Lee

The endlessly-exploding trench-furrowing BMP's! haha

Attacking Iran is actually a very easy call. First off, they simply cannot be allowed to get nuclear weapons for obvious reasons, *ever*. Israel would be hard pressed to do the kind of bombing necessary to get that done fully, so that leaves us. Secondly, they have been killing our soldiers in Iraq for years, either directly or indirectly through aiding the terrorists groups there to attack us (lots of Kuds involvement) and have been disgracefully allowed to get away with it until now, so they deserve it just for that. Now, I can imagine several people posting about hard it would be to take out that stuff. There certainly are quite a few nuclear weapon site targets, but that's why you keep bombing for as long as it takes, it if takes two weeks, then you bomb for two weeks. And not just the nuke sites themselves, anything related to the support and functioning of the nuclear weapon facilities has to go to. And, perhaps most importantly of all, you take out the lunatics that run Iran. The first target is their parliament, when Ahmadinejad is giving a speech (military command and control targets). Put about 10 2,000lb bombs right in there with stealth bombers and get rid of that trash. Let's see how eager those remaining ayatollah nut jobs in charge of Iran are to kill our soldiers in Iraq after they find out they will personally be killed for doing that to our men. And naturally you also take out their airfields, air defense network, major military bases, etc. This wouldn't even qualify as a third war, no ground invasion, just devastating air power focused on the most important targets for no more than a few weeks, which will mean very few, maybe none, of our men will be killed. Picture the air campaign in the first Gulf War, and you get the idea. Iran will do nothing meaningful in response, because they will be told that they'll get it 10 times as bad if they dare try anything after we get done eliminating their nuclear weapons production efforts. That's the way to end the problem with these nuts in Iran trying to get nuclear weapons, and make them pay for the many U.S. (and Brit, too, I'm sure) soldiers they have already killed in Iraq through the assistance they are giving the terrorists. And Putin will secretly love it, as he can then have fun selling Iran the same stuff we just got done destroying all over again.

This is great, they should have been doing this for years, as Syria has been letting terrorists use their country as a staging area for attacks on our troops in Iraq from day 1. Iran is the one that really needs blasted, but that will be heavy bombing, not just a raid on terrorist camps and stuff like that. And as a bonus, it looks like BTS's theoretical war against Syria in CMII just got even more credible. hehe

Sounds cool, have fun getting to shoot the guns and blow away terrorists. haha Be sure to send us pictures from the front, and shoot video of any air strikes you witness and any good shoot outs. And we expect at least DVD quality on the video, with great sound quality to match, so don't compress it very much, none of that youtube junk.

Those remote controlled tanks are cool!

Not really. If a bunch of cowardly terrorists are in a house hiding behind civilians (which is a scummy low they have proven willing to stoop to, but what do you expect from trash like that?) while firing RPG's at our tanks as they pass, then you return fire before they can kill our men. Whether it be canister or an HE round doesn't really matter (both are very deadly), you do what you have to protect our men, their lives come first. The shame is on the terrorists for behaving in such a dishonorable way, it's on their heads and their's alone. Anyhow, we're talking about the various possible ways to tactically employ a canister round here. Why bring up hypothetical stuff like this, you can say the same thing of just about any weapon, so what's the point? The situation I mentioned was about a fire fight between our troops and terrorists fighting from inside a building, I didn't say anything about civilians being present, it has nothing to do with my example. Our troops are in war zone, a thankfully vastly safer and more quiet war zone over the past year, but a war zone nonetheless. Sometimes in war friendly fire casualties are sustained, or maybe civilians get caught in a crossfire, you try to avoid that, but it happens.

That's a slick looking model.

Steve: My "virtually impossible" statement was in the context of what I was describing, which was a detailed analysis of the tactical situation. If I wanted to, could I hurriedly issue orders to my units in RT to get them, in a general sense, to do what I want them to do? Sure, I could do that, and probably quite well (I can think fast on my feet and such), and I'm sure you can to, but the difference is in the depth of thought that can applied in RT vs WeGo. I've been in highly complex tactical situations in CM where only a very careful analysis of the current situation, as well as anticipated future moves by my PBEM opponent, would allow me to set up my very clever and intricate trap. This simply could not be done in real time, if takes too much time to go through all that stuff. To paraphrase your earlier statement, what you are giving up is depth and detailed thinking (as it pertains to plans too complex to be gone through in real time). A wargame against a real opponent is a battle of wits, and I enjoy that mental chess match that goes on and the detailed planning it requires. It's so much deeper than playing a FPS (which is also fun, but in a very different way) and I like to take the time to get into the details of it, RT would force me to gloss over too many of the fine details. And CMII has sooo many cool little details that have an affect on the battle. Now, I grant you that this is a preference of how to play the game. If someone wants to play a game of CMII with reinforced battalions on each side in RT and is willing to give up the aforementioned very detailed planning, then that's fine by me, I might even try it just for kicks. All I'm saying is that WeGo should be set up to allow the full enjoyment of that playing mode. Such as being able to pause and rewind the combat video without having to see (it can still be calculated as it is now, just don't display it) everything that happens in the full minute of combat in advance, etc. I suppose that you could approximate the ability to plan in depth when playing RT against an opponent, if you paused the game every minute or so and for considerable length when the situation called for it. But how many opponents that want to play RT in the first place are going to want to wait around for you to plan out your very complex counter attack while the game is paused? Probably not very many, therefore you might as well play WeGo.

