Are we there yet?

[thewood]

Seems like the general answer is yes. Most of the bad stuff seems to gone. I have played four of my test scenarios that are meant to highlight weaknesses and outright bugs in CMSF and they all played out almost perfectly. The only one that didn't was an urban battle, but I would call that one well over 90% there. The only issues were some minor pathing issues with a couple of infantry units and one area fire issue that Charles explained in another thread.

To me, the game finally plays like I expect CM to play. I hope someone somewhere understands what a difference a minor change like the space bar menu makes in making a game feel different. Also, I am at a point that I have high confidence in the AI handling my forces in the 60 sec. WEGO action phase.

Other than some tweaks, I am hoping some focus is put on beefing up the scenario editor with something other than time as a trigger, easier unit selection, some way of watching what the AI is doing in a test mode, and general tools for map building. The editor needs a little work to make it a tool that more people than the handful of designers who are now using it can use.

Overall, good job on 1.06.

[SlowMotion]

Yes, this version fixed/improved a huge number of things and I hadn't even noticed most of those things in 1.05. What I've seen in my short games so far has worked very nicely.

Makes you wonder what kind of things will be added to the game after this. Or is it module time now?

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[DzrtFox]

Overall this patch was way more than I think most of us possibly could've hoped for. I've been truly enjoying the game without wanting to tear out my hair for the first time since buying it.

However, I too have noticed a couple of pathing issues that seemed to have re-surfaced. I played Al Huqf last night once from each side, and while giving my vehicles orders to follow a road I saw them both go completely off the road to reach where I plotted. This is with only two or three waypoints plotted, and all of them were directly on the road.

This seems to have been re-introduced with this patch, as I didn't notice it at all in 1.05... Maybe I just missed it though.

Overall though, I am very happy with this patch and applaud Steve & the gang for sticking with the game and showing a commitment to making it work.

[molotov_billy]

Absolutely!

Far and away, 1.06 is the update that changed the game from something that I felt had potential, to something that actually unlocked that potential. I do feel the my $50 was well spent with 1.06.

Reasons I think that this update was so succesful:

1) The casualties I take, I finally feel like they are no longer the fault of the AI doing ridiculously stupid things. Whatever losses happen, I feel are a result of my actions as a "commander." Huge difference in terms of frustration.

2) Far less babysitting. It seems that with 1.05, I was pausing the game every couple of seconds to look over each unit and manually select targets. With the update, I choose the locations for my units and they end up making good decisions on their own about what to fire at, and are very prompt. I can now play company-sized scenarios without feeling overwhelmed with micromanagement.

3) As the result of the above two, and as a result of the huge number of tweaks everywhere else, I finally feel immersed in the battle itself from the time it starts until the time it ends. I haven't run into anything that has broken that sense of reality.

Anyway, I'm sure with extended playtime we'll come up with more bugs and issues that could certainly be fixed, but CMSF 1.06 as it stands finally feels like a solid product/simulation.

[thelmia]

Wow! I found out that the 1.06 patch was out and installed it. What a difference! Not only are the annoying clunky interface things gone, but AI behavior is sooooooo much better.

I ran some scenarios I made back in August but gave up on. I found the AI forces rapidly and efficiently following their plans and owning me. It was great- before they would drive in circles and run back and forth across a road. They could not win the scenario in 45 minutes even without opposition. Now, the computer kicked my ass in 15 minutes.

Small arms combat feels much, much different. Infantry is much harder to spot. Snipers work right. I love it.

Finally, I can recommend this game to other people. It's fixed.

[Taki]

Originally posted by thelmia:

I ran some scenarios I made back in August but gave up on. I found the AI forces rapidly and efficiently following their plans and owning me. It was great- before they would drive in circles and run back and forth across a road. They could not win the scenario in 45 minutes even without opposition. Now, the computer kicked my ass in 15 minutes.

Small arms combat feels much, much different. Infantry is much harder to spot. Snipers work right. I love it.

Finally, I can recommend this game to other people. It's fixed.

Same here. Every little Unit got more "Tactical Worth" now. Infantry is getting the Queen of the Battlefield again.

[Itael]

Wow, to see 'positive' comments from Thewood and Adam1 in the same thread **rubbing eyes in disbelief**

If these respected guys enjoy CMSF now then it means 1.06 is GOOD, hehe.

Battlefront - You did a great job with 1.06 and with CMSF in General, Thank you.

Itai

[Vanir Ausf B]

Can we pick our own forces in QBs again? If not, we are not there yet.

[gibsonm]

I don’t think you are ever going to be able to do that.

[Vanir Ausf B]

No, I don't expect I will.

[Meach]

Pity

[Secondbrooks]

Still haven't had time to try out 1.06 properly. But i thought that 1.05 was already filling almost all my (realistic) expetations, I could have lived happily with 1.04 already. Hard to think that 1.06 would give me any major "YES!"-experiences but that remains to be seen.

Atleast people seems to be liking it very much. And i do like the changes in change/fix log... They have made lots of moves to right direction.

[Kwazydog]

Originally posted by Vanir Ausf B:

Can we pick our own forces in QBs again? If not, we are not there yet.

As can be seen in the patch notes, this was not something that has changed in 1.06. It is something that we will be looking into as we move towards WW2 however, as has already been mentioned I beleive.

