JulianJ

I think we are sidling into the banned topic of politics here @Steve: I love CMBS. Thank you for your explanation of how it is easier to fix 100 bugs than one. I hope in that 100 the poor performance of artillery vs armour will be rebalanced, including both direct hits and near misses because that is IMO the most anomalous part of the game; apart from not being realistic, it also is annoying from a gaming perspective - the weaker sides do not have another option vs the most powerful tanks. I am not suggesting that artillery should be a superweapon, but direct hits and near misses from large calibre arty (120mm +) having minimal effects on both tanks and tin cans like Strykers and BTRs doesn't seem right.

Thanks for referencing some interesting quality sources. My biggest gripe with CMBS is the ineffectiveness of arty fire against armoured vehicles. We've discussed this extensively in the past particularly with reference to the Swedish 1960s experiments and some of the pix @Haidukposted a while back of tanks etc destroyed by artillery fire. The Swedish experiments showed that near-misses are in a way better than a direct hit because they cause all sorts of damage to engines, running gear and other equipment (soft kills); I have done no experiments, but observations playing all 3 sides in CMBS has been armoured vehicles shrugging off extensive pelting of arty fire. The most ludicrous being a Bradley that had a 122mm off map round explode underneath it without suffering any serious damage. From a gaming perspective, this means that weaker sides have limited options to knock out tanks, but also other AFVs. So I hope the new module will do something to remedy this. I like my games to be fun, but I also want them to be pretty realistic, within the limitations of the game engine and BF being a small company, which they usually manage well.

Yes, Erwin, I totally agree. A lot of material I have read about WW2 involved moving and utilising terrain features, and some of our games don't represent that fully, especially as we now have that satellite mapping and can see that the desert is not a flat sand table. As you say, memoirs of people involved are quite clear it is not so. I don't know if you have seen some of the Houthi videos of combat in Yemen, but the desert is grey gravel with lots of dark rocky outcroppings - the Saudi sand coloured vehicles stand out like a sore thumb. I know that is incredible Saudi incompetence (how much does a few pots of paint cost?) but it is interesting how a desert isn't at all yellow or flat.

Ironically, I started playing WW2 games with Airfix tanks and soldiers on tables, where it was too easy to have flat terrain (we had polystyrene hills, etc) but there is no excuse for it where we are using computers, and also can have access to satellite mapping. It is laziness or lack of imagination on the part of scenario designers. I think BF should do better in this; I have found often that the QB games suffer from this flaw; and contrariwise some mod scenario designers do put a lot of effort in to create good landscapes.

I think that a lot of the BF games map designs do not take full account of "microterrain" - which you can design in to help infantry. Many scenarios lack this, I assume because it takes so much time - for example, using Bocage Hedges as undergrowth in woods or micromanaging undulating terrain. We are now much more familiar with the terrain in Syria and it is not flat as a pancake as often in SF1/2: in vids I've seen lots of dips, ditches, shallow wadis, and piles of rocks which do give infantry cover, which are often not replicated in the game maps. If scenario designers (some do!) paid more attention to this, then we would have more satisfying games where well-handled infantry can sneak up on targets, rather than being instantly blown away.

Very interesting. I think MF looks like a good game to get.

Yes, I skimmed through this .....er....stuff...until I saw the name Victor Davis Hanson. An idiot of the first water. LOL!

@Saint_MattisThanks for your observations, interesting.

Could someone give it a brief review?

On watching this through again, I think that there should be a proper restoration using modern digital techniques to bring out the quality of this film which covers some of the most important events of WW2. I wonder what happened to the underground tunnels of Nordhausen, were they dynamited, or are they still there? BTW I have a half-French friend, and in her early years she knew a relative who was imprisoned there (he'd run away from German workforce conscription to hide in the woods and was captured and labelled a "terrorist" even though he had not been in the resistance AFAIK). So he got sent there. It seems like he survived by becoming some sort of top dog among the prisoners, I imagine in a brutal way. She said that he had episodes of craziness, paranoia, sudden noises and dogs barking would send him cowering under the table. Poor man.

There's a few things that don't seem to be covered in the Manual: 1. What is the difference for Artillery strikes of Personnel/General/ and Armor (or armour as we Brit grammar Nazis would have it) Is there any actual difference between General and Armor? BS only had the first two. 2. The British 50mm mortar supposedly has a range of 750 M but I had several attempts to get the HQ team to fire it at a target 720-730 M away with no avail. I know it takes a minute or two for them to get it ready but nothing happened. 3. Is there any comms value in the Warrior Infantry command vehicle? I couldn't seem to see any difference. 4. On a pernickety point - when an aircraft has expended all its ammo, the pilot says something about returning to base. It seems to me that the next turn the aircraft popup it says 'landed'. wouldn't it be more logical to say 'returning to base' for say five turns then landed? This breaks the immersion for me...I think where's the airbase then? right behind me?

