Operation Tumbleweed

[DasMorbo]

And your 2 cents are probably the only ones that BFC will make off your release strategy I am afraid... But I could be wrong.

 

I know they don't make a lot of money with this. Just look at the viewer numbers on their Youtube-Videos!

My point is, they are churning out games faster than people with a life can play through for the price of abandoning the support for the older titles.

 

I am stuck with CMBN because I don't have neither the money to buy new installments of the game nor a new PC to support the larger maps they come with.

At the moment I am in the situation to have spent 10$ for the Version 3.X upgrade to render a 75$ game horrible to play.

[A Canadian Cat]

At the moment I am in the situation to have spent 10$ for the Version 3.X upgrade to render a 75$ game horrible to play.

 

??? I found the 3.x upgrade did nothing but improve the game - both in terms of performance and render quality.  It certainly did not introduce problems or instability.  The only issue I can think of was one campaign ended up messed up - which was just fixed.  Can you tell us what made things worse in the upgrade?

[LukeFF]

My point is, they are churning out games faster than people with a life can play through for the price of abandoning the support for the older titles..

 

And which titles would those be?

[PanzerMike]

??? I found the 3.x upgrade did nothing but improve the game - both in terms of performance and render quality.  It certainly did not introduce problems or instability.  The only issue I can think of was one campaign ended up messed up - which was just fixed.  Can you tell us what made things worse in the upgrade?

Yeah, I don't understand this either. What made it horrible to play, DasMorbo?

 

And like LukeFF said, which titles are abandoned? CMBN gets a new pack and CMFI will even get a new module. There is no end of support of these games in sight at the moment as far as I know.

Please explain what you mean.

[Holien]

??? I found the 3.x upgrade did nothing but improve the game - both in terms of performance and render quality.  It certainly did not introduce problems or instability.  The only issue I can think of was one campaign ended up messed up - which was just fixed.  Can you tell us what made things worse in the upgrade?

Mr picky here....

I think more than one campaign, but I agree with your general sentiment. I am still travelling so until I get back I will not be able to dig out specifics re the campaigns. I am hoping they know root cause and then from that they will fix all campaigns.

[A Canadian Cat]

Oh by all means if there are other problems lets get them on the table - so they can get fixed.

[General Jack Ripper]

And which titles would those be?

 

That's a fair question. Nothing has been abandoned since CMx2 came out, even Shock Force is scheduled to have a future update to the 3.0 game engine, which surprised the heck out of me!

 

Oh no, not ANOTHER new Release.

Who is supposed to play through all this content? I am not even through all the game content of CMBN, and I own it for about two years.

 

Join the club, I haven't even finished playing through Shock Force yet, and I bought it back in 2008!

So you know what, after I bought CMBN, I didn't buy anything else! I'm happy with the games I have, and I do realize that it might take years for me to finish playing them, if I ever do.

No one is forcing you to spend money to buy all of the new releases, and to complain that new releases would somehow force Battlefront to "abandon" their old games simply isn't true.

 

I am hoping they know root cause and then from that they will fix all campaigns.

 

An updated version of Kampfgruppe Engel has already been released. I haven't heard of any other campaigns with any problems.

[Holien]

I have bumped my thread re campaign issues, I would hazzard a guess that whatever was underlying issue needs to be back tracked to other campaigns, missing 6pdrs in Scottish corridor were also noted in some other threads?

[DasMorbo]

Hey Guys!

I just wrote an email to Slysniper about this topic, here is a copy:

 

 

 

The bugs I am referring to are the following:

 

Fisrt of all the movement system is skewed - troops tend to bunch up way more than in earlier versions. You can spread out a whole platoon 200 yards wide and give them parallel movement orders and you have them all bunched up in one thick line after 30 seconds. Nice when enemy artillery is present...

 

Secondly the Panthers (and some other vehicles) hit and damage registration is still bugged. This was present already in version 2.12. The vehicles won't get destroyed before receiving 3-6 partial and solid penetrations (by 57, 75mm, 76mm guns) even in areas which hold ammo and fuel. Just recently a Wespe 105mm SP gun received about 6 direct hits from 3 Churchills without showing any sign of reduced combat readiness. In this match I have one enemy Panther destroyed (5 solid penetrations needed) and 3 active (between 1 to 4 penetrations each). Just one is unscathed.

Remember our match with your invincible Tigers. How many PIAT hits did they recieve with very little damage?

