Heirloom_Tomato

@Macisle your idea for infantry in towns and cities sounds great. I have been trying to figure something similar out and will give this a try. Thanks for posting your idea.

I don't want to derail this thread from talking about the AI and how to make it better. For more information on the Quick Scenarios or Advanced Quick Scenarios please see this thread in the CMFI forum.

So after giving this some more thought, I have come up with two ideas, Quick Scenarios or QS and Advanced Quick Scenarios or AQS. A Quick Scenario is a quick battle map with units hand picked for each side and some points set for casualties and enemy force destruction. These QS battles will feature the original AI plans and feature no map changes. For each QS, I will load a common briefing file stating the original map name and giving credit for the map to Battlefront. An Advanced Quick Scenario will feature all of the above but will have some tweaks to the AI to better represent the units chosen and to try and take advantage of triggers. These AQS battles may feature reinforcements and might come with a recommendation to play as one side or the other. Both types of battles will have the player entering the battlefield "blind". They will have no idea of what they will be commanding or what they will be up against. See the earlier posts in this thread for rough ideas of sizes of battles and the forces involved for each. I will plan on uploading them in blocks to the Scenario Depot once I have a group of them made. I think it needs to be stated this idea could not come about without the fantastic QB maps Battlefront and @MarkEzra have provided. I enjoy working with the editor and find making a good map to be a real challenge. With a large selection of maps ready to go, it is very easy to come up with playable scenarios in short order. Thanks for all your hard work on these maps.

@Heinrich505 I believe there was three AI plans with the map. I did not make any changes to the AI plans with any of the battles I had posted. All I did was add some real units and make sure they were in the setup zones, add some battle parameters and saved. It looks to me, if i am going to keep making these, then I should also look at the AI plans and try to make some adjustments. I am glad you had fun, and that a complete victory was possible from both sides. It would be interesting to see how the battle would play out H2H...

@Bulletpoint the difference is the blind QB has no briefing, no map, no fancy graphics, just like a QB.

I will try as well. I have BN-with all the goodies, RT and FI. take your pick and I will see what I can do.

@MisterMark I don't know if you have checked out the CMFI forum, but i have created some "blind QB's". I took a QB map, added some realistic forces to each side, saved it as a scenario and you have a blind qb. As the player you have no idea what you will be playing with or will be up against. Check out the thread and see what I mean. If you are interested, I would be more than happy to make some for CMBN. I could also rejig the AI to better represent the forces chosen and hopefully give you a harder battle.

Hi ironcross13: Welcome to the world of CM. I hope you figure the game out, the learning curve can be steep but it is sure worth the time and effort. If you are interested in playing a friendly/tutorial match with a human opponent, drop me a pm and I would be happy to help. As for mods, there are tons. Check out this website http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/ and choose the ones that appeal to you the most. If they change the look of the game in a way you don't like, download something different. For me, the HQS 2.5 sound mod, Juju's UI mod and anything by Aris is well worth a download. The game uses OpenGL for graphics and having the best graphics card available might not make any difference as the card manufacturers have limited the amount of support they offer for OpenGL. A search of the forum should turn up one of several threads on this issue and hopefully someone else can come along and offer their tips and suggestions of what they do to make the game run smooth for them.

Yes these are scenarios and need to go to the scenario folder.

Or this one https://www.dropbox.com/s/f5y4ambaxt4fge6/Meet Tiny Agricultural (water) 273 battle 003.btt?dl=0

I will explain my process a little more so everyone has all the details, well as I see things anyways! I started with tiny meeting battles for the reason everyone is encouraged to start small. If i screw things up it is easier to find a problem if the size of the battle is small. I followed the game manual guidelines where a tiny battle is roughly platoon in size. This is the basis the whole battle is built upon. Each side has been given a platoon from the formations purchase options. All of the settings were left on typical, you get what the game randomly gives you. I set the date for the battle and then chose the formations for both sides, based upon what was available at in the purchase menu. So as an example, I could have taken American Rangers vs Italian Blackshirts or British Paratroops against German Pioneers. I made random choices for each battle. For some of the battles I kept the formations the same but changed the time of day or the weather conditions. So again sticking with the Rangers Vs Blackshirts, you have the same map but at night and in the rain or overcast at dawn with a heavy wind instead of very hot at midday with no breeze nor a cloud in the sky. I know this may make for some lopsided battles but i think this is part of the appeal. As the player, you will know you are against an enemy platoon but a platoon of what? The initial contact with the enemy will then force you to adjust your plans as the battle unfolds. I know there will be some players who hate this idea. Fine, don't play these battles. I know there will be other players who will love the challenge. I made no changes to the map in any way. All the credit for the maps must go to the original QB map creator. Without their hard work, no of this would be possible! Thank you very much! As for the AI, so far the tiny meeting battles have had only one AI group so nothing too hard to figure out there. I added a casualty threshold and assigned some points, and unit destruction points for each side. So there is the terrain objective, take good care of your men objective and destroy the enemy objective. Since there is already AI plans for both sides the battles are playable as either force. Are these battles playable head to head? Sure they are! Are they perfectly balanced from a point total perspective? Nope. If this is a problem for you, again don't play one of these battles. But neither player will know he is the underdog until contact is made. Give the battle at this link a try and let me know what you think! https://www.dropbox.com/s/zzlmx4c5buqfnv9/Meet Tiny Town (steep hills) 064 battle 095.btt?dl=0

