Ultradave

Ok, here's a couple:
1. Vehicles get dropped from airplanes (called "heavy drop"). Rigged with several parachutes, they are strapped to steel platform skids, with honeycomb cardboard crushable padding. The battery commander's jeep and trailer (with all his belongings), each get one small skid and parachute. Occasionally we lose a vehicle when the chutes malfunction. Occasionally. Two drops in a row, the only casualty was the BC's trailer. Tent, all his personal gear for a deployment...  BOOM.  Upside down. Nothing but the flat bottom of the skid visible.  Two times in a row. On another occasion it was the #3 gun. #3 is always the senior gun chief, and the gun we use for registering the batter, adjusting fire before FFE. They are the most experienced and best performing gun. SSGT Perry was looking for his gun. Its parachutes had detached as it slid out of the plane and it fell 1200'.  BOOOOM.  Upside down into the sandy drop zone. SSGT Perry almost started to cry when we told him "It's under there. That's your gun."  It ended up on display in the motor pool after they dug it out. It was about a foot tall, wheels out sideways, gun tube cracked in the middle and driven down into the chassis. Incidentally, it's for this reason that in training the vehicles drop first, then the  people drop. In a real situation you'd drop the people first to secure the drop zone, then the vehicles, but as you can see, that can be dangerous.
2. Two gun raid.  An artillery battery is comprised of 6 guns. In the 82d, back then we had M102 105mm howitzers. Nice guns. Towed by M561 Gamma Goats. But being a 105 the range is somewhat limited. A two gun raid takes two guns, and a couple of people from the Fire Direction Center (the LT and one enlisted man) forward with the two guns.  The FDC LT gets to play Fire Direction Officer and XO at the same time (calculate the firing data and lay the guns). The guns get slung with enough ammo for the mission, the two gun crews and us (The FDC - I was the LT), ride the 2 Blackhawks that are carrying the guns (Hueys early on but then it took 4 to do it). Placed forward in the front lines to be able to hit a lucrative target in the enemy rear, you set up, shoot, and rig up to be removed again, all very fast. In peacetime, Ft. Bragg, NC, you have strict range safety. A firing box to fire into from a specific surveyed firing point. When the helicopters set us down and flew off, the senior gun chief and I huddled with a map and quickly realized they had set us down on the wrong spot. We were a mile down the road from where we should be (and where I had safety data for), with no transportation. Radio silence, the choppers would return in 30 minutes. So we lay the guns, calculated the data and dry fired for the practice. No live rounds - that would have been a disaster. Had we fired the mission as given from the wrong location we would have fired rounds onto a road. A real road. Luckily the sergeant and I were familiar enough with the area that we could tell we weren't in the right place.  If it was real it wouldn't have been much better because back then with no GPS, you are dependent on doing your own survey.  We were in the trees with no readily usable landmarks. Who knows where the rounds would have gone, except not where the target was. And in real life we may not have recognized the error. 
3. And I've already told the story of the final protective fires. Danger close with infantry company mortars (I was a FIST Chief then). Rounds kept creeping closer to us. They were already close and getting closer. So we radioed "Check Fire" and received the reply "Rounds Complete".  Mortars are quick firing with a long time of flight. There were still about 15 rounds in the air. We bugged out. The last rounds hit our former position. The mortar baseplates were sinking in wet ground with every shot, causing the tube to rise, which shortens the range. They hadn't noticed until it was over. So we had good FPF fire but had to retreat in a hurry anyway. This one could easily be applicable to CM games due to the close quarters of most battles.
Not very exciting stories, but examples of if something can go wrong it will.

By the recon being done before the battle simply means you know the general location of the enemy force. Recon teams as small and can move around ahead and locate the DETAIL of the enemy positions, many times preventing a whole squad from walking into a buzz saw, or giving you a better idea of dispositions so that you can plan where you want to go.
When I don't have actual recon teams, I usually break out scout teams from squads to do the same thing. Better for 2 or 3 guys to find the bad guys the hard way than a squad or platoon.

A JagdTiger waits quietly at the edge of the woods for its prey. Nice pine trees in the foreground.   (I have gridded terrain mod added - you might notice the lines on the ground. It helps a lot with the very snowy scenery.

Many of the scenarios of all the modules had a going over. In a lot of cases that included new AI scheme(s). Not every single one, but a lot of them. They were at least looked at to see if they had a reasonable AI scheme.

I for one have no complaints at all with how you have decided to do the upgrades on all the games and how you have priced the add-ons and upgrades to the engine.
I also am impressed with CMSF 2 in that you made it work being able to load old CMSF 1 scenarios.
When I read complaints about how you are pricing and marketing games, I generally see it appears to be a customer who either is not someone that is going to spend much time with the product or its someone that thinks the world owes them things for free. ( Both of which have come from a gaming industry that teaches them that those two principles can be somewhat true).  So I have no feelings of remorse for them when they find out this company does not work on such concepts.
I also have found that I have never regretted a purchase of your games  in that I likely get about 800 hours a year of gaming entertainment with you products.
Where as, there is hardly any other game that has managed a 100 hours of my time in the whole time of ownership and many a game that has not given me 10 hours of time before I never want to see it again.
Keep up the good work and live long and prosper
 

You can build your own scenarios using QB maps as a base (just remember to rename and save them in the Scenarios folder).
These have the advantage of having EVERYTHING available for purchase and there's no points limit to worry about. If you want you can have your uncons backed up by massive 130mm artillery barrages or BM-21 artillery rockets. You can also go into the generic QB AI orders and tinker with the timing and movement to suit your needs. Its a simple starting point for anyone who someday wants to generate his own original scenarios. Playing the game is just the tip of the iceberg.
 

