IICptMillerII

During a nailbiter of a scenario, German Panther tanks are getting around my main line in a forest. If they break through, they'll wreak havoc in my rear. All I have to stop them are a few GIs with bazookas rushed to the area. Manage to pull off this great shot:



Through the trees, at 75m, with the old M1A1 bazooka. Vaporized the tank. I don't get those kinds of shots in the modern titles, let alone CMFB. It was nice to see.

Yes

For anyone interested, I just uploaded a blog post on Using Listening Halts.  This is a subject I have discussed many times before in my AARs, but have never really written at length about it.  Hope its useful.
Bil  

Muh boys finally getting to go weapons-free after the none-too-soon death of "Fury Panther."

@37mm great video! I must admit, I'm jealous that you have the time to make these cinematic vids. Keep up the good work!
I also noticed that the BMP-2s have the bugged turret texture. Here is a link to my Sand BMP-2s that have the fixed turret texture:

http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/combat-mission-shock-force-2/cmsf2-vehicle/sand-bmp-2/
 

Marines load up in the well deck of the Assault Ship USS Wasp.

AAV-7s and LAV-25s exit the well deck and head for the beach. 

Marines gather gear on the flight deck of the USS Wasp as the first assault wave passes between the Wasp and the USS Oak Hill.


Marines on the starboard hangar of the USS Wasp look on as the USS Ticonderoga engages attacking aircraft.  

 

Good to hear! Thanks for the new update Elvis! Nothing will ever stop the real detractors from complaining, but I can assure you the more level headed individuals really appreciate the updates. Hoping for the new patches to release "very" soon!

Good to hear! Thanks for the new update Elvis! Nothing will ever stop the real detractors from complaining, but I can assure you the more level headed individuals really appreciate the updates. Hoping for the new patches to release "very" soon!

Good to hear! Thanks for the new update Elvis! Nothing will ever stop the real detractors from complaining, but I can assure you the more level headed individuals really appreciate the updates. Hoping for the new patches to release "very" soon!

Seven days with no posts?
Let me fix that:
 

Looks to be another fantastic @George MC scenario! Looking forward to the release!

Thanks for the good wishes. I think I am 75% there. Another year maybe...

In the early 2000's, knowing nothing about it, I picked up a boxed retail copy of "Barbarossa to Berlin" and ended up spending untold hours battling back and forth across the plains of the Eastern Front. WEGO had me hooked! I toyed around with the original "Shock Force" because it was very familiar to my actual military service, but I'm really a WW2 buff at heart.. I got away from the game as I upgraded computers over the years. A few years ago I started noticing that Combat Mission was out again and with a new engine, but for no particular reason, I never pursued it... until now. Well - a few days ago I bit the bullet and bought the latest build of "Battle for Normandy". Just - wow. After a bitter fight through the hedgerows, my beleaguered US squads finally knocked out the dug-in PaK 40 that had been holding my four Shermans at bay, allowing them to commit to a high-speed "cavalry charge" in-line across the now-secured field in the last three minutes of the game, to form a semi-circle at the objective crossroads all the while gunning down the remaining German infantry as they broke and fled in abject terror! It was rather glorious!

That was only my first mission, and I'm already eyeing the additional content - specifically Russia and Italy... Thanks Battlefront guys - I have returned!

Well said.

I am a stalwart supporter of BFC, been playing the games for longer than I can remember. I made a modest contribution to the development of CMFI some years ago.
Yes, waiting for the patch has been unusually testing, but this game system has so many facets that even though I played less I still had a lot of fun making maps and designing scenarios, not to mention fun testing them.
 
These guys are a small team of extremely dedicated enthusiasts. They give 100%. I still haven't found anything remotely approaching their product for the kind of game play I appreciate. I have total confidence in their judgment and integrity. And I don't begrudge them for one minute the long gestation of this patch, or the confusion over exactly when it will be released.
Thank you Steve, thank you Charles, thank you everyone else who put their time and effort in bringing these games to us.
I've gone through a rough patch that has lasted nearly ten years so far. If and when I get back on my feet, I will be glad to lend a hand again. I hope it will be soon (can't give a precise date though... sorry, I couldn't resist that :-) ). In the mean time, I don't mind saying that playing your games has often been the only source of fun and relaxation for me, and a good way to avoid going mad during the long spells when real life got held up in limbo.

