astano

Re: Spitzenhund and Michael Emrys - I'm sure that's a factor but I don't know if it's the factor. For example, IRL M2 Bradleys have a maximum capacity of six dismounts, but the squad is still considered 9 men - my understanding is that in reality this is just achieved by some complicated cross-loading throughout the platoon. (CM gets around this by artificially making the IFV Bradleys capable of holding 9 men so the player doesn't have to fool with that.) I guess my point there is that if they wanted to, the US Army could just as easily say that a "squad" is twelve men carried across two Bradleys, or six men in one Bradley, but instead they chose a Bradley and a half as the measurement of a squad. The size of the squad therefore is perhaps artificial, if you will, rather than inherently tied to the size of the vehicles. I suspect that the 9 man number was arrived at based on considerations like those identified by Emrys above balanced against resource constraints (money, manpower, logistics), and the 6-man capacity of the Bradley arrived at separately based on (again as you say) limits on the size of the vehicle and other considerations. Additional evidence for this might be the size of IBCT (i.e., totally dismounted) rifle squads, which are still 9 men even though carrying capacity of a vehicle isn't necessarily an issue. Like I said, I don't know one way or the other. I'd be really interested to see some primary sources on the subject but frankly I don't have the time or the energy to hunt them down. It occurs to me as well that two other links between mechanization and squad size are (1) the additional massive increase in firepower offered by an IFV like a Bradley, which obviously means that you don't necessarily need as many dismounts, and (2) the additional manpower considerations caused by the fact that every squad now also has an associated three-man IFV crew; although I don't believe the US Army considers the Bradley crew technically a part of the squad, it does mean that in a sense US Army mech squads are still 12 men.

One thing to keep in mind not explicitly stated in these responses is that squad size itself has changed (for the US at least, I can't speak with any authority on the Russians) since CMBN times. You'll note that in CMBN, US Army squads were 12 men broken into 3 teams with an uneven distribution of equipment. Modern US Army squads are smaller at 9 men organized into two 4 man teams with largely identical equipment plus a squad leader. You could only get three teams out of such a squad if you had three men in each, and I believe that four is considered preferable because four men have more firepower than three, are more capable of sustaining casualties and still functioning, and have a built-in buddy team split of two and two. Regarding CMSF, US Army squads are substantially unchanged - it was the USMC squads that still had a three team structure. I believe the basic reason for the 9 man squad is simply that today's volunteer military is smaller than the massive conscript forces fielded in World War 2, and you can have the same number of squads/platoons/on up if you just make them smaller. Today's 9 man squad also has a massive increase in firepower over 12 men in World War 2, with two belt-fed weapons, two grenade launchers, portable AT weapons, every man having an automatic fire capability, and (at least in the US Army) multiple magnified optics per squad. I've heard it said that going to the smaller rifle squads was originally intended not to be a permanent measure, that instead the idea was that 9 men were supposed to form a core, professional cadre fleshed out to 12 by the addition of 3 draftees per squad in the event of war. I've never seen any sources to back that up so take it with a massive grain of salt, but it's an interesting theory. Of course if anyone knows differently feel free to correct me.

PM sent if you still need a tester. I am also in the testing phase of a scenario I'm working on, if anyone's interested feel free to shoot me a PM. US Bradley platoon vs. Russian dismounted infantry, original 800x800 map.

I'd posit that if there's an intimidation factor here, perhaps it runs the other way and is part of what drives people to attempt such massive projects. The standard for mapmaking and scenario creation in CM has become very high - just look at all the (entirely justified IMO) praise being given the new CMBS scenarios on these forums and the quality of those scenarios and the maps they're built on. I think there's a feeling among some that if their scenario isn't the second coming of Studienka (or Ambush, or whatever other highly-praised scenario you can think of), it's not worth doing. Plopping two platoons and a farmhouse down on a featureless map is a little unsatisfying by comparison, and frankly I'd give good odds that the community would dismiss if not totally pan such a scenario. The intimidation, I'd guess, is of being compared to the masterpieces and found wanting. Hopefully there's a couple things about CMBS that will reinvigorate scenario creation from this perspective: first, it's a fictional conflict, so no one can come bash you for having too many Panthers in your scenario, or putting the XXth Awesome Brigade 100 miles out of position for the date the scenario's set on, which at least reduces any historical intimidation; and, second, there are a number of smaller, simpler official scenarios, which may spur more people to create similar ones rather than emulate the titans.

