Omenowl

I have seen demonstrations with .50 bullets fired into brush and it still alters trajectory of the bullet. To say concealment does not give cover would be somewhat imprecise. Brush won't stop the bullets, but it will deflect them and it is much better than nothing.

I was the one who recommended altering the lethality of the weapons. I thought it was too high, but under the same situation I was also worried that if it was tweaked too much that casualties would be so low and the battles so long that it would not be fun. 2 companies of men fight and after 2 hours maybe 20 casualties per side, while technically high is not very satisfying. It does need to be tweaked and this is not an argument. Snipers should be more lethal and regular soldiers should be less so. Cover should have more effect along with concealment. HE should be less lethal to soldiers who are prone. Still I don't want to sacrifice fun for pure realism, which is where my worry lies.

Well the argument is the game is too lethal. The opposite problem is if you try to make it overly realistic we might be looking at casualties in single digits for both sides. We might also be faced with only getting kills by artillery, javelins and vehicles unless you walk right up on a guy. Maybe there needs to be a higher penalty for range, environmental variables (dust storms, haze, temperature, etc), troop quality, equipment quality and fatigue. The question for us all is how much? Do I really need 7000+rpgs fired to take down a few vehicles? Do I need irregular forces to outnumber my guys 10+ to 1 to get good results and 14 hours? And this is if I want to represent Somalia 1993. I am all for realism as long as it is playable.

Steve, Could you put an option somewhere to tweak up the accuracy or down the accuracy depending on how lethal we want the battlefield? Maybe depending on the level we like to play (elite, veteran, etc). Currently, while I think the accuracy is high for all sides I am also worried that if we make the accuracy much more realistic we won't be able to kill anything without javelins or vehicles at medium ranges.

My father had a friend who was a platoon leader in Vietnam. He said his unit was in a gully and they were fired on from 25 meters away by AK-47s. Not a single person in the unit was hit despite having the enemy shoot down the gully. I have also seen demonstrations with tompson submachine guns, 7.62 fully automatic rifles and the ak-47 at targets. Only the first 2-3 rounds in a burst would hit the target at 30 yards. I don't know about SAWs, M-16 or M-4s for their automatic fire accuracy, but I definitely think automatic fire is probably overly accurate at longer distances unless it is braced or setup.

I thought the average for all wars before vietnam was 1 kill per 10000 rounds. This does not include wounded, etc. A sniper was at 1:1.7. Vietnam was 1 kill per 100000. That said we are also looking at a lot more bullets being shot by vehicles (no one ever said exactly which rounds were being fired). I don't think the problem is with the weapons being too accurate, but rather the soldiers calmness under fire. It is very easy to shoot on a range. Try running with 50 lbs of gear for a mile and then shooting. Very different results. Most soldiers don't fire their weapons past 125 yards. So I think being accurate in combat is more the exception rather than the rule.

Somalia wasn't a fair fight and I am sure we can point out in several situations where American forces were in danger of being overrun. I don't expect the massive clashes of WW2 to be in CMSF, but still it is not unreasonable to assume at some point Americans won't have the upperhand. They will lack air support or artillery and the rescue is 30 minutes away. This is fun to me playing blue. Will I survive till the end of the battle and at what cost? This tests my mettle. My only complaint about CMSF setting is lack of terrain. I would love to see trees, snow, mist, sandstorms, fog, night, etc. I think this is the bigger pro for WW2 because you could fight anywhere.

I don't find WW2 that much more appealing than some other areas. I don't see Tarawa or guadalcanal missions that much. Same with Iwo Jima. It seems to be a much more romantic affiliation with with WW2 than the actual tactical detail. I don't favor tactics with a meatgrinder. That willingness to accept casualties or throw in untrained soldiers into combat does not exactly appeal to me. There wasn't that much manuever at the tactical level because the grunts were on foot. Then we have modern combat. You have vehicles to move around. Losses of any kind are not acceptable. The room for error has diminished. When you have a squad pinned you try to do everything you can to keep them alive. Close combat is much more lethal, but I still don't lose that many more men than I did in CMBO when it got close. I feel this is the real difference between CMBO and CMSF. I care about my people. 3 dead and 10 wounded is a failure on my part because so many were lost, but in CMBO that might be pretty good because I only lost that few. Try the ambush scenarios where you try to rescue your guys and they are low on ammo. Desperation sets in, whereas in CMBO you just hoped they layed low and would get out. The really funny thing is if you look up losses in battles from Cannae up to now modern combat is actually less lethal...

I don't avoid MOUT anymore than any other modern day commander. I do find that I need to have smaller squads split in half. Move them slowly to support and that I have to understand I can't manually target due to LOF issues. So I usually use a firing arc and hope they do the spotting for me. I tend to drop off my troops with the cover of smoke. I drive to a location, drop smoke and then dismount so they can arrive in one piece. The squads are split into javelin carriers and the rest. As for the problem with mission 2 in the campaign is the time limitation. It causes me to move abnormally fast rather than concentrate fire and move forward. Some of the other missions are much better.

I think it could be modeled with a tertiary weapon if they are out of ammo and within a short range (7 meter or so). Each weapon has a range it won't be used (grenades for example or a unit with a sniper).

