Dietrich

When LOS/LOF seems wonky, I don't worry about it.

Numerous times I've come up against instances where a unit of mine can't target or can see but not target an enemy unit or a building or what have you. But when this happens, I don't think "there must be something wrong with the game"; I think "there must be more going on than meets the eye", and either I make whatever miniscule correction is needed or I just shrug and continue playing.

No wonder the Landsers called forest fighting Grünhölle (green hell). All the same, I'm looking forward to the eventual CMx2:Eastern Front.

In my experience of being on the receiving end, an MBT (Abrams, Challenger) can take multiple RPG hits from the front quarter without being knocked out, but an AFV/IFV (Stryker, Bradley, etc.) is more often than not knocked out by the first RPG that hits it. Counterbalancing that, however, I have done tests which revealed that dud RPG rounds are modeled; and occasionally a Bradley or Warrior of mine 'takes a licking but keeps on ticking'. But plenty of times my AFV/IFV (this is rather less common with MBTs) is "destroyed" by a round that doesn't wound/rattle any of the crew and doesn't damage any of the listed componentry more than a small green x.

Yeah, my experience with that scenario ("3:10 to Yuma", right?) is that I lose as many as a third of my guys just trying to make it to the police station, especially if I have the humvees unbuttoned. As far as I can make out, this is for several reasons: 1. A humvee gunner is rather exposed, even when the weapon mount shield is between him and the incoming fire. (Compare this with the wraparound protection that humvee gunners enjoy nowadays; and the amount of fire they typically receive is rather less than in any given CMSF scenario.) 2. Going medium speed or slower in this scenario means risking an even greater degree of effective fire, including RPGs. But the faster a humvee goes (as far as I can tell), the less capable the pixeltruppen riding therein are of spotting enemy units. And the faster a humvee goes, the less capable the gunner is of bringing effective fire to bear on enemy units, both because of the aim-spoiling effect of the vehicle's movement and because of the weapon mount's traverse rate. 3. Most of the uncon Red units are stationary in the first phase of the scenario (driving along the road to the police station), and they're able to bring fairly effective fire on the humvees from multiple directions simultaneously. 4. If a vehicle has to make a course correction of more than about 30 degrees, it slows to a crawl, and its vulnerability to fire increases exponentially. In this scenario, I take great care with each humvee's waypoints so they can maintain relatively high speed as they progress along the movement path. I've lost many a humvee (and the pixeltruppen riding in them) around that hairpin turn at the corner of the field. :-/

At least some of the weaponry -- namely single-handed swords -- in RH (judging by what the trailer shows) is somewhat more accurately contemporaneous than in Scott's previous medieval film, Kingdom of Heaven, where the hero wielded a fairly not-late-12th-century-looking hand-and-a-half sword and used tactics which looked like they were gleaned from a 15th-century Italian fencing manual. As much as I love picking apart history-derived movies and making note of the inaccuracies or even outright falsehoods therein, I've come to realize that movies about events and people that happened in the past all suffer from a baseline minimum degree of inaccuracy because of several things: (1) drama is always more important to moviemakers and moviegoers than historical fact; (2) moviegoers are pretty much ignorant of historical fact; what little they "know" about history is based more on myth, legend, and misconception than on documented reality; (3) historical accuracy is oftentimes and to varying degrees difficult to achieve technically and logistically. So they might as well make yet another movie about Robin Hood, even one which purports to be the most historically plausible version thereof. Because the public is so ignorant of historical realities that even if a 100% historically accurate movie were to be made, they wouldn't know the difference and thus would be unable to appreciate or enjoy it. In fact, a truly accurate historical movie -- especially one about people and events 900 or so years ago -- would be relatively hard to understand for the average moviegoer because people in, for example, early 13th century England thought, talked, acted, fought, loved and dreamed differently than early 21st-century Americans.

Now that you mention it, what is the British Army practice WRT the Warrior's ammo load-out? Not to be yet another person semi-derailing this thread, but in what regard do the British infantry ammo loads seem wrong to you? (I ask, not because I think they're correct, but because I'm curious what perception you have of it.)

Thanks very much for the insight. My own attempts at scenario design have hardly gone beyond alpha (mostly because of the daunting-ness of making larger-than-small maps), but I'll gladly file this info in the ol' gray matter for future reference. And I look forward to your Ramadi scenarios. =)

Finally, some NATO module bones!* Excellent work, Webwing! I've seen equivalent colored flag patches on MARPAT and ACU. Makes sense to have such patches blend in with with the uniform's overall coloration. * not everyone is fixated solely on CM:N

Fowler's cites the OED throughout. I may have at times come across as a keyboard-mashing refresh monkey who doesn't know his M16 from his M4 (or even his M1), but if there's one thing I know more about than the average joe (or at least the American average joe), it's the English language and how to use it.

The way I see it, the CMSF forum is going to be populated as much by Peng-ish threads (or by Peng-ish posts within other threads) as by actual CMx2-related threads until the CM:N forum is created.

*shrug* What's your source? Mine's The New Fowler's Modern English Usage3rd ed. Fowler's says: However, in a previous subheading under the entry compare it points out: Besides, I'm not British.

Sorry, no. For one thing, my pre-alpha mock-ups showed that the battle would be extremely hard to simulate in a way that would be true to the actual event but would also be playable or fun to any extent. For another thing, I've gotten the impression that a lot of people regard the Qala-i-Jangi incident not as a battle but more as something resembling a massacre, and thus the level of interest in any scenario based on the event would be rather low. In the meantime I've been working on other scenarios, but only time will tell if I'll be able to bring those to fruition.

Throughout the Middle Ages, people of the nobility in Western Europe often bemoaned the relative lack of "chivalry" (or, rather, what is nowadays generally thought of as "chivalry") among the contemporary generation compared to the previous one.

