Falconander

Chiming in at the last second, If it is scenario design as has been said, don't play that scenario. If it is your own tactics, switch things around a bit. The AAV is great at saving turn times and getting your men to a point and having them fit to fight with extra ammo. Plus, I believe they have offensive/defensive smoke which I admit I need to use more. Also as had been mentioned, if they get in a good position their ability to obtain superior firepower is awesome. Now I played a scenario last night and I had them winding through city streets behind my men that had cleared the way. I had squads on rooftops and plenty of overwatch positions. I lost two like an idiot since I had them patrolling together and a car drove up a blew them both to smithereens. I lost another as it peaked around a building and was popped by an anti-armor team that i thought was subdued. Both were my errors and not that of the AAV. Playing as Red, they stick out like sore thumbs and I am always happuy when they finally start popping up. But again, they have to be used for their purpose and unloaded with the extra ammo early on.

As in almost everything, terrain dictates what works best. Column works best for fast movement, tight movement or also when there are mines present. You kind of figure if that guy in front of you made it, your chances are greatly improved. In an open situation a wedge or wide wedge with your saws, m60s and team leaders mixed in usually worked best as it gave you effective fire to the front with a quick movement to line as well as effective flanking fire. It also helped negate the possibilities of enfilading fire. I'm with you, I'd like a choice on formations as well as the ability to easily form a line. But as such, are minor gripes and with some micro management you can approximate what you want. I do though, like the bounding fire squads. One of the better elements of the troop movement within the game.

Cmon....give the dog a bone already.... TOW 2 Demo as promised right???

Mark, for one man, you do a hell of a job. I own over 100 games going way back to the early days of gaming and you and Steve have had the best forums and attention to gamers needs. I know you take a lot of ownership in what you do and I actually like the QB maps for what they are. If anyone has any real issues they should stick to scenarios or perhaps make their own.

Ok.. I have questions on this as well. I finally stopped playing basic training and now I have the question marks all over. I think that there might be multiple ?s for different viewpoints. Meaning which, a single squad could be registering as multiple ?s when no squads of your own are selected. When you click on one of your squads it will give you their ?s of assumed positions, when you click on anther it changes. Now when no one is clicked you see what everyone sees, right. Now that enemy squad or two instead of having 2 icons has about 5 ?s some times as you have a bunch of different estimates of where they really are.... I think this is pretty cool. However, you have to realize that this is what they do so you don't committ too many forces and realize you were just chasing shadows and the real force is somewhere else. A little verification if somone else has seen this would be good. So I am essentially saying you might get multiple ?s for the same enemy squad at times since your have different sources of feedback.

Yes, the rolling smoke is about the best idea yet beyond the Helo idea in the beginning. I don't use enough smoke as it stands right now. Not to belabor a point though there is a difference in what they were saying about spotting... 1) In one situation no one has seen each other and both are essentially moving to contact (Not the case here) 2) In this situation, you have come under fire but you do not know from what direction and you have no eyes on the target but they have bead on you. Not ideal and from what I can tell, this is the situation here. Your movement will be different in these two situations

Some don't go for the obvious sacrificial lamb type of idea and would rather have some tactics than the old WWI let's charge out of the trenches at the machinegun and see if we make it. If the enemy decides when to open fire, I would think he will have you rather than you having him. Sounds like he already wasted one of the vehicles so he has eyes on the objective already and looking for some choice targets. Anyone can find the enemy like anyone can find a land mine. There are just different outcomes to how you do it.

Meach, I used to love those cat and mouse matches. We are going after some scouts one time and could see them through our NV gathered aroound a 'glow' coming from the ground. We watched them for awhile and eventually came into contact with them. They were taken off guard as they were occupied with their undergound BBQ pit. They had an air intake built into a hole in the ground which was almost entirely underground. What was more surprising is that one of them had caught I believe a pheasant or such by hand and they were BBQing it. Their meal was much better than our MREs that night.

