A Canadian Cat

They are ready. Since there is no repository yet I have attached the .zip files here - they are only 400K or so each.
 
Here is the key:

 
I have a mod for the US including Ukraine (both red and blue sides) and a separate mode for the Russians.  My eventual plan is to create a Russian tactical symbol set because my preference is to play with the symbols used by the given army.  I do not know how long it will take me to get there but it will be a while.
 
US and Ukrainian icons
CatTacticalIconsCMBSUSNato.zip
 
Russian icons
CatTacticalIconsCMBSRussianNato.zip

Oh I hate that fire just as you halt thing. My first friendly fire casualties were because of that - what a WTF moment. I agree with @womble move fast to get to the good place and then set your pause and withdrawal orders.

I do use hunt sometimes to move tanks up: if I am moving them to a place I want them to stay like the edge of a forest or a good hull down position covering some spot. In those cases I will use hunt so that if they do see something on their way they will stop - after all they can see the enemy and that was the idea.

Thank you. Your result is impressive. The best I have seen and some of the testers did pretty well but no one managed to loose only on soldier. Wow!

The friendly bonus is just a way to make sure if you cease fire early as the US you don't win. I forget if it is programmed for a draw or a loss if you cease fire early. Not big issue 'cuase who would want to do that? That is what it is for.

 
Go a head, good catch actually.

Try it from the Russian side and see if you can do as well.

They are ready. Since there is no repository yet I have attached the .zip files here - they are only 400K or so each.
 
Here is the key:

 
I have a mod for the US including Ukraine (both red and blue sides) and a separate mode for the Russians.  My eventual plan is to create a Russian tactical symbol set because my preference is to play with the symbols used by the given army.  I do not know how long it will take me to get there but it will be a while.
 
US and Ukrainian icons
CatTacticalIconsCMBSUSNato.zip
 
Russian icons
CatTacticalIconsCMBSRussianNato.zip

They are ready. Since there is no repository yet I have attached the .zip files here - they are only 400K or so each.
 
Here is the key:

 
I have a mod for the US including Ukraine (both red and blue sides) and a separate mode for the Russians.  My eventual plan is to create a Russian tactical symbol set because my preference is to play with the symbols used by the given army.  I do not know how long it will take me to get there but it will be a while.
 
US and Ukrainian icons
CatTacticalIconsCMBSUSNato.zip
 
Russian icons
CatTacticalIconsCMBSRussianNato.zip

They have plenty of use in WeGo. Not, perhaps, as tactically vital in some cases, but they at least provide useful UI shortcuts.

Halt is a quick way of deleting all of a unit's waypoints. Either because you decide to do something different with them in the order phase when you issued them, or later, once they've set out on their journey.

Pause is a quick way of clearing an existing Pause (rather than having to press Pause upmteen times to cycle back to "none"), or putting an "indefinite" pause on a unit that you don't want to continue on its way just yet, either at its current location, or at a future waypoint.

Evade is useful because it forces even pinned troops to haul ass, and they do it with some urgency. It's particularly useful since v2 came out, as you can now move the waypoint that the TacAI assigns so that your troops go the way you want them to, rather than the way the TacAI thought they should. There's a persistent suggestion that Evade applies a "morale hit", but it doesn't seem to be very much of one, if it's there at all, and if you're needing to use Evade, it's probably worth it to have slightly grumpy pTruppen rather than slightly dead ones.

The evidence had been posted several times already, but it gets conveniently ignored by the fanboys in favour of such high quality discussion as "lol, what is wrong with you" and "ignore him, he's just soms marketing nerd".

The human-mediated system of multiplayer at its most bascic involves the players on each side passing a save of the replay phase from last turn and another save of the uncompleted current orders phase between themselves and having an agreement on which elements they're allowed to tinker with. The last person on a given side hits the red button and sends the resultant turn file to the first person on the opponent's team, and a save of the replay to their own team members.

They are ready. Since there is no repository yet I have attached the .zip files here - they are only 400K or so each.
 
