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Apocal

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Everything posted by Apocal

  1. Unintentional repeat? What was the other thing, besides the engine compartment? Excalibur has INS as well and if it is anything like JDAM, the GPS set is effectively backup to the INS, not the other way around. In other words, if you spoof the GPS, the weapon just ignores it and goes pure INS. It's also technically tricky to spoof the later marks because they have built-in protection that basically amounts to the weapon making sure the GPS signal is coming from above and not below. I don't think EWAR effects it in-game, other than taking a stupendously long time to arrive.
  2. Almost every ground vehicle in the US inventory uses JP-8. It isn't a unique thing to the Abrams and I'm somewhat mystified on how you came to conclusion it was the wrong fuel. On top of that, I'm almost certain the AGT1500 specifically is fuel type agnostic, so it burns diesel, gasoline, straight kerosene, or even straight up bunker crude.
  3. Why is running on JP-8 a concern? And I'm pretty sure an Abrams will run on anything you put in, it is just JP-8 is the Army's preferred brand, so every vehicle uses it.
  4. I know, that was the point of bringing it up as an example. I do see the advantages of it, I just don't think it is as effective as you state it is.
  5. You can edit battles but not complete campaigns. But if you make your own battle or even go hog wild in the quick battle buy screen, you can have at least 25 TRPs. That's a lot of TRPs. This is a bit of semantics in-game, but a TRP (target reference point) isn't necessarily registered (the process you describe). It is just something used as a easy guide when referring to things around the battlefield. CMx2's TRPs are supposed to combine both, which is why all units get a bonus to accuracy when firing in the vicinity of a TRP.
  6. Nobody runs around that fast on the real life battlefield and real life artillery barrages might very well cover half a CMx2 map. The Russians aren't shy about dumping massed artillery in company- or even platoon-level fights. Within CMx2 scope, artillery's suppression comes from dudes just not sticking around where artillery is falling (or even might fall) and/or keeping their heads down while it rains. It is just in-game most troops act like Rambo and pop their heads right back up without much fear, even if you wipe out half the platoon, and usually retain their core firepower (machine guns and rocket launchers) so the effectiveness is limited compared to the real deal. That, and players lose a platoon for every committed company in a battle and count that as a success whereas anywhere else it is a complete disaster. First off, if artillery was incapable of killing anyone in cover, WW1 would have been a much different conflict. It isn't as good as catching dudes out in the open, but even for troops in the highest quality field fortifications melt away under heavy artillery over longer time scales. Secondly, thermobarics don't work anywhere near as reliably as you state. The Marines had them in 2nd Fallujah and still found dudes could fortify a building enough to limit the effects to the point where the most reliable method for dealing with it was surrounding it and using a bulldozer to demolish the structure entirely. Thermobarics aren't alien death rays.
