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The first generation Bradleys we got in... (dating myself here) 87 or 88 had built-in smoke generators too. It sprayed oil directly onto the motor and spewed an amazing amount of smoke out the back of the vehicle. I remember during an NTC rotation we'd go flying in, crank the smoke on, do a 360 to spray it in a big circle, drop the ramp, dump the troops, and haul ass. By the time the smoke cleared we were way the hell downrange. I wasn't aware that Bradleys didn't have those anymore, to be honest. I wonder why they got rid of them?

I wonder if this thing with the Strykers has something to do with which side you're playing on? I was trying out a scenario as the Syrians last night, congested urban area, I had some T-72's parked waiting for targets, and the Strykers were sure as hell reacting. They'd come blundering around a corner, see my tanks waiting there, and pretty much do everything but **** their pants. Smoke was popping, they were backing up, I even saw one try to drop its ramp and dump the troops inside before I blew it up. (didn't work - but it was a nice try) The point being that I've never seen that kind of reaction when I was the one running the Strykers. I've seen them pop smoke and back up a few times, but never anything consistent and nothing to the extent of what the blue guys were doing last night.

This conversation is a perfect example of why I wish this series was going in any direction other than WW2. :cool:

I don't think it would have been inevitable that a mid-80's NATO versus Warsaw Pact version of WW3 would have gone nuclear. I can imagine a few scenarios where it probably wouldn't have happened. Let's say, for example, that the Soviets roll into West Germany. If it's a surprise invasion, they breakthrough quickly, and get anywhere near France, then NATO starts popping nukes. If NATO stops the Soviets and counter-invades, then Russia starts popping nukes. But if NATO stops the Soviets in West Germany and then holds their ground, I don't think either side would have gone nuclear. But back to the original question about sea lanes... to be honest, I don't think it would have mattered much simply because I don't think land warfare in Europe would have lasted long enough for it to become an issue. If it ended up being a protracted war somehow, then I think NATO could have kept shipping lanes open pretty well. The Soviet surface fleet was never a real threat once it got outside of the protective umbrella of Soviet land-based airpower. They might have been able to make it hard to ship across the North Atlantic, but ports in France, Spain, Portugal and Italy would all have been open to NATO and so the North Atlantic wouldn't have been as critical as it was in WW2. As for the Soviet sub fleet - they had a lot of attack subs, and the ones they had were pretty good, but they weren't really designed or intended to interdict shipping the way the U-boats were. The primary mission of attack subs on both sides was to hunt enemy Boomers (ballistic missile subs) or the enemy's surface fleet. I don't think it's likely that either side would have risked a multi-billion dollar submarine to take out some freighter that may well be full of toilet paper.

The general feeling I get from the game would be that accuracy is about right, but that the benefit of cover is undervalued - with the end result being that fire isn't too accurate, it's just too lethal.

It seemed to work pretty well against the Nazis. Not really all that different on a tactical level, when you think about it. I'd say the American technological advantage is decisive in long-range, set-piece battles when the US has air supremacy. But if CM:SF demonstrates any one tactical concept, it would be that all the high-tech gizmos don't help much once the fight is in congested territory at point-blank range.

Infantry combat is much, much improved with 1.05. Fewer LOS absurdities, much better movement, much better use of available weapons. The AI seems to have gotten craftier too. Unless I'm mistaken about who fired the shot, I think a bunch of Syrians just wiped out an entire fire team of mine by blasting an RPG round into the side of the building my guys were using as a firing perch. I've never seen the AI do that.

No, to be honest, these guys weren't even under fire, Steve. Both squads were rested and happy at the time. Let me give you the details... Playing Following the Euphrates as Blue, Veteran, WEGO. There's a set of three buildings on the right side of the highway that are pretty close to the Blue start area. First time I'd played that scenario and I was being cautious, so I thought I'd get some Javelins up on the roof of the three-story building in the middle to provide some cover for my armor as they advanced towards the intersection. I loaded two squads with Javelins and launchers and sent them to the roof to have a look around. I first noticed something was wrong when both squads made it to the roof, and no one seemed to be left inside the building, but they were still showing blue lines underneath them, as if the 'move' movement order hadn't been completed for some reason. They'd started chucking M203 rounds at some bad guys in the trenches over on the right, so I figured I would let them do that for awhile, and hit the 'cancel' button to erase the blue lines underneath them and prevent them from doing anything goofy while I wasn't paying attention. Unfortunately, when I went to get them down a few turns later, they simply refused to move. I tried making them go directly to the ground with the 'move', 'quick', and 'fast' orders, but that didn't work. Then I tried the same thing by placing a movement waypoint on each floor all the way to the ground, and that didn't work either. Then I split the squads and tried all the previous steps again, and that also didn't work. The orders seemed to input correctly, but when I started the action they just kind of stood around with their hands in their pockets. They were never fired upon, and never took any casualties. I guess maybe they wanted to keep it that way. :cool:

I just had a couple of squads get stuck on a rooftop, which pretty much ruined a scenario for me. Tried splitting the squads, tried everything to get them to move - nothing worked. I have to admit, I'm kind of disappointed with that.

Got it. Installed it. Started a scenario with it. No problems to report thus far. (Battlefront version) Thanks, guys. I'll enjoy exploring this one.

