Homo ferricus

That would be something great to fix, by the way. About LOF/LOS being treated differently--I was mindful of that when I posted. I myself have forgotten many of the differences and reasons for them, but now that I think about it, it doesn't seem right to partially abstract spotting while going full 1:1 with ballistics calculations. But then again, it doesn't seem right that a T90 can shoot straight up from an intersection into the 9th floor of an apartment on the corner of said intersection, or calculating LOS from the center of a unit rather than from its visual detection apparatus, etc. As with any game, or anything in life, really--you can't and don't always get everything you want, and thankfully, these are acceptable limitations of the game. But for some reason it's still bugging me that LOS and LOF are on such different plains, apparently. Makes me think, "my unit can't see squat because the spotting system is abstracting that they're hugging the ground and trying to use cover, but they got shot because their graphical representations are just kinda hanging out there... My units are blind without the supposed advantage of being any more shielded from gunfire. I think that might be the issue here--that the squad was somehow awkwardly spread out in a way that when the system tries to draw LOS from the center of the unit, it can't see what the tip of the spear sees because it's being drawn from the center. Perhaps the squad was only half in the trench, and LOS was drawn from an awkward slope, etc.

Considering the fidelity of ballistic calculations in CMSF, and the fact that a round visually passing through the physical representation of the soldier is what counts as a hit, there would seem to be a conflict here. Meaning that, if this were true, spotting is based on abstractions presuming that the unit is taking advantage of the available cover in ways that the soldier's model does not portray, yet, when resolving hits and misses and ballistic calculations, the soldiers is treated as being exactly where his graphical representation is.

I come across them regularly when doing quick battles with Marines. For some reason, it seems like the only Marine formations that the quick battle generator wants to give you are CAAT and LAR platoons. Either that, or I end up with a force consisting of half dismounted TOW teams, and half engineers or whatever odd unit you can think of. It's quite odd and quite frustrating. It feels like a really bad episode of "Worst Case Scenario".

About age--most all the folks I've talked to served In combat during the 60's/70's. I guess they were skeptical when the idea of flak jackets came out, and they remain just as skeptical today. Of those, I could see AO as they most important factor. It seems like the usual case with FOBs/outposts in the mountains of Afghanistan is combatants who are far from marksman taking potshots at the base from 800 or so meters with AKs and such. It hardly seems necessary to wear the stuff. In all seriousness, every time I question wearing body armor, I watch this:

Another very recent cool moment, In a quick battle I played yesterday, I had a TOW armed Humvee fire at a BTR that was maybe 500 meters away. As I tracked the TOW missile heading for the BTR, I see it suddenly change course a little bit upward, and skim a solid 3 meters over the BTR and detonate quite a ways behind it. Looking back I see the top cover coming down over my now-buttoned TOW gunner, and I realize; I heard a burst of small arms fire nearby after the missile fired... A second or two after my gunner fired his TOW, he was fired upon by infantry that got a little too close and he decided to button up, leaving the missile's controls unattended, which caused it to veer off and miss the target. AWESOME!!!

Right. Which is why I had those couple disclaimers to reiterate that I indeed do believe body armor is worth wearing for the average grunt. I'm on the same page as you and agree thoroughly, but it's interesting to point out your first sentence, when you said that you "feel" safer wearing it. It definitely does make you feel safer, the danger may be that it makes you feel too safe. I can't quite remember, but we had a member on the forum here post that he disliked how all the extra armor put on Humvees lately has the negative effects of poorer visibility and more importantly, it lulls a soldier into complacency. Causes a feeling of utter enclosure and protection that leads to the occupants having a lesser level of readiness or awareness. Either he really believes that or I really don't get military humor.

John, Yeah, I took a look at your posts there and followed the links to do some more investigation, even That's partly what made me draw the body armor example, along with actually hearing old vets and ballistics grogs occasionally giving cases where getting shot or blown up is more harmful/lethal when wearing a ballistic vest, not even considering the limitations of the armor, like it's hindering of mobility/endurance, and the fact that people who wear body armor tend to feel safer because of it, and may have a false sense of vastly improved survivability when in hostile situations, which is also very dangerous to the wearer. edit: In the vast majority of situations, I'd always wear a ballistic vest rather than not. I don't think that helicopter medevac and advance in battlefield medicine are the only things that account for the fact that so few of our casualties are KIA, relatively speaking. also edit: yeah I meant "unintended" consequences, not "unexpected". Like I said, sleeplessness and all...

