Combatintman

Ok - that was my map - thankyou for saying it was realistic - if you look at the actual ground I had to crop it by a few kms to make it fit so it wasn't totally realistic. As to your point about the desert being dull and realism - well you answered the question yourself - the game is set in Syria and the campaign is anchored around real life locations. The fact is that a lot of Syria is desert and therefore at some point there is going to be some sort of battle in a desert area. Variety is the spice of life and all that and again this was part of the campaign design - there are some people who rail about the predominance of FIBUA/MOUT battles in CMSF - a school of thought I agree with in a lot of ways mainly because of how difficult it is in real life but also because of the way scenario designers put their missions together - I've lost count of the number of times I've looked at an urban map and seen the objectives and looked at how I'm going to reach them and then known that I'm going to get utterly wasted taking that path. Horses for courses as they say. The points allocation thing was all decided as part of the campaign design - this was supposed to be an 'easy' mission and therefore the points allocation reflects this. You quite clearly disagree with this and I understand your point totally but taking the campaign as a whole, if all missions were hard, then nobody would finish it.

And temperate camouflage schemes tend to feature generous patches of black. Good start though - looking forward to the finished article.

I wouldn't get too hung up on the proximity of the coast as to whether this would be a USMC v Army operation. You have to set a wider context and by that I mean which formation 'owns' that battlespace. As you are the scenario designer it means you can specify what you want in there or maybe use the campaign map as a guide to set your backstory/narrative. The other way is just to reverse engineer it - so select your force package for the mission and then build the wider higher formation context around it. In terms of the packaging suggestions you've got there - all sound plausible enough. In reality it will be determined by factors such as 1. How important is the airfield in the grand scheme of things? 2. What enemy is there? 3. What resources do I have available? 4. Where are those resources? 5. How much time do I have? 6. What risks am I prepared to take?

Nice - great to see the UN skins for the TUM and Warrior - quick off the mark there.

AT-5 minimum range according to the Worldwide Equipment Guide is 75m so it looks like he wasn't too close.

Yes its a pain in the dangly things having to alt-tab, however it is the only show in town right now. There are ways to speed the process up such as the simple expedient of printing off your desired area in Google Earth and Cpl Steiner has posted some great tips with Google Earth to aid the process such as using a freeware program called GE Path which allows you to overlay a grid on your Google Earth image. This grid is scalable to whatever you desire so for example you can set the interval to 8m by 8m (the tile size in the editor).

zmoney - thanks for the compliments on the map - it took me a couple of weeks to get it right so glad to see the effort is appreciated. The time limits on many missions are pretty tight and it was a conscious design decision. If you remember one of the many gripes of the WW2 crowd about modern warfare is 'modern warfare is too easy for the blue player, I don't find it challenging' then this helps set the context. One of the ways to make each scenario challenging is to introduce a time constraint. I think Napoleon once said something along the lines of 'take anything from me but time' so its always a factor. Added to that the other factor in the decision-making was the fact that we all have to organise our gaming around our real lives - many people do not have much more than an hour a day to devote to their hobby and so that is why few if any of the campaign missions are more than an hour in duration.

