CarlXII

To me it rather shows that some people here would apprisiate if Steve could spend a fraction of his 'free time' that he spends in the ukraine thread to instead communicate with the community on other topics... Surely answering a few questions would not require a monumental effort on his part...'working' or not. IMO that would be a sign of goodwill and respect towards his customers..

I has been mentioned several times by other BFC (BFC assosiated) people that they need Steves permission in order to comment on things going on...So a lot of the blaim for lack of communications obviously falls on him... If this is your wiewpoint...You are certainly easy to please. I agree with this !

I guess that we will be waiting a very long time before seeing any new releases then...Since nothing of note has happened.

Everything can be a problem...if you want it to be...even something as simple as getting out of bed in the morning. If you WANT that to be a problem. It certainly can be. If you want something to work though...it very well might if you put some effort and intrest into it. Like designing the best tactical wargame out there for example ! Again...How difficult could it possibly be in todays world with instant communications etc to provide the community with some more regular updates on things going on. - preferably designate a few dates (the first day of every second month, the first friday of every second month or something like that) to upload these progress reports. - Ask the assosiated battlepack creators, module creators, scenario/campaign creators, game engine updaters etc to provide a simple file with some pictures and a short text describing recent progress prior to these dates. - Start a few new threads in this forum (sticky or not). Each covering one or a few of the current projects that are currently being worked on. - Ask those assosiated people to...in addition to providing the 6 (or whatever) update reports each year...to spend a few minutes each week/every other week to respond to questions in their particular tread. I'm guessing that most of those guys hang around this forum from time to time anyway. Surely not a huge effort on their part to do so. Having a few threads like this will hopefully have the added bennefit of bringing some sort of life into this forum. That cant be a bad thing either...can it ? The designers/content creators will be able to get feedback on their WIP from a broader bunch of people compared to a limited number of BFC playtesters etc...Questions could be asked by the community. Tips, suggestions and requests could be shared with content creators. A more happy crowd all around. George Mc have done something like this in the past with projects he has been working on and i think those threads got well recieved. Critisism, negative comments and almost impossible request might offcourse be part of such discussions...but come on ! Surely that is something that most people can handle. If kiss-***, super possitive comments are the only ones allowed then something like this might obviously not be a good thing. But hopefully that is not the case.

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I know i'm negative...i'm sorry i just cant help it. I've grown seriously dissapointed in BFC in recent years. The talk about resources...I don't buy that. Lack of resources when it comes to productivity...maybe...but lack of resources when it comes to information sharing and development discussions with the community...NO ! That has nothing to do with lack of resources. How many man hours could it possibly take to share some simple progress reports, future idea sharing/discussion etc ? maybe ones a month or something like that...or perhaps ones every second month. Let's exagerate some... Let's say it takes a full working day to produce such a report and to answer some follow on questions. With one update every second month that would mean 6 days lost of development time each year...Considdering how long it takes BFC to release any new product... nobody...NOBODY ! would notice any difference AT ALL ! if some of BFCs products took 6 more days or something like that before release. To claim that is utterly riddiculous. But then again...If you have nothing to share....You have nothing to share...But according to BFC they are indeed working on many things...

Oooh, really ??? Compared to who ? BFC ? Try this on youtube... It's Tea Time with Slitherine

That works fine if the scenario is a singleplayer ONLY scenario i guess....If the scenario is ment to be playable both vs the AI and as a H2H scenario those setup zones are needed i belive. Have you tried hitting the GO button (ones) to see if they jump into place (according to the yellow squares) when the scenario gets going ?

At min 18.30 if you don't want to watch the whole thing... I belive that the game unit manual will tell you the same thing....Some of the tanks have lowered quality armour... How well this actually works in the game i don't really know though...

I belive that this is already implemented...IIRC even CM1 had it. Same with this...I don't recall right now if they show increased suppression but they do take moral hits after multiple non penetrating hits on their tanks...

A new PBEM system has been implemeted (on STEAM, i belive) and some tournament features are being worked on... Both the PBEM and tournament seems to be struggeling with some bugs though... NONE ! Appart from some very minor improvements to the AI opponent. It's even more dead now. Welcome back to the game !

Forgett about the greenies...Buy sausages...

