Dietrich

True on all points. However, I said nothng about what percentage of the IBCT infantry would be Green versus what percentage would be Regular. As per your supposition(s), I reckon Regular/Veteran would be more realistic. Were I designing the scenario, I would probably just set the soft factors of the Blue troops (IBCT as well as ANA) to their "typical" settings and call it good. "Green troops are third-world conscript level" sounds like an oxymoron. From the CMSF v1.20 manual: It strikes me as odd when I come across a scenario in which all the US troops are set to Elite when said US troops are not SEALs, Delta Force, etc., and are in greater than platoon strength. I try to apply a more subtle and nuanced sense of soft factors -- when simulating an ODA or MARSOC operators or what have you, I wouldn't necessarily even set their experience of every unit to Elite. I can't help but chuckle at all the complaining I've read on these forums about how people wish there was an experience level above Elite.

This thread is starting to sound annoyingly like a certain other thread in the General discussion forum. Rather than pertuate the foregoing argument/discussion about who is the man-for-man bestest force in the world today or the rationale for Western troops remaining in Afghanistan, I say consider this: A scenario in which the player posed the challenge of commanding Regular/Veteran Fighters and Combatants in a lighting assault (with the aim of taking out certain pieces of equipment and otherwise inflicting as many casualties as possible while simultaneously minimizing own losses) on a incompletely-fortified position manned by a platoon of Green/Regular IBCT infantry and two platoons of Conscript/Green Syrian Reserve infantry (to simulate ANA troops). Oh, and just because the number of "Taliban" bodies found afterward could be counted on just one hand doesn't mean that those were the only casualties inflicted. Obviously, if the insurgents are so swift and adept at blending into the terrain, it stands to reason that they could "medevac" all the but the closest-to-the-enemy-positions KIA and leave no trace.

So . . . the point is that bursts longer than 3-4 rounds (even from machine guns) should be virtually never necessary because 60% to 70% of an entire platoon's/company's/battalion's firepower should be employed in the suppressive fire role?

I was referring to lack of company-level artillery support in an HBCT battalion. The TOE of a whole HBCT battalion includes only four 120mm mortars. An SBCT battalion has the usual four-tube 120mm mortar section but has two 81mm mortars per company. But considering the on-map firepower of a typical HBCT force, it's no biggie that there are no medium or light mortars to be provided. Most often the provided artillery support is suitable to the situation, including scenarios where artillery is minimal or absent because of the tactical context.

*shrug* Well then, I can't help ya. I paid full price for base game and both modules.

$35 may seem overpriced, but consider that by buying the base game you paid $45 for only about half of CMSF's overall content (not including the forthcoming NATO module). With all due respect to the designers of the scenarios of the TF Thunder campaign, both the USMC campaign and the British campaign are quite well designed, with interesting maps and varied tactical challenges. In particular I dig the large, open maps of several scenarios in the British campaign.

To put it in perspective: Imagine a Bundeswehr MG3 crew in Afghanistan is firing disciplined 3- to 6-round bursts at various points along a treeline 600 meters away from which the Infanterie had been receiving sporadic small-arms fire. Suddenly they hear three or four AKs firing at them from a perpendicular treeline 60 meters to their 9 o'clock. Is this MG3 crew going to (a) continue firing 3- to 6-round bursts with pauses for careful aiming in between, or ( let fly with longer bursts with only brief pauses in between, raking the treeline with fire so as to either shred the insurgents or at least scare them away? Commanding MG3 teams is one of the things I'm most looking forward to with the NATO module. ("Neben den Baum, ein PKM! Dauerfeuer!") At medium range and beyond, indeed. But the closer the enemy is, the more one feels compelled to empty one's magazine at him (whether aiming down the sights or firing from the hip) until one sees him go down. That's why (in my experience) the guys who get dozens of kills in any given game tend to wield the weapons with the highest rates of fire and the highest-capacity magazines. True, but modern infantry conditioning yields a much greater degree of "shooting to kill" than in WW2 or even Vietnam. Also, "sweeping fire" can be directed at spotted enemy personnel and it can be recon-by-fire with traversing.

The MG doesn't know that it doesn't have LOS/LOF to the gunner's target! :eek:

I like it! Its ease of installing/uninstalling mods makes CMSF that much more enjoyable. Judging by the planned additions you listed, FightingSeabee, v1.4 should be even better. Pretty much the only glitch I've experienced: When I click on the "Open Scenarios Folder" button, a message comes up saying "Set path to scenarios folder", but I can't find anywhere to put in the path to the scenarios folder.

