Something else to talk about. What would YOU like to see next.

[poesel]

The feature I would like to see next is support for Head to Head campaign play. I really, really want to be able to play campaigns via PBEM.

+1

New settings and stuff to play with are all nice. But this would be a new way to enjoy the game.

Oh - and multi-player per side please.

[Childress]

Barbarossa or Battle of France.

But I know I'm the voice in the wilderness

Meantime I'll probably take whatever ( WWII ) I can get.

Both compellng choices. But France won't move the market; no Americans, under-powered (but well-gunned), radio-less French tanks. But definitely interesting. CM: Barbarossa! would, I believe, sell better than CMRT. You get rampaging Germans! Massive encirclements! Stukas! And some epic Soviet counter attacks. But they'd have to make a lot of new 3D models. Not to mention sorting out all those bewildering early war Russian formations.

Agree with Emrys, Arab/Israeli is the best fit. But we'll never see it. For a host of reasons. Can you say 'Fatwa'?

[Glubokii Boy]

On the top of my list would be EASTERN FRONT

CM 41-42

With operation Barbarossa, operation Typhoon and the russian counterattacks during the vinter among other things....

In such a game it would be nice to have some fictional options...

- The ability to choose 'winter prepared' german units...

This could be useful in creating fictional scenarios. One such campaign i could think of

right away would be a fictional campaign where operation Typhoon were succsesful...

Resulting in the battle for MOSCOW ! for example...

- The ability to choose 'Well lead, well equiped' russians.

Could be used to make fictional scenarios taking place during operation Barbarossa simulating where 'no killing of russian officers' had taken place prior to the conflict.

ev. Stalin did not kill 'everybody' he saw before the war. Resulting in a more competent

and well equiped (with regards to radios and stuff like that) russian enemy during Barbarossa.

CM 42-43

Battle for Charkow, Case Blue, Operation uranus...WOW !

[MikeyD]

Lets keep in mind THIS title will eventually take us through winter and into the Battle for Berlin. Ooooooh, baby... come to papa!

[Sequoia]

Lets keep in mind THIS title will eventually take us through winter and into the Battle for Berlin. Ooooooh, baby... come to papa!

And I'm looking forward to it. The path BF has chosen for the Eastfront makes perfect sense and gets us more stuff faster. I'm just curious of the three (or more) possible routes BF will prioritize for the next release, people would be most excited to see ( I don't think The Bulge Game or any of the other things folks have listed has any chance of being next).

[Vergeltungswaffe]

I'm excited for Black Sea, but Bulge and North Africa.

[Wodin]

Flight Commander 2 updated to FC3' date=' a game like Over The Reich, Auchtung Spitfire all would be great. [/quote']

THis is being developed..

[kendar]

THis is being developed..

thanks for the head up.

Downloading Version 1 to test it

[c3k]

- Persistent map damage.

- Importable maps.

- Ability to edit imported maps.

- Importable units. (Save that depleted company, after the battle is over, into a file.)

- Ability to "tweak" imported units. (That saved company? Re-ammo, and replace casualties. Or weaken them further.)

- "slicker" UI (see how vague that is? )

- "Killed by" stat at end of game. (Click on a dead unit and see which enemy got him.)

- Translator: put the tres cool foreign voices into English (or other home language). I can now go to Germany and either order zwei bier, bitte or call for spotting rounds.

- Hand-to-Hand combat. Better bayonets. 'Nuff said.

Those are my quick, cup of coffee at the café table, ideas.

As for new families/modules:

- Early WWII; France and Poland would be very interesting. Fear the mighty 3.7cm!

- China vs., well, a lot. I can see them going up against Russia, Australia, Vietnam, and the US assisting. That'll be the big one.

- Space Lobsters. Go read Neal Asher.

- Patton attacks the Fulda Gap

- Remake CMSF (this would also allow coverage of Iraq/Afghanistan).

- Something major which would then allow a minor pack to be released which would cover the Falklands/Malvinas land battles.

- Zombie apocalypse. De rigueur.

Ken

[Michael Emrys]

Zombie apocalypse.

Funny, just about an hour ago I was thinking about the song "Zombie Jamboree".

Michael

[Blazing 88's]

THis is being developed..

Sweet, thank you very much for the heads up. I should have also mentioned in my previous post a WWI version would be excellent as well.

[Sequoia]

-

- Translator: put the tres cool foreign voices into English (or other home language). I can now go to Germany and either order zwei bier, bitte or call for spotting rounds.

