Apocal

Yes.

1. For a tiny scale attack QB, attacker gets4201 points and the defender gets 2560. For medium scale attack, the attacker gets 10600 and the defender 6400. With a huge attack, the attacker has 26980* points with the defender getting 16228 points. The preferred game size is tiny or small. Beyond that you start edging closer to having unplayable monster scenarios. *Just for sake of context: this is enough (with a little finagling) for an American attacker to buy two tank-heavy mixed companies, with all-APS Abrams, full MANPADS and Engineer Platoons, a battery of 155mm artillery, UAV for spotting and some TRPs. There isn't a QB map that comes stock capable of reasonably support all those forces. 2. Points are static, although a dynamic point adjustment would be nice. 3. Meeting engagement for PBEM. 4. The game isn't balanced. There is nothing stopping your defending opponent from buying large amounts of heaviest caliber artillery he can find and calling down a massive turn 1 barrage on your starting area. People don't do it because it kind of makes you a complete tool, but I'm sure there is at least one dickbag in the crowd.

I'm down as long as we're talking like... reinforced platoon to company scale. Anything larger than that bogs down in CMx2, IME.

1. Yes, the number of attacks increases if your JTAC sees more dudes (or has more up to date spots). 2. It seems to me that the priority is most to least visible. They definitely don't single out AA.

On a somewhat unrelated note: is it still standard for tanks to draw-up range cards when setting up a defense? Because I imagine in the world of CMBS, where a lot of vehicles have LWRs, it would be pretty well tactically advantageous to be able to let off a shot without light off their warning receivers and TRPs could be a good abstraction of this.

Yeah, winning the fires fight.

In the setup phase, under UAV observation or near a TRP, yes. They don't as readily collapse the building, but the defenders sure as hell don't enjoy the experience.

1) Better tools to control the AI. I know building a higher level AI capable of handling CMx2 probably isn't in the cards ever, but it would be nice if the players were given more tools to make relatively intelligent AI play happen on a scenario-by-scenario basis. 1a) Branching AI plans. Nothing is more annoying than building a mission, particular one wherein the AI is attacking, and wanting them to be able to react realistic to different defensive schemes. It would be nice if inflicting sharp losses over a short time-frame would cause the AI to pop smoke, reverse and extract its force off the map to fight another day. It would be cool the AI could respond to the unexpected appearance of an Abrams on one flank by shifting its own tanks to meet the threat and if player tried the same trick from the other flank on the next play, the AI be built in such a way to react to that as well. 1b) More trigger conditions. Detecting enemies on a certain patch of ground, having artillery spotted over an objective, losses of some parts of the force, low-ammo, fatigue, running across mines, etc. should be able to be used to trigger specific actions if not branching paths. 2) Being able to edit briefing text in the editor. This is a minor annoyance, however it is one that really grates, especially when I screw the format up. I don't know how difficult programming an extremely basic text editor is but I don't imagine it could be too difficult. 3) Default images players could use for strategic and operational maps. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places and you've already included them, but I'd love to pull the already provided graphics for my own missions instead of hunting around for something remotely relevant and finagling it into the proper parameters for CMBS to use. 4) Off-map campaign branching. I remember Field Marshal Bulcher's Devil's Descent had a "mission" where touching one of two objectives would lead down different paths in the campaign. That remains workable, but incredibly hamfisted. Instead, why not offer a screen where you could simply decide on one path or another between missions? It would definitely help with the fiddly nature of getting points and victory levels correct for choosing a mission, especially when dealing with three or more choices. That's all I got.

Excalibur fired at the ground floor can take down a single story building in a single shot. That's pretty nice to have.

Yeah, I was just saying there wasn't a fight for either city. Sort of pointless to talk about picked men making up for light firepower when there wasn't really any action to be had.

I know what I'm debating: by time the Russians were able to pour forces through the Roki Tunnel, the Georgians had zero chance to turn things around. That was the point of decision after which the only question was how long and at what cost. There is no realistic string of events that stops the Russian attack or prevents them from eating the Georgian forces wholesale once they are through the tunnel. I presume the Russians understood this just as well, which is why they sent two combined-arms formations with plenty of ass and firepower to do the job, rather than trusting the Georgians would be the incompetent pushovers they proved to be later.

It doesn't say that in my manual for some reason. Page 73 talks about the Bradley.

