Drusus
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Posts posted by Drusus
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No information about that, but propably not because the base fuze mechanism doesn't require the nose of the grenade to hit anything and that is the only logical reason I can think why nose fuze wouldn't work in rubble. I don't know how big of a force the base fuze needs to work, though.
Interesting thing was that if you shoot at a building wall with a low angle it is possible that the shell will "rabbit". This means that the shell will continue perpendicular to wall. And in infantry tactics it is mentioned that when advancing, you should keep atleast 12 inches between you and the wall to avoid rabbit rounds.
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BTW if you want real grog goodness check this one out: FM 3-06.11
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Naturally in many battles they have T72s or artillery or something. Actually mortars would usually be there. So there are going to be battles where the Syrian commander must think about collateral damage. But because they are usually lacking heavy artillery and air support it is going to be rare that they will do (accidentally) _excessive_ amounts of collateral damage. The US side on the other hand can do almoust always excessive amount of damage with a couple of JDAMs...
Ofcourse things are much different if you are playing a scenario which is balanced in all aspects, meaning that the Syrians have as much artillery as the US side.
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I hope that the base points in QBs are going to be based on combat power as was in CMx1. The forces would be equal in combat power, not in numbers. This ofcourse would mean that the US side has only a few units. Another thing is that you might have well trained Syrian troops in QBs which would balance things a lot. And the amount of artillery and airpower would also be limited for the US player (US player must pay for it). Then it might be possible to do balanced blue VS red QBs.
Put on rarity and the Syrians have a lot of conscript troops with RGPs... I don't think that CMSF should aim for realistic QBs in the amount of equipment the sides are fielding. That would mean boring blue vs red QBs. Ofcourse there might be an option to do realistic QBs, meaning a much more powerful US side.
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URC,
What I meant was that there are propably going to be battles where your mission is to secure a village in which there are 3 snipers. You have a Styker company with CAS and Artillery support. In this situation using artillery at all is excessive. But the Syrians are propably always going to fight battles where their enemy is big. At least a platoon or something like that. I must admit that there certainly could be battles where the Syrians must take collateral damage in account. Different thing is that it is possible that in many battles they don't have anything to cause excessive amounts of collateral damage. Many times no Artillery and always no Air support.
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I think there should be special buildings which are to be not touched. If you do you will take a severe VP hit. This means also that the Syrians should not position forces in them. And then there should be the VPs from collateral damage.Originally posted by undead reindeer cavalry:i think it should apply only to special buildings and it should apply to both sides.
Why not both sides, but the enemy the Syrians are going to have in the battles is propably always so big that it warrants a lot of damage. The situation is much different if there are only three snipers in the village.
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From FM 3-06.11 (MOUT):
c. Minimization of Collateral Damage and Noncombatant Casualties. A condition that commanders and leaders will be required to confront during urban operations will be minimizing collateral damage and noncombatant casualties. This will have to be balanced with mission accomplishment and the requirement to provide force protection. Commanders must be aware of the ROE and be prepared to request modifications when tactical situation requires them.
So, it is clear that collateral damage VP reductions should be in. But the real problem is ofcourse how to do it in game terms.
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It is worth noting that the up to 25% of contact fuzed munitions being dud is not only about munitions dropped from planes. It is of _all_ contact fuzed munitions. This is something that has a real effect on the use of HE. Also it is said that high buildings can cause proximity fuzed munitions to explode in the wrong place.
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It is also said that the AC-130 is best used in low threat urban areas. How much was it used during OIF? This should give us pretty good idea of how much it will be used in the battles CMSF will deal with.
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The assumption that the commanders are rational might mean that they will just blow up the whole village. No friendly casualties -> a perfect victory. I think that if there is a lot of enemy fighters in the area, then blowing up some houses where there is no enemy fighters isn't excessive collateral damage. Ofcourse the Syrians might think differently... But if you send in some 155mm artillery just in case there might be a lot of enemies, then that is excessive use of force and the player should be penalized. If there is no limitation, then a rational (in game terms) commander will use that artillery just in case.Originally posted by akd:But would the decision to use three TOWs against the structure really be deemed a mistake: given that 1.) the commander must have had some cause think the structure posed a threat and 2.) the commander knows there are no civilians in the structure.