Don't mean to take it upon myself to moderate, but you may want to use less colorful terms when referring to enemy combatants, Pandur. As I understand it, that might be against the rules and I don't want you to get in trouble for silliness :D On the topic, I largely agree with Pandur; the Bradley seems to be the most recent vehicle to receive up-armoring in response to IEDs and other insurgent tactics. Just the US probably overpaying for reactive measures that may or may not ultimately hurt the troops' capabilities in the long run. What I mean is, with every layer of armor you put on, the vehicle gets heavier, and unacceptably heavy vehicles seem to be one of the major problems for the military in Afghanistan lately. I've read articles about how QRFs mounted in MRAPs are so slow and sluggish that by the time they reach the fight, the Taliban have already done their damage and disappeared. Bridges become impassable because of weight restrictions, vehicles bog down frequently due to lack of paved roads in many areas, vehicles are made bigger targets, etc. Among more problems is that with every new tech you add, that's something new to repair, replace, and take care of, adding to the overall cost of the upgrading. On top of everything, the rule of unexpected consequences always applies. For example, the brutal irony of a ballistic vest the weighs a soldier down and limits his movements, yet will stop a bullet from any angle or direction, BUT, the impact of a round causes so much pressure, bruising, and general internal abuse, that the wearer will 80% chance die of shock, hemorrhaging, or cardiac arrest, and thus die anyway. DISCLAIMER: none of that is true as far as I know, just trying to come up with an extreme example that obviously illustrates the rule of unexpected consequences in a way that does more damage to the troops than it benefits them. Silly example but it's 4:30am over here and I haven't slept I realize this is all cynical and sorta makes me sound like I'm the type to be shouting anti-military-industrial complex conspiracy junk, but I care about the military deeply, and as a person who has taken interest in all the aspects of warfare, I often wonder if these types of splurging reactionary expenditures are game-changing moves that will stress and strain the insurgency and come that much closer to breaking it's back, or (more likely) ignorant, inefficient, patriotism-fueled, bottomless cash graves that congressman hastily throw our nation's money into, so that they won't be branded as anti-military communists in their next election campaign.

Not cool moment: Humvee versus small IED = 100% KIA of all four passengers. Explosion was NOT directly under the vehicle, but rather a couple of feet to it's left. Seriously folks, let's tweak the IED/RPG lethality vs. passengers please... But to stay on topic, cool moment: Literally a running gunfight as I chased a Syrian SF squad through the village in the "Following the Euphrates" scenario (I think that is what it's called). As I pushed them back from one house to the other, taking advantage of the LOS my Abrams and Strykers had to put area fire on and around their position, they withdrew deeper and deeper into the town, denying me the use of my vehicle weapons, and causing horrendous casualties on my infantry everytime I probed or assaulted one of their new positions. Frustrating, but ultimately cool.

SPOILERS * * * * *SPOILERS * * * * * The battle is absolutely brutal. On my first try a couple of days ago, I think I ended up with something like 48 KIA and 100+ WIA, enemy had 400+ KIA, 200+ WIA and 9 MIA I got surprised big-time when hordes of Taliban came out of the forest immediately next to the compound, lots of casualties, RPGs being fired point blank, etc. etc. Needless to say, by the time the Marines got on-map, the majority of my original defenders were dead or dying, and the survivors had virtually zero ammunition, some of my units literally just watched the Taliban roam around the compound because they had no more weapons with which to resist. Defending the compound had worn me out so bad that I commanded the Marines rather badly, causing unnecessary casualties, and running into much more roadblocks to progress than expected. Needless to say, my QRF landed in the clearing with enemy eyes and weapons still trained on it, more casualties ensued. The going was too tough and since I maneuvered my counter-attack forces so poorly, I found myself largely pinned down and unable to breakthrough safely. A thunder run into town with a truck from the Marine convoy to resupply my original forces still in the compound ended with a burning truck in the street. So it ended up that I brought up spotters to the highest floors of buildings I could and started plotting targets to my motley crew of Army A-10s, USMC Cobras, British Harriers, and Dutch F-16s as it got dark and turned to night. I actually hammered ANA hill so hard with CAS that I satisfied victory conditions for retaking it, considering it was one big smoking crater after a Harrier dropped what had to have been a 19,000Ibs JDAM on it. All-in-all, crazy tough scenario, quite stressful. I don't recommend tackling it in one sitting unless you really have your stuff together, in terms of this game.

Awesome! I appreciate your commitment to improving CMSF.

