RadioactiveMan

On top of my interface wishlist would have to be mouse-over names for the items in a unit's inventory. I am forever forgetting what caliber/ordinance type RPGs my syrian units are carrying, and the same goes for the multitude of equipment that every American unit carries... Tracing kills would also definitely be a nice plus.

Hmm, the third picture posted for Vegetation is eerily similar to one of the tree models already present in CMSF! Looks like Battlefront can check that one off their list... maybe I spend too much time looking at trees in the editor?

Regarding 50 cal. snipers: You have to set the quality of equipment BEFORE you purchase the unit. If the unit is already on your TOE on the right hand side of the screen modifying the quality of the equipment apparently only influences accuracy/frequency of jamming/etc. This is a bit counter-intuitive and I had the same problem for a long time... I never could get vehicles to load out with the weapons I wanted them to. Its in the manual somewhere, but it is easy to miss.

Distance, distance, distance! I like Other Means comment about how vehicles are not swordsmen. This is a good thing to remember. I often find myself thinking, "great, my vehicle has spotted the enemy and seems to be killing some of them, or at least they are suppressing them. I bet if I move closer I will be able to kill them faster and suppress them more..." This may seem like a good idea, but its actually just an invitation for them to inflict damage on you. Patience is important as the Blue player. Be willing to just stand off and unload on enemy positions from as far away as possible. This is great advice for infantry as well as for vehicles.

I park them in the back up high somewhere and let them overwatch from there. Don't know if this is a useful tactic, but it keeps them out of the line of fire. I just can't stomach sending those boys out in front to become bullet magnets. Burning vehicles make me instinctively reach for the Load Game button... There is a good example of this issue in the TF Thunder Campaign (mission 3?) You start w/ some recon humvees and a Bradley and you get some reinforcements over the first 10 minutes. At 5 min you get a platoon of Strykers and at 10 min a platoon of Abrams tanks. You are up against infantry in trenches with machine guns/RPGs/ATGMs and some syrian tanks. This mission provides a decent opportunity to test out ways to use the Recon vehicles on open ground. Typically for this mission I end up arranging my units in this mission in the opposite order from which they arrive. Thus: the tanks go up front, followed by the strykers, followed by the humvees. I try to keep ~200 meters between these groups... This keeps the thinner skinned vehicles well back where they can shoot or, in the case of the recon vehicles, where they can overwatch and (hopefully) radio in any targets they sight. Typically, however, I have to dismount my infantry if I want to get any really decent spotting done.

Yah that happens sometimes When I am testing a portion of a scenario I like to build a little walled enclosure in the corner of the map and put all my unused units in there. Its fun to watch them while the rest of the map is doing whatever.

I don't have anything to contribute regarding Normandy, but I would like to suggest some good war films that may be below your radar... or may not be. These are the battlefront forums, after all! The first is a Korean film called Tae Guk Gi, which apparently translates as The Brotherhood of War. Its about two brothers from South Korea who experience the Korean War. The story is fairly epic in scope, and follows the brothers from the early days of the war, to the intervention of the Chinese, and then finally to the final days of the war. Interestingly, Americans are never shown or is their involvement mentioned. This maybe makes sense because it is a Korean movie, but was refreshingly different for me as an American viewer. The movie does a great job exposing the deep emotional scars this war left on the Korean consciousness- and its a great yarn at the same time! The second film has just come out recently, I think on a limited release, and is called Waltz with Bashir. Its about Israeli soldiers recalling their experiences during the invasion of Lebanon. It looks beautiful, and has a lot of really amazing scenes that, I imagine, capture how things really were for the participants. There are interesting comparisons to be made between Lebanon in the '80s and what is happening now in Israel and also in Iraq. Both these films are subtitled, and Waltz with Bashir is animated, but if you don't mind that- or, if you enjoy that sort of thing - then they both are definitely worth checking out. Definitely two of the best films about war that I have seen. Be warned though, A Thin Red Line is also one of my favorite movies. I am surprised to see it get no love on these forums. EDIT: One more, just because I can't resist. A movie about war that has very little war in it: The Devil's Backbone. I won't spoil the plot of this one, but its a fun story that builds to a great ending.