@mjkerner check your email! @IanL I had already thought about that but so far in the tiny meeting battles I have started with there has been only one AI grouping. But since you brought it up, how would you handle this issue? I was planning on splitting the forces roughly evenly over the number of groupings. For example in a company sized battle and 3 AI groups, each group gets a platoon and one group at random gets the company HQ. If I added a platoon of tanks, how much of an impact on the flow of battle would it make to change which AI group they get assigned to? Do you feel the difference would be great enough to make an entirely new battle? I have a numbering system planned out that will not use sequential numbers for battles. So battle number 1 and battle number say 235 might be the same map but different forces, so a player can play the scenarios in number order and may not remember how a certain battle played out the last time they fought on this map. Even if they do remember that last time the tanks came over the western hills, this time they might come from the north or the south because they are in a different AI group.

I have started the process of making some double blind quick battles. I loaded a QB map in the editor, added some formations set at the typical setting, assigned some parameters, and saved them. The original AI plans are in place, there is no briefing text or maps,and no clue about what you are facing or what you have until you load the battle. I have set different weather and time of day conditions and used different formations in the battles. I have played a few of them and can achieve a total victory as either side. I am wondering if anyone would be willing to try one or two out and let me know what you think? Send me a message or an email and I will send you a link to a dropbox file.

I am wondering how much the effects of weather and time of day influence your tactics. How much does rain influence the decisions you make? Snow? Heavy wind? Do you change your approach to a battle if it is fought at night versus in the daylight? Would the same scenario be enjoyable to play if you played once in clear skies during the day and again at night in the rain?

I did not! But now I did and just played through it to a major victory. Thanks it was a good challenge.

I have a small scenario to test out. I took a QB map, modified it to my needs and set up a small scenario. This is a very simply made scenario, no flash or razzle dazzle. I made this one in response to the request for small scenarios. If controlling less than 20 men is your cup of tea, give it a try and let me know what you think. It is called Scouts out front. https://www.dropbox.com/s/kvg65c28hxku6uu/Scouts out Front.btt?dl=0

It is possible to play a 2 vs the Ai battle or a 2 vs 2 player battle. It is not a directly supported feature and will require transfer of a saved game file between the players. I am playing a battle right now this way and am really enjoying it. I have all the CM games, (CMFB still to come), so if you would like to play a co-op game send me a PM and we can set something up.

In another thread on halftrack gunners dropping like flies, I ran a few tests and came to the conclusion that the game is having infantry not only spot for enemy targets but also do a threat analysis of the targets they spot. I hypothesised that a halftrack gunner or TC is a higher threat than an infantryman in the open due to the amount of "hurt" they can send in the direction of my men. Therefore, my infantry are more likely to all fire at once at a halftrack gunner or TC out of concern for their own safety, rather than to shoot at an easier to hit target. Is your quote above confirming what I suspected? If so, it would seem to me, that players tactics are causing higher death rates rather than faulty game mechanics. With regard to the OP complaint about additional crew members unbuttoning and being killed off, a tweak to the system to reduce their willingness to do so would be great. I know I would personally be not very keen to stick my head out of a hatch that I just saw my crew mate get wounded or killed in.

Right underneath of the ceasefire order should be the "Adjust Mission" option. It will take a few minutes for the artillery to start to land in the new location but it will be shorter than a ceasefire and whole new order.

I ran a quick scenario based on your parameters and it confirms what I suggested in the halftrack gunner thread about self preservation on behalf of the AI. When an m20 vehicle spots a tank, they try and get the heck out of the way, not engage. Even elite fanatics ignore the target orders and reverse into cover.

I just smashed through and I have two full pairs.

Yeah!!! Something fun to read again when I get home from work. Thanks for taking this on again Bud. I look forward to see what happens next.

