Combatintman

I think also the other reason you can't take everything in the vehicle is because of the available ammunition to start with. If you look at the 5.56mm and 7.62mm slots in the squad before you acquire ammunition you'll see that there is not space to acquire all of those ammunition natures stored on the vehicle. This I'm sure will reflect the number of ammunition pouches that the soldiers have on their webbing/load carrying gear/assault vests. Encumbrance will also be a factor - do you know how much ammunition weighs? On top of the weight of your helmet, body armour and the water in your Camelbak, carrying 6 x magazines of 5.56, a belt of 200 x 5.56mm link for the SAW or 7.62mm link for the MG, a smoke grenade and a couple of hand grenades soon tires you out.

Cpl Steiner - thanks for posing the question - I am interested in the answer myself as I am trying to put together a scenario myself where I want IEDs as a feature. It will be my first one and I'm still at the map making phase right now. I haven't experimented with the AI yet but am slightly concerned because from reading the manual it does suggest that some form of positive action is needed to activate the IED and I'm not sure whether the AI can cope with that.

I think that perhaps you're getting overstressed to be honest. In real life you may be told to cover a particular arc but to maintain situational awareness you're always going to be looking around as a dismount if for no other reason than to see where your feet are going. Also the section/squad commander needs to look around just to check that he's going in the right direction and that all of the blokes in the section are following so there is at least one person who is covering 360 degree arcs. Now I don't know if these are the factors that went into coding this game but to translate into real life that would be a reason why an enemy is spotted outside the game/player induced covered arc. Next point is - so what if they stop? You lose a bit of time. Your plan should have enough flexibility and concurrent activity to cope with it. Given also that the basis of all tactics is fire and manoeuvre you should have something overwatching anyway - be it another section/squad or vehicles of some sort. That being the case they will engage enemies that pop up and means that you can reconsider what movement order type you give to the moving section/squad.

Even if not you should be able to work it out from its location in the tactical formation. Not that it matters because you can't micromanage your gunners often enough or with as much fine tuning as saying in real life 'go for command vehicles' to take out the 'K' variants anwyay.

Flipping heck - I opened a can of worms with the M-113 then? My take on the nomenclature is pretty much as stated by many - the 'Gavin' thing seems to have crept in. I know when I teach vehicle recognition its always going to be known as an M-113. The other beauty of having the M-113 family is that it is another vehicle for the great modding community to get their hands on and do a bit of reskinning. The possibilities then are endless - US Desert Storm, US OIF for starters. Those guys working on the REFORGER Mod will be better able to replicate the US Army of the late 80s. Then of course in combination with the LAV when it is released in the USMC module and the Leopard in the NATO module that opens up even more possibilities - two starters for ten below: ADF Mod M-1 ASLAV M-113 Canadian Mod Leopard (once the NATO Module is released) LAV M-113 (or TLAV - but not Gavin!!) All of that combined with the British Module and some extra Former Soviet vehicles will make this game something I've been waiting for for years. To be honest I'm pretty happy with the way it plays now.

George - just played this on V1.07 on basic training level in WEGO mode as the US - had a minor defeat. SPOILERS Did pretty much the same as many other players. Armed up my dismounted scouts with Javelin and plonked them on the roofs to give overwatch and then went right flanking with everything I had. Getting to the town was a doddle although I was aware of time ticking away. Once in the town my troubles began and lost both tanks and 4 Bradleys. In retrospect I was overly mindful of the ammunition requirement and didn't use one of my 120mm mortar units at all although to be fair given that all of my vehicle losses bar one were due to two of the T-72s in the town I'm not convinced that it would have made much difference to be honest. SPOILERS END My only quibble was that I never got the points for the second phase line even though I clearly crossed it and secured all of the objectives in the town bar one. Not sure if this is a bug or not. Otherwise - to go back to your post about real life briefings - I have seen many exercise Op Orders in the British Army which have combat effectiveness stated as a constraint along the lines of '1 Loamshire BG is not to fall below 70% CE'. That said I haven't seen it relating to CSUP expenditure. Overall a well balanced scenario, a good map, some potential surprises and a lot of tension as the clock ticks away. I enjoyed it very much and thankyou for creating it.

All for more kit I'd like to see in addition to the above: M-113 M-577 I also think there's a place for modelling casevac in CMSF as well so would like to see ambulance variants of the M-113 and Stryker.

the Fighting Seabee - We might have hit on something here. As well as MOPP/NBC kit, how about getting smoke to simulate chemical agent clouds and then modelling the chemical downwind hazard - would be interesting to see it implemented in some way. Or even have chemical munitions for Syrian artillery - a BM-21 strike with any kind of chemical agent might even a few things up.

I know its only a game and that CW effects aren't modelled in CMSF but if it were for real I certainly wouldn't be pounding a CW facility with artillery - so much could go wrong with that course of action!

There's been a lot of talk about additional Syrian forces as part of the USMC module and in addition to those mentioned I'd like to see a lot of the less 'sexy' stuff included such as: MTLB APC. BTR-50 APC. BRM-1K Recce vehicle. GAZ-66 Truck. MT-12/T-12 100mm Anti-tank gun. I echo various comments about additional map features/flavour objects as the current building choice is a bit limited my choice would be: Bridges. Oil facilities such as storage tanks and pipelines. Industrial buildings. Railway objects. Weapon pits (I bodge this with craters currently). Airfield objects such as Hangars and HASs.