Sgt.Squarehead

I'm guessing they were a SOF team of some kind? My recent research indicates these are typically twelve strong.....I've got several CM:SF scenarios featuring them, but mostly at a very experimental phase, if you want to look at a Core Unit file containing such a unit send me a PM. In game Elite twelve man units are just great until they run into a landmine or an IED (or even a well hidden infantry squad), unfortunately CM isn't at all forgiving on that front and their Eliteness counts for SFA once the explosions start.....That's fairly realistic TBH, but it is also rather difficult to work around for scenario design purposes as you have to keep potential player casualties in mind while still creating a genuine challenge.

Jesus.....Are they allowed to eat & sleep too?

Was that the dude in the Afghan village? I'll have to have a crack at working up a sniper only scenario at some point.....I actually started doing one on the CM:BS demo-map, but that game just depresses me too much and I got fed up with it before it went very far.

In my case it got me through about 300 yards of open ground potentially covered by IS-2s & ISU-152s (at 1km+ ranges), so infantry was the last thing on my mind!

There are lots of balconies in Mosul (often neatly lined up straight down the street).

Not sure that's entirely fair, there do seem to be one or two issues with the briefings in this campaign, but the behaviour you are seeing may very well just be the TacAI making bad calls.....As the discussion above suggests there are several possible causes, but without decompiling the campaign and taking a detailed look in the editor (we'd need to know what plan the AI was on too) it's impossible to determine for sure the precise cause of the bunching. Based on your new image I'd guess 'block-painted' AI orders are the cause, but without knowing the composition of the AI group it's unfair to criticise the designer's use of that policy.....The single tile per vehicle technique can go a bit squiffy if you have infantry in the same AI group (there are workarounds, but they are map dependent and definitely easier on MOUT maps). FWIW

Damn that looks sharp.....Nice work Olek.

Hoping @TheForwardObserver might pop in and share his thoughts.

@JeepsGunsTanks Nice post fella, that last picture is very cool indeed.....Any idea when/where it was taken?

I post at ML Braille Scale DG under this ID too.....If you know OTW! you will already be familiar with Henk's site, so you are probably about as well equipped as you could be. I use BM for the atmosphere, it's a proper friendly Gentlemens' Club sort of a forum.

Yeah, those are the ones.....You can find my build thread here: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235031277-sgtsquareheads-shermanicus-genericus/ If modelling is your thing and you are not already a member, I'd recommend joining BM.....That way we can discuss stuff like this in detail without derailing threads here too badly. If you bought Dragon when they were new, you made a very good investment, some of the better kits fetch £40 plus.

Not in CM:SF or CM:A sadly.....It's a purely manual process for those two.

Pretty sure there are a lot of Russian units much closer to the theatre who could get there a lot quicker & much easier than the USMC, reckon we should have at least some of those first TBH.....Just saying!

Very.

I believe the RHA figures for both sandbags and concrete are available.....I'll see if I can find them. Coincidentally I found this among the posts in the Sherman GB, thought it might be of interest here: PS - @MikeyD Is it my imagination or is that an M4A1E8 underneath all the sandbags? They were kinda rare!

That's exactly what US forces going into Aachen did.....You clearly put a great deal of research into this, I shall have to give it a go.

Bernard Law Montgomery

I'm doing the same as @Erwin, fairly gentle zig-zags and trying to end each leg in a bit of cover (corn fields mostly, in the game I described). FWIW

I don't see a need to change anything, the actual frequency of use of the .50cal in game just doesn't warrant the extra modelling IMHO, plus it's bloody awkward.....at the moment I'm building these mid-production(ish) M4A1s: You can probably make out that the pintle on the cupola is rotated to the front on all three turrets.....Squeezing both a crewman and a .50cal into that space is going to be a royal pain in the rear (so two will be buttoned, but I always leave the platoon CO opened up)!

Love the new video and before I go any further I want to thank you for all the time and effort you spent to making it (especially for a first time scenario designer like me).....That is very much appreciated. Really impressed with your result.....That was actually a rather brilliant victory (Highlight to reveal hidden text): As you probably guessed ISIS were about to emerge from all the concealed tunnel entrances and have a crack at taking the mosque back! You beat them to the punch by several minutes.....Very, very well done indeed! In the first seconds your Abrams did you a humongous favour (Highlight to reveal hidden text): The buiding it fired on was the location of the Triggerman for the Huge IED in the Taxi! Great to see the citizens of Mosul getting in on the fight, but amazed to see the ISIS SPAAGnical alive so late in the game, that one usually attracted a JDAM in my tests! Felt a bit sorry for the team at about 12:30, they were within yards of the Ansar Road, but ISIS are everywhere! Enjoyed the coordinated assault on the Local ISIS HQ & the way your CTS dealt with the ISIS leadership was just classic.....Your dudes genuinely looked p*****d off! Taking the mosque as swiftly and efficiently as you did, was a very good move indeed. Any chance you could ping me a screen shot of the location, I suspect it's the same one that @sburke found, but I'd like to be certain.....Pathfinding on this map is complex enough without me screwing the player in advance. You can probably understand why building it took so long now that you've had a wander around it and for this one all I was doing was tweaking @LongLeftFlank's work to better match an area of Mosul (if you are interested in making a comparison, this was formerly the area to the east of the cemetery in Ramadi).....I owe a huge debt of gratitude to @Combatintman who wad the patience to check it for me more than once (& much more besides). For 'Al Hutumah', the sequel to this mission, I've had to make rather more drastic changes and it's taking me absolutely ages! Close.....It's actually around 0400hrs in a month's time, so you will be back to full strength and you even get a couple of new toys. This also gives me cover to explain all the destruction on the overlapping section of the new map that @SLIM didn't actually cause (But @borg so did! ).....ISIS had to emerge from those tunnels at some point and dealing with them would probably have made a mess.....Which incidentally is pretty much exactly what happened historically.

Did a bit of investigating while working up Mosul but didn't take any notes.....Depending on the intensity selected (& the ammo supply of the battery firing) barrages seem to last between three and a half to five minutes, firing usually starts after 30-45 seconds. Batteries committed to opening barrages do not seem to fire again in the course of the game (I'm not saying that they don't, but if they do, I have never noticed it). You can identify the nominal spotter for opening barrages in 'Scenario Author Mode', this is usually just one unit regardless of the number of fire missions that are called. That's about all I have.

Yup, that game will bring out your inner 'ranting loon' every time!

These are not SPGs, they are the M777: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer

That's odd because I used it in my most recent game too and the SPWs did a good job, I didn't notice any significant pauses, but it was a very big map (a modified version of the CM:RT demo scenario 'Monster Mash').