Alan8325

Are there that many countries that would back such sanctions? I imagine the U.S. could get most of the E.U. to go along, but even some of them have been expressing doubts. Putin's recent pullback of forces from the border were probably meant to strengthen those doubts.

This is why I'm fascinated by the emergence of new financial technology like online crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin. They basically can't be frozen, and with proper security measures can be made anonymous. Iranian merchants are already using them to do international business, bypassing sanctions. If these technologies catch on and remain virtually unregulable, then the only way to enforce sanctions will be by blocking physical goods.

Saferight, I read in the mainstream media that these are not actually normal Russian soldiers but more likely mercenaries or unmarked spec ops. Anyone have better info than this? Edit: Not that I would complain if mercenaries and special forces are included in CMBS.

There was another thread where someone from BFC mentioned that some of the back story had already come true, therefore a 'drop' of the back story probably won't be necessary although they may change it a little. As for campaigns already made, I imagine that missions can be shuffled around, added, deleted if necessary. Not that anything is really necessary for a fictional game as CMSF was.

On the plus side, the back story of Black Sea should be much easier for BFC now since it's essentially been half (or more) written already in real-life. Hopefully they get the new game out before the war is already over. As for sanctions against Russia, too bad Russia already declared Bitcoin illegal.

I think the sprites are fine, especially with mods. What would really help is a moddable particle effect to create the appearance of flying debris. It could be very simple and then modders could add better debris sprites later.

Thanks for the info. No need for anything spectacular but I would think that at least burning buildings would have to be added at some point to make flamethrowers tactically realistic. I have no doubt that they know what they are doing!

I did a quick search but couldn't find a thread on it. How is the new feature of fire going to work in the vanilla version of Red Thunder? Will buildings be able to be set on fire and eventually collapse? Will troops in buildings on fire take damage from it even before the building collapses? Will the same apply to vehicles? Can fire spread and be affected by weather conditions like humidity and wind? I know a lot of time was spent on making fire functional so I'm curious to see what state it's in. Feel free to post a video.

True. I guess Syria really hasn't obtained any new hardware in the recent past that they didn't have in 2008. Any differences between 2008 and now would be in Western forces and even those changes would be few. Maybe more air support would be via drone, but in CM terms that wouldn't make much a difference from manned air support. You could certainly model most of the Red on Red battles happening in Syria now with current CMSF content.

I agree that CMSFII is better off remaining in the 2008 time range in Syria. Current and near future Syria (2014?) is going to be less suitable for game based on conventional conflict like CM. Syria is likely going to become a failed state with areas ruled separately by Shiites and Alawites, Sunni Islamists allied with Al Queda, and Kurds. Any Western intervention would likely consist of a short air campaign to bomb leftover air defenses followed by a special forces campaign, supported by limited air support, to work with moderate local forces to secure chemical weapons and limit Islamist power in the area. While this environment would make for some interesting team and squad-level games based on the Battlefield or ArmA engines, I think 2008 Syria is better for CM. The only issue I see is that a re-do of CMSF in the same environment, which no longer exists, might have a difficult time attracting any new players who aren't already fans of CMSF. I wonder if it could be based on an invasion of Iran instead of Syria.

I would argue that in a conflict vs Russia like in CM Black Sea the Russians would have airpower as well, with the security of their Motherland airbases backed by nuclear weapons. The U.S. could shoot down airplanes over Ukraine all day but the Russians can keep sending them because deep strikes against Russian airpower in Russian territory would be grounds for taking the conflict nuclear. In a conflict vs a non-nuclear opponent or insurgency on the other hand, one would just have to assume that there are steep penalties for inflicting collateral damage with airstrikes.

So those would be "yellow" casualties in CM right?

That's a good point. I wonder which would be more interesting between a CMSF2 based on Syria in 2007 or so vs a CMSF2 based on a Syria as it is projected to become in a couple years or so. The 2007 Syria (as in CMSF1) would be more cohesive and a bigger challenge to the U.S. military from a conventional standpoint, but a divided (as it is projected to be) Syria with multiple competing factions would be a more interesting game from a political and irregular perspective. I would imagine that a U.S. intervention in a near-future Syria would consist mostly of special forces working with religiously moderate militants on the ground, backed by air power. With further tweaking and added detail of infantry combat, especially MOUT, I could see unconventional combat-based CM games becoming much more interesting. A total re-do of CMSF1 with a current CM engine portraying a conventional invasion of Syria in 2007 would be welcome too, but I wonder if the modern conventional vs modern conventional desire will be quenched by "CM Black Sea" and CMSF2 should begin to delve into unconventional and special forces type missions.

Also MGs aren't nearly as effective in CMSF as they are in the CMx2 WWII titles. This is partly because MG simulation has been improved since CMSF and partly because MGs in CMSF are deliberately toned down in effectiveness to account for wider spacing between individual soldiers in modern military doctrine. CM keeps the soldiers in a squad within two or three action spots when in reality they would be spaced farther apart to minimize casualties from explosions and MG bursts. To compensate for the CM engine's limits on soldier spacing they toned down the lethality of explosions and the accuracy of MGs. Hopefully in CMSF2 this gets resolved in a better way.

+1! I would even allow ATGMs to fire from inside buildings. In CMSF1 we could fire RPGs and Javelins from inside buildings but every Russian-built ATGM and even the Spike was not allowed. I say just impose a chance for casualties proportional to backblast of the weapon and inversely proportional to experience and time allowed to set up.

