JMDECC

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ag3w2bawytlt7bs/South Sahrani Beta 4.btt?dl=0 Hopefully the above link works and you can access it. CMSF2 is the game.

Ran into a strange problem today that is worrying me quite a bit. I have a map that I've been working on for some time. I tried to load said map in the scenario editor today, however instead of opening the map, it just starts with a fresh template. I tried moving the map file into the scenario list to see if I could access it from there and it is not showing. However when I look within both my map editor/scenarios folder, the file is there and everything looks correct. Any idea why I am not able to access this? Has it become corrupted somehow?

I am not sure why, as others can, but perhaps I can try to upload a few additional screenshots another way. Sorry about that Thank you! Thank you...I think that Northern Sahrani is actually far more interesting geographically than the South, but I am hesitant to try and map it as I am not sure the elevation will transfer nicely. Trying to get South Sahrani's main mountain looking halfway decent was work enough and I am still constantly finding ways to tweak it. But should I ever do so, there are several islands dotting the northern coast! The one's featured thus far are small, but with the right equipment each can be reached and used for a variety of tasks. Might be a good location for an FO to call fire missions in as BMP's storm across the bay. Thank you! If anyone should get some sort of credit it would be yourself, as I never tried doing anything too serious both in modding and in the editor had it not been for your words of wisdom some months back. The SLA you created are fantastic. I owe the creation of this map to you and your work. I don't think I would have thought to even consider Sahrani had I not stumbled across your units. That is perhaps one of my favorite parts about the ArmA series - the maps! They are fantastic and great to work with when creating maps in CM. I have a few other maps I've started work on based on the ArmA series. I would love to do Chernarus or a part of Altis, such as Kavala. I know at some point someone else on here was working on some Turkish forces, makes me wonder if Greece would be hard to cobble together as well to fit such an environment. Certainly generates a lot of ideas! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! ...and thank you to everyone else, should I have missed anyone. I did not really expect much if any feedback after posting this so the positivity has certainly been encouraging. The so-called 'beta' version of the map is done at this point. Although I've labeled it 'beta' I expect the terrain portion of the map to be completed at this point so I doubt there will be any changes made in that department unless during play testing issues are discovered. I have attempted to double check everything and make sure there weren't any glaring issues terrain wise however the map is so big its hard to make sure everything has been covered. I have had some trouble with walls not sitting correctly along elevation changes as well as disappearing/moving flavor objects that had set me back a little bit but otherwise we're rounding third and heading for home. I even added some forces for a rough scenario and created some rudimentary (read: AWFUL) AI plans for REDFOR to give it some play-ability solo. I am going to add in some objectives and setup zones tomorrow; after I hope to post to the forums with a dropbox link sometime after work (assuming I don't run into any major issues). In the meantime, here are a few more screenshots, which hopefully everyone is able to see this time around: Aerial View SLA Armor Crossing the DMZ into Western Corazol Especas near one of South Sahrani's many Hotels Overwatch outside Ortego Securing Paraiso, block by block...

Sahrani has always been a favorite of mine over the years. Recently, I stumbled across a mod made by |||CPTMILLER||| that turned our Syrians into members of the SLA. Feeling inspired, I decided to see how feasible it might be to recreate Sahrani, or a portion of it, in CM. I ultimately decided to go with South Sahrani (and a small part of its northern neighbor). The end result was a fairly accurate recreation of the map itself. Due to map size limitations, the island is roughly 12% smaller than the one featured in ArmA but still comes in at a whopping 4,272m x 3,856m. Some features, like building placement and terrain, had to be modified to fit the smaller scale or changed slightly due to not carrying over in CM's world builder the same. Other features, like the light houses, had to be left out all together because I simply was not happy with the available substitutes. It is not a 1:1 recreation by any means, but it is close enough to where I am happy with it. The map is pretty much completed at this point, with only a few changes left to be made to the terrain, so I would expect a release sooner rather than later. Some screenshots: Editor Map (South) Editor Map (North) Southern Port at Corazol Paraiso, International Airport & Government District Ortego & Geraldo Ortego Street View East Corazol - part of North Sahrani Dolores East & West Corazol

Happy to see the release! Thank you so much for your hard work. Now, I haven't had a chance to download just yet, but I was curious, are we able to mix and match DPM and DDPM uniforms?

Not for the first time, no. But without the new nationalities, I'm not sure if I would've bought the new expansion. Even with TOE changes, the typical units present in the base game get kind of bland after awhile. This isn't limited to just Italy, I'd say it counts for every other base game. I can't even remember the last time I used US anything for say, CMSF. Half the fun in playing is learning the strengths and weaknesses of other nations, putting them to the test in actual battle.

