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Dietrich

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Posts posted by Dietrich

    Squads the size of platoons

    in Combat Mission Fortress Italy

    Posted

    Normal C2

    Company -> Platoon ->Squad/Team

    Italian C2

    Company -> Platoon -> Section (real world a Squad) -> Squad/Team (real world a Team)

    Given that, as of CMBN, the chain-of-command section of the UI accommodates no more than four levels (from top to bottom: squad > platoon > company > battalion), does the greater number of C2 levels with the Italians mean that the corresponding part of the UI is different in CMFI? Or is the Italians' structure different enough that it actually can fit within the existing four-level UI?

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    CMSF in Mainstream Gaming Media

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Seems to me the article basically says that CMSF "gets it wrong" because of the way things currently are with regard to Syria and the West's prospective humanitarian intervention therein. Various parts of the article show that the reviewer was viewing the game consistently through spring-of-2012 eyes, despite mention of the game's stated premise. Of course, that's perfectly understandable, since if it were not for the current political/military situation in Syria, CMSF wouldn't have attracted the reviewer's attention.

    Some observations:

    "C’mon, like NATO is really going to invade Syria? It takes a dictator who bombards his own cities to make life imitate art."

    Except that this isn't a case of life imitating art, it's a case of a reviewer thinking that art is imitating life. Because CMSF's premise isn't based (as the reviewer himself goes on to say) on Assad waging war on the citizens of the country he rules in a time when the US is weary from 10 years of two-country war and when just a year earlier NATO struggled somewhat to successfully conduct a strictly air-to-ground intervention in the Libyan civil war.

    "CMSF postulates a NATO invasion force ... versus a hodgepodge of Syrian forces ranging from elite Republican Guards and commandos to ill-trained irregulars. The scenario is regime change in response to Syrian support for terrorism"

    This makes it sound like one day in early 2008 the West suddenly said "Y'know, we're sick and tired of the Syrians supporting terrorism, so we're gonna invade Syria"; rather similar to how the US invaded Iraq even though the regime of that country had virtually nothing to do with 9/11. Whereas CMSF's stated premise is that terrorists supported by Syria set off dirty bombs in a number of major Western cities.

    "For all the talk" (by whom?) "of boots on the ground, the NATO forces are strong on high-tech vehicles but short on the infantry needed to clear RPG-armed defenders from villages and trenches."

    Methinks the reviewer didn't play any of the scenarios involving USMC infantry.

    "Even as a simulation, CMSF has flaws, especially in not including the swarm of unmanned aircraft that would cover any Western expeditionary force."

    That implies that UAVs, armed as well as unarmed, have at least partially supplanted manned combat aircraft in Western militaries. Is this really so, even in 2012? What percentage of the air-to-ground ordinance expended in Operation Odyssey Dawn was delivered by UAVs?

    "There are no Iranian or Hezbollah fighters supporting Assad..."

    Sure there are. One can have as many guerrillas/irregulars in a scenario as one wants, and they can be as skilled and fanatical as all get out. They're just not labelled "Iranian/Hezbollah fighters in support of Assad".

    "...nor are there Turkish forces, though the power most likely to intervene is Syria’s neighbour to the north."

    I respectfully defer to LongLeftFlank on this point.

    "The real problem with a game like CMSF is that it depicts conflict as the West (or Western wargamers) would like to fight it, as a straight-up fight between conventional armies where firepower, technology and training are the queens of battle."

    In some scenarios/campaigns, yeah. But the game's scenario editor is versatile enough to simulate a not-as-narrow-as-many-may-think range of situations.

    "That may work for World War II. But Syria features a government army that has troops defecting to the rebels, while the rebels themselves — whom the West is supporting — may be under infiltration by al Qaeda."

    That's the way things are in Syria now, in the spring of 2012. And the extent to which such would be true even in the summer of 2008 (the game's particular timeframe) could be simulated through sufficient skill on the part of the scenario designer.

