Sgt.Squarehead

Wilfully too TBH. Well not yet anyway.....I shall make it so.

Was aware of the general facts/dates, but I didn't realise it made it to the front before the war ended.....Every day's a school day, as they say.

I've struggled to find a suicide bomber concept that both works and won't prompt rage quits by those who don't like 'First Turn Surprises'. I thought my idea of assigning the explody property of a VBIED to the driver (in part at least), allowing him to be used dismounted as a suicide bomber (with reduced blast effects), had some merit.....I reckon they should dump the Spy Team in the car too while they are at it, what's he for anyway? But this is one for Steve & Co. not mere editor dabbling mortals like us. PS - Triggers and VBIEDs are suddenly going to make this game a lot more lively for Blue.....You have been warned!

If you have my Mosul scenario open it in the editor and look at the timings of the orders for the AI Group that the VBIEDs are assigned to and the timings of their reinforcement slots.....Essentially it is just a timing thing, allowing you to add more (or new, in the case of VBIEDs) units to the same AI Group while ensuring the existing units don't freeze for want of fresh orders. Can't take any credit for this one, I found it on this forum somewhere.

The counter-position: http://tass.ru/politika/4942734

Downloading mods isn't compulsory you know.....Well it isn't for the rest of us at any rate! **** ISIS!

Some interesting details visible in these images.

That's exactly how I work.....I mess around with a lot of ideas, I know very few of them will be of practical use in a scenario, but it's interesting to experiment and you can sometimes discover new ways to implement things, like the random spawning trick to get IEDs inside buildings (that one I have used).

No it is not.....It is a Constitutional Republic. The difference is night & day. Perhaps you should read the founding father's thoughts on democracy.....You might find them rather eye opening.

Hasn't been an issue to date, but in my experience randomised setup reduces the capabilities of a given force by about 50% (HMG team in the windowless ground floor of a barn etc.), so for certain critical defences it's a silly idea.....These are my A:1 group, that is how I do things, others may do it differently. PS - If I could manually place units in alternative setups for each AI plan I would do so, but I can't.

Cheers fella.....Looks to me like they've fitted a .30cal to the commander's all round vision cupola somehow, so presumably it rotates, looks kinda cramped up there though, worse than the .50cal on the older cupola. PS - Aren't the tracks on the lead tank kind of unusual for WW2.....I thought it was pretty much all T-66 on wartime HVSS Shermans?

On what legal grounds are US forces in Syria exactly? I forget. Funnily enough that's how I'm envisaging the bigger scenario, but I'd say it should probably be the second.....Fairly sure Iran will be the focus for the first.

That's exactly where I'm coming from, I'd assumed we'd be seeing force compositions similar to CM:BS (in format, not content), with Specialist Teams and Individual Vehicles.....Following this logic I assumed that since these units would need to be made anyway (MANPADS or Breach Teams being a good example here) that it would be a simple and relatively sensible move on BF's part to slap a Fighter or Combatant skin on some of them. This would both broaden their capabilities for designers in the default storyline and enable those of us who want to use the CM:SF II framework to depict other conflicts.

To be fair, according to CM:BS, people in the east should find it a lot more off-putting.....But your point is very valid all the same.

My force composition is a little more complex than that, it includes HMMWVs, dismountable .50cal & 40mm AGLs, Javelin, Snipers, LMGs, FO/FACs, basically you name it, but if you are using the SOF Core alone, once twelve dudes are dead total, the campaign is FUBAR! Basically what this means is a lot of careful balancing and testing, which still results in a campaign with a high re-load factor.....Once can never account for everything that a player might do and as I said, one unexpected IED or tank round..... Consequently I've made the SOF team part of a much bigger peacekeeping force (in Syria just after the official BF campaign storyline), they get to play a cameo role doing the stuff that SOF do, but the heavy lifting will mostly be done by Canadians & Azerbaijanis.

Amen to that fella.....I found that to get them to respond at all in CM:A they have to be part of an active AI Group.....If I left them in my default A:1 'Passive-Diehards' group (ie: the guys who I just place on the map and do not give subsequent orders to) they just would not use their tubes, even if fired on! Switching them to an active AI Group seems to wake them up a bit and they will then use their tubes, if reluctantly. In the earlier CM:SF and also in the later WWII titles & CM:BS they seem to be a lot more aggressive and will use their tubes even when in my passive A:1 group, but moving them around in an active group definitely seems to make them much more likely to use their tubes regardless of the game engine.....I presume this is because the TacAI has them actively acquiring targets for themselves? IMHO this is probably the way forward: It might be worth trying the spotter team in a separate AI Group, using the single tile painting technique to move them precisely, combined with a Face order at the target you want shelled.....Not sure what posture they should be in, Ambush, Normal or Active should work but they might open up with their small arms.

In Soviet Russia..... Za Rodinu!

No disagreement, but as you can probably tell I'm kind of impressed with Iraq's CTS.....They've come a long way from the typical western concept of an Arab fighting force and IMHO they did as good a job as they could in keeping destruction to a minimum (I believe a member here has actually worked with these guys and he seemed pretty impressed with them too. ), yet the city still wound up looking like Stalingrad. You always have to assume the enemy will do their worst in these scenarios, if only to make your forces look bad in media accounts of the fighting.....It's an awful bloody mess and my fears for Raqqah revolve mostly around the fact that I don't believe the SDF to be remotely as capable or well trained & motivated as CTS. To put it another way, CTS are Iraqis fighting for Iraq.....SDF are whoever the 'Coalition' can hire to cause the Assad regime grief and that makes a huge difference.

Which wouldn't be a huge loss TBH.

Harsh.....But fair.

While you can sometimes see very old Shermans (with M3 style bogies) in pictures from Sicily, Italy & even Southern France in 1943-44, I'd very much doubt any of them would still rely on the periscope.....I can't guarantee it, there are exceptions to every rule where the Sherman is concerned, but the numbers would be so staggeringly small I don't think it should effect the game. Early M4A1, Operation Dragoon, France, 25 August 1944

Does anyone else see the minor flaw in this thinking? Hint: It's not a ******* democracy if you impose it by force!

Technology. What might have worked for the Red Army just won't on todays battlefield.....The Russians learned this the hard way in Chechnya & Georgia.

My first post was rather clumsy, in retrospect I'd edit it, but I can't.....My whole point is that this was done by the most precise artillery out there (with help from air dropped bombs, IEDs and MRLs of varying sophistication), I've never suggested that it was overkill or deliberate destruction, indeed from what I can tell CTS did what was needful and no more, taking on very high casualties themselves in order to reduce casualties amongst Mosul's civilian population.