Dietrich

As an American, I think I am qualified to note how it seems that most Americans think that pretty much all Britons speak in one of two ways (the former being the more common): (1) in the "cheerio, old bean" posh style; (2) the "cor blimey, guvnah" cockney style. One of the reasons for these misconceptions is, according to my research, due to the contact that American soldiers had with Britons during WW1, at which time Britons (the more memorable ones, evidently) spoke in the manner of "I say, I say!" and such. Basically, Americans think that upper-class British people talk like they're from the Victorian age and that lower-class British people talk like Cockneys. (The pervasiveness of this misconception can lead to strange casting in movies: No matter where the movie takes place and no what the nationality or native language of lower-class characters in a movie, they as often as not talk like Cockneys.) And then there's Eddie Izzard's hypothesis that Britons play bad guys in Hollywood movies because of the Revolutionary War. A certain BBC journalist who reports from China and who I hear on the BBC World Service has a certain odd je ne sais quoi about her pronunciation: for example, she pronounces "road" rather like "woad". Is this an aspect of an accent? I've heard several Britons speak with this pronunciational oddity. Recently I was at my friend's house, and he had over a friend of his who is Russian and is fluent in English. When talking with the Russian fellow, I found myself talking in English (which is my mother tongue) with a Russian accent. :eek: (Evidently I've been doing too much joking around with my best friend using our 'Russian supervillain' accents!) But the Russian fellow didn't seem to notice. That, or he was too nice to even act like he noticed.

With all this talk of cannons' "attitude", I'm curious why no modelling of how a Challenger's gun angles upward after firing? (Is this the case with the Abrams too? I forget. I know the Leopard 2's gun elevates after firing.)

Getting torn a new one by the press and by the brass isn't the only reason -- or even the primary reason -- why Blue (no matter which war) should strive to not inflict civilian casualties. Civilians whose friends and loved ones get turned into Swiss cheese by machine guns, disfigured by grenades, or atomized by JDAMs have a disturbing tendency to arm themselves and conduct ruthless guerilla warfare on Blue and to feel unsettlingly little compuction about, well, torturing captured Blue soldiers. Sure, we hear about the five Marines getting killed by an IED blast one day, seven British soldiers being seriously wounded by a mortar attack the next, and we hear about journalists and such who get kidnapped and held for ransom, but would it be reasonable to think that insurgents would not like to do horrific things to captured soldiers from the forces they are already locked in guerilla warfare with? To put it in the context of CMSF: If I were a soldier or a Marine, I'd rather face an entire company of Syrian troops than a dozen AK- and knife-wielding insurgents who know the land and can sneak around (my NVGs notwithstanding). But, sad to say, if I were a soldier or a Marine in CMSF, I would already have earned the bloodthirsty wrath of the insurgent.

Could it be that the widespread dis-allowance of depictions of sex (and, secondarily, of good-looking women nude) is in tacit acknowledgement of the fact that watching people getting it on has the "behavioural effect" of making people want to get it on, which carries the risk of actual procreation? In other words, is the incidence of violent acts in any sort of proportion to the incidence of sex in not-socially-approved contexts? I'm basically wondering out loud about why for millenia it's more or less been okay to be entertained by depictions of violence (from mere fistfights all the way to hack-and-slash bloodbaths), while depictions of sex (and all things related to it, such as Lucy Lawless in the buff) are much more circumscribed or are disallowed in the first place. I think it's because people tend to think that one is less likely to murder someone than to get it on with one's lover. As if murder is not as bad as pregnancy . . . or something.

Makes me want to create a British Army mission with an Obj. ZAPHOD and an Obj. PREFECT.

Thanks for the campaign, Herr Feldmarschall! =) **** FILMED IN SPOILER-O-VISION **** Moving two squads via Assault in a pincer movement at the one-story building outside the nearer high-walled compound typically led to whichever squad got closer first suffering one or two casualties from sudden full-auto AK-74 bursts. Preemptively pouring suppressive fire from both M240s and the stationary squad usually made the uncons stay cowering long enough for one of the two advancing squads to get within handgrenade range they could actually start Assault-in the building. In the case of the half a dozen uncons in the two buildings in the walled compound nearer to Saber Platoon's landing site, I found that even with two squads and both M240s firing Target (as opposed to Target Light), the uncons in the one-story building next to the alleyway were not suppressed enough to not let loose with their AKs and inflict at least one casualty on the squad moving along the wall. It seemed that no amount of 5.56mm, 7.62mm, and 40mm HEDP was enough to either inflict casualties or suppress the uncons enough. I ended up using one Javelin on the one-story building and the other on the two-story building (at the same time as pouring Target Light from both M240s onto each building in succession). I found myself wishing for a satchel charge or two. :cool:

I think in the contexting of the upcoming module, "NATO" does not refer to NATO as an organization but refers collectively to the three countries -- Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands, which are members of NATO -- comprising the new module.

"The thing I'm interesting most interested in, though, is the big gun, which, as you can see is rifled for greater accuracy. Unlike those smoothbore American ones, which just hit something . . . <waves dismissively> over there." --Jeremy Clarkson Ah, Clarkson . . . what would we do without your humorously snide ethnocentrism. Rifled vastly more accurate than smoothbore? Hey Jezza, I think you'd find that if you attempted that challenge against either an M1A2 Abrams or a Leopard 2A6, you would lose just as much -- or "as near as makes no odds", as you're so fond of saying -- against either of those tanks as against the Challenger 2. That said, I dig the CR2, especially the Enhanced version.

Three cheers for BFC! Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray! Hip-hip-hooray! Cheerio, Dietrich

Ah, I see. Come to think of it, the rallying-the-trains phenomenon is, I suppose, enough outside the temporal as well as spatial realm of CMx2 to be not worth explicitly including. Better to leave room for simulating it. Maybe. But that's not the sort of situation in which cooks and buglers would (if they had a CO who was sane) be called upon to fight.

