Vark

Yeah, because they both put their snipers in steeples!

Can I second the, watch, wait, observe, act cycle. Had some Marine recon move into a building and open up as soon as they saw Syrian Paratroopers in the building opposite. The first time they took three casualties and suppressed the force, but had to rely on more and more assets being employed to help them, End result, a Ko'd LAV and a team out of action and the enemy still lurking, though badly shot up. Next time, I put the recon on hide and short target arcs, they snuck in and watched for 3-4 minutes, locating a sniper, squad of paratroopers and RPG team. As the intel filtered down, I moved assets to prepare for an assault. Once everything was ready, I launched the assault. End result: one lone Syrian survivor retreating, sniper and RPG team dead and best of all, the Syrians had themselves to commit reserves to bolster their defences. Those defences were pinned and a precious BMP-3 lost, with the Marines suffering one red and three yellow casualties. So recon, recon, recon, then plan and only then, strike.

Um, the possibility that the tanks are behaving in an unhistorical manner might constitute more than a 'bit of a weakness' to a game that rightly prides its accuracy, in simulating tactical combat.

True, but the average US soldier carries far more on his person, than his shirt wearing, three mag chest rigged Syrian opponent. Also why is slow so much more labour intensive than assault?

Why is slow so damn exhausting, yet quick, so effortless, even for heavily encumbered soldiers?

Given the map, set up zones, and forces picked, could he ever win anything more than a stalemate?

Thought the Milans were on the Gazelle helicopters that gave the IDF in 82 a scare?

Can't remember the figures, but scores of troops in Grenada came down with heat exhaustion as they has bought as much ammo as they could carry. Trouble was, they has to run around in the heat with it.

Why not specific commands? IIRC, SOP when being attacked by superior RED forces, who have deployed from column to line is to work from the end vehicles inwards and the middle vehicle outwards. SOP's, as in TacOps, have been ruled out by BF, which is a shame, because they gave that game an added dimension, it also allowed concentration on the mission, not stopping to micro-manage units, which is a CM weakness.

Would it be possible for vehicles to be given primary, secondary, tertiary, targets, so that working your way from the outside in, or vice versa, could be simulated? This way an M1 might be given the T-90 as primary, BMP as secondary and some dismounts as tertiary. The AI might overrule, depending on the developing situation (the M1 spots a second T-90 and puts the BMP as the tertiary target, the dismounts drop to fourth).

How effete, airsoft, monocles, mankini's and flip flops. I think c3k's, Khan-like attitude (Khaaaan! Not the Gengis variety) will cause Bil a serious headache. Nice AAR, keep up the bullet bitin', spit in your eye attitude.

I've already suggested disembarking as a waypoint, how about infantry paths originating from the disembarkation point? At the moment, you can plot infantry moves and vehicle moves, but the infantry start from the vehicles present position, which can be confusing. IIRC, in CM 1 APC's could drop infantry and then move, if you gave the infantry orders first, in CM2 you cannot represent standard SOP's without timing debussing till the end of the move.

But in reality, most are not that effective over 300m. Ranged infantry combat in SF, for Blue forces, is often too decisive as a result.

Will they have the ad-hoc, bed sheet camo option, I wonder?

If you want real examples of the response to being under fire, there are thousands of hours of HD footage from the current war zones that show it. Academic books have their uses, but now we have access to a vast amount of primary source material, which can be extrapolated to the conflicts we wish to simulate. Most soldiers, hunker down, if they do fire it's for suppressive fire, and the most often heard comments are. 'I can't see where they are, f*ck what was that? and the ever popular, 'can you see/ whose shooting at us/where it's coming from? Often engagements are under 500m, often far less. After burrowing down, they normally call up support, or occasionally, move tactically to close the range to destroy the enemy. Question is, does CM simulate this dynamic? Should it simulate this dynamic, given the artificial time constraints of scenarios, often the lack of a bigger picture and more importantly its function as a piece of entertainment?

He keeps his girlfriend in a tent, cloaked in a foul miasma of incense and marihuana smoke, for a reason.

Pretty please!

They were too busy bunking off drawing little tanks and stick men shooting at each other, and wondering how they could make them come to life!! Seriously, I agree with you whole heartedly about the benefits of education, it's too damn important to allow the politicians to meddle in it, or pander to special interest groups, every 4-5 years.

