nijis

Having very similar problems. I entered the Soviet password and the game file disappeared. However, about eight hours ago I noticed that it had reappeared with the message "Please do not touch." It appears the tournament admins are on this issue.

Reduce, I would think. I'm not in the military (I was one of those much-maligned media folks) and I'm not qualified to say. I can say, however, that... 1) Based on the transcript, whatever the Apache crew thought was "reasonable certainty" has little to do with my understanding of the term 2) Most of the ground units in which I embedded, I think, would have recognized that civilians move about pretty regularly during heavy fighting, and might even try to peek around corners and/or rescue the injured 3) There seemed to be an awful lot of this kind of incident involving Apaches in eastern Baghdad 4) It could pretty easily have been me, either in the US ground unit that was thought to have been threatened by the cameraman, or in the Iraqi SUV that stopped to pick up the injured. I don't think my driver and colleagues would have let someone bleed to death, if we were passing by.

To address a remark made by angryson a few pages back. This is the problem, right there. If you prefer to blow away a group of people hanging at a street corner who may or may not have a weapon, to avoid making a mistake that may get one of your buddies killed, then you will fail at urban counterinsurgency, and you ought not to be in a country having the power of life or death over the civilian population. I was in Baghdad in 2007 too. And 2003. And 2004. And 2005. And 2006. The US military was a genuine bulwark against the worst depredations of the Jaysh al-Mahdi's more brutal commanders, and the Qaeda-affiliated branch of the insurgency, and saved a lot of lives. It also killed a lot of people unnecessarily. Some US troops I met were genuine heroes, and risked their own lives to save Iraqis. Others made it pretty clear that they didn't give a sh*t about Iraqi lives. Some commanders made a real effort to try to prevent the deaths of non-combatants. Others tried to cover up their units' deadly mistakes. I'd actually guess that the latter group were probably the more popular commanders, the ones who were perceived to really care about their men. It's not a question of not hurting anyone, but how frequently you hurt the wrong people. Put less of a priority on force protection (we ultimately had to do this anyway) and put even less priority on protecting the career of an otherwise good commander whose loyalty to his own men completely eclipses his obligation to the non-combatants in his AO. Care a little more about Iraqis, which in an insurgency necessarily means that you care a little less about Americans. More specifically, take the phrase "reasonable certainty" in the ROE seriously. If the only way that you can be reasonably sure that the device in question is an RPG is to let them take the shot, then let them take the shot. Most likely, it will cause no damage. You have to weigh the small possibility that hesitation will lead to your buddies getting killed, to the significant possibility that engaging will get Iraqi non-combatants killed. The life of an Iraqi cannot count for zero in your calculus. If it does, then you're a liability to the mission, and a threat to whatever unit has to clean up your mess after you and your buddies have rotated out.

"DU is only dangerous when You i.e. eat piece of it." Or breathe it, the theory goes. The danger is not the radioactivity but its supposed propensity to be vaporized by the high temperatures generated on impact. I'm not sure if tungsten has the same properties. "Here in Poland in WarPac times and PRL, many people have in their garage's hammers made from DU, and there were no problems." There wouldn't be, unless you fired the hammer through a sheet of hard armor, causing it to form an aerosol. "Oh please, stop with that BS from eco-idiots!" DU's effects are documented, albeit controversially, in peer-reviewed literature http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/17 "In 2003 invasion and later, M829A2 and M829A3 rounds were used preatty rare, most common rounds used by M1 crews were M830 HEAT and M830A1 MPAT." Most battlefield DU in fact supposedly is fired by the A-10's 30mm autocannon. A-10s knocked out a lot of vehicles in 2003. "Besides this, in the war I wan't ammo that have extreme, possible lethality, I don't care about what next." Not these days. Post-war challenges in the defeated nation and recruiting issues also make a difference. Arguably, given the variety of tools at the disposal of the US military for destruction of enemy armor, the PR value of eschewing DU outweights its advantages in combat. I will grant you that undestroyed enemy armor, firing back at you, has also been shown to be a health hazard. I'm not sure this is the place for a debate on DU, but I did want to point out that the case against its use is not simply "eco-idiocy".

