Dietrich

That's because of the Stryker's FCBC2; and no, not all friendly units know the position of the spotted enemy unit five seconds later. Even two infantry units on the same action spot might not both detect the same enemy unit. If a BMP-1 spots an enemy unit, do all Red units know the position of that enemy unit five seconds later? From what I've read, I get the sense that a lot of the "problems" people have with spotting are due to not playing on the Iron difficulty setting, which enforces the full spectrum of realism rules in terms of spotting, C2, etc. As Steve himself has recommended several times, folks who worry about borg spotting in CMx2:WW2 should play a few games of CM:SF with Red forces, especially Uncons.

Seeing such assiduously well-built infantry and vehicle models makes my head spin with imaginings of the vast and varied number of mods folks are no doubt going to make. Keep up the awesome work!

I understand the randomization, at least as regards how it applies to textures; in fact, just the other day I was poring over Birdstrike's ragtagging guide and fiddling with Angryson's dusty USMC infantry skins to make a quasi-ragtag mod. When you say "model 1.mds", etc., is "model" equivalent to "us-marine" in "us-marine.mds"? How does this relate to the code below? us-marine.mds us-marine-lod-1.mds us-marine-lod-2.mds us-marine-lod-3.mds us-marine-lod-4.mds us-marine-lod-5.mds Does this mean that if I created multiple *.mds files named "us-marine 1.mds", "us-marine 2.mds", etc., randomization would be introduced amongst the models? Would I need to correspondingly create multiple *-lod-#.mds files to match the multiple "us-marine #.mds" files?

It works! Thank you so much for discovering this! Now my US pixeltruppen have more practical SAWs! Randomization of models? Could you please explain this a little more? Does this mean that one could, for example, replace USMC infantry with US Army infantry models (so that the USMC pixeltruppen don't have tinted goggles) without having to swap the infantry textures? I tried replacing the USMC infantry models with the US Army infantry ones, but then my devil dogs were wearing ACU. :-/

Looks real good, tagge! I, for one, would very much appreciate being able to see the particular loadout for any given subunit of a certain formation at a glance. =)

*reckons the fact that none of the pictures with 'big hooters' have been removed is proof that the folks of BFC (or just Steve) are busy working on the game everyone is [im]patiently waiting for*

True. My original point was that although the male protagonist in Avatar is referred to as a "marine", this is simply in accord with sci-fi convention; it need not be seen as any sort of implicit jab against the much-decried wars currently being waged by actual Marines (Royal and otherwise). Perhaps no less-inaccurate term (with regard to infantry which operate extraterrestrially) has caught on because of the implicit metaphorical view of space as akin to the ocean; in other words, evidently spacefaring is seen to a great extent as an extension of the seafaring that humans have been doing for millenia.

But in those designations (the Spanish and the French, at least; I don't know about the Russian), none of the words are cognate with "naval" or "sea". "Infantería de marina"/"Troupes de marine" could be translated as "sea infantry" or "naval infantry", but they are not often referred to as such. Thus you yourself show that some nations other than the United States do refer to their amphibious infantry as "marines".

With the NATO module not even announced yet, I figured there might just be time available for BFC to at least consider a few requests which I reckon could be feasible to introduce with the NATO module or with a subsequent patch. 1. M24 Sniper Weapon System -- Since the US Army's contract with Remington for M24s ended only last month and CMSF takes place in the summer of 2008, and since v1.21 provided Mk 11 sniper rifles to USMC pixeltruppen, could US Army units be provided M24s along with their M110s and M107s? After all, the M24 is built from the same rifle (the Remington 700) as the USMC's M40, which is already in the game. (Granted, the rifles are effectively rebuilt at Quantico to become M40s; and I understand that the M40 is built from the short-action version of the Remington 700 and the M24 from the long-action version.) 2. Vehicle suspensions -- Seeing a vehicle rock when its gun fires is one of the many little details which add up to make CMSF an excellent game. However, I think the "wobbly-ness" of most vehicles' suspensions could be toned down, in some cases markedly, in other cases only a little. For example, when an Abrams' cupola-mounted M2 machine gun fires, the tank rocks slightly; does even an Ma Deuce have enough recoil to move a 65-ton tank? This means that when an Abrams fires its 120mm cannon, the tank rocks much more than it does in any video I've seen of an Abrams firing its main armament. And when a Bradley IFV rocks a little bit when it fires, not its 25mm Bushmaster but merely its coaxial M240. Similarly, when a car accelerates suddenly from a stop, the front end lifts up. But when a pickup truck (even a non-technical with no passengers) or even a Humvee takes off, it tends to look like it's carrying an especially heavy load in the back, and this appearance lasts for several seconds (until the vehicle has achieved a steady speed). It looks most undignified when a tank repeatedly rocks back and forth on its suspension as it navigates through a wooded area or amid obstacles. 3. HMMWV armament variations -- The in-game US Army Supply Platoon allows the scenario designer to include Humvees (sans crew) for units which may or may not have them normally. Since the Mk 19-armed model already exists and is even found in the TOE of the regular IBCT, would it be feasible to allow Mk 19-armed Humvees in the Supply Platoon with the appropriate Equipment Quality setting?

My 6th-grade teacher was a portly and curmudgeonly black man named Royal King.

Since sniper teams are so valuable yet so vulnerable, when a sniper team of mine spots a valuable target (such as an HMG or ATGM team), I assign the sniper team a long and narrow cover arc which encompasses just the intended target unit. This has the effect of giving the sniper the green light to fire if he has a shot, but the other member(s) of the team continue to hold fire.

I've used it, and it works! =D I wish I could say that I've used it so extensively as to uncover some lingering glitches, but so far it has worked fine.

