Chelco

Hi Elmar, They would do that if the ATGM is spotted or if the firing unit is spotted? I've seen too many of my M2/M3s go up in flames with that "deer in the headlights" look. Cheers,

A bit more of self-preservation reacting against ATGMs (pop smoke, reverse zig zag and suppress the unit firing) would be nice too.

On the defense, reverse slope worked great for me so far. On the attack, try approaches where you face very few M1s at a time.

Huntarr, Your willingness and talent to teach are unsurpassed. Cheers, EDIT: LOL, that sounded like a fortune cookie phrase. Kudos anyway.

Great idea. Count me in.

Hi George, Correct me if I'm wrong, but your briefing mentions no indirect fires allowed due to civilian presence (is that right?). I see 60mm mortars in support. Did you use them when you played? Cheers,

Hi, You could split a squad into fireteams and send a fireteam ahead to scout.

Darkmage, Man, I cannot keep the Panzers alive. But I refuse to play any other scenario until I succeed in this one! George, the scenario is a beauty. Thanks. As much as I have read about how the Marines fight with so little, this scenario threw the concept in my face.

"Ok ... I've beaten the game like two times already. Game is like too short!" You know the great tragedy of all this? The youngsters that who read these negative reviews are less likely to get initiated in any form of serious wargaming.

Great screenshot!

Great post. Yesterday I was moving around the camera and by accident I ended up in the middle of an amtrack and I could see an enormous amount of detail inside the vehicle. These are things that most of the time are hidden to the player. I am in awe to the amount of work the team has made. Kudos.

Thanks for the link to the documentary. Is that the "Shootout" documentary? I've seen one on SWAT teams the past week. Very well done. About this battle, this book has been brought up before: Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War, by Tim Pritchard It is a great read, highly recommended.

Thanks for the links and the names of the publications. Great reading. Thanks John, Is there a doctrinal publication for the LAR? Cheers,

JohnO, Googling around I couldn't find anything about LAV-based infantry. Is it still named LAI? Thanks,

Roger! Stuck at the office.

Great news! Doh! Anybody has good excuses to get out of the office earlier than usual?

Oh, and I forgot this piece of s**t, Full Spectrum Warrior which ended up as garbage for both civilians and the US Army. (Steve, for goodness sake throw us a sentence or something about the Marines module release please).

Hi, Does any off-the shelf war game satisfy those parameters or has those attributes? I don't know if this is correct, but TacOPs, Decisive Point, Point of Attack 2 and the early games by Pat Proctor (ATF) were made with the military customer/student in mind and then released to the civilian market (is that correct?). The only games I know that were initially targeted to the civilian market, and then after that were modified to cater the military customer/student are Steel Beasts (now Steel Beasts Pro), Close Combat The Road to Baghdad (now Close Combat Marines) and Operation Flashpoint (as the VBS1/2 series). And a final and most important question: how does CMSF fares against the parameters/attributes of your post? Cheers,

The Marines module is still available as a pre-order in the e-store. It ain't happening this week, me thinks. Sigh.

Hi FMB, Sorry for the confusion. I painted a big, all-covering red setup area in the map, and then I went to the AI menu, select a group of troops and gave setup/deploy orders (the yellow ones) to this group. The yellow setup orders were 4 or 5 non-contiguous square areas inside buildings, and within the big red setup area. I ran the scenario several times, and the guys would appear always in one of the 4/5 squares.

Yes they would. I even tried a flat, billiard table map with three setup zones and just one group: they would always choose one setup zone. Give some time to have a second look at it. I'm glad you say you can make it work. This randomization thing adds a lot of replayability to the scenarios.

Congrats to CplSteiner and all the participants. Outstanding!

I've seen this happen, but in my case the Bradley couldn't see the offending RPGer. My Bradley had a clear LOS to the position of the RPGer, but not to the RPGer himself. What I did is to area fire a building very close to the RPGer, that appeared to suppress the guy and allowed me to move the Bradley to a position with better LOS. Cheers,

FMB, I tried a time ago, but no avail. I wanted to create a MOUT scenario where enemy combatants would appear in different buildings every time the scenario was started. Never got it to work as I wanted (groups would appear in the same building every time I started the mission). I will try again when the module is released. Thanks,

Hi FMB, The last time I tried, the AI will always put units in the same spots every time the scenario is re-started.