Erik Springelkamp

When a Fennek reccon vehicle move on a Hunt order, I have noticed several times that the passenger team - with the sensors - detects an enemy unit, but the driver doesn't know and he continues to drive on. One would expect such detections to be shared immediately between the observer and the driver. It is probably an artefact of the overall command system and the separation between driver and observer team in Dutch Fenneks - I think they are one team in the German setup, but in this case it works out a bit odd.

Please hide these kind of remarks behind a SPOILER warning. It surprised me as well initially, but on the other hand it makes sense: what would you do as Syrian commander? But once you know this as a Dutch commander, you can misuse this knowledge.

Were your losses too high? Because that was probably the one hope that kept your opponent endure all that suffering.

Can you mention a SPOILER when you post things like that, Erwin?

Is it suitable for a PBEM game?

So maybe they implemented it as RealTime with pauses at whole minutes, where you give all the orders, and you are not allowed to give orders during that minute of realtime play - which is your one and only replay. That would mean there is no blue bar when you hit go! but I have never played that way, so I can't confirm that.

Since my email client (Thunderbird) remembers its last save- and attach-folders, handling the email part of PBEM takes only a few clicks and less than 10 seconds.

I don't mind the scenarios being hard. I think they are very good. With the NATO scenarios I usually get a minor defeat on too many friendly casualties. I think that is a correct result, because I make errors one shouldn't make in the field. But the friendly casualties are the worst kind of result for the rest of the campaign. It is a feedback system: if you don't play perfectly, it gets even harder in the next battle.

Yes and no, because it takes away from the immersion of a campaign. You see, I want to have my cake and eat it too :-) I did bug out of two scenarios in the British campaign by taking an early cease fire, when I saw that I was in terrible trouble. So maybe that is a solution for some of the scenarios. It is cheating, and you don't win the battle, but at least you conserve your forces for a later task. I think I want a cheat button, for when I think I tried enough. It could be built into a scenario easily, by putting a little landmark called 'cheat' near your setup area, that gives you loads of VP's. But purists would probably object to a failed target when they play a perfect game.

Dara O Briain expresses my issues with campaigns: I love CM campaigns for the storyline, but I am not that good a player. When I play through a campaign scenario I make costly mistakes, or sometimes I even don't know how to solve the problem at all. (I do sometimes win them, I am not a complete moron). So I restart the scenario, and try to avoid my previous errors, and then run into another disaster, and after a while I feel like I am doing work, and think: OK, I more or less know the situation here, I want to move on. With NATO, there are only a few scenarios involving the Dutch, but I know there are a whole lot of beauties locked away in the campaign, that I will never reach, because I wast too many troops in the early battles. I have been spending a good part of a weekend trying to do a perfect run of the first scenario, and then - bang - oh god, there is that RPG around the corner that blows up my Leopard, yes, now I remember from the first run.

I did shooting range tests with the Gill, and I too experienced systematic different behaviour: one run they allmost all hit their targets, another run they all hit the ground halfway. That was 12 Gill launchers against a company of T-90 over absolutely flat terrain, range about 1500 metres.

Another +1 for a larger font.

Lethaface, I am up for a PBEM game. Never played one in CMSF, but use to play them in CMBB & CMAK Stuur me een email naar erik at springelkamp.nl, dan kunnen we het regelen (ik moet even kijken of ik supergrote emails kan ontvangen, anders is er wel een andere oplossing).

I think in real life these scouts operate in twins, because if the first one is killed in one shot, the second can at least report the fact. In CMSF you don't need this feature, because you, as gamer, will see where it is destroyed, so the double act mostly loses its primary function.

Yes, I have done that with Dutch Fenneks, which share some of the features of Scimitars :-) They are somewhat useful at spotting when they join a force of Leopards (and their machinegun is more powerful than that of the tanks), and if they are destroyed by an ATGM, you at least have the information with a cheap unit. The first Dutch campaign scenario has some opportunity to scout, but for only 20 minutes, and at the end of the day I could have walked that distance easily.

But of course the real long range scouting tasks will be outside the scope of a CMSF battle, so often you are stuck with this vehicle in a scenario, and you are nevertheless tempted to use them in combat.

Having unlimited time would make the AI plans unpractical, as you could just wait until all AI traps had been released before starting your attack. With a limited timespan, the AI has a decent chance to catch you in a certain position. Only when AI plans would work on triggers you could losen up the time schedule

If all these times are relative to arrival, it seems much harder to coordinate different AI groups, as all of them may have different histories.

So we all seem to interpret these times differently. (I have seen previous discussions about the subject) Which is why I did this test, and why I think someone knowledgeable needs to explain more clearly what is supposed to happen.

I experimented a little bit with these numbers, but I can really grasp the logic. I made a very simple plan, with one vehicle that had ample time to fulfil its moves. format (order: after/before) Setup - 0:30/1:00 2 - 2:00/2:30 3 - 5:00/5:30 4 - 10:00/10:30 5 - 15:00/15:30 Play proceeded as follows, scenario starts at 30:00 30:00 Vehicle jumps from setup position to setup order area 30:00-29:40 Vehicle moves from setup order area to order 2 area 27:00-25:40 Vehicle moves from order 2 area to order 3 area 24:00-21:30 Vehicle moves from order 3 area to order 4 area 19:00-16:50 Vehicle moves from order 4 area to order 5 area So all exit times seem to happen 1 minute later than ordered, except the setup order.

I suppose it is related to the fact that recon teams are part of a recon section - although it doesn't make sense to merge them into the section, it can be done, I just tested it. Then the binoculars belong to the section, and when split, only the A-team inherits the binoculars, and the GPS set as well. Both teams do however keep night vision equipment.

I noticed that from the Dutch recce teams only the A teams of a section have binoculars. It seems very weird that a recce team wouldn't have binoculars, as they are supposed to leave their fenneks, for instance to go to the edge of a wood or a ridge. The spotting ability of the Fenneks themselves is very good though. When I send them forward together with Leopards, they often spot enemies long before the tanks do.

> ...and how about the instant 180 arc hotkey! Isn't the shift key used for that?

Just in from WikiLeaks: the US promised China delivery of Saudi oil in case the Iranian contracts would falter because of the new sanctions that were approved by China. > Basically, this puts China in a bad place akin to Japan's prior to WW2. No more so than the USA, I would think. Where is the US waging or threatening war? Coincidence?

But when you attach engineers of the same nationality to a mech company, can they communicate with the company forces? They don't show a common upper command level in the command window.