What u want to see in CMX2

[Kellysheroes]

Heh, if you're a MAC user, you deserve to be left behind. Now, me with my 3.2ghz P4 1g ram system am ready for an upgrade to the GRAPHICS of CMX2. Push it to the limit BF, I have the POWER!

I definitely vote for the battle movies file. It's what makes Medieval Total War so much more fun, being able to sit back and watch the entire battle over again, scroll around the map, zoom in and out, should be top priority.

A smarter AI unit purchaser, balancing the QB with units equal or better than my own purchases.

More blood and screams

Partisian and French underground units. (need some females in the game)

An AI that branches it's attack more than it does now, too often it's far too easy to figure out where the AI is going to come from.

A Pacific theater included with the European Theater.

A covered arc "automatic range indicator", I have such a hard time with mortar and bazooka ranges.

A "hand to hand" combat animation, knives, throwing helmets, fists, slapping, clawing, biting ears off!

[Cthulhu Dreams]

Simple.

Actual mods.

thats all I want. The ability to do the half-life or operation flashpoint, or medieval total war total conversion style mods.

If you have that, you can do whatever you want with the game. You want fast grahpics for 500 mhz users? Mod it. You want high end uber sleek models and textures and terrian and everything? Mod that to.

Want pacific theatre? Mod it. Want vietnam? Mod that to!

[sebastian]

I want to see a more efficient user interface:

- When it comes to displaying information, the GUI of the Close Combat series is still the unreached reference (everything color coded, live mouse reporting).

- Camera control by buttons at the bottom of the screen is a HORROR. I want to zoom the camera with the mouse-wheel. I want to rotate the camera by holding the mouse-wheel down and moving the mouse.

[ July 22, 2004, 12:50 PM: Message edited by: sebastian ]

[flamingknives]

Actual (engine) mods. AFAICT, that's slightly less likely than Lucifer requiring Ice-skates.

The size of BFC and their position in the market means that making their product open-source would seriously hurt them.

I wouldn't say that the interface was too awful. Using ctrl-click and the live edges of the screen suffices for me, but them I'm trained in the ever-changing horror of different FEA packages. *shudder*

[General Bolt]

Originally posted by Panzer Ace:

The ability to use paratroops, pick a drop zone before the battle and have the game engine randomly drop them to the spot marked or not,

That way you could have a good drop like in Holland, where the majority landed where they were supposed to, and you could have the randomness that was the case during Overlord, when airborne units were scattered every where. actually seeing the troopers coming out of the sky would be totally cool,

This has been talked about before.

1. creat zones where you want the paras to appear then set them as reinforcements on that turn.

2.For d-day battles, use lotsa 1/2 squads scattered in little tiny drop areas so they are not a complete fighting force.

3. You still won't see them fall from the skys.

Thing I'd like to see: A tank (living or nonburning-dead) provide some degree of cover for a squad. This works for smoking tanks only now.

[Gen. J-sun]

Actual penetration wholes in the tank, and for the MGs withering fire (aas in hose the whole area) and experation times for area fire instead of dumping ammo for a whole turn, infantry in 1/2tracks and other transports can fight back, and the last thing FACs so an aircraft can have a general area to target, and picking ordinance such as napalm and tell him to target hard or soft targets

[Pzman]

Must we again go into the fact that there were no FAC's, or at least not till late 1944 for only the Americans.

[Richie]

The Dice Rolls

That's what I want to see!

[Nelson 1812]

Transferable maps, where axis route is in the planned direction...........and allies too!

rotate and expandable map building facility.

Fixed pillerboxes (such as the sandbags)

a youth tablet for all us older players to see all these wonderful additions!

and contour lines.........thanks

[K_Tiger]

A FOV = Field of View where all Objects are highlighted in your sight line.

[Richie]

Ooh Yeah, and PINK MIST !

:mad:

[EarlofWarwick]

"Start the purple! Start ... the ...purple!"

