black_prince

The FSA would probably be better off targetting the BMPs most of the time-they don't sport ERA and are obviously important for re-supplying/reinforcing/casevacing the infantry. A steady flow of KO'd BMPs could disrupt the infantry's houseclearing operations/make it more difficult for them to hold cleared areas. The T-72s were doing their best to keep the BMPs sandwiched between them most of the time but there were plenty of occasssions when the BMPs were exposed.

There is a detailed analysis of the video that can be found at the link below (google translate is your friend). http://gurkhan.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/blog-post_27.html The blogger idetifies the projectile responsible as an RPG-29. More likely I would have thought than a sabot round.

Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

@ dieseltaylor Even if the cost is £10 I'll still consider it cheap at the price. The TV parallel may not have been the best but it is inter-changeable with countless other possible examples, models of cars with or without ABS, mobiles with or without bluetooth, cars with or without rear view cameras, whatever. The point I was making is that product development happens over time. Just because a feature is desirable, earlier products that lack that feature are not necessarily broken or fundamentally flawed. If you genuinely feel that the upgrade is not worth the extra money then I cannot understand your concern that you will be restricted to an ever shrinking circle of adversaries. If your arguments have merit then no doubt there will be plenty of like minded people who will not be upgrading to version 2.0. WRT your last point, you only have yourself to blame if you didn't know what you were buying beforehand. There was a free demo, pre-release video AARs, and a forum. Not to mention a very approachable community who have been playing two other games plus add ons based on the same engine that have been around for years. The idea that BF should have exhaustively listed all the things that weren't featured in the game is frankly bizarre.

The fact that you might consider the lack of a feature to be a glaring omission doesn't make it a bug and doesn't mean that you are entitled to have the feature backported for free to your game when it subsequently appears in the game series. Any one who felt that CMBN was 'broken' without things like moveable waypoints or armour only arcs was perfectly entitled to refrain from purchasing the game. When colour TVs came out, people didn't get their old black and whites upgraded free of charge, although we now take it for granted that a TV should be capable of displaying images in colour. Rather, they had to pay a premium for models with the new feature. As with other products, there is a process of evolution involved in the development of CM games. It doesn't happen all at once. I only wish that BF would also give us the option of upgrading CMSF. Get a grip guys-it's only $10!

Just to clarify, are you checking the right section? The Smoke option is found on the 3rd or 4th paramters selection page, i.e. the page where you would usually choose intensity (harrass, heavy, medium, light). The smoke option should be at the bottom. Or are you checking this page and there's no smoke option?

Great link John. I've read about halfway through so far and it certainly paints a vivid picture of life on the front in Normandy. The attrition suffered by the Hallamshires is particularly sobering. Thanks for sharing this.

@ Forwardobserver: You're welcome. Watching the video, it looks like he was standing while filming or standing but stooped over so maybe a mix of unfortunate and unwise. In case you didn't watch the video all the way through, you can see the guy's face at 00.55 and it looks like one of the lenses from his sunglasses has been damaged so he must have got some frag in or near his left eye. Nasty. OTH he probably survived this particular encounter.

TBH I don't think you can draw much in the way of hard and fast conclusions from the clip. However, note that after the cameraman is injured there are not only no further direct hits but there are no further audible mortar rounds impacting at all. It seems to me that it is more likely that the mortar team stopped firing for some reason (shoot and scoot, ammo conservation, thought the target had been suppressed/destroyed etc...) rather than that the folowing rounds missed by such a great distance as to be entirely inaudible. Also, prior to the mortar strike which injures the cameraman, there are only two of the men seen in the video that actually fire their weapons-the guy with the mg and another man who fires a couple of rounds from his ak before taking cover when the initial mortars land nearby. However, the succession of single shots which can be heard after the mortar strike can be heard during the early part of the video as well. This leads me to the conclusion that this fire was actually coming from elsewhere. Probably only a little further along the bank but not in the immediate vicinity of the mortar strike.

