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Some Final Blitzkrieg basic details


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well you can pretty much do that now, just put down plain clear terrain in snow conditions. No river or lake is gonna freeze over in 4 hours so it isn't like it is gonna happen during a battle and with the snow you'd still have that flat expanse of white. Creating a decent looking map that depicts a frozen river or lake is a pretty interesting idea.  Hmmmmmmm. May have to wait for the CMRT module though to consider it. 

You could even depict different bodies of (frozen) water at different altitudes...

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Do the Gebirgsjager class formations have any new capabilities, like beeing more adept in crossing and moving in difficult terrain (cliffs...)? Not that it counts as there weren´t any battles fought in real mountainous terrain in western europe in 1944/45 and steep slopes have little to no effects on movement of any units in the game, yet I appreciate this OOB expansion.

 

No, as far as Combat Mission (and most tactical battlefields) are concerned, they are only different in their organization and equipment. Those sorts of abilities aren't necessary at this scale.

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Baneman just showed to us that we have a new terrain feature available in the editor - streams. This is a quite significant new feature (code in the engine handling its implications for pathfinding, cover, fire effects etc.) and content (textures, shaders, etc.).

NB: Adding it here for the benefit of peeps missing out the brief exchange on Baneman's AAR. 

Godspeed to BFC setting up the site for presenting CMFB in a "proper" way!

Edited by BletchleyGeek
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Do those new Gebirgsjäger have g33/40s? or just k98s? eh either way mountain troops are going to be fun.

For Final Blitzkrieg no, however, they have a much higher amount of automatic weapons compared to Grenadiers. For example, I just looked at a typical Gebirgsjäger squad and out of ten men: x1 LMG, x2 Kar98k, x3 MP-44, x4 MP-40

However, I can confirm that in the next CMFI module the G33/40(t) will be included.

Edited by ChrisND
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No, as far as Combat Mission (and most tactical battlefields) are concerned, they are only different in their organization and equipment. Those sorts of abilities aren't necessary at this scale.

I wonder if at this stage of the war how much mountain training the Gebirgsjaegers even had, just as Fallschirmjaegers no longer trained for para drops.

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Baneman just showed to us that we have a new terrain feature available in the editor - streams. This is a quite significant new feature (code in the engine handling its implications for pathfinding, cover, fire effects etc.) and content (textures, shaders, etc.).

I'm always asking for new features, and here's a new feature. Great :)

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I wonder if at this stage of the war how much mountain training the Gebirgsjaegers even had, just as Fallschirmjaegers no longer trained for para drops.

The mountain units that I know of were mostly transferred in from Finland and hadn't seen much combat for a couple years.  Other mountain units were used in the Carpathians and in Yugoslavia so I'm guessing that most mountain units still had decent mountain specific training.  I don't think any brand new mountain units were created at the end of the war in the way Para units were.  There weren't any 'branch' differences between mountain and regular army units either in the way that there was between air force and army so the internal political considerations would be absent.

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It's a nice new feature but apparently it's not really treated as water. Water tiles still have to obey the same height rule.

I guess it's just meant to represent very small streams that any soldier and vehicle can cross. Not sure if it even has gameplay effects or if it's just a flavour thing, but I like more choices and options for the editor, to make more and more detailed maps.

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Since the brook is laid-down like roads that means you have control over what terrain tile is beneath it. A brook on top of a marsh tile is a no-go area, on top of mud its a bog risk, on top of heavy rocks it stops vehicles but not infantry, combined with tall weeds and brush it offers a bit of concealment. Plus it has some affect on terrain deformity.

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It's a nice new feature but apparently it's not really treated as water. Water tiles still have to obey the same height rule.

As I just mentioned in my AAR thread - troops do make "splashy" noises when crossing.

Add that to what MikeyD told you above and it's pretty much water ( just not visibly moving water )

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Since the brook is laid-down like roads that means you have control over what terrain tile is beneath it. A brook on top of a marsh tile is a no-go area, on top of mud its a bog risk, on top of heavy rocks it stops vehicles but not infantry, combined with tall weeds and brush it offers a bit of concealment. Plus it has some affect on terrain deformity.

Can they flow uphill...  and will there be a fishing gnome flavour object :-)

Image%202015-12-15%20at%208.13.07%20pm.p

North Devon : The Gnome Reserve, Stream & Gnomes Fishing by Lewis Clarke 2009

Edited by Wicky
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Since the brook is laid-down like roads that means you have control over what terrain tile is beneath it. A brook on top of a marsh tile is a no-go area, on top of mud its a bog risk, on top of heavy rocks it stops vehicles but not infantry, combined with tall weeds and brush it offers a bit of concealment. Plus it has some affect on terrain deformity.

Isn't that basically just the effect of the underlying tile though? Or does the stream boost the effect of terrain under it?

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This new stream tile is some exciting stuff! It's always been very difficult to replicate small creeks and farm irrigation, as 8 meters is just too wide. Very clever. Hopefully we will be able to use it on different elevation levels, though it sounds like we will if it's another type of road tile. Will streams be backdated into the older CM games with a new patch?

This really is good stuff for map makers, are there any other editor additions? Love seeing more stuff like this to make more realistic maps!

