[Modding Discoveries]

Yep. One workaround is to mask it with high walls flush against the bldg, or the long window option.

Another idea I had was for BFC to load up some generic 2d panels and 3d rectangular and cylinder objects of various sizes and heights that we could texture mod to create our own flavour objects.

2d: closed metal gates, signs, graffiti, pockmarks, etc.

3d. Shipping containers, tiny shacks and sheds, stacked crates or bales, machinery, lorries, etc.

Wouldn't seem hard to do and would give much joy to urban photorealism junkies like me.

[*MOD* China VS South Korea]

Do the US forces in Korea still use ROKUSAs? (i.e. Korean soldiers acting as in integral part of American combat units down to the squad level). Given the huge manpower shortage facing the US Army at present, it wouldn't surprise me if this practice has been reintroduced.

Also, IIUC, a major enabler for large scale Korean immigration to the USA in the 1960s and 1970s was ROKUSAs who automatically became eligible for citizenship owing to having served in the US military (Please correct me if this is an urban legend).

[Various Flavours Of MOUT]

Given Steve's comments in other threads about MOUT being the best way to give Red a fair chance of winning or at least bloodying Blue's nose, and in anticipation of 1.06 and ELOS, I set down some thoughts on the different types of Syrian urban areas, what conventional combat would probably be like in each area, and a few elements I'd like to see added to the game or the editor in order to create truly interesting (and deadly) cityscapes. Comment and elaborate as you wish...

1. City centres. Dominant terrain: densely concentrated and generally multistory cement buildings laid out in regular blocks (except in "Old Town" areas). Wide, paved main streets with narrow sidestreets and unpaved back alleys. Lots of ground floor shopfronts with pulldown/accordion gates and narrow sidewalks. Lots of parked cars, vans and lorries -- which make lousy cover but obstruct LOS and AFV movement into the narrower streets.

Combat will be focused on the streets and on any rooftops or buildings commanding them in defilade. AFVs will be very constricted and extremely vulnerable to fire, especially from above. It will be hard for an attacker to identify obvious strongpoints or ambush zones.

Suggestions: Thick cement walls are badly needed. The major flavour object missing is parked vehicles (using lots of destroyed uncon taxis is a resource hog). For souks (markets), shopfront awnings would also be nice (slightly tweak the bus shelter and slap it up against a facade). To jazz up the rooftops, I'd like to see small utility sheds and sat dishes per the attached photo (from the Anbar Government Centre, Ramadi, Iraq).

2. Industrial estates. Dominated by large, cinderblock-walled and tin-roofed workshops and warehouses, with large interior spaces and lots of ventilation. Sprinkle in some smaller administrative and utility buildings and maybe some Sov style proletarian housing nearby. Both the shop floors and the freight yards between them are cluttered with machinery, piles of materials, cargo containers, and other hard goods, many of which provide better direct fire cover than do most of the buildings. Decent space for AFVs to move around and stand off, and even hide inside the buildings. Yards may have enclosing walls.

Combat will be mainly hide-and-seek for skirmishers, since it's unlikely Syrians would seek to dig in here in force Stalingrad-style. With few civilians around, the US can use fire support much more freely, and overhead cover is bad or absent.

Suggestions: Open plan warehouse structures are missing. Also, could BFC possibly pop in some generic rectangular and trapezoidal flavour object MDR files of different sizes that we modders can texture mod to create whatever flotsam suits us: cargo containers, outhouses, drill presses, whatever?

3. Poor residential areas. Dominant terrain: densely packed, haphazardly sited and poorly built shacks and shops, of varying ages, mainly single story with limited roof access. Lots of little tin-roof outbuildings, useless as cover but block LOS. Frequent patches of waste ground or ruins filled with trash or jungle thickets. Little to no pavement. Fewer cars and trucks, more motor scooters. Ramadi again here:

Combat in these areas will be fluid and confused. Because the cover is relatively poor, units will need to displace a lot, shooting and scooting. Close support AFVs might have a little more elbow room here than in other urban landscapes (but still need an infantry screen). On the other hand, heavy weapons use could be heavily constrained due to presence of many civilians with nowhere to flee to.

