Vanir Ausf B

Yes, foreign fighters are a problem. I can see the US possibly taking almost any military action short of invasion. Baring some very unlikely scenario, such as the one being used for CMSF, the US is in no position to be taking on another occupation and insurgency. And barring a blatant provocation I do not see much public support for one anyway.

No. Less than 10% of insurgents in Iraq are foreign. EDITED for clarity. [ October 21, 2005, 07:20 AM: Message edited by: Vanir Ausf B ]

You sure don't sound very hopefull.

Yeah. I seem to recall my Soviets in CMBB having BFT back in '42. Except they called it RFT and it always worked.

We quized him on this earlier.

The French. We've got to get the French in at some point. Lots of reasons why, but the biggest is that US vs. France games will be VERY popular.

I think BFC has said that modules will all be in the same time period as the game they are based on, so I think it's unlikely we'll see a jump 35 years into the past. I want the same type of game you do, kip, but I think we'll be better off hoping for French and British 2007 armies in the modules for some hot blue-on-blue action (sounds vaguely sexual, does it not?)

Heh, when I first heard of "Combat Mission" I thought it must have been made by George Lucas. But I think you're right that it doesn't matter much. Battlefield 2: Modern Combat isn't an inspired name by any means and it's sold about a billion copies.

Is Syrian known to have the 9M123-2 or 9M123F-2?

Yeah, that's what I'm looking at too, panzer. My concern is that the Syrians will only be competative in a very narrow range of circumstances. I expect that open desert warfare will be out of the question unless there are some restrictions on what the US can field, but I don't want every game to be MOUT with the Syrians on the defense. That's why I'm pushing for the higher end Syrians armor to be included so we can have some variety before the Euro stuff arrives in the modules.

You forgot to mention the T-80

If you include the captured in the loses column the ratio is 1:5, but your point still stands. If the insurgents had equal numbers, armor and more heavy weapons, like the Syrian army does, the results would be very interesting indeed. Which brings me to my next point: Ah, thanks for the clarification. Indeed, a lot of people are having a hard time picturing a game where tank on tank combat isn't the central part of the combat. Oddly enough, after 2 years of intensive work on modern warfare I am having the opposite problem.</font>

It sounds like a modern PSW 234/4. It even has the same problems.

I suppose they could do like Steve said above and just make the US side automatically lose if their loses exceed a certain percentage at any point. That could be jarring and frustrating, I think. Something similar they could to, at least for QBs, is make US loses count for more VPs than Syrian loses. So if an Abrams which costs 300 points to purchase is destroyed it counts as 600 VP points for the Syrians, for example. Of course if you go far enough with this you could theoretically end up with a situation where the US player destroys every Syrian unit and still loses on points. No Pyrric victorys for the US Whatever they decide to do I strongly agree that the Syrians should be given the benefit of the doubt on capabilities and tech wherever reasonable, such as with the T-80 and BMP-3. Let's not make the problem any bigger than it has to be.

You are absolutely correct. The evidence that TIME's team collected indicates that relatively few members of the Republican Guard were actually killed in the fighting. According to the accounts, the Iraqi forces for the most part survived aerial bombardments by keeping their distance from their armor, which U.S. pilots targeted with great precision. Then as U.S. ground troops approached, the Republican Guard generally fled. Many of them appear to have acted on their own, motivated by fear and self-preservation. In Baghdad, according to a high-ranking Republican Guard officer interviewed by TIME, troops were actually instructed to desert. This may help explain why the members of the Special Republican Guard, deployed within Baghdad as the Iraqi regime's ultimate defenders, put up virtually no resistance to the American takeover of the city, as they felt the entire elite-forces structure collapsing around them. Link When it came to war, most of Saddam's armies either chose flight over fight or were neutered by commanders who had agreed to accommodate the coalition. Colonel Ali Jaffar Hussan al-Duri was not one of them, but his ultimate superior was. Once the fighting had begun, Hussan's division of the al-Quds army, an official Iraqi militia, received what he called "an incredible" order to send half the men home on leave. He challenged the edict with his brigadier, who was equally bemused. They attempted to verify it, but communications had been cut. So they dismissed half the unit and watched the other half vanish soon after. Link

Yeah, and you're not invited.

I'd really like to hear why CMSF is supposedly meant to appeal to the "teen market". Makes no sense at all. Personally I'm getting tired of the WW2 whiners. I would have prefered a Cold War setting myself, and have grave reservations about whether the Syrians can ever be competative in QBs, but I'm willing to give it a chance. At the very least the addition of other NATO countries in the follow-on modules combined with the blue on blue option should eventually give us some games with parity.

This is what concerns me. All of the means by which the game will be made challenging to the US player seem to apply to scenarios with a heavy emphasis on MOUT. What about multiplayer QBs, particularly those that don't feature a lot of urban terrain (I believe I read somewhere that there will be a wide variety of terrain)? I'm thinking in such games the only way to give the Syrian player a chance is with a large numerical superiority, which may not be feasible if the US force is more than a company in size. Maybe this is what the blue on blue option is for? If so I may wait until the first module to buy, since US vs. US doesn't hold much appeal to me.

You have it backwards. Modern warfare is far more interesting than WW2. See, I can conflate my personal preference with absolute fact too! Calling 2007 "SF" is absurd. That's not an opinion. What "simplistic" rules are you refering to? I see no reason to think CMSF will be at all simplistic. I expect it will be more complex than CMx1. Why does their choice of a non-WW2 setting imply lower quality? What is it about WW2 that makes everything associated with it higher quality?

Sure. Lighten-up the skin tones on the Syrian textures and call them Russians.

Oh, absolutely. Something else in that report that caught my eye: The Syrian delegation, which completed a three-day visit to Russia on Sept. 30, discussed delivery, training and maintenance of the S-18 as well as the procurement of other weapons. I wonder if the Kornet was the only other weapon discussed...

It had to do with rarity. I could list others, but it's probably better to forget. We are allies now! At least for the moment.

But would that be realistic? For WW2, it just so happened to be real. The russians and americans had lower-developed hardware (T-34, Sherman vs. Tiger & Panther) but had tons more of it than the few pieces the germans could build. Yet in this hypothetical setting, I think the Syrians actually have less tanks then the US? So you can't just give them more of their stuff for play balance reasons. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken, too.</font>

Oh. I thought you were being sarcastic. In that case, welcome to the dark side, Darth Ruddy.

I completely disagree. As Tom pointed out, it's just 2 vehicles. Not at all every single frikin' piece of armor the USSR ever exported. Secondly, from a pure gameplay standpoint these would make the difficult job of balancing out QBs and scenarios somewhat less difficult. Hardly a waste of time IMO. And most telling is the fact that tom and I almost never agree on anything. That fact that we are in lockstep with each other on this is a little disturbing I admit. rune: Interesting info on the SA-18. It just reinforces my opinion that giving the Syrians the benefit of the doubt on stuff we aren't sure about is not unrealistic. The future can change without notice :cool: