agusto

Those are awesome pics. I especially love the one with NVG. It always bugged me abit when the US Marine in CMSF would wear their black sunglasses during night battles.

I spent some time reading WW2 MoH citations on Wikipedia a couple of weeks ago. Some of these guys were not just incredibly courageous but also insanely lucky. Check out this one: "Second Lieutenant Audie L. Murphy, 01692509, 15th Infantry, Army of the United States, on 26 January 1945, near Holtzwihr, France, commanded Company B, which was attacked by six tanks and waves of infantry. Lieutenant Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to a prepared position in a woods while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him to his right one of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. It's crew withdrew to the woods. Lieutenant Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, Lieutenant Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer which was in danger of blowing up any instant and employed its .50 caliber machine gun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to the German fire from three sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. the enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminated Lieutenant Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he personally killed or wounded about 50. Lieutenant Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective"

I award c3k 10 points for creativity though. It' s not a bad idea .

You could try the Windows screen magnifier, it may work with CM. Go to Start->Control Panel-> Ease of Access Center->Screen Magnifier. Start CM, read the briefing, and when you are done, you can quit the screen magnifier with Windows+ESC. Lowering you screens resolution to something like 800x600 will also increase the size of the briefing text. EDIT: Here is some more infor on the screen magnifier, if you want to try it: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-use-windows-7-magnifier-make-computer-screen-easier-see.htm

Exactely. They are responsible for what they do and it wasnt my intent to find excuses for other peoples crimes. However i do think that by understanding the social mechanisms that make people commit crimes, we can construct our society in such a way so that potential criminals wont get in a situation where they go from potential criminal to active criminal. The goal is not to protect the crimnals from beeing prosecuted by the law but to protect those who would become their victims.

I played the first part of the series. It is about producing snuff movies IIRC. I am sure you get points for creative or particularily cruel murders though. And gang members are civillians.

That s going to be awesome - and i love the new battle briefing graphics .

That' s the whole point. Depending on which studies you quote the amount of psychologically unstable persons in western societies (and i am now only talking about western societies because it is difficult to get studies on the mental health of let s say Afgahnistans population) varies between 20-30%. Of course these statistics include everything, from raping and murdering sociopaths, who would commit their crimes regardless of what kind of media to they consume, to those who in general manage it to normally fit into society but who have the potential for commiting crimes of various degrees if they are brought in a situation that triggers that kind of behavior. There are numerous reports of criminals who, when interrogated by police after they were caught, specifically referred to certain games or movies as inspiration for what they did. The movie 'Natural Born Killers' for example is infamous for beeing quoted by several criminals as inspiration for their crimes. The conclusion is that there is a certain number of people who may be negatively influenced by violence in the media and that the amount of violence that can be responsibly shown in movies and games correlates with that number. You also must not forget that the media we consume are already censored in regard to violence. Most countries have lists of games or movies that are prohibited from beeing sold or possessed. In Germany, for example, the game "Concentration Camp Tycoon/KZ-Manager" is prohibited from beeing sold or possessed (and for good reasons), while other games such as the Manhunt series (a game that is about murdering civillians in the most brutal way possible, points are awarded for cruelty) are not allowed to be sold. So the violent games and movies you have consumed were only those containing the socially accepted forms of violence, which, of course, are designed in a way so that most grown-ups can consume them without beeing traumatized or negatively influenced. I am sure though that with modern technology it would be possible to design a movie or game capable of traumatizing grown-up, mentally stable people. Think of a high quality 2-hour reinaction of an ISIS-style mass-beheading with dull pocket knifes or an accurate reinaction of the murder committed by german cannibal Armin Meiwes who sexually tortured his victim for over 3 hours before letting it bleed to death. We dont see these things on TV because they are so graphic that most people would not want/couldnt bear to watch them. That is my experience as well. But, given that war according to Clausewitz is nothing but "the continuation of politics by other means.", it is no wonder that wargamers are interested in the political backgrounds of military conflicts. I also often find myself in a reversed situation: i know about the political background of a conflict and then i start to look for a wargame on that topic.