You certainly are right on point here ... The current CM scripting tools though are very, very, VERY limited and by todays standars...to be honest...very bad. This results in a very limited AI performance ones we play the game and unneccesarely long developing times when it comes to designing scenarios....Requiring endless testing and tweaking to get the AI to perform as desired...Atleast for anything except for the simplest of scenarios. This does not have to be the case though. With decent scripting tools both scenario design and gameplay vs the AI will improve drastically. As i suggested above...The scripting tools from DCS world for example does not compare in any way with what we currently have in CM. It's a completally different world and the results can be absolutelly amazing scenarious with very high level AI forces. These scripting tools are by no means rocket sience. They are simply just clever and fairly easy to work with...allowing for amazing flexebility in scenario design. CM is i'm sorry to say the complete opposit. IIRC the few triggers we currently have in CM today were ment to be expanded on over the years but that has not happened at all...sadly. We are left with a very limited system. Hopefully we will see an AI that is able to act on its own (in tactical combat computergames)...SOMEDAY...But i fear that that SOMEDAY is quite some years away yet... Personally i don't want to wait many years yet until we get an improved AI and updated scenario editor in combat mission. I would like to see that rather soon ...Adding a set of top notch scripting tools would be comparably simple i'm guessing. Improvements to things like map creating is pretty much vital i belive if we are to see any major increase in scenario output. I agree...That ought to be doable.

I don't think that a self thinking AI is neccesary to wastly improve the combat mission single player experience. Give us a trigger/scripting system simular to that of DCS world/ Eagle Dynaics and Combat Mission singel player gameplay will be elevated beyond recognition....

You guys don't mind exagerating...do you ? No one...or atleast very few people asking for some updates etc are saying that Steve is doing NOTHING...Or that he has to drop everything he is doing and start to work on EVERYTHING that we personally want to see and nothing else... Quite a few people are concerned about the slow progress with the CM game in recent years and would apprisiate some more regular information sharing on whats going on and what we can expect and when.. If you guys don't care and think that everything is just perfect...Good for you. What could possibly be wrong with posting an update report somewhat more regularely...sharing some information on recent progress with the modules, battlepacks etc... With regards to the V.5 upgrade why not share whats been done...We have finished implementing these features and improvement...we are currently working on adding these...We are currently struggeling with this and that will most likely cause some delays to our estemated release date. With regards to CM3. For starters why not confirm if it is indeed a thing being worked on or not. If it is being worked on...why not release a few development updates every now and then to increase the exitement for product and get the community involved in the development process. Personally i don't play all that many other games but i do play some...DCS world from Eagle Dynamics and some of the Paradox games for example...Those companies have a quite different wiew on comunications with their customers and i don't think that is a negative for those companies... But if the community over here is happy with the "it's ready when it's ready"...Then fine...no worries

That he is far more intrested in posting in the Ukraine thread compared to sharing some progress information is pretty obvious to most people... I can agree with this...But thats not what i said. I said that it "might be a good thing"...

I would be perfectly happy to tell him the same thing if he was sitting infront of me....But he's not. Should i book an appointment, maybee ?

"Manage every minute" ??? I don't think that's what Piat is talking about...Apart from PIATpunk i've seen several other members around here question Steves priorities somewhat... Some slight tweaking of thoose priorities might be a good thing...

I tend to agree...But this 'feature' will be avaliable to any other CM game from now on....I belive that a few other minor things cam with CMCW but i can't recall right now... I belive SNOW came with CMFB for example and that TRIGGERS were introduced with CMRT...I think Stuff like that...

I don't remember them all now...but i actually belive that to a large degree that has been the case... Nothing major perhaps...but atleast something new each time... Did we not get clusterammunition with CMCV for example...or a might be mistaking here

Considdering that BFC have spent the best part of a year...or even more on adding the STEAM feature to a 15 year old game...I kind of doubt that we will se a CM3 game for many years yet.... If they where a year or two away from releasing an entirely new gameengine (game) why would they do that...One of the main features of releasing CM2 on steam is to make updating the game easier as i understand it...If a CM3 game is released i highely doubt that BFC will spend much time on updateing CM2...Considdering the manpower situation with this company...

A few years back i seem to recall that BFC stated something along the line that.... 'A basegame will add NEW FEATURES...A module will not'

Hopefully this is his brand then... Then we all should be good...

I'm seriously dissapointed with recent progress and parts of the updates/ info sharing i can't deny it but as you said....I will wait until the 2024 new years-bone to see if i will drop CM for good... I never thought that would happen !! I've been along since CMBB... but i just don't enjoy it currently...The lack of progress simply frustrates me more than the enjoyment i used to get from playing the game...I hope things will change for the better soon....It still is the best tactical game ever made...but that just isn't enough for me any more... And the lack of comments when it comes to CM3 is a complete PR fiasko imo...

We havn't seen much of the 'chew gum' part lately...