LongLeftFlank

And though the trolls were rather small / Steve had to ban them all / (kidding)

Well in the past Steve has said the BFC team wanted to do some kind of "future war" theme, for which SLOD is shorthand. The Talonsoft guys tried something in this hybrid genre with their 2000 game Dogs of War: Battle for Primus IV. I recall it had some very interesting elements, but it also kept crashing my PC so I gave up.

Don't let the tiger's head distract you. We all know that's SLOD! whose vile demon claws envelop the globe, sapping our precious bodily fluids. ....So once again we see BFC effortlessly writing tomorrow's headlines today. The linked piece isn't one of DB's best though, mixing references to the Heinlein classic and the gawdawful Verhoeven film https://www.duffelblog.com/2018/10/space-force-recruiting/ .... Riffing in yet another direction, wouldn't jumpsuit armoured MI infantry be just awesome in the CM. Of. The. Future (future future future)? Or if those copyrights are too dear, then haul out the old "Terran Trade Authority" books and draw some inspiration from the fantastical artwork of Peter Elson and company...

Nice timing. With the patient assistance of @Elvis (his Aim is True), I got CMBN reinstalled on my MacBook. I am now trying to reorient myself on the project, in fits and starts between business trips (btw, last year I stayed at that hotel that fell down in the recent Indonesia earthquake/ tsunami/ volcano. Heartbreaking). Here's a couple of historical photos of the vicinity of "Purple Heart Corner", on this French language site chronicling the WWII experience of La Meauffe and the Meauffois. It seems even prior to D-Day the distillery had been bombed, as had V-bomb storage tunnels in the limestone quarries just north (occupied in mid June by 119th Infantry), along with several area chateaux housing German command staffs. And the Germans were demolishing bridges, fortifying churches, etc. The granite "Gestapo Château" guarding the Fors crossroads (actually a Feldgendarmerie detachment guarding LXXXIV Korps HQ at St. Gilles): The adjacent rail crossing. Yup, Purple Heart Corner fits the bill.

I'm on a Mac. But running the shell script via the terminal delivers the same result ("invalid serial number") as simply opening the game exe, which merely triggers the same script. Thanks for caring though. Elvis is still trying to help me out, good service.

Yup Elvis is trying to help me out. Hoping I can at least get it up and running before I crash (it's 2220 here in Manila). No gaming tonight alas. Edit: aaaand, I broke the mojo helpdesk. Sorry, Elvis.

I have now downloaded and installed the game using the full install Mac file at the link, all dandy. But now the popup is rejecting the 32 digit "activation code" that came with my order. I have now tried both the 3.0 code and the original 1.0 code multiple times, incredibly aggravating. Copy paste and manual entry, nothing works. Plus the popup screen uses a different term "license key", while in the helpdesk FAQ "activation code" is given a different meaning altogether (a 20 digit code used in offline manual activation). WTF? No wonder people loathe this system. BFC needs to make these instructions crystal clear. I have now wasted my rare gaming evening struggling with this nonsense.

@Elvis advised me via helpdesk to just buy the 3.0 upgrade, which I've now done (DL only). But the order shows Pending and there's no download link, only the activation code. I will need the "Full" DL. Does the link appear in due course, and how long does it take? EDIT: never mind, link was in the email confirmation though not in my online account. All good now. Downloading.

They are prefab mass graves or drainage ditches, not resembling any fighting position known to man. This is what a slit trench and LMG bunker (foreground) looks like. These are dug by infantry in a few days using only basic local materials (sandbags, logs and earth). South perimeter of Eliane 3 (A1) position, Dien Bien Phu (Viet Minh hills 'Chauve' and 'Fictif' are opposite)

(Oh Gawd, not another bloody Korea/Fulda/Vietnam/PTO thread!) For Future Combat Mission, here are my thoughts, fwtw: Combat Mission 3 would look and play a lot like ARMA3 does now, though hopefully with more ambient smoke and grit. Interface and camera views would be different of course, appropriate to a wargame not a FPS. 1. CM3 would support full multiplayer online, perhaps with WeGo mode giving way to a 'chess clock' providing a finite pre-agreed volume of 'time outs' where players can confer, review replays (and bleed the Monster), then resume. Or sumfink. 2. Next gen TacAI would improve autonomous pathing, cover seeking, awareness and tactical movement of individual pixeltruppen/ vehicles. BFC would also introduce basic battle drills and formations at squad/team level that units would execute automatically, depending on: unit orders, in command status, casualties, morale, training, experience and doctrine. This would return most player micro to platoon level and up, restoring the wargaming 'command' experience and making RT play much less of a clickfest. 3. Concealment (spotting), fog of war, terrain cover and damage models would be brought up to fidelity with the ballistics models. HE would no longer have to be nerfed. ....What else?

