c3k

Well, yes, BUT that wasn't a pickup. Any fool knows that the cab-style vehicle modelled in CMSF would portray this quite accurately. The pickup, well, that's totally different. Ken

There is only one remaining spotting/firing situation remaining, outlined here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=83773&page=2 My abject apologies if this has been changed. I don't believe it has been. The situation can exist when the action spots are out of LOS of each other, but a unit may not be entirely located at the center of the action spot. (Infantry in a building,or a vehicle poking around a corner.) In that case, there is no LOF until the unit in question gains LOS. From the thread I linked to, regarding an enemy soldier looking out a window from the corner of the building, at the moment he pops up, the two way nature of LOS/LOF exists. The two way nature ends once he drops down. The game result is quite limited; since he cannot see out (he is below the window), the enemy unit has no LOS/LOF. However, even though you KNOW he is there (by the corner of the building under the window) you also don't have LOS/LOF. Physically, you can see that portion of the building; you may want to area fire on that part of the building, but cannot. To emphasize, this is limited: you will gain LOS/LOF to the enemy soldier once he pops up in the window; you are blocked from gaining LOF to that spot while the soldier is out of LOS. This is a rare occurance. The same situation occurs with partial vehicle spotting (poking around a corner). To summarize; LOS exists from you to the building corner (fringe of an action spot). LOF does NOT exist until an enemy unit appears in the LOS. Ken

My personal favorite: damn, I just noticed the bottom of the blast plate is green and the rest of the vehicle is tan. I bet the factory installed the blast plate upside down. Quick, get some guys to take it off and reinstall it properly.

Image linked in OP: I couldn't tell based on the link. The blocks could be to utilize the canal path, but to place some pipes/wiring above any possible water. Also, a lot of newer water diversion canals now have blocks placed along the path so the water flow does not get too powerful. Ken

Let's just think about an organization which is concerned with camouflaging the BOTTOM of a vehicle; WTF? Is that so it can hide after it's been flipped over? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's already been primed, so don't tell me it's to rust-proof the bottom. I wonder what the extra man-hours to paint the underbody are billed at to the taxpayers? But, more importantly, will this be correctly portrayed in game? Accurate underbody skins, or the game is broken! Ken

The M707 in CMSF is a recce asset. Unbutton it, then send it ahead of your forces. Optionally, you can leave it behind your forces. Your choice. Next, to use its recce ability, ensure it is stopped with LOS towards the enemy. Have you unbuttoned it like I said? Good. Again, it doesn't matter if it's in front or behind, as long as there is some LOS towards the enemy. Now you need to wait about a minute or so. GPS acquisition, LASER exciter warmup, turret slew, etc; none of that matters. The reason you're waiting the minute or so is to allow the enemy time to destroy it. Is it burning and/or smoking? Excellent. Hopefully you had other friendly units which spotted where the enemy was who just destroyed it. If not, don't worry, use the other M707's. That's what they're there for. Back to that smoke; this is where the "up front" placement would help. The smoke provides concealment for your forces. Did any of the crew survive? Yes? Too bad for them. They get to do the same function as their vehicle. Send 'em forward. Have your real forces keep an eye out to spot the enemy. Ken "who loves the utility of the M707"

Yes: thanks for digging that up!

Alex, That damage is impossible. See, I've been told in another thread that CMSF's artillery damage model against buildings is quite accurate. That, indeed, 155mm rounds don't have much effect on multifloor buildings or their occupants. Now, a 240mm mortar round obviously has more explosive fill than a 155mm howitzer round, but still, CMSF tells me a single round cannot account for that kind of damage. My point being: artillery can devastate structures. It's almost like it's designed to blow things up. Ken

I find I give area fire orders to units in overwatch (in WeGo), then zoom in on the front units for the next several turns. The result is my overwatch units burning through all their ammo. Ooops. (Another gotcha: using IFV cannon for area firing into an area you're assaulting results in friendly fire casualties. Sorry men - I'll not to keep forgetting that!) Ken

The last 1 or 2 issues of PC Gamer Magazine featured an Arma2 group which does exactly as you're suggesting. See if you can find copies online; they included links to the group. Ken

To me, it's scale: RT is only playable at a very low unit density/map size. Anything too large and too many men die. I can't be squad leader for 20 squads in real time. WeGo is playable at large scale. The tradeoff is once I give orders in WeGo, I totally lose the ability to influence the unit until the turn is over. Consider ordering a squad down a street and they get ambushed. In RT, I can immediately order them to stop, return fire, and seek cover. In WeGo, I've got to sit there and watch what happens. To me, RT=control; WeGo=relinquished control. I prefer less control. Ken

But the flames, man, the flames. Why are they 2D? We need volumetric flames. Cool flames, flames like Wolfenstein, flames like Company of Heroes. Flames that make you sweat when you see them. Burning flames of purity. Where were we?

bodkin, NOT the snipers! Coding the security element to stop firing is my goal. Right now the security element (the OTHER part of the sniper team) fires and reveals the team location. As well, the sniper will often revert to his backup gun for targets inside a certain distance (about 400 meters). These targets are marginal with the carbine, but would be easy with the sniper rifle. The goal is to allow the sniper team to snipe; not act like a small fireteam. Read my comments; I believe I was quite careful in ensuring that I was talking about the security/spotter part of the sniper team. Ken

Chops, the British teams are two men. Soloing out the sniper would neatly resolve the issue, regardless of how many are in the team. Ken

