Cpl Steiner

Preybyemail, I really don't understand your problem. In a straight firefight between Western troops and Syrian troops, of course the Syrians should get creamed. They have no body armour, poor training, and use their already relatively inaccurate "AK" rifles in "spray and prey" mode whereas the Westerners have body armour, good training and accurate weapons often with ACOG scopes and the like. As CM:SF is a simulation game, it favours the Westerners in such engagements every time. You say, why couldn't we have had Russia or China as the enemy instead of Syria? Have you actually read about the performance of these troops in any recent conflict? Apart from units like Spetznaz, they are all barely trained conscripts too. In the "Battle of Grozny" (1996) the Russians lost scores of men and vehicles to Chechen ambushes because the Russian Federation forces were largely poorly trained conscripts using sub-standard equipment. If you do a search I'm sure you can confirm this for yourself. The thing with Red is, they don't have to win straight up firefights with Blue to win the game. You only have to look at the current situation in Afghanistan to see what works for Red. At the start of the Afghan conflict, the Taliban were regularly engaging the Brits in firefights, and dying in their hundreds as a result. Now they have switched to large-scale use of IEDs instead and are causing the Brits real problems, with calls for the troops to be brought home every time another coffin is unloaded at RAF Brize Norton. You can win as Red, but as Steve says, it won't be because you have achieved a higher body count. If the scenario has been designed correctly a few Blue KIA from IEDs and RPGs is often enough to cause a Tactical Defeat or worse for Blue.

Paper Tiger, I think that's were I slipped up last time I used the "Mark Mines" command - I had the men quick move through the marked area and they still got blown up. I will try "normal" move speed next time.

Can someone tell me what the point is of marking mines? What effect does it have?

Hi sdp, I have dropped in occasionally on your Op Nemesis website and I must say I'm very impressed by your progress so far. Your high-definition unit counters are beautifully done and the rules seem to be very comprehensive. I wish you every success and hope maybe one day I can command one of the armies in your campaign.

When CM:Africa Korps came out, it represented the pinacle of the CMx1 engine family of games that began with CM:Beyond Overlord. Even though it was set in North Africa and the Mediterrainean theatre, players were soon modding it so they could play all their favourite Normandy battles again from CM:BO - only this time using a fully matured and debugged version of the engine. I see the same thing happening in a couple of years time when BFC bring out CM:SF 2 - their proposed modern warfare game set in a temperate environment. People will just mod deserts and palm trees into it so they can return to the middle-eastern theatre of CM:SF but with a fully matured CMx2 engine. It's win win as far as I can see.

Hi RecceDG, You said you had to go back to Afghanistan soon? Are you in the British Army then? Just thought I'd ask. Well, I don't mind a bit of "tough love" and I can take criticism no problem. To declare an interest here, I designed most of the missions in the "southern" route of the campaign, the one in which the Brits head south to secure the Jordanian border rather than head into Damascus. I am all in favour of making scenarios as realistic as possible but I can tell you it isn't easy. If the Syrians are on the offensive for instance, it's pretty hard to give them a fighting chance against Blue force without hamstringing Blue in some way. If Blue had all the assets it should have, Red would be massacred every time - which is in fact what happened most of time in Afghanistan when the Taliban were assaulting the "Platoon Houses" set up around 2006. A single Brit platoon with adequate air and artillery support should have no problems holding off waves of enemy several times its own number. These are the sorts of dilemmas we face when trying to design a challenging scenario. As for Blue offensive operations, your line of thought seems to be the following: 1. Blue should be totally tooled up for the job with every sort of asset available such as tanks, air and artillery, and that they should significantly outnumber Red. 2. Red should be in good defensible terrain with assets designed to slow down and cause attrition to Blue. 3. Blue's overwhelming superiority in firepower and numbers should be mitigated by making them very sensitive to combat losses - such that taking the objective but losing a few men in the process should be at best a Tactical Victory. Lose a dozen or so and its a Tactical Defeat or worse. Well, there's nothing wrong with that approach, and as far as I can tell, it should even be workable within the framework of the existing Scenario Editor's capabilities. What I will say though, is that it's often very hard to give Red even a remote chance of winning when Blue has lots of Air and Artillery support available. Remember the first mission of the "Task Force Thunder" campaign, when Blue attacks from behind a berm? Most players now can crack that mission with virtually no casualties at all by just cremating the enemy with artillery strikes.

Yep, CMx1 style symetric "Flag" objectives are a doddle to do in CMx2. Just give both sides the same "Terrain Objective" and the same point value for control. Job done!

