Apocal

I don't believe any helicopter has selectable ammunition types, I could be wrong though. IIRC, all the rounds are combat mixed and ballistically identical. Well, considering the increase in tooltip in the last patch, we're headed in the right direction.

Yeah, I'm on xfire now.

I'd get Marines before getting Brits, honestly.

Coming from WeGo gave me a few bad habits in Real-Time. Like obsessively watching my moving units with the "Target" button depressed, waiting for anything to pop up. Constantly assigning targets in much the same manner to my infantry, lots of target arcs when defending, insanely detailed waypoint strings that had my vics braking more or less constantly, etc. After about a week I realized the TacAI could handle that stuff fine on it's own 90% of the time. The primary exception is ATGMs in overwatch. They sometimes make... questionable decisions.

They fire what they have loaded.

You can fire it out of a window. Theoretically, I haven't tried it in real life insofar as they are not about to let me fire a $75K missile for personal enjoyment. You'd need an absurdly tall building firing at a fairly short range to get anything better than a grazing angle on the top armor. That's a far more likely proposition, but still not really one you can count on. Watch vehicles carefully as they drive, they pitch forward and back regularly. Ideally, you shoot and scoot, generally from the rooftops or out of the front door because most ATGMs don't have soft launch, then run back inside. It's not really ideal, and it requires some forethought, but it works.

They shouldn't have to. Breach command works when at the waypoint selected, you can breach a wall and have them run the opposite way. Not especially so. They occassionally get hosed down by a lucky burst or an RPG, but so does everyone else. What kind of circumstances are we talking about here? Maybe it's just the nature of the situation.

"I do not think that word means what you think it means." Likely.

That was actually my specific intent I had in mind when I planned that engagement area. Nice to know it actually worked after a fashion. No problem. Another thing, you can hold your units in place with a pause command, then issue detailed orders. Double click a Platoon HQ, hit pause (everyone in his platoon paused), then issue orders as needed. If nothing else, you should be able to have your men stop outside each building and "Target Light" inside, so they throw grenades in first, then rush in and murder the survivors. -They don't have many ATGMs and they use RPG with a lot of OG-7Vs, so even uparmored Humvees can shrug off multiple hits. They have some newer gear, but for the most part the stuff would've been outdated against an M60 Pattons and steel pots, let alone our guys these days. -Weapon effects are maybe a little overmodelled (opinion), morale effects are deliberately undermodelled (BF statement). -That kind of action would have been broken up into multiple phases, instead of being one long continuous battle. You could have kinda done it by first devoting a platoon or so and clearing all the hills, then at least getting overwatch established. -You'd have likely had tank support and additional supporting fires provided from Bn Weapons atop all the hills, once they'd been secured, not just one or two. -Body armor, battlefield dominance allowing for speedy evacuation for most of the wounded, and money spent on medical capabilities. I think there were eight battalions involved in taking the city and they took about 80 KIA and 600-900 WIA, which, when you control for reduced KIA ratio, comes out to just about right for taking down a city in the 'proper' fashion. -It's a campaign, all the time. There is no single scenario selection in real life and you always fight tomorrow or next week. People talk about casualty aversion and gnash their teeth at victory criteria simulating such, but it's reality. Of course, the reverse is true as well. Insurgents who blew up two packed AAVs for a cost of six of their own (the initial movement into the city) would feel zero shame in putting their RPGs back in the tree and calling it a day.

Map size is limited by crashes and a 4km x 4km hardcoded max size, time is restricted by hardcoded limits, units though? I just added five battalions to a map, no problem except my framerate is lower than whale poo.

A reinforced company is about my maximum in real time. Even then I'm really only running a platoon of troops and one or two vehicles at a time. As for scale, I can't recall any statement by BF (not to say they didn't make one, just I don't remember seeing it) saying that they'd scaled it down, I think the nature of the forces involved does it for you. How many Syrians would you need to make a Combined Arms Battalion sweat?

The mission was Rahadnak Valley Search.

The AI is not nearly as smart as me. Initially you had it right, pre-emptive fires on suspect buildings, bold movement across open areas, overwatch established, etc. The big thing is that you kinda slacked off on the application of firepower. Before your infantry enter a building, hose it down with 25mm or 40mm or 50cal or a SMAW or two. You'll suppress hidden defenders, allowing your riflemen to waltz in and murder the cowering survivors. And it'll force your opponent to adopt a second-door back defense (which I did from the beginning anyway). The vehicle losses... eh, you did relatively well with the use of smoke, especially to cover dismounting troops. You left some in incredibly open areas, including one AAV I took at the end with an RPG team from a position your 2 LAV overwatch couldn't see. Typically, I'll take a squad or two and establish kind of a 'bastion' for vehicles, where I can park the non-fighting types and they are covered from RPG sneak attack and (ideally) observation from prying eyes. If I'm short on infantry for the task, I'll dismount the vehicle crews and do it. I couldn't believe my eyes when you actually drove down the bridge leading with AAVs without lighting up every building on the other side. I only noticed two mortar missions, the initial smoke mission to get a foothold into town and the one that collapsed my OP. Saved your helos for the end, where they did good work against my parked technicals. The constant vigil of your two LAV overwatch kept my counterattack from coming out. Or else things would have gotten really interesting That being said, it was a tough fight for me and I didn't manage to attrite your infantry nearly as much as I'd hoped to.