Not biting MD, sorry, you keep on believing your 'reality', I'll believe mine. What strikes me about the screen shots is that it really brings home the nightmare XXX Corps had in advancing across narrow elevated roads, in flat terrain. I'd read the accounts, in 'It Never Snows in September', of 88's picking off targets at close on to 3km, you can see how. I'm wondering if BF could do a deal, allowing TV companies use of their terrain models and vehicles, when they make their WWII 'drama documentaries'. Instead of the crappy effects you get now.

Blackcat, wonder where you went to do your PGCE and did you ever put it into practice? Mine was at the UEA, and apart from the mildly left wing academic input, most of the students had already been 'corrupted' to conform to the left-wing orthodoxy well before taking the course. In fact, on my course, we lot were quite conservative, openly mocking the PC elements slipped into our course. As for parental incomes, quite the opposite. I teach students who have flat screen TV's quad bikes and holidays four times a year, but parents who are obsessed with having 'me time' and buy their children's affections with the trinkets listed above. It's even worse for the parents (often not conforming to the BBC stereotype of bankers and the idle, evil rich) who have saved and sacrificed to send their kids to private school, now find the top universities actively discriminating them to fill the Liberal Democrats quotas. I must stop now, I'm about to throw something through a bloody window soon, bottom line I came into teaching as an idealistic pessimist, I fear I will be driven from my vocation, or seek refuge in the private sector again. As for MK, I really hope BF sort out the house to house fighting, as it was essential to so much of the fighting at Arnhem. It will be a real killer if the blind bumping around and regular section massacres continue. We need a specific house clearing mode and ability to restock on grenades, unless the action could degenerate into an orgy of micro-management, and rapid player fatigue. I like giving broad orders and the occasional fiddling, I've found spending hours on precisely timed individual moves, often nets a poorer reward than keeping the pixel troops moving, and focusing on the big picture.

I think Blackcat was having a dig, but I'm sure he can defend himself. Womble, I sympathise with your wife's plight, I have only taught 10 years, but see the end in sight for me, especially if my wife's project takes flight. As for the standard of education, it has weakened since I've been in the profession, especially the core competencies required for A level study, especially self-learning and reading. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10250548/School-standards-threatened-by-early-and-often-GCSEs.html This from todays DT.

Blackcat, as a teacher in a UK comprehensive (now an academy) take care in denigrating all in my profession. The majority of teachers work to keep a Victorian system operating whilst being asked, by society, to remedy its increasingly dysfunctional attitude towards children. My friend in the Foreign Office is increasingly box checking, its a syndrome that occurs in most professions now, apparently, as 'Peter principle' management focus' on claims, instead of the reality. A comprehensive American survey has shown the key enablers to social mobility are, children brought up in two parent families, who support them and who regularly contribute to communities, via church or charities. The former and later are an anathema to successive UK governments, so we have pointless initiatives targeting, various artificially created groups. Universities are suffering from the dumbing down of GCSE's and the restrictive National Curriculum, which both affect A levels, and as you correctly stated the ridiculous 50 idea. Though that was partly because a majority of industries had scaled back their apprenticeship programmes, to save on costs, and most companies need far fewer staff than before. I guess the idea was that with A levels and a university course 5-6 years would be taken up before they hit the job market and by then the magic unicorns would have solved the fundamental problems with the system. As for fees' the previous system was unworkable, with students running up massive debts, due to financial incompetence, which rarely were paid off in total. Western nations need to have a mature debate about the role of education, blaming teachers is the easy option, though some of my colleagues do closely resemble the stereotype, much beloved by the media, the majority I know of don't.

Thanks Jason, just wonder how much of that meticulous picture was created by Russian maskirovka? Especially if the Russians played on the German perception of lax radio op-sec. It might explain the attitude of near-certainty the Germans seemed to evince about Soviet deployments, especially in the mid to latter war years. Or was it just the case that the intelligence picture took so long to build, bottom up, that it always lagged behind the Soviet operational timetable? I thought Stalingrad might have netted valuable intelligence on German capabilities, thanks for confirming it, and it reinforces the idea of Stalingrad being a 'turning point' in many ways.

And yet, operationally, the Russians caught the Germans by surprise, time and time again. Not much good having a good I-comm capability, if you do not use it to build up a bigger picture. Or is the usual fall guy for the Reich's failings, the inflexible Grofaz and his minions responsible? When did the Russians learn about the RDF capability of the Germans, given they were capturing rear echelon units quite early on, or did they never cotton on?

Thought 9K33's had back up manual guidance, via LLTV, in cases of strong ECM environments? From Homs, big whuuump! http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fff_1375361358 Different view http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=16a_1375360739