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tyrspawn - I think to best use your suggestion, the squad should only replenish ammo when it leaves the vehicle. That way, vehicle crews and depleted squads who are sheltering from arty fire don't take ammo when you won't ever use them again that battle.

Hi, Welcome to the forums 1. You can only reskin units - BFC keeps a tight reign on modders. They have their reasons but I won't try to explain them as I don't know enough about the technicalities. 2. Elevation in the scenario editor is actually very simple when you get used to it. What you are doing is creating 'contour lines' on the map. It allows for some very precise modelling of terrain even if it isn't as visually accessable as other editors. If you want to create a hill, just draw a series of concentric rings, each one higher than the last as you move towards the centre. As you get used to it you will quickly be able to create concave/convex hills, ridges, gullies etc. If you need extra help, try opening another scenario designers work and see how they do it - everyone has their own style!

Just what I have been looking for Ryujin, Thanks!

Use 'RezExplode' found in the mod tools folder in the battlefront directory. You can convert them back by using 'RezPack' in the same folder.

The thing about games in shops is that after the initial high price, games tend to get cheap quite quickly (unless they have huge sales). Battlefront sell their products at 'full price' for years. Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't pay a little more for a new title from Battlefront but I am not shelling out 50 quid for a game like CoD that lasts for maybe 15 hours and offers little replay value. Not ever. I would buy it second hand or pirate it instead.

I like stoex's idea for CMSF. When CMSF2 rolls around it might be easier to have an inventory management system similar to those in RPG's. They are familiar to a lot of people, easy to use and very fast. (+you can transfer stuff both ways )

Older ERA is easier to see when it blows off, newer stuff doesn't fly off so it won't be obvious. I can't say at what graphics levels you need though.

True, there are uber weapons like MLRS and NBC stuff but warfare was expected to be increadibly mobile with big gaps between units. Because there would be no defined 'front line' for any length of time it would be difficult to effectively employ these weapons effectively, especially with the expected breakdown in command and control due to extreme electronic warfare. Because of this, the chances are high that formations would stumble across each other frequently and begin a fast paced meeting engagement without heavy artillery support.

+100 Well I think I have made my feelings clear on this before Besides the fascinating and balenced gameplay, you also have the attraction that much (all?) of your potential audience lived through the cold war and we all wondered what it would be like had it gone hot! In the '80s there was a chance of a conventional phase for the first few weeks so the game could be modeled without pesky tac nukes

Spoilers!!!! Yeah, me neither! I was half expecting ATGM's though so I kept my Warriors out of sight for the most part. I found that I could use smoke to mask the tanks while shooting up the Jeeps etc with the warriors. The helicopters helped a bit but it was the Challengers that helped the most for me. My biggest surprise I would say was the forces that turned up behind me! Luckily I had posted spotters with mobile reserve by the Cafe which made short work of them. No WIA/KIA

If you are on a campaign mission, just set up a defensive perimeter at the 'road blocks'. Civilian traffic is abstracted and you will only spot hostile vehicles. If you want to simulate proper ROE, only open fire on civilian looking vehicles at less than a few hundred meters. A piece of advice on this mission. Keep a mobile reserve and keep your eyes open!

Surely the heat would affect the Syrians less as they are carrying much less gear than western forces. Just a Rifle, webbing and a helmet for most of them. I havn't tested this out though. The only infantry that I make run for long distances are my pixelBrits and they can jog for about 500m before tiring. At over 1km of jogging they are pretty exhausted. They arn't carrying javelins or anything though!

lomir - Great post, sums up my thoughts entirely. Unfortunately for the new players, common sense and experience are the only things that can help here.

Does a Kiowa carry ATGM's?

Go to 2.01 in this video That is what I think Alex is talking about. Which brings me back to cluster bombs. What are the chances of seeing them included?

I've always wondered about cluster munitions myself. Do the Syrians have them? The US certainly does and might be prepared to use them if they have just been hit by WMD's.

