c3k

It's hard to spot stationary enemy hiding at night. (Not "HIDING", just sitting still waiting in ambush.) It can take several minutes.

Ooh, ooh, I know. If you're concerned about force protection with a lot of smaller, dispersed, airfields, put a twin-cannon dorsal turret on the plane. That way you could man the turrets while on the ground and protect the field.

Nice video. It seems to be 9 seconds, elapsed, to fire off the entire belt. That comes out to a cyclic rate of ~1600rpm. (If it's only 8 seconds it's about 1875 rpm.) Are you sure it's a full 250 rounds? (I didn't count!)

Absolutely. Making it 25mm/bushmaster compatible would be nice. Installing 6 of them in the wings would add style points. (The A1 only had 4x 20mm.) Enabling selective fire so the pilot could choose how many would fire on each pass would get extra scoring from the judges.

Any A1 re-build would of course require new avionics/comms. It would be modernized to use the systems now in use. The idea of just pulling some out of a museum and declaring them the new solution is ridiculous. The core of an A1-style CAS aircraft would be a single prop of some flavor for simplicity and cost. Heavy lift for a robust weapons loadout. Trade some loadout for extremely rough field performance. Knobby tires are must. Modern comms/avionics/targeting systems. Cannon vs. .50: cannon have a longer range/explosive fill and can keep the aircraft beyond enemy small arms and HMG fire. (A longer reach is a good thing.)

"Capable" is user-defined. If I'm leading a platoon through the green zone in a-stan, I don't want a 600 knot bombing pass based on GPS from an F-16 dropping at 25,000 feet. Yet, that capability is critical to some missions. The A-10 is great...at what it's designed to do. Is what it's designed to do the best set of capabilities to support our troops as they are currently operating? Fuel burn, loiter, bomb load, communications up and down the kill-chain, ID'ing targets, hitting targets in close contact, etc., etc. What about its basing? Are distant bases with thousands of feet of pavement the best option? Maybe.

Juno Beach, Post over in the tech support section. A link back here would be helpful. A quick summary of what you've tried and what doesn't work wouldn't be remiss. The guys who'll get you up and running look over in that section more often than they come over here. Good luck. It'll be worth it when you get it running. Ken

My 64bit OS, multi-core computers run multi-threaded 64 bit applications very well. They even run single thread 32 bit applications very well. My 32 bit OS single-core computer would have some, um, "difficulty" with a 64 bit application coded for multiple cores. That is the short answer...

If you were in a Tiger, how would you know a Firefly was shooting at you? The sound of the shell whooshing past? The sight of one looking at you? Or the impact of the shell? Is he shooting at YOU, or your wingman? Are you jussst about to squeeze a round off at him? Or, is that just a Sherman? It's a tough call... Having said all that, yes, there are definite situations where there is a known threat and the unit should abandon its covered arc and possibly run away. There are conflicting reports about how the game is reacting to these situations. That needs to be clarified before anything else gets done.

Well, that's the conundrum: do you build and plan for worst case only, or can you afford to build and plan for other cases as well? Imagine using an F-22 or F-35 to try kill 2 or 3 guys with AK-47's and an RPG about 300m in front of a rifle platoon. Imagine using an A67 to drop a bridge near Pyongyang. Different missions, different tools.

Loiter time, ordnance capacity, followup, BDA, kill-chain, etc. Oh, if it's USAF, it needs to be a jet. Props? Boats have props... An aircraft that sips fuel, is simple, rugged, and yes, expendable, is needed. Multi-engine increases survivability, but at a huge maintenance/weight/complexity cost. Single engine - hell, I woudn't even give 'em an ejection seat. Some armor plate, cannon's to keep out of small arms range, and hardpoints galore. Big knobby tires. Because they look cool. Who really thinks the USAF will ever let an aircraft operate off a dirt strip? Let alone mud, or even worse, some place unsurveyed? Institutional inertia. Simple, rugged, reliable, cheap. Land it in a ditch? Cut it up and sell the scrap. A lot of thought has gone into fragless 250lb bombs. Festoon them all over it. Stick a few extra in the cockpit and have the pilot heave them out. A67 is too light. A pilot with eyes on the target, in comms with the ground unit, orbiting for a LONG time, with plenty of ordnance is what is called for. Sounds like the A1. Up-engine it, newer avionics - nothing too fancy, just more reliable solid state - and a few structural tweaks as need. If nothing else, it'll cause enough AF 3/4 stars to have heart attacks that the promotion rates for everyone else will skyrocket.

Quickset mortar will do that. You've exceeded the working time. Turn it into a useful ornament. Perhaps hang a plant from it?

Just a quick comment: the old A1's engine was rated at 2,800 hp vs. the turboprop in the A67 being rated at 1,600 hp. (Engines and airframes are matched to one another. These numbers are purely for comparison purposes. The Skyraider was a beast. Totally different class than the A67/Pucara/Tucano, etc.) Whole airplane parachute: Cirrus aircraft were the first civilian (or any?) certificated aircraft to use them. They work. Not always, but they have saved several folks already.