One of the companies that we got some COTS radiation analysis software from - small company - called me their Charlie tester. Just when they thought they'd covered everything I'd stress the code a little farther and find something no one thought of. To be fair to them, I was finding new ways to use their code on unique problems, so they aren't really to blame. 🙂

In this instance a picture doesn't paint a thousand words 

I agree with the NATO recommendation however, both the UK and USMC expansions come with a number of scenarios (a dozen-ish each or so) plus a campaign. There is plenty in each expansion, but I agree the NATO one brings lots of new vehicles and several countries, plus a few campaigns.

I agree with the NATO recommendation however, both the UK and USMC expansions come with a number of scenarios (a dozen-ish each or so) plus a campaign. There is plenty in each expansion, but I agree the NATO one brings lots of new vehicles and several countries, plus a few campaigns.

@George MC's scenarios often remind me of a puzzle box, with a key or series of keys to be found, each unlocking a layer of the scenario. 

Me too😀
a friend of mine was a cannon cocker in Vietnam. He told me they’d get a fire mission to fire a star burst at a specific location. He’d turn to his gun crew and say, “We’ll, looks like Recon’s lost again!”
We in the military are like a family; we might fight among ourselves, but if someone from outside the family jumps one of our brothers, the rest of us will “Read them from the book!”

Steve said it was ok to tell everyone that upgrades will be posted soon ( later today/tonight I think) Patience. 

Steve said it was ok to tell everyone that upgrades will be posted soon ( later today/tonight I think) Patience. 

Yes. In the real world US Army infantry squads are made up of two fire teams. When split, it is split into these two fire teams. 

AFAIK, there is no default 7-man squad with a 3-team structure.  IIRC, UKR has a mountain motor rifle platoon with a 10 or 11 man squad which would require the 3-team structure to still be capable of a 2-man split off (1 team cannot have more than 7 men, and the total number of teams is hard-coded to the squad).  Such a squad that is understrength or has taken casualties might appear as 7 men in 3 teams.
Personally I'd prefer that US squads did have a 3-team structure, with the SL in his own team alone and 2x 4-man fire teams, but I believe Steve does not like putting only 1 man into a team. (He really worries about his pixeltruppen creations getting lonely and lamenting their creator.)

Many thanks for this and your time.  Great help.  Thought I was going mad, or maybe screwed something up with the install / location.

LOL - love that line.
Wait, you mean if I'm <splat> ...

I answered this in a different post but on a Mac FOR THE DEMO, the saved games you have to show contents of the .app, then Resources/Game Files/Saved Games. Old style like BN. When the game is released it will have a separate Game Files directory at the top level, just like FB.

Applications/CM.../Game Files/Saved Games
It's not a Mac thing. It's Charles setting up things on the Mac so you don't have to open the contents of the .app to find the game folders (scenarios, campaigns, saves, etc). Makes it tons easier to add user scenarios. The Data folder is also outside the .app now as well, so same goes for mods.

Had to reinstall the demo - had taken it off. Sorry fo the confusion. The demo is built the old way. So the saved games are at   <demo>/.....app/Resources/Game Files/Saved Games.   Like say, CMBN, you have to show the contents of the .app to get there.

The full game for release of SF2 is built the new way FB is with the game file outside, so you just click on the game files folder.  Much better.

As BFC's interior modeling fidelity improves over time (certainly by when we have CM in #D holograms), all those fiddly details will matter. The Tiger 1's backup firing system in the event the electrical system fails, killing the electrical firing system, is this. When you mash the button down, it generates sufficient electrical care to fir the gun.


Regards,
John Kettler

What he said. Seriously. I'd take anything and I know it would be many hours worth, no matter the actual subject.
 

What he said. Seriously. I'd take anything and I know it would be many hours worth, no matter the actual subject.
 

There was an old computer game "Balance of Power" where you had to counter USSR Cold War aggression (playing as the US), and of course, implement your own diplomacy and aggression (military advisors, combat troops and such). If a nuclear war started at some point, you lose. Doesn't matter who escalated or started it. You lose. Decisive defeat. Good concept. You either did it or allowed it to get to the point where it happened. It was really hard to win because the Russian AI was very aggressive and wouldn't back down in a lot of cases. Invoke the Monroe Doctrine and try to force them to get their 150,000 troops out of Nicaragua and you are likely to start WW3. I lost a lot. Didn't find the magic formula of diplomacy, pressure (just enough but not too much), and luck. 
In the case of the real world it took some coincidences, timely turnover of Soviet leadership, and luck to avoid WW3.
Speaking of which, just finished reading "1983" a couple weeks ago. Good book, well researched with some recently declassified info. Having lived through some of what he writes about, it's even scarier reading about it now than it was at the time being there. Incredible how close we came to turning the Earth into a little cinder ball. Not just once either.