It depends on the height/footprint of the targeted building. My experience has been that General yields a tighter grouping (more suitable for engaging MBTs and IFVs, obviously), and as such it is more suitable for small buildings than General. The advantage of General, though, is that it yields a somewhat wider grouping, which can inflict casualties by landing right next to the building rather than just collapsing the roof on the enemy personnel within. Anyone know why 155mm howitzer sections and 60mm mortar sections have relatively plentiful ammo, whereas 81mm and 120mm mortar sections have proportionately much less ammo? In scenarios with HBCT forces (with 120mm mortars on call), I'm left feeling a bit short-changed in the artillery support department. (Of course, HBCT forces have beaucoup direct-fire assets.) I can't help but think that the 155mm howitzers (M777, M109, AS90... and soon PzH 2000, I hope) are the workhorses of the artillery arm.

Ah, that would in part explain the aggressiveness of the attack and their striving to actually get inside the outpost. I get the impression that the Taliban are content to harass Coalition forces and inflict casualties through tactics which involve minimal risk to themselves (namely IEDs).

From Sean Naylor's Not A Good Day To Die: The Untold Story Of Operation Anaconda: "The team contacted a B-52, and within minutes six JDAMs rained down, killing four of the fighters, including the commander. The two survivors, one of whom was mortally wounded, got to their feet and dragged the commander's body down to some nearby low ground. . . . Al Qaida fighters reoccupied the same position twice, and each time Juliet [the aforementioned AFO recon team] arranged a similarly devastating bombing run. In a testament to the enemy's motivation, after each air strike, even the wounded would assist in carrying off the dead." Obviously, though, the insurgents in this case were Al Qaida rather than Taliban. I reckon that Al Qaida fighters could be counted on for showing greater aggressiveness than Taliban. The impression I've gotten is that the Taliban almost never physically attack; sure, they bombard with mortars, BM-21 rockets, RPGs, maybe the occasional howitzer, and they blaze away with their AKs and PKMs and whatnot, but they never assault, they just strive to achieve fire superiority from well-concealed positions, and when Coalition forces return fire and achieve fire superiority themselves, the Taliban seem to vanish into the landscape. On the one hand, I don't think CMSF can simulate such cunning tactics (if Red is AI-controlled); and on the other hand, such a battle could easily be disappointing and frustrating for the Blue player -- suffer casualties from a disturbingly accurate mortar barrage, take lots of small-arms fire from nearby treelines, return fire viciously, call in air support, then notice that the enemy has pretty much disappeared.

On account of how common RPGs are among Red forces, I often feel like my troops are at a disadvantage in MOUT situations -- spot one enemy unit, open fire, get plastered by an RPG seemingly out of nowhere. Slightly less so with the Marines, on account of their multiple M32s. The irony, though, is that a Marine rifle squad means more men packed into the same area for an RPG to nail. It should have a longer range and greater terminal ballistics; it fires 12.7mm rounds -- it's pretty much the Russian equivalent of the M2 Browning. If you play as the Marines, you can get (dismounted) M2s.

If a 20+-round burst is aimed at a single spot, it's probably inordinate, even factoring in relatively wide CEP on account of recoil and such. If a 20+-round burst is combined with traverse and/or elevation so that the rounds hit an area which may (or may not) contain multiple enemy personnel, then it's more probably worthwhile. Then again, CMSF doesn't model sweeping fire.

*shrug* He saved her from selling it for only $5 dollars to some guy who would then just dust it off and auction it on eBay for $500+.

What I would like to see is MBTs using their MGs (especially because most MBTs have a 12.7mm MG in addition to the 7.62mm coax) more on infantry and unarmored/lightly armored targets. As of v1.20, Bradleys and other IFVs are more apt to use their MGs than their cannon on infantry, but MBTs still seem inordinately inclined to use up their cannons on targets which could be dealt with just as well with their MGs.

On the question of CMx2 versus ToW: I get the impression a lot of people saw the initial info on CMSF and said/thought: "Modern-day warfare? Syria? Are they kidding?" and then pretty much haven't been heard from since. Thus I can visualize how plenty of folks will come sauntering back to the realm of CM(x2) and breezily proclaim: "Well, BFC, we're glad you've finally come to your senses and made a real Combat Mission game...." For the record, I too balked when I found out a next-gen CM game had been made but that it was modern-day and in the Middle East, but when I actually played CMSF I found I rather liked it, and I've grown to greatly appreciate it. And I'm very much looking forward to CM:N and the various WW2 CMx2 games. On the question of CMx2/CMSF scale: I prefer playing real-time because it feels more immersive and immediate, but my ability to handle forces equivalent to more than a reinforced company is correspondingly limited. Sure, it's great to wield half an MEU's worth of troops and vehicles in a single battle, but I find that with any of a fair number of scenarios, the number of troops is much greater than one would find in an area that size. I think making the map big enough to fit the forces in a battle (or adjusting the size of the force to fit the map) is part of good scenario design. That said, sometimes there's a big, well-designed map, but with the force I'm alloted, I'm left wondering if the scenario designer really intended for me to be able to accomplish the mission. For example, "Armoured Assault" has a big, well-made map, but even with two platoons of Challengers and two of mechanised infantry (aboard Warriors) and Harrier CAS, I could't help but think: "How am I supposed to achieve the objectives with this relatively small force?" As a test, I replaced the Challengers with a platoon of M1A1 FEPs and an entire company of Marines aboard AAVs, along with two Harriers and two AH-1Ws for air support and the usual mortar allotment, but even then it was a real challenge to achieve the objectives while minizing casualties. (A single SPG-9 knocked out two of my Abrams! Thankfully, all four crew of one of those tanks survived.)

