LongLeftFlank

What in the h*ll are you talking about?
 
I went on Steam and then they said go away, and then some comments were deleted, then Combat Mission, then you don't own your games, then EULA stuff...then I passed the bong.
This is like a an acid trip where I didn't get any.
EDITED: Yes, I know, I mixed my drug metaphors but it seemed to fit into the gibberish theme this thread evokes.
EDITED: I do not condone drug use except on days ending with sunsets.
EDITED: I don't do drugs. I can barely do mornings.
Mord.

Fun article.  Thanks...
"What was that Charles V said about the many languages he spoke? "I speak Spanish to God, French to men, Italian to women, and German to my horse?"

Socrates was against writing, said it dulled the brain, made people less capable of remembering things. Sigh, kids these days just can't memorize the Iliad like they used to. Romans were against reading silently (as opposed to orating), said it promoted seditious interior thoughts. Now everyone's against the internet (what we're on now), claiming people lose the faculty for 'deep reading' of dense material. I have my own gripe with calculators. They've made my brain flabby. Why bother adding and subtracting in my head when a machine will do it for me? Calculators turned me into a mental couch-potato.

No. You should be able to choose your platform now. If you cannot find the link I would ask support. You are allowed to get the Mac version.

Here's the one you've been waiting for, hot off the presses.

My third test used an 81mm British Airborne medium mortar team (Regulars) with a forward observer (Vet)


Test 1. Area fired on bunker 2 site (never spotted). 4 ranging rounds then 9 of 23 shots hit, KOing bunker and killing occupants

Test 2. Indirect fired on 2. 2 ranging rounds then 9 of 27 FFE shots hit, killing 2 of 3 occupants.


Test 3. Direct fired on 2. 5 ranging rounds, then 10 of 22 shots hit, killing all occupants

Test 4. Direct fired on 2. 4 ranging rounds, then 8 of 23 shots hit; 1 occupant lightly wounded

Test 5. Direct fired on 1. 4 ranging rounds, then 8 of 23 shots hit, killing 3 of 4 occupants

Test 6. Direct fired on a 30 meter segment of trench, "walking" target along trench (red X's in photo); 4 ranging shots, then 10 of 23 shots landed in trench, killing 7 occupants


Test 7. Direct fired on a 40 meter segment of trench, "walking" target as before; 3 ranging shots, then 8 of 24 shots landed in trench, killing 7 occupants.

I also ran a couple of plays playing the French side; the VM mortar failed to shoot at my forces unless I UnHid and took some pot shots first -- it then fired a few rounds in reply and fell silent again.

EARLY CONCLUSIONS:

a. The bunkers seem to provide reasonable protection against mortar fire; a lot of the casualties are taken through the firing slit (it would be nice to have one that's just an all round shelter). 27 direct fire shots under ideal conditions is pretty heavy punishment.

b. The trenches provide very weak protection against mortar fire; again, 27 81mm shells is an intense barrage on a small segment, but it consistently caused 50% casualties to the (Hiding) men under it. That's higher than I'd expect for men in trenches. I'll rerun the test a few more times to reconfirm the results. Not sure what I can do to mitigate this, other than to stick the men in revetted bunkers (dugouts) along the trench line and exit them once the barrage lifts.

c. Once they range in, mortars seem to land at least 30-40% of shells right atop a point target; this is fairly consistent.

Let's start with the most lethal weapon: a direct fire high velocity gun. I used a British Airborne 2lber (57mm) AT gun, a highly accurate flat trajectory weapon with HE and AP ammo. I have modded it to look like a 75mm recoilless rifle of the type used by both sides at Dien Bien Phu. Gun crew is Green.



I ran four plays of 10-12 minutes each. The results were similar enough that I didn't see value in running more. I also ran a 30 minute playthrough as the French defenders, and found the results consistent with these tests.

Test 1. Gun spots all 3 bunkers quickly, but does not fire. I order Area fire to a point beyond each bunker.
1.(left bunker, 215m). Area shots 1-2 penetrate, shot 3 sets it afire.
2.(centre bunker, 230m) Area shots 1-5 overshoot, shots 6-8 penetrate (bunker KOed).
3.(right bunker, 250m) First Area shot sets it afire. This is a cement bunker!

Bunker 1


Bunker 2


Bunker 3 (revetted 3 meters below the range -- a 4 meter depth would put it out of sight of the shooter).


Test 2. Gun spots bunkers 1 and 2 immediately and fires on 2.
2. 5 shots in 1 minute -- all penetrate and shot 5 KOs.
1. Area shots 1-2 penetrate and set afire.
3. Never spotted - 5 area shots do not reveal it.

Test 3. Gun spots bunkers 2 and 3 within 30 seconds. Order Area fires
3. Area shot 1 sets afire
2. Area shots 2 and 4 hit - KO. others overshoot.
1. Never spotted.... I didn't bother trying area fire

Test 4. No area fire or other commands needed.
2. Gun spots immediately, KO'd in 2 shots (all penetrate)
1. Gun spots in minute 2, KO'd in 4 shots (all penetrate)
3. Gun spots in minute 3, KO'd in 4 shots (all penetrate)

And here is a surviving French para, stunned at how easily his "cement blockhouse" was destroyed and set ablaze. Note the Kilroy graffiti visible through the door.


