provide cover for enemies - or even level it. Better safe than sorry. Which brings us to the next one. Make sure that your units and their path are covered by other squads, or better yet - vehicles. When things inevitably go wrong you'll want all that firepower to suppress or destroy the enemy and get your guys out of trouble. And even if your troops do not spot anyone and advance safely - still suppress whatever looks suspicious. In this game there is an order to fire on the enemy when it gets within X meters ('target arc' while holding shift btw), so no contact doesn't mean you are safe. In case of infantry avoid advancing through open ground, unless you have no other choice. If you see a concealed path to the same location, but it will mean spending 10 minutes more to get there - use it. Infantry ambushed in the open ground is as good as dead. In case of vehicles it depends on the situation, so it's up to your judgement. When in an unsecured area and unloading troops from APCs - use smoke. Use smoke when crossing some lengthy street. Even if you think you are safe. Learn to split squads. For example putting a whole squad on the same floor of the building means only a few men will be able to fire, since they can only use windows for that and having a tank getting a lucky shot at them means that nearly a whole squad can be wiped out. Split your squad across floors or even neighboring buildings. Not only that will let all your troops fire, but provide a wider LOS. Plus - the less men advance at the same time - the lesser chance they will get spotted. Which means when advancing as infantry - split them into a recon team. 2 men slowly advancing using a MOVE or more fatiguing but safer HUNT are very hard to spot. And even if they will get spotted - losing 2 men vs. losing a squad is a better deal. Same goes for AT teams. If you want to take out that tank with an infantry - doing it with less men is safer. When getting ready to assault some area - use artillery on it. Arty may not kill much, but it will force enemies to keep their heads down or even run away in panic and into your crosshairs - letting you approach their positions or even occupy a building or two right under their nose. There's a lot more to learn in this game but again - SUPPRESS. SUPPRESS everything you find suspicious. Always SUPPRESS - with whatever you can - guns, cannons, arty.

Splitting squads for me is important in urban terrain since only 2 or 3 guys out of the whole squad will be able to fire when all are on the same floor and be quite blind versus being in open terrain - thus splitting squads makes for a superior situational awareness and increased firepower. Plus one lucky rocket or a tank shot will kill almost a whole squad when they are in a tight formation there, whereas even putting separate fireteams on different floors increases their chance of survival. Recon split is also useful when you need to scout the area since it's potentially losing 2 guys and saving the rest versus getting your whole squad ambushed, pinned down and wiped out. Splitting teams is also very useful when you want to advance through a risky terrain and have a lot more control than with an "assault" order. Basically when I've learned how to use the ability to split squads right - my losses went down drastically

It's probably ReShade with slightly tweaked/untweaked DOF enabled. If it is - it's cool for making screenshots alright, but don't expect to be able to normally play the game with it - since it is unable to distinguish between GUI and 3D gameworld and thus will blur interface too.

Just finished Night Jump on Elite with Total Victory (russian surrender at ~30 mins to go), 5 kia, 9 wia. Never had to use engineer platoon and never got to the factory. On one hand it was anticlimactic as I expected to race for the factory against the clock (only slightly began moving towards it - and had no idea what numbers I'm up against still). On the other hand I found enemy numbers to be adequate (e.g. no large force to just overwhelm US). I guess enemy needed a bit more punch in defense (perhaps more mg nests, higher skill, some small arty support, stuff like that?) and some way to stop AI from surrendering if it's possible? The detail level of the area made it pleasant to look at and fight in, really loved these tight village yards and the factory looks, great job there.

Some missions have large buildings as capture objectives. Thus far the least worst way to take one for me is to blow up as many walls and floors with whatever big guns I have and then just split several infantry squads into an assault team and the cover team. Then I let the assault teams advance into the rooms (trying to enter from separate sides if possible) with the cover team following closely. I still take some casualties if unlucky - but usually it's only one team that comes under fire, while the rest mop up enemies that made themselves known

First turn airburst artillery is quite... overpowered

Splitting into teams with the assault team leading the pack a few meters in front seems to work better than assaulting. However I'm still taking some heavy casualties in big buildings. I guess it's impossible to do it without notable losses. And it takes quite a bit of time for the attacking side AI to react to the ambushing defenders

While entering building is fairly straightforward - just suppress the hell of it or completely blow off a wall, killing exposed/suppressed dudes and then enter - moving from floor to floor or building block to building block is extremely hazardous. In the modern setting the enemy has a lot more firepower with assault rifles and defenders thus have enormous advantage. Plus how do you even suppress the other room? And obviously explosives are limited so can't just go around wasting them. Plus in large buildings with blocks that have these large halls with inner walls removed it's very hard to even get to the wall before getting shot at. So how do you actually clear the building? Especially the large one?

There should be 3 manuals in the game's directory incl. editor AAR

Hey Waclaw, can you post the old 3 sec flames.wav sample please? Because this long one has too many sounds in it that sound like shooting or explosions and it's often confusing, especially when playing in real time - sometimes I think my soldiers that are nearby the burning wreck come under fire.

"US-backed islamic terrorists" - wow this is just as good as "ukrainian neo-nazis"

What about Google Drive?

Right now Ukrainian army in real life already went beyond Battlefront's depiction of 2017. It now utilizes a digital camo almost exclusively (even in training) and thanks to volunteer's - and now government's too - help many frontline units utilize NV and even IR devices. Some APCs and IFVs (like BTR4E) were also outfitted with SLAT armor. Small recon UAVs of various quality are also used extensively. So basically 2017 army in CMBS is in some ways more dated than it is in 2015 in reality. So... can it be a thing for an expansion pack or a patch? For example I know there's a digital camo option for QB/editor but wouldn't it be logical to update campaigns to feature it too?

OK, windows are fixed. Update's at the dropbox link

It appears that some modular buildings (building 1 and 8 to be precise) have a transparency issue like in the following screenshot: (you can see through windows textures like they are not there) I'll try to do something about it too

Nice mission, achieved Major Ukrainian Victory. Managed to save half of my initial defending troops.

Sorry, I had adblock installed so didn't see all the ads Here's dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/s/0yegvt0cdpcgdhf/kieme_mod_buildings_fix.7z?dl=0

Closed windows fix http://www63.zippyshare.com/v/7lElIbVQ/file.html simply copy into/merge with the folder of the same name, replacing files

Are they auto-detected by Quick Battle setup when picking the automatic map selection depending on the location for battle? Or do I have to pick them manually whenever I want to play on these maps?

This is because Kieme's windows do not have an alpha (transparency) channel present in their textures. I will try to fix it next week.

I got a Draw in Mission 3 as well. Yeah I've had some losses (but AI had nearly 4 times more) and reached all 5 hide objectives and all but two CP. I think it has to do with AI objective called CP10 costing whole 500 points, which (despite me scratching all but two positional objectives off the checklist) outweighs my score of 900.