Sgt Joch

Let's not forget that since CMSF came out in mid-2007, BFC has released 7 base games, 6 modules (7 after R2V), 3 game upgrades, 2 battle packs, 1 vehicle pack as well as numerous free patches. That works out to something new roughly every 7-8 months. I don't think anyone can accuse them of slacking off
 

Let's not forget that since CMSF came out in mid-2007, BFC has released 7 base games, 6 modules (7 after R2V), 3 game upgrades, 2 battle packs, 1 vehicle pack as well as numerous free patches. That works out to something new roughly every 7-8 months. I don't think anyone can accuse them of slacking off
 

I seem to dimly recall from posts pre-2007 that the basic engine is RT only. WEGO just pauses the RT engine every 60 seconds and adds the replay feature.
personnaly I never play RT, WEGO only for me.

I seem to dimly recall from posts pre-2007 that the basic engine is RT only. WEGO just pauses the RT engine every 60 seconds and adds the replay feature.
personnaly I never play RT, WEGO only for me.

I hope it's okay to resurrect this thread rather than create a new one on the CV90. 
 
I recently talked to a Danish dude who served on the CV9035DK in Afghanistan, and he told me some interesting things that the game doesn't get right. 
1. The CV9035's Bushmaster III gun has two magazines of 35 rounds each, for a total of 70 ready-to-fire rounds. 
2. The vehicle has an addition 280 rounds (for at total of 350, and not 210 as in the game.) in ammo storage boxes, unfortunately he didn't specify if all of these extra rounds were stored internally or if some of them were stored in the external storage box on the side of the turret. 
3. The extra rounds are linked together in 7-round belts, because of the sheer size and weight of each round - a 25mm round weighs almost a third of a 35mm one. 
4. The magazines can be reloaded from inside the vehicle, and the linked and linkless feed system of the Bushmaster III gun means that 7-rounds belts can be quickly fed into the gun mechanism and linked together with 5 more belt as they were feeding. Unfortunately he didn't specify the amount of time it would take to reload all 5 belts.  
5. Because of the limited number of ready-to-fire rounds, they would strictly use single rounds, or 5-round bursts against high-priority targets like RPG-gunners or suspected VBIEDs. 
6. They had two different automatic firing patterns for 5-round bursts- they could either be fired at the same target or be spread out in a linear pattern.  
7. Even with single rounds they were able to hit targets at distances of several kilometers. He stressed that the CV90s had a profound effect on the Talibans willingness to engage Danish or coalition forces in their vicinity. 

Good evening all,
@BFCElvis has granted permission for some preview pics to be shared with the community of the upcoming Dutch Campaign revamp. (The remaining CMSF campaigns haven't been forgotten ).
Dutch Campaign revamp for CMSF2 is being handled by @Imperial Grunt and Ithikial_AU.
Some of the key changes from CMSF1 version (slight spoilers)
- Reworked briefings to provide more narrative flavour around the Dutch effort and it's role in the wider conflict.
- Lowered campaign difficulty to be more accessible to players of varying skill levels. (Don't worry I don't think having to undertake MOUT missions with a small Company(+) force will be considered "easy"). There was an initial 15% casualty rule in the old campaign, equating to automatic scenario and potentially campaign loss - this was considered pretty harsh. Some hunting around archive forum posts on the Battlefront forums helped identify issues. We were also aware the CMSF engine had evolved since the original release, with automatic weapons now being much more lethal making this parameter difficult for players to meet.
- Victory conditions and campaign script reworked for some scenarios to reflect their close timing and geography between battles. For example, shared support assets, no ammunition resupply, the next missions time of day dependent on the outcome of battle before etc.
- Infantry replenishment added at key points of the campaign.
- Maps tweaked to take advantage of new map features (water, bridges, fortifications etc). Some urban maps have been cratered/ruined to reflect the timing of the campaign in the wider conflict.
- Changes to AI plans to take advantage of new features introduced since CMSF’s release.
- Joint ops for all. (You'll have to play through the campaign to know what that means).
So I guess the cat is out of the bag. I was asked to come on board to help out earlier in the year and the first task I got was helping out on this one. Most of the work is done with scenarios individually tested and tweaks made. We're just waiting on briefing graphics and final blind runs through the entire campaign to see how it plays. Obviously R2V has priority at the moment but for the modern war fans there's something around the corner.
Cheers
Ithikial
 

"MOUT again?"
 