My sense of the editor, as someone who has made several scenarios none of which have ever seen the light of day (due to loss or finding out they just weren't fun during playtesting), is that although the editor interface might be a little archaic, it really isn't bad. Though opaque at first glance, mapmaking and even the AI are relatively easy once you spend a little time with it. The only thing that I think would really significantly improve the mapmaking and AI processes is a true 3d editor - the ability to place buildings, foliage, and especially flavor objects directly in 3d preview, and the ability to give the AI orders on the terrain itself, rather than hope that spot you painted in 2d is actually a hull-down position. Rather, I suspect that the thing holding more people back from releasing scenarios is the extensive time and effort it takes to polish them. Playtesting can take exponentially longer than the in-editor aspects, and at least in my aborted efforts the briefing graphics take almost as long as making the map. Judging by past threads, there are a lot of editor dabblers that don't think it's worth this effort to release a scenario that might wind up totally ignored. I imagine this results in a lot of half-finished scenarios on hard drives.

I think it was said previously (maybe in one of ChrisND's streams?) that they adjusted the TacAI behavior to make it less likely, but not impossible, to fire AT weapons at infantry targets. Although now that I write that, I think it may have been in reference to vehicle-mounted ATGMs rather than infantry weapons. I didn't think so - they've been in use with USSOCOM and US Army Rangers for some time but not with the regular Army - but apparently it's been selected for more widespread use in light infantry units.

Drink myself to sleep. In seriousness, I only play SP, so rarely get to a final, definitive "loss." Rather, if things start going sufficiently south, I quit and restart the scenario fresh after a few days or a few other scenarios, whichever comes first.

How's the saying go - "Always cheat, always win?" I'm surprised how many people are reporting success with the scout teams vs. the Russian defenders. Looks like I underestimated them and/or had some lousy luck.

I liked this scenario, tried it a couple times and just couldn't get what I deemed a satisfactory result. I finally cracked open the editor and gave myself a SAW team and a sniper team, which made the whole thing much more doable.

I haven't played a whole lot with the Russians yet, but so far US. I prefer smaller, infantry-centric battles, and I think the US infantry has the coolest toys to play with. Dat M110 CSASS and dem XM25s

I was just about to start a thread about this one too. Played it yesterday and it's a great scenario, if you haven't given it a go yet I highly recommend it. The map in particular is stunning, and I expect to be back for that alone. I thought the time worked out pretty well; it definitely gave me one of my more memorable CM moments. Some spoilers:

I enjoyed the names on that one. (I'm guessing the -2, named "Fairbanks" on mine, has a generated name?) Fortunately none of the testers died in my run - between smoke, suppression, and a lot of luck I got away with only some yellow-base wounded. Those AGS are a lot more dangerous than I remember from CMSF.

To be clear, it doesn't really bother me any. The tradition of someone posting about it and being pilloried in the forums is a time-honored one; it wouldn't be a new release without it.

Double-check your e-mail: Personally I have no idea how much of an impact on d/l speeds this has, but many around here are quite adamant about it. It's considered a breach of forum protocol by the pre-orderers to let the cat out of the bag as it impacts all of them too.

I'm curious to hear what the beta tester's experiences have been with effectively salvo firing against APS-equipped vehicles. I imagine on a real-life battlefield this would be handled by coordinating launches over voice comms (i.e. "Fire on my mark..."), but for all the player's God-like information and control the best we can do is probably just give target orders and hope for the best. From Scott's latest video it looks like the APS recovers pretty quickly (instantly?) between intercepts, so even a few seconds between firing could result in the destruction of all missiles. Then there's the potential hiccups with LOS/LOF - one or more launchers losing LOS if the target moves, or maybe even losing LOS due to smoke and debris from the APS intercepting the first missile(s), not to mention the target popping smoke as Ken says. All in all salvoing sounds much easier said than done.

No offense taken. I just thought it was interesting that one of the more mainstream outlets to mention CM wrote about this thread in particular, and that others might too.

