BornGinger

It seems I was wrong about the size of the maps. The largest scenario maps are apparently 4km x 4km and not 7km x 8km.

I know about that. But if I buy Red Thunder today, I'll have to pay for the upgrade later on to upgrade from engine 4 to engine 5. If I'm correct that is how it has worked with other engine upgrades. So instead of paying twice I can wait and buy Red Thunder when it is sold already upgraded to engine 5. I just have to wait and see. I'm sure there will be more updates about engine 5 later in the year.

@Mogarthand @E5Kif you feel like having more of a challenge by playing against human opponents you can find those on this forum and on the few good men forum. The opponent finder thread on that forum is where you find them.

If you aren't joking because Pete loves to make large maps, you mean that the maps in Cold War are going to be larger than in the other games. If I'm correct the largest maps in the other games are about 50 to 60 square km.

If you don't have much success there, you can go to the opponent finder thread on the forum The few good men.

Alrightie, then and thank you. I've been thinking about trying this out to see if I would be able to make a Finnish uniform for Red Thunder when I buy it. But as I read that the engine No. 5 might come out in Autumn this year, I'll wait til then so I buy the game already updated.

How do you make the uniforms for this mod? Is someone using a graphics tablet to make them from scratch in Gimp or Photoshop or any other program good enough for it or do you modify a Soviet or German uniform in any of those picture editing programs? I can imagine that it could be quite difficult to do this by using the mouse.

As there in the game is no option to set explosives for a mission to blow up a bridge, as it according to Steve & Co. in real life would take too long time to set this up than the time we have in the scenarios, maybe we among the different bridge options in the editor could have a few bridges already ready to blow up? Then the scenario objective could be about doing the last preparations and leave the bridge, while the enemy is shooing at them, and then finaly blow it up. The End

It's the same.

Are Fire and Rubble Soviet squads changed to follow the changes that came in 1944 when it comes to the number of NCOs and riflemen in each squad?

As long as what is being sold isn't too expensive and looks great, I would probably buy something.

As it seems some of those joining the Daesh got disappointed with what actually happened in their land of milk and honey and how many of the radicals didn't follow the rules themselves, you could be correct.

For a while now I have been thinking about buying Red Thunder as I would like to see how it is to meet and fight the Soviet armoured vehicles. But if that article is correct I think I'd better wait until Red Thunder is upgraded and sold with engine 5 so I don't have to pay for an upgrade later on.

I now noticed that I had written that wrong. What I wanted to say was that we can now only have a team or squad (or maybe a single vehicle) being in waiting for one trigger area at a time. I would like us to be able to have a unit being in waiting for more than one trigger area at a time so that a unit can sit on a spot and depending on which of the two or three trigger areas that are becoming activated the unit moves.

With the CM games on Steam and more people getting aquainted with them and the games becoming more popular, It won't surprise me when there will be other game companies that copy what BF has done but with some changes to their games to make them a bit different. Russian players already play WW2 content quite a lot. But it seems, at least some ten years ago, that they were playing the Men of War series and Faces of War which they call V Tilu Vraga or Behind Enemy Lines as I think that is in English. On a quite large Russian game forum one guy started a thread about the CM games a year or two ago. I went back to that forum in January and I think only three or four people have written in the CM games thread with the last post being from last year. But with the CM games coming on Steam, I'm sure more Russians will start playing them too.

