AlanSA

lol you really are a ray of sunshine. Never change though

PRELUDE: A Retrospective

This was our Battalion's first battle against the Hun, in Italy. It has been a rude awakening, and lessons were learned the hard way.
 

After a heavy bombardment, Jerry pulled back from his defensive line. Little did we know about their well-prepared fallback positions.
 

Their guns are well positioned, camouflaged and fortified. They make mincemeat out of infantry, and seriously crippled a couple of Shermans.
 

We tried to advance quickly, to avoid being bled dry in kill-zones. The Hun made great use of automatic weapons and hand-held anti-tank launchers.
 

We decided to take it slow, to conserve our forces. If this deadly maze is a sign of things to come -- we will need them for taking Celleno.
 

First, we take our time probing their positions. Second, we slowly surround them. Third, we pound them into submission.
 

Fourth, Jerry counter-attacks with tanks. This caught us off-guard -- we can expect armoured counter-attacks, going forward.

Pretty sure their last release was on a Friday heading into a weekend....

wargamer.com has become just another of the 5 or 6 N network outlets for search engine optimisation (or "creating online communities" if you want). Generic articles are written on anything vaguely resembling a wargame, which look and read like product placement.
Computer wargame reviews are dead but for Tim Stone's Tally-ho Corner, and a few blogs (Max Chee, chelco, etc.). 

Poor developers just can't win with some people.
 

Hello hello, 
 
thanks for your comments all ! I'm happy you like it so far.
I tried to give different flavor to each mission(difference in term of scale, intensity and goal). Also, also the mission have 4 differents IA plan for replayability (and also because i wanted to train on IA planning). 
 

Poor developers just can't win with some people.
 

They both sound very cool - I'll buy them both and I don't care which one comes out first.

Ok, lemme weigh in on this because there are going to be more questions.  What made it into the game...and why?  What did not make it into the game...and why?  Not easy answers to be honest.
First we took a deliberate design choice to try to stick to a policy of "historical introduction +/- 6 months".  The primary reason was to not artificially limit the choices of the player and leave more constraints/restraint decisions in their hands...they are the customer.  There will be purists out there - god love em- who will want to play with extreme historical accuracy and this game is set up for that.  Then there will be 'experimenters' that will want to see what happened if X showed up earlier/later, so we took a look and tried to keep the aperture open for them too.
Second, unlike most historical conflicts, the Cold War never went hot so the geopolitical or strategic situation never really evolved to mirror what is happening in our game.  For example, having spent a lot of time looking at committee records and  logistical after action reports, the reason that vehicles or weapons systems were introduced at a certain date was not the same context as, say, WWII.  These were not shaped by technical, industrial or operational realities as much as they were by good old fashion bureaucracy.  Vehicles and equipment were held up for funding shifts or strategic logistical SNAFUs, not anything "real".  So within a "what if" context saying "Nope the M2 Bradley cannot be in Europe in 81-82...sorry player" makes no sense if the primary reason was "it got delayed because we forgot to include a support package"  or "there was a congressional district issue"  or "the delivery process got held up in a contracting screw up".  If there had been an escalating strategic reality, all of this red tape would have been cut through and the vehicles, which were being manufactured (i.e. well past the prototype stage) and many of them in warehouses, could have easily been pushed forward.
So what?  Well if you see an odd vehicle date to your eyes, trust me we know about it and considered it.  If you want to play with the highest historical accuracy possible you can do that easily within the game.  If you wish to push the envelope of what could have been, well you can do that too...within reason.  You will not be seeing M1s rolling across the plains in 1979, there is a point between ahistorical and complete fantasy but some equipment, particularly US will be available earlier or later than its actual arrival date in the ETO but all of these vehicles were 1) well into manufacturing and 2) had been already delivered to the US military, contracts cut and the machine in motion.  
And finally, what got left out.  Ya, there is simply no way we were going to win this one...we still get beat up by the beta team for leaving out vehicle Z.  Here the tyranny of time kicks in.  Spending an extra 6 months modeling and testing in-game systems that were niche and that most players will never see or use, simply does not make sense.  And then some pieces of equipment would break the game engine itself (e.g. AVLB...breaks my heart as an engineer).  So hard decisions to leave some babies on the roadside had to be made...and they were.  What is in the game are the essentials (plus) and we are likely going to have disagreement on what was "essential"...now let the healing begin.

Ultimately there's a point where the worse it gets the cheaper CM games on steam will become. As is the case in our failing banana republic where we enjoy considerable discounts on many steam games including CM which we get to enjoy between rolling blackouts....

