Greetings (and a few CMSF gripes)

[ElectricWraith]

Salutations fellow forum goers! I've been lurking here for a while now and decided to sound off on CMSF.

First off, thanks to Battlefront for paying attention to their customers and posting here. It's appreciated, and for those of you that don't think that BFC does enough, try getting EA to give you the time of day.

I've been playing the CMx1 games for a while now, mostly CMBB, I eagerly awaited CMSF and bought it as soon as it was available. For the most part I love it, mostly because I see the potential that it has, but there are things that are driving me mad.

1. The TacAI issues. Often my units will not engage unless directed, or in the case of a very stupid Abrams crew, choose to engage a far more distant target in lieu of a T-55 that's 50m in front of them. They paid the price. Also, my infantry appear to have an aversion to going through holes in walls, ditto for vehicles.

2. Horribly inaccurate artillery. Come on guys, I expect 10-digit grid coordinate based fire missions to land closer than 50 to 100m away. Especially when my spotter has a direct LOS across flat terrain. OK, 10 digits is an assumption, but I don't think it's an unreasonable one. Oh, and of course the Adjust Fire button not working.

3. Pathfinding. Yikes. In Breakthrough at the Berm, I had an Abrams get immobilized in the gateway to the compound. This apparently terrified all the Stryker drivers, as they repeatedly tried to drive all the way around the back of the compound to reach the waypoint I set just inside the gateway. They also paid a heavy price for their cowardice when they drew up short 10m from a Syrian AT team. One of the lads took it to the other extreme and drove straight through the wall, the three story building, and then the back wall in an attempt to...well, I don't know what he was thinking. He kinda scared me, though. Freak. Note that this is a hit and miss glitch, because I had to play through that mission again (thanks to the wonderful "Crash When Saving The Start of the Next Mission" bug, and yes I had lowered the process priority.) and all my units went through the same gate with no problems.

4. The infantry. Oh dear lord, the infantry. Now I'm all for hiring the handicapped, but I'd prefer it if my troopers didn't ALL have Downs Syndrome. The whole bit with them only going through doors I understand. If the Stryker's in front of the door when the hop out of the back, they can't get in. No problem. But when the path is clear, do they really have to mill around in the street under withering MG fire?! And once they get inside, the real retardation starts. They're utterly incompetent at clearing buildings. I've watched several occasions wherein the troops have waltzed right up to Syrians like they were going to bum a smoke off of them. I understand that the walls and doors aren't shown, fog of war, etc., but when one of my soldiers is actually touching a Syrian irregular, I expect him to open fire.

Oh hell, that's enough for now, my hands are cramping. Suffice it to say that I love the game, but I look forward to it becoming what it's meant to be. I have no doubt that this will happen.

If anyone's interested, I'm 36, a former Marine (Sgt., 5954, H&HS MCAS Cherry Point, station pogue), an electrical engineer, I have a wife, 1 daughter (7&1/2), two cats (Tucker and Cuzco), and a 165lb Great Dane puppy (yes, puppy, he's 1&1/2) named Moose. Oh, and I practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I like long walks on the beach, my turn-ons include...

[Truppenfuhrung]

Originally posted by ElectricWraith:

2. Horribly inaccurate artillery. Come on guys, I expect 10-digit grid coordinate based fire missions to land closer than 50 to 100m away. Especially when my spotter has a direct LOS across flat terrain. OK, 10 digits is an assumption, but I don't think it's an unreasonable one. Oh, and of course the Adjust Fire button not working.

Except when I call an emergency barrage, I never had any kind of problems with the artillery.

The next patch should resolve the others issues.

[ August 21, 2007, 01:05 AM: Message edited by: Truppenfuhrung ]

[Guest]

Hey ElectricWraith! Welcome to the forums. I'm hoping that your info will help BFC fix these issues. Thanks for taking the time to post your observations.

By the way, I assume you're playing with the 1.02 patch?

Cheers.

[jomni]

No problem with Arty accuracy.

Maybe you're using your normal squads to call the missions? HQ's and spotters are best.

[ElectricWraith]

Yes, I am playing v1.02 and I've had the same results with both regular squads and spotters in Fire Support Vehicles.

[rudel.dietrich]

Modern artillery is also not pinpoint precise either. Some of the larger stuff (155 and 8 inch) has minumum safe ranges in the hunderds of meters

Someone a while back posted min safe ranges for calling in air ordanence, I wonder if someone has one for artillery rounds?

[Falcon899]

Personally I've never experienced any problem with artillery accuracy, with the exception of when I set it to emergency as has already been noted.

As far as room clearing, I see it all as abstracted. Even though the soldiers appear to be right next to each other I don't necessarily think that they are. Could be one is in a hallway, the other in a room, etc... so I don't have any problem with that personally.

Everything else though I agree with you completely.

[whaco]

Originally posted by ElectricWraith:

And once they get inside, the real retardation starts. They're utterly incompetent at clearing buildings. I've watched several occasions wherein the troops have waltzed right up to Syrians like they were going to bum a smoke off of them. I understand that the walls and doors aren't shown, fog of war, etc., but when one of my soldiers is actually touching a Syrian irregular, I expect him to open fire.

Exactly. This is very annoying and really needs looking at from BFC. At the very least, BFC should have given every inf unit a portable card table to go along with there ammo rounds and Jav's. That way there, when inf units are standing around side by side they can break into a friendly game of Texas No Limit Hold Em instead of actually killing each other. :confused:

[whaco]

Originally posted by Falcon899:

As far as room clearing, I see it all as abstracted. Even though the soldiers appear to be right next to each other I don't necessarily think that they are.

Then you haven't played the game long enough . I have finished the campaign and 75% of the battles. Through the whole campaign especially, they most definitely are on the same level and next to each other. Now being next to each other can be construed as being on opposite sides of the same room and the room being the approximate size of your bedroom. I have had instances like that also. The majority of the time though, it is an enemy in the same building on the same level, crawling around by my units feet attempting to tie his boot laces for him. And just to be sure I was not on the crack pipe, I used a 360 degree view to see how close each unit was and me thinks that this is a major bug that will take a few patches to fix.

[KNac]

No whaco, even if they are close to each unit the close quarters combat is abstracted. Noi matter if they are together in 1:1 or if target command says they are apart 2m.

It looks lame but is the way it's working.

[Falcon899]

Yep, I still stand by my statement and what KNac said. Believe me, I've been playing since release and have seen a lot of bloody CQC, I'm fairly certain it's heavily abstracted .

There's any number of ways to interpret the things that you see during CQC. Really it's up to your own imagination. It worked that way in CMx1 too as I recall. Abstracting CQC will likely be a necessity until home computers improve enough to model actual room by room combat.

Incidentally, if and when that happens, I will expect BFC to do a game centered on Stalingrad. Immediately.

[Omenowl]

I find the artillery works fine. I have used it on several missions and it hits pretty close. It however does depend on the artillery. Usually the mortars are the most accurate.

I do admit my men are best described as storming deficient. They do ok in open terrain, but buildings give them problems even if I micromanage how they move. The wandering bug also bugs me. It was a lot easier in CM1 to stop my troops and then have them move away instead of being confused with a move order I can not repeal and they just move back and forth.

What I do wish is they had a command similar to Total war where I could put them into a formation of my choosing. Sometimes I want a line along a berm or a single file column.

[ElectricWraith]

You know, I think I may have been setting it to Emergency every time.

Hmmm...