Apocal

If you have air on station, you might as well use it. It's not like you get a bonus for returning them to base with unexpended ordnance.

This is a problem that can be addressed by more realistic scenario and/or campaign design. There are variables in scenarios for expending ammo and in campaigns for resupply of ammo between missions. If there was a possibility of another fight right around the corner with no chance of resupply, you'd see a lot more players either A) carefully watching their expenditures or losing. This is realistic as well, as there are several accounts of American forces running out of supplies during the initial invasion of Iraq, most prominent (in my eyes) being the Battle at Objective Titans, a part of the thunder run into Baghdad. And it's worth noting that had the ground portion of ODS gone on any longer than it did in real life, we'd have had very real problems keeping the lead elements supplied.

Concrete piercing. Used for bunkers and sturdy buildings, made from like concrete, stone, adobe, etc.

Unfortunately for all involved, that special role is bull**** to begin with. If the littoral threat is that great*, you're going by helo from much further out than even an EFV can hope to cross. *Great enough to justify an OTH amphibious assault. If not, you can just wade ashore with what we have right now.

It was the Battle of Khafji during ODS. The sortie started off in darkness, but it stayed on station a few minutes too long and got taken out by a Strela. That plan was cancelled. Apparently the 30mm guns weren't accurate enough.

1) The Mk19 already has precalculated indirect firing tables. I'm not sure if the upgun can elevate far enough to make use of them though. 2) The Mk19 is inaccurate enough in direct fire mode to make 1) mostly a waste of time and effort. Putting 40mm into dead space occassionally? Sure. Dedicated indirect fire support, no.

If you're using a lot of vehicles against other vehicles, that's why. They tend to take everyone with them when they go. Especially Syrian vehicles. Survivability is apparently a four letter word in Russia. Because historically artillery accounts for the majority of battlefield casualties while being one of the least lethal. When it comes to strictly direct fire engagement, a 1-to-1 ratio is historical. That isn't to say that CMSF is perfect, but it's not completely out there by any means.

I find myself wishing I could have the map editor of CMx2 and the open scripting of VBS2 put together in one game.

I think, I'm not totally sure, that if the XO or CO is nearby units take less of a morale hit when taking casualties. I'm almost postive it mitigates the morale hit when they lose a leader. Defensively, if your first contact with the Americans lasts longer than 30 seconds or doesn't kill a squad's worth of troops or a vehicle right off the bat, you are doing it wrong. Sustaining contact as the Syrians, except in cases where you have some absurd degree of overmatch, is like trading punches with Mike Tyson in his prime. You aren't going to win doing it. On the attack, I just apply as much combat power I possibly can to whatever critical point I can find. It's hit or miss.

I don't lose very many of them and I have no problem sending them into hot areas. Are you guys leaving them parked in the middle of the street or something?

SACRILEGE! Seriously though, the SMAW was designed with typical assault duties in mind, i.e. cracking open enemy fortifications. That it has a anti-tank round available is mostly secondary. At least using AT4s you can pray for miracles with a volley. I generally just call them in right off the bat. No reason to wait really.

In either case, the arty AI is smart enough to use CP shells and fuze settings, so it doesn't matter, in my experience.

The bipod is what's used undeployed (who in the world would mess with a 240 in the prone unsupported?), setting the gun to deploy has the crew setup the full tripod and T&E. And if you have a (stable) way to setup a tripod on a parapet, some very active people in the DoD would be grateful to hear it. It's realistic as is. Tripods aren't suitable everywhere.

We didn't use AC-130s during the march up to Baghdad for very good reasons. They are about as vulnerable as an attack helicopter all things considered, and we continuing losing helos to concentrated ground fire and MANPADs right up until 2006 IIRC. Plus, I don't think we're able to have a platform that only operates at night.

MTTs or MiTTs. Military Transition Teams.

Funny that Close Combat having precisely zero formations, zero SOPs and pretty much zero of anything except a workable morale model and decently realistic small arms performance doesn't prevent it from being used for training.

I'm disappointed anything but "SLOW", "SLOWER" and "BLANK STARE" is available as a movement command.

For most units, use the targeting button, if you're hull down, it will say "Spotter is hull down" or "Spotter is partial hull down" along the targeting line. I'm unaware if weaponless recon vehicles can do this, in which case it's trial and error. Yes. Behind terrain, at least. Yes.

Honestly, I don't like reconning much with the Syrians. They generally don't have the assets to exploit an information advantage. They are VERY capable of taking my recon forces, chewing them up and then going down the street to use the rest of my forces as a toilet, while I screw around trying to be a masterful tactician. Gamble big, win big.

Get hull down. Wait. Or better yet, dismount some troops with optics; strangely enough, antiarmor teams are great for this because they are small and have the CLU which absolutely ****s over all other man-portable sensors.

I don't know if I'd call very many people green after a NTC rotation, nor the training leading up to it.

This is understandable. Only in the virtual world Eh... you can use historical evidence to argue either way. Lots of cases of soldiers flat out refusing to continue after seeing what would be considered "minimal" casualties to a wargamer. I can imagine soldiers refusing to unass their track and simply leaving the door locked while the first sergeant beat on the door with his pistol. Much shennanigans is explained by this. I thought this was a CMx1 issue fixed in CMx2?

The explanation I got was that the scout's needed situational awareness upon exiting the Bradley as opposed to being down-ramped into the unknown.

Straight from the manual.

In one burst, I've seen spreads of around 2 meters. Probably the biggest problem is getting a good angle to view it, because you have to right on the line of fire to notice any shift at all. Yeah, that's part of what was screwing me up when I looked for the effect. It is there though. Probably it would be more noticeable if the gunner's would fire longer bursts with MGs. And honestly, it should be more pronounced (especially at 2km) when you're firing off a M3 tripod. The tripod is good and it's very stable when sandbagged, but vehicular mounts are absurdly stable. I'm guessing an ad hoc tripod setup as shown in game for HMG squads would have much more horizontal deviation.