Neepster

I have a question about them? Do they go off accidentally sometimes? I have seen them once or twice detonate when none of my guys (US) were around them or even when my guys shoot at the vehicle with them in it. Typically they kill a fair number of the enemy and generate a large hole as well. Anyone else seen this?

Yes, but velocity of ballistic rounds like .50 cal doesn't bleed off THAT fast. If you are within 500m, 50 cal will likely go through almost any urban wall material with ease. I've seen 50 cal tracer go through car engine blocks (SOLID STEEL) at 100m... Heck that 30mm round in the video went through a concrete block wall at 1000m like a hot knife through butter. In any case, I am often <100m when I am firing and still take forever to get kills.

No one is saying that spraying a building with fire will kill everyone in it, but if you methodically spray a small sun baked brick building (or wood or even block) with 50 cal fire for two or three minutes, most of the people in side will not be combat effective after that time. Yes, things like you describe happen, but it isn't the norm, yes? Usually if you throw frag grenades in a 10x10 room, many if not most people in the room will be badly injured or killed unless there is a lot of cover. With a 50 cal, that goes through almost every cover a Syrian irregular (or even regular) force could conceivably have in that room, it would be even worse. With a grenade, you can duck behind a desk or a bed or something and maybe only get concussed, but a .50 round is going right through that bed or desk and spray pieces of it all around you and through you. Like I said, I can accept the argument that sometimes you just don't get hit, but spraying a smallish room with high caliber weapons for several minutes and having NO ONE or only one or two guys in a squad get hit seems very unlikely to me. And this happens a LOT in CMSF...

Umm... Yeah, but if I send 200 .50 cal rounds (or even 50) into a room that is about 20x20, most people will be dead or hors de combat... That part seems pretty clear. I mean, you can look around your average urban block and you will see very few things that will even slow a .50 cal round down, much less provide cover. Spray 50 of those into an average room, and almost everyone inside will be KIA or WIA... Personally I don't think CMSF models this that well.. however I am open to alternate arguments...

So, after watching that video it seems that lethality of arms through buildings below 25mm is modeled too low in CMSF, although I was impressed at how much better 7.62mm is at penetrating brick and block walls than 5.56mm... I hope BFC will get around to tweaking their modeling (particularly of .50 cal weapons) sometime soon... I also agree that it seems that I can shoot a building full of holes with the Stryker M2 and hardly hit anything.

I'm pretty sure it is the grid causing the issue, although it would be nice to see Steve chime in. It would be easy to "fix" I think. The AI targeting routine or the tracer draw routines will just have to change how they draw the rounds flying to the grid point. Rather than heading to the player target point and then jumping sideways to the grid, they will need to head to the grid from the instant they are fired. It is pretty hilarious to watch them zig zag into the target. I noticed this on the first scenario I ever played with the full version and thought it was crazy weird, and I was seeing it again last night while playing the campaign and it was just bothering me, so I thought I'd mention it.

Ok, that's fine, but can BFC at least have the projectile travel in a STRAIGHT line to the target rather than snapping to the grid at the last fraction of a second and making it look like the ZF-1?

Probably this has been reported elsewhere, but a cursory search did not reveal it. Anyone else seeing weird visual behavior when vehicles (may happen with troops too, but not sure) are firing at a building and the tracers fly to the buildin and then at the last second make a 45-90 degree turn and slam into the building? It is really wierd and very unrealistic... maybe it is an artifact of the 8m grid? Anyway, anyone else seen this?

I'm not saying it doesn't happen to some, just not to me... And I haven't disabled any of my cores... Of course, I am using an XFX Nvidia Geforce 7800GT graphics card, so I am not sure why this isn't happening to me. Anyway, the question still stands... Assuming they can fix whatever bugs they have that seems to not like video cards with dual core procs...

Hmm.. I don't have to disable any cores to play the game on my Core2 Duo E6700...

One of the things that seems to be a fairly common complaint on here is that the AI seems to be far dumber in CMSF than it was in CMx1. To some extent this may just be the AI not being patched to some "good"/future "improved state" extent. However, it seems that some of it is the limitations of coding an AI that operates in "Real Time" that can figure out what to do on the fly in a microprocessor that is simultaneously rendering 3D graphics, controlling the simulation, accepting input and running the AI. If so, then is it possible to spawn the AI into a separate thread so that those of us who have dual core or quad core machines can get a better AI experience? With a full core (or two) working to calculate the AI actions, one can probably get better results and still have "Real Time" gaming. I mean, for those without dual core, you'd still get the same current level of AI, but for those of us with more horses under the hood so to speak, we'd get an "improved" experience... Thoughts?