Zwolo2003 I haven't looked into it too much, but from my own experience it appears that a paused vehicle fires as if stationary. Pretty easy to see with larger caliber weapons (tanks, MGS, 40mm grenades). Alot of these vehicles can't hit the broadside of a barn while driving at high speeds, but seem to do fine while paused. I've also noticed that vehicles with a "slow" command retain pretty good accuracy. My new favorite tactic for advancing across a large open area is a sort of creeping barrage, with all my vehicles on slow commands, shifting targets frequently. Works pretty well...

Can I have bombs that bounce off the surface of the water like giant skipping stones before crashing into dams/bridges/MG-42 positions? Pretty please say yes...

The move/fire bit is easy... you can change your firing orders at every waypoint you place. If you issue a "target" command and then a "move" command then your vehicle will fire and move at the same time. If you issue a "move" command and then a "target" command from the destination waypoint your vehicle will only fire once it has reached that waypoint. Since orders change at waypoints the best way to increase your control is to include more waypoints. You can further fine tune things with the "pause" command: Its fairly straight forward to move your vehicle into position to fire on a target, pause for 20 seconds, and then reverse back to safety. Make sure you have the correct waypoint selected while issuing the "pause" command, or you may pause at your initial position by accident. Smoke on the other hand, I have not had much luck with. It seems like if you issue a "pop smoke" command to a moving vehicle it will not complete the order until it reaches a waypoint. Sometimes it will only pop smoke when there are no more waypoints left. Also, the hotkeys for each command are listed on the panel in the lower right corner of the screen. Just make sure you are on the proper tab as some commands won't work, or will issue the wrong order, if you are not careful.

Just started replaying the TF Thunder campaign (this time, with fewer saves and loads, I promise!) and I had a weird moment in the first mission. I maneuvered one of my MGS Strykers to fire on a single story building within the compound. It just so happened that the angle was such that I was firing directly at the corner of the building... Everytime I fired the 105 mm shell would not explode on contact but rather ricochet off in another direction! :eek: After watching half a dozen rounds bounce off the side of the building, sometimes going up in the air and sometimes coming perilously close to hitting my own troops, I decided I had better reposition... Strange to try and imagine big 105 mm shells doing this in the real world, but I suppose it is possible! Anyone have any other funny or random moments to share?

As long as we've got the battlefront admin in this thread I have a question regarding artillery: If I have a forward observer in a fire support vehicle is it better to call the strike in while the observer is selected, or while the vehicle is selected? Or is there no difference? How about if I dismount the observer? If I move him out of contact with his vehicle, or if his vehicle explodes? Conversely, is the fire support vehicle effective at calling in strikes if the field observer has shed his mortal coil? And by "better" I mean faster response time, more accurate fire, etc...

That made my morning But, don't get too excited- I just woke up...

The "Assaulting Fierce and Agile" thread in this forum has some good tips for assaulting buildings and urban areas. My advice is to use the fighting vehicles for suppression fire. Put your infantry in the tallest buildings you can find (avoid floors with balconies, but roofs with walls are great as long as there are no other buildings that are taller) and have your IFVs hang back until your infantry identifies buildings with enemies inside. Then maneuver your IFVs to hit those buildings while exposing them as little as possible to other buildings that you haven't cleared. Position them in alleys or at corners, etc. With this setup you can engage any threats and your infantry is reasonably safe inside the buildings. For added safety you can split your squad between floors or put them in adjacent buildings to minimize RPG damage. When you want to advance and claim a new building there are several ways to go about it. If the building is right next door the "Fast" command usually works well. If the target building is a little further away you may want to use the "Assault" command. If the building is any great distance (more than 75 m) you should probably load up your boys and rush in under the cover of smoke if you suspect a threat. Always, if you suspect a threat feel free to blaze away with your IFVs on any potentially dangerous buildings. Your vehicles have a lot of ammo generally, and you can afford to waste some to keep your infantry safe. Use your vehicles to suppress and your infantry to spot and kill. Lastly, 40mm grenades are your best tool for buildings. Save your SMAWs or Javelins for tanks/IFVs.

