Howler

Evening all,
@Juju has announced that he was stepping back from modding and after working as a tester for a few of his releases and then helping out directly with R2V he's graciously offered to handover the care of his long running UI mod to me. As he said, "Please look after my kids". JuJu has provided me with all the original .psd files now so it's easier to update and add things in with the new content matching pretty close to the existing mod. This is still well and truly his mod. Now I'm no artist but have been labouring away behind the scenes for a few hours every week and learning quite a bit as I go along. Please be a bit more patient.
There's been no CMRT F&R update from me but this is because I'm trying to hit these three goals before sending to Bootie for upload to CMMODS. Number 3 is the big one but a huge time saver going forward.
1) CMRT F&R Update - Done - just tweaking  (I may release this separately so you can overlay it on top of your existing UI mod). Also fixes the mod to reflect the changes that were brought in with the background panels in the update.
2) CMFI R2V Update - Fixing up some of my mess with shadows and colour correction in the last release.
3) Mod Unification Project - JuJu had different background textures for each family which made the workload quite high with not a lot being easily transferable between the families.. well without standing out like a saw thumb. I'm switching this around so for example the same M1 Garand Weapon Slot texture will now fit in in CMFI, CMBN and CMFB. Over time there's also been updated different icons for the same weapon, vehicle and special equipment icons between the families so I'm unifying the look there as well. CMFB icons get the preference given the slightly better detail. This also makes life a lot easier if and when future modules are released.
I should says this doesn't mean the all the mods will now look identical, the exact opposite, however the comment elements like weapon slots will carry across the game families. Think of it as the kids are still unique but I'm sending them to school and making them wear something resembling a uniform.
A few things that I'm not continuing or putting on the table now so there is no shocks later on. Most of this is largely due to time and I have no idea how to set up an script for the Paint.net to do some of this repetitive work automatically. Batch processing doesn't appear to be a thing. (I'm not paying subscription money to Adobe).
- Reducing the options for the "Yellow Weapon Slot" textures to just the red cross option. The many options JuJu provided over the years here is an absolute time sync to create each one by one for every weapon BF has modeled in WW2 era CM2. It's actually an enormous list now! I won't rule it out down the track to bringing some of them back or doing something new here. Vinnart has already had an interesting idea, but I want to get something out sooner rather than later.
- Portraits - Will fill in the gaps if I can get crafty enough and it meets my own (probably too) high bar. These are tough to get looking right. Backgrounds will be tweaked to sort of match the uniform of each branch to separate them out a touch. (See preview pics).
- Never going into Cold War or the Modern titles. JuJu didn't and neither will I.
 
Preview pics (I know about the black line running through the centre panel).

I had included T72s in my Fahrbahns scenario because I imagined they might never show up in a scenario otherwise. Because why would anyone pick T72 when you can play with T64s and T80s? I guess i underestimated the nostalgic appeal of T72.

Good to hear. CW might well end up as one of the best titles to Quick Battle in, so getting that reasonable would be a huge benefit.

Use the LOS tool in a clearing or somewhere with what would be a long view in clear weather. Blue line should show you the “range” of how far you can see.
 

There's only a driver.  There's no gunner for the MG.  That's the reason the fire commands are greyed out.

The other clue is that the distance to the target changes to reflect the position of the waypoint relative to the target rather than the current position of the vehicle even though the line is still drawn from the vehicle.

Long time player of CO2 (and 1, which was just CO). Better than OK, it's an outstanding game. I suppose you could use it for scenario creation, keeping in mind that in pretty much any CO2 scenario, you'd have to play to some point and then pick an interesting section of the overall battlefield and slice it to be a CM scenario, due to the map and unit sizes of CO2. There is plenty of detail under the hood listing all the equipment and personnel of every unit  and their casualty state, which you could take and apply to force selection in CM.
What you'd be doing is taking an existing historical battle/mini-campaign, playing it out partway using your own methods, and then at some point stopping to select part for a semi-historical/what-if scenario for CM. Getting all that info from CO2 to CM would be kind of tedious, but you could do it. Plus you'd have to create your own map based on what you sliced from CO2. The fidelity of the maps in CO2 is nice, but not the level of granularity of CM.
Anyway, CO2 is a lot of fun. Different level, but a pretty capable AI, and there are many scenario sets available. Also if you check the LnL forums there are some user made battles that are excellent. There's a 3 or 4 scenario Caen campaign that's really great (and huge!).
 
