Apocal

Not every vehicle on the battlefield is a tank.

HEAT works good enough is why.

Has anyone beside myself experienced crashes in MP coinciding with the splash of a spotting round? It has happened in roughly four out of the last nine MP matches I had, generally just when it was getting good. Obviously no savegame available. RT, mixed between custom missions built from QB maps, stock scenarios, etc. Red on Blue, Blue on Blue. Using Hamachi, which shouldn't matter.

He phsyically has the pistol in hand, presumably because there is someone a few feet away feels the need to shoot.

1. Can we get the the motivation setting used to control responsiveness? It would help with MP playbalancing if Syrians got decently fast indirect fire for a change. 2. Any chance for modifying the battery configurations like what was done for the Brit mod's SP arty? You have a choice between three sections of two or two sections of three. 3. An option for "stacking" fire missions for some rudimentary fireplanning possible? I thought I posted this last night but apparently not.

1. First things first, Allah's Fist is not a good H2H scenario. All except one Abrams kill was via T-72 teleportation. The Syrians suck so badly that all except two ATGMs I fired at his Strykers nosedived into the ground. The tanks routinely missed stationary targets with ATGMs. Ironically, the one kill I did achieve was against a moving target with conventional shell. Not a win for me at all. 2. 51:00 in the video. This mission is something I threw together in about fifteen or twenty minutes, using one of the QB maps. Meeting engagement, blue on blue, both of them balanced heavy companies, two tank platoons, two mechanized infantry platoons, 120mm mortar section and FO + BFIST. Mortars came in as five minute reinforcements to replicate coming off the march and getting firecapped upon initial contact reports. More pragmatically, it's because my usual MP opponent will ruthlessly and shamelessly bombard a starting area with preplanned fires. My intent was to put my tanks, reasonably seperated, in overwatch positions covering his likely routes of advance, while holding my mechanized infantry in place, waiting for a suitable context for their participation. Ideally, this context would be simply occupying the ground admist a background of burning enemy tracks. As you can see, he largely won the overwatch battle, all of his tanks were able to apply firepower to my sequentially committed tanks. The exceptions was one tank in a position approximately 500 meters away from the destroyed tank platoon and another I was holding as a reserve. Those two tanks kept me in the fight and as his Brads tried to flank what he thought was a found and fixed force, they got eaten up against the last tank I had in overwatch. His game crashed before mortars could become a factor, his Bradley platoon showed that TOW is no substitute for armor and infantry either advanced without problems or died a lot. The deciding factor was whether tanks had suppressed the enemy. 3. The real MP match right here, no deus ex machina, no crashes. Starts at 1:05:00 or so. Same setup, different gameplan on my part. Forget all that stuff about "best thing to kill a tank is another tank", I was going to use Javelins to do most of it. Combined arms means never having to say you're sorry. The only reason I had tanks move forward was to give his tanks something to shoot at and distract them from the impending hail of ATGMs. Meanwhile, my mechanized infantry would move to exploit some terrain and establish a solid base of fire and overwatch position themselves, both to kill tanks and, once his tanks were a non-factor and mortars were firecapped, dominate the OBJ with direct and indirect fires. I'd let my fire superiority work it's magic, attriting his infantry into nothingness on the OBJ itself, once they'd been suitably handled, I'd move my own carefully husbanded reserve in to slaughter the survivors. Profit. I worried a bit about mortars, but from watching one of his videos, I remembered he had a fairly low opinion of mortars, even the, IMHO, excellent 120mm, so I chanced a bit that he wouldn't effectively employ them. Other than that, I didn't have many other concerns. You can see how well the plan worked out in the video. His "Ardennes Counter Offensive" could've worked, but I caught a brief sight of tanks moving around and I decided to move an infantry team to better overwatch position and saw a thundering herd of Bradleys parked there. Holy telegraphed countermove, Batman! I position my reserve to cut his maneuver off at the pass and break off some Javelin shooters to cover as well, then spin both my base of fire Bradleys around so he gets to get it from both ends. I was confident the infantry platoon at the base of fire position could handle what was left of his infantry. He took the initiative and used it to drive straight into my guns, rockets, and missiles. It was a much, much closer run thing than I wanted it to be or expected though. Had he managed to get another 150m closer, he would've had my infantry reserve under fire with either Brads or Abrams and they didn't have Javelins. Bad ju ju right there. Hard fought, hard won. EDIT: Additionally, I didn't employ mortars too effectively, my FO was killed early on and I didn't see to what. I was a little too impatient to wait a full six minutes so I called in maybe two fire missions total. Although had it come down to my infantry vs. his infantry on the OBJ, I probably would've plastered either the OBJ or his overwatch behind it with HE/VT.