Dan

[Taki]

Is there anybody out there who want to play me Online or PBEM? Is it worth a Try now? Anyone tested? If thats the Case we have taken a Big step forward.

[stikkypixie]

Originally posted by Taki:

Is there anybody out there who want to play me Online or PBEM? Is it worth a Try now? Anyone tested? If thats the Case we have taken a Big step forward.

Drop me a mail (my adress is in my profile).

[Webwing]

Originally posted by thewood:

Other than some tweaks, I am hoping some focus is put on beefing up the scenario editor with something other than time as a trigger, easier unit selection, some way of watching what the AI is doing in a test mode, and general tools for map building. The editor needs a little work to make it a tool that more people than the handful of designers who are now using it can use.

Those and other improvements have been discussed in several threads and I'd love to see them all implemented.

But I don't get your logic that having more options is going to make more people use the editor. In my opinion the opposite might be true.

The fact that there are fewer people doing missions as compared to CMx1 is simply because doing missions in CMx2 is more complex and time consuming.

There are a few things that can be done to save peoples time while designing but not much.

--

[thewood]

Originally posted by Webwing:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by thewood:

Other than some tweaks, I am hoping some focus is put on beefing up the scenario editor with something other than time as a trigger, easier unit selection, some way of watching what the AI is doing in a test mode, and general tools for map building. The editor needs a little work to make it a tool that more people than the handful of designers who are now using it can use.

Those and other improvements have been discussed in several threads and I'd love to see them all implemented.

But I don't get your logic that having more options is going to make more people use the editor. In my opinion the opposite might be true.

The fact that there are fewer people doing missions as compared to CMx1 is simply because doing missions in CMx2 is more complex and time consuming.

There are a few things that can be done to save peoples time while designing but not much.

-- </font>

[panzermartin]

Last night actually it was the first time that I had the patience to finish a whole 1:30h mission after a long long time. Infantry was more or less taking postions where I wanted, vehicles were smart enough to avoid unfair armor duels and everything seemed smooth and sensible. No more shooting through ground and weird LOS too.

Can it get better? Of course. WW2 would make it instantly 10 times better, with more balanced hardware, clearer victory conditions and denser terrain. My personal wish is to improve head to head play, with pausable RT in TCP/IP since single player is such a lonely habit in the massive online gaming communities of today. I would second the QBs request and how about a QB map generator randomly mixing pre made combatible ,say 200x200m, tiles into larger maps?

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by KwazyDog:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Vanir Ausf B:

Can we pick our own forces in QBs again? If not, we are not there yet.

As can be seen in the patch notes, this was not something that has changed in 1.06. It is something that we will be looking into as we move towards WW2 however, as has already been mentioned I beleive.

Dan</font>

[Battlefront.com]

Thanks guys. It's taken us longer than we wanted to get the bugs out of some things and polish others, but we think we're pretty much there for CM:SF. We appreciate people hanging in there and having faith that we could do it. I mean, CMx1 should have bought us some credibility

As the game engine progresses over time lots of things will be added, perhaps even changed. What specifically? It's not something we can really discuss much before it happens. We keep our development schedule flexible and therefore it's not useful to anybody for us to get into details before we're actually ready to put that thing in.

One thing I have talked about in the past, and will continue to discuss in the future, is QuickBattles. I think it's safe to say that is the single area that people feel needs improvement. CMx1's QB system was a first attempt and it had its fair share of problem areas. CMx2's QB system is a second attempt and it too has some problem areas. What we will do (sooner rather than later) is begin to change CMx2's system to give a more CMx1 feel to it without recreating the old problems that CMx2 got rid of.

We've had an improved design on paper for some time now, so hopefully now that the core game system appears to be where it needs to be (it can always be better, of course!) we can start implementing those changes. You probably won't see them until the first WW2 release, though, since we're talking about several months of dedicated work ahead of us. Definitely not something we can squeeze into a patch.

Steve

[LordCalvert]

Hey guys at Battlefront, great work!

Now don´t forget to take a couple of weeks vacation! You deserve it.

[Battlefront.com]

You sound like my wife

BTW, I think I've already mentioned this publicly a few times so this shouldn't be news... the improved QB system will have some means of "cherry picking" units. I very much doubt it will be exactly like CMx1 since we purposefully didn't duplicate that system for CMx2. It's flawed and we would like to think we're smart enough to come up with something better

Steve

[Paper Tiger]

thewood:

I agree that the editor could be made a tiny bit more user-friendly too. It would be VERY useful if a sides forces were automatically placed in that sides set-up zone and mounted if possible rather than open the deploy units and spend 20-40 minutes dragging them from the opposite map corner to the set up area and then mounting them up etc etc etc. That's a LOT of work sometimes, especially when the situation is a big one.

If the situation is only designed to be playable by one side, I'm aware that it's only necessary to have the AI force IN the set up zone and they'll mount/dismount according to their instructions but it's still a lot of work for the human side.

The ability to actually SEE the flavour objects in the menu instead of a big number would also be a HUGE improvement to the editor.

[Childress]

The game still needs prisoners. And not just for chrome. Processing POWs exerts a real drag on American operations. It's unrealistic for them to be free of this encumbrance.