M Hofbauer

Combat Mission: Operation Desert Syringe Combat Mission: Pimp my Stryker

...with V for ...volume? ...vacuity? ...vanity?

We quized him on this earlier. </font>

We quized him on this earlier. </font>

jihad jamboree ROTFLMAO how about Combat Mission: Insh' Allah ! Combat Mission: Raghead Rave ? seriously, I don't particularly object to "shock Force", but maybe, in line with the CM titles so far, BTS should use the Pentagon's (fictional) title for such an operation? How about: Combat Mission: Operation Syrian Freedom Combat Mission: Bagdad to Damascus or some "Desert" title... Combat Mission: Desert Claw ...naw, that was that bungled Iranian hostages thing, or was it? Combat Mission: Syrian Desert Combat Mission: Operation Syria you get the idea... isnt there already a software title "force commander" , isnt that some 3D-RTS about StarWars?

Steve, There is a massive difference between Tactical, Operational, and Strategic levels of warfare. We are only simulating the Tactical. That is where the combat challeng lies. Operationally and Strategically, Iraq was an easy conquest as far as knocking Saddam out of power. The rest of history is still being written. I'd also suggest reading a lot more about what CM:SF is and isn't. From your comments you clearly are missing some rather critcal facts. Don't feel bad, Sirocco has obviously read a lot on this Forum and he's still missing the point occasionally too </font>

somebody set us up the bomb: ...or with a sign saying: you have no chance to survive make your time. or, like the mayors of the cities where the US military is closing their installations are chanting: all your base are belong to us !

what an excellent reply,, what a stunning, convincing string of thought and argument. ....now, somebody remind me, what was this board all about?

any arab civilians caught in the crossfire will be martyrs. many would readily serve as human shields, but even if they didnt want to, any syrian mother and children unhappy enough to be killed by such tactics would surely be portrayed as slaughtered by the evil enemy GI murderers. if anything, such massacres would only help the agitators. dont you think that if Bush can pull it off re. one of the most enlightened and schooled nation on earth, the syrian leadership (political or, more likely, religious) can not fanaticize the people to tell them the evil american baby-eaters are coming, and they are killing the civilians? if they show the slaughtered corpses and blame it on the US do you not think the people will readily believe it? it is not a syrian thing. governments are lieing and deceiving to aid their goals. works all the time so far as I can tell from history and news. what makes you think the syrians were any smarter than, say, the americans, the russians or the germans? [ October 18, 2005, 11:17 AM: Message edited by: M Hofbauer ]

the early Bradleys had a large rectangular hatch on the rear - not as large as the one on the M113, but roughly similar. Has it gotten eliminated in the unholy process of "improvement" and "progress" just like the firing ports? Reminds me that I havent seen a live Bradley for quite some time now... [ October 18, 2005, 11:17 AM: Message edited by: M Hofbauer ]

actually, Seanachai suggested inclusion of translations in a text-file listing outside of the actual game. I'll put in a vote with c3k. I think some type of English translation (either subtitles or the option for English voices for non-English units -- whether Syrian, Russian, or German) would be a worthwhile addition to the game. </font>

Steve, short on time here. Will reply to the other post next week (some misunderstandings there). You're right about the length of the M203. what threw me off (and made it appear "somehow wrong" to me) is the lack of correct heat shields (incl cooling vents) and the rifling of the M203 tube plus the lack of the M203-sights behind the regular sights. all this makes the weapon look cleaner and more "sleek" and hence lengthy. my mistake. M.Hofbauer btw I like that pic. 3rd ID. rock of the marne. they were here in Würzburg and Schweinfurt for a long time (until they changed for the 1 ID couple of years ago), I basically grew up with the square with four blue stripes.

btw, whats up with the CMSF-logo? That thing is a bit long for an M203, isn't it ? It generally looks weirdish somehow.

now what? first they are raghead nutjobs overturning the regular government or at least a zealotry fundamentalist syrian opposition, and now they are conventional sane rational regulars. I find the arab's suicidal attacks highly asymmetrical. Granted, a regular syrian soldier is probably unlikely to do it - but the fanaticized members of irregular "hitler youth volkssturm"-like masses enrolled by their imams into home defence militia against the american imperialist infidel pigs sure are prime candidates. hmmm...maybe the syrian player will have a blow-up button like in Lemmings...

yes and no, the same basic rules apply like those regarding the Panzerschreck.

