Cmbo

[Squallion]

Just got it, also got CMBN. CMBN is great, I actually prefer it over the eastern front :X. I guess hedgerows and bocage are my thing.

However, I'm having a hard time liking CMBO. The game seems really neat, but the camera is holding me back. I had the same problem in shock force. All I want in a game is a smooth WSAD or up,down,left,right camera movement.

Is there any mod to make this possible? Or any way to enable it?

I know this is the red thunder forum, but there's a total of ONE post in the CMBO forum.

[Ultradave]

Just got it, also got CMBN. CMBN is great, I actually prefer it over the eastern front :X. I guess hedgerows and bocage are my thing.

However, I'm having a hard time liking CMBO. The game seems really neat, but the camera is holding me back. I had the same problem in shock force. All I want in a game is a smooth WSAD or up,down,left,right camera movement.

Is there any mod to make this possible? Or any way to enable it?

I know this is the red thunder forum, but there's a total of ONE post in the CMBO forum.

There are three (I think) options for camera move controls. One of the others might suit you better. I only use the default so I can't comment on the others. Check the manual and the options screen for the other choices (I may be wrong about 2 others but there is more available than the default)

[womble]

I'm a bit puzzled as to why you're taking the retrograde step to CMBO... There's a subset of people who like it better, largely for reasons of "accessibility" (I think; I don't really understand - not trying to diss 'em; please put me right), but it's a 15 year old game now, and shows it. IMO, BN does pretty much everything better, and any money spent on BO would have been better saved towards CW/MG/v2/v3.

[Squallion]

I'm a bit puzzled as to why you're taking the retrograde step to CMBO... There's a subset of people who like it better, largely for reasons of "accessibility" (I think; I don't really understand - not trying to diss 'em; please put me right), but it's a 15 year old game now, and shows it. IMO, BN does pretty much everything better, and any money spent on BO would have been better saved towards CW/MG/v2/v3.

It was $5. I can find $5 on the bottom of my shoe.

The first operation I started playing had very interesting text, it really made me want to play. It was about Americans facing falshirmjaeger in France. It felt immersive and interesting.

[Erwin]

If you like CMBO you should try the other two BF classics, CMBB and CMAK. There is an active number of clubs that still have CM1 tournaments etc.

[Skwabie]

Just got it, also got CMBN. CMBN is great, I actually prefer it over the eastern front :X. I guess hedgerows and bocage are my thing.

However, I'm having a hard time liking CMBO. The game seems really neat, but the camera is holding me back. I had the same problem in shock force. All I want in a game is a smooth WSAD or up,down,left,right camera movement.

Is there any mod to make this possible? Or any way to enable it?

I know this is the red thunder forum, but there's a total of ONE post in the CMBO forum.

...

by the frequency you're going around these games i bet you'll end up liking nothing. Don't take it personal but there should be better ways to spend free time.

[Ultradave]

Never mind what I said about camera options. I read it wrong and just assumed you were talking about CMBN.

[kuri]

I got CMAK a few months ago, i was really impressed with the amount of scenarios, ranging from North Africa to Market Garden and beyond also gotta love the amount of units.

[Squallion]

...

by the frequency you're going around these games i bet you'll end up liking nothing. Don't take it personal but there should be better ways to spend free time.

I work two jobs and spend plenty of time with my family. What I lack is sleep. Not that I came here to defend myself about how I spend my time.

[Blazing 88's]

Never liked or wanted CMBO for some reason. CMAK and CMBB though are gems. CMAK can be modded to CMETO (basically CMBO but without Pershings or King Tigers available) was really cool. 3 games for the price of two.

Here is the link for the CMETO mod for CMAK if you by chance get it: http://www.tspindler.de/cmak_mod/

Having said that, I haven't touched CMx1 stuff since about 2011. Still have it on the HD though. CMx2 keeps calling me back for my CM fix. I can't wait for CMx2 North Africa some day down the road.

[Blazing 88's]

It was $5. I can find $5 on the bottom of my shoe...

lol........

[sburke]

It was $5. I can find $5 on the bottom of my shoe.

The first operation I started playing had very interesting text, it really made me want to play. It was about Americans facing falshirmjaeger in France. It felt immersive and interesting.

rotflmao - you were probably not on the forum when the 2.0 upgrade came out and the s**t storm started over it's $5 cost.

[Squallion]

rotflmao - you were probably not on the forum when the 2.0 upgrade came out and the s**t storm started over it's $5 cost.

Meh. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed having to pay $10 for the upgrade to 2.0 with CMBN, but I don't know the work that goes into upgrading an engine, so I can't really complain. I'm really enjoying CMBN as it is, glad I upgraded anyways.

I feel compelled to try Afrika Corps. I definitely will, in time.

[Skwabie]

I work two jobs and spend plenty of time with my family. What I lack is sleep. Not that I came here to defend myself about how I spend my time.

5 months old kid, taxing job with a lotta travels and a working wife. And we try the damnedest to support it. Nobody has it easy in RL. But I find your questions easily found out with a few mouse clicks, some research or some practice by yourself. Doesn't take all that much time, just gotta have the knack for it.