Players should have the option to play as the finest armor unit ever to take the field, the 2nd Bn, Irish Guards. There should be a Col Vandeleur unit (he should look like Michael Cane), and a wav. file with the above quote should accompany it. Whenever the wav. file is activated, rocket- firing typhoons should zoom in and decimate any nearby German positions (at least the ones marked with that wicked purple).

[Richie]

Do you have all Princes' albums?

[Renaud]

* Addition of flexible random variability in squad and team weapon TOE. This would enhance the you-are-there feeling and reduce the cookie-cutter feel of squads now. For instance, one squad might have 2 bars while another has none, but an extra SMG-man. Variability could perhaps be increased among higher-experience units, with a tendancy toward more captured weapons and preferred weapons such as extra bars or smg's. This would also allow a more variable dispersion of random captured enemy weapons appearing in squad TOE's, rather than the current hardcoded substitution of mp40's with PPSHk's, etc. Additional benefit of a flexible weapon-TOE system is that some or all members of a squad might have NO weapon, either through surrendering and then escaping, routing and dropping weapons, or entering the scenario unarmed. This would allow MG's and other integral heavy weapons to be abandoned, avoiding the syndrome of routing/broken HMG teams dragging 40+kg of equipment around. This naturally brings up the question of whether unarmed men could acquire weapons found on the battlefield. Unarmed men would probably be lost first, as they would try to recover weapons from armed squadmates who fell first. I do believe that a flexible, editable squad system is slated for CMII which may well address these issues.

* Ability for attacker to start entrenched in assault or attack scenarios. Possibility for units to start with additional ammo, which is lost if they move from initial position (voluntarily or not). Mortar position pre-stocked with 40 extra rounds, etc.

* Revamped fortification system. Keep the current 'pillboxes' with fixed armament, but add:

1) 'bunkers' with restricted cover arcs which are purchased empty, but allow friendly units to enter/exit much like the current vehicle mount/dismount logic. Occupants could be combinations of guns, teams or squads up to capacity limit. There could be several sizes of bunkers each with various occupancy capacities. Bunkers could be placed in any terrain, including buildings, and would be well-concealed unlike the current 'pillbox' style bunkers. Bunkers could be destroyed and occupants forced to 'bail out', much like vehicles, but only with the heaviest weapons. Occupants would typically have to be killed/incapacitated by hits/penetrations, while bunker remains undestroyed.

2) 'Communication' trenches in addition to the current 'fighting position' trenches, which would allow rapid concealed movement. No LOS in/out unless respective units are right next to or together in the trench. Perhaps addition of deformable terrain would allow this. I suspect current trenches are more of a kludge designed to give us something usable in the interrim.

* Seperate current scenario files into 'map' and 'battle' files. This would allow maps to be re-used independent of the TOE. Also would allow transfer maps between ops and scenarios. Would be a boon to those attempting to fashion adhoc campaigns out of a series of CM battles.

Ren

[kipanderson]

CMX2 features.

Hi,

These lists have been done many times before… but in my view, are no less fun for that:)

I will hold back from giving the entire list of features I hope to see, but will concentrate on one area.

My very uninformed guess is that one of the really big changes will be live multi-play. Teams of say… 4-6 players on each side… all live in the same game.

As all will know, and Steve has stated many times, Borg Spotting will be a thing of the past in CMX2. Units will all have to do their own spotting, with the exception of some modelling of a radio nets and such. This means that if a friendly infantry unit 100m from an enemy position spots an enemy unit, a friendly tank 800m away but in Line of Site, will not automatically be able to spot the enemy unit in question.

However, in games in which there is only one player on each side it is still inevitable that there will be a certain “Borg” feel to games. What I mean is that if there is only one player on each side that one player will still be able to spot what all his units can spot. He will still have a Borg like knowledge of the battlefield. This is where multi-play, team play, comes into its own.

In team play, say with four players on each side, each player will only be able to spot what the units he commands can spot, both in terms of enemy units and friendly units. So you may have one player commanding each of three infantry companies, plus a fourth commanding the few armoured vehicles and artillery spotters in the game.

