Apocal

That is really annoying, I agree.

You can honestly say you didn't expect that kind of reaction going with the line "death trap?"

Yes, you do. 500lbs - "That was pretty cool." 1000lbs - "Whoa!" 2000lbs - "HOLY ****!"

Weren't you the same guy who the beat the enemy so hard in the Marine campaign they had no units left for the next mission?

Swine flu.

OK, coming back and rereading my post I realize something was lost in translation from my brain to my fingers. I meant once you've completed the Western Front series, all the modules, all the content and such, is there any hope of something like a Combat Mission Western Front gold edition, with everything plugged into everything else? I mean, not much (if any) new content, just the whole thing in one shebang. It's modular, so it should just kind slot together, right?

I always wondered why they didn't simply reflag or redesignate or whatever the brigades as regiments and go from there. Especially now, since an Army brigade combat team is a close organizational parallel to a Marine regimental combat team. And aren't the 82nd's brigades known as their respective parachute infantry regiments anyway? WTFO?

Partly. It has a function, it's just under the hood. If you're calling arty down, it decreases the time spent dialing in the mission and you need fewer (if any) corrections. I *think* it also makes it so that aircraft carry laser-guided munitions never fail to spot the target, but I'm having problems setting up a scenario where I can consistently get the conditions right to test that theory. I might be mixing it up with the FSV though, because in-game I use both vehicles the exact same. I'm pretty sure the 4km by 4km maps we get don't do the LRAS3 justice though. You're better equipped to answer that than I am.

I don't believe it's at all realistic for a battalion or smaller on the front line to receive resupply via train.

Tactically, does this matter? Honest question.

Company: Checkmate Platoon: Blue Vic: 2 Squad: 4 If the squad had to talk on the Bn net for whatever reason they'd be "Checkmate Blue 24 (two-four)." If the vehicle had to talk on the Bn net, they'd be "Checkmate Blue 2".

That's awesome.

I have a video of 96 guns laying 1536 DPICM shells onto a target, dated April 2003. I don't think we have planeloads of smart 155 rounds. Even if we did, in many cases, historically most cases, artillery targets have either been moving or ill-defined or both so the area effect was a necessary component. Maybe we've fixed things since, but the commander of the 3rd ID himself remarked that in spite of all of our satellites, UAVs, signal monitoring and special reconnaissance capability, his division didn't know where Iraqi troops and tracks were until the Iraqis began firing at them. I imagine for that reason he was (according to Takedown: The 3ID 21-day Assault on Baghdad) a big fan artillery, especially DPICM. They had precision munitions, SADARM and possibly Cooperhead, available but mention of it being used is only made once, in reference to destroying a single T-55 tank spotted by a group of scouts early in the campaign. I certainly think it would be awesome if something like fifty precision guided munitions could take the place of five hundred. But I also remember the air force had been hitting armies precisely for the better part of fifteen years before they got it right. And the conditions under which they got it right were a largely incompetent military, on a pool table flat desert, with lots of tanks and armored vehicles. When they weren't under those conditions, at close of business the effects were underwhelming. Oh I certainly think the concept of a medium force is great; networking technology so we get sensor-to-shooter with no middlemen, hell yeah I'll vote for that; simplified logistics, fo' sho'. It's when it's turned into a kind of half-breed, "meaner than a Stryker but tame compared to Abrams/Bradley at twice the price" that it loses me. Most definately. But it's looking like at least some of the FCS program will see the light of day. Actually, I'm pretty sure parts of it already have. Which is at least one benefit of that whole system of systems marketing slogan.

That's slightly longer than normal but not unusual. Battles last up to two hours and some change.

I'm trying to look at things holistically. The real logistic weight of artillery is in the ammunition. Going by Jim Dunnigan's "How to Make War" a U.S. heavy brigade uses 1,000 tons of ammunition per day on the offense. Elsewhere in the book he states that 70% of a division's ammunition goes to artillery, which I'm assuming (anyone correct me if I'm grossly wrong) holds true for brigades in our current force since DIVARTY is no more. Deploying a Paladin by air sucks, no arguing about it. But it's a one time suck and since a brigade only has 16 of them, it's a 500 ton one time suck. Keeping the pieces in powder and projos is going to be a 700 ton daily suck. Which still leaves out the 120mm (gun and mortar), 25mm, TOWs, small arms and other odds and ends of the ammo business. Then you get down to fuel which, again according to norms, is going to 200+ tons daily on the defense. And so on and so forth through other, sundry items that a fighting force needs to continue, well, fighting. So what are we really saving by going with lighter vehicles "not necessarily optimized for high-end combat"? Obviously my bias against the whole "air deployability" metric is creeping out and the numbers I'm using could be wrong, but still I'm left wondering, "Did I miss something or did someone else?" The mismanagement aspect of things... I don't believe I've seen a single major program without flaws so it's just kind of icing on the cake.

