Suchy

This will be my last comment on this topic:
1. I will not defend myself against accusations that are absolutely grotesque. What do you think? That I am selling Battlefront products illegally via their official forum? To earn what? 150 Dollars ? 😂
2. I have invested a lot of time to create such a huge BattlePack. It was primarily for my personal pleasure. Why did I invest so much time ? I don’t normally post any personal backgrounds, but in this context let me give a short explanation: 
After working in Level A hospitals for 15 years, during the last year I was member of a medical intervention team. My job is to wait for emergency calls. Sometimes there isn‘t any of these so that you are waiting for endless hours. During this time, I am payed AND I can do what I like: sleeping, reading books or watching TV … or doing some PC game stuff like CM. For example: some month ago, last September I started my day and we had to resuscitate a three year old boy who had a cardiac arrest when suddenly stop breathing while he was sleeping. His diagnosis was a huge brain tumor and he passed away some weeks later. Some hours later, I had to open the chest of a 24 year old girl in the ditch who was trapped under her own car. 
Between these two rescue missions, I created CM stuff, as a form of relaxation. 
 
3. Of course, if one creates such stuff, it is nice to share the result with a community like in this forum. I did contact Battlefront in order to get (may be) some logistical support (especially for playtesting) and to offer them to use my work for their own - without any financial interest !!! I thought there was some enthusiasm there for such projects, but this idea was completely naiv. Did I care about that? No, I didn‘t. I continued with my project because it was my own pleasure.
4. Why did I go the way of „pre-ordering“? Sometimes, if you make content and it is placed on an uploading platform, it feels as if your content is swallowed by a kind of blackwhole. So, I have decided to make it this way, in a more personal form. When the content is ready, I will send it to all the guys who like to get it. Nothing more…no payment, no abuse of mail-adresses, only some harmless files of a OC game.
5. My personal happiness does not depend on such game stuff. I have enough real life, children etc.
If players like the content, it will be a pleasure for me. If they don’t like it, it is absolutely ok. And even if my computer should crash and all my stuff was destroyed - so what. It is only a hobby, little fun, nothing more. 
 
Mr.X
 
 

I made this a few years ago, your screenshot brought it to mind

No Polish mods in CMRT. Only Warsaw uprising.

Sorry lads.  Sworn to secrecy and all that.  (Now that last statement does imply there are indeed secrets….sweet delicious secrets).

Hey I like the spirit and initiative…but.  There is a lot more than maps [aside: we take them directly from RL maps - hell during CW I had to research a rail line at Alsfeld to see where it was in 1982 because it was shut down in the present.  So those are not abstracted, at least not the campaign maps.  For BAOR, I did MS Flight Sim flights over the entire AO].  
Further, to move the game into Belarus and involve NATO we are talking a lot of research and TO&E development.  Data for a single nation at the resolution of CM takes months of work (trust me).  Then there is the Belarus military which would need to be built as well.  All this would be for 2017, which is modern era so we are taking new vehicles and models…that is artwork and mechanics.  All that takes more time and effort.  I mean this is no longer a DLC but a stand-alone title.  At that point and level of effort I would not do 2017 but 2027 because fighting a “what if” from 6 years ago when the real thing is happening on the news gets weird.  But then we are talking features which is getting into coding.
I am sure the guys can salvage something.  Maybe some stuff can show up in a Russia v US somewhere else but it is no small investment to make that happen.  BFC has to weigh time and effort to payoff - I will let Steve speak to that.  Finally a key principle in business matches the same one in war; know when to cut your losses and move on.  I suspect that is what we are looking at here.

