DaveDash

I you think a game sucks based on something like that, then christ almighty. No one can help you. I think the ONLY reason the 'blue bar' system would be better is because the game then could actually use a big chunk of processing power to precalculate what happens in a much smarter manner. This would enable room for real LOS calculations and so forth instead of the shortcutting they have done. Then of course there would be no real time play either.

Maybe I'm not getting something here, but you can rewind quite happily in WEGO in CM:SF and replay the action to your hearts content. You just have to wait for the "review the action" phase to finish before you can rewind etc.

"Your milage may vary". In a forum enviroment it means that your opinion may not nessesarily be the same as the rest of ours.

I feel it's more a time based thing actually to be honest and Real Time was thrown in as a way to cover up for the lack of a finished TacAI and other things that you are asking for. E.G. The feeling I get is that the game was built around WEGO but they threw in a RT mode to cover up for many of the games release issues (that still remain). The main reason I do not want to play RT is no replays. With WEGO you can examine what just happened over the last 60 seconds in detail and plan accordingly. With proper planning and learning to play around some of the games current quirks, you can be very successful. It also, for my personally, has a more 'immersive' feel of being the commander and issuing orders, then it's up to my men to carry them out.

Well said Mark. While BFC should not be let off the hook, I think the witch-hunt type posts by many people in this forum really goes to show the immaturity (and I mean the word scientifically, not as a personal attack) of the exposure of many here to the gaming industry. It's also somewhat counter intuitive to actually getting a product we are all reasonably happy with. No one knows what goes on behind closed doors, saying BFC should have done this and that and this is one thing, but I know at the end of the day I'd rather a CM:SF that was buggy and eventually fixed than not having one at all. Besides, I'd like to see one poster in this forum, single handidly code a game like CM:SF and do a better job without any investment from a publisher.

There are definately times to split your squads, but my experiances in that assaulting fortified positions is not usually the time to do it. It's personal preference really, the much higher control of squads by splitting really is handy from time to time (minus the bugs), I'll conceed that. Infantry does make better overwatch than vehicles but there are still bugs with both. Try having a vehicle overwatch for infantry assaulting units either in a trench or on top of a building. Generally your units overwatching will sit around doing jack. This is a big problem in missions like Hammertime or that campaign mission with the Powerstation and field assaults. Buttoned or no buttoned it doesnt matter. Besides, I tend to use lots of target arcs which should make vehicles significantly better, but it doesn't. My experiences are completely the opposite. You're going to get detected most of the time anyway - unless you are crawling - and with half the guys you generally get cut down and surpressed easier. On the flip side if you walk into a really bad situation you're going to lose 5 guys instead of 9. Again I think there is a time and place for both, and close assaulting buildings - which is what we're talking about in this topic - its often better to do it with as much mass as possible.

How so, when the developers knew the terms of the contract when they signed it? </font>

Welcome to the gaming industry. Where have you been the last 9 or so years? The ONLY way to avoid this is to have small little developers who BF once were release a back-yard game with minimal funding because they -have- to do it rigt. Now with publishers who dictate everything games need to be released ASAP so revenue can be gathered - and don't worry - we'll patch it later. I'm not saying I agree with it, but this is how the gaming industry IS now. You need the big bucks to survive and produce quality games. In fact, CMSF could have done with more. Blaming the developers in all this is extreme naive, more than likely the blame rests at the publishers feet. Give it another few more years and when console gaming completely rules the pooch we will return to the old days of quality, engaging games. PC gaming will of course become far more niche, but that is not nessesarily a bad thing given the Music-Industry like trends big gaming is now following.