Just wanted to praise this excellent campaign- really fun infantry-based missions that are small enough to let you micromanage everything and not feel overwhelmed. I just finished it for the first time... 1 KIA, 5 WIA and about 10 walking wounded. I only saved/restarted a few times after unlucky encounters with RPGs... the friendly casualties objective forces you to be very careful about how you plan your moves. Its a great campaign to show off the importance of fire supression and fire superiority. My only gripe was with the last mission- it ended for me in sort of an anticlimax. I was just negotiating from one block into a second across a tricky alley when the red AI up and surrendered! Sometimes having a mission end like this is disappointing But, looking at the map review, the enemy didn't really have much strength left, so I suppose it made sense. Still, I was enjoying the tense leapfrog through the city... My only question now- what happens next? What is the fate of India company after the platoon rejoins them? Inquiring minds want to know! Avid small-unit players want more missions!

There is a fun old sci-fi squad level combat game called Laser Squad Nemesis that handles this problem of timing well. The game was played exclusively over email or hotseat for a long time, and only at the very end of the game's lifetime were single player missions created. I think because of the play-by-mail nature of the game the designers spent alot of time coming up with a solution to this very problem. The game had a waypoint system very similar to Combat Mission, with the addition that when you placed a waypoint an estimate was shown of how long it would take for the unit to reach that location. You could have your guy run up to a corner, pause and look for targets, and then continue running on, with waypoints for each command telling you how long the actions would take to complete. It was easy to co-ordinate entry into a building from multiple directions simultaneously, to breach a wall and then run in immediately afterwards, or to pause supressive fire long enough to run your guys through the fire lane and resume fire afterwards. The game also had a feature where you could "test" your turn's orders before actually submitting them. You could watch the turn unfold with the orders you had given, and see if there were any adjustments in timing that needed to be made. Because of these two features it was possible to very tightly script your planned orders for the turn, and the strategy of the game revolved around doing this well as much as it did about unit choice and tactics. It was great fun to plan out a turn, only to watch your opponent plan out an equally detailed turn and then see who had anticipated who. Very much like a chess match, only with rockets and laser beams. Long story short: It should be possible, and fairly straightforward, to add something that shows the time to reach a waypoint or to complete a command. The timing is of course theoretical, based on what is known of the ground, and can obviously not incorporate the effects of enemy fire.

Grenades and smoke would help alot... one strategy is just to target-fire every building you come across to pin/kill anyone inside. Of course, this uses alot of ammo. Works best if you have infantry vehicles to do the cover firing, as they have almost limitless ammo. My test compound setup was somewhat unrealistic. Starting the marines in a trench 30m from the compound was a bit harsh, and isn't actually very good scenario design. I think it would be more realistic, more flexible strategy-wise, and generally easier if the marines approached from further away, and had buildings of their own to occupy and to overwatch from. There is probably a neat scenario in here somewhere, I'll have to think on it. I've never actually finished a scenario design, I always seem to get obsessed w/ the small stuff...

Yes, Steel Panthers taught me that driving tanks through buildings is a bad idea. So many immobilized digital tanks...

Ah well, I've never played this game head to head. I am strictly a turn-based solo player. Of course a game against another player would play drastically different. I was mostly thinking about how to make something that would be devious to run up against as Blue vs the AI. The intent was to depict a fairly fanatical scenario, where the enemy wants to inflict maximum casualties in an urban area without much thought for escape. If you wanted to force a fight like this in a head to head game you could always put an objective inside the compound, and maybe some restriction on destroying the buildings.

