SgtHatred

Capitalist trickery.

Capitalist trickery.

Capitalist trickery.

Capitalist trickery.

Capitalist trickery.

I'm having wildly inappropriate feelings about this game.

This is some bizarre, authoritarian logic here. What if someone reviews a modded version of the game? Who cares. What if someone thinks they know more about recoilless rifles than Battlefront? Who cares. If someone wants their SPG-9s to have enough punch to knock the moon out of orbit that is their deal. Being thankful that someone can't enjoy something their own way is ****ed up, and worrying about how a modded version of the game might somehow impact the game's reputation is dumb.
 
Worrying about how other people enjoy stuff is pointless. I don't think Battlefront should put the effort into scenarios that they do, because I think that the scenarios are the worst part in Combat Mission. Set piece battles against the AI? That's not fun, that's lame as hell, might as well play minesweeper as far as I am concerned, but you don't see me advocating for their removal because I don't think others should be allowed to enjoy them. That would be silly.

Why would it be so terrible if people could mod stats?

It's the 21st century. AMD and Nvidia ship with tools to do this, AMD Relive and Nvidia Shadowplay. Don't use any garbage 3rd party tools. FRAPS and Bandicam are hilariously obsolete.

Lots of things can prevent CM from running correctly,  I think you've focused too much on security features. If SmartScreen was preventing the game from running it would prompt you about it with a large popup.
 
A couple years ago I discovered that the Asus Realtek control software prevented CM from running unless CM was launched through a 3rd party shell like Steam, which is weird as ****, but whatever. Try disabling every application in your system tray that isn't critical for your system's operation and launching CM. If it works, then use the process of elimination to track down what it could be. 
 
Also, AVG sucks. I highly recommend going back to Windows Defender. It does all you need without the extra bull**** that will cause more problems.

Test results
Tests done in a more "natural" map instead of flat ground. Shermans are at 900,1030 and 1050m. All shermans are placed in light forest with trees. Shermans are of variant M4A3(76)W. Panther is of variant Panther G mid.
20 tests done with panther hull down, 20 tests with panther open ground. At test start the panther will drive to its correct position so it is not exposed at the start, all shermans stationary. Disregard the forward observers, they are behind terrain and does not see anything. At this range and angle the shermans can penetrate the lower glacis and the front turret, only the upper hull plate is immune.
Skill: regular, normal, 0 for all tanks

The map.

Panther hull down/open from sherman's perspective (one of them).

Panthers perspective.
 
Results:
Panther in hull down position:
4/20 times success; 20% win rate
failures:
12 times by main gun destroyed: 4 times muzzle hit, 2 times barrel hit, rest are mantlet/weapon mount hits. Rest of failures is crew dismount and tank destroyed.
Panther on open ground:
11/20 times success; 55% win rate
1 success had the panther immobilized by lower glacis penetration, engine destroyed
failures:
4 times by main gun destroyed: 1 time muzzle hit, rest mantlet/weapon mount.
1 time destroyed after +50 hits, crew panicked earlier, but the tank was still operational
rest is lower glacis or weapon mount tank destroyed
 
So after all that i did another 10 tests in each position with shermans all beeing elite crew to see what happend
Panther in hull down position vs 3 elite shermans: 0% win rate
Panther on open ground vs 3 elite shermans: 40% win rate
 
I got many pictures from the different successes and failures, but i dont want to clutter the post, but in general this is why the panther wins open ground scenarios:

The AI will always aim for the upper hull plate, which is the only place they can't penetrate. This is the aiming issue im talking about, the AI aims for the exact same location every single shot and will never deviate at all unless terrain forces them to. Once they are zeroed in, there is almost no hits to the turret or lower glacis at all, these lower glacis hits was two of the first shots fired. The panther won in the scenario that picture is taken from.

So yet another month goes by and.. yet again.. and again and again... nothing. Soon, I'll give up even looking entirely. What a shame. 

CMx2 only "runs fine" for you if you have low standards. CMx2 works, but performance is an issue.

I like how 1 person expressing disappointment leads to an entire page of discussion on how bad everyone is. Are you people stuck in a time loop by any chance?

woof. Combat Mission is pretty bad as a singleplayer game. That's not really a knock against it though. All strategy games are terrible singleplayer games. The AI is as bad in this game as it is in every other strategy game, and I don't see any accomplishment in defeating it.
 
Playing against someone who can (at least theoretically) outwit my dog is critical to enjoyment.

There is nothing wrong with giving out ETAs and nothing wrong with missing them if something comes up, but when it becomes obvious you are going to miss your ETA you should inform interested parties. To not do so is a Dick Movetm

There is nothing wrong with giving out ETAs and nothing wrong with missing them if something comes up, but when it becomes obvious you are going to miss your ETA you should inform interested parties. To not do so is a Dick Movetm

There is nothing wrong with giving out ETAs and nothing wrong with missing them if something comes up, but when it becomes obvious you are going to miss your ETA you should inform interested parties. To not do so is a Dick Movetm

Yeah, giving an ETA that can not be followed would be awkward. It's not like someone has already talked about a before March 2019 ETA, right? 🙂

Your argument is less convincing when you subvert it in the sentence that follows immediately after. Artillery and somewhat realistic reactions to its fire have to be considered pretty core components of a game centered around military tactics. So there are in fact bugs that, more or less, break the game for those who are inclined towards playing it in a certain way intended by the developer. 
But as said, I don't particularly care about the bugs themselves. In part because I don't even own the games that are affected by them*. Hell, if they'd been clearly labeled on the tin, I might've bought the CMFI bundle already. Sadly they aren't and my only saving grace from unexpected frustration was stumbling into this thread and asking what ailed the game. The general lack of transparency is, simply put, very offputting to me as a prospective customer. It seems to me like the kind of aloof attitude that not even AAA developers can very well afford these days.
I eagerly await the patches and for a few months to pass after their arrival. With this thread as a reference, it seems unwise to be sinking my claw-like toenails deeper into the product catalog much sooner than that. 
 
(*Though I guess I've noticed some fairly minor wriggles in AI response to fire in CMSF:2. Like Canadians running away from the impact of their own LAW:s)

When a patch is 2 years in the making I start to question their ability to deliver, regardless of how long they take.

Another view is to flip this around and ask why wouldn't they have been working on the patch this whole time?
It's been 2 years and 3 months now since they broke some pretty fundamental parts of their own game -- broken to the point that many people can barely enjoy the typical stock scenario. And not just one title broken, but all of them.
When the issues with v4 were first brought to light, I would have never believed that it'd still be almost literally years before we saw them fixed.
Perhaps Battlefront needs to start actually paying more testers and content creators, in order to get things moving along, instead of relying on the generosity of so many volunteers?
I've defended Battlefront and heaped praise on the game many times over the past 4 to 5 years, but at some point a customer's patience and good will just gets used up.
"Niche market" is no excuse for a fix to the underlying game engine to have taken this long.

When a patch is 2 years in the making I start to question their ability to deliver, regardless of how long they take.

When a patch is 2 years in the making I start to question their ability to deliver, regardless of how long they take.

When a patch is 2 years in the making I start to question their ability to deliver, regardless of how long they take.