Others have given you some very handy tips - but they've left out one important thing I feel. Planning. You actually need to plan your attack so things like having to cross alleys where there may be machineguns simply dont happen. As the game is currently modelled, as the U.S. play you absolutely need as many men as possible to survive. Vehicles, mission depending of course, are somewhat more expendable. That means though that always always always make sure your squads move through cover, be it smoke or real, and always make sure they can support each other. Be careful with overwatch, sometimes vehicles or squads overwatching won't do diddly squat if the enemy units are on a reverse slope position or a different elevation. I find its MUCH more reliable just to blow the hell out of everywhere the enemy may be hiding and then take your objectives. This is not some sort of heroic movie. U.S. infantry is good, but caught in a knife fight the Syrians will take you apart. There is no shame in blowing them to kingdom come to begin with before even getting your men in any danger with atillery, tank fire, and Bradley fire. Bradleys are excellent at destroying buildings and fortified positions. I'm also going to go a different path for movement. Approaching buildings, if you must without cover, you definately should use quick. You want to get your men in that building as quickly as possible. If they're shot at, dont worry, they'll return fire. However, i find it is often better to use 'hunt' when in buildings especially or if you suspect the ground floor is occupied with enemy troops. Also dont rush your men around like Delta from place to place. Normally you have more than enough time in each scenario and you can afford to have your infantry squads sit for a bit when taking hostile buildings. Often after a couple of turns someone will spot some enemy units hiding on a roof, or that machine gunner might be detected. Now as for splitting squads, again I find overwatch to be largely useless in this game. Vehicles/Units are bugged to hell and tend to be useless at overwatch. So don't split your squads while attacking. You NEED all the momentum you can get and the object is to find the enemy and defeat his defenses in detail. If you split your squads, yes you have more control, but the chances of YOU being defeated in detail are much higher. E.G. moving a squad of 5 onto a roof and most of them get cut down by fires from surrounding buildings, and you're left with another 4 who will get cut down. Woop de do. But given U.S. firepower if you moved all 9 onto the roof they probaby would have destroyed the enemy, albiet with casualties, but you now have a strongpoint. Defending however - yes - split your squads.

Allied Force, which is the re-release of Falcon 4.0 makes Faclon 4.0 look like childs play. It's one of the most serious war sims around. The game simulates in real time an entire modern conflict such as a modern day Korean war, and top of that has an incredably complex and high fidelaty simulation model for the F-16. I mean if you go real hard core you have to go through the proper engine procedures and what have you just to taxi to the runway. In Allied Force the cockpit is almost entirely clickable, with real modelled buttons and the graphics have been improved. I've played a lot of flight sims (including Falcon 3 back in the day) and it took me about a week of practice just to master BVR combat and the F-16 radar. In the real time campaign too you know you're in a high intenisty conflict. The sky is filled with planes doing various missions and all around you war is raging, land, sea, and air. Bomb an airfield and it has to get repaired, etc etc. None of this static mission bollocks. So yeah. Allied Force (Falcon 4.0 improved) absolutely rocks, but you have to be REAL hardcore.

Slat is only really effective against the RPGs and tactics employed by them - found in Iraq. Adam1 - ignore whether or not the Bradley and Stryker have similiar balisitc protection. Nicoch got my original point, the survivability of squads in CM:SF inside your Stryker and IFVs are way too too low. RPG-7's AND IEDs destroying entire squads is not correctly modelled.

As I said in the 1.05 thread you are now all living in the reality that is modern software development. I've seen pretty much EXACTLY the same posts verbatim from so many 'hardcore' fans of other game series when the Developers get ambiguous and try new scope but the realities of the situation end up being a good idea but not so good execution. What has happened in many cases with the good developers is that the and some of their loyal fans stuck with them and the follow on product of the new engine or whatever usually turned out to be significantly better. There will be light at the end of the tunnel. I also think many people forget this game is programmed by one dude. With that limited resources you can't expect something completely revolutionary. It was much easier to do 'back in the day' before gaming became a multi-billion dollar industry. Don't expect it now. There are only so man new wheels to invent.