I keep seeing comments all over this forum about how much everyone seems to be looking forward to CMx2, the WW2 version. So much so, that I kind of started wondering if I'm the only guy here who thinks WW2 has pretty much been done to death. I mean... cool war and everything, and some great games have been based on it, but do we really need anymore? Give me hypothetical stuff. Near-future US versus China. Mid-80's NATO versus the Warsaw Pact in the Fulda Gap. Israel versus Egypt. The European Union versus Microsoft's evil corporate goons, for all I care. Just anything other than another WW2 simulation. Hell, let's figure out a way to let the Brits slug it out with the French or something. I know, I know... WW2, big war, lots of theaters and combinations of forces, equipment that was equal enough to make for interesting tactics... I understand all the pro-WW2 arguments, but none of that changes the fact that I'm sick of it. I've been playing wargames at home since I bought my first Commodore 64 in the late-80's, and I've had enough WW2 to last me for awhile. CM:SF was originally interesting to me primarily because it's different, and I really wish we could keep that trend going for awhile before we re-hash THE WAR. Again.

My Grampa was a ramblin' man. He was born in the backseat of a Greyhound bus, rollin' down Highway 41.

Personally I just wish Bigduke6 would stop being so shy, come out of his shell a little bit, and tell us how he really feels about the pathfinding issue. Hopefully in great detail. At length. He could even go on and on about it as far as I'm concerned. *snork* Personally? I thought the pathfinding in 1.04 was pretty decent. Yeah, the troops do some goofy things sometimes, but anyone who finds that surprising or unrealistic has probably never seen real-life troops try to conduct movement in a coordinated fashion - and things get extraordinarily goofy when you add the minor element of people shooting at them. If the door-related problems are addressed, I'll be pretty content.

Screw tracers. Let's just give 'em laser rifles with different color beams for each side.

You guys are spending an awful lot of time debating "WHY" the game was delivered in the state that it was, but as far as I'm concerned the "WHY" isn't relevant. - I understand why my next-door neighbor feels like he needs to be outside running his leaf-blower at 7:30AM on Saturday morning, but that doesn't make the damned thing any quieter. - I understand why my wife thinks the dining room walls need to be painted. I promise you that won't inspire in me a sudden love of painting. - I understand why my stupid cat feels compelled to kill birds, bring them in the house, and leave them hidden in unique and interesting places. That doesn't make them smell any sweeter until I find and dispose of them. I can understand why the game shipped the way it did, but I don't really care. I'm not a fan. I am a consumer. I am a consumer who paid money for a product months ago that is only now becoming playable. A product that advertised features that still don't work. A product from a company that claimed they were above that sort of thing. That bugs me, and understanding why doesn't make it bug me any less.

Low-crawling (which is what the infantry calls it) isn't that exhausting, even when you're combat loaded. Well... let me clarify that. There are really two types of low-crawling. There's the normal "keeping my head down and being sneaky creeping along" low-crawling or "I'm going to flop down and scoot over to the edge of this building" low-crawling. Takes awhile to get anywhere (obviously) but physically it's not all that demanding. Fast low-crawling (as in "bullets are smacking into the ground around me and I have to get behind that building NOW") will flat-out exhaust your ass in a hurry.

You know... I tend to be a guy who gives developers a lot of slack when it comes to bugs. I usually think "Well, there's no way they can anticipate every possible hardware configuration." -or- "That's probably something that didn't crop up in testing because you wouldn't normally get into that situation." Driver problems, display problems, even balance issues seem to me like things you can't reasonably expect a developer to fully know about until the rubber meets the road, so to speak. But none of that sort of logic applies here, does it? That's the part that bothers me. The game didn't just ship with bugs. It shipped with bugs that were obvious, serious, and in some cases (multi-player, for example) crippling. It shipped with bugs that BFC simply had to be fully aware of when they released it. That bothers me. In fact, it bothers me a lot - because someone, somewhere, had to make the decision to go ahead and roll it out the door that way. The explanation about having to live up to a contractual obligation makes sense, but it's an explanation that was delivered after-the-fact, after-my-money-had-been-spent, and in some ways that just made it worse than no explanation at all.

Harpoon Online on AOL/Kesmai - circa 1997.

It's an old but classic joke in the US Army... you take a piece of black construction paper, cut out a silhouette of an enemy vehicle, and then tape it to the lens of your buddy's binoculars. Then every time the guy looks across the battlefield with those optics, he thinks an enemy vehicle is bearing down on him. "Enemy vehicle sighted!" >everybody else in the foxhole chuckles< "No, really guys - it's coming right at us! Enemy vehicle sighted!" >more chuckling< Personally I applaud BFC for recognizing this tradition and adding it to the game. It lends a level of authenticity to the ambient environment that other games lack.

Until body armor provides complete coverage, there will always be weak spots and openings. As long as there are weak spots and openings, I suspect the most cost-effective ways to defeat the armor will be increasing either the precision of fire, or the volume of fire, or both. When it comes to developments in ammo, an explosive round could produce a lot of shrapnel, and shrapnel has a way of finding the vulnerabilities in the armor. Wounds would probably be less lethal, but could definitely be incapacitating, which is almost as good in a tactical situation.

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

Springfield Armory XD-45. High-capacity .45ACP in a stable, bombproof, ergonomic and comfortably designed package. I've owned and carried a lot of pistols, but the XD-45 is without a doubt the best gun I've ever owned right out of the box. As for the caliber choice... with a good gun at common handgun ranges I'm equally accurate with a 9MM or a .45, so all other things being equal, I go for the round that makes bigger holes.

Ah, that's right. 1 spotting. 3 firing. 4 have assumed room temperature.

I need a button in the unit-specific menu that orders my troops to either remove their blindfolds or pull their heads out of their asses, because occluded retinas or anally-inserted craniums are the only two conceivable explanations for the fact that none of these morons can see a damned thing. Anything. Ever. Under any conditions or circumstances.

1. You have to right-click on an empty piece of map space to de-select the current unit, then choose another one. 2. Not that I know of. 3. All you can really see is how many troops they have left, by the number of gun icons in the central display window down at the bottom when you select the unit. If you know how many guys the unit started with, then you'll know how many they've lost.