IMO the more interesting question is: where does this fascination for wargames come from and why do people who enjoy wargames in general do not experience participating in a real war as enjoyable at all? I think that what makes wargames fascinating is that the player can make all the positive experiences that war brings with itself: the intellectual challenge of solving tactical and strategical problems, the excitment of putting ones life at risk, the great feeling of power that comes from exercising ultimate control over other peoples lifes (by beeing able to kill them), the great adventure of doing things that are completely different from ones everyday life and the excitment of doing things that are normally considered immoral and taboo by society. In reality, however, the negative experiences of war greatly outweight any positive experience that an individual can make: the massive emotional trauma that can be inflicted by excessive stress and seeing others suffer great pain, the possibility of real physical injury to ones own body, the loss of friends or seeing friends suffer, the feeling of guilt that can come from inflicting pain on or killing other human beeings. What makes wargaming enjoyable is that you can have all the positive experiences listed above without having to suffer from the negative ones. Wargames are basically a geratly simplyfied, censored depiction of war where all the bad experiences are blanked out and, in games like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, all the good experiences are exaggerated. Regarding the particular question of compassion and guilt which was initially asked ITT, i would like to quote Vanif ausf. B who imo gave the best answear on the subject yet:

There is still a lot of truth in ths article though. For example it correctly assumes that there is a country called 'Russia' and it also correctly locates the Black Sea near the Russian borders. Although the average person may have problems locating them on a world map, few people would seriously argue that Russia and the Black Sea are made up. I even know someone who claims to actually have been to Russia at least once, and i fully trust this source. To me there is no doubt that Russia really exists.

Ahh, i see, you guys are already warming up for the CMBS Peng Challenge thread. Isnt it a bit early for that?

So basically a shell with [classified] penetration values will produce [classified] results if fired at armor with [classified] protection values? Wow, that 's so [classified]!

It needs to be cared for, it needs to be trained, it maybe runs away under fire, etc. Biggest pro is that it' s cheap. You can probably get 100 mules for the price of 1 BigDog or LS3 robot.

You maybe want to do that with unguided rocket propelled grenades, but when you have something like a Javelin at your hands, it is better to be as far away as possible. At 2000 meters a Syrian T-72 will never spot a Javelin team first, so your guys are going to get the first shot, and even if the T-72 gets a chance to take a shot at the Javelin team while the missile is in the air, it is likely that the tank misses its first shot at that range and it wont get the chance to take a second one. Moreover, the Javelin is a fire and forget weapon, which means that when you are playing real time you can retreat you guys right after the shot so the T-72 doesnt even get a chance at retaliating. The Javelin is really great vs. anything - tanks, IFVs, bunkers, infantry... it is almost like some type of HE/HEAT-super-long-range-sniper rifle.

The enemy will never hear THAT coming : While autonomous robots would be an intersting addition, i think though that they way they are currently implemented in IRL armies is beyond CMBS' scope: they clear mines, transport ammo (like BigDog) and perform some recon duties. They are performing duties that are abstracted in CM. EDIT: here is a vid of thelatest iteration of BigDog, the Legged Squad Suppprt System aka LS3: Field test of the LS3 witth he US Army:

Hopefully! Just imagine the headlines: Russia declares war on US over conflict in Ukraine "I played and won the Russian campaign in CMBS three times in a row.", Putin gives as explanation for his new, drastic move, further explaining that "...the game has become the primary tool for helping Russian politicians with making strategic decisions."

Maybe there wont be nucular weapons, but definitely new, cooler weapons.

I think there is IR blocking smoke in CMSF. The Syrians have it.

Germany is at least considering sending troops to Ukraine: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2780940/Germans-set-send-troops-Ukraine-WW2.html

I think the Target Reference Points (TRPs)in the game will work just that way. Not as far as i know. Possibly you can use pre-battle TRPs though to achieve a similar effect. Good question.

Will there be fire, either in the form of flame throwers and/or burning trees/houses/etc?

Microterrain is modeled though, even if it is not visible. I am not sure to which extent it is modeled, but it is there. I ve often read about it on the forums and IIRC even in some of the game manuals.

But how about whole squads? 8 men with assault rifles are probably able to produce a volume of fire high enough to hit a low & slow flying drone within a reasonable amount of time. Me neither .

In this video ChrisND explains how UAVs are going to work in CMBS:

To bad BaronJacquinot got banned - he would ve loved a thread like this.