Combat Mission: Stryker Force

[tataus]

Ive played the other Combat Missions games, so, when I see Shock Force, I can not understend why you moddify many things that used to be right, to make it wrong.

In my country we say "equipo que gana, no se toca" (dont moddify the winning team)

With CMBB, ad CMAK you have to winners... but many see SF as an serius uninprovement in the series.

Gamespot give it 4.5 in a scale of 10.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/combatmissionshockforce/index.html?tag=result;img;1

You have two possible attitudes.

1) You can do as if nothing happens. You may think the critics are part of a islamic complot against the game. Ore they are simply "wrong", and you and a few fan-aticals are wright.

2) You can asume whats wrong, and fix it. Then, you reggain the respect you loose.

A problem I hate:

Once I try to desing a small combat: a few american engeniers (with mg suppourt) ambushing a couple of T-55.

What do I find?

I cant pick the equipment I want.

Even I cant see what Im buying, until I go to the 3d map.

Many times, Im forced to buy strykers.

Why do I ALLWAYS buy strykers?

Why do I MUST buy strykers?

The Stryker is nice... but I just played it, and find many combats unbalanced, because the are soo good.

Playing with the same units, each time you play (once more Strykers), every combat looks prety much the same.

Compare that to CMBB, where you can buy anny thing you want in just a few seconds.

The solution:

I think you may re-improve the game if you let us pick the units we want.

Let us buy the units at three levels: individual, platoon, and company.

Let us buy a simple tank, and let us choose the tank we want.

Let us buy it without some other 20 undesired units.

Ok, I can play red vs red... but I think you can get my point.

Or I can buy a company, the delete 95% of the equipment I just buyed. Thats an ridiculous solution, but its the only one.

Come on, fix the editor, or rename the game "Combat Mission: Stryker Force".

The editor have many othrer issues...

as an example, many times the enemys stands paralized all the battle.

Even, a great iddea in CMBB/CMAK is that you may play so different battles.

Thith the same equipment you already included here(or a couple of blue additions), you may simulate many, many battlefields.

Africa, Europe, Asia... even America.

Any where i the world you may find a firefight including AK gunmen, BTR, etc.

A real CM game, would have many escenarios (and many combats) possibles....

In this game, you always play the same game.

Sorry if I write wrong, english is not my lenguage.

[Mord]

Play scenarios until they revamp the quick battle editor.

If you really want to argue, you can only play about three different kinds of battles in CMX1; Attack, Defend, and Meeting Engagements all having to do with flags. That's not a whole lot. In CMSF there are a ton of different victory conditions that can be set per scenario to spice them up. There's a big difference.

The Ratings you are reading are from last year. There have been major improvements to the game since then and more to come. For those of us that have been here from the beginning we have heard (and done) a lot of *****ing and BFC have tackled 90% of it. So keep the faith and you will see a game engine that's gonna blow CMX1 away.

Mord.

[Paper Tiger]

Welcome to the boards.

Your first point about why change a winning formula is not difficult to understand. Basically the first CM games (CMBO, CMBB and CMAK) were incapable of being expanded any further. You have already seen everything that game engine was capable of doing and there was no way for them to take it to the modern era. Therefore the game company had to make a decision, continue to pump out the same-old for diminishing returns and go out of business or create an all-new game engine. And here we are.

Your next point about it not really being an improvement was definitely valid when it was first released. Let's just say that you're VERY lucky to be experimenting with the game in the 1.08 version. Yes, the game wasn't pretty when it first came out for reasons you can find if you really want to know them but it's WAY past that now. Just forget that review as it is now completely worthless as it's a whole new game today.

With regards to the game editor, yes, it's definitely more work to create missions but the new engine is capable of far more than the old one so that should be expected. Yes, the only way to create that mission of yours is to buy a whole Battalion and delete all the units that you don't want. But in reality that only takes a few seconds to do once you are familiar with the editor. You can delete all the vehicles if you don't want any. The reason for doing it this way is one that you'll appreciate once you get a bit more familiar with the game and that's C2. The CMx1 series of games have NO C2 at all. For Modern Era it's essential.

If your enemy is standing paralysed in battle than it's because there's no AI plan for your mission. CMx2 games have a whole new, and FAR superior, AI system compared to CMx1 games. Unfortunately this added sophistication comes at a price and so you have to create a simple AI plan to get the AI to do anything.

I can understand your frustration with this because at the start, you have to learn a LOT to get the game to do what you want whereas with CMx1, it was all done for you. But stick with it because once you know how to write an AI plan you will be able to knock out a quick mission in a matter of minutes. If you need any help with learning about the editor this is one hell of a friendly place to do it. There's even a lonk to a simple PDF guide to the scenario editor in George Mc's signature so do a quick search for one of his messages or wait until somebody posts a link to it here and you can get started.

[John Kettler]

tataus,

Welcome aboard! The rating you cite is for the game pretty much as released, and that release was prematurely forced by contractual issues which needn't concern us here. This is a much better assessment of the true state of CMSF as it exists now in the latest version.

http://www.simhq.com/_land3/land_107a.html

You need to understand something vital about CMBB and CMAK vs. CMSF. The first two represent the very best that could be extracted from the once revolutionary CMBO game engine, a game engine now retired honorably, but still retired.

The future of BFC's core games lies in the new engine, and CMSF is the living testbed for it. No longer will BFC put out toolkits allowing entire giant theaters of war to be reproduced at will. Too time consuming and not cost effective for such a tiny firm. If you read about the "Brain in the Jar," that's Charles Moylan, the firm's only full time programmer, and he's the one driving this change. Doing things in the old engine was beyond nightmarish, which is why he wrote a new engine designed to be usable for all kinds of wargames. Instead, tightly focused games covering specific topics will be released, to which Modules will then be added. Right now, people are all hot about the first one, Marines, not just because of all the Marine goodies but because this also provides other juiciness, such as the T-90 and BMP-3, opening up all sorts of exciting play possibilities. The idea is for Modules to be released every six months or so, with any game engine improvements, as opposed to vehicles, weapons, squads and the like, provided FREE to customers via downloadable patches. Several Modules are in the mill for CMSF, but many here are all worked up over the coming return to WW II. Also, some very pointed hints have been dropped about a Modern Russia vs. NATO game. Given events lately, that could turn out to be remarkably prescient.

Regards,

John Kettler

[MarkEzra]

Welcome to the boards. I sure hope you'll give CM:SF some time to grow on you. Paper Tiger's comments about the CMx1 engine are exactly right. Like Mord I have no wish to argue. just hope you'll stick around. BFC has announced the New Marine Module. I think the cost of it will be around $25. But also a free Dl of game improvements for the current game will also be available. You can get accurate information on all that here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/announcement.php?f=79&a=30

By the way...Your English is just fine...Beats my Spanish...!