Egan
06-22-12, 02:10 PM
Well, they sneaked this one up:
Announcing "Combat Mission: Fortress Italy"! Better still, the development of this latest addition to the Combat Mission lineup of tactical warfare games by Battlefront.com hasn't just started, it's just finishing. In fact, Battlefront.com is also happy to announce that preorders for CM:FI are now being taken for an expected August release. You can pre-order now and get the "Tin Case" Limited Edition, and even save $10 in the process! And yes, we do mean August 2012!
Fortress Italy is a new "family" of Combat Mission games covering the Allied struggle to knock Italy out of the Second World War. This initial release deals explicitly with the battle for Sicily and sets the groundwork for future additions to simulate the hard fighting in the rugged terrain of "Europe's underbelly" up until the war's end in 1945.
Combat Mission: Fortress Italy does NOT require any of the previous Combat Mission titles to play. Both PC and Mac versions are available!
Steve Grammont from Battlefront.com comments, "We always wanted to return to the Mediterranean Theater, though figured it would be several years before we got to it. Simply put, the stars aligned last summer and work started in September. Now it is in final beta testing and it's time to tell you what to expect from it."
The combat forces immediately available to players include the full range of historically available American, Italian, and German forces which fought in Sicily. In addition to the completely new Italian forces, both the American and German organizations differ significantly from those familiar to Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy players. Some of the highlights are elite formations such as:
Italian Bersaglieri
American Rangers
German Herman Göring Division
Of course, the time frame and units involved require equipment new to the Combat Mission series. A full list is available on the new Fortress Italy website, however here are some particularly fun gadgets to play with:
R-35 Light Tank
Semovente 90/53
Panzer Mk III
Grille
M3 GMC Halftrack
T30 HMC Halftrack
Players get to dive in and try these forces out in three (!!!) campaigns, one from the perspective of each national force (USA, Germany, Italy), a host of new stand alone battles, and of course the automatically generated QuickBattles. It won't take long for Normandy players to feel how different this time period and setting is from what they are used to. And the Italian forces are very interesting indeed! Squads the size of Platoons, almost no radios at all, few antitank weapons, proportionally few support weapons, and relatively light armored vehicles present even the best CM player with a lot of new challenges.
But wait, we didn't come to the best part yet... Fortress Italy features more than just a new setting and new units. It is also the first Combat Mission game to be upgraded with our CMx2 engine Version 2.0 features! If you haven't heard about the new Upgrade path for Combat Mission, click here for more info. For those who have, here's just a few of the new features you'll experience:
Moveable Waypoints
Target Armor Arc Command
Expanded Floating Icon Categories
"Fog of War" Floating Icons
2D Editor Map Overlay
Auto-Assemble Road/Wall/Hedge Tool
Camera Jump to Groups
Target Briefly Command
New Rendering Shaders
Bump and Normal Mapping
Improved Framerates
Pausable Realtime TCP/IP Mode
...and more!
Some very interesting stuff there. I can't wait to see how this upgrade path stuff will work out. No word on using triggers in the scenario editor, which would be a massive change in itself, but everything else looks fantastic.
Further, this little snippet also came up:
he Road Ahead
Combat Mission fans have a lot to look forward to in the next year as the CMx2 game engine continues to produce games at an every faster pace. At the moment we have three games in active development and more planned. While we aren't in a position to make detailed announcements right now, we can tell you what the three are about (in no particular order):
1. CM: Battle for Normandy Module 2. This Module picks up where CM:BN and Commonwealth left off... with the September push out of France to the German border. The content centers around Operation Market Garden, though it covers more ground than just that. The game includes a number of new vehicles, formations, and new terrain models/textures. Adding new terrain, a first for any Module so far, ensures that you feel like you're fighting near Germany and not still back at the beacheads.
2. CM: Eastern Front 1. The first of four Eastern Front "families" starts with Operation Bagration (June 1944) and eventually covers through to the end of the war (May 1945). For many tactical warfare enthusiasts, this period is considered the most tactically interesting since both sides were at their peak of their military technology, organization, and experience. The scope and scale of the combat offers plenty of subject matter to explore.
3. CM: Shock Force 2. Our return to modern warfare is long overdue! Given how close Shock Force 1 was at predicting a conventional conflict in Syria, we're a little nervous about choosing a topic this time around. Especially because we've chosen to simulate a full spectrum conventional conflict between NATO and Russia in the Ukraine. This gives players a rich tactical environment to explore with the most advanced militaries the world has ever seen. Having said that, we hope the politicians aren't insane enough to try it for real. Even thought this is great stuff for a game, it's the last thing this world needs in real life.
We have more games planned for 2013, however we are making no formal announcements at this time. These three mini-announcements should be enough to keep you busy for a while.
That's in the next year. Wow. It's going to be fun seeing if they achieve their goal here. I can't see how they are going to do it all but they must have some plan ready...third party devs perhaps?
Looking forward to the Italy game, though. Should be some interesting battles there. But it's SF2 I'm looking forward to the most. Nato v Russia? In a temperate setting? I'll take 5 copies please....