No the first mission features 7 Armd Bde's Formation Recce Regiment. These have always been equipped with Scimitar and will remain equipped with it for the foreseeable future. FR Regiment Recce Sqns are termed 'Sabre Sqns' as is stated in the TO&E. The withdrawn CVR(T) Sabre vehicle was, as has been stated, a cut and shut job with a CVR(W) Fox turret bolted on to a Scorpion chassis and equipped the recce platoons of Mechanised Infantry Battalions and Armoured Infantry Battalions until its withdrawal a couple of years ago. The Type 44 Armoured Regiment or IMA (Interim Medium Armour) Regiment came about as a result of the Expeditionary Doctrine which has as its main premise the ability to deliver a lot of combat power over great distances quickly. In essence the British Army reorganised itself to deliver a certain number of light role units, medium role units and heavy role units. These equate to Light Brigades, Mechanised Brigades and Armoured Brigades. So in this instance we are talking about 'medium' or mechanised brigades. Now bear with me because this is stuff off the top of my head but a mech bde post FAS (Future Army Structure) should comprise: Formation Recce Regt Armoured Regt Armoured Infantry Battalion Mechanised Infantry Battalion x 2 Light Role Battalion The Mechanised Brigade is the thing that is waiting for the much heralded FRES vehicle programme (for US types think Stryker equivalent here). As Steve has said though, we've done the reorg without waiting for the equipment to turn up. So the result is the Type 44 Armoured Regiment with 3 x Challenger-2 equipped 'Sabre Squadrons' and a CVR(T) Scimitar equipped 'IMA Squadron'. In the Mech Inf Battalions the utterly useless Saxon was replaced by the FV-432 Mk3 Bulldog. This in itself is an interim solution as we had lots of FV-432 hanging around in vehicle depots and the need for a decently protected vehicle was very quickly identified in Iraq. So the FV-432 Mk2 was upgraded to Mk3 status by fitting a new engine, protected or remote weapon firing stations and by adding armour and then issued to Mech Inf Battalions. This will be until FRES (Future Rapid Effect System) turns up which will provide Utility, Reconnaissance, Medium Armour, Manoeuvre Support and some simpler variants. As it stands right now the most likely vehicle to replace the Bulldog will be the Piranha V. CVR(T) variants throughout the TO&E I reckon will be replaced by a combination of the Panther command and liaison vehicle and hopefully the CV-90. So that would see our IMA Squadrons being equipped with CV-90. Hopefully this clears things up.

That depends on the scenario designer - have a look at the Police Station mission in the Brit Campaign - that has quite a few abandoned cars in it.

AH would be less effective at acquiring personnel targets though due to the limited FOV on the gunner's sight.

Same for us Brits - the Javelin CLU is seen as one of the best night ISTAR assets going so it is not at all surprising that in-game the Javelin CLU picked up the enemy first and so far out.

Loads of variables here - where did the a/c lift from (i.e. how far away is the airbase to the CAS station?), what is the loadout? Is AAR available? As a generic figure I reckon 2 hours would be about right.

Yep - lost me too - any chance of giving us more of a clue what you're after and we'll do what we can to find the answer.

lomir, That's one hell of a map you're putting together there - as one who likes going for realism on my own maps, I know how much effort it takes to get it right and your pics show you're doing a great job..

Colours are rare these days - you can expect a bog standard Coalition half chevron, a number plate and a coy/sqn marking with the vehicle callsign in the middle of it all in black. The coy/sqn marking coventions are pretty much unchanged from WW2 if you know much about that. What you won't see is a coloured box with a number inside it. Otherwise all you've got is an air recognition dayglo panel. Some challenger regiments draw rings around their barrels to indicate which troop they'r in (I think). Best bet is to hit a military modelling site - these guys are all over that sort of stuff.

RecceDG With regard to your comment in the post above about the campaign writing - I'll take some of your points from the other thread: So to sum up, the campaign so far has suffered from: 1. A lack of a central "main character" (meaning a unit, not a person) to hang the narrative on; A - 4 SCOTS BG 2. A lack of continuity mission-to-mission in most cases; A - Not quite sure what you mean here, but the continuity is supplied by the geography. The units may differ mission to mission but each mission will feature elements from the core units file which bring us back to 4 SCOTS BG. 3. A gross misunderstanding of the sequence of tasks involved in an operation; A - Untrue. The premise of both branches of the British Campaign is the same - kick the doors in and go for a regime collapse objective in Syria. So we have an initial sequence of pure warfighting missions followed by some stability tasks followed by resumption of the advance. Now of course you're thinking - that's just the point I'm making - stability ops should come at the end. Well I vaguely recall on TELIC that there were stability tasks going on concurrent with the battle for Basra so your neat construct actually doesn't fit the facts. So why have the stability tasks where they are in the British Campaign? Well the reason is simple, and I accept that this may not have come across strongly in the campaign narrative and so I accept the point, 7 Armd Bde, having led the assault has handed off to 4 Bde to take up the attack and therefore is conducting stability ops while reconstituting prior to resuming the advance later on. 4. A further misunderstanding of the troops assigned to tasks (both type and amount); A - I accept that troops to task is not realistic and therefore I agree that part of the point but this is where the gameplay v reality equation kicks in. To say that the Campaign designer misunderstands troops to task is factually incorrect. 5. A passive AI who does not react to opportunity, nor commits reserves, nor even makes effective use of artillery. A - Agreed and there are plenty of posts to that effect here - I'd love to see a trigger-based AI. So, I hope that puts it into context more for you and perhaps encourage you to use less emotive words such as 'horrific' when discussing the campaign.

