LongLeftFlank

LOS masking effects aside, I love the immersive visual effect of lingering dust and smoke from round impacts, and wish these effects could stay around longer (in dry conditions), perhaps with a toggle switch for the framerate impaired. While it isn't top of my wish list, it would seem a relatively easy way to mitigate complaints about battlespaces appearing sterile or generic.

Nope, whitey had nothing whatsoever to teach the Middle Kingdom when it came to usury or the extortion of tributaries and satrapies.

So let's parse this Week article which encapsulates the current conventional (defeatist) wisdom: https://theweek.com/articles/794399/afghanistan-endless-war US goals: - They must renounce violence - break ties with al Qaeda - Accept the protections of women's rights in the Afghan constitution, and - Negotiate directly with (accept authority of) the Afghan government Talib goals: - Taliban-ruled medieval society, and al Qaeda - ISIS would have free rein there to plan and carry out attacks on the U.S. US resources: - 15,000 US troops - armed drones and airstrikes - Afghan forces number about 300,000 - The population of Kabul has shot up from 1.5 million (2001) to almost 6 million Talib resources: - 20,000 to 40,000 fierce and committed fighters - annual budget of an estimated $2 billion (foreign funding) - lucrative international opium and hashish trades, which employ nearly 600,000 Afghans - Taliban now rule more territory than they have at any time since 2001 - Pakistani military also allows the Afghan Tal­i­ban to retreat into its territory

Thanks for the contributions all. After stripping away all the general gearhead talk , this seems to be the summary of CM specific specs advice to date, as far as this non-techie can tell: - CM puts more stress on memory/CPU architecture - favour higher speed CPU cores vs more slower cores - Buy K versions of Intel CPUs - AMD backend cores are not full cores - CM is happy with higher clock frequencies - Nvidia (GTX) graphics cards are better than AMD, especially for laptops and  avoid Intel cards - Consider an extra case fan in a desktop build - Windows with bloatware removed leaves more resources for CM than a Mac OS (no doubt some Mac evangelist will argue this but please don't derail the thread!). What else? I care *solely* about optimizing for CM performance here. I have other devices for general computing. Cheers!

My wish list includes an option for both sides to have some (or all) forces under AI control, with plans, triggers, etc. Seems more doable within the current engine than full multiplayer. So a player can command a subunit that's part of a larger engagement. Or doesn't have (unrealistic) control over his armour support. Or a designer can even design a war movie then watch the computer duke it out both sides, viewing via Test mode.

Yeah, my sigline links are obsolete. Send me a pm with an email and I'll get the Shopfront 8 to you along with the Mosque collonade 9. That should make the map look as intended. Good luck with the scenarios!

Tangentially related: I thought an interesting in game way to simulate the 'Hit the dirt!' reflex of infantry to incoming OBA shells (not mortars) in game would be to have 2 'rounds' closely spaced, but one making no sound, invisible and doing no damage, just triggering the protective reaction in the pixeljoes a second before the real round arrives....

"What kind of specs should a PC have to run CMx2 well?" Yes, it is OT. Can we confine this to advice and anecdotes on the above, svp? Non-techie question: Which operating system is the least of a system hog (i.e. doesn't compete with CM)? I feel like the exponential increases in computing power over the last 20 years seem to get sucked up in the bloatware. Cheers!

Resurrecting this old thread on specs and settings, plus some helpful pro tips @IanL linked to below. Cheers, Ian et al! I am shopping for a CM2 machine as my old one won't run CMBN at all any more, and certainly won't handle Ramadi SF2...

Try searching archives here: www.understandingwar.org

Great video, mandatory viewing for all us CMSF armchair warriors!

Because offering newcomers a high functioning *free* CMSF1 alternative to a $200+ CMSF2 with much the same content isn't good business for a niche company. Every sale these guys lose to free hurts.

1. In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men. 2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. 3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. 4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue. 5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays. 6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare....

Never happen. It's still too good. The BFC team need to earn a living. The various demos ought to suffice for the purpose you identified. In spite of their historical aversion to Steam, I have thought that to draw some new blood in from that huge gamer pool, BFC might put up a free multigame demo, with 4 company sized fights from, say: 1. CMSF2 (Germans, desert recce) 2. CMBS (industrial burbs, heavy tanks) 3. CMFB (Peiper's last gasp at Stoumont?) 4. CMFI (Canadian engineers at Ortona) Scens 2 and 3 also playable H2H? Of course, the game's dated engine and learning curve might not fare too well in the reviews of the shooter Twitch crowd....

Re "girl's basketball", you can keep your New York Liberty. I'll watch the Aussie netball thanks very much.

Yeah, I'm not sure I can recommend that kind of tourism mate. If you must see a war zone but don't want to enlist, you might consider a refugee aid org like Docs w/o Borders. That's what Hemingway did.