Here is the key:

 
I have a mod for the US including Ukraine (both red and blue sides) and a separate mode for the Russians.  My eventual plan is to create a Russian tactical symbol set because my preference is to play with the symbols used by the given army.  I do not know how long it will take me to get there but it will be a while.
 
US and Ukrainian icons
CatTacticalIconsCMBSUSNato.zip
 
Russian icons
CatTacticalIconsCMBSRussianNato.zip

No, I don't often use Slow for straight moves; it's for helping the poor ickle AI's brain cope with twisty-turny roads and streets. I'd use Fast out to the firing spot, to get there ASAP, and minimise the time I spend out of defilade. If I've judged it wrong, and don't go far enough, then that's fine, cos I've not exposed my armour to the enemy. Even at Slow, wasting your first shot by shooting on the move isn't, I feel, a good plan, even if you get it away half a second earlier; you're still going to crawl "all the way" to the waypoint that you estimated was "just far enough", and any unanticipated threats have longer to engage you, even if your moving shot was a fortunate one. Also, I don't use popup attacks often when I'm not sure of the threat environment. Certainly, there are exceptions, but those tend to be "Oh well, time to spend a tank to get some info," moments, and pretty rare, and while it's nice for the tank to survive, it might not even be a pop-up shot.
Most of the time, if you've got a good idea where the target is, you can have a pretty good idea of where you've got to get to in order to shoot at it, and Fast gets you from "unseen" to that place quicker than Slow, and gives your trigger-happy gunners less chance of taking a dippy first shot... Unless they fire just as you halt, and the tank is "rocking" forward on its gas-lift, and the round hits the dirt 16m ahead of your vehicle... :-/

Do you occasionally actually add anything to discussions, or do you just always troll?

A handy rule of thumb is don't do anything in the game that you wouldn't do in real life. Would you charge across an open field into the teeth of a machine gun? I think not. So don't do it in the game either.  This rule applies to pretty much everything.

Maybe one additional thing, from my (limited) experience:
 
Learn to use your infantry!
 
When I first started playing CMSF, I tended to rely on my armored vehicles way too much, trying too keep the infantry safe inside their Strykers. That way, I was simply not using dozens of eyes for spotting, and tons of potential firepower to supress any spotted enemy.

Just a quick though, but I'd say one of the most important lessons is patience. It's not like most RTS games. Take things slowly. Don't be afraid to have guys sitting around doing nothing for extended periods: the temptation to get them doing something rather than sitting there like lemons will often get them killed. Use small scout teams, let them wait in cover for a few minutes to spot stuff. Have the rest of your troops a minute or two further back, not just 10 yards behind. Make good and plentiful use of artillery and aircraft: in modern war, infantry will account for a tiny amount of casualties you cause. HE explosions do most of the work: artillery, mortars, tank rounds, 30mm guns on troop carrier vehicles. In some ways, your infantry aremostly a screen to stop the enemy infantry getting too close to your main weapons.
 
Shoot the hell out of places before you move your infantry in. Recon by fire and suppression.
 
You might do better playing a few quick battles rather than scenarios. A lot of the players of these games are pretty experienced, and the scenarios tend to be designed to be a challenge for them, which can make them rather formidable for a new players. Try some smaller quick battles at first to get used to the way things work.

Following RL TTPs (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) can help. As you've mentioned, recon is one of the main things you need to master. Try this blog:
 
http://battledrill.blogspot.com/
 
I, personally, love to read US doctrinal pubs and field manuals. The most helpful (to me) were FM 3-21.94 (SBCT IBT Recon Platoon) and MCDP 1-3 (Tactics). The first one covers Recon TTPs, and the second one is good for general understanding of tactics.

Well I was quick enough to copy the message before Ken deleted it - it's not pretty reading I'm afraid.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Pitiful if you ask me.
 
P

I must have missed when Russia was a submissive colony of the West in the past ... ?

It seems to me like a lot of your perceived issues could be solved by your making better use of the options built into the engine.  I'm sure other folks will have more comprehensive answers, but I'm waiting for something to compile so I thought I'd throw my X cents in.
 
