Pelican Pal

Back in CM:SF someone did a scenario modelling a battle against the Japanese in Burma (I'm pretty sure it was Burma, but don;t hold me to it) with moderrn equipment. I had a reinforced Platoon and the Company HQ get overrun. With the last surviving members of the defending unit managed to hold out in a pocket just long enough for the Company Commander to call in a fully loaded A-10 onto his own position. The A-10 bagged the best part of a company and a handful of my survivors managed to hold the hill.

So I;ve read that the AT-5 has the capability of warning the operator when the missile is being spoofed, or at least when the computer suspects it is, and the operator can then take over and control using MCLOS. Does the TOW-2 have this capability? Is that capability modelled for any missiles?

Yea, they aren't displayed anywhere. The unit firing the shot gets the kill and offmap units, I suspect, aren't treated like on map units. So if you have on-map 82MM mortars you can click on them to check kills, but you cannot do the same for off-map.

Macisle was correct. I had somehow placed a 1x1 action square "setup zone" for the two AI groups. On a large map they tend to blend in very well, but I managed to hunt them down.

I've been working on a scenario and I've recently run into a problem. I've placed a platoon of Russian Recon and Ukrainian Infantry and they appear in the right places in the editor. However, when loading the scenario to test it I find both platoons about 800 meters away from where I placed them. As far as I can see there aren't any setup zones on the map that would be causing this. Anyone know of a solution?

Lucas, you have got to be kidding me. Anyway, as it is right now I don't think the game offers a really suitable solution to the problem. The Primary ones seem to rely on time based triggers. Which we currently don't have access to. Generally the way I design scenarios I don't run into the issue. However, my general rule of thumb is for reinforcements to never show up near objectives.

I would disagree. Things that happen in the real world follow a set of natural laws. This is akin to those being broken. It isn't a "Oh, I didn't expect that to happen but I can understand how it did" It is much more like you're computer suddenly ignores gravity flies to the top of the room and is smashed into pieces. You couldn't possibly expect that to happen and to attempt to provide for that contingency would be seen as absurd. Similarly the CM series has a set of natural laws. To provide for contingencies outside of those would be absurd. The board edge, for example, represents the end of the known universe. if you are at the board edge nothing that is off of it should be a worry to you, because it doesn't exist. That is why we can sit an mech company on top of the tallest, most exposed hill we can find and not worry about an off map TOW-2 rocket killing everyone. Even though that mech company would probably be at risk from anyone within 6KM of its position.

Yea, this is something I've noticed since CM:BN. Trees off and your Sherman firing at that target 500 meters away doesn't seem odd. Trees on and you can literally cannot see through the foliage. I've always assumed it was a weird abstraction.

Are you really trying to justify this? Like seriously? It is just a "Real World" risk that a bunch of enemy troops will suddenly appear within 20 meters of your troops without any possibility of detecting them? That is complete and utter trash. According to your logic I need to be prepared at all times to have a relatively heavy attack force appear within 20 meters of my troops. I must therefore, watch the entirety of the board edge with sufficient force to destroy them within a few seconds of appearing, and I will probably take absurd losses anyway. This isn't something that can be planned for and frankly I find it appalling that you are trying to defend this as a realism feature. Like jesus. This is a modern war. Where we can have very accurate fights at 3 KM or more. And you are saying that I just have to understand a magical teleporting force of BMPs and MBTs showing up essentially in my line as a natural part of warfare? How is this a legitimate answer?

Does the bug have to do with the ERA not triggering? I've lost a number of ERA equipped armored vehicles and haven't noticed any ERA hits.

I personally feel that designing QB maps is harder than straight up scenarios. Getting the AI to do intelligent things when you have no idea what it will be is a time consuming process to say the least. Also, if I intend on spending a lot of time on something a QB scenario just doesn't sound very appealing. It is oddly lifeless. At least from the designer perspective.

But that map would look absolutely terrible and probably would get a negative reception if you released it. Map making is just as much about immersion as it is interesting tactical scenarios.

This is just from my experience playing Arma 3 regularly with about 40-50 people. If say you are looking at a vehicle toting FLIR, and a 30MM autocannon and your AT weapons are RPGs or AT4s. Something unguided. It isn't unusual for us to fire volleys of rockets. It allows you to: 1. increases chances of hitting. 2. increase the number of hits. Thereby ensuring lethality. Even if there would only be possibly seconds before the next shot the vehicle might suddenly move, it might spot you as you fire the first rocket, and it may spray down your position with its gun. So the whole volley fire concept I don't think is incorrect. However, I would like to see a slight delay especially when the unit isn't in direct danger. Since the tacai doesn't have human intelligence it could very well be that those are the last two AT4s they have so they may want to conserve them.

I've made two scenarios for CM:RT so i'll throw in my two cents. Making the briefing and the maps used during the briefing (especially the bloody maps) is annoying, difficult, and absolutely no fun. Both of my scenarios are at the "add in tactical/strategic maps stage, and maybe one day they will get past that and I'll release. However, when it comes down to it I have limited free time and I can either play some Dota2 or spend time in photoshop. I general choose Dota 2. And on top of that I generally make scenarios for my personal enjoyment. During the design and testing phase I get my enjoyment out of it.So do I want to put in that extra effort for a dubious reply from the forums?

With modern FLIR and Armor using IFV alongside your infantry can be quite effective.

