A Canadian Cat

I don't know if this is the case or not, but your posts come across as having an agenda of some kind.  It's all nice to talk about Steam and everything, but seriously ..... perhaps you could step away from the computer for a while and take a few deep breaths before continuing.  Making assumptions that Steve doesn't know what he is doing in terms of contracts and agreements between parties is a pretty big stretch considering the ample evidence of what BFC has done in the past.  You may have an opinion as to whether such an agreement would be to the benefit of BFC or not, but I think it would probably be a safe assumption to make that Steve, at a minimum, actually understands the details of any agreement that may be struck with Steam.  To assume that he hasn't even looked into it at all is probably a misguided and erroneous starting point for this sort of discussion.
 
As far as wargaming being a niche market goes, perhaps there is some evidence out there that might be publicly available.  How well do non fiction books about military history sell as opposed to any other books of any kind?  I'm sure Amazon has some sales data available.  It isn't a perfect match, but I think it would be indicative of how popular wargames might be as compared to other activities.

I don't give a **** either way, whether it's there or isn't, but they said NO. Stamping feet and crying about it every month or two doesn't change what they said. That's the point. No still pretty much means no in most dictionaries. Steve possibly, yet again, spending precious time explaining why they said no, on the fifteenth stupid @ss Steam argument is a waste of resources. I'd rather have him talk about the actual game.
 
 
Big deal, 1200 views...every argument thread gets lots of views. Wait, let me guess...it's the magic of Steam! Steam makes reading fundemental! Lose 100lbs of fat in only 9 hours...with Steam! Got wrinkles...Steam will fix them! LOL.
 
Look, I am on Steam. I have no problem with Steam. I have Rome II, Shogun II, Medieval II, Left 4 Dead, and Sniper Elite V2 all on Steam. So, what?
 
Mord.

Fixed that for you

Psss! You are spoiling the surprise for everyone that didn't need the manual!
 
But that is correct. To verify:
 
Micro-UAVs can not be attacked by SAMs, but can be attacked by AAA fire. (This includes the russian ZALA drone and the american Raven)
 
Medium UAVs can be attacked by both AAA and SAMs. (this includes the american Shadow and the russian Pchela-1T)
 
The large US-UAV can't be attacked while observing. They can be attacked while conducting a strike (Not observing, which I falsely claimed) mission by both AAA and SAMs. (The gray eagle is our large UAV)
 
The russian large UAV can be attacked while observing (Orlan-10)
 
The gray eagle is the only UAV that is armed.
 
Also, be aware that the "micro, medium, large" order is not official. Thats how I remember it.
 
Edit: Fixed lack of sleep. Thanks, Vanir!

I do find it amusing that showing a photo of an unattractive government spokesperson qualifies as evidence here.
 
Could we get back to the actual scenario stuff?  The RUSSIUA STRONK is a bit tiresome, if there's something relevant and incorrect about it, cool, but simple disbelief and "glorious T80!" is not worth the text.
 
So more or less, more H1ND,ikalugin and Steve.  

Oh good old Panzer, you will never change.
At least stop this useless trolling attempts. The only one who throws crap here - is you.

OK here is one of mine from a way back:

I should probably stop reading this thread but it is interesting to watch the interaction and spot the logical fallacies
 
Steve even joined in and explained his reasoning - again.  Wow. 
 
So, here is the thing.  Back in post 133 Steve laid out his reasoning.  The bottom line is that the so called arguments put forward by a few people pushing steam are riddled with fallacies: Aside from the usual biggies Straw Man and Ad-hominem which abound there is also Burden of Proof and then there is the problem of Steam has a bigger pie therefore it will yield more customers which I cannot quite pin down it is some combination of Composition or Division.
 