Strangely enough, calling people fan boys rather than addressing the points they raise doesn't do much for game development either. I think the problems with light mortars are two-fold: 1. The bug mentioned whereby all area target orders subsequent to the first one dispense with the need for spotting rounds. 2. The action spot system means that infantry-even in split teams- are less dispersed than they probably would have been in rl (although this might not be the case depending on their level of training, terrain type etc...). Hopefully the 1st will be addressed and fixed by bf sooner rather than later but I think we'll just have to live with the effects of the 2nd point (as we do with other weapons systems) for the foreseeable future. I think the suggestion of making tweaks to the TacAI whereby personnel under mortar fire would crawl into cover is probably going to be problematic as there will likely be instances where your men actually crawl into a more exposed position. Also, I for one would be fairly irritated if all the enemy had to do was pop a couple of mortar rounds in th vicinity of one of my fire teams to get them to abandon their position. The general feeling amongst posters seems to be that light mortars are just too potent. I recently found an article discussing light mortars online. While the article didn't provide any of the technical details I was looking for, it certainly conveys the impression that light mortars are indeed very potent and deadly weapons in RL. Here are a couple of quotes from the article Link here: http://www.asianmilitaryreview.com/upload/200711272205571.pdf Also, I believe the following clip demonstrates just how rapidly light mortar fire can be adjusted onto a target. WARNING while there is no gorrey imagery in the following clip, some people may still find it disturbing. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2b1_1312498613 Disclaimer: I cannot definatively say that the explosions seen in the clip are the results of light mortar fire but the 'splashes' do appear to be consistent with those from a light mortar. Also, the lack of smoke and dust clouds prior to the initial two explosions do seem to indicate that these are the initial spotting rounds although it is possible that the effects from prior rounds may not have been caught on camera.

I would rather the game aimed for realistic weapon effects. If mortars and artillery are demonstrably more effective than they were in rl then fair enough, lets see them changed. If they are more or less as they should be then I hope they'll be left as they are. There is nothing to stop people from making scenarios with limited artillery support/ammunition or with inexperienced crews and FOs or as Bimmer alludes to above, with a bit more cover. I havn't really observed any unwillingness of my troops to take cover when artillery is falling but I will pay more attention in the future.

Agree with JK's last post. The British Army was going to do away with the 51mm mortar with the advent of their underbarrel grenade launchers but after experience in Iraq and Afghanistan decided to replace it with a 60mm mortar instead (this principally being due IIRC to the 60mm ammo being more commonly used and therefore easier to source). From what I've been told, the light mortars are particularly popular with the troops due to the speed with which they can be brought into action and are used almost exclusively in a direct fire role. I generally find that foxholes offer good cover against light mortars used for indirect fire. Even light mortars that are used in a direct fire role generally have to significantly deplete their ammo in order to take out troops in foxholes (although this is less telling with the 60mm mortars due to their larger ammo allocation). WRT the effectiveness of their HE shells, I've seen plenty of examples of 45mm and 51mm rounds exploding in the next action spot and leaving infantry in the open unharmed. I don't think that mortarmen are any more or less susceptible to suppression than any other type of infantry (once motivation, experience, leadership etc.. have been taken into account). However, the consequences of not suppressing them rapidly are very grave indeed so if you're taking on a man with a mortar, you'd better have what it takes to finish the fight quickly. If someone can prove that the accuracy of the light mortars should be reduced on historical or technical grounds (as was done with the 81mm mortars) I would be all in favour of seeing an alteration of the light mortars accuracy in game. However, I'm not comfortable with the idea of knowingly making a weapon less effective than it was in real life in the interests of 'balance'. Should we reduce the armour thickness of the Tiger in the interests of balance? The penetrating power of the ma deuce? The turret traverse speed of the Sherman? Undoubtedly, light mortars in game represent nasty weapons systems. But surely the enjoyment of the game is in finding ways of dealing with these challenges. My tuppence.

Both larger and smaller atillery have their uses but you just need to know how each should be used. Ideally you should have a mix of both. The really big stuff tends to only be useful for very specific situations.

I tend to find that trenches and foxholes offer the kind of protection I would expect them to. In my experience even repeated fire missions with 105s (point detonating) tend not to cause many casualties against troops in foxholes. AT guns though are a different matter. Only sandbag walls give them any kind of protection and it is very inadequate protection (although sticking the crew in foxholes also helps a bit). I don't know how easy it was to excavate gun pits in Italy and Sicily but it does seem a bit of an omission to me not to have a better type of fortification for use with AT guns, infantry guns etc... When it comes to infantry in the open, artillery is very deadly and that, I feel, is the way it should be.

FMB Thanks for the advice.

The 3rd mission is proving to be a bit more challenging than I first thought. Although, I think that's partly down to hubris on my part. It seems that knocking out the AT guns was just the beginning. Hopefully I'll beat it without too many casualties and won't encounter the decision mission crash bug.