This topic made The Flare Path on Rock Paper Shotgun. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/09/the-flare-path-full-steam-astern/#more-261519

I don't have any expertise on Steam numbers but FWIW the "community" (i.e. forum) aspects of Steam probably aren't the best way to measure sales. The best source for Steam data that I'm aware of is Steam Charts, which tracks the number of players of a game at a given time/over the last 24 hours/last month/what have you. Here are some numbers for games being specifically tossed around in this thread or that are broadly similar to CM: Unity of Command - 43.1 average players at a time over the last 30 days; 358 all-time peak Close Combat: Gateway to Caen - 25.8; 240 Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations - 15.7; 83 Flashpoint Campaigns - 12.0; 88 Graviteam Tactics - 10.9; 33 Theatre of War - 4.6; 26 This data is of pretty limited use to the discussion (if you can even call it that anymore) for a few reasons - most obviously, it shows people playing, not sales numbers - but it is the best that's out there unless publishers decide to release their own sales figures. The best this can tell us is that (for example) at least 33 people bought Graviteam Tactics from Steam - without knowing more about GT's history (when and where it was first released, how many copies it sold there, its history on Steam), I don't think there's much that can be done with that tidbit alone. It's also possibly a bit misleading because I believe that each of these titles were directly available from the publisher for a significant length of time before being on Steam, so I'd hypothesize that most of the core fans probably bought them early and directly rather than later through Steam (which means those purchases won't show up on Steam Charts, and while that's useful for determining how many new people might buy a CMSF re-release now it might not tell us how many people would buy CMBS if it launched tomorrow). Along similar lines, we also have no idea if any of these titles ever got any of the exposure that appears to drive a lot of the sales on Steam and would drive most of the hypothetical additional sales from moving there - significant front page placement, daily, holiday, or flash sales, etc., and furthermore there's no way to know if a Steam launch (rather than re-release) would have garnered them such attention. We could probably figure that out too, to a certain extent (there are sites that track Steam discount history), but I'm too lazy to do it. And of course, we can make all the assumptions from this data we want and it doesn't really get us anywhere, not least of all because none of us are BFC and can't make these decisions for them. As far as my two cents, I am agnostic about Steam for Steam's own sake, but I find it remarkable that I have never seen an ad for CM anywhere. I stumbled across CMSF solely by chance looking for another type of game altogether, and I think it would be great if more people knew this sort of game was out there. I think Steam would be a great way to do that but I trust BFC to make the decision that's right for them.

I think there is a bug with the towed weapons in the heavy weapons company of the Panzer Aufklarungs Battalion. I did a search on the forum and didn't see this reported anywhere else. In the scenario editor, the Panzer Aufklarungs Battalion 44 has a weapons company with an anti-tank gun platoon and an infantry gun platoon (the weapons company and these platoons are not available in the QB version - I don't know if this is intentional or not). Both platoons have the option to be purchased as Motorized or Armored. If purchased Motorized, when you go to setup mode everything works fine - the crews are loaded into the trucks, the guns are limbered and hooked up to the trucks, and you can mount/dismount/move the guns around however you want. However, if you select either of these platoons as Armored, the guns are not attached to the vehicles, they are instead floating underneath the map. If you go from Motorized to Armored, the guns appear on the map, but mounting the crews to the halftracks leaves the gun behind, and the gun disappears back under the map if you exit setup mode and come back to it. I haven't been able to determine anything that effects this - other selections in the battalion, size of the map, etc. Has anyone else seen this behavior? Edit to add: I tried attached a separate halftrack and AT gun to the battalion and those worked fine - gun could be mounted/dismounted/moved. Other formations which have trucks and AT guns work too, just the organic guns in this formation seem to have this problem.

At the risk of further derailing the thread into political territory, I just wanted to point out that although this sort of thing (and gun-related violence generally) does happen in some areas, it's not the case that everywhere in the US is basically an active warzone or even has much crime of any sort. Depending on who's statistics you look at, most of the murder and violent crime in the States is concentrated in a relative handful of urban areas, and most of the US doesn't really have this kind of crime to the point where you "need" to own a gun for your protection. It may be true of some areas, but not by any means everywhere. For example, I live about half an hour from Akron, OH which (if I remember correctly) within the last few years had one of the highest murder rates per capita in the country. The town I live in, on the other hand, hasn't had a murder in about 15 years. Even burglaries are relatively rare here and only happen when people are home if the crooks screwed up and miscalculated the likelihood of people to be present. So while I do own firearms, including for self-defense, I definitely don't feel like I need to. Even with going into Akron on a daily basis, which I've done now for four years, I don't feel compelled to own or carry a gun. I'm not disputing that there are some really violent areas, or that there are some places where you might truly need to own a gun for personal protection, but I wanted to point at that it's not universal. At any rate, good to hear you and yours are okay, c3k.

