dan/california

I think that tac ops 4 has a pretty good set of hit probability tables on this subject. The verdict of virtually all recent conflicts though is that being second best, even by a little bit, will result in your being reduced to smoking wreckage in the desert. Crews and equipment both count of course.

There are multiple stand alone single player game modes that can be played on multiple maps. There is a lot of variety.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that they never even new the jets were there, one second they were sitting around talking about where to blow up the elementary school next, and the next second they were dead before they had time to realize they had screwed up. Zarqawi did not last as long as he did by being unsure when to duck. I wish they had used white phosphorous just to give him a little time to ponder his sins in this world before getting down to an eternity of it in the next. But I will take his elimination anyway We could get it.

This is a somewhat silly question, but if the vehicles are antimatter powered wouldn't they either have an advanced antimatter to electricity conversion system or if the liveships have lost that ability, then a very compact steam turbine? A combustion engine with an anti matter power source makes no sense. I was looking at the schematics trying to figure out why paladins take me five rounds to kill with a 120mm gun and that part of the description really jarred me.

Game as whole is simply excellent. I am absolutely certain the very small problems that exist will get fixed. I do agree Yurche's turret comments. They are the only things that feel really wrong. The ground ones especially. IFF is much easier for aircraft. I have discovered a small exploit that may or may not be intentional. The mortar carriers can fire while attached to the resupply dropship. This allows them to essentially shell the whole map to death. Made very short work of the moon scenario in the Hopewell campaign that way. Ten long range heavy mortar rounds are bad for the other teams day, 30 or 40 of them and their is no other team. Multiple mortar carriers hooked in at the same time would be beyond devastating. And they get the Galaxy's point dense at the same time.

I have one to add to the formations wish list. Have a couple of choices of formations, line abreast and column at the minimum that orient of of the leader. Right now it is agonizingly slow to get bots formed up in a useful way. This would really ,really help. Game is absolutely fantastic overall.

The game overall is excellent. It runs flawlessly on my 20" intel mac. One small things. Is there a pause button in single player mode? I keep getting reduced to smoking wreckage while looking for a command I have not memorized yet. This is what happens in a firefight when you don't know what you are doing, but I already know that I don't know what I am doing. It is why am playing single player and trying to get it together.

For gods sake Clay, GO TO BED. Your baby(game) will still be there in the morning.

I like this game even more than I thought i would but it needs voice chat desperately. Is there a way to do it that I am missing or will that happen with the full game?

I have figured out how to call for resupply, but how do I get the ship to let me go when I am full up on ammo? I keep getting stuck to it.

In defense of the developer, I can think of a vast number of plausible reasons why the 20mm would fire in 5 round bursts. Packing the rounds in sealed clips and not melting the barrel are just the first two that come to mind. If you figure one tracer per clip it makes at least as much sense as the rest of the back story.

This really is the crux of the game design. The most important thing in a game like this that is almost entirely focused on multiplayer play is that it be well balanced. This is just insanely tricky with the forces on each side being so fundamentally different. One idea that comes to mind is to have the players bid for the U.S. side. Who ever was is willing to take the lowest total amount of points gets to play with the fancy toys. If there was a record of both the bids and the game results scenario balance could be worked out very quickly. This goes all the way back to a sci fi paper war game MANY years ago. It can be fun to watch people bid themselves into impossible holes.

With fresh Italian herbs please.

My pre order is in, don't know how to give a bigger thumbs up than that.

Well, were the Iraqis really that stupid, or does the U.S.A.F. have some toys its not talking about? It has to be one or the other. I did read a comment in another forum from someone who claimed to be a military E.W. guy, and all the cautions about this kind of info apply. But he said "what exactly do you think we do all day" or words to that effect. His implication being that they think about these things all day everyday. And have some answers too. [ May 12, 2006, 05:42 PM: Message edited by: dan/california ]

The U.S. has a guidance package that specifically seeks out GPS jammers. They used several of them at the beginning of the current thing in Iraq. The Israeli air force has operated has operated over Syria with near impunity since they shot down the entire Syrian air force in 82 and the Russians told the Syrians it would cash upfront for a new one. This includes a recent(last year or so) attack on a terrorist training camp near Damascus. The weakness of the Apache in a dense small arms environment however is a fact. Helicopters are too easy to shoot down. But drones and aircraft operating at high altitudes can do a lot of the same work. The drones seem to be much more survivable because of the lower signature. And especially for the smaller ones, losing one or two to find out that you want to top the next ridge very carefully is acceptable. Dragging remote cameras through the streets just does not have much propaganda value. It is trying to work a checkpoint in downtown Damascus after the fireworks show that is the problem. You just can't pick the bad guys out soon enough. But trying to sneak up on an armored column operating with permissive, shoot first type, rules of engagement is a very different problem. Would some one from Battlefront please supply a little feedback, please, pretty please.

