agusto

I really enjoyed the Troina campaign. In the first battle i used the preperatory bombardment to 1) shell the position on the ridgeline with HE and 2) deploy a looong smokescreen in order to litterally split the whole battlefield in half, cutting off the ridgeline from the other defensive positions. I then launched an all out attack on the surviving defenders of the ridgeline, quickly overrunning them without casualties and then had my troops take cover on the other side of the ridgeline. The plan was to break through and then attack the enemy on the hill and forrest from behind. In the meantime my spotters positioned themselves in the center and shelled the enemy foxholes in the forrest and on the main hill, taking out some AT guns. The rest of the battle was cleaning up what the artillery had left over. I took the hill and used it for firing down into the forrest with tanks and infantry. I ended up with some 15-20 casualties mostly due to mortar fire and 1 tank lost.

I have made similar experiences in CMFI in the US campaign. You cant QUICK you troops up a steep hill or a mountain with diffiult micro terrain like lots of rocks effectively, they will be tired within 1-2 turns while not being significantly faster than with MOVE. But usually i use QUICK too and let them rest for a few turns when they get too tired.

I doubt BF wants to get so political to release a "Syrian Civil War module" or something like that. Probably that is why CMSF was about a hypothetical conflict in Syria and not about the ongoing and very similar Iraq conflict.

I get the most fun out of the QB maps by refining them in the Editor with improved AI and details (if i feel like they need them) and making Scenarios out of them that i can play vs the AI. Of course this partailly takes away the element of suprise when you know what the enemys force consists of, but if i select a sufficient number of troops for the computer i usually cant remember in detail what and where they were anyways. There are some great QB maps that come with the game, really.

That s awesome, really! I think i am going to have to dig out TOW2 in the coming weeks and install it just to play this.

If i tab out of the game during loading, i most likely will have to restart the game if not the whole system.

I think when a tank gets hit and penetrated and the surving crew bails out, there is such a mess inside you cant just get in an drive away with it. Using captured vehicles is of course possible and can happen in real life, but since they will most probably need some sort of repairs it is out of the scope of a CM battle.

If you take an 8 men squad and give them a hide order, only one of them will occasionaly pop out his had and observe the battlefield while the others hug the ground, so the chances of spotting somthing are much smaller than with all 8 pairs of eyes observing. Given the situation as you described it, i think the best solution would be to have everyone hide except the shreck and panzerfaust teams (sslpit AT teams of your squads). They should be positioned in a way however that they wont need to hide because as soon as the shermans spot them, they will already be within firing range. The reverse slope of the field on the left flank of the map is perfect for that. Put some infantry men in the building opposing the reversed slope so your shreck teams have covering fire from small arms when teh tank crews bail out. troops in a building will be much harder to spot for a tank than troops out in the open, so you wont necessarily have to hide them. But yeah, sucessfully ambushing an enemy in turn based mode can be hard to do. I use the edges of buildings, curved roads or anything else that physically obstructs view like wrecked vehicles for that and position my troops in a way that they will not need to hide because when the enemy comes around the corner he will already be within shreck or faust range. I only use hide for ambushes when catching the right moment to open fire is not of prime relevancy due to a slow moving enemy or a wide kill zone.

That s awsome and definately qualifies as something nice!

Those are good additions indeed.

I found that (and the armchair general tutorial somhow implied that) systematically reviewing a turn greatly improves situational awareness. When i watch the movie, i try to answear the following questions: 1) Did i take any casualties? If yes, how did that happen? What effect does the enemy fire have on my troops? 2) What effect does my fire have on the enemy? 3) Concluding from the above two: am i winning all current firefights? How can i improve the situation and if i cant, is breaking contact and retreating a better option? 4) Are spotting rounds landing anywhere near my position? 5) Whats my troops ammo/manpower status? 6) Is everything going according to the 'big plan'? How do you review a turn?

Pilots dont wear uniforms? What are flight suits then? Fetish?

A large scale nuclear exchange between