76mm

Does it involve making armored vehicles invulnerable by putting them behind low walls, as in 1.05? If so, I hate to break it to you, but it probably won't work IRL, and it's gonna be fixed in 1.06 anyway... You might be on to something, however, if you've hit upon a means to disorient and paralyze the Striker crews to that they don't flee when facing T-72s and can't drive in a straight line.

Two good books for tactical accounts: 1) IN DEADLY COMBAT by Biderman; and 2) TANK RIDER by Bessonov. You can get in-depth reviews, etc. on Amazon, but basically both books are by soldiers (Biderman-German, Bessonov-Russian) serving at the company level during a couple years of combat, and are both pretty frank about the pluses and minuses of their respective armies.

+1

rune, Interesting examples, but I wonder if the emphasis on keeping airguards up would extend to movements into urban areas with intensive and sustained small arms fire rather than IEDs, ambushes, snipers, etc. I see the logic for doing so, but it seems like suicide... I think I read somewhere that in at least one of the Arab-Israeli wars, Israeli doctrine was that tank commanders would stay unbuttoned, period. The result was an astonishingly successful Israeli armored force...and 50% TC casaulties.

Yippee! This is great news, and I think a great way to proceed. I'm sure that in addition to whatever BFC cranks out for the East Front game (among others), the community will be ready to contribute some really cool content. [ December 19, 2007, 05:46 AM: Message edited by: 76mm ]

Yeah, I guess Carell would have been more likely to underestimate the strength of the heroic, outnumbered German soldaten as they fought off the Soviet hordes. Don't get me wrong, I have a few of Carell's books and enjoy them for what they are, but I don't regard him as a serious, objective historian. Also, sadly, I also find this discussion about German troop strength in 1944 kind of interesting--this seems to be a pretty basic topic, and yet no apparent agreement. I've read a lot of books on the Russian Front, and always got the impression that most units were seriously understrength most of the time, but credible evidence to the contrary is always interesting.

While I guess I understand why BFC wouldn't want to totally up the data and models, the fact remains that--especially once you get into WWII--there is a dedicated community here that would certainly create and use all sorts of additional units, buildings, etc. beyond what BFC is willing or able to produce. As pointed out by others, it certainly seems like this kind of support would only make the various CM2 iterations more popular and long-lived. I for one would certainly be more inclined to buy one of the basic games if I knew there would be a regular stream of new mods, rather than one or two to be released by BFC. This is a long way of asking whether a compromise is possible between totally opening up the data and models and keeping them totally closed--something like licensing or otherwise allowing specific individuals (or more likely groups) to create and release new units, mods, whatever, either for free or on a commercial basis? [ December 18, 2007, 05:34 AM: Message edited by: 76mm ]

I can describe from personal experience an instance of how Iraqis made poor use of Soviet equipment in the first Gulf War: I was in a tank unit, we came up against some Republican Guard T-72s which were equipped with dozer blades on the front. Presumably the Soviets would have used these blades to create hull-down fighting positions by digging down into the rather flat terrain. The Iraqis used the blades, however, to create "hull down" positions by scraping dirt into thin, waist-high berms on three sides of their tanks, which was about as effective against our sabot rounds as holding up a piece of cardboard. I think the Russians would have done better!

Perhaps Sajer or Carell?

Awww, did you have to go and ruin the surprise? Or has this already been announced?

This is a quote from a thread which was locked and merged into this one: So does this mean that at least for now, we should expect to be able to fire through berms as described in the other thread, or is this being fixed in 1.5 as well?

Now that Battlefront has resurfaced, these are the types of questions I'd really like to see answered...I mean, c'mon, what's going on here?

Well, good to have you back, but I don't think that your comment above is completely fair. While there has certainly been rehashing ad nauseum during your absence, many of the posts over the last few months have concerned legitimate issues (often of the "how does this work" or "is this a bug" variety) that posters felt had not been addressed adequately or at all. I didn't complain about your absence, and even before your recent post I knew that your absence was completely justified, whatever the reasons for it were. That said, it sticks in my craw a bit for you to justify your absence in part by essentially saying that only jerks and idiots have been posting here lately, so no real need to respond. While I'm at it, I found the "forum rules" post rather heavy-handed as well. OK, I've gotten that off my chest. Now get these marine modules out of the way and crank out the East Front WWII game...

You've got a curiously elevated opinion of the users of legal software; it never ceases to amaze me how otherwise intelligent people can make a complete hash of anything involving a computer.

Excuse me, are you talking about me? I didn't "attack" MarkEzra "for doing his damndest to improve CM's experience by having a site..." I "attacked" him for putting too much emphasis on the fact that a single scenario seemed to enjoy any popularity among CM:SF players. Please explain how my post could possibly be interpreted otherwise?

