hcrof

It has to be said though that if the shell scrapes are the same as the ones as in CMSF, the attacker will never see them - They are always there but are so shallow that you have to know exactly where they are in order to have a chance of spotting them. I have hope yet

Just a suggestion which might be obviously wrong but I thought I would give it a shot Seeing as 'foxholes' in CMSF are practically invisible (I have a hard time seeing them with a unit in them, on open ground), why not have the texture/graphic as a spottable unit? So the foxhole is easy to see for the defender but is still almost invisible to the attacker. As well as this, you could have a 'sandbag' object to provide additional cover or fortify houses which is spottable. Along that theme, the edges of a foxhole could have a 'rim' of raised earth and camoflage that works like the sandbags. Are placable objects that dont break the terrain mesh but provide cover possible?

c3k - Yep, high quality troops from better formations (i.e. not reserves) will get the 105mm rounds. Sergei - I was going to post something about more RPG's but your post made me check. You are right, a platoon should only have 1 RPG per squad. The russians use an RPO and an RPG-22/26 as well though, I take it the Syrians don't have them because I would love to have an RPO in my squads!

To be fair I would be getting pretty p***ed off after 6 months of tracked vehicles driving down my high street. Also, to most people, if it has tracks its a tank and in Afghanistan, tanks carry a huge amount of negative feeling because the Soviets destroyed villages with them. Besides, how are you going to collect HUMINT from inside a Warrior? Freindly locals warning of enemy movements save a lot of lives so it is worth talking to people as you drive though a town. Warriors have their place in very high risk environments but I think the commanders on the ground would use them more if they thought they needed them. No argument on the hardware we have though - at the low level (Brigade?) we are the equal of the US forces, its just that as far as I know we have fewer high level assets available because we are not planning on defending West Germany any time soon

Don't forget the 105mm T-HEAT. That one will make a mess of anything it hits (except perhaps the front arc of an Abrams). Although the size difference between 93mm and 105mm might not seem that great, it has a massive difference in penetration which makes is truly dangerous. The only drawback is its shorter range, I wouldn't try to hit anything at over 150m with it. The RPG-29 uses a similar warhead but has more propellent behind it, making it more accurate at range. As stoex said, thermobaric rounds for both types of RPG are very useful for killing people in buildings. The pressure wave ignores body armour and will kill ~90% of the people in the room, making it is as effective as a SMAW. It is not so effective outside an enclosed area though. The BMP-1's gun fires a special 73mm HEAT warhead, the same one as in the SPG 9 recoilless rifle which has about the same penetration as the 85mm warhead from the RPG 7 (but much greater range). Hope that helps As for the same warheads being in all types of BMP I agree. BMP-2/3 should have a selection of RPG rounds available - Including HE and the more powerful HEAT ones.

I had to think about that for a while but I think the answer is that your average Taliban footsoldier (for all the stereotypes) is not that interested in dieing. They fight partially because they always have and partially because they cannot take any foreign occupation/influence. This is no Jihad (In most cases) Now I'm sure someone who has been to Afghanistan can do a much better analysis than that (And I'd be interested to hear it!) but that is not the point. An ambush would only kill part of a platoon as the terrain, weapons and numbers of fighters cannot achieve more than this. They would then have to escape before the rest of the platoon unleashes a whole world of hurt on them. At point blank, it is much more difficult to escape and the remaining troops would fix them with fire before taking action to wipe them out (reinforcements, air, arty etc). In Afghanistan and Iraq, anyone who decided to fight it out rather than hit and run got killed fairly early on so most of whats left will not risk such a bold attack. I hope I am not wrong because anyone who is a) good enough to lay a decent ambush and crazy enough to do it point blank will cause a lot of casualties - like you said. I am not a military man so don't take all of that as gospel but that is how I see it.

It also has to be said that the British forces were making quite an effort not to be hit. AFAIK, infantry never walk in the open if they can help it, which reduces their profile. The Taliban shooters probably just has to rely on flashes of movement in between pieces of vegitation to shoot at. Of course, once the bullets start flying, then given the terrain, the British soldiers (or Taliban for that matter) would effectively disappear as they dive into the nearest cover. Ross Kemp was making himself a pretty small target in those ditches!

with "sendthisfile", just open up multiple tabs, each sending a file simultaneously. No subscription charges for me

I'm pretty sure that engines give a kind of armour bonus. From my experience, a BMP that is knocked out from the front (with a light weapon like an RPG) will take far fewer casualties than from the side. In my opinion, the engine is either acting as armour or is acting as stand off to the troop compartment. Having said that, I have learned from hard experience not to keep troops in them at ranges below 500m so it hasn't happened to me for a while! And troops riding on armoured vehicles would be cool!