Suggestions: Outbuildings are the main elements missing at present, together with crooked utility poles/wires and stray dogs (the latter two would be a bit of a stretch to model). Otherwise, this environment can be modeled fairly photorealistically in the current game, Oh, and a minaret (read, spy OP) for the neighborhood mosque would be nice too, but that's a separate issue.

4. Wealthier residential areas. Dominant terrain: 2 story row houses with rooftop patios and gardens; perhaps some larger mansions. Fewer outbuildings. All homes surrounded by high walls. Given any notice at all, most residents will have fled with their cars but US fire support will still be constrained. Roads are mainly paved and wider.

Combat here is tricky, deadly and time consuming, since most buildings and walls are sturdy poured cement, and the rooftops offer lots of good sniper positions. The enclosure walls also create a maze that aids infiltration and makes life hazardous for AFVs.

Suggestions: This environment can also be modeled pretty well right now; the forest of rooftop satellite dishes is all that's missing. Would love to put some metal gates in high cement walls (i.e. a "door") as opposed to either having a large gap that a tank can drive through or no opening at all.

5. Agricultural suburbs. Buildings are similar to those in poor residential areas, single story mudbrick houses clustered together with even more ratty outbuildings, barns and sheds. But because the residents mainly garden or farm for a living, there's more space around them: fields, orchards and paddocks, enclosed with low walls or vegetation, or nothing at all. All roads are dirt. A fair amount of trash, farm equipment, etc. In river valleys, drainage and irrigation ditches and dikes can provide crude cover.

Combat: With more open space, there's more room for AFVs. Buildings on the other hand generally provide poor cover unless fortified in some way.

Suggestions: Outbuildings! Again, largely useless as cover, but some LOS effect.

[How powerful is modern HE?]

I've been reading these forums since 2001 and there's a few people here who when they post, I sit up and listen. BigDuke6 is one of them.

That being said, I think we're championing a lost cause here. Steve's mind is made up on this topic, and it's his game. He has suggested we focus on MOUT if we want a challenge. I agree, but there's still some critical stuff missing, most significantly thick (cement) vs. normal (mud brick or cinderblock) building walls.

But I'm going to take that cudgel up in a different thread.

[*MOD* Dukes of Hazard Humvee]

I'm looking forward to the Daisy Duke mod....

[Some thoughts on different types of gameplay]

I'm a realism junkie, and am striving to make the MOUT environments as photorealistic as possible. But I definitely draw the line at including civilians.

I think BFC has been pretty clear that they'll NEVER put anything in the game that will depict, or allow players to depict, the killing of innocent civilians, deliberately or otherwise, even though that is an unfortunate concomitant of warfare, particularly MOUT and insurgency. And I fully support that.

In conventional warfare, in any populated area where a large armed force has moved in and is preparing to meet another large armed force, most civilians have generally gotten out of Dodge before the fireworks start; those who haven't are lying low in their root cellars or wherever and are unlikely to appear for the duration of the firefight. I know that civilian cars cropped up in the weirdest places during OIF (e.g. Thunder Runs), but once serious lead starts flying, those folks are either off map or a (bullet-riddled) part of the scenery.

However, in COIN situations prior to contact, the presence or absence of civilians -- particularly children -- in public places is a very important barometer as to how "hot" the locals deem things likely to get in a given locality. If there's a bunch of fedayeen or an IED lying in ambush on July 17th Street, they know it. The streets are deserted and the shop owners pull their doors down.

Scenario designers could embed some kind of "heat map" in their mission briefings showing the level of activity in each street, for example. Activity in most streets would instantaneously fall to zero as soon as serious shooting began anywhere nearby however, so such barometers would be of strictly limited use.

[How powerful is modern HE?]