[Macisle]

Meh. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed having to pay $10 for the upgrade to 2.0 with CMBN, but I don't know the work that goes into upgrading an engine, so I can't really complain...

IIRC, there were also a lot of graphic improvements for the units. $10 is cheap for what they provided in it.

Squallion, it's always nice to see a new member of the community excited about the game series. I'm sure your questions and the answers you are receiving are providing useful information to other folks new to the game, without them having to hunt as much for it.

After all, if all new members did was forum search without posting questions, the forum would largely shrink to a small number of crusty old grogs pining for the next patch/module/family.

No one has to take the time to respond if they aren't getting any enjoyment out of it.

[John Kettler]

Squallion,

I've been with CM since the CMBO Beta Demo, and I found and still find, CMx2 to be a handful. A condition not helped by a serious head injury a few years ago. The CMx1 series were sims--within the resource and computational constraints of the period. CMx1 was designed to run on a 200 MHz PC w/o a graphics card, and AI has improved by leaps and bounds since, as, obviously, have the capabilities of platforms and game engines. Am sure you've already noticed the visual differences!

But where CMx1 was a sim, CMx2 is a SIM, so much so that the US military is using CMSF for current military training, rather than the custom designed CMAK used by the Australians to teach the nation's military history in WW II and basic land warfare tactics to officer cadets. The difference in modeling fidelity between CMx1 and CMx2 is enormous. CMx1's CMBO was multiply revolutionary, but it abstracted lots of stuff, stuff which is explicitly and discretely modeled in CMx2, such as individual men--with all that implies. In CMx1, generally a vehicle hit was either OK, Suppressed and/or M-Killed, F-Killed or K-Killed. CMx2. by contrast, uses the same sort of methodology employed by the government and defense contractors to compute terminal effects. Shotline analysis.

https://www.dsiac.org/sites/default/files/FASTGEN%20060614.pdf

Tanks, for example, are now collections of systems--all of which are subject to various forms of temporary disruption or permanent damage. You can chew a tank to pieces by damaging various subsystems, either forcing withdrawal from battle (virtual attrition) or setting the AFV up for subsequent destruction (actual attrition).

On balance, CMx2 is by far the more complex and demanding to play game family. The workload, for any given size battle, is far higher than in CMx1. For most people, a battle using a force costing of an infantry company and a few AFVs is their practical upper limit in CMx2, whereas a battalion engagement was/is easily doable in CMx1.

Now, I'll be the first to admit I don't have a whole lot of experience in CMx2. For that, please see John Kettler vs CMBN.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=105379

The learning curve is very steep (note my several freak outs), difficulties compounded by poor availability of my wargaming neural circuits, if you will, post accident. Since your brain quite clearly works fine, you should find mastering CMx2 far easier. Besides, there are lots of tutorials available, and they're a real help. When I first got into CMx1, there was the CMBO Forum, and that was it. Count yourself fortunate. Of course, YT now has tons of CMx1 material available, too.

There is no fundamental reason why you can't play both engines, but expect a great deal of cognitive dissonance and frustration as you go from one to another. What one can do, the other frequently can't.

For instance, the player has direct control over ammo selection for tanks in CMx1, but in CMx2 the AI handles ammo selection. Sometimes, maddeningly. Likewise, the player has no direct control in CMx2 over bazookas and such. Again, run by the AI, not the player.

In CMx2, until the paid upgrade, there was no Cover Armor arc, a feature which first appeared in CMBB. CMx2 lacks an Ambush command, too.

Another example is LOS as it relates to gunnery. In CMx1, units on upper levels could be engaged and hit by enemy fire under circumstances impossible in CMx2. Why? Because in it, LOS traces to the AS (Action Square), not the actual structure.

A further, key difference is the way terrain works. Or doesn't. Weapon siting is far easier in CMx1, and battle planning likewise, because the way terrain behaves is consistent. In CMx2, the terrain, concealment and cover are directly modeled. No longer can infantry, say, be distance X back in Woods and be effectively invisible. Many have come to grief in trying to apply CMx1 tactical methods to CMx2. I'm one of them! Terrain builders have tremendous flexibility in laying out the battleground, but because the terrain is depicted in much smaller areas (CMx1's 20+ meters vs CM x2's 8 meters), there's that much more for map makers to have to deal with.

Ultimately, it matters not what others think of your choice of one or both systems. It comes down to what interests you, what's doable for you and what floats your wargaming boat. You can fight pretty much the entire War in the East in CMBB, but only Bagration in CMRT. If you want to cover other Ost Front areas and periods, you're going to have to be really patient. The CMx1 games allowed for depicting practically anything an entire military theater. In CMx2, the huge difference in design and development workload, cycle time and associated business decisions ("We can give you a CMBB, but it'll cost you a grand!") have caused BFC to restructure wholesale how it does games. Now, we have games, models, patches and paid upgrades. Before, we had patches. Period. Better yet, what's doable in the latest game is now available as a retrofit to the earlier games. A phenomenal improvement! You wouldn't believe how unhappy the CMBO players were when they found that CMBB had Cover Armor arcs but CMBO didn't. Likewise, dust only appeared in CMAK and couldn't be put into CMBO and CMBB, because the games were hard coded. Of course, for all its features, CMAK had nothing like the array of weaponry that CMBO had. This limited what was doable via the previously discussed private CMETO mod.