Has anyone seen the announcement? I was so excited I had to sit down for a while

"Anti-Armor Tactics: The enemy did not attempt to penetrate the crew compartment of the vehicles they engaged. They fired volleys of RPGs to the front end of the HMMWVs in order to disable them and start a vehicle fire. Once the crew evacuated, they would engage them with crew served weapons. This demonstrates a very detailed understanding of the limitations of their weapon systems and a thorough knowledge of our armor vulnerabilities." I dont understand this, why would the Taliban not attempt to penetrate the crew compartment of a HMMWV? The RPG-7 has a penetration value of 330mm RHA (Basic 85mm wahead) so its not as if it's possible to put that much armour on a HMMWV. The crew compartment is a bigger target and once hit, the surviving crew would probably bail out anyway. Is this just deliberate misinformation by the US government to protect their troops?

I have a game running right now where my A10's strafed up a 3 or 4 T-72 TURMS-T tanks. They all took multiple hits and drove off. I don't know about subsystems but they where not destroyed!

I like these ideas - I would just throw in different types of question mark for soft/armoured vehicle and infantry. Also, I think there shouldn't be hit text in iron difficulty, personally I like that moment of doubt when an enemy tank is hit and you dont know how much damage you did!

I had my first real experience on the wrong end of a minfield the other day and I can't say I enjoyed it! There has been a bit of discussion of landmines in the past but nothing very specific so I would like to set out how I feel mines could be improved sometime in the future. Right now, if a fireteam runs into a minefield, you will lose most, if not all of your team. I tried crawling into possible minefields and it just got worse as they bunched up even more. This is made worse by the fact that currently there is no way to detect mines, even if you suspect a minefield. Here are a couple of suggestions to improve this aspect of the game: 1. Reduce the power of the AP mines explosion: I have been lucky enough to hang around a de-mining organisation for a week in the field, in Angola. From this experience, I can say the vast majority of mines will only actually kill children or old people, soldiers will just be injured with a broken or missing leg. Those nearby can suffer minor injuries or be blinded by debris. When one person in the fireteam gets hit by a mine, the team should immediately cancel all move orders and drop to the ground. Even in WeGo, the maximum one minute delay before new orders could be seen as everyone going "sh!t, Jonnys hit, we're in a minefield!" and working out what to do. 2. Allow anyone to spot any type of landmine if moving with a SLOW command: Recently laid mines are always spottable if you look hard enough. A lot of mines, especially AP mines are just tossed on the ground. Vegitation such as long grass or forest cover hide the mines until someone enters the field. The mines should then be covered by direct or indirect fires which do the most damage. Even if the mines are dug in, the disturbed ground usually will give an indication of a minefield. When searching for the minefield, there should be a chance that someone blows themselves up, higher for concripts and very low for veterin engineers. Once the mines are spotted, the information should go around the chain of command as with all spotting information unless engineers MARK the minefield. Bear in mind that digging around, trying to find the edges of the minefield is a VERY slow process but I think it would be already modelled by the slowness of the SLOW command and the fact that your troops would get exhausted quickly (Definately realistic!) 3. IEDs should also be spottable: I have heard of a lot of stories of people spotting IEDs and blowing them up at a safe distance. I think that they should be easiest to spot when the population density is set to HIGH. This would reflect a combination of Human Intelligence as well as the fact that the spotting troops would have been patrolling the area before and know what to look for. (I doubt the population of a recently invaded city is ever that high). On the other hand, an IED ambush in the middle of nowhere would be harder to spot (But less likely). Once spotted, it should be possible to attempt to destroy the IED with direct fire. I am a defensively minded player and would love to see more engineering work but right now I just feel sorry for my opponent when I place a minefield as there is nothing he can do about it. By expanding minefields in this way, they can be used more often and new mission types can become available (find a path through the minefield?). I could go on for ages about different types of mines and nasty 'combo' effects you can use, but my suggestions above would be enough to cover ~90% of the real world situations Just my $0.02 but I would be interested to hear what people think

Well I thought I would try this one out as the syrians. As Steve said, I am pretty sure that the Americans wouldn't notice the difference due to their information sharing abilities being much better. Essentially, question marks DO provide a spotting bonus for your troops. If a unit has a question mark over an enemy, when the unit moves into LoS it will spot the enemy much faster. My test showed some interesting stuff. There were two ridges 1200m from each other and hull down static tanks as the enemy. If a T-72M moved into a hull down position on the ridge, the static tank always fired first. The firing signature would then reveal its position and the T-72M would fire back. If the T-72M approached on a road, with no dust cloud, the two tanks would fire at each other almost simultainiously but with longer wait before firing as neither tank would spot each other very fast. If the T-72M crew missed, backed down the ridge and appeared somewhere else, it would then get its shot off a lot quicker the next time due to the question mark. The effect was the same if the crew was dismounted, took a peek over the ridge before returning to the tank and moving to hull down. I am not claiming that this test was comprehensive or even very controlled (It was during a battle). However, it does seem to show that question marks are important for spotting and also that it is not a good idea to stay in one place for too long! I could set up a proper test if people want me to but I hoped that little bit of info helped!