Hmm, I think I'll experiment with some PW's and see what happens. Is that against any rules?

Actually, in my experience, surrendering troops ARE invulnerable. But only to troops who KNOW they're surrendering. Unit A sees enemy troop surrendering. No fire from Unit A will harm the enemy troop. However, Unit B comes along. It spots the surrendering enemy as a "?", then upgredes to "seeing" an enemy unit. It fires. This fire, from Unit B, can and will affect the surrendering enemy.

Here's my counter: if a unit traversing a Covered Arc forces a "Target Lock" onto itself, even if it subsequently leaves the CA, then I'll simply flood half a dozen jeeps ahead of my tanks. My JeepSwarm © will act like a magnet, pulling every PaK and Panther's attention as the jeeps zip around, briefly in and out of LOS obstacles. Meanwhile, my Shermans will pick off every revealed gun and tank. (Hey, if I do this with amphibious Kubelwagens, it'll be a "SchwimSchwarm" (copyrighted).) The exact tactical situation can have a profound effect on whether a tight arc or a loose arc is appropriate. On balance, I think the arguments would tend to favor a tight arc as being better in most situations. Ken

Two different outlooks on covered arc raison d'etre. If the CA is "tight", it can be EXTREMELY useful to add definitive control over unit firing. Imagine setting up an ambush and having the hiding units open up whenever a round comes near them. The ambush would be useless. Hence, CA is "tight". The other view has CA's being a "point over that way and fire whenever, um, it seems like you should". Can you DEFINE in EVERY case when is good and when is not good? No. The only reasonable solution for CA is to keep it "tight". It's up to you, the commander, to set the CA appropriately. Having said that, there is a case to be made for a NEW command which allows more "looseness".

Aragorn2002, just to clarify: did the Panther wiggle its hull back and forth the entire duration of the engagement? (No savegames?) Ken

A toggle-able terrain mesh would be great. Right now there are some terrain mods which have grids embedded, available to use at the repository. (Thanks for the work to those who created and shared them.) You may want to mod your files with one of these terrain mods. If you suspect enemy is behind bocage, but cannot target them, some close-in camera work and area targeting will enable you to put rounds where you need them. No, they won't be very effective. After all, bocage was wonderful defensive terrain. Without knowing your style of play, perhaps more area fire would help. Ken

76mm: I agree, both issues need work. Issue 1: Spotting by vehicles. You'd think stationary vehicles in overwatch would spot a vehicle entering the kill zone first. (If you played vs. AI, you won't know when the M8 spotted the Puma/s.) The fact that the M8 got off the first shot may be a factor from spotting behavior. If not an aspect of the spotting routines, then an explanation of the Puma's delay in firing needs to be sought. Issue 2: Covered arcs. If the Puma was holding fire for a reason (ambush, get the battalion Hq, etc.) you would've complained if it had fired at the M8 after it left the covered arc. If the enemy area targets into your unit's zone, recon by fire, that shouldn't "break" the adherence to the covered arc. Etc. Right now covered arcs are very "tight". (I use excessively large covered arcs to ensure I cover the area I want.) It sounds like the covered arc was executed exactly as you ordered it. But, yeah, you'd think it would've fired at the M8, regardless, after the M8 aimed and fired at it. Do you have any savegames? Ken

This is a question at the heart of the CM model and as such it has spawned many threads. My interpretation comes down to this: as a player, what command level are you supposed to be? The opinions on the answer to this are important to how you view the game. For what it's worth, when playing this game, I consider myself every commander in my unit. I'm the Battalion CO. Yeah, it's my vision which shapes the battle. I'm the commander of each company. I understand the role my company should have and I get to move platoons as needed. In the same manner, I'm the platoon commander. I move my squads to achieve my platoon goal. I'm the squad leader. Finally, I'm the team leader, the tank commander, the forward observer, the sniper, the mortarman. Which of those roles would you take away from me? Each one has a part to play in the game. Having said that, command and control issues have been accounted for in various ways. The CMx1 implementation was to have delays imposed for orders. That was not a perfect solution. Flesh out your idea a bit more. It's fun to kick this stuff around. Ken

Good luck.

Yeah, a complete "good to bad" list would be nice...

There are two types of woods terrain tiles; heavy and light. Both simulate heavy underbrush. Neither simulates a single tree. The trees need to be placed IN the woods tiles. Hence the confusion over the the initial description of a team in "woods".

Old topic. The elevation limits are not modelled. LOTS of reasons for that. I won't get into that here, but feel free to search CMSF/CMBN forums for that. The graphic representation will show the various projectiles coming out of the barrel at an angle. That's part of the implementation. Ken