EARLY CONCLUSIONS:

Just reconfirms what we already know; bunkers are virtually helpless against flat trajectory guns, even of lighter calibres, and are knocked out very quickly. Putting them in hull down positions does nothing to extend their lives -- even bunker 3, whose roof is the only part visible was killed instantly. Their firing slits are not their weak point (like you'd expect) -- they get killed just as quick from behind or the sides.

The only protection seems to be to hide them deep in the earth (4 meters) or behind crests so they aren't visible from a distance.

Here is a diagram I've quickly tossed together, showing the effect of distance and muzzle height in relation to the aimpoint. If your aimpoint is at a different height than your muzzle, increasing the distance to the aimpoint results in a flatter trajectory, which can be used for grazing fire. Note that for the two muzzle points at lower height (red + blue), the intended grazing zone would be reverse-slope and could not be targeted. 
(Of course there is always some random inaccuracy/deviation from the "ideal" lines. This is not shown in this pic.)

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.... 

Once I get the map to a point where there's something solid to show. I most definitely will. I had a decent start in CMSF 1. I'm waiting for CMSF2 to be finished, and I'll go from there.

quality of the contractor and construction company?
 

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

Mostly deployed as infantry.

As a long time player of all games in the series Just Upgraded to Ryzen 5 2600x Win 10 64 bit Mem  G skill trident CL14 16 gig 3200mhz ddr4 GeForce gtx1080 8 gig X470 Aorus ultra gaming motherboard Samung Evo SSD ( faster transfer rate drive) 500 gigs   I had been using an 8 year old  Amd Athlon I3  CPU Older Memory ddr3 8 gigs Geforce 1050 Older Mobo Upgraded to SSD 2 years ago   Older System was crashing with cmbs Got an SSD which improved loading and some performance Had to run on lowest settings with my older pc specs A medium map on lowest setting could take a minute to load or longer if lots of action going on in map     My new system I'm playing runs CMBS with all settings maxed out and loads in around 15-20 seconds on a medium sized map same size etc as one I mention above Not sure what the crucial factor is to speed up the old engine  My GPUs fan doesn't spin when running game Stays idle Hardly using the GPUs specs / no heat Combined with my fans cooling system GPU temp stays very low Glad I upgraded It does make a difference to cm Plus I can super multitask with ryzen I also play other main game titles   So if you thinking of upgrading you get  better performance  But don't expect too much with the older graphics engine it was based on   I'm still testing full specs with bigger battle vs lag Haven't seen any so far Just got my new PC a week ago  Cheers Gaz

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! 

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

Try searching archives here: www.understandingwar.org

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! 

Why? It was essentially a siege battle. From recollection, the project was abandoned because of various issues around troop behaviour in entrenchments/fortifications.  I would love to see the work that was put in to modding CMBN to generate the Viet Minh, CEFEO and the Vietnam environment updated to the current engine and released.  The first Indochina war was more than DBP, which CM is not optimised to replicate on many levels, so I hope that this project gets revisited.

Hmm, why do I feel like the lead in "A Man for All Seasons", with my old friend SB in the role of Norwich chiding me that my obstinate purism will cost me my head?
And you will seek my thousands of posts in vain for a "CM totally sucks", either stated or implied. Not guilty, m'lud.
My particular wargaming interests are highly specialized and in the distinct minority (although I'm also not the only one). So I hardly expect my views to matter much to BFC as a commercial matter. I hope and expect most SF1 players will greatly enjoy the upgrade. But I am not required to alter my interests to match theirs. And the step change improvement over SF1 is not yet self evident on the criteria that matter to me. No amount of belittlement or strawmanning (not you, others) is going to alter that. Time will tell.

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

A hardware thread like this one should be stuck to the first page in my opinion.
I just did a few hours of research for buying a new PC. What I came up was this:
Dell XPS Tower
Intel Core i7-8700 CPU
16 GB, DDR4, 2.666 MHz
M.2 PCIe-x4 SSD, 256 GB
Hard Disk 2 TB (7.200 1/min)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB DDR5)
... for 1236 €    (10% reduced offer)
Actually, I admit that this is overkill for my needs. Personally, I would have ordered the smaller XPS tower:
Intel i5-8400 Processor
8 GB, DDR4, 2.666 MHz
SATA-HD, 3,5, 1 TB (7.200 1/min)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti (4 GB GDDR5)
... for 809,10 €  (10% reduced offer)

(... but then it turned out that the PC will be bought for me, anyway.)
I shall be more than happy to report how CM runs on it.
Best regards,
Thomm
 

Hi Long Left Flank. 
I am getting my new rig next week and will report back how it handles it. i7 8700k, MSI 1070 Ti Gaming, Asrock Extreme 4 motherboard, 8gb of 3.000 MHz RAM, Samsung evo SSD. If you can wait until then with your purchase...

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... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Just read this thread, well done @Kaunitz.
Sad to see though that not much has changed on this front since 2013, when I ditched my CMBN Dien Bien Phu opus for many of the reasons you describe here: no slit trenches; infantry unable to hunker down and keyhole, and easily shot dead in their holes or bunkers to the last man by ranged direct and indirect fires, within minutes, as they 'prairie-dog' up and down to spot. World War 1 would have been quite different with these physics.... 
And, no firing slits or embrasures.... 

Good grief! We can be shot in the head from pretty much any angle the moment we stick our heads up to spot, Charlie Brown.