Edited by SeinfeldRules
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I highly appreciate a new streams feature added in CMFB. :) Can you tell yet if this is just a simple texture overlay without yielding further effects, or does it also have terrain mesh sculpting capabilities (negative ditch locking), as well as movement or cover effects for any CMX2 units moving into or through that new terrain? (my preliminary guess would be no for the latter, for beeing too small a terrain feature)

Given your question I asked Chris if I could post something about steams, he said go for it, so.  The answer is that the streams themselves do not have terrain mesh sculpting capabilities so you have to do that yourself with elevations.  Below are a few screen shots from my Lanzerath Village Map.  @sburke already commented on putting various tiles under it to get the right effect.  In these screen shots I have mud, dirt, rocky under the stream time and tall grass next to it.  The elevation change is normal not ditch lock in most places.  In the field the elevation difference is bigger between the stream and the field (because water tends to carve into soils) than in the forest area.  Under the bridge I used some ditch lock around the bridge to get the look that humans had messed with the stream when they built the bridge.

In answer to your second question, yes, the stream itself impedes motion and introduces a higher risk of bogging.  I did a quick test with Sherman tanks, jeeps and soldiers.  I placed stream tile on flat grass tiles (it looked boring) so that the underlying tiles would not be a factor.  All units showed down to cross the stream and in one case a Sherman tank bogged for a while trying to cross it.  On a real map the elevation change and any underlying tile choices would increase the obstacle but the stream itself *does* effect mobility.

Now for some fun pictures (after the game is out I can show some "how Its made" pictures too and perhaps some of the other map makers can add their tips too because plenty of people have been experimenting with streams).

A Stream passing through a field:

01Stream_Field.thumb.jpg.1de28f6a3c19f7f

A stream passing under a bridge:

02Stream_Bridge.thumb.jpg.2947db51766a0d

Here is the end of the stream in a small swamp in the middle of a forest:

03Stream_EndInSwamp.thumb.jpg.0245f3dd10

 

 

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Given your question I asked Chris if I could post something about steams, he said go for it, so.  The answer is that the streams themselves do not have terrain mesh sculpting capabilities so you have to do that yourself with elevations.  Below are a few screen shots from my Lanzerath Village Map.  @sburke already commented on putting various tiles under it to get the right effect.  In these screen shots I have mud, dirt, rocky under the stream time and tall grass next to it.  The elevation change is normal not ditch lock in most places.  In the field the elevation difference is bigger between the stream and the field (because water tends to carve into soils) than in the forest area.  Under the bridge I used some ditch lock around the bridge to get the look that humans had messed with the stream when they built the bridge.

In answer to your second question, yes, the stream itself impedes motion and introduces a higher risk of bogging.  I did a quick test with Sherman tanks, jeeps and soldiers.  I placed stream tile on flat grass tiles (it looked boring) so that the underlying tiles would not be a factor.  All units showed down to cross the stream and in one case a Sherman tank bogged for a while trying to cross it.  On a real map the elevation change and any underlying tile choices would increase the obstacle but the stream itself *does* effect mobility.

Now for some fun pictures (after the game is out I can show some "how Its made" pictures too and perhaps some of the other map makers can add their tips too because plenty of people have been experimenting with streams).

A Stream passing through a field:

01Stream_Field.thumb.jpg.1de28f6a3c19f7f

A stream passing under a bridge:

02Stream_Bridge.thumb.jpg.2947db51766a0d

Here is the end of the stream in a small swamp in the middle of a forest:

03Stream_EndInSwamp.thumb.jpg.0245f3dd10

 

 

Thanks both to you Ian and MikeyD for that info! :) Looking forward to toy around with the new streams, like the other guys around here.

One wish or idea remains though (for V4 and up). Having more than 1 mud type tile available to create different parts of the map to have increased bogging chance and slowed down movements for most CM units. That would add to terrain FOW, although many players would hate such a feature, as simple grassy terrain could be in fact "mud". In example in summer or otherwise "dry" conditions, lots of terrain could be very soft, like grassy areas beside creeks, or low lying grounds generally (Netherlands). Setting the ground to "muddy" overall wouldn´t do the trick, as would not using the standard mud tile, as you see at a glance that it´s mud and not very soft grassy grounds. I could imagine to solve something like that with the "tag" system and the AI does not necessarily need to know about that and adapted. Well, it´s just a brain fart...:D :)

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Thanks for the screenshots, @IanL. Looks good, nice screenshots always make me want to go for a walk :) 

Hoping for more additions like this in the future. With a bit of landscape contouring like you did, it really makes a map come alive as a real place.

Even though the stream might be small, it would have had a lot of time to cut down through the landscape. On the other hand, drainage canals would be quite shallow and run in straight lines.

Edited by Bulletpoint
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Given your question I asked Chris if I could post something about steams, he said go for it, so.  The answer is that the streams themselves do not have terrain mesh sculpting capabilities so you have to do that yourself with elevations.  Below are a few screen shots from my Lanzerath Village Map... <snip>

 

Wow, thanks for all the info. These streams are a significant development, IMO. I didn't expect many new things once BFC said there wouldn't be as many engine enhancements in this title, so this is really a very pleasant surprise.

 

Edited by sttp
needed to
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