cool breeze

I think the cant do part is about having the masts retract and extend. They already have unmanned turrets and I think I remember Steve saying something about putting fake eyeballs on any part of the vehicle. The stryker seems like an idea test vehicle. does anyone know if it ever shoots stuff that only the gun optic can see?

Basically true, but I think one of the most recent patch notes was that they Improved this feature, and I thought I noticed it in my last battle using atgm vehicles.

That's probably a more sensible reading but its hard to tell, some people really love their snipers!

My reading was that the only infantry he buys are anti tank units and sniper lol

This seems to be an issue going by the wayside, I think it was the last patch that increased the ability of troops to target whatever part of the vehicle is visible. Try putting a atgm vehicle hulldown now, then enemy will shoot at the missile mast now (if they get a chance)

I find that playing the big scenarios is more intimidating than it is actually hard or too much work once I get into it. For me a doubling in size of the force does not mean a doubling of work, the bigger the size, the less the extra work per size. The bigger the force, the larger the portion that is in the back not requiring any complicated moves. I also do a lot of group moves for front lines guys, but for them they are placed in small groups in nice formations and the waypoints get adjusted as needed and a lot of pauses get placed at way too many waypoints individual. That's the most painstaking part for me in the larger battles, going through the group orders to add pauses at the right waypoints. A lot of players here argue for splitting squads all the time. I don't think that's the best way, unless your force Is so limited you need to. Like splitting is good, but by splitting you lose some tactical flexibility, because you cant split up into the most appropriate groups at the drop of a hat (end of the turn). Instead you have to form up and recombine and then split again if you want some more optimum configuration for the task at hand. By splitting you also lose firepower concentration and maybe some c2c benefits. You also and most importantly make it a lot more work to give everyone orders and keep track of who's who. If my force is small I might have important tasks for very squad that require them all to be split right from the start and kept that way. However with a big force and a lot of support one of the main jobs of the bulk of my infantry is going to be hanging out somewhere relatively safe while waiting to be reinforcements. And I want those reinforcements to be full squads if possible, because then I can either break em up as needed, or run em into key spots full strength to win some firefights. So the first thing across the street or field would be a 2 man scout team, with fire teams covering (and maybe a lot more), followed by the first platoon broken up into teams. But once the street or whatever is cleared everyone else can just jog or walk up in nice big squads...

Yeah more of an anti Afghani in the 80s ground attack aircraft than in a 2017 war vs. USA

I guess the Mi-8 wasn't considered strong enough in the ground attack roll for inclusion.

Too bad they wont just go for a total hodge podge. All those stryker variants seem too awesome, I want ALL!. Except the 105mm. Gimmie quad .50 cal, 25mm +TOW, 40mm Bofur, 75mm ARES, and TOW with 3 RWS. And slap some Javs on some lol . I just watched the preview for MadMAX, with all this we will SO be ready for peak oil Oh and of course C3k's 120mm mortar.

To me it seems pretty clear that they are built to challenge western tanks. Challenging the west is one of their long time national past times, almost like baseball here. The S-400 as a detection to launch time of .6 seconds. It is of course very big expensive system, but some of that size and expense is so it can do the detection at a range of 600km. I imagine the 0.6 seconds to launch is more based on the speed of modern computer processors, vs. the huge fanciness of the apparatus. Its not the job of the Russian tech industry to solve the miniaturization problem, that's the job of the worldwide tech industry, which Russia is an almost full beneficiary from. Russia just has to/had to just wait until miniaturization technology got to the level where they can just adapt the highly mature vertical launch systems into a mini tank mounted form.

They don't just intercept Aircraft. no aircraft fly at 17000kmph or 180km altitude. And anyway aircraft are generally harder to intercept because of the aerodynamic maneuverability. We'll, harder for the speed/range/height. the basic thing of seeing the projectile coming via radar, plotting its trajectory, and intercepting it seems pretty much the same for supersonic ballistic missiles and anything else that might take a fast relatively straight line for you. Edit to add: Not arguing with everything you said mind you. I mean your clearly right about the time being shorter for the tank APS system. But I feel like your leaving out of the equation all of the mid course corrections that have to be made to intercept maneuvering targets. I think the timescale of the whole tank APS engagement sequence is probably pretty long compared to a lot of the on the fly midflight calculations that must be made. Oh and further some of the targets the missile interception systems attack combine supersonic speeds with evasive maneuvering and are still supposed to get shot down. and definitely disagree strongly about the exoatmospheric kill vehicle seeming easier.... speeds hugely higher.... in space... orbital mechanics... super huge distances... small sensors lifted into space.... Lots of background radiation...