This is in danger of getting extremely fractious - to say that the Campaign is 100 per cent unrealistic is I think over the top. It was well thought through and put together in my view - yes we can quibble about the execution of individual missions but the campaign concept is sound and was written by someone with military experience. Also to address the scenarios thing - each one was tested by the team and feedback given. I did a couple myself and in terms of redesigning them was faced with the spectrum of 'good mission' to 'totally unplayable' - remember everyone has an opinion. So how do you deal with something like that ... you compromise. The type of AAR you put up here was the type of AAR that was going in on the Beta Forum - however not just from one person but a dozen or so people - a balance had to be found. In terms of the thing about the people who made the Campaign are unpaid volunteers being part of the problem I'll turn that on its head and say that it was part of the solution for without those people you wouldn't have had a module.

The TO&E was a source of enormous angst for the Brit Module - because it is so quirky and because the variety of units modelled in the Brit Module was so big the whole thing took a long while to put together and probably contributed to the long timelag between the issue of the Brit Module and the USMC Module. Many design decisions and compromises were made to get the thing to look and behave right and it was only when that was sorted that the Campaign could be put together. It is hard enough to explain the difference between WO1s and RSMs and WO2s and CSMs (lets not get into the RQMS/CQMS debate) to Brits let alone Americans. As others have said - the design decision was to include 'F' Echelon.

I've lobbied for more civvies and anything we can do to get closer to the human terrain I'd love to see but there is more that scenario/campaign designers can do. As an example I guess that a lot of players will as a default hose down buildings that they are suspicious of. So the designer solution is to make use of the victory conditions - lots of preserve objectives, high civilian density, make the blue casualty threshold extremely sharp and to cut down on hosing - make ammunition expenditure a key part of the victory conditions equation.

I can be more sympathetic here - the concept and narrative of which you speak is a good one - a lot of thought went into it and it fits the geography. However there are lots of factors in play with the whole thing and lots of punters were involved in putting the thing together. A happy medium has to be found between the realism wing and the variety/wargamer wing. I am a subscriber to the realism wing and there were plenty of things that I wasn't happy with - the classic being why isn't there air and arty racked up for every mission as there would be for real? Simple answer is that if it was there as it would be for real then the campaign would be a doddle. So in many missions you don't get that support as a deliberate design decision to make the missions harder. All I'd say is ... stick with it.

Yep, Iraq for us was an utter disaster - everyone knows it but isn't allowed to say it. The pullout was entirely due to misplaced political decisions - the same sort of thing was being talked about in relation to Afghanistan recently - namely that we would be in 'overwatch' next year - if we do that it will be Iraq all over again but some comedian will say that it was a well-executed 'exit strategy'. Utter nonsense.

When Bulldog was introduced (reintroduced if you're an old git) - the stated absolute minimum for the dismounts was to be an 8 man section resulting in a manpower increment for the mech battalions converting from Saxon. I'm pretty sure the ORBAT reflects this in the game.

You could probably do the Danes by modding existing kit or kit that is proposed for the NATO module. They would be useful for doing Helmand-type scenarios.

George - that is gleaming - however in your closing credits you refer to 'Combat Mission Strike Force'.

The reason I asked is that RCIEDs and Cellphone activated IEDs are susceptible to electronic countermeasures while CWIEDs are less susceptible. That's why I always choose CWIEDs for red when I want to use an IED. I'm not saying that this is the case in your scenario but if you are trying to eliminate factors for the thing not detonating then you might try swapping a cellphone operated IED to a CWIED. Another point to consider is ... what effect are you trying to achieve? If you are just looking to kill/immobilise a vehicle then why not save yourself all this hassle with faffing around with IEDs and their triggermen and just purchase a red mine group in the fortifications menu and stick them where you've got your IED. It will achieve the same effect and is more likely to work first time every time.