Lee Winterbone

Hello all. In a recent game, I advanced towards a forest 700m away with six BTRs, overwatched by a dozen AT-5 equipped ATGW vehicles a kilometre back. When three enemy tanks fired from the treeline, destroyed three of my BTRs and then backed off (using the SOP "if fire, reverse"), not one of my AT5s fired back. Out of curiousity, I re-ran this situation in a test game, placing the AT5s only 500m from the forest to see if they would respond, but the same thing happened. I know that a vehicle cannot be seen when it is 101m into a forest, and I read that a vehicle firing from cover can often benefit from a 15 second "surprise", enough for it to back out of LOS. The question for the veterans is this : what should I do so that this "surprise" is avoided by my troops, allowing my covering ATGW to fire back and avoiding my advancing troops from being "sniped" continuously ? Thanks for your tips !

I have just been browsing through the TacOps unit and weapons databases (well, you just can't help it, can you...) I noticed that some weapons are listed as "advanced penetrators", "steel penetrators", "tungsten penetrators" and so on. Do these qualifications have any additional effects in the simulation ? Another "real world" question I would like to ask of you all (this is from someone who knows next to nothing about modern armoured warfare). I notice that the more modern OPFOR ATGWs have only 800mm or so of armour penetration, even in their "improved version". This apparently makes them ineffective from front aspect against tanks such as the M1A1D. Whereas the much older Spigot and Spandrel, with their >1300mm penetration, can knock out an M1A1 from the front. Have OPFOR "downgraded" their ATGW for some reason ? Has ATGW function changed in armies using Russian equipment so that MBTs are no longer their primary target ? Or am I misunderstanding something in the game mechanisms, so that this is not a "real world" question after all ? Another complete amateur question that I am burning to ask. The difference between armour protection vs. kinetic and vs. chemical weapons, is this derived from reactive armour ? And is this reactive armour - in the real world and in TacOps - progressively "eroded" over time as it is hit by HEAT / APFSDS weapons (or others - I cite these two because I have heard of them) ? Thanks to all those who can help with these queries !

Ah, we're not the only ones looking to play over the 30km maps then...Thanks very much for the reply !

Would it be possible, I wonder, to add a couple of features to make unit control easier and more fluid in large scale games ? The "Get Orders" button has one restriction - the unit which picks up the orders (say, X) moves to exactly the same location as the unit it picked the orders up from (Y). Would it be interesting that unit X copies the relative movement of Y ? ie. if Y is going 500m west of its current position, X will go 500m west of ITS current position. In other words, a sort of optional formation movement. Well, I admit it, I'm asking for purely selfish reasons - we like TacOps so much we are planning a game over one of those 30km x 20km maps...

Afternoon all. Excellent game. I am utterly addicted : if I don't get my weekly fix over the net things are just not the same... A game balance question : I notice that ticking the option "OPFOR tanks / OPFOR ATGWs have thermal sights" does not change the OPFOR force points value in the "Reports" window. Can somebody give me an idea of how much these thermal sights are "worth" on a tank or BMP ? This is just so that my friend and I can set up balanced DYO scenarios without having to turn off the OPFOR thermal sights. Thanks a lot!