combatplus2

Yurch, Well put... The ion is the only weapon that doesn't "feel" right in this game - to the point where I've stopped using it, even though I know it's quite effective. As a matter of fact, long, long ago I worked in a physics lab that did experimental ion beam research. (Just a warning though: I'm a little rusty, because this didn't end up being my field of expertise!). But, just to convey some sense of how hard this is to do: We had a very high voltage (> 10,000 V) power system the size of a truck, hooked to a cathode in a small vacuum chamber. Ions would shoot out of the cathode and strike the target, which was only a few inches away - inside this high vacuum chamber. The result was about one Amp of current into the target. Air molecules certainly dissipate an ion beam's energy (hence the vacuum chamber in the lab). So game-wise, it would make sense to have a big penalty for shooting one of these things through an atmosphere. The energy delivered to the target should be some strong function of 1) density, and 2) range. This could be interesting, because the ion beam could be a nice standoff weapon on an airless moon, but would only be a short-range "dogfighting" weapon on the green map, say. Also, if we wanted to include some "physically-inspired" ion weapon drawbacks: 1) Size and weight 2) A chance of EMP'ing some teammates in your vicinity, due to rapid discharge of capacitors. 3) A long recharge rate, b/c capacitors can only charge so fast. 4) The ion weapon might not receive damage well... Envision a violent shower of sparks and EMP side-effects.

Agreed... How about replacing the drop-down list with a GUI window using icons, in a later version? The icon would just have a recognizable profile image of the vehicle and the name/weapon. Single click could bring up some more detail on your selection, and double-click would start the drop. Things could be spatially sorted in the window, one column for sensors, one for wheeled, one for tracked, etc...

Ah thanks - that's one mystery less...

My own problem: I can almost never switch ammo types in a mortar vehicle. + and - don't work for me like they do in any other vehicle. Sometimes though, I'll get switched by some unknown way! Also, what is the actual difference between HE-H and HE-L?

same here. (bump!)

Hm - BFC may be keeping the "Backstory" in a kind of rough-draft mode, for good reason...

I recall Steve saying that CMx2 snipers will be accurately modeled. It would be cool to get more info on this! <bump> In general I think true 1:1 combat is a tall order for CM, because they're still at the "squad level", and really can't do all the LOF calc's between all individuals, and model every object that you'd use for cover like in an FPS (without choking the game speed). I think it's just a matter of BFC chipping away at the level of abstraction, like breaking squads down into teams. From the AAR thread it seems we can expect US squads to have "support", "assault" and "security" teams/elements. But we still haven't heard what this _really_ means in practice to the gameplay...

Question for BFC, following along the lines of the old "squad footprint" discussion... In CMx2, now that squads are divided into "teams", I'm wondering: 1) Does each team in a squad have a distinct location (and footprint)? e.g., will there be times when my "assault" team is physically in a house, while the "support" team is still outside? and things like that? 2) It would seem the point of coding the game this way would be to reduce abstraction in squad tactics... So can each team in a squad be indepentently targeting different enemy units (under TacAI of course)? Also, does 1:1 go so far that my US SAW man will specifically target the RPG man in a Syrian squad? .. And will a Syrian sniper specifically target my squad leader? ...Or will all the soldiers in a team be shooting at only one enemy team as a whole?...

Hear hear. I'm another WW2 / History Channel / CM addict, who happens to be excited by the prospect of CM:SF. (And yes, this is my first post... Can you see that deer-in-the-headlights look? ... But actually I've been playing CM since 2000, and lurking the forums now and then). I see no problem with the modern setting. With the predominance of urban combat, we can expect CM:SF scenarios to be full of close-in fighting, ambushes, smoke, confusion, buildings that block your shot, which may/may-not be enemy occupied, and so on. You could say FOW is FOW, whether you're shooting a bazooka or a javelin. Add to this a brand new system of victory conditions (forget the old flags - on to max. acceptable casualties, etc). New tech toys will be fun, and I don't think they alone will transform CM into some kind of fire-and-forget standoff game. Even to the extent the US force will have an edge - like several others here - I actually enjoy the frustration of playing the outgunned underdog now and then... Eric