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Something to try: Open up the editor. Toss in a mounted infantry platoon (or company). Make the map about 800m x 800m. Give yourself 4 hours. Call it, "Test - Catch a Ride". Save it, then play it. See what types of movement commands work and what don't. (Move, load. Load, move. Move, unload. Unload, move.) After ~30 minutes, you'll have gained a huge amount of insight into how this works and the timing involved.

The rest of the reason why to the bold is that infantry stay together a bit tighter in CM than in real life. So, since they bunch up, artillery would be too effective. This is due to the action spot system. It's been discussed many times. As akd mentioned above, testing and data collection is what will show whether there is really a problem. That takes time...and effort. Once it can be proven that there is a problem, well, then a solution must be proposed/devised. And then that solution needs to get tested. Bocage/infantry interaction has been a great example of how inter-related all these factors can be and how unintended consequences can result.

There was a great AAR posted here (CMFB I think). A night fight. It showed very well the "unzippering" effect of night LOS when units opened fire. One unit, far left, fired on the enemy. The enemy, now seeing that unit, had it's opposite units open fire. Well, those units were visible to more units to the right. So, they opened fire. More enemy units saw them and opened fire. In less than a minute, from a few rifle shots on the far left, units from that side to the far right all opened fire on one another. Prior to that, no units had contacts. (Covered arcs would have helped.)

Nice links. Thanks for finding and posting these. Regards, Ken

I've been working this and what I'm seeing is actually pretty good. Yes, there IS an issue, but only in one set of circumstances. The TacAI targeting algorithm is correctly apportioning the team's antitank assets to the correct targets. I've tried various combinations of weapons and armored targets. The TacAI is really doing some great discrimination. Kudos. The only issue is a matter of timing. If we could get everyone to HOLD FIRE until after the Javelin is fired, then it would be about perfect. IMHO.

My bold. You were probably the only CMBN player to be upset that v4.03 was released. How about updating the tests? Seriously...this is a great resource. Outstanding! Thanks, Ken Edit: I just finished reading some, browsing all, of your writeup. I am gobsmacked! Seriously, this is great.

Just to be clear: I am just a lowly beta tester. All I can do is flag it and run it up the pole. (To mix some metaphors. Or something. ) I have NO idea if it is possible for BFC (I am -not- an employee) to do this...or if they think it's a good idea or if they have the resources, etc. I shared my idea and that is what I will present. But, well, we'll both have to wait and see if anything comes of it. (Of course, if it does, I may know about it before you. )

(If anyone has better information, please chime in.) The KETF round has a variable fuse. It is the preferred round for all but armored targets. The "solid shot" should be saved for those armored targets. The KETF can, theoretically, be fused for airbust, delayed burst, contact burst as well as pre-burst and pre-spread. In this case, it should be pretty effective against the bunker. Not a one-shot, everyone inside dies, but a few bursts should neutralize the bunker. Somewhere, I've got pages and pages of PDFs on the KETF/CV90, as well as many html links. Hmm...

I've learned to NEVER go into the woods after PPsh-armed Soviets. Ever.

@nikolai, Yeah, I figured out the stripping away of the assault team leaves the remaining team with the AT4s and the Javs. There are a few things seeming to be going on here. Like I hinted, I've tested this for years, and I thought it had been resolved. I'll go back behind the closed Beta doors and work on it there. The AT4 shows a range of 0 to 300 meters (point target) and the Javelin's is 75 to 2,500 meters. Their ranges overlap from 75m to 300m. This is the problem area. (Inside of 75m, only the AT4 should be usable...and used.) The desired behavior would be for NO AT4s to be used outside ~75m, if a Javelin is present in the team/squad. Fudging that ~75m up to ~100m would be fine to me (so it's not such a hard cutoff). So, enemy armor (IFV or MBT) inside ~100m, use the AT4s and anything else (absent a restrictive cover arc). Outside that ~100m, with a Javelin, no one should fire until AFTER the Javelin(s) engages the targets. ^^^ That is what _I_ would like to see. I'm not sure if it's possible to code it that way. But, as I said, I'm ducking behind the Beta curtain. Thanks. Ken

If you're seeing something otherwise, let me know.

