Dietrich

In "Trial By Fire" I nailed 4 guys in 5 seconds, but that was because I rushed into what turned out to be a keyhole position, spotted them through a doorway just as they paused at the edge of an alley, then brought my M16A4 to bear and let fly with rapid aimed fire until they all went down. However, plenty of times I got wounded or outright killed by an uncon I hadn't spotted. I admit, my sense of FPS games is colored (some would say tainted) by my much greater experience with arcade-ish shooters like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, but I must say: it's awfully disconcerting to hear rounds snapping past you and having no idea where they're coming from. :eek:

For me, I think seeing my pixeltruppen go down is at least slightly more of a jolt in CM:SF than it will be in CM:Normandy, since in CM:SF you're dealing with an army (Blue, that is) which is under more pressure than ever before in its 230+-year history to not let its young men end up coming home in caskets or on gurneys. When playing Blue, even as a lowly platoon commander, each time I see one of my soldiers go down, it pangs me, since I know how little I (and, by extension, the army in which I serve) can afford to loose anybody, even as 'just' a casualty. As in, for example, no floating text saying "pinned" or "routed"?

Vis-a-vis Steve's response: And here I thought it was a hoax intended to distract us from the still-not-quite-arrived announcement of the British expansion's release date! (At the risk of sounding like a spoil-sport...) Contrary to popular opinion, 'exotic' dancing while wearing a belly-dancer costume (as in the above-linked clip) is not

What gets me about tanks (M1s, at least) is when the main gun lets loose the moment the turret stops traversing. I guess this illustrates how in a modern tank the gunner can be 'locked on' even before he's brought the gun to bear on the target. Also (so I understand it) the TC can mark a target at, say, 10 o'clock while the gunner is engaging one at 2 o'clock.

An ignorant Westerner visiting the Middle East will wear shorts and a T-shirt, thinking this wardrobe combo is most suitable for keeping cool. He looks at the traditionally clad Middle Easterner, wearing layered head-to-toe robes, and thinks him rather overdressed. The Middle Easterner, on the other hand, thinks the Westerner dangerously underdressed. The more skin is exposed, the more skin there is to absorb heat. (Though there is the converse, that skin also radiates heat.) The more skin is covered, the better protected it is from heat, and its ability to radiate heat is not too significantly impaired. The trick about the traditional Middle Eastern layered robes is that they trap thin layers of air between the sunlight-heated air and your skin, providing insulation against heat. In the desert, one encounters four sources of heat: 1. Direct sunlight. 2. Reflective heat (sunlight reflected off the ground). 3. Conductive heat (heat radiating from ground). 4. Hot wind.

If in smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria mori. —Wilfred Owen ------------------------------------------------------------ In a letter to the city council of Atlanta dated September 12, 1864, Sherman wrote: I can imagine him saying (or thinking) this as he watched Atlanta being burned on his orders.

Two words: 1. Patches. 2. Mods.

Just wait till CM:Normandy and we get to see Fallschirmjäger (or Rangers, if deutschy stuff ain't your thing) vaulting over picket fences and low walls!

Woo-hoo! Looking forward very much to your scenarios and such, FMB!

[exaggerated John Wayne impression]That there Kay-yoh-tee looks like just ah Jack-ull with more seats in thuh back . . . pilgrim.[/exaggerated John Wayne impression]

Call me a cynic, but I'm inclined to be pessimistic and to estimate that it won't be until next month (at the earliest) that even the release date is announced. On the other hand, it's an expansion rather than an 18+-months-in-the-making/anticipated-for-2+-years full game, so even though the release date isn't even announced yet, it won't -- or so I understand -- be all that long between the announcement of the release date and the release date itself.

I may not have laughed at it, but nor did I think it was a "vile" story. Anyone who thinks that was a vile story obviously hasn't had a sufficiently sobering dose of actually vile wartime stories.

I think it's revolting that the death of a human being is more hilarious to some people than the death of an animal.

Regarding Javelin employment by IBCT teams: I don't know about you guys, but I would keep any Javelin team in an overwatch position 200 to 400 meters back from the fighting line and with a short-range cover arc in place to obviate unwanted Javelin-firing. But that's just me. As opposed to naming vehicles after generals (Sherman, Patton, Bradley, Abrams, etc.)?

Might the "pom-pom-pom" have been the sound of a helo firing a rocket salvo, which salvo didn't land on-map because of obstructing terrain at the edge(s) of the map? I haven't been playing CMSF that long (got it last November), but I've never noticed anything like an air asset being 'scared off'. Perhaps simulated off-map AA defense is another of those hypothetical "under the hood" things(?) This makes sense to me. If the FO/JTAC team was chased from its vantage point and thus no longer had LOS to the target, I suppose they wouldn't give the air asset the green light. And if the air asset didn't get the green light from the FO/JTAC, I suppose it wouldn't actually attack. It seems to me that an air asset interprets an area-attack call on an area in which the FO/JTAC has not spotted any enemy units as something like this: "If you identify any enemy units in this area, attack at will." But oftentimes the air asset, despite its state-of-the-art sensors and bird's-eye vantage point, doesn't spot any enemy units in said area, and so it doesn't attack. What is the typical effective range of thse MANPADs? The fact that Blue CAS comes from outside the map suggests that even the rotary-wing air assets maintain enough of a distance from the tactical battlefield that a MANPAD wouldn't necessarily be able to reach them. Note my last post.