  7. I'm not really advertising anything, since this is a free game and no longer in active development, but I just found out about it a few days ago and it is quite the nice little experience. Armoured Commander (yes, spelled with a 'u'). Just to get things out of the way, it is based upon an old Avalon Hill boardgame called Patton's Best. You could consider it the computer version of the same. For those who haven't played either Patton's Best, you're basically thrust into WW2 as a tank commander in the 4th Armored Division on 27 Jul 44. You control your tank's movements on an operational map made of ragged tiles, doing such things as sending out recon to check the resistance level of adjacent tiles, calling in artillery or air strikes, requesting resupply and deciding on your route. The objective is generally to capture zones on your way to exiting off the map at a designated point, which nets you a big bonus and resets you on another map so you can continue earning points. The day ends when the sun sets, no night fighting in the game. Along the way, you'll almost certainly encounter enemy forces consisting of anti-tank guns (tools of the devil), infantry and machine gun teams, unarmed trucks, half-tracks, armored cars and of course panzers. That's when the battle starts. Combat is a bit abstract; you won't find dynamically arranged maps for each fight. Instead there are six sectors around your tank (just like a hex) with three range bands enemies occupy. You fight it out by ordering your individual crewmen to various tasks. It is entirely possible to order your driver to reverse to a hull down position, your gunner to fire a WP round at an ATG, while your gunner and assistant driver desperately attempt to suppress approaching infantry while you as the tank commander spend your time yelling at the driver because he failed to find a decent hull down position, leaving you totally exposed. The level of detail gets right down to how many and which rounds go into your ready rack and tracking facings across the battlefield, along with a simple but effective system for figuring out what penetrates and what doesn't. Nothing will ever overcome the sheer joy at surviving in a dry storage, plain M4 overloaded with 100+ shells, most of them HE, against a Tiger and a pair of 88s. Nothing will ever match the sheer anguish you feel when, at 20+ days into your career, your tank commander gets machine gunned after escaping from a M-killed Jumbo, one week before he would have gotten the Medal of Honor to match his two Purple Hearts. It is the first game that really, truly made me understand why tankers might prefer the 75mm over the 76mm, why deep stores of ammo were preferred. Intellectually, I knew why but this game brought it out in fairly stark relief. You haven't lived until you've been shot at while your dry storage Sherman is still packing 120 shells and ninety of them HE. You also won't live after it either since, you know, loose ammo all around the turret basically turns your Sherman into a Viking funeral should anything penetrate. Anyway, the real challenge is surviving 68 days of combat, stretching from the Normandy breakout, isolating Brittany, racing across France, hitting the West Wall, relieving Bastogne, crossing the Rhine and reaching Czechoslovakia. My own record so far is 25 days, four Purple hearts, ten dead or severely wounded crewmen and roughly eight tanks shot out from under my tank commander before finally being killed.
  8. I make small, simple maps and don't bother putting flavor objects in them.
  9. Conventional munitions get less accurate in heavy winds, judging from some quick-and-dirty testing. Because they accelerate more slowly and decelerate more readily, as far as I can tell. Now that I look closer, I'm starting to see more of the effects. But I guess my issue is that I have to really look for them to notice, instead of weather being shoved in my face like in real life.
  10. Yeah, putting regimental and divisional pieces into the AT network or even as direct fire support was such a standard Soviet practice I can't think of any justification for not including them as on-board assets, especially not when the 150mm SIG managed to find its way on-board as far back as CMBN. Suppression is fine, even with a gun shield. The gun shield itself is pretty small and I have no trouble imagining it is very difficult to service the piece while staying completely protected behind it.
  11. Has anyone noticed the extreme heat/extreme cold temperature settings in the scenario editor actually having a tangible effect in-game?
  12. It doesn't come up because game issues are mostly agnostic towards the game mode. I play a lot more real time than WeGo. Basically the latter only for campaign missions that are unexpectedly huge and PBEM. But I'm a bit out of the PBEM game for now and I've played through almost every campaign.
  13. It still exists as WeGo. Just select "turn-based" when starting a new scenario or quick battle.
  14. The game already does this. If it didn't, trees wouldn't be able to catch rounds the way they do and artillery shells would have even patterns even on reverse slopes.
  15. I wasn't saying it was unwinnable, just it forces you to take losses in a stupid manner. I guess I could complain that it basically got the entire relationship of a successful river-crossing wrong; intact defenses overwatching the crossing points with ample and unsuppressed artillery available is basically the conditions for a bloody failure on the part of the attackers attempting to cross. But I don't care that much compared to the scale being like double from playable and other stuff.