 
The running animations are an engine limitation. If you want to cross a dangerous area while sprinting, use Fast. If you want to do it in small groups according to some scheme that you have which fits the tactical situation... break the unit into small groups according to your own scheme, and do it.  The command system can't read your mind.  If you order a whole unit to run, it's going to run as a unit.  If you want to do it in sections... do it in sections.
 
 
YOU can stack teams outside the building and support by fire while they breach. It works quite nicely. The Assault command doesn't magically do this for you.
 

Again, this is something you can do, as the player. There's not some magic button that tells your infantry to pull off higher-level MOUT tactics without your intervention.  You need to split your units and do this.

 
If all you care about is the immediate vicinity (and it sounds that way, since you don't want them responding to threats they spot outside the woods), use Hunt with a covered arc. This is literally telling the unit to do exactly what you're talking about.
 
Units return fire and crawl away if they feel they can. If a whole unit is cowering, they're thoroughly suppressed... and they likely can't do those things.  They *might*, but chances are slim.  Move up units to support them, do *something*, because otherwise they very well will "die one after the other".
 
 
This is something I'd like to see done.  It's not easy to do, given the scale of pathfinding that we have to do already.
 
 
I would love to spend time on the TacAI too. However, even middling TacAI improvements are a HUGE time investment, and some of them are difficult enough to be impractical in the context and scale of CM's expected simulation. Most of the situations you mention above could be solved (or at least bettered) by using the tools the engine provides.
 
The thing is... everybody has different ideas about what infantry should do.  Every MOUT situation is different.  Trying to write an AI that solves all of these problems is certainly impractical.  Micro-management on the part of the player makes a lot more sense than some enormo-monolithic AI that solves every MOUT problem, ever.  We can add tools and soldier responses to make the experience better, but "magic MOUT button" is not going to happen, nor would it make everyone happy if it did.
 
I'll ask Steve to come along and discuss this from his designer's standpoint, but from a programmer's standpoint this is how it looks.

The game mechanics can be frustrating when things don’t turn out right.  The AI is far from perfect and can always use some improvement.  One of the biggest challenges is to take our tactical ideas and translate them into commands via the user interface that the AI will understand and follow.  I have found the following tactics will mostly give the desired result in building assaults.
 
First I try not to intentionally enter an OpFor occupied building.  I attempt to drive the occupants out with firepower and would rather, when possible, level the building instead of forcing entry.  But sometimes you have to make a dynamic entry of an occupied building.
 
It is best to have multiple squads split into fire teams.  Under the admin command there is the assault team split.  Make this split.  Then look at this team’s ammo panel in the UI.  You will see that they have most of the squad’s grenades.  Have the remainder of the squad (B Team) area fire into the building as a suppression team.  There should be two or three additional suppression teams also area firing into the building.  All the better if one or more of these teams is a machine gun team.  Watch for the OpFor teams to cower and their return fire dwindle.  This may take three or four minutes.  If they don’t cower (become suppressed) the fire is not enough. 
 
When you get ready to go in if any of your suppression teams have bazookas, rifle grenades, etc. switch those teams to target light so as not to injure your assault team.  Then quick the assault team up to an action spot outside the building.  Pause them in this action spot for about 10 seconds.  They will now make use of those grenades.  When the 10 seconds is up quick them inside the building to close and hose.  Your suppression teams will still be area firing on target light into the building.  They will not injure your troops on target light but it is possible that they might suppress your own troops.  However, at this point, the fight is going to be over with very quickly for better or worse.  I think the advantage is to keep the target light stuff coming.                    
 
Now comes an even more dangerous time for your assault troops.  If there are OpFor troops behind the building or on the other side of a common wall they will now target your assault troops.  And your troops that were providing the suppressive fire will probably not be able to support them in a timely manner.  Another reason I try not to go into occupied buildings.    
 
Also after I own the building I try to have no more than one team per floor.  
 
For movement in woods I often use Hunt with a circular target arc of about 30 meters.  Then they will usually only respond to threats inside the arc and keep advancing.    
 
Hope this gave you some ideas.         

