Lethaface

Some people already went into details about the different weapons systems. Some great advice would be to learn about the weapons systems in real life as they seem to work similar in CM. In CM the biggest notable difference between Mortars and Howitzers is that mortars fire in a more vertical path and that most mortars can be employed both on- and offmap, while howitzers and field guns are usually only available off map. Apart from that they all lob rounds over to the enemy. There are various shells (smoke/airburst/groundburst/precision iirc) and various firing patterns. The accuracy and time to call depends on the unit calling the artillery (their training and communication capabilities) and the artillery piece itself. How I use them: 60mm mortar -> nice for (direct) support of small units in firefights. 81mm mortar -> suppressing and destroying enemy strongpoints. 120mm mortar -> like the 81mm but better. It's a great mortar, however munition is usually limited. 105mm howitzer -> weaker howitzer but usually a lot of rounds. Use it on targets of opportunity or else in a large diameter strike with a lot of rounds over a longer time 122mm howitzer -> stronger than 105, more useful in urban area bombardments. 130mm field gun -> maybe a more lower trajectory that's significant? otherwise it's just a larger 122mm. 155mm howitzer -> This is the goto artillery. It will basically destroy what it finds, even tanks. This is good for almost everything, use it on where you expect important enemy positions. They will suffer. 180mm and 203mm are also great. Basically larger calibre is better, however then downside is that larger guns usually have less rounds and or feature a slower rate of fire and response/setup time. In real life there are more relevant factors, but since this is about the game I guess this will suffice.

I'm all with you with regards to keeping calm etc. Things will come when they come, as that is how life works. Time is relative. However, I don't agree with regards to the issue. Sure in a PBEM one can use the pause feature, however against the AI playing campaigns/scenario's the enemy can't use those commands. Sure, the impact depends on the specific scenario but having troops fleeing trenches upon some nearby arty can sure make a campaign/scenario less interesting. Edit: I see I wasn't the only one I do agree that the AI doesn't always put up a good fight, however there are quite a number of scenario's where it's at least (more than) good enough for me to have fun with. Some of that fun is impacted when the enemy runs away the instance I put their (prepared) positions under arty fire. Given the commonality of indirect fire in CM, one could value that impact as significant. PBEMs are my favorite however I don't really have the luxury of playing those. Anyway just wanted to stress some people actually play against the AI and have some fun at it, so I'm surely anticipating the patch for all CMx2 titles. Still I'd rather have them release a patch in November over October if that means the difference between a good tested/quality product vs something rushed. Given the BF history I'm quite sure that quality will be the most important, so I'm happy to wait a little longer. Yes, they could update us given the presumed delayed demo and or CMSF2 release. I would appreciate it. However, since that update will basically entail nothing more than 'somewhere soon (Q4 2018)' realistically, I don't really bother if they bother the effort to come posting about it. That's how I feel about it anyways, in a free world everybody is free to agree or disagree.

Steve told me on snapchat that the new CMSF2 roadmap is 'late 2018'. Patch to follow up shortly after. (joke)

Well, 'learning a new OS' (or getting to know any new 'thing') can be a steep barrier for some.

This game has a steep learning curve compared to arcade games. However, compared other complex games it isn't too bad. Knowledge of tactics and weapon system capabilities sure does help.

Aye aye! -- I'm planning to order Adam Tooze's book 'crashed' after I read the link provided by @LongLeftFlank. Too bad the chapter about Turkey didn't make the cut, although the article provided goes quite deep into the Turkish situation. Anyone here read 'Crashed'?

Hehehe I was trying not to keep him from working on the release Good idea though, I'll probably file up a ticket sooner.

Same situation here. I am sure that I do have the CMSF disc, manual and map although the license number isn't on there anymore. The sticker has probably come off after 10 years . I can't remember how I got hold of it though and my mail archive doesn't reach that far, although I think there is a good chance I ordered it from battlefront directly. Anyhow, Steve informed us that he has the data although it's not available in the webstore. My plan is to check/ask when the game comes out.