Relevant to Russian airpower: The T-50 (PAK FA) testing is supposedly going very well and is expected to enter service within the next couple of years with performance similar to the F-22. Word coming from the Russian military boasting their own hardware may be taken with almost a grain of salt, but the Indian military jumping on board with $25 billion for their own export version shows that there may be some merit to the claims of progress. http://indrus.in/economics/2013/06/29/t-50_fighter_to_be_ready_in_2013_26603.html

Technology is rapidly improving on the pro-privacy side too. It's a new arms race. The website below shows a list of new programs that are either open-source or encrypted alternatives to more commonly used ones. Some of them, like the Linux operating system, have actually been around for a while but are rapidly improving and becoming more widely used. One of them, Tor, is the infamous encrypted web browser needed to access many black market websites. AFIK, the U.S. government still doesn't have a solution for this. The black market purchases are made with Bitcoins of course, also a new development for which the government doesn't yet have a solution. There are about a bazillion cryptocurrency spinoffs coming after Bitcoin as well, in case Bitcoin gets stomped. http://prism-break.org/

The answer is that they wouldn't see a high risk of the war going nuclear as long as it stays in and around Ukraine. Russian air power and air defense losses in Ukraine and even inside Russian territory immediately around Ukraine wouldn't tip the conflict over the "threshold." The conflict WOULD go nuclear if the U.S. decided to strike deep inside Russia which is what would be required to defeat Russian air power and prevent it from being a factor in the Ukrainian conflict. The result of this standoff is that, assuming Russia sees some high-value reason for being in Ukraine, Russia knows that they will take high losses of their aircraft over Ukraine and air defenses on the ground, and the U.S. knows that it will have to continually fight off Russian aircraft and air defenses sneaking in because striking too deep beyond a limited AO is too risky. But I agree with you that it's just a game based on a hypothetical situation that could really go the way of anyone's imagination.

I disagree completely. In addition to what Sgt Joch said above, the conflict in CMSF2 will be in Ukraine, but the U.S. would have to establish air superiority over Ukraine AND Russia to effectively knock out Russian airpower. Good luck with that. Assuming that the U.S. even has the capability to do this, especially as easily as you think, you can be assured that Russia would begin using nuclear weapons before allowing their air power to be neutered. I know I would if I were in their shoes. The result of this in the CMSF2 scenario is that the U.S. would adopt a strategy of trying to maintain air superiority over Ukraine only, and not penetrating very far into Russian territory, if at all. As Russian airpower could continue to come in at weak points over Ukraine as Russian commanders adapt to the situation, you would see pockets of Russian air superiority over Ukraine as well.

Or when the Sunnis (AQ affiliates or them plus a more general group including FSA) begin retaliatory atrocities against the Alawites, Shiite and possibly Christians. Also, once airstrikes are underway I don't think that there is any way that the S-300s can make it in there and get set up. There is also the issue of training the Syrians to use it, which there almost certainly wouldn't be time for.

Looks like U.S. military weapons and/or airstrikes are on the way. Anyone want to speculate what's going to be sent? http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/13/us-syria-crisis-usa-idUSBRE95C1AB20130613

I think Russia still has more advanced weapons than China and doesn't export their most state-of-the-art systems. Also, they're going to have higher training standards than Syria's army, although you could argue that Syria's army has better experience right now from actual combat. In my opinion, the factor that would make the biggest difference in the dynamics of a conventional war between Western powers and Russia compared to a conventional war between Western powers and a Middle Eastern state, is the possibility of the war going nuclear. In Syria and CMSF1, we assumed that the Western coalition obliterates Syria's air defenses and air force allowing uncontested air supremacy for the coalition. No danger of bombing runs or helicopter gunships for your Abrams tanks parked 1km from enemy lines. The difference in a war against Russia is that, assuming Western powers could effectively wipe out Russia's air defenses with enough effort, Russia would almost certainly go nuclear before allowing their opponent air supremacy against their ground forces. In a back story like in CMSF2's, I think you could expect constant air-to-air battles over the Ukrainian AO and advanced mobile SAM systems moving around on the ground. NATO likely wouldn't even attempt to penetrate deep into Russian territory to attack air bases and air defense sites. You wouldn't see this in CM scenarios, but the result of the above in CM terms will be some areas with Russian CAS available and some areas with NATO CAS available. You might play a campaign were in one scenario you have CAS available and can call strikes on enemy positions, but in the next scenario you have to watch out for Ka-50s attacking your AFVs. It will be interesting to see how it works out!

AIUI, many of the urban combat fronts, such as in Aleppo, are relatively stagnant where fighting might go on over a single city block for weeks or even months. In these cases, a trebuchet that has a range of just a few dozen meters might be just as effective an artillery piece as a light mortar.

Indeed, in real life you can't take a day to contemplate your next move for each individual minute of the battle. Moving quickly can knock your opponent off balance and loosen their grasp on the situation, but it's tough to create this kind of effect in a turn-based game. I hope that someday CM has a full-battle replay feature that can be used on real-time battles. The current AAR between GaJ and Bil is probably on too large a scenario to be played in real-time, but smaller real-time AARs made by taking screenshots from a full replay feature would be fun to watch. A semi-real-time AAR could probably be done now by having pre-negotiated pause times, maybe every 5 minutes or so, to upload screenshots and post on the forum.

Not a close call for the two guys that took the direct hit.