Secondbrooks

Question i like to ask my self, and have been raised few times by instructors, is that how many failures are because of user and not because of weapon... Well if weapon isn't simple to use and guys unfamiliar with it operates it wrongly then it's flawed. Quite naturally. But anyways.

Yeah. Like in most games there is light, but game world doesn't do more than draws that light in screen, it doesn't affect to actual visibility of game world (excluding player who sees that light on his screen)... I admit i wrote it badly. So basically AI/bot/whatever still "sees" darkness even if you point flashlight into his eyes. Or am i wrong concerning CMSF?

Illumination rounds would make game more playable and balanced on night time as well. Problem is how to implement them... I'm quite sure that running illumination-system would require quite big amounts of resources from CPU, same as with trenches which would be visible to side having them, but being invisible to opponent. Game currently doesn't handle any kind additional light sources by my understandment, so that would be pretty major overhaul to take. I would guess. EDIT: Blackcat was faster.

What guys at some armory tested with AK was to fire 10 mags in row and each magazine was finished with one trigger pull. 10th mag started to turn wooden hand guard black and would have probably started to burn eventually. Barrel was fine might have been slightly damaged. That blue-thingy gained by corrosion (i'm not familiar with english name) suffered mildly. Dunno how it handles ice and winter. If it handles sand, as it seems, then maybe it doesn't mind much if there's water which freezes to moving parts. PKM (=pokemon) was capable to go thru over 1000 rounds at rate of fire which was close to theoretical maximum (including belt changes, not sure about barrel). It wasn't even close to it's maximum, weapon was 100% fine after that. One practical joke i've heard of was that you need to roll belt in sand so that defects from factory gets rubbed off. After that you have great MG in you hands. Main defect in PKM probably is ammo and belt, it's pretty picky about how well rounds are placed in belt. For not too familiar guy with PKM that can cause surprises. Overall all Soviet weapons they tested were pretty reliable and were cabable to withstand high rate-of-fires for long time without any problems. When looking at what western weapons generally are expected to handle and withstand Soviet weapons seems to be far more capable to go on working.

You know you made me feel like a moron right there. I like that Well only way to get them as light as possible armament is to set equipment level to poor. That typically cuts two guys from team (making them 3 men teams, which was surprise to me!) and usually it's RPK which gets wiped out. But seems that each formation created is bit different, some have SVD or RPK in each team while another formation has just one such team. Combatants are more weaker with this, they seem to regularly come with just AK, while fighters seems to keep bit more firepower. So there's way, but one has to make compromises with team size.

I dont' find such unit in editor which would have only AK-74 as it rifle and then they would still have RPK. Can you point me such formation and equipment setting? Ah found it atlast? Funnily it didn't show up earlier. :confused: And best of all, they don't have ammo for RPK, if they have 2 pieces 7.62mm weapons (SVD or RPK) they have small amount IF their supply is full. Medium and large fighter formations with normal equipment. Bug or feature? Would seem odd that each AK-74 has more ammo than what RPK can muster. EDITxx: This is becoming a monster.

Yeah. It's common to have RPK along with AK and AK-74. Militia units seems to be only ones with RPD and they have just AK. But if unit has just AK-74 then they have RPK-74. I'd say that can be taken as rule of thumb.

Alex: I don't think i'm 100% sure what your after: Do you mean that amount of AGL-17 available to Syrians units is generally low? And that AGL-17 should be part of pretty much every batallion there is. Yeah. That is my impression of at least composition of Soviet mechaniced organization. Btw. Is it true that AGL-17's main use was/is planned to be silencing opponent's ATGM-systems?

Yeah. This is "funny" part. You have Apaches circling around engaging targets pulling back now with loads of casulites, hence even pull back without any casualties, would be pretty much doomed attempt. How there aren't more casualties? Yet. Us troops are saying that they are getting heavy incoming fire and that enemy is just 10 meters away. And there's only few casualties which are found out. Sound impossible if you have let youself got stucked into pitched battle with ground forces. Basically you got yourself into crossfire when Apaches arrives. Pulling back under those conditions sound like messy thing... Then again some units have pulled back on bare flat ice for hour or so while they are being shelled by some 200-300mm shells with little casualties. Even on massed batallion or two attacks they received one casualty from every 2nd or 3rd shell, which spreads it's fragments to 600 meters distance and FO's reported that on each impact you could see bodyparts flying in the air... Yet objective studies seems to suggest that really only 50-30% of shells actually did kill or wound severly something. So generally firepower seems to be more of an show. This is even more true with air. Maybe these few casualties were all that heavy incomming fire from 10 meters. While rest of units had pulled back into village and fired from there? Ofcourse it's possible that US troops just thought that enemy is in 10 meters (having chaos everywhere around them). They get taken by surprise, no body really not having a clue on what is going on. But then again leaving few men behind into suicide mission to draw enemy attention isn't all that new thing. Maybe there was covered routes, trees, small rocky valleys, which they could take so main assault force were safe from firepower. Maybe they had (wet) blankets? So air actually didn't see a thing, but had to engage blindly. So main part could stay longer and keep engaging US ground troops, after that evacuate casualties and pull back in good order. What was exact composition of enemy raid? How many went to close range and how many remain behind to support by fire? And there are probably dozens of "variables" which doesn't cross my mind. Heck. It's seems to be pointless to speculate of outcome, when i don't see that there's even general understandment of situation at hand. Not that i'd like to display myself as tactical master as lately CMSF has roughed me pretty badly.