Well my sans miniaturization technology was a big sans... I agree it has to be at least big enough. But some of the big systems are supposed to be able to intercept missiles going 6000kmph+ and go as high as 180 Km. So you wouldn't just scale one of those down to 1/1000. You'd take a lot of propellant out and put a much bigger warhead in. My point was just that the vertical launch of intercepting missiles is a very well developed technology in a larger size category. Edit Woops I mean target speed 17,000 kmph. S300 missies weigh up to 1900Kg, I gave the max height and speed numbers from s400, which I assume has bigger missiles. So I guess your not really shooting for 1/1000 the size more like... I don't know 1/250th? How much would anyone guess those vertical cylinders on T-14 weigh each?

I didn't read all of the last couple pages yet but a thought just occurred to me. Maybe vertical launch APS isn't particularly hard sans miniaturization technology? I mean USA and Russian have been making vertical launch missile interception for a long time now..... They just need to make it 1/1000th or so the size right?

But if the guys with the 360 arc are in a building they will tend to cover the windows on all sides but if you do a smaller one the guys get more concentrated. At least before the bullets start flying.

Thank you for the very helpful reply I thought that might be the case.... lol but seems an oversight on the Russians part in that case.... all that work to upgrade em and all, I don't imagine LWR weights or costs too much. So I guess as far as you know from your beta testing there wasn't anything done in particular about how the ATGM vehicles with the little mast work? Edit to add: woops didn't mean to upvote myself that was supposed to be for your helpful reply

Ok my title made it sound like there are just 2 parts but really its 3. I was just playing a quick battle vs the AI yesterday, on the super long skinny valley map (Edit to add : Huge Novohurivka -Open). US attacking AI heavy mech forces are generally able to beat me as the defending Russians on this map, but I try it sometimes when I feel like trying to handle the Ami sensor advantage head on. This last play through brought up 3 things I wanted to post about. Firstly, this is a really nice map but I rally wish it was slightly extended on the defenders side. I don't like how the attacker gets loads of hulldown, high ground, treeline positions to roll up into yet the defender has to start either hull up or in a lower and somewhat awkward places. It seems like the map might have been snipped from a bigger map, if that's the case I would love for their to be released a version that just included a little more area in the back. I understand if the desire was to make it so the attacker only has to attack through one reverse slope position, instead of one and then a little baby and kind of gameyly incomplete second one. but it doesn't have to be a actual down again thing after the defenders peak, it could just be a little low area on the high area to be hull down in. I imagine it being an often picked map since it has the really long dimension for some long range battling, and I think people would get a lot of enjoyment out of a better long range initial showdown. Secondly, BMP2M. One of the coolest vehicles in the game... except it seems kind of messed up now. Other people have pointed out the draw line stuff but that's a pretty big deal I wanted to bring it up again. The BMP2 is ugly and not cool, I don't like my BMP2M looking like BMP2. But that's not why I'm posting about them, I'm posting about them because they failed my plan. lol (like most complaints). I bought a whole company of them, and their main job was to be hanging out slightly more exposed than my krysanthema to provide IR blocking smoke when they get lazed. But apparently they don't have a laser warning receiver. I managed to manually pop smoke with 2 of them.... so not a total waste but not quite a full company of mech infantry worth of utility (mostly my fault, I didn't even dismount hardly any of them... wasn't a serious game I just like playing with those kysanthema sometimes). Thirdly , OMG did Krysanthma get changed over patch 1.03 to have its mast mounted missile system work exactly how you would expect? My most successful one was simply hulldown in the grass at not very long range. It destroyed 2 Abrams and 3 Bradleys and shot all its missiles, I'm not sure it was ever spotted. Shortly after that I send him back to hide(since hes out of ammo) and his platoon mate near by engages some tanks and brads nearby from another hulldown open ground position. After some shots he gets spotted and engaged by the brad, but the brad can only see the missile mast, and engages that. This was at around minimum range for the Krysanthema maybe even less, so around 700 meters. So although most of the 25mm missed some hit and it wasn't long until both launch tubes were knocked out sequentially, but the hull was never even hit.. Anyway this platoon managed to shoot over 20 missiles from short range and in the open, and the whole thing made feel like the game was handling the missile mast and radar mast thing better than before. I imagine that if there was a little ridge to be hulldown behind at the back of the map, the krysanthma would really dominate that initial long range confrontation. As the map is now, the whole Krys battery I had hiding in the trees at the back did less than the platoon in the open at short range but hull down. They shot some missiles but mostly just got blown up, didn't manage to pop any smoke back their. And in case anyone is thinking the platoon that did so great did it because they were in the smoke, not because of the hulldown; I don't think that's the case. I did use smoke and it did help but I didn't notice em shooting thought it at all, I think it just kept me less outnumbered in the engagement.

