Lt. Smash

Hi, all.  I just realized that my old mod for CMFI/GL never ported to the new CMMODs III.  You can download the file here.
This mod replaces the default floating icons in Combat Mission: Fortress Italy (CMFI) and its Gustav Line module. These stylized icons are based on the U.S. War Department’s 1943 Basic Field Manual FM21-30 Conventional Signs, Military Symbols and Abbreviations. The icons have a slightly three-dimensional appearance so that they look like counters from traditional board-based war games. And, when the icon blinks (i.e., the unit is selected or wounded), the unit’s national flag is displayed.  Detailed instructions included in the zip file explain what each symbol means and how to use the provided files.

Thank you, @Bil Hardenberger and @The_Capt! Thank you, @Battlefront.com and team! As a child of the Cold War, this game has surpassed my expectations on Day 1. I had so much fun fighting as the "hated" Soviets and loved playing as the "good guy" Americans. The equipment and technology is a blast. This has immediately become my favorite CM game, and I hope it gets the love the CMBN and CMSF have with lots of modules, battle packs and vehicle packs plus great support from the community.
Lt, out!

YVAN EHT NIOJ!  Outstanding, glad you guys are enjoying it.  It was a lot of work to pull this thing together but it was probably the most fun I have had "at work" in years.  I hope it brings you all enjoyment for many hours.

Congrats to all you MFers that have been hamming away on this for the last twenty years. You did it!
Now, where's my Nam?
 
Mord.

Thank you, @Bil Hardenberger and @The_Capt! Thank you, @Battlefront.com and team! As a child of the Cold War, this game has surpassed my expectations on Day 1. I had so much fun fighting as the "hated" Soviets and loved playing as the "good guy" Americans. The equipment and technology is a blast. This has immediately become my favorite CM game, and I hope it gets the love the CMBN and CMSF have with lots of modules, battle packs and vehicle packs plus great support from the community.
Lt, out!

Thank you, @Bil Hardenberger and @The_Capt! Thank you, @Battlefront.com and team! As a child of the Cold War, this game has surpassed my expectations on Day 1. I had so much fun fighting as the "hated" Soviets and loved playing as the "good guy" Americans. The equipment and technology is a blast. This has immediately become my favorite CM game, and I hope it gets the love the CMBN and CMSF have with lots of modules, battle packs and vehicle packs plus great support from the community.
Lt, out!

Thank you, @Bil Hardenberger and @The_Capt! Thank you, @Battlefront.com and team! As a child of the Cold War, this game has surpassed my expectations on Day 1. I had so much fun fighting as the "hated" Soviets and loved playing as the "good guy" Americans. The equipment and technology is a blast. This has immediately become my favorite CM game, and I hope it gets the love the CMBN and CMSF have with lots of modules, battle packs and vehicle packs plus great support from the community.
Lt, out!

Modules I'd like to see (staying with the European theater), that I assume could stand a chance of being realistically expected:
1. West Germany / East Germany
2. Britain (BAOR) / Poland / Czechoslovakia 
3. Canada / Netherlands / Belgium / Denmark (Centurions !) / Austria (?)
4. A module that brings in the timeline between '83 to '91. This would update all of the equipment and organizations for the previous modules/base-game. However this would be quite hard to execute with the current licensing scheme (with the desire to limit each module to not requiring other modules beyond the base-game). Winter textures would probably be appreciated too (covering modules and base-game content). Perhaps this module could be done first so that all follow-on modules would have all the equipment/organization of '79 - '91.
 
Modules that would probably be unlikely to be made, but would be cool if they did show up:
5. France
6. Italy / Yugoslavia / Romania / Hungary
7. Norway / Finland / USMC / Sweden (?)
 
I would assume that any content that goes beyond the European theater may warrant enough work to be considered its own base-game. However I could be wrong on that account. This entire game family would remain with the current engine (CM 2, Engine 4 and probably an Engine 5 Upgrade).

