Glukx Ouglouk

I... honestly don't know what to say. Let me try and make something clear: when someone says "A's forces fought as part of B's forces, under B's command" it DOES NOT mean the same as "A was part of B". There are such things as nuances in language. Saying "the Polish forces in Normandy fought as part of the Commonwealth's forces" DOES NOT mean "Poland was part of the Commonwealth" (hint: they had a government in exile, which had their say in what was done with their forces), nor does it mean "Polish forces were indistinguishable from Commonwealth forces" (hint: they were Polish, spoke Polish, used Polish ranks, had Polish markings on their vehicles, and so on).

Magpie_Oz, I don't think anyone here is claiming that Poland is part of the Commonwealth... AFAICT, what as been said is that: - Polish forces used the same equipment and TO&E as the commonwealth units present in Normandy, and fought in 21st Army Group - so, in game terms, it makes sense to lump them together with commonwealth forces if Polish forces are to be included; - Polish units (division level, I think?) took their orders from Commonwealth higher-ups (corps level and higher, right?), so it makes sense to say that Polish forces were part of larger commonwealth units, or were under Commonwealth command - now, where on Earth would that imply that Poland was ever part of the Commonwealth? - The first module is referred to as "the Commonwealth module" because it's centered around Commonwealth forces and because nobody wants a name that is fifteen words long to describe everything that's in it - that doesn't have to imply that it won't contain anything that isn't part of the Commonwealth! Case in point: there will be new German units too... Frankly, as a French, it wouldn't come to my mind to deny that the 2ème DB, while certainly being a French unit, was part of the American forces in Normandy - because the units it was part of (XVth corp, IIIrd army) were led by Americans, not by a joint command.

What I can confirm is that they now use grenades with a bullet trap, so they at least don't have to use blank cartridges (though I think the training rounds still have to be fired with blanks). As for training - from what I understand, rifle grenades are supposed to be actually used in combat in Afghanistan (since 40 mm grenade launchers normally aren't used on the FAMAS, and the LGI is closer to a light "commando" mortar than to a grenade launcher) - so they certainly train with them. My understanding is that French soldiers tend to like the higher lethality of rifle grenades (an APAV F2 weighs more than 430 g, while a 40 mm HEDP weighs something like 230 g... including the propulsive charge!) and the ability to fire them very quickly in reactive fire (if they're already loaded, that is), but OTOH they do have a shorter range than a 40 mm fired from something like a M203. What I'm not to sure of is what will happen in the future : most modern rifles can only be fitted for lighter rifle grenades (like the MECARs ones, 300 g max I think - anyway, not the APAVs already in service in France), and the FAMAS is supposedly getting long in the tooth (mostly because of the ammo issues, since 5.56 ammo production has ceased in France, and the FAMAS was supposed to only use the French made, lacquered, steel cased F1 ammo with any decent reliability... there are some foreign-bought, brass cased, cartridges which are qualified for training use at least, but they aren't supposed to be used in combat AFAIK). There's been some talk about that issue when the Armée de l'Air (Air Force) bought some HK416, but that doesn't necessarily mean much for the Armée de Terre (Army), since the number of rifles (and costs) involved are nowhere near the same... And OTOH, the FELIN kit has always been demonstrated with the FAMAS so far (except for export purposes), so it's not clear whether there's any plan to replace the FAMAS in the near future... Anyway, when the FAMAS is finally replaced, there will be some tough choices to make there.

AFAIK, multi-GPU support (be it Crossfire or SLI) is completely unrelated to CPU multi-threading.