  16. JasonC doesn't like scenarios where the player is railroaded (especially when he is railroaded in dumb ways), where the scale goes beyond a reinforced company, where the actual relevant tactics and techniques are distorted to make a scenario more action-esqe. Given the delay involved (~20 minutes) and lack of TRPs for the attacker, it was pretty clear the intent was to use the rocket battery as the player's personal prep fire, particularly since the ammo provided is somewhere south of half it's normal load. IIRC, the briefing said as much. But given that, it is lackluster at the task; even putting the rocket barrage directly on target doesn't appreciably degrade the totality of the defenses. Even if you inflict casualties, it isn't as if the scenario designer actually degraded the German personnel numbers in each team so what is fielded still has manpower depth enough to endure and stay intact. The suppression doesn't last longer than a minute or two, so it is basically irrelevant. Odds of a player arriving just after the fifteen minute mark (longest delay possible for a fire mission) in this scenario are very low. It's been years since I played it, but I think the mortars have limited ammo as well, even though you can't use them for prep fire since they are MIA at scenario start, only coming in at (I think) the five minute mark for whatever reason. At any rate, they are incredibly difficult to employ effectively, due to the lack of map-fire ability in CMx2 and basically no good overwatch positions, which means you're exposing a unit leader (or the singular green or conscript FO) to whatever nastiness you require mortars to deal with. The first mission a monster in size terms. Some people enjoy them, some don't. I thought that was a bit annoying in the stock campaign just because I prefer real time and it is well beyond anyone's ability to manage played that way. If you're into splitting squads to maximize infantry performance, it goes straight into near-unplayable territory even for WeGo; each turn for me took something like a half-hour of tweaking, especially once I realized it was a shooting gallery for one side if I didn't carefully echo-locate each of the backfield ATGs and try to hit them with mortars before they took out my supporting armor. The careful approach doesn't work very well; you cross right in sight of the deep German backfield defenses and a few close-in machine guns in some serious chokepoints, all of which have TRPs set on them. The end result is that the Germans get a free harvest of kills wherever you cross and if you choose a single crossing point, they get a series of them with their artillery, which out-matches the player's by a fair margin. So yeah, I didn't really like the scenario that much either. Whenever I replay the campaign I just hit cease fire during the setup phase and save myself the aggravation.
  17. "Occupying" in the sense they exist somewhere. If you're doing a hit and run attack but take longer than a few minutes (maybe as low as five, possibly less) you might just get smoked, is what I'm saying.
  18. Not quite "losing the initiative," no. Artillery on-call doesn't care about who has the initiative. It's that lightly protected forces can't afford to occupy any piece of terrain longer than it takes a fire mission (or should I use the Russian term, fire strike?) to arrive. It worked pretty good in WW2, with limited comms, fire support that was considered responsive if it landed twenty minutes after an attack started, and a dearth of even the latter among many combatants. I'm not nearly so certain it will be viable overall (exceptional successes, sure) in modern times. Like, everyone has a radio and even Grad batteries answer calls with, "May I take your order?" Alternatively, you might just blunder into something like a tank company backed by two platoons of motor rifles. That would, if competently handled, run through almost anything light like **** through a goose, regardless of who was driving events. There is something of a meme or brainbug, what have you, that going fast with minimal armor is protection. I think modern military history disagrees with that idea. Firepower is protection. Armor is protection. Stealth is protection. Numbers, in mutual support, are protection. But none of them, except maybe the third, are especially sexy nowadays and they are either agnostic to or negatively correlated with going fast. But like I said, fine for light occupation and better than nothing in straight-up brawl.
  19. The SOF types also had first pick of uparmored vehicles in Iraq, once they started going home in bags from IEDs. The Rangers rolled in Strykers for the same reason. Running around light and fast works fine if you're barely opposed, but far less if you're facing someone competent who is completely fine with bleeding you over time. As for facing any sort sort of serious enemy combat fornation, the broad lesson learned had been dancing works until the very first time you make a mistake. Then you die in a fire, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Modern Russian formations, even medium ones, can absolutely mallet the hell out of anything the moves without serious protection, do it fast, and do it decisively without burning through their entire allotment of ammo. I'm thinking even if your light raid force gets held up for three minutes on an objective, it is already courting death by steel rain.
  20. Is there anyway to request my scenario be added as a candidate?
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