JulianJ

Downloaded immediately. I am sure this will go a long way to defeating the Syrians with appalling language. Thx @George MC

You need some authentic Jockanese  http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=6296 in your scenario

What's in your wallet?...… somebody's hand.
On a side note a couple years ago we had a hacker do a  presentation at a company event and he showed how you could read a credit card's data with a LOS device.  Also talked about hacking hotel units to get data from folks who use the tv service for checkout.  There are just way too many ways to get hit out there.  That's why I drive around a truckload of chickens and do barter trade with eggs.  Oh yeah I still owe you a couple dozen don't I steve?

In CMSF2 you can purchase BM-21 Grad MLRS. CMBS kind'a got short-changed on artillery rockets. Pesky Javelin teams can't shoot at you if they first die under heavy artillery bombardment! Russian army was known for its artillery back when the Soviet union was at its peak. After playing CM:Afghanistan I joked that the best tactical use for a Russian infantry squad is to move forward and occupy ground over the charred bodies of the already-fallen enemy.

Chapter VI, Chapter VII or Chapter 6.5 operation? What is the mandate for UNFUK (United Nations Force in the Ukraine). Would a pre-emptive UN deployment to head off a Russian invasion be achievable? It is certainly doable under Article 42 but Russia is a member of UNSC so it is unlikely that it will sign up to it.

I think this is a know bug.  Below is a work around for it. 
If your first BLAST command turns into a QUICK move on placement, select the waypoint and hit the BLAST command again. It should change and stay a BLAST command.

It's not just the Chally 2, all British vehicles have peculiarly low HE loadouts. 
HESH rounds are supposedly multi-purpose, meaning they can defeat all but the most heavily armored vehicles, thus they ought to be the majority of the rounds carried in a Challenger 2.

To  go back to the original question: I do think buildings and cover are undermodelled. I can quite understand that a breeze block building won't stop 7.62 but modern concrete buildings, especially those prepared for defence (e.g. a sandbagged position inside) and trenches/bunkers/foxholes do seem to be much easier to destroy than RL as seen in videos of action in places like Syria and Ukraine. In Ed Nash's excellent book Desert Sniper (recommended - see reviews on FGM inc mine) a ISIS fortified house position that has resisted all sorts of attacks is finally hammered by using the YPG "home made" 12.7mm and 14.5mm sniper rifles. (here's hoping we can get some of that stuff in the game sometime) 

@JulianJ At the top left, click on "Window," then "Toggle System Console", there should be some error messages there.
 

Could be a number of things and the message will always tell you what the issues are (on export keep the mouse on the message to read it), but you could try applying "rotation and scale" to the object - it is a required step. The other thing is the texture. You won't see any object without a skin. If I recall correct there is rule with the mdr format that the object children must be lower case and I think there must be single parent for the object. You'll find that sbob outlined all the requirements in the tools read me supplied so please go check all this.

I should add for interest that I've successfully got a pack of various objects working in game (in various states of completion) and I promise to release once I get time to finish everything. This is one of those projects that I spend a few weeks on holiday indulging and then unfortunately it gets sidelined when work commitments bite back. But I do have 3 weeks holiday for Christmas so I should be able to invest some more time working on this.

Once that's been layered with a few thousand flavour objects (some of them, potentially explody) it'll look just fine IMHO! 
 

I'll try again, but it's gonna get to the point of diminishing returns. At some juncture something is going to cease to be black. The fighter is already slipping into an artistic interpretation of black. He's not too far from going gray. Someone needs to write the selectman at the International Board of Jihadi Flags and lobby them for a new color scheme if not in banners than in pajamas.
 
Mord.

No worries. I rarely leave anything alone for long. He will be worked on. LOL. Probably twenty times.
 
Yep. I went with as generic a insurgent flag as I could find because I didn't want anything specific. I figured this was used by enough different subsets that it would fit well into the timeline without identifying any one particular group.
 
There will be portraits for Fighters, Combatants and Spies, so yeah, there'll be a guy with a different colored head wrap. But the one thing you guy's should learn from dealing with my previews is that even though I may say something is a "keeper" I am a notorious liar. LOL. This dude could possibly be long gone by the time this mod is finished. But so far, I like him. Hopefully after he is tweaked I'll like him still!
I am gonna try lightening the flag some more, there's already shadow so we'll see what that does. Black on black is a PIA.
 
Mord.