Ken

Do you mean you'd rather hear the Soviets/Germans/Italians speak English? I wouldn't.

I keep hoping some one will do a Canadian voice set mod someday.

[PhilM]

What I'd like to see - because the irritating consequences of it not being available have just happened to me again! - is the availability of a "manual" call-up for route plotting preview for a specific unit that will occur in the coming action phase.

I had plotted for a tank to go through a nice, tank-sized, gap between two lots of impassable terrain that the mapmaker had kindly left for me to use ... I thought! But although it LOOKED tank-sized, the tank driver decided that it wasn't, actually, and proceeded to drive out of concealment to take a loooong roundabout route to get to its first waypoint and NOT using the gap ...

Given that the movement plotting routines already exist, surely it cannot be TOO hard (he said optimistically) to allow us to "call" that, for one unit from its current position to a selected waypoint on its movement path?

If you don't find the need, you can ignore it; and done for one unit (at a time), it shouldn't be too lengthy a task?

If you want to keep the plotted path (even if wasn't what you first expected / adds intermediate points), just click to accept it. If it shows that what will happen is unacceptable, escape out of it and think again ...

[permanent666]

I would like to see bulge as a super-module for cmbn. I this way bf could save some time keeping nw-europe up to date.

[c3k]

Do you mean you'd rather hear the Soviets/Germans/Italians speak English? I wouldn't.

I keep hoping some one will do a Canadian voice set mod someday.

No, a toggle, enabled by the player, to PICK the language that all the forces will use. I like the immersion of the native tongue. I don't like not knowing what my men are saying.

So far, I think "dvai" means to "hurry forward and die".

My Germans are always yelling "sani". I guess they like sanitary conditions and abhor the muck. The ones yelling it are frequently the laggards who stop fighting.

A toggle. That's all I want.

[Erwin]

+1 re Phil's idea.

Surely we all have plotted moves thru what appeared to be passable terrain only to find that our vehicles or troops use some daft AI-inspired route that leads em into a minefield, or ambush that we were trying to avoid.

This is obviously a huge problem if you play WEGO.

[poesel]

- Translator: put the tres cool foreign voices into English (or other home language). I can now go to Germany and either order zwei bier, bitte or call for spotting rounds.

That made me laugh - very funny! You should also be able to warn others of tanks. Comes in handy, too.

Sub titles would be a good solution for this. Add a text file <sound file name>-<country code>.sub which is displayed when the sound plays (with toggle).

- Patton attacks the Fulda Gap

Fulda 1980 - I would have preferred that over any modern game.

Btw 'Sani' is short for 'Sanitäter' which means 'medic' (which you might already have guessed )

[Baneman]

Fulda 1980 - I would have preferred that over any modern game.

Yes, this would be the only "modern" title to really get me on board.

'CM Fulda Gap' - I would buy it in a heartbeat.

[MOS:96B2P]

Yes, this would be the only "modern" title to really get me on board.

'CM Fulda Gap' - I would buy it in a heartbeat.

YES!!! CM Fulda Gap!!!

[JasonC]

Lots and lots of much smaller scenarios for CM-RT and CM any western front.

Platoon on a side. 1-2 armored vehicles, maybe. That kind of scale. Scores to hundreds.

[AlexUK]

I would like to see bulge as a super-module for cmbn. I this way bf could save some time keeping nw-europe up to date.

Given the issues being raised by maintaining three families up to date, this would seem the way to go. Although I understand the need to charge for maintaining families up to date, it would also reduce the costs going forward (i.e keeping three main games - NWE, Eastern Front and Mediterranean).

On the current plans - say we get to five families relatively quickly - CMFI, CMBN, Bulge, CMRT and CM other year Eastern Front - paying 5x$10 for an upgrade would start to get painful...

[sburke]

Given the issues being raised by maintaining three families up to date, this would seem the way to go. Although I understand the need to charge for maintaining families up to date, it would also reduce the costs going forward (i.e keeping three main games - NWE, Eastern Front and Mediterranean).

On the current plans - say we get to five families relatively quickly - CMFI, CMBN, Bulge, CMRT and CM other year Eastern Front - paying 5x$10 for an upgrade would start to get painful...

Could but I think the number of us that buy all the titles is going to be more representative of the forum as opposed to the full community. I know folks who won't buy the modern titles and I am sure there are folks who will focus on them exclusively. As to $50 to upgrade all my titles for a year pfffft I spend that on coffee every month not including what I drink at home (and I usually drink at home).

[PhilM]

I have been pondering this for a long while: Poesel71's post over on Erwin's minefield thread brought it to mind again and made me think it may be worth posting ...