In the course of playing a recently released scenario, I used my Forward Observer (with comms to all higher echelons and "small x" comms to the air asset, estimated response time 8 minutes) to call the on-station Harrier for a "Heavy" attack on a tall, narrow building on the far side of the map. The FO had direct LOS to the target building. Three times the Harrier called "Dash One is in the pod" and the FO replied "Roger, cleared hot", yet each time no bomb was dropped. The Harrier's status read "Attacking" each time. Why the repeated scrubbed attack runs? What might have been going on "under the hood" to have caused the Harrier to actually not attack? (I don't remember if any of the Harrier's ammo indicators ticked down with each "attack".) Also, helo rocket inaccuracy is such that if the target is small enough, all rockets in a given salvo might well miss. Thus helo rocket attacks seem better suited for suppression and a modicum of casualty-inflicting rather than doing much damage.

Minulla ei ole votkaa. No use submitting that to the local college's English faculty. But Secondbrooks probably knows what I mean. (Unless I misspelled something....)

Radio silence, schmadio silence. Yet another wargame gimmick-ly centered on a single tactic/strategy (i.e., ruses). Makes me look forward all the more to CM:Normandy. Using one's entire arm(s) to control gameplay + leaning forward over screen for any length of time = shoulder and back aches

Or worse: sit around for 6-9 minutes hoping for a 2000-pounder and then get . . . one less tick on the fast-mover's JDAM counter. While playing the second mission of Field Marshal Blücher's Operation Hangman campaign, at least twice (I don't remember if it was more times than that) a fast-mover's status read "attacking" and the (presumably) JDAM counter went one tick lower, but no bomb landed. Admittedly, the briefing did say something about the two CAS jets being able to provide only one bomb each. (Something to do with fast-movers' skill level, perhaps?) But when an air support asset "attacks" and apparently expends ammo but no ordinance lands on the map, what is that supposed to represent/simulate? A dud bomb? A so-off-target-it's-not-even-on-the-map fire mission? A scrubbed run? I'm puzzled. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, though, I'm quite satisfied with the effectiveness of my support assets, both artillery and air. (But I suppose it helps that I play as Blue most of the time.)

JP76er, Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but it sounds like you're experiencing the misunderstanding I had when I first started playing CMSF. You see, the M249 fires 5.56x45mm NATO rounds just like the M4 and M16, whereas the M240 fires 7.62x51mm NATO. Not realizing that the M249 and the M4/M16 fire the same ammunition, I would always load up my rifle squads from 7.62mm ammo from the accompanying Strykers or Bradleys before dismounting them. Later, though, I realized my mistake after reading more about the M249, and now my M240-armed teams suffer no dearth of ammo on account of misinformed rifle squads. EDIT: Doh! Yair Iny beat me to it.

I thought of Shanghaiing, but that is a method of conscripting as opposed to a recruiting tactic. Even now, the US remains one of the few Western countries in which prostitution is illegal. (In most of the countries of Europe, prostitution is either legal and regulated or legal but not regulated.) The illegality of prostitution in the US disregards, obviously, how common prostitution is in the US, not least among those who with astute political correctness legislate against it. And then there's the fact that a 14-year-old girl evidently had no problem with getting boinked by three guys she didn't know (except, sort of, for the one she supposedly met online). The irony of these matters (that of the Marines and of the soldier alluded to by JonS) is that the kinds of guys suited to being armed to the teeth and unleashed on the bad guys are not infrequently also the kinds of guys one wouldn't want to have LOS to one's 14-year-old daughter. But yes, if I were a Marine, I suppose my view would be something along the lines of: "Lousy &@#-%@$& jailbait-mongers heaping dishonor on the Corps...!"

Good point. I concur.

As I understand it, "bogged" means a vehicle is in the process of getting stuck in the terrain; this is indicated by the vehicle's wheels/tracks continuing to move alternatingly backwards and forwards while the vehicle is stationary. If a vehicle remains "bogged" so that it is actually stuck, then its status changes to "immobilized". "Immobilized" status can also be a result of damage to the vehicle, which (in game) most often is the result of enemy fire -- an RPG hits the running gear and blasts the track apart; 12.7mm MG fire turns a Stryker's wheels into Swiss cheese; or an SPG-9 round turns a Bradley's engine into iron fillings. Just because a vehicle is "immobilized" doesn't mean it couldn't be recovered in short order, as in the situation LT Mike describes above. For example, a Bradley could still be towed if it suffered an engine-disabling hit from an RPG, since the running gear itself is intact.

Could this have had anything to do with whether or not the TOW launcher was in the process of being reloaded at the time? I don't know off the top of my head (in part because I almost always play real-time) how long it usually takes to reload a Bradley's TOW launcher. You mentioned the Bradley reversing out of LOS, and I find that this occurs often after launching a TOW, even if there's another TOW in the second launcher and ready to go.

Rather than 28 rounds? While I have no personal experience with .223/5.56 firearms, I have read about feed issues with fully-loaded 30-round mags.