Gpig

I am really impressed with how your soldiers will toss grenades into the building before entering. When I am moving into a suspected enemy occupied building, I usually try the following. 1. I suppress the building with MG and rifle fire with squad A. Heavy weapons welcome! 2. After 40 - 60 seconds of suppression, I will give Squad B a TARGET LIGHT order on the building and a QUICK order to an action spot hugging the building, nearest my entry point (door) of choice. My next action spot is a hunt into the building itself. The TARGET LIGHT order makes the men shoot and throw grenades into the building, even while running and hunting. NOTE: Cancel the target light order soon after entering the building.

Hey all, Found a cool link to some Afghanistan maps: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/afghanistan.html Gpig p.s. check out the detailed war maps, "day-by-day."

Hi hcrof, Love your DAR. I noticed your tanks have covered arcs engaged. How has that worked for you? Do you usually use covered arcs when you are attacking? I find them to be a hindrance most times. (Hindrance meaning, dead tanks for me.) Good luck on your attack! Gpig

Why thank you! Outstanding. Gpig

In the editor, when I select options 2 through 6, the images of the flavour objects do not change. I am left only with the first and second screens of flavour objects. Is there a way to see ALL the flavour objects in the editor? Gpig

Hey C, Yes, I suppose there are all kinds of ways to make the scenario MORE difficult. But as it stands right now, it works well as a U.S. ass-kicking battle. Ooo-Rah! ***SPOILERS*** I opened up the battle to see if I could try it as the bad-guys and discovered that most of the red-force are conscript, with a few greens sprinkled in. That removed my enthusiasm for battling as the red-force. Facing crack G.I.'s at night, no thanks. The fact that the opposition is conscript and green also made me feel like my first run-through as the Rangers was not all that much to hoot about afterall. Would you consider raising the quality level across the board, for the red-force? Maybe just make the conscripts green, and the green's regular? I really like your idea of making the map larger. Perhaps adding an enemy patrol to dodge, etc. Good luck with it, Gpig

Played it last night . . . ***spoilers*** Total U.S. Victory. only 2 WIA for the US. 29 KIA for the bad guys (only 11 left standing). All parameters achieved/satisfied. Fun little battle! Nice immersion, small scale, pretty interesting tactical challenge. Pretty much went exactly as I'd expect a real world situation with the same parameters/forces/situation. (i.e. Rangers kick but!) I loved being able to use the assault platoon. Being able to break up the squads into assault teams was a real tactics helper. The platoon and squad level tactics I chose seemed to work out well for me. The DEMO charges being a real treat. Blasting through walls, and then blasting through buildings. The Crack Rangers set the charges relatively quickly, and I could follow on with the rest of the squad to infiltrate the building and neutralize the stunned defenders. Worked like a charm. Like a movie! (Having night vision devices was certainly a helpful aid for the Rangers.) Suggestions for improvements: The enemy compound is cool. Easily defensible, one would think. (Not at night, vs. Crack Rangers). The enemy forces did not put up much of a fight. Perhaps there could be one enemy squad (the leader squad?) equipped with night vision? Or two? Enemy forces did have some pretty good kit (thermo warheads and what not), but luckily I managed to eradicate the sentries with suppressive area fire before they could be brought to bear. I suppose the game could have turned out differently if I had guessed wrong . . . The map itself is fairly plain. Nice compound, but very little detail on the map itself. (I understand it's not really the point, but I feel it could help a little to have grass or bushes or flavour objects here and there.) OVerall, I had a great time playing the short battle. It's almost a byte battle. (In fact, you could upload it to the CMSF Byte Battle page.) It turned out as I exptected it would. There were no surprises other than the sudden ending (when the enemy surrendered). Actually, I was surprised how my Rangers owned the bad-guys in house to house fighting with grenades and accurate fires. Entering a building at night usually results in me losing lots of dudes. I guess it helps if you make your own entrance. Thank you very much for the battle! Gpig

Uh oh. With talk of lots of "options," AND "cars," you'll soon have Steve in here with a car analogy. Seriously though, the Simpsons episode where Homer gets to design his perfect car is a pretty good one. The car has everything he'd ever want and lots of options, but it's a disaster.

How about basements? Cellars, etc? Gpig

Excellent screen shots. Last pic looks like a photograph. Love the smoke and fire just starting to come out of the drivers hatch of the first LAV (first pic). Your second pic (overhead of the map) gives away some valuable intel, or so it seems. What Lethaface said: Where can I find it? Gpig

Nice drawings, Ali-Baba! Great staging and use of color/tones. Storyboard artist? Are you running Sketchbook Pro on a WACOM or Cintiq? Or is it all hand painted, old-school inks and paper? Gpig

Hello, Got a different computer. Unlicensed my previous version of CMSF + MARINES. Swapped my computers. Installed CMSF, and licensed it. Everything seemed to work up until I tried to run the game. I double click on game icon and get an error message a second later that says "CM Shock Force.exe has encountered an error and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." It then generates an error report and urges me to send it to microsoft. I checked the DEP settings. I tried holding down "V" to disable the opening game video, no help. Any ideas? (I've submitted a ticket as well.) Cheers, Jon