It concerns having the ability to choose (up to a point) the "stance" - to some extent physical, but mainly mental - of your units. How it would work is ...

The GUI would be modified to "squidge apart" (technical term) the Team Info panel and the Command panel, to provide space for 5 (?) "radio" buttons (i.e. only one selectable at any one time), that would put the unit in question into different "stances", from the lowest level of activity/alertness/aggressiveness at the bottom, to the highest level at the top.

The choice would be subject to:

- the game "taking over" and putting the unit into a different mode (the extremes, I guess), based on suppression, morale, C2 (etc); indicated perhaps by a red button, that you cannot move until it goes green;

- some options (again, the extremes I think) being "greyed out" and not available for certain units, based on e.g. their experience levels.

The command panel would still operate as now: but what would be available, and the actions that would result, would now depend on / interact with the current "stance" of the unit.

Lots of options present themselves, but to list a few:

- "ambush" type setups could be planned more precisely, sacrificing some cover for the increased likelihood of spotting and making the ambush work by choosing which stance you give the ambushing unit ...

- hunting on max alert means going looking for trouble: fire at anything you see. Hunting on next to lowest level (not allowed on the very lowest level?) would mean proceed with caution and stop on contact; etc

- target orders on max level means don't worry about saving ammo, fire everything you've got because if you don't use it now ...; target orders on a lower level mean extended suppression fire, conserving ammo;

- crawling on max level means an assault-course-type "fast crawl" over a short distance to stay below cover, as opposed to the present "take your own sweet time" kind of thing.

There are hopefully lots more ideas / combinations that would present themselves across the range of commands.

What do you guys think? Workable? Worthwhile, or a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

[AlexUK]

Yes, but you've also got to add in a couple of modules (say) a year on top of that... I definitely don't want to start taking this down the complaining about costs point of view, but as a customer who is interested in anything BFC produce, I would start to think twice about maintaining all families up to date if the number keeps increasing, which may then mean they would lose out on me buying the subsequent modules for that family.

But what I was really trying to say was that the developers rightly want to ensure upgrades are bug free. It seems at the moment that they are spending a lot of time dealing with bugs associated with upgrades - the fewer game families, the less likelihood of bugs IMO (which is not an informed opinion). It would be interesting to get Steve's view but I wonder if one of the reasons that BFC are behind vs the roadmap scheduling is the amount of time they are spending fixing bugs vs new development. I would have thought that the more time they can spend on new development vs bug fixing, the better for all of us, BFC included.

[sburke]

Yes, but you've also got to add in a couple of modules (say) a year on top of that... I definitely don't want to start taking this down the complaining about costs point of view, but as a customer who is interested in anything BFC produce, I would start to think twice about maintaining all families up to date if the number keeps increasing, which may then mean they would lose out on me buying the subsequent modules for that family.

But what I was really trying to say was that the developers rightly want to ensure upgrades are bug free. It seems at the moment that they are spending a lot of time dealing with bugs associated with upgrades - the fewer game families, the less likelihood of bugs IMO (which is not an informed opinion). It would be interesting to get Steve's view but I wonder if one of the reasons that BFC are behind vs the roadmap scheduling is the amount of time they are spending fixing bugs vs new development. I would have thought that the more time they can spend on new development vs bug fixing, the better for all of us, BFC included.

I think those are all good points. We have to keep in mind BF is I don't think any clearer on how this might look in a couple years when we have 6-7 families going. The process of keeping versions up to date will have to be smoothed out to reduce the load or yeah they will end up spending too much time in engine updates which frankly is lost income relative to working on families and modules. The new installer packages for CMBN were one example of them creating a path to reduce load, in this case load on the support desk. The 2.0 upgrade was only toward one game family and my impression is it had fewer "moving parts" issues than 3.0. I could be way off base there, just an impression. Much as some folks seem to think 3.0 doesn't offer much, the reality is there is lot in 3.0. On top of that it had to be tested against 2 other game families while BF is also working on that one story bug and apparently a DRM issue Yeah they have been busy. What will it be like when they have to apply the update across multiple families possibly in different eras? No idea. These are all issues I am sure have been discussed. BF knows better than us what effort all this takes and now have two upgrades they can look to for lessons learned.

As to whether that is actually having an impact on their schedule yet I honestly have no idea. I suspect less than we might think. It is summer, folks do take vacations and as they have stated they have had other issues they have had to deal with and a new modern game which is a whole other topic.

Gonna be a helluva ride.