 

Thirdly the spotting system acts really weird at times. You pile up all the spotting advantages on your side and the enemy still spots and shoots first. Just had a match where my Stug III with an unbuttoned veteran crew looked straight at a T-34/85 through some trees and bushes. The T-34 was at an 30° angel, buttoned and with regular crew. Guess who shot first and killed the Stug? This is really no single incident, with vehicles staring straight at other vehicles 150 yards away in the open, and no identification happening.

 

That is about it.

 

 

 

The 'abandon older titels'-claim points in the direction that Battlefront is a very small developer. And with every new Installment, their limited rescources for technical support are spread further.I hear about the Shock Force Upgrade to V3.0 for the first time. An overhaul of that titel I have been awaiting ever scince Upgrade 2.0. So this point is somewhat less significant now.

I still have the impression that the Upgrades for CMBN have been made quite hurredly with the above mentioned issues not having been noticed, due to limited rescources.

 

 

Best regards

[MikeyD]

Everyone seems to have their pet peeve, that 'horrible flaw' that either nobody else has notices or pops up once every hundred hours of gameplay. Wespes in my hands tend to turn into blazing infernos no problemo.    If you're playing CMBN and T34s are shooting up your Stugs then you have problems that nobody else has! For one thing, there are no T34s in the game, and over in CMFI players always complain about how blind their T34s are and vulnerable to hidden Stugs. About placing your tanks in the tree line, even Patton warned against doing that!

 

Its out of the goodness of BFC's heart that so many free download patches and minimal-cost game engine upgrades have appeared. They go above-and-beyond in that regard. Their sole 'partnership' title in the franchise - CM:Afghanistan - saw only one patch, if memory serves.

[JonS]

over in CMFI players always complain about how blind their T34s are and vulnerable to hidden Stugs.

 

If you're seeing T34s in CMFI then you have much bigger problems than just spotting issues.

[MikeyD]

Har har!  Darned acronyms are starting to jumble together!

[Ales Dvorak]

If you're seeing T34s in CMFI then you have much bigger problems than just spotting issues.

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/118887-operation-hercules-the-invasion-of-malta-wip/page-5

 

[RockinHarry]

Awesome pics! Looking forward to finally get my stacked october/november scenarios in the right time frame. Operation Queen and the hurtgen will keep me busy for quite some long time!

Even if there´s no exiting new game engine features in the Bulge, I keep my 50 (or so) Euros at ready. At last some the latest game improvements like ditch lock, foot paths, AI triggers and greatly improved HMG effectiveness got me back on path. Thanks for that!

Btw...Have some moody ingame autumn and winter landscape pics as well?

Hope that Aris is still around! Think 70-80% of textures in my game is his works!

[DasMorbo]

Everyone seems to have their pet peeve, that 'horrible flaw' that either nobody else has notices or pops up once every hundred hours of gameplay. Wespes in my hands tend to turn into blazing infernos no problemo.    If you're playing CMBN and T34s are shooting up your Stugs then you have problems that nobody else has! For one thing, there are no T34s in the game, and over in CMFI players always complain about how blind their T34s are and vulnerable to hidden Stugs.

 

 

Instead of mocking people right away, I normally ask if their statements are correct.

In this case it was a situation in the 'Combat Mission: Red Thinder'-Demo which, for your information, is based on the same engine as CMBN.

 

Funny that I bump into these flaws permanently playing CMBN.

[Baneman]

Sorry to say, but it's simply bad luck. ( granted, it's screaming-at-monitor levels of bad luck, but simply bad luck all the same )

 

I regularly lose Panthers to Partial Penetrations ( in my biased perceptions, it seems they die to PP more than to full Penetrations  )

I've also seen Shermans soak up unbelievable amounts of fire ( memorably, in one game, one Sherman took 3 50mm PP and 4 75mm Penetrations before dying - I still even have the saves for that one  ).

In my AAR on this forum a year or so ago, a Stuart took 2 full Penetrations from Panzerschrecks and lived - to my horror and dismay ( until the 3rd ).

 

It happens. Dice suck. Random is random.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Baneman

[DasMorbo]

Oh yeah, I remember that stuart.

 

Still I would appreciate it if Battlefront would review the hitreg/damage system. To me it seems to produce results which are too random and incoherent at times.

I am talking of tanks getting their ammo racks and fuel tanks shot through without harm.

 

Maybe we should start a thread of its own on this?

[womble]

If you're careless and lazy with your infantry movement, and you give massive long waypoints across open ground, then you can have multiple elements all converging because they all see the same "most efficient" path (according to the "move diagonally to get orthoganally opposite the destination" pathing decisions). It very rarely happens to my troops though. They're all going to different places, with different waypoints, so they don't all see the same "most efficient" path. 

[Baneman]

 

Still I would appreciate it if Battlefront would review the hitreg/damage system. To me it seems to produce results which are too random and incoherent at times.

