Apocal

They are. And his opponent's scouts are getting hosed by tanks, leaving the HMGs unsighted...

I guess that was recon by death?

It has the new MG behavior, so he is being sarcastic.

Weren't there operations similar to this in CMx1?

1) Artillery effectiveness depends greatly on your opponent's actions. I can easily get my money's worth if an opponent, for example, shows a full rifle company and puts them all behind one hedgerow or if I catch a section of Wespes behind a building. More aware or less unlucky opponents limit it's effectiveness. 2) Yes, I believe that to be a concession to the old-school wargaming crowd who got used to pushing around a half-dozen model tanks on their literal boards. At any rate, you can afford (in a small QB) a section of medium tanks, tank destroyers or assault guns, a full company of infantry, high experience FO, some TRPs and one module of 105mm artillery or 2-3 modules of heavy mortars or 75mm howitzers, which is about ideal in my eyes. Sometimes heavier on armor, sometimes downgrading the artillery, sometimes attaching engineers, sometimes going with AT guns or light tanks or rather than mediums, etc. but a solid core force. 3) I agree the game in general doesn't have very good situational awareness tools for real-time players. It also suffers greatly from not being able to make ad-hoc groupings selectable at a single number key, like other real time games. Instead it plays with camera positions :-S 4) Fortifications are not only expensive but hilariously easy to spot and "de-populate." Even by small arms fire. Not really reflective of the real thing. 5) I've never had this problem. 6) Always could improve the TacAI. But for the most part it does reasonably well. If you don't want that light AT gun shooting a Tiger, give it a short-range 360 degree arc. 7) Sure. 8) Eh... not really. IRL, you would have a reserve, but consisting of what you could spare (as a battalion commander) or what your boss could afford to send you (company or lower). Maybe there'd be some back and forth about exactly what they could send, but nothing like, "lemee see, I'll take a section of Shermans, some mortars... oh! I know, another platoon of infantry!" 9) There is the option of having upwards of three hours for a scenario. 10) You can already play HTH campaigns, it is just difficult to balance so that one side doesn't get completely steamrolled after one decisive defeat.

Huh? I mean, yes, there is certainly a considerable skill cap involved (as with any good game), but the openness of the community regarding the how's and why's compares rather well to other competitive games. Pulling from one prolific poster: How to defend in bocage. Tactical axioms edit: If you are referring to my question as to how someone loses tanks to artillery, that is an honest question because we all know it is possible and you can do it regularly to the AI (because the AI is dumb). But to have it happen to a live player? There is something going on that is very wrong (not necessarily the player's fault) for that to happen consistently. And if there is an issue with artillery being able to reliably destroy armor in this period, that needs to be looked at, because it breaks the combined arms relationship between armor and artillery.

Depends on the type of artillery, it is generally only heavier or more specialized pieces that require a FO, the rest can be called by platoon leaders and company commanders, somewhat less effectively.

If you are referring to the green dots turning red, that is basically a measure of the module's rate of fire. When all of them go red, the rate of fire is significantly reduced and it takes a few minutes to get them all back green again. Generally it is a non-factor due to spotting times between missions and quite a bit more lenient for larger pieces than reality, IME. So do I.

Like womble said, a single 105mm battery can do it, but it isn't all that likely to happen unless your opponent just sits under the barrage for minutes at a time. I mean, honestly, even 75mm pack howitzers and 81mm mortars can take out as well, but no one complains about them because it is just so unlikely to happen outside of ideal situations (already immobilized track, etc.).

150 or higher works fine against tanks. Probably 4.2" and 120mm mortars as well. The problem is that tanks can (and do!) move out from under the barrage, rather than eating volley after volley in a stunlocked state.

Look at the module counts though, you have four 301mm Nebels in BJ's test, three 150mm Nebels in winkel's test. There aren't many scenario authors who'd give a player even one of those to play with and I can't think of any who'd give four.

Yes. But three modules of 105s won't reliably immobilize it. Something around 155mm will, but I have not played a scenario yet that gives you three modules (a full battalion) of 155s. Expressed more directly, tanks still counter artillery, by both armor and their mobility under fire.

How are you losing tanks to artillery? Even a full battalion shoot of 105s in-game won't reliably m-kill a single Sherman out of a five tank platoon and I haven't seen a scenario yet that will give you that much to play with. As for artillery overall, the relationship is skewed because infantry don't have deep entrenchment options to ride out intense bombardments in safety. Bunkers are too obvious and easy to knock out, cellars aren't modeled in the game and foxholes have no option for overhead cover against even lighter mortars. Also, artillery is moderately more accurate than in reality, with mortars being like indirect sniper rifles.