Not dissimilarly, Americans still think Britons' conversation is characterized by words and expressions like "cheerio", "I say, I say", and the like. As I understand it, this stems from the contact American soldiers had with British ones during the First World War. Thus the typical idea Americans have of British informal speech is nearly a hundred years out of date.

And here I figured they were working hard on CM:N so as to get everyone off their backs so they could work on CM:A and the NATO module in peace. So maybe the NATO module isn't as far off as I figured it was? *shrug* A man can dream.

Being in no way a sock grog, I'm in no position to light a fire under this thread.

Hm, curious. I didn't read any particular rude-ness or snippy-ness in MikeyD's post, at least not enough to warrant comment. To me it looked no different than his usual observations, just sans any emoticon. *shrug*

In his tomely Blood, Tears, and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II, Len Deighton writes (italics mine, parentheses his): So while some folks in the former USSR claim[ed] that Western intelligence agencies inflated casualty figures for Cold War propaganda purposes, some folks in the West express[ed] shocked disbelief of how ruthless and profligate the Soviet Union was with its own military forces.

I wouldn't be surprised if it came to light that BFC were putting most of their effort into CM:N, if only so as to get the WW2-fixated folks off their backs so they could finish the NATO module in relative peace. In other words, I'd be surprised if the NATO module were to come out before CM:N.

When I saw this video of a US Army tank crew crushing an Iraqi's car, a lot of questions occurred to me. Did it ever occur to them that their actions would teach the Iraqis present, not to no longer loot, but to be even more sympathetic to and cooperative with insurgents? What excuses did they make to their LT or PSGT about coming back with fewer full pistol magazines than they had when they left? If their LT or PSGT even found out the reason why they had few full pistols mags when they got back to the FOB (i.e., if they found out about the incident itself), did the tankers get a chewing-out about misusing their weapons and their vehicle? Did the tankers' buddies express any sort of disapproval, or did they congratulate them for "showin' the hajjis they can't get away with ****"? If any of the tankers' buddies did disapprove, was their expression of disapproval muffled or silenced by their sense of loyalty to their brothers-in-arms? In other words, aren't junior NCOs and enlisted men more likely to cover each other's backs than to risk seeming traitors to the primary group by expressing disapproval of each other's misbehavior?

Speaking of circularity, can we ease up with the constant striving to sound smarter and more worldly-wise than each other? (I say "we" because I too have to resist this tendency.) I fail to see how this discussion can be served by always trying to make the other guy sound like he's an insensitive ignoramus. Is it really reasonable to think that that is what bitchen frizzy means? Isn't it more reasonable to reckon that he means "don't send full-on combined-arms forces to do police-style COIN work, especially when they're not specifically trained for it"? It sounds to me like what he says shows that he does have a grasp of and a concern about "the larger issues involved outside of the battlefield". Isn't he basically saying that using a combined-arms army to conduct nation-building does create innumerable future mujahideen and is a problem?

Am I the only person (among those that posted in this thread) who is suspicious of WikiLeak's framing of the video and its contents? The right calls into question the authenticity of the video (as Fox News has done), while the left uses particular word choice and careful editing in an effort to elicit the maximal sense of anguish and outrage in the viewer (as Democracy Now! has done). I don't question the authenticity of the video. I don't question that civilians (including children and journalists) were killed. I don't question that the Apache pilots should be indicted accordingly. I do question WikiLeaks' and certain media outlets' presentation of the video. "Collateral Murder"? "Indiscriminate slaying"? "Massacre"? I deduce that neither the assessments and assertions made by conservative media or the US military nor those made by liberal media provide a clear picture of what happened. WikiLeaks claims to be showing what modern war is really like while simultaneously using the general public's ignorance of how modern warfare is actually conducted to frame the video in a certain way. Yet anyone who doesn't say "oh, how horrible!" or "those murdering scum pilots..." or words to that effect is apt to be painted as a debased right-winger who doesn't care about civilians getting killed and who simply seeks to defend the decisions and actions of the Apache pilots and of the ground commanders. So in effect there is no way to talk about the video and its contents other than to basically reiterate what WikiLeaks and certain non-conservative media have to say about it. Honestly, I would hate to be a US soldier or Marine these days, if only because while deployed I would be getting shot at or blown up at any given time, and while back home I would getting painted as a hero (by right-wing folks) or as a heartless civilian-slayer (by left-wing folks), both inaccurate labels. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Did the Haditha incident (which involved the killing of twice as many Iraqi civilians) get as much press as this? Was there as much of an outcry and as much of a damning of US military personnel? Oh, right, there's no video of that incident. And that incident involved men, women and children being shot by infantry at more or less point-blank range supposedly in retaliation for the killing-by-IED of a Marine rather than being blown away by 30mm cannon fire from a helicopter orbiting about a mile away in an instance of "indiscriminate slaying". Also, that incident happened back in November 2005, when US public opinion about the war in Iraq was not so clearly opposed. I reckon that if WikiLeaks had obtained the video and decrypted it and released it in, say, Q4 2007, it would have had less of an impact, because public opinion regarding the war in Iraq (and, though to a somewhat lesser extent, the war in Afghanistan) was less clearly negative. If I were driving through town in my minivan with my kids and I saw a dozen people lying splayed on the ground surrounded by small craters and debris, I wouldn't stop to help any wounded among them, even if I didn't see any weapons on the ground around them. Call me a "bad Samaritan", but I wouldn't endanger my kids that way. Besides, how would I know that whatever had killed these men wasn't still nearby and still ready to dish out more death?

That's not because modding is any more difficult in CMx2 but because far fewer people are interested in non-WW2 warfare. It's yet another thing I look forward to as regards CM:N -- a greater number and wider variety of both mods and scenarios.