Don't plan too much, just go!!! The backpacker trail is well defined pretty much everywhere. Pack light, fly one way to a suitable starting point (I recommend Costa Rica or Bangkok as fairly safe), buy the Lonely Planet guide, and you'll make friends who will tell you the next steps. If you're healthy and don't have addictions beyond tobacco you can get by nicely for half a year on about USD5,000 + air fare. It's nice if a family member can keep your minimum paid on your Visa bill; you don't want to be broke in a foreign land. And don't sweat the resume. At age 26, I sent a telegram (yup I'm that old) from Chiang Mai telling the law school that had accepted me I wasn't coming. Never regretted that choice. My 2 travel years were vastly more formative than school. It's also why I'm a road warrior expat today (married to another backpacker). Having deep roots in a place is great, but it isn't for everyone. Anybody who interviews you (at any company worth working for) will either have taken time out to travel, or wishes they had. And as a bonus, your dating conversation will be vastly more interesting, especially to the kind of person you'd actually want to be with....

Archibald "Harry" Tuttle: IED mechanic, at your service!

This may be apocryphal (since my info comes from SEALS), but ever since Vietnam, one sure tell for a journalist with no actual clue or access is that they use the term 'Green Berets' in their reporting, as opposed to operators. You could certainly do a CM scenario, but it's basically "an endless series of running battles" (i.e. hit and run ambushes) across a quite large battlespace. Command skill would be almost irrelevant; victory would be random, based on (un)lucky hits by rockets, mines, plus the retaliatory airstrikes. And after 15 years that's exactly the way the bad guys like it.

Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book! As for a RED force counter to BLUE open country mech, all I can think of is some of the 1941 Ariete tactics during CRUSADER, where their best offence was a good defence (i.e. a feint), and their short guns bushwhacked the advancing British tanks on reverse slopes and wadis. Hezbollah provides the only successful modern example of course, but they had the singular advantage of defence in depth, in a long-prepared zone. Still, they had some interesting tactical ideas. 2006 Lebanon war Hezbollah deployed their tank-killer teams in a thin but effective defensive scheme, protecting the villages where the organization’s Shiite members reside; villages where their short range rockets were positioned and where command infrastructure and logistics support was set up. An estimated 500 to 600 members of their roughly 4,000-strong Hezbollah fighting strength in South Lebanon were divided into tank-killer teams of 5 or 6, each armed with 5-8 anti-tank missiles, with further supplies stored in small fortified well camouflaged bunkers and fortified basements, built to withstand Israeli air attacks. Due to mountainous area, engagements were encountered at ranges below 3000 meters. Hezbollah tank-killer teams would lay in wait in camouflaged bunkers or houses, having planted large IEDs on known approach routes. Once an Israeli tank would detonate one of these, Hezbollah would start lobbing mortar shells onto the scene to prevent rescue teams rushing forward, also firing at outflanking Merkava tanks by targeting the more vulnerable rear zone with RPGs. In general, Hezbollah demonstrated rather slow regrouping and response rate, since their mobility and command links were severely restricted by the IDF dominating the open areas. However, even this slow pace was fast enough to match the slow and indecisive movements of the Israelis forces. ... Benefiting from its superior night combat capability, the IDF conducted most movements at night, minimizing exposure of forces during day time.... Realizing the capabilities of the Merkava 4 tank, Hezbollah... engaged these tanks exclusively with the heavier, more capable missiles such as 9M133 AT-14 Kornet, 9M131 Metis M and RPG-29.... the TOW as well as non tandem RPGs, were considered obsolete against tanks, but proved quite lethal against troops seeking cover in buildings. Overall, almost 90% of the tanks hit were by tandem warheads. The IDF employed several hundred tanks.... about ten percent were hit by various threats. Less than half of the hits penetrated.... Hezbollah aimed their missiles to the sides, and rear, when possible.... An armored brigade, which bore the brunt of battle.. hundreds of antitank missiles were fired... only 18 tanks were seriously damaged. Of those, missiles actually penetrated only five or six vehicles and according to statistics, only two tanks were totally destroyed, however, both by super-heavy IED charges.

For the most part, unfortified buildings furnish a lot less hard cover than you'd think. The concealment value is at least as important. The cinderblock walls of most modern structures, as well as traditional mud brick structures of the type you'd find in Syria, are not load bearing and are readily perforated by small calibre rounds at hundreds of meters even when fully intact. So shot-up walls won't offer dramatically worse cover values until they collapse entirely. Such harder cover as is available inside is mostly the supporting pillars which are poured cement and rebar, or the floors. A few large structures, usually government edifices or old mosques, have thicker walls of poured cement or sandstone blocks.

As with the Imperial Japanese Army, oblige them without joining them. When they're hiding among civilian populations, the best approach to date has been effective local allies with a better sense for local bad guys. Technology may also help some; cheap drones can already 'sniff' explosives. In the (indeterminate) future they may also be able to bioscan for visual or metabolic cues that warn 'this dude is either very ill, stoned or living his last moments on earth.'

Cheers, all. Yeah, the richness of mapping and documentation is what attracted me to this particular battle, vs. more 'CM-friendly' actions (i.e. more tanks) taking place east (Hill 192) and west (V. Fossard, le Dezert etc.) at the same time. Most CMers are to a greater or lesser extent aware of the history, but game mainly for the pleasure of 'fighting in the style of' a historically accurate force. Fair enough, but I am more of a digital historian, and like to get deeper into the boots of the participants.