I must admit, until I played CMSF I had never seen a stryker before. So when researching the airlifting stryer thread I cam across these links which were some really good reads on them. Hope they help someone out there... http://science.howstuffworks.com/stryker.htm/printable http://www.dcma.mil/communicator/archives/spring%20summer%202003/stryker.htm

tc237, I'll take Visa, Discover Card, Best Buy gift cards or just cash. Several accidents have occurred during low-level military training flights. A C-130 demonstrating how a parachute can pull a tank from the cargo bay only a few feet above ground crashed at Fort Bragg, N.C., when it flew in at too steep an angle. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0D9143BF93AA2575BC0A96E948260&n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FA%2FAccidents%20and%20Safety July 1, 1987 : A USAF C-130E, 68-10945, c/n 4325, crashed during an open house at Fort Bragg, during a display of the low level airdrop technique known as LAPES, (Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System), in which a parachute is used to pull the cargo out the rear door while the plane makes a touch-and-go. Pilot failed to pull-up after deploying M551 Sheridan tank, hit treeline, burned, killing three on board, one soldier on the ground, and injuring two crew. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C-130_Hercules_crashes www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv28LUdzB2s (Can't open the youtube at work) Ok... so not an M1...

tc237, I accept Visa, Discover, Best Buy gift cards or cash. Several accidents have occurred during low-level military training flights. A C-130 demonstrating how a parachute can pull a tank from the cargo bay only a few feet above ground crashed at Fort Bragg, N.C., when it flew in at too steep an angle. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0D9143BF93AA2575BC0A96E948260&n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FA%2FAccidents%20and%20Safety Most site blocked through my work but this was one that talked about the crash. This was a C-130 Hercules. THis is an interesting link about Strykers http://science.howstuffworks.com/stryker.htm/printable http://www.dcma.mil/communicator/archives/spring%20summer%202003/stryker.htm

RIP is done down in 3rd Ranger Batt on the Army's Fort Benning (at least back at that time)... so an Army guy.... Hate to see what he would have done if he was a Marine....

Hmmm... A Javalin without a CLU... I have that running rampant through my forces....

When all esle fails look for the easiest answer..... Went to the Shockforce folder, saved games, outgoing e-mails and found it there. Interesting that my computer could not search for it there and find it. Anyway, I am good to go now..... sorry for the moment of panic....

Someone freaking help me before I lose it... I could not find the PBEM file at this location if you have Vista try search for this folder C:\UserName\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force\Game Files\Outgoing Email\ I have looked in the game folder as well as searching by .ema and Thin_Black_Line etc... Keeps only finding the 001 file. I am up to 004 in the setup part but cannot find the game to e-mail back. Eager to play so please help me....

Illumination rounds would be very good.... Ok... I know you guys are sick of my stories but when I was in RIP (Ranger indoctrination program) one of the guys found a starburst flare on land nav. He decided we wanted to see what it did but there was noise light discipline and range cadre out in the woods. So he shot it at the ground:eek: The flare bounced off the ground and went up his BDU top and proceeded to burst within his BDU top. When we saw him come back (from the hospital) he was a head to toe mummy. The funniest and saddest thing I ever saw there. Mind you star burst flares are not just one flare but a burst of several flares. That boy is lucky he did not die. He had burns over 90% of his body... ouch...

Exaercase, While I like your idea the main problem is that it would take away the immersion to the game... put another way it would make it like an arcade game. Most games like this you have to use your limited knowledge along with some trial and error to see what gives you the results you want. I have seen some games which use Green, yellow and red lines to give you an idea of what your chances are but nothing like a pop up saying you have a 85% chance of knocking out that tank with your bazooka.

c3k, Thanks for the laugh... I remember the 'Cat Eyes' on the back of our helmets on jungle patrol in Panama. You could tell the rise and fall from the cat eyes at times. Due to the undergrowth walking with night vision was almost impossible. It was always funny when you would suddenly see one of the cat eyes quickly disappear followed by a muffled holler and the breaking of vines and trees etc... You would freeze at that moment since some of those drops were really steep and into Black Palm. It was funny until it is you... At Fort Lewis went off a smaller ravine to be only followed by my M60 belt of rounds which pulled the M60 ontop of me.... I remember just thinking crap here come all of my rounds and oh damn...BAM! right into my face the M60 came.

I remember reading about an airshow where they were trying to do the fast deployment with an M1 coming out the back of a C130 or the like. Tank rolled back, chute deployed, something went very wrong and the tank did not deploy correctly bringing the whole 9 yards crashing down on the runway tank and plane included. Not the crowd pleaser you would want to have seen....