Announcing "Combat Mission: Fortress Italy"! Better still, the development of this latest addition to the Combat Mission lineup of tactical warfare games by Battlefront.com hasn't just started, it's just finishing. In fact, Battlefront.com is also happy to announce that preorders for CM:FI are now being taken for an expected August release. You can pre-order now and get the "Tin Case" Limited Edition, and even save $10 in the process! And yes, we do mean August 2012!
Fortress Italy is a new "family" of Combat Mission games covering the Allied struggle to knock Italy out of the Second World War. This initial release deals explicitly with the battle for Sicily and sets the groundwork for future additions to simulate the hard fighting in the rugged terrain of "Europe's underbelly" up until the war's end in 1945.
Combat Mission: Fortress Italy does NOT require any of the previous Combat Mission titles to play. Both PC and Mac versions are available!
Steve Grammont from Battlefront.com comments, "We always wanted to return to the Mediterranean Theater, though figured it would be several years before we got to it. Simply put, the stars aligned last summer and work started in September. Now it is in final beta testing and it's time to tell you what to expect from it."
The combat forces immediately available to players include the full range of historically available American, Italian, and German forces which fought in Sicily. In addition to the completely new Italian forces, both the American and German organizations differ significantly from those familiar to Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy players. Some of the highlights are elite formations such as:
Italian Bersaglieri
American Rangers
German Herman Göring Division
Of course, the time frame and units involved require equipment new to the Combat Mission series. A full list is available on the new Fortress Italy website, however here are some particularly fun gadgets to play with:
R-35 Light Tank
Semovente 90/53
Panzer Mk III
Grille
M3 GMC Halftrack
T30 HMC Halftrack
Players get to dive in and try these forces out in three (!!!) campaigns, one from the perspective of each national force (USA, Germany, Italy), a host of new stand alone battles, and of course the automatically generated QuickBattles. It won't take long for Normandy players to feel how different this time period and setting is from what they are used to. And the Italian forces are very interesting indeed! Squads the size of Platoons, almost no radios at all, few antitank weapons, proportionally few support weapons, and relatively light armored vehicles present even the best CM player with a lot of new challenges.
But wait, we didn't come to the best part yet... Fortress Italy features more than just a new setting and new units. It is also the first Combat Mission game to be upgraded with our CMx2 engine Version 2.0 features! If you haven't heard about the new Upgrade path for Combat Mission, click here for more info. For those who have, here's just a few of the new features you'll experience:
Moveable Waypoints
Target Armor Arc Command
Expanded Floating Icon Categories
"Fog of War" Floating Icons
2D Editor Map Overlay
Auto-Assemble Road/Wall/Hedge Tool
Camera Jump to Groups
Target Briefly Command
New Rendering Shaders
Bump and Normal Mapping
Improved Framerates
Pausable Realtime TCP/IP Mode
...and more!
Some very interesting stuff there. I can't wait to see how this upgrade path stuff will work out. No word on using triggers in the scenario editor, which would be a massive change in itself, but everything else looks fantastic.
Further, this little snippet also came up:
he Road Ahead
Combat Mission fans have a lot to look forward to in the next year as the CMx2 game engine continues to produce games at an every faster pace. At the moment we have three games in active development and more planned. While we aren't in a position to make detailed announcements right now, we can tell you what the three are about (in no particular order):
1. CM: Battle for Normandy Module 2. This Module picks up where CM:BN and Commonwealth left off... with the September push out of France to the German border. The content centers around Operation Market Garden, though it covers more ground than just that. The game includes a number of new vehicles, formations, and new terrain models/textures. Adding new terrain, a first for any Module so far, ensures that you feel like you're fighting near Germany and not still back at the beacheads.
2. CM: Eastern Front 1. The first of four Eastern Front "families" starts with Operation Bagration (June 1944) and eventually covers through to the end of the war (May 1945). For many tactical warfare enthusiasts, this period is considered the most tactically interesting since both sides were at their peak of their military technology, organization, and experience. The scope and scale of the combat offers plenty of subject matter to explore.
3. CM: Shock Force 2. Our return to modern warfare is long overdue! Given how close Shock Force 1 was at predicting a conventional conflict in Syria, we're a little nervous about choosing a topic this time around. Especially because we've chosen to simulate a full spectrum conventional conflict between NATO and Russia in the Ukraine. This gives players a rich tactical environment to explore with the most advanced militaries the world has ever seen. Having said that, we hope the politicians aren't insane enough to try it for real. Even thought this is great stuff for a game, it's the last thing this world needs in real life.
We have more games planned for 2013, however we are making no formal announcements at this time. These three mini-announcements should be enough to keep you busy for a while.
That's in the next year. Wow. It's going to be fun seeing if they achieve their goal here. I can't see how they are going to do it all but they must have some plan ready...third party devs perhaps?
Looking forward to the Italy game, though. Should be some interesting battles there. But it's SF2 I'm looking forward to the most. Nato v Russia? In a temperate setting? I'll take 5 copies please....