Thewood1

Why are these update threads always buried in one of the game threads? How about pinning it in the CM general thread and a headline at the top of the forums? It would be nice not to have to dig around.

I have been wondering if there is a law of diminishing returns on FPS in CM. I have watched carefully over the years as I change my laptop every year. I use Barkman's Corner as a benchmark. My last two PCs have all been over 4GHz CPU clock speed. But I am still getting 25-30 fps on maximum settings when looking up the road from behind the Panther. That's about what I was getting with a 3.3GHz PC four years ago. Granted that the nVidia cards improved along the way also.. I don't buy my PCs based on what I think CM's performance might be any more. It just seems the hardware doesn't matter after a certain point.

The only thing to be careful about with the M.2 formats is they generate a lot more heat than a SATA drive. If you have a laptop on the thermal edge, it can make the difference in thermal throttling.

That's true of almost any business that has any connection to the internet or social media. You can't be in business today in the US if you have thin skin. You do what's good for your business. If you are too concerned about what people think about you, your business's days are numbered.

Probably should have made that decision years ago. Its a good business decision.

Yeah, I don't think the TacAI has much context to incoming fire outside own morale state and direction of fire.

Steel Beasts does a few things to alleviate unit overload. 1) Individual units have some very good AI that takes care of positioning and retreat. I don't have to tell a unit to go to that exact spot and stay hull down. I give it a general area and an SOP. It figures out the speed to get there, whether to use a covered route, when to expose itself to fire at the enemy, etc. As an example, there is a thread on these boards about gun elevation on tanks and the difficulty in programming the AI. In SB, the unit AI knows when to move out from cover to shoot and when to back into cover, considering elevation along with a number of factors. 2) The commands you use to build an AI plan in the editor are available in the game for friendly forces. I can pretty easily script complex plans for units that branch based on what types of enemy or conditions exist. You can build in automatic fallback positions and resupply positions. You can tell a unit to drop infantry and when artillery starts falling, go pick them up. An almost innumerable number of things you can do just using an options dialog. 3) SOPs are critical to AI behavior. They combine dozens of commands and settings into 6-7 basic SOPs. FOr example, a scout SOP will have slow move, move through road, don't fire, retreat, move is incoming artillery, dismount troops, etc. all combined into one command to your recon units. Its fairly common in SB to command a small unit while the AI is fighting the bigger unit and your sister units around you. Its a pretty cool experience when done right. And again, I never play an individual unit. I play it as a wargame with the tools that SB provides out of the box. When compared to CM2, SB comes very close to being a command simulator. CM2 reminds me of a 3D board game with having to be the brains of every unit during execution.

That I never knew. Good tip.

Nope. Just repeating what BFC stated.

In CMSF1 the issue was that infantry passengers automatically performed air guard through the rear hatches. There was no way to force them to remain inside. It was explained by BFC at the time as the tactical doctrine of Stryker brigades and wouldn't be changed. I have lost hundreds of soldiers to MGs and snipers over the years in CMSF1. Not sure about the behavior in CMSF2.

And that CM1 hunt behavior has been sorely missed by me in CM2.

Well, they could do that, or finish the module and not release it until the following Monday. They can then have an actual holiday. Why would any software company in the US release this week and have to spend the holiday online handling install and download issues?

Its deja vu all over again

I looked around and must have missed it. Is there a new schedule for CMFI module release? A bigger question...I have seen several road maps from Steve on the entire CM product family in the past. None of them seem to hold up for long. Is there any word on the order of new games/modules/packs?

One of the reasons these type of people are able to espouse and expose their ignorance is there are people out there that read and promote it with limited to no critical analysis. That is the gift of the internet.

I think the comment was more about the semi-stealth edit of the store page at the end of every month. Its not about the quality of the product or meeting artificial deadlines. Its about knowing a couple weeks in advance you aren't going to make the date and then not saying anything until someone notices on the store page. You said a couple weeks ago that that week and the next week (this week now) didn't look good. So you heavily suspected October was a no go. Why not change the store date then? Your comment would only be seen the few people frequenting this thread. How about being a little more proactive in updating that stuff? No one is expecting you to predict the exact date or rush the product out the door. Just some basic customer communications on your official website. Not that big of a deal me, but I think I understand where the guy is coming from.

Well, at least it generates a little activity on the CMFI forum.

This...every game I play, Steel Beasts, CMNAO, Jutland, etc. are all very complex simulations. But they all have abstractions. If there were no abstractions, you would actually be living the event. I bet you wouldn't find much fun in that. Its much more fun to come into a forum, misconstrue and misrepresent what someone is saying and vent in righteous indignation.

Did you post in the wrong thread?

Looks like someone left the gate open.

OK, so it looks like an October release might be in jeopardy too. Two weeks out puts in the last week of October.

Steel Beasts uses copy paste move commands as a core part of being able manage large numbers of units. It works great and is a key to making the game playable with large formations. They also have detailed SOPs that go along with waypoints and such. It really simplifies playing the game.

Yeah, that's how it started, but ended uo talking about all the German FTs, including the Flammpanzer 38, at least I thought. Just thinking it might have been easier to at least reference that thread.

Didn't you two already take part in a relatively lengthy discussion on this? Not sure what the final conclusion was.

Does it replace the T-55? IOW, is the armor and weapon specs of the T-55 vs. the M60?