Dietrich

Only 200m away?! Sheesh, at that distance you don't even have time to pop smoke before the AP shells arrive. *sigh* Sounds like a bit of poor scenario design. Of course, in that situation, M1s are the pretty much the only Blue vehicles that would be able to not get more or less instantly knocked out.

*winces* What, your guys never ran low on ammo, so that they then said: "Thank goodness for those AAVs and all the extra ammo they're carryin', or else we'd be SOL"? AAVs spawning into enemy LOS isn't the AAVs' problem; it's the fault of the scenario designer.

My experience has been that Armor yields a tighter grouping than General, so if the building is small, you might find Armor yields more hits on the building itself. If the building is more broad, General should suffice.

I agree with you, MikeyD, that if the action could flow in multiple directions, the AI plans should be multiplied accordingly. In historical scenarios, though, it makes sense to have a single AI plan based on the actual event(s). However, multiple AI plans in a historical scenario could yield rather interesting play.

Okay, so losing merely one or two guys per squad at a time is expecting too much. I find, though, that my playing overall in CMSF is rather different than in any previous CM game. In both CMBB and CMAK, in which I prefered to play as the Germans (or the Finns in the former case), my attitude in attacking scenarios was <furious shouting>"Los, Männer! Vorrücken! Die letzten beißen die Hunde!"</furious shouting>, and if my pixeltruppen took 30% casualties on the way to the objective but, after a volley of Stielhandgranaten and some wielding of Spaten, captured the trench or building, es ist nun einmal so (that's just the way it is). In CMSF, however, I feel even more commanderly concern for my pixeltruppen. I'm conscious that I'm leading one small part (a company, a platoon, or even just a squad) of a strictly volunteer army which can ill afford casualties due to Sturmangriff, never-mind-the-cover sort of charges. If one guy in a squad goes down, especially if he is wounded rather than killed outright, I feel beholden to send a couple guys back once the rest of the squad has reached its bound. When a squad's commander gets hit and the unit's rank changes from a sergeant to a corporal, I think, "Damn, they got [insert surname here]." In short, when I suffer any casualties, I think, "What could I have done differently?"

Too much, yes, but only because the unit in question is a lone Maquis. If the unit in question were a 'spy' from Marseille, however....

'No wrong way to do it'? Whenever I lose more than a couple guys in a squad at one time, I consider that the wrong way. Providing the enemy AI multiple possible setup zones not only increases the replayability of a given scenario but lessens the feeling of 'well, now that I've restarted this scenario a couple times, I know right where to aim my artillery at the outset....' If you don't necessarily know where the enemy is even on your third or fourth time playing a scenario, there really is no 'key', as MikeyD put it.

Why won't BFC allow a no-time-limit option? Perhaps because battles/scenarios which would require more than two hours to complete are beyond the scope that CMSF was built for. *shrug* Sounds reasonable to me. It sucks for the AI that it doesn't know how to do tactical resupply, but I'm glad my pixeltruppen are able to grab fresh mags and belts in the course of a longer-than-an-hour battle.

Using smoke to isolate objectives can also be done with vehicles' smoke mortars. (The LAV, I've noticed, for some reason launches its smoke much farther from itself than any of the other Army or Marines vehicles.) The principle is the same: use smoke to screen from enemy fire your forces while they are on the move or otherwise relatively vulnerable.

"Sacre bleu! Invaders! Ay moost attaq zem uith ekstreem prejudees!" I'm surprised no one has yet commented on the Surrender movement command. American 1: <grumbles> "The French...a bunch o' cheese-eatin' surrender monkeys!" American 2: <trying to be conciliatory> "Still, they weren't Nazis*, at least." * pronounced: NÄH-zees =P DISCLAIMER: I think the French are okay, and I believe their reputation alluded to above is merely the result of the Germans being faster on their treads.

Bug: "+2 OK" should read "+deux tres bien". =P

*cheer* One-to-one-rendered pixeltruppen charging forward with a cry of "Angriff!"

I suppose an undeployed MMG has somewhat less accuracy than a deployed one, but suboptimal accuracy is better than no LOS. lol True, the AI may well do that. But typically the AI is more than able to plaster me (or at least try to do so) with rooftop-positioned MGs and/or AGLs (as in "USMC The Old City"). heh

To call for arty smoke on the area where there may be hostiles lying in wait would, as MikeyD points out, make things more dangerous for the troops you send into that area. But to call for arty smoke on the area behind or next the objective would separate the hostiles in the objective zone from supporting fire from adjacent positions. In other words, you can use arty smoke to isolate an area until you have time to capture it or eliminate the hostiles therein.

Thanks to the bullpup configuration (magazine and upper receiver between stock and trigger assembly rather than above/in front), the L85 can have a longer barrel than the M4 while being only 1.1 inches longer overall. =) If the next module is going to be NATO, will any German troops (or at least Bundeswehr equipment) be included? I'd love to unleash some rapid-fire 7.62x51mm at some mock-Taliban via an MG3. =D

Do you mean that you were under the impression that the M16 was the primary infantry weapon for both the Army and the Marines in CMSF or in real life? Whereas I haven't seen any Army infantry in CMSF using M16s, I have noticed certain soldiers in Marine squads sometimes using M4s (usually w/o M203 grenade launcher) -- fireteam leaders, when responding to a Target order at extended range (beyond 300m or so), will unsling their M4s and squeeze off rounds.

