Heirloom_Tomato

Which title are you seeing this in?

@danfrodo Did you have success clearing Damascus?

Welcome back. How are you liking CMFI?

I wanna take wagers on how long it takes before a second purchase is made! Before or after the first pbem @mjkerner?

@Zloba I have a young one at home, 8 months old now, along with a bunch of siblings for the little guy, so I know cash can be tight sometimes and spending money on a game can be hard to justify. If you want to wait for the Red Thunder/ Fire and Rubble bundle to save a few bucks no one will blame you. The demos are fun and can keep you entertained until either you are certain you want to buy the game or you have enough free cash to justify the purchase. If you really want to make sure you have the money to buy the game, follow a tip an old man gave me. He put $2 into a jar on his nightstand every day. If you need to raid the jar for an important purchase, the money is right there and ready to go. If at the end of the month, the jar hasn't been raided and you still have some extra cash, use the money for whatever you want. In your case, put $2 in the jar every day until the Fire and Rubble bundle is available. If your jar is still full, a guilt free purchase awaits! Or just trust a random internet stranger, buy the CMFI bundle and really start having fun!

Fire and Rubble will ready for release when it is ready as the saying around here goes. If you are thinking about Red Thunder, there will most likely be a bundle deal when Fire and Rubble comes out saving you a few dollars if you wait until then. However, every day spent waiting is another day not playing the game. If you have the financial capabilities, pick a title, buy it and start enjoying the game. You really don't sound like someone who will regret the purchase.

@Zloba The price of the game you see on the website is not a sale price but rather a discount for purchasing the bundle. If you choose to purchase just the base game and then add the modules later, it will cost more than deciding to purchase the bundle up front. The price of these games is subject to great debate and a search history of those who post here will show many have asked the same questions as you are asking now. I know I was looking for a sale price when I first thought about buying one. These games are not something you will finish or beat in a few days. Even if you only buy one base game and play a single scenario every night, it will take you over a month to complete all the scenarios and campaigns that came with the game. So is a $1 or $2 a day really all that excessive to spend on entertainment? Add in community created scenarios, quick battles, multi-player battles, and exploring with the editor and the cost of these games is actually quite cheap per hour of entertainment. The manuals for each game are included with the purchase. The website wording refers to an older option where you could purchase a physical copy of the manual and have it shipped to your house. The manuals are now all pdf files and will be installed along with the game of your choice. I would recommend picking up the CMFI big bundle for your first purchase. It may seem less interesting at first glance but consider the following: Accurate TO&E for at least 10 different nations from July 1943 to May 1945, the most for any CM title. All the cool little tankettes and armoured cars up to the big cats. Wide array of different small arms, mortars and off map artillery. Longest timeline of any CM game giving all 4 season to play through. Hot, humid, hazy summer days, the rain, mud and fog of spring and fall, the winter snows and frozen ground. Widest variety of terrain to fight through. Desert, mountains, valleys, rich agricultural lands and dreaded city battles. All together, the CMFI big bundle gives you the most opportunity to experience a wide variety of tactical challenges. But is sounds to me like you have already been bitten by the CM bug so it doesn't matter what title you buy first, soon you will buy another. So pick one, and start having fun playing!

What kind of error are you seeing with these two?

The editor and Quick Battle unit purchase stage, have various options when selecting the units participating in the battle. Morale ranges from poor to fanatic, Experience from elite to conscript, leadership from -2 to +2. There is also the opportunity to select equipment quality, supply, headcount and fatigue level as well. Also keep in mind the TO&E differences between the different formations in the game. As you can well imagine, and based on you mod work on experience levels in ARMA, a company of +2, elite, fanatic, fit, excellently equipped, fully supplied, and full headcount SS Volksgrenadiers will be far more difficult to push out of a small village than a -2, conscript, poor, weakened, poorly equipped, scarcely supplied, 50% headcount Volksstrum company.

@kurtcobainsbrainz go to the store page and select your order for the Upgrade 4 big bundle. You should find a folder for each game title and in the folder will be the upgrade and the full installer.

Be sure to name a saved game so you won't forget it at the start of this mission. This will give you a chance to come back and take the other branch of the campaign.

The old flowchart is for the SF1 version ONLY. While the order of the battles and what happens next has not changed, the rest, refit and resupply variables have been modified to reflect the updates in the game engine since SF1. While I understand you were disappointed to encounter the exit zone error playing the updated SF2 campaign, this advice makes literally no sense. The updated campaign file is based on the original campaign, meaning the exit zone error was, and still is, in the original SF1 campaign. Not only will some one playing the original campaign run into this issue, they will also miss out on all the other updates improving the campaign. I did a speed run of the campaign last night as your comment about this being a bug in the campaign needed to be checked. I ceasefired in the setup phase of every battle not requiring a victory to move on. There was only one battle needing a minor victory to advance. I kept the tanks out of the battle as much as possible and did not suffer any tank casualties. In the Counter Attack battle, I started with 1 tank on the map and more than 3 tanks arrived as reinforcements. Since all the tanks in this particular mission are core file units, you must have suffered a tank casualty in a previous battle. As for the British platoon HQ units being unable to call for artillery, this is a game engine issue and not a campaign specific problem. The issue has been reported in the official channels and should be fixed the next time a patch is released. Knowing this problem exists, and the importance of timely artillery and air support, I can only recommend doing your level best to keep any Forward Observers alive. There is nothing further I can do on this issue as any further work is above my pay grade.