You know by the fact that everyone in the building goes flying backwards about five feet.

CQB would become quite awkward.

Just to expand on my original answer a bit, there are a few factors to consider when choosing between up high or down low. The first and foremost is the range. If you're system has a 300 meter minimum range and the building is surrounded by other buildings 50 meters away, that's obviously a non-starter. This variable, more than anything else, should have your less capable ATGMs on or near rooftops the majority of the time. The next is the system's actual ability to ability to kill what it hits. From a ground floor, you can somewhat pick your shot, with an effective keyhole position overwatching a killzone, hopefully interlocking with other AT systems. This works well when you're facing top of the line armor with bargin bin ATGMs, as you can get 90 degree shots to the side armor, rear, etc. In case of only damage, you may have an opportunity for follow-up shots, which might not kill a tank but can render it pretty damned ineffective. When you can reasonably expect to hit anything you can see and kill anything you hit (Kornets vs LAVs), it makes sense to bring them higher to gain more LoS and effectively dominate the terrain. The fantastic thing about ATGMs is that range does not appreciably degrade their lethality, you can hit short, you can hit long, both with equal effect on target. Whenever possible exploit the hell out of this. Likely enemy support is another factor to consider. Light mortars can only hurt you if you're on the rooftops. Against medium (81mm, 82mm) mortars, you can stay at the top floor, they have a limited ability to penetrate rooftops and hit the floor below. Good enough to suppress the team for a minute or so, roughly, usually not enough to cause casualties. Against heavy mortars, I recommend getting an additional floor lower. And then expect casualties on top of an additional helping of suppression. Light artillery (105mm, 122mm) is generally comparable to 81mm mortars in terms of effects and precautions necessary. Medium arty is a whole different ballgame. If your opponent has responsive and plentiful medium arty, I cannot recommend enough you either shoot-and-scoot with your ATGMs or stay on the low floors. I haven't encountered rockets particularly often but they seem to be in-between medium and heavy mortars in terms of effects. Anyone with more experience is welcome to offer their insight. Overall, lower floors are safer from indirect because the people tend to keep their fire support guys back where they only see rooftops and if you target a rooftop with a supporting asset, it will tend to knock the roof out and nothing else. Whereas supporting fires directed at lower floors tend to knock down every floor above the targetted one, in getting shells to it. You can easily test this effect by creating a long building and setting a linear mission to start at one end on the bottom and ending at the other end on the roof. Direct fire HE is another concern. There is no "safe" caliber to get hit by. Large bore HEAT is at times surprisingly ineffective, other times it collapses a roof on your head. HE isn't as devastating, but more consistent. Rapid fire chain type guns (25mm mostly) effectively has better terminal effect by virtue of being strung more or less continuously until you ATGM is knocked out and/or the crew all dead. ATGMs vary, but if it'll knock out a tank, it'll knock out a crew. This ties back into making sure that you have a solid degree of overmatch (both capability and numbers) before you commit to a upper floor positioning plan. Nothing sucks worse than have a Kornet miss the BFIST and having said BFIST slather your building in HEI-T, while calling for fire on the guys it couldn't get with the chain gun. Generally the lower the floor you can place your team and still have them dominate the terrain, the better. In favor of higher floors, CMSF players are rarely stupid enough to advance armor without overwatching infantry, so any low floor ATGM launch is likely to meet a massive response of small arms fire. There are probably other factors I didn't consider at all. But those are the main ones in my mind when deciding where to put my ATGMs.

Best floor: It depends, METT-TC, YYMV, etc. Higher floors give you additional LoS. I have not noticed an increase in misses when fired from on high vs down low.

You can get in another platoon's Strykers. The reason that squad couldn't get in was because it was a Recon Stryker with only so many seats and rifle squads only fit in regular Strykers.

MICLICs are soley missed.

I like that the HQ system is capable of pushing my mundane stacks around while I can control the real breakthrough corps' and armies'. I like the toned down airpower from late patch HoI2, having eight CAS stacks destroy an entire German panzer army in weeks was just BS. I dislike the new supply system. I dislike the new combined arms bonus modifier, because it leads to combinations that make no damned sense having it. Two armor brigades and a mech brigade don't, but two light armor and an armored car brigade do? Are you ****ing serious? I like that you the AI is capable of fighting a decent attrition or maneuver campaign. My first playthrough as Germany, I was bled-white by Britain and France, managed to conquer France and get Vichy on my side, but was so roasted by the campaign (16 months) when Poland attacked (alt his) my divisions just kind of melted away for want of leadership.

:D :D I knew I'd seen your name somewhere, I couldn't place it until I heard your voice.

I like the aggressive movement through open areas. But I bet you wouldn't do that with Woodrum's nuclear IEDs in the AO... Anywhoo, you do a good job of describing your intent and how you accomplish it. And you certtainly have a good grasp of when to push and when to hold. It took me some time before I got the hang of it in CMSF.

In-game or real life? Real life, sure, unless it's BMP-3M. In-game, they are tough as hell, I slathered one in 30mm from a Warrior and it didn't even scratch the optical lens.

Yes, all SPG-9 rounds are effective against BMP-1/2, BMP-3 is quite a bit tougher though.

CMBO's competition was Close Combat, TacOps and a bunch of hex and counter based wargames. Hard to argue it had worse graphics than those.