I finaly found my notes so here is my little wishlist of changes for engine 5 or a possible future CMx3 game engine. Trees could be a bit thinner and have a broader variety in general. I often get the feeling that the trees are too thick and look too much the same. Instead of only having one single tree, two trees and three trees of each type to choose from there could also be trees of different height and thickness to each type. This variety could be randomly decided by the AI. If I for example would choose to place two single trees of the same type beside each other the AI could choose two different ones. Maybe one thinner and smaller which is slightly bent towards the east and one thicker and larger which is pointing straight up. Have houses sometimes being able to start burning if they have been hit by a bunch of high explosive rounds or if a vehicle has been hit close by. If a certain part of the grass close to the house burn too it would be even better. It would be good to have the ability to set an AI-artillery fire order anytime in the AI's battle plans and not only for the first three minutes. The ctrl + c command is only for small arms fire, armoured vehicles and mortars. But sometimes it could be challenging for the player if there was a heavier AI-artillery barrage a few minutes before the AI-troops are sent forward to assault a position. If BFC would like to limit this the editor could require that the scenario map is either large or huge for this function to work. Trenches and foxholes that are more correct. Trenches should be a bit deeper so the troops have to stand up to shoot and don't have to crawl to avoid being shot at. It would be good if the troops could crouch when they walk in those deeper trenches to avoid being shot in the head. Foxholes should preferably be single ones and more spread out instead of being in close groups of four as they are now. If a hmg-team is wiped out of their pixel life and a squad or a team of other soldiers are close by it would be great if one or two of them could move to the hmg and use it instead of having the hmg being viewed as abandoned. When talking about machine gun teams I'd like them, and all other troops as well, to be able to move backwards instead of having them turn around before they move to another position and that way avoid to get shot in the back. Have the ability to use triggers without a timed move order, The way it works now we use a trigger, for example trigger by enemy, and a timed move order. This timed move order seems to work as an insurance that the AI-group will move. And the AI-group will later on move even though no enemy has touched the trigger. This behaviour could mean that the AI-group moves away from its position to the new position and thus opens up a hole in the defense line. If there could be triggers without a timed move order. The AI-group will stay in position and move only when an enemy has touched the trigger. If the AI-groups could be connected to not only one trigger at a time their ability to defend could be better. An AI-group could for example be connected to two triggers which would mean that group 3 stays in the position where it's been placed. But if the enemy would enter any of the trigger areas it moves to the position for defense which the scenario designer has decided for the group to move to in cases of necessity. If both triggers areas would get activated at the same time there could maybe be another string of code, or strings of codes, which would make group 3 move to the position where the threat seems to be the most severe. For this to work It would maybe be helpful if the trigger areas were able to count the amount of enemy soldiers that enters them so scenario designers could decide in advance how many soldiers that are needed to enter to be counted as a threat and cause the AI-group to leave its position to move towards the threat. It would probably have to work a bit differently when it comes to trigger by enemy armour as one or two armoured vehicles can cause a lot of damage. But for this to work we would need to be able to paint more trigger areas and we would need more AI-groups. I would like AT-guns and tanks to be able to hide behind buildings with large holes in the walls so they can stand on the side of the building facing away from the enemy, see the enemy through the ruined house and shoot at them from the other side. The way it works now the inside of the house is a blocking entity with some kind of invisible wall so the direct fire line gets blocked as soon as it enters the inside of a building with large holes in the walls. I would also like to be able to position AT-guns inside large enough houses and barns with parts of the walls missing so they can shoot from there. The Germans and Russians, and probably the Brits and Americans too, used this way of positioning AT-gunss. They seem to often having had the doors to the barns not completely closed or the holes in the walls covered a bit to conceale the AT-guns. I sometimes feel that it's a bit strange that units without a binocula often can stand quite far away from a house and see enemy soldiers inside it from that long distance. It's usually only possible to stand outside a house and from a distance see someone inside it if it's the evening and at least one lamp is lit in the house or if someone inside the house is standing in front of the window and gawking on birds or something. During daylight it's more often that the only thing visible from inside a house, when standing further away outside of it, is darkness. For the people inside a house it is of course not dark at all because of the daylight brightening up the rooms. But that daylight doesn't effect the ability to see whether someone is inside the room if he is further away from the windows. I wish vehicles wouldn't get stuck in a splash of mud as easily as they do now when the weather isn't wet. Dry weather, damp weather and cold weather would most likely not have the mud sticky and deep enough to cause them to get stuck, especially not if the splash of mud is by the road. Mud on the fields on a day with wet and rainy weather or after a long period of rain would more likely be more treacherous and cause vehicles to get stuck and immobilised. Units who are using the slow movement (crawling) are often not aware or their surroundings but only aware of what is on the ground. I have read on the forum that units see what the animated troops look at. As the troops who are crawling always have their eyes on the ground by their chest, they often miss to notice enemy vehicles and troops being fairly close. If an AI-tank with AI-tankriders get bogged down and immobilised the result is that the AI-tankriders sit on that AI-tank throughout the scenario. It would be preferable if tank riders could jump off a tank by themselves if it has become immobolised, or been standing still for too long, and later on follow their AI-groups following orders to make the battles more enjoyable. It isn't fun to have a look at the map after a battle is over and see a large bunch of soldiers sitting on vehicles that have got stuck in a splash of mud in the beginning of the battle. Campaigns (most likely for a CMx3 engine): It could maybe be fun if a campaign could start with a recon team/platoon going out on a large or huge map to find out about the opponents troops. Depending on how well the player does his recon/probe and how well he manages to return his recon team/platoon by exiting them from where the recon scenario started, he will in the next scenario, the battle scenario, of the campaign get the amount of troops seemed necessary to take on the enemy on the same map as in the recon scenario. This could be done by using a system where the player must spot enemy troops. When the player spots enemy troops he gets points and those points can be used to aquire the amount of extra troops seemed necessary based on the recon points. For the battle scenario in the campaign, the scenario designer prepares the minimal amount of troops the usual way. Then he prepares certain batches, for example three, of additional troops that the player can receive depending on how many points he got from playing the recon scenario. Batch one could require 200 to 500 points, batch two could require 700 to 1000 points and batch three 1200 to 1500 points. Reinforcements (most likely for a CMx3 engine): It could be fun and maybe interesting if reinforcements arrived only if the AI calculated that there was a need of them. The scenario designer would set up troops of reinforcements the usual way. If the AI's calculations reached a certain value during the scenario it would send in a batch of reinforcements. This would of course have to be limited so that the player or AI didn't get more than one batch of reinforcements unless a certain critical values was met and also if the scenario time was the correct one. If the scenario is close to the end the reinforcements wouldn't maybe make much of a difference and are therefor canceled by the AI. There is of course from me also the usual rambling about how line of sight works. But I'm sure the people in BFC read about that subject often enough so I won't say more about it now. This was my little list which I have written down while playing and making scenarios for Final Blitz.

