slysniper

Looks like you need to leave this open for submissions til you next release.

interesting post. It is all coming down to money, many countries not wanting to flip the bill that it cost for these things. What I am amazed of, is that they think the US and Nato can protect them. If any real events were to happen, I think there is plenty of evidence that shows that logic doesn't really work out. The only thing the US can provide quickly is air power and that is if they want to. The US is not positioned to get large amounts of troops to one spot quickly, past events has proven it. They are also being stretched as to all the places they are having to keep forces. And if a time comes that countries do find themselves needing military help, it will a interesting decision. Do you help a country that is doing it part in its defense's before you help a country that has lacked in its support for its protection. interesting times, that is for sure

The one point mentioned that I would be interested in, is how the German people do feel about their men and woman in uniform. Like everything in life, there is going to be those that do look and treat them with distain. But I wonder what percentage of their people support and treat their troops with the respect that is deserved. At least that is one thing here in the United States that has been good for awhile now. The average citizen at least realizes these people are what helps to make their country what it is and it allows them the freedoms they have.

why can you not agree, Do you know that the state of the forces is in better shape than it states in this article? Is the government doing more to fund the needs of the forces? Any time I read or see such articles I do wonder what the path is that world is taking. I sure do not to see any major war erupt in the world. But if countries lay down their guard and weaken themselves from within, then it is a sure fired method for such a event to happen. The cost to maintain military forces is a great burden, but one that cannot be cheated on for other things.

This battle makes up for the first two where I had no breaks, when we can talk about this one I can tell the tale of how I made bad choices that lead to great results.

This was the most enjoyable battle yet, I found this one had plenty of surprises also. (you like to do that it seems) I will only say I went about this battle all wrong but it worked out for me, I was on fire for this one and everything went my way. I will not give anything away or comment on the game until after people have turned in their results. My screen that shows the buildings and what damage is done was hard to take without giving anything away., you will note the two craters. I was not caring about your request to not harm the buildings, I felt they had to go, lucky for me those bombs missed I guess. But that was a interesting event which I will discuss later. The only comment on what you could improve on was I was confused as to what you tell us the scoring will be and then I open the map and see 3 objectives, so I was not sure about the scoring still. So that is not clear but maybe you did not want it clear for us. http:// http://

4 RESULTS POSTED AND THE OUTCOME IS VERY SIMILAR FOR ALL 4 GAMES. IMAGINE THAT

Also it appears you need to do a little more to promote these. This will at least bump it to the top again for you. can you tell how many are downloading your file?

http:// Ok, you did it to me again. I knew the way to get a excellent score would be to not lose my men. Figured I could get the points if I was 13 or under in losses. Needless to say, you managed to get that first location to ambush me in a sense and somehow I lost 10 men in that first fire fight. So I knew I was never going to make that goal. Other than that, I did fine on the rest of the mission taking out your GI's, Did not need to worry about losses, just get the job done. Not bad , snow lost one stug for me before he moved far, so I had two to work with two stugs to support my troops. But I really wanted the 400 points for low losses. ( not even close) Again you did a pretty good job with placement and movement of your AI troops. This is good training for how well you are doing and a quick way on getting some feed back. You need to put it out there that it should be only the first playing of the game (blind) no looking in the editor and just believe in the honor system as to having people post scores thus. At least we can compare our results with each other.

I met one fellow way back when I was in college. he was in Vietnam (infantry) and had been caught in a ambush and they did just that. Turned into it and assaulted. Of course, his memory of it was very limited. They were on a roadway when they were hit. he managed to take a few steps before a explosion blew him back and dropped him on the ground, when he managed to get his wits about him again, he crawled away from the enemy to the far side of the road and found the only cover available, a tree trunk, so he positioned himself behind that and hide. The problem was, it was not really any cover. So he next was shot in his butt. That was all he had to the story. His unit did manage to assault enough that the ambush ceased and withdrew. He said the unit lost a lot of men that day, some were his friends and he felt terrible about his own actions. but that was about the only combat experience he had while there. the few other events he was in, all he knew was where the fire was coming from, never really could see anyone, just muzzle flashes, and him firing back into the location. And no one moving , just firing til the units disengaged from each other.

