Dietrich

When the day comes that the AI learns to area fire, the number of four-letter words I utter under my breath while playing CMSF will increase a hundredfold. As it is, my muscles already tense spasmodicaly when the jackhammer rattle of an AKM on full-auto suddenly shatters the silence of an eeriely empty-seeming urban area as my men stalk among the buildings.

A squad armed with an AT4 or an M72 (British infantry have their own equivalents) can blow a hole in a wall. From 60-70 meters away (outside handgrenade range), Target the base of the wall at the spot where you want to blow a hole. Sure the squad will open up with everything they have (including rifle grenade) and will give away their position (not that sound contacts are modeled per se), and they may well use up a sixth of small-arms ammo before they think to fire an ATM, and when they fire off the AT4 or M72 it might still not blow a hole in the wall, but it's better than not making a hole at all, and it's better than using up one's precious few handgrenades and possibly fragging one of your own men.

I had no idea that "rad" means "capable of impregnating without physical contact." Makes me embarrassed to have uttered said word so many times in my late adolescence.

So you're saying that only enemy combatants who surrender without a fight "deserve to be taken prisoner"? That the only people who "deserve to be taken prisoner" are those that don't need to be taken prisoner at all? Are you really saying that if you were a battalion commander (a unit any smaller would be wiped out if it took at least 200 casualties in a battle) and your unit took 200-plus casualties, you would order all surviving enemy combatants to be killed? *shrug* It's your choice. But do you really want an implacable enemy? Just because the enemy kills POWs and one is righteously indignant, even outright enraged about it, that doesn't provide any justification for killing enemy POWs.

If I knew what the Canadian equivalent of "oohrah!" is, I would yell it. Makes me look forward all the more to the NATO module Which in turn reminds me of this quote regarding the A-10 Warthog: Sounds like you don't need something capable of supersonic flight and carrying half a dozen JDAMs. You just need something sufficiently intimidating. On the other hand, an übertank is less likely to be knocked out by a single RPG. On the other other hand, if the Blue commander was (unlike me) tactically smart enough to keep his MGSs out of RPG range...

Alright! A Paper Tiger USMC scenario! I'm definitely looking forward to this one. While there are plenty of scenarios where the Blue force involved is not large enough or has not important enough of a mission to be worth providing air support, this would not be the case of an MEU. For one thing, an MEU isn't just any ol' unit of reinforced-battalion size; it's a highly trained and highly capable force assigned important missions. Secondly, an MEU has significant component air assets which are tasked with nothing other than supporting the MEU and the units that comprise it. And a river crossing mission with which about a third of the MEU's forces have been tasked sounds like just the sort of mission which would likely not be launched without at least helo, if not also fast-mover support.

That looks like the "Tiger" that starred in Saving Private Ryan.

I'm surprised someone hasn't already created a "looking forward to v1.21" thread, listing all the little things they would like to see fixed with the next patch.

"Air support equals friendly fire" hasn't been my experience. That's simply because I'd hate to see my lead platoon catch the edge of a JDAM's blast radius or some such, so when I call in CAS, I either area-target 200+ meters away from the nearest Blue units, or I pull my forces a couple hundred meters back and place an area target. In other words, I prefer not to have to call actual "danger close" missions. In plenty of scenarios, there are periods lasting 6 to 12 minutes where my ground forces are just sitting around waiting for the CAS to do its thing. Admittedly, this wouldn't work against a human player, because the AI doesn't think to itself: "Hmmm, the Americans have pulled back.... They must have artillery or air support on the way. Quick! Withdraw under cover!" For me, most Blue-on-Blue incidents are during night missions when one squad wastes ammo taking potshots at another squad because they're just far enough away to get not identified properly. (I always play on "Iron" difficulty.)