I play it under one house rule: Americans don't get Javelins. Played that way, helps offset the advantage of Bradleys with TOW over Brit APCs with either MGs or an unstabilized, slow-firing thirty mikemike. And it forces the American player to pay attention to terrain and find good hide locations for his tracks, rather than just hiding them in the cluster of buildings, along with the infantry, while Javelins kill every threat on the battlefield. Heh, British Army, for some reason it's not Royal. IME, yeah a lot more finesse, the light infantry is mostly similar, But their mechanized infantry is in this really ****ty 113 lookalike, it burns like one too. I forget what kind of gun is mounted MMG or HMG, but it isn't important, one RPG or even a decent string of HMG rounds or grenades and goodbye track. Armored Infantry is a little bit better, the Warrior has comparable or better protection than a Brad, but the gun sucks and no TOW. They all have 81s though, which is nice. Tanks are similar, Challenger is a bit better protected, but not enough to actually influence tactics. Artillery, same same.

2pam chloride, meth, and antropine were the ones I remember.

Honestly, that's more of a worn-out old joke. Although Parisians were *******s when I was over there. The people in Nice were nice though, along with another coastal, touristy town who's name escapes me at the moment. Other than grey-area rule bending that crosses the line into blatant cheating on exercises, their .mil types seemed professional when we trained together. I've never operated with them, but it stands to reason they are competent. Most nations in NATO are. Gaming wise, I'd probably get a French module after a short while playing with Normandy. Modern units and campaigns interest me moreso than WW2. EDIT: "People in Nice were nice" That was honestly unintended, but it's so terrible I'm leaving it there.

It occurs to me that we may actually be talking past one another; I was speaking from experience mostly with MGs mounted on vehicles and JonS was placing more emphasis on the dismount role, possibly? At least that's the impression I get from "running your ammo depth dry in moments". The mention of the M2HB in the opening post threw me off. Cutting a ten or fifteen round Z isn't terribly unusual from a turreted M2HB, the newer ones aren't nearly as horrible with regards to recoil as the old mounts. I recall CPT Mike was/is a Stryker guy and it seems if fired from an RWS the weapon is held rock-steady. I have no firsthand experience with them, so I couldn't say. FWIW

Ah roger, thank you.

Yeah, Dangerous Waters had an outstanding one, made me feel like Red Storm Rising and stuff. That being said, controlling multiple units with voice in CMSF probably won't be as awesome for me, I manage in real time without keyboard shortcuts, but I'll give it a shot.

So you're saying you have the game now and it's version 1.10?

Danger close is six hundred meters for mortars and artillery, seven hundred fifty for naval gunfire. It's not the safe distance just the "possible danger, additional controls in place to keep from killing yourself." It's meant to err on the side of caution.

A sixty weighs four pounds, an eighty-one weighs between ten and sixteen, a one-twenty weighs thirty-five. Mortars don't have the kind of logistical support that artillery does, since they are much closer to the fighting; more or less they have what they have onboard mortar vics/tracks and not much else. Howitzers are the workhorses. Mortars are well liked because they are organic to the supported formation. Barring highly unusual circumstances a battalion commander will always have a platoon of medium or heavy mortars available to influence his fight. A company commander will always have his mortar section available.

Never tried it.

I was actually referring to getting the blue player to pause in an FO's line of sight.

Just curious about your reasoning, why have the MGs in the first trench?

As unpopular as they are, mines work for this purpose. It would be nice to have alternatives available.

General is a mix of point detonating and airbursting. Armor is the same HE, but with a slightly tighter grouping. With artillery batteries, Area Fifty Meters-->General-->Heavy-->Short works ninety percent of all the situations you face. It actually covers about 75 meters effectively, infantry suppressed with a few routed, armor banged around if not knocked out, light vehicles burning, buildings lose a rooftop, contour lines changed, etc. Mortars are a different kettle of fish; eighty-ones are roughly comparable to one-oh-five howitzers, one-twenties are a small step behind one-five-five howitzers. Sixties are pretty weak, more powerful than forty mike-mike, but they are responsive, lethal to exposed infantry and have ammo for plenty of missions provided they are short or quick. Great for shutting down machine guns and ATGMs in trenches. I like sixties and one-five-five. One-oh-five, what's the point? Eighty-one sits in an awkward position, it's not really better at killing infantry than sixty, either kills them all, it's not really useful against buildings and it has a lot less ammo on-hand. One-twenty works wonders on smaller buildings, but one-five-five does everything it does, usually better on top of having more ammo. The only difference is if you lose your FO, then one-five-five is as slow as Syrian mortars, like nine or eleven minutes for a fire mission. Then you realize one-twenties are only good enough to put out like five or six fire missions before they run dry. Linear. Point means one point.

Has a lot to do with fire superiority though. Some people think that ranks pretty high.

75% is my planning figure.

Ah roger. Always wondered wtf that second bar was.

Oh yeah, certainly, never disagreed there. Though I see how you could've read it that way.

I think a more realistic depiction would be the gunner tending towards longer bursts until his target is pinned or retreating (vehicle), then reverting back to sustained rate of fire. It's low pri though, MGs are already fairly good at taxing the player who lets MGs get shots in at 50-700 meters.