For my part, I really enjoy seeing many different armies represented, and my favorite Combat Mission games are invariably those which have more variety in playable nations (SF2, Normandy, FI) rather than less (RT, FB, BS). So I would really like to see a prioritization towards development of modules that add new nations. 
The #1 addition in that regard is probably West and East Germany for me, but that could very easily roll into Netherlands/Denmark, and eventually France/Britain along with other Warsaw Pact nations that would add something interesting to the mix. I realize most Warsaw Pact nations were 'Soviets but worse', but the same could be argued about the Commonwealth nations in Normandy/Fortress Italy.
The long-term desire for me would be an expansion of the game to include other theaters of war more incidental to the main conflict around Germany  For example, a Balkan/Mediterranean module with Italy and Yugoslavia, or stuff in the Middle East (Israel vs Arab Powers), or the Arctic (Finland/Sweden/Norway, possibly bring in Canada). But I would prefer these inclusions only be explored after a really solid fleshing out of the Central European theater.
And maybe a 'stretch goal' could be the inclusion of some more obscure conflicts... Bush Wars in Africa/Asia/Latin America, hypothetical scenarios that could involve Asian powers like a fictional Korean War 2.0, or a Sino-Soviet alliance and/or split that leads to Asia becoming a major theater of war.

I'm pleased to announce the release of my first scenario Operation Ladbroke. This small scenario for CMFI (Gustav Line required) depicts the battle between the British 1st Airlanding (glider) Battalion and Italian Coastal Division at Ponte Grande Bridge on 9 July, the night before the Allied amphibious landings in Sicily. It is playable as either side or head-to-head.

It is available for download at The Few Good Men website. You can download it from this page. It is the last scenario listed.

Hi, all.  I just realized that my old mod for CMFI/GL never ported to the new CMMODs III.  You can download the file here.
This mod replaces the default floating icons in Combat Mission: Fortress Italy (CMFI) and its Gustav Line module. These stylized icons are based on the U.S. War Department’s 1943 Basic Field Manual FM21-30 Conventional Signs, Military Symbols and Abbreviations. The icons have a slightly three-dimensional appearance so that they look like counters from traditional board-based war games. And, when the icon blinks (i.e., the unit is selected or wounded), the unit’s national flag is displayed.  Detailed instructions included in the zip file explain what each symbol means and how to use the provided files.

37 selected Flavour Objects that I made for Black Sea have been combined and renamed within the SF2 editor as required to be available within SF2
Some textures have been reworked to fit within the Syrian environment.
FO have been added to empty slots within the Map Editor and so the naming conventions in most cases are a little odd.
Download https://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=7737

Read Me
Additional Flavour Objects for SF2 
Additions to the FO as follows
Aircon
3 – concrete barrier
4 – spray tank on wheels
5 – Disc rake
6 – picnic table
7 – fork lift truck
8 – rail buffer1
9 – rail buffer2
ATM
2 – kiosk1
3 – kiosk2
4 – loaded pallet
5 – stack of pallets
6 – pallet on trolly jack
7 – large aircon unit
8 – vending machine
9 – electrical box
Log
3 – concrete pipes spilt
4 – concrete pipes stacked
5 – concrete pipe
Shelter
5 – wooden pitched roof
6 – green plastic roof
7 – pillars and arch
8 – busstop
Bin
7 – large yellow bin empty
8 – large yellow bin on side
9 – large yellow bin full
Pallet
4 – pallet trolly jack (no pallet)
5 – handcart1
6 – handcart2
7 – handcart3
8 – handcart4
9 – handcart5
Barrel
3 – 3pipes standing
4 – 2pipes standing with base
Telephonepole
4 – concrete telephone pole
5 – raised barrier
6 – basketball hoop
7- rail crossing X
 
P

What hapenned to me:
When you select your game folder, the installation app adds "Combat Mission Shock Force 2" to the selected path by itself. So, in my case, when i selected the game path the first time the installation app create a folder named "Combat Mission Shock Force 2" inside my Combat Mission Shock Force 2 folder. I had to delete that folder and re-apply the patch, that time selecting only my "Battlefront" folder in the installation setup.

