About close combat serie and battle editor

[welk]

with a few years delay, I fall as addict player in Close Combat and I bought all opus (except CC3/CC4) on GOG Games (very low prices)

https://www.gog.com/fr/games?query=Clos ... desc:score
Precision : today prices are high, I bought during a promo time last week

But all versions are not cool concerning battle editor (I use CC only in single battles mod, to create my own battles)

CC2 editor : Perfect

CC5 invasion Normandy = pretty good (but unit level corps is missing : a level corps like GTC would have been cool)

The longest day = Same

Gateway to Caean = good (in particular, I love the large choice of units in editor if you play with units at corps level = if you choice corps units, you may choice all kind of units in your scenario and it's very cool)

Panthers in the fog : Very bad => concerning battle editor, this game is a real crap for players who want to create their own battles in "single battle mod" : Even if you choice a low level of quality troops (green, etc), you have neither 100% of awailable slots !

I understand historical necessity but dev should have alowed the possibility to set "historical oob" on/off

Las stand Arnhem : bad = Same as Panthers in the fog for same reasons

Close Combat modern tactics : Perfect (but other hand, modern fighting is very deathly and hard, armors are very oft immobilized in CCMT)

My global conclusion : CC2 editor was the best, and after this opus, excepted CCMT and perhaps GTC, battle editor of the CC serie began to be bad tools (too historical limits for OOB : dev should better have given a on/off historical mode command to allow players to play in "no historical oob mod")


In addition, the "campaign/operation" game mod is unrealistic : You fight a campaing with very little size units and victory or defeat in battles with these little units command the result of a strategic campaing... Crazy !

I think battle editor has been sacrified for nothing as funny tool with "historical limitations" (unawailable slots), that are probably needed to allow the "campaign/operation" game mod.

One of the quality of CC2 game was the possibility to create his own oob to experiment customized oob. But battle editor in recent opus does not allow that : all units are almost identical and player has very little choices.

Other bad feature : you never may change victory locations in map, so all battles are pretty identical each time you play them...

EDIT : CC3 and CC4 : not tested because not bought => White maps are not good for my poor eyes (CC4 and WAR), and red color map of CC3 (+ red interface) are hideous in my opinion. In addition, I think that Normandy bocage is a better ground for this kind of game and allows more embush tactics possibilities : better ground for tactical level game.


The bloody first : : Hem... How to say that in diplomatic termes... It's a real crap (bought it, but each time I tried to play with, I stopped : this game is simply too bad in comparrison with the rest of other opus)

[mickxe5]

I hear your complaints about the various CC scenario editors through the years. Frustrating that editor features have come and gone but have never been optimized. Doubly sad because scenario creation was at the heart of CC's popularity in the late '90s.

Look into these editing tools [http://www.closecombatseries.net/CCS/mo ... =Downloads] to address some issues you cite:

1. mafi's BED9 tool can change VLs in the re-releases. It's the easiest way to edit a map and change the game since VL size and placement determine how the AI will manuever. Any serious CC fan needs to understand the 10x10 pixel terrain "element" grid structure behind the battle maps. Use mafi's 5CC map tool to visualize a map's terrain and elevation data that you can only see in-game by right-click & drag.

2. SgtWilson's CCReq tool for scenario editing CC4 & 5 includes VL placement, custom OOBs and soldier names.

Unfortunately the best scenario editor was in the now unavailable CC:AT-JTAC release for the USMC. This version allowed individual soldiers to be custom equipped.

However, just about any scenario editing you'd like to do can be done to the game save file in an op/camp. Note: single battles dont have save files. The catch is you'd have to familiarize yourself with a hex editor [nbd, its like Notepad for hexadecimal] and the save file structure. With an edited save file you can customize to your hearts content. Want a 5:15 game timer? Want your name written on the map in shellholes and rubble?

CC's resident programmer, Steve McClaire, went to great lengths to improve the game mechanics in TBF. eg. Where in classic CC the player would always be sweeping red/green fire lines around to check LOS, in TBF a button shows a unit's entire LOS at a press. Need to envision an entire map's elevation contour? In classic CC you couldn't. In TBF a button shows the contour overlay. However, the corporate decision to use an in-house 3D game engine resulted in poor graphic quality. So while TBF's 'feel' is better, its 'look' is much worse and post-process tricks like ReShade can only help so much. In today's game market it's 'looks' that matter most to UX.