So I'm curious. Being able to change out models is fantastic. Is it possible to add additional or custom TO&E for factions? Ex adding "special forces company" to US with their own models? Or is that hard-coded?

No problem, was just curious! Hope everything is okay on you end mate.

@mjkernerhave you ceased work with this one? I hope that isn't the case; I am oh-so-excited for the mixed uniforms.

Hello, I have been playing via a Hamachi connection with a good friend for a few years now. We played a 2 player turn based game approximately 3 nights ago with no issues to report. However, this evening we attempted to play another match against one another and ran into an issue where the player joining the host is stuck on the "Loading Data" screen perpetually. We tried switching hosts, changing Hamachi networks, tweaking and ultimately shutting down firewall protection completely, all to no avail. Again, both myself and my opponent ran into this specific issue no matter who hosted when things were working just fine a few evenings prior. IP and port are both set correctly, the host can load into the match but again the player joining the host is faced with a never ending "Loading Data" screen. So odd. I was curious to see if anyone had any ideas on potential fixes or what could be going wrong. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Pertinent? information: OS: Windows 10 (both players) Game: Combat Mission Shock Force 2 Both players have the most recently up to date version of Hamachi. We are willing to try just about anything at this point, so any suggestion is more than welcome.

I don't know if it is possible or not, but I was wondering if anyone would be able to add a few woodland DPM tops to the British infantry for a little more variation. There are several photos during this similar time period of infantry wearing woodland tops and desert bottoms. Always thought it would be cool to add. Unfortunately I am horrible at modding thus my request. I love the variation we have now and wanted to expand upon it a little further if possible. If this is not allowed feel free to remove. Here are some reference photos below:

Considering how much variation is seen among Russian troops in terms of what they're wearing in combat, I'm curious as to how they'll be represented in CM Black Sea. If you go through reference pictures within the last several years, you'll see all kinds of crazy different patterns being used by Russian forces. Flora, Digital Flora, Mountain Flora, Izlom, Kamysh, SS-Summer, SMOG pattern, Flecktarn-D, Berezka, various types of Gorka, even multicam these days…etc. From what I understand the game will be set a few years in the future (I think I last read 2017?) so I'm curious, will we be seeing more of a standardized & uniform force or will it be more along the mismatched lines of what we saw during the South Ossetia conflict? The new ability to change appearances would be great if multiple/various camo patterns are included.

I feel stupid, didn't even think of changing the date. Thanks for the advice, all is working now.

I loaded Gustav Line and everything works except both the Polish and New Zealand armies are not playable...anyone have any idea why this is so? Should I try to reinstall or is this the way it is meant to be?

40..50...60....man, I'm only 19!

When the 3.0 engine is released, will the CMBN and CMFI games we have now be able to be updated in a similar way to the way 2.0 was done? I hope so! I think I'll be playing these games for forever...

Thanks for the links and advice John, I will make a point to get a little more creative with my searches from now on. It is nice to get more of a glimpse into how other people play. I'm seeing some operations where the detail that goes into planning is something I would've never thought of in a million years. Hopefully sometime this evening (but more likely tomorrow) if I get some free time I will film myself playing a QB in turn based mode and afterwards use something to narrate my decisions throughout. Hopefully I can get some feedback from other players on what they see. I have played very little of the campaign so far, mostly due to lack of time and commitment, therefore I find myself playing a lot of quick battles. I play on Iron and in most cases I find myself winning against the AI, but sometimes I wonder if I'm a little too reckless with my men.

Would anyone care to share how they go about filming missions? I just filmed my first video but I feel like it is very jerky - I'm all over the place trying to keep up with the battle. Maybe there's nothing wrong with that, I don't know. It would be nice to hear other peoples tips or opinions.

I have to agree, I think this is a great idea. I actually have been planning on using Fraps to record a few battles and post them up onto youtube and link them here, I just haven't gotten a chance to do it yet. One of the main reasons I'm so into the idea is because I, as a new player, really would like to have people (especially long time players) critique how I go about playing - things I'm doing right, things I'm doing wrong, things I could improve upon, etc. It would be great to be able to watch others play styles as well for the same reason. I know there are a few videos out there, but not a whole lot from what I recall. Shortly before I first started playing CM last February I tried looking up gameplay videos and didn't find too many. It left me on the fence over whether to buy or not until I found the demo which I had somehow overlooked. I'm sure that I'm not the only person who has found themselves in a similar position.

Wow, this looks awesome! Can't wait to try it out, keep up the great work.

How about 1982? I would really love to see CMF...Combat Mission Falklands Korea would be great too though, lots of different forces thrown in the mix.

