Apocal

Even a ballistic JDAM goes further than a large UAV can pick out a moving man on their sensors. And the laser Maverick isn't simulated in-game.

There is already a 2-3 minute re-attack time per air asset, the aircraft aren't over the battlefield for anything but around 10-15 seconds (judging by on-map engagements). Obviously they are flying back to an IP before attacking again. I'd like it if they held at the IP rather than deciding (at random) to stop attacking so I need to either cancel an already running strike or let them sit idle in the stack. I'm not asking that they strike the target and yank back around for another attack 30 seconds after another. In-game Reapers spot moving men reliably, that's inconsistent with them being at maximum distance. On the other hand, if such space safe exists for Reapers utilizing their sensor range, why not also the fixed-wing aircraft delivering (relative to the defenses simulated) standoff weapons from even further out?

The only reason MANPADS or AAA can't shoot down a Reaper is due to it flying at high altitude. Other than that, it is completely defenseless, no flares, no warning systems and typically flies at helicopter speeds. If it is flying at high altitude without any sort of defensive system whatsoever, what are those theoretical MiGs and S-300s doing again? And it isn't a bug that the Reaper is invulnerable during Observe missions, they put it in the manual. When it performs Strike missions it can definitely be shot down. Also -- as far as I can tell -- the Zala can be shot down by AAA, it is just most players facing them choose the side (US Army) without any AAA available in quick battles. edit: Yeah, I just shot down all three Russian UAVs using the Tunguska. Spotted the Zala surprisingly fast as well, within two minutes. That is a shorter time than my Ravens generally last against air defenses. Anyway, this is all sidebar to the real issue; aircraft breaking off attacks and not being able to get back into play.

Eh... it is easy enough to simply collapse the building entirely in-game, so that is what most people go for.

I'm pretty sure Battlefront knew that, since they note the real name in the manual. No idea why they chose to call it the Skif in-game though.

That is pretty much contradicted by the Reaper being unable to be shot down on Observe missions by on-map SAMs or AAA.

The Iraqis had MANPADS available. Our aircraft just flew above the effective range of MANPADS and AAA, over their own "backfield" so it was never a real concern.

The spotting cycle for units close to each other is lowered.

When directing a multi-aircraft strike with one JTAC, it is irritating when aircraft break off due to being unable to find a target and -- due to the one strike restriction in place -- cannot be brought back into play. As for solutions: 1) Aircraft in a multi-aircraft strike will not break off as long as at least one aircraft spots something, i.e. all or nothing. Either they all break off due to failure to spot targets or they all stick around to continue hunting. 2) A special status like "HOLDING" enabling them to be either re-directed by the original JTAC or snapped up by another available JTAC. 3) Remove the one strike restriction. 4) Allow unassigned aircraft to seamlessly join a strike already in progress.

Hey, as much as I hate to be the dumb guy in the thread, I downloaded the *.brz file, now what do I do with it?

Not every vehicle, but one per platoon of dismounts or something like that. And hoping your opponent isn't grimey enough to simply throw DPICM instead.

Basically directly under the newer shells. They have sidelobe suppression features installed so pushing RF through the sides doesn't work; it has to come from the front or back.

LCS is fine for pushing sensors into the danger zones where we expect to take hits regardless of capability, which is what its main mission is. Its certainly better equipped than the OHPs were, since it actually has a functioning radar and missile system. The jobs that "real frigates" are called to do amount to running down pirates, drug runners and showing the flag. Half the OHPs (the short hulls) didn't even have towed arrays, the SM-1 never worked as advertised, it wasn't equipped with ASROC, had a limited helo complement and generally was the butt of all the jokes, i.e. "The Hellen Keller-class; can't hear ****, can't see ****."

Excal doesn't require a laser designator. The actual GPS+LRF combos used were pretty well cheap, occasionally off-the-shelf. Excal itself only costs around $30,000 - $50,000 per round, which might as well be a rounding error -- even when buying dozens -- when you're dealing with the money required to field a modern maneuver battalion.

Who's icon mod is this?

Burkes should still have Tomahawks, just not the anti-ship version of Tomahawk. The late-model ones don't have Harpoons, but that's because the surface navy didn't want to shell out bucks for keeping Harpoons relevant during the nineties budget crunch. The air navy did, which is why they had (have) the SLAM-ER on their birds and that's where most of our anti-ship capability currently resides. Submarines are cool and work in some circumstances and we do have a lot of them, but based on what I saw during the last decade, if any serious war pops off, they're going to have better things to do than dedicated themselves to popping surface ships... unless those surface ships are trying to sortie from a monitored port. That is changing in the very near-term, but for now, if you want to see how the USN would mallet a bunch of ships, use a carrier's airwing with P-3/P-8/MQ-4C support for surveillance and maybe the White Cloud constellation for additional ELINT capability.

Thanks. It does strike me as odd. The Kuznetov was incredibly unreliable, but that was years ago and last we saw of her, she wasn't going dead in the water anymore. Her whole steam plant was supposed to come out, to be replaced by a gas turbine setup (IIRC) but for whatever reason didn't happen. Its possible they just ran out of money, its possible they just figured out what in her steam plant was giving them so much grief.

The annoying thing to me about Battlefront is that I'm buying all these different theaters with no way to join them as a single, unified product.

Yes, I'm the same Apocal. And the outdated part is "because it is so unreliable," the Russians are just paranoid about other people's tugs handling their precious carrier.

I didn't realize they'd invented time travel, because that is some seriously outdated info.

That has nothing to do with the merits (or lack thereof) of the T-34 and everything to do with the Soviet mechanized corps' all being unwieldy monsters of formations. In the circumstances where commanders had the experience and luck to handle more manageable forces, the T-34 did well enough to send the Germans into a furious upgrade cycle for their own tank park. Precision guided artillery rounds actually save money over using the same amount of unguided HE to do the same. Excals aren't that expensive and fuel (to haul hundreds or thousands of shells) isn't that cheap.

About two platoons of light infantry, roughly. The downside is that there is nothing in that capability that confers the ability to shrug off artillery and machine gun fire the way a tank can, so the easiest method to no-sell a pure infantry attack is a de-nuded (nearly empty) frontline feature machine guns, mines, wire, etc. that "hold" the attack in place long enough for artillery to respond. And artillery can respond frighteningly fast nowadays, on the order of two or three minutes from first call to shell fall. The traditional infantry counter to such firepower was nighttime infiltration, which shortened the effective range on most weapons at the cost of being slow. So your opponent could always respond to the breakthrough with adequate force to stop it. But nowadays, most serious players have some form of night vision and the upper-end guys have "persistent stare" surveillance. You can certainly get lucky, innovative, etc. and carry an attack forward, but the idea is that you can't consistently repeat that success, day-in, day-out, without bleeding yourself dry. And once you've been bled, it doesn't matter what you hold or think you hold, you'll either give it up of your own accord to stop the bleeding or have your unit fall apart from the (figurative) blood loss. That's why tanks are useful; the number of weapon on the battlefield that threaten them relative to an infantryman is something like an order of magnitude lower. There are high-end ATGMs around, sure, but not nearly as many as people assume. Meanwhile an infantryman is concerned with a single bullet or 1lbs. anti-personnel mine...

I actually like it, because my opponent is usually performing recon-by-fire.

You realize you're posting this in response to a guy who has coded a game with credibly adaptive AI, right? Nobody in this thread is asking for anything that is novel in the wargame/simulation world.

It aims at the turret.