Tweaked mission conditions and maps.
 

The Syrians get some new toys. Your air support is no longer invincible.
 

Reworked maps. In this MOUT engagement the city isn't as pristine as it once was.

for modern, yes, that is about right. NATO forces are well trained, so should normally be regular/veteran, unless you want to simulate national guard or reserve units.
for Russian/Ukranian, well that opens up a can of worms…:)
note you can also play around with leadership factors to fine tune experience level, for example a regular unit with a -1 modifier will act more like a green unit, while a regular with a +1 will act more like a veteran unit.

for modern, yes, that is about right. NATO forces are well trained, so should normally be regular/veteran, unless you want to simulate national guard or reserve units.
for Russian/Ukranian, well that opens up a can of worms…:)
note you can also play around with leadership factors to fine tune experience level, for example a regular unit with a -1 modifier will act more like a green unit, while a regular with a +1 will act more like a veteran unit.

well Jason, maybe you should actually research the history of the campaign before commenting.
map scale is correct for the force levels in that sector. This was one of the main axis of attack of the 11th Guards Army. German forces were relatively light in the area, since they did not think the Russians would attack in that type of terrain. German troop density is correct for that secor.
As to the fire support, yes that is a game restriction. The Soviet prep bombardement was up to 3 hours, obviously out of scale for a CM mission. The idea was to simulate the tail end of the bombardement and this was the most practical solution. I believe this is also stated in the designer notes?
I spent a lot of time researching this one, so if you have other comments I can swat away, please be my guest.

I am the one who designed mission 1. The map, opposing forces and defenses are all as close as possible to the historical situation on the morning of June 23rd as we could determine based on the historical records.
you don't like the scenario? I am sure the Russians and Germans who actually had to fight it in real life liked it even less.

I am the one who designed mission 1. The map, opposing forces and defenses are all as close as possible to the historical situation on the morning of June 23rd as we could determine based on the historical records.
you don't like the scenario? I am sure the Russians and Germans who actually had to fight it in real life liked it even less.

Size: 2600x2600 m
Semenovka is an eastern suburb of Slavyansk. In 2014 , during the struggle between Ukrainian army and DPR militia, it became a battlefield. In june it was the last supply route for the DPR forces in Slavyansk who controlled it until the withdrawal. 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f8vt26mk622h75o/Semenovka.btt?dl=0
 
 

I don't know if anyone has mentioned "Tank Crew" from 1c. Still early access with limited gameplay, but may have potential.
Problem with any simulation is you eventually see all the flaws and compromises from reality the Devs have made. Sometimes you have to take time away from a game to appreciate it.
Overall, CM is still the best at what it does, i.e. WW2/modern company level armored/infantry tactical warfare.

That would be me, I did both.

bit late to this discussion, but here is another interesting article on the key role suppressive fire plays in successful infantry combat:
http://www.2ndbn5thmar.com/CoTTP/Suppression McBreen 2001.pdf

bit late to this discussion, but here is another interesting article on the key role suppressive fire plays in successful infantry combat:
http://www.2ndbn5thmar.com/CoTTP/Suppression McBreen 2001.pdf

One interesting point is the fact that much of WW2 doctrine was developped in WW1 and was often developped in reaction to enemy doctrine.

For example, mid WW1, the Germans developped the concept of the "elastic defence", which remained their basic doctrine until 1945. In a nutshell, it was composed of 3 basic elements:

1. the forward line was very lightly manned to reduce casualties from the prep barrage. Its main role was to warn when the main assault was coming and to slow it down;

2. The Main Line of Resistance ("MLR") was placed farther back, usually on a reverse slope so it could not be fired on directly by enemy guns; and

3. a reserve force would be positioned farther back, ready to reinforce the MLR or counterattack if the enemy force broke through.