This thread reminds me exactly of all the Shogan Total War vets grumbling about Rome Total War when it was released, or Civ2 vets grumbling about Civ3, or game X fans grumbling about the new game Y. The Total War series is similiar to CM in many regards and it was revolutionary and groundbreaking when it first came out. By the time the third title, Rome, was released the developers went for a complete overhauled modern approach, 3d graphics, what have you. The oldschools HATED it and ripped it to shreads for various reasons. Bugs that were massively infuriating. Oh so your striker turns around in combat does it? Try dealing with a suicide general who charges the entire Carthage army alone, dies, and results in your entire army routing. Or the 5 second clickfest battles vs the hour long slogs of strategy and cunning that left you drained in Medieval Total War. So anyway, what happened? After trying something new, they evolved it and shaped it into Medieval Total War 2, which was much more like the original, with newer graphics and some of the new design concepts, and presto, it turned out to be spectacular. Same deal with Civ4 vs Civ3, etc. BF is trying to advance into new territory, with ONE man instead of a team of programmers. Give them some credit. The bugs are annoying and I'd love them to get fixed, but they're a product of modern gaming, I guess the wargaming community being rather niche is one of the last to be hit by beta releases and all the jazz us gamers from other genres are now used to. Good developers no matter how stifled by publishers don't forget their roots. BF won't either. Hang in their, I've seen this happen with so many games in so many other forums, and there is always light at the end of the tunnel. For me, I'd like to see fixed: 1. LOS problems. If someone can shoot at me, I should be able to shoot back. Important for WEGO. 2. Crew and Squad survivability increased. 3. Abstract cover of more clever placement of infantry so units don't get mowed down while stationary in the 'open'. If real life was like that Somalia would have been a lot different. 4. Bit of pathfinding improvement. 5. Vehicles behave oddly in general. 6. Weapon selection controls. E.G. a target heavy option? Probably more that I can't think of right now.

I dont think he meant they literally have the same armour, but rather the same protection against 14.5mm shells. The Bradley has reactive armour and the Strker has mesh, the author knows this so naturally he does not mean the same kind of armour. Apart from that I am sure they have the same ballistic protection. Re survivability - you are forgetting context. A vehicle slammed into the Stryker and the commander was killed. In that context in all likelyhood the commander was unbuttoned and the explosion from the blast killed him, however I do not know the details. That aside there have been many many many cases of Strykers hit by IEDS and RPGs and the crew only suffering minor injuries. A much lower attrition rate than is modelled in CM:SF. Wheels vs Track - The Stryker can still move with 7 punctured wheels (in fact all wheels I believe) whereas the Brad cannot move with a disabled track, making the crew/squad vulnerable in an ambush situation and forced to dismount, whereas the Stryker can still manouver out of an ambush. In CM:SF when your stryker is hit by an IED it's toast.

I've already downloaded it and will try it out soon. The main thing I learned from Hammertime is that I'd HATE to play George MC in a PBEM game.

Works for me. Here is what he says on the Stryker and Bradley (and his findings are verified as being relatively accurate by those such as on TankNet)... "It is interesting to compare the losses sustained by the Bradley Fighting Machines from light anti-tank weapons and IED to the experience of the new Stryker Medium Armored Vehicle. This wheeled 8x8 has about the same ballistic protection as the Bradley (360-degree protection from 14.5 mm shells). Enhanced survivability against RPG is provided by slat armor: testing and combat experience in Iraq has shown that this steel grille is able to prevent the proper functioning of anti-tank grenades and the formation of a hollow-charged jet. The Stryker also has higher survivability against mines. Whereas exploding mines have almost always stopped the Bradley in its tracks, the Stryker as a rule has been able to escape from the area of detonation. For example, on 9 September a Bradley was blown up by an IED placed in a parked car on Haifa Street in Baghdad with an explosive charge of about 10 kg. The IFV suffered damage to its tracks and lost mobility. Two crew members were injured and another four were hit by small arm fire and RPGs when they tried to exit the vehicle. Reinforcement units evacuated the crew and the vehicle burned unchecked. On 11 October, 2004, a car in Mosul rammed into the side of a Stryker, detonating a similar explosive charge. The MAV suffered serious damage, the commander was killed, and seven out of 8 wheels were punctured, but the vehicle retained mobility and was able to return to base on its own. In another pair of incidents, a Bradley and a Stryker each lost their front suspension arm, on 12 October and 20 December respectively. Again, the Stryker retained mobility while the Bradley did not. "

