Erwin

Does it come with a phrase book so we can translate into English?

ok, thanks...

This is a small part of a discussion taking place in another group I belong to. Hope it may be of interest here: "This issue is a more fundamental one than wargaming – it applies to assessment of real world operations as well. More controversial is the notion that it stems from some fundamental inconsistencies in our new construct of war. The COIN problem, as Peter has pointed out is the lack of a theory that links "doing things right" (MOEs) and "doing the right things (to get your desired endstate – MOEs). Lacking that theory, we tend to – INCORRECTLY – assume that if we do things right, then good things will happen. When the talk goes to simulators (inherently training tools to do things right) as a way to solve COIN problems, this pathology is rearing its ugly head. I would argue there is nothing inherently "COIN" about these simulators – unless one thinks that tasks like protecting a supply convoy, interacting with local officials to facilitate local order, or suppressing partisans are exclusive to COIN. Talk to the Germans in WWII about these things. Or the Spartans... Like Peter, I agree one of our problems is the level "sterility" with which our Cold war models were abstracted. It lead us to an incorrect understanding of "Conventional war" as a pure military on military affair where the winner made the loser sign a surrender document that ended things cleanly. Why did this happen? Well, because historical Army's were created to keep the other guys Army from raping and pillaging your cities and stealing all your stuff. Or in more modern times, destroying them. When the Army was destroyed, you had to surrender (i.e. tell your people to stop fighting) then really bad things would happen to your civilians. Well, in the Pax Americana version, Armies no longer do anything bad to civilians, so when you fight the Americans, what good is a defensive Army? It is at best a sacrificial anode to give you time to collect up as much cash as you can and get out of dodge, or go into hiding. The best thing for an Army to do against the US is to go guerilla, blend in with the population and try to bleed us out over time. But our understanding of military interaction lead us to models of combat based on Newtonian mechanics of attrition. When military units fought military units in the sterile field of battle, these models were "useful'" comparatively speaking, if not the best predictors. These models were "complicated' but "simple". When took certain types of actions, and turned the crank, expected outcomes occurs. Saddled by our own success, driving opponents with all but near –peer capabilities to long term, "COIN" (actually more steeped in guerrilla tradition IMO) we find ourselves having to put all the "dirt" back into our sterile models because we have found, over 10+ years, that in the "real world" pulling the same levers, pushing the same buttons and setting the rheostats the same way does not let you "zero in" on the "right answer" – but gives you a flummoxing range of outputs, that seem to bear little relation to how you set the inputs. Welcome to the world of complexity where doing the same thing over and over gives you increasingly good results, until it doesn't. Where metrics that "confirm success" suddenly spin around 180 when you dial back a smidge. All those issues that Peter points out. These are the fingerprints of a COMPLEX situation. OK, says General to OR guru – turn my complex situation into a few simple ones so I can get back to turning the crank on well-behaved relationships between MOEs and MOPs. Unfortunately we have some OR guys giving a cheery aye-aye and claiming to do so, when we KNOW that you can't decompose complex systems into components. He may as well ask for a set of actions he can do to make his 16 year old daughter act rationally. Unless there is reason to believe that our nascent understanding of complexity is fundamentally wrong, then we are left with the situation that our problems are not with our understanding of COIN, but cognitive dissonance between reality, and our desires regarding reality. I blame the whole JV 2010 thing for a lot of this. It represented the total breakdown of rationality regarding warfare when we decided that we didn't like where we saw warfare going, and decided that we could simply state a series of desires about how we wanted war to be, as goals to be accomplished. When it stated to become clear that these were not only unrealistic, but impossible, we just blinked and restated them in JV2020. The problem may not be with our understanding of COIN, but with the expectations with which we apply military capabilities to complex problems. We envision an end state, we devise a sequence of actions that we believe (key word) will result in that endstate, and then we assume that if we perform those tasks to an acceptable degree of "doing things right" we will get to our end state. In "simple" situations like the delivery logistics to disaster victims, and bombing electrical grids, because there are "simple" problems. They don't work with complex endeavors like COIN. Our military planning hammer is not effective dealing with the screw of COIN, so we call it a "COIN" problem and bemoan the fact the OR gurus can't make it work and the lack of a COIN model that makes the hammer work. The problem is the complexities of the wide range of situations we paint with the COIN brush do not lend themselves to a "work a series of actions back from the desired endstate framework" – but because that is the only tool we have, or are comfortable with "because it has only worked in the past" it MUST be that we simply haven't broken the code on how to round off the square peg, not re-examine or fundamental assumption that "pulling the same levers, and turning the rheostats" will cause real world effects in a predictable way. They simply won't and we won't "solve the problem of COIN" until we accept that. The issues of assessing why there is no consistency between action and system response in systems is a similar problem. Black Swans and all that. We "Know" you can't predict outcomes from inputs, yet it's a "problem" in need of solving. We Say we understand that and come up with variations on the words – "indicators", "design frameworks", "correlation mappings", etc., etc, but in the end the "problem" is we don't like the fact the tools we are comfortable with don't work dealing with complex situations. Until senior military leaders admit where the problem lies, we will never "solve" it." "For a discussion on the lack of a model of how COIN (or IN) works, the pathological demand for a numbers based assessment of progress despite this lack, the use of junk arithmetic and bogus logic to bridge the gap, and finallly two proposals for approaches to at least make sure the complexitt is recognized, see the two articles in the November issue of the Naval War College Review at http://www.usnwc.edu/Publications/Naval-War-College-Review/2011---Autumn.aspx by Jonathan Schroden and Stephen Downes-Martin, both of whom base their findings on field work in Afghanistan."

