ZPB II

15 seconds into the battle a Mk.19 Stryker fires 5 rounds into the heavy hospital building and kills 3 Syrians. Soon followed by M203s, M136s and Javelins all fired into a heavy building into different stories all causing casualties in a very believable way. 8 killed 4 wounded in approximately 15-30 seconds. A few minutes of this firing and the entire front side of the building is filled with charred bodies. So, uhh, corrupt install or patch or something? Edited to add I am playing CMSF with all modules installed in order and patched to 1.31. CMA is 1.02.

Ok I'm firing up good old House Cleaning scenario which is basically all about Mk.19s and Javelins being shot into a heavy building full of people.

Not seeing any of this, played many battles in both CMA and CMSF and can't say I noticed any incidents of people not dying when they get HE chucked at them in all kinds of environments, be it hand grenades, 20mm gun fire or 115mm cannons. Going to do some messing around in the editor after I finish playing this scenario. NATO H2H Dutch mech vs. something something.

I was playing some quick battles and again came across a certain rather frustrating issue with NATO. It seems the formation points or whatever are off for atleast Canadians and Dutch. I often play infantry battles. If you select a tiny meeting engagement, as US Marines you often get as medium infantry, 4 LAVs and 4 squads of infantry. Ok, that is great for a tiny battle. But if you choose Canadian or Dutch infantry forces in tiny scale you end up with like 20 LAVs 20 Nyalas each full of infantry. And against you are 4 BMP-2s with infantry...As Dutch tiny force you might end up with 20 Fenneks... Needless to say these quick battles aren't fun. Just something that would really fix a lot atleast for me, since only German quick battles are playable most of the time. Cheers

And? We are talking averages...

I don't think HMG42s will be hard to locate and identify. Let's see, clearly identifiable sound, typical HMG behaviour regarding bursts and rate of sustained fire, smoke, tracers...There's a reason why a lot of machine gunners got killed... Then just lob onboard mortars on them as per real life. You don't even have to hear the MG42, you can feel the RPM in your chest.

What makes it gamey? If we're playing a battle with regular or veteran troops we assume they have seen combat and know the way it plays out. Every move made in the battlefield in which you convey orders to others expose you to danger. Simply pointing your hand in a direction while running with your squad will draw fire to you. Uniforms, caps, radios even more so. AFAIK HQ tanks in WW2 had large aerials that scream. Iron difficulty means your troops don't see contacts that other units see. I seriously don't see the problem here. You are the commander, your men report to you that they have located an enemy command element in this forest grid here. You tell them to direct fire there... I have to clarify again that when I got out of the army, I had perfect eyesight. Hopefully I still do a couple of years later. The average battle range is not that long... Come to think of it, this might be a problem that abstraction has brought to some. Mixing RL and the game. In real-life, a command squad does not just lie down in the mud and act as extra riflemen. They actually do command the men on the battlefield. It is odd that targeting HQs is called gamey when in real life, NCO casualties were and are pretty grim.

I'd like to point out that in CMSF most every unit has modern optics, 4x, 8x, thermals, amplifiers...You name it, even the most basic US grunt has a scope on his M4. This is not the case in WW2, and since none of us has actually played the game...I wouldn't go so far as to panic over it... Actually, I think I'll skip reading this AAR from now on, it's really starting to spoil my mood. So much dis- and misinformation and almost downright hysteria and none of us has even touched the game. I now fully understand why BFC doesn't release screens and info until the very last moment and I fully applaud them for this move. The forums would be really tiresome otherwise. EDIT: I have thankfully never been in real combat, but I have spent more than a fair share of time in combat exercises as an armoured jager, with every participant wearing the latest combat simulation gear from Saab-Bofors Dynamics. You know, the one that tracks you realtime via GPS and calculates artillery and direct fire that way. With lasers that actually work at 300-500m ranges. Sitting in the back of a CV90 speeding through the forest, Leopard 2A4s, BMP-2s, explosions, Hornets and Little Birds flying everywhere, utter chaos...And even then it is not that hard to pick out the participants of the battle. You know it's an MG team when you see the gun and a couple of guys carrying boxes behind him. Soldier yelling and waving his hand at the radio guy? HQ perhaps... I could pick out our company HQ CV90 every time because of the way the commander out of the hatch swiveled around at twice the speed of others. Even though it's all simulated you're still out of breath, adrenaline kicking in and the noise just drills in your head drowning out your thoughts. Yet you can still make these observations...

I'm a bit confused. I could swear that sound contacts exist in CMx2 (like spotting a ? tank on a road behind buildings.) and with Iron difficulty your friendly units don't share ID info and all that jazz...

You can have 2 active installations of a single copy of the game. If, like me, you happen to have a situation where you had the game installed on a computer that broke down you can simply email BFC support and explain the situation, they will give you new licenses. It is not the best solution by far, but seeing how many copies of CMBO and CMBB were downloaded from Suprnova and other torrent sites at the time, I can understand perfectly why a marginal game developer will pick this route.