    "Some of the bad guys are good, and some of the good guys are bad. Pity the poor American platoon commander who’s most likely to shoot him in the back."

    "Blue-plus-Red versus Red-plus-different-shade-of-Red" battles are just as feasible as (*yawn*) conventional "Blue versus Red" battles.

    And one can even "program in" some heavy-duty friction (vaguely of the Clausewitzian sort): Say an American platoon commander is supposed to bring his unit to a certain public building in the outskirts of some city in east-central Syria to rendezvous with local rebels; but a car bombing (accidentally by said rebels? intentionally by members of a pro-regime faction? who can say?) kills said American platoon commander along with a vehicle's worth of his men, plus a number of local fighters and civilians.

    The NATO campaigns are much more varied and nuanced with regard to "not fighting the Syrian military" (despite scenarios like that one in the German campaign where you have to withstand an MBT-and-AFV rush, that one which gave folks grief aplenty back before CMSF v1.31 when Marders carried Panzerfaust rockets but no launchers) than the early scenarios/campaigns made for the game, yet even the British campaign has a good number of "by Jove, this is rather bloody asymmetrical" scenarios (like that one where a British platoon is under siege in a police station after a car bombing and the mech-inf QRF has to fight its way down narrow zig-zag streets against roving fighters and has to not 'frag' the allied anti-regime forces also on the map).

    That said, I'd quite like to read LongLeftFlank's take on the review.

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    Market Garden...Was success ever a possibility

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    Off topic but this question burns to be answered: Where did the whole "Hun" thing get started, anyway?

    As per Wikipedia (FWIW):

    On July 27, 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion in China, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany gave the order to act ruthlessly towards the rebels: "Mercy will not be shown, prisoners will not be taken. Just as a thousand years ago, the Huns under Attila won a reputation of might that lives on in legends, so may the name of Germany in China, such that no Chinese will even again dare so much as to look askance at a German."[48]

    This speech gave rise to later use of the term "Hun" for the Germans during World War I. The comparison was helped by the Pickelhaube or spiked helmet worn by German forces until 1916, which was reminiscent of images depicting ancient Hun helmets. This usage, emphasising the idea that the Germans were barbarians, was reinforced by Allied propaganda throughout the war. The French songwriter Theodore Botrel described the Kaiser as "an Attila, without remorse", launching "cannibal hordes".[49]

    The usage of the term "Hun" to describe a German resurfaced during World War II. For example Winston Churchill referred in 1941 to the invasion of the Soviet Union as "the dull, drilled, docile brutish masses of the Hun soldiery, plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts."[50] During this time American President Franklin D. Roosevelt also referred to the German people in this way, saying that an Allied invasion into the South of France would surely "be successful and of great assistance to Eisenhower in driving the Huns from France."[51] Nevertheless, its use was less widespread than in the previous war. British and American WWII troops more often used the term "Jerry" or "Kraut" for their German opponents.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hun#20th_century_use_in_reference_to_Germans

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    The BMP-1: Really that bad?

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    The fascination is simple, it's the big what if, that pits two differing design, deployment and fighting philosophies and sees who theoretically would have won. It would also allow a game engine to create the hundreds of conflicts spawned and succoured by the Cold war.

    Fair enough. So I say bring it on and rhetorically ask "Why not a CWTH game?"

    I lived my teens wondering if I'd hear the sirens go, knowing and talking to people who went off to fight this 'phantom conflict'.

    There, methinks, is the proverbial "kicker". I'm a few months shy of 30 years old, whereas (so I infer) y'all who long for a CWTH game are rather older than that. Also I'm relatively new to wargaming (aside from a few flight simulators, my start was with CMBB and CMAK in the mid 2000s), so I don't have a stemming-from-when-the-Cold-War-was-still-ongoing history with such.