You still don't want to let enemy infantry get anywhere near your tank, *very* dangerous for the tank. But if you're in a tough situation with enemy infantry nearby, this at least gives you an emergency round you can fire to try and stop or suppress them. Or in a place like Iraq, you can just use it to blast houses with terrorists hiding out in them, or clear an alley they might be in trying to flee from our troops.

I think the effective range was listed as something like 600 yards.

Steiner14: Exactly. As I pointed out before CMII ever came out, other than perhaps in very small battles, where you might be able to get away with it, it's not possible to make the kind of detailed combat decisions that are needed in a sophisticated wargame like CMII in RT. The player is in effect given the task of doing the thinking that would normally be done by all the sergeants and officers in his force, and in a medium to large size battle you simply can't do that in real time. You are being asked by the game to be involved in *far* more detailed thinking and direct control over your units than a real battalion commander would have to do (because he has real men that are well trained and capable of making complex tactical decisions dynamically taking into account a huge number of variables while carrying out his orders). And if the player is being asked to do all this thinking, then he needs to have the time to actually do it. You simply need more time than that to think through the complex tactical implications of your orders. And this is especially true in highly detailed and realistic wargame like CMII, where even small tactical errors can lead to disaster for your units. Which is why WeGo is the only practical way to play multi-player for medium to large battles, if you actually want to play with any sort of realistic detailed tactical command decisions being made by your units, which is the whole point of a wargame like CMII. Like Steve said in his post, when you are ordering a tank to move, you are in effect in the role of that individual tank commander at that point, deciding exactly where he wants to place his tank for a good shot on the enemy, and that is correct. Now imagine having to make those minute tactical choices for *all* the tanks in your force, and the APC's, and the infantry units, etc., while also making larger strategic choices on how to thwart the enemy's developing battlefield movements. And you're going to do all that while the battle is being played out in RT? Virtually impossible. Which is why it's critical that WeGo in CMII be fully featured and functional like it is in CM, since it's the only way you can actually play the game the way it's always been intended to be played in anything other than small battles. And I should point out that in my particular case, this has nothing to do with my not being able to click fast enough or whatever. I play first-person-shooters all the time (Day of Defeat, Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2, Battlefield 2, Rainbow 6, etc.) and I am extremely good at them. And in these games lightning-fast reflexes and split-second thinking are your only chance for survival, far more so than you would need in a wargame or RTS game. But for many other very good skilled wargame players, who don't play FPS games like me for thousands of hours, it may well be difficult for them to fly all over the map trying to give orders in a rushed manner, just in terms of reflexes and hand-eye coordination. I don't like RT in any CMII game because you simply don't have time to conduct proper tactical analysis and issue orders (FPS games are very shallow and simple compared to the complexity of a good wargame, but they require extreme mental and physical agility to play well). Whereas a player without fast reflexes and good hand-eye coordination, not only doesn't have time to think about and issue proper tactical orders (which is bad enough), but he also has a very hard time just keeping up with his mouse as to what is going on in the battle. This makes it even worse for them. And since most serious wargamers probably aren't known for their FPS skills, I'm guessing this affects a large number of CMII players.

Just get real English, Irish and Scottish men, soldiers, preferably, to do the voices just using their natural way of saying things. Just the same as we expect Germans to do all the German voices in CMII: WWII. Good authentic voices are a huge plus in a realistic wargame like this.

I'm for bagpipes!

Steve: Well, I certainly hope a way can be figured out to make that work, it would hugely benefit WeGo battles to be able to pause and rewind from the start of the turn. But again, if you can instead give us a "blank screen and no sound" game option for when the turn if first being calculated in 60 seconds RT, so we don't have to see or hear anything, and can then play back a saved video replay of what just happened in the turn, that would work just fine and might be a lot easier that trying to make it work during the first play through (where the RT battle calculations are going on to determine what will happen). Anyhow, you and Charles have my utmost confidence in the matter. Yeah, apparently the way it's set up now the combat calcs and the 3D representation take place at more or less the same time, so it wouldn't really help the frame rate unless they were done like in CM.