Throughout the past wargamers all over the world (the groggy, semi-groggy and non-groggy alike) have gathered on December 24th, in a far corner of the internet, to await the arrival of Santa Steve. It is a storied tradition that has been passed from father to son, and son to another son, and that son to his imaginary friend, Jim. For what? at least four years now? So, it's time-honored. Like drunken derelicts in a Mexican whorehouse, a whiskey, beer, (or in Emrys' case, egg nog spiked with ex-lax) in hand, they jostle excitedly to be the first to sight the legendary WaffenKringle of the Great Northern East. For they know, with his arrival come tidings of war and what shape that war will take in the following year. It's the kinda joy that brings a tear to a grown man's eye and divorce papers from that same guy's wife.
However, this December an old friend from the desert landed in a LZ that normally would be abuzz with the cries of "BONES! BONES! BONES!" This friend had lost ten years, and gained ten pounds, and looked like a million bucks! Seemingly sated and awash in desert badassery most have turned their attention to blowing the crap out of Syrian crewed T-72s or RPGing a Leopard or three. So, it begs the question, with our old friend to keep us knee deep in cordite and the WaffenKringle elves busy as only WaffenKringle elves can be, will Santa Steve ride tomorrow night? Will all the good little wargamers gather in the hopes that Santa Steve soon will be here? Or will it be the year without a Santa Steve? I for one hope to spy him drudging out of the snowy wilderness, brain-in-a-jar in hand, the pockets of his coveralls packed to the brim with CM news and wargaming goodness. But regardless as to whether it happens or not, I am thankful our stockings were stuffed early with SF2. It was a great ending to a very dry year! Here's to killing it in 2019; Russian winters and Brazilian waxings in North Italia!
Merry Christmas, Fellas!!
 

 
 
 

 
 
Mord.
 
P.S. A year ago yesterday. Wow. We made it!!!
 
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/126131-the-night-before-cm-mas/?tab=comments#comment-1731593

In hindsight I should have known that RT was Red Thunder.  I don't have Red Thunder.  Thanks for the replies.  Since Red Thunder covers the last year of the war I would be  more interested in the earlier years of the eastern front.  I am surprised Battlefront isn't working on that or a North African game like they had in the original Combat Mission series.  However, I am very much looking forward to Rome to Victory.  In my opinion, the current Combat Mission series is the gold standard for computer tactical warfare.

If you have an nVida card you can also use the builtin recorder that is part of the GeForce Experience app.

Admittedly, I've been a good a good customer over the years - I think I've bought all the CM games, modules and packs except Afghanistan - but this price is insane.
First I bought the Shock Force 1 big bundle on special for the price of a restaurant meal for two, and now you've basically sold me the Big Bundle upgrade for the price of a takeaway curry and Naan!
I don't know how you expect to make a living - but thank you though
 

The sh/t mod is something I've put together, along with ground rubbish, amended rubble and a re-textured wooden bridge from RT


I'll get them on CMMods later today
 
P

These Tactical Problems designed by Todd Justice ( @ScoutPL ) and myself are designed to give small scale (Platoon to Company (+)) and short (around 30 minute) games for two players to test and explore tactical solutions to unique situations.   
They are Head to Head only in order to provide the toughest challenge.  Each side in these scenarios is designed to provide a challenge, though some sides may be tougher than others, refer to the scenario complexity ratings for the difficulty rating for each side. 
 Post your solutions in the comments section for each scenario, or on the Battlefront forum.  We might in the future add AI to each side of these scenarios based on the best submitted solutions for each side.
Links below:
PBEM Tactical Problems Introduction PBEM Tactical Problem 01 - A Rifle Behind Every Tree PBEM Tactical Problem 02 - Strongpoint! (Coming Soon) PBEM Tactical Problem 03 - The Last Hundred Yards (Coming Soon) It had always been my intent to provide Tactical Problems like these on my blog to allow you to learn and  test tactical situations.  Please leave your feedback below.  I would suggest that if you have an AAR or a solution to one of these scenarios that you start a new thread and post a link to it in this thread to keep spoilers to a minimum.
Bil

Welcome to Syria!

- MOUT is really hard, a slow and costly grind, street by street.
- MOUT is also the bread and butter of CMSF, and probably the main thing that differentiates it from the other titles.

First, an excellent link: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/call/call_01-9_karagosian.htm

What I find really interesting about the above is that it not only gives advice on how to do it, it also highlights how even the official sources have fallen into the same kind of traps that we do as players - focusing on the target building, rather than isolating it with fields of fire and concentrating on the avenues of approach.
 
