Alan8325

@ John- I think what happened was a 73 hit near his UAZ occupied by his FO team and all but 1 man were killed/wounded by shrapnel. I know that at one point in CMSF development only the actual FO member of the FO team was allowed to call fire support, and if he died, then the rest of the team would be denied fire support along with all other non-FO units (for a "Red" force). In the latest version, however, I believe that any "Red" officer can call fire support. This would be FOs, platoon leaders, company and battalion commanders.

The extreme lethality of weapons in CMSF is not a CMx2 feature per se, but an element of modern combat added specifically to CMSF for the modern theater. I'm pretty sure your Tiger tank in CM:Normandy will be just as tough as its CMx1 predecessor.

This one just recently started happening to me. I think it means that there's a little switch bounce going on the mouse and it's time to get a new one.

It's little events like this that make every battle unique, even if the exact same plans are used in the same scenario, giving CMSF such the replayability it has! "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." - Winston Churchill

Yeah, I remember reading that it won't be introduced into CMSF. It probably will make its way into CMSF2, the next modern title, though. Of course it would depend on the success or failure of the system going into CM:N.

I believe that if it is an attacker vs. defender QB, and the defender is AI, then there are no movement orders. The AI just places units in the setup phase. I could be wrong though.

Humping in from a distance is a good strategy with any lightly armored transport, as long as the scenario designer leaves me enough time.

Yeah, looks like experienced BMP-1 gunners could manually load the 73mm main faster than the autoloader, leading to its removal. Also, the autoloader was prone to malfunction after vehicle movement over rough terrain. The BMP-3 system presumably has fixed all or most of these issues, or it wouldn't be there!

No wonder it tends to go BOOM after a penetration!

From what I've experienced in CMSF, .50 cal will eventually knock down walls, but it takes a lot of shots. As for the chunks of wall and cinder blocks and stuff flying apart and injuring those on the other side, I believe that this is abstracted by the small "explosions" from .50 cal impacts in the game. Unlike small arms fire, it can even injure your own men if you use area fire around them.

Yeah, I was unaware that there will be three campaigns as well. As gibsonm said, it's probably not worth Battlefront's time to create content that only a fraction of their customers could play (those with all modules), as opposed to spending the time on more campaign missions and scenarios that everyone buying NATO could play. No matter though, I'm sure the included campaigns will be great and there will be great user-made campaigns that use content from multiple modules. I heard about this too, and I also remember a mention that while conventional forces in CMSF are highly constrained by reality, leaving not much room for more additions, Uncon formations in particular are much more open to the imagination. I'd personally like to see a better resupply ability and suicide vests. They are realistic and would make the storming of buildings occupied by uncons a whole lot more nail-biting.

The Brits module did not use any content from the Marines module because it should not be required that customers buy Marines in order to play the Brits campaign, however I was wondering if it would be possible to include a branch in the NATO campaign that uses another module. This way it wouldn't be required that customers own other modules to play the NATO campaign but those who do could play a branch that, for example, encounters T-90s or links up with Brits. I do not know how the game currently handles scenarios that use content from a module that one does not have, as I have both modules, but perhaps a branching mission in a campaign that leads to a module mission could not be "winnable" by someone without the module, thus leading to the non-module path.

Same here, except after playing the demo at 1.0 I didn't even buy the game until the Marines module (v1.1?), at which point I tried the demo again and then bought the bundle.

I've noticed that some of the gravel roads in CMSF have very shallow ditches on the sides that men routinely move to when ordered to the nearest action spot. I haven't tested to see if they provide cover though.

Most of those reviewers haven't touched the game since version 1.0, I think.

Don't forget infantry. In CMSF all infantry squads and teams are instantly identified as well. Realistically, if you see a man with an RPG in a window you wouldn't necessarily know if he was in a 2-man team or the AT member of a 9-man squad.

I think the thing that uncons need most at this point is some ability to resupply..ANY ability to resupply, even if its just some acquirable ammo in the transport pickups or UAZs. I would imagine that this would be a piece of cake to add. Some new units would be really cool tho, especially uncon fighters equipped with suicide vests. The formations would look pretty much the same, but maybe the large fighter groups could have a suicide team added that would be identical to a 3 or so man team with AKs but with the ability to explode, either with a separate command in the targeting interface, or somehow operated by the TACAI when the enemy is in very close proximity. I would personally prefer the TACAI method because it would allow it to work with strategic AI-controlled forces. Perhaps for human controlled forces it could be a toggleable function, defaulted to "on". Alternatively, suicide vests could be given to some of the teams in fighter groups with "excellent" equipment quality.

That reminds me of a quick battle I played once on a small map where I was given loads of 155 arty and 6 or so planes with 2000lb jdams. I just did a few area targets on the other half of the map and won by enemy surrender after 2 turns. I don't remember what version it was at the time though.

Right now I tend not to like scenarios with ATGM vehicles at all in CMSF, primarily for 2 reasons. First, LOS cannot be drawn from the optics suite at the top of the ATGM launcher, thus taking away the vehicle's biggest advantage which is to have only the launcher exposed to the enemy. LOS is always drawn from the center of vehicles in CMSF. Second, as Elmar mentioned, CMSF ranges generally give the MBT the advantage because each side is so close together that it is difficult not to be spotted, even by an MBT, and a round from the main gun will close the distance much faster than an ATGM. I have a feeling that ATGM vehicles will be more useful in the future as the CMx2 engine improves, such as with bigger maps and improved LOS calculations.

Has anyone seen airbursts with the programmable prefragmented (PPHE) rounds? Are they actually modeled in the game to have any additional anti-personnel effect than HE or HEDP?

Has anyone actually verified that WIA count differently from KIA in terms of final score? Are KIA worth more points to the enemy than WIA?

Well I thought originally that the mines in this scenario were anti-personnel mines that still somehow damaged the scimitar, but I just checked again after clicking "cease fire" and the mine fields say "mix". Are the AT mines in these fields really small as far as AT mines go? I would think that an AT mine would turn a scimitar inside-out, not just wound a crewmember and leave components fully intact.

AP mines don't leave craters in the game but can still damage light vehicles. On the very first mission in the Brits campaign I found that a Scimitar had an injured crew member, leaving me wondering how that happened without them being unbuttoned. After watching the replays it turned out that it hit AP mines. Strangely there wasn't any damage to the tracks. It's a little odd that the underside got penetrated but the tracks weren't damaged.

I've seen plenty of videos of stationary artillery being used in the direct fire role in Afghanistan. Granted, this is almost always in response to Taliban attacks on the artillery positions rather than pre-planned operations with direct-fire artillery use being part of them. Still, being able to put that kind of firepower quickly from one hillside to another should be something positive that the MGS adds to the battlefield.

About the AI auto-surrender, is this tweakable in the editor yet? I know the AI originally didn't surrender until only 2 or 3 men were left standing in any particular scenario, but then it got changed a few patches ago to make them surrender when what seems like 10-20% of their forces are remaining. I haven't played around with the AI in the editor that much but it would make the most sense to make the surrender threshold changeable.