I am talking of tanks getting their ammo racks and fuel tanks shot through without harm.

 

 

I too would certainly like to see a bit more "match-up" between external hit locations and internal damage rather than the random system ( I think it's random ).

[RockinHarry]

If you're careless and lazy with your infantry movement, and you give massive long waypoints across open ground, then you can have multiple elements all converging because they all see the same "most efficient" path (according to the "move diagonally to get orthoganally opposite the destination" pathing decisions). It very rarely happens to my troops though. They're all going to different places, with different waypoints, so they don't all see the same "most efficient" path.

My main problem with this, is the AI and setting up zones. In example, I can´t get a line of AI infantry move to another line (zone) in a straight way (taking shortest route), even if this next zone is just 4-5 AS away and the map is all just grass. The converging of AI plotted movement paths midways, causes a lot of problems (time loss, several squads bumping into each other at the crossing point, ect...), which makes an attacking AIP particularly difficult. I´d wish for some sort of stand off-, or generally some maintaining formation routine to get more out of the AIP capabilities. So far I need to take this odd pathing behavior into consideration, when painting zones and applying orders, so that cross pathing is kept at a minimum. Think the BFC beta testers are fully aware of that already and take measures as well which are, deploying formations from columns to lines and back to columns, depending also upon particular order types and intervening terrain types and possible enemy opposition.

Also of concern is number of teams within a squad and the more teams, the more AS need to be considered for the next zone for a squad to effectively deploy. Range between zones is not that logically considered as one could suspect. In example an infantry platoon dash or quick moving from a line to another zone line over same terrain (all grass, pavement...), will seldomly take shortest and quickest path as one could "expect", but more oftenly will have individual squads paths cross each others, with unpleasant consequences. This can be tested with a plain grass map, no enemy on map and in scenario tester mode. It´s not that much different with more complex terrain and spotted enemy units on map.

The illustration gives an example of the general problem with AI moves. Another problem is unit facing, after reaching a zone by extreme diagonal move. If the OP AI decides for another diagonal move to next zone, facing will change accordingly before the next move. This is particularly bad for tanks/vehicles as these could end up opposing side armore toward (possible enemy).

A human player can avoid all that by plotting movements AND facing (on end waypoint), but the AIP can´t unfortunately.

What off course helps when setting up the AIP (for movements/attacks), is setting movement zones from between columns and line (sort of) and making ranges between zones not too short. For advance - assault - max assault orders, there should be enough cover terrain offered to the AI for its sub moves (split teams). If a map offers little cover between zones, the AI can be helped by adding a number of 3S crater action spots. The AI has a very high liking for craters as cover for its infantry, so this can be used to advantage to excert some control over possible AI moves, over otherwise coverless terrain. This is just a scratch on the surface with regard to setting up an offensive AIP, but I would like to see other scenario makers tips & tricks and share some experiences. (in a seperate thread maybe)

[A Canadian Cat]

Another important factor is to determine when a vehicle is knocked out. Your men do not have the ability to know for certain when an enemy vehicle is KO'ed, unless it is burning. I once reported a suspicious incident where a Sherman took 7 rounds to KO a PzIV. It turns out after talking with my opponent the German tank was KO'ed after three shots but the Sherman crew had no idea the tank was toast and kept on firing.

First you or someone needs to verify that there is something worth investing, aka a test. If you can show, with a large sample size, behaviour that seems strange then you can get BFC to look. But they will not look at something just because a handful of people say something is off, especially when another handful say it seems fine to them.

I recommend setting up a test and play it in WEGO hot seat so you can know when the enemy tanks are KO'ed. Run it many times and record what happens.

[DasMorbo]

Ok, with so much to say by everybody I start a special thread about the topic.

 

Look out for it!

[Placebo]

Another important factor is to determine when a vehicle is knocked out. Your men do not have the ability to know for certain when an enemy vehicle is KO'ed, unless it is burning. I once reported a suspicious incident where a Sherman took 7 rounds to KO a PzIV. It turns out after talking with my opponent the German tank was KO'ed after three shots but the Sherman crew had no idea the tank was toast and kept on firing.

 

Very true,  there is a lot of wasted ammo goes into firing at KO'ed tanks, until they brew up or there is confirmation they are abandoned.  A game feature rather than a flaw.

[Doc844]

Not so much a game feature this happened all the time in WW2, if in doubt keep hitting it till they were satisfied it was dead/knocked out.

[Placebo]

I would say a WW2 game feature = realistic portrail of how things happened in WW2

Edited July 29, 2015 by Placebo