The old flowchart is for the SF1 version ONLY. While the order of the battles and what happens next has not changed, the rest, refit and resupply variables have been modified to reflect the updates in the game engine since SF1. 
While I understand you were disappointed to encounter the exit zone error playing the updated SF2 campaign, this advice makes literally no sense. The updated campaign file is based on the original campaign, meaning the exit zone error was, and still is, in the original SF1 campaign. Not only will some one playing the original campaign run into this issue, they will also miss out on all the other updates improving the campaign. 
I did a speed run of the campaign last night as your comment about this being a bug in the campaign needed to be checked. I ceasefired in the setup phase of every battle not requiring a victory to move on. There was only one battle needing a minor victory to advance. I kept the tanks out of the battle as much as possible and did not suffer any tank casualties. In the Counter Attack battle, I started with 1 tank on the map and more than 3 tanks arrived as reinforcements. Since all the tanks in this particular mission are core file units, you must have suffered a tank casualty in a previous battle.
As for the British platoon HQ units being unable to call for artillery, this is a game engine issue and not a campaign specific problem. The issue has been reported in the official channels and should be fixed the next time a patch is released. Knowing this problem exists, and the importance of timely artillery and air support, I can only recommend doing your level best to keep any Forward Observers alive. There is nothing further I can do on this issue as any further work is above my pay grade.

Are we talking weeks, months or even a year before a decision is made regarding the success of this new partnership and the appearance of the other titles on steam?

Back in the saddle:

Map #2 for my mini-campaign has been extended yet again.....So many trees! 

@nikolai,
Yeah, I figured out the stripping away of the assault team leaves the remaining team with the AT4s and the Javs.
There are a few things seeming to be going on here. Like I hinted, I've tested this for years, and I thought it had been resolved. I'll go back behind the closed Beta doors and work on it there.
The AT4 shows a range of 0 to 300 meters (point target) and the Javelin's is 75 to 2,500 meters. Their ranges overlap from 75m to 300m. This is the problem area. (Inside of 75m, only the AT4 should be usable...and used.) The desired behavior would be for NO AT4s to be used outside ~75m, if a Javelin is present in the team/squad. Fudging that ~75m up to ~100m would be fine to me (so it's not such a hard cutoff). So, enemy armor (IFV or MBT) inside ~100m, use the AT4s and anything else (absent a restrictive cover arc). Outside that ~100m, with a Javelin, no one should fire until AFTER the Javelin(s) engages the targets.
^^^
That is what _I_ would like to see. I'm not sure if it's possible to code it that way. But, as I said, I'm ducking behind the Beta curtain.
Thanks.
Ken

I've been having numerous hardware issues these past few weeks but I did manage to scrape together the first draft of another H&E conversion...
... no prizes for guessing who made the original.
The patch seems to be working well with the less than crack troops & various types of strange terrain features*... I will have to update the scripts text file again though (anybody using 0.96 will have to delete the scripts file if they've patched up).
 
 
*We speculated that the flooded ditches effect might have been a bug however you only seem to get that effect if the underlying terrain is particuarly damp (muddy or marshy)... so it does seem to be a terrain design feature.

Amateurs
 
Here in SA our ruling politicians appear on TV with berets sporting cuban flags along with our own and quote from Amilcar Cabral's theory of class suicide.....
 

12. Surprise me - I'm certain to love it
Korea 1950
WW2 Pacific
WW1
Horses

For me, it is Fortress Italy with all the addons. It has the longest date range, from July 43 to May 45. It has the most number of different nations and the widest TO&E within the nations as well. The game also features the most diverse range of terrain of any of the games; desert, mountains, rural farms with wide open fields to tight vineyards, villages, cities, about the only thing missing is bocage. The game also has every possible weather condition to fight in; from scorching heat to freezing cold blizzards. 
The best advice I can give tho is to pick the theatre you are most interested in and start there. Odds are, you will end with them all, so start with the one you are most excited about.

Excellent thanks. Always interesting to see how other players tackled a scenario once you yourself have completed it. 
 
In this case rather depressing given how few casualties you suffered in comparison to my effort. Although in my defence it was only my 3rd CMFI scenario.

The bug has been patched and fix. The patches are being tested now to ensure nothing else is broken. 
As one of the original people who pointed out the 4.0 HE bug (anyone remember the video?) I know that it can be frustrating waiting for a patch. But, I also know that the bug is 100% fixed, having played the patch that addresses the issues. The bug is squashed, and the patch is coming. 

A possible issue with LAVs in SF2 as pointed out by Hapless. It's mentioned shortly after 16:10
 
 

Seems to me Europe is big and ugly enough to look after themselves. At least with regards to Russia

I recently had a rage quit associated with the infantry movement bug. I had a squad of inf move into a building 30 ft away that was occupied by friendly troops. Instead of running straight through the back door they decided to run around the building to the front, and since this wasn’t enough to take casualties they decided to keep running in a big circular pattern before trying to run back towards the front door and all got mowed down. Also in just about every mission I play regardless of which CM title I am playing there is the odd bug where one member of the team becomes detached and just sits in one spot not following the rest of the squad.
 
I seem to remember reading in one of these many infantry bug threads that this issue was resolved like a year ago but BFC doesn’t release small patches. I’d be willing to pay $10 for the patch so BFC if you’re listening hit me up because this is a very annoying bug especially if there is already a fix for it.

A particularly brutal scenario even by CMFI standards. Degenerated into a surrender-a-thon as both sides try to throw in the towel first.