Flying Penguin

You mean you kept a few airfix models handy and made pew pew sounds?

You guys are coming at this the wrong way.... Don't fear the tabletop, embrace it! All we need is a background village hall scene with a few tables of beardy blokes playing ASL and you can forget that you are even playing on a pc!

I think the proper caveat is "unless they were desperate". The only tanks I've seen that look like they've seen the business end of a paint brush seem to be very late war types rather than "summer of '44". The (few) exceptions tend to stand out, like this JadgTiger that appears* to have had the lighter colour brushed on in a hurry. *See the paint smear by the bow machine gun which appears to have been painted with a quick right to left stroke (hence the part circle of darker colour showing through), the general sloppiness, the lack of the characteristic colour blending which would denote spray gun work etc. Clearly without a photo of the painting process we can never "prove" it was brush painted, but it doesn't look like a neat or even a sloppy spray gun paint.

It's very much an RTS rather than a tactical wargame. Credit where credit's due, it's a hell of a lot more realistic than a straight Starcraft clone with T-72's and a good handle on recon is key, but it's much more focused on RTS style play at speed than careful considered moves (e.g. there is no ability to give orders while paused). As for single player, Airland Battle includes a campaign mode (of sorts) but don't expect a deep story, rather a series of skirmishes. IMHO it is a good RTS, but it's not a direct competitor for CMSF. That's not a criticism of either, but simply different styles of gameplay. If you are a strictly WEGO type, the Wargame series is probably not your bag.

Well not quite, I have zero interest in a "pure" operational game, quite frankly they bore me to tears. My question was more focused around whether, given the possibility of much larger battles (and as some have said, the current force sizes could be lost on a larger map), whether any effort was going to be put into giving the units more AI as "crutches" to help manage larger forces. I appreciate it's blurring the lines slightly (and some of my top-of-head possibilities may have been a bit more operational than intended), but my personal feeling was that any WW2 force large enough to "fill" the map space would be desperately unwieldy to manage. I guess the answer is "play smaller scenarios" Personally I'm looking forward to being able to use my modern tanks (yes, the M word) as they were intended in a setting large enough for them, rather than having eternal armour knife fights....

Well take the 5x5 example, that's 5 divisions (and plenty of men!). Easter Front WW2 isn't my forte, but I assume it's many thousands of men. Either way, there's little point having capabilities for extremely large maps without the tools in place necessary to manage correspondingly large forces. I don't know necessarily what that should be (I'm pretty new to this myself) but some possibilities could include: Unit automation of standing orders (e.g. on contact, find cover vs on contact keep going) Player fights alongside AI players to a player determined master plan Multiple players per side Ability to give units an objective and have them figure out how to achieve it I'm just thinking aloud, and those ideas may not be feasible or desirable, but I can't imagine anyone but the absolute most committed being able to monitor the expanded forces that you will now be able to fit onto the map without a fundamental re-think of the relationship between player and troops.

Or 1.5km x 20km..... I'm currently playing "Operation Hammersmith" in CMSF which is about 1.5km in depth and would give you plenty of engagement range if you plonked WW2 tech in, so obscenely long fronts are a distinct possibility (subject to scenario design and technical limits).

WEGO doesn't allow me to micromanage enough... Yes I'm a complete control freak!

Looks impressive Quick question, with the inevitable increase in complexity when bigger maps come in (you can't have a 30km front capability without having at least a few truly epic map filling battles ), is there any plan to give units more autonomy (even if it's optional)? Just as one example, I don't see how you can reasonably tell who's under fire and respond, other than second by second stop/go, so having units able to seek cover a little bit more proactively than they currently do or calls to indicate under fire (not just casualties) might help... Alternatively will there be any other tools to assist managing such large fronts? Cheers, Jamie

Hi Schrullenhaft, Thanks for the quick response. I was fiddling last night and turned on the "ATI Right Click Compatibility", which allowed me to get through a mission without crashes. Hopefully that's sorted it, but if not I'll have a fiddle with downgrading to Catalyst 9.10. I've just bought the base game, so I hope my run of luck continues! Cheers, Jamie

Hi, I downloaded the CMSF 1.30 demo to give it a go and I'm having an odd issue which I hope someone can help with. Whenever I start a mission, I get 5-10 minutes in before being dumped back to the desktop with a standard Windows "this application has stopped working" message. I'm not sure where to start as there is no obvious error message or log file as far as I can see. Can anyone suggest next steps? My laptop key specs: Intel i7 Q720 1.6ghz 4GB ram ATI Mobility Radeon 4650 1GB (Catalyst 13.9) Win 7/Avast Antivirus Any help greatly appreciated, Jamie