Is the Eurofighter Typhoon the only aircraft/vehicle/weapon available to Blue in CMSF which would not have been available to the real-life BLUFOR in the time frame which CMSF simulates? Either way, I'm perfectly willing to stand corrected. Perhaps one reason (albeit a small one) why people gripe so much about the Syrians not having more kit is because Blue seems to always have top-notch equipment. Admittedly, this applies most to Blue tanks -- in other words, I don't recall having played a scenario with plain ol' M1A1 HC models rather than M1A2 SEPs or USMC M1A1 FEPs. So the availability in CMSF of T-90s and BMP-3s (which the Syrians could have but don't actually) is proof that Red should be furnished even more kit it doesn't really have?

As soon as the bad guys do it first, that makes it okay for the good guys to do likewise thereafter. That's the reasoning, anyway. To put the Malmedy incident into perspective, consider this alternate scenario: Let's say a company of battle-hardened Marines fresh from the Pacific Theater were advancing eastward through the Ardennes and overran a couple of German artillery batteries, capturing the several dozen personnel thereof. Now let's say these Marines had only a few days earlier heard the news about a Luftwaffe bombing raid on Philadelphia, in which hundreds of people were killed, thousands maimed, and tens of thousands rendered homeless. Now let's say the Marines' regimental commander drove by, saw the herded-together prisoners, and yelled at the Marines something along the lines of: "Just deal with 'em and get back on the move eastward!" As to how to "deal with" the Germans, what choice do you think these men -- hardened men accustomed to, perhaps embittered by, weeks of bloody, take-no-prisoners combat -- would be likely to make? Indeed, the Malmedy massacre was a heinous thing, and killing POWs is about the worst thing one can do to help win a war (both tactically and strategically), but it wasn't simply a matter of "we're evil Nazi bastards, so we're going to machine-gun these prisoners".

Stupid to the extreme and plenty to get him court-martialed, but aren't these just the sort of things that the audience not only doesn't mind the hero of the movie doing but also kind of expects the protagonist of a modern American war movie to do? Cuz, y'know, heroes never follow the rules nowadays, and the things they do which at first seem suicidally stupid are proven to be the better courses of action when it's all over. In the final analysis, Hollywood doesn't care about what's realistic or what's tactically smart. They only care about what will entertain and what will make the audiences want to come to the theater in the first place. Maybe it was a sort of "a top-notch American EOD team is as good as any given British special-forces team" kind of thing. (Was it ever noted what particular sort of British SF they were?) Also, I wouldn't be surprised if they were 'sniping' at much-closer-than-sniperly range. Anybody here seen a movie in which snipers were shown taking shots at realistic ranges (600 to 1200+ meters)? If so, I'd like to know which movie(s). Thought I haven't seen The Hurt Locker, I have seen The Kingdom. **** FILMED IN SPOILER-VISION! **** How's this for pushing the plausibility envelope? Not only are FBI agents (not Delta Force, not DEVGRU, not even CIA) sent to Saudi Arabia, and not only do these FBI agents determine who is the mastermind of the suicide- and truck-bombing of the American compound, by the end of the movie they track him down, take out dozens of his henchman in a wide-ranging firefight, and shoot dead (with an AK-47, ironically) the mastermind himself. Definitely a post-9/11 movie, if ya know what I mean. :cool: Makes me wonder if the British (and maybe even the Spanish) have made any action-type movies where agents of their government track down and kill bomber-makers and such.

Sure, to my knowledge there are no (confirmed) plans for giving the Syrians additional kit. But the Blue forces haven't been furnished with anything they don't (or wouldn't) have. The fact is that if dirty bombs were set off (by Syrian-backed terrorists) in major cities throughout North America and Western Europe (including the UK), forces from a number of different Blue countries would be deployed against Syria. Besides, it's not that NATO is involved in a war with Syria, it's that countries which are members of NATO are involved in a war with Syria. How many T-90s are "all those"? If T-90s are available only to the Republic Guard, which is basically one reinforced mechanized division, maybe (in the context of CMSF's alternate reality of summer 2008) the Syrians only have enough T-90s for a company or two. *shrug* But I do agree that the Syrians could use some sort of truck. =)

Well then . . . if (as the evidence seems to be showing) there are more of the Afghan people who want the Taliban (or at least don't mind them enough to do anything about it) than those who want something non-Taliban . . . why are "we" still in Afghanistan? (Merely a rhetorical question, expressing my fed-up-ness with the whole Afghanistan quagmire.)