Clay, you mentioned something a while back about testing a universal binary build that would run on the new Intel Macs. My semester is now sufficiently wrapped up to try it. I'll send you log file after log file, I promise.

Oh I don't know, oil derricks have a distinctly pointy look about them. Our mistake in Nam was not making Mr. Minh a better offer in 48 or so. The French have been so grateful don't you know.

I think the thing that my half of this discussion is trying to say is that the U.S. defeated the Iraqi conventional forces with a casualty rate that was extremely low. Furthermore almost none of those casualties were from heavy units or artillery. Iraqi tanks that moved to contact just died. And the Iraqis had a lot more recent combat experience than the Syrians What are the specific factors that will make the Syrians do better? Peter is right about U.S. players getting reminded of the laws of physics early on, but then what happens once the U.s.payer gets his tactics straight? I don't recall the Iraqi version of the jeep rush working very well.

Of course more info from Battlefront would simplify this discussion immensely. Please, something, anything, lies, statistics, misinformation. Hmm those are synonyms.

Peter I am just working from things that TAC-OPS 4 have taught me. And If I have drones and artillery and thermal vision and you don't. You had better have a whole lot of tank crews willing to become barbecue of the most unpleasant kind. Are their scenarios where the Syrians could hurt the U.S. a little, sure. But the U.S. army has had this little three year training exercise in Iraq to sort out the truly stupid people tactically. And I am sure the Israelis would be more than delighted to provide endless, detailed military intelligence even if they did nothing else. They have been keeping extremely detailed tabs on the Syrian OOB for 30-40 years at least. And they have the Pentagons Email, hell the Israelis probably read the Pentagon's email before the Pentagon does. And if you were Assad would you bet all of your forces on the Israelis not settling accounts once and for all. I mean I am going to buy the game, and I am going to play the game. Hell, I just bought a new computer for Drop Team and this. But the scenario info Battlefront has released so far just makes me scratch my head harder and harder. It would not have been my first choice, or second.

Check out this link for the Dragon Eye UAV. This is the kind of stuff i just cannot see the Syrians dealing with in a stand up fight. Figuring out which guy is wearing the suicide vest is a harder thing to do. But every T72 and ATGM that this thing sees is going to be in line for immediate attention. http://www.defense-update.com/products/d/dragoneyes.htm

I may be beating this drum to loudly, and if so I apologize. But are there any credible sources about the state of the Syrians night vision equipment? If one side has 2000 meters more visibility than the other. Then even the best defensive cover and planning is only going to help so much. You still have tanks and fighting positions blowing up with no idea of what killed them. Even in day time if you can lay smoke that you can see through but the enemy cannot it makes a ridiculous difference to the force balance. On a related note, has Battlefront said if the new precision guided 155 and mortar rounds are going to be in or not? I am deeply curious to play with and with out them. A 120 mm mortar with a >3m CEP for the first shot would really make life hard on defensive infantry emplacements. If there is an effective anti armor round that would be even harder to counter. Theoretically the victory conditions and or point values can take all of this into account. But even if trading a Syrian battalion for two American armored vehicles is considered a victory I can't imagine it would be whole lot of fun to play. Which I think is the short version of the point that a lot of people are trying to make. I like the idea of actually laying out the probable invasion path Peter. These arguments are even more fun when their are more details to chew over. And if the designers will not provide them then we will have to do it ourselves. A deeper understanding of the choke points and terrain obstacles would definitely improve the level of this conversation. Of course Battlefront could just surrender unconditionally and at least promise a Taiwan expansion pack.

We still have not answered one of my main points. And while everything peter said is valid, units with good night vision slaughter units without it. and this is before all the new small drones the U.S. is deploying are taken into account. I seem to recall that even during GW1 that tanks in the desert stand out like beacons on IR. And their are so many more toys to reach out and touch them with when that happens now. Occupation is a different story. But in a stand up fight I am just not convinced that the Syrian military is gong to accomplish a whole lot. I mean the Israelis have hammered them without mercy any number of times.

Attacking against even slightly dug in infantry with javelin quality atgms is simply impossible at any time of day or night unless you have overwhelming artillery support available. Otherwise those missiles take out at least one tank for every two shots. And every American soldier in Iraq has faced the elephant. The only tank panic would be the Syrians panicking about running out of tanks. The Syrians have at most 3000 tanks that would move under their own power before the air force drops pgm #1. How many Syrian tanks would even manage to move to contact? I guarantee their would be enough javelins to go around. Their would be lots of complications to taking out Syria. Its armored divisions are not very high on the list. I REALLY think the designers should have gone with the Taiwan scenario. There I can believe a standup fight. Syria is Iraq 2, easy to take but miserable to hold without either a lot more troops than we have committed to Iraq so far or the willingness to use Saddam's methods. Of the you won't do that again because your all dead variety.