ForwardObserver

No worries, noob. Without the thing coming nicely packaged and with an UI on top, it's hard. I'm already using it to play solo (I always take the attacker side, with some simple defense AI plans thrown in for good measure), and taking notes of what kind of things need to be done in order to reduce the workload and the chances of making mistakes. With the tools you can change the locations of units as well. So the retreat and advance results can be applied automatically, and end up in a situation very much like that you get when launching a (successful) assault from within PzC.

The guy is quite retarded, good luck with attracting more attention than Machimina. He got a point though: CMBN is a terrible RTS. I couldn't help laughing when I realized he was expecting it to be something like Company of Heroes or the Wargame franchise

The part I've more problems with is to visualize the schedule and the plan. I've been working for a few months on a little scenario covering the initial phase of 17th SS PzGr counterattack in Carentan, and I've spent some time trying to figure out an effective way of dishing out AI plans for both sides. I'm now using a simple Gantt diagram tool so I can sketch out the plan and then adjust the timings. Once I'm happy with the overall look, I then input the data by hand into the Scenario Editor. This is less painful than it sounds, since the thinking has already been done. Introducing the timings is a bit of a clickfest sometimes, I wish we had both the buttons and a text input widget where one can write down the times. And I'd also like that the Exit After field started 30 secs after the Exit Before of the previous Order of the Group. I also use Mil Sketch on a screenshot of the editor view of the map to draw objectives, so I can get a 'global view' as well, over the map.

Guys in shorts lying on snow? They must be Scottish

I'm already playing a different game (CMBN 2.01 and GL). And playing different scenarios, probably. I'm very fond of Fredrocker's scenarios, who uses quite creatively map elements to present quite challenging tactical problems. Or maybe the problem is in the tactics I'm using, since are the Germans the side I usually perceive this. I feel that the German early 1944 'standard pattern' squads (1 MP40, 1 MG42, 6 Kar 98k) are quite lacking when it comes to firepower, compared to the US infantry, and somewhat less, compared to Commonwealth infantry. PanzerGrenadier and Waffen SS squads, with their dual MG and higher proportion of automatic weapons are a different story. So I usually find myself bringing forward these bulky HMG teams forward - I say bulky, compared with the US MG teams, which are usually broken down into a 3-man gun element and 3-man ammo bearer/escort element - looking for oblique lines of fire on enemy positions. Depending on the layout of the terrain elements, or the lack of AFV support such as Skdfz's or StuG's, doing this - or rather, getting it right - can be hard.

Poor thing

My dear self-appointed comrade Komissar for Straight Thinking: no matter how hard you look for a fifth leg in a cat, you're not going to find any. You might find its tail or its dick, but not a 'leg'. Funny that I wasn't the one saying so, who prompted Vanir's question. That was Redwolf. I just checked what was behind Redwolf claims, and found something that I thought it would bring some light on Redwolf's somewhat Delphic statements. Posting that in the context of the discussion here, made me an ******* in the view of some here. Fair enough, I guess. So much for context, comrade Komissar. It matters to me because I don't like bullies. And there's way too much - textual - bullying going on these forums. Indeed, people can as juvenile as they want on the Internet for free. But things can get out of hand really quick. If you doubt that, just check that thread where someone commented about John Kettler's recent mishaps, expressing some honest concern about his health and what were some of the reactions there. That was just beautiful. Going back to the topic of your inquiry, comrade Komissar. It's obvious to anyone with some basic English skills to figure out that BFC was expecting to deliver stuff at a pace they haven't. The reasons for that can engine-related (as Redwolf advocates), or of a more 'managerial' nature (such as Market Garden not having enough 'content' to make it worth or overlapping with past products, so that it was not attractive enough for owners of the CW module). After becoming interested in the subject of "snail pace releases" - interest sparkled by me looking up what was Redwolf talking about - I've got my own hypothesis, which are just that, hypotheses, and they're inspired by past experiences with small companies developing wargames, and don't have to do with hopeless attempts at reverse-engineering the game engine. In no particular order Real life hitting hard one or more critical members of the development team Internal volunteer beta testers participation in Q&A dwindling for some reason Content development bottlenecks due to having volunteers doing most of the job, which have real life priorities other than CMx2 None of the above 'make BFC look bad' in my book: just name a war game, discontinued or still in active development, which hasn't been struck by one or all of the above at some point during its life.