Great idea. Here are some more on a variety of topics that I've found on these forums or across the internet in general: MAPS Pre-war Soviet military topographic maps. There's an index here or at the top of the page to help locate which map you need. Soviet military topo maps from 1989 are available at loadmap, which is sort of Google Maps-style with the topographic maps overlaid on it. US Army technical manual on Soviet topographic map symbols, which in addition to its obvious uses includes an alphabet transliteration and translations of commonly-used abbreviations and map terms. Mapywig.org has pre-war Polish maps. This thread here on the BFC forums has some good information on reading contour lines on Soviet maps (and probably more resources that I've forgot about): thick lines are generally 50m intervals; “normal” lines are 10m intervals; dashed lines are 5m intervals on gentler slopes. TO&ES AND ORDERS OF BATTLE The Nafziger Collection has a lot of detailed information about the orders of battle for the Germans and Soviets in Bagration. I think some people argue about how accurate these are but they are at least a good start. Its two biggest shortcomings for CM scenario making purposes are that (1) it contains little if any information about unit movements and locations and (2) it very seldom contains any detailed information about the equipment in the formations it lists. The index to find the document you want is here. Bayonet Strength has some information on German divisional and regimental TO&Es, which can be helpful for filling in the blanks between the CM battalions and their parent formations' organizations and equipment (unfortunately nothing about the Soviets). Feldgrau.com has a listing of all the German divisions raised during the war and some information about them, but the detail varies pretty widely from division to division. Axis History has a lot of the same, and sometimes additional, information on units at the division level as Feldgrau, as well as a little bit of detail about Soviet forces. I haven't been able to find any good sites with detail at the level of Feldgrau or Axis History for Soviet forces lower than Army. MISC. JonS' Sheriff of Oosterbeek scenario design thread is a really great walk-through of one way to build a scenario and is full of tips and tricks to make the process a bit easier.

That's what SH4 is for. For my part in SH4 the only way I can reliably do manual targeting is with the "Fast 90" method. Line up so that the target will pass perpendicular to your bow. Determine the target's speed (I measure the distance travelled in yards in 3 minutes and divide by 100 to get speed in knots) and enter it to the TDC. Set range to maximum. Set angle on bow to 80 degrees from whichever side the target is passing. Line the periscope hairs up at either 350 or 10 (depending on which side the target will pass from). Fire at parts of the target as they pass 350. The only times I've ever missed with this method are when I've incorrectly figured the target's speed. I don't think it works with U-boats though, and it only works when the target will pass you at a 90 degree angle - anything else and you have to use "standard" targeting methods, but seeing as how you should be attacking from ambush all the time to begin with, if you calculate the target's course right you should never have to attack from any other angle anyways.

Mostly I am studying for finals like a madman, but I have found that I can play a lot of Silent Hunter IV in time compression traveling to and from patrol areas while my nose is in a book. I was hoping to play CM:SF in the run up to CM:BN - I still haven't had time to play more than the first few turns of LLF's Ramadi scenario - but clearly my professors have other ideas on how I should use my time.

Have you been to Subsim? I can't say for certain about SHIII, but I play SHIV and the amount of tutorials in the forums and number of mods they host is mind-boggling. I'm sure there's plenty in the SHIII forums too. EDIT: Guess Elmar beat me too it. As I said not sure about SH3 mods, but if anywhere can tell you about manual targeting it's a tutorial on there.

Yes, it does look like Ubi is making a hobby of eviscerating some of the renowned sim franchises - although at least SH5 was released in a better than "alpha" state. http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/silent-hunter-v-battle-of-the-atlantic Really disappointing to hear this about IL2, I've been looking forward to it since I picked up the first one a couple years ago. Oh well - at least I have time to save up for a new PC while they patch the game up to snuff.