Not sure about the 'lore' but IIRC on the original CMSF map the Turks do have some presence. I can't find it although I'm sure I saw it somewhere this year. I tried googling it and found some images of it. It's easy to find if you look in google images searching for cmsf map scan. There are arrows into Syria from Turkey, so I guess the Turks are involved (which would be logical since NATO article 5 was invoked in the lore).

Yes, unfortunately I fear the battle for Idlib will also feature more of those brutalities. One can hope one day Assad will see trial for his crimes, not holding my breath though.

I don't think anyone doubted the existence of certain articles (although thesun? seriously? ) Anyhow it's still bullocks. Besides; how does 'a growing population' equal to factual tangible pressure to 'include' Sharia law.? Also, like... what laws? Stoning people for 'avin a pint? Come on get yourself a break and go meet a Muslim near to you. He or she probably won't bite. They might invite you for tea though. Personally I feel the 'politics' line was crossed with your first post about the Muslim subject. I had to reply but I'm happy to steer it back to the more on topic macro geopolitical / military stuff. --- It will be 'interesting' to see what happens in the region after the, sort of, inevitable regime (Assad) victory over the rebels in Idlib. I hope it's not just the next phase of conflict, but I have some fears. There are a lot of players on the board, with converging interests. Turkey will be among the first with the ball in their court. Will they pull their (proxy) forces out of Syria and how about the Kurds? The Iranian block becomes stronger. Israel is not happy, there is always something about oil, wuddabout US, etc.

I'm glad there is no mention of those sorts in the article, for I would have stopped reading them. I'm not going to debate these subjects, I think it is suffice to say that both ('floodgate muslim immigration from Turkey' and the 'EU Sharia') are populist myths. Also, I miss how those are correlated? Turkey doesn't feature a Sharia law; besides there is no such thing as 'the Sharia law'. In The Netherlands (and I suspect the UK also) there already is the possibility for mediation, instead of formal courts, when parties want to settle a civil dispute. If they do wish the mediation to follow certain religious rules, that is fine as long as it is within the boundaries of the law (and all parties agree to it). Different religious groups do make use of this freedom and have been doing that for a while. It is nothing new, nor is there any small chance of our constitution being replaced with religious books.

Thanks for the link, interesting read.

Well said.

LoL nice one.

I'm with 'combative man' here I don't see the merit of artificially limiting the pauses to 15 , 30 , 45 secs and so forth for RT. Basically that's like WEGO with a twist. I'm personally not against adding options for WEGO games which allow you to do that (although also not on my wishlist). But why limit RT? You can already limit yourself by just hitting the pause button according to the rules you make up. I think it's a bad idea to force those rules upon every RT game.

First, nothing wrong with a critical while civil discussion. I consider your post as civil What I find interesting though, is how you come to feel disrespected because you had to check for yourself that the game didn't release in July. You even agree that not much was lost, just the activity of checking the website.

Thanks for the interesting video! Based on his video I would draw a different conclusion though (different than that of the video author). A significant faster boot time or load time for games (which ofcourse depends on the rest of the hardware and the game), is worth it for me as a 'boot' disk and or disk where I put my stuff one that I want to load quickly. Price per GB might be double, but so are certain load times. Anyway obviously in a budget system one wouldn't go for a highend SSD like the 960. But when your building a highend machine and spend 1500 (or in my case more like 2500) on it in total, It's my opinion that a 50-100 euro difference is worth it. It might be double the price, but that price is still in proportion to the build. Maybe if one goes for a SSD only setup that the NVMe's get very expensive. I need at least a few TBs of storage, which would become quite expensive if I build that on 960 evo's. Like everything, in the end it always comes down to requirements.