The exit zone has been fixed for the Sab'Abar mission. There were two scenarios with a TO&E oddity which caused the Marine module to light up when attempting to play the campaign. This has also been addressed.

There are no Javelin launchers in this scenario. There are however lots of other infantry anti-tank weapons available for you to use. They are just much shorter in range, less powerful and require stealth to use effectively. I loaded up the single scenario, BOTH the original and the SF2 modified versions have the tanks as core units. If @Erwin had 1 tank on the map and three show up as reinforcements, casualties were suffered in previous battles. With all the discussion around this scenario, I played it again tonight and got a minor victory. I suffered a turn of disaster when I got too aggressive and lost 4 AFV's in 30 seconds of misery which cost me the major victory. The key to the battle is getting the on map Challenger into a covered location with excellent views of the map. Guard his backside with AT equipped infantry and covering fire from grouped AFV's. Have the infantry take all available AT weapons, split them up and deploy them in protected ambush positions. A well positioned FO team can be a real game changer once the artillery arrives with their short call times and precision rounds. When the reinforcement tanks arrive, their grouped firepower easily overpowers the Syrians. The Challenger is one tough tank but it can be taken out easily if used too aggressively. I don't know how to make a beautiful flow chart but here is an excel file with a listing for each scenario and what happens next if you win or lose. https://www.dropbox.com/s/wvnt4rc68qipc2t/highland games.xlsx?dl=0

We are talking about the same mission. There are two branches in the campaign and you only reached one of them. The first branch comes after the Recon mission of helicopter airfield. The following mission is exactly the same mission, the difference being the amount of intel the player has based on a successful recon mission or a failed mission. The next branch happens in battle #12 and has been explained above.

Mission 11, or "Counter Attack", is only the end of the campaign if you lose the scenario. If you had achieved a minor victory in the battle, you would have continued on. No spoilers, but this is a battle where your casualties from previous missions will come back to haunt you. The next scenario is the US or Alone battle where the player chooses which path to follow. There are 4 more battles after this one, irregardless of the path chosen. I would suggest keeping a save from this battle so you can take the alternative path if you wish to play all the battles in the campaign. The US path features urban battles, while the Alone path features more rural combat. The convoy battle exit zone issue is one that was flagged by @Ultradave in play testing. I made the changes and saved the scenario with a modified name. When compiling the campaign, I did not up date the script to pick up the new scenario. This mistake has now been corrected.

I will check it out.

Finding errors in another persons writing was one of the easier tasks to learn in school. Proof reading my own work on the other hand is very difficult as I read what I intended to say and not what the words actually say.

Did you succeed in Mission #4? Have you lost any Challengers?

I will try to explain it a little bit differently then using an example from my non military day job. Last fall we did a major renovation to one of our barns and used some equipment from the Netherlands. Our farm was only the second farm in North America to use this equipment and the very first installation for our local dealer. Naturally there were many questions about the correct way to install things. We were given the direct line of the technical expert at the company but the seven hour time delay, spotty cell service and slight language barrier made calls direct from the barn difficult; ie the RED connection. Information was able to flow, yet most often resulted in confusion at one end or the other but progess was possible. Phone calls made from the house provided a more stable connection but the other time and language barriers still existed; consider this the ORANGE connection. Next we tried a video conference call from the local suppliers office with all the install guys, myself, the salesman and company tech guy. We could see a complete example setup in their office, and figure out a few other things by talking and looking over plans together. It was time consuming, still some language issues but once again progress was made. Consider this to be the YELLOW connection. Email with pictures also yielded great results. No languages challenges, clear example of the issue, usually a quick response time with great answers. This would be similar to the LIGHT GREEN connection. About halfway through the install, the owner and their main communications man flew from the Netherlands to our farm to check progress. Now with a face to face meeting, both parties looking at the same problem, quick, detailed and accurate solutions were discussed. Future problems were presented, debated and solutions found. Real progress was made. Consider this the DARK GREEN dot. In game, a DARK GREEN dot would be similar to the FO coming from the artillery regiment whose guns your using. They guys know each other, trained together, speak the same slang, can hear the panic in each others voices and know how to make things happen. A RED dot is an American rifle company Captian calling in fire support from a French Canadian artillery regiment. While this is an over simplification, the dots represent the amount of friction, static, confusion and miscommunication that occurs between the units. Dark green: on time, on target, great results. Red: the shells will come. Eventually. But they might not be very accurate.

The scenario design side of the game can be even more addictive than the playing side.

If you are missing .brz files for CMFB, your best option will be to redownload the installer and try again.

Those tanks are your friends! Be kind to them and they will take care of you. The 51mm mortar is a great tool for quick, accurate, bad days for the enemy.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this. Without giving away too much, there is varying degrees of resupply throughout the campaign. There a couple of battles which take place quite quickly after the previous battle and resupply in those is rather limited. Otherwise most battles will see you start the mission after receiving some supplies.

If you own the 4.0 upgrades there is an all in one installer for each title. Simply download this installer, point it to install over top of your existing install location and you will be good to go.