I dont see this working. If BTS wants to re-do the drive to Bagdad, it is either going to be a lopsided affair or unrealistic. Of course limiting the player to the Strykeout, denying him the Abrams, setting him up in the few tactical instances where there might be a real challenge goes a long way to help make it interesting, but ultimately it takes the "no phyrric vitories" - condition taken to the extreme to make it a challenge. The iraq war was a rollover. just like everyone expected and predicted, it was not the conquering and the defeat of the iraqi army that posed a problem, but the aftermath of occupying the country. Now keep in mind iraq at that time had one of the most powerful armies in the world. Syrias forces are almost nothing compared to it. So this won't work. What BTS apparently wants is Guerilla Style warfare, with asymmetrical, unconventional, unpredictable tatctics employed by the syrians. to quote Steve However, it is intended for *us* to take the role of the USofA, against the AI playing the unconventional, asymmetrical guerilla syrians. But I just don't see how they can get the AI to conduct the "unpredictable" unconventional-creative asymmetrical tactics. If they claim (probably rightly) that they can't even model the AI conducting a US assault (which most of the time goes pretty much according to textbook...uh, Field manual, and with behavior and tactics that they trained over and over again) properly. I also don't see how they want to model the latest line of US military hardware correct. Here we were talking and arguing over shot traps on early production Panthers or mantlet flaws on late mid-Tiger I models and their resemblence in mm of steel, and now we get modern US equipment whose characteristics are entirely confidential. BTS would have to work with educated guessing. And eben if they used obscure inside sources we would have no way to check the values. Lastly, all this talk about asymmetrical warfare, Strykeout ACs and stuff lets me think this is foremost an infantry game. AAO scenarios going CM. Infantry has never been the strong point of CM. CM, with all its flaws, truly was the first game to truly excel where it came to modeling armor duels between vehicles. There wont be much M1A2 vs. T-72 in this game. I will keep a close, interested look at the development of this game. But for now I am not convinced (yet). A final idea for those guys wanting to play the syringes and hoping for balanced gameplay: since it is going to be a (hopefully ! Bush, Condoleezza and Rumsfeld - I'm keeping my fingers crossed!!) *fictional* scenario set in 2007, why not include some element to the effect that the russians or maybe the chinese or the "usual" rest of the world who are obviously going to oppose against such an invasion would aid the syrians. the story could read along the lines that during the declining diplomatic relations between the US and syria, the looming war is strongly opposed by the chinese and russian governments. chinese head of state shee-tee wok: "in order to deter the US from its warmongering threat to attack the innocent Syrian people, we have decided to supply the sovereign state of syria with the requested means to defend itself". the russians, or ukrainians, could secretly supply the syrians with the latest weapon technology, which they are willing to sell to anyone for cash. Or even the french. Mind you, they are not delivering into a war zone, into an open war against the US, but months or even years before the actual war, during the gradual buildup of tensions. or some such. and voila you got the latest line of OpFor tanks, ATGMs and whatnot. cheers, M.Hofbauer edit: edited for typos [ October 14, 2005, 11:40 AM: Message edited by: M Hofbauer ]

you're american. you're not supposed to play the syrian side. playing the syrian side would classify as an act of active disloyalty and betrayal and would be punishable under the Home Patriot Act with internment in a jurisdiction-free camp for an undisclosed-unknown-unlimited amount of time. BTS will spare you and themselves this unpleasantness and have you play only the star-spangled-banner side in the campaign. if you *do* happen to play the syringes (in your private home, at night, in the basement, with tinfoiled walls) then all you need to know and yell is "yaller yaller" to drive them on. ;o)

that rock-paper-scissors is fine except it doesn't really take much to make it already break off in line 3 where the MGS comes in. because it doesnt take much "crew served weapon" to take out the Strykeout. just let it stumble over some stray syrian S-60 57mm AA gun piece or some such.

a morbid race between dieing first or running out of ammo first, even with that limited ammo loadout a very close race to the bottom...

oh, we have those too: "Der Wertsack ist ein Beutel, der aufgrund seiner besonderen Verwendung nicht Wertbeutel, sondern Wertsack genannt wird, weil sein Inhalt aus mehreren Wertbeuteln besteht, die in den Wertsack nicht verbeutelt, sondern versackt werden." (Dt.Bundespost) Ausfuhrbestimmungen sind Erklärungen, mit denen man Erklärungen erklärt. (Wirtschaftsministerium) Der Tod stellt aus versorgungsrechtlicher Sicht die stärkste Form der Dienstunfähigkeit dar. (Bundeswehrverwaltung) ...and here I was thinking *I* am the poor slob who has to wade through BS-bingo phrasing... p.s.: hope you liked them

