Falconander

Apocal, Terrain and available transportation dictates everything. Most of our transport was Blackhawk, Huey, Chinook or C130/C141. So we were jumping in or air assaulting in. Most movements simulated the walk through the jungle where weight was critical. That was the old days where they thought that the 12 mile jungle patrol was prudent. Later as I left Fort Lewis, we started using trasportation a lot more. Though I still remember some pretty tough terrain in the forests/hills/mountains. I can also remember mortars being distributed. This would really suck. So not only do you have the 60 ammo to contend with, you are also packing a couple mortar rounds as well. (I think they simulated this with sand-packed cannisters at Fort Lewis.) Thermal scopes huh?? Kids and their toys...NODS sucked back at that time but still better than nothing. The Dragon had a pretty neat thermal scope. Most simulated encounters were in the range of 100-200 meters anyway. If not the tracers giving you away it was the 'bark' or the muzzel flash was pretty evident at night.

Not the best list but here are my top 10 You know that Christmas will eventually come Christmas Relatives are more tolerable than people complaining about the wait for v1.11 The joy of Christmas lasts a day, V1.11 lasts a lifetime, or until WWII Christmas has Eggnog Swearing around Christmas is frowned upon, swearing at unit pathing while waiting for v1.11 is the norm Everyone appreciates Christmas Santa gets a whole year to work on Christmas Christmas is the finale, v1.11 is just the prelude to WWII No one asks Santa "Why does Rudolph's nose glow red, I think it would be cool if you made it alternate colors in a swirling pattern and shoot out sparkles in the shape of snowflakes and emits a wave of joy and happiness wherever Rudolph goes." No one gets hurt in a snowball fight

donnieitaly, Good to know you have engaged yourself with the game. I saw that you were on the fencepole for awhile. Now starts the addiction. To answer one thing with the Javalin that has been covered other places but is easy to overlook it that some weapons are single shot like the AT4s and the Laws, while other use ammunition like the Jav. In the beginning, I picked up the Jav round thinking I had a Javalin, ran up to the tank only to find my guys engaging the iron beast with mere gernades. So sometimes it allows you to pick up the round, but you need the launcher to go with it or elase you just have a really heavy souvenier(sp?) from the war. Other than that, AT4 and Laws are good to use the "acquire" button with even if you don't think you need it. Since the vehicle might get dusted early in the battle. This way, you have what you need early on and you are not scrambling back to the hummer to pick up what you need. Though, I have had the 'supply' truck drive to each fighting position late in a game for the guys to hop in and load up.

SgtMuhammed, Normally I'd want to extract some form of vengeance against you for killing my boys in such a 'hand of God' way but after I let my emotions calm down I am left with nothing left but admiration. I have logged many years of every combat game out there and this is one of the first where I have been impressed with the Arty. Though COH is impressive (graphically) and Faces of War is also quite fun destroying buildings.... Even though I mention these, I don't remember being AFRAID to move my troops about playing these games. I'll even give you credit for the rounds that land in the middle of a pasture with no one around. These are still enough to keep me in check and evaluating, carefully my next move. Last attempt had me bringing a force, not on the road (I am chicken to think what dastardly fate would await such a bold strategy) but onto the ridge in the middle. After I gained superiority of fire, it was kind of fun seeing those little suckers get pounded. Yeah, I found out by default (Pop smoke and get us the hell out of here) that smoke works pretty well. Though I did not think about concealment against arty... interesting.... Atago, yeah, you owe some advice seeing how you have a huge thread guiding you through a scenario. It is good to see you did not hang things up on this game. After all, we have to get through this thing together. I got sucked back into Medieval Total War lately prepping for the next game in that series. But I will be back at Milk Run soon. I've learned to save after the Sniper probes (my only saves allowed) so that I don't have to go through the 45 minute prob over and over. Try the humvee dismouonted 4 man recon. Not only does it save the Hummer and any ammo it has, but those boys are pretty effective at hunting out those last entrenched positions and than rooting them out.

Atago, Thanks for the input. I had read some of your previous posts about painting the bullseye on your hummers and driving them around. One of the problems that I am running into is that they don't seem to run out of ammo. So naturally I am dashing people franticaly around trying to avoid the incoming fire. I think some places have a TRP coded into them so any spot that would naturally look good is probably a death trap. So actually, it is quit intense as I am second guessing myself a lot, which is death itself in this mission. My next go around I am going to keep the infantry in the vehicles and take a change with that. I'll take your advice about trying to 'occupy' the FOs. Course, anyone cal call in Arty but at least get to those with the best fields of view. I found that if you gain superiority of firepower, the ATGMs are not as bad as a problem. I usually try and have 2-3 vehicles in a position with optimally 2-3 spots that they have view from. So if they see enemy armor they can engage and hopefully as one reloads the other is cooking off a round. As soon as you realize you have gained superiority (No one is dying:)) I bring up the flank or a second line forward. This all works well in absence of a HUGE amount of artillery on their side. So the creeping line approach needs to be discarded partially on this mission. What I have noticed that soon as you are across the lowest bridge, the battle gets easier. The farthest treeline still has some fellas hanging out but for the most part you can sweep from the bridge/village across the road. There might be some armor left over depending on your airstrikes. So I bring up my AT guys to the high ridge at this point. I have been using the hummers as well to either directly engage or driving up close and dismounting the small squad to root out the baddies. See there is more you can do with a hummer than watch it burn;)

