Yair Iny

Lomir, good points. I'm aware of the difference between cover and concealment, but you're right in that cover is relative to what is shooting at you and both are relative to where you are being looked/shot at from. I agree too, with your other point in that I'd also rather have any new gameplay feature than a UI enhancement along those lines. I was trying to make a quick suggestion that I thought could be done quite easily, but there's always a bit more depth to it that seems at first glance. Cheers

Steve, how about instead of providing information about what terrain and cover the squad is in, instead provide more information about the terrain itself? For example, right click any point on the map and you get its height, and a general (i.e. none/poor/good/excellent) indication of cover and concealment.

Sorry, but posting on a public forum does not equal freedom of speech, just as there are golf clubs that are allowed to choose not to accept members of certain races and religions. In this case, I personally find that a forum not tolerating racist views is slightly better than the aforementioned golf clubs NOW, back to wargaming

Really? So you think for example, that saying Obama is wrong about health care and saying that the US shouldn't have a black president are two equally legitimate political views and should both be tolerated on a public forum? (I'm not talking about arresting people for saying things, only not tolerating them in a community forum, there is a difference). I don't know if Steiner14 is a neo-Nazi or not, and frankly I don't care. But given his chosen username, and his dragging Israel into the Bundeswehr's involvement in Afghanistan, I don't think Steve is too far off the mark...

Sorry if you thought I was responding to your message, I was responding to a different poster further down the thread. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have more information and feedback about the terrain, even if it was just a popup that said "Where you just right clicked is thick bush and offers medium concealment and no cover". What I wouldn't like to see is that people figure out that you should be 29.5 m behind a tree line and not 30. In fact, i hope CMx2 is sophisticated enough (i.e. adds random factors), so much that you *can't* know exactly how far back to be, just like in real life.

Syria knows it has no chance of matching the Israeli Airforce and seems to have given up on doing that. Instead they are aiming to increase their Air Defence capabilities by attempting to acquire S-300 (SA-10 IIRC), which Israel is trying to prevent by influencing Russia. As an aside, they have also seen the writing on the wall in regards to their chances in a conventional armour-vs-armour manoeuvre battle and are instead relying on ATGM and infantry, as demonstrated very successfully by Hezbolla in 2006. It would be fair to say that Syria no longer poses a real offensive threat to Israel. At best they could try a limited manoeuvre at the Golan heights, e.g. re-taking the Hermon and suing for a diplomatic solution from a relative advantage.

I have to say this whole throwback to CMx1 being more engaging because you knew exactly what the terrain parameters were, etc, is quite hilarious. I remember threads in CMx1 specifying exactly how much distance to keep between squads so that suppression of one doesn't affect the other. I remember long threads with Walpurgis Nacht discussing the exact merits of different types of terrain cover, with a level of mathematical detail that would shame a pentagon systems analyst Seriously, to say that CMx1 is more engaging because you knew more and had more control is, to me, a joke. At best you could say it is more engaging because of the period. On a personal note, I found CMx2 quite hard to get in to. My troops kept dying, and I didn't feel like I had control of what was going on. Every once in a while I'd play a scen when everything went right and had a blast. Then I watched Tyrspawn's videos and just tried to do as he does, i.e. follow basic tenets of tactics, establish a base of fire, fix and flank, and most importantly, not worry about the little things being perfect. Just put some suppression on a building and assault a squad into it. And you know what, suddenly the game became fun. Playing in RT, I don't even pause now, except for once or twice when I get reinforcements, and stop for a second to plan for their usage. And I think that is the biggest problem with the transition from Cmx1 to 2. In the old CM you had so much more control. You knew the terrain params exactly and could place a squad in the terrain exactly (it being a pin point). Now, you have to play like a real commander. Get you guys to do their things and hope that overall things play out kindly. It's way more fun, if you ask me.

Bolteg, the extra ammo in vehicles is fixed per vehicle type. The US//Brits, having fewer weapon variations, benefit due to fewer mismatches between what is carried in the standard loadout, and the weapons used by the squads.

Yeah, but that's it's accuracy compared with modern APCs/Tanks. Would a Tiger be more accurate than a BMP-1?

That would be awesome. I learned a lot from watching your Army campaign recordings.

Good point, my thinking only goes so far

Steve, Would it be possible to set a range of condition for reinforcements? What I mean is that currently we can simulate airborne landing by using reinforcements. Would it be possible to then say that this reinforcement group will arrive at a condition (i.e. casualty rate) of between, say, 15% casualties and 40%? This could simulate say airdrops during D-Day. In another scenario, a range of 3%-15% would simulate some of the uncontested Market Garden landings, etc. By allowing a range to be set, as opposed to a discrete value, it would allow for greater re-playability, especially if the designer used many small groups with the same range. That way the effect on balance will be, well, balanced out, and the arrival of stronger and weaker groups on different locations would add to the tactical challenge for both the attacker and defender.

