Vanir Ausf B

This is news to me. Has this been tested? A rather massive one, as I recall from the Black Sea beta testing.

Exactly. It isn't about eliminating area fire. Area fire is the most common type of fire in real combat. It's about the near instant responsiveness of it in the game. It takes time for information to percolate through the C2 chain. The player can render this irrelevant. If an enemy unit reveals itself by opening fire I can in most cases hit that unit in less than 30 seconds of the start of the next turn using vehicles firing from waypoints. When I think of the number of times I use one unit to spot area fire for another as opposed to using genuine recon by fire the former probably outnumbers the latter more than ten to one. But it is true that there is no solution that would not cause problems under some circumstances. That and the fact that most players don't care/aren't bothered by it are why it's not going to change.

Receiving There is a listing in the manual of what the EW effects and at what levels. From memory I don't think it affects those items you listed. Mostly it affects radio and satellite communications so that arty and air support call times are longer, UAVs stop working, ect.

One realistic way to give a small nerf to US forces is set their electronic warfare level to Light, or one level higher than whatever you have the Russians on. Russian EW is very good.

The spotter does need to have a satellite data link to use the UAV, either via PDA or vehicle mounted system.

I don't have answers for all of these questions, but Ratnik is in the game to a limited extent. All Russian soldiers have body armor. Recon troops have helmet mounted night vision in addition to their weapon sights, and recon platoon HQs carry PDAs that allow them to network with UAVs.

Zala A note of clarification to my earlier comments. It is not unrealistic for the Abrams or any other tank turret to automatically slew towards an enemy unit that is lasing them, but the hull should not go with it. I am hopeful that the tactic of "lasing off" target will be implemented in some way and also bore sighting for close range engagements.

Yes. https://www.dropbox.com/s/b6b9psp776wakup/building%20test%20two.btt?dl=0 I did try your test and indeed the problem isn't manifest there for some reason.

The think the point is that area fire in CM is usually not blind because you have other units spotting for it and the player with his god's eye view knows there is an enemy unit there even if the shooting unit does not. I would certainly not want my house rule idea implemented in the game. It's not really feasible. If I ever did play with such a rule there would need to be a common sense exception clause for obvious prominent geographic features. Targeting the top floor or roof of a 14 story building is perfectly reasonable, but if you are targeting the 6th floor that's different. Bulletpoint's idea has merit because it doesn't prohibit anything, just makes it less precise. Admittedly, the realism of that is circumstantial. An action spot is 8m x 8m, a size that was chosen for computer performance reasons and has nothing to do with real world combat. If you ordered a tank to target a particular patch of ground there is no reason to think the fire would be limited to any 8x8 area. On the other hand, if the order was to target a specific feature that could change. For example, a line of bocage could be expected to produce a lot of variation along the x-axis but not so much along the y (in fact the lack of an option to area fire a target line instead of a spot is a separate but related issue). But I suspect you have little to worry about. Ideas for capping area fire abuse have been kicked around for as long as CM has existed and nothing has come of it to date.

It isn't. I reproduced it in a test scenario I made myself.

The idea has merit. I have been thinking about this and have even considered trying a house rule that vehicles can only use machine guns to area fire on targets they do not have a contact marker for. In reality this is how most recon by fire is done anyways since real armies don't have the logistics to routinely use large caliber shells on speculative fires. That is why tanks carry thousands of rounds of machine gun ammo.

Yes, AFAIK nearly all of the official scenario maps and a large chunk of the QB maps are based on real world locations so the amount of trees isn't necessarily a design decision.

Good catch. Reported.

Even Abrams tanks don't spot well to the rear in the game so the spidey sense is presumably the laser warning receiver. The problem is that tanks have instant reaction speeds. This has been effectively slowed down in the case of infantry close assault but remains an issue in other circumstance. Vehicles of all types, not just US, really do seem to have a spidey sense for incoming ATGMs. This is all going to have to be addressed at some point.

