LongLeftFlank

Allowing unwounded men to complete Buddy Aid on wounded (not KIA) casualties decreases the tally of final KIA -- a certain proportion of untreated wounded become KIA at game end. On the attack you might use bailed out crews or vehicle drivers as medics so as not to hold up your combat forces. Edit: ASL beat me to the punch

Not the answer you're looking for, but this workaround works pretty well. Sink the bunker square 3m into the earth and it's invisible to same height shooters.

Actually, Mord did a no chinstrap mod that I adopted for all my Indochina forces -- looks more "ragged" and authentic IMHO, less parade ground.

But with no other changes, blazingly accurate HMGs, especially MG42s can basically shred any unit that isn't Hiding behind solid cover (and that doesn't include Forest, Buildings or Foxholes btw) simply by applying enough lead. Listen, like you, I'd definitely like to see the wacky dispersion go away, MGs able to "walk" bursts onto target, and the TacAI to utilize intense Final Protective Fire when appropriate (not controllable by the player). I'd like to see the dialing up of MG accuracy and volume of fire to realistic levels. But to obtain realistic results (i.e. squads not chopped down to a man within seconds, or cut to ribbons once pinned over a longer period), the targets need to seek cover instantly and promptly. And obtain it, such that they can't readily be hit as long as they keep their heads down. In the theoretical pooltable example of course, they're kind of screwed since there is no cover. Their only tactical recourse upon being ordered to cross such ground is to form a broad skirmish line (a formation not yet available in the game) so one burst can't kill multiple guys, then run like hell. I for one am *not* talking about morale. Nor am I talking about permanently impairing a unit combat-wise unless it's either very green or has taken a lot of casualties. I'm just talking about it responding to the incoming -- especially the New Improved Intense Machine Gun Fire We All Want -- more intelligently. 1. Remember, pinned men can still fire; they just don't move. So actually the MG team isn't necessarily worse off from being more easily Pinned, if you weren't planning to have it move anyway.. 2. But men in cover but still under fire should not be sticking their pixelheads and upper torsos out into that fire for extended periods to Spot, unless it be to suppress that fire with a MG. That is suicide even with the old lame machine guns. You're assuming of course, that sniper fire is part of a much larger firefight. But yes, with snipers, it is casualties -- especially leaders -- that matter most. And experienced units recover from a casualty too fast in my view. Yup.

Pzkw, dialing the MGs up to Eleven will just make them another kind of death star if there are no other adjustments to behaviour made at the target end. So you "solve" the pooltable problem, sure, but then introduce a bunch of other issues. Also, I have no problem at all with an infantry platoon going to ground after a series of well aimed shots at range by a single sniper, not an HMG. That happened frequently and is also realistic.

At this point, it probably makes more sense for the team to focus on CMSF2: UKRAINE, which I assume means at minimum US Army, Russians, Ukrainians and various irregular forces (i.e. Uncons) on both sides. 1. If the game's backstory doesn't include USMC, Brits, Canadians, Dutch or Germans, then later release a $15 expansion pack containing (tweaked) versions of these forces (but no other content -- the community can provide that, or just play QBs), so the CMSF1 work is not lost and can be monetized for the niche that wants these forces. I think that would be an ample "bone" to throw those of us who have kept the lights on in CMSF world. 2. As Broadsword56 showed over in the CMFI Tunisia project, resurrecting the Middle East in an unofficial mod pack is not at all difficult. In fact, with increasingly bigger maps playable, new worlds open up. 3. The Syrian army, or any other Middle Eastern RED force, can almost certainly be recreated using the older Bloc weapons and equipment that would presumably be used by the Russian/Ukie militia forces (POOR weapons quality should be provided for all forces in the new game, including US, so we can do early 2000s historical). And with that plus the NATO force pack, anybody who cares to bootstrap their fave CMSF1 scenarios and maps can readily do so. I will certainly be looking to bring my Ramadi and Baba Amr nightmare urban maps over (part of why I haven't done much with them lately).... the new 2.0 Map overlay editor should make that reasonably easy although a copy-paste among maps (even if not backportable to older games) would be even better! The only "new feature" I'd definitely plead for is for the CMSF2 engine to allow flat-roofed (e.g. office) buildings with parapets, plus infantry able to move from an interior through a door and enter the (flat) rooftop of an adjacent building so that we can construct "split" level buildings (as is the case in CMSF). That's quite distinct and important for the Third World. Also, I hope that CMSF2 will take a close look at the combat modeling of buildings in general, distinguishing traditional (weight borne by thick walls) from modern (steel/cement skeleton with thin walls 'hung' on it) for this next go-round.