Hey, I am not going to moan and groan and say how unfair the game is, because we all know this is not meant to be a walk in the park. Here I am on Milk Run though and I being bombarded like freaking crazy. I 'had' lots of troops left over from previous missions and decided to park the vehicles and exit the crews to do the infantry screen. Needless to say, their artillery came down. I would scatter and it would rain down again. This went on for over an hour. I looked up and saw that I had 29 minutes left and was still cat and mousing with the artillery. This stuff poured down at times with at least 60 rounds raining down 6-10 at a time. I mean this looked like the finall finale at a fireworks show the only problem was that it never stopped. So after seeing my time depleted and my forces cut to 30% strength and half of them cowering, I decided to just storm down to the lower bridge and through the village emerging on their flank and essentially taking the battle to them. The question is, should I have done this from the start? I am going to try again and this time keep everyone in vehicles and try and take them by force. It looks like one of those scenarios that you don't have the luxury of sitting still. I tried to hide my stuff in trees, in back of buildings, on lower floors, in ditches but I tell you even though 1/2 of their stuff missed while I smiled that things were looking better, the other 1/2 was brutal. I have a lot to move around as well so I am almost tempted to do WEGO but I have a feeling that it would take FOREVER and just like the RT aspect. As a side note, the fixed wing support was awesome and even though my tubes were dry, i had managed to get some shots off so Armor was not a real threat nor Anti-tank, nor infantry. I just could not effectively deal with that artillery. Enough said... any pointers to lessen their punch or scoot my men through the fire?

It has been awhile, 10 years, but with grazing fire I never used it in application since the huge amount of ammo it would take to achieve this. Maybe in a static defense but on patrol or movement to contact you would not be able to carry the rounds to achieve this. Most times I can remember carrying around 400 rounds with 200-300 on my ammo bearer and on a rarity another 2-300 among the squads. We were able to get more detailed on a static defense where the ammo and the time would allow to set up our cards with the FPL and dead zones for M203s or Claymores. Yea, the 7.62 from a M60 would strike more fear than the 5.56 from a SAW. Though our expected life spans were significantly lower as soon as we went off, it drew a big target on us:eek: Kind of like in Anti-Tank guys in CMSF. They pop up their heads only to get 81MM dropeed on them...

Man I love this game... Angriest moment at myself was when I had all of my troop transports, AFVs and reserve force tucked away in back of some buildings. I was busy shelling armor and calling in Apaches and watching and patting myself on the back when I realized after my "Fire Missions Overs" were declared that there was still artillery coming in. Quickly pausing I looked around for the smoke or explosions and realized to my horror that my rear guard was getting pounded. I tried to get them out of the kill one but they were all shell shocked and refused to budge. I remarked to my son that this was my worst tactical blunder I have ever done in a military game. Those poor bast*rds never even got into the fight.

When I play with my son on war games, he can never understand why the crew bails as they are sure to get cut down. But I guess better to have some chance of survival than being caught in the wreckage as it catches on fire. CM Fan, I remember that doctrine of 10 years past. Volley fire and pray that you wounded the beast. I still remember snaplinking to an M1 Abrhams and barreling down a dirt road deflecting overhanging branches with my M60 so as not to get hung up in the trees and ripped to pieces as the tank went one way and the tree the other way.

Anyone remember the WWII battle where the German tankers committed suicide inside their tanks rather than take the continual bomardment from the allied forces. Even though they were relatively safe inside of their armor, the precussion(sp?) and the terror of being trapped under the barrage was enough for them to finish themselves. I remember reading the story in my younger days but can't recall the details now.... One of the deciding factors that made me go into the infantry rather than Armor... So a gernade/rpg just has to damage the equipement, penetrate to the interior or rattle the crew enough to disable the tank.

Donnieitaly, I understand your dilemna. I routinely have to hide new purchases from the wife but I fear she is wise to my ways. Understanding that you might be somewhat technically challenged, I would say go with the "Honey I needed a new computer for work that doesn't have Vista. So on my way home I stopped by the local used computer store and picked this one up. Isn't she beautiful..." She might applaud your resourcefulness....