Good point, Jon. On the other hand, there are units already included in any given TO&E which might be omitted in any given scenario. *shrug*

That 100+ soldiers being comprised of the HQs of the respective companies, correct? But what about those times when some courageous captain or lieutenant rallied the cooks, clerks, and buglers to reinforce his decimated company in the face of a heavy enemy counterattack? Sure, that sort of tactical scenario would be much more common for the Germans (enough so that it might well fall into the realm of "outliers"), and the same qualitative circumstances might be simulated by an understrength squad or platoon of infantry with Green skill armed just with rifles, but . . .

Ah, I see. I wouldn't have thought an MP would be out on a combat patrol. Is that SOP, or just not anomalous enough to be worthy of mention? Or is it due to the need to have at least one woman in a patrol in case civilian women need to be searched?

Am I misunderstanding the nature of the mission documented by this series of photos, or am I misreading the caption which says "Corporal Chelsea Williams and Color Sergeant Kevyn Diggle ('Diggs') clean their weapons"? The British Army allows women in combat roles? Last I heard, the US military (by contrast) doesn't allow women in combat roles. On the other hand, the other day I saw a clip on YouTube of a German documentary which showed a Bundeswehr tank crew with a woman loader.

An interesting perspective, LT Mike. I find the USMC (as simulated in CMSF, at least) to be at least as formidable as the US Army. Sure, the Army has more vehicles (and more vehicles which can go toe-to-toe with BMP-1s and -2s), and their M1s are state-of-the-art, and they have a higher Javelin-to-soldier ratio, and they have a wider range of air-support assets (Army and USAF). But what I appreciate perhaps most about the USMC (in CMSF, that is) is that though their air-support assets are relatively few, they range from SuperCobras all the way to F/A-18s, and they are responsive -- an Army JTAC has at best yellow "+" comms with air assets, whereas an USMC FAC has green "+" comms all across the board. With the USMC in-game, I enjoy the tactics of employing vehicles which are few but capable and with infantry which are numerous and heavily-armed. That said, what I figure I'll enjoy most with the BF module is not so much the British Army vehicles (except for the Jackal and the Challenger) but the air-support assets and the infantry and their capabilities.

Not wanting to suffer heavy casualties in the face of entrenched defenders with numerous RPGs and static tanks, I used my artillery and air assets to inflict heavy casualties, then hit "cease fire" with 15 minutes yet to go, to see whether I'd be booted back to the previous scenario (or worse, to "Decisions, Decisions..."). In fact, Red suffered over 200 KIA and WIA and lost a dozen vehicles (including recon armored cars, BMP-3s, and T-62s), whereas the only loss my forces suffered was some damage to a couple of my Abrams from RPG and recoilless rifle fire (none immobilized, thankfully). But, then again, it felt rather like cheating. I just knew I had a hard slog ahead and couldn't afford to loose multiple AAVs (not to mention the sometimes 20+ men therein) or even one Abrams.

Rangers lead the way! I very much look forward to playing this, Normal Dude.

Where's the text saying "objects in mirror closer than they appear"?

Cowbell, schmowbell.

So long as the NATO module includes the basic Bundeswehr stuff (Leo 2, MG3, G36, etc.), I'll be happy. An hour's recce prior to a three-hour assault sounds good to me.

Indeed, I understand why incoming bullets 'crack' past. What I was referring to is how the report of a weapon sounds different at 500m than at 5m -- think outgoing friendly fire of guys in one's same squad compared with the outgoing fire of an adjacent platoon or company. And yes, in ArmA2, it's quite unnerving to hear bullets snapping past yer head and having at times no idea where it's coming from. :eek: And what is more, in that LiveLeak video you can even see tracer rounds going right over the heads of the guys on the roof.

Seems to me there are a couple aspects to this: 1. How often is it that (in a combat zone) one moment things are eerily quiet and the next moment a single shot -- the report of which shot doesn't sound like it's from within 100 meters or so -- hits a soldier squarely and the culprit isn't a sniper or at least a marksman of some ilk? (Sort of a rhetorical question, since I don't know the answer one way or another. And yes, I know that's a specific situation, but without specifics....) 2. "If three of the Shermans attached to our company just got blasted one right after the other, it must've been a Tiger." "If an HE shell landed that close to us, it must've been an eighty-eight." That sort of thing. *shrug* Speaking of "seems": Based on the various video I've seen of M4s, M16s, AKs, and such being fired on ranges, the reprt of a given carbine/rifle can seem to sound rather different from one video to the next. (Obviously, the quality of the sound-recording equipment would have some impact on that, however slight.) Based on various videos I've seen of soldiers in combat where one can hear firing (friendly as well as enemy) in the distance, carbines and such can seem to sound rather different from when one is up close; what is a distinct bang from 10 feet away sounds more like a crack from 200 yards away.

Why does the British Forces module have no new Red stuff, whereas the Marines module did? Because the new Blue stuff in the BF module is an entire army, rather than just a segment of one nation's armed forces. If you compare the total amount of new stuff (Blue and Red) in the Marines module with the new stuff in the BF module, I suspect you'll find they are about the same. For example, how many new vehicles in the Marines module? Eleven (nine USMC and two Syrian). How many new vehicles in the BF module? Ten (nine British and one US Army). But, like I've said, I'm no beta tester, so this is just hypothesizationalizing.

And can the M707 be given a Target command so as to know what is has LOS/LOF to like pretty much every other unit?

The results who expect? Certainly. I just meant that there's a particular reason why the "snipers" in that scenario are Elite with very high Motivation