Dawn, dusk and moon phases are modelled according to calendar, so date determines how long the daylight lasts and much moonlight you get in a night battle.

There is a trick to placig your trenches and barbed wire. The point you have to remember is the map is based on squares. Les say you have a couple of trench sections. Place the first one somewhere. Then place the second section at an angle to your first section. Observe what happens.
 
This will probably require some experimentation on your part but you pretty son will get the hang of it. I suggest you start by using the small flat map you see when you open the scenario editor first. Then , when you are comfortable with thaty, graduate to experimenting on actual maps

Not a scrap? Really? You must have missed the list of developers and publishers I posted on page 1: Matrix Games, Illwinter, Paradox,...  All of them started out with the exact same lame excuses as you give: "We are industry veterans with decades of experience, we sell niche games that have no mainstream appeal, therefore our opinion to dismiss Steam is right and you are wrong." And yet all of them are now happily selling on Steam, because as soon as they actually tried it (thanks to customers like me who kept pushing them to), it turned out they had to admit all their decades of "industry experience" were quite simply wrong. The industry has changed radically the past decade, most of your experience is quite simply outdated.
 
I've already posted my proof. I'm still waiting on your proof that wargames can and will never succeed on Steam.
 
 
Please quote the part where I made this claim, or stop putting ridiculous strawmen into my mouth.
 
 
Citation required. You are still merely passing your opinion off as fact, without any factual evidence to back it up.
 
 
Any businessman who doesn't think increased exposure will lead to increased revenue is a very poor businessman indeed. As far as the gaming industry is concerned, Steam is reality. And a businessman can either work with reality, or hide from it.
 
 
And which opera will sell more tickets to opera lovers, the one that plays in the world's most famous venue with a lot of advertising or the one that's performed in the spare room above a bowling alley in some backwater town?
 
 
But the production is getting made anyway, so what's so scary about trying to maximize ticket sales?
 
 
To know if you like something, you first have to try it. And step one in that process is knowing about its existence. Right now, very few people even know that games like these even exist, so how can they know whether they will like them?
 
 
No, but then again I merely pick the side the vast majority of people who do have a sound view of the market have chosen. And unless you think you are perfect and all-knowing and everyone else is just stupid, you should spend a very long time thinking very hard why all those people who know as much or even more about the market as you do are all deciding to do the exact opposite of what you're doing.
 
 
So tell me, what exactly will going to Steam cost you? How exactly will expanding your markets cause you to go out of business? Nobody is asking for you to make different games or cut your prices, the additional cost of making the games Steam-compliant is negligable (and don't try to argue otherwise, there are plenty of developers actually selling on Steam who have disclosed the process) and you can even keep your current online store and its outdated DRM system. So what exactly is the massive risk you'd be taking here?
 
And if you're wary of throwing your newest title out there, try it out on the older ones first. How much revenue is Shock Force for example still bringing in? Put the entire Shock Force collection on Steam, try it out. Strip out the DRM, price it at $50 or whatever it's in your own store right now, ask Steam to make it a "Daily Deal" or "Weekly Deal" once at 20-50% off for exposure and see how much your revenue skyrockets. If it doesn't work, it's unfortunate and you'll have lost a few days programming work and some money, but it will hardly bankrupt your company and you'll finally have actual proof to support your position the next time this discussion inevitably rears its head. If it works, your company benefits immensely and you can expand your Steam catalogue, your profits and your company. All it takes is for you to abandon your fear and prejudices and take a calculated risk. It's what real and successful businessmen do, and it's what all your competitors are doing.
 
 
Ah, so here is where your fear and prejudice comes from. Gamersgate and the Paradox store could barely compete with Steam back in 2007-2008 when you tried this. And Steam has grown massively since then, and made the entry process a lot more convenient for new partners. The idea that your experience on Steam today would be similar to the ones you had on two fringe stores with poor service towards both customer and partner, one of which went bust in favour of Steam soon after, is rather ridiculous. If one-man indie operations can easily handle the Steam acceptance process, so can you.
 
