SgtMuhammed

Emrys, though, might be having flashbacks to when the US WAS English.

So Steve, are you advocating the assasination of the current Pontif and the rigging of the College of Cardinals in order to end US dependence on foreign oil and radical religious terrorism?

Personally I think the MGS is a piece of crap. A combat vehicle designed by a committee. They could have removed that silly autoloader and stuck a crewman back there and filled the back with rounds. Worried about weight? Spread the rounds around during transport. Even better, use a low velocity cannon as suggested by Dan and strap a Javelin lancher on the top of the turret for Anti-armor work. (I am amazed that every vehicle in the army doesn't have a Javelin strapped to the top.) They would have saved a ton of weight because they wouldn't need such a heavy recoil mechanism. I suspect the choice of cannon had more to do with branch rivalries rather than mission considerations. They weren't going to give a mobile gun to the infantry, and if you stick a low velocity cannon on it then it would have probably been manned by gun bunnies rather than tread heads. Since the clankers got it there was no way they were going to put a wimpy low velocity cannon on it.

That's what works for me.

You also have to have at least 60 hours of college. At least you did in 2000.

The MGS was designed to work within the sensor and commo net of the SBCT so it is supposed to benefit from kind of a hive mind type thing. I think that was supposed to make up for any shortcomings in the individual vehicle sensor package. I've never been in one though so I can't really say how good they are supposed to be able to see.

I have been getting good results with assault lately. Supressive fire and smoke on the objective are helpful and very necessary if you suspect the building is occupied. Remember to lift fire if your guys are using grenades or LAW/RPG type weapons. You can also get good support by ensuring that other units have good LOS to the target so they can fire as soon as they spot something. If you have the assets you can put a SMAW/RPG round into the room and then immediately have your guys quick move into it. They will normally be able to catch the enemy stunned. I have found that hunt is fairly useless for assaulting a room, usually resulting in the unit stopping short. This may or may not be what you want. Units will stop and engage in Quick so it is quite useful.

That is their biggest asset right now, their ability to blast their way through buildings. A full engineer squad can blast its way through half a city before running out.

cmfan, 2k is well within short to point blank range for the 105mm Sabot so that shouldn't be a factor. Phantom, The Stryker Company IS able to defeat any threat on the battlefield IF used properly. Remember, the Stryker is TRANSPORT with a very secondary role as fire support. The main striking and defensive power of the company (and the SBCT as a whole) is the infantry. Deployed in good positions with their Javelins and supported by Air and Arty for the deep fight. The organic AT vehicles should be used as fire support vs infantry and to hold flanks and to act as a QRF against a serious armor threat. Different units require entirely different ways of thinking. With the MGS, one thing to consider is that once a round is loaded it is a major pain in the rear to change it for another one unless you fire it. The gun is likely to have HEAT up because it is a more versitile round and can kill a vanilla T72 at any range. Plus it is much more effective against softer targets where a Sabot (APFSDS) round might just blow through the target without killing it. So the progression would most likely be, HEAT, AP, if facing a tank. That's how it would most likely be in real world engagements unless the crew were instructed to have a silver bullet loaded. So the game seems to be getting the initial round in the chamber correct but failing on the subsequent rounds.

Lord British successfully returned to Earth.

No changes to mission 11 but the new 1.11 fixes make it even harder. Maybe not what some people wanted to hear.

Nothin but a bunch of Hentai. Pretty boring. Seems to be quite a vast untapped () market here.

Exactly. In real MOUT you do whatever you can to isolate your target. Routes of approach, smoke, cordoning off the area if possible, etc. It can take hours to take a single building. The problems with spotting the enemy are exactly what makes MOUT so deadly. The only thing you can really do is keep good spacing so that if something does happen then hopefully the entire unit isn't in the kill zone. You train to react to ambushes until it becomes a reflex and hope that is enough. If you are in a straight invasion operation then yes you would blast anything you suspected of being a threat. Preferably with arty or some other big guns but with your own arms if support isn't at hand. Of course the level of force you are able to use, and where you can use it, is dependent on the rules of engagement and can vary widely. One big thing to keep in mind are the differences between the game and real life. MOUT is slow, the timeframe of an entire battle in CMSF is often the time it takes to take a single block or even a single building. In actual combat the difference between getting shot at and getting shot is much greater than the game would have you believe. Even in an ambush it is rare that a unit would suffer the casualties that you see in the game. The morale effect is MUCH more important than the actual damage caused. Real units will withdraw long before they are wiped out. A battle the size of Pooh from the campaign, for example, would most likely take at least a day and result in about 50 casualties total. So the normal dilema isn't to care for guys once they have been shot but to get them to do something useful once they are being shot at. Anyway my point is that even things that sound "weird" are often exactly what happens. Combat is dirty business and there really aren't any magic bullets that can change it to any major degree.

Interesting.

"Holy crap, look at the size of that spider!"

Steiner, You've seen the AI use linear targets? So far I have only seen him use area targets, often with HUGE areas. Once he even included himself in the area and ended up eating a 2000lb bomb.

With John William's soundtrack played on a portable keyboard. There has to be something like this already out there. GOOGLE TIME!