I'll take that as a compliment 😁
I think this is a large part of the reason why CMFB has relatively few uniform mods compared to other WWII titles. I know that some of the uniform mod makers in the past have been contracted by BFC to do the uniform models of newer CM games, which is in large part why the uniforms in CMFB and CMSF2 (apologies if I've forgotten one) look so spectacular on release. 
RE: Scenario Making
I've just never been very good at putting a map together. I can never seem to get the building placement right, or the map to look real and lived in, and I always have issues translating the scale from the 2D map you place everything on to the 3D game you actually play in. That's probably the single biggest reason I haven't gotten into scenario creation, though I fully acknowledge that this is an issue on my end, not anything to do with the scenario editor. 
Again though I'll point out that the scenario's and campaigns in CMFB are in my humble opinion some of the best stock scenarios/campaigns that have shipped with a CM title. The reworked campaigns and scenario's that came with CMSF2 continued that strong tradition, and CMBS also had great stock scenarios/campaigns that were immensely bolstered by the release of the mission pack. 
In general, I think that there is a lot higher quality stuff shipping with the stock games the past few years, so community members feel less of a need to create their own standard scenarios. Instead, we are starting to get scenario's that stretch the limits and capabilities of the CMx engine, like what @MOS:96B2P is doing. If the stock quality remains going forward (which I fully expect it to) I think unique scenario designs will be more common as well. 

I'll take that as a compliment 😁
I think this is a large part of the reason why CMFB has relatively few uniform mods compared to other WWII titles. I know that some of the uniform mod makers in the past have been contracted by BFC to do the uniform models of newer CM games, which is in large part why the uniforms in CMFB and CMSF2 (apologies if I've forgotten one) look so spectacular on release. 
RE: Scenario Making
I've just never been very good at putting a map together. I can never seem to get the building placement right, or the map to look real and lived in, and I always have issues translating the scale from the 2D map you place everything on to the 3D game you actually play in. That's probably the single biggest reason I haven't gotten into scenario creation, though I fully acknowledge that this is an issue on my end, not anything to do with the scenario editor. 
Again though I'll point out that the scenario's and campaigns in CMFB are in my humble opinion some of the best stock scenarios/campaigns that have shipped with a CM title. The reworked campaigns and scenario's that came with CMSF2 continued that strong tradition, and CMBS also had great stock scenarios/campaigns that were immensely bolstered by the release of the mission pack. 
In general, I think that there is a lot higher quality stuff shipping with the stock games the past few years, so community members feel less of a need to create their own standard scenarios. Instead, we are starting to get scenario's that stretch the limits and capabilities of the CMx engine, like what @MOS:96B2P is doing. If the stock quality remains going forward (which I fully expect it to) I think unique scenario designs will be more common as well. 

I'll take that as a compliment 😁
I think this is a large part of the reason why CMFB has relatively few uniform mods compared to other WWII titles. I know that some of the uniform mod makers in the past have been contracted by BFC to do the uniform models of newer CM games, which is in large part why the uniforms in CMFB and CMSF2 (apologies if I've forgotten one) look so spectacular on release. 
RE: Scenario Making
I've just never been very good at putting a map together. I can never seem to get the building placement right, or the map to look real and lived in, and I always have issues translating the scale from the 2D map you place everything on to the 3D game you actually play in. That's probably the single biggest reason I haven't gotten into scenario creation, though I fully acknowledge that this is an issue on my end, not anything to do with the scenario editor. 
Again though I'll point out that the scenario's and campaigns in CMFB are in my humble opinion some of the best stock scenarios/campaigns that have shipped with a CM title. The reworked campaigns and scenario's that came with CMSF2 continued that strong tradition, and CMBS also had great stock scenarios/campaigns that were immensely bolstered by the release of the mission pack. 
In general, I think that there is a lot higher quality stuff shipping with the stock games the past few years, so community members feel less of a need to create their own standard scenarios. Instead, we are starting to get scenario's that stretch the limits and capabilities of the CMx engine, like what @MOS:96B2P is doing. If the stock quality remains going forward (which I fully expect it to) I think unique scenario designs will be more common as well. 

The reason TO&E fixes are being bundled together with the infantry behavior fixes was explained by Steve in a post last summer iirc. Basically, instead of doing incremental patches, they decided to go for one big engine patch that would affect all games running on v4. Again iirc, Steve stated that in the future (after the large patch comes out for all v4 engine games) they will go back to focusing on incremental patches. 
For now its the nature of the beast and we're all stuck with it, but it sounds like things will improve going forward. As Elvis has said, the patches are in the final stages of testing. Hopefully, things go smoothly from here and the patches are released soon and put all of this to rest. I know I'm looking forward to that. 

Well, comments like yours are probably the reason that BFC usually never give time estimates on releases. Because some people will always latch on to that date - and start whining if it is not met.

Without reigniting the BTG discussion, you can lavishly equip units with organic fires on a small scale but that wouldn't be sustainable for generating a larger force.
 

