com-intern

I do know that in the vanilla game if you place a trench within a ditch the men will stand in the trench to fire out of the ditch. So again this may be due to the hill? I've used the ditch trick when making scenarios as it gives the men much more protection than a standard trench. Since they get the saving throw of the trench placeable but also get much more cover as the ditch hides most of their body.

Red Thunder is v3? It would make sense for the next release so you don't have to pay a $10 surcharge for access to the module.

Put it this way. I understand your issues with modding but I cannot really fathom any games where its actually panned out like that. I could easily understand you being annoyed with modding. But I can't think of any games where the overall community has been left worse off. Total War, for example, has developed away from its historic roots and into a much more of a fantasy game. With both the Warhammer: Total War and Three Kingdoms: Total War selling well without heavy modding on a specifically fantasy basis. ---

Yea, an SOP system that could be attached to waypoints or to the unit themselves would be fantastic and do so much for the game. Imagine having a move to contact with an SOP to crawl back 20 meters on contact instead of just sitting in the open - or an AT team fire a rocket and then immediately move to concealment.

Agree to disagree then. I just find it frustrating enough that I would not recommend anyone buy CM:BN unless they were absolutely married to the idea of playing that first few months of the war. Like I said, I would be more forgiving of the issue if CM:BN were the only game in existence but it isn't.

Honestly this sounds like folks overestimate the popularity of these games. You need people willing to seed and many more popular games lack an established seeding base making the acquisition essentially a non-starter. Really the lack of cracks for the games speaks magnitudes about their lack of popularity. There are plenty of examples of users doing a ton with the current set. The post-apoc. CM:SF1 mod, Heaven & Earth, several fantastic user-made campaigns (the airborne campaign from CM:BN being stand out), numerous well done scenarios and maps of real world locations. There is likely even more out there that isn't on any of the normal online repositories. I know I have 4-5 scenarios that have only ever been privately shared. Compared to CMx1 the rate of production is lower but the increased time requirements and lack of feedback (seen in some longer threads about scenario design in the past) speak to that.

Developers aren't making money off of a game that intentionally short shrifts the playerbase with the intention that mods fill the gap. What is actually happening is that the developer is making cost trade offs that rub a minority of players the wrong way. Take the newest Elder Scrolls games. It sold upwards of 3 million copies during launch weak on consoles with no modding capability. Like I said, the doom and gloom about mods ruining a game is really just a fantasy. At worst you get a unpopular modding scene - games aren't ruined because of mods. Like can you actually think of any legit titles that were ruined by mods?

This is the bug I am referring to. IMO it would be possible to overlook it if CM:Normandy was the only game available. However, with CM:Eastern Front, Italy, Syria, and so on being available I think it makes Normandy an non-starter.

I might shy away from CM:Normandy as I believe hedgerows are still bugged. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but in a game where they play such a critical role I don't think I could recommend making the purchase.

That is essentially the nature of most development though. Trade offs built on trade offs built on trade offs. CM natively has a number of them. Mods will obviously have them. The benefit that mods bring are three-fold. 1. Players are better able to make decisions about trade-offs. 1 2. Games survive longer 2 3. Niche content can be covered 1 1 Medieval: Total War 2 has a historic mod that I played years ago (it may actually be Stainless Steel?) and while it definitely made trade-offs and sacrifices they were much different than the ones that the base game made. Personally I enjoyed the mod sacrifices far more than the base-game sacrifices. Additionally the mod existing at all allowed a far more niche take on M:TW2 than the base game would have ever allowed. 2 Yes JA2 1.13 is quite a bit different from vanilla JA2. But its easy to overlook the problems when the base game barely runs on modern hardware. --- Generally I don't buy most of the "community" arguments against mods. I can't think of a single game where a strong modding community has been a net negative for the game's community, while I can think of games off the top of my head that essentially exist because of modding.

Battlefront has pretty efficiently done this themselves already. Right now you have a userbase that is: Spread over 6 games, within those games anywhere from 1-4 different version #s, within anywhere from 0-3 Modules, and 0-1 battle packs. CM Normandy alone, for example, has (napkin math) upwards of 30 combinations. Further most players (apparently) do not play PVP and also do not talk about the game on public forums. I imagine there would be relatively few, but the ability to go very deep would likely attract a smaller and more committed set of modders. I've had very much the opposite experience. Take Jagged Alliance w. the 1.13 mod for example. That game is essentially alive and playable today thanks to the hard work of those modders - any number of Bethesda mods - and entire communities built around mods in Arma.

SOPs by themselves would go a long way - especially if their effects could filter up the chain of command. An SOP system by itself would be an incredible leap for CM in terms of realism and playability. Imagine having a pre-plotted course for an AT team that is triggered after they fire. Rather than having a precious Panzerschreck team stand around after firing a rocket for the rest of the turn they immediately pack up and use a cover route to safety.

I am pretty certain its a Combat Mission software limit rather than a PC limit. I have a CM on an SSD - 16gb of 3200mhz ram - Ryzen 3600 and load times are still tremendously long compared to almost anything else.

If anyone has played tabletop wargames like Warhammer 40k - Flames of War - etc.. Those are a pretty good approximation of what is happening in engine. Whether a figure is hit is WYSIWYG. A bullet must intersect the model for a hit to occur. However, once a figure his hit they then get a cover-save and armor-save (in modern). What this means is that if a solider is in a trench they can be hit multiple times, but as long as they make their cover save they will not be wounded. So while being in a trench is inherently more protective than non-trench terrain due to the cover-save a badly placed trench would allow more WYSISWYG hits meaning that more dice must be thrown. If a soldier has a 66% save that is pretty good, but if his physical place in the world allows him to be hit by 20 bullets he would be better off with a 33% save and better physicial position They would (well should) receive the cover-save from trench terrain. However, the trench model would not prevent them from being hit - so they would be more vulnerable than men prorperly in a trench.

Yea the module thought process I think is wrongheaded. It would make more sense for it to just be a stand-alone game priced out slightly lower. No Campaign No pre-made scenarios (well maybe 1-2 because I figure you'd need to run some tests) Label it "Empty Edition" or something like that $45 If you buy it you get end of war American and Soviet army formations. QBs, maybe master maps. That is it. Leave up to the community to build out scenarios and maps. Make up some story line about Patton going off the reservation and dragging W. Allies into fait accompli war with the Soviet Union, or alternatively Stalin wanting all of Berlin. 3 months of combat from May-August until both sides go to the negotiating table having decided that extended WW2 is not what anyone wants.

Maybe its because I've only played the WW2 games, but I have to agree that I've seen no difference between move and quick. I could see the heat settings being higher in CM:SF causing far more issues though.