Has anyone else noticed that infantry squads seem to tire incredibly easily? I was playing the Wadi portion of the campaign last night with 1.03 and at several points dismounted my infantry from the Strykers. When you give the dismount command, the squads exit the vehicle with a quick or fast command and then immediately by the time they come under your control, they are 'Tiring'. Come on, these are physically fit 20 year olds, jumping out of a APC and running 10m shouldn't be that "Tiring". It's annoying because then when you give them any other order, they start to get Tired and Exhausted too easily. Thoughts?

Go Hokies!!! Hokie, hokie, hokie hi tech, tech, VPI! My team also

I believe it was the T-72 APFSDS type... which stands for Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot I believe... Not 100% sure.. In any case, the point is that in real time you don't have time to react to teleporting reinforcements...

I already cast my vote, but I have to get this off my chest. The thing that kills RT for me is the way that reinforcements are handled. I've literally had reinforcement for the enemy just APPEAR right behind me and light up my tanks from behind. While this can happen in WEGO too, at least you have a chance to notice the reinforcements have shown up and react, which does NOT happen in RT... The first warning you have is after the T-72s have sent SABOT round through your rear armor... This is just gamey and kills RT for me...

I assume they make some sort of explosion sound when they go off right? Strange....

Not talking about RPGs, I know they exist in the game I am talking about hand grenades. Heck, my little infantry dudes even have a ammo bar for them, but I have never seen them throw one, ever. Even when it would make a lot of sense to do so. Come to think of it, never seen them use the "rifle grenades" of the M203 either... Is this a bug, or am I missing something?

WEGO 90% of the time, unless I really want to play the game fast, then I play RT. The problem with RT is that I can't rewind to see what happened on the other side of the map while I was messing around on the opposite side...

I also agree that I think it was the subject matter that reduced the sales... I mean CMAK? Come on! N. Africa is probably the least popular theatre of WWII, even worse than Pacific Island land combat... BFC would have been far better off making CMAK backward compatible with CMBO as well as having the N. Africa/Italy stuff.. Redo the original scenarios with new features and pawn it off as an upgrade plus new content. Heck, the forum members and beta testers would have done the scenario work... Even better would have been to have CMAK become CM Europe or something and have all theatres represented. I mean they already had all the models from CMBB and CMBO... Yeah it would have cannibalized CMBO sales, but how much of those were still going on with CMAK and CMBB out there...

Hmm... ok, that makes a bit more sense, but given that we hopefully won't be fighting the French, the Brits, the Isrealis or the Germans, I hope it doesn't matter

So if Armor and Air don't win wars alone (or almost alone) how do you account for Desert Storm? Granted we had some dismounted infantry fighting, but most of it was mounted heavies and Bradleys rolling through and over the enemy. I agree you always have to have infantry, but to reduce your Armored force to replace it with crappy things like Strykers is insanity. If Strykers are indeed a replacement for Humvees, then it is a step up and yay! But that is not what I heard they were being sold as... Last I heard they were being sold as a REPLACEMENT for the Abrams, which they certainly are not in any shape or form.

Hmm... that sounds rather optimistic unless they are comparing it solely against tanks even newer (I think the Chinese have the Type 99 and the Russians have the T-90)... I read something similar in the mid 90s as well, which obviously wasn't true against the T-72s and T-80s of Saddam...

With regards to Strykers, I seem to recall about the time that these things were being "sold" to the world as Rummy's new "do it light, do it half a$$ed" military solution, that I did some calculations that determined that 12.7mm or 14.5mm AP MG rounds would turn the thing into swiss cheese. Not sure what the point of an "armored" carrier that can't turn MG rounds is. Not sure if anyone else has any different info on that... Still don't see the point of Strykers even now and in the demo for CM:SF I have determined that while M1 Abrams tanks are thing to be reckoned with, Strikers might as well be called Zippos, since they light up so easily and often. There may well be a use for Strykers in the US military, but if I have the option of being in an M1A2 or a Stryker, I will take an M1A2 any day of the millenium. Heck, only ~15 guys have died in M1A2s to date in Iraq, and only 5 of those were inside the vehicle...

After reading the wiki article for the M1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams Particularly the armor part, I am less concerned that this behavior is unrealistic. Sounds like even the M1 has trouble killing the M1 in real life from the front and that there are documented cases of multiple APFSDS rounds to the frontal armor not penetrating... I guess I will make sure never to attack them from the front then...

Let me preface this by saying it is in the demo. However, I just witnessed something I am not all sure is feasible. An M1A2 was hit by TEN, count them, TEN 125mm main gun round from multiple T-72Ms from less than 200m in less than 60 seconds (granted, in the frontal to side arcs) and did not die. Instead it methodically killed my T-72Ms as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Now, I know the M1A2 is incredible. Probably the best tank in the world (with the possible exception of the Leopard 2A6). However, this seems excessive to me. We aren't talking a gun that is underpowered here, it is a 125mm 2A46 with a muzzle velocity likely over 1600m/s... Speaking of this, since the M1A2 has Chobham armor, how does CM2 do the armor penetration modeling anyway? Is there a separate post on this?