I don't know what BF will have to say about that, but in my experience, Mac games always run slower than windows games on the same hardware, though the difference of course isn't the same for all games. I guess that's partly because Nvidia's and AMD's drivers for Mac OS X aren't on par with their Windows drivers (and haven't been for a long, long time), partly because Apple's OpenGL implementation isn't great to begin with (they still haven't implemented all of the OpenGL 3.0 functions, right?), and partly because game developers have little incentive on spending a lot of time to port a game to a small market, so they're unlikely to optimize them as well as the windows versions.... And that last problem is not just because Apple has a small total marketshare (about 5 % worldwide and 10 % in the US, last I checked, though the install base might be bigger) but also because most of Apple's computers are a pretty bad deal for gaming: iMacs have rather weak graphic cards that can't be upgraded, Mac Pros are expensive dual-Xeon monsters that don't justify their cost for playing games (not to mention their lackluster choice of graphic cards, compared to their huge CPU power), and non of Apple's laptops are great for gaming considering their price (though they have other strong points of course). By the way, I don't know how BattleFront is handling their Mac port, but many games are now ported using tools like Cider (that's the case for many EA titles, for instance), which make the ports easier but at the cost of lower performances. That's also why the performance gap with Windows varies quite a bit from one game to another.

It's actually a wheeled IFV (called the VBCI), rather than an APC. The French army has allready been using a wheeled APC (the VAB) for years. AFAIK, the reasons for choosing a wheeled IFV were the cost and weight savings (the latter for airtransport with the A400M), at the condition that the offroad mobility had to remain good enough to follow the Leclerc tank. Mobility on roads may have played a role too. I think it should be noted that the VBCI is a post-cold war design intended for the main roles of the French army nowadays - peace keeping operations and low intensity conflicts, notably in Africa,and all whithin a tight budget. I don't think wheels are inherently superior or inferior to tracks - it's simply a choice based on the intended role of the vehicule. As for the Stryker, the way I see it is : if it works for the wars the US is fighting now, it's a good design, even if not perfect. As for the idea of using an upgraded M113 instead... If those are built new, they will most certainly not cost less than Strykers (and there's not much point in building new vehicules based on a 40 years old design) ; if they are taken out of storage, they are not only of an old design, but also old vehicules, which means that they would probably have to be completly rebuilt, not only to upgrade them, but also to extend their service life...

France has nether entirely left NATO (De Gaule only withdrew from NATO's integrated command, not from the NATO alliance) and resumed full membership since then (in 1995 according to wikipedia). I know that the French army has some pretty outdated equipments, but not that outdated ! (The AMX-13s were phased out of service in the 70's or maybe the early 80's.)

IMO, the only things that have really changed are that there no longer are uber tanks (has the best syrian AT weapons should be quite efficient even against the best US tanks) and that infantry long range AT weapons are now more mobile (ATGM vs ATG) - but the situation remains very similar for "normal" armor. Which isn't surprising, as the Abrams is an MBT, with an "M" for "main", and not the 200 tons monster that would be the modern equivalent of a WW2 king tiger... If you were used to playing with KV-1 in 1941, tigers in 1942-1943, king tigers, etc... CMSF tanks will most certainly seem fragile, but if you were used to playing with "normal" tanks, Abrams will probably seem particularily strong - after all, they can survive several frontal hits from most syrians AT weapons while, for instance, in 44-45, a sherman (or a T-34) could be killed frontally by almost any german AT weapon it was likely to encounter... So, yes, we will probably have to handle our armor with a lot of caution, but no, it's not something new !

It's impossible to do due to video memory consumption, according to what's been said in another thread.

I don't know about 1., but as for 2., all I can say is that you're going to love CMx2 ! Have a look at the CMSF forum if you want to see what improvements the next CM games are going to bring - so far, it looks promising.

That's only true for T-72-like autoloader tanks... Tanks with an autoloader in the turret neck (French Leclerc, Japanese Type 90, Russian project Black Eagle...) can have a very high rate of fire (theoretically 12rds/min for the Leclerc for instance). Furthermore, not all ex-Soviet/Russian tanks have equivalent autoloaders : the T-64 and T-80 have a different one (better but more expensive) from the T-72 (and I don't know what's worth the one used on the T-90). But they do all work on the same basic principle though, and problably suffer from the same problems but to a different extent.

Is that just because you guys say everything backwards in France? </font>

It's Mac mini, not Minimac, and Core duo, not duo core ! And, more seriously, it's only got an Intel integrated video chip (the GMA 900), instead of a real video card, so you won't be able to play any relatively recent game on it.

