Sgt Joch

spoilers . . . . . . . . . . . . . yes, I found some of them already...tough buggers, one team took out a hummer and its crew with machine gun fire and grenades. It was neat to watch even though I was on the receiving end..:mad:

I have played one hour into the 1st mission. Great campaign so far, great map, good force mix; good job on the RED AI artillery, it is a real pain...

In CMSF, I believe it is assumed the Army/marines units participating in the initial invasion are regular line troops, however reserve or national guards units would be easy to simulate by giving them lower than average physical fitness and/or morale so they are more brittle.

If you look at the bigger picture, part of the problem is that the current experience levels were conceived in a WW2 setting where the German, US and Commonwealth armies trained in about the same way and combat experience had the biggest impact on combat performance. Arab armies are completely different. For many cultural and other reasons, units rarely receive the type of ongoing training which is standard in western armies. Individual soldiers also receive only the barest instructions in operating the weapons they have and are often unable to use the more advanced functions. For example, egyptian F-16 pilots in Gulf War I relied only on their eyes and guidance from ground controllers to find their targets and did not use any of the onboard sensors. Arab armies are also excessively centralized with almost all decisions being taken by senior officers which leads to a very weak NCO corps. This has a substantial impact on small unit tactics where having strong NCOs makes all the difference. If you look at the Israeli army in 1967 and 1973, their capability was roughly similar to that of a typical western european army. Their spectacular tactical results, which make them look like an elite army, were all due to the very poor Arab peformance. The Syrian army also have another problem. In the late '70s, after they realized their army could not compete with the Israelis, they started concentrating their best men, training and equipment in elite units, such as the Special Forces and Republican Guards. This gave them a certain number of troops which had a capability comparable to western units with unquestioned loyalty to the regime. However, this also had the side effect of lowering the overall quality of the rest of the army. I would guess the quality gap between US and Syrian troops is probably as high or higher than the gap between German and Soviet forces at the beginning of Barbarossa. So if you take all these factors into account in picking the proper experience level, my best guess on the Syrians would be: -Special Forces/Airborne: mostly Regulars with Veterans for certain crack units; -Republican Guards: 1/2 Regulars, 1/2 Green; -regular line units: Green; -Reserve Units: 1/2 Green, 1/2 Conscripts -Militia: all Conscripts. U.S. regular Army units/marines are different since it is an all volunteer force which trains regularly and has well trained and motivated junior leaders, so for these units a mix of 1/3-1/2 regulars, 1/2-2/3 veteran is probably correct.

re-reading "Arabs at war", all Arab armies have problems with artillery. They are fine with pre-planned barrages and firing on pre-registered targets, but have problems with rapidly shifting targets. This applies to the Egyptians in 73, the Syrians in 82 and the Iraqis in 91. This is the comment on the performance of Syrian artillery in 82, when the Syrian army put in its best performance against the Israelis: "Syrian artillery support was very poor and had little effect on the fighting. Their batteries showed almost no ability to shift fire in response to changing tactical situations or to coordinate fire from geographically dispersed units." (pp.543-544) In GW1, there is also an interesting example in the stand of the Nebuchadnezzar Infantry division. This was a Republican guard unit which was attacked by the US 24th mechanized division. Its artillery had pre-registered targets and placed 55 gallon drums as target reference points. At first, the US forces came under the barrage, but quickly realized the fire was registered on the drums and stayed away from them. The Iraqi artillery was unable to respond and just kept shelling the drums for the rest of the day. (p. 255) Based on those examples, the present modeling of Syrian artillery in the game, in terms of accuracy and response time, is very reasonable. One thing we should consider, however, would be allowing the placement of pre-registered Target Reference Point, as in CMx1.

My observations are all from the first mission of GeorgeMc's "Forging Steel" campaign. I was surprised by the results as well since spotting in 1.10 and before was very quick. It does appear to me that there is a advantage to spotting over several turns, but maybe we can get BFC to comment.

From what I observed, it can take several minutes observation to spot a unit. In a scenario I am playing, 2 AFVs were hiding in woods. A recon team on top of a building about 500 meters away spotted the first one after about 5 minutes and the second one after about 10 minutes. A M1 on top of a hill about 1 km away also took several minutes to spot them. Of course, the spotting has probably been reduced as far as we would want it.

In 1.11, spotting is harder. It takes a longer time before enemy units are spotted, indentified and acquired. It now pays to put recon units in a good observation post and just let them scan the landscape. GeorgeMc's new "Forging Steel" campaign really shows this off. I personally like the change, although it slows down the game, it finds it is more realistic. What do you guys think?