I guess I can see where Steve is coming from, although I'd rather be able to simulate a smarter, less-rigid Syrian batallion commander able to use the 3 or so hours before the infidels arrive to map out some ambush zones and stick some key weapons in hidden AND hardened holes. Or at least put his arty OP and HQs in something where they won't get instantly spotted and pounded.

And I still assert -- from trying and failing -- that the trenches, shellholes and bunkers provided in the game are too big and easy to spot to serve in this kind of role. Their very presence betrays the ambush. Which basically leaves us with only buildings to use.

[How do you calculate the LOS when a squad is not in the same 8*8m grid?]

Which would seem to me to be as it should, as the "orders" you're giving would come from the squad leader who is assumed to be in spot Y. In my experience, the other squaddies tend to make rejoining the leader in his 8x8 their first priority, even if there are other things I'd rather they do (like not getting gunned down in the open en route). But I accept the AI nightmare involved in programming this any other way. I'd just like to see the entire squad be quicker to "bug out" to a safer action spot when they come under heavy fire rather than trying to reconsolidate in the hot zone first. But let's see what 1.06 bringeth.

[Building Facade Mod - Mideast Shopfront]

Thanks for the tip!

[Building Facade Mod - Mideast Shopfront]

I've been whining for this for a long time and decided to put my lousy artistic skills to work.

I just uploaded the 3 relevant BMPs to CMMODS. It modifies Building Facade type 3 and one of its balconies to create the following shopfront which resembles one you'd see in the Mideast (the signs come from actual buildings in Ramadi, Iraq. Don't ask me what they say).

From a realism standpoint, you'd simply shotgun or jimmy the padlocks off to open these doors. In other words, there needs to be a working door somewhere. I didn't like the look of only having 2 shopfronts + a conventional door, so I slapped one over the top using similar grillwork. It looks a little cheesy up close, I know, but 3 pulldown doors looks more authentic overall.

Unfortunately, you get the same motif on all 4 walls of the building which looks a little odd. My workaround is to slap a high wall against the end building walls to mask it. The long window/door combo also masks it pretty well.

[ January 20, 2008, 01:30 AM: Message edited by: LongLeftFlank ]

[How powerful is modern HE?]

If you apply the rules Steve has applied above -- that the US juggernaut would inevitably spot and kill anything in its way whether or not it digs in or hides, so why would they bother -- then you get back to my "France, 1940" (the boardgame, not the battle) analogy.

According to that same standard of omniscience, the very notion of Syrian mechanized forces somehow making it to the front (or the front making it to them) in one piece and then being able to come into close action with main force Stryker units (as opposed to a few scout elements who promptly withdraw and call in air) becomes equally onanistic as a simulation, though a fun game.

And I've heard this "Syrian conventional forces will do things only in huge thundering herds or not at all just like the Soviets taught them" argument from Steve numerous times now. And a number of highly knowledgeable people on this board have disputed it. So why not give us the tools to model it both ways and make the call ourselves?

[How powerful is modern HE?]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Nope, I understand what you're saying better than you Look, if a Syrian Battalion or Regiment digs in, and magically finds all the resources it needs to get overhead cover (sandbags do not provide overhead cover!), you have yourself a fortified defensive line, do you not? And if you do, then everything I said applies. It gets spotted, it is pounded into oblivion by air and artillery, or simply bypassed until it is sufficiently irrelevant.

And if the Syrians do make a stand, then the Americans let up a cheer of joy and obliterate them without getting bloody.

What would happen if a US mixed infantry/armor force came upon a significant nest of resistance that was dug in beyond what CM already allows for (trenches, "foxholes", and bunkers)? The answers are:

1. Assault WWI style and get very bloody

2. Assault WWII style with combined arms and get fairly bloody

3. Call in organic artillery and attached air assets to obliterate the defenses then either mop up or bypass

As I said above, the more the Syrians dig in the happier the US forces would be. There is only one thing the US military machine loves more than a force caught maneuvering in the open... and that is a static force that is patiently waiting to be killed by indirect fire.

Steve, kudos to you for hanging in there with us malcontents on Saturday night! I have a sick baby and a sick wife here so I have a built in excuse for no life (although I am halfway through a nice Zin).

