Apocal

I can also recommend "House to House" and "Hard Corps." Very intense, particularly the first, with scenes of climbing through pipes filled with raw sewage to sneak up on insurgents, hand-to-hand combat with foreign fighters and a very frank view of combat.

I know, I've heard the horror stories.

That's because this game is entirely too forgiving of when it comes to western troops calling for fire support. I've heard even highly-regarded troops screw things up; hint the O-T line is almost always different than the G-T line. Yeah I noticed that when I looked for a way to copy and paste the text straight from the PDF. I was hoping it was a misprint.

I was wrong, the manual mentions Cooperheads, not Excals. Point stands though. Well, Gimmlers is nearly the same thing, functionally, so that's definite a mark in BFC's favor.

So, we get Excals for the M109s (IIRC, been awhile since I played with them) but M777s are a no-go? Also, I find the reasoning that allows for platoons, companies and battalions to drop $150-400K LGBs on targets, but not $80K Excals... highly dubious.

Why aren't Excals available for the M777? If I recall correctly, that was one of the keypoints of their introduction into service, an Excal-shooter without the overhead of self-propulsion.

Early intel gives you "?" at or near the enemy positions. The AI will not fire at "?" only fully detected and identified units. That's my conclusion.

That's certainly an acceptable tradeoff; from reading the "The Highway War" by a LAR company commander, the one obstacle preventing the LARs use in their doctrinal role was a deficiency in the number of dismounts they had available to clear cities and other congested terrain. It's not at all a stretch to say the USMC took a hard look at keeping LARs relevant and parcelled them out to other formations, while maintaining a "recon heavy" combined arms formation for Corps-level recon, screening and some security. I really like the additional speed for the Recon Bn. Essentially, you're acknowledging the ground-level truth that LAVs are far more operationally mobile than main battle tanks, if only because of their much more modest logistical tail. A LAV requires fuel every (roughly) 72 hours, compared to 12 for an M1. A LAV blows a wheel, it's a 15-20 minutes process (AIUI) to replace it, whereas an M1 loses a track, that's an easy hour or two spent fixing. Pallets of 25mm are easy to cart around, 120mm not so much. A 25 vic LAV company requires roughly the level of support (or slightly less, I can't recall the specifics off the top of my head) that a M1 tank platoon does. I'm also biased because I'd like to see some good scenarios highlighting the capabilities of the LARs, because they are certainly interesting formations whose advantages are too often overlooked in tactical wargames.

Yes, I play real time.

Honestly? No, I didn't. Re-reading your post I can't figure out why. At any rate, how do you guys even see that stuff while you're playing? Usually I have to zoom way the **** out to actually have any sort of situational awareness and at that distance I can barely discern individual infantrymen, let alone critique their apparel.

It's been awhile since I actually reviewed the applicable FM, but I'm pretty sure they agree with you here. That is "standard" nowadays. Though it's as much dependant on available transport as anything. The guys rolling around in motored or meched up can (and do) carry thousands of rounds of ammunition per man. The solution to that is taking the tracers out of your ammo and mounting a thermal sight on the gun. Out to about... oh 200-300 meters (depending on conditions) you can see the trails left by the rounds and out to maybe 400 you can spot the impacts, or, rather, the effect of impacts well enough to adjust. Longer range, you still need the tracers (or a really good spotter), but honestly from that range it's damned unlikely they'll know where you are accuracy enough for anything but harassing fire. Even assuming they can find you, the enemy generally can't respond effectively. It's impossible for their AKs to get a point across when the 240 just talks right over them.* *Taliban Dushkas and motorized mortars notwithstanding.

That certainly seems realistic. Ah... one thing to remember is that the Tank Battalions of the USMC generally task-organized and parcelled out to lighter formations. I'm not entirely sure if this was uniform procedure during 2003, but certainly at An Nasiriyah, there was only a (reserve) tank company present, which itself was divided into two parts; one (Team Mech) directly attached to the AAV-mounted infantry, the other a seperate, all-tank "super platoon" (Team Tank). On the other hand, the LARs were mostly kept intact throughout the invasion and it's not as if Marines have a suicide pact with their doctrine, so it's entirely possible to say the Tank battalion actually swapped a company out and has three companies of tanks (around 40 M1A1s), a platoon of AAVs (12 amtracs) carrying a company of infantry. That would give it rougly equal fighting power with an equivalent Army combined arms battalion. Of course, the downside is that the Marine Corps only has three such battalions... Another thing to remember is that an AAV Bn has enough tracks (213+) to transport an entire Regt. Sounds awesome, thanks for making this.

Has anyone else noticed that when selecting the MEU(SOC), it gives you "1 x SBCT Howitzer Battery"? And in the LAR Bn is it possible to move the mortars under the individual companies rather than as Bn assets? I was reading "The Highway War" by MAJ Seth Folsom a LAR Co commander and I got the distinct impression they were "his" hip pocket artillery.

I'm thinking something in the platoon/company region, built with real time in mind, following a single set of core forces. Are there any like this out or am I going to have to get started on my own?

IIRC, within the MEU, one rifle company is mechanized, another heliborne and the last is built for small boat insertion (which essentially means light infantry). More realistically, a mix of mechanized (AAV), motorized (Humvees and MVTRs) and heliborne should be used for the individual battalions?

It's like chasing women, no fun when it's that easy.

As I recall it's an intentional simplification, because once players get a launcher that raises and lowers, they'll demand a realistic delay. A realistic delay means additional TacAI requirements, because someone is going to demand the AI intelligently deploy the launcher. And so on and so forth.

grazing fire Definition: (DOD, NATO) Fire approximately parallel to the ground where the center of the cone of fire does not rise above one meter from the ground. Taken from FM 7-7, appendix C. As I understand it, it's used as a barrier rather than aimed at any one unit. With grazing fire, you create a wall of lead through which no credible force can pass. I've tried doing it in CMSF and it doesn't appear to function. Not a huge loss; tactically, area fire fills the same role in-game. I like it because it's effective range is longer than 5.56 and the tripod means even more effective range than the SAW. And it's a dedicated crew. When I have an MG, I know what it's role is, I know exactly how I'm going to use it.

A lot of football players go home and play Madden. When your work legitimately interests you, playing games related to it isn't unusual.

Chat with the people on and see if you can arrange a game. Generally one person hosts, he picks the scenario. The person joining selects "Join Network Game" and types in his IP. Typically the port is 7023.

I'm on right now.

Some flavor of Halon, yes? Yeah, Halon is some nasty ****. The only reason we use it is because the alternative of burning to death is (we think) worse.

Dude, no offense, but I really have trouble following what you're trying to say here.

SHHHHHH! It's supposed to be a secret!

The air would be unbreathable anyway due to smoke from the fire. The solution is the same either way, open a hatch.