Lon! I really dig the pieces you made for this game. I find that I prefer your music to the original. (Though I like the original too, and I sometimes switch back to it for a few days to remind me of how glad I was when I first got the game.) Especially the loading-screen music; it gets my pulse to a more combat-suitable level. The main-menu track does very well in setting the tense mood. And the end-of-scenario music is thought-provoking. Excellent work!

Move the camera inside the room then click directly on the interior walls you want to edit/remove. I learned this through trial and error while trying to recreate the towering apartment buildings on Haifa Street in Baghdad for a potential "Battle of Haifa Street" scenario.

Just an idea I had. Come to think of it, though, since feldgrau is somewhat greenish and the color you've picked for US forces is a shade of green, an alternate option could be what might be called "Heer blue"". These are merely suggestions, of course. I appreciate the work you've done, and I will respect whatever colors you choose to use.

Gray gray, or "field gray"?

Might perhaps the soldier models be enhanced to show which soldier in a team/squad has a Panzerfaust slung on his back? This could even be with CMSF/CMSF2. I don't think it would require any new animation(s) either; it would be just to give on-map at-a-glance indication of who has the AT4s and M72s and such.

Rangers are already doable -- just take an IBCT formation, set their experience to Crack, and set equipment on Excellent. If by "Little Bird" you mean the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior attack helo, then yes, that's already in the game. Explosives include grenades, which don't typically dismember.

In playing "Breakout!" (the scenario where a company's worth of SBCT troops come up against BMP-3s and AT-14s on a long, narrow map) the other day, I fired at least three Javelins (from two different scout teams) at a BMP-3, and all three soared high in the air—like normal—but just continued on overhead and out of sight beyond the map edge. No near-misses, no failure right after launch (resulting in the missile hitting the ground a relatively short way from the unit with the CLU), just couldn't-hit-the-broad-side-of-a-barn stuff. Overall, though, my Javelin-firing experiences have been like that: right on target or just sail overhead. :/

Maybe the particular current-issue Bundeswehr helmet wasn't designed by a German. Maybe it was designed by a Belgian accustomed to sipping ale from a fluted glass rather than quaffing Doppelbock from a Krug.

Boy, there sure is a lot of discussion about the recently-released module for the game that this part of the forum is about. Which makes sense, what with how people were so insistently pining for it. If it weren't for the latest incarnation of the Peng challenge thread, this and the other thread about CM:N would be the only ones getting more than a minimum of attention. Now I can see why BFC has delayed in setting up a CMx2/WW2 subforum. And to top it all off, the discussion is this particular thread only indirectly pertains to Normandy! Seriously, though, the Germans, as far as winning (in any sense of the world) the Second World War, were doomed from the get-go, insofar as Hitler's ambitions outstripped the German war-machine's capability and his willingness to view himself as the ultimate authority on war-waging led to decisions which hobbled the Wehrmacht more and more. Just my two bits (two cents adjusted for inflation ).

If Britain had been under Nazi German dominion for through most of the Second World War, and then 64 years later Susan Boyle appeared on Britain's Got Talent and sang a wistfully heart-wrenching song from the spring of 1940 with video and imagery of the Blitz projected on a screen behind her, she would have won.

I know I can't be the only member of this forum living in the US many months ago started to think it odd that the American anti-war protestors' characterstic cry has been (not a direct quote, obviously) "bring our troops back from Iraq". And one of the foremost anti-war organizations in the US is named Iraq Veterans Against the War, not Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War (aside from the fact that such is too long and awkward a name for an orgnization, even if abbreviated). But there are several reasons which could explain why Americans are not so insistent on having US troops return from Afghanistan.