At first, it worked very well, CW assault troops once they broke through the MLR would often advance outside of friendly artillery range, become disorganised and were often pushed back by the German counterattack, often wiping out all the original gains.

In reaction, the British developped the concept of "Bite and Hold". The idea was that by consolidating early within range of friendly artillery, CW troops would have an organised defence AND artillery support once the German counterattacked.

Fast forward 20+ years, in the western desert in 1941 and 42, British Armour was operating independently, trying to out-german the Germans, usually with disastrous results.

Once Monty took over, the first thing he did was to bring back the concept of "Bite and Hold", bringing the armour under tight control and using it just as infantry support. It worked very well at El Alamein, in a series of limited "Bite and Hold" operations over several days, the British dismantled the German defensive position piece by piece and forced to Rommel to use up his reserves until he was forced to retreat.

The Normandy campaign followed the same pattern. We have to remember that the German defensive position in the British sector was very good. Most of the terrain was wide open and dominated by high ground, so CW tanks could be fired on from far away. The Germans had also massed most of their armour and several SS Panzer divisions in that sector. Yet, in a series of "Bite and Hold" operations, some succesful ("Totalize"), some less so ("Goodwood"), CW troops again dismantled the German defensive position and wrote down German armour to the point where they could no longer prevent the breakout.

"Bite and Hold", not flashy like Blitzkrieg, but it works.

Actually Steve, I was responding to IanL.
Arguments about who is right and who is wrong, who is telling the truth and who is lying were interesting the first few times, but at this point have become mind numbingly repetitive. This dirty little undeclared war will keep going until it has run its course and I personally have zero interest in discussing it here.
But its your forum and you can set whatever rules you please.

Steve, I didn't argue with you just because you kept providing sources from Ukraine, Or 5th columnist news to me, Or even US and British. You sound really convinced, So I won't argue with you on things like that just because it is not pleasant for me, And it will make no difference arguing. I won't argue on this one either, Call it what you want, But I am simply filled up, Same stories, Same propaganda, Same lies. It isn't healthy for me being a Russian citizen who has relatives who are directly effected by the war, Who have people in Crimea, Yet you as the American citizen you are certainly know about what went on in Crimea. Also I haven't provided any links solely because I know no one will change their minds. That is why I think we should keep the topic on track, Instead of fueling me by bringing up incidents in Ukraine. This is a good game, And fun topics to talk about, Why always fuel it into hate? 

BarbaricCo, welcome to the forum and an excellent first post, I might add.

Hi All
 
To make a long story short, father in his middle 40-ties decided it's time to check are there any modern time "Close Combat" game for him and here we are. Finally:)
But on the road to Combat Mission it was obvious that some games are more "eye candy".
First decision was to make textures mod. But omg there are "billion" already top notch textures and community already provided great stuff here.
Then I discovered "War Movie" mode.  Why devs didn't made it default? But than again colors in movie mode are somehow too washed and not for everybody eyes. But Battlefront made right direction (they just weren't enough radical with movie shader settings) Textures are great we just need some fancy shader FX stuff. Being developed few iOS games myself I totally understand enormous amount of work small team like Battlefront can have with its own engine and all the assets.
As there is no SweetFX or Reshade for Mac OS X only solution was to try dig in into shaders and here we go:
 
- this is modified Battlefront “War Movie” shader
- this will replace the opt-M (alt-M) mode
- put the unzipped folder in "z" folder
- should work also with CMFI and CMBS
- don't know is this is allowed. Would be great if someone from Battlefront check it. Even greater if this is somehow putted in future official releases 
- tested on iMac OS X Yosemite with ATI 6750m
- little or no performance hit
- OS X only (someone can check it on Windows too -  not sure will it work)
- screenshots are unedited. Only used some community mods (aris mostly)
- experimental stuff
- please don't edit shader if You don't know what You are doing!
 