Nice way to introduce yourself, on what, your 4th post? You realise, of course, that the meaning of the battle to the troops and to the course of the war has nothing to do with it being interesting or not to simulate. Now I agree that the sight of landing craft and hundreds of troops pouring out of them would be really cool, but I also think that the landing part itself, up to the beach at least is not interesting tactically at all. The landing craft just sail up to the shore and dump the troops. Are you as a commander going to steer them differently? Or maybe find a covered approach route through the waves on the left as opposed to those on the right? From the beach onwards, you could simulate it by having the troops start the mission on the beach, either on foot, or in a tank (think DD tank). The current marine campaign has a mission like this where you start inside the Amtrak (a USMC amphibious APC), with the premise that those are the ones that made it to shore. Off shore artillery will either be modelled directly by BFC as a module with the right calibre, or can be simulated by choosing a module with a similar or close to similar calibre. So really, this has nothing to do with sucking up to BFC, only a bit of common sense. I surely hope that when you walk into a new social group in real life you don't start out by insulting one of the members of the group. The internet is no different. All the best...

Out of curiosity, and this being the CMSF forum , how do replacements work today in the US military? Is there a golden median between the two approaches presented above? Do you think the way it is done today would still produce good results in a long drawn, high casualty war? Hope I'm not too OT...

You seem to have misunderstood me. I was being sarcastic only about Hezbollah indeed, but was referring my comment to what MikeyD said, i.e. that if there were to be an IDF module he would be playing the Lebanese (i.e. not the IDF, because to him, they are the bad guys). All I was doing is pointing out that Hezbollah are no great scions of morality either, and if he is unwilling to play IDF then he should be (in my eyes) unwilling to play Hezbollah too. As to me, I play games for the fun of it, and don't attach too much meaning to which side I am playing, otherwise I wouldn't have played the Germans, etc. in CMx1, as you pointed out correctly. As a former IDF soldier, though, I would probably give playing Hezbollah a go, but can't guarantee that I won't have some sort of knot in my stomach... Cheers

Well, in that case you would be playing Hezbollah, an organisation known for meticulously observing the rules of warfare and the Geneva convention, one which covered itself in glory with daring military operations like the bombing of the Jewish Community Centre in Buenos Aires. Look, the problem with the IDF and the Israeli public in general right now, is that they are far too easily willing to justify the IDF's committing war crimes just because the other side does too. But that doesn't make the other side any better, only less powerful... Sorry if I'm derailing this thread, but seeing as how the OP doesn't have the guts to either stand up for what he posted (a completely idiotic post, IMO), or apologise for it, I think I can get over it All the best!

Damn Tyrspawn, I don't know if it's you, the improvements to the game engine, or both, but after watching your vids, I fired up the game and played in RT as opposed to WEGO, and was having an absolute blast. Thanks for showing me how the game should be played. BFC: you should give this guy a copy of Normandy as soon as it's playable and get him to do videos, can't think of a better advertisement! Gotta love this forum.... Cheers

Alex, good post and very informative. Have you run any test scenarios to see if the accuracy difference is based on unit experience rather than weapon modelling? That would be an interesting comparison to make. Veteran or regular troops using both weapons on some sort of firing range.

Summer 2010??? I doubt it. I wouldn't be too fussed if that were the case, to be honest, as CMSF is just fine. But with Steve already having said early 2010, it being delayed to mid 2010 would be a big blow... By the way, I'm assuming you mean northern hemisphere summer (being English) and not southern (being stationed in the Falklands)

I think the apache is designed to minimise noise to the front arc. When I was in the service, our base was adjacent to an air force base that housed 2 apache sqds (in the IDF, Army has no air assets, they are all Airforce). We would sometimes get overflown by them at night and you would suddenly notice them at about 200m distance. Quite freakish really...

Nice video, but I'm afraid it's not that easy. I have SB PRO PE, great sim by the way, and as I recall from the last time I played, you actually specify an AI command to fight from a battle position. This would not be the case in a CMSF game, as there would simply be BPs on the map and the AI would have to understand that it needs to use them at some point in time and figure out when to bug out, etc. Also, in SB you need to use triggers to tell the AI to move to the next command in the sequence, and CMSF doesn't have those, so they would be necessary for a fallback BP as described by M1A1TC. I guess it does show that it's not impossible, though... Cheers

Hmm Flanker15 did say parked, etc. But more importantly, I think M1A1TC's description of how BPs are used goes to demonstrate just how hard it would be to code the AI behaviour for them.

Well, desperate tank battles on the Golan Heights, Syrian commandoes taking the Hermon, and then the failed retaking attempt by the Golani Brigade, followed by a successfuly heli-bourne attempt by the Paratroopers, would have nothing to do with desert But I know it ain't gonna happen...

Nice try, but Assyria was centred in what is modern Iraq and not Syria, despite the naming symilarities Not that it invalidates your point though, I doubt many would be drawn to playing the Iraqis (Babylon and Assyria) or the Iranians (Persia)....

Mate, I might be mistaken, not at the game right now, but if you select all the troops (with SHIFT I think), don't you get to see all the movement orders?