You forgot answer 4. Stumble into concealed positions in the Syrian kill zone, take serious casualties in the first few minutes of contact, be unable to shoot them out of their positions, withdraw and then bring in the arty and air, per 3 above. In game terms, Blue has lost decisively, even if they subsequently flatten the Syrians to a man.

And if you counter that the onrushing US Stryker brigades would seldom fail to spot such a large force dug in before running onto its guns -- they've got JSTARs and drones and Cav and IR and yadayadayada, I simply say: sauce for the goose. At least half the current CMSF scenarios implicitly assume some kind of SNAFU, weather/ sand-related or other, in that vaunted US C4I capability, otherwise they'd never take place at all. The Syrian vehicles if not the grunts would be sliced and diced by airpower before even arriving on the map.

Let's flip it around and look at it from the Syrian POV. Both in game and in life, they have no serious expectation of holding the ground, or of surviving. Like Hizbullah in Lebanon, they "win" by taking a whole pile of Crusader "white meat" with them to Paradise.

Their vehicles are kind of hosed -- they're big and easy to see, and it's a miracle they're even here on the battlefield as other than flaming wrecks. Their ability to kill anything generally depends on lighter US vehicles making a mistake and coming into range.

But for their jundi (infantry), the available in game options are:

1. Hide in whatever buildings are available without any kind of reinforcing, sandbagging or mouseholing.

2. Bulldoze and jump into the huge prefab mass graves that pass for trenches in this game and then wait for the Crusaders to spot and kill you from long range.

3. Sit in bunkers, which are basically immobilized vehicles that stick out even worse than the trenches.

4. Skulk in brush or whatever else is handy. You might succeed in shooting first, but you'll then live about a minute if you're lucky.

5. Hide behind crestlines and then do a good old fashioned human wave charge. Urrrrraaaaaaah!!!!!

Which would you choose? So sorry, option 6: site your OPs and HQs (preferably your ATGM and MGs as well) into easily-dug and roofed over/IR camoed slit trenches having good fields of fire and requiring direct HE hits to knock out (you know, that Soviet doctrine they follow so slavishly) so you can ambush and kill infidels for 15 minutes or more instead of 2, is not available as it would be rare and have little relevance to this game. Please wait for Normandy.

[Streetlighting]

Since CMSF is deliberately NOT focusing on guerilla (or post-occupation) warfare, but rather on the invasion itself, one can safely assume that the power grid will be down in areas being invaded for one reason or another (Allied bombardment or simple failure by the civil power authorities to keep the power going). Ergo, no streetlights or anything else in the battle zone.

I speak as the employee of a major utility.

[How powerful is modern HE?]

Originally posted by average:

I'm pretty sure i've borrowed the above from a book, but I can't remember what it is.

I think Edward Luttwak wrote "Coup d'Etat: A Handbook", or some such thing back in the 1980s.

I like your thumbnail of the internal balance of power. Good grist for the Red v. Red scenario mill.

[How powerful is modern HE?]

Originally posted by C'Rogers:

Not to mention a pretty drastic difference in military structures between Syria and Imperial Japan.

In his effort to be clever, Steve missed my point, which was not to compare Syria to Japan, or jungle to desert combat -- although Iwo Jima and Okinawa weren't exactly covered in lush jungle -- but that any outgunned force is going to use entrenchments -- and I'm NOT talking about deep defensive belts, but simple covered holes in the ground -- to extend its staying power.... and is going to try to take a lot of Americans with them.

This is a fundamental building block of warfare that has NOT changed, but is badly undermodeled in the game, and strips the Syrians of an important resource (as if they didn't have enough stacked against them already).

I mean, if we are expected to believe that Syria is competent enough to keep a well-motivated mechanised army in the field in the face of a lightning Allied advance (search for the lengthy treatise by JasonC on the evaporation of the Red Army armoured forces in 1941 for a scholarly discussion of how hard this is), they can certainly deploy and dig in their infantry along the likely axes of advance at least SOME of the time. The orders: ambush, kill and fight to the last man. Some at least will do it. This ain't Iraq, as we are reminded repeatedly.