Apparently that is a myth cause by poor glass manufacturing techniques in old buildings. I have no facts or sources apart from wikipedia though I'm afraid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Glass_versus_a_supercooled_liquid

7.62 from a TARGET LIGHT command is actually quite good at supressing a building, even if it won't kill everyone inside. Just advance a squad up (using smoke if necessary) while hosing down every building that could hurt them with 7.62, toss in a few grenades (TARGET LIGHT, pause just outside for 5 seconds) and rush in. Immediately do the same again to the next 'room' and you should rush through the structure with few casualties. You will however run out of grenades very quickly. When using machine gun fire I get the feeling that the enemy gets used to getting shot at and after a few minutes of supression they may start to shoot back again. I always hold fire until just before the assault to maximise shock value and to save ammo. The 30mm is best kept as a reserve IMO for RPG teams or other nasty suprises. Another way to use it is to not fire for a full minute. Just pump a couple of rounds into a building and move forward slightly, switching to TARGET LIGHT to keep the survivors heads down. Also in mission 1 you have engineers. Use them! When they blast a hole in a wall they will seriously suppress anyone on the other side and there are plenty of walls without windows in this map. This allows them some protection as they set their charges. I just worked my way down the lines of buildings, blasting as I went and had little problem with enemy resistence. My only problem was a lone insurgent RPG team which managed to damage a Scimitar, killing its commander before hosing down one of my fireteams, killing or wounding 3 more. They got plenty of 30mm after that! SPOILERS The info cache is found in a small house on the left. I believe it has a garden and may be labled as the commanders house. As it is a single structure, I used my scout teams to capture it while my engineers where dealing with the main compound. They then called down arty fire on the barracks. I wasn't going anywhere near that!

Plasticity is the ability to be shaped or formed. The rubber ball analogy is perhaps a bit unclear but imagine a coathanger. You can bend it a bit and it will spring back to shape (elastic deformation) or you could bend it a lot and it will stay in the new shape (plastic deformation). The steel is plastic because you can cause lots of plastic deformation without damaging it, indeed you can simply bend it back to its orginal shape should you wish (with some work hardening etc that isnt very relevent here). It is not very maleable because it is not that easy to bend it. The steel is slightly elastic because it will take a little elastic deformation before going plastic. The opposite of plastic is brittle. You can't stretch or bend glass! As mentioned above, malleablity is how easy it is to cause plastic deformation, bluetack is very malleable, steel is not but both exibit plastic properties. Ductility is slightly different because it relates to how easily atoms slide over each other within the metal but I am not such an expert at wires etc so I am sure someone else could give a better answer

Doesn't the HQ vehicle have a slightly different model? An extra antennae or something. Maybe the HQ vehicle could have an aquirable RPG-7?

I think that there is certainly room for tweaking with the ammo types stored in the Syrian carriers. Maybe include all 3 types of ammo (7.62x39, 7.62x54 and 5.45x39) or have a generic 'assault rifle' ammo type that serves both calibres. About the BRDMs, I believe the Soviets put an RPG into at least one of the vehicles in a platoon. I don't know aboout the Syrians though. To be honest, the russians have a habit of stuffing everything they can get their hands on into thier carriers so I wouldn't be suprised if a Syrian recce platoon could 'aquire' an RPG from somewhere. Maybe with good equipment settings?

It would be nice to see even more smoke and dust for in the game too. Watching explosions in real life videos (especially in the middle east) one is struck but just how much dust is kicked up!

Try the battle 'king copper mines' (not the riots version), preferably as a PBEM. It has a very CMx1 feel as you creep around with your tanks. Seeing as the tanks mentioned are from 1955 they are not too different to what you would find in CMx1. Red v Red in general will feel more tactical than rolling through as blue. The key to CMSF is that weapons are much longer ranged and more lethal than in CMx1. If you can be seen, you can be destroyed so you need to quickly gain a firepower advantage over your opponent - not difficult with american troops who can just blast thier way through but much more difficult as the Syrians. Real world tactics work in CMSF so reading field manuals etc will improve your play and one of the joys for me is the research and discovery I do around the game. I think that you also need to lose the CMx1 mindset too. The games are superficially similar but try not to think 'CMx1 had this feature so I want it in CMSF'. As the game is so much more complex, you will never see those firepower % again for example - the game is too 'fuzzy' for that. If you approach CMSF as a 'new' experience you will gain more enjoyment for that. Its a steep learning curve but all the more rewarding when you eventually get it!

Yep, the GMG crew was killed and I used a spare scimitar crew to pick up the GMG using buddy aid. They can't use it - they won't deploy it after several attempt on the rooftop and open ground. I am having no problems with my dismounted GMG crews. Thanks for looking into it, I have savegames if you want one.

Just to update, I have moved the team into some open ground and tried to set up the GMG again. It didn't work. Are scimitar crews just not allowed to fire a GMG?