Love that "saving private ryan" moment in the tower. Men coming up, fighters laying in wait, quick bloody gun battle. Amazing. Gpig

It's also a fake. The hand w/gun come from a different picture than the cat on ledge. No reason to get freaked. It's all make-believe! Gpig

Awesome! Thank you for posting that, it's like watching a war movie . . . (See if you can work in a "love-interest" next time, eh?) Gpig

What is a hamachi group? Where can I find one? Gpig

I've seen engineers throw a demo charge ONCE. And they were in a building when they did it. Small Gain MkII (?) was the scenario. And a big ol' tank rolled up to the farmhouse where I had some engineers. After about 30 seconds of the turn, they lobbed a DEMO charge that erased that tank. Pretty spectacular, I have to say. That was also a few patches ago . . . Gpig

Love the playback myself. Playing two battles right now. One versus a friend PBEM, the other versus the A.I. in RT. Missing a lot of the fine detail in a big battle versus the A.I. I find myself higher up, watching from a distance for "hotspots." Then pausing and zooming in to analyze the situation before adjusting my orders. The PBEM battle is really rocking. Being able to rewind, pause and watch again brings great enjoyment (with the good and the bad turn of events). I rolled my T-62 (Gun damaged) up to a short wall that unbeknown to me sheltered a squad of US infantry. The grunts threw a couple of grenades but it looked like they self-inflicted some casualties due to my T-62's ERA blocks cooking off at close quarters. Then my TC swiveled his DshK round (along with the gunner coax) and they both started chewing up the infantry (budda budda - CHUNKA CHUNKA CHUNKA!). Rocks and dust are flying everywhere, Men crying out, G.I.'s returning fire. My tank commander throws closed the hatch and the driver reverses outta there. But about 5 seconds later, the TC is back up and looking for targets. I must have watched that 15 second action about 15 times! What I love is that this game creates wonderfully unscripted moments. Moments that pit crews, technologies and happenstance together in a myriad of ways that result in eye-popping and original outcomes. Thanks BFC. Gpig

Excellent stuff. Thanks for putting the effort into this, guys. Here is a wonderful example of how no plan survives contact with the enemy. Do you think that his forces in overwatch (Btn HQ, Tank platoon in the south) witnessed your entire force crossing the bridge? Or was your BMP just too far forward on the ridge? (Silhouetted against the horizon?) Gpig

With regards to Sri Lanka, it was a dramatic change in, and implementation of new strategy that won the government the day. You are correct, Squatdog, that the insurgency had gone on for years and years. But suddenly, the government was unstoppable. The rebels losing on every front. It was like the government had "figured it out." It's interesting to me, because as I followed along through the world news, there was nothing obvious about the change. Does anybody know what was different?

interesting review on the IMDB website http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1483831/ I really cannot understand all the positive reviews on this movie. To start with, everything is unrealistic/not believable, but not to the point of being metaphorical or theatrical, no! just to the point that it becomes very irritating. I will not go into the details, but to quote a few problems: the bunch of soldiers are not trained at all (is this the efficient Israeli army or what?), they all show very human feelings and cannot obey to their orders (how many times we've seen this already? who performs all the terrible deeds that happened in that war??)... the zoom lenses from the tank can do miracles and every target looks pitifully straight into the lenses/camera (unbearable)... the idea that they (the Israeli Army represented by the silly bunch) do not understand what their allied falangists say and ingenuously support them is quite outrageous and possibly, a way to call itself out from any responsibility of the Sabra and Shatila massacre... unacceptable! Finally everyone access the tank as if it was an hotel. Nothing really noticeable about the score, camera work or screenplay. Another very overrated movie. Avoid it. Sounds like a lot of crappy war movies I've seen. Still, gotta see it myself to truly judge it. Gpig

I believe Yair Iny may have been speaking with some sarcastic intent. Gpig

Deitrich wrote: ". . . would be if surrendering/surrendered individuals/units were sans/ohne helmet, since . . ." Uh oh. You've just unwittingly unleashed a horde of mid-20th-century hairstyle grogs! Run! . (I'm sure they'll be along any minute now . . .)

For those of us not exactly in the know, would one of you lads kindly describe each vehicle and the nation it fights for? I know the Coyote and the Leopard 2A6 fight with the Canuckians . . . and I see some German symbols, but . . . Any help appreciated! Gpig

@Steve, I believe Bodkin and yourself are in agreement on casualty ratios. He states he'd expect 1 KIA to 3 WIA in his post. But he started out saying that in CMSF, it's more like 2 KIA to 1 wounded. I'd have to agree, that in my experience with CMSF, I often have close to twice as many KIA as I do WIA. Even in battles with no vehicle crews burning up. Gpig