Bulletpoint

When things go wrong, I do my best to swear in the faction appropriate language and accent.

That's true, but even with only one AI plan, the designer can still build in a semi-random placement of enemies by painting setup zones. So there will still be an enemy bazooka team somewhere close to the first roadblock, but you won't know if they're in the house, in the little copse of trees, or sitting behind the low wall off to the right. I really like that kind of replayability, so I hope more designers would use this feature.

That's what I generally always do. But with really well made scenarios, I like to play them several times and try various tactics. And then it's really great to have a couple of various AI setups and variability within each setup too. So was wondering if this campaign has it.

I'm finally rolling with KG Peiper, and in the third mission I have been hit by disaster due to massive bad luck a series of extremely incompetent orders I don't really like to admit being responsible for. So I'm tempted to start this scenario all over, but it would feel like I'm cheating if I already know where most of the enemies are located. Any variability in enemy troop placement built into the scenarios in this campaign? (Apart from my own incompetence, I'm very impressed by the campaign so far.. everything seems top notch, from the briefings, the very detailed maps, the forces, the missions, the choices to make, etc.. would be great if there's some replayability here too).

I only read about this regarding the Soviets, when and where did it happen on the German side? Not saying it didn't, just curious to learn more.

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Not at all Erwin.. I laughed a bit about what you said, but we're on the same team Obviously you're right in that it's up to Battlefront to make their own decisions, and that they know what they are doing with their own company. But if you read the interview that was linked to above, Steve isn't actually dead set against going on Steam; he says it's a business decision where he weighs the pros and cons. I just thought it was interesting to look up the growth of the Steam marketplace size in recent years.

I'm sure Steve has a Wookie costume somewhere he could put on and do a little dance if his new fickle STEAM overlords demanded it Because obviously they must be obeyed.

When that thread was written, back in January 2015, Steam had 8.5 million users. It now has 18.5 million users. I don't know at what point it would tip the risk/reward business case into positive territory, but I thought it was interesting.

Some people are God Emperors of Dune, some are merely excellent equine necromancers

+1 "First of all because the vast bulk of the Steam customer base hates games like ours, which means the bulk of what Steam has to offer us (tons of customers) has zero practical value to us." - Steve I'm not a hardcore Steam fan, and I don't really care if they go on Steam or not. But I thought I'd take a look at the numbers. Steve might be right that the vast bulk of Steam users hate Combat Mission, who knows? But even then, Steam now has 18,5 million users. If just one in a hundred of those users has the intelligence and interest in realistic WW2 games required to be a match for Combat Mission, that's 185,000 potential customers. If just half of those actually purchase one game, that's 92,500 customers times 60 dollars = $5,550,000 (before Steam cut). I don't know if that amount of money would be peanuts for a game development company the size of BattleFront. And of course, I'm not saying Steve can't use a pocket calculator. He obviously has his reasons for doing what he does. I'd just like to challenge the "zero practical value" part of the argument.

This is kind of an old myth that keeps going around. I've read several news reports about white guys killing random people and then being called terrorists, and people from other ethnic backgrounds killing random people and being called mentally ill. One example is the Iranian who shot and killed nine people in Munich in 2016: "Police say he was a depressed loner receiving psychiatric treatment" according to The Telegraph. In the end, what the media calls a shooter usually depends on whether the person did in fact have a known mental illness and was under psychosis, or if he acted on religious or political urges.

I believe if the gunner is killed, the A-gunner picks up the weapon for the remainder of the scenario. Then when the attrited MG team shows up in the next battle, it will be the same A-gunner, but he will not have the crewed weapon. If in contrast it was the original gunner who survives he will carry the weapon through. I have only tested this with the 191xA4 2 man mg team. But I believe it happens with other equipment too for core units in a campaign from one batte to another. Thanks for the info, but my question was about the "gunner" status, not the actual weapon...

The idea was not driving with the wheels or tracks on top of the rails, but between the rails... Never tried that with a car (nor a tank) though...

I think this folder has changed with CMFB? It used to be a Z folder in the data folder, but now there's a specific "mods" folder ... it works putting the file there at least

When ordering a mortar halftrack to fire a maximum duration mission, it stops halfway before spending all its ammo. At beginning of the mission, the mortar team in the halftrack has 90 rounds available. 66 of these are in the halftrack itself. When ordering a maximum diration mission during setup, the halftrack will stop firing when it has a total of 56 rounds available (33 in the halftrack itself).

I mentioned this one before, but inside another thread, so just want to make sure it gets noticed and logged: Mortar halftracks can't fire fast. They fire very slowly, both in direct fire and as indirect fire missions (when the halftrack is physically present in the battle). An easy way to test it out is to open the first battle of the KG Peiper campaign.

Brilliant, it works now! Thanks to you and to @The Steppenwulf

Renamed to backgroundrain.wav - still doesn't work. Thunder still rolls.

It didn't work. I put the attached .wav file in the folder C:\Users\name\Documents\Battlefront\Combat Mission\Final Blitzkrieg\User Data\Mods. No luck.Thunder still sounds. Is the file supposed to be called "5af6de8907d16_backgroundrain.wav" and only be 347 KB in size?

I think this is already in the game - was added recently (in 4.0 - 'recent' in CM terms means within the last couple of years)

But if the designated gunner gets killed, will the replacement gunner still have the "gunner" tag?

So, how about driving along the track? In CM, that also takes place at a snail's pace, whereas my uneducated guess would be that as long as the tank kept its tracks between the rails, it should be fine?

+1 That's actually an interesting and creative idea. I think it would make it difficult for the attacker to secure his flanks, though. Currently, if you manange to dominate the map edge to edge, you know the defender won't be able to slip past and attack you from the flanks or rear. If using your attack zone idea, you'd have to post a lot of troops along the edge of the attack corridor to guard against flanking moves. In some ways I guess it would be realistic (for breakthrough scenarios), in other cases it would be unrealistc (there would be assumed to be friendly troops advancing to your right and left).

Maybe something good will come of it. While I have no love for Apple, I hope the dwindling support for OpenGL will finally convince Battlefront that it might be a good business case to move on to a modern graphics platform, thus finally getting a chance to solve many of the graphical issues such as flickering shadows, uneven shading of tiles in fog, etc. that are currently not fixable because of poor support for OpenGL.