Ryujin, the mod looks great! Keep up the excellent work. =)

The foremost instance of inordinate grenade-throwing that I've seen was in a pre-v.1.20 playing of the third mission in the "Semper Fi, Syria!" campaign: While crossing the gulley on the left flank, the ten or so men in a USMC rifle squad jogged past a lone cowering Syrian infantryman, then stopped in mid run and each threw at least one grenade at him. Would having two men throw one grenade each (so as to conserve grenades and use them more efficiently) be more characteristic of a well-motivated veteran squad or of poorly-motivated green squad? Perhaps the number of grenades thrown at a time could be tied to order type. A squad given a Target order at enemy infantry 35 meters away could have several men throw grenades in a volley, whereas a squad with a Target Light order could have just one or two men throw grenades. It would accord with real-life practice (wouldn't it?) if Blue infantry shouted "Frag out!" when throwing grenades and "Grenade!" when taking cover from enemy frags. Another boost to immersion would be two sets of voice files -- a normal-volume set for when troops are observing or on the move, and a high-intensity shouted set for when troops are in actual combat.

I still find that rooftops are best used as positions for observing rather than firing, since the extent to which pixeltruppen are exposed on a rooftop makes it dangerous to draw attention thereto, especially if enemy vehicles have LOF to that rooftop. However, it's still situation-dependent; if the enemy has no heavy weapons and the rooftop is outside small-arms range, then a rooftop can tactically be a prime piece of real estate. Which may well explain why infantry on rooftops, when told to change facing or given similar orders, will typically go prone and crawl in the corresponding direction. And people say the animations in CMSF are substandard!

Great news! I'm thankful you took the time to make the mod manager in the first place and that you've stuck with it and made such useful improvements. =)

One yet-unasked question which has as much of a bearing on the realisticness as any of the other factors: Is the "Going To Town" scenario in question the US Army SBCT version or the USMC version? With the specifying of 5-man half-squads, it sounds like it was the SBCT version, but I'll make these points anyway. In the USMC version, the main OPFOR units are Syrian Special Forces -- well trained, well equipped, and highly motivated. They're apt to be a match (in terms of training and motivation, if not in weaponry, yet not in numbers) for the BLUFOR's Marine infantry. Being well trained and highly motivated, a Syrian SF ATGM team is not as likely as one might think to be supressed by a half-squad's fire.

The amount of destruction that seems 'overly' because carpet bombing (let alone day-and-night-for-weeks-on-end carpet bombing) is of a bygone and much-sung-about era.

Perhaps so, but even if there were a Friedrich Zoller unit -- due to BFC's stated "no national differences" modelling schema -- there would correspondingly be a Pfc. Daniel Jackson unit. No scope on Kar 98k = FPS-style "sniping" at no more than 100-200 yards.

No. That's why I specified that I was using "elite" in the broad layman's sense of the word; i.e, not referring to actually elite troops like special forces and such. Besides, are Spetsnaz troops called "marines"? No, I haven't seen Avatar. But I don't need to have seen it, since I was merely pointing out that "marines" are to be found throughout sci-fi whenever there are well-armed, well-trained, and Caucasian-looking soldiers on the good-guy side of the story. On a similar-ish note, I wouldn't be surprised if the bad-guy colonel were played by a British actor. Then again, maybe Hollywood may be starting to get over the bad-guys-are-played-by-fellows-with-foreign-accents thing. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist: My observations have led me to the conclusion that no movie gets made -- or, rather, receives sufficient funding -- without an axe to grind. I surmise that if the "green" movement had never come into being and had not built up the policy-shaping momentum that it has in the past couple years, Avatar (insofar as the work on the film began way back in the mid 1990s) would not have received sufficient funding.

Whenever there are 'elite' (using the word in the broad layman's sense) Caucasian-looking soldiers on the good-guy side in a sci-fi context, they're always called marines, whether the army they're part of is a more-or-less direct descendant of the US military (United Nations Space Command Marines in Halo, United States Colonial Marines in Aliens; the Mobile Infantry in Starship Troopers, while not called marines, are quite marine-like in their ethos, espirit de corps, and tactical capabilities) or is so far in the future as to be only the vaguest vestige of any 20th-century 'Terran' military (Space Marines in Warhammer 40,000). It's almost a sci-fi convention (albeit a second-tier one). It dates at least as far back as 1937 with the "Galactic Marines" in E.E. Smith's Lensman series. Besides, nations other than the US call their 'elite' ship-borne infantry "marines" too, right?

I'm by no means an armor grog, let alone a modern armor grog, but isn't "all 505 Abrams tanks in Iraq should now have [the TUSK upgrade]" not unlike saying the expectation is that Abrams are going to be employed in urban[-ish] environments a lot more? (Are USMC Abrams included in this 505?) Or does that statement simply mean that these tanks should have already received the TUSK upgrade (which would have made them more useful tactically)?

Sorry to hear about the trouble you had with that bunker, but I admit, I find it a bit ironic, since in the several times I've played that mission, it wasn't the bunker that gave me trouble but the dozen or guys in the trench just past the bunker that gave me trouble. Thank goodness the helo-borne platoon comes onto the map behind the bunker.

Seems that when a scenario's briefing specifies the absence of something, that should be a red flag to look out for the presence of that which is specified.

And yet even the inimitable Bigduke6 acknowledged that someone else was first to mention the default inclusion of a guy whose name ends in "-ski". However, that someone said nothing about the guy whose name ends in "-ski" being a muscle-bound quasi-mute Slav who carries the squad's belt-fed MG. It's just that seemingly every movie in which there are at least a squad's worth of American (or just American-ish; e.g. Aliens) soldiers, there's a guy whose last name ends in "-ski". And besides, if the "-ski" guy doesn't talk, then would there be any characteristic voice .wav for him?