A 155mm round is about 100lbs compared to the 30ish lbs of a 105mm. In the early 2000's a lot of NATO planners assumed artillery would be standardized to 155mm but operational experience has shown that cheap, light, mobile guns are valuable. I'd rather have a 105mm on call than a 155mm tied up supporting other units. More tubes are generally better than fewer state of the art tubes with precision rounds.  I think the Russian way of war is on the right track in that regard.
See also the return of 60, 81 and 120mm mortars to NATO after all those theorists thought precision CAS would replace organic fires.
When I joined the military as a field artilleryman, even at the school staff were bemoaning the End of Artillery because everybody was reading about how armed UAVs, small diameter bombs on CAS, land-based CIWS, Hell even tactical lasers had made artillery obsolete. I think NATO thinkers get tied up in the latest and greatest until the next conflict. Look at all the loony ideas before Vietnam, or even throughout the 70's and 80's.

I wanted to point out how you are both saying similar things here. Squarehead is correct in saying that some (though I must admit it was a minority in the US at least) viewed the success of Desert Storm as proof that massed Soviet artillery would have been less of a decisive factor than originally feared. The basis for this was the ease that Coalition forces destroyed the (very large) Iraqi artillery corps in Desert Storm.
Quick background, the Iraqi military had a lot of hardware in 1991. Not only did they have the 4th largest army by manpower in the world at the time, but they had the hardware (tanks, artillery, both tube and rocket) to back up that manpower. Many Coalition commanders were worried that entire battalions would be annihilated by Iraqi artillery concentrations, and is part of the reason why anticipated casualty figures were so high. 
However in practice, while the Iraqi's had the hardware, they lacked the training to properly employ the hardware. Much of the Iraqi artillery was destroyed by aircraft and counter battery fires, and the Iraqi artillery that was able to fire generally failed to hit anything. Again, this was not a fault of the hardware, or amount of hardware they had, but a fault of poor training (this includes tactics, techniques, procedures, all that).
Now, for the same reason that some in the West underestimated Soviet artillery based on Iraqi performance, some in the West are now overestimating the capabilities of Russian artillery based on Ukrainian performance. I am not saying that Russian artillery is ineffectual by any means. However, I would point out that just like the Iraqi military in 1991 was a bad indicator of Soviet military capability, the modern day Ukrainian military is a bad indicator of NATO militaries today. 
The Ukrainian military, especially during 2014, was a small, ill equipped and trained force not ready for any type of real conflict. Their equipment was mostly vintage Soviet. In a way comparable to the Iraqi's in 1991, except this time in 2014. Point being, the equipment was old, dated and poorly used. 
For the same reason that the Soviet military in the 80s would have performed much better than the Iraqi's did in 1991, NATO militaries would perform much better against Russia in the 2017 conflict depicted in BS. 
By the way, this applies across the board; tank combat, infantry combat, urban warfare, artillery, electronic warfare, etc. 
This is not now, nor will it ever be true. The idea that a small well trained/equipped battalion of 400 men can do the job of 4000 is a myth as old as warfare itself. While everyone likes the story of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, they also forget that there were over 6000 other Greeks there as well, and even when the Spartans remained as the rear guard, another 500-1000 Greeks stayed with them. 
In modern times, the same myth persists. Partly because the idea of small special forces teams wiping out entire armies "Commando" style has been so romanticized, and partly because many nations are seeking further ways to reduce defense spending while still clinging to the idea that their tiny military can still hold it's own in a real fight. The fact remains that the most important "force multiplier" is mass.
This is exactly correct. A "battalion tactical group" trying to act as a brigade is a very good way to get a battalion destroyed in short order. One can get away with it in a low intensity, static and frozen conflict like what is currently happening in Eastern Ukraine today, but it would collapse in a matter of hours in the larger conflict depicted in Black Sea. 
Completely agree. 

Not mostly, but the research of it does continue and there are items that are debated and then there are game constraints that sometimes make it difficult to actually represent the detail.  You may recall some of the discussion on how the vehicle occupancies affected unit ToEs for CMBS which theoretically should have been more clear cut.  It doesn't always work that way.  The army can decide that Joe Specialist on the grenade launcher will have to sit with another squad in the 3rd Stryker, but in CM you can't do that.  Either the team fits or it doesn't.
Folks should by now understand that the game team/squad structure and it's intersection of actual ToE is a pain point.  One that Steve does his best to make fit, but it can get very difficult with unintended consequences when you start changing the ToE for dates.
Folks should also appreciate that the testers are just other players.  We feel the pain just as much.  That we have more visibility as to current state doesn't make us any less anxious to get the patch out there or frustrated that it isn't.

LOL yeah umm to actually develop that would take more time than the patch and likely still be wrong.  Sure Charles could stop what he is doing to try and create that, but the net result would likely be that everything grinds to a halt and there is no progress.  I don't think you fully understand the variable complexity of the ToE and how much is actually being researched as the modules are built.  You can't build regression testing if you don't have the data yet as to what you would test.  The assumption that there is an agreed upon ToE database for all these forces covering the war is a 50 ton fly in your ointment.
I frankly have no idea how they even keep this stuff straight, certain individuals must have massive libraries and near eidetic memory to recall it all.