So to summarize and not call out specific examples there has been plenty of Straw Man arguments, even Steve has a tendency to do slip into this one (I know I do too) mainly because sometimes it is a fine line between committing a Straw Man error and scoring a beautiful Reductio ad absurdum argument.  But the Straw Man and Ad-hominem stuff aside the biggest problem is the burden of proof is ass backwards in they eyes of a few Steam advocates.  I realize you don't see it but *you* have the burden of proof.  Steve has conducted his analysis and has stated several times that he keeps up to date and is open to changing his mind if conditions change.  He is the one that owns the business.  He is the one that is actually producing product to sell.  He is the one that makes his living based on the decisions he makes.  Therefore the burden of proof is not his. It is yours.  Period. 
 
This brings us to half of the real issue (the only half that has been discussed at all): the makeup of the pie.  It is not logically correct to say that exposure to a particular larger community of more people will result in more sales.  It is a fallacy to say so.  You must demonstrate that the larger community actually has the appropriate characteristics to support your argument.  Hint just saying it is bigger does not prove anything.  Several people have given their anecdotal descriptions of the appeal of CM which while not rising to the level of statically significant actually points to problems with the bigger community means more interest in CM.
 
So, if you want to continue this as a worthwhile discussion you should accept the burden of proof and address this issue of “community make up”.  Again remember bigger does not necessarily mean better.  While at the same time avoiding Straw man and Ad-hominem mistakes.
 
The trouble is that only takes you half way there.  The other half is the business side.  If a size of CM interest can been estimated with some kind of confidence then you need to look at how the business side stacks up.  That means more than just quoting some % hold back on Steam’s part.  You have to know how prices are established (no I don't mean say you know some number you have to have the contracts and fully understand them) who controls pricing?  When can they change the price?  What penalties there are for slow sales, high volume, low volume or whatever else is in there.

Hi Stanley

Here's the reason from a Battlefront post a while back when 3.0 came out :

Plans, schmans. That's what militaries do. There might even be plans stored away somewhere in the Canadian Force HQ for an invasion of the US (yeah probably not) but I know there are plans for what to do if the US invades us. Military HQs are "what if scenario" and plan generators.

I know you guys in Russia have been fed a long diet of NATO wants to invade us and destroy us various other crazy stories.  I don't want to get to sucked to far into that rat whole but let me simply assure you that that was never the intention of the NATO governments and it sill isn't.  Oh I know someone somewhere can find some crazy government official or elected parliamentarian saying things that make you nervous - trust me we Canadians know all about that.  But the existence of plans and some low ranking guy's statements are not evidence of hostility.

Crap? No I don't think its crap, and I am being very civil. I will drop it, but I have no problem saying I disagree with you.

Oh right... I guess that means my second needs to take over the game now.. Ian, I think that's you!!  I will forward my password to you forthwith.  

Buddy aid

And parfaits, have you ever met a person, you say "let's get some parfait", they say "hell no , I don't like no parfait?"

I am just following the main road from Kiev to Moscow on Google Earth.  I just don't see a single spot that would truly inconvenience a major armored push in good, dry weather.  The forest blocks are all very broken up and there no large watercourses on the route.  All the rivers, and there are several in Northwestern Ukraine seem to parallel this road.  I am referring to M3/E391 to the E101, to the E95.  I just don't see any thing on the entire route to hang a defensive position on that couldn't be flanked in a hour.  The Russians are not known for making it complicated when simple and very hard will suffice.
 
 I am just trying to start thinking through some scenarios for the Initial Ukrainian defense that end better for the Ukrainians than their suicidal defense of hill 347.

Greetings. I have just registered here on the forums, but have been playing CMSF for several years and am awaiting CMBS very eagerly. I have several questions / suggestions pertaining to some tactical capabilities that can be potentially game-changing on the modern battlefield and the possibility of their implementation in CMBS and its (hopefully) future modules or unofficial modifications. I apologise if this have already been discussed (in that case, can you please direct me to the relevant topics / posts, if possible), but I was not able to find anything relevant through the search (only "Nakidka" has been mentioned a couple of times in passing, it seems, and without official BF comments on it). Also, pardon me if my English is not perfectly clear, since I am a non-native speaker. So, without further ado, how about putting in the game:
 
1.) Vehicles equipped with infrared-blocking and radar-absorbing camouflage covers.
 