Hey, I know that guy. He owes me money!

One other bit of advice. Never find yourself in the situation where you have to say, "I came here to train not to make friends." That always means you just screwed your buddies. Just keep a good attitude and do everything to the best of your ability (and if you aren't good at something then try harder) and you will be fine. Another thing I just thought of: Once you get to your unit (and by the way, you will go your entire career searching for the "real" unit that everyone talks about) if you don't want to end up in the training room or as the CO's RTO try to hide any typing or computer skills you may have until you get established in a line platoon. Admin skills are usually lacking in an infantry company and the HQ platoon is quick to snatch those guys with some aptitude. So if you want to stay a trigger puller you need to impress your PSG enough that he will refuse to give you up. There is no finer feeling than being part of a good squad of young life takers and heart breakers. Also if you can speak another language go ahead and take the test to get the language identifier, it will put a little extra in your pocket on payday. Have fun on Sand Hill. Tell me if the lady with the throat mic is still issuing class A's.

What was real exciting was when the wire broke. We had one that we fired for the Secretary of Defense (it was Cheney back then) that broke as soon as it came out of the tube. The missile went straight up and just vanished. We still don't know where it finally landed. My buddy Kaelen was the gunner (he won a competition they had with all the TOW gunners in the battalion) and I was acting as his loader. After he fired the missile he was tracking the target while the rest of us were staring up at the moon shot. After about 15 seconds he told SSG Queen, the vehicle commander, that he could not see the missile. Still looking up SSG Queen said he could quit tracking since he doubted the missile would be back any time soon. Cheney just kind of shrugged and said that stuff happens. What sucks is that we had fired 3 perfect missiles THAT DAY to practice. I even got to do a combat reload and we managed to get two missiles off in about 40 seconds with two hits. That afternoon our company was flooded with guys from Martin Marrietta who were interviewing us about what happened and taking apart all the pieces of the launcher. John, I loved Dragon live fires, I swear the thing flies so slow, or seems to, that you could probably push it out of the way to keep it from hitting you. I was an M60 gunner the last time I saw one fired and it was all I could do to keep from trying to shoot it down. It was pretty neat to hear it popping as it went down range.

Mord, Thanks and best of luck. You'll like Benning, nothing but lazy afternoons in the Georgia sun, or freezing rain in your case, sipping mint tea on the porch swing. Then you wake up at 0330 to put another coat of wax on the floor before rolling out for PT. If you can, drop this old Infantryman a line to let us know how you are doing. The only feeling that beat getting my blue cord and disks was the birth of my son. Normal Dude is right, start running now, even if you are a total screwball, if you can run you will save yourself a world of hurt. "Follow ME!"

You can use the M1 mods still if you don't mind kind of a patchwork paint job.

Stay low. Most people don't look down they tend to look flat. If you stay low you can get a couple shots off before someone notices you. This goes with the peeking left and right instead of over obsticles.

The TOW will normally dip slightly when launched until the control surfaces can stabilize it. It only takes a fraction of a second but you do notice it when the missile is fired because the speed elongates the movement. From there it kind of wiggles or corkscrews its way to the target depending on how much the gunner moves around. Generally though the flight path is straighter than in the game. We corrected it somewhat but it will probably never exactly match what a real TOW shot looks like. What is funny about shooting the TOW is that through the sight the missile seems to be bouncing around all over the place. This is a combination of the high magnification and the nerves of the gunner. A lot of gunners, especially on their first real shots, get freaked out if they can't see the missile and will move the sight to peek for it. This is especially bad when tracking a rapidly moving target as the missile is sometimes just outside the cone of view as the gunner tracks the target. Needless to say when the gunner moves the site to peek for the missile it tells the missile to change course and upsets the aim. The gunner then has to get back on target which slews the missile even more and can cause it to bounce around the sight even more. This often causes the new gunner to try to fly the missile to stop it from moving about and normally only makes things worse. Because the missile is gliding to the target, too many course changes will make it lose energy and it will actually crash if you are attempting a particularly long shot. I have also seen gunners get fixated on tracking the missile. When you look through the optical sight you see a big red dot, which is the IR emmitter at the back of the missile. It is hypnotic, like a flame to a moth, and new gunners, for some reason, feel the need to put the crosshairs on the red dot. Of course this steers the missile away from its previous path and makes the gunner track even farther. The result is usually that the missile makes a lovely righthand curve right into the ground. Spectacular but useless. As to the representation in the game, no it doesn't make any difference but it is something for people to grip about since that's pretty much why most of us exist. The screenshot was a total accident. I was pausing to look at something else when I noticed this missile. That's the only thing I miss since I started playing mainly in RT, no more going back for those WTF or "Hey Neat!" moments.

One of the collections of short stories. I think it was called "Tales of the Bounty Hunters," or something like that. There were 5 IG-88s and they had implanted the virus in the primary droid manufacturing planet. So not only would they have taken over the Imperial computer net but they were going to have control over most of the droids in the empire. So in the end it was a question of losing a moon of fuzzy midgets or confronting a massive droid revolt that included nearly all the empire's heavy weapons and transport. I think fate made the right choice.