I get the difference, but I can also separate fantasy from reality.  Playing Call of Duty doesn't make you a violent person.  Playing CM doesn't mean you support the war in Ukraine or condone how the war is being fought.
Steppwulf, I'm not trying to needle you and I apologize if I have been too argumentative or have not been as precise as I intend.  My ultimate point this: Battlefront developed a game before the world events changed.  As far as I am concerned, they have nothing to apologize for or be ashamed. If they want to slow or stop development of CMBS as a means of being sensitive to current events, I can respect that.  But I am also a customer and I want more of this particular product. They have already invested time, finances, and resources into development. Why thow out the baby with the bath water?  Is it possible to change the setting and create a win-win situation?

I think we are missing the point of wargaming.  What would happen if Battlefront modeled the Israeli army in a fictional battle against Syria?  Does that now make the game a referendum on Israel?  Does it imply a stance by the game company?  I say no.  Playing Combat Mission is akin to playing a miniatures game in real life.  You have your armies and you fight it out.  It doesn't matter what happens in real life.  We play video games because we want to play war without the dangers of war.  Battling it out in a virtual Ukraine has nothing to do with what is happening in real life.  Has anyone looked at Command Modern Operations?  Some of the scenarios for that game are almost real time.  I just don't see a connection for developing a game and support for Ukraine or Russia.

Yeah, that will teach them a lesson. 😄
Here's a thought. After BF has finally closed business (and long mey they rule), NO ONE will ever produce this kind of complicated and labour intensive wargames anymore. So let's praise ourselves lucky we've already got his much.

From today onwards the final phase of the WIP starts with the aim of release on February 1st 😎
The plan provides for the following:
= 3-4 single missions have to be reworked after they failed during the testing. That is a manageable number.
= It still takes some hard work to place flavor objects in a few missions and make minor adjustments.
= Finally, the 20 master maps have to be „cleaned up“  for the players who want to use them. 
 
= And at the very end - if I still have time 🙏🏻 -
I might add a little prologue mini action 😉
 
At this point, thanks again to everyone who helped and to those who are still working hard at the moment 👍🏻
 
Regards 
Mr.X

Thanks. More than 70km2 of maps to fight over in this Battle Pack. I'm still creating two more smaller maps for two scenarios. Using a lot of BIGOT maps from 1944 and aerial photos for reference. Some master maps will have variants that will also be provided with the historical German Fortifications placed and ready to go. (<-- That took a while...)
As per last year's bones on the pack, geographically the fighting is focused on the Utah Beach area itself and the area heading south towards and beyond Carentan. All scenarios/campaigns occur between 00:05 hours on 6th of June through to the evening of the 13th of June. Don't expect all of them to be brutal slog fests, particularly the D-Day ones where the Allies at times had significant advantages. I'm going for more of a focus on narrative and experiencing that first week coming off Utah Beach rather than slug fests designed for competitive tournament play. (Master Maps are there if you want to create your own matches though). If you play the pack chronologically and come out the other end content and with a greater appreciation of the challenges the forces faced, then I've done my job.  
The content in this part of the Normandy theatre, though popular, couldn't be created by BF as part of the CMBN base game given the absence of Fallschirmjager and Waffen SS forces in the WW2 titles at the time.

Ahh Yes, good Ole Talonsoft East & West Fronts from back in the late 90's...Good memories for sure 🙂

So that's pretty much Kursk to the Dnieper 1943 - 1944 confirmed...🙃

+1 for that, Steve. 

Thanks for answering me so clearly on this one! However, this is devastating news. CMBS is my favourite CM game but it always lacked a bit variety. I can understand your decision but this makes me incredibly sad.
As for Slitherine/Matrix, they are soon releasing Broken Arrow. A game that features the realistic destruction of entire building blocks via rocket strikes, painstaking detail when it comes to authenticity of units and overall a very smiliar landscape to Eastern European countries. I don't really see them squirming there. Maybe because that game could be their first mainstream hit?
And personally, I've never understood why contemporary conflicts are taboo while it is completely fine to have SS Todeskopf troops in your fun wargame or bomb the Vietcong without any notion of all the civilian casualties. I probably know all the arguments why this war is okay to depict but not that one. And I can even comprehend most of them. But Wargames are not some casual fun games. They are - more often than not - simulators and show us the workings of modern equipment and tactics. And, at least for me, they even have an anti-war element to them, much more than most of so called anti-war movies. And in that regard, they transcend the regular piety rules that apply for entertainment media.
Anyways. It is great to hear that there is enthusiasm for other modern settings from your side. I do know that it's not gonna be a game featuring the IDF though.