Combat Mission FXShine mod link:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/49hc7e5cn0lve4d/AADjTuXSsx6l35wtx_4g3mnda?dl=0
 
Oops - long story!
 
Please enjoy and post Your best screenshoots!

sburke, you need to chill out, you have been getting on some of my nerves with that "poo poo" what ever that means, This is the Armata discussion thread if it gets locked because of you I will have put -1 reputation   But seriously lets not derail this thread, It made it 85 pages long so far.

sburke
 
You can't possibly turn this into off-topic, bring up Crimea and then accuse me of not replying and taking it personally. I come here to discuss vehicles with other gamers. If you want to say that Russia can't possibly scrap some money together to produce new IFVs, then that's your opinion, and I'm not gonna rob you of it (is that a correct term? I'm improvising). The basic math says they can. Whether or not all that money is gonna end up stolen, or if Putin's gonna get hanged tomorrow, that remains to be seen. But instead of speculating about how bad everything might turn out, I'd rather have fun and stay on topic. You are not the person I'd rather have such discussions with anyway.
 
There's another modification of BMP-3, much more simple than others. BMP-3 "Vityaz". New digital FCS and optics.
 

 
More pics here: http://vestnik-rm.ru/news-4-12721.htm

The Soviet SMGs II thread (link here) started by Poesel piqued my interest.  The initial question was the perceived supremacy of Soviet SMG troops:  Is a real phenomenon?  Is it automatic weapons generally?  At what range do regular rifles gain an advantage over the SMGs?  Etc...   I ran a few tests and showed my initial results in the linked thread.  A few members made suggestions about how to structure valuable tests.   - c3k said to limit variables.  - Sgt Joch said to place the targets on pavement to eliminate micro-cover. - Poesel said to only test one thing at a time.  (i.e., if you're interested in testing accuracy, don't worry about ROF)   I took their advice and went back to the drawing board.  I built a range with five lanes for each of five range groupings: 60, 120, 180, 240, and 300m. (1)  The lanes are 11 tiles wide and divided by high walls.  The bulk of the terrain was the default editor "open ground" but I lowered the terrain between the shooters and targets by two meters to reduce / eliminate any LOS blockage figuring that none of the grass types would be six feet tall!  The firing lines are placed on a step at elevation setting 22.  All shooters are Regular.     The floor of the range is elevation 20 and the targets, to match the shooters, are placed at elevation 22 in the middle of three block wide stretch of pavement which slopes from elevation 21 to 23.  To emphasize the point, shooters and targets are at the same elevation. (2)     For the targets, I used five 2-man sniper teams: one in the middle of the range directly across from the shooter and two more arrayed on either side with an action spot gap separating each team.  All targets are Fanatic and given short firing arcs to keep the shooters alive. (3) Yes, it was more tedium to use five two-man teams in the place of a potential single 9 or 10 man squad.  The method to the maddness was that I wanted to focus the test on simple accuracy.  I worried that an entire squad placed in a single action spot would provide a target density that would disporoportionally benefit automatic weapons. (4)  As JasonC put it in the SMG II thread:   c3k - sure, one of the reasons I wanted realistic examples is that SMGs might be favored by massed targets, lack of cover, and movement, as all things that can be benefited by spray and pray and hits on targets *other* than the intended one, especially at close range.  Whereas a longer range shot at a stationary and small / single unit target in good cover should bring actual accuracy to the forefront.   So five two-man targets it was.  Point-of-emphasis:  I am (I hope it is obvious) NOT claiming this represents typical firing conditions.  These targets tend to lay prone and are therfore smaller than a standing or kneeling target.  On the other hand, they are stationary and marooned on a stretch of pavement without so much as a blade of grass to shelter behind.   I marched to the range and fired a combined 261,761 rounds from eight different weapon types.  Does "over a quarter million rounds" sound more impressive?  I tracked rounds fired per range per type along with the casualties caused. (5)  This is what I found:       Now remember, this isn't a promise or prediction that you should expect to fire N bullets at range X with weapon Y to achieve Z casualties in CMRT battle conditions.  I'm simply reporting my results for the given sample size under the admittedly artificial conditions I laid out.  The interesting thing to me is to see how the accuracy of a given weapon degrades with range and/or how different weapons compare at a given range.  All tests were performed on the exact same range and I have the stats per lane so we could see if a certain lane seemed to perform poorly over multiple weapons for example.   For those who prefer the raw tabular format:     Note that I'm not advancing 'Composite' accurracy here as a meaningful metric, but I just threw that in there so that I had something to sort by.  I'm not sure how interesting or useful anybody will find any of this.  My two big reactions were as follows:   1.)   My first-hand experience with shooting and ballistics is dominated by Basic Training at Ft. Leonard Wood in the Summer of '90.  