I tend to agree with the complaint. I would love to have a speed or time bar to determine what is going on. They have it for a few other games to speed up the action. A 4x or an 8x would be plenty (as long as you could keep it like that during the processing phase). With a fast computer it takes only a few seconds for all the processing.

I tend to use hunt and to break squads up. The problem is 10 guys do stranger things than 5. Smoke has never quite worked for me for infantry so I rarely use it (vehicle smoke I use all the time especially when dismounting). Make sure your squads can provide suppressive fire for each other. This means putting soldiers on rooftops to provide overwatch and generally moving at a slow pace so the rest of the platoon can help suppress any enemies found. Your machine guns along with vehicles are some of the best to provide suppressive fire. Also your men depending on the amount of ammo they have will fire accordingly. I almost always give my men full ammo. It makes them tire more quickly, but I found they will blaze away with much more intensity. If one group gets bogged down just leave them in place. Don't force them forward as you will just get them killed. Flank or try to bring troops from a different direction to help clear an entrenched enemy. Finally for the antitank weapons I usually leave the team with them furthest back It is much easier and safer to have a javelin fire from a far range and it is less affected by range than bullets.

Odd when I played the nightstalkers mission it seemed the enemy had almost 0 visibility unless I was firing. My troops on the other hand seemed to hardly notice it was night. I am not sure if this was the AI or simply the fact I couldn't be seen. Many time I would have guys literally walk up and shoot the syrians at point blank range. The average ranges were probably less than 50 meters for combat.

Democrats are never to be spelled out with capitals only in lowercase IE dems=democrats, Digital Elevation models=DEMs. Both are all over the map, but one has values that are fairly static and is reliable. One is free and the other takes money out of you wallet. One was money well spent producing and the other is unpalatable choice amongst many unpalatable choices.

Being far too lazy to actually be involved in every government decision I must admit I lean more to a republic style of government. Still it would be fun to have Fort hood or Knox war games or a civil war in the united states without having to do every map from scratch.

I would like to play large maps, but don't have the patience/enthusiasm to do much of the terrain modeling. I was wondering if it was possible to import digital elevation models as grids into the editor as some future point. It would also be nice if the same could be applied to land use cover. Basically go to the USGS website pull up the landcover and DEMs and viola you have a real world location with realistic terrain and contours.

It happens if for some reason the unit hasnt fully dismounted and either the vehicle needs to move or you give another command to the squad while cancelling the original dismount. It seems to confuse the squad on what it should do and the soldiers become trapped.

BFC posts about once or twice a week to let everyone know they are still working on 1.05. The beta testers are letting people know BFC is working on the patch. Every few days someone whines because Steve doesn't comment on their post and then throws a hissie fit saying BFC doesn't care even when a beta tester chimes in. There are a lot of problems with the game. Same are minor (overly accurate RPGS) and some are major (multiplayer and quickbattles). BFC knows there are problems, they have commented on them and unless they having something new to say I would rather them keep on working to fix them than try to address every post.

Evenly matched opponents in war become attrition and even higher casualties than a clearly superior vs. inferior opponent. Want to see a very bloody war between two roughly equal opponents then look at WW1, WW2 or even Iran vs. Iraq. I think we all know how bloody Iraq would have been in Gulf War 1 or 2 if it had been a fair fight.

Cost is a major reason. This isn't putting your dog to sleep. You can't get rid of an old horse by selling it to a slaughter house since congress passed the stupid bill shutting them down. So you have an animal you purchased for 500-1000 dollars 15-20 years ago (or it was given to you). It is dieing and a vet will charge for the house call and then will charge for the medicine which is probably more than the horse was worth. This also does not include death sentences such as a broken leg, cancer or a few other conditions where a vet is useless. I do admit I have a bias for the .45 vs. 9mm. The fact the .45 came out to combat muslim extremists in the Phillipines because the .38 lacked enough power is good reason. I have heard 40% of gunfights are within 8ft, 80% are within 21 feet (FBI statistics supposedly, but can't verify a definitive source). A former policeman told me the average of gunfight had only 2 rounds fired. So I don't need the rounds unless I am shooting wildly in most cases. So I want a pistol that has enough rounds (5-7 is plenty though I have seen 14 rounds for certain pistols), an extra clip, enough stopping power for man or beast and a weapon I like to shoot. Also the .45 round tends to go subsonic so silencers can be used if needed without losing its effect. So that is why I favor a .45. I like the .357 revolver because of a revolver's reliability (a round won't fire then just go the next chamber).

If you have to put down an injured horse or cattle then you definitely want a round that can do it.

You are probably looking at rounds that create an explosive to stun or cripple the enemy. Theoritically if the soldiers can carry large enough rounds you are going to look at some kind of HEAP round to penetrate the newest armor. I am all for mobile infantry suits.

I favor a highly accurate pistol with enough weight that I don't hurt my hand with the recoil (give me a larger pistol vs. a snub nose anyday). A .45 or .357. I am not a big fan of 9mm rounds. It needs enough kinetic energy to put down a horse.

I have had similar problems, but not as much bad luck with teams. The larger squad sizes definitely make the unit stupider.

I have played a few quick battles setting everything to random. The problem is the battles have no enemies. This has happened twice and I am trying to understand if this is because of the CMMOD maps or is it just the quick battle has a problem if everything is set to random?