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Geez... what you guys are asking for is incredibly unrealistic. Why, for that to happen, the troops would have to have something like a two-dimensional image of the terrain on a sheet of paper or something. Then they'd have to figure out how things on that sheet of paper correlated to the real-world terrain in front of them, and use that information to EXTRAPOLATE the parts they couldn't see. Then they'd have to read some numbers off of the sheet of paper, and do some really hard math and stuff. Or maybe you guys think they could just use computers and satellite images to do all of that? I don't know where you people come up with this stuff. Landing artillery shells on parts of the field you can't actually SEE? That's just crazy talk.

Clearly the BMP commander had orders to scuttle his vessel before allowing it to be destroyed by the American pig-dog/crusader/infidels.

...and miss everything in the area, as opposed to just missing the specific unit you targeted.

Seanachai: "Wit! Insouciance! Intellect!" See? That's the problem right there. I suffer from an acute insouciance deficiency.

I enjoy the game the most in Veteran mode. Why? Two reasons, I guess. 1. I've always felt like if I had to crank a game's difficulty level all the way to the max in order to have a fun, challenging, and interesting play experience, then it probably wasn't a game worth messing with for any length of time. To me, the highest difficulty settings should be reserved for some indeterminate point in the future when I've beaten every scenario several times, know where the enemy is and roughly what the enemy is going to do, and still want to be challenged somehow. 2. If there's one fault with the game, I tend to think it's that the LOS and spotting elements are unrealistically restrictive, even on Veteran mode. I often find myself saying "Look, of course you can see that enemy unit. It's right there, damnit!" Elite mode just increases my frustration with that aspect to the point where I don't enjoy the game as much.

The primary element that makes the CM games different from other wargames is that they make a serious effort to model weapon ranges accurately. As far as tactical application is concerned, the main factor that distinguishes CMx1 from CMx2 is that effective weapon ranges are a hell of a lot longer in 2007 than they were 40+ years ago. I honestly think that's the hardest adjustment for many of us to make. Many of the weapons in CM:SF can comfortably kill bad guys at ranges that the maps (as large as they are) simply aren't capable of displaying. If there's one lesson we should learn from this game, it's that all of the technological and C3 advantages that the US forces have really only give them a decisive edge when the battle is fought at arm's length. Once you get to knife-fighting distance all the high-tech toys don't help all that much. As for the fragility of the M1 Abrams... keep in mind that it's a Main Battle Tank that was designed specifically to stop the Soviets dead in the Fulda Gap. It's the King of the World when the range-to-target is measured in kilometers, but a lowly T-55 can kill anything, including an M1, if it's so close you could hit it with a well-thrown rock. That's why you'll notice that in the toughest and most well-designed scenarios, the designers force the Blue team to close the distance before they engage the Syrian armor. If the Syrians can force the US team to give up their range advantage, then all bets are off.

Assault Mode probably isn't what you think it is. When you hear the term assault it sounds like the troops are going to go charging right into the objective area, right? Like saying "Attack that building!" In game terms, the assault command actually means that part of the squad will provide covering fire while the other half moves forward to a covered position, then they'll provide covering fire for the other element as they move, and so on. It can be a fairly effective movement order in open terrain, but it's pretty much useless in urban areas - and no matter where you use it, it's a very slow way to get from Point A to Point B.

Whoever put Staff Sergeant York in charge of the US sniper squad on the Jisrash Shughur mission gets a full 10 style points.

I won this one on Veteran, but I haven't tried it on Elite yet. I kept my force together in one group, going in from the end of the runway. I placed the artillery and air support spotters, plus the sniper in the Air Control tower. Then I crept all my armored vehicles across the open area towards the SFHQ very slowly. Targets would pop up one at a time, and I was able to concentrate a ton of firepower on them individually and take them out pretty quickly. I used short mortar strikes to suppress anything I couldn't destroy or rout. I used two platoons to seize all the buildings on two sides of the SFHQ, and then the third platoon assaulted the building itself and secured it. I had Apaches available by that point, so I used them to suppress the area between the SFHQ and the Barracks, and then I basically hopscotched (also known as bounding overwatch) my platoons from building to building up to the Barracks, with my Strykers tagging along pretty closely for fire support. I captured the barracks but then ran out of time before I could make any headway on the Airbase HQ. I lost a total of three armored vehicles (two mobile guns and one APC) and some of my squads were cut up pretty bad, but overall losses were pretty light. One lesson I learned the hard way was the importance of having my infantry clear a building completely before allowing my vehicles to pass it by. I lost two vehicles when an enemy unit I missed on the rear of a building planted an RPG up their backside.

Your attempt at humor has failed miserably. ...but I appreciate the effort.