First CMx2 FB or RT?

[NUTTERNAME]

A 'bundle' on Upgrades? Oh Boy!

Here's the deal with the Upgrades. As before it is always $10 per Family per Upgrade. The games are all separate, which means they each require separate programming, separate installers, separate testing, and separate support. There's no reason why someone with 1 game should pay the same as someone with 5 games because the guy with 5 games is getting 5 times as much. Having said that, because there are now 5 Families involved in this round of Upgrades we are planning on an Upgrade Bundle which offers a discount for buying all 5 at one time. We will also provide Bundles for Upgrade 3.0 and Upgrade 4.0 as applicable (CMBN and CMFI). The latter will likely be $15.

As for the question about bringing CMFI up-to-date with Engine 4.0 in order to play the new Module... the short answer is yes, of course if you have Engine 2.0 (the original release) you will need to purchase both Upgrade 3.0 and Upgrade 4.0.

What we've found is that MOST people that continue to have an interest in playing a particular CM Family purchase the Upgrades pretty quickly after they come out. It's about 1-1.5 years between Upgrades and that means the cost is spread out over that period of time (for example, $0.75 per month). Someone who skips an Upgrade is only doing themselves a disservice because they will not enjoy the new features over long periods of time and then, if interest continues, will likely purchase them anyway.

Time = money or time = opportunity. Either way, when you put time into X you aren't able to put it into anything else. Someone willing to invest time into something should want the greatest return on that investment. Upgrades offer features and features offer increased enjoyment for the same amount of time spent. Some features even have the opportunity to decrease time spent (for example UI efficiency improvements, faster loading times, etc.). Certainly many of them are designed specifically to reduce frustrations/annoyances, therefore increase enjoyment. The cost of obtaining those features should be weighed against the return on investment.

The more you play, the better the return on investment. Let's say someone plays 20 hours of CM per month fairly consistently. For one year that's 240 hours of play time. A $10 Upgrade amounts to $0.05 per hour. Anybody that thinks an hour of their time isn't worth an additional $0.05 enhancement isn't someone I'd like to hang out with

Steve

 

[mi80j]

Thanks for the great info!
I have tried the CM Red Thunder and Normandy demos. They are okay.
But, the having to use a key thingie to play CM deters me from buying any of the games.

 

[NUTTERNAME]

Its old info. I have issues with 4.0 and so do some people that post on the CM board. They twiddled some things, and as far as I can tell, they do these things and it isn't documented. Again, not standard software practice. They do not want the Help board to be a place that people can get feedback or help regarding issues, in other words post on the forum. But people post issues there (forum) and I see no BF response or presence. Just the usual forum-flys with the lame posts.

I haven't played any scenario that uses the 4.0 AI features. It is an odd upgrade, with the hull down command being the only feature that stands out. I didn't upgrade CMBN, just CMRT. I bought CMFB, and it was already 4.0 for some reason. That may not be the case anymore.

At this point, maybe interested in CMRT module and that is about it. But, that won't happen anytime soon. CMFI seems to be the focus followed by a rehash of Shock Force. Given the problems they had just bringing up CMFI to an updated state; will CMSF be any easier for them?

 

[NUTTERNAME]

A sad update....Maybe Steve should talk to the people in his management team about putting so much work on one individual? Oh wait, that would be himself...

Sadly, Rome To Victory is the one project most affected by Chris' departure because it was unusually dependent upon his scenario work for the campaign. Usually we have the work more dispersed, but this one was mostly on him. Which probably contributed to the burn out. We're VERY far along in many ways, but the content is still in need of quite a bit of work.

Steve

The CMRT module isn't happening anytime soon. It will take BF time to 'pick up the pieces' and find another person to dump the work on.

 

[NUTTERNAME]

Oh boy....like a slow train wreck coming up the road...

First, apologies for taking so long to update you guys on where we're at. We know that you guys care more about new stuff than anything else and so we have been totally devoted to making that happen. However, I'm acknowledging that a bit more balance in priorities was needed and we dropped the ball on communicating with you.
With that out of the way, time to give you an update on what's going on beyond what our testers have been able to say.
We've been working short staffed for the last year in particular. At first we thought CMSF2 and CMFI Rome to Victory were far enough along that missing some hands would be OK. It's clear to us that wasn't the best decision we've ever made! The time to fix that isn't now, however we are currently working with someone to help speed things along through the final stages and a new full timer has been lined up for this Fall.
What really buggered things up is that both CMSF2 and CMFI Rome to Victory were both deceivingly simple in concept, but very difficult in execution. Both games have been "nearly done" for most of this year, or so we thought. In reality CMSF2 required about as much effort as a brand new Base Game (if not more) and Rome to Victory ran into seemingly endless TO&E oddities that needed to be addressed. A couple of months ago we decided to put Rome to Victory on hold so we could focus on CMSF2. Focusing on one complex project instead of two certainly was the right way to go.
The result of this strategy is CMSF2 being nearly ready for preorders! I'm going to make a separate post about the options for you all.
As if we didn't have enough work on our plates already, there was another major project that we had to deal with... our website. The existing website should have been replaced years ago, however we continually prioritized our time and resources on game development. Which was fine, except that the need for a new website didn't magically go away.
Our new website will hopefully be live within a few weeks. Total redo from top to bottom in all ways. Your store accounts from the old website are going to be ported over so that there's no loss of order data. We will have to shut down our current site (not this Forum though!) for a few days while all that data and the domain are transferred. We will give you a heads up when that is about to happen.
There's more to say, therefore I'm going to post a few more announcements over the next few days. And yes, some of those announcements will involve screenshot bones!
Thanks for hanging in there while we get our ducks back in a row.
Steve

 

[NUTTERNAME]

Again, we see BF telling us what we want...."New Stuff".....Oh Really? How about fixing the Upgrade "Old Stiff" before announcing pre-orders? Patches please.

I think I called this....

What really buggered things up is that both CMSF2 and CMFI Rome to Victory were both deceivingly simple in concept, but very difficult in execution. Both games have been "nearly done" for most of this year, or so we thought. In reality CMSF2 required about as much effort as a brand new Base Game (if not more) and Rome to Victory ran into seemingly endless TO&E oddities that needed to be addressed. A couple of months ago we decided to put Rome to Victory on hold so we could focus on CMSF2. Focusing on one complex project instead of two certainly was the right way to go.

... So, the bottom line was that things got "deceivingly simple in concept"... And things had to be done with less people... So, it was the 'complex project's' fault? Or is it back to being the "Website's Fault"?

Good Luck with the Ducks. I guess they are being sold in the store?