I am absolutely awestruck by this Mod. Congrats to all involved in it. I love the Vietnamese peasant hats, we must have them! The boats are great - all credit to CMAquila's innovations. The effort you have all gone to is awesome. I am preparing to put The Doors, Jimi, and Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die, and Gotta Get Outta this Place on a custom soundtrack, plus I shall shout "Charlie Don't Surf!" and "Ain't no horse in this whole goddamned country, that's broken, man!" "Too bad for Handjob!" and suchlike. Do you have a release date? I'm regret to put this on you but I am excited!

I think the red flag is good. The upper imperialist one is OK. No biggie for me. The mod is much bigger than its flags! Gonna play it anyway.

I first played the original title - Beyond Overlord - when it came out (2001?) and thought it was a huge step forward in computer wargames. Played Barbarossa to Berlin a lot. Then did other things. GOG rereleased the CM1 titles and thought they were such fun I came back here and got hooked on Black Sea, and then had to get SF2 and all modules. Been tinkering with some modding, which does take up a lot of time. So that's 18 years of off-and-on play. As Mord says, that's tremendous VFM. Particularly to the games you play once or twice then drift away from.

Thanks for this great AAR @IICptMillerII . I really enjoyed it. Sadly I am a grammar Nazi (though no other kind of Nazi): Plurals do not have apostrophes. eg: two Bradleys advanced = plural a Bradley's infantry dismounted and moved onto the berm = possessive. Take no notice of the forum grammar/spellchecker - it is fked. Also, it would be good if you used a more spaced out font for the captions to the pix, as other people have said. I know I shouldn't but I seethed when I saw all these wrongful apostrophes. Please do not be offended, as I do not wish to cause any annoyance: it's just me.

It somewhat seems like bad taste to turn such terrible events into games. On the other hand that's not stopped me either creating or playing them. I think SF2 has a lot of potential for all sorts of unusual scenarios. The conventional warfare seems not only dull at times, but also passé, as Squarehead's article above indicates. I look forward to this.

Hi @Vergeltungswaffe are there really? I haven't come across them anywhere except BS. Which scenarios? Can you add them to QBs?

Hi all, @Liveloadhas reworked the scenario. I haven't played it all the way through but I just wanted to give it the thumbs up so far. I've had several nasty surprises! Not a cakewalk by any means. LL's remix is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uozlq764am6vqw0/Al Hawl SF2 - Liveload Remix.btt?dl=0 I will do a proper review when I have finished but unfortunately due to RL events that may not be for a while.

This all looks excellent and I hope to play it soon. I notice the Shilka is mentioned. Do all the scenarios need the NATO module? If so you might want to list the modules required in the game specs when you upload it to one of the Scenario sites, to help the players.

Hi Dom, thanks for your thoughts. An interesting analysis. Even with the idea of just defending, Blue can seize good positions on the taller buildings for overwatch. That's what I did. The jav can be fired from inside a building and has a v short minimum range, so combined with more, superior infantry, I still wouldn't rate Red's chances, especially with the F16 able to find and destroy hidden vehicles. Before I split off AT teams, some of my Javelins were fired uselessly at buildings: I still had some left at the end of the game. No air support, halve the number of Javelins and give Red some arty or mortars would make it more playable IMO.

Great. Thanks! Well done, mate.

Oh dear @37mm I seem to be following your bumps (accidentally) while looking for old but good SF1 scenarios for SF2. Sadly I think quite a few of them have disappeared.

I just played the Al Hawl scenario - I was the US Forces. It was a complete walkover and towards the end I was rather bored. So many Javelins. I think it wouldn't be very good to play as H2H as whoever has the Syrians is in for a pasting. What I did was race to good positions in the town at or overlooking the objectives then let the Red Side attack my fist with their faces. What would improve it would be: reduce the number of Javelins the US forces have (I was even giving them to my platoon commanders, let the useless Ruperts do something for a change!). Remove the US air support, and allow the Syrians some artillery/mortars. That would make it harder for me to just occupy buildings and wait for something to come in range. I think the Syrians don't even have enough infantry as the americans outnumber them and are high quality troops. Without so many Javelins it might necessitate trying to stalk the enemy armour at close range with AT4s: that would be more interesting and problematical. My troops fired off quite a few of these, and failed to knock anything out, so IMO this needs to be up close and fired at flanks or rear.

Yeah, I've got it - seems quite good. One caveat - I read one of his previous ones The Vory about the Russian Mafia, which I though was interesting; however I know little about the world he was writing about and a couple of days ago read an excoriating book review saying Galeotti is really ignorant and gets a lot wrong, which made me wonder about his Ukraine war one too.

I am unable to post images on the site which means I can't post screenshots of games or mods, nor can I post pictures of a castle I was at recently. I've tried hosting on mediafire and dropbox. I disabled my ad blocker so I don't think it can be that. I've used up my files allocation so I can only post from external URLs. Nothing shows up. Any suggestions please? It's quite frustrating.