frez13

Steve,
We spend allot of time postulating over whether or not steam can make you money. Wouldn't it just be better to cement this in fact. Try selling a game on steam... I can't imagine selling one, older platform, is going to break the bank and what if CM sold like hotcakes. I mean all of this speculating - the uncertainty could be capped in fact. You would know the terms for potential future dealings, you would greatly expand your advertising footprint, and you could finally put to rest whether or not 100M gamers want to play CM.

von Luck

Just saying, if Shock Force was put on Steam, I'll buy it again. One reason for it is so I won't have to deal with the license thingy anymore. Am serious. However I'll admit that I don't play the rest of the CM games because I'm mainly interested in modern/near-futuristic warfare settings.

This has never been done before, and gains nothing for Steam themselves, so will likely be impossible. Steam is still a store, they want products to sell. They are not a free advertising company to direct customers to other stores.
 
Hence my earlier suggestion: put Shock Force on Steam to test the waters. It's got an extensive demo, and its age means it's probably not selling much here on Battlefront anymore. But that suggestion probably got lost between all the insults and white noise generated by certain regulars here.

Re: AMP
 
It most certainly is not at this point, It's supposed to be a "soon" thing like 2017-2020, but as of now the basic load was still a mix of sabot, MPAT, and sometimes canister.  
 
Re: M1A3
 
It is most certainly an enigma.  I worked with guys who got pulled in to basically be the focus group for some of the improvements. There never was a real "hey what do you think of this?" tank parked in the motorpool or something, it was very general "do you think the loader could use his own remote weapons station?" sort of questions.
 
The stuff that's been consistent:
 
1. New lightened gun.  Same performance, just much lighter
2. Better integration of electrical systems (a lot of stuff has just been added on top of existing architecture, so reworking stuff like the wiring harness to reduce redundancy is in the cards)
3. Replacement of copper wiring with fiber optics (this is supposed to save 2-5 tons of weight)
4. Data link for the gun to allow for rounds like the AMP or possibly some sort of future missile system
5. Improved commander's weapon station.  The CROW is too tall.  Way too tall, and while effective, it's clearly a bolt-on addition.  Something shorter, and better integrated into the tank is likely.
 
Stuff that's mentioned occasionally that I don't rule out:
 
1. Replacing the engine with a diesel.  It has been discussed, and would be more cost effective.  However the gas turbine still offers excellent performance, and we have the advantage of having a lot of them on hand right now.
2. Additional remote weapons system for the loader.  Given the COIN focus in the last decade or so, making a tank more MG focused doesn't seem unlikely, but at the same time it'd get in the way of the commander's station, the CITV would have to be worked around, and the loader has other things to be doing usually.
3. Some manner of add-on boathull for the belly armor to deflect mine blasts
4.ERA racks installed as standard vs a kit.  I'm sort of half on half on this, on the one hand, the ERA mounting kits definitely stayed well in the realm of the TUSK kit, and only the TUSK kit.  On the other hand, with better weight management it'd be possible to actually just have the ERA on all tanks.
 
Stuff that I've heard but seems very doubtful
 
1. Longer/larger gun.  It's possible to do, but most of the direction the Army has taken is better rounds, and the sheer length of a larger 120 MM gun is prohibitive in urban or other complex terrain.
2. Longer hull/more roadwheels.  I've never seen the logic for it given the weight reduction measures, maybe partly trying to lower ground pressure by increasing how much the existing weight is spread around.  However given the sheer number of M1 hulls in existence, and the expense of modifying them to that degree, it's more likely the basic shape of the hull and suspension will remain the same.
3 Home-grown APS.  The US program seems to have stagnated/suffered from reduced funding and priority.  The CMBS scenario where the US buys a few thousand units from Israel to add on to existing tanks seems more likely than the US APS coming out in time to install it.  Unless of course it's actually something that's just being done so in the dark for OPSEC reasons that no recent information has leaked on it.
4. Autoloader.  Just no.  Reworking the turret to that degree, and the value of the fourth crewman is not something I see the Army walking away from.

Yeah Steve stop having a rational and calm argument with people!
 