    With regard to "arguing the reverse": I don't play Blue and think "Take that, you [insert hateful, propagandistic epithet here]!"; nor do I play Red and think "Take that, you [insert hateful, propagandistic epithet here]!" I'm just a sucker for whoever has the better "toys" and/or the better-developed tactics. My interest in CMSF stems from an interest in military stuff generally; that's why I'm interested in all types of scenarios (Red-vs-Red, Red-vs-Blue, as well as the more "stereotypical" Blue-vs-Red) and in playing all the forces (the various branches of the Syrian military included in the game as well as the several "NATO" forces in addition to the US ones). And I find interesting the juxtaposition/opposition of (late) Cold War-era equipment and tactics with post-Cold War-era equipment and tactics.

    With regard to the bemoaning of Red's capability in CMSF: Y'all must be far better wargamers than I (which would make sense, since some of y'all have been wargaming since before I was born), since only occasionally (e.g. in old (pre-v1.10), not-well-designed scenarios) do I find Red anywhere near an eye-rollingly yawn-inducing walkover as some make it out to be.

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    The BMP-1: Really that bad?

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Some of the sentiments expressed in this thread lead me to the (perhaps wild) surmise:

    What's the second most (after NW Europe circa summer of 1944) fantasized-about, near-fetishized wargaming area/era? Cold War turned hot, Central Europe, circa 1985.

    Would someone perhaps elucidate just why (some) people are so droolingly keen to wargame this strategic scenario? Is it because such never actually came to pass (i.e. the Cold War never turned hot and in fact fizzled out altogether)? Is it because NATO spent decades preparing for such an eventuality but never had occasion to employ the fruits of its preparation? Is it the implicit assumption that such an eventuality would somehow not entail the subsequent use of nuclear weapons by both sides?

    That said, I'd still be interested in playing a NATO-vs-Warsaw-Pact c.1985 Cold-War-turned-hot game.

    It seems that the BMP3 has been infected with the same incompetence as the BMP1 too. Seemingly they just get wasted by bradleys left right and center even after scoring several direct cannon hits.

    In my experience, BMP-3s are not to be taken lightly, even if one is playing Blue and has MBTs. Sure, a BMP-3 is apt to explode spectacularly if one's Abrams scores a hit or if a TOW from one's Bradley finds its mark. But I find that with the firepower BMP-3s can dish out and their superior (to that of their forebears) targeting, I'm wary of just driving my Abrams and Bradleys into their LOF like I would be with BMP-1s.

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    Deffinetly a very nasty bug

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    The wife walks into my Bunker...

    Wait... you have a bunker, and she can just walk inside? Clearly, your first problem is security. The question of what you should do when the wife infiltrates your bunker and demands to be taken shopping shouldn't have to be asked if the proper security measures are in place. That, or she's capable of defeating your security measures.

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    bug: specific unit un-rename-able

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    The USMC FiST Team can't be renamed.

    I found this out in the course of designing a scenario. I wanted certain units to have specific names so I could refer to them by such in the briefing. As you can see, I gave Kilo Company's CO the name West:

    CMShockForce2011-10-2221-01-46-55.jpg

    And the name shows up in 3D mode accordingly:

    CMShockForce2011-10-2221-01-27-38.jpg

    As for the FiST unit, what should be Vegapacheco shows up as Santos:

    CMShockForce2011-10-2221-00-28-97.jpg

    With the name reset to default, the name is different, but also the leadership modifier is different (all the units in this formation have the same "soft" settings):

    CMShockForce2011-10-2221-20-39-11.jpg

    I double-checked this in the editor and found that in both USMC infantry formations (Infantry Battalion and Marine Expeditionary Unit) every FiST unit is un-rename-able.

    Granted, CMSF's development is done, so it's not like this will get fixed it some upcoming patch, but I figured it'd be better to let y'all BFC folks know about it; and there are probably other individual units in various other formations which are un-rename-able. If nothing else, tis for the forum a bit of ever-so-mild amusement and for me some practice putting pics in posts.