Another source: http://www.defense-update.com/products/s/slat-stryker.htm "In Iraq, Slat armor proved quite successful in defeating attacks of High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) of Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPGs). This type of armor is not effective Attacks by high explosive and fragmentation RPG rounds which explode before they hit the cage. In one mission, a Stryker vehicle, with slat armor, was attacked and hit with nine RPGs. The locations of the hits on the vehicle were sporadic. The crew escaped with minor injuries and the vehicle moved under its own power to the nearest operating base for assessment and repair."

Tandem RPG's naturally have a much higher disable rate, but my main point was internal survivability of the crew and squad. Even against Tandem RPGS the Stryker still has protective measures that will keep the crew alive and squad alive. There have been a few cases in Iraq where Bradleys have been catasrophically destroyed and the squads still dismounted to fight. This is rare in CM:SF. U.S. vehicles are built with survivability in mind, since personale are a very expensive commodity in moral, political, and $ value.

There are tons of sources on this, but I decided to pick an interesting one, written from a Russian POV on U.S. armour http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/1-2005/ac/us_armor/ In this summary, he actively gives the Stryker better survivability vs RPGS than the Bradley due to its extremely effective anti-RPG meshings. Now pray tell why in game those meshings seem to do diddly squat against RPGS? RPGs and ATGMs disabling Strykers and Bradleys is borderline fine, but the crew survivability modelled in CM:SF is absolutely appauling. I think in Iraq there has been one KIA from a RPG hit on a Stryker. That's right. One. Now I realise those red guys arn't nessesarily dead, but if you read many accounts of survivability of the Stryker is poorly under-modelled. Often they take IED hits without any crew injury AND they keep on driving. Crew survivability is also extremely poor. Now I'm not saying you should be able to charge your guys into battle like rambos, the likely chances are of a squad bailing out without cover is death anyway, but it does irk me (especially after playing the scenario Hammertime) that one lousy RPG-7 not only destroys the Stryker (which is extremely unlikely) but also the entire squad. A simple solution would be to change the status of IFV's and APC's to 'knocked out' from RPG/ATGM's far more often than 'Destroyed' and increase Stryker survivability. Those things CAN keep driving after an RPG and IED hit in real life, wheras a Bradley's track damage will force the crew to bail out.