Will download from YouTube in the work's library after my night shift is over. Could be good to watch while I have my breakfast.

How many conflicts were there in Africa during this period? For example African (or African country) government troops with US/British/French or Soviet support in a struggle against African rebel forces with or without US/British/French or Soviet support. Then we also have the conflicts in South and Latin America. If nothing of that will be in a Small Conflicts Module containing different scenarios and maybe even campaigns about internal conflicts from different parts of the world the modders might have much work to do in the future.

Much less than yo' mama of course.

Allright. Sounds good. I'll probably make a two scenarios test-campaign first to see the result. And if it works out, I'll see if I manage to get the time to (feel like spending my time to) do the necessary research and make the necessary maps and uniforms to do this for real. Thank you very much.

The Fire and Rubble module will give the owners of the game a whole lot of new unit formations. Those who own the game but don't buy Fire and Rubble, will they get a little something of those new formations or are they for the Fire and Rubble module only?

A little question about mod tags. If there was a campaign being planned about a unit which first fought in a country's regular army and later on got transferred into a Waffen-SS regiment, am I correct to assume that it would be possible to use mod tags for, let's say three scenarios, where this unit is wearing the regular army uniform and then three scenarios where it is wearing the SS-uniform? Or would that change of uniform not be possible within a campaign?

In 1944 the German authorities called up those Estonians borned 1920 to 1922, if I'm correct, to get prepared to join the Police Battalions, Border Guard Regiments, which served under the Special Purpose Battalion 300 (z.b.V 300), or the Waffen-SS. As my dad had the correct age but didn't want to serve the Germans, he did what other Estonians had done before him and crossed the Finnish Bay to fight the Soviets in the Infantry Regiment 200 with the other so called Soomepoissid. I have been searching personal reports from Scandinavian Waffen-SS volunteers to get a glimpse of their motivations to join up and also to read about their experiences from the training and fighting on the front. In one of those from a Swedish volunteer is mentioned a soldier with the union jack on his sleeve he noticed in a trench in Ukraine, if I remember correctly. This surprised him very much as he was convinced no Britt would fight for the Germans.

Yes, I know. With the words "The Stug III in the service as an anti-tank vehicle is probably the reason to why it is called a tank" I meant that it's possibly a reason to why people call it a tank.

Some people seem to think that all of those who joined the Waffen-SS were nazis or people sympathising with them. Many of those who fought in the Waffen-SS were just young men who didn't have much to do at home and had listened to the words about the Red Threat. As they wanted to stop that threat, and maybe have some adventures too, they joined up. Some of them were soldiers who wanted the chance to do some fighting and with the experience from how Finland had been attacked by Soviet Union they felt that the Red threat was greater than the Grey one. Most of the Estonians, or maybe most of the Baltic men in the Waffen-SS, hoped to stop the Soviets from being able to control their country again. And as they weren't allowed to have their own army they signed up for the Waffen-SS. That did of course mean that they weren't only a defensive armed force but were sent away to fight in the Soviet Union. But there were of course also those who were sympathising with the Nazis and wanted to help in spreading the Nazi sphere of control. While you're at it you could also make a mod about the Brits who joined the Waffen-SS and in that way joined the side they were supposed to fight.