CM Red Thunder page is up

[Bletchley_Geek]

Ya know...Some people post just maps in the Repository. ...without units or AI plans..,....not for nuttin. ....just saying.

And you're right :-) But I'd like at the very least to setup them for QB's, that should make them far more useful/valuable.

[MikeGER]

I was directly replying to a poster here who had this problem and told him it is a known problem and gave him a link to the solution.  Then you can in and took objection to the wording I used.

THX! Redwolf, it worked very well  :)
... i now actually use the new RTS setting. I like the right mouse button function, but missing  'elevation up / down' with mouse wheel a little, which is switched to zoom in/out in this setting.   (would be nice to have that maybe together with ALT-key press) 

[Michael Dorosh]

Review is up at wargamer.com:

http://www.wargamer.com/article/3563/pc-game-preview-combat-mission-red-thunder

[Bletchley_Geek]

Beutezug is an entertaining scenario as well.

Quite "entertaining" indeed :)

Good to see a late war armoured raid, and good to see an scenario in Lithuania. I had forgot how awesome the Hetzer is when camping.

[Sir Slash]

Very good review at the Wargamer. I haven't seen much about how the new aircraft involvement affects gameplay. How well does the AA units engage the enemy aircraft and do the air units overpower the ground units? Any thoughts anyone? Also, should I buy now or wait until after any new patch improves the game?

[RyanE]

Very good review at the Wargamer. I haven't seen much about how the new aircraft involvement affects gameplay. How well does the AA units engage the enemy aircraft and do the air units overpower the ground units? Any thoughts anyone? Also, should I buy now or wait until after any new patch improves the game?

I don't think there are much point in waiting as far as the quality of the game goes.  There a a few niggling things, but the overall quality isn't going to change much in the next few months, I would guess.  If you like CM games, get it.

[Bletchley_Geek]

Review is up at wargamer.com:

http://www.wargamer.com/article/3563/pc-game-preview-combat-mission-red-thunder

Good writing, I see you aren't afraid of being controversial ☺

Some constructive comments:

• Regarding the "dwindling demographics" thing. Indeed, it's true what you say in the review. But I disagree with the Gotterdammerung vibe. There are things that can be done to widen that demographic without "dumbing out" things. Battlefront is doing helpful efforts to that effect. CM Touch is one, and the efforts Chris - and others - do by generating content on Twitch.tv and YouTube is another. 
• Battlefront business model predates Early Access releases, and it's not a far cry from what you get in wargames that strive for extreme fidelity. Uncommon Valour can be understood as the crowd funding for WITP, and in turn WITP crowd-funded WITP AE. Command Ops and WITE have followed as well similar life cycles, with different pricing structures. There's always something missing in the current implementation as you go down the rabbit hole.
  
• You devote, perhaps, too much space to comment on "arcane" things like mod tags, which only are noticed by maybe a 10% of the user base. Maybe having those remarks in their own section, in a more streamlined form would have been a good idea.

Cheers for the review ☺[/list]

[Michael Dorosh]

Review is up at wargamer.com:

http://www.wargamer.com/article/3563/pc-game-preview-combat-mission-red-thunder

Good writing, I see you aren't afraid of being controversial ☺

That's usually what other people bring to my writing - or just seeing my name. :) Case in point:

Regarding the "dwindling demographics" thing. Indeed, it's true what you say in the review. But I disagree with the Gotterdammerung vibe. There are things that can be done to widen that demographic without "dumbing out" things. Battlefront is doing helpful efforts to that effect. CM Touch is one, and the efforts Chris - and others - do by generating content on Twitch.tv and YouTube is another. 

Honestly, I didn't mean to suggest "dwindling", rather, "hardcore tactical" has always been a small demographic. Whether it is getting bigger or smaller isn't addressed in my comments. So I think the 'dwindling' aspect is what you brought to the article rather than me? Personally, I don't see it that way, at least as far as CM goes.

Battlefront business model predates Early Access releases, and it's not a far cry from what you get in wargames that strive for extreme fidelity. Uncommon Valour can be understood as the crowd funding for WITP, and in turn WITP crowd-funded WITP AE. Command Ops and WITE have followed as well similar life cycles, with different pricing structures. There's always something missing in the current implementation as you go down the rabbit hole.

Good points. However, there is probably less excuse for not documenting the stuff that is actually IN the game, which is what my real point of contention was. Or proofreading the rules manual to an acceptable (not perfect) standard After publishing a few periodical issues and books on my own, I tend to be a lot more forgiving about things like typos and I have a better understanding of how achievable "perfection" is for anyone that does not have access to paid beta-testers/proofreaders. Even proofreaders who are compensated for their work (I have found out from experience) will not produce "perfect" work as there can be no such thing. If we can't expect it of the space program, I think it is unfair to demand it of a video game company.

But I do stand by my comments about beta testing as opposed to buying finished product. I'm happy to support products in development. But I admit to not understanding fans and reviewers who simply rate each game in the development stream as "perfect" when key features are by self-admission two or three releases down-stream. The developer's real incentive is my money, not my '10' rating on a website.

You devote, perhaps, too much space to comment on "arcane" things like mod tags, which only are noticed by maybe a 10% of the user base. Maybe having those remarks in their own section, in a more streamlined form would have been a good idea.