Dave

Correct. Pick the combo you want and go with it. I investigated other ways of packaging it but given the shared icons this is the only way to get the look right.
I have been playing a lot of small red on red and blue on blue battles over at The Few Good Men site and I noticed that my previous icon mods were falling a bit flat because one side got cool icons and the other side did not. So, when creating the new CMCW icons I did things differently. Each mod contains a full set of red and blue icons for all armies in the game. That means having several versions to allow for the various combinations that someone might want to play.
That was easy-ish because I already had red and blue NATO icons and Red Soviet icons. So, theoretically all I needed was a few icons and some scripting (to do the required renaming - I don't do editing the same icon multiple times). It turned into a larger job though because it turns out that the diamond enemy unit shapes for NATO were introduced after this period so I did have to create new red versions. Plus, my Soviet icons had somethings that were appropriate for WW2 but not for modern and some stuff that I think was just not correct. It turned into a bigger project than I expected.
I'm tired of the fiddly icon work so this will be it for now but someday I'll likely revisit my other mods. Maybe. I could start with repackaging the modern icons more in line with this method.

4 new scenarios have been added to the Scenario Depot this morning...
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-fortress-italy/cm-fortress-italy-add-ons/gl-cmfi/
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cm-battles-for-normandy/cw-cmbn-changing-of-the-guard/
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-fortress-italy/cm-fortress-italy-add-ons/gl-cmfi-night-moves/
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-red-thunder/cm-red-thunder-add-ons-scenarios/cmrt-fr-dnieper-rising/

FYI folks, as @Bootie noted, I just posted my scenarios to The Few Good Men site. I have to say, it really was an easy process. I got everything together that I wanted (my file, zipped, and the image for it - same as you see on my site) first, then then for the first one I simply followed the instructions on the site (posted above) to the "t". They are well laid out and there's only really about 4 main steps, and that's it. After the first one, I was able to do the rest without referencing the instructions and all went tickety-boo (is that really an expression 🥴??). If anyone is into building scenarios and aren't too sure about giving this site a try, I do highly recommend it in terms of ease and exposure. It's a pretty good service and I've gone there for a few scenarios before. Might be worth a look, and man, if you can build a scenario and program the AI for it, this part is a no-brainer  .

Remember that CM allows you to check LOS not just from a unit's current position but from a movement waypoint.
For example, select a unit and place a waypoint somewhere the unit definitely can't see (such as the other side of the map). If you select that waypoint and give a "target" order, the line of sight tool will reflect visibility from that waypoint, not from the unit's current position. (It take a little getting used to because the line still originates from the unit, but its color clearly indicates calculation from the waypoint.)
 
 

Feel free to make a detailed list of them and post. Really. I'm not being sarcastic. There are quite a few people on the beta team, however the deadline was short, not everyone tested or even opened every scenario (I haven't even opened the NTC campaign, for example because I was busy on other things). As was said, not everyone is a native English speaker or even if they are not a US English speaker so some military terms and organizations names were constantly being corrected. Most of us were on the beta team for a short time, compared to  "normal" (like FR for instance). So sure, typos are there.
And while everything IS read over, and corrections made, sometimes new errors can creep in when a correction is made and it doesn't get caught. BF always looks for quality, so if you posted a list of errata rather than insulting everyone involved in the entire process, it will definitely go into a list of things to be fixed.
My constructive criticism of your criticism. Take it or leave it 🙂
Dave

Blimey - I'm still full on playing CMFI; I've started playing Fire and Rubble, but it'll be many months before I begin to get to grips with it all; I haven't bought Cold War yet (but I will); and I still have barely touched Black Sea.
Another title will be great when it comes along, but there's a lot in the ones we have already, enough to keep me happy a long time...