Personally, I feel that the type of hard work Erwin is referring to is fun. I think of a well defended position as a very tight knot: you need to grab the loosest strand hard with the sharp points of your nails and pull until the whole thing comes to pieces-and I enjoy doing just that. So far in CMFI I've found that there are usually a number of possible ways to approach and capture an objective-although one particular method usually makes a lot more sense than the alternatives. Personally, I love the fact that each CM2 game has its own characteristic terrain and tactical challenges. CMSF was mostly urban warfare. CMA gave you mountains and walled villages. CMBN is mostly boccage fighting (although the CW model gives a bit more variety). CMFI reminds me of CMA at times with the hilly terrain but the TO&Es are very different so tactics have to change accordingly. In the more open terrain encountered in CMFI it makes sense that tanks and artillery are going to take on more importance-that's as it should be and it is a very reffreshing experience after CMBN (although I enjoyed CMBN thoroughly as well). At the moment I am on the 3rd scenario of this campaign and I'm not doing too badly with total victories for the first 2 scenarios and relatively light casualties. The only thing thst irks me a little is that the scenario I'm currently playing and the previous one both seem to follow the format of 'locate the enemy AT assets and destroy them with artillery then have a free hand to shell the hell out of the enemies' remaining units with your tanks'.

There's no reason for mortar crews not to be used as riflemen if you feel it is expedient. After all, they're basically infantrymen who have been given some additional specialist weapons training. As Broadswoard states above, IRL extra riflemen would often be scrounged from wherever they could be found, including the weapons platoon.

John Kettler you are magnificent! Havn't had time to go through all of the sources you have provided in detail tonight as I am catching a flight tomorrow morning. However, I'll have a proper look and post here again in the next couple of days.

Good point.

You can check the systems report for enemy vehicles after the mission ends. The second abandoned tank (front and side turret penetrations) had red tracks and radio but all other systems were green, didn't check the first tank which took the most penetrating hits. Crew casualties were 2 each in the case of both abandoned tanks. I've seen plenty of pictures of tanks with multiple penetrations as well (although I don't know wether or not they were still in a good running state. IIRC correctly I have also read an acount of a British tank crew in North Africa continuing to fight their tank after it had been penetrated by an AP shell and one of the crew having been severely wounded. However, I was very surprised that the little M5a1s were able to survive penetrating hit after penetrating hit in the way I described. Obviously the versions of the Stuart used in game are mature versions of the tank so it is possible that they have an improved internal layout (well protected fuel and ammo stores). But it still seems a little odd to me. TBH, I don't feel confident enough to say definitively wether or not these results are true to life or not. I've had a quick look to see if I can find anything relating to the survivability of tanks after a penetrating hit from a gun of similar caliber but havn't found anything useful so far. I'll also carry out some tests to see how repeatable this is when I have a little more time but I was hoping to hear other people's opinions and experiences with regard to this in the meantime.

Last night I played a QB as Italians defending against Americans. At one point an advancing Stuart exposed its right side to one of my 47mm guns. The gun opened up at about 350 metres achieving eight penetrating hits in succession before the crew finally bailed out. However, the tank had not been knocked out or destroyed. Two other Stuarts also recieved multiple penetrating shots on the right side of their turrets and front of their turrets (possibly from a 47mm HEAT round?) and the original abandoned tank also recieved further occassional penetrating shots into its side. In addition, both of the latter Stuarts recieved a number of partial penetrations and spalling hits. By the end of the game a further Stuart had been abandoned and it transpired that all three had been immobilised. However, none of these tanks had been knocked out or destroyed in spite of multiple penetrating hits to their hulls and turrets. I am a little surprised that any armoured vehicle of the period should survive so many penetrating hits. Even if the 47mm rounds are modelled as solid shot with no bursting charge (although the graphical depiction of their impacts would certainly suggest otherwise) this doesn't seem right to me. Have other people had a similar experience with this gun and if so is there any historical justification for this?

Weird, I played 'Lemon Hill' a few days ago and the armoured cars definitely fired their 20mm cannons at the ground when I gave them area target commands although they did have to stop firing their cannons every so often to re-load them with another clip.

Don't know about jams but isn't there a 7 second gap when every so many rounds are fired from an MG42 to simulate the barrel change?

Superb link, thanks.