I look forward to seeing how ELOS improves the currently dismal cover value of foxholes and trenches (to say nothing of their zero concealment value for purposes of ambush). But I'd respectfully differ from you both on "perfect" or "close".

[How powerful is modern HE?]

Originally posted by Barleyman:

For petes sake, can't a man ask for proper foxholes without getting swamped by this elaborate maginot line-nonsense?

You just simply refuse to see any difference between a reasonable foxhole and a line of bunkers?

Yes, I get the sense that Steve is just talking past us at this point, rather than trying to understand what we're looking for. Which is pardonable, I suppose, given all the bitching and Monday-morning-quarterbacking on this board for the past 6 months.

If overhead cover and sandbags are too hard to program right now, and there's other stuff that's more important to work out, fine, I accept that. They're doing a great job with the game within its current scope ... I'm just hoping for more.

But like you, I just don't buy his arguments about why Syrian infantry would NOT bother to harden and hide their OPs and ambush positions (holes and buildings) so as to extend out of their only real tactical advantage: fighting at places of our choosing to make the infidels bleed for as long as possible before they bring up the heavy stuff and blow us to Allah.

[CM2 WW2]

I for one fully respect your opinion as to what you like to play as a gamer. I agree that you can have fun with 30 men per side.... I for one play a lot of Iraq platoon-scale patrol actions set in Fallujah, Ramadi and elsewhere. They're playable in a single sitting, and the AI doesn't perform too stupidly.

However, these actions aren't the focus of this game as designed... CM strives to be an honest simulation (i.e. simulates real combat), as well as a fun game.

And the vast majority of military actions other than spec ops, recce and patrol are conducted at company to battalion (100 - 400 men a side) and larger. In fact, some posters here (e.g. JasonC) have argued that major WWII actions only make sense to simulate at the division level and up... hence the long-awaited CMC add-on to CMBB.

Sure, you might carve off a subset of the action to simulate just the experience of Third Platoon, Easy Company and make a fun game of it. But from the simulation perspective, there's always the question: what's happening to the rest of the company/battalion/regiment on either flank, and how's it going to impact this battle?

[How powerful is modern HE?]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />If they had any sense at all, the Syrians would fight in the coastal zone, where almost all the population is. This is a place human habitation has been in progress since the beginning of recorded history, and to me that means basements, tunnels, catacombs, ditches, quarries, orchards, fences, etc.

I expect this is exactly what they would try to do. The problem for Syria is it can not survive long in such a situation. Sieges only work if the besieged can outlast the besieger.</font>

[Hold fire]

Trying to restrict the arcs is very kludgy and takes a lot of micro in realtime. I've been wishing that units could be allowed to maintain "Hiding" status while Slow moving (i.e. crawling). This would allow infiltration with less micro, and the unit wouldn't engage anyone unless it lost Hide status for some reason (e.g. nearby enemy spots and starts shooting them).

[How powerful is modern HE?]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

There is a difference between sandbags and overhead cover. As for sandbags, we asked a bunch of OIF vets if they saw a lot of sandbags and other fortifications during the initial phase of OIF and the answer was "no"...

As I've said a dozen times already, I'm not saying that this type of thing wouldn't exist at all in Syria, I'm just saying it wouldn't be there that frequently *and* we had to make decisions about what to include. Defensive terrain that we didn't feel would be all that relevant to a realistic setting was considered, and still is, lower priority compared to other things..

OK, Steve, I appreciate why these things aren't in CMSF due to the focus of the game on fluid, mobile actions to simulate the Stryker brigade in its preferred element. And the game does a great job at that.

I'm just hoping that the Marines module doesn't simply swap in LAV "Pigs" for Strykers and T-90s for T-80s and offer up more of the same kinds of actions. I'd rather pay full price for a module that offers a wider range of combat possibilities, and ones not so heavily weighted in favour of Blue.