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    Request while we wait.

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    ...all the Brits (and their offshoots) are doing is advertising the sad fact that a thousand years ago we lost a war to the French.

    But said "French" weren't actually French, at least not entirely/mostly — they were the descendants of the Norse Viking conquerors who settled in the former kingdom of Neustria (part of the Kingdom of France), which historically had a mostly Frankish population.

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    F-22s and Typhoons

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    According to what I've read, OIF benefitted considerably from the nearly decade-long SEAD/no-fly-zone campaign conducted against Iraq in the form of Operation Southern Watch and Operation Northern Watch — by the time OIF actually launched, the Iraq integrated air defense system (IADS) was so thoroughly suppressed that pretty much all the SAM/AAA fire against Coalition fast movers was ballistic (i.e. without radar guidance).

    I don't know how formidable or extensive the Syrian IADS would be in the 2008 of CMSF, but I reckon that the coalition SEAD effort would probably have to be rather more strenuous than it was immediately prior to and during OIF. Given that in CMSF's 2008 the Iraq and Afghanistan "wars" would (as far as I know, anyway) still concurrently be ongoing, the number of aircraft available for deployment against Syria would be fewer and would be probably be busier; on the other hand, thankfully the broader coalition support against Syria would take up some of that slack — in the SEAD role, for instance, the Luftwaffe could employ its Tornado ECRs.

    Granted, such is in several ways beyond the scope of CMSF itself; but I, for one, find it interesting to contemplate not only the tactical ground aspect of the hypothetical invasion of Syria but also the strategic aspects and the air and sea forces involved. The more I read about OIF and its various aspects, the better sense I get of how the Syrian invasion (Operation Nemesis?) would probably be conducted, and the better I understand how to translate that into realistic and detailed scenarios for CMSF that I hope to eventually make.

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    CMSF Celebrity Deathmatches - Draft your 'Dream Team'

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Assuming you could draft a 'dream team' for a H2H game, what would you choose?

    Recce Vehicle: Insofar as it doesn't have dismount-able scouts, I rather like the Coyote. But since dismounts can be quite handy (granted, we are talking about H2H, which tends to involve players rushing to engage each other rather than carefully reconnoitering beforehand), I'd go with the M2A3 – its TOWs can take out MBTs (when necessary), its cannon and coax are good against everything else (except BMP-3s >.<), and its protection is good (even without ERA).

    IFV: CV9035NL – great marks across the board; though the cannon's rate of fire, while helping ensure that its targets get knocked out right quick, tends to exhaust its ammo supply in fairly short order.

    MBT: M1A2 SEP TUSK Abrams – excellent marks all around, plus hunter-killer capability (though I'm sure Damian90 would probably assert differently on that point).

    Anti-Armor: Javelin, hands down.

    Infantry: USMC rifle squad – more firepower per fireteam than any other infantry squad in the game, plus more light AT assets per fireteam (though such aren't as hefty as the PzF3, of course) than their US Army counterparts.

    Sniper: L115A3 / C14 Timberwolf (.338 Lapua Magnum) – excellent range and terminal ballistics; more portable than a .50 BMG weapon.

    Artillery: Panzerhaubitze 2000 – über-precise targeting makes for optimum ammo employment; accurate enough to score knock-out hits on stationary armor in fire missions as short as a few rounds.

    Fixed-Wing: A-10A – more LGBs/ATGMs than any other fixed-wing asset, plus a great onboard cannon.

    Rotary-Wing: AH-64D / AH-1 – highly effective chain gun, highly effective missiles (I find that rockets are fine when they're on target but are a waste of ammo when they're not).

    A smart Taliban kid with the smarts to rig up a cell phone to take control of a UAV and block the electronics of all the above toys so they have no C2.

    I haven't ever seen UAVs or Taliban in CMSF; nor have I ever witnessed comms-jamming in game. Have you, BlackMoria?

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