simast

Yes please, this is important. I would love to redeploy my ammo bearer teams when they are done with ammo supply (especially when you are on defense and need all the extra men). As of right now they are always stuck with the mortar/AT teams.

PM'ed you the turn. The range to the last target was exactly 100m.

I remember playing Close Combat series and there was this moment when one of your soldiers could go "fanatic". This got me thinking if anything like this is implemented in a Combat Mission engine? I see. I have double checked my turn and the soldier was a "Veteran" with a "Nervous" morale. So maybe it's not the weapon accuracy that is exaggerated but how the Veteran accuracy bonus is applied. YouTube tends to make the videos lower quality, but if you look close enough you can see the bullet tracers hitting from the pistol on impact. I do have the turn, but it's password protected (H2H). If any of the developers or testers need it - let me know.

Nooo! Get back to Fortress Italy modding ASAP p.s. I just got reinforcements, and they were PSW armored cars. It struck me how bad and out of place the models look like without your weathering.

... just got an Iron Cross: http://youtu.be/toGRqbeE27A?hd=1 Seriously tho, I have never counted on pistols being any good in CM, but this happened in a H2H game I am playing: 4 kills with the Walther P38.. It could be luck, but given the range of the last kill.. I wonder do we need rifles at all? How effective are pistols anyway? Or maybe the German Walther is an exception in this case?

Actually, here is an excerpt from the Fortress Italy manual (Errata section):

Yay, Aris is back and working on dusty vehicles again! Keep them coming. By the way, what happened to the Fiat 626? I seem to recall you posted a work-in-progress screenshot?

Wrong place Paul Since CMFI, you should put your mods in: C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Battlefront\Combat Mission\Fortress Italy\User Data\Mods\ (Where USERNAME is your OS username)

What about a WW1 game with CM engine? Early tanks, lots of artillery, a bit of trench warfare. Probably not as exciting as WW2 combat, but I would love to play that (in a way, the Italians do feel like WW1 forces already).

I never knew there are activation limits? Or it's different for CM:N and CM:FI (which I have)? I never saw how many activations I have left, at least the copy protection did not bother to inform me. But in general, I second this. BF is using the most notorious copy protection ever invented by a human being. Just yesterday I had to set my clock one hour back because of the daylight saving time. Guess what happened? Was unable to launch CMFI with a message "your clock was set back, please restore yada yada".

I personally like the fact you can't micromanage every soldier. The way I approach it is that as a a commander you wouldn't just say "you, go behind that bush" or "you and you, get behind that window". So essentially if a couple of your guys seems to be looking the wrong way and totally ignoring the fact they need to get behind cover - they might be rookies or something. Also, I found that if you want to somewhat influence their cover positions you issue a move order on that grid and then select the last move waypoint and issue a face order in the direction they need to cover. This way they tend to move in the best spot to cover that direction.

A possible TODO item for developers? As suggested by Vanir Ausf B, I would love to see the sounds originating from out-of-contact units to be at least randomized (location wise).

If the mortar is making a sound (not a noise, but an actual CM engine sound effect) that unit should be marked as a possible contact (with the "?" sign). Which would explain that someone, possibly out of combat heard the noise (or spotted origin of mortar rounds) and identified that spot as a possible contact. What we have right now is that no one on the battlefield thinks there is a mortar (or any other generic unit) at that location, but I, as a commander, know that 100%. I know the type of the unit and I know it's exact location. That's a bit of an abuse/exploit of the engine, don't you think so? I just think that if the developers added a simple logic so that "enemy units that are not spotted/contacted play no sound effects" - the issue would be fixed instantly. What other side effects such a change could bring? Other than improving the overall experience?

I noticed that even if you don't have LOS or spotted enemy mortar as contact - you can still pin-point it's location (quite accurately) based on directional sound (assuming it is firing). Wouldn't it make sense for the units that are out of contact with my OOB to not emit any sounds whatsoever? Or it's not a bug and working by design?

*sight* Found some more cheap hippie jokes: How do you know a hippie stayed at your place? (He is still there) How do you get rid of the hippie staying at your place? (Offer him a job) Where do you hide money from a hippie? (Under a bar of soap!) What do you call a hippie who just broke up with his girlfriend? (Homeless) How many hippies does it take to screw in a light bulb? (None, hippies screw in tents) Why do hippies wave their arms when they dance? (To keep the music out of their eyes)

You mean you will use overwhelming force to beat the opposition? And will not bring an excavator and try to level their defensive positions before the battle? Makes sense. Which is also my point. QB has nothing to do with this.. Anyway, I did notice this and thought this can be relatively easily avoided for scenario maps. If no one else thinks this way, I am fine.

I know you mentioned the game here, but how would you approach such a battle in real life (given the fact CM engine was always striving to be as realistic as possible in depicting tactical combat)? I can already imagine the attacking force commander saying something like "this isn't fair! let's lower the elevation and balance the forces" Unless there are other factors involved? Like engine limitations? I just don't buy it. Given how realistically CM does everything else, it bothers me that we have these Call of Duty style map balance fences placed in the game. I know map balance is needed for QBs since you can choose your own forces, but there is no excuse to balance the scenario maps, which is what I am referring to.

I get your point about QB unit purchase points, but the screenshot and my issue is with a scenario map, not a QB map.

Thanks for the patch, but have you thought about using something like Dropbox to share the patches/files? They don't charge for the traffic and I doubt CM community can take their servers down so easily. And by sharing I don't mean your clients will need to install Dropbox or something like that, all they will get is a direct URL to the patch file in your Dropbox account they can download.

And by maps, I mean the actual maps and not the battles. I am playing one WEGO game right now (the first meeting engagement battle in the list) and this: The fence is here so you wouldn't use your truck and rush into a good position too soon too fast. The map is full of other goodies. Every tree is placed to obstruct something... Also, found this line in the latest patch: some Meeting Engagement maps were re-balanced. I understand there is a lot of work put into these maps and don't want to undermine the effort, but why would you want to balance the maps at all? The only balance that should be done is with forces/OOB.

Looking great as always! I am collecting all your mods as if they were expensive postmarks.

Sorry, the CM engine does not support kitties.. Trust me, I tried.

Installed and it is asking me to activate the game again. I am 99% sure that I have installed everything correctly (I can see 1.01 files in the right places in the game directory). Should I just activate again or wait for a hotfix? Has anyone else run into the same issue? Edit: Re-activated and seems everything is working fine. It's just that the patch readme was lying in that you do not need to activate again after patching.

Some screenshots:

HE artillery is based on projectile fragments hitting nearby troops. So it makes sense to lie down to evade casualties rather than stay in standing/prone position. Please correct me if I am wrong