You're also admitting here that you don't actually know the current Steam acceptance process, and thus your claim that it would be too much work and effort is nothing more than an uneducated guess. Again, not the conduct of a businessman.

Well, far be it from me to let a snideness go by without giving it the applaud it deserves. (Sound of crickets chirping.)
 
Moi, a fanboy? It depends on your perspective. Show me a better game at this scale. Oh, it doesn't exist? Guess you're a fanboy, too.
 
Now, let's look at what I posted:
 
 
LOL. Really. How many times would the OPPOSITE be decried? E.g., my AT team only used small arms and refused to fire their rockets at the enemy? (Err, kind of like how this thread started?)
 
I agree: in the situation you described, it's sub-optimal. Now, let's dig down. Were they surprised? (Real life: surprise/danger close, you trigger off whatever's in your hand.) After you've re-run the savegame 100 times, how many times did they use the sub-optimal weapons?
 
I just had a game turn where I had 3 engineers, totally black on small arms ammo. Down to 3 grenades and some demo charges. Yeah, they used the grenades which pinned the enemy for a few seconds, then, as they were being overrun, the engineers started tossing demo charges. Why wait? Because, as happened, one of the demo charges WIA'd one of the engineers.
 
There is a LOT going on under the hood. A one-off situation can be cause for investigation, not a conclusion.
 
I gave you a possible reason why your troops did what they did. I also ended with a statement that your experience may raise a question, but a one-off anecdote does not mean the game is broken. See that part where I agreed that it was sub-optimal? Of course you didn't; you have chip on your shoulder. Those chips tend to stack higher and higher until they block peripheral vision, leaving one with tunnel vision.
 
Your troops died. Waaaaa. Cry me a river. Must be the game is broken, right?
 
Ken

Covered arcs will bite you at some point, just a weakness in the game system really.
 
I know very well to never limit my tanks attack options with making small cover arcs. (never want a enemy to pop up outside of it}
 
BUT TO GET YOUR TURRET TO TURN AND FACE A KNOWN DANGER IT IS ALL YOU HAVE. SO MAKE THEM 180 DEGRESS AND TRY NOT TO CUT OUT ANY POSSIBLE LOCATION YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO DEFEND FROM.
 
Anyway, there will come a time you use it, a enemy tank will show up just outside of it and your unit will sit there and not react at all because that is how the command works. It just will happen.

That'd be all fine and dandy, if that was the way TAs worked, but it's not (unless they've changed it in BS, at which point this is all out of date! But carefully watching your vid, I don't see any evidence that the gun "sweeps" its assigned arc). The turret swivels directly from its previous bearing to the midpoint of the arc, which is in the same place whether it's a 10deg or a 180deg (though perhaps a bit easier to judge with a narrower arc, granted) and stays there until it sees a valid target or the arc is cancelled. The crew don't scan any more or less with their optics; though the turret rotation does get the ones with a limited field of view pointed in a more useful direction, again this would be true with a narrow or broad TA. So given that you got the direction pretty bang on, the turret would never have to be "yanked back". A Target Arc is primarily a restriction on where targets are valid, rather than a "focus" to identify and prioritise seeking targets in that arc. 
 
It was based, also, on a flawed understanding of the way TAs work; it bears emphasis, since this is a common misapprehension. One thing you can do with vehicles is give them many short movement legs with changes of orientation of their TA at every opportunity. They don't stop at each waypoint, like infantry do, so it doesn't slow them down (assuming you make all the legs the same speed ), and it means you could even more precisely pre-lay your gun's bearing for "quickdraw" contests like this.
 
 
It's a perennial complaint about the turret rotation selection algorithms of the tanks. First, that they try too hard to get their glacis pointed at the threat, prioritising that sometimes over rotating the turret and taking the shot, and second that the turret cannot counterrotate to keep the gun bearing while the hull rotates. The models can only do one at a time, and that has saved my bacon on a number of occasions, and frustrated me on a number more. It's a game artefact that you have to take into account (by, for example, using TAs to fix the gun in the right direction and stopping hull rotation), and that the AI can't/doesn't is a contributor to its downfall as an opponent.