Xorg_Xalargsky

Amen to that!

We've got little information to work with here, perhaps if you could give details about your results and the difficulties you faced, you would receive more useful help. For now, I can still recommend you this excellent youtube playlist featuring a thorough set of tutorials, some of which were made by this forum's own Chris Maillet

That's very interesting, I wonder if its ever been properly tested.

@Oleksandr Unfortunately, I believe your image link is broken.

Yep, the game needs at least 5m for Water tiles.

@HerrTom You're doing amazing work! I've been following it for days, very interesting. This is what makes the CM community so great.

I'm fairly certain there must be some Soldier's Names mods available. You should have a look there, it's the Mecca of Combat Mission mods and scenarios. http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/

Yes, it's pretty simple actually. The way CMx2 mods work is by replacing assets that go by a certain name the game engine searches for. In any CMx2 install directory, you will find a "Mod Tools" folder, therein you will find two modding tools : RezPack and RezExplode. RezPack is used to make .brz files (CMx2's data file format) and RezExplode is used to crack them open. You don'y really need to use RezPack, it's just a way to make nice little file bundles; as a matter of fact, most mods simply provide raw files for ease of use. To unpack a .brz file (which are all found in a game's Data folder), all you have to do is plop it down in the RezExplode/Input folder and then run the exe. The program works pretty quickly and will leave the loose files in the Exploded directory. Now for Final Blitzkrieg, you'll have to unpack "final blitzkrieg v100a.brz". You'll find the soldier's names files under the Text folder.

Ah! This anecdote reminds me of my first try at the Kampfgruppe Engel campaign for CM:BN. There was a Greyhound down some narrow dirt road flanked by hedges, I send a Pz IV thinking this was going to be a no-contest... well, the greyhound destroyed the panzer's main gun... Later I send a Panther to finish it off and then give it a movement order slightly up the road (I knew there were no AT assets in this area)... well, the remnants of an infantry team I thought I had killed earlier managed to gather the courage to chuck a few grenades at that Panther, breaking its tracks! As you said, nothing is invincible in this game, I've even seen a video of a Stuart killing a Tiger!

There is a Combat Mission Series wiki, but it's on the anemic side... On the other hand, the manuals do a pretty good job at explaining what's at your disposal. For armor and penetration data, I find the game's Defenses Report to be almost useless. Luckily, there are alternative and much more accurate (Front Yellow vs. Large Shell isn't very descriptive) sources. The free-to-play WW2 tank/aviation/navy game War Thunder features a wide arsenal of vehicles for all major nations of WW2 and an Armor Visualization feature that lets you see the thickness/angle of armor. Another source is the Penetration Calculator tool at http://www.wwiiequipment.com/pencalc/. It even shows you a nice little graphic to see where you should position a unit armed with a given canon to take down a given tank. I've been known to frantically consult this website when I'm facing heavy German armor...

My personal wishlist for supply/ammo. - Supply Platoon options for all infantry and crewed weapons - Ability to purchase Supply Dumps in Quick Battles (sometimes, vehicles can be hard to conceal...) - One Supply Dump for each vehicle replaced - Converting MG/mortar/AT teams that don't have an ammo bearer team to 2-team squads (so you can split it and don't have to send the weapon itself or the unit's leader to fetch ammo)

Boy oh boy, double dose of juicy info! I guess all the ritualistic sacrifices have been working after all!

In my experience, Battlefront is not too keen on revealing dates it's a peculiarity of the game development industry. On one hand, rushing out a product to make a certain date can lead to poor quality and cut content. Conversely, you can create a lot of negative sentiment in the community if you don't deliver by a promised date... On the day of the release of 4.0 for Fortress Italy, it was said that Rome to Victory was only a couple of months away and that most of the work left was scenario/campaign creation. Chris' ailment might have pushed that back somewhat, but probably not by much.

Fortress Italy already has a released module and another coming shortly. Indeed, it has a much bigger OOB as it includes many nations, with more sub-nations coming soon! The base game covers the battle for Sicily and features Americans, Italians, and Germans. The Gustav Line module pushes further in the war and adds some Commonwealth nations and some more units all around. The upcoming module is supposed to cover the events from the capture of Rome to the end of the war, alas, little is known about what is going to be added except for Commonwealth units from the colonies. Despite what you might think, Red Thunder is not un-balanced, scenario-creators focus on the battles that were a bit more even. Unfortunately, I don't think we're bound to see the Finns or any other axis-aligned nations any time soon, but who knows... That being said, dedicated community members create all sorts of mods and some of them try to replicate nations like Hungary and Finland.

@Battlefront.com It's always good to hear from the devs! Thank you for taking the time to read the forums and addressing some of the community's concerns. I'm very excited about Red Thunder's upcoming module, here's to hoping for some gorgeous city battles and perhaps Volkssturm units, Onward to Berlin!

You can always nudge luck to your side, bazookas and panzershreks will fire up to 200m, but I find they only start to be useful under 150m. Even at that range, a first shot hit is 50/50.

A 75mm gun will most likely take a few direct/near hits to destroy a wall, low or otherwise. Now, a 150mm on the other hand...

This is why I think we should get a Shoot And Scoot command. One of the top items on my wishlist, a command that lets the unit shoot a given number of times then run away! It's currently possible to reproduce this command with a Pause order, but it's not reliable, it's based on time, and you never know how much is required for a unit to shoot.

That's what I heard and my limited experience with low-light battles would tend to confirm it. It's a shame, because low-light battles are one of Combat Mission's main weaknesses. I simply try to avoid them.

This thread is a very good idea! How do you find the return on investment on your first example? That's something I struggle with in Quick Battles, when to buy fortifications vs. more units. As of now, I always lean towards units as opposed to fortifications unless some area just *asks* for some obstacle or mine (and then, sometimes the enemy decides to go completely around them, hi there @IanL )... Maybe I'm not playing to the strengths of fortifications (I'm definitely open to criticism or suggestions), but I think they could do with an overhaul in the future (new types, re-balance of some values, perhaps an alternate resource system reserved for fortifications...)

In my example, 4 guns on harass would still expand too much ammunition. 1 gun will produce a barrage lastinv 4 x as long.

Makes you wish, what if co-operative play was a possibility, each player controlling a platoon, only being able to communicate with other players while in C2...

@DougPhresh Have you tried Play By Email multiplayer? In my humble opinion, this is really where the game's depth and its replayability comes into light.

What if I want one 105 field gun firing slowly for a very long period of time, for example, to defend some open terrain leading to a bridge? And besides, a gun has a maximum ROF and a sustainable ROF. a Heavy fire mission will order the gun to use its maximum ROF until it heats up then switch to a sustainable ROF.

It gives you more flexibility. Some batteries have as few as 2 guns while some others have as many as 8! You wouldn't want a slow area denial barrage to use all of those!