This is actually nice, everyone got a few answers and the discussion is still going, if your bitter about it at this point just leave the thread, NO ONE is making you stay and read it.

For me, the one thing I do not like about the way Battlefront operates is the key system having limits and we customers being forced to rely on Battlefront to use a product we bought and paid for.
 
I recently had to replace a hard drive.   Except when I went to unlicense my copies, it would not work.  I tried contacting Battlefront only to have my emails rejected..  I could not wait and ended up taking care of things on my end.   Now for the last 3 weeks I have been trying to get a response out of Battlefront even here on the forums because every email I send them is being rejected by their servers.. and the weird part is the rejection is not happening right away rather days later when I suddenly get an email stating as much.
 
I have so far not heard from anyone at Battlefront regarding my request for help even though I also posted over a week ago here on the forums as well requesting it and why.
 
I am not a happy customer because I own a number of their products.. and cannot use any of them because I cannot reach Battlefront to fix the issues with the elicense system.   
 
If Battlefront were to close up, every single one of us would own hundreds if not thousands of dollars of Battlefront products that we would eventually be unable to use at all because of the way the system locks us out after a few activations.   IF the un-license system were flawless then perhaps it might not be such an issue.. but it is not.
 
And THIS is why I think a Steam move would be a good thing for Battlefront, in my opinion.

So I have an interesting article that discusses an indy company creating and selling a game over Steam and several other mediums. 
 
http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures
 
This article is an interesting glimpse at a company looking back at some sales data and reflecting on what it means.  The graphs speak volumes about sales and the mentality of gamers in terms of buying into a product.  They also discuss the affect of having the player base increased to such an extent that the base sales rate increased due to having a greater visability of the game. 
 
Obviously this game is nothing like CM however I think there are enough commanalities in terms of a game attempting to build a larger player base.  Despite what many of the nay sayers proudly discourage - having greater visibility of a game is a huge boon which translates into the company making more money which means more and better products.  Steam is a fantastic tool for advertising and selling games and I heartilly agree with people who suggest it should be used.
 
 
von Luck

For those less interested in reading the article these graphs are an interesting look at Sales data.
 
 
Initial Sales:

 
Midweek Madness Sales:

Humble Bundle Sales:

 
 
Total Revenue:

 
von Luck

Sburke,
 
I have played CM for a very long time.  I have been involved in this franchise since its early inception.  I am posting this because I find it genuinly consternating that the game isnt marketed on steam.
 
von Luck

Make no mistake, going on to Steam entails some risk, just as continuing the same business model.  Combat Mission is niche, but not so niche as "99.90%" won't understand it.  That's just elitism talking.  Personally, I would hire more staff and try Steam.  But it's their company, and they can run it the way they want.
 
And God, do I wish was 18-25 years old!

If you don't have new people coming onto the forums arguing ideas then all you do is stagnant the series because with such a small community the ideas start to incestualize because people who are die hard fans are content with anything the series does as long as it sticks to the canon that they enjoy.

Saying a company survived for 15 years proves nothing to future success if they aren't willing to adapt to the change. I haven't been around BF for all too long so I am not sure how they have changed their marketing or image over the past 15 years (if at all). But you have to follow the change if you want your company to continue its success. Sure BF could survive by being a really small company that makes you pay for patches and makes their games very expensive to adapt to the low demand because of the games obscurity. But that wouldn't really be thriving from what I see the new technology from CMSF to now is very limited compared to say Civilization from Civ IV Beyond the Sword to now.

I don't believe you understand just how large and diverse the steam community is. You have people playing stuff from Europa Universalis 3 to Tabletop Simulator to Eurotruck Simulator. The steam community has changed a great deal from the early days of Half Life, Counter Strike and TF. It's a huge mistake to think that a community for Combat Mission could not be found on Steam.


Other than that I'm really confused to the other complaints on this thread other than the business model. "Invasive DRM"? What? It's 2015, by now you should have stable internet for at least the 10 seconds it takes to log into steam. After that it doesn't matter what happens to your internet. It can go out and you just switch to Offline mode. And yes Offline mode does work and your very foolish or not receptive to new technology if you think it doesn't work.