You can also run enough guys over it that you detonate all the mines.

You could even do some interesting variations of the theme, each player could have a certain number of times he can change orders. Like for an hour long battle maybe you could have 3 or 4 "time outs" per side, to be used as deemed necessary. Would keep some especially silly things from happening in the battle without compromising the spirit of the thing. you could do it like American football, at the half way point both teams have a chance to change their orders, plus 3 time outs max per half, because American Football is cool.

I think big modular building are generally the concrete and rebar variety

And someone was saying a little ways back that the target line gave you the max distance you could see someone at? I have the impression that this isn't the case, don't muzzle flashes sometimes let you spot and fire at enemies beyond the max area fire range? I might be confused I haven't been playing any non CMBS night time battles in a while. I think that's how it works tho and that's what makes sense to me too. If its dark but not foggy you wouldn't be able to see the unlit building until you got close, so you couldn't area fire it. But if dudes in the window open up at you, you see the flashes and shoot back. Oh and last thing, some people were talking bout it as if each setting for weather has only one level, but I think I recall someone doing some weather testing at one point and they figured out their is some variation within each weather type. So not just the interaction of the date/time + weather, but within the fog category it can be different levels of foggy.

Yeah, I think a lot of city folk just don't realize how dark it can get outside. That was no mist, compared to the situation in the scenario were it is presumably dark like that plus the mist is so thick you can only make out muzzle flashes at 40 meters.

So I kind of ran out of energy half way through reading this thread but wanted to post anyway. Are people still thinking this is a bug? Seems to me like its not really a bug, just rock bottom visibility. I've played plenty of night battles, I think the new CMx2 spotting system does a great job with them. But there are a lot of different levels of darkness available at night in the real world. Their weren't a lot of big cities lighting clouds from beneath back then on the eastern front. The game lets you play in those potential levels of zero visibility even tho its not fun and would generally have not happened. Its hard to do a night infiltration mission when you can hardly figure out which direction the enemy line is in and you are all making tons of noise tripping and cursing and breaking things. They would all be better served with swords than their rifles but they might get confused and cut each other up. I have bumped into things in the dark before. Seems reasonable to me the Ptruppen have to actually run into it to rub their hands over it to get the positive ID, till then its just a rumbling engine. They aren't real soldiers so I don't expect them to be clever and talk amongst themselves to sort it all out. I posted this quote because I didn't like the idea of the automatic spotting of nearby enemy Ptruppen. I think all the times I have guys hiding in bushes or buildings or whatever in short range of enemy guys, or when I have to move my guys right onto the enemies AS, and search around a bit to find em all, or crawling thought the smoke at short range for the rear grenade shot on the tank: all those times were great.

Death Star Conspiracy, inside job https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEPazLTGceI Off topic I know But I don't post a lot of links

"Schoof Of Hardknocks"

you can do that easily with house rules, although I agree a 3 minute long replay would be nice. Just agree not to change the orders for 2 turns in a row.