I qualified Sharpshooter (the mid-tier), hit a few pop-ups at 300m, and by now have surely forgotten most of what I learned although I could probably still field strip an M-16 by rote.   So I'm nobody's idea of a shooting expert but I was expecting the accuracy to degrade expotientially with range.  But maybe that's not how it works or maybe that's only true at longer ranges and 300m and below is within quite reasonable ranges for these weapons and (mostly) iron sights.  I simply don't know.   In particular, it's striking how the accuracy at 180m is much the same as the accuracy at 120m for several weapons.  The range jumps by 50%, but the accuracy (judged by average rounds per casualty) degrades by only 21.44%, 3.08%, 3.53%, and 4.12% for the LMG42, DPM, PPSh/PPS-43, and MP-40 respectively.  Not sure what's going on there or if anything is going on.  Statistical noise?  I dunno.   The related point is how the accuracy of the weapon types relate to each other.  The snipers are best, then the bolt-actions, then the LMG, and finally the sub-machine guns.  Each type is grouped together in its expected place along the accuracy continuum which feels good.     At 180m, it takes ~ 84 Mosin-Nagant rounds or ~ 126 PPS-43 rounds to cause a casualty in testing...  So the PPS-43 is 50% less accurate but it's trivial for a PPS-43 shooter to exceed the rate-of-fire of the Mosin-Nagant by more than 50%.  I know I wasn't supposed to consider ROF, but you see the point here.  Just rough figures: Maybe a determined and steady Mosin-Nagant shooter gets off 10 rounds in a minute.  In the same timeframe, as soon as a shooter behind a PPS-43 exceeds 15 shots he's causing more casualties on average at 180m (according to the test results).   2.)  What's going on with the German Snipers?  Why are they performing so much better than the Soviet Snipers?    I believe I found the answer to this one hiding in plain sight.  Yes, the German snipers performed better than the Soviet snipers but my working theory is because the German sniper test shooters ended up with a freakishly large proportion of designated 'Marksmen' rather than the basic 'Soldiers.'   For the sniper shooters of both sides, I used Sniper Teams at 50% headcount in attempt to limit the teams to just guys with scoped rifles and avoid the SMG-toting buddies.  However, even at the 50%, I found a couple German teams still had the MP-40 guy so I placed those at the 300m range knowing they wouldn't fire.  (See thread about 200m hard range cut-off for SMGs here.)  So those teams would have had improved spotting abilities relative to the singletons but I didn't worry about that as I only cared about the resulting aimed shots and not if the snipers had spotting help.   As I placed the snipers of both sides I idly noted (mentally) that some were Marksman and some were Soldier but I didn't think much of it.  However, I later had the impulse to mark which lanes contained Marksman and it was then that the Germans' relative overperformance made sense.     The lanes with the m notation off to the side contained Marksman snipers and the ones without contained Soldier snipers.  The # symbols designate K98 armament; the balance were armed with G43.  (Digression, were G43 the predominant Heer sniper rifles?)   You see I ended up with only four non-Marksman among 24 active lanes. (240m Lane 1 is the NULL lane referenced in footnote 3.)  As you see, the accuracy of the non-Marksman snipers is significantly worse.  As for the Soviets:     You see they only ended up with two Marksman and they are the best two of their grouping although the effect is less discernable at 60m.  Ironically, I put those two in the 60m grouping on purpose as I noticed they were carrying only 55 rounds per man compared with 150 rounds for the bulk of the Soviet snipers.  My thought was that I wanted them at a closer range so they wouldn't run out of ammo and, at that time, I didn't make the connection between the Marksman designation and the lower ammo count.   Although the sample size is small, we see that the few non-Marksman Germans perform comparably with the non-Marksman Soviets at a given range.  So that riddle is tenatively solved.  The German Sniper "results" should then be accompanied with a big asterisk at the moment and are subject to revision.  But I thought I'd still show what I have for the moment to demonstrate the seeming weight of the Marksman-factor.  Plus, the Snipers are such outliers in the scheme of these results.  Even the regular Soldier Soviet snipers are 6 and 11 times more accurate than the Mosin-Nagant at 240m and 300m respectively.     (1) More specifically, the number of action spots between the deployed shooters and targets were as follows: 7 - 56m, 15 - 120m, 22 - 176m, 30 - 240m, 37 - 296m.  (Yes, I know you guys can do arithmetic.)   (2) I know it's a more challenging shot when there is an elevation difference between shooter and target.  That's not from experience, that's from reading Stephen Hunter novels.   (3) There was one exception.  In Lane 1 at 240m in the German Sniper test, I missed a cover arc on one of the Soviet sniper targets.  The result was a shooter that got shot...  So I threw out that particular lane and then ran another iteration with Lanes 2-5.  Every other test scenario featured 4 iterations per lane wheras that one ended up with 0 iterations for Lane 1 and 5 iterations for lanes 2-5.   (4) Naturally, in CMRT battles, there are occasions when automatic weapon fire DOES hit massed troops and multiple casualties are the realistic result.  But again, I don't want to confuse that with the question of accuracy.   (5) As with my earlier tests, I disregarded light wounds.  The casualties shown in my results are KIA and serious wounds only.