After JOKER 3 was hoping that amazing map would be seen in other scenarios. Just curious...

I remember that one. A classic.

Re Engineers and mines... Can they do anything more other than "Mark Mines?" Any way they can clear mines (like in CM1)?

If the system doesn't recognize the file, that should prevent it being loaded. Personally, I find it easier to create extra mod folders to store mods I am not using in the Z folder, and to keep a BU folder of all mods in case I mistakenly delete one. The other "fun" thing to do sometimes is to use the Mod Tools' RezExplode to open up the .brz files and mix and match to get a desired mod effect from two or more mods (say) of uniforms.

Do I need to d/l and run both patches, or only the latest one?

Cm: Office Command

Ok, I will try to not rant on about the XO's no more. However, am looking forward to CM: LOGISTICS REMF module to give em something to do.

So, it really does make sense to keep recon troops light and ammo-deprived if they have to do a lot of crawling etc? It's great to know this sort of thing - but only if the ammo weight has a NOTICEABLE effect in the game. Unfortunately, many really interesting effects (how experience affects sniper accuracy, effects of a superior quality HQ etc.) are so subtle that it's hard, maybe impossible to notice any effect in the game (ie outside of doing specific tests). The subtllty may be realistic. But, it would help the game if these effects were a bit more noticeable.

Hope the Russian Front module has female soldiers (to keep things "realistic" of course).

I know that folder or file "ZZ" will load after "Z". But, how are mod files handled within folders when in combination? Eg: One has a ZZ folder that is loaded after the Z folder. However, the Z folder has one or more files in it labeled ZZZ. Does the ZZZ file inside the Z folder get loaded last (and is seen in the game), even though the ZZ folder would be loaded last? This issue came up with as I was trying to use UI mods from "JUJU's tweaked UI", "MB interface" and "Bill's Improved Rank and Insignia" mods together. And it's hard to get the desired mod to appear in the game. Thanks...

I never even thought about the issues that Womble raised. Dam, there are some crafty, gamey bastids out there! Ideally, I suppose it would be nice if there were a toggle for things like that since many of us play vs the AI, I am less concerned about that sort of sneaky behavior by the AI. It is frustrating to not be able to mount (non-sexually of course) certain vehicles.

Not sure why you are looking at "mainstream press" reviews since this is not a mainstream game like Call of Duty etc. However, a simple Google wll give you many reviews from wargamer sources. And as everyone else has said, there is an xnt free demo to d/l and play. So, what are you waiting for?

Thanks for the mag info JasonC. And yes, ammo supply is one of the weird items in all CM2 games. One often spends the first minutes of setup simply loading up ammo to pretty ridiculous levels. Fortunately, all CM2 troops seem to be professional weightlifters and there are little if any negative repercussions from carrying 300+ rounds of 45 for the Tommy (or massive amounts of ammo for any other guns for that matter) heh.

Re XO's I thought that we/this game was all about trying to be realistic. Is it realistic to use XO's for recon, medics, suicide missions etc? If it is/was I stand corrected. My point is that we use medics ALL the time, and so the game would benefit from having em. So if there is a (programming workload) choice to be made, I hope that in the future BF will reduce the plethora of HQ units that cannot be used in a "realistic" manner in the game.

There was an earlier post someplace that such a bullet would go thru about 25cm/10" of reinforced concrete. Pretty amazing. You'd think you'd be safe behind that. Probably been watching too many TV/movie firefights where people are safe behind one row of bricks.

"I am too old and spaztic to play RT..." I agree... Um, I mean, I am too...

Nice AAR. I was surprised that any mortar or arty other than super heavy would neutralize a bunker (so I have never even tried). I probably would have hoped that the airstrike would do that. Is that a CMA bunker phenomenon, or are bunkers in CMSF and CMBN also vulnerable to mortars? (Also, would 60mm or 81mm have any effect?)

I agree with CPT Mike. There are an overwhelming number of choices for versions and scenarios right now. It's the "strange/weird phenomena" which could be bugs or deliberate design abstractions that are confusing as natch they are not explained in the still fairly inadequate (altho' CMBN's is a big improvement) manuals.

+1 to interest... Am enjoying CMBN right now. But, am developing a real hankering to get back to modern combat again. And the Brits are fun as they don't have the "overwhelming firepower" that one tends to see in US scenarios. One has to fight much smarter as the Brits.

Just curious... I have seen different sizes of Tommy Gun mags. How many rounds typically? 24? 30?

"I use them as streetsweepers to take care of casualties my troops do not have time to deal with." We all do. That's why it would be great if BF got rid of the Byzantine collection of excess HQ's and gave us Medic Corpsmen who we would actually use all the time.

mjkerner: Was that "Mad Minute Games'" two Civil War games (b4 they went bust)? Yes, I really liked the forests becoming translucent/transparent as one got closer. They did it right. But, I know I had a CM1 mod that removed the lower tree branches/undergrowth so one could see ones troops in woods fairly easily without having to turn the trees off, so one could still enjoy the feel of being in trees (branches above you). (LOS was still bad for the troops, it was simply easier to see where your own guys were.)