Well I finally did it. I lost more men than I should have and reloaded a couple of times when idiotic pathfinding or AI screwed me over in WEGO. It seems units have issues firing at many of the guys on the roof as well depiste the guys on the roof being able to shoot at them. I've noticed this in a few campaign games. SPOILERS: I completed the mission with 19 minutes to spare when the Syrian AI surrended. What an Epic battle, I feel mentally drained after that one. I had a bit of forewarning from reading some of the posts here that this mission was 'nasty' so I didn't underestimate the Syrians one bit. My plan was to send my main effort up the very western side of the map as that side had a closer entrance to the city objectives. The eastern side, while it looked easier, meant I'd have to fight my way through that side of the city to gain the objectives. I sent my Recon team to capture the closest farm on the west - luckily the smoke from my Bradleys confused the enemy and my recon team managed to wipe out the Syrians on the reverse slope. I moved 1st Platoon along the Western side of the map to clear the buildings there - using the cover of the fields, and halted at the first group of buildings. When my artillery arrived, I pounded the three western farms that remained ahead of me almost to dust, and used second platoon to capture the farm buildings and clear resistance from trenches. Third Platoon stayed as a reserve until I knew the extent of enemy resistance. My tanks unfortunately played a minimal role, both getting bogged in the mud in my west advance. Once all the Western farms were clear I moved up 3rd Platoon, who was still fresh through the clear western fields and began prepping the city for assault. I used my remaining 155mm artillery to obliterate the buildings to either side of the bridge to allow entry into the city. I tried to move 1st Platoon up to take the Hamlet to the east but they met stiff resistance from tanks dug into the city, losing almost all Bradleys but with little troop loss. I kept them there and planned ferry them to the battlefield later. 3rd Platoons assault on the city gained footholds, but due to some crazy pathfinding into buildings and Bradley TacAI doing a very poor job of covering fire they got cut up pretty bad. The fighting was extremely intense and I moved a still relatively intact 2nd Platoon through 3rd's positions and managed to elimate most resistance. 1st Platoon wasn't needed in the end and I gained all objectives. Some key points that helped me succeed: 1. Using cover wisely. This is for both troops and vehicles. Once you start gaining a foothold you can use all those trench networks and buildings to your own advantage. 2. You have limited artillery, but tons of Bradleys. You can use them to destroy all buildings that seem like they are a threat and still have plenty of ammo left over. If you see a building that looks too hard to assault, too many enemy units, just blow it up. 3. Putting infantry on the rooftops of buildings allowed me to spot a lot of the tanks quite early and use Javelins to destroy them. 4. When moving vehicles I used quick bursts of erratic movement, and made sure they were never stationary before the turn ended. This mean a lot of RPG/ATGM and tank shots missed and I was able to surpress them (eventually). 5. Staggered East/West movement across the edges of the map to clear threats. I noticed there was a lot of 'ambushes' set on either side of the map that my clearing forces approached from behind. All in all a fantastic scenario. Unlike other people however I was frustrated with LOS annoyances, perhaps it's a 1.04 thing?

SPOILER: . . . . . . . . . . . The ATGM at Farm 6 is the cause of extreme frustration in WEGO. I can handle it getting off one shot, but it can literally take out 3-4 Bradleys assaulting various parts of the map and due to its "Reverse slope" position not a SINGLE unit returns fire in WEGO. Not a mission design fault, but really something needs to be done about reverse slope ATGMS/RPGS. I believe vehicles don't shoot because they believe it to be a 'wasted shot'. They should area surpress automatically.

I don't know about your Abrams, but mine are nigh invincible (1.04) front on. ATGMs are a different story. The vast majority of old RPG hits (such as the RPG-7 used in Iraq) are going to do diddly squat against an Abram, but RPGS are not ATGMs. If anything, it seems Strykers and Bradleys are too weak against RPGs, particulary the crew survivability. When was the last time you heard of an entire squad being wiped out when a Stryker or Bradley was hit by an RPG or let alone a IED? The U.S. designs its vehicles with survivability in mind. Anything that gets hit in CMSF and your unit inside is basically toast.

My campaign is halted after the same Scenario (Night Stalkers). My only previous save is at the start of the prior mission - which I really don't want to do again. Apparently this 'bug' will be fixed in 1.05.

Well this mission looks extremely well designed, I give up in frustration every time before finishing it. Possible Spoiler: There is some extremely annoying bug or something in CM:SF that prevents my vehicles from firing upon enemy units in trenches, even when -ORDERED- a target command. Unfortunately this means in this mission my units sit with their thumbs up their butts while RPG and anti-tank teams demolish my entire company. This is on WEGO of course. It turns what could be an extremely fun mission into an effort of futility.

Krautman: "The whole wbs-Sergei discussion looks like a clash between american pride/arrogance and european modesty/politeness/pc". I agree 100% with wbs, am I suffering from 'American arrogence' too? I am not an American, so how do you factor that into your little equation? Every time an American has a POV that a European doesn't agree with, it's because the Americans are arrogent? It seems to me Europe is the land of politeness when it comes to anything BUT America and anything it's assosiated with. FYI I've travelled to both America and Europe, far more extensively through Europe, and by whole Americans are far more polite than Europeans in my experiances (although I havn't been to New York . Oh, I'm a Kiwi. Is it OK if I use that word here? Heaven forbid I want to offend someone who doesn't even speak my language natively.