cmfan

Too bad. Not that it matters much I suppose so long as your machine guns attack any infantry they spot along the line of fire - though this doesn't do much for infantry they don't see. Would be neat though.

When I was in the army we were told that if we wanted any chance of damaging or even taking out modern MBT with an AT-4 we needed to fire in volleys. Preferably at a weak spot. If we didn't have an AT-4 or heavier then we should use grenades and whatever else we had to destroy the vision blocks, sensors and tracks on the tank. There wasn't really any mention of effectively getting at the crew inside with concussion from grenades. Perhaps with heavier weapons, who knows. I do remember reading some fms on field expedient anti-tank explosives that might get crews to bail out like: impromptu satchel charges and a nifty incendiary device you made out of an ammo can, gasoline, a thermite grenade, and a few other things. I don't think any of those are modeled as being in your squads' inventories!

Hmm, this changes things! I may indeed have been able to end the scenario early with all most of the objectives accomplished - but what fun would that have been! . Yeah, I got lucky with the initial convoy of Deltas - no casualties but boy where there a couple of close calls! Anyway, I think what I really like about this scenario is that it feels like it has a "movie like" story behind it, but plays "realistic".

As Flamingknives states the HEDP 40mm grenades in the game *can* penetrate the armor on older BMP from the flanks, rear and top. BMP-1 and even BMP-2 armor is pretty thin. Even the BMP-3 has thin armor compared to something like the Bradly. I'm sure a lot of variables determine actual penetration rates but it is possible. The Stryker also has very, very thin armor so I wouldn't be surprised if a 30mm grenade aimed at an area not protected by the cage could do some damage inside. Not sure how well hand grenades should do against either the BMP or Stryker. I suppose if you pop one inside an open hatch whoever is inside is going to have a bad day - however a grenade going off outside shouldn't be too bad considering it's designed as anti-personnel fragmentation weapon and not an anti-armor weapon. As for crew bailing out under grenade fire... the only thing I can think off is that the game is simulating their moral breaking. This result in them abandoning their vehicles. The problem is that the AI, once moral breaks, does not make any distinction between being hit by an 120mm Main gun, autocannon, a bunch of hand grenades or small arms fire at long range.

I know that as it currently stands there is no such thing as small arms friendly fire in the game. This makes a significant difference in tactics in that (if you so choose) you can both maintain suppressive fire on an objective as your troops assault it and you don't have to worry about crossing lanes of fire from platoon support weapons like medium machine guns. What I've been wondering about lately, and haven't been able to determine, is whether or not grazing fire is simulated for enemy troops? Could I create something like an FPLOF (final protective line of fire - sorry if this isn't the correct acronym...its been well over a decade since I was a ground pounder)? In other words, set up an aim point for my machine guns several hundred meters away that lays down a line of fire a meter off the ground throughout?

Great Scenario! Getting the prisoner to the police station was fun and full of little surprises. Holding the police station was tough. At the end I lost all my Delta guys except for maybe a couple of snipers and an XO team. At the end they, along with one green police squad (heavily mauled) managed to repel several direct assaults. It was awesome! My Cav team did well dishing out the pain once it got there, but I think I didn't maneuver aggressively enough and as a result wasn't able to get my prisoner to the extraction objective in time. I ended up with a draw. Your AI plans were simply amazing. I wish I could coordinate the AI that well. I want to lavish more praise, but I don't want to spoil things for anyone. A couple of problems though - none of them your fault, but gripes with weird things going on with the game: 1) Vehicle path finding sucks. I loose more vehicles to this than bad tactics on my part. 2) Is it me or is CAS kinda buggy sometimes. Sometimes my support doesn't show up at all, or if it does, it doesn't drop anything. I hear the fighter fly by, but don't see anything go *boom*. I then check the support menu and see "coming around". This isn't the first game where I've noticed my fighters fail to deliver - helicopters are more reliable so it might be limited to fast movers. Is this working as intended or a bug?

I've noticed that it begins to happen when you are about to get the "sliding soldier/graphic stuttering" bug.

Okay, not to jump on a bandwagon here, but I would argue we see "best case scenarios" for U.S. troops using a variety of weapons. Take the AT-4 for example. I've trained on it and while it's a fairly simple weapon to use it does require several seconds to arm properly and aim. I've noticed that in-game my grunts almost "John Wayne" it. Perhaps its a shortcut in the animation sequence but I've had regular experience troops knock out APCs with it that are only out of cover for a second. Even if you are walking around with an armed AT-4 (not recommended) it will still take you that long to simply aim it. Do Syrians of similar experience levels do as well with the RPG-7? I haven't played with them much so I don't know.