Yup. This is why isolating and overwatching plausible buildings are important. 


Take this as a simple example (moving up the left street at the start of Breaking the Bank)



Platoon wants to turn this corner. This street is overwatched by a challenger from the start of the scenario, so it's reasonable to assume that all of these visible windows are free from enemy.



Team's eye view. Notably, they cannot see the large building to the right:

Peeking around the corner with the camera:



Both large buildings here seem like plausible locations for enemy. You can inch around the corner and see each window in turn coming into view - running around this corner with anything is a Bad Idea (Street Fighting is not about fighting in streets, as per the article).

The team could move into the building they're currently lined up against, but that creates some more problems:



This does allow covered LOS to the two threatening buildings, but also exposes the team to a third (large wall and taxi, above). This building has the further downside that there is no way for supporting fires to reach this one from this situation - anything firing from there will go pretty much unanswered.

So this is an awful situation, and one which is fully in Red's favour. How can we improve, using only the above?

Well, across the street from the team there is a tall building with a decent area for overwatching the two key buildings. This is the view from there:



The plan then would be to get some firepower set up in this building, and then recon-by-fire onto the suspect buildings from a degree of relative safety, granting your teams more freedom to manouevre.

This is the kind of inch-by-inch puzzle that MOUT is all about, and CMSF does really well.
 
Splitting squads minimises risk. The assault command can be useful to clear buildings, but it also commits the entire squad to the clearing, if you split a squad and run into the worst possible situation, you'll "only" lose a fireteam, and not the whole squad. As per the above article, the actual *clearing* is not the important factor, but it's easy to get hung up on. 

 

Armour is a mixed bag in MOUT, in any period. It's really effective at bringing devastating firepower quickly and ending firefights, but it's also extremely vulnerable to infantry ambushes. You definitely do not want to drive your armour up to the middle of the street, hoping the RPGs will miss, but as a way to finish a firefight they can be very successful. The key, as with a lot of combat mission, is to control the tempo as much as possible, and to engage with the minimum amount of force that you can get away with, so that you can maintain options and reserves.

Don't do that. This is a mistake that I see a lot by many different people. The Assault command is just a bounding overwatch drill (leap frog). Very useful in many situations, but room clearing is not one of them. For room clearing, you want to have as much firepower directed at the target building as possible, and when you enter the building you do not want to do it piecemeal. 
Here is a very simplified example of how I conduct MOUT:
For simplicity sake, this will only be a 1 squad demonstration using the US Army, but you can scale this up to multiple squads, to platoons, etc, as well as other nations. 
First thing is to split off an Assault Team:

This results in a team of 4 men with rifles and a lot of handheld grenades. The squad leader, a Staff Sergeant, leads the section. This is important as his leadership will help give you an edge in morale in a close firefight:

The second team is the remainder of the squad, 5 men, led by the assistant squad leader, a Sergeant. They have both of the squads SAWs and lots of ammo. This makes them an ideal base of fire element, which is exactly how I am using them in this example:

As you can see, they are on the second floor of a building overlooking the target building, and they have a target arc covering only the target building and the immediate surroundings. This way, they won't get distracted by engaging other targets that appear elsewhere, and will instantly engage any threats that appear in the target building. 
The assault team is given a series of movement points and pauses for its movement to, and entrance into the target building:

First, the assault team will wait 20 seconds before moving into the open. That way, the entire squad has time to orient themselves on the target building and see if there is any initial activity. If you've already had the target building under observation you can skip the first pause.
The first movement order is a Quick move to cover, the low wall. The reason I use a Quick move here is so that if the assault team does take fire from the building, they can return fire as they move to cover. When they get to the wall, they will pause for 10 seconds. This allows them to both catch their breath and observe the building from a closer position. If they were engaged during the run to the wall, this will allow them to put more fire into the threat.

Then, I use a Hunt command on the movement to the outside of the building. This will allow the team to spot better as it approaches, and immediately hit the ground and return fire if they are engaged. When they reach the outside of the target building, they pause again for 10 seconds to look in the windows/doors for any bad guys that might be hiding inside. This pause can be longer, but I recommend at least 10 seconds. 5 tends to be too short.