I read a really good account a while back of a British engineering recce group in WMIK's who advanced past some American armour who had stalled after losing a few Bradleys. Although it was at night, they drove through 6 ambushes, each one worse than the last due to communication between the ambushing troops. After a while it was clear that they were not going to get to their destination and they were being hunted down by some Iraqi technicals so they thought about it and.. Drove right back through the 6 ambushes! Some medals were won after that but it proves that speed and firepower can keep you alive - some of the enemy were less than 100m away! I think the book was called 'In foreign fields', It is a collection of personal stories from British medal winners in Iraq and Afghanistan - a really good read.

Sometimes when I recieve a PBEM turn and try to open it my password doesn't work. I tried entering my opponants password and that doesn't work either. The only way to resolve the issue is to ask my opponent to replay the turn and replace it with a new one. This issue has happened to me twice now and I have a save game to prove it. Possible bug?

Thanks guys - You have given me a bit of reassurance that I was doing the right thing - from what you said my big problem was that my second rocket barrage missed. (And I was careless at one point with a BMP) I am now well into the third mission and having some great tank battles - a hull down enemy tank just took 6 hits before brewing up and one of my tanks limped away barely functioning. Thanks PT!

Unfortunately there is not a lot of room for maneuver, I have clear a road in order to facilitate the advance of the main force. The town is on the road. Because of this you get sucked into the town which is defended piecemeal by a lot of low quality reservists. I elected to approach the front because of the fact that I had tanks on a hill to the front and I was told that the enemy had AT assets (ATGM's and recoilless rifles) which could only be in the open on the flank. Because there was no 'integrated' defence I could not come up with a unified strategy, I just was given a load of houses, of which some had enemy in them and only 45 minutes to clear them all. The majority of my casualties came from a freindly fire incedent (my own ATGM nosedived into a full BMP :eek:) but I have no ammo for the rest of the campaign and a few moral issues about levelling the place as the population density was high. @BlackMoria - Reverting to savegames is cheating!

I don't play a lot of single player CMSF but I thought I would give Paper Tigers 'The road to Dinas' a go. First of all I am very impressed - I love the concept, and so far, the maps have been excellent! More importantly, I started in Petani and had to take the town in 45 minutes with a company of mechanised infantry and rocket arty + tank support. After getting a little bit held up after establishing a foothold, I pushed ahead with a quick tempo and took the town without huge casualties. However, there was not much left of the town, or my ammo supplies at the end of the mission. I had hit across a formula where a reinforced platoon would fire at every building in a compound before one squad assaults every building in turn to clear it. Any targets of opportunity would be engaged with tanks placed 500m outside the town and every tall building would be leveled in case they contained something that could engage my tanks. This meant that after 45 minutes, I had used almost all of my 5.45, 7.62, RPG and HE ammunition, even after resupply! Is there any way I could do this mission again without using so much ammo and yet not lose people as they walk into an ambush? Also, this is not a very subtle way of taking a town, and if I was playing PBEM I would have revealed every position I had to the enemy. Surely, western forces don't: a) fill every house in a densly populated town with bullets and HE Level the town with an (attempted) rolling barrage by rocket artillery before going in - I know the georgians were accused of this but they are not 'western' Maybe I am doing the right thing, but I would have not liked to face a counter attack after taking that town - I was spent! Any advice would be very welcome!

I am designing something but its not officially announced yet (although people who actually read my posts might have got what it is ) I would love that ORBAT! could you send it to hcrofton...gmail.com sdp - 118 premade maps :eek:

IIRC, In 'Allahs fist' a dismounted tank crew was essential. A T-62 is never going to take out a M1A1 from the front so it was great to wait until the enemy turned their flank (observed by a dismounted crew). I then went over a ridge and nailed the US tank platoon whilst they whern't ready for it! Of course, when the crew is dismounted, they don't have a radio so there is no chance of sharing information with the rest of the platoon. :mad:

Nice to see you like the game - I have to say I agree with you although I am am a bit of a fanboi To call in a smoke screen, you request a fire mission like normal with your artilery and select the area/ linear pattern. After this you get to choose if you want heavy, medium, light or smoke. Enough said! A smoke screen can be very useful - use it well!

Definately go for a big monitor - it makes a huge difference to everything. Even your desktop background starts to look good!

Well I almost always play WeGo PBEM so I find it easier! I tend to lose patience when playing a battle all in one go so my micromanagement starts to suffer Of course there are many times a well place ATGM doesn't have to be move but really good positions are rare. Against a human player who will replay the last turn a couple of times and spot the smoke cloud it is often better to be safe than sorry. He will often have something in overwatch that I havn't seen yet! I use my ATGM's as my primary tank killers and I never have enough so I am very cautious with them