What does "blocked" mean on my unit selection menu?

Yair, Ok, jsut searched and found a topic by Chops that explains this pretty well. I'll have to make a small campaign and test this stuff out. Pretty interestinig and takes away some of my arguments about things being disposable. Thanks for your input....

Wow, I did not know that about the core force. I'll have to experiment with this one. I noticed that I had more units the second time I played so that might have something to do with it. It does have the stats at the end too so that helps you to hone down your skills. Would love someone to follow up on the core force application that you spoke of in the game and how casualties are simulated from mission to mission.

I was sitting here thinking about things and wanted to know people's favorite part of this game. Is it your tanks blasting away, your squads assaulting a building, Tow missles streaking across the dusk sky, stealthy ambushes...??? Mine has to be the incoming fire. Last night played a match and called in everything from mortar to howitzer to apaches. Hearing the radio chatter with the blasts falling from the sky and watching the flashes of exposion everywhere is just awesome. I literally lit the whole place up and than walked the infantry and strikers through the ghost town afterwards.... Stunnning....

Yair, Understand your point and I can see people might abuse this. But you won't see any Rangers or Special forces guarding the motor pool. Elite regiments/units have always been given special consideration throughout history. If I have a battle, that I have to win, this is where these guys come in for a swift and accurate strike. The other night I had a huge hill off to one side that overlooked everything. I said it would be pretty cool to sneak my FO way up there. But knowing the enemy might pick him off I sent a Humvee up there to sneak the crew out as a recon. Naturally, they got to the top but before they could unload, they were blown to pieces. I know I get more units next battle so that Humvee loss doesn't matter as the Humvee won't effect this battle at all. So the poor Humvee is expendable. That would probably not be the case if this was the same humvee crew that I had through the last 8 missions. I know it is about your own honor and no one knows the final score but you, but it would be cool to have some of your first troops walk off that final battle.... Blackhawk Down.... Saving Private Ryan....We Were Soldiers..... Captain Price (Sp?) in Call of Duty 4.... You almost cry when some of these guys go down... It misses that element in the game since no one is carried forward. Maybe the argument can be made that we are at Brigade level so we are not concerned with individual names just whether they get the job done. But when you zoom in and you are literally on the rooftop with your recon element under heavy suppression with Strikers on the way, you are not at the Brigade level. You zoom from Company to Platoon to that squad leader ducking behind the wall trying to get your men the hell out of dodge. Even if you do, they vanish in the next mission anyway. Too late to make changes I know, probably even to the next addition, but somewhere down the line it would be good to bring back. Awesome game though....awesome...

Thanks Normaldude for that answer... While it is understood that Shockforce covers a limited campaign and as such promotions might be limited, unit cohesion and experience would get better as the campaign goes on. I also sorely miss tracking my guys from mission to mission. As I understand things, Sgt Sniper does not come back into the ranks on the next mission. It helps with the flow of the campaign and believability that you are following a real unit through a campaign. There are so many things that are spot on with this game, so as always congrats on that. But, I'd love to be able to follow my boys from battle to battle. You almost get into a mode of protecting your favorites for the important tasks and sending the green guys in as cannon fodder. It adds some realism to the whole campaign.

I went back and played some old games this weekend, one of which was Squad Assualt Western Front. They have an excellent promotion, award and experience system in this game. After every battle you get to give awards and the like which effects the units experience. Yea, I don't know how field promotions work in a combat zone. But there are plenty of examples of squad leaders going down and the team leader stepping into their roles. I forget the term but when someone is made into an officer on the field of battle. Anyone.... ?

But even at that think of the two paired to each other.... Joe Blow, worries about his mortgage, sleeps with his wife, sees his kids every day. He makes $60K a year and his main concern is that they don't carry French Vanilla at work. His main health risk is high cholestoral (sp?) and throwing his back out bowling last week. Joe Grunt worries about IEDs, sleeps in the sand, his wife sleeps around, he has not met his kids. He makes $30K a year and his main concern is he has to be deployed again after he goes back home. His main health risk is getting his head blown off and or losing limgs to some bomb blast. So why is the military rate almost the same as the civilian rate? Because you appreciate what you have and have the stamina/pride to see the mission through. All things equal, the military rate should be three times the civilian, but that does not make good news.

