Falconander

What campaign is this part of? Is this the Marine's Campaign? If so, I have some more work to do to get there. Sounds like a bugger....

I haven't played the mission fellas but would not the title give things away that things are going to happen that are so screwed up that only and LT could be responsible? If a mission was called Cluster-F*** I'd expect some serious losses of otherwise valient pixelmen.... I played one mission where I start in the middle of an ambush and you have to fight your way out... If it wasn't for the title I'd say it was a poor scenario design but given the title I'd say its par for the course to have your reinforcements coming under fire off the get go. I love the movie "We were Soldiers" when he goes "BAM! your LT is dead what are you going to do...(inaction) BAM! now he's dead... (turning to new soldier).. What are you going to do ??.... "Get off the Copter.... (everyone bails out)... Looks like Blackmoria's thinking on his feet saved some of his pixelmen for another day...

I always took this as a self-preservation act that the unit knows they will get knocked out or killed if they stay there too long. I have had this happen with troops that are isolated and away from the main line. They are usually in an overwatch or trying to spot for artillery or spot emeny FOs. These guys are crucial but a lot of times they bug out. I tell myself, I would have bugged out as well. One thing i am going to try is to get a LT up there with them and see if that helps their staying power. What I think you will find is that if they did not reverse or bug out, they would have eventually been wiped out. So you guys are using the brain that God gave them to save their hides and by the way in turn based, this behavior has saved many of my men.

Just remember your snipers use that 7.62 as well... So say there is 2400 7.62 Grab 1200,1000, and 100 for each sniper. Which brings a point, how many rounds do you think a sniper needs?

donnieitaly, Not sure if it will help but right click on the game icon and click "Run as Admin". It has helped me with several games where Vists was giving some issues. Now come to think of it TOW (Battlefront) was where learned that from. oh... and are you sure it is the computer... Actually I had Red Pepper doing wierd things last night. Blue Bar was taking anout 1 minute to load. I finally had to reboot. But the Run as Admin buy right clicking the Icon is a awesome quick fix for some things....

Yeah... double post....sue me.... Lethaface, When we grew up it was almost the same way but my Mom caved on a lot of things and thank God there were no dolls. But she fought the gun thing. One 4th of July I took a large tube and slit a hole down the side, strapped on a sling, fasted a grib to it and taped off one end. I proceeded to grab a bunch of bottlerockets and ran around with my friends firing my new rocket launcher at them. My sister-in-law has her youngest boy take ballet, sing in the choir, play with dolls and the like. She was reverse role playing him for a number of years. Her oldest she tried to get him to avoid guns but now he is hell bent on joining the Marines, has a Air-soft gun as well as pellet gun and a army collection that I started him off on one Christmas. At least I saved the older one....

Dietrich, Actually I think society has gone a long way to positively support the strong female role as well as integration of different societies. Disney has done some great things in this regard. Mulan was a great movie and a fantastic heroine, Alladin, Tarzan and the lot. You have multi-national women in various roles. Take this further to Doomsday (Watched last night), Wanted, Tomb Raider, Transformers etc ... great strong female roles who can kick some tail still. I think the girls are putting down the dolls and chores and are going to start demanding more 'screen' time. I think guys are going to demand a more challenging partner and vice versa. The world has gone into a high stimulus frenzy so we are looking for that in our games, our partners and even our downtime. You even said you get some relief from browsing though pictures on the PC which is many a guys favorite pastime. There is a lot of beauty out there but in one sense this is just another form of sensory stimuli. So even in our downtime we are still looking for stimulus. Could it be that we looking for new and improved ways to catch that same high that Chainsawing someone in Gears of War just doesn't do it for us anymore? Now we want live feeds from Iraq and Afghanistan so we can take it to the next level. We are addrenalin junkies, that is what we are hard wired for. We sit and play wargames since not only do we have the visual/audio stimuli but our brain is working ovetime playing multiple aspects of the battlefield. One could argue that it is a control issue as if one game is too hard we stop playing. We cannot accept the lack of control, but given the right mix, we will sit there for hours getting our fix of stimuli and control. Whatever it is, it beats the hell out of watching sitcoms on TV or soap operas. I tell my wife I'll take my kids playing video games over watching spongebob any day of the week. Their brains turn to mush watching that stuff. Thank goodness my youngest likes History Channel, Discovery Channel, Lost Tapes (If yoiu don't watch this you have to...awesome show) etc.... But even these things cause him to have strong emotions. They talk about aliens, creatures, animal attacks, Black Holes and great military battles. The things that he really likes are all very stimulus driven and casue you to think. It starts early on and some could say it is environment but some of it is hardwired. I'll take the Pro Volleyball player over the Bimbo any day of the week no matter how they are dressed. Course Lara Croft trumps both of those but that is just my addrenalin seeking side of me talking.....

