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Flying Penguin

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Posts posted by Flying Penguin

  1. One question I had re these vehicles used in re-enactmemnts is that the camo is always beautifully sprayed on. Did they do that in WW2, or was it a crude paintbrush job?

    Hi Erwin

    This should answer your question - at least partially (canĀ“t say if they always did it like that):

    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.

    panzer0627.jpg

    *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.

  2. 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.

  3. I think he was probably responding to Flying Penguin's posts, which pretty much were describing an operational level game.

    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....

  4. Not sure you'd want to do that in the opening of Bagration though - Soviet unit densities were of the order of a divison per kilometer in the breakthrough sectors...

    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.

  5. Not 30km "front". 30 square kilometers. So, maybe a bit more than 5km x 5km.

    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).

  6. 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 :D), 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

  7. 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

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