They didn't capture a single major 1st MarDiv objective. They were supposed to take a bridge, but that mission was cancelled when it was decided a bunch of Humvees weren't going to cut it. They weren't even leading the division in most cases; it was only when the opposite LAR (doing the same thing, but in LAV-25s) ran into resistance strong enough to stop them that 1st Recon pulled ahead and led the rest of 1st MarDiv. For the most part the 1st Recon were operating on the alternate route, against zero resistance at all and frequently behind the leading elements of the division. That was intentional; no amount of pluck and gumption makes up for protected firepower. I don't think it takes away from their accomplishments, but credit where credit is due -- the LAVs were generally blazing a trail for the division, not 1st Recon. Gori was abandoned two days ahead of the Russian advance and there was nothing substantial defending Poti. The real fight of the war was getting troops through the Roki Tunnel and that fight was led by two MR BTGs, not VDV. Taking from The Tanks of August: Almost immediately after the beginning of massive Georgian shelling of South Ossetia, at 0100 on August 8, the Russian General Staff ordered the troops deployed at the training ranges near the Ossetian border to march towards the Roki tunnel. Within half an hour of receiving the orders, the two battalion-size tactical groups of the 19th Motorized Rifle Division’s 693rdand 135th Motorized Rifle Regiments were on the move. At about 0100, the Russian Defense Minister, Anatoliy Serdyukov, was on the phone with President Dmitry Medvedev to report about the beginning of the Georgian offensive. It seems likely that during that phone conversation, the president authorized the Russian Army to cross into South Ossetia. At 0200 on August 8, the first Russian armor of the 693rd Motorized Rifle Regiment’s battalion-size tactical group crossed into South Ossetia. It was soon followed by the battalion tactical group of the 135th Motorized Rifle Regiment.

Well, maintenance attrition is still attrition, but a lot of those losses came at the hands of MANPADS, since the Syrian AF wasn't exactly flush with PGMs and a seriousface targeting complex. By time Hellcats were seeing Zeroes in serious numbers, there weren't any newbies in Hellcats.

A cat finds it around using (among other things) its whiskers, right? 1st Recon was basically hopping from road net to road net, driving through town after town to determine what level -- if any -- of resistance the rest of the division was going to encounter. If the battalion had run into anything too intense to handle, the division would just take a different route and bypass the presumed strongpoint. They were basically helping the rest of the Marines feel their way around the Iraqis defenses so as to move as rapidly as possible and prevent them from massing combat power against the Marines. This worked because in 2003 there weren't enough Iraqi formations to cover all the approaches, so some were left empty or near-empty by necessity. On paper it would still work against more competent opposition although, given that 1st Recon was rolling in not-uparmored Humvees, probably not against more numerous or better equipped foes.

I recall that being said as well, but I can't find where in the manual or on the forum. On that note, it is sort of annoying how some missions in the campaign are so stingy with them. You'd expect a seriousface attack to have at least two or three points, along with any credible defense including defiles, woodlines, dead ground, etc. as registered targets.

doublepost

TRPs don't improve spotting.

Wiki is showing me under 900,000 in the Russian Forces in total and over a million in the US Army alone. The actual Russian army end-strength is less than 300,000 plus a modest number of VDV, whereas the US Army and USMC come out to around 1.4 million.

I remember you could assign additional weapons to units in CMBB and control the mix of ammo for tanks and other vehicles.

Nah, Ukraine is doing poorly because it is a corrupt ****hole, Russia or not. Back around 2002-2008 when they were closer to our sphere they were still a corrupt ****hole and their military performance was, if anything, even worse than it is now.

The Russians were fighting in Chechnya throughout the nineties and early 2000s and capped that off with the 888 War to prove they still knew what the hell they were doing when it came to conventional conflict. Certainly both were smaller scale than the military commitments of Iraq and Afghanistan but the Russian Forces are a lot smaller than the American military...

I noticed they tend to be suppressed and cower, which is fine and realistic, but I haven't yet seen them sent into a 'panic' morale state from only one wounded and thirty seconds of fire. Unless it is like, a tank's main gun or BMP autocannon.

Um, by setting a waypoint on the wall, then a reverse waypoint to back the vehicle off... You can already do this with short walls in-game, I'm just asking it be expanded to taller ones.

Yeah, that was it.