Sorry for jumping on ya, MarkEzra, I think we're more or less in the same place. My real problem with the game is that I'm not really interested in the Syrian setting, so all the kerfuffle about the next patch is kind of meaningless to me. I don't know if 1.05 will make everything right or not, but am pretty confident that BFC will get it working really well in time for the WWII game, which is all I'm really worried about.

Please give it a rest with the 2000 downloads for ONE, (1), a SINGLE scenario. I actually think it is really lame that only one scenario has seen that kind of popularity, especially given the deep unpopularity/unusability of quick battles in CM:SF. Or are there more great scenarios available for the 1.05 beta-testers that us riff-raff are not granted access to?

I recommend: --THE HEIGHTS OF COURAGE, by Kahalani (tank battles in Golan heights); --ARABS AT WAR, by Pollack (very interesting, though lengthy, treatment of several Arab armies thoughout the post-WWII period, including the Yom Kippur war) .

I guess I don't understand how people can say here that CM:SF's version of 1:1 works well, or even that it is actually 1:1 at all, if we are that much in the dark about how things work? So is CM:SF essentially just a more complicated set of abstractions hidden under a 1:1 graphic representation? Obviously all wargames are abstractions to one large degree or another, but to me 1:1 means that individual soldiers are considered to be located in specific coordinates and may fire, suffer casualties, and take other actions only to the extent that such should occur at such coordinates. I'm sure that other valid definitions of 1:1 exist, but it can sure get confusing with everyone talking about this undefined concept. In any event, if no one other than BFC knows how the mechanics work, how can anyone even make claims about the validity of CM:SF's 1:1 credentials?

Thanks for this clarification; hopefully they'll figure out how to overcome the shortcomings of this approach in urban terrain. My brain hurts just thinking about it... It's happened to me many times with both infantry and vehicles, so it is hard to generalize. But if my guys are in a building and don't fire back (against small arms fire), I kinda thought they'd at least hunker down and survive. But they got wiped out. I guess they picked the wrong building! Anyway, I need to play around with the game more, but between the interface, realtime, and the need to pay so much attention to individual units trying to get them to fire, etc., it is taking me a while to get the hang of this system.

Double post.

I've just been playing this game for a few weeks, as I was out of town for a long time, so please excuse if my questions have all been answered long ago. But can anyone explain to me how the 8m "Action Spot" grid (or whatever it is) allows for 1:1? From what I've seen on the forum, no one seems to really understand how the Action Spots work, but it is not really intuitive how having LOS/LOF based on 8 meter can allow for implementation of 1:1, at least for infantry, especially in MOUT ops. My biggest complaint though (and the reason I haven't even been able to complete a single scenario), is that too often my troops just sit there like inert blobs and get blown away without even returning fire. Occasionally they will, but too often they won't. Sometimes I can get them to fire back by manually giving them orders, but sometimes not. Is this a "feature" or an AI glitch? Who knows? Maybe I'm just doing something wrong, or maybe I would recognize some genius on Battlefront's part if I understood what was going on based on designer's notes, etc. But right now I find it frustrating and unfun.

I don't think that Michael's argument is essentially about "bugginess"--as someone else on this thread pointed out, the problem with 1:1 design is that to do it you either need to: 1) have players control each of the individual soldiers--I think everyone agrees that this is not workable and certainly not fun; OR 2) Hand this level of control completely over to a TacAI, which is really just another form of computer-driven abstraction and incredibly difficult to implement well, given how difficult it is to program an AI to handle all of the situations that arise in this kind of game. If the AI explicitly tries to model and represent 1:1 action in the game, it will inevitably (pending significant advances in AI development) leave players asking "why are my soldiers acting like idiots/zombies/automatons?" BFC certainly has outstanding programmer(s), but do they have the resources to develop a "next-level" AI that can make individual pixel troopers behave in a believable manner under all circumstances?

Hi, I've finally gotten around to installing and trying to play this game. Didn't get too far though, because I've had a really hard time with parts of the interface, I think I must be doing something wrong. Manual didn't help much, maybe I overlooked something. Anyway, here are a couple of interface questions: 1) How do I select units? Whenever I have one unit selected and try to select another, the cursor still seems stuck on the first unit (ie, whatever movement command I gave the first unit will be repeated with the second unit as the destination instead of the second unit being selected). 2) Anyway to set waypoints other than left-clicking at each waypoint? I thought the CM1x system worked rather well... 3) How can I tell how many casualties my infantry units have suffered? If they are in buildings, etc. it is pretty tough to zoom in and count, and I don't think I should have to count anyway. Sorry if all of this has been addressed in previous posts, but I've started and quit three scenarios because of the above issues--not having fun!

I add my voice to those requesting kill tracking!