But as I said, you guys are the best judges of what you can do when -- this is just feedback. I'm willing to wait until CM2WW2 for fortifications, so long as the features are backwards compatible.

Bunkers are in, so I would suggest using them. A lot more effective in real life compared to sheet metal that won't do anything but protect from rock spatter.

Yes, but because they're essentially immobile vehicles they stick out like a sore thumb, unlike a sandbagged and camouflaged slit trench (with or without topcover). This limits their value. I mean, the Syrian doesn't have too many strategy cards to play as it is, and different flavours of ambush from hiding is one of the few. But if the cover is no good*, Red gets about 30 seconds to shoot before a semi-competent Blue player who has learned to stand off his AFVs at optimal range guns him down. Also, the US side can't use or enter bunkers AFAIK (I've tried!)

I've loved the game since the start, but I say again, it's modeling half a war right now, and the half where the US basically romps. Maybe we're just spoiled by the near-infinite scope of CMx1 for reasons you've already explained ad nauseam, but since you brought up the Maginot Line, I worry that CMSF is at risk to develop the same problems as another famous game: AH's France, 1940.

* Looking forward to seeing how ELOS helps this

[ January 17, 2008, 03:36 PM: Message edited by: LongLeftFlank ]

[How powerful is modern HE?]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Sure, foxholes can be dug relatively quickly. However, when you're in an arid area, where do you get the materials to have overhead protection worth a darned? That stuff has to a) exist and get trucked in specific to your position. That's the sort of thing I'm saying...

I'm assuming ELOS will improve the direct fire cover value of unimproved trenches some. But the simple addition of some kind of sandbag "wall" terrain (plenty of sand in the Mideast IIRC ) could put this kvetch to bed once and for all... Unlike stone wall tiles though, these should be placeable if possible either in the middle or the edges of the squares so as to get them right up next to your trench, building or whatever else you're reinforcing.

And BTW, in all but the most unpopulated desert some basic topcover can be built for OPs and other small emplacements. Just rip some corrugated tin roofing off a farm outbuilding and cover it with a layer or two of... wait for it... sandbags and rocks. Add a camo net, and MacGyverhammed be praised! But I'm OK to wait on this one (and on wire) as long as we can get some kind of "reinforced" cover soon.

(Alert: Whining follows)

Do we REEEEEEALLY have to wait for Normandy to get this stuff? Huh Dad, huh? I love CMSF, but I feel like it's only showing "half a war" right now. Send in the Marines!

[How powerful is modern HE?]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Since we ourselves have limited resources, we had to focus on a smaller subset of defensive capabilities.

Oh, and I would like to see the ability to designate houses "reinforced". It's something I'm not sure if we'll get to, but certainly it would be nice.

CMSF now does a very good job recreating the kind of fluid engagements that showcase the Stryker brigade concept under the blitzkrieg backstory.

I'd hope though, that the Marines module doesn't just swap in new gear for us to replay the same kinds of mobile actions. I'd hope to see more focus on blood-and-guts infantry assaults and MOUT, the kinds of stuff Marines are known for.

Adding a few basic fortification elements

1. sandbagged/reinforced cement buildings

2. wire entanglements

3. sandbagged/camouflaged trenches

would go a long way toward opening up a fresh set of modern warfare possibilities for the game system, both for Blue on Red and Red on Red.

And for people like me who enjoy Iraq scenarios, the US could be the dug-in defender for a change, with quick reaction forces, Dagger runs, et al.

[Mortars??]

And shoot and scoot mortar teams are an important part of the uncon arsenal as well.

[MOUT and Urban Warfare is unplayable]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

Does not work when they are pinned. They stick to the wall and die. I am sure that contributes a lot to the casualties in MOUT.

This gets at the heart of the issue. Units under fire have no "bugout" option -- they just go to ground in place and keep taking hits, even when much safer terrain is close by.

[Mod Russian version.]

OK, I want to watch "The Beast" again now. One of the great all-time tank flicks, up there with Sahara.