Aren't they doing good? Yes they aren't making much of fuzz out of them selves, but the way i see it Tet Offense and Diem Bien Phu both were major gambling for insurgencies. French had won previous battle similar few years earlier and goal of Diem Bien Phu was to lure Viet Mih into conventional battle and "wipe them out". But this time they didn't win. Tet Offense was so succesful just because US pulled it's troops off. If it wouldn't have done that, then VC wouldn't been much of a fighter, but they got NVA watching their backs so they could afford to try. Chechens won one major victory. Granted i don't know much how things went after that, but my impression is that they got chewed up by Russians pretty badly. How are Chechens doign now days? Seems that they are lying low if they aren't already finished. I can just imagine that ISAF eagerly waits for resolving conventional battle to take place Yes. That speaks for idea that Taleban indeed lacks power on tactical scale to even try to win their opponents. But i don't know does that tell us that they lack healthy tactical understandment. I don't know should they be called masters, but they/some-of-them seem to possess enough understandment to plan and execute textbook raid, which might end up as teaching material to some military academy. I think this was Bigduke6's point. And in what i (think i) follow Bigduke6's flow of mind is that i dont' think even all professional/regular military guys who have studied those textbooks could pull such action all the time, or even some of the times. And their pride is such that they can't think that if one haven't had official training for it, don't wear uniform and don't belong to some group (regular military, airborne, marines, ground forces) could do things even distantly like they can.

Classic example from ww2 is when some unit changes another unit from fortification line to rest. At least Soviets liked to use this moment to strike, as unit was green with that block of fortifications. With luck that fresh unit hadn't yet faced such strike which Soviets could muster. There are records where unit with good training and experience (in CMSF terms somewhere in borderline of Regular-veteran) goes to fortification line and get's throwed away from it in panical kind conditions pretty soon, even when previous unit (tired and worn out) has been able to repel such attacks before. Partially reasons being that they don't know that line yet and that they haven't seen such level of enemy action before. Same for attacker. If attacker would have had time for training (not meaning other than going thru than mission in general) and planning for such attack their experience level could be tweaked to be higher then it really would be. And other way hasty attack tends to go bad and individual performance goes down just because the fact that there's no much changes to adjust unit for action.

Naturally nearly optimal setting is much more based on situation (enemy, own troops, terrain, objecitve comes to my mind first). Text-book examples to be used as they are written is for idiots ... And that probably also stands from ww1 to this day.

Well true is that todays tactics haven't changed pretty much at all. Ofcourse there might be "new" and better ways of doign things, but as i've let myself to be told; training-fundamentals and doctrines aren't most fast moving and adapting animals so generally they tend to lag behind progress of technology... I'm just dumbass so i wouldn't know. Apocal: Okay thanks.

Yup it is. Mostly i'm interested about seemingly long safety distance for indirect fire, 250 meters. Is this also for combat? We use minimum of 100-150 meters for 81mm mortars, which is for combat, dunno what exactly is peace time regulation but i bet it's not that short. Can understand even better why US has that much direct firepower to bear. Hmm... How close is safe distance in CMSF? 50 meters for 81mm mortars? Atleast when i use indirect fire i move my men very close to area being under fire... Not that i would actually care so much if few guys takes hit from fragments.

Hmm... What was it called: Final defensive fires? The phase when enemy has got into charging distance and is trying to get as fastly as possible to defender's neck. Like Elmar Bijlsma seemed to suggest.

I use loaded shotgun. Has it worked? Quite surprisingly not.

I've been poundering few days why my CMSF won't start up, but windows (Vista) just reports that game's exe stops functioning. However as i'm rather bright bloke i instantly (well two days) found out that reason was DeepGuard. And it's some fecking 'use advanced process supervision' or however you would type that in english (i'm using finnish version). Turning that button off and CMSF starts to rock like nothing happened, which is rather jolly-good thing. So there.

Yeah. This was problem some ww2 engineers have talked about. Blowing up minefield was more safe and faster way, but in the end they still would need to get there to clear rest of mines (which didnt' go off with explosives) with their hands. And when area is turned up-side-down by explosives it gets very dangerous even for seasoned engineers to find and neutralize those which remain. But that was about clearing large mine-fields in rear-areas. So it's basically different than in battlefield, where few casualties from "artillerized" minefield can be more interesting option than going head to head with concentrated enemy defense. Then again just how effective artillery would be? how dense should fire be to make something like 90% of mines to blow up... I dont' have an idea, but i would think it would require lots of ammo wasted. Direct fire... There probably are loads fo cases from ww2 to this day about using direct fire it to clear mines and such from one's path, but are they relevant for CMSF's scope? CMSF's mines are dug in ground and concealed.

