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Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord
FAQ Updated
5/22/02
Combat Mission really is a groundbreaking game
engine - for many reasons - and this Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ) page is intended to share the most common inquiries
which we have collected over the past years (and our answers) with
everyone. We've also created a list of the vehicle types
Combat Mission will include, in case you're curious. Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord is a tactical WWII combat
simulation set in a full 3D environment. Players issue orders
in
turns and then see the action executed in real-time. It simulates
battles in northwestern Europe immediately following the Allied "D-Day" invasion of Normandy in June of 1944, also known
as Operation Overlord, through to the end if the war in May 1945.
Combat Mission allows the player to lead the soldiers of six nationalities
(U.S., British, Canadian, Polish, French, and German) into battle
using historical Tables of Equipment and Organization (TO&E),
surroundings, and combat results. Combat Mission is not a video
game. It requires thoughtful strategy and tactical skill to overcome
the enemy while preserving one’s own forces and achieving the mission
objectives. The demo can be downloaded from the CM
Demo Page. The demo is version 1.02. The full game has
many enhancements and improvements over the demo and
is version
1.12. Except for Europe and Japan, CM is only available directly
from Battlefront.com. Preferred order method is online with credit
card, though we are accepting checks and mail orders. Visit our Sales
Policy
page for details. The Macintosh version of CM is NOT being sold by CDV – European
customers wishing to purchase the Mac version, can do so only
online directly from Battlefront.com. Read our
Sales Policy page for Battlefront.com’s full sales policy. CM sells for
$45 + S&H. S&H is $7 for US and Europe, $8 for Canada and
Mexico and $10 for all other countries. CM is shipped via the US Postal Service. Shipping by
other methods (UPS, FedEx) is not available. Shipping time is approximately
one week for US orders and two weeks for all other orders. Given
the vagaries of postal delivery, there is a good chance you may
receive your package earlier or later than the above estimates. If you buy Combat Mission online then it comes with a
shrink-wrapped manual with the CD inside the manual. The European
version of CM sold in retail locations does have a box. All versions
of CM comes with a printed 180-page manual. The battlefont.com website has links to lots of reviews and the many awards which CM was given in the past. Over a Hundred! In fact, there is a webring setup for
CM - CM
WebRing although it needs to be updated. The granddaddy
of CM sites is CMHQ. You can also visit our link
section here
which is currently the most comprehensive list available anywhere! No. Yes, the sequel to CMBO is in beta testing phase right
now and is going to be released later this year. However, we’re
not calling it “CM2”. The sequel to CMBO is called “CMBB” (Combat
Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin). CMBB is based on the same game
engine
as CMBO, though with hundreds of major and minor modifications.
For more information about CMBB, visit the dedicated CMBB FAQ (in
the works). Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin (CMBB) covers combat
on the Eastern Front from 1941-1945. It is not decided yet what
theaters or time periods following titles will cover. Later this year. Even though CM already has a game engine
in place, there is still a tremendous amount of work to do.
TO&E
for five years of war for the Germans, Russians, and Axis minor
nations. All new models for the nearly 900 new vehicles and
equipment.
New graphical textures for all of the new models. New terrain.
New sounds. Massive game engine upgrades and more. Much of
the work
is already done, but still more is ahead of us. No, internal data such as speed, armor, firepower, etc,
can’t be user-modified. If you have a problem with how something
is modeled, visit our forums and state your case, and we always
have an open ear for suggestions. Absolutely! The external graphics and textures have been
intentionally setup to be user modifiable. User mods are already
available. Head on over to CMHQ
or some of the other websites listed in the CM webring our links list located HERE
and you will find thousands of excellent mods and even some great
utilities (like CMMOS) to help manage them! Some of these are so
much better than the original graphics shipping with the game, you
HAVE to download them! No winter textures shipped with CM. CM did ship with
a neat feature, though. Winter textures can be added to CM
without
the need to overwrite existing texture files. Winter texture bmp’s
begin with a 1 instead of a 0. As a result, a blizzard of winter
textures has appeared. Try the same sites listed above to download
winter textures. Winter textures will only appear if the scenario
has snow on the ground. Various sites on the CM webring listed in our CM Weblink Page have scenario depots filled with scenarios, probably the largest one being the Scenario Depot. Hit ‘Printscreen’. Paste image into your favorite paint program. If for some reason all you get is an image of your desktop (a known problem with some Voodoo cards) or for some other reason ‘Printscreen’ doesn’t work, you might want to try a dedicated screen capture program. Hypersnap is a good program and is now available for a free trial from http://www.hyperionics.com.