Please elaborate on how the rifling affects HE performance. </font>

first off, like many others here I am wondering: where in the world did you get your T-34/85s from in autumn 1943 ?!? Im not sure I understand. did you ever take a look at a Panther A ? - it is *not* a side turret issue. the problem is the gun mantlet construcion, which makes for nice ricochets alright, but in the lower half it thereby tends to deflect the projectile downwards into the thin top armor and joint between turret and hull. a hit to the "shot trap" on the Panther A registers as a "front turret penetration at weak spot" in CMBB. if you had "side turret hit partial penetration" disable your Panthers then it was definitely *not* a shot trap issue. or did I misunderstand you ? now, as regards the original scenario and problem, SU-85s even with their lousy late-43 85 ammo can kill Panthers pretty much ok if you gang up on them (like everyone repeatedly said - stack up or dont engage at all) at or below 500m. be prepared to lose one or two SU-85s in the process, however. at that range the 85 *can* penetrate the Panther A turret front independent of shot trap. the whole setting is very reminiscent of the old Pz IV problem - you are invulnerable at the hull but toast if they hit your weaker turret. it's when you're wondering whether hull down is really such a good idea. like JasonC already said - 122 will kill the panther turret even at remotely realistic ranges, and 85 starts hurting between 500 to 750 meters. I'ld say you will have a hard time hitting anything at that range with the IS-2'S 122mm gun, good luck. ...hehe...plus the building doesnt run away so the slow rate of fire is not an issue ) BD6 already pointed out how he uses the IS-2s popping up like moles; especially enjoyed his remark about "emasculating a great tank like that" *g* ...oh yeah...thats why the us didnt have the M10 and the M36, the russians didnt have SU85s, 122s and 152s,...and the germans didnt build the Royal Tiger, the Maus and what not. ...IOW, I thinks that's too general a statement. like you said yourself, the russians did introduce SPAT themselves, plus of course the germans didnt abandon tanks and go SPG only. eventuwally they streamlined tank production to less than a handful of variants, but their additional use of SPGs made sense. cheers, M.H.

yes, i think that's true. comparisons get muddy when you start comparing different variants, but basicly T-64 had better armor, faster autoloader, more ammo... </font>

it was meant as a joke aimed at the faulty reasoning underlying the initial post. ok I didnt want to go into this but - I have a few concerns about all this. one of them is my concern about this new trend that russian equipment is the best thing since sliced bread. I fear that something similarly subtle yet horribly wrong might happen here as it did with IL-2. to elaborate: not originally a trackhead, I come from the aviation enthusiast corner decades ago. when there was all this hype about IL-2 being the best and most realistic flight sim out there, I eventually gave it a try (in the bargain bin). ok, my very first mission, i barely knew the basic controls. maximum realism, of course. I have a Polikarpov I-16 Rata. my airfield is under attack, opening of barbarossa '41. I barely manage to get airborne, there is quite a bit of chaos with friendly and enemy aircraft. a lone high-flying Ju-88 is flying away after having dropped its bombs. I chase after it, knowing it is futile: I still hadnt figured out how to retract my gear, and I keep overheating the engine. I manage to fiddle around with the engine shutters and cooling to keep it working, but I never figure out how to retract the damn gear, actually I wasnt even sure if I had retracted it or not. nevertheless, I was easily able to catch up with the Ju-88 (!!!) and pretty effortlessly shoot it down, then return to my airfield. the video clearly showed I had my gear down all the time ! exhilarated at very first over my victory, but then, after quick reflection on what just had happened, very disappointed: what a let-down ! now, catching up with an empty Ju-88 that is making a fast descending exit home, in a decrepit little Rata with its gear down... plus this thing, as I later found out, flies wonderfully against Me-109s - one would start to wonder why the russians would ever feel the need to develop anything beyond that good ol' peashooter Rata ! here's another thing: russian military equipment looks good on the paper. ships, tanks, aviation, avionics, optics, everything. they have fabulous data. but only on paper. reality looks different. it is faulty, poor craftsmanship, crude. non-working. prone to malfunctions. I know it. I've seen it. during the cold war there was a military joke here in germany about how to tell american vehicles from german vehicles. the joke went on that you could tell the american designs by the buckets and pans under the vehicles to collect all the oil dripping down. of course, despite some grain of truth somewhere (the original M113 was notorious for that), it was a joke. but the real truth is that compared to the russian equipment the US stuff was top notch craftsmanship, excellent work... I have some other, even bigger concerns about this T-72 Balkans game, but there is also this fear that in this game I will be wondering why the russians ever bothered to evolve beyond the T-54/55 or even the T34/85. this fear so far is unsubstantiated and I will be more than happy to see that it was unjustified. cheers. [ May 12, 2005, 12:41 PM: Message edited by: M Hofbauer ]

Huh, whazat? Sorry, I was just looking over the new contract for "Big Hootered Immoral Coeds Gone Wild With Bald Bouncers" which we are going to publish later this year. What did you guys ask again? Madmatt </font>