Jump to content

hellfish

Members
  • Posts

    1,877
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by hellfish

  1. My $0.02...

    It's certainly true that events are occurring faster than anyone can expect them to. It's only Wednesday and I've read at least three news reports originating from Syria already, all of them having some bearing on the background of CMSF.

    While I like the idea of having a real nation to fight against with a history to look back upon and analyze, there are some benefits to a fictional country.

    First, you can give them whatever you want. No more debates on BMP-3s or begging for T-80Us or T-90Ms to balance out the American technological superiority.

    Second, you can fudge your OPFOR organizations. Rudel has done a great job, but there are still a lot of gaps. With a fictionalized country you can tailor your enemy less to reality and more to game play and get away with it. Give OPFOR infantry companies a couple extra organic PKM machineguns or an ATGM section. Maybe the Brazilian EE-11 Urutu APC is their main wheeled AFV, as opposed to the BTR series.

    Third: You don't have to worry about getting anything wrong - both militarily and historically.

    Fourth: A lot of games have made up their own OPFOR and done very well. Look at Operation Flashpoint: Resistance (or even their new Armed Assault game). Full Spectrum Warrior (even though I think it's awful), Strike Fighters Project One (with the excellent mercenary campaign) and many others have done so, often successfully. IMHO, it doesn't take away from the credibility or enjoyability of a game if the setting is fictionalized. Hell, in OFP some modders went nuts and created police and military forces for the fictionalized countries - even going to lengths to write regimental histories as backgrounds!

    The main benefit of a fictionalized country for me, though, is the spark of imagination required for it. Though I've not developed a game on my own with this, I have and still do participate in mods of other games where I'm totally enthralled with creating my own little world or experiencing the other people's worlds. Thats fun for me - that excites me, especially when the others have the attention to detail to make their worlds believeable. Hell, in TOAW I edited every single scenario with my own forces - and I've got detailed Word files with their TO&Es and unit histories simply because I love using my imagination in my gaming.

    Now that I've said all that, I'm not against using Syria by any stretch of the imagination.

    I will say this tongue-in-cheek, though - my first vote for CMx2 was for a Korean setting, which will never get caught up in news events like this. They've been the same for 53 years now and nothing's changed! They're dependable enemies. smile.gif

    And I still think a PLA expansion pack for a CMx2: Korea would have the best game title ever:

    Combat Mission: Enter the Dragon

    ;)

    [ September 13, 2006, 09:33 AM: Message edited by: fytinghellfish ]

  2. Originally posted by rudel.dietrich:

    Just takes alot of practice.

    Wikipedia believe it or not is actualy a pretty good resource. Just input something and start reading.

    When something looks interting just click the blue hyperlink and read about it too.

    As for Victoria, that is one of my favourite games!

    The only Paradox game I ever liked.

    Maybe with Steves permission some of us can undertake a platform information section for the manual.

    We can list every weapon and piece of hardware in the game and give it its own entry into the manual.

    Since the manual is probably going to be .pdf all those extra pages will hardly matter.

    Maybe we could build a Battlefront Wiki?
  3. I getcha with that Victoria comment - I've had the game for years and I still don't know what I'm doing.

    I don't think you'll have much of a problem with CMSF. BFC did a good job of helping you figure out why the T-34/43 early and the T-34/43 late were different, I don't imagine they'll have trouble helping you out with the difference between a T-55 and a T-55AM. If all else fails, just look at the point value. smile.gif

  4. Originally posted by MikeyD:

    And Syrians probaly wouldn't get to ride up-top much because everything moving within 20 miles of the front line would soon be a flaming wreck anyway.

    I think you overestimate the competence of the USAF (but thats OK, everyone seems to). :rolleyes: There were several engagements in OIF when large Iraqi mechanized units got the drop on American forces, but their own incompetence doomed them to failure. Look up the Battle at Objective Peach (I think it was - my reference books are at home). A T-72 battalion ambushed US forces but their gunnery was so atrocious that the US element (A tank/Bradley company IIRC) returned fire and destroyed the Iraqis with no loss to themselves.
  5. Originally posted by John Kettler:

    rudel.dietrich,

    Some of your syntax intrigues me, for example, characterizing the beautifully designed, amphibious 2S1 as "the 122mm D-30 bolted on..." Your profile says you live in Fairfax, Virginia (lived in Burke and Fairfax Station myself) and work as a Security Analyst. Judging by your impressive depth of military knowledge, am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that "Security" = defense, that you likely work for a "Beltway bandit" doing some sort of military analysis and that English isn't your primary language. Am I right?

    Every Soviet/Russian artillery piece, to include SPs, MUST be able to fight tanks, to which end, direct fire sights are fitted, and AP ammo is provided, either HEAT or APHE, depending on the gun. Both the 2S1 and 2S4 are thus fully capable of direct fire engag

    The 2S4 is a 240mm mortar - I don't think it has open sights. ;) I think you meant 2S3.
×
×
  • Create New...