The obvious example is the Russian "Nakidka" kit (my apologies for the Wiki link - could not find anything more useful in the English language). Since thermal imaging plays an enourmous role in how most modern combat vehicles and some weapon systems (especially the deadly "Javelin") acquire and engage targets, reducing the vehicle's IR signature should be one of the top priorities for any nation faced with a modern technological opponent (such camouflage should probably become as common as optical camouflage eventually). The radar signature reduction would probably be more significant on the operational level (I do not know if and how the functioning of BRM-1/3 recon vehicles radars is simulated in CMBS), reducing the visibility of the formations to the enemy radioelectronic reconnaissance, but would still perhaps help against certain radar imaging / targeting systems, such as the AH-64's "Longbow".
 
I am not sure if there are currently stocks of the "Nakidka" or similar kits for the regular line service vehicles of the Russian units (this was probably a rather low priority since Russian Ground Forces were not likely to face a major high-tech opponent in the past two decades; however at least the new M2 modification of the 2S19 "Msta-S" SPH seems to come factory-equipped with such countermeasures). However, it should be relatively easy to rush produce them during the mobilization efforts when faced with the real possibility of conflict with NATO (certainly easier than producing new APS units or ERA modules; for example this article (in Russian) claims that the price of one such kit for Armenia was just $2675 in 2005). US/NATO seems to have done some research (.pdf link) too, though I am curious as to how far it has progressed (obviously, encountering major high-tech opponents has not recently been a priority for NATO either).
 
Implementing it: Since I do not know how the CMBS engine deals with IR/radar spectrum (if simulating them at all), I can not offer concrete advice on how to simulate it in the game. If the IR/radar signature is an independent value of the unit, then the camouflage kit should, obviously, directly reduce it in the given proportions. If there is just a single "observation" parameter (combining optical, IR and anything else), then perhaps the camouflage can reduce it by a proportion relative to FLIR/radar system "boosts" factored into the values. For weapons with IR/radar guidance, the camouflage can perhaps increase times needed for acquiring the target and/or increasing the probability of losing target lock in-flight (not sure how air support is implemented - if even ATGM launches are handled as very precise area strikes then perhaps their CEP can be increased when targeting the camouflage-equipped vehicles). Not sure if it is better to handle the process from the targeting ("how much it is seeing") or the targeted ("how much it is seen") vehicle's side, and how to do it without affecting either the observation capabilities of regular optical systems, or the visibility parameters of vehicles without camouflage (it would be really great to have independent IR and radar signature variables if there are not ones now ).
 
As for the vehicle models, while it would be really great to have ones with visible camouflage covers, from gameplay perspective just standard models with changed values and short description modifier (like "T-72B3 'Nakidka'" or "T-72B3 (IR camo)") would suffice.
 
2.) Dedicated smokescreen laying systems for area concealment.
 
As opposed to the already implemented individual smoke screens or artillery smoke rounds with temporary localised effect, how about being able to cover entire areas of the battlefield in the long-term across-the-spectrum (visible/IR/radar) shroud? As an example, here is a recent exercise (in Russian) of the Russian CBRN protection unit - an entire railroad station was concealed for 3 hours with a 2 km long and 200 m high optical/IR/radar impervious smokescreen. The exact designation of the equipment used is not given, but it was probably something like the TMS-65 turbojet spraying vehicle (here is a rather illustrative video of its operation). And Russian chemical units practice such actions rather routinely, training to conceal entire military bases and airfields. Combined with a heavy ECM jamming of GPS signal transmission frequences to block or disrupt satellite positioning, such smokescreens would render just about any piece of precision-guided weaponry ineffective in the protected area (the only thing I can think of that would remain unaffected is inertial guidance, but this method is not very precise to begin with), and any kind of target acquisition beyond the simple notion that "the enemy is somewhere in there" would be completely impossible (the same would also be true for the defenders though - "somebody might be coming at us from somewhere").
 