One interesting point is the fact that much of WW2 doctrine was developped in WW1 and was often developped in reaction to enemy doctrine.

For example, mid WW1, the Germans developped the concept of the "elastic defence", which remained their basic doctrine until 1945. In a nutshell, it was composed of 3 basic elements:

1. the forward line was very lightly manned to reduce casualties from the prep barrage. Its main role was to warn when the main assault was coming and to slow it down;

2. The Main Line of Resistance ("MLR") was placed farther back, usually on a reverse slope so it could not be fired on directly by enemy guns; and

3. a reserve force would be positioned farther back, ready to reinforce the MLR or counterattack if the enemy force broke through.

At first, it worked very well, CW assault troops once they broke through the MLR would often advance outside of friendly artillery range, become disorganised and were often pushed back by the German counterattack, often wiping out all the original gains.

In reaction, the British developped the concept of "Bite and Hold". The idea was that by consolidating early within range of friendly artillery, CW troops would have an organised defence AND artillery support once the German counterattacked.

Fast forward 20+ years, in the western desert in 1941 and 42, British Armour was operating independently, trying to out-german the Germans, usually with disastrous results.

Once Monty took over, the first thing he did was to bring back the concept of "Bite and Hold", bringing the armour under tight control and using it just as infantry support. It worked very well at El Alamein, in a series of limited "Bite and Hold" operations over several days, the British dismantled the German defensive position piece by piece and forced to Rommel to use up his reserves until he was forced to retreat.

The Normandy campaign followed the same pattern. We have to remember that the German defensive position in the British sector was very good. Most of the terrain was wide open and dominated by high ground, so CW tanks could be fired on from far away. The Germans had also massed most of their armour and several SS Panzer divisions in that sector. Yet, in a series of "Bite and Hold" operations, some succesful ("Totalize"), some less so ("Goodwood"), CW troops again dismantled the German defensive position and wrote down German armour to the point where they could no longer prevent the breakout.

"Bite and Hold", not flashy like Blitzkrieg, but it works.