The weapon is slower to turn and has worse aim.

Great Naval Battles: Guadalcanal. Silent Service for NES. Close Combat 1.

That is because the Repository has no specific header for campaigns and they aren't always clearly marked.

Other than being composed of three black regiments early on and having separate black (survivors), white (converted AAA units) and Japanese (442nd RCT) regiments late in the war? No.

Most first generation night vision had that failing. A few of them got around it, only to accidentally blind their operators. Oops. Modern night vision either blanks out or has automatic gain control (AGC) circuits to prevent burnout. In high (air) threat environments, you don't specify a direction of attack (especially not over comms), the aircraft chooses it's own and varies it with every run to avoid AAA/SAMs. At least theoretically anyway, we haven't done CAS with a credible ground-fire threat since Vietnam or Korea. Another part of the reason you see so much friendly fire with CAS in CMSF is that air is called down much closer than is typical in real fights. Real air staffs and FACs can (and sometimes do) make fairly draconian demands of ground troops who want to bring down heavy firepower; stuff like "all troops must be behind phase line Colorado, with PL COLORADO being 800 meters from the target." It also comes much, much faster than in real life, where you might wait a half hour from initial call to putting warheads on foreheads.

Anything is a good thing that ends the debate between two sides trying to press their version of wargamed events forward

Precision guided artillery and mortar munitions like Krasnopol, Excalibur, GMLRS, PGMM (120mm mortar), etc. Larger map size. Half-meter increments in elevation. A campaign scripting system for user-made content, so we can avoid the dedicated mission just to choose campaign branches. Battle scripting system for more dynamic battles against the AI, especially attacks. Obstacles, roadblocks, booby-traps, fougasse, etc. More realistic handling of night vision; degrades around light sources like flares, fires, or insufficient ambient light.

Being able to fortify buildings and knock out loopholes as needed. Obstacles, roablocks, debris from destroyed buildings, etc.

Not a different story at all. It is not legitimate to kill protestors as a government, it also does not become legitimate to kill soldier's families as part of your rebellion against the oppressive government. You can back one, you can back the other or you can back neither. Not that any of this particularly matters, war isn't a contest of legitimacy and I fully expect whoever wins to settle scores in the most vicious manner possible in the post-war. No, the FSA has not condemned it and is still actively fighting against the Kurds. Yes, the Alawites are going to punish the Sunnis harshly if they win. Assad being relatively nice (compared to his father) is what allowed the insurgency to grow in the first place, so I doubt he'll make that mistake ever again. As for the FSA, if it cannot control it's members during the war, how does it expect to control them in the aftermath? This is a serious issue in many successful insurgencies, bringing all the various groups to heel can be as nasty as overthrowing the existing government, if a bit shorter. Against any case the FSA could make for post-war solidarity, their most effective and respected fighters (Al-Nusra) are the ones most divorced from the FSA's core message and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3zgxWgb6k0. At least they (Al-Nusra) aren't threatening to put all the minorities to the sword though, which is an improvement on the FSA's stance. Or you could support neither. This is apparently confusing for the west, but we do have the option of saying, "thanks, but no thanks." I don't post videos of what the FSA does, because they are incredibly poor taste for this forum.

I never said it did. It was you who claimed that one side's illegitimate actions automatically legitimized the other side. No, it is intentionally less representative, since in this case democracy means three wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. I don't understand why it is wrong to not support democratically agreed-upon genocide or ethnic cleansing in your eyes, but I guess we can agree to disagree in that regard. The FSA itself (seperate from Al-Nursa) has previously targeted the (at the time neutral) Kurds, driving them into Assad's camp. They did this around six months before their December setback in Damascus, when it looked like Assad would be gone within the year. The FSA itself (separate from Al-Nursa) has stated that their desired endgame is a campaign of ethnic and sectarian cleansing. The FSA itself (separate from Al-Nursa) is posting YouTube videos of mass prisoner executions. This is after Assad's regime folded on the original Constitutional issue, has granted more rights to non-Alawites in the country and generally taken steps towards a more just form of governance. But the FSA (separate from Al-Nursa) must have it's pound of flesh. The reason why western media coverage of the conflict has tapered off is because you basically have two sides behaving extremely badly and the side they initially supported (FSA) professing some very un-western things.

Because they quite literally are? On one hand, you have government forces killing prisoners of war, on the other, you have the FSA beheading suspected collaborators, beating vendors for selling "western propaganda" and outright looting even otherwise neutral civilian communities. Is it also legitimate to kill or deport ethnic and religious minorities? Or is it just an inconvenient side-track that we should ignore until they establish (Sunni-majority) democracy?

Both sides have been executing civilians/prisoners of war.