Re. LT Mike's comments about not giving a damn about enemy casualties, I find this perfectly understandable - although I think one day he will feel some strange remorse he didn't expect to feel. War dehumanises people to the point that the enemy is just a target like in a video game. In fact, most armies specifically train their soldiers to view the enemy as not human in this way - through the use of pop-up targets on firing ranges etc. However, deep down I still think killing any other human being is bound to leave mental and emotional scars that could surface later. It's how the individual deals with these scars that matters. Now back to the game: Someone made the very good point that "Yellow" casualties don't currently appear on the AAR screen, which distorts the killed to wounded ratio. I think this is an excellent point that could be addressed with a slight change to the AAR screen. Example: Killed (brown): 5 Incapacitated (red): 6 Walking Wounded (yellow): 25

Yeah, I'm pretty sure LT Mike thought I was referring to casualties suffered by the "RED" side as compared to the "BLUE" side. I was of course actually referring to casualties that go red in the game as opposed to yellow or brown. I suppose my wording could have been better.

I read this report on the fighting and casualties in Helmand in operation "Panther's Claw" and have been haunted by it ever since. Telegraph Article Here's a quote: "In one attack an officer lost an arm, both legs and his genitals, but survived through the excellent medical care." Poor bastard! It makes you realise what all those "red" casualties in CM:SF might actually represent. I used to always kind of feel less guilty if I suffered a "red" casualty rather than a "brown" but whenever I see a red one now I think maybe he's lost a leg - or his nuts! I really hope that officer referred to in the article can find the mental strength somehow to carry on and make the best of the rest of his life - and it really brings home why politicians should be SO VERY sure they know what they are doing before they send our young people off to war.

When the AAR screen shows Brit soldiers as "missing", I wouldn't necessarily interpret that as meaning they went AWOL like a bunch of deserters or something. Maybe they were so cheesed off with getting nearly blown up they decided their time would be better spent helping to carry a wounded colleague to safety. I've read that in wars through the ages, helping the wounded to the rear was a common way for soldiers to remove themselves from danger without necessarily deserting.

Well, from my readings lately ("3 Para" - still haven't finished it!) civilians aren't always a factor. One of what the Paras termed "combat indicators" was things out of the norm - such as entering a village and finding it deserted. That was a good indicator that the Taliban had told the civilians to get the hell out because they were going to launch an attack on the Brits. Similarly, as soon as the Brits moved into any sort of town and made it their business to secure it against the Taliban (e.g. Musa Qaleh) the local population usually decided to pack up and leave. This was good sense on their part because these "platoon houses" as they called them were like candles to moths. The Taliban couldn't resists having a go at them - so the civilians got out before the fighting started. Obviously this isn't always the case but I reckon in a substantial number of the sorts of battles we fight in CM:SF you can imagine there would be columns of refugees leaving the town before a shot was fired.

Whilst waiting for your detailed post, let's look at those first few missions shall we? The first probably has fewer infantry than one would like. The second seems perfectly reasonable to me. The third is maybe a bit dense on armour at the start. However, I don't see how you can say that these things couldn't happen in real life. I'm currently in the middle of reading "3 Para" about the British in Helmand province in 2006, and at one point the Para's elite "Pathfinder Platoon" - a highly mobile recce unit in MWMIKs - is ordered to hold the town of Musa Qaleh. They expect to be there only a day or so but end up being stuck there for weeks. As is pointed out in the book, these guys are supposed to be on 200 mile patrols out in the desert, not acting as a garrison. The point I'm making is that sometimes commanders in the field have to "make do" with what they've got.

All the previous ones you've played probably had a fixed scenario length, so you wouldn't have got the red mission timer numbers. I can see now why you were surprised by the clock getting to end of mission and then carrying on. It probably would only have continued for about 5 minutes if you'd left it but as you'd achieved all your objectives a ceasefire seems most appropriate.

There are no end-scenario triggers in CM:SF so you have to wait for the clock to click down or just click ceasefire as the other poster said.

Just noticed this post. Well, bullpup designs do have some drawbacks too. For one, it's impossible to fire one left-handed as the spent cartridges would eject into your face.

Well I was playing in Real-Time rather than Turn-Based mode so I had no way of "watching the replay" to see if the Harrier actually dropped the bomb on the tank but I'm almost 100% sure it must have because the explosion was very large and left a big crater under the tank. The fact that the FAC's air-strike targeted area was then found to be very close to the tank supports this assumption. I haven't seen this sort of incident in the game until now but I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that large area target orders for ground attack aircraft can sometimes result in friendly fire incidents if friendly units are close by.