Just to level set here, the original thesis of (the latter part of) this thread was: infantry should not routinely be able to advance across a pooltable flat surface against a MG in cover, rapidly shrugging off casualties/Pin effects and then closing to a range where their small arms can then pin the MG and eliminate it. The bulk of the responses have been something like: yeah, a HMG, especially those badass MG42s, should just mow these guys all down WWI style. Why isn't that happening? Because the MGs don't fire nearly enough bullets, that's why! So dial up the rooty toot! And others have said, sure there are probably some adjustments needed in terms of burst frequency/length, dispersion around distant targets, FPF "rock and roll" fire, etc., but the critical issue driving the Extremely Non-Historical Result is what's happening at the target end: The attackers don't go to ground fast enough when shot at, and then rally too quickly. So in the time it takes for the MG to shoot an accurate burst that forces Team A to ground, Team B has gotten up and is moving forward again, etc. And then at a certain range the MG starts getting pinned itself and things go downhill from there. The objection has then been raised: well isn't making MGs more lethal and moving infantry more brittle going to create very static, undramatic battlefields, with nobody except AFVs able to move much at all? And won't that make the game frustrating and unfun as your troops constantly dump their movement orders, leaving those few who do obey sitting ducks for the rest of the WeGo minute? Answer: not necessarily. In the Pooltable scenario, yeah, that advance is pretty much going to stop cold (unless the men are Fanatics, in which case they just wither away). Nothing really to do but pull back to cover and call in supporting fire, and Smoke. But on less barren battlefields, the attacking troops go to ground and find cover quickly. And assuming the first "bump" didn't debilitate the team, and accelerated by the direction of a strong (unbroken) leader, they will recover and be willing to resume their advance -- but slowly and more cautiously, seeking blind zones, calling in their own support weapons to reduce incoming, etc. The playability issues are soluble, using adjustments to the existing mechanisms. And I too would support a level of troop response tied to Difficulty level, for those who like their battles Nasty Brutish and Short.

One point: it appears some people here are using "suppression" to describe two different phenomena: 1. Fire on a moving unit that causes it to go to ground or seek cover. The unit may or may not be willing to fire, but will be reluctant to resume its advance until rallied (and if Rattled or Broken due to casualties, that's unlikely) 2. True suppressive fire on a fixed position (e.g. The HMG) that causes a reduction in volume of fire and enables rally and resumption of the advance to killing range. I submit you can adjust 1 without messing too much with 2.

I was actually down at Yale last week. In addition to the Skull and Bones crypt, there's a whole bunch of other weird unmarked Lovecraftian buildings all over campus. A conspiracy theorist's paradise. Trilateral Commission? No, sorry, this is Illuminati. You want one block west -- they share a crypt and sacrificial altar with the Bilderbergers, next to the All-Seeing Eye Hedge Fund in the old Prescott mansion. You can't miss it, look for the crematorium chimney out back.

.... because that would be.... Obscene.

That, together with the ol' "Mord bunker" is calling up some really disturbing flashbacks of pre-marriage housekeeping....

Mord, what are you, crazy? That's like releasing Cthulhu from the non-Euclidean abyss!

But if they then spend all their time Cowering and not shooting because you've nobbled their morale, then that's a problem too. Because that behaviour applies to both sides -- what you'd get then is an overly static, quiet battlefield dominated even more by indirect fire and AFVs than it is already. Kind of the (discredited) SLA Marshall model. Don't get me wrong: I believe that at least at Elite and Iron levels of play difficulty, the behavior of all troops below Crack should more closely resemble Green -- extensive periods of Pinning and casualties takes them rapidly to a Rattled or Broken state, from which they can be rallied but then quickly return the moment things get hairy again. That would then place a premium on Command and leadership modifiers -- leaders (HQ units or simply good squad leaders) getting their doggies up and going. "Follow me, boys!" But moving from one extreme -- heads up guys spending most of their time partly exposed -- to the other -- unbroken troops never looking around for the enemy -- is no solution to my mind. Real soldiers trying to fight under fire (e.g. having reached at least a Cautious pinned state) would pop up, look for telltale signs of enemies (gunflashes, helmets, obvious firing positions etc.). Then they pop up again, take a hasty shot, or maybe a few depending on their weapon ROF. Machine gunners would probably prairie dog a little less -- making themselves more vulnerable -- but they'd also want to fight from narrow embrasures (between sandbags) to minimize the target they present, relying in part on their own outgoing fire to protect them.