WJA, all your points are on the mark. and some here have pointed out a few of them can be somewhat resolved with features presently in the game. Other items are likely not going to be resolved, but it does not hurt to point them out. The sad thing is I am sure the designers also know about these short comings along withy some others not mentioned. We as players can get very critical as to the game needing to represent things correctly as to how it is in real life. I am sure I have done it myself more than a few times over the years. But the truth is, it is a game and it is a computer program with all sorts of compromises in the programming that has been made but to us the user it seems to reflect reality pretty good. I am just amazed that it does as well as it does. The things we complain about the game is pretty limited compared to all the things the game is trying to portray. These guys really do try to get it right and we as the consumer needs to be reminded that they have made a huge effort to do just that. So keep that in mind before you make comments that sound like the effort has not been put into trying to get it to do things as correct as possible. We the consumer needs to realize there is going to be short comings, just is how it is. So when asking about possible improvements, keeping our tone in a positive manor is important. Because there is limits to what they can do. Nothing wrong in making suggestions, but acting upset because they are there is not a mature way of seeing it.

I agree with you as too, not getting into replaying a battle much, I only enjoy the first event, the real test of the unknown. But it does work as a way to test tactical choices one has made, so I don't blame anyone for going back and testing options, But that only is of a benefit if you control yourself and play the situation as if you have none of the knowledge you now enjoy. Its also a needed skill if you are making scenarios, you have to test them many times, but you have to move the units as if you have never seen the situation before or have any knowledge of where the enemy is.

Erwin

I do want to say, it was a good challenge. well designed. I focused on the whole map the first time, which is what one should do with the task on hand, then at the end, I was in a little rushed and lost three guys in a unlucky event. that cost me the task of keeping my casualties light. The lost car was to a AT gun that I had not spotted and the car had pulled to a location to support some infantry in trouble in the first go around. I enjoyed the challenge on the first go around. The third time, not only does one not waste any time with having to anticipate where the enemy is. , but the armored cars were used to remove each defensive asset one at a time with personal exposer to that threat only. once the main threats were gone , it was pretty easy to mop up the whole map. None of that battle would ever have happened playing it the first time blind. There would be no way for me to understand to use my units thus and if I did figure it out, no way would I have the time.

So As you can see, I played it three times. Anyone can dissect a situation until its not a challenge at all. In my world, only the first score matters, because there is no do overs. The second score is playing it again without trying to risk my units for the sake of a score. The third time was with the knowledge of your AI plan and scoring from the first two effort and then going in with the intent to get a perfect score. And it was done. Not wanting to be a jerk about it but the format lacks a way to be a good challenge for comparison, there will always be someone that will do what it takes to get such a score. Just showed you how easy it could be done and there is plenty of ways to even make it easier. but I was not going to mention all the cheap methods to take the challenge out of it.

Here is the problem with this format - the posted score wanted http:// Now a more realistic score http:// But the truth of it is, here is the truly blind score, playing it the first time and truly not knowing what I was getting into. http://

I will be giving it a try, plus this helps bump this to the top for others to see

Thanks Well if you ever need a play tester, I am more than willing to get my hands on new stuff that I get to be the first and give it a couple of run throughs and tell you what I think of the work. I have played plenty of your work and you keep it at a good high standard.

All very true. I guess for me, I am one of the few lucky ones in that CMSF2 is all fresh to me. I am getting to see these all for the first time. No scenario has been dissected and understood . So Christmas has truly arrived for me. With 80 + Scenario's , tons of old user made ones I can also access, all of the campaigns that are being reworked. All of it is new to me, I think I have my addiction possible fixed for awhile, long enough to be able to wait patently for the other projects coming out likely this year. So, I want to post and discuss what's happening with the new toy I have.

Ok, let see how good my memory is. First, in general I actually probed every avenue of approach, seeing if I felt any was weaker than another as to using it. (but how do you probe, with only a small amount of infantry that you are not to lose, tanks that are at risk as much as anything else to ambushes in such fighting and bmp's that are somewhat weak in general.) it means you need overwhelming firepower the second something exposes itself. So I had a couple of bmp's over watching a few approaches while the rest of the force focused on two approaches at a time I was probing at the same time. I used the bmp's to do these probes. (I lost the two bmp's and the two tanks during these early stages of probing, the tanks were over watching the bmp's as they moved forward.) I actually liked the far right approach before starting the battle, thinking that would give me a little open space and a little better view at targets with a little range. needless to say, I found that very well covered and choose to look elsewhere. The far left I left off the table because of the briefing plus of the map edge, I hate using the edge as it seems a unfair advantage on this map, so I had a few units watch it and that was it. So that left the two middle approaches. I found both difficult, but the red approach was a little better favorable terrain as to me being able to put fire on it if anything exposed itself to my lines. So it became the approach. Lost a bmp very quickly to it, But knowing most of the ambushes were set to attack units as they pass, decided I just needed to close with and overwhelm them locations because such locations could not see me coming either. So with aggressive assaults I removed them. I did have a little luck also. The first bmp I sent to the objective did have one additional ambush site fire on it as it ran to the objective. but they missed, thus exposing their location for my next assault. When I sent the second bmp, there still was almost two blocks I was not sure about as to if they would get fired on from those areas. Once it made it. I quickly reorganized and sent the rest of what I needed with plenty of covering units down that lane before some new enemy units appeared. Knowing that wasting time was just asking for new enemy units to possible enter the fray and block that route. Really, I don't feel I did anything too unusual in all this, I don't play overly aggressive, but I also knew the situation required taking advantage of any chances I had as fast as possible to benefit from the momentary gains. Playing H2H, you need to develop that mentality, you want to get momentum and not allow a defender time to recover or be able to react to your moves. So having units ready to exploit successes is a needed trait that likely paid off for me in this scenario.