Realistically though, that's a lot of sound files above the simple "Enemy troops ahead!" and "Enemy vehicle spotted!" Just a simple line of text and a radio squelch would aid the player's situational awareness immensely.

Any chance of a once off, all-encompassing game covering the Normandy landings to the end of the war?

Wasn't most of the actual gun technology of the NLOS-C taken from the Crusader? And you can have relatively rapid (10-15 days) deployability for a complete heavy division if you prepositioned equipment on ships. And they'd offload with either two weeks or thirty days worth of supplies and more enroute, for something like 15-20 additional MPS ships.

Probably not for everything, but if they do relatively well in Afghanistan, then a lot more then they currently are slotted for. Then what is the point of this vehicle? If Strykers are sufficient for SASO and other low-intensity assignments and the current heavy-mech force is considered top of the line for high intensity combat, why the hell should we buy FCS? Yeah sure, winning when you only field 9 players (in this case whatever fraction of current heavy-mech capability FCS offers) makes you seem brilliant, but when you lose you just look ****ing stupid.

I know how to do it, I just wished it was directly called that to slap the player in the face.

Are you sure it's not because they've spotted armor?

I always felt that in addtion to the minor, tactical and major victories, there should by a Pyrrhic Victory triggered when you utterly gut your force for an insignificant objective.

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Sorry for weighing in late, I kind of forgot about this topic. Hate to hit-and-run a thread and all that. Gladiator fights anyone? Historically speaking, the de-glorification of violence is a relatively new thing for the western world, although taking a longer view of the past shows it's generally tied to relative affluence. Money seems to have a mellowing effect on people. Both Operation Flashpoint and Armed Assault include civilians and I can recall many missions over the years that included relatively realistic depictions of civilians mixed in combatants. The victory criteria is incredibly open-ended although most missions made some semblence of an attempt to penalize players for shooting civilians. The best was a small-scale COIN campaign mission in Operation Flashpoint where the player was given a handful of troops, a few vehicles and a brewing insurgency that had placed arms caches around the map. The players could interact with civilians in various ways, talking to them, interrogating them, bribing them, detaining them or killing them, which played out in various ways, i.e. you weren't penalized for killing an IED maker but you were massively penalized for killing/detaining someone who was innocent or only somewhat linked to the insurgency. This penalty took the form of peope who were previously neutral becoming insurgents. So if you killed the wrong people consistently, you'd eventually piss everyone on the island the off, you'd never find the arms caches and they'd come at you in numbers until you finally had only your FOB to fall back to and you were either killed or held out until evacuated. It was actually the most complete and illustrative examples of COIN in gaming I've seen, because you actually had reason to leave the Abrams and artillery (use of which would turn civilians against you) and ride the Humvee to town. Most people were fencesitters, in the beginning and would refuse to talk to you. A few would give intel on the locale of arms caches, but some were so shady it was hard trusting what they said. A handful would shoot at you. Certain people you'd *know* were insurgents and probably hosting arm caches, but they were community "leaders" so you couldn't kill, detain or even interrogate them without angering others. It was a constant balancing act between carrot and stick, conventional approach (levelling an insurgent stronghold w/ arms cache with your Paladin battery) or unconventional (paying them wages to join your side). The only somewhat distasteful mission I ran across was actually based somewhat closely upon the events of Operation Red Wing; players assumed the role of a 6-9 man reconnaissance team that has been compromised, with the only viable way out of the immediate area being through a hamlet occupied by unarmed but unfriendly civilians. Your options at that point are to ignore the civilians (leading to the civilians ratting you out and masses of enemies converging on your team), detain all the civilians (giving you additional time before they are able to rat you out), or kill the civilians and hide the bodies. There was more to the mission than that, but the fact that it included a moral choice that was left open (no penalty for killing the civilians). That being said, of all the times my gaming clique played the mission (10+) only once did people go with killing civilians (and that I suspect just to see what happened). I'm sure there are individuals out there building massacre recreations and playing them solaitaire, but for the most part people are mature, even in the FPS world. Just because you have a few ****heads who can't drive doesn't mean you close the roads for everyone, right? I noticed that as well, Marines and former insurgents were apparently some of the people guiding development of the game. Although I question if it's cancellation is due to the games controversial nature and not because it looked to be shaping up like a cheesier, more arcadey-version of CoD4... So essentially, you'd like an unrealistic, ahistorical depiction of ground combat... I see.

I am doubtful that K43 will depict batttalion-level combat well. I would be (pleasantly) surprised if they pulled it off. But I agree fully that K42 is the best "old-school" tank sim since... ever. I thoroughly enjoyed peeking out over the top of my commander's protective plate trying to spot ATGs, other tanks and infantry. And it is hand's down the best depiction of actually being inside a vehicle in rough terrain I've seen.