.... I believe the problem here isn't primarily with the rifles or ballistics modeling, it's with what happens at the other end: - Exposed infantry don't take cover from "near misses" (or other audible incoming) fast enough (as noted above, they don't seem to "notice" bullets not impacting near them). - Part of the cover benefit of terrain (e.g. vegetation or buildings) is abstracted, which means in practice that if you fire enough shots the infantry will eventually be hit regardless of how hard it is trying to hide. - Even when infantry take cover behind a solid bullet-intercepting object like a Fortification, wall or hedgerow bank or a terrain crest, their entire heads and a substantial portion of their bodies remain exposed for extended periods when they are not Cowering. Infantry basically behave like a hull down vehicle, but without the armour protection, instead of "sneaking and peeking" like they would in RL. - That hard cover is treated as entirely flat-topped -- there are no narrow embrasures, leaving the infantry exposed to fire from a very broad angle. I am getting to the point where I believe infantry Spotting ability and LOS should be delinked from the pixeltrooper's actual posture (Standing, Kneeling, Prone). Having 3 levels of spotting was a clever addition, but it's resulting in the infantry having to make itself excessively vulnerable in order to see anything, as well as odd artifacts like LMGs firing "from the shoulder" instead of propped on a bipod. The alternative is to have infantrymen rapidly prairie-dogging up and down all the time (like the German halftrack gunners do right now), which would look a bit funny, and might not help if Spotting is a function of time spent with target in potential LOS.

Let's try to keep this thread clean of the endless and irresolvable "Who Are The Good Guys, Again?" discussions, please. Please focus purely on the military aspects.

Some Balls are held for charity and some for fancy dress / but the Balls that are held for pleasure are the Balls I like the best.....

This sounds just like a lot of the dramatic DienBienPhu accounts of mowing down waves of screaming barbarian hordes: "eyewitnesses" claim (and likely sincerely recall) hundreds of enemy bodies left in the wire -- but since they didn't end in possession of the battlefield, those claims are unverifiable (unless the enemy does, of course).

Well, the constructive solution is proposed here. It just got buried in all the pages of (interesting) sidebar discussion.

There is no NATO. There has never been a NATO. Rumors to the contrary are pernicious lies propagated by right deviationist elements. (Sorry you're having trouble. Looks like an exe file got quarantined or sumfink. Hopefully someone will be along to help).

Exactly, Arnoldio -- thing is, folks like you and me who frequent the Forums and grok the difference between BFC and EA aren't the problem. The demographic that matters here are gamers who bought, play and enjoy the CMBN games enough to buy the expansions but don't follow the details. A large chunk of them are going to feel gouged and misled when they buy the module but then find they need to buy something else to get it to work. And they're not going to come to the Forums to investigate why this is the case and more than fair and they should feel lucky and yadayada. They're simply going to be pissed and perhaps will never buy again. This is basic Customer Psychology 101. Mocking them for not reading the fine print will help nothing -- the result that matters is that you've lost a prime (module buying) customer. A small gaming house serving a niche market simply can't afford to risk these kinds of communications breakdowns -- it's just bad business. K.I.S.S. -- bundle it all and charge a little more, then make nice with the core community who already upgraded later on.... Most of us will be fine with it.

HA ha! (/Nelson]

Calling BigDuke6, over.....

Again, BFC's concern should not be dedicated Forumites, who may grumble a bit (at paying "twice") but are clearly hooked on the game, but the Great Silent Majority of casual players who are fan enough to buy the modules, but won't take kindly to being "gouged" by an extra $10 once they've bought MG just because they didn't read the fine print. And playing Vogon ("the plans have been on display at your local Galactic Planning Office...") and then lecturing them on how they should be happy to be paying more isn't going to help any -- you have needlessly alienated a good (module-buying) customer for the "sin" of not anticipating the unexpected. So the best thing is to bundle the upgrade with the module and raise the price of both, or else sell a DL only version for those already upgraded. I work in the utility business and we see this kind of indignant reaction all the time with customers. I tell you, no good thing happens when you add unexpected "extra charges", no matter how good your reasons for doing so. Avoid it at all costs is my advice, FWIW. Oh, and btw my copy of CMBO was bought for me by my Mum, who read the New York Times article on it and knew I'd love it (what a great Mum, eh?). There is no way though that dear lady would know she had to buy a separate upgrade as well. Not saying that's typical, just that not everyone is like "us".

Yeah, a real can of worms there VaB. We also have the artificial clumping of the squaddies around the Action Spots to consider. Last one....