Another thing that I noticed after my previous post: the '1.000 GB HDD' is a bit underwhelming, as there are 2TB (and 3 or 4TB) HDD's available for more or less the same price (from €20,- more). Since your (also) dutch I can advise the following website for (regularly updated) reference system builds: https://tweakers.net/reviews/6497/desktop-best-buy-guide-september-2018.html PS I see they also advise on the Crucial MX500 (1TB), which strangely enough implement a SATA interface over a M.2 connector. So, they are vastly inferior with regards to read and write speed compared to the Samsungs 960 series that use a PCIe interface. I haven't actually tried comparing them in a setup, so I don't know if I would notice the difference with regards to speeds. I do believe in math though, 6x read speed and 3x write speed is substantial.

Strange that they don't offer any other options in such a case, they're losing out €. I have had some ordeals with DELL over the years (profesionally), although I must say that they have generally proved to be a reliable and adequate company; they certainly didn't have problems taking money lol. Anyhow since you have found Mediamarkt accepting your €, the point is moot. With regards to your very recognizable 'startup requirement' and the reference system offered by the German magazine: the Samsung EVO (you hopefully have ordered) is vastly superior to the Crucial MX500 series. The main reason for that is the interface: the Crucial MX500 utilizes a SATA interface whereas the Samsung EVO series utilize a M.2 / PCIe 3.0 interface. This means the Samsung EVO (i have the 960 500GB) offers 3.200MB/s read speed and 1.500MB/s write speed, while the MX500 offers 560MB/s read and 510MB/s write respectively. I see now that the Samsung EVO 960 'only' costs €80,- for 250GB and €150,- for the 500GB version. In other words, my system starts up instantly. That is, it takes a few seconds for the 'BIOS screen procedure' to finish and than almost instantly I get the windows prompt. For this to work the OS needs to be installed on the SSD of course, although I have moved 'my documents' etc to my HD. In any case, congratulations with the new system! I'm sure you'll enjoy it, it will play CM and ARMA3 fine.

Built a new pc last year (goal: discrete high end gaming system; no LED arrays or extra overclock capabilities, just high spec quality components). i7 7700K Nvidia 1080 MSI mobo 16GB DDR4 (matched set of high spec ram) M.2 PCIe-x4 SSD, 256 GB (Samsung evo) 3TB SATA 27" 1440p 165hz IPS (with Nvidia Gsync) Now this wasn't a cheap build as some components were very expensive, but am very pleased with it. Only the monitor was around €800 already and the 1080 wasn't much less iirc. Gsync is a culprit (adds 200), but it's worth it as the days of VSYNC perf issues or tearing frames are over. It does run CM very well. There is massive difference when compared to my previous system (first gen i7 build with updated GFX card). Especially on larger battles, I can play those smoothly now even in RT. The problem with posting builds are that they change every few months. When building a pure CM system I would invest in a CPU. CM is happy with higher clock frequencies. GFX wise any decent recent GFX card will rock your boat. Also, the m.2 PCIe SSD's are REALLY fast. So while they aren't rock cheap, I would 100% advise one. @Thomm depending on what you want to use it for, but I guess gaming: for 50% more (or €427) I would definitely go for the higher spec system. Half of that difference can be explained already by the m.2 PCIe SSD. The i5 is a fine CPU but 2GB extra VRAM is a lot. I expect the i7 will outperform the i5 in CM by quite a margin. Edit: I'm on windows 10 without tweaks. IIRC never installed cortana, there is an option during install AFAIK. The 'ads' don't really bother me, like they don't bother me when I see them elsewhere. I think it's a fine OS for a personal (gaming) computer. All the startup clutter doesn't really matter anymore with the SSD and plenty of RAM available.

I have been making this mistake since 2008 orso. Good to know I'm not alone out there. The Russian FLIR capabilities coupled with the ainet 125mm HE round featured in CMBS do tend to capitalize those mistakes more seriously compared to CMSF.