I appreciate this as well. CM is now so rich an experience, one could literally write a Combat Mission Encyclopedia - it is difficult to sit down and know where to start. One could write entire paragraphs on the history of MG behaviour or Spotting. I suppose one can only "write what you know" though...and I happen to like mods. :)

If you want to talk about dwindling demographics, I think we can examine reviewers, and in particular, those who have chose to write about Combat Mission. After CM:SF, the number of review sites, magazines, etc. that have touched CM releases has fallen off dramatically (I suspect, so have the sites and magazines).
[/list]

[Zulu1966]

Review is up at wargamer.com:

http://www.wargamer.com/article/3563/pc-game-preview-combat-mission-red-thunder

Well I thought that was a very fair review. I didn't see a comment a about a dwindling demographic so can't comment on that, there was a comment about a demographic but I didn't notice you say it's dwindling.g

Overall Mr Dorosh that's about the most fair and enthusiastic I have seen you on the new version. I myself tend to be a little more enthusiastic about the titles myself in that for me they still deliver the single most bang for your buck of any war game out there. Nothing combines historical accuracy real life tactics and visceral thrill the like the cm titles do. So if I have one criticism its that you tend to be overly negative about things that aren't in the game rather than what is and there seems very little mention of all the things the game gets so right, however a pretty fair summing up.

[MengJiao]

Very good review at the Wargamer. I haven't seen much about how the new aircraft involvement affects gameplay. How well does the AA units engage the enemy aircraft and do the air units overpower the ground units? Any thoughts anyone? Also, should I buy now or wait until after any new patch improves the game?

  I tried out airplanes last night in a modified version of what is probably the ANGRIFF scenario.  It's out there in some form in the Quick Battles Maps oddly enough and its a huge battle.  Anyway so if you are a Russian there is this huge cordon defense of 76mm AT guns stretched over rolling terrain behind some scrubby woodsy barriers in little valleys (for concealment and to force close range action).  Anyway, you don't know where the Germans are going to strike and they open the battle with a massive smoke barrage so...it was a good thing I gave the Germans some extra flak and brought in some PE-2s (heavily loaded) for the Russians....because I could spot the main German effort by watching the flak and bombs.  Sure enough they came right up the big bare hunk of high ground that the defenses surround to make a killing ground and the first three KingTigers through the barrages and smoke and woods and bombs were promptly knocked out with close range shots flanking shots from 85mm guns.
  Heavy bombs make blasts big enough to be quite visible even to my usual wandering Real time eyes.  The aircraft engine noises add a certain amount of immersion at least the first time you hear them.

[sandman2575]

dang, the more I read about Red Thunder, the weaker my willpower gets.  I just shelled out $100 a couple weeks ago for the CMBN 'big package' and have barely scratched the surface. But it is damn tempting to ditch the slog of bocage fighting for some Ostfront goodness.... 

must.... resist...

[MikeGER]

CM (now 3.0 in RT) really has its cute moments  8)

....i just played the smallest scenario (the very first one, just Inf, ...to test a little more with different UI settings) 
In the middle of my combat patrol, one group of my Germans on the right flank got 2 more causalities, after i had already lost a man before near 'der Hügel'. I had split of a scout team close to the hill objective, and one scouting Landser didnt made it back, Verdammt!  ...unfortunately it was MG42 and the assist now down by the tracks.
I was in the process of sneaking up to the house from 3 approach routes with the other groups more on the left flank ...when the two groups got in position (i had to rest them anyway, they were exhausted from low crawl the last stint). I ordered the group with the causalities back to the spot where the men were lying on the blown up tracks ...and after a while the crippled group had picked up the MG from the heavily wounded ...and later this MG42 became the key of suppressing the house, while the two groups who still had almost full strength, together with the 3 men HQ, closed in, leap frogging - well, after the few 81mm round i had for a my small mortar prepfire had impacted so - so the house go cleared, the occupants who were not dead had flown behind it into a foxhole and were quickly dispatched ... i had no more Ausfälle taking the house :-)
   
Its those little details that come together to build a kind of 'war story' when playing a scenario and that reallife tactic actually works that brings the joy with CM  in its current state.   

[Redirected]

Review is up at wargamer.com:

http://www.wargamer.com/article/3563/pc-game-preview-combat-mission-red-thunder

It's titled: PC Game Preview: Combat Mission Red Thunder

Not Review. 

[z1812]

I was playing a Quick Battle when I noticed a German Panzer IV stop beside a stone wall. It had a good chance of flanking a Soviet infantry platoon.

Conveniently, in a nearby house I had a team of Soviet Tank Hunters. I had them move out the back door and then crawl up to the Panzer using the stone wall for cover.

When they were close to the tank they threw their AT grenades. The Tank opened up with it's machine gun and turned the attack back killing 2 of the Russians.

I thought that was it. Then, to my astonishment, the last Soviet Tank Killer turns around on his stomach crawls a few feet forward and throws his last grenade as he is killed by the tanks MG. 
The tank is immobilized and the crew bails in panic.

I have seen my share of amazing moments in CM.......but nothing as dramatic as that.

That is why I play Wego. There are so many cinematic moments happening all over the digital battlefield.

[WallysWorld]

Very interesting post by the user "von Albert" on Battlefront's forum for CMRT to increase your frame rate performance for CMx2.

He posted to do the following for your video card:

1) Sett the Vertical Sync Tear Control to Adaptive
2)  and the Frame Rate to half the refresh rate of 60 Hz.

I have a 660 Ti and did the above using nVidia Inspector and wow! What a difference.

Now CMBN, CMFI, CMA and even CMSF run at a smooth 30 fps with even shadows on. Before I was lucky to hit 30 fps with my 660 Ti and more like 17-20 fps in the very large scenarios. After this change, I now run locked at 30 fps and CMx2 looks great.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=114616