And here is a quick example of a fortified courtyard with limited access and good ambush potential: http://i44.tinypic.com/256sih0.jpg There is a couple things to see in this picture. First off, the yellow dots are the only doorways present. Looking at the doorways and the walls you can see how limited an attacker's movement could be made. In blue I have drawn in a theoretical attack route for the marines, assuming they were forced to approach from that direction. Upon moving through building A the marines enter a kill zone, and will take fire from B and C. In order to enter building C they must move through D and around to the back. But to do so will expose them to troops in E (and potentially D). Meanwhile G and F provide overwatch. Note that building E stradles the wall, potentially preventing easy flanking or breaching from that side. Also note that F can only be approached by a very roundabout way. This is just one example of how a fortified position could be constructed- there are lots of other possibilities. This type of thing presents a really thorny problem for the marine player if they don't have sufficient heavy weapons to take down walls and/or knock down the buildings. I ran a few play tests, and found I had a hard time defeating my own design. The overwatch machine guns come into play immediately, and were surprisingly hard to take down. Upon entering the courtyard my marines had a hard time getting eyes-on-target before they took rifle, rpg and grenade attacks at close range. Ouch. Lastly, I tried a breach and my boys accidently breached the wall segment and not the 2 story building as intended. There is a lesson there somewhere... http://i42.tinypic.com/28s7nr6.jpg http://i40.tinypic.com/4hqc0i.jpg http://i44.tinypic.com/xauiyf.jpg http://i39.tinypic.com/x5w369.jpg After several runs, I was still having trouble clearing this little compound. I decided to make a small adjustment to the Marine roster...:cool: http://i39.tinypic.com/6jq88y.jpg

Well I went and made examples of the things I was talking about. Here is my trench, with two machine guns deployed in seperate firing slots. They have really good fields of fire with decent protection for the crew. The rifle squad is down in the trench, they are safe from direct fire- But not grenades! The HQ squad is positioned approximately "hull down". When I ran a play test they always got chewed up, but you can see how troops could move along the trench, then pop up where ever. This would be great for RPGs or Javelins http://i41.tinypic.com/16knr6q.jpg

Remind me not to play any assault missions designed by Cipher... I like both of those ideas. Another idea, related to your tank idea, would be to put a trench in a depression. Something like this: 22 22 22 22 22 20 20 20 20 20 <- Trench on the 20's 22 21 20 21 22 Should be possible to build a berm around your trench, with "firing gaps" similar to what you have shown for the tank. Including the trench gives the infantry better cover than the depression alone, and encourages them to stay put, and to move along the trench without exposing themselves too much. Another unrelated idea: Read an excellent book about fighting in Fallujah called House to House that was recommended by someone on these forums. In that book the author talks alot about how the city defenders had modified the houses and spaces between them to limit entry points and movement for the Americans. You can simulate this in CMSF by limiting the doors and windows you have in buildings, and by using high walls to connect the buildings.

I haven't tried the mission but in the situation you describe I would have blind-fired a few rounds with the M1 while the Marines were advancing. Maybe you hit it, maybe you just increase suppression while your boys advance... can't hurt, unless you are worried about ammo.

I find the Assault command works really nicely. Keeps your guys spaced and lets you put down fire as well. That being said, some of the other commands don't work the way I would like. This is particularly true of commands over long distances. Put a "Quick" command to a point 300m away? Your guys will string out in a single file line. Often times what I want them to do is just the opposite, to spread out in a line perpendicular to their axis of advance, or to make a wedge or something... would be nice, but I can live without it

Nice post from the Battlefront Admin account there. Thats one thing that I really like about this company and these forums- The developers are more forthcoming about updates and more willing to engage in conversation than any other game community I have seen. That being said, the post was informative. I'll probably pick up the British mod based on the strength of the last two games alone. I'm amazed how differently the Army and Marines play, and if the British play in a completely different 3rd way I will be quite happy. I'm expecting an excellent British campaign as well... One last thought for Battlefront, since they are reading these posts: You mentioned CMAK not selling well. I'd never heard of that game before I came into these CMSF forums. I was familiar with CMBO and CMBB, but somehow I missed the boat on CMAK. Is it possible that advertising was lacking for CMAK? I try to keep myself pretty informed but I have a hard time keeping up on this company. I recognize that advertising is also quite expensive, and there is a joy to the small community of loyal fans. Not telling you how to run your buisness, just mentioning my perspective- for some reason I heard about your other games and was excited to try them, but CMAK never even came up on my radar.