OK, that's a good start, but it's still nowhere near as squalid as those vids! It could be my road on a Saturday night. 😉

@Pete Wenman made the below mod.  [squalor]  

LOL!  Call me callous, (or perhaps Tony Bliar....accidental but brill mistype) but I don't care.  They are there to die for me,  and quite frankly all you sensitive snowflakes should harden up. 🙂. Apparently there are 13,000 homeless British Army veterans...OK, we can't win wars any more but we are still putting down markers on how to mistreat our cannon-fodder.  It's a military tradition around here (read The Recollections of Rifleman Harris). So I am being realistic,in the CM tradition. Do you notice any medics, casevac or field aid centres.  No, they are only for wimps. CM rightly disdains them.
Perhaps you should stop playing CM and try Solitaire if it is too stressful.😬
 

I just came across this. Very vivid. The narrative is in Russian. Perhaps our russian-speaking members could help a bit on what's going on, but it gives very stark impression of AFV fighting in Syria.
Quite a lot of it is for a GoPro (or similar) mounted on top of a tank, which gives you a POV.  I learnt some things - how close some of the action is, how totally devastated the environment, it's like a dusty Stalingrad, how much firing the main gun produces clouds of crud which makes targetting very hard.  I don't want to give you spoilers but they stop the frame when ATGMs come in so you see what has been fired "at you".  Some of the tanks have improvised stand-off armour made of building rubble in a cage.  Call me old fashioned, but I don't think that will stop more than harsh language.
8.45 and 12.50 are worth watching.  You might well flinch like I did.
There is some film showing the damage to tanks , particularly ERA, at the end which is interesting.
 

Sf1 grew on me. I thought sf2 sounded exciting but any other title woulda gotten me more excited. Especially anything ost front or BS
Financially the last few tears uave veen terrible - i couldnt even afford the stupid 5 dollar upgrades to engine 4 which was heartbreaking bexause i cant suffer single player after years of pbems. 
I wont lie with my mothet very sick and my son is 7. And xmas i doubt ill get the sf2 money and im eligivle for that AWESOME discount bfc offers which is sooo generous. 
All this said the 2 pbems ive got going im EXTREMELY IMPRESSED WITH SF2. I actuallt dearly want the gsme now and realized how utterly i missed all 0bems and im stuck on 3.0 anyone still using it pls msg me
So just wanna say sf2 is worth every penny and bfc did a fantastic job

LOL!  Call me callous, (or perhaps Tony Bliar....accidental but brill mistype) but I don't care.  They are there to die for me,  and quite frankly all you sensitive snowflakes should harden up. 🙂. Apparently there are 13,000 homeless British Army veterans...OK, we can't win wars any more but we are still putting down markers on how to mistreat our cannon-fodder.  It's a military tradition around here (read The Recollections of Rifleman Harris). So I am being realistic,in the CM tradition. Do you notice any medics, casevac or field aid centres.  No, they are only for wimps. CM rightly disdains them.
Perhaps you should stop playing CM and try Solitaire if it is too stressful.😬
 

- cellars 
- staircases/stairwells
- fortified buildings 
- buildings with internal extended lines of sight (open factories horizontal and vertical)
- camouflage (vehicles, guns, men, fortifications)
- improved trenches (strong points where you shoot from and maneuver trenches (where you can move out of line of sight)
 

Frequently.....then I go off in a swoon and don't need to mod anything.  Plus my posting goes asdfhslo 04985023489-30 fjl9ip'a nasf; q .....shine on you crazy diamond....:-)

This isn't an argument. It is just a contradiction!
Mr. Vibrating: I'm very sorry, but I'm not allowed to argue unless you've paid.
Man: Aha! If I didn't pay, then why are you arguing? Got you!
Mr. Vibrating: No you haven't.
Man: Yes I have. If you're still arguing, I must have paid.
Mr. Vibrating: Not necessarily. I could be arguing in my spare time.
Man: Oh, I've had enough of this!
Mr. Vibrating: No, you haven't.
Man: Oh, shut up!
 

QB maps are my own pet peeve. I think many of the CMBS ones are frikkin awful. It's not just the issues posters have identified above, but the fact that most of the QB maps I have played so far
a) bear no resemblance to any town or village landscape I have ever seen
b) lack tactical benefits of terrain so games become grinding matches
To give an example: the CMBS QB I am playing at the moment -  destroyed factory stronghold - is far from the worst, but is virtually completely flat, has only pitched roof buildings and only 1,2,3 storey buildings, so you cannot seek an elevation for snipers and arty observers.  It also has four arrow-straight main roads (eh?!). There are no ways to sneak infantry up advantageously, and as Kaunitz says just becomes a short range bloodbath.
This is unlike any terrain I have seen, and quite frankly, most factories/warehouses/industrial complexes have many different buildings, from very large flat-roofed ones, to office towers, to small sheds and utility buildings.  Where are the shops, filling stations,  car parks, workers' cafes, and the odd playing field or billiard hall where the workers take breaks?  I've seen more realistic alien planets in games.
I was actually today going to propose that some of us here modify the QB maps and make them better, call them Mk2 versions, that would be quicker than starting from scratch and if a few of us did one each it would not become too  tiresome. I am grateful to @Kaunitz for raising this topic because it was on my mind too.
(note - I like QBs because you can pick your forces, and experiment with different force mixes, vehicles and troops)