That's a very fine response, Thomm. The second point, especially, is something I've figured out the hard way. For instance, I've observed the following behaviour (or maybe lack of behaviour would be more appropiate) in units with a Quick command: the soldiers adopt a 'standing' stance, and move towards the designated action spot as if they were 'gliding' over the map. This 'gliding' (or maybe the animation is being 'zeroed') is less common when I specify a direction for deployment by chaining a Face command. On the other hand, I've never observed this when issuing a Hunt or Slow command (regardless of specifying the final direction with a Face command). Another common thing when no Face command is issued is that one or two members of the team start rotating along the Y-axis of their 3D model, sometimes in a standing stance (if some form of cover is nearby) or prone (if no cover is present in the action spot or in adjacent action spots). Another general observation is that the TacAI seems to struggle at times with terrain features which go against the 'grain' of the action spots (for instance, making a diagonal cut across the action spot), especially heavy weapons units that require deployment. I've yet to be able to get an MG team to deploy properly against a diagonal piece of bocage, hedge or wall: they don't seem to be able to deploy along the obstacle properly, even when issuing a Face command specifying a direction orthogonal to that of the obstacle. Having said the above, the TacAI in CMx2 does a qualitatively better job than in other games doing 1:1 modeling of infantry, such as Close Combat or Graviteam Tactics.

Very fine points all of the above. Will keep them in mind, rest assured.

Did you get PTSD because of bad rolls while playing ASL, mate? I'd expect more clarity from a veteran of a notoriously complicated and contrived tactical wargame Jokes aside: Vanir was asking for a reference to the release schedule that Redwolf mentioned, so I brought it up, since Redwolf seems to think that doing that himself debases him or something. That's the point. As everybody knows, BFC never "really" commits to release dates. So those statements I quoted, and where some definite expectations are created, are a quite notorious outlier. If that doesn't attract your attention, then I wonder why you bother with these posts, really.

FWIW. These posts were made at the end of June, last year, on "The Road Ahead" thread in the CMFI forums. I'd say - and here I'm not implying anybody is lying or selling us snake oil, mind you - that obviously something didn't go according to the plan. The actual delivery was a Module (Gustav Line), the v.2.0 upgrade for CMBN and the port of CMSF into MacOS X.

Thank you for your answers/clarifications - I do indeed need to go again over the ruleset

Great initiative and thank you for organizing! Will watch this event with interest I would suggest you to upload it to Google Drive and change the sharing settings from "Private" to "Anyone with the Link". 'noob' is no noob, he's already thought about it (from his ruleset): Stacking limits can be changed with the pzparams tool of Tiller's engine. So I guess the idea only up to a whole Bn will be able to participate in a 'close assault' (in Tiller's grand tactical games the attacking units stacking points cannot exceed the stacking limit of the attacking scenario). I've got another question for noob: single unit close assaults are allowed to be declared when there are several in the same hex? Or are close assaults only allowed to be declared by one or more stacks (with the provision of 'stacks' consisting of a single unit in a hex)? Or there's a limitation of just one assault allowed from a given hex each turn?

That's quite a problem, indeed. Good to see someone to go and take a look by himself. That's funny, its rank right now is #18,441 in Video Games. And right now it has improved to #4,364 in Video Games. Did anybody buy a few copies recently? I didn't look into Direct Downloads: I was just checking boxed versions, under the impression that boxed distribution gave a better picture of the distant past. Direct Downloads look to me more as an accurate picture of the near past. Amazon download service hasn't been around as long as boxed distribution. Aggregating the two sources - boxed & download - indeed offers a picture different than just looking at boxed versions But anyhow, thank you for looking into the data.

The Sales Rank gives a quite accurate picture of market reach (but possibly exaggerated when numbers of actual sales are small). Hardcore or non-hardcore, the data is there, without cherry-picking things to fit our world views. Given your assumption, that sales rank was achieved by the sales to "hardcore" people. Interestingly enough, CMBB rank is in the same league as East Front II (i.e. in the 10,000's). So here either: 1) Out of the "hardcore" audience of Tiller, a significant percentage turned their backs on CMBB, and the resulting gap was filled with "non-hardcore" players. Such "hardcore" people who turned their backs need to be either (a) SP/CC fanatics which will never be convinced, or ( people who found CMBB modeling to be "bland" or "unrealistic" or less sound that the traditional 'design for effect' in Tiller's games. The former probably have always been a small yet very vocal group, and the latter... well, what can I say? 2) A good part of the same audience of Tiller's games, was also to a great extent part of the audience of CMBB. And then CMBB scooped up more people (and the reason probably being it a more "credible" warfare simulation/game, with realistic portrayal terrain, LOS, physics, etc.). Either could be true, yet I put my money behind 2). And here I stopped reading your post. What I said is that the admittedly scant data publicly available doesn't support Steve claims regarding Eastern Front themed wargames - take it the way you want. At least you didn't say I fabricated those links I included in my post. Thank you.