Holy cow, 7 pages! Clearly the Alan Parsons wasn't enough. In the meantime, try the buffet, and don't YOU go changing...

PRO TIP: Give the reb forces some burning cars to place in key intersections. These slow but don't stop AFVs, rendering them more vulnerable to RPG keyhole shots. Plus the smoke plumes make the battlescape less sterile and more ominous.... Also, I have some billboard mods for those highway signs. I guess I didn't include them in the zipfile I sent over, sorry!

Great to see the Ramadi map get some love!

Here, some 1970s art rock to soothe the savage refresh monkeys. https://youtu.be/zhRzORqNa0E

Interesting piece, looks like some of it was cribbed from this "BD6 and SWAT tactics are rubbish / no they're not" vets debate I linked in a MOUT thread over at the SF1 forum.

I often marvel at what the poor CM community members whose first language is (fortunately) not English have to put up with in the mishmash of US and CW idioms used here.

Great topic! even if not strictly CM. I once had a memorable conversation with a French African academic. He eloquently poured scorn on the intellectual sloppiness of le Anglosphere, especially our lamentable tendency to compose thoughts, and still worse, to edit them! on the keyboard. (I could only admit guilty as charged). In contrast, he went on, the French pedagogical method demands that you compose and arrange your ideas in your mind and only then commit words to paper, or open your mouth. I have Russian friends who say much the same thing. The lengthy piece below treats, lovingly, of that same topic, but is really about how thought process itself varies widely with culture and language. (No doubt there are also Taiwanese scholars lamenting the desecration of court Mandarin in the uncouth mouths of the dominant mainlanders). https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-useless-french-language-and-why-we-learn-it/ “I think the Mauritanian folktale is pretty sexist,” Collins says in French when called on by her teacher to respond. Challenged by her non-American classmates, she can defend herself only with variations on the same statement. “That was very American of you,” an Italian classmate tells her afterward.... [Europeans] took a few minutes to compose their thoughts, rather than walking around, undone, in the affective equivalent of pajamas.... the English of an educated, coastal-dwelling white American — sounded like exaggeration. I might have been speaking in all caps.... 'Great', 'awesome', and even 'perfect' now carry no particular connotation.... [Anglophones] think of their language as “open,” “flexible,” and “accommodating.” The French story is exactly the opposite. In French minds, their language is a particularly complex and nuanced tongue with no gray zones and little, if any, à peu près (approximation). Words are right or words are wrong. Every word has a precise meaning distinguishing it from other words. The French get the message very early, then consistently throughout their lives, that they are expected to exhibit a certain eloquence in their interactions with others. Unlike the other European languages that lost ground to English, “French had once been the common tongue of the Enlightenment” and “remained the standard idiom of diplomacy in the 19th century. English, somehow, is everyone’s property....the more extensive English’s spread around the world and across cultures, and thus the more total its disconnection from any culture in particular, the less impressive its standard of use.

So I finally got enough time to dig up my BFC account with my CMBN info and download keys. I can see both Pc and Mac options for CW, but the base game file only offers me a PC file. The only CM capable machine I have now is a Mac. Do I need to rebuy the base game or do I open a help ticket?

So the rumours are true.... https://www.vqronline.org/dispatch/big-suck-notes-jarhead-underground The tactical permutations were endless and, in some cosmic convergence of reality crashing head-on with the local grunt imagination, the Marine rumor mill began to seem like a legitimate source of intelligence: the mujahideen were all on speed, the muj were using remote-controlled cars as suicide vehicles, the muj had stolen an American tank and were waiting for just the right moment to use it, one of the muj snipers is a turncoat US marine, the muj had trained local dogs to act as scouts. (Most of the marines I knew bit on this last one and were inclined to shoot a dog as soon as look at one, and for some it was just one more drop in the karma bucket: the locals hate you, Allah hates you, hell, even the ****ing dogs want you dead).

Reading it now. Great stuff.

Interesting stuff! For those interested in the meta background on how Turkey went from NATO stalwart and EU aspirant to... well, today's situation, this is a pretty good summary: https://adamtooze.com/2018/08/19/framing-crashed-4-the-turkish-crisis-the-missing-chapter/ Refugee situation pretty dire as well....

Trying to get this thread back on MOUT as opposed to general current events: "Battle of Algiers" is available on YouTube, in the original French with subtitles. It makes many Top 10 / most realistic war flick lists, although it is not one in a conventional sense, and is used in counterinsurgency training. https://youtu.be/f_N2wyq7fCE

A year passed. Winter changed into Spring. Spring changed into Summer. Summer changed back into Winter. And Winter gave Spring and Summer a miss and went straight on into Autumn.