After having run through a few more, what did c3k call them oh yeah samples, an unbuttoned halftrack up against infantry only will be fired upon once it reaches a distance where the infantry has a weapon system capable of hurting the halftrack. In the scenario I made, the first weapon system to able to hurt the halftracks are the rifle grenades. In my sampling when I run the scenario with the halftracks buttoned up with short covered arcs, every single time the first weapons fired are the rifle grenades. This is quite quickly followed up with rifle and smg fire and finally hand grenades as the halftracks come close enough. Why does the infantry not attack the halftrack when it is sitting out at 250- 300 meters? I think it is because nothing the infantry has will destroy the halftrack, and if the halftrack is able to bring its mg to bear on the infantry, then they are likely to die. Call it self preservation on behalf of the AI. If the halftrack is opened up, the AI knows the gunner on the halftrack can lay down some serious hurt on the infantryman and he will do whatever he can to take out that gunner. The platoon's BAR gunners open fire as soon as the halftrack enters their effective range. They want to kill that gunner as soon as is possible. The effects of plunging fire come into the equation and we lose a few passengers. As the opened up halftracks got closer to the US lines, they entered the effective range of more US weapon systems. As these systems became effective, they were brought to bear on the halftracks helping to rack up the casualties. Is the number too high? I don't know. I have no idea of what the actual casualty numbers should be for plunging fire onto an open halftrack at 400+ meters. In the first sample I ran, the Germans lost 5% of their total force to the effects of plunging fire. I have run this same sample again and had only two gunners get hit. I am not really all that interested in running 100 samples and coming up with a more statistical analysis. If it is possible to have a third option for halftracks, where the gunner can be up and at his position but the passengers are safely buttoned, I would be very supportive of having this featured in game. In the save game file I posted last night, the halftrack is sitting within hand grenade range of several US squads and they are not attacking it. Must be because it is buttoned up and the AI refuses to attack buttoned up halftracks right? Maybe not. A closer look at the US squads shows they have no grenades left. Their rifles and smgs are not likely to penetrate the halftrack so why give away your position? If the machine gun on the halftrack was brought to bear on them at that range the US squads would be decimated. Once the halftrack opens up, the US squads rifles and smg can harm the gunner and crew, so they open fire right away. With some 20 odd guns firing at a single target it is no wonder the Germans are cut down so quickly. The sample I did with the men dismounted and the halftracks providing covering fire, saw the US BAR squads focus on trying to shoot the halftrack gunners while leaving the infantry alone. Game flaw or sound reasoning? Which is the bigger threat to your current safety, the guys marching across the open field or the machine gun spraying rounds in your general direction? If you can kill that gunner, the bullets coming your way will stop and then the German infantry are sitting ducks. To me it makes sense, let the squad light machine gun try and take out the halftrack gunner and leave the advancing infantry to the rifle men. So is the game broken or is it like I suggested back in the second post of this thread, our tactics that are broken? To me, and I want to stress this, to ME I think the game has it correct. The tac AI is running a threat analysis and then checking to see if the unit in question can harm what it is facing. A Sherman tank will fire on the buttoned up halftrack every single time as it can kill it with ease at any range. A rifle squad with m1 garands and a few hand grenades? They are going to let that halftrack drive right on by and go become a headache for someone else. If the halftrack turns and heads straight for them, they will only engage as soon as the halftrack gets close enough for them to reliably harm it. It may seem excessive to have every available gun fire straight at the halftrack gunner but as the fifth sample showed, the halftrack machine guns can change the course of the whole battle. The gunner is a threat to every single rifleman within range and they will all attempt to kill him in a classic case of self preservation. All my sampling has convinced me to use my halftracks buttoned as high speed battlefield taxis in areas clear of the enemy. When I am forced to engage the enemy, I will be unloading the passengers and using the halftracks to lay down serious amounts of area fire. The further away I can keep my halftracks, the better. Knowing my enemy and what his capabilities are, will help to determine how far back I need to keep my halftracks to not lose a gunner.

I have a save game file available showing a halftrack fully loaded sitting less than 30 meters away from at least 4 US units and they do not fire a single round at said halftrack for multiple turns. Open it up and everyone inside dies within minutes. In this same file is another halftrack sitting the same distance away, also fully loaded and buttoned and it is fired upon constantly. However I have let the turns go for several minutes and the US squads are unable to cause a single casualty. Put that same halftrack 400 meters away and open it up and the passengers die pretty quick. This link contains the save game and also the halftrack testing file I used to create my earlier tests. Feel free to mess around and see what your results show. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xip790mmhih9rtn/AACdD_fyAaV8J_bcr2BOzsjja?dl=0

I believe so yes. Here is the shipping info page from the battlefront website http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=6 Looks like the UK is on the list!