Kozure

I had noticed this video on YouTube: The intro is a little long, but it contains quite a number of very valuable resources/references and how to access them. Highly recommended.

"Britain's Joy" Hostage rescue scenario in the British module. Anyone manage a victory on the first play through? I've played once, and I can see how I can probably get better results on a second try, but I'm pretty uncertain of how I could have done better without knowing what I know now. --==>> SPOILERS <<==-- I moved in column up the road, but given the time restraints, I tried to move pretty fast. Knowing that I didn't have much time, I scouted with one of the HMG Tums and dismounted sniper teams and FOs for a better look once I had a "?" contact. I came under fire from the recoilless up on the far left hilltop and pasted it with an airstrike (losing a TUM to its fire) and then tried to bull through the various teams set up on the hill and next to the road, hitting with airstrikes where possible. I was running out of time and tried a rush, but ran into the mines at the crossroads - fortunately I had staggered my units and only lost one TUM to that. Instead of going directly through the town, I flanked all the way to the back (lost a TUM to long range fire in the fields) but got two sections to the back behind the hostage area. When I used charges to blast my way in, the MG team executed the hostages immediately. I managed to get sections within striking distance of both hostage areas before the time ran out, but it was tight, and I took a lot of casualties moving at the speed that it seemed I had to move. Anyone had better luck (i.e. a victory) on a first play through? Does it become much easier on the second play?

Incidentally, I get this as well with my ATI Radeon Sapphire X1950 Pro, but only to a minor degree. Not at my home computer at the moment, but will be later today and can post driver details then. I only notice it in distant terrain, and assumed it was some moire-pattern glitch specific to the CM:SF engine. I was prepared to just live with it, since it doesn't seem to significantly affect gameplay, but if you gents come up with a solution, I'll give it a whirl.

Certainly it was a boondoggle at first, but eventually they got a decent vehicle out of it. The US military history is littered with vehicles and weapons that died in prototype - the the MBT-70 (predecessor to the M1), the M247 Sergeant York, the MIM-46 Mauler, the AH-56 Cheyenne... etc. Fortunately, most of the time hard lessons learned from these aborted projects were applied in their successor projects. Not all boondoggles are complete wastes of time or effort.

There are LAV variants with ATGMs, just not the chain gun as well. There are several reasons: 1) Centre of gravity issues. The LAV-series vehicles are generally quite well designed, but like all comparatively high-silhouetted wheeled vehicles they can tip fairly easily if handled roughly, which isn't unlikely in the stress of combat or when attacked by a IED. Combining a ATGM launcher (and associated sighting/targeting equipment) in the same turrent as the M242 Bushmaster 25mm chain gun makes for a very heavy turret, which would add to the top-heavy issue. 2) Overall weight issues. The LAV-series vehicles are designed to be air-portable. Adding a TOW-2 system and reloads (in addition to the autocannon system and ammunition) adds to the weight of the vehicle, which is probably within the envelope for carrying one, but adds to the problem. 3) Intended "Red Force" opposition. In the 1980s, expected opposition for the US was the heavy mechanized formations of the Soviet Union. Although the LAV-25 was developed in the early 1980s and first deployed with the Marines in 1985, it was never intended to go toe-to-toe with full-on MBT-equipped formations like the Bradleys in the US Army order of battle. 4) Doctrinal differences. The Marine MEU is intended as a rapid deployment and reaction force with a high focus on mobility and adaptability. The choice of a light armoured wheeled vehicle family suits this doctrine. Using variants of the LAV-25 such as the LAV-AT and LAV-M permits the sort of firepower that the mechanized formations of the USMC require without the need to combine the weapons system in the same vehicle. That said, I'm sure in the situation as depicted in Syria, one or two enterprising Marines wouldn't be trying to figure out a way to hook up at least a Javelin system to the LAV-25 turret.

Last night I tried Attack, Medium-size, Forest-terrain, Blue US Stryker, Medium Infantry, Fit, Good Quality, no Force adjustment, Red Syrian Mechanized, Medium Infantry, Fit, Good Quality. I got a US Stryker MOUT mechanized company, with supporting FSV and three MGSs. The Syrians got BMP-1s and their dismounts. I didn't see any armour or specialized support equipment. It was exactly the kind of quick battle I was hoping for, if a little large. Played in real time with occasional Esc pauses, finished in just under forty minutes. I got caught up in the game and didn't have time to check other medium-sized set-ups, but if you're frustrated with the force mixes you get with small, try a medium set-up and see if it works better.