I think you are heading down the path of creating a game world with artificial restrictions where commanders are punished for decisions that in the real world would not even be questioned.
This is, of course, assuming you are creating a system that presumes the player is a rational commander and not a lunatic blowing up a town for ****s and giggles. Do we really need a game that accounts for such behavior?
I must admit that firing 3 TOWs to a building will almoust never be excessive because if you fire TOWs you propably think that there is some threat from that building. But with artillery it is clearly different. You can destroy the whole village just in case, with TOWs you propably can't.
Does somebody know the limits there was in OIF regarding use of heavy artillery in build up areas?
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I don't like the camera crew idea. It is not how it happens in real life. It is annoying to lose a battle because AI happened to move that camera crew so that it can see the casualties. Like throwing dices to see if you lose the battle or not. By the way this is why I don't like Tigers in small battles. You have too much to lose in one moment of bad luck. Also the camera crew is fearsome in the insurgency stage, not in the high intensity fighting stage. And last point: What should the US player do with it's camera crew? Send it out to get killed, minus points for the Syrians? Send it to the corner of the map, no pictures from there? Maybe they get angry and write negatively... In short, I don't like the idea.
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About the insurgents ability to fight. I am sure they are learning to fight in a way that is most effective to them. Darwin and all... In Afghanistan the fighting is much different. That country has a history of fighting guerilla style. And if I understand correctly they don't usually take too much casualties, at least not in the firefights. Certainly not fighting in the same style as the Iraqi insurgents. I don't know how effective their style of fighting is against US forces, but at least it is better for the Afgans fighting.
And about the victory conditions. If you have operational and strategical objectives it is fine. But think about the ranger scenario. How should that scenario be made with the operational and strategical objectives so that 1) the tactical objectives are what they really were in WWII, 2) the operational and strategical objectives are realistic 3) the battle is fought to the last ranger and 4) the mission briefing and objectives do not give any hint about what will happen. In reality their operational and strategical objectives were _not_ to cause as many casualties as possible and to delay the enemy as long as possible. Their objective was to take the village. Now you possibly could do all this with hidden operational and strategical objectives.
But I think it might be more realistic and simple to have the end result calculated based on the idea of how well did the player do given the situation. Maybe the difference isn't that big to the tactical and strategical objectives from the end result point of view. And ofcourse it is a whole different thing to think which one is easier to implement. At least in human made scenarios both should be doable.
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If it is the AC-130U then it is equipped with all kinds of sensors and among other weapons, a 105mm cannon. I can understand why you don't want to go out in the open when there is somebody watching you from the sky with IR sensors and with the ability to shoot 105mm shells if you are seen. There was a time when night was when the insurgents wanted to fight. Now it is day which is better for the insurgents.
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LOL
That is a TLA for Laughing Out Loud.
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Well, I still think that there are two different things when thinking about the result of the battle. How well you did given the situation and did you do your mission. CMx1 has these sort of mixed (objectives, casualties and it seems ratio of forces). But if you do poorly it is still very much possible to win the battle. Ofcourse it is also possible to do so poorly you lose the battle. Defending against 1:1 odds in CMx1 even if you lose nearly as many points as your enemy, you still win (and you should win as in win the battle). But the reality is that you didn't play well. Or in other words your superiors wouldn't like the result even if you did your mission.
The best example I can come up is this. You are the _attacker_ in CMx1 1:1 odds battle. It should be expected that you won't take the flags or that you won't make that much casualties either. You have only little chance of getting an acceptable end result (as in CMx1) of that battle. But still you can play badly. Or play well. The difference is that you may only get a tactical defeat and not total. Another example is that you have an attack with the normal odds but the terrain is strongly in favor of the defender.