I suggest: Deduce which buildings have LOS to your troops and recon by fire on those buildings. Alternately, when facing open terrain with clumps of trees, recon by fire into the trees. Interestingly, that trick is not just the preserve of old war movies -- I've seen a German sniper training film from 1944 (commissioned by the Luftwaffe High Command, oddly enough) which illustrates the gamut of tactics, from the good ol' helmet-on-a-stick trick to fairly elaborate (and with only readily available materials) dummies which looked fairly convincing at sniperly range.

I encounter this most times that I have an MG deployed on the roof of a building. I say most times because not all buildings have parapets of the same height, whereas a few have seemingly no parapet. In most cases, deploying an MG on a rooftop is counterproductive because the parapet blocks LOS. You'd think that instead of put the MG on its bipod and setting the bipod on the roof itself, they would deploy the bipod and put the bipod legs on the parapet...but I guess it isn't modeled so particularly. So I don't think it's an LOS error per se, but rather an unfortunate side effect of stance coding.

Despite the implications of poor supply in slug88's quote, the Marines have more men and proportionately even more firepower -- they're quite well equipped. A typical Army infantry squad has 9 men (two four-man fireteams and a squad leader), whereas a typical Marine infantry squad has 13 men: a squad leader and three four-man fireteams. Thus a Marine infantry squad is like a platoon in miniature, and the Marine infantry platoon has almost a squad's worth of men more than the equivalent Army formation. And the typical weapon of the Marine rifleman is the M16A4, which (thanks to its longer barrel) has greater effective range that the M4 which equips Army riflemen. (Fireteam leaders equipped with M32 grenade launchers carry M4s to supplement.) I wouldn't say that the Marines have more CAS, but air assets -- attack helicopters and Harriers -- are (on paper, at least) organic to MEUs, and they can call on F/A-18s as well. On the other hand, as RadioactiveMan alluded to, the Army's Bradley has a greater passenger capacity and -- with its 25mm autocannon and ATGMS -- is able to tackle a wider range of targets than the Marine LAV. (Though the LAV responds better to "Target Light" commands....)

(Not to be even more off-topic, but...) Clichéd stereotypes about people from a certain country or region can typically be debunked just by taking the time to notice how said people actually are. Japanese people are thought of as being unexpressive and humorless. Ever seen a film directed by Akira Kurosawa or starring either Toshiro Mifune or Takashi Shimura? My point exactly. If it really were true that Germans have no sense of humor, why did Westdeutscher Rundfunk invite Monty Python to create two 45-minute specials (entitled Monty Pythons Fliegender Zirkus; the first was recorded in German, the second was in English with German dubbing)? If Finns really are so soft-spoken and reserved, then why are rock singer-songsmith Ismo Alanko and über-folk band Värttinä (to name just two examples) so loud and vivacious?

Thanks for creating this scenario, Webwing -- it's definitely intense! =) *** SPOILER ALERT! *** So many red diamonds out there! A mishandled sending of a couple squads round the end of the wall into unanticipated enemy fire yielded nearly a dozen casualties and bogged down my force for 20 minutes while they laid down suppressive fire and recovered the dead and wounded. After that, to secure my left flank -- the north(?) side of the highway -- I sent one more or less intact platoon (2nd Platoon, B Company, IIRC) up onto the embankment. They took some fire as they advanced to the opposite side of the embankment, suffering a few casualties (wounded), but no sooner had they gotten there than what I figured to be an entire company of Syrians came hustling over the rise in front of them. It was like that scene in Band of Brothers: "It's a whole 'nother company!" The fire of the platoon on the embankment and of the handful of my other units which could see over the embankment made that Syrian flank attack grind to a halt. By that time, the platoon was getting low on ammo, so I had my mortars lay down a smoke screen to the north and sent my guys hustling back to the safer side of the embankment. So far I had sufferred about 7 killed and 15 wounded. But then, after half an hour of combat, I had to leave my computer. I'm sure I'll be enjoying the challenge of this scenario even more when I have time to play it all the way through. Thanks again, Webwing! =)

...So will war eventually become a matter of one nation's robots fighting against another nation's robots? Events throughout the world in the past few decades (and, by extension, throughout recorded history) have shown that not even killing aggressors ends conflict, so delegating the fighting to robots would be simply delaying the inevitable.

True -- when one has platoon/company mortars, battalion mortars, SBCT/HBCT artillery, and standard air assets, an orbiting AC-130 would be perhaps too much of a good thing. Being interested in small-scale (platoon or less) Special Forces-type scenarios, I imagine an instance where a 13-man ODA (or some such) comes up against stiff Uncon resistance and calls the on-station AC-130 for some on-the-spot raining of high-explosive death. Not so all-encompassing as a 2,000lb JDAM but more hard-hitting than a flurry from a couple o' 81mm mortars. Being a longtime CMx1 player, I'm just glad to have air assests I can actually communicate with.

My most thorough observation of the phenomena Steiner describes has been in the several times I've played theFightingSeabee's "Afghani Stan" scenario. This may be due more to the Red AI plan(s) than anything else, but the Uncons come jogging into grenade range of my five-man Army SF teams, hardly returning fire at all before they get thoroughly fragged. The ammo supply problems mentioned by dan/california and flamingknives show that setting Red ammo supply to Typical yields what seems to me to be no more than a couple magazines per guy -- it's all the easier for Blue to prevail if Red simply runs out of ammo.

Ah, point. Hence the AC-130's more common use in Afghanistan. Isn't air interdiction one of the types of missions that Blue ground forces in Syria would call for? In that case, F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, etc., would suffice, I reckon.