You would be surprised at the number of people who play games like Hearts of Iron 3 on Steam and games like Panzer Corp from Matrix. Now Panzer Corp isn't as complex but there are people out there who if they are exposed to it will probably love Combat Mission, people just don't know it exists. A demo on Steam for Red Thunder for example, would be a great way to gauge if this is the kind of game people are looking for on Steam.

Once again like I pointed out in the other thread, people that want CM on Steam are not out to ruin CM we want it to succeed and do even better than it is right now. Treating new guys who come on to the site to see if it will be available on Steam like dirt does nothing except show how ignorant this community can be to new ideas, and that goes for including new features in game as well as steam.

I think you are pushing it quite a bit there. There are definitely CM players who do care if it is on Steam or not.
 
Anyway, I would find it but the search function appears to be not working for stuff posted on the old forum. Anyway, in the before time there was a post in this post this was detalied: BFC contacted Valve about putting CM on Steam. They got to look at the contract and found that what was being offered wasn't better than what they had now. They decided to continue with the current system. AFAIK that situation has never changed.
 
There are also considerable risks to putting CM games on Steam. Some of these include:
 
#1: Coding time to hook the games into Steam. This requires that projects that are sure to make money are put off.
 
#2: Cannibalizing current customers at a lower price point. Right now 100% of money paid to BFC goes to BFC (not their own backend costs to support the store front). With Steam somewhere around 70% of the money paid in makes it to BFC. They need to make sufficient new customers to cover the loss of revenue from current customers going to Steam.
 
#3: The team at BFC is probably pretty old. The first game was announced in like 1999. So lets be generous and say that they were all 25 at the time. That would make them something like 40 years old.  Financial they individually probably cannot afford a setback at this point.
 
There are solid financial reasons for BFC to maintain it's own store front.
 
Personally I think a few of y'all can afford to calm down and stop throwing vast generalizations around.

Am I supposed to be impressed now? I started on 8" ones, so get off my lawn you young whippersnapper.
 
The marketplace in 2000 was entirely different than the marketplace in 2015. Back then, PC games were still sold in actual physical stores. Nowadays only the very big ones or the ancient relics like Battlefront even bother with printing physical discs. What worked well in 2000 is a recipe for disaster in 2015. Battlefront has survived so far, but they're hardly thriving these days. After all, a company that has to price a small piece of vehicle DLC at $20 in order to even make a profit (and then still drops hints that they likely won't do it again because it wasn't really worth it) isn't exactly screaming "massive success story" to anyone with a bit of business sense.
 
Over 99.99% of gamers have never even heard of these titles. Thousands of potential customers who'll merrily spend their money elsewhere. There is only one single mainstream gaming source even mentioning the name Battlefront, and that's because they've got an author on staff (Tim Stone) who is a huge fan of the wargaming genre and who, just like many posters here, is constantly urging these antiquated business models to adapt and thrive in the modern gaming market. There is a joke game where you quite literally play a goat that is raking in profits Battlefront can only dream about. Train and farming simulators sell more in a single week on sale than Black Sea will in its entire lifetime. And all thanks to the massive exposure Steam brings. I'd also be quite interested in knowing how much Strategic Command 3 will outsell its predecessors now that it's most likely going to Steam.
 
Again, I've had this exact same discussion half a dozen times before. I've heard all these arguments before, I've been ignored for it, I've been insulted for it. And every single time I've been proven correct in the end. Paradox, Matrix Games/Slitherine, Illwinter, Longbow Games, ... They all strongly opposed Steam, they all predicted for years that going on Steam would ruin their company, they're all eagerly selling their games on Steam today. This time will be no different, so I really can't be bothered to be drawn into yet another endless debate about it. Either Battlefront will join the modern market in the next few years and we'll merrily enjoy many new Combat Mission games for decades to come, or they will stubbornly and scaredly vanish into obscurity and be replaced by someone else. Those Graviteam guys for example are going to be a really interesting competitor in a few years time, at the rate they are improving and innovating.