For Mac: The latest version of CM is 1.12. The
1.12 patch for owners of previous versions can be downloaded from
the CM Demo
Page. All current orders from Battlefront.com and all games
purchased in retail locations in Europe come with the most recent
and final game version 1.12 so no download of the patch is needed
(in fact, it can cause problems). Basically if you bought a copy
of Combat Mission in the last 18 months or so you probably already
have the latest version and should NOT patch it. You can check the
version number by launching the game and looking at the bottom right
hand corner of the Main Menu page. The first thing you should do is consult
the Troubleshooting
Guide.
Here you should find solutions to most problems encountered in the
past. We are updating this document regularly. If this still fails,
post your problem to the CM tech support forum Battlefront.com Forums.
Be as detailed as possible. At a minimum, include a description
of the problem, hardware with driver versions, and OS. If you want an OOB screen, you are not alone. OOB stands
for Order of Battle and an OOB screen would basically list all of
the units under your command. The arguments pro-OOB: “I have a hard time following what is happening to my
men. I don’t feel in control of my forces and an OOB screen would
give me the info I need to better control my forces. I want a screen
that lists my squads and teams with men left and status level and
allows me to click on a squad and immediately jump to it so I can
give it orders (or something to that effect). I can already get
all of this information by clicking on all my units or cycling
through
them using the +/- keys, but that is tedious.” Anti OOB: “Welcome to the problems of command! CM already
gives you WAY more information than any WWII commander would ever
realistically have. With practice, it is possible to get a feel
for what is happening to your men without having to click on every
unit. Some people actually like the feeling of a loss of control
and consider it a realistic element of warfare… There are many
ways to find your units and figure out what is happening to them.
Sound
cues and visual cues are probably your best way to get a quick
idea of what is happening. Also there are numerous toggleable features
to help keep track of your troops -Floating unit state text descriptions
pinpointing pinned or panicked units or those with depleted ammo,
showing all movement paths/targeting lines, unit bases, changing
the size of units, varying tree densities, smoke, as well as the
+/- key to cycle through your units.” Ultimately including or not including an OOB screen
is a Design Philosophy issue. We didn’t include an OOB screen because
it doesn’t fit into the feel of the game. No OOB is included in
CMBB either, though we might consider one for future installments. Several reasons: Processing power: Not enough of today’s computers are
powerful enough to display every soldier. CM already pushes
more
polygons than man FPS games. This is especially true for the larger
scenarios. Practical reasons: Even if some computers could handle
drawing all soldiers, not all of them can. Adding a feature that
could only be used by a limited number of users is not a good use
of valuable programming time. User Interface (UI) - Displaying all the men in a squad
would add a tremendous amount of graphical clutter. This is
especially
true for computers with poor graphics or small monitors. Instead
of having 3 zombie-like soldiers, you would have 12, and we’re
not sure that adds much to the game. Scale: CM’s smallest scale is the squad or team.
As such, there aren’t too many practical reasons for showing all
the men in a squad. Currently, squads are represented somewhat
abstractly.
Externally showing all the members of the squad while still having
an abstract internal representation would be confusing for the
player. "Gamey" is a situation where you exploit loopholes
in the software to achieve an objective. For example, rushing crews
or unarmored jeeps forward only to be shot up by the enemy, but
in return get recon information about the enemy’s positions is considered
gamey by some. It should be pointed out that what one person considers
"gamey", another person might not. So if you play head-to-head
against another human opponent, you might wish to lay some ground
rules up front. Not currently. We have this on our to-do list for future
installments, but so far it’s proven too difficult to code
within the existing game engine limitations. "...the MG34 is not modeled for anything but vehicles
that would have them (i.e. ball mounted or coax)." By the timeframe which CM covers, the MG34, due to it's
expense, and susceptibility to problems from dirt and damage, was
relegated to duty on vehicles. The MG42 was the standard MG in use,
so the MG34 use in squads is not modeled.