Yes, the fact that Syrian ATGM teams are harder to spot has a big impact. They can sometimes get off 2-3 shots before they are spotted which makes them a lot more deadlier. As the US player, you can't just bull your way through with tanks, you now have to use much more combined arms tactics.For example, scout with your infantry and take out suspected or spotted ATGMs with suppressive fire/artillery.

How good is the Russian stuff? As anyone who witnessed the forum wars regarding CMBB and IL-2 will know, even when you have a lot of documented info, you can still have heated arguments on its interpretation. Dealing with modern stuff, the problem is compounded since there is less info and much of the interesting bits are classified. Dealing with the Russian stuff in Syrian hands, you have the further problem that the export version is often less performing than what he Russians keep for their own forces. Own advantage with modern weapons however is that they are almost all one shot/one kill which simplifies the problem to one of spotting, reaction time and accuracy. When you get into that sphere, things become even more fuzzy since the quality of the troops handling the weapons become more important than the weapons themselves. So to a large extent the relative deadliness of weapons in a simulation like CMSF will always be a best guess based on published data and what little real world data there is. In 1.11, I think we have achieved a pretty good balance. I think you will find that the changes to the spotting rules have made all Syrian forces more deadly. You can no longer just park a platoon of M1s on a hill and have them spot and engage every Syrian units in LOS.

Good luck Mord...and try to come back in one piece...

Just finished it, as others have mentioned the ending is a bit abrupt and unexpected, but the game itself is very satisfying. To get the full flavour of it though, you have to spend time wandering about and not just be in a hurry to finish the main story.

If you want to finish 1.10 PBEM games, you need to back up: - your 1.10 exe; and - the marines module folder. I just switched them back and forth during beta testing. You can leave the 1.11 brz file in the Data folder, although you may notice the game misidentifies weapons, it has no impact on actual weapon performance. In PBEM, the main fixes were: - no more constantly erupting vehicles from secondary explosions; - no more vehicles bucking/rocking at the beginning of a turn; - no more twitchy vehicle movement during replay;

Nice to see Billy back! What would the release of a simulation be without some heated arguments over how realistic it is..

when you go too fast, you miss things like the hamlet of Andale which is out in the middle of nowhere, serves no useful purpose to the story, but has its own finely woven backstory...of course, the way I play, poking my nose around and cross examining everyone I meet, it could take me a few more months to finish this thing...

I actually figured out another way after talking to Old lady Dithers..(got to keep my Karma up)..I am now chasing after Dad who insists on walking back to Rivet City. It would not be so bad if the old coot did'nt insist on fighting EVERY SINGLE creature we encounter...finally found a good use for the missile launcher though, great for brewing up Protectron Robots. .. That's what I love about this game, it is so deep and there are so many options.

...I am trapped in Tranquility Lane....that music is driving me crazy...:mad:

I would not read too much into the study. We don't know what its purpose was. Based on the title and subject, it appears to be more to test the validity of USAF assumptions about acquiring air supremacy in a conflict, rather than developping a defence plan for Taiwan. For that purpose, it is a very good overview of the current state of air combat.

DT, yes, the USAF does seem to be particularly obsessed with China in that study, but their job is to prepare for war. Russia and China are presently the only two potential enemies who could give the US military a real challenge and it makes sense to at least plan what could happen even though the current chances of an actual war are very low. It is also hard to justify an expense like the F-22 program unless you can scare Congress with an aircraft gap... things happen very quickly when planes are closing in at a combined speed of 1,000+ knots. I used to play Jane's F/A-18 and Falcon 4 quite a bit, which are good at giving you at least a general idea about modern air combat. I was always amazed that the bandit 40 nm on your nose and closing would, in the blink of an eye, be on your tail maneuvering for a missile shot and you were fighting for your virtual life...that is part of the reason I switched to more sedate entertainment like CMSF...

regarding the continuing relevance of dogfighting, look at this RAND study on "Air combat Past, Present and Future" http://www.scribd.com/doc/7774389/Rand-StudyFuture-of-Air-Combat pp. 19-28 deal with the effectiveness of air-to-air missiles. Since the advent of AA missiles, only 24 out of 588 kills were done by BVR (i.e. Beyond Visual Range) missiles, the so called over the horizon missiles. the rest were WVR (i.e Within Visual Range) kills by gun/missiles. Since the introduction of the AIM-120 in 1991, still only 20 out of 61 kills were BVR, so you still have a lot of close in fighting. incidentally, if you read the study, you will see why the USAF feels naked with only 188 F-22s.