But what if you could have both... which after a very long twisted turn I will bring back the thread to the original questions about mercs. I think I would whole heartedly support mercs if they were bikini clad femme fatales wielding M60s. See I knew we would get back on topic. Who is for Bikini clad mercs?

You know when you go to the acquire menu and it says 1800 5.56 1400 5.56 1200 5.56 An so on..... If you select the top one that means the boys in back of you don't get any. For some odd reason I totally missed this. I have guys grabbing 40 rounds of 40mm and 1200 rounds of 5.56 and running off. When my next guys came running up to the truck they were like, "What the hell, we humped all of that way for nothing..." Also, if you leave the crew in the truck it will show the supplies it carries. If you take the crew out, the only way to know what is still left is to run up and look inside. In Red Pepper I left them in until everyone was resupplied than pulled them to the firing line. It helped being able to read quickly how much 5.56, 7.62 and 40mm was still around and shuffle people between the trucks.

Dietrich, Wow, this post is really going off course.....but I'll bite... I think a couple of things get in the way of what you are talking about. First of all, I'd buy a good girl game any day of the week if I they pranced around in Bikinis (or less). I think SimCity can come up with a SinCity version. Oh, how cool would that be. But the things that get in the way of this is 1) My Wife 2) Kind of awkward playing that type of game with your kids. In stead of playing Gears of War or Call of Duty I'd be playing "Buxom Bikini Babes Battle Bots" 3) The internet has a bountiful amount of free sites with all of the content someone would want, both PG rated (Girls Pro Volleyball) and Non-PG But the male ego is appeased with a healthy dose of female characters to play with in most games. Balder's Gate had some very attractive females and most games now allow you to create your character. My youngest always asks why I play female elves.... the reason is that I appreciate a good dose of female beauty and if I can get it while battling at the same time.... well that is just a thing of beauty

Thomm, I was playing Red Pepper and very low on ammo and hordes of infantry all over the place so I just needed something to shoot. 5.56 was being rationed out so I was resorting to 40mm as a backup when the 5.56 was all gone. Had at least 2 squads shooting only 40mm at one point before the last reinforcements came. Even my sniper's buddies were reduced to 40mm....

Thanks for the quick responses.... I am good to go.... appreciate the links as well...

So when I am acquiring ammo it is a good idea to grab some of both, I assume, and my boys will determine on their own which one to fire, right?

Hey, What is the difference between the rounds and how do I know which ones they are firing? So far I have seen 40mm HE and 40mm HEDP... Any help is appreciated....

You are right, I've started it about 5 times now. Three of those times my computer went into sleep mode and caused Shockforce to crash. But I've used the center push, I've used bounding to the right and left and most recently the stay put and survive the waves. Good overall mission but that left flank seems too much like a shooting gallery. I get massive amounts of kills over there and the guys seem to be running back and forth. Don't get me wrong, I have great fun mowing them down buy you would think that they would get low and find cover. The multiple spotters makes things fun as well as the rolling hills and woodlines...