To clarify, I think the only weapon a sniper team should use should be limited to the sniper's rifle. Specifically, his long-range rifle. The only exception to this should be an ordered TARGET. In that case, the team should allow the security element to open fire with either rifle/carbine and/or grenade launcher, if so equipped. The sniper would be able to use either long-rifle or backup weapon (carbine, etc.) with TARGET commanded. The player or the TacAI could order the TARGET command. In all other cases, TARGET LIGHT, COVERED ARC, or the absence of any combat order, the ONLY weapon the team could use would be the sniper's long-rifle. The coding issue would revolve around the TacAI commanded TARGET order. When is that appropriate? Right now, it seems that the TacAI does a pretty good job of ordering units to TARGET when they are threatened. The exception being sniper teams. They switch to the sniper's backup weapon too easily and the extra team member(s) open up far too much. Thanks, Ken

Gents, I small idea occurred to me. The sniper teams cause a bit of frustration when the security/spotting element opens fire when they shouldn't. This gives away the team position and invites a response which often has a deleterious effect. How about coding them to only fire when under attack? That would prevent them opening up on a target which the sniper has lined up. A covered arc or target light command would ONLY apply to the sniper. Target would still be a command for everyone to open up. Otherwise, the spotter/security element would only spot and, er, provide security. Thoughts? Ken

Interesting. The video shows NO kills. I extrapolate a possible 2 kills due the imagery of multiple rounds impacting in/on 2 individuals. There is no imagery after the impact. It is obscured, then the video ends. You extrapolate 9 kills. Who is presuming what?

The "ubertech" is not as immediately effective. Examining the two runs in the video does not support 9 KIA. The difference may be what "attack" is defined as. I would assume that the two runs shown do not constitute the entire attack. After the initial run, when the enemy flees to the other side of the ridge, they are then pinned against it. As the Apache(s) reposition to that side of the ridge, it would be the matter of about 15 minutes to search for, find, and kill the remaining enemy. I have no doubt about the lethality of the weapons, only the timeliness of the attack. Meaning, 9 were not killed in the first two bursts. My "youtube-fu" is lacking. However, there was a link posted here about several Apaches prosecuting an attack against 5 enemy in a built up area. Yes, totally different situation. The salient point was that the attack was made using 3 Hellfires. One seemed to be a direct hit on 3 enemy, yet all three emerged from the IR imaged dust/debris cloud and ran to better cover. Later imagery shows a Hellfire impacting a shed containing all 5. One ran out. Another Hellfire impacted his location. So 5 men, 3 Hellfires. One missile caused 0 KIA (Unknown if any were wounded, but they were able to run). One missile presumably caused 4 KIA/WIA. (unknown because only 1 ran out. The other 4 could've been stunned - or vaporized. It would take occupation of the shed to determine if anyone was left. The debris and editing was inconclusive.) 1 Missile caused one casualty. The explosions and debris from that strafing run are impressive. Examining the impact points PRIOR to impact show that the men have fled. Lots of noise and impressive dirt. Very hollywood. Not very effective. Another video showed similar results. Apache gun film; delay between firing and impact means target was at least 1,000m away. A lot of dirt, debris. Then, a lot of men running out from the debris. Wounded? Possibly. But I would not assume so without evidence. (Parts and fluids do show up on IR depending on range.) Ken

Yeah, and the chick piece of eye candy, er, I mean, the female reporter chosen for her journalistic credentials and speaking ability to be an on air personality, also missed. Ken (who's only watched RPG launches and never actually participated)

TheVulture, Thank you for taking the time and effort to post this. It's revealing that I've tried several times to click on your screenshots to select the units or change the camera view. Keep 'em coming! Ken

Notice the engagement is directed to run from north to south. We can't (but should) do that in-game. Also note the misses on the first burst. Most infantry on the ridge immediately run to cover on the downhill side of the ridge; the second burst gets two probable casualties, the rest have already run downhill. Air support runs get commanded for which direction they come from and go towards; the effectiveness is not too good. Suppressive effect is high, casualty effect per run is not so good. (Surprised enemy, no incoming fire at Apache, high exposure on ridgeline, etc.) Ken

John, In this video, at the 3:48 mark is a few seconds showing a soldier firing an RPG-7. (I leave it to the RPG grogs to determine which mark of rocket is being fired.) The wind is slight, from right to left. The range seems pretty close. He missed. So, ideal firing range conditions; slight crosswind; no incoming fire; no screaming, yelling, distractions, etc.; close target (less than 100 meters?); plenty of time; target not moving. Possible spoilers would be the slight crosswind and let's grant that we have no idea what this guy's experiencle level is so we can call him a conscript on day 1 of basic training who just grabbed an RPG out of bin. Regardless, it seems significant to me that the impact was both short and upwind. Short is due to aiming. Upwind is due to the slight wind (watch the smoke; 1 m/s? or less). That seems to be a very difficult weapon to aim accurately. Thoughts? Ken

Yes, ugly shadows exist with Nvidia cards.

TheVulture has it exactly the way I try to do it. The grenading can be accomplished with a 5(?) second pause at the stack up location coupled with a target light into the building. The quick into the building is coupled with a covered arc command covering 360 degrees and a range sufficient to cover the adjacent rooms. (That stops the team from continuing to area fire into an empty room while they get ambushed from an adjacent room.) I usually don't move the second team into the building until the next turn (I play WeGo); that's to prevent the entire squad from dying in case of an ambush. Worst case would be losing the entrance team. I use the assault method, a few posts upstream, when splitting into teams doesn't make sense or can't be done (casualties, command, squad limitations). Ken

Very cool. If you move the HQ team what happens to the mortar? (Note the mortar shell icon for the gunner; I assume this means he can use the mortar. I'm curious as to what happens to that icon if the HQ unit moves.) Ken