Hmm... your statement earlier regarding a limit on orders per plan actually made sense given my experience with the AI so far - I think. I've spent the day playing around with the AI and I keep having problems with vehicles and units that don't move despite starting near others that have identical orders. When I read what you said about a 16 order per plan limit I checked my test scenario and sure enough one of the vehicles that didn't move had order "number 17". However - Looking more closely I notice that I do have a vehicle and squad that also remained stationary despite having movement orders that don't violate a theoretical 16 order move.

Exit zones would be awesome.

Never mind, I probably misunderstood the problem with the processor cores.

The babel fish translation of the captions says this: "still one version of the machine of the support of tanks. Above the wings of installation for the grenade launchers " I"m going to take an incredible wild guess here and say that its a BMP-4 (Urban combat support bmp based on the T-55 chasis) check out the video: http://warfare.ru/?lang=&linkid=2092&catid=0&video=true&id=222

Thanks for looking into this Steve. The game campaigns (and larger scenarios) are basically unplayable for me because of the "out of memory" bug. My frame rate drops and my soldiers start sliding around. I can usually tolerate it for a bit, and restarting the game helps a little, but after a while the game just crashes. Tonight I was on my way to finishing the second scenario in the Army campaign - I had hit all the objectives and was just about to blow up the special forces HQ when the game crashed. I'm bummed. Pentium D CPU 3.00 GHz (dual core) Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 2 GB RAM XP Ps. Someone had mentioned that setting the game to run on only one core processor might help? How do you do that?

I don't have a screen shot unfortunately, but during one game I had an rpg detonate right in the middle of a squad. Everyone hit the dirt and was suppressed for a while, but in the end only two soldiers where lightly wounded. I don't know what the odds of those results where, but I kept reviewing the action from different angles to convince myself that it had actually happened.

I actually saw something eerily similar to this on Youtube not long ago. I think it took place in Afghanistan back in the 80s. The camera man is following a group of fighters moving up a hill when you suddenly see something whiz by their heads. Turned out to be an RPG fired from a nearby position.

Yup! *Sips coffee waiting for the fire mission.* *Drops rounds till they're gone.* "See you back at the PX!" On topic: I tend to think of yellow wounded as "walking wounded"; essentially soldiers who can still move under their own power and who's wounds still allow them to contribute to the fight. I think CM2 does a good job of simulating system damage to vehicles and while I would like more details regarding hits and who killed what - CM1 style - I'm not sure the ability to repair vehicles during a battle would be very realistic. I haven't given much thought to the idea of medics. What could they do that buddy aid already doesn't? If we bring in medics shouldn't other support elements be modeled as well? My dream game would be something with the fidelity of CM2 and the scope of Tacops... but could you imagine the micro-management nightmare that would be!

I think U.S. military forces are no longer allowed to use non-command detonated mines - except in DMZ. Claymores might still be okay though... not sure.

I served in an Armored battalion back in the 90s (mortar man in a M1A1 equipped unit) and while I wasn't a tanker, I did work with a line company while helping to train national guardsman in the summer. From what I can recall, repairing a vehicle while under fire was simply not part of the sop. If a vehicle took simulated damage, or actually suffered some sort of mechanical failure our support train didn't even deal with it until the area around it was fairly secure. Getting stuck might have been a slightly different story, but our company and battalion commanders where very careful to preserve our support elements.

Does anyone have some good links to sources on the IBCT TO&E? I'm fairly familiar with the older (80s-90s) light infantry formations but not the IBCT. I'm assuming it's basically just like a striker formation minus the vehicles and with light mortars like the marines?

Sounds like fun! I'll give it a try.

I think the "Army" soldiers firing a deployed TOW are Marines using M4s. You can tell by the uniform.

This makes good sense from a technical perspective. I see why things would be set up the way they are. Thanks for the tip on delaying the entry of HQ units! I didn't know this. Great ideas John! One can always dream. Hey, I remember that in CM1 vehicles could get bogged down. I've yet had that happen in CM2. Was that not included in the modeling?

That's disturbing actually.

Is the current unit selection setup a balancing decision or limitation of the game engine?

I know this has probably been debated before, but I miss the flexibility of the old unit selection system. I know the current setup probably gives allows us to choose more "realistic" unit formations, but it takes some of the fun away in constructing and playing scenarios. I also agree with Cpl Steiner, being able to purchase units with loses and even casualties would be nice.