Just for the sake of critical thinking: how to populate the select menu with all the arrays of available items? There is zero guarantee that even two of the selected vehicles have the same ammo stored up/left. It would surely be helpful during setup phase if one could, for example, give all infantry squads an extra AT-4/RPG-18 and RPG squads 2 extra AT rpg's. At least, that's what I normally do for all my squads (IF!) I expect them to come into contact with armoured vehicles and or tanks. It all depends though, loading everything up has risks of itself as the units carrying the ammo might become casualties, etc etc. Anyway I do agree that ammo loading can be a bit tedious, especially with large games. The challenge in this lies in mitigating the 'wet van behoud van ellende' or literally translated 'the law of conservation of misery'. The interesting part is how to get rid of the tedious effect of hundreds of mouse clicks without taking away the finegrained control. I actually do like the option to load up ammo as I desire, it's just that sometimes I desire to acquire so many items over a battalion that the process gets tedious. And what I do might not be up to someone else's idea's of proper ammo distribution. Another thing is the amount of actions needed to restock a squad in WEGO. The acquire command can't be 'chained' like waypoints can, so one has to babysit the troops entering, acquiring and dismounting the vehicle on a per turn command basis. The easy solution is to just play RT :-). Free thinking: they maybe could make a function that automatically restocks all weapons in a squad with the ammo available in the ammo container/vehicle available to the 'normal' loadout quantity. And or make that function available as a 'move' command which lets the designated unit mount a vehicle, ammo up and dismount in a certain timeframe. Another idea could be to just make the acquire command available when troops are really close to vehicles. I'm pretty sure that this subject has been discussed at lengths before, although it is still interesting to philosophize about. Edit: over the period of years playing CMx2 I have generally moved towards acquiring in a 'just in time' / LEAN fashion. If I expect armoured contact, I will load up extra AT rounds. Since I like to play with and against combined arms forces that tends to happen a lot (forgetting to load up those Javs can be painful!!). But I generally don't load up on other ammo during setup anymore, I do focus on factoring general logistics/supply capabilities into the way I deploy into battle / tactics . The whole tedious part becomes much less tedious if you just roll with what you got and only (re)load when necessary or opportune. Works for me and probably also leads to better tactics.

I don't see much value in comparisons. Why can he do this but I can't? etc Also I thought this subject was addressed in Steve's posts last months. He basically agreed that they had be silent for too long. Also he explained why he won't be doing weekly/monthly dev updates or the likes of that. Steve explained that for him there is no easy 'going on the forum for a minute'. If he goes, he goes full retard ;-). All kidding aside, I understand that when he posts something he wants to be there to read the response and reply follow up questions. It's not 'possible' for him to just post something in a few minutes and than move on. First, thinking what to post exactly takes up time. Than he will want to add some this and that to it and before you know it (half) a day has passed. Iirc that's basically his explanation and I dig it. He theoretically could just come on the forum once a week, drop some info while timeboxing himself and go do other things. But that's not how he rolls, which is in the end his decision. Personally, I'm fine with this organized chaos. When the time is right, information will come. If you have interest in the info's, just check the website at your leisure. To entertain you in the mean time, a forum is available to discuss the game if one is not to busy playing it.

I agree that it would be nice to have the option to tell a tank (or whatever) to go shoot and scoot, especially in WEGO. The question is than how long a unit should wait if it can't get a shot at anything, before it should scoot without shooting. However, abstractly this is already implemented in the (realtime) game. You tell a tank to move somewhere and wait till it shoots, than tell it to go scoot (although in WEGO you are limited giving orders once per minute). You can tell how long it should wait, or just wait for the next turn to give the scoot order. What we seem to desire is a function where a unit can be told to pause at a waypoint, until a shot is fired AND OR a timer expires. Anyway, in my experience the pause system works fine given the niche need. There are few instances where I would really benefit from a shoot and scoot command, but overall I think my user experience wouldn't change that much (although I agree that less admin would be a bless for CM). In the current situation I usually just let units sit on a place for a (couple of) turns, before scooting. It is only in specific duel situations that a shoot and scoot order with more finegrained controls over the current pause timer functionality would really make a difference. It sure won't ease up on the 'command' burden, as you'd still have to tell for how long you want to wait before scooting anyway.