Great video. Do you have that as a savegame? This bug is near and dear to my heart... I'm a beta, so I'll run with it from here. Thanks for the clear documentation. (And how did you get 5 men to carry 5 AT4s and 3 Javelins??? Or, do they have help downstairs?) Ken

It was the effect on the bunkers that was fixed.

Late to the party, but this is great news! Hope its success exceeds expectations.

Outstanding job on these videos! These should be used as a sales tool for CM.

You missed a sale last month. Operation Mercury, new, was around $40.

I just did a deep dive into CMSF2's "House Cleaning". Yeah, that hospital complex is a tough nut. I found that they Syrians were able to ambush the US, inflicting many casualties. So, I dug deeper. What I found, surprised me. You know those hanging skeleton models in medical places? Well, some Syrians had skeleton suits and were imitating them. That worked. In one case, as the US team entered the morgue, several drawers popped open and out sprang some full-auto AK-firing Syrians. I won't even mention the fiasco in the emergency ward. Oh, the operating theater? Well, the US expected that the "patient" was a Syrian fighter. Sure enough, he had a machine gun under the green sheets. What caught my guys out, though, was that every "doctor" and "nurse" were also Syrian fighters. These were just the ones that stood out. The usual techniques of hiding behind furniture, poking shooting holes in walls, etc., were there as well. My point? A lot is abstracted. Room-clearing is deadly work. Explosives and suppression...and smoke, are the only way to make it work. And you'll still take casualties. But it still sucks.

Set the arc TOWARDS the direction to which you want them to observe/orient. Make it short, but not so short that they won't respond to an ambush. Say, 20-60 meters. They MAY fire back if fired upon by units outside that covered arc, depending on their suppression level, morale state, and experience level. Using HIDE will make most of them stay heads down, and only one pop up and observe. The game rewards more eyes spotting, so I would not use HIDE. (I will use it if I am setting an ambush, not if I'm trying to create an observation post.)

Do what @Combatintman advised. BFC is very good about this...if a ticket is opened with the Help Desk. And then post back here and let us know how they resolved it and what your thoughts are about CMSF2.

That type of error (unit naming, etc.) is almost always a .brz error. It's good practice (so I've been told) to remove all your mods BEFORE patching, then just put them back. (To me, that means just moving my "Z" folder from my Data Folder to my Destop, patching, than putting the Z back into Data. FWIW to others who are reading this.)

Thanks for posting this. A bunch of us have just discovered it, as well. If you've already installed it, you can copy the files from the nested patch location (the second "Combat Mission Shock Force 2" folder) and move them into the same folder in the original CMSF2 location. Don't copy/move the folders: just the files inside the folders. After all the files are moved from the nested CMSF2 folder into their correct location, you can delete the nested CMSF2 folder. (Or, just delete the nested CMSF2 that was installed with the patch, and redo the patch, this time dropping the "Combat Mission Shock Force 2" from the installer location.)

It seems like you've only partially quoted what I wrote. I agree, the non-calculating player should upgrade. But the game turn is not upgraded until AFTER the calculating player upgrades and THEN calculates. The receiving player just watches the replay. That can still be the old version, but then he needs to upgrade or else you're back to where you started. To expand: One player performs the calculations and sends the resulting turn to the other player. The sender needs to be patched BEFORE calculating, or the sent turn is the old version. The receiver (if unpatched) will not send an updated turn back after watching, once that player becomes the calculating player, if that player is not upgraded. So...both need to be patched. Sure, the receiver could wait until after watching the replay to patch, before calculating the next turn, but that just takes us back to step one, where the new receiver (the original sender) is now patched before receiving the turn. Does that make sense?

Thanks for the explanation. (And, yes, it was hard not to drop an early reveal about the patch. )

Do you have a save of the scenario which is giving you Gill issues?

Yes. Both should patch. As your described the one player patches after saving the set up phase. The other player patches and waits to receive the turn. First, copy your existing install, just in case this goes sideways. You would then just bring the copy over to its original location, overwriting the patch, if you cannot get this running. In pbem, one player is the "calculating" player. That player should patch his install and then "calculate" the turn. The other player should also patch. Then, the replay goes out, the next calculation occurs on a patched install, and you're up and running.