Web Wing... You one sick puppy.... Ok...tried 1.11 and took your advice to try the other one that was hotlinked in this post. First thing I noticed, and thank God that I read this thread, was that all of my men were horribly low on ammo. What General was in charge of this cluster-f*** I am wondering to myself. That is great, send us up against impossible odds with little to no ammo. So before the real fun starts I spent the first 5-6 minutes dividing up ammo between my troops.... ok 500 5.56 for you 100 7.62 for you.... all the while I can heart my men muttering under their breath. To top things off, I got the AI scheme where they are danger close right off of the get-go. So I am pulling guys off the line to resupply under fire. The good news is that I devoted assets to hunt the spotters so no arty this time around so that was a good thing. To the right shrubs and forests I had ambushes set up for anyone coming down that way. 2nd platoon formed a line to take the reinforcements to the left. Ammo was running low even after resupply from the vehicles. Late in the game saw the two BMPs run over the hill and disappear down into the village at the crossroads. I now have 3rd platoon and have resupplyed for the 3rd time. I think the left flank has fallen and i have a MG and marine squad with niper in overwatch sweeping across and taking out the remainder. Once that flank is gone I can take the last 40 minutes and make way for the crossroad. I took your advice about staying put and even my forward elements had to pop smoke and beat back to the line to get ammo. It sucks having your squads just runnning back to the line with no ammo. I'll push for the crossroads tonight. I am pretty well intact but we will see how that goes. One of my squads was blasted by the BMPS and another hit an ambush but the others are about 75% strength.

Welcome to your new home...

Damn...double post...sorry... MrSpkr, Look up this experiment... not as good as the other but still notable.... Jones' Third Wave also caught the attention of Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo, whose famous prison experiment several years later resulted in college students lapsing into sadism and eventual emotional breakdown after being assigned the role of guard in prison.

MrSpkr, This is another good read on The Third Wave... http://www.ronjoneswriter.com/wave.html Acrashb, Point taken... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare Just took a break from work and got back from the gym. I was thinking about this and started to think about us bombing Japan and our quest to maintain nuclear dominance. This massive death of civilians could be considered a terrorist attack. If someone launched such attacks at us in the United States, we would call it an act of terrorism unless we could pinpoint it to a country. At the time it would be an act of war. We don't want anyone else to develop nuclear power/weapons but we have thousands ourselves. Who are we to dictate what others can do or not do. (I really don't want anyone to get Nukes by the way). We use our ability to wipe people out to enforce our views of how the world should be. Kind of sounds like the threat of violence to get our way. But is not the intent and the result the same? One by a government, one by a group. The line between war and terrorism is very fine. The years to come are going to checkered with unconventional warfare against the US. The attacks against the towers, while terrorism, was a devastating blow to the US economy and still is rippling through our system. This is going to be the face of war in the future. The IEDs and things like that are just the start. The enemy cannot fight us face to face so this system of attacks will prevail. They might be part of asymmetric warfare as Acrashb stated but we will hear it in the paper as terrorist attacks. We will pull out of Irag and Afghanistan with less than desired results due to the inability to fight the way we need and due to the loss of support from people back home. They cannot stomach the long deployment, the losses sustained, the civilian deaths. All of which in one way or another was a result of the success of terrorist attacks. The price will be too heavy to pay and we will pull out. ---- Don't get me wrong the war in Iraq has had numerous successes and a great demonstration of a lot of our joint wespons but the fatal flaw in the whole system is the media and the lack of public support.

Jarhead, Normally I don't make such 'stupid' posts but occasionally either because of boredom or to cause a stir I'll talk about such tandems of possibilities. We are quite sheltered here and thank God for it and the troops out there who keep it this way... But even the study points to that dark side of human nature, a nature that even a bunch of high schoolers could succumb to. My point being that it is easy to claim that we are above such things as a civilized society, but when in reality, we have never been pushed to see if we would break or not. Clearly it would not take as much as a push for some, take the two guys who pulled guns on each other in the middle of a Toys R Us over Christmas and started shooting each other over the last toy. Now... take your country, your family, your wife, your kids, occupy your homeland and yes... the pot is going to boil over. Your might not have access to the M1 of my early post, but you find a way to make do and get even or fight for your rights. The people in control will call you a terrorist because the best you can manage is a crude bomb at a police checkpoint. Before you rant, I am not supporting terrorism and I have served my time in the militrary protecting this nation. What I am saying is that we can't cast blame from atop our pedestal without knowledge. So yes, although falted, I like to think even my worst enemy has some type of honor, no matter how twisted it might seem.