I am not Sublime but a few pointers. Don't get into a staring contest with US units. Sublime's advice is sound. Any Russian vehicle in LOS of US units will be quickly spotted. You have to put solid cover between you and them. The key is try to catch the US unit while moving and preferably not facing your units, so you have to anticipate where they are going and cover that ground with multiple keyholed assets. This is easier said than done and can require a lot of terrain analysis and LOS checking with the target tool at waypoints as well as the camera at view level 1 (doing this with trees on trunks only can help quickly identify gaps in tree coverage, but checking LOS from waypoints can help locate gaps that may not be visually apparent. Abrams tanks can and will spot and kill your vehicles through small gaps between trees. You will be surprised at how much less concealment trees give than their visual representation suggests). Infantry can remain undetected in LOS of US units if they are on Hide in good concealment such as buildings or forest but only until US units close to within a few hundred meters. Within about 100 meters your guys hiding in the forest are going to be seen by anything looking their way intently which makes forests poor ambush positions unless they are thick. It is better to engage US forces from urban areas than forests. Put your guys on Hide with a 180° covered arc and they will unhide if anyone enters the arc. If you find yourself fighting in low light conditions or especially low light combined with less-than-clear weather you will be at an even greater disadvantage since most US infantry units have helmet and weapon mounted IR sights while Russians have only weapon mounted day/night sights. In this situation dismounted AT-4c and AT-14 ATGM teams will be a godsend. They are the only man-portable thermal devices the Russians have and the difference in spotting range is huge. Also note that in such conditions your forward observers will need a UAV to call in strikes across long distances. The only real spotting advantage the Russians have is the millimeter wave ground search radar on the Khrizantema-S. It can "see" through even multispectral smoke. Use other late-model Russian vehicles to generate smoke screens for them when in LOS of US units. BMP-3Ms shoot smoke about 100 meters, BTR-82As and BRDM-2Ms about 135m, BMP-2Ms about 125m, T-xx MBTs about 50 meters but in a wider arc. Russian vehicles can only shoot smoke twice.

I see Russians. I see guys named Steve.

There are gameplay differences in how visual C2 is established and in some cases whether it can be established.

Yes.

It's on the left edge of the screen where there is usually a readout of what action each team member is doing. EDIT: Just noticed you're playing Shock Force. I don't have that game and if it isn't in there the feature was added in the Normandy game.

I play Iron exclusively and don't see delays or refused orders.

What was motivation and leadership ratings (e.g. +1).

I have a feeling US spotting will be reviewed for the first module. I don't expect major changes, but what needs to be tested is US moving spotting vs Russian stationary spotting. If the former is better than the latter there is a problem. But more than anything else what needs changed is reaction speed. It is rediculous that you can lase a tank and it will pop smoke or slew around 90 degrees before the sabot leaves the barrel. The same is true regarding how vehicles routinely detect ATGM launches off to their sides. Vehicles effectively all have Shtora. These issues are not at all unique to US vehicles but the effects are magnified for them since Abrams frontal armor facing matters more.

The Abrams side turret armor is set too high, IMO. It will resist PG-7VR even without the ERA. It has been reported as a bug and will hopefully be adjusted in the next patch.

Apparently I use grids in a much different way than most. When the camera is close to the ground I don't have much trouble seeing the lay of the land. Grids do help a bit but where I find them most useful is zoomed way out where everything looks flat. I like being able to turn trees off and see the topography of the whole map at a glance, which is impossible at that elevation without a grid, IMO. The early grid mod you are remembering is Niessuh's Outer Grid, one of my all-time favs that I still use in CMBN. What I love about it is that when you are watching the replay at ground level locked onto a unit the grid is invisible for maximum immersion. The problem is that it was made for the Normandy game and since BFC switched to a very desaturated color palette for all subsequent games it creates a jarring effect in those games since the distant grass LODs with the grid are a much more vibrant shade than the near LODs without. Rocket Man also did a grid that I still use that is the most purely functional grid I have ever seen. It's not only visible at all LODs but the larger grid squares contain smaller squares at close LODs. It is also a CMBN grid with bright grass and the grid is something of an immersion killer with all those sub-grids so I drop it into my mods folder only when doing the setup turn for a game where I will be spending a lot of time on terrain analysis and planning.

Is it intentional that these grids not be visible at distant LODs or do I have a conflict with another mod?