I disagree. I've seen several other developers and publishers make the same claims BF does about Steam. I've seen their forums flooded with countless topics where their customers ask and pressure about Steam, and I've seen countless people like you dismiss those efforts. And in almost every single case I've seen those companies give in to the pressure, join the future and profit immensely from it. I think the only case I've seen where it didn't happen, the company no longer exists.
 
Again, the choice is Battlefront's. But the people who keep asking for Steam are those who have BF's best interests in mind. And in the end, in my experience Battlefront will have to either bend... or break. Right now, very few gamers have even heard of these games. Obscurity and anonimity are never good for someone trying to sell a product, even though finding a niche might keep them alive for a while.
 
 
 
Yes, it says that people realize what a massive amount of money can be made from Steam (by all parties involved) and want their share of the spoils. And the lack of success of these alternative services says even more.

It would also mean Battlefront can get rid of its DRM system, saving the money it costs them and saving customers from the frequent problems with activations. It offers customers infinite re-downloading and possible Steam Workshop access for easy access to mods. And Steam has had an off-line mode for many years now.
 
 
Yeah yeah, I've heard the same excuses a dozen times before from other companies. And inevitably, once they actually try Steam, it turns out most of the cons were bull****, profits skyrocket and those companies can't get enough of Steam.
 
Look at Matrix Games. For years they claimed, just like Battlefront does, that their many years of publishing experience and all their sales data proved that going to Steam would only hurt their profits. Customers kept pushing them to Steam however, and now that they actually tried it, it turned out all their data and experience was quite simply wrong. Nearly every new game they publish gets a Steam release these days.
 
If Battlefront is smart, they'll embrace the future, as so many others have done and profited by. A game like Black Sea would top the Steam sale charts for at least a week, instead of being confined to obscurity on this tiny little corner of the internet. But as so often is being said, most wargaming developers and publishers are scared of both change and success.

Ok, I see what you mean. Those are fair points. So let me put it this way then - there is no chance in hell that US will fight Russia over Ukraine in a near future and there is no "f'in" way in hell that China would somehow get involved in such conflict; so you're right - Chinese involvement is even less feasible; but both scenarios (US or China) are completely unfeasible to begin with. Can we perhaps agree on that? If we can't, I am sorry - but that is as far as I am willing to debate politics on this forum. Cheers!

First of all, as my fellow countryman you will probably agree that there is absolutely no support in our society for engaging in a war against an enemy that does not pose a direct threat to us (at least on a same or higher level than Al Qaeda did in early 2000s). There would be even less support for engaging a strong opponent (albeit not nearly as strong as we are) like Russian Armed Forces over Ukraine (that most of our countrymen cannot even find on a map). However all of that is moot point due to our nuclear parity with the Russians and a mutual distraction principle. The last thing that any responsible American or Russian leader would want to do is to escalate such conflict to DEFCON 1 level. As I've said in quite a few other threads - CMBS provides a very interesting and challenging scenario that I am really looking forward to; but their premise (as far as direct US Military involvment is not really well grounded in reality - which is something that I am perfectly OK with btw).... so in that sense PRC involvement in such cisis is just as likely as US involent - which is to say that neither one is likely to happen; yet it is still fun and challenging to consider in a game like CMBS

Lets remember 'weather' isn't just weather. Its spotting distance, hit probability, ground conditions, light levels, even fatigue factors. If most of those parameters are pre-calculated for each action square at startup to allow for continuous gameplay then altering them significantly during gameplay would throw the whole game into confusion. Bear in mind I don't have a clue how the game actually operates under the hood, myself. 

Would it be possible for BF to develop a program routine that would allow weather to change during a battle? This might work by the scenario designer steeing a percentage chance for weather to change with branching options enabled.
 
To take a simple example the game could start off as foggy. After a specified amount of time there will be a 40% chance the weather remains this way but a 60% chance every ten minutes that the fog will become mist. Once this happens there will be a 70% chance every fifteen minutes that the mist will clear. Once that happens there will b a 50% chance that the weather is clear. oherwise it wil be overcast. If overcast there will be a 60% chance of precipitation.