Combine team play with coding such that each unit has to do its own spotting, and it will truly add a new dimension to CM play… one of confusion, command friction and blue on blue fire. The Borg element will be massively reduced. But there is more…

The above describes how multi-player games may be used when you take advantage of team play to have a single battalion combat team broken down into 4-6 elements. However, if one used a team play feature to play massive games, with 2-6 battalions on each side, over a huge 6km by 6km map an entirely new dimension would open up.

Imagine a 6km by 6km map of a road junction in the Ardennes, Christmas ’44. There are two US battalions in defence and four German battalions closing in from slightly different directions. Each battalion is commanded by a different player. Added to all this, in each turn there are not just two US versions and four German versions of the one minute action movie produced, but also an umpire’s/game master’s version which shows all of the units on both sides. The new engine would require one more feature, the ability to launch Saved games in the Editor. Saving the Units file and Map file separately. The umpire designs the scenario, recruits the six players and the game is played live. Then after a given number of turns, or at the umpire’s discretion, the game is saved to the umpire’s machine. He then tweaks the files and re-launches the game on another occasion.

This way operations, involving half a dozen players at a time, could be tracked, tweaked and edited over large, realistic maps.

Anyway… enough of my dreaming… but I am very optimist something along the lines mentioned above will be possible. Time will tell:)

All good fun,

All the best,

Kip.

PS. New graphics will be fun, but in my view they are just a bonus, not the real priority. Other features are likely to be hugely more important.

[yacinator]

Real modding. And building with more than 2 levels, a basement level, and rooftops on which infantry can walk and choppers can land

[flamingknives]

What is it with all these engine mod requests?

I know that if I'd put as much work into something as the BFC guys have into CM, letting the general public have the source code is not the first thing I'd do.

Apart from anything else, there is nothing else out there that is similar to CM, so why let other people have the code so they can make cheap knock-offs?

Possibly something to change 3d models so modders can sort out the last few little models, but changing data would lead to massive arguments and restrict who you can play against.

[ July 25, 2004, 05:53 AM: Message edited by: flamingknives ]

[Sergei]

It all comes down to business plans. I doubt BFC's is anything like Valve's, so comparisons are fruitless.

What I would like to see is letting designers edit values in their scenarios a bit, as in Steel Panthers. Like for instance in CMAK I'd like to be able to edit an M4A3 into M4A3E2 Jumbo. Or putting a 380mm rocket launcher into a Kübelwagen...

[Brent Pollock]

I take it you want to do this so you can make mixed platoons, without having to resort to making them all Independent? Sure would help make those Commonwealth Sherman troops that had a Firefly and two to four non-Fireflies. It would also help with the single Pz IIIN support tank that was supposed to accompany a Tiger platoon.

Originally posted by Sergei:

[snipped by Brent] Like for instance in CMAK I'd like to be able to edit an M4A3 into M4A3E2 Jumbo. [snipped by Brent]

[Sergei]

Actually I'd like to do that because there's NO Jumbo's in CMAK. :mad:

[John1966]

Better shadows to the graphics engine -> height differences in terrain easier to spot(surrently next to impossible).

Absolutely! Probably one of the most important things I would hope (expect) to see.

No need for any grid lines then...

[legend42]

the ability for crews to leave there vehichles and scout over a crest before the afv or vehicle has to crest it on its own,and then get back into there vehicle, no smart co would ever crest a hill without checking it out

[junk2drive]

"the ability for crews to leave there vehichles and scout over a crest before the afv or vehicle has to crest it on its own,and then get back into there vehicle, no smart co would ever crest a hill without checking it out"

i think that might take too many turns, to exit, then view, then embark. how about the ai doesnt take out everything on the first shot when cruising up a road.

[kipanderson]

Hi,

Just small point…one of my original requests for CMX2 was for toggled gridlines.

So that in the orders phase, when you feel you need it, you could just hit a Hot-Key or some such thing and toggle on an overlay grid. But dispense with it when you want to enjoy the full realism of the graphics.

All the best,

Kip.

[Mr. Tittles]

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=009942;p=2

IF the company attempts to model german optics/rangefinding/etc, I hope they bother to know what effects each of these things have,