The best description comes from Charles himself: "The U.S. .50 cal was designed to destroy light
armor. It can penetrate 12.7mm at 1000m, and 19mm at 550m, according
to "Hell On Wheels" referencing the War Department's "Defense
Against Mechanized Units". Obviously, at pointblank range,
the penetration would be even greater (somewhere in the 22-25mm
range, IIRC, sorry I don't have my data in front of me at the moment)." and
later in the same post: "And imagine what it's like. It's not a single shell
penetrating. It's five, ten, maybe twenty or more. All ricocheting
around inside the tiny crew compartment, fragments flying everywhere.
And more shots coming very quickly (no need to reload some big cannon,
just squeeze the trigger!). The side of that Hetzer would look like
Schweizer Käse. The .50 cal is a big bad mama jama." First, makes sure you have the newest version of CM (v1.12).
We did some tweaks to increase the lethality of MGs between versions
1.00 and 1.12. That being said, there are many factors that decide
the effectiveness of HMGs in CM. First of all, you may be causing
more casualties then are shown in your HMGs kill statistics. If
your targets are not fully identified (ie, the show up as 'Infantry
Squad?' You will not get credit for casualties caused. What the
enemy squad is doing will make a difference, a running squad is
much more likely to take casualties then is a moving squad in a
given amount of time. A moving squad is more likely to take casualties
then a crawling squad in a given amount of time. Now, this is counterbalanced
by the fact that a running squad will most likely be under fire
for a shorter amount of time then a moving squad or crawling squad. Crew quality will also greatly affect the MGs ability
to cause casualties, as well as their current state (are they pinned
or taking fire?) Another thing to note is, even though clear terrain
is shown as just flat ground, CM takes into account that there are
small bushes and undulations in the ground that can be used as cover. Finally, MGs just aren't quite as effective killing machines
as many people think based on what they've seen in other games and
movies. What they are excellent at is suppression and pinning units
down. If used properly though, they can be very devastating. Another thing to consider about MG effectiveness is
that CM does take into account 'Grazing fire' and 'Plunging fire'.
This is described in the .50 cal manual as: Classes of Fire with Respect to the Ground.
Since Battlefront.com are a privately owned company,
we have no obligation to share our business data with the public.
CMBO models air support in a somewhat abstracted manner,
to not lose the focus of the core game principle (land warfare)
and also to not allow unrealistic micromanagement of air assets
ot the extent no real-world ground commander would have had. First off: you buy air support as a form of artillery,
rather than as you would buy a tank or an infantry platoon. You
can ONLY buy fighter-bombers (sometimes referred to as Jagdbombers,
or Jabos) for battles which are fought during the day, in clear
weather. You cannot buy air support under any other conditions. Second: you have NO CONTROL over the plane once
the battle starts. It may come on turn 1, it may come on turn 30,
it may not come at all. It may even bomb your own units by accident. Third: you will never actually see fighter-bombers.
The most you will see is a plane-shaped shadow moving very quickly
across the map, and usually leaving a trail of burning things behind
it. Fourth: yes, you CAN shoot down enemy fighter-bombers,
and your own fighter-bombers can be shot down. CM models a variety
of antiaircraft guns, and in addition, tanks which have flexible
MGs mounted will sometimes use them against enemy fighter-bombers.
You can tell if a unit is targeting or being targeted by a fighter-bomber
by looking at the targeting lines going to and from the unit. If
there's a red targeting line going from an AA-capable unit to some
point in the sky, that unit is trying to shoot the fighter-bomber
down. If there's a yellow targeting line going from a unit to the
sky, well...chances are that Combat Mission (CM) has its roots in an earlier project
called Computer Squad Leader (CSL) which was based on, but
not a
literal translation of, Avalon Hill's Advanced Squad Leader (ASL).
But Big Time Software and Avalon Hill parted ways as work began
on CSL, so Big Time switched gears and created an original
game
system from scratch called Combat Mission, which, besides the topic,
has nothing to do with Avalon Hill’s classic board game. |
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