I agree, at one time there was more of this on the forum and more discussion of how to use ones units. Hardly see any good stuff on it anymore. Detailed AAR's are the best, but its even better if you can get a open discussion going as to other options that were available and evaluate the choices made. But there is a lot of work in making a good AAR. Only done a couple in all the years playing. But I always debrief myself after every battle and review my actions, then if I want to see how another choice would have gone, I replay the battle and use the other option. Basically, this post was a little of that but with me trying to get input as to if anyone else had come up with a better option than what I was rethinking. This was therapy for me, when setting up to play it for the first time. My gut and thought process was telling me to not go down that right flank. but I let myself get in a mindset that is what the scenario was designed for you to do, so play it as they intended and I will work through the challenges it gives me. Needless to say, I regretted that so much I just had to do this thread as a part of my healing.

The scenario still could use some tweak's, that is for sure. You are correct in that the scoring is all jacked up. I would like to see him add reinforcements that never come so that the battle times out with no surrender possible to red, they need to fight to the last man and blue deserves to make a push as far as he can. I had 10 minutes left and I would really have liked to take that second objective. Other than that, the only thing I still do not like is his use of a few bmp's on the far side. There movement is nothing more than making them easy targets and not adding anything to the defense because they are going to lose the sighting battle every time with how he is moving them into the open.

So the first image shows the force as they enter into town from the left flank and my first units to enter. the second image shows basically the situation at the games end. Structure on the near side bank are all occupied. both bridges covered. troops having crossed on the left bridge and preparing to attack the second objective. Results image, much better than the first go around. Very light losses compared to the first approach. Not only was the infantry not forced to go down a path that was a killing zone. But with the forces used altogether, they provided the added cover that helped me not lose armored units like I did in the first battle. Firepower is always the key to success.

http:// http:// http://

OK, I replayed it tonight and I went ahead and shifted my Stryker force on the right flank and brought it over to the left flank and moved it to the ridge line behind the road as it cuts the hill and goes down into the town. For me, this was a much better approach. all the Stryker's could now easily engage targets and move into firing positions. they at first focused on units on the far side hill from this location. My left flank 105 Stryker's, focused on moving left of the hill and clearing targets that way. With the complete force on this side I could put fire power on portions of the buildings as I began to move down the road into town in that cut. The infantry was able to get into town by the Stryker's laying a smoke screen for them. In general the whole process was better and I had some flexibility to adjust units as needed as situation of enemy positions became available. On the original right flank I only left a javelin team and one machine gun. They were there to do no more than spot units and take out targets of opportunity. The enemy left them pretty much alone, but I did manage to them around the bend as to forward progress in the battle. Playing the scenario again I was surprised to find it still very challenging in that even with all my fire power now grouped together it still was very hard to dislodge the enemy. There was many buildings I poured tons of fire into and still could not eliminate of break them to run. it was a hard fight to clear them out. As for scoring I was pleased in that the battle did not end too early in that I did get to cross the bridge and was assaulting the objective on the far side of the river before the AI surrendered. Not perfect, but not as bad as I thought it might be by the other reports provided in this thread. So I think this is one of the more challenging battles I have come across and it plays well. Its not a 10, but a good 8.5 It has a interesting force match up so I like that about it. I never look at a second playthrough as a fair contest so it will always remain one of the few that I messed up on and it kicked my butt. But I will post a few shots and my second attempt to show how my approach went by not following the bad approach trying to come in on the right flank.