Heh, that is indeed one of the spices of CMSF. Make no mistake, like every other game it has bugs, but very often people confuse realism or an abstraction aiming at realism with bugs. I have to link a thread where I happened to make a similar assumption, only to eat a slice of humble pie. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=93387 Erwin, I've played quite a few scenarios where they have enough range, but sometimes the challenge is the fact that you have the wrong kit for the wrong terrain and it's up to you to make right decisions.

Damn, I hope the old guard is doing okay with no health issues.

Atleast in CMA which is the latest version of the CMx2 engine (I've been led to believe atleast ) tanks drive through a fence, crushing it and usually suffer minor track damage. I think wheeled vehicles are mostly unable to do so, but a "fence" in CMA is a thick stone wall you'd find in Afghanistan. :cool:

Yeah, infantry behaviour has been honed to near perfection in the latest CMSF: NATO version and CMA. I've found it to react to threats very convincingly.

LAV-ATs and ATGM Strykers are one of my favourite units in the game. I unbutton the commander and place them in hull down positions overlooking vast distances. I have a massive Kill/Death ratio with those babies. Not to mention the "funny" fact that a TOW hit almost always scores a catastrofic kill. What's the warhead on those things, 6 kilos?

I remember a poll on the forums back from CMBO/CMBB days and I think the average age was 42 or something...

Bodkin, I'm sure the guys at BFC will produce a video trailer eventually. That is probably the best way to grab the younger generations (me included, only 24 here ) attention.

That is an excellent point, stikkypixie. One that I totally forgot.

Just to bump this thread, I have a scenario in the pipeline that should be a bit different from the usual fare. It is a tank heavy combined arms scenario with the Soviets attacking a DRA held airfield in 1980. Should be a refreshing change from fighting Ghosts all the time. I was inspired by a TCP/IP quick battle against my friend with T-62s and T-55s duking it out.

So, now that this forum is bustling with activity looking at the number of posts and more importantly, views how busy has everyone been praising the CM gospel? When the demo comes out I am sure to hype this baby on several Finnish gaming sites full of lurking CMx1 veterans. :cool: I have also gotten several of my friends that played the original CM games back in the loop.

If the targets are large buildings and you have several batteries at your disposal, I usually use point target. I am very confident that at night you will find non-hidden units with cover arcs extremely effective. That is how I completed the campaign. Note that in real life it is very hard to hide a 100 men, each hiding and observing an area, unless each is wearing ghillie camo, which in turn reduces their combat effectiveness drastically. (Try wearing one while performing combat manouvres. )

Some more thoughts about artillery, the bigger the caliber, the bigger you think...Focus on major terrain features, larger grid squares...Try to think in, say, 15min chunks of time that is the maximum delay you can set for the barrage. As soon as it looks like you can't reach your 15min deadline, cancel and replot. You don't need anywhere near the direct hit to have an effect, 152mm has such a gross kill zone and it suppresses targets quite far away. (If you have seen around 155mm caliber artillery land in real life you will understand exactly why. The are earthmovers. ) Remember, with artillery timing is everything. In a balanced scenario you rarely have the amount of indirect fire to truly be able to win a battle by just artillery casualties alone. Therefore, you rely on timing your artillery in such a fashion that while it is landing you either set up a nice firing line in LOS of the suppressed area or form up and get ready to storm the front as soon as the shelling ceases. Ofcourse, with heavy artillery flinging their fragments 500 meters away occasionally, it is hard to utilize effectively in this role. Again, most of the time if I'm given heavy artillery I use it in the prebombardment and it pretty much always does inflict casualties. Maybe I need to do some testing, but I am pretty certain that those 152mm shells really are killing people in cover.

1) I haven't found any significant issues with their arty. Yes, it's slow to react, so use the heavy hitters as prebombardment or just plan around that fact that it will take time to arrive....I have had the opposite observations regarding heavy artillery and have found them extremely effective. I have read several people observe that artillery against buildings is bugged, but I personally haven't seen anything major that would make me think so. Corrupt installs or something maybe? If a 152mm hits a building full of Ghosts, the building is destroyed and the people inside die. Try using preplotted arty with a delay to time it better. 2) I think this one is easy. Let me guess, you use HIDE command for your troops? This means that they hide in such a sense that their observation capabilities drop to null. I play RT exclusively and never bother with hiding, I just pause and order my men to not fire the moment some Ghosts are spotted. Either use the HIDE command in conjunction with a Covered Arc, so they will continue to spot but not fire...or was it just a covered arc with no hide...Can't remember since I almost never use covered arcs, just the Face command... I am almost 100% certain that your men are hiding at the bottom of their foxholes and the Ghosts stumble upon them...I have never witnessed ambush behaviour that you describe.

Are you serious? Two senile old men trying to play a computer game AND they end up doing stupid things? Who'd have thought.

*shrug* The model itself depicts no camouflage, ofcourse that is abstracted but....Things happen...In exercises it wasn't all that uncommon for me to spot enemy infantry lying still even at 300-400 meter ranges, sometimes through the hatch of a moving AFV with all the motion, sounds and exhaust fumes messing with your focus...Then again, when I did the eye exam in the army they ran out of letters... :cool: Who knows, maybe the poor bastard had gotten a letter from home saying his wife and daughter died in a firebombing, hasn't slept in 3 days and simply forgot to watch behind him as he siloutted himself against the sky...