Finally, the final command is a Quick move order into the target building. This part is very important. It is imperative that once you commit to entering a building, you do it quickly and with the entire assaulting element entering the building. The Quick command is used because the team will run into the building, but will still pause momentarily to engage targets before continuing on. 
 
Others may have a different way of doing this, there is plenty of nuance to MOUT. There are also many situational factors that influence which specific technique is best. I'm using the above as an example of a template you can always fall back on and build from. For example, if you had two squads available you could use one squad as the base of fire element and the second as the assault element. If the target building was occupied and you knew that, you could use the base of fire element to put suppressing fire into the building before the assaulting element moves, and while the assaulting element is moving to the building. 
Do not Hunt into a building. All this will do is get your men stuck in a fatal funnel. The second they take fire, they will immediately stop and go prone. Many times, they will do this in the direct line of fire of the enemy at point blank range, and will get slaughtered in short order.
Avoid rooftops when possible. You are much more exposed on a rooftop, and can be much more easily spotted by the enemy. That said, sometimes the roof provides the best vantage point, or the only vantage point and you have to take a risk. 
All that said, the single best way to clear out a house (or a town for that matter) is to destroy it with indirect or direct fires from heavy weapons, and prod the rubble with a bayonet afterwards, but this is not always possible/practical. 
Hopefully this helps!

The weakness in the approach Cpt. Miller illustrated (and, to be fair, he did caveat this significantly), is that the team is spending time hanging around in the open street, rather than in a covered position - either on that low wall, or if they make contact during the hunt or pause orders.

That's fine if you're 100% sure your flanks are secure, of course, but that can go horribly wrong very quickly..

This is part of the reason why I think the actual room-clearing part is very secondary - if your focus is instead on avenues of movement to and from the target, on creating and restricting paths of mobility, the room clearing can almost take care of itself.

"Avoid rooftops" is also an interesting point, especially in CMSF with all of the flat roofs. Rooftops do give you the best visibility possible in MOUT, especially for crew-served weapons, and therefore controlling this space is important. That doesn't mean that you have to join the enemy on the rooftops - controlling this by fires (especially mortars) can be equally worthwhile.

Thanks, @Bootie!

Just to let you guys know I have updated the sites to now accommodate uploads for CMSF2.
As usual any problems tag me here and I will reply ASAP.
Bootie

Hello,
I had pretty much given up on CM back in 2016 for various reasons and mostly lost interest in anything CM related as well. The announcment of CMSF2 has brought me back somewhat and, coincidentally, I am currently learning a new programming language. So I decided to write a little application I had wanted to write even way back then, which can extract scenarios from campaign files so you can look at them in the editor or edit them. Mad Mike's ScAnCaDe is a great tool for parsing scenario files, extracting campaigns and visualizing scenario and campaign metadata. However, it does not work with the 'legacy' CM games Shock Force 1 and Afghanistan. Also, who knows if Mad Mike is still around to update it anymore for future versions. He did a great job deciphering the various campaign file formats that have existed throughout CM's lifetime and much of what I did is based on his groundwork (which involves a lot of staring at hundreds of rows of bytecode and figuring out which bytes stand for which variables), so credit where credit is due. And while according to the devs you should be able to play any old campaign in CMSF2 out of the box, now you can also extract the scenario files from these campaigns and update them to the new engine standards, even if the original creators are now longer around.
I decided to focus on the extraction part and didn't bother with any of the metadata listing and visualizing. The tool should be able to extract any campaign file from any CM game so far and should also work with CMSF2 once it's released. I originally wanted to extract every bit of information required to also recompile the campaign from the extracted data without any further input, but that proved to be more difficult than I anticipated because some of that information is compressed or decrypted within the campaign files and I have not found a way yet how to extract that. This includes the campaign victory/loss texts and the complete core units and campaign briefing data. Maybe I will manage to add this at a later point. For now the scenario extraction works really well however, but I need some feedback from others. I don't have any CM games installed currently besides Shock Force and thus have only been able to  thorougly test the CMSF stock campaign as well as many campaigns downloaded from the Scenario Depot. So if anyone finds a campaign that does not work, make sure to post or send me the error log file that should be created. Usage of the application is as simple as it can be, just put the .exe file in a directory that contains any number of campaign files and start the executable.
 
uncam-0.9.zip