To answer your question, some missions have so-called "Preserve" objectives. These are usually things like mosques, schools and hospitals - as for example in the battle "UK It Ain't Half Hot Mum". You gain points for these only if they are undamaged at the end of the scenario.

I was playing the "Crossroads" scenario from the Brits Module campaign when I saw this happen. I can't swear it was friendly fire but it does seem extremely likely given that there was a large bomb-like crater under the Challenger. When I switched to the FAC to check where he was targeting, the large blue area target circle for the Harrier was nearly touching the Challenger. Maybe a few tiles away at the most. I'd inadvertently advanced the Challengers a lot closer to the air-strike area than I'd realised. I called off the attack straight after. I thought it was worth writing up to show how real this game can sometimes get! [EDIT] Just added a spoiler warning for those who haven't played this mission yet! Apologies to those who've already read it!

*** SPOILER WARNING - Don't Read if you haven't got passed the "Crossroads" battle of the Brits Campaign yet *** BBC 6 O'clock News - 23-June-08: Presenter: And now for more news on the invasion of Syria. The MoD confirmed today that a Challenger 2 main battle tank from B Squadron, Scots Dragoon Guards, was destroyed in a so called "friendly fire" incident yesterday evening whilst taking part in operations to secure several bridges deep in Syrian territory. All 4 crewmen were killed. The families of the dead have been informed. We are joined now by our Defence Editor, Mark Urban, who hopefully will have more information on the incident. Presenter: Hi Mark, what more can you tell us? Mark Urban: Good evening. Well, my sources tell me the incident occurred sometime after 5pm yesterday evening. A formation of about 7 Challenger 2s had reached a crossroads close to their main objective - the two bridges you mentioned - when they came under concerted attack from the north and west. My sources tell me this was some of the fiercest fighting British forces have been involved in since Korea - perhaps even WWII. Waves of enemy tanks and armoured personnel carriers were assaulting the British position. Whilst this was going on, enemy infantry had been engaged on top of a low ridge just behind the Challengers to the south-west. Fearing that more enemy armour might launch a surprise attack on the Challengers, a "Forward Air Controller" - or FAC - called in 2 Harrier ground attack aircraft to take a look behind the ridge. The Harriers arrived on the scene and identified a number of enemy armoured vehicles behind the ridge, knocking out several. In the confusion though, somehow one of the Harrier pilots mistook a Challenger on the other side of the ridge for an enemy tank. Before realising his mistake the pilot had scored a direct hit on the Challenger with a 500kg "Paveway" bomb, totally destroying the tank and killing all 4 crewmen instantly. At first it wasn't known what had knocked out the Challenger, as there was so much firing going on. However, as the destroyed Challenger was sitting in a large crater, the FAC decided it was possible that a friendly fire incident had occurred and called off the Harriers. Only once the battle was over was this confirmed to be the case when pieces of a Paveway bomb were identified around the wreck. Presenter: Thanks Mark. Obviously this is a very serious incident. How will it affect the ongoing campaign? Mark Urban: Yes it is serious but in some ways not unexpected. It's a sad reality that in war, such incidents are sometimes unavoidable. Yes, lessons will no doubt be learned, but it probably won't make much difference to the course of the campaign. Presenter: We must leave it there. Thanks Mark.

Another thing that I find helps a lot is to switch to turn-based play instead of real-time on the larger maps. The game then does all its ballistic and LOS calculations in advance so that in playback mode your PC is pretty much just doing graphics.

Don't think anyone mentioned buddy-aid. At the higher difficulty settings buddy-aid takes longer.

I think the reasoning behind this decision was that the Brits don't have ANY foot MG units in their TO&E, so if you are going to allow dismounting of weapons it makes sense to have the MMG rather than the HMG because it's in more common use. Admittedly it seems a bit strange to me. Foot MMGs and HMGs in the TO&E would have made more sense - like the Syrians get.

Instead of having everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink in the TO&E, I've often thought BFC should have gone to the other extreme and just given us the building blocks of a TO&E. For the base game we could have had things like "M4 Rifleman", "M203 Rifleman", "M249 Automatic Rifleman", "Fireteam Leader", "Squad Leader", "Stryker ICV" etc. You would then build your TO&E from the bottom up, first putting together fireteams, then squads, then platoons, etc. It would have been more work for the scenario designer but greatly enhanced flexibility too - as you could have non-standard formations, or formations designed to fit into their accompanying vehicles. BCF could have provided some example formations in the editor - or just outlined them in the manual. What I miss more than anything about CMx1 is the ability to have squads short of a few men - which wouldn't be a problem with the bottom-up approach.

But then you might start up a Quick Battle and have to take a heavily defended village with a load of cooks and buglers.