CMBB has hundreds of different vehicle types and units, but BFC has to be infinitely more discriminating when it comes to CMx2 vehicles, which are hugely more complex to design (all those internal systems, recall, plus gobs and gobs of small detail, much of which moves) and animate. Soldier animations are astronomically more complicated in CMx2 than in CMBO. We were thrilled to see soldiers whose heads moved back and forth back then. CMAK had no Panther turret pillboxes, but neither did it have trenches which stuck out of the ground. Sighting them was quite different, as was their protection level. Nor were there the siting issues which have to be directly addressed when putting in things like pillboxes in CMx2.

And then there's Borg spotting vs the far more demanding CMx2 system in which it's entirely possible for a soldier in the squad to have LOS, but the LMG gunner in the same squad doesn't. No longer is it "what one sees everyone instantly knows about." It's become a constant struggle to get eyes where they're needed, keep them alive and maintain unit cohesion for the sake of rapid communication of combat information. Does this group have binos or not? Makes a big difference. What about a radio? These were nonissues in CMx1.

Fire support is modeling is radically different, as seen, for example, in the whole issue of mortars in Direct Fire in CMx2. The player now has to think about more than just ammo expenditure and carefully consider fire pattern and intensity--after working the whole FO or officer end of the kill chain. As noted previously, the mere fact we can clearly see a building sticking out of the ground doesn't make it targetable, save to a limited extent in which mortars can target one AS deeper than actual LOS to the ground. Thus, artillery is quite constrained in CMx2 compared to what it was in CMx1. Nowhere is this more the case than in CMBO, in which the players enjoyed fire responsiveness and accuracy the likes of which I'm not sure even the US can do today, except in extraordinary circumstances.

I'm sure many more examples can be adduced, but I hope I've conveyed some sense of the considerable differences between the two game engines. CMx1 is, relatively speaking, beer and pretzels. Easy to get into and start playing (not necessarily well), where CMx2 is a much richer gaming micro level experience, so much so many play squad and platoon fights and become emotionally invested in their men. I think the true costs of war hit home much more now than they did before. If you read my 18 Platoon account you'll understand what I mean.CMx2 provides that richness at the cost of demanding a lot more work and concentration from the player. I once had five CMx1 games going in tournament (see sig) at once. These days, I'm hard pressed to play a scenario and couldn't contemplate doing five at once even before the accident. I know some people have two and even three CMx2 games going simultaneously, but they're rare birds.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

John Kettler

[womble]

It was $5. I can find $5 on the bottom of my shoe.

The first operation I started playing had very interesting text, it really made me want to play. It was about Americans facing falshirmjaeger in France. It felt immersive and interesting.

'S not the money; I've had BO/BB/AK on my HDD for ages, but haven't once felt the urge to go back to them, after BN came out, even though the monetary cost for doing so is zero. It's the opportunity cost: time spent in CMx1 is time that could have been spent in CMx2. I guess it's something you're entirely at liberty to find out for yourself though.

[Erwin]

A major reason people still play CM1 is that it's not hard or too time-consuming to play giant scenarios 3-4Km square with Regiment-size battle groups on each side.

We're inching towards that sort of size in CM2 but since CM2 requires much more work to play - partially cos of some of its interface and mechanisms, it will be much harder to play.

I think that the CM2 game engine is very good these days. The only major issues involve speeding up play and making things easier (and quicker) to handle. eg: The ACQUIRE system needs overhaul. We need selectable waypoint and lines so we can use those to select units. One key 180 degree arcs. Having units at set-up start in formation so we don't have to waste time moving em around to get back in formation etc.

[DavidFields]

CMBO: graphics are too poor. And I am not a huge fan of that theatre--too limiting as far as equipment. (neat explosive waves out of the firing AFVs, IIRC, though)

CMBB: a classic. Probably still gives PTSD to BFC with regard to what they actually did. I don't play it--want to move forward--but miss it.

CMAK: better graphics, and the desert. Loved it. Classic German paradrop onto Crete campaign.

The gaming trade-offs with CM1, because of the lower computer graphics were "less realistic" in a technical sense than CM2. But...despite enormously better computers, for example, the U.S. still has not sent a human to the moon again in decades [yes, what a stretch for an analogy]. Sometimes there is just an extraordinary time--and I think CMBB/CMAK were it. Can CM2 get there? I would say, "not yet". I don't think the issue is technical, I think it is conceptual, and am optimistic.

[John Kettler]

Squallion,

I mistyped. Where it says "models" in my detailing the new BFC approach, it should read "modules." No extra charge for other hobgoblins in the post!

Regards,

John Kettler

[altipueri]

Random quick battles are more fun in CMx1 which is why I've kept these games on my PCs.