In CMSF we are going to see a lot of battles like this. The US player has odds something like 10:1, so even if the Syrian player can't accomplish the mission given to him it is still possible he did well in that situation. In CMx1 he would still be loser. CMx1 was ofcourse more about balanced battles, so it didn't matter so much. But I hope in CMSF it is possible to have a result that says you performed well, given the situation. I think this should be doable in human made battles. It is kind of doable by playing around with the flags, but if the falgs are not where your objective should be given the mission briefing, you know there is going to be something funny hapening. This will change even more when you add in the collateral damage based points.
So, my point is this: I think it should be possible to be the Syrian player in a (human made) battle where you are attacking with an x amount of infantry. It might be that the "real world" odds are actually against you, but still it should be possible to win (as in you did well). You were able to kill a whole squad of enemy infantry, while still not gaining any of your mission briefing objectives.
Play the CMAK scenario A Ranger Last Stand. It would be much more fun if the mission briefing would be the same the rangers got and the objectives where they should be. And the battle could last till the bitter end. But this would mean (in CMx1) that the battle was lost even if the rangers did well. And no matter how you look, the rangers did lose that battle. But I hope it will be possible to make that ranger scenario as it was with CMx2 victory conditions. And it is possible to win (as in you did well) with the rangers.
If this could be done in QBs that would be just awesome. Now you know quite exactly what you are playing against. If you make the point values random, it will unbalance the game. But don't worry, even if you are not able to take those flags, you could still manage to play better than your enemy given the situation and thus win. This would add a lot of reality into quick battles.
Ofcourse what I think is doable or should be done doesn't matter that much. So I hope something like this is what you have in mind when saying the system will be more sophisticated in CMSF.
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That is the field manual about air operations in urban areas. The manual is 125 pages long (including all the cover pages, index and so on) and there are 7 pages of acronyms.
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From FM 3-06.1:
AA assembly areas
AAA antiaircraft artillery
ABCCC airborne battlefield command and control center
ACA airspace coordination area
ACP air control point
AFDC Air Force Doctrine Center
AFDD Air Force Doctrine Document
AFI Air Force Instruction
AFTTP Air Force Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures
AFTTP(I) Air Force Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (Interservice)
AGL above ground level
AGM air-to-surface guided missile
AIE alternate insertion/extraction
ALSA Air Land Sea Application
ALLTV all light level television
AP armor piercing
APC armored personnel carrier
API armor piercing incendiary
APT armor piercing tracer
ASE aircraft survivability equipment
ATC air traffic control
ATO air tasking order
AWACS Airborne Warning and Control System
And my two favorites:
TLA three letter acronym
ETLA extended three letter acronym
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I really hope we are going to see victory conditions where you can succesfully accomplish your mission while still losing in game terms. There are two separate things, performance and accomplishing your mission. The critical difference between this and CMx1 way of thinking is that if for example you are fighting against a single squad of infantry with a company of infantry, it is not enough that you take out that squad while losing 2 squads yourself. In CMx1 this will be a victory for you, that is you got the flag and eliminated the enemy. In CMSF I hope we will see that while managing to do your mission, you took too many casualties _given the situation_, thus your performance was bad and the end result is failure. Jet you accomplished your mission. The same goes if you took zero casualties but you leveled the whole village containing one enemy sniper.
This might prove impossible to do in quick battles, but in scenarios it should be easy to do some testing to see what should be the end result given decent performance. If you manage to do a lot better, you will get a major victory, if you do a lot worse, the result is a failure. In all cases you might have managed to do your mission. Or from the Syrian point of view, in might be that you 'won' even if you didn't do your mission.
The difference to the mission of securing that village while taking less than x casualties is that you don't know the criteria in advance. This is realistic. I think it goes something like this in reality (of course simplified):
Mission: Secure that village.
If there was a company of special forces hiding in that village, and you took only a few casualties, you did a good job even if you had to destroy most of the village. If you took 4 casualties and destroyed 6 buildings while taking out ten insurgents you did a lousy job. In both cases the mission was a success. It is always the case that you must take minimum casualties and do minimum collateral damage. It is not part of the mission briefing. If there was a holy site in that village, it might be part of the mission briefing to not damage it in any case.