First up - I know that Battlefront has stated several times that they're not spending any more resources on tweaking Quick Battles. I'm not asking to have it fixed; I'm just wondering if anyone else has noticed what I consider an oddity. My question is - is it generally a accepted fact that playing quick battles with small Blue forces will generally result in AT-heavy or exotic OOBs, or am I getting some of the strangest runs of random generator results I can think of? I like small scale quick battles in real time when I have about an hour to kill and don't want to invest in a full scenario (I don't know about you gents, but if I start a scenario it's quite difficult for me to hit Alt-S and walk away). I've noticed though that if you select medium or light infantry in US Stryker, US Heavy or Marine formations (or indeed, many "mix" forces), you often get a plethora of AT-type weapons... AT dismounts, ATs in HMMWVs, TOW teams, LAV-ATs... etc. Even when you don't get all AT weapon units, I seem to get Engineers, Recon units, pretty much everything except vanilla mechanized infantry or dismounts. I had played through about six such "flukey" scenarios and finally I thought to myself, "Is this just dumb luck?" so I went through about a dozen more set-ups with various Blue force combinations - I'd always seem to get "exotic" OOBs - often heavy on AT assets, and almost never your average ordinary rifle squad mounted in a Stryker or Bradley. Each time I'd quit, start another scenario immediately, and get a similar recon or AT-heavy OOB. Each time it would typically be unsuited to what I'd expect to use for the scenario - two platoons of HMMWV-TOWs and no dismounts to take a town, or something similar - basically, odd duck choices. To me it feels like trying to use a random generator to make "typical" WWII scenarios and getting captured Russian T-34s and Romanian bridging platoons for the Axis forces and Brazilian heavy anti-aircraft batteries and Kangaroo APCs for the Allies every time. Even when I tried to be as plain as possible... village terrain, small scenario, infantry only, etc... I got a company of Engineers. Is it possible that the Small scenario setting assumes a battle between recon-type forces? I've tried combinations of attack/assault/probe/meeting engagement defence postures and I still seem to get odd OOBs. Does the rarity/oddity even out if I select medium-sized engagments? The one common factor to all of these quick battle set-ups is that I've specified "small". Is there a setting for rarity that I've missed and perhaps jacked up? At this point I've gotten into the Semper Fi Syria campaign, so I'm not looking for quick answers on the topic. What I'm hoping to get is if I select Small scenario, US Stryker, Medium infantry or mix, that I'd get a platoon to a company of "typical" forces - Strykers with associated infantry and the various Stryker-platform vehicles. Or if I select US Heavy mixed, I'd get a platoon of M2 Bradleys and their dismounts and maybe a tank or two. Occasionally I'd get some "odd" forces, but they'd be... "odd". Anyhow, just an observation. It's a great game, and occasionally it's a lot of fun to play with units you're not used to (I did learn how to do breaching properly when I was saddled with those Engineers). Not so fun to try to take a infantry-defended village with a HMMWV-TOW platoon and their dismounted crews. Strangely (or perhaps not), I often get what I'd expect going with randomly generated Red forces - a company of BMPs, a platoon or two of tanks, etc. I guess another possibility is that the point costs for complete platoon formations is so (relatively speaking) high for Blue (vs. Red) units that in small scenarios, when the point count is limited, the generator just selects units that can fit in the point cost category and doesn't consider rarity. i.e. - Since a Bradley infantry platoon costs so much, it's not considered as an option for a Small scenario, and the command structure set-up of the CM:SF system doesn't allow for half-platoons or detached units.

Three fun moments while playing the first scenario of the Semper Fi Syria campaign this past weekend... I was playing Scenario 1 and mistimed an assault during a WEGO turn. I thought my 155mm artillery barrage was almost finished when I ordered one squad to cross a street to be in position to rush whatever remained of the defenders. A final 155mm round landed about 50-60m (?) away - not exactly sure on distance... but far enough that I thought the squad wouldn't be in danger (but certainly they would've been shaken up). Nope... apparently a fragment took out of of my team. I replayed it a number of times and they were not under small arms fire and the casualty was taken at the same instant as the explosion. Earlier in the same scenario, a single scout/sniper team was advancing on the north side of the map in "hunt" mode when they encountered a Syrian reserve squad and their HQ inside the lower storey of a building. I thought they were toast for sure. A flurry of hand grenades and small arms fire later, the entire enemy squad AND the HQ was taken out, and the scout/snipers hadn't taken a single casualty. Perhaps foolishly, I hunted the team into the lower floor of the adjacent building through an adjoining door and they ran into a second reserve squad, which they also completely took out without a casualty. I noted that they were firing through the windows of one building into the next. Shortly before the mistimed artillery incident which took out one of the team, one of my scout snipers teams hunting up to the second storey of a building caught two reserve squads huddled in a gaggle against the corner of a building immediately below the second storey window that the team was looking out of. Both enemy squads were wiped out to a man within about 30 seconds. The marksman in the team was even using the M-40 to take out the enemy at what had to be less than 4m distance. I saw a couple of grenades lobbed, and I think I even heard the M203 go off. Serious badasses, those scout/snipers.

