DaveDash

Well, Ill get through as much as I can over the next few days and email you my initial impressions/bugs/whatever if you like. =)

Send me a PM and Ill play test it by doing at least a mission a night. So 10 days. (I see you are online, so I might even start tonight! )

I don't even bother with CAAT. The scale that CM:SF is on makes their usefulness limited. I guess you could use them as suicide scouts, but I prefer not to. I have tried employing them in each and every way and they just die far too easily to get any use from them. Regarding this mission, I didn't find it was too bad when I played it the first time, but I did eventually run out of time and had to throw caution in the wind at the end. 90% of my casualties were in the last 10 minutes or so. If I had an extra 10 minutes I would have been fine. After dismounting IMMEDIATELY and clearing the start town, I sat all my vehicles on the edge of town and hosed down all the buildings as the infantry assaulted through the tall grass. Regarding marines vehicles: Overwatch & Area fire. Unless the ROE states otherwise, shoot the crap out of everything that could hide an enemy. It's the ONLY way you can assault without taking casualties. Never assume anything is safe, always clear ahead with infantry first. Anyone seen Generation Kill? Makes me wonder just how accurate the modeling is vs vehicles in CM:SF for a bunch of guys in thin skinned HUMVEES to get through what they did suffering what, 1 WIA? Seems quite often the USMC would send LAVS or IFVs in first. I'd NEVER do that in CM:SF. Ever.

Well, that's probably why I'd remove almost all the tanks (apart from a Platoon each, or so), so the entire game doesn't hinge on the first tank battle. It also feels a bit like command and conquer with all those tanks on such a small map. As blue I can win every time by targeting your tanks that go to the hill first, with air strikes. I've played it a few times and the tanks fail to spot the hidden JTAC teams even if they are right on top of them (which causes some unwanted casualties from the resulting airstrikes, but hey). Then, those two tanks I got early on can be moved into in hull down positions behind their little hill effectively take out all the other patrolling tanks outside the base. Stationary vs Moving advantage. In H2H I imagine there is more than enough airpower to make sure you never get that hill.

Yeah. I generally find it's not worth it in CM:SF. In fact, it's generally not worth sending tanks anywhere without sending infantry in first. IRL seems to be a different story.

Ah right, been a while since I've seen it. I'm still impressed at their spotting there (I can't really make out the team in the video). If that was CMSF the tank would have driven obliviously past

Case in point, has anyone seen the Thunder Run video of the tanks going into Baghdad in 2003? At one point, the tank with the camera on it stops to an immediate halt, spins the turret around, and starts blasting an RPG ambush team with 50cal (to their 9:00 or so, and about 15 meters out). If the law of a "bigger gun is always better" was true, they would have used the main gun. But instead they used 50cal, given the close proximity, ROF, etc etc....

Agree with this. and this: This last fact never used to translate in game so well, but I've noticed of recent patches you don't quite lose an entire squad to a single RPG-7 anymore. =P The fact is these vehicles, the Stryker in particular, was designed for MOUT operations. It's not really designed to do the role of mech forces. In MOUT/Ambush situations, good luck even getting the barrel of a BMP to effectively traverse into the right position to fire, let alone using an ATGM.

Yeah, which led me to believe ArmA was the "real" successor to OFP given BIS were the programmers and Codemasters the publishing house. I read a while back that most people in the community didn't have very high hopes for OFP2 for this reason.

ArmA is the successor to OFP is it not? OFP2 is something else entirely... (and apparently not that good? I havn't followed the series in a while). You can't jump and shoot accurately in CS:Source. However, due to the headshot system it's very easy to die. Players that master the recoil on rifles to always know where to headshot, will cause you endless amounts of frustration. It's similar to AA, AA you can't really jump and shoot from memory (unless it's changed?). Your accuracy goes through the floor. In any FPS those who know the maps much better than you will seem like they are cheating/have faster reflexes/whatever. It's nothing to do with that, they just KNOW the likely avenues of approach, likely spots you are hiding, and have their crosshairs on you already. I used to play quake1/2/3 professionally (hangs head in shame) and on most maps I was so good I could listen to what powerups you picked up, deduce exactly where you were, and made sure a rocket landed right on you when you walked around a corner. Many people accused me of cheating, etc, until they learnt who I was. Believe me though, many frustrated times in AA I have thought "if the game actually wiped your hard-drive when you died, you wouldn't have done that!" after seeing guys rambo around with no tactics what so ever, seemingly impervious to fire.