Javalins are great, I was assaulting and had already taken out all of the enemy armor and had javalins still left on a ridge. I had a large force spotted in trenches. I did an area target with the javalins and BAM! about 8 killed. Another Jav hit, about 6 killed and the rest were broken with no command available. I believe army life insurance just went up to $400,000 which helps the bean counters determine they better start reinforcing those hummers and a $100,000 missile might be better than losing a 5 man squad. If one of my hummers goes up with 4 men inside, I'd hate to calculate the costs. You have the life insurance payout, training costs wasted, morale costs, costs to replace the vehicle and the opportunity cost of not having that said vehicle in follow on missions. Probably easily bucking $2 mil for a hummer of four going up in smoke. So yeah, I'll Jav the RPG if that is all that I have available and I know it is only a matter of seconds before I lose the hummer. So area target the trenchline.... remember that this will be close enough for horseshoes, hand gernades and well...javalins....

I have no idea on how to play this way but should not be hard to figure out. I play after putting kids to bed for about 1-2 hours on various games. You can e-mail me at phillipwight@hotmail.com. I'll try and look you up tonight.

Basically a classic movement to contact situtation, Most doctrine would say that upon contact you would form a line a try and gain superior fire power. But here, you do not see the enemy and they are in a position of strength. If you are unable to gain superior firepower and advancing is suspect, you could fall back to defensive line and as they said provide covering fire onto the objective. You would than take part of your force and basically fall back and bound left or right with them to not only recon but possibly flank. (Think of a "C" shape.) They essentially attempt to break contact by falling back and bound around. As your flanking unit engages, and draws attention, you can attempt to move your main line forward to a point where they achieve superior firepower. The flanking unit would sweep across the objective with the main force lifting fire as they assault across. On the far side of the objective, the flanking force would pop smoke as they say which would signal everyone to go to the Rally Point which was away from the objective as most 'camps' have a TRP (Target Rally Point) right smack on them. So it is not a good idea to stick around. An excellent an easily attainable source for anyone would be the Ranger's Handbook which if I remember correctly covers just about any situation in excellent detail. If you haven't read it and read this forum, it would be a good place to get some good ideas.

Probably urban legend, But I heard about a team on Fort Lewis that decided to make camp on some grass that was beaten down. Their guard dozed off and was unaware and woke up too late to realize they had chosen a tanker path to camp on. Rumor has at least one guy did not make it. <Shudder> Almost as bad as the damn MPs driving their Hummers through our constatine (sp?) wire and dragging the wire across our objective. Probably almost lost a leg to the stuff but I jumped onto the hummer's back to simulate planting a device or firing through their window. After I banged on them to stop their freaking vehicle before someone gets hurt. Range cadret did not give me the kill on the hummer stating something about armor penetration. ...BAH... I told them I had improvised explosives with me and that the Hummer was no longer.... I lost the argument but was praised for trying to challenge the hummer in the first place.

Jorges, I would love to see some kill stats but alas you will not find it here in the current setup. You have the AAR (After Action Review) at the end but this does not list by soldier. We can hope to keep our fingers crossed that the next addition has it included. Their TOW does a really good job at this so I can only think this will be included at one point. I don't care about pathing issues and 85% of the stuff people gripe about but what is sorely missed is the kill stats and a good purchasing systems for Scenario/QB/maps etc... Red line you are good to go with as long as it leads to a 'bright' icon. if the icon is dull you might not get the desired effect. I believe the grey line is out of effective range or ineffective against the target. Try aiming a pistol at a tank and see what you get. You can area fire to targets that are suspected of having enemies around or to create some suppressive fire. Last night had 3 machineguns area targeting a hole in the wall where the enemy was rushing out. Even though I could not see "Blue" force, it caused some hummers to become knocked out. Hot seat is a load of fun so you are sure to enjoy...

Mark, THanks for your help. If it is a quirk, don't spend too much time on things. I am fully upgraded to Marines 1.11 so should that not only give me 1.11 maps. I thought I was playing 1.11. Though I did put things on random which might have selected this map. Do I need to specify 1.11 QB maps somehow and if so what is hte procedure to do this? Thanks, Falconander