Macs now use the same CPUs as the majority of PCs (namely, Intel's Core and Core2 lines). What's true, though, is that a given CPU's X GHz are not the same as another CPU's - but it's not a question of Mac vs PC (nor is it really a question of x86 vs PPC, or Intel vs AMD vs IBM, as each compagny has changed their minds several times about how to optimize their chips other the time).

It's been said in an older thread that there won't be a campaign editor, but that it will be possible to create your own campaigns by tweaking text files. I don't know if BFC have changed their mind since then, but I haven't found anything else about campaign creation, so I guess they haven't.

Hasn't France allready rejoined NATO's integrated command in 1993 ? Anyway, even if it's not the case, France has participated in a number of military operations with the US and other NATO countries in the past years (Gulf War I, Kosovo, Afghanistan...) so IMO it's hardly a problem for your backstory.

After the war, the French probably prefered to emphasis the fact that many of them had fought on the right side than the opposite... And history has been written by the ones who won the war ! Same answer as corvidae, but I would add that, just after WWII, De Gaule was only in power for a relatively short period of time, until a regular election could be held, and the situation in France was quite chaotic too. He did have problems with some French officers after he came back to power in 1958, but it wasn't related to WWII, it was about Algeria (some officers didn't accept the independance of Algeria in 1962, and created a terrorist organization). I mostly agree, but I'd add a few things. There wasn't really such thing as a main battle tank in the French army in 1940 : there were mainly infantry tanks (think Renault R35), cavalry "combat armored cars" (think Somua S35) and heavy tanks (B1bis) - all of them being quite specialised. But if French doctrine had allowed for a MBT, technically speaking, it may have been the Somua S35 (not surprisingly : the French cavalry had a more advanced doctrine for using tanks, while infantry was still very WWI-minded), but not the B1bis, which was too slow, heavy, expensive, and specialised to compare with a Pz III for instance. But another point is that the question of italian armor was really irrelevant for the B1bis : it was a breaktrough tank, supposed to help crushing the Siegfied line (or any prepared defense, for that matters) in a very WWI-like way - not a Tiger-like tank killer. That's why it had a big 75 mm gun which could only be aimed vertically (unlike in a Grant/Lee, where the gun can rotate horisontally, even though not very much), which wasn't a big problem against bunkers which weren't supposed to move very fast . Of course, IRL, it wasn't quite used that way in May 1940, and its 47 mm AT gun proved to be a lot more usefull than the 75, but that's what it was supposed to be for, doctrinally speaking. [ November 18, 2006, 08:52 AM: Message edited by: Glukx Ouglouk ]

Maybe it's not possible, but why not do both Syria and fictional ? If you can make a Syrian backstory, do it, so that in the campaign which comes with the game we get real names, real places, and the like - and, of course, no T-80s. But in the scenario editor, add a drop-down menu which let the scenario designer choose between "Syria" and "hypothetical OPFOR" (just like we can choose between US and UK in CMx1). If Syria is chosen, the designer will only be able to use syrian equipment and TO&E ; if OPFOR is, he can choose any equipment and TO&E avalaible in the game and the modules (which will be limited to Syrian stuff whith the game alone, but more will come with the modules). That way, you even get the opportunity to include other real countries for the red side in future modules if you find it interesting (as long as they share most of their equipments whith Syria, but that's the case, to some extent, for a number of countries using ex-Soviet/Russian equipment). Maybe it's unfeasible, or maybe too much work would be needed to implement that, but it seems reasonable to me - as long as you can come with a backstory for Syria, but isn't a minor one still better than none at all ?

According to Wikipedia the Leclerc tank is supposed to be able to do that, and it's 15 years old now... So I'd guess that this figure is only impressive when you compare it with tanks without an autoloader (M1, Leopard 2...) or whith an old and not very well designed autoloader (T-72...).

As I understand it, their could be 2 differences : - It seems to me that a trench may be less than 8m wide (and the narrower it is, the more difficult it is for a grenade or mortar round to fall inside the trench, right ?) - a trench's protection can be enanced with more complex pieces of fortifications than the basic slit in the ground. But I don't think it's important (it's not a WWI game ! Trenches are nor exactly that important in modern warfare...) Btw, it's the first time I post here, so hello to everybody... And I hope my English is not too bad !