SlapHappy

Yes, they would be for the MK19.

Yeah, they love those balconies, don't they? You would think there was a cooler of beer and some steaks grilling on the bar-b-q on every one of them.......

This is what one book source quoted: 40 mm 430 rounds or 50 cal 2000 rounds 7.62 mm 3200 rounds 5.56 mm carbine 2240 rounds SAW 1120 (belted) smoke grenades 32 Javelins 4 So for the standard m1126, the only thing discrepancy I see is one missing Javelin round. Of course this is only the official loadout and I wonder how much variance we see in this in real-life usage.

In most of the really tough scenarios I have played, it's not the number of red enemy or the lack of blue troops that has made the difference, but the quality of red troops on average. I don't find the limited casualty allowance for Blue to be unrealistic, but perhaps the Red troop quality is too high to expect reasonable results given the limited resources of the paratroopers?

Ahhhh...the "new" Army. Or is that moniker so outdated now that it's actually the "old" Army? How about the "constantly evolving" Army? Or "evolving too damn much" Army?

Despite the insinuation that those are Taliban sniper victims, I also have had my doubts that was the case. Something about the video doesn't seem like a battlefield setting.

Hey Steve Explicit control of anti-armor weapons is, of course, an important topic. But what about TAC AI ability to acquire Javelins and such when being controlled by computer AI? Is this also on the eventual to-do list? Right now the only computer AI soldiers capable of utilizing those weapons are dedicated anti-tank teams that already have the launcher in their possession.

Gotcha. I read that as February of 2008, instead of August of 2002. Thanks again.

BTW, the pertinent slide there is slide number 9.

This PPT slideshow from geocities: http://www.geocities.com/ibctcliffnotes/sld001.htm mentions the composition of an IBCT company in one of the slides, but indicates that the unit is supplemented with a platoon (3) of MGS. The PPT is dated early '08, so it is fairly recent info. Can anyone verify the 105 strykers in the official TO&E?

I have always felt that North Korea played the mad dog role more or less to try and gather some handouts through a show of strength. Hopefully at some point, before something really bad does happen, their administration will see that such a tack is highly unproductive. This is a country that has trouble simply feeding people. Those people deserve better, and hopefully one day they will get it.

My guess is no, but in my case, I will of course have to find out!

Here we see that as soon as the first Blue trooper HUNTS around the corner, the Syrians in the building 50+ meters away facing in the opposite direction detect them via LOS: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2323/3529851910_63dd9f25fa_o.jpg And in this frame, they have moved to the opposite side of the building and are exchanging fire with the BLUE squad: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3571/3529851958_5952f1e9ab_o.jpg Can they see me? http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3187/3529852066_b3f934e4c8_o.jpg Yes they can! http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3590/3529039465_8bd01664ac_o.jpg

Uhhh...I did and...uhhhh...Steve is right . Thanks for taking my back on this one, though, Ken. If anything, a squads ability to react to threats within their 360 degree LOS potential is perhaps more potent than it ought be. As I said, I have a save game that illustrates a particular game turn where three Syrians react to a lone soldier coming up on their five o'clock from outside of a building while they are facing opposite inside the building. But even this particular sample is not as convincing as some of the situations I ran within the entire test itself.

Personally, I don't think R33GZ is being unfair. TOW also no longer resides on my HDD. I guess I have a bit of a different take since I came to the conclusion that 1C had a different vision for this game than what I wanted out of it. Fair enough. I can't really claim the game is broken if it matches up with the ideas the developers had for it. What most of my concerns continued to be in this series was the way infantry was handled. I wanted more TACAI capability, while the developers were pushing more the concept of the individual soldier control methodology. That's simply a matter of preference. Traditional RTS players probably prefer this feature and would submit it's one of the stronger points of the game. I'd rather have more squads and be limited to controlling them at that level. In fact the thing that ultimately dashed TOW for me was the low number of available troops per battle and the fantastic rate at which even small arms fire wiped out those limited numbers. It was a combination of problems which pretty much kept an all-infantry scenario out of the question for me because of the inherent lack of depth any such game would offer.

I experimented with these values in TOW 1. The changes you make in the above tables reflect directly in the displayed encyclopedic information....This is the original source that data comes from.

I have a particularly instructive save game file which illustrates the "eyes in the back of the head" capabilities of infantry in a test mission I cooked up. If anyone wants to see it, I could email it....it's about 280 KBs.

Yummy....with <b>chocolate</b> milk, I hope......

Yep, I can very well see how this notion of sound contacts can be a difficult one to work out. For instances of the tank gun firing on the other side of the wall a few yards away....any creature with a pair of protuberances on either side of their head is going to be able to get a localization on that "event". However, the case of the enemy squad maneuvering around your building location can bring up any number of variables: Can they hear you and know that you are there? Thus, attempting to make sure you don't hear them? What is their movement type? Rapid or stealthy? Is your group or theirs firing weapons, etc. Fully realizing this, my original thought was that it was just too much to explore within reason. Thus, I visualized a squad of men who being deaf, and knowing they are deaf, attempt to utilize "roaming eyes" to compensate for their lack of auditory capabilities. Expanding their LOS capabilities to compensate for lack of audio cues. Not as realistic, but still giving some enhanced battlefield awareness.

Yes, under duress our hearing "compresses" in an attempt to protect the tympanic membrane from damage. Also, I believe US troops actually wear hearing protection in field exercises if not actual combat. And certainly, loud external noises could cover up some nearby activity...gunfire, explosions, etc. However, examples like Flanker noted tend to shift my thinking towards the idea that infantry are inherently stone deaf.

I like your idea very much. If nothing else it gives the scenario designer an ability to playtest different variables in his design with less effort.

One of the biggest problems with using the baked commands option is the inability to achieve continuation if game events intrude on the pre-applied command set.

A well-timed bump while Steve is perusing the board...

Impressive! I never play above VETERAN level. I'm always willing to concede, of course, that I might be a fairly lousy tactician.

For me the answer to the question "how many vehicular units is enough?", is answered with the statement "As many as it takes to reasonably represent the time period in the game scale". And that's mostly because I feel that CMX2 isn't and never was about a plethora of armored "goodies". What makes it special is the new focus on complete representation of squads and squad tactics - Even more so as we move into the WWII versions. What I hope continues to happen is that BFC pushes the envelope of what the TACAI can do to better simulate better squad behavior and realism. This has always been the attraction for me - and a source of frustration and letdown with other wargaming titles. Many games do a decent job of simulating armor at this scale on the battlefield (some obviously better than others). Few offer the possibilities or seem interested in exploring a realistic 1:1 scale system for infantry. Why? Probably because it's HARD to do! Most publishers promise a tactical combined arms game, but when you actually get your hands on it, it's just another tankfest with next to no thought put into the squad simulation. Infantry are pretty much just there to be squashed under the tracks.