Only partially related to the topic, and in no way intended as a comment one way or another on kill radii of weapons, but I was playing Scenario 1 of the Semper Fi Syria campaign on Saturday night and mistimed an assault during a WEGO turn. I thought my 155mm artillery barrage was almost finished when I ordered one squad to cross a street to be in position to rush whatever remained of the defenders. A 155mm round landed about 50-60m (?) away - not exactly sure on distance... but far enough that I thought the squad wouldn't be in danger (but certainly they would've been shaken up). Nope... apparently a fragment took out of of my team. I replayed it a number of times and they were not under small arms fire and the casualty was taken at the same instant as the explosion.

I've heard Second World War stories of the Ordnance SBML 2" mortar (the predecessor to the current L9A1 51mm mortar, but fairly similar in design and usage) even being placed against a vertical surface and fired almost flat. Unusual, perhaps even extremely rare, but not outside it's range of use. As for accuracy, Britsh commandos used the 2" mortar to very good effect against the defensive positions around the various artillery emplacements to the flanks of the main landing at Dieppe. I don't have it handy, but I recall accounts of one mortar team being very accurate. I think accuracy varies considerably with operator and the circumstances of the firing, much like many other weapons. In WWII at least, the 2" mortar was mostly for smoke, but it was not ineffective for light suppression missions and the British retained it long after most other armies dropped it. Whether that's because the 51mm is a better design or sheer bloody-mindedness, I'm not sure. I think Canadians retained the 51mm as well, well into the 1980s, though I believe they have dropped it even from reserve armouries by now.

Real time for anything company-sized or smaller. WEGO for larger or more complicated scenarios.

I saw the same thing last night - it looked like a shotgun blast. I was wondering what it was at the time.

I'm sure you old hands have had a bunch of them... moments where you just look at the screen and say "holy cow, did that just happen?!" Short Range RPG Miss The other night I was clearing out a town as blue. I thought I had cleared a block and I advanced a .50cal Stryker to put some fire on a building further down the block. To be safe, I even had a squad in a building above and slightly in front of the Stryker as a screen. Suddenly I heard the telltale whhssssk of a RPG round. The Stryker was taking RPG fire from a RPG team hidden behind a low wall less than 10m directly behind it. I don't know if the RPG missed or it just didn't arm at the minimum range, but miraculously the Stryker survived - not only that, it pivoted the RWS to face rear and shot up the team. Somehow I had missed the team hiding behind the wall (I guess the low wall screened their crawling advance from the rifle squad). I think the Stryker crew must have welded a couple of horseshoes onto the rear end of that thing. Volley Fire Javelins Last night I tried a completely random scenario. The only thing I specified was size (small) and that I was blue. It came up with a meeting engagement where I had to take three objectives in a town. Strangely, I was given a team of four LAV-ATs and a bunch of Javelin teams (something like 6 or 8) and HMMWVs to carry them. Distressed at the possibility of trying to do MOUT with Javelin teams, I had four of them advance dismounted more or less line abreast to the crest of a hill overlooking the town, while I had the HMMWVs and two of the teams race into the town. It was a night scenario. I had the Javelin teams set up near the crest and I made sure they had a line of sight to a likely route of advance for whatever armoured units he was likely to send. I had the LAV-ATs cover another route of advance in roughly hull-down positions. A couple of minutes later, the Javelin teams fired nearly in unison. Three BMP-2s had come into view of the Javelin teams at almost the same time. The Javelins streaked across the battlefield and pegged all three at a range of about 1.5km or so (I think). Three missiles, three kills, almost in volley fire. Pretty darn cool. The rest of the scenario was pretty interesting as I had to try to use HMMWV dismounts and Javelin teams to hold ground in the town, but I was the one who had specified random, right? What are your favourite "Holy %$@!" moments in CM:SF thus far?

Well, I purchased the Marines last night at around ~8PM Eastern. I selected the download and mail option. When I followed the supplied download links, I got the Marines 1.10 version. *shrug* I agree, it's fine, once you know what you have to do in what order, I'm just saying that if you're coming to the game for the first time, or if you haven't been on these forums since pre-order, it might not be completely clear.

The knowledgebase looks great - in this case I figured out the problem without referring to it, but nothing on the page for the Marines module notes that it is release 1.10. http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage_bfc&product_id=157&category_id=9&manufacturer_id=0&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=26 If I had previously had vanilla CM:SF patched up to 1.11, I would have no way of knowing that the Marines module was an earlier release; indeed, one usually assumes that the latest purchasable download direct from the publisher includes all the lastest patches. In fact, the warning on the download/buy page specifically says "Any version of CMSF is eligible, not only those purchased directly from Battlefront." - which could be interpreted to mean any patched version. Not necessarily correct, but I'm just saying that it can be misinterpreted. A simple note on the page above which indicates that the module is 1.10 and MAY be patched up to 1.11 (linked) would help to avoid confusion. Also, I should note that though you say I shouldn't have to do anything with the base game again, when I installed Marines it disabled the 1.11 scenarios and features, and I had to install Marines 1.11 to get them back again. Thanks for the response, though - a wonderful product and I'm pleased that it was robust enough to survive a misunderstood upgrade process.