If one were to compare them to tanks, the RPG-7V1 is like the T-55 (old but still a threat to all but the toughest targets) and the RPG-29 is like the Abrams (it will likely hit what it's aimed at, and it will put the hurt on what it hits). The RPG-29 is all-around better than the RPG-7: greater range, greater accuracy, greater lethality, greater variety of ammo. (The RPG-7D3, availabe to Syrian Airborne infantry, is basically a modernized version of the RPG-7V1. It is not all that much more accurate than the RPG-7V1 but has a greater effective range and fires the full range of modern rounds.)

Could this perhaps be the key contributing factor to instances where a fixed-wing air-support asset is listed as "Attacking" in the UI and loses one tick of ammo afterwards but no bomb drops? Is an "attack" in which no bomb is dropped but which decreases the aircraft's loadout meant to simulate a dud bomb or a failure of the pylon clamps to release or something else? Would setting an air-support asset's equipment to "Poor" after purchase yield failed JDAM drops and dud Hellfire launches, etc.?

*shrug* Same 'problem' with the TOW-2 dismounted launcher. **** FILMED IN SPOILER-VISION! **** In playing Field Marshal Blücher's "Tip of the Spear" campaign, I ignorantly ordered one of my two TOW launchers to change its facing about 70 degrees to the right, and suddenly the three crewmen were "packing up". Oh great, I thought, they'll be absolutely useless for the next ten minutes, long after that platoon of BMP-3s attacks on the left flank...

Is any of these not-cooking-off vehicles the victim of a Javelin or some other weapon which created a huge explosion when it knocked out the vehicle? If yes, then any ammo which would have later cooked off may have already been detonated by the knock-out strike. The test with already-burning AFVs and IFVs may have been inadvertently misleading. I've never seen a cook-off from a 'placed' brewed-up vehicle, and thus I'm inclined to reason that already-on-map brewed-up vehicles have already experienced their share of cook-offs before the scenarios begins. In view of both the danger of cook-offs and the loss of ATMs and small-arms ammo resultant from losing IFVs (especially AAVs), I've established the SOP of giving rifle squads extra ATMs and doling out ATMs to machine-gun squads and such, both so most every unit has its own AT weapon and to leave as little as possible in IFVs in case they are knocked out and brew up.

Uh-huh. So if one of the snipers under your command ran out of ammo and then surrendered, you would be fine with the enemy summarily executing him on the field? Besides, just because an enemy sniper "uses 50 bullets on [your] men" doesn't necessarily mean that he kills or even wounds any of them. Even if it the surrendered enemy soldier that you kill is a sniper who had just inflicted casualties on your men at a 50-to-1 ratio, killing POWs makes the enemy want to not surrender, to fight to the death. Would you really want pretty much all enemy soldiers to fight to the death, thus inflicting even more casualties on your men than they would otherwise? If killing POWs is one of the things that makes the enemy evil, what about the 'good guy' when he kills POWs?

I look forward to seeing how Panzergrenadiere pile out of an SdKfz 251. ...orrrrrrrr how GIs pile out of the back of an M3. Speaking of vehicles, can you fix the thing where a vehicle with a Target order stops firing while passengers are embarking/disembarking?

And found it a blast! Well done on the scenario-making, Thomm! I've played it several times, in fact. Yeah, I'm sure the Marines won't even need to have spotters on the rooftops; they'll be able to spot and annihilate the roof-lurking Syrians from street level.

My experience all along (that is, before v1.20) has been that the only instances when it was safe to put units on rooftops was when said rooftops were 300+ meters from where combat was happening and when said units were assigned point-blank-range cover arcs so that they didn't give away their position by opening fire. In playing "USMC The Old City", to have units on uppermost floors or roofs of buildings and allow them to engage was to invite their annihilation; but perhaps that was in large part due to the minimal range between the rooftops I was able to gain and ones already occupied by Red. However, in "USMC FISHing in Garmsir", a scenario with a much larger map and thus greater engagement ranges, moving units to rooftops or floors with balconies was likewise to invite their decimation, thanks to Red having no shortage of snipers and PKMs.