Steve: I never said anything about saving time. The point is that you can play the turn video from the beginning while having pause and rewind available, so the battle can be viewed at the player's pace, without having to see the end of the turn (major spoilers) before you even get a chance to savor the part of combat early in the round from various angles. I was just now thinking of a work-around for this problem. Could you instead place an option in the game where when playing WeGo (PBEM or internet) you can click an option box that will tell the game to make the screen go black (nothing visible) and cut all sound while the 60 seconds of real time combat is being calculated? Everything is still being calculated in RT just as before, but you just can't see or hear anything while it's being calculated. Then the game would automatically (the player doesn't have to click anything) rewind the video of the just calculated 60 seconds of combat back to the beginning of the turn, then turn the picture and sound back on, and just pause the video. Now the player can hit the play button and watch the video from the beginning with full pause and rewind as much as he wants with no possibility for spoilers on the big tank showdown that doesn't take place until 38 seconds into the turn. What do you think? Also, as far as separating the 3D and the combat calculations, again, it has nothing to do with saving time. If you have a huge raging battle with tons of units in it, it would allow for higher frame rates (nobody likes to watch a choppy battle) when you do watch the turn video because the computer could devote all it's processing power to just rendering the 3D, not having to handle all the LOS calcs, AI, etc. while also rendering the heavily reinforced battalion on each side of the battle. Anyhow, this is more of a side-benefit, the above point if far more important, as it affects every single turn.

As far a play modes in CMII go, my only request is that PBEM (and internet) WeGo be set up like it is in CM, where the entire turn of 60 secs is calculated in advance all at one time with no graphics, then the file saved to a replay video. Thus allowing the player to watch the video at the pace he wants to, and pause and rewind as much as he wants to without having to sit through the entire 60 seconds of the battle while it is calculated in RT with the 3D graphics in place (and thus spoil any climactic showdowns that might take place near the end of the turn before the player is ready to view them). This also has the advantage of the combat calculations being handled separately from the 3D graphics in WeGo play, allowing for maximum frame rates with the 3D graphics during those big battles with lots of infantry, APC's and tanks. This will be especially important for those huge battles we know scenario designers will make for CMII: Normandy.

I do hope they add the canister round in for the patch with the British module (as an addition for U.S. troops, I'm not sure if the Brits have such a round). It would be really cool to get to use that in a battle. Firing canister rounds at terrorists is one way to break their morale, below is another method. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7cb_1219063451

I was guessing it was a humvee if any vehicle had mounts like that. Thanks for the links, seems we do have some of those cool miniguns in combat over there. There was fire going up, must have been the terrorists, our guys certainly wouldn't be firing in the air like that. But I'm still almost sure that minigun fire at the end was coming from a ground vehicle to the right of the guy with the camera, it was way too close and clear sounding, plus at that distance you would definitely hear if it was a chopper flying there. I've seen a minigun fired, it's extremely impressive.

Check out this cool video of a raid on terrorists in Iraq at night by our troops. One thing I don't quite understand, towards the end of the video a gun fires, it almost sounds like a mini-gun. But I can't think of any U.S. ground vehicle that has one of those mounted on it, do we have one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWG1yiRn2hY&feature=related

Yeah, that is a superb recording of those canister rounds being fired. It's the old grape shot cannon load, this time being fired from a 120mm tank gun, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Did you see how it knocked down all those targets at the end? Very cool! According to a post by a soldier, these canister rounds are being used on terrorists in Iraq now by our troops and work very well. I bet they do, that is one devastating load.

Another vote for detailed armor hit text. You've just got to love seeing that text saying that a round has shattered on your Tiger's armor! Or that spalling has been let loose in an enemy tank from your last hit. Super fun!

Oops, sorry! Here it goes, it's worth the wait. http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do?displayContent=170421&ESRC=army.nl

Check out this excellent video of a 120mm tank canister round being fired, very impressive! This round would absolutely own the enemy if they get caught without good cover.

This is great news the way Steve and Charles are handling this. CMII: Normandy, then 3 or 4 modules for it, and then CMII: Post Normandy with another 3 or 4 modules for that game. This will allow them to go into a huge amount of detail with units, weapons, vehicles, etc. (plus tons of engine enhancements) and really do the western front the right way. It will be CM:BO all over again, only this time with an unprecedented level of graphical detail as well as combat simulation realism. The eastern front wargame will need at least 5 heavy duty modules to handle it properly.

Yes, Winchester means the pilot is down to his guns only. If the term is used together with a specific weapon mentioned, then it can possibly mean he's out of a particular weapon (as in, "Winchester on rockets", and similar types of phrases). Guns dry would mean he's out gun ammo, as well (time to return to base for a reload).