Wow so much feedback! Thank you, guys!
Scenario vs. Quickbattle:
It's true that in order to implement the retreat-idea, I need to create a scenario rather than a quickbattle (@Bud Backer, @sburke). I think it's perfectly possible to create two versions of the map. One for quickbattles, one for H2H scenario-play (no AI!). I also wished that more (slightly modified, if neccessary) scenario-maps were available for quickbattles (@JulianJ), especially since most scenario-maps are really well done and often scaled realistically. It's just a pity that scenarios have a rather limited H2H appeal if both the forces and their deployment are pre-determined. With free deployment, it's more interesting. I think the appeal of scenarios could be greatly enhanced by adding more randomness: e.g. giving players the option to choose between sets of pre-selected troops, adding a random factor to the arrival time of reinforcements, etc. 
A scenario also gives me the option to select troops for the players. The selection of forces by the players is a good thing, but sometimes I think it really favors some set-ups while discriminating others. 
I'm also intrigued by the idea to add reinforcements for the defender. I can even imagine to make him start the battle with only infantry (against some armored support for the attacker). He would then get reinforcements (Panzergrenadiere in halftracks!  ) to relieve the infantry or launch a counter attack. But maybe a proper counter-attack is better represented as a separate mission on the map (as part of a tiny campaign).
Retreat-idea:
Indeed I think it will be tricky to set up the objectives in a way to make the defender ponder whether it is better to retreat or not. As you've mentioned, domfluff, It's easy to give the defender incentives to run away. You just need to give him exit objectives. Giving him some incentive to stay, however, is more complicated. In any case, I'd like to make a retreat an option once the defender knows he's going to lose the terrain objective. Instead of making a final suicide stand, I'd prefer if he could withdraw his forces to limit the extent of the defeat or perhaps even get away with a draw. So therefore, I think that the defender should not be awarded too many points for destroying the attacker's units - this would just reward the suicide-stand rather than the retreat. I assume it's more reasonable to create a balance between "preserve own troops/exit the map" and "terrain" objectives. In order to make the decision more interesting, there need to be several smaller terrain objectives, not just a single large one.
Another important aspect here is that I think players should be allowed to know how the outcome is calculated (by adding the info to the briefing...). They need to know that at some point, a withdrawal can be an interesting option for the defender. 
Scouting:
For me, scouting is just not within the scope of CM. In a H2H battle, it's rather boring to exchange 50 turns of doing "nothing". Rather, I would like to add the information that has been gained by recon before the battle to the briefing, or perhaps even on the map (by using "landmarks"). But this again cannot be done if you allow free deployment of forces. But then you can still set the "intel filter" in the scenario editor to give some information to the players.
Villages, sizes of fields:
It's certainly true that in the 1940s, field sizes were smaller in general. However, there is still a lot of room between the standard QB-map field sizes and a properly scaled field. And you can get a pretty good picture by looking at the paths that are displayed running along larger fields on contemporary maps and also by taking a look at photos of aerial recon.
As for the villages - maybe I'm confused by the maps. On many contemporary maps, houses seem to be spaced out quite a bit. But probably their footprints are displayed in an artificially distorted (also too big) way in order to make the layout of the village clearer. 
---------------------
Generally speaking, I need to point out again that I don't expect battles on a more realistically scaled map to be more interesting/tactical by themselves. I think they will just play out a bit differently and also a bit more "relaxed", with what I'd like to call a "soft" contact. Units will become aware of each other at longer distances which means that they're not knocked out instantly and can observe the enemy a bit more. And, for that reason, MGs can for example lay down fire when the enemy's rifles are still way out of their range. You will quickly learn how much of a "close range" weapon ordinary infantry really is. Casualties tend to trickle in more slowly and more "accidently". I also hope that the suppression-system will shine in a bit more nuanced way. If my units get suppressed, they're usually dead very soon anyway and their suppression bar is maxed out. I rarely see medium levels of suppression for sustained periods of time. WIth a larger distance between the contrahents, I hope to see more nuanced levels of suppression at work. In the same vein, I think that armor values will become more important (at point blank ranges, anything goes).
On the current QB maps, by contrast, contact is very "hard", spotting leads to immediate catastrophical results. This fosters a kind of un-relaxed (many people would say: more exciting! ) gameplay and inculcates the typical "paranoia" in CM-players. Every freaking ridge, every corner of a house is just a death trap that potentially leads not to 1 casualty, but to the wipe-out of the whole team. It's just so unforgiving. This is certainly realistic for the final stages of an modern fire-arms assault (if the defender does not withdraw!), but it misses out all the stages before the assault, where it's not as much down to instincts and reaction time, but to slightly more deliberate decisions.

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