I think we all agree that UCAV will eventually render manned AC obsolete, the only question is when. Air superiority is important, although Air superiority alone will not win a war without a solid ground or naval game. Regarding the effectiveness of air superiority, I had found this article sometimes back based on a postwar assessment of the 1991 Iraq war: from: "Desert Defense and Surviving PGMs: The new Russian view" http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/Red-Star/issues/JAN95/JAN95.HTML#Desert

That is a hard one to answer. Before Vietnam, the USAF took the position that air-to-air missiles had made dogfighting obsolete. That turned out not to be the case. Now with the latest generation of missiles, it does look like dogfighting is less of a requirement. The F-22 was designed on that premise, although it was designed to also be a maneuverable dogfighter if the need arises. However, if you look at the air to air fights which actually occured since 1990, a fair bit were fairly close, so dogfighting is still not a totally dead art. You also have to remember that the 100% certain kill enveloppe of missiles is a lot smaller than the printed maximum range, so you still have to maneuver your aircraft and the target in the optimum position if you want to be assured of a kill.

agreed yes, the only advantage to manned aircraft is greater redundancy since even if they lose contact with AWACS, they can still use their onboard sensors, including the Mark I eyeball in a worst case scenario. In addition, you can't discount the advantage of having a trained pilot on the scene who can make quick tactical decisions. I understand, but missiles are subject to the same countermeasures whether they are land based or attached to an unmanned airplane. In additon, missiles, even the latest generation like the AIM-120 are not one shot, one kill wonders. They can be defeated if fired at long range or under less than optimum conditions. This is why pilots are trained to maneuver targets into the heart of the missile's kill zone before they fire. This is where a pilot's training can make a difference.

I also do not see UAVs rendering manned aircraft obsolete in the near future. Theorists have been speculating about the end of manned aircraft ever since Gary Powers U-2 was shot down by a guided missile in 1960. Guided missiles, since they tracked their targets, were supposed to wipe out all air fleets. Indeed, the first encounters of USAF/USN aircraft with SA-2 missiles over north vietnam in 1965 were a disaster. The missiles initially had a close to 1:1 kill ratio. However, countermeasures were soon developped to counter the missiles: dedicated Hunter Killer groups to hunt the SAM sites, early warning systems to detect radar lockon/launches, onboard jammers or dedicated EW aircraft to disrupt lockon, onboard chaff/flares and evasive maneuvers. These measures radically reduced lossses and until the end of the war, US aircraft were able to hit any target in North Vietnam, with very acceptable combat losses, certainly a lot less than what the USAF suffered in daylight bombing over Germany in 1943. Again in 1973, the IAF went up against the Egyptian SAM wall, which at that time had the most powerful antiair defences in the world. The IAF was shocked at their performance. They lost about 40% of their planes in the 1st 24 hours and were playing catchup during the entire war. However, the IAF carefully studied the soviet systems and in the 1982 war, the IAF took out the entire Syrian SAM network in less than a day. In 1982, the Syrian air defences were more powerful and sophisticated than the egyptian defences in 1973. You have had the same dance since aircrafts were used in war in WW1. The anti-air defences come up with new weapons/tactics and the air forces come up with countermeasures. Now UAVs are supposed to be the new wonder weapon, since they can be built cheaply in great numbers. UAVs however, suffer from the same weaknesses as a guided missile and can be subjected to many of the same countermeasures: bomb their bases to destroy them on the ground, bomb their arfields so they cannot takeoff/land, bomb the buildings housing their controllers to kill them, jam the communications between the controller and the UAV, spoof the UAV or its missiles. Plus since the UAVs fly like a normal aircraft, they can be engaged and shot down. The big advantage cited by UAV supporter is the fact that you can flood an area. Using a variation of the Jons example, if China is defended by 10,000 UAVs, is attacked by 1,000 US aircraft and you get a 10:1 kill, the strategy works. However, if the kill ratio is more like 100:1, you expend your 10,000 UAV to kill 100 aircraft, leaving 900. In air combat, you can easily get such lopsided results. In June 1944, the IJN launched 500 aircraft in a first strike against US carriers. Most of the japanese planes were piloted by rookies. US fighters shot down 90% of them with negligible losses. In 1982, the syrians launched their air force against the IAF. The syrian pilots were green. The IAF shot down 100 with no losses. There is no reason to believe UAVs would have a better score. Again, no one knows how the future of air combat will evolve, but I have not seen any argument by the UAV proponents which convinces me that manned aircrafts will be obsolete in the near future or that UAVs would do a better job.

follow the main quest and all will become clear.