Jammersix

Nope. Don't trust commissioned officers with access to ice cream.

Add an autocannon to the Abrams, stuff six infantrymen inside.

For all you rigorous test guys, here's your challenge: establish a baseline of kill percentage against enemy personnel with an M107 at 500 meters in cover other than urban.

No idea, John. It was a Red infantry force, my sniper took more than 70 shots, no vehicles on the board, so I assume he took all his shots at people, and got 21 kills. All natural cover, (meaning not urban cover) range of less than a kilometer. Sniper was elite, led by a +2 leader.

So I've been messing around with snipers. What I've found is that when snipers with M107s get a good position at long range, they are able to put out rounds. What I'm wondering about is why they don't actually hit anything. I just had a sniper team in a computer game put out more than 70 rounds of .50 cal ammo to get 21 kills. Okay, they're not all gods. But three to one?

Huh?

And I don't want precious heavy-lift cargo space taken up with other foolishness. Like Strykers.

No, I want an M1A4 Abrams that can carry a full squad.

As a veteran of those very M113s, I'm with you all the way, as long as it's clear that you're advocating a new design, fully tracked, with at least as much firepower as a modern Bradley has. Incorporate lessons learned from the Stryker, admit that General Shinseki was wrong, and build a real, modern IFV with both cutting edge technology and the ability to carry a full rifle squad.

Has anyone done any rigorous (or semi-rigorous, or hell, I don't know) studies regarding weather and sensors in-game? How much, for instance, does an in-game downpour degrade your UAVs? Your M1A2s? Your Javelins? Whatever trash Red uses instead? I've just been told that the downpour I picked could degrade my UAVs, and my reaction was my standard "huh?"

The Bradley is not an APC.

Figuring out how stuff actually works is almost like cheating...

I thought those "hardened churches" were impossible to destroy by design.

FO, I just noticed that you add First Support to your scout teams, too.

Huh. Sending scouts where you're not going. Never occurred to me. When you do that, do you use them as a small platoon or individually?

Huh. Is there a way to move the assigned unit or do you eliminate the sniper and buy another one? Sublime, how do you keep recon from being wiped out?

So you're adding spotting personnel, right? You couldn't, for instance, add a bunch more batteries or platoons of 155s.

Jesus. FISTs. What? What does SAF and TWS mean? I want interpretive dance, and I can't write SAF with a crayon. Now, combining scout teams with sniper teams never occurred to me. You might actually be on to something, if we can get your communication skills up. If you're moving to contact, and you have a ways to go, how do you transport the snipers? The scouts all come with their own rides, but there's no extra room, and the snipers only come with one vehicle for three teams and a HQ. In the past, I've thrown all the posers, clingers and remfs out of their vehicles in battalion HQ and made them all ride in the XO's Bradley, which gives each sniper team their own vehicle. I prefer that private vehicles be assigned to people who shoot at the enemy rather than mess officers. Well, at least until dinner time.

I'd like to talk about scouts and snipers in large scenarios. I cormmand American units exclusively. I have yet to command a Red unit or even a Ukrainian unit. I have my hands full trying to understand American units. So if some of my questions seem strange to all you expert Red commanders, that's probably why. The following questions all pertain to a battalion level force. For this discussion, that mean any force larger than a company that includes battalion level assets. Usually, I take an Armored Task Force and trim out all but one maneuver company, HHC, the artillery battery and the battalion command unit. Lately, I've even been eliminating the extra trucks in the command unit, to put every penny towards more 155 fire and more TRPs. Always, more TRPs. An American Task Force HHC includes a sniper platoon and a scout platoon, and while I've developed my own mad methods for what I do with them, I'm interested in hearing what conclusions others have reached, and what you do with yours, and why. How do you use your scout platoon? Do you fight your scout platoon as one platoon sized unit or break them up into sections? If you fight them together, what sort of objective do you assign to them in the assault? If you break them up, what type of objective do you assign to each section? If you break them up, what do you do with the HQ and the XO units? How do you measure whether or not your scouts are successful? How do you use your sniper platoon? What caliber to you assign to your sniper platoon? Why do you assign that caliber? What do you hope to accomplish with your snipers? How do you measure whether or not your snipers are successful?

You guys are no help at all. I should have known. Not a grunt in the bunch.

The estimates I've watched (and thought about, but I can't say I've studied them) seem to be "the longest time unless something goes wrong" estimates. That is, the FFE will begin before that time unless a spotter who is using spotting rounds is killed, suppressed, panics or loses LOS to the spotting round, or loses contact, or some other catastrophe I haven't encountered yet. I started glancing at those estimates and then ignoring them long ago. My comments on elite batteries are a general feeling, they come from watching the game clock in a casual manner. (I didn't study the issue, I just took note of it on several occasions.) I'd make the call, glance at the clock, estimate when it would hit within about ten seconds, then go back to the game. Elite batteries surprised me by arriving "early", which is how I realized that it makes a difference.

Are there any Filemaker fans here? I've been coasting along, recording my ammo consumption project in a spreadsheet. (I know, gag, but it got the first couple of simple scenario reports displayed...) So far, it's worked. But I finally stumbled outside the bounds of what a spreadsheet can do easily, and some attributes that were supposed to be simple attributes suddenly exploded into multi-line nightmare entries, with common spreadsheet results. No standardization for entry, more than one data type per attribute, all the standard spreadsheet nightmares. It's starting to look like an accounting spreadsheet designed by a real estate agent who needed to use it for baking recipes and was baking bread in a broken oven and watching porn while designing the spreadsheet. I'm thinking of breaking down and building a data model, then implementing it in Filemaker. With Filemaker, there's always a considerable gap between the model and the product, but that gap makes me happy, because it makes the DBM so much easier to work with. "In theory, there is no difference between theory and reality, in reality, there's a huge difference." Except for light weapons, most ammo types are specific to a vehicle, Bradleys do not use 120mm APFSDS. No one but a tank does. So right off the bat, I'm arguing with myself about whether ammo is an attribute or an entity, and I haven't even really started. There are a number of many-to-manys here, with 7.62 being used in everything from different machine guns to sniper rifles, and 5.56 being everywhere that doesn't have a main gun.

Have fun. I don't really advocate mortars-- the only thing they really have going for them is response time. I use them to hit first, fast, and keep targets suppressed until the 155s show up. So I almost never use them for longer than "short". It's really easy to burn right through mortar ammo. The first sign that I'm going to lose is the last mortar running dry before initial objectives are secure.

Caller is an M1200 Caller is elite Battery is elite Battery is a mortar Battery is on board Target is on or near a TRP If you want, you can call it in as emergency, but I never bother doing that. An FFE in twenty or thirty seconds is usually enough for me. I call them in in groups-- on board mortars to hit in thirty seconds, mortars on the same target to lay smoke, and 155s on the same target to finish the job. The effect is smoke and accurate mortar fire in thirty seconds, and constant suppression until the 155s are finished. I almost never call in indirect fire from a caller that isn't an FO, a FIST or an M1200. I make all my spotters elite, as well as all my batteries. On occasion, I buy extra mortars one at a time to get them as on-board. I'd rather have TRPs than a UAV. Sometimes I sell the UAV and replace it with TRPs, sometimes not. FOs don't need LOS unless the target is outside the grid of TRPs. I only play on Iron, 1 player-Real Time.