@Suchy Well Tommy. Here it is as a raw form as a folder for the CMRT BEF1940 mod. It is "fake lobster" the best I can make it. The scenario has no AI plan.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/snv799wfi1ucaw9qrtlcc/h?rlkey=vjwvourec881ol5pzy51ib44m&dl=0

Hi Tommy. I will try and get it out this next week or so. 

@Battlefront.com
We are not arrogant and insolent. We are CM addict junkies and BF is a dealer of our beloved drug. We badly need another fix.... And there is no hope in sight....
We just expect clear information about the status of the game....
That's it, that's it and that's it....

@Phantom Captain and @Vacillator:
Thank you very much for your kind words and your valuable support as a tester 🙏 Fortunately, so many pre-orders
have been received that my mailbox here in the forum has reached its storage capacity. At this point many thanks to 
 the many people who are interested 🙏👍.
That's why I decided to invest some time in completing the BattlePack, at least in the evening, despite my current
professional commitments. I actually wanted to let the final tests run and only get into the home stretch from January 11th.
This means that nothing should stand in the way of the release on February 1st 😎.
 
Regards
Mr.X

I can do a variety of things that I call "fake lobster" but I cannot change the physics of the game code. 
Here is an example for CMFI Korea 1950...
CMFI does not have the T-34/85. I use various resources to decide my best option to deliver a "fake lobster" version of the T-34/85. One resource I find easy to use is the ASL game with its counters and rules.  This resource led me to decide to use the British Sherman IIA as the "host" for the "shell" 3D model from CMRT. The power of the gun, the armor strength, the crew size were a good enough "fake lobster" match.
Making new vehicles
I have also created new/hybrid/bastardized 3D models in a program called Blender to be the "shell" over a good enough "host". One example is a Hungarian armoured car called the Csaba. It had a turret stolen from vehicle X with guns from another vehicle Z, slapped on the hull from vehicle Y. 
85% fake lobster with melted butter fresh off the coast of Maine.
 
 

Here's an update on how this is going. I have changed the structure of the original campaign to give it a new opening mission which, together with the original starting mission, Beau Guillot, will form a new campaign prelude, the outcome of which will determine certain parameters for the three Chapter 1 - Georgian Ridge missions. 
Having revised and tested the new AI plans for both the prelude and all the chapter one missions including the variants, I'll be picking up where I left off with Turnbull's Stand tomorrow. This is one of the very few AI attack missions so it will require a bit more time to get right but I learned a LOT from making USMC Gung Ho! so I'm guessing this will be better than the previous revision I made earlier this year. I'll just have to make sure that it's winnable. It's almost certainly going to play very differently from the old version, that's for sure.
I seem to be taking about a day to revise a defensive mission at the moment so if I am able to stick with a decent schedule, I should have most of this done before Xmas. However, the two blocks to swift progress will be Le Ham and the finale, Eroudeville. Le Ham didn't have any AI plan associated with it - it was a pure set-up with no variants and I can't let that stand. Eroudeville has a pretty sizeable AI attack so that will take a few days to revise as well.
 