I have never done a PBEM before but I would be interested if you wouldn't mind explaining how it all works. If not and you're looking for an experienced player I understand

Something else I'd really like to see is visible, on map air support. This would mostly pertain to a more modern CMSF/CMSF2 setting instead of WW2. So instead of me calling in that helicopter gunship and only seeing bullets appear on the ground, the actual chopper would be represented and things like AA guns and small arms would pose a threat to it. It would be useful for transport purposes too, I can imagine a small infantry engagement taking place on a huge map where a helicopter picks up troops and flies them to a waypoint. Getting shot down could have multiple outcomes...all crew and passengers killed, crew and passengers wounded, crew and passengers survive. Could be determined by altitude and what brought it down (small arms, AA, etc). If that could be implemented my next wish would be a Falklands War game...now that would be interesting. Lots of small to huge infantry engagements with little use of vehicles and armor, heavy use of mortars and airstrikes, both sides being fairly similar in weaponry...that would be fun.

Some things I'd really like to see… I would like to see a lot more detail and meaning added to surrenders. In general I'd like to see surrenders be much more costly in point value than an actual kill. From a strategic viewpoint (in my mind at least), having ones own forces surrender and be captured as opposed to being killed creates a much trickier situation. The captured troops now become a bargaining chip between each side, the civilian populace back home is outraged and demands their safe return putting extra pressure on intelligence and high command (locating whereabouts, launching a rescue operation later on), and much like having troops which are killed, it decreases overall troop number during the battle. To counter the above however, instead of having troops which have surrendered simply just disappear, the player must actually collect them and hold them somewhere on the map. Say for instance a squad comes under overwhelming fire and only two men are left standing, after deciding that an attempt to flee is useless due to the enemy being close by, they opt to surrender. The opposing side which forced the surrender can first make one of two decisions: 1. Leave the surrendered forces alone, eventually allowing them to un-surrender and flee back to friendly lines to fight once again 2. Move towards the surrendered forces and 'collect' them (probably through some administrative action such as "join nearest group" or something similar) By choosing action 2 (which I presume most would), the 'collector' of the surrendered troops has to be aware of obvious things such as enemy forces firing at them to repel them away (so that they can go reclaim their men themselves). Once they do manage to collect the surrendered troops though, they can either choose to hold the prisoners somewhere, or force them to move with them. The benefits of holding the prisoners (somewhere secure) would be the assurance that there is little chance of them escaping, while the downside is that manpower would be used up as the prisoners would need to be guarded. The benefit of moving the captives with the group that captured them would be that no manpower would essentially be wasted and the men could continue to fight with their prisoner at their side, however if the group did come under intense fire and was forced into a rattled/shaken/broken state, the captives would be presented with the opportunity to flee their captors and back to friendly forces. I believe that the implementation of this would do several things for gameplay. First, it would force commanders to rethink how they want to move their forces and attack. Do I want to launch a head on assault on that house? If there are more enemy forces there than I suspect, my men could be overwhelmed and taken captive. This would cause much more cautious approaches towards objectives, and would also heavily promote more non-combat scouting/reconnaissance movements to determine how many and where enemy forces are positioned. Second, it would create interesting unplanned/unscripted side missions where the commander is attempting to locate where his captured forces are, and mounting assaults to rescue them in order to avoid incurring the severe point production. While the battle for that enormous French Château rages, a small detachment of men have broken away from the fight and begun sneaking their way around the edges of the map to locate that house near the enemy starting positions where their friendly's were being held up at. I can picture how that would play out perfectly - an engineer team places explosive charges along a high wall, blows it away, and the rest of your infantry forces assault into the compound in a daring rescue. Something else I would really like to see in relation to surrendering is the ability to allow each of your infantry units to call out (or even taunt, I guess) to your enemy and give them the option to surrender. Under the interface action list for "combat" there would be an action labeled "Offer Surrender" (or something like that) which would only be enabled if that particular infantry group was within a certain distance of another enemy infantry group. Choosing this action would not necessarily result in the enemy immediately surrendering, instead a number of factors would play into whether or not they would. Some of these factors could include friendly to enemy ratio, unit skill level, current unit state, and also the unit offering the surrenders skill level (a higher skill/experience level, say +2 for example, would mean the unit offering a surrender could speak the opposing sides language fluently and charismatically, as opposed to a -2 who would only know how to offer the surrender in their native language in a mostly unthreatening way). I believe that implementing a more detailed surrendering feature such as this would also benefit and work with a new possible casualty treatment and evacuation system like the one mentioned in the first post. Wounded troops (casualties) left behind would need to be retrieved and treated (if possible) in a safer location or run the risk of being captured, treated, and held prisoner by enemy forces.