The rate per 100,000 soldiers also has been rising and could be surpassed. It was 18.1 per 100,000 last year -- the highest since the Army started keeping record in 1980. That compared to a rate of 17.5 in 2006 and 9.8 in 2002 -- the first full year after the start of the war in Afghanistan. The rate for 2008 has not been calculated, officials said, but if the trend holds, it would surpass the demographically adjusted rate of 19.5 per 100,00 for the civilian population, Stephens said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the suicide rate for U.S. society overall was about 11 per 100,000 in 2004, the latest year for which the agency has figures. But the Army says that when civilian rates are adjusted to cover the same age and gender mix that exists in the Army -- a younger and largely male population -- the civilian rate is more like 19.5 per 100,000. I bet the military, even with cambat casualties, has a lower death rate per 1,000 than the civilian rate if you factor in things like diabetes, cancer and the like. Joe Blow having a coronary at this desk is coverd by CNN. I was probably safer and healthier when I was serving.... food for thought....

Understand your comments, Yes, after you are a casaulty things get worse. Our base hospitals were great, also awesome care for my family and the births of my sons. Guys who were wounded, even a limp had pay for the rest of their life as well. But you would not catch me in a VA hospital or under VA care. This is what has to change. I'd like the death payout raised as well. I think it went recently from $100,00- when I served to $300,000 now. It maked the bean counters think twice about better armor on Hummers and the like. 4 grunts *$300K= $1.2 Mil. Still, if you get civilian insurance there is the war clause. So better life insurance needs to be put in place for the widows and kids. But my comments were more centered around the air support and gunships, precision tank fire and the like. I forget the stats but in Desert Storm their Armor was neutralized very efficiently. So the efficiency of the attacks and the civilian loss has dramatically decreased. I bet my bottom dollar that we are being fed some false intel on supposed targets so that there are civilian deaths. They are using the media as a weapon to fuel their own hatred but to fuel the anti-war efforts back here. Served a bit with the Rangers and Airborne and I would rather be the strike force than the occupation force any day of the week. As far as suicides, more guys die from motorcycles every year. Not to say it is not a problem but given the situation, you would expect to see it worse than the civilian rate. It just gets more press to add fuel to the fire that we have to pull out. Army: Soldier suicide rate may set record again by Pauline Jelinek / Associated Press If all are confirmed, that means that the number for 2008 could eclipse the 115 of last year -- and the rate per 100,000 could surpass that of the civilian population, Col. Eddie Stephens, deputy director of human resources policy, said at a Pentagon news conference.

What benefit does calling in fire with your FO have over using one of my scouts? Does it get better if they have COM with a leader and better if COm with a FO? How valuable is an FO? Should I safekeep these guys are is the benefit minimal where I would value an infantry squad more. But in more details, who hikes to the top of the mountain or peeks theis heads over that ridge to call in fire? Does the FO have better sight and hence the binos or does an infantry squad with binos have just as good of sight? I assumes LTs and XOx work better if kept around their assigned units? Does this effect rate of fire or what other value? ---- I have read a lot on these forums so these are some areas I am still not clear about. ---- On a side, accepting the graphics for what they are, this is an amazing game and the Combat Mission series are the true unsung heroes of warfare. My son won't play CM as it isn't fast enough. He prefers Faces of War or other such games. I sat him down in the chair, cranked up the speakers, called in artillery and told him he couldn't leave until the rain came. He whined and complained about how slow the action was... I told him to be quiet and listen.... Fire mission over....Fire mission out.... The rain came and all I heard was WoW did you see that... those poor suckers... I than had him unload his infantry and assault the trenches... He was horrified as they several were cut down... "Pop smoke" I hollered at him but by now he was a nervous wreck as he tried to get his troops to cover. I asked him... "Do you still think it is boring and too easy" Now I think he is daunted by the complexity of the whole thing. I am still trying to convert him. He loved Total War so he has to appreciate the complexity and simplicity woven together.

You need to run the game as Admin on machines running Vista. Right click the Icon and select Run as Admin. This worked for me. Was about two clicks away from taking it back to the store.

I had problems with Vista and went on line. They told me to run as Adminastrator and after that it works fine. Basically right click the icon on the My Computer screen, use the drop down to select "Run as Admin." I almost took the game back for a refund before this. I hope this helps...

Happy is just fine and way better than saddened... Why does it have to be sad? I am proud of my service and those were some of the best times in my life. I am happy to have served and proud of those who continue to serve. Lives gets lost every day. You can die for something or die driving your SUV down the highway on your way to work. What is sad is that my kids only got a half day off of school. What is sad is those that criticize the fatalities and civilian loss without any appreciation for tactical advances that that have limited both over the years. I saw that deaths per 1,000 is worse in New York... Saw that motorcycle deaths were killing more of our men... A true infantymen/marine/grunt awaits for the day that they get to go into conflict. Be happy that you have the freedoms that were brought to you by the blood, sweat and tears of those who serve... Be happy you are warm in your bed with your family... Be happy when they return wirth their mission complete, rather than with their tail between their legs because the people back home lost heart... Veteran's day... a good day to honor those that serve and be happy that they have your back...