A few observations about the new core forces - having the US 2/8 INF mostly Green makes for a rather different experience and I nearly undid the change as it was definitely harder to manage these forces in combat. But instead I've added some extra firepower to some of their missions to compensate them for the loss. In Guillot, you get a Destroyer on call to help soften up the defenders and there is air power in a couple of the Georgian Ridge missions. In Hameau, I've added an AA Quad Half Track to provide the attacker with some extra punch as well. The defenders get a little boost too to keep things interesting - nothing massively OP of course, but after all, most of you will have already played the original campaign so these changes should make it feel fresh.
The new AI plans are a considerable improvement over the old as well and the AI is much better on the defence now than it previously was so you'll need to be a little more cautious. Except for the new opener, there are always two or more AI plans in each mission, usually five. The opener is a recreation of a certain famous, historical action which I released as a stand-alone scenario to the old repository so it's intended to be fixed.
I have also found an old mission, Maxwell's House, which I kept a back up of on the Beta boards. It was offered as a possible scenario for the Arnhem module but it didn't cut the mustard. Fortunately, it was still in my folder there so I have been able to revisit it as well. it's a German attack on a tiny but highly detailed rubbled map defended by a very small but elite force of Red Devils in Arnhem. NOT Historical at all, just 100% for fun. It's definitely NOT going to be added to the Nijmegen campaign - that one is finished and I have no plans to touch it again (play perhaps  but definitely not redesign) The Breakout from the Neerpelt Bridgehead and the Aalst missions pretty much broke me, the work that went into them was tremendous. The other two Irish Guards missions that formed that series were no picnic to make and test either.

FR40C VONCQ VIGNETTE is being focused on for an XMAS release on CMMODS...
 

The point was that a poster said its hard talking to people.  I'm just pointing out Steve obviously doesn't think so.  Everyone gets time off, but maybe instead of 10 posts a day in the Ukraine thread, 9 posts a day and one day a month post something on the games he produces.

Just to put a quantitative point on it, Steve has posted around 65 times in the last week in the Ukraine thread.  He's averaging about 10 posts a day in a topic that right now has nothing to do with the game.  And no where else in at least a month, and maybe more.  Its his company and his time to do with what he likes.  But based on some of the counterpoints that communicating with people is exhausting, he either is doing heavy doses of uppers or he is completely exhausted.
BFC has gone through this before.  Back when CMSF 1 came out and was almost a disaster of a CM product for the first few months, Steve was spending all of his posting energy for weeks at a time prolifically debating the concept of the Stryker brigade in one thread.  It finally hit a point where enough established players were vocally walking away that he shifted his comms from his Stryker tirades to addressing game issues.

Everything can be a problem...if you want it to be...even something as simple as getting out of bed in the morning. If you WANT that to be a problem. It certainly can be.
If you want something to work though...it very well might if you put some effort and intrest into it. Like designing the best tactical wargame out there for example !
 
Again...How difficult could it possibly be in todays world with instant communications etc to provide the community with some more regular updates on things going on.
- preferably designate a few dates (the first day of every second month, the first friday of every second month or something like that) to upload these progress reports.
- Ask the assosiated battlepack creators, module creators, scenario/campaign creators, game engine updaters etc to provide a simple file with some pictures and a short text describing recent progress prior to these dates.
- Start a few new threads in this forum (sticky or not). Each covering one or a few of the current projects that are currently being worked on.
- Ask those assosiated people to...in addition to providing the 6 (or whatever) update reports each year...to spend a few minutes each week/every other week to respond to questions in their particular tread. I'm guessing that most of those guys hang around this forum from time to time anyway. Surely not a huge effort on their part to do so.
 
Having a few threads like this will hopefully have the added bennefit of bringing some sort of life into this forum. That cant be a bad thing either...can it ?
The designers/content creators will be able to get feedback on their WIP from a broader bunch of people compared to a limited number of BFC playtesters etc...Questions could be asked by the community. Tips, suggestions and requests could be shared with content creators.
 
A more happy crowd all around.
 
George Mc have done something like this in the past with projects he has been working on and i think those threads got well recieved.
 
Critisism, negative comments and almost impossible request might offcourse be part of such discussions...but come on ! Surely that is something that most people can handle. If kiss-***, super possitive comments are the only ones allowed then something like this might obviously not be a good thing.
But hopefully that is not the case.

Some more advertising 😎 the product is now 98% finished