I am extremely happy BFC did Shock Force. I'd been yearning for a modern combat war sim for ages. The only other thing out there really was ArmA (and maybe TacOps?), and I question ArmA's "realism". There was this one game I used to play quite a bit, called "Peoples General". It was based on the old SSI Allied General games. Basically a modern conflict of China/N.Korea vs everyone. It was pretty cool, after all the mods etc.

Yeah. I actually leaning more towards RT with smaller forces after my last post. It's definitely best to have both in the same game.

I find the lethality of most weapons, grenades included, to be relatively high, not low. Especially those HEDP grenades the Marines have. An area fire on a building from a squad of Marines will mow down most of the poor Syrians inside more effectively than HE from a Bradley. It seems as the patches have gone up so has the lethality of weapons, or am I just imagining this? I seem to recall it was very difficult to rout dug in defenders in earlier versions (which was a good thing, since it actually required you to use proper tactics to win). The reason this sticks in my mind is I remember when first playing CM:SF I was pleasantly surprised at the lethality of the weapons, given most other military "sims" (even OFP / ArmA etc) the lethality is way too high resulting in 5 second fights devoid of all tactics. Just observations of mine and no way scientific.

I gave this scenario a go, as I'm interested in Blue vs Blue scenarios. SPOILERS BELOW . . . . . . . . . . . . I found it a lot of fun. However I found it too easy as Blue vs AI. I realise it is designed more for H2H, however with some simple adjustments to the placing of the Red forces, the challenge could be increased dramatically. I'd also probably remove the Blue air power, and remove 2/3rds of the tanks from both sides. I pretty much decimated all Red's tanks with the four F/A-18's and two of my own tanks, and then with 16 or so tanks left over I was pretty much unstoppable. I was fairly careless and still only took about 10 KIA 30 WIA on my first go. The placement of red's forces allowed me to pretty much demolish his forces from range with my tanks. To up the difficulty, I'd put his forces down low (instead of up high in towers) keyholed, and perhaps change the red setup zone to allow the hill. No general would leave a hill over-looking his entire base unoccupied. Giving Red some javelins on that hill along with a couple of tanks overwatching the rest of the map would significantly add to the challenge.

I love this mission. WARNING SPOILERS: First time I played it I won, but my infantry got chewed up fighting in the town. I sent one force to assault the town through the trees on the left, and one force to clear the trees to the right and provide supporting fires. I played it recently in 1.11 and kicked ass. I sent two tanks through the trees to overwatch the fields to the left. Other two tanks overwatched down the road. Send all my infantry through the trees to the left of the road and assaulted the town, making numerous breaches in the walls with the MGS and used smoke and artillery to gain entry to the town without taking casualties. After my two tanks on the left flank cleaned up the enemy assaulting armour, I moved them around to clean up everything behind the town. The fighting in the town can be tough, but as long as you make sure your infantry can support each other, don't expose them on rooftops, and pay attention to where doors are, you should be fine. The challenge with this scenario is while you have a lot of vehicle support, gaining maximum use from those vehicles can be difficult. It comes down to an infantry assault, so I found it much better to mass your guys to gain local advantages.

Don't let the timelimit fool you in this. Take it slow. I won with 1 KIA 8 WIA, 1 AAV lost with 30 minutes spare, when a good chunk of the Syrian forces surrendered. I managed to take the main objective and the bridge, that was enough to net a total victory.

Started WEGO, went to real time, now back to WEGO. I find the benefits of real time can be mostly be mitigated with properly WEGO planning, yet the benefits of WEGO can only be mitigated with extreme difficulty in real time. Also, as others had mentioned, I found the time issue a big one in real time, especially on large battles. I'd often take less casualties than in WEGO until I realized I was running short on time, and then, I'd effectively end up taking more.

Also to further your point, due to the manufacturing techniques and what have you of a modern computerized society, it's probably just as cost-effective to create guided munitions than unguided. GPS, computer parts, etc, are as cheap as chips these days.

While I definitely see your point, it's all relative. Yes the stuff the west uses is pretty expensive, but I'd be surprised if Afghanistan takes up even 0.1% of U.S. GDP per year, which is definitely sustainable economically. Even Iraq, which is fussed about as being expensive is 0.5%-0.7% of GDP per year which is sustainable, compared to Vietnam which was 1.5%-2.0% per year. If the Taliban had any way of effectively causing any attrition then it might be an issue, but the amount of attrition they cause is pretty much negligible in terms of equipment and economics to the U.S. at least. What is not as sustainable is the political/people will IMO. That is a much greater problem than the cost of bombs. I am also fairly certain that the ROE has changed in Afghanistan to target poppy fields generating income for the Taliban. In that video of the Taliban firing mortars, it looks to me like the Apache is taking out a spotter or something, given the elevated position that they are firing upon.