What if CMSF2 is going to star Russia vs. China vs. USA?!?!?!? And by allegiance Britain joins with USA to fight Russia in Central Europe, leading a European coalition including Denmark, Germany, Holland, Slovakia, Czechs, Austria, Poland, some random Balkan states, etc, ala Fulda Gap?!?!? That war keeping Russia preoccupied with Europe, and open to attack from China, which uses the opportunity to attack Russia's underbelly via Mongolia?!?!? But that will leave China committed in the North, and so it will make a bargain of some sort with it's communist neighbors, Vietnam and North Korea, to help protect her flank from the inevitable attacks and incursions by South Korea, Japan, and an attack from a US Carrier Group with a MEU on board?!??! And who else? Perhaps India or maybe Thailand will throw down, making valuable deals or taking advantage of the situation?!?!? The Canadians will advance on Russia via the Bering Strait, or will they? It would seem a strategically irrelevant move. In the meantime, the Mexicans finally find the Zimmerman letter and attacks the US, aided by Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Insurgency situation within the US, due to dramatic levels of illegal immigrants and Mexican nationalists living within American borders. Encouraged by the chaos, Ahmadinejad begins Revolutionary Guard incursions into Iraq while the Americans are distracted, sparking intense firefights all across the border between Iranian SF and RG and IA supported by American forces. Pakistan steps up anti-taliban offensives, coup occures, begins anti-American offensives. Battle against Taliban in Afghanistan intensifies as Americans are hastily withdrawn to protect the home front and US forces find themselves outnumbered and outmaneuvered and supplemented only by unmotivated, ill-trained ANA. Spain invades Portugal for being so in the way all the time. France surrenders when a stray artillery shell accidentally falls through the roof of the Louvre. Unsure of whom they were surrendering to, Germany happily occupies French territory. Outraged by this seemingly hostile and confusing act, Belgium, Norway, Britain, and Austria attack Germany out of old nazi paranoia. A three way battle rages in Europe between a quasi-NATO force, Germany, and Russia. Several revolutions are sparked in South America by the world-wide violence, and Finland gets nuked. That's going to be a lot of armies to model.

To echo what other people have said before, depending on how/what you play in the game, it can be far from a turkey shoot. I just left a small urban battle (In which I had about 2 Stryker infantry platoons, MGS PLT, a tank company plus company/battalion HQ attached assets and organic mortars). Ended up with 15 infantry KIA and 25 infantry WIA, with an immobilized Stryker, and two disabled Abrams (one immobile, one had it's main cannon completely destroyed). I was up against a mechanized Company, maybe 2 or so platoons of Syrian SF along with a few uncons. The reason that I specify that all my casualties were infantry is because while, for the most part, my armor and support vehicles took on the Syrian mechanized company with relative ease, I moved a platoon of infantry into town, where the only resistance was both Syrian SF platoons (actually it very well may have been a full company). The urban fighting got so damned bloody and frustrated that even when i called upon the many assets I had available to me, I was not able to take the town entirely after over an hour. I had to commit all of my infantry to that fight, along with many Strykers and a couple of tanks eventually. It was bleeding my forces so thoroughly that I thought I was going to have to start sending In FOs and JTACS and XOs and re-armed crews into the city to act as emergency provisional infantry! I estimate that the rate of casualties during my urban battle was probably less than 2 Syrian casualties to every American one. So, even with Abrams, even with Javelins to every squad, even with plenty of artillery support, that battle was hard fought by both sides and I ended up with a tactical victory. The best way to get inspired, I've found, is to stick to a scenario and keep with it, despite that some can be boring and unattractive at the start, and still keep with it if a catastrophe happens. That way, the scenario grows on you and you start to feel more attached as you realize the story that is playing out and how you can affect it for the better.

I also lost on my first attempt at mission one. FMB, I want to congratulate you on the eloquent wording of the debriefing that follows when failing that mission; you managed to emphasize and give great weight to words like, "failure", and, "unsuccessful", so well, in fact, that by the time I was done reading about how horrible a human being I am, my head was bowed so deeply that my chin was touching my chest. *DEEP INHALE/EXHALE* In any case... ***SPOILERS*** To make a long story short, the two high walled sections of the compound are virtually unapproachable. You don't have an angle for suppressive fire (especially the one story buildings), smoke won't help, so your best bet is to do area target however you can and then assault guys in, who will inevitably get sprayed with automatic fire while they are running the gauntlet of windows to the door, where they stand to absorb more rounds from enemies they haven't spotted yet indoors. That's the one and only thing that produced casualties for me, besides an MG team that for one reason or another failed to overwatch properly when someone got shot from a building that the MG team was arc'd on. I ended with 8 KIA and 6 WIA. Four guys were killed instantly and another four WIA when I assaulted the single story building closest to the trees (that was the first building I assaulted). I was very surprised at how poorly my crack/elite troops with NV and the element of surprise were doing against militia, even with some of my riskier moves.

It seems your section leader had too much of that "Highlander Spirit" in him. http://www.blackfive.net/main/2004/05/friends.html

What's interesting is this--the Russian version of Combat Mission is translated to something along the lines of "Front Line" instead of "Combat Mission", according to the picture of the CMSF:M cover art in Cyrillic on page 9 of this same thread. This game that you mention here in the link does not look like it runs on the same engine (any of the CM engines, anyway) but it carries the same "Front Line" title that the RU version of CM has. It's called, "Front Line: Battle for Kharkov"... probably irrelevant but... ???