While this would probably be more common practice at an operational level (protecting sensitive installations in the rear from airstrikes), it is not impossible to imagine it being used in a tactical frontline defensive action (if you have to defend a fixed position against a technologically superior enemy, it is much better if he were not able to use his sophisticated engagement capabilities effectively). Aside from being outright useful, I think it adds the possibility of some very interesting tactical situations (think of having to assault or defend a completely shrouded city, with your and enemy soldiers fighting through an apocalyptic gloom while wearing gas masks, further reducing visibility to almost point-blank engagement ranges, as if city fighting was not already hard and brutal enough as it is ), and therefore would be a welcome addition to the game.
 
Implementing it: Since basic smokescreen mechanics have been present in the game for a long time, it seems that implementing a bigger version of it should not be that hard (yes, very presumptious of me, I know ). There may perhaps be some processing power concerns, but even CMSF already has a capability to produce quite large smokescreen fields (like when a couple of "Stryker" platoons get spooked by a mean-looking T-72 ) without a noticeable effect on performance. In any case, it is probably possible to reduce the smoke field's detalization for the sake of gameplay.
 
3.) Realistic decoy vehicle dummies.
 
Here are some photos of the Russian 45-th independent engineering-concealment regiment training to set up various inflatable high-fidelity (well, relatively speaking ) decoy vehicle dummies. They not only look realistic enough, but also have appropriate moving parts (like turrets) and equipment that reproduces thermal and radioelectronic signatures of the real vehicles. All to confuse the enemy, of course, and to make him waste time and effort destroying these false targets, sparing your real forces some trouble. Since the dummies are easy to transport and deploy (the tank decoy weighs less than 100 kg and takes about 10 minutes to set up) they might prove to be an advantageous asset in a defensive operation. Perhaps the player can be allowed to place them in the deployment stage within the designated zones, where they would stay for the duration of the battle.
 
Implementing it: The real trouble would perhaps be in allowing the player to identify the vehicles as dummies while denying his enemy the same untill his forces make a positive identification (for which they presumably would have to get rather close to them - within less than a kilometer, probably (obviously bound to differentiate depending on the observing unit's capabilities)). The actual models can probably be borrowed from the vehicles that are being simulated (and this course will probably have to be followed if there is no way to present different models of the same unit to the player (dummy) and his opponent (real vehicle model untill identified as dummy)), while adding '(dummy)' classification to their description (though, if the enemy player would be able to see it too, that would obviously defeat the whole purpose ). The on-hit animations and after-effects would probably have to be changed too (it would certainly be nice to have a deflating and a burning/melting animation (or being torn to shreds in case of large explosions), but from gameplay viewpoint simple disappearing into a pile of rubber debris would suffice, perhaps).
 
So, dear Battlefront, can you please-please-please-pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top try and implement at least some of these capabilities in one of the further patches or modules? Or, if not, maybe some modification makers are feeling up for the task?
 
In any case, thank You for Your attention.
 
P.S.: As long as we are on topic of softkill countermeasures, I also had a question about the "Shtora" optical-electronic suppression system in the CMBS. Have its emitters been implemented as an upgraded system, now covering the relevant tracking signal spectrum of the TOW-2, or would they only be effective against Ukrainian "Konkurses" and other older SACLOS ATGMs?

Many good points. (JonS pointing out all the non-combat expenditure of ammo is something often overlooked in these stats.)
 
You can easily raise your troops' ammo use by adopting the following rules:
 
1. Ignore the time limit in game. Open every battle and max out the time to 4 hours.
2. Every time one of your pixeltruppen gets a yellow base (light wound), have someone plunge a pin into a meaty part of your body. Up to the head. One pin per wound.
3. Every time one of your pixeltruppen gets a red base (heavy wound), have someone plunge a knitting needle through a limb. Once per wound.
4. Every time one of your pixeltruppen dies, lop off a digit, down to the next knuckle. Counting toes, that gives you up to 60 KIA. (3 knuckles per digit.)
 