I've been screwing around in the editor and it seems the acquire command is disabled? Is it supposed to be disabled? If so is there anyway to get the AI to use Javelins and other acquired equipment?

I've watched a lot of combat footage. Both from American forces in Iraq/Afghanistan, the fighting in Syria, and now the fighting in Ukraine. What I've tended to notice is that people, regardless of training do bunch. However, the important difference is how they bunch up. American troops (and generally the people who seem more competent) seem to bunch up behind some sort of hard cover. You'll see a bunch of soldier's with a few feet between each other in a deep ditch. Or you'll see some soldier's meeting together discussion the situation. The general similarity in all these situations is it isn't a ton of guys, while close they still would have to lean out and reach to touch someone, and there is hard cover around them. Meanwhile if you watch footage, especially from early in the Syrian Civil War, you'll see 15-20 guys milling around in the open. There isn't hard cover, there isn't great coordination about who is shooting around their new combat corner, they are almost all standing straight up. If someone was able to fire an accurate burst it would almost certainly catch 5 or more of them. Mvp7, I remember very distinctly watching the maneuver element come under fire from a key holed enemy HMG during a wego turn. They became pinned and took a few losses, and I also noticed the overwatch element begin to cower. They were not taking any fire whatsoever. As for the need for a nice tactical pace advance that prioritizes shooting. I 100% agree with you. Right now there are two viable combat movement orders. Quick, and hunt. Quick, will very often result in a squad taking fire switching to Fast and continue moving to their destination. If the shooter happens to be in between them and their destination you have the squad participate in the suicide train and run ever quicker to their deaths. The tacai reaction for quick is geared towards fire from 100 meters or farther out. The closer you get to incoming fire the worse this decision becomes. What is more frustrating is that the squad will often spot their killer and choose to ignore him and just run faster. Hunt, hunt is incredibly slow and very easily disrupted. In dense terrain it isn't unusual for the lead man to be spotted, shot and killed, and then the rest of the squad go to ground. The squad then takes additional casualties as searching fire comes in from the enemies who shot the point man. Even if the hunting team successfully finds and kills the enemy the point man spots it then requires another turn for you to get them going again and for the process to repeat. If this hunt command is part of a coordinated move with other elements it can leave a deadly hole in your line. An order in which the men advance at a decent pace that prioritizes shooting the enemy in the face over continuing to advance would be invaluable. Clearing fortifications, woods, buildings, any sort of dense terrain right now is incredibly hit or miss, and a single shooter can easily cause heavy casualties even if the shooter is spotted first.

I don't think that is the issue here. Regardless of the accuracy, when the automatic weapon does hit center mass of the target there will be sizable number of rounds hitting that area before the weapon tracks out of target zone. So the target soldier is being hit, and then every bullet that didn't kill him is flying into the rest of the conga line that squad decided to form. This problem is compounded by the increasingly long bursts that occur at closer range.The result being that at close-ish range a squad under automatic fire will take absurdly high casualties. To the point that a single shooter can, within the time hit takes him to fire a burst, totally destroy a squad or reduce it to a point of combat ineffectiveness.

Yea, the tac ai on the infantry side definitely has some issues. Personally I'm hoping for three things: SOPs, a nerf to automatic weapons, and a order that prioritized shooting over running. SOP commands would make the tac ai infinitely more flexible and most of all! Stop the suicide train. Right now automatic weapons are unrealistically effective. Because the units are so bunched up it is very easy for a burst to kill 50% or more of a squad. Some sort of order that prioritizes shooting over moving, likemvp7 said, would also be a boon. Re. The Assault Command. The current assault command horrible. Both elements share the same morale so anyone heavy fire on the bounding unit will suppress the overwatch elemtn, the bound is often too large or through intervening terrain, it is an exhausting command, and it exposes the overwatch team to over shoot fire from enemies to the front. Splitting elements and using pauses with quick or fast is infinitely more useful.

With what is in the game right now you could do a pretty passable "future Fulda Gap" game. At the end of the day you are still going to have tons of Russians running into fewer, but better equipped Americans.

I also don't have CM:BS. However, in CM:RT ATGs can be moved short distances without packing up. Heavy tripod mounted weapons also might be capable of doing that. Try a FAST move about an action square away. The core of the problem is a game design one. To the extent that picking up a weapon that is already been deployed is not modeled. So to move a crew served weapon the entire weapon must be packed up and then moved, while in reality the entire weapon would be carried to a safe location before being packed up.

The complaint about rockets in WW2 family of games was because of their cost rather than how they worked. IIRC, for something like the cost of single T-34 you could get 5,000 rockets. Take any decent sized scenario and you couldn't go wrong trading a platoon of T-34s for 20,000 rockets.

You should probably assume that your thread will wander into off topic conversation within 5-10 pages of it starting. This is now at 37 pages. Expecting the same topic to be stuck to is maybe a little much. Anyway, folks are having an interesting discussion. I'm not sure why it should be stopeed.

Is there an answer to this question? Does the tacAI intelligently lase targets our does CM just assume it is done at every range?

If you read the briefings carefully they will give you a number of hints that you can use to find out just how "expendable" the men under your command are. As a general rule though. Run of the mill infantry will be replaced. As for the AT guns. I found them quite brutal on that first mission. Although I put it down to tree bursts and the tight formation my men were fighting in.