Atago

Tactically to me the dilemma is this - I can sneak from building to building throught he city where I have much better cover OR I can hoof it over the open areas further away from buildings. Good: City has lots more cover, good places to hide around corners and what not. Bad: City has lots of places for the bad guys to be hiding and ambush you. Open field, bad guys can't be hiding close to you however IF they can spot you you're waggling your ass in the air asking it to get shot off! In town it's like land mines - you start to cross a street then "find" the enemy the hard way as rounds start to land on your scouts - and you don't have too many of them to spare. It's one of those interesting quandries - each approach has advantages and disadvantages, but much depends on how much cover of darkness you have.

I've just got Marines, and am playing with the first scenario in the campaign. You are to send scout teams to various locations across a map with a city on one side and more open ground with a few buildings on the other. It's night, dark and quiet. First question - how can I tell how well the enemy can see? If they don't have night vision (and I don't' know for sure if they do or not) how far can they see? If I'm out in an open field where I'd be obvious in the daylight, at night visibility depends more on distance - can they bad guys see me? If the object is to be sneaky - can I tell my guys to hold fire, assuming that my firing will give my forces away. I really don't know (see above) if the enemy forces have spotted my guys or not at this point. If not - I'd rather not shout "HERE I AM" to the world! Great game/Simulation, still very much learning this thing and having fun doing so. Glad my Marines are virtual and not real... I'd be considered a Syrian secret weapon for all the poor Jarheads I get killed off!

Possibly but it came across that way. I had explained the dilemma I was having, using infantry spotting for bad buys (but getting shot at) and being unable to pull up AFV support. I thought though that I had pointed out that I knew that infantry spotting was probably the best bet. If he had a better idea (half squad or something, leaders perhaps) just saying so would have been much more informative. I DO give these things some thought before posting. If I got the tone wrong I Apologize! Don't want to rub anyone the wrong way!!!

And I wonder why I don't like forums - you always find someone that wants to be condescending or sarcastic . For those that actually tried to help thank you, I tried a different set-up location than the one I used previously and got through with minimal casualties. Went on to the next one where you have strikers and infantry fighting tanks and squeezed through that too (lost a couple strikers, but did OK). Now I'm onto the tank battle... heh, got my ass handed to me there first try!

Woops - I'd delete this if I could! Not sure How I did it...???

I'm still very much learning - so with that in mind... Stock scenario 2 - US forces need to get into the town, clear out the bad guys and get to the check points (or whatever you call them). US forces are Strikers (a few with 40mm launchers, the rest with 12.7mm) and attendant squads. 2 tanks show up at 10 minutes in. My problem... I approach the town with the strikers too closely and RPG's pick them off. If I don't close with them then the troops seem to take fire badly as they don't have cover until actually in town. How do I approach the town without loosing Strikers or too many troops? On attack my vehicles often spot an RPG team but seem to not react fast enough, the team often can KO the striker before any fire can be brought to bear on it. Something I'm doing wrong here? Perhaps I'm expecting too much. Maybe the way to find the RPG teams (or other anti armor forces) involves putting a Striker or two at risk to cause the enemy to expose their AT teams. Once you spot them, they get only one shot typically, but you can go though a lot of strikers doing the "wiggle your ass in the air" routine! Once actually IN town then the troops seem to be on their own. Strikers are limited to where they can go, and the troops apparently have to clear buildings of RPG teams before the armor can be moved up. By that time most of the support work is over - it's too late. I'd love to see an "expert" walk through of this scenario! I finally won the first scenario - read my orders for a change and just end ran around to my destination - put my Arty to good use for a change (does it do anything to infantry in buildings - 82, 120mm mortars?). Thanks!

I'm still very much learning - so with that in mind...

I do it too. I can't remember the number of times I've had the squad run back to the vehicle to get the launcher & missiles. As for city fighting, I do still occasionally find them useful when I can pop one at a building that has bad guys in it.

It's probably one of those answers I'll get and have say "duh" and slap myself, but... where do you find downloads of scenarios and/or campaigns for CMSF? If it's obvious, it ain't obvious to lil' old me.

Exactly. If I didn't like it, and didn't care I wouldn't waste time getting registered for the forum and making comments at all. If they want to call in whining that's ok - sometimes whining works (as my nephew has learned).

Fair enough, and thanks for the response. For those bitching about my bitching - sorry, but that's how feedback is done and potential improvements may be made. They had a good reason for doing the modular game it seems, and yes - it's to make money but that's ok as without the green stuff (or multicolored if you're not in the US) there'd only be shareware. I'd just be much happier if I could pick my exact forces then have the AI pick so I'd not know what I was up against. If that arrives in the Normandy module great, but having it retrofitted would sure make me happy. It sounds like this is being covered - excellent! I am rather curious to see how the T-90's are - particularly after spending the last hour or so driving around in the T-72 demo and blowing up a few targets.

First, let me point out that I do enjoy CMSF, it has good things going for it but of course, gripes rule - so I'm going to be griping about the stuff I don't like . I enjoyed the previous 3 CM's due to their versatility. It was very easy to just pop in and start making maps and battles putting whatever I wanted in them as ridiculous as I wanted (King tigers vs Infantry in a city, Osterwinds vs T-34's - whatever!). With CM I am disappointed as it seems I have only a few units to choose from (as compared to most of the total armor, infantry and weapons in each army covered in WW2). Random battle building is more difficult - Apparently I can't choose exactly what my forces are - instead choosing infantry, armor, heavy infantry, etc - a step backwards IMO over the previous CM's. The lack of variety - another step backwards. Now I know BF is in this to make money - but if it's $25 to get a few more units - several times (KaChing!) before I get even close to what I had with buying any of the previous versions... my crystal ball doesn't see any more expenditure on CM in my future. I got lured in to getting CMSF expecting it to be a gamewide improvement over CM. IMO - it ain't.