This may not the place to debate this, but anyway, here goes... If you think otherwise, cite one example from 1965 onwards in which a US unit has surrendered to the enemy, been destroyed, or has otherwise failed to achieve its objectives. This would depend on how small you want to go with "unit," or how broad you would go with "failed to achieve its objectives." According to the book, The Cat from Hue, the mortar platoon of Charlie company, 1/12, 1st Cavalry Division, was overwhelmed by an NVA attack on May 20, 1966. The book's description is largely based on the article, "Men facing death: The destruction of an American platoon" by SLA Marshall in Harper's Magazine (pay to download, I think). http://www.harpers.org/archive/1966/09/0015190 On a broader level, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, arguably failed to create a motivated and professional South Vietnamese military that could stand without a major US troop presence. (I don't know whether this was its official objective, but I would say that it was an implied one). [ June 10, 2008, 03:06 AM: Message edited by: nijis ]

If the crew is conscript or green, I'd suggest that this behavior is probably realistic. Battlefield reports from the Arab-Israeli wars, as well as from the 1991 Gulf War, suggest that poorly trained armor crews perform very poorly. I recall having a conversation with an Iraqi tank gunner who had fired the main gun I think a grand total of three times in his military career. I don't know, but I don't think it inconceivable that a conscript BMP crew would not have fired their missiles at all before entering into combat. With this kind of "training," it is conceivable that a conscript or green vehicle team has simply forgotten how to fire their weapons in the panic of spotting an oncoming enemy, or omitted a key step somewhere along the line. Anyone who doubts this is possible should try to perform a mechanical task that he or she has never properly practiced while in the full flush of an adrenaline rush. I don't really have any hard data on what very poorly trained vehicle crews actually do in combat conditions -- and, I suspect that it really hasn't been studied very much -- so I'm speculating a lot here, but I submit that the combat record of Syrian armor in 1973 and Iraqi armor in 1991 speaks for itself. Imho, you should expect green or conscript vehicle crews to behave in a hair-tearingly frustrating fashion. [ June 09, 2008, 03:43 AM: Message edited by: nijis ]

I think it's says al-Najda al-Nahriya -- River Rescue? But other than that, beautiful work.

Just to review, what specifically are the likely problems that could be caused by an orders delay?

Forgive me if this has been mentioned before, but given all the unexpected paths a unit can take between waypoints -- and given that the pathfinding may never satisfy everyone -- would it be possible for the game to compute the likely path in advance (assuming no new enemies or terrain deformation) and show it on the map -- possibly if the player hits a "preview" key? That way at least players will know in advance if a move between seemingly adjoined buildings will involve a quick sprint in the open.

I'm seeing what I estimate is a 60 percent hit rate for RPGs fired by conscripts at 2-300 meters. This seems much too high, given what I've read about the fighting in Baghdad and Nasiriyah during the initial 2003 invasion. I've argued before that weapons handling is too high in general for poorly-trained troops. These are soldiers who have taken the stocks off their rifles, who probably don't use their weapons sights, who might very well have never actually been to a firing range. The worst-quality Iraqi troops and irregulars were often almost completely ineffective in combat. My average losses in a US "Total Victory" in CMSF are higher than any engagement during OIF I of which I am aware. If BfS wants to maintain play balance, it could reduce the proportion of "Conscripts" to "Green" troops, assuming that the Syrian army is better trained. Or it could introduce a new quality level below "Conscript" -- "Untrained" or something to that effect. But for a system which purports to be able to reproduce any battle during the last century, the difference in effectiveness between the high levels of training and the low ones is far too small. As soon as I have time and access to the right sources I will try to find engagements that back these assertions up. [ September 04, 2007, 03:54 AM: Message edited by: nijis ]

I think the status display only shows the casualty until he is evacuated, at which point it only indicates what the survivors are up doing.

Given that it's a Bradley having trouble with the waypoints, maybe the driver is chasing stray dogs... [ August 24, 2007, 11:20 AM: Message edited by: nijis ]

In the interests of not glomming on the Arabs too much, I'd argue that any army's training deficiencies are going to affect its tanks more than its infantry. Also, Pollack makes the point that Arab armies were quite good at carrying out their orders -- ie, storming the Suez Canal -- when they had been well-rehearsed. They just weren't really trained to readjust on the fly. So hefty command delays I think would work really well.

I'd like to see poor quality units simply ignore orders! But I understand that other players might not... The long orders delays in CMx1 made coordinated attacks difficult. They don't seem to be as dramatic in CMx2. It wasn't the spotting so much as the accuracy -- or indeed, the ability to make the weapon fire at all -- that struck me as overrated. When you're undergoing an adrenaline rush, trying to do basic mechanical tasks can be difficult unless you've done them many times before -- and a conscript tank crew I would think would only have fired their vehicle's weapons a few times. I don't know how a T-72 cannon is fired, but I've would expect conscript crews to do the equivalent of forgetting to take the safety catch off, or putting the shell in the chamber. I doubt those are documented, but I'll try to find examples from the Iraq wars or the Arab-Israeli wars of poor quality armor being completely ineffective even at very close range.

Or they could be used as they were historically in the 1973 Egyptian and Syrian offensives -- as blunt instruments. Allow players to send them off on their initial attack with a very short orders delay, but any on-the-fly amendments would have them sitting in place for five or ten turns before attempting something new.