This brings an interesting aspect to CMSF. You must _decide_ what is the maximum amount of force you are allowed to use. It is _not_ told to you and I think this is the usual case. If you try to attack that Special Forces company without any heavy weapons it is sure you will lose. If you level the village just in case, you might end up losing. But if you accidentally destroy one building (or even more buildings) which doesn't have any enemy soldiers in it, this in itself isn't a reason to lose. It depends on the situation.
In the Tal Afar "rescue the pilots" battle I think it is clear that the mission was a success from the US point of view. The performance of the troops isn't as clear. We really don't know enough of the situation to tell how good or bad it was.
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Read my last post, its all there. We are talking about different battles. From the Iraqi point of view you may very well be correct. But I would tend to think that the Iraqis happened to shoot down the helicopter and then the battle started. That is, they try every day to shoot down helicopters and usually they don't succeed. This time they did and that started the battle to rescue the crew. Now I might very well be wrong, I am no expert about things happening in Iraq. But to cut the battle to start just before the helicopter is shot down is also arbitrary, but it makes sense. So does the 'rescue the crew' battle which doesn't include the helo. BTW I am quite sure the first shots fired were not the RPGs...
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What about Finnish? I am sure we could send at least a private with a pointy stick there.
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I don't know anything about 3d modelling or game design, but I still would like to ask this: Why not release the 'empty' 3d models and let the community compete whose textures will be included in the game. I am sure there are plenty of people who would be willing to do this for free, in some kind of open source spirit. Maybe even do some 3D models, too.
Also, could it be possible that the scenario files would also have the possibility to include textures, which would be used for that scenario only. You know, it could be nice to have those road signs show correct distances to the nearest towns and that kind of things. Hopefully this would be in a separate file, to make the life easier for modem users...
Well, I hope this post has more to it than just showing that I don't know anything
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Once again, I don't think it is fair to inculde that helicopter in the results. As I see it the battle was started because the helicopter was shot down. That is, the helicopter was shot down _before_ the battle. Imagine a CMSF scenario where you are tasked to rescue a helicopter crew. In the end you lose because you have lost that helicopter. WHAT?
Now, if your point was to take a bigger picture of the battle, then ofcourse the helicopter goes into casualties. But then we are no more talking about the Tal Afar "rescue the crew" battle but some other battle which this incident was a part of.
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But to claim that Lt. Hall isn't ready for promotion because we are going to lose this war if we keep fighting like this doesn't sound fair to me...
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There is only a minor difference in the tactical-operational-strategic view and mine. I would say that the battle was a victory but with a too big of a price. Then the next stage is to claim that the operation was a victory but with a too big of a price for the whole strategic picture. Axis in Caucasus comes to mind, don't know if this is a good comparsion, though. But anyways the lower level is separate from the next stage in the view of the winner of the battle.
BTW I happen to think that the damage to the war effort isn't so much done in the battles than in between them. And ofcourse in the political decisions and mistakes in the way the whole war is handled.
Cornered units
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
I am wondering if there should be a moral state for units which are in a situation they have no other choice than to stay where they are and fight on. For example soldiers trapped in the upper floors of a building or in a building from which there is no way out (all exits under enemy fire). Many times such units might surrender, but then again if US squad was trapped for some reason, I don't think the chances of surrender would be high. Same goes for many Syrian units.
At least it would be great to have the units have a better sense of danger than in CMx1. In real life running out of a heavy building to open terrain which is under fire of enemy units isn't a likely outcome. Nor is routing to an ongoing barrage of the enemy. This kind of sense is ofcourse really hard to do realistically, but to improve it from CMx1 should be doable.
These trapped units might pose a big problem for the attacker. It might be that they can't do anything else than wait for the enemy to clear the building. But even if one might be able to clear buildings with relatively low casualties it takes a lot of time and ammo (grenades) to do so. Leaving them behind isn't an option. These trapped units might fight even better than "OK" units while their morale level is actually worse than panic.