I find it much better to be slower/tired and have maximum of ammo to suppress the living hell out of anything that faster/less tired but having to maneuver troops across lines of fire to resupply. You always inevitably lose one or two guys and it slows the momentum down overall. I find the effect on tiredness minimal to be honest, especially since the way the game plays is usually stop, start, stop, start. Speed in this game gets you killed, suppression keeps you boys alive, and for that, you need ammo. This is especially key IMO for you machine gunners. You cant have them running back to reload and they're mostly stationary if you find a good spot. The only thing is you usually have two MG's per vehicle so it pays to remember to divvy up the ammo between them.

The problem as I see it is not nessesarily the spotting. It's the combinitation of spotting and over modelled infantry lethality. Seriously, the lethality of small arms in this game is way over modelled, or rather, how easy it is to be seriously wounded and put out of the fight is WAY over modelled. I've never been in combat, but I've read quite a few books about it. For example, in the book "House to House" the author goes on to state it took well over 200 rounds from the M240 to put down a militant wearing captured U.S. body armour, and take note this militant approached in the open wthout cover. Often the U.S. would have to clear buildings wth tank rounds etc and even THEN often the militia inside was still alive and kicking. RPG's, etc, also kill to many too easily, and the accuracy is way too high. Quite often the crew inside a Stryker or whatever hit by an IED survive mostly, while in CMSF one RPG-7/IED and your entire squad is wiped out. Given the fact it's almost impossible to spot enemies until they shoot at you, and then you almost always take heavy casualties in these cicumstances, I don't feel the game is anywhere near realistic, and the only viable tactic you can ever really use is recon by fire. Imagine a Black Hawk Down scenario in CMSF, all your Rangers would be wiped out in seconds by highly lethal and accurate AK-47 fire from militiamen at 400m. Seriously, thats how accurate they are in this game. If infantry lethality (especially infantry with body armour) was tweaked appropriately, the game would be a lot more fun, engaging, realistic, and allow for more tactical opportunities. Right now the way the game works is approach with the most bodies possible (in order to get the biggest spotting bonus) and blow up everything in your path that might hold the enemy. Also, there is still one serious spotting bug that annoys me and Im surprised it's STILL in the game. If a squad of 9 guys on a roof can see a tank, they should be able to point this out to the Javelin crew standing RIGHT next to them, and not have it go up and down the chain of command (which it quite often doesn't, leaving the Javelin team rather useless and unable to see anything due to the way spotting currently works).

This is also happening to me on mission 06 I think of the official campaign. On 1.10 I used to get the slide show on this mission, but now when it gets to the point where it used to give me the slide show, I cannot load save games. I watch the process in task manager and it gets to about 1.8 gig of memory then crashes saying "out of memory" (also on 29% on the loading bar). I have 3GB of RAM. I've seen the official response from Steve about the slide show issue (and why they changed to the blue bar), and quite frankly, I didn't buy it at all. The issue always felt like a coding issue with some sort of infinate loop kicking in since the game would always run fine for two more turns after a reload. Now with 1.11 it appears the game has a memory leak issue....what do you know.... I feel the two issues are related and caused by the same problem.

Further Update. When the slowdowns happen (I can usually save the game OK after the turn has finished), I have to completely quit out of CM:SF and come back in to reload my game. Otherwise it just hangs on 2% while trying to load. The fact when you replay the turn the framerate is normal, but the units "chunk" around, cant aim, etc, really indicates to me that there is some calculation issue, perhaps some sort of programming loop that isnt exiting cleanly.

The Edit button doesnt work for some reason. Here are some attachments. First one is 19 (pretty much the lowest I get, very playable still) after I load my save game. Then after 3 or so turns it crawls down to 5 fps, looking up at the sky gave me anywhere between 5 and 15 fps. When I go back into the game, it runs fine for a while again. I have a dual core 2.6GHZ processor with 4GB of ram with a Nvidia 8600GTM 512MB video card.... This is the only mission so far in CM:SF, or Marines, (or any other game for that matter) where I get anything like this.

It may still be a graphics problem, but the symptoms are different for me. It's fine when I load the game, despite how many units I am looking at, or where the camera is at. After about 3-5 turns it then starts to give me <10FPS only during the real turn in WEGO - not the playback. Doesnt matter where I look or what I do. Also all my AI men suddenly can't aim for sh!t while it is having these problems. Tanks fire in the air, Javelins fire right in front of them, etc That "feels" more like some sort of memory leak issue/CPU calculation issue to me. However your problem is definitely GFX card related Cpl Steiner.