Thanks Elmar! Very useful and interesting to look over. Although you could readily count the amount of firefights German troops have been in, it is apparent that they are indeed making contact with the enemy (not just IEDs and indirect fire) in and around Kunduz.

Oh, I know YOU might not be surprised That was more of a general address to anyone who might be reading the post. Did you find, by the way, what killed those 30 Germans, perhaps? Edit: "Ok, let me rephrase: CMSF is a game modelling a fantasy invasion of Syria. Afghanistan is a real life occupation. The German constituition only holds sway in one of those environments." Exactly. That's why I ended my first post here the way I did. In the end it's not hard to believe that the Germans would partake in such a war, suspension of disbelief shouldn't be a problem.

It's true that the setting is completely different, as are the circumstances of the actions, but that doesn't change the German constitution, although dirty bombs going off in Berlin or Munich or what have you would likely sway the Govt's and the public's will towards decisive military action. Not to be crude, because every casualty is a very bad thing, but 30 killed in the span of 8 years (how long has ISAF been in-country?) is not unexpected for a peacekeeping-type operation. It would be important to note if that is 30 KIA or 30 soldiers who died in country. I used to check websites like icasualties.org regularly and you might be surprised how many deaths occur due to things like vehicles accidents (especially in Afghanistan's terrain), neglectful discharge, heat stroke etc. etc.

Actually, I had always thought it would be more appropriate if the module would have had Canadians/Dutch/and Danes rather than Germans. Albeit, Denmark is a small country with a relatively small military, but I do recall seeing lots of information that included Danish commandos, armor, and other forces engaging in combat operations in Afghanistan (and Iraq?) over the years. While Germany's constitution (this is all gonna be brought back from hazy memory) restricts troops from interfering militarily with other countries unless the operation is multilateral and/or many other criteria are satisfied that make it okay to do so. On top of that, there are restrictions on roles the German military can take when participating in such operations (i.e. putting German troops into combat zones would be considered a very shocking move, or more likely, would not be considered at all). I still remember not too long ago when the U.S. first started lobbying Europe to send more troops to Afghanistan, there was some uproar in Germany over simply giving German bombers the okay to fly night bombing missions in the Southeast. I understand that perhaps Germany has more to offer in terms of new equipment and TOE variation than Denmark, and if that's so than it would be a real stretch to complain about this damaging suspension of disbelief or something like that. Edit: and now that I think about it, German forces probably appeal to more people than the Danes would.

The reason you may consider the releases of BO, BB, and AK a wargaming "Golden Age" is probably because (in my assessment) BFC had grossly misjudged their workload : payoff ratio when making these games, letting you fight virtually any ground battle in the European theatre of operations during World War Two (with the major exception being early war Poland and France) within an absolutely fabulous game engine and charging you less than companies like EA do for one cookie-cutter fps. I think they really burned out financially and workload-wise by being over-ambitious; i mean seriously--you could fight as the Free French and Poles against German mountain troops in France, Russian partisans against Romanian pioneer platoons in the East. Italian armor against American Airborne in Sicily. The list goes on-and-on. It was surely not financially feasible to go on giving people so much damned bang for their buck. It is only reasonable to expect BFC to tighten the scope of their games, and I am admitting this as someone who would definitely like more scope. It's really unfair, I think, to use that kind of rhetoric and slander these folks who have, and still do work very hard to create a product we enjoy. DISCLAIMER: the various scenarios pitched in the first paragraph of my post were taken from mid-air. It is very possible that many of them if not all of them never happened.

I did think it was funny when Marines came out with the full DVD case wrapped in plastic. I recall "Strategic Command" came in the mail the same way Brits did, except I think the CD case may have had a simple cover (no manual, nothing on backside, just a piece of cover). Also, when I originally ordered CMBO, There was no packaging! It was the CD in one of those paper CD holders stuffed in between the pages of the manual. At least the Brits module has a manual that is printable from the website, does it not?

Woaw, according to that list, this game's gonna have Shilkas and Stingers... Take it away, speculators!

Ouch. I really want to blame this on the fact that I'm a little rusty on CMSF, haven't really played in a couple of weeks, but... Just played "UK H2H light infantry vs. Syrian Mech infantry" or sumfink like that, ended up getting 17 Brits killed, 12 wounded, and lost a WMIK and a TUM. Ended with a British Tactical Victory. I love the challenge but it's quite difficult to stay below the expected casualty threshold...

Call me crazy but it seems that it's selling exceptionally. It appears that the servers are so packed that I was hardly able to place my order