Now that you have an aversion to casualties, your tactics should be a little different. I suggest dumping a TON of firepower on any location you THINK the enemy may be occupying. You really, really, really don't want to let the enemy have an observer spot for artillery. Machineguns? Ooh, that'll hurt. Did you forget to protect your flanks or bring antitank weaponry? You may not want to advance over the next ridge.
 
As your troops go red on ammo, rotate them back and await resupply.
 
The pace of the game will slow down. If you're lucky, you'll get through each 4 hour game intact. You may end up dreading the next game session. Regardless, the "send a few men up the road to see what happens" approach will stop occurring. Instead, it'll be "hold here while I organize some arty on that copse, then we'll line up the mg's and fire along the edge of the road, then we'll watch some more and then we'll crawl up the ditches alongside the road" style of movement.
 
Or, just man up and plunge in.
 
 
Real life has consequences. Games do not.
 
Ken

Nasty. Long range. Every country's infantry is more dangerous than the German army in the WW2 games.
 

Yeah, the Javelins are really nasty and I never grow tired of watching them fly.
 

And precision munitions that are available for many batteries on all sides are truly wild.
 

One thing I will say about APS system is be careful with your own guys. Nothing sucks more than looing a squad of your men because your tank's APS system triggered to counter an enemy missile. Man it sucks.

APS, both Russian and American, are based on SOLID current systems, with minimal future extrapolation. Israeli Trophy and Russian Arena are both tested and have operational backgrounds. A few more years of tweaking, and, IMHO, what's in the game is pretty darn close to what will be on AFV's.
 
Hypervelocity sabot rounds are "proof" against APS. The energies needed to propel 10kg at 1800m/s require a tank to absorb the recoil. Thus, tanks fight tanks. A swarm of IFV's/ATGM carriers can destroy a tank. They need to salvo fire, and all focus on the same vehicle. That target, if it survives the first barrage, will pop smoke and try for cover. (That's why they pop smoke when lased. It's hard to keep 'em in sight.)
 
APS is a very good protective layer. Next is ERA. Then the armor itself. It's all about layers. Like ogres. And onions.
 
Ken

Hi Everyone!
 
You guys are like the seagulls in 'Finding Nemo'....
 

 
... I support that.
 
 
 
GAME? GAME? GAME? GAME? GAME? GAME? GAME? GAME? GAME?

After the initial "getting to know the gameplay" thing that's usually covered by the campaign in other games, it doesn't much matter, IMO, whether you jump into the campaigns or the scenarios... except that the scenarios might be something you want to play "sight unseen" against another human. Oh, and if you do jump into the scenarios, be aware that they too are not arranged in any didactic order, just alphabetically or by size, and small doesn't mean "easy" any more than "its codename is Aardvark".

Not usually in my experience. Sometimes you may see maps from stock scenarios and campaigns show up as quick battle maps. But it will not kill any surprises written in the scenario or campaign. 
Sometimes the after market campaigns or stock campaigns can be unpacked and then the individual scenarios rewritten as needed to be available as scenarios.
But if you download them it probably says that in the description.

Steve,

Its the potential you refuse to recognize. It might sell ... A lot.

von Luck

Am I missing something?  That article looked like a shallow summary of this thread and offered no additional info on how great it would be on steam.  Absolutely no offense intended @astano BTW.
 
I am still scanning through the comments in case there is value there - so far not really.  I have to admit I don't understand peoples' position who insist they will only buy games via steam. 
 
Then again people often look at me strangely when I explain my position that I will not buy subscription software.  I respect your decision - it is yours.  I don't expect Adobe will change their position to only offer subscription licensing for some of their software though.  The key is respect. Adobe and I disagree and I have told them so - once.  I respect their decision and that is that.  They respected me by taking me off their mailing list

I would ditch the camera movement controls whenever the mouse pointer is near the edge of the screen.