True. I don't have clue of this subject either. I've always expected them to cover one tile. Anyways as we have mine thread i might as well ask that does area fire, be it direct or indirect, have effect in mines and there fore be used in mine clearing jobs?

Yup. 300 meters isn't safe if one doesn't wish to loose few vehicles. With regular/veteran skill level 400 meters against stationary target doesn't seem to be too much. Some conscript militia unit will have just lucky hits at those distances. But when i put my vehicles at that distance from enemy... Well i can just guess that they are bit better trained than my militia troops. If i have green militia i have no problem to give them distant targets which they wouldn't hit but with luck. But if i happen to have regular-crack units at my disposal distances are usually 200 meters or less. Which is quite freaking funny. Or sad. Depends. MikeyD: Get's bit into splitting hairs side of things, but anyways: Well M72 shouldn't be that bad with it's penetration, but it's warhead is optimiced for penetration so effects after penetration might not be so ideal, unlike M136. That is the story i've heard anyways. Newest Norwegian LAWs which still has caliber of 66mm are said to penetrate past 400 mm, maybe close to 500mm. Which is quite insane for that caliber. That probably means that hole's diameter is very small.

Oh, you again. Steve: Many things (the underlined ones) you mention in that list don't have anything to do with deploying times of the system, they do take time but they are not part of deploying (they are part of "preparing for battle"). Riflesquad (with Javelin or not) doesn't need to "deploy" in game when it goes to positions ready to engage enemy and neither do tanks. Again i don't know other systems as well as AT-4 (which i know only from those who served with it), but based on AT-4: Are quite irelevant as AT-4 has tripod and optics always attached, they are just flipped open when system is deployed. Well we had few additional things such as thermal optics and detector for IR-countermeasures, but Syria seems to have just ordinary version of it so those can be scrapped. Don't remember was there anything other than putting missile on place... There could be "tester" for checking possible malfunctions. I might check it later. So AT-4 is fast already.

It is not. In reality 2-3 guys can't even move TOW-system if they are using it dismounted, too big, too heavy, too complex (=breaks into too many parts). We needed 7 men to smoothly operate it (2-3 minutes for both pack up and deploy, which was requirement), with 5 it's still reasonable. With less it's impossible. I laughed my arse off when i saw how tiny teams were operating dismounted TOW's in Marines module.

I just don't understand why there have not been comments about this. This question has been raised few times. I think i brought this up with AT-4 quite soon after CMSF's release, so it shouldn't be new thing. But there has been no response which i could recall. I really don't know how AT-7 and more advanced ATGM-systems have changed but AT-4 already is very simple to deploy and pack-up (besides as said one can just take system to his arms and run, make it packed-up later when he reaches more safe location). Well you guys have to keep in mind that pack-up and deploy times are fixed (aren't they?). So in optimal case 5 minutes might not be even close to reality, but then again what if team looses 1-2 guys and it still has 2-3 missiles left... awful amount of equipment for one or two guys to operate. So in that sense i see it as "golden middle-road" to be taken, "simulating" overall problems which operating such system with too few men would generate. Not game-breaker, but it sure damages flexible use of several firing positions as packing up and more importantly deploying takes so much time.

Dunno did i understand what your after, but you can set one target order for each waypoint, by clicking that white "bubble" in waypoint's destination (you can do alot of interesting things with that). I don't remember how that happens if guys are in vehicles, it should be possible. Example: Squad moves at it's 1st waypoint put in front of door (but does no enter yet) it has area fire target attached to first floor 2nd waypoint is in building's first floor and it has area target order attached to second floor 3dr waypoint is in second floor and it has area fire order attached to third floor etc... So squad rushes for door, when they reach it they start firing at 1st floor [you may imagine them to stack up at door sneakly, then commit blizt action with lots of fire]. At door they rush into 1st floor while swifting their fire to 2nd floor. from there they start to rush for 2nd floor while swifting fire at 3rd floor. Rinse and repeat or sumthin. Hint: You need to click that white bubble in waypoints destination to make that happen. You can also issue pauses and such. I use target orders attached to waypoints alot! Mostly when i seek out hull down positions. Great tool and i don't know how i survived earlier! Well i played mostly US Ps. Sorry if i got you wrong.

Hmm... I've grown to be very picky. Back in older days i could play total ****e and not to be angry of it enough to care. That has started to appear few years ago. There-fore i've probably reach level of gaming veteran. No? The list: ArmA and ArmA2. Not that they are bad, but Operation Flashpoint just rocked enough lotz. TES IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3. Not that they are bad, but compared to TES III: Morrowind and Fallout they were lame: unimaginative&cheesy. Oh! And my Amiga 500 was some sort let down as it had somehow busted additional memory-chip which didn't co-operate with most games which were cool. Killed my gaming hobby for few years, but as i was young kid back then i really just didn't care so much. Now days i would probably end up drinking my salary and beating my wife from such event.