MrSpkr, I believe this is the one but I will continue to search on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave --> an eery article and forgot this was high school (thought it was a college)... look at the bottom where they said the same experiment was done with younger kids... Although the specter of fascist resurgence seems largely forgotten in the euphoria of German reunification, it may not be far beneath the peaceful veneer of that nation, or any other, for that matter. Even the most ostensibly free and open societies are not immune to fascism's lure - including places like Palo Alto. What came to be known as the "Third Wave" began at Cubberly High School in Palo Alto as a game without any direct reference to Nazi Germany, says Ron Jones, who had just begun his first teaching job in the 1966-67 academic year. When a social studies student asked about the German public's responsibility for the rise of the Third Reich, Jones decided to try and simulate what happened in Germany by having his students "basically follow instructions" for a day. But one day turned into five, and what happened by the end of the school week spawned several documentaries, studies and related social experiments illuminating a dark side of human nature - and a major weakness in public education.

Unfortunately Dietrich, That is almost exactly what I am saying. Think of the battles over the years in Ireland. Been awhile since I followed it but what many would call terrorist attacks. The organized, well equipped politically backed force fighting against the insurgents. But were/are they terrorists or are they fighting for what they believe in and using the methods that they have access to? As I said before, this is a game and these comments are merely used to paint the Red army in a more favorable light and give them a reason for their fight.

Guys, I am in no way supporting terrorism. War has been brutal since the existence of mankind. Take the Huns or Monguls or any other barbarian warrior type nation. Forget barbarian nations, take the Roman Empire or others of their time. Rape, pillaging, heads on pikes, the destruction of villages, torture, burning civilians etc.. etc.. etc.... The thing is that terror has been used for centuries to control the masses. It has not been too long since Nazi germany stalked the lands. I remember a psych class that I took talked about how a teacher had some of his students question how could something like Nazi Germany ever exist. So he conducted an experiment with the school. He slowly granted people power and prestige, gave them uniforms and bands to wear with an insigna on them. Before long, his group was ruling the school, bullying the other students and policing the school after hours. It finally came to a head when some parents tried to break into his office after hours to figure out what was going on. They were caught by his "followers" and beaten. The entire class had to go through a "detoxing" brief and many of them wept when they realized how far they had gone. --- The point is that we are no more removed from the primal instinct than our situation allows us. We are truly lucky to sit in our warm beds and not be plagued by the horror and brutality that many of these nations face. Not too long ago we were at war with ourselves and people were raped, civilians and children were killed, people were imprisoned, villages burned, people were burned alive. But this was the 'Civil' war, and we have changed so much since that time. These were honorable acts by 'soldiers.' A soldier is not removed from acts of terror. We can say that those times were many years ago and we are more civiliazed now. I'd hate to say that I disagree. We just haven't been tested for a long time. So yes, any army or soldier can have honor for what it does as any person can be pushed to acts of terror. The fortunate thing is that the wide majority of us will never have to take that test. ---> Sorry for the less than popular post <---

Rayak47, The mark mines command was finally implemented in v1.11 ! It works like this, take one scout unit and run it in a straight line. When it blows up you have a pretty good idea there is a mine field there unless you are playing RT where you can't go slow mo and zoom in to the impact. I'd say in RT, send a second unit to make sure.... ... but I guess from the sound of it, you have this method down already. If that is the case, you have to wait until Normandy or maybe the British Campaign.... I know about guarding without weapons.... One of our missions was to go down to Panama and round up a couple of hundred Cubans that broke out of their camps, put about 100 MPs in the hospital and proceeded to run into the jungle. A 100 Mps guarding a thousand cubans and the MPs were not allowed to have weapons. Something about the Geneva convention and the like. Fun mission to ambush people in the jungle and subdue them without using rounds chambered. The funniest and saddest part was that someone told the Cubans if they reached the Panama Canal and swam to the other side that they were in America. Many died trying, some drowned, other were lost to Sharks and the PNP (Panamanian National Police) were on the other side with rifles with strict orders that no one was to enter Panama City.

There is something to be said about playing for "honor". My men fight for honor whether Blue or Red. I don't like the idea of mercs, it would just muddy things up. I try and teach my kids that every soldier has honor. The japs, koreans, viet nam, afghans, iraqis etc... We can't say these guys are bad people. They are just like us in many ways and if we grew up in their position what they do and how they act would be normal. A terrorist is just a soldier who lacks an M1 to do his work for him. I bet there is many an Iraqi who thinks we are the evil empire. In the end, they are fighting for their country, their god, their homelands. In some way that makes them honorable. Ok.. now I don't feel so bad when I mow them down with my combined M1s, Helos, 105mm, Javs and a bunch of Marines bent on destruction.