I still have it installed.. basically for nostalgia. I never actually play it now.

I prefer binary patches, don't want to compile the patches myself.
 

Certainly a fair question.  For CMBS I love Kieme's CMBS reworked USA faces mod - great mixture of diverse US troops.  I'll add that the CMCW US troops look good also.

FWIW, I think it was a reasonable question, and it was reasonably answered.  No need to lock IMHO.

I also thought it was a fair question, and a good answer.

Normally I "Target Smoke" "Pause" for 5 seconds. "Reverse" one AS and "Face". Providing you haven't got a super fast Loader it should expend just one round of Smoke. 

Welcome!
Not really easy to do, LutzP.  You can Target Smoke, put a Pause Command for say 15 seconds or whatever, then put a short Movement order, like 1 Action Square or whatever, then on that Waypoint, use another Target Command. Play around with the Pause timing and number of Movement Orders to figure what works best for that vehicle to get X number of smoke shells. With on map mortars you can Target Light and they usually pump out 3 shells per minute.  (Unit soft factors will affect all this to some degree.) 

Roads and railroads have always looked terrible for me (1070 here) in all CM games. I started experimenting with some massive maps a while back in CM:BS and came across the same issue of trees disappearing in the distance.  I'm not sure I buy the DirectX/OpenGL argument rather than it's a limitation on the CMx2 rendering engine that hasn't been addressed.  I would think it really hasn't been an issue until we started getting these (awesome) big maps in CM:CW.

The British Army has always had a particular obsession with ammo consumption/supply - which is no doubt linked to some of their greatest defeats in battle being linked to running out of ammunition. 
I too was puzzled about the Warrior until I did a bit of research about its background. 
It was designed and built in the late Cold War and meant to serve with British Armoured Troops in Germany, where it would be facing hordes of Soviet tanks and IFVs/APCs.
In order to avoid that the vehicle blasted away its ammo within minutes, the slow-firing and 3-6-round Rarden was purposely chosen to ensure that the Warrior would remain combat effective for longer. Also, the lack of a stabilizer for the cannon meant that the crews were encouraged to remain in the pre-planned and prepared defensive positions the British Army would assume if war broke out. The ammo loadout of the Warrior is a clear indication of this role. Also, to the Rarden's credit, it did have the major benefit of not requiring an external power source and can therefore remain in action even if the vehicle's engine is disabled or turned off.
Curiously the export version of the Warrior (called the Desert Warrior) which was acquired by Kuwait is equipped with the 25mm Bushmaster, rather than the Rarden. 

About the use of the Warrior in-game, I personally tend to mainly use its machinegun with a cannon for emergencies and/or armoured targets. This does require a lot of micro-management, which can be a bit tedious (setting target arcs is quick but it can lead to some frustrating situations). 

Ceasefires are secret within the game.

As far as whether you tell your opponent it depends on who you are playing. Usually what will happen is that either myself or my opponent will throw in the towel and message the other. At that point we both submit a ceasefire since a surrender sets all surviving units of the surrendering player to "missing". Although I don't play for the end-game win-condition since it ought to be obvious how well you performed and the Major/minor/tactical victory/loss doesn't actually matter. I imagine some players actually do hold to that in which case you might want to keep it secret.

Yep. I'm not too happy it works like this, because I really like to do flexible defence tactics where I fall back several times to new positions.
Would prefer it worked with a radius aroundthe contact marker, so if you just moved your tank 20m to the left, it wouldn't count as a new position.

I should have mentioned that just the night before Hypeman posted the question, in one of the Operation Clipper campaign scenarios, I had a Panther trapped along a stream bank, behind a group of buildings, smothered in smoke by other troops, with an engineer squad creeping up from behind.  I simply ordered a normal Target command. Three demo charges thrown--- Panther died.