Zveroboy1

Right, but I mean even within the realm of the East front. Compared to every other time period, 1941, 1942, 1943 or 1945, Bagration is probably the offensive with the less books written about it. The Germans for very understandable reasons have tended to write as little as possible about it in their memoirs. I think Von Mellenthin just spends 6 lines in his book about it for instance. In the West, both for political reasons and because it was overshadowed by Overlord, it hasn't been covered in depth much. I don't think Glantz has covered it yet. So yes in virtually every other period of the war in the East, there are dozens and dozens of possible engagements I find myself wanting to recreate but for Bagration because of its scope and because it is usually covered on a strategical level, it struggle a bit lol.

(No it is not that the Germans are getting the **** kicked out of them.) The problem with Bagration imo is that it is such a large operation in scope that it is difficult to find source material for inspiration or vignettes of the appropriate size to make scenarios for CMRT. Most history books covering it deal with army groups, armies, divisions at best. There isn't so much litterature about battalion or company size engagements.

How are preoders factored into the release of the game? Dvds need to be pressed, manuals printed and packaged etc before being shipped, that takes some time. Is this going to add another delay or will the game just be released separately as a digital download first without waiting for the physical game to be ready?

A couple of pics from my Afghanistan scenario.

Yes this is definitely not easy. I gave it a go, but this is probably too much for my limited photoshop skills. I have a decent source picture, not as HD as it should be but I think the landscape looks better than the original horizon and blends in quite nicely with less houses and more fields and forests. The problem is that no matter what I do, use guides, the slice tool or whatever, I always end up having a 1 pixel gap between each picture and I have no idea why. Thanks for the detailed walkthrough, but what do you mean by this : "You don't need a 360° view because you can Always stretch the original picture so that it covers the game's fictional horizon" I am just asking out of curiosity because really even if I somehow managed to get past the 1 pixel gap issue, the other steps would probably be beyond my meager skil level.

It bothers me a little too. How hard is it to make a horizon mod? You need to split the panoramic source picture into 4 different ones, one for the north, south, west and east bmps and make sure there are no seam lines ok, but what else? Does the top half need to be transparent with an alpha layer so that the skies can work with it?

Friday 23 is my guess. A week to wrap it all up, finish all the missing graphic/art job and various tweaks. And one more week for final testing.

Instead of going directly for Kiev, how about a drive south toward the Crimea bypassing Kharkiv from the west, along the Dnipropetrovsk - Zaporijia axis? Sorry if this has been mentioned before, I didn't read all the threads on the topic. Kharkiv might turn out to be a bottleneck for supplies with this scenario if the Russian forces just bypass it, but this would isolate whatever forces the loyalists have in eastern Ukraine, either pocketing them if the movement is swift enough or forcing them to withdraw westward. This would yield several benefits for the Russians : - inflicting a military defeat on the loyalist Ukrainians, possibly forcing Kiev to the negotiation table. - seizing ground where the population is mostly pro-Moscow, which can be used as a bargaining tool in the future negotiations or simply presenting Kiev with a fait accompli. - linking Crimea to mainland Russia This could probably lead to a partition of Ukraine, and if not a full blown annexation, at least the formation of a pupper regime in eastern Ukraine.

Ok scratch that, for some reason I thought it was possible to assign a negative value to a destroy objective.

Right, I was probably being a bit too naive here. It didn't cross my mind at all that this could turn into a dick waving exercise. I was just looking for pointers. But you got a point. I want to include some ANA units for my scenario and will probably have them green with low morale. For the Talibans I will run some tests and see how it unfolds. I was wondering though if making them have a low morale would not be a way to have them break contact more readily and disperse and thus help portray some sort of hit and run tactics where they disengage or even vanish after initial contact. I need to explore this option.

How would you rate Talibans in Afghanistan as far as experience and morale are concerned? Should they be green or regular? possibly Veteran? On the one hand, the war in Afghanistan has been going on for over a decade so there has been plenty of time for getting combat experience but on the other hand, the life expectancy of insurgents actively fighting ISAF is maybe not super high in the long term? I am guessing the crucial factor is maybe not so much their level of experience per se but rather relatively speaking, what their experience level is compared to blue forces. But still it would be interesting to know what you guys think. Also should Talibans be rated differently than Mujaheedins in CMA?

Yes but this is what I am talking about. How do you decide when to substract points to a side's total by using destroy with a negative value and when do you decide to add points to the total with preserve for instance? Similarly when do you decide to award points for destroying units and when is it preferable to give points to the opposite force for staying under a particular threshold?

Thanks that was helpful. I need to study that link, it looks really thorough.

Ok so I am trying to design a couple of scenarios taking place in Afghanistan using CMSF; it is not going too badly for the mapping itself, the force setup even the AI plans but when it comes to victory points, basically I have no idea what I am doing. That's why I need some guidelines regarding victory points allocations. It seems there are several ways of doing it but the thing that puzzles me the most is how you can have two opposite philosophies so to speak. For casualties for instance, you can either reward the player by giving him a victory point bonus when he keeps casualties below a certain threshold, but you can also reward the opposing player when he inflicts casualties. Isn't it better to use only one of these two mechanisms? And if so which one in what circumstances? By that I mean that if say blue force gets a bonus when keeping casulaties low, the effects will get compounded because at the same time red force won't get the points. It seems it works the same way with preserve/destroy. Any tips/hints welcome regarding that but also victory conditions in general.

Don't forget Mk.19 vehicle mounted automatic grenade launchers; in CMSF these were brutal for infantry. You get two of these on a humvee or a marine AAV firing in tandem on infantry in the open or even in a building behind a window and it makes minced meat of them in no time. I think they got a 5 meters kill radius from the point of impact and a 15 m wound radius and they get fired in grapes of 3 or 4 at a time.

AD terrain ARIS terrain Hmm for some reason I cropped the two screenshots differently but you get the idea. AD looks lusher but since ARIS' textures are higher definition, it is maybe more detailed and crisper up close. There are good textures in both packs really, I am probably going to make a mash-up.

But is it going to be a brand new game not compatible with the old CMSF or will we get some sort of patch to bring it up to date akin to the upgrade kits you have now, albeit bigger in size and scope and maybe with a different pricing ?

Ok I found it thanks, it was under CM shock force - base game / maps

What scenario is the Ramadi map from?

Message Vein and he will send you a dropbox link for the downloads.

'NATO TV 98-5 Steelers' by George McEwan in the repository is bigger than this : 2.7 x 2.9Km. Here is the link : http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=2639

Personally I hope they make the time span covered by each base game a tad broader on the East front. I mean the war in the west post Normandy landing lasted just one year and it will be covered by three separate games : CMN, CMFI and CM Bulge. But on the East Front since it lasted 4 years, I don't see how it could work if Battlerfront keeps the same 3-4 months period as in RT.

Please forgive me if this has already been debated ad nauseum before. Just assume I have been living under a rock and haven't touched CM2 since Shock Force. From someone coming from CM1 and who has played an ungodly amount of CMBB and CMAK, one of the things that struck me the most with CMRT is the effect of morale and suppression. It seems to me that it has been toned down quite significantly. I seem to remember having my pixel troops get pinned down for several minutes frequently, being unable to move or react for several turns, whereas with CM2 it looks like suppression wears off very rapidly. The whole morale/suppression model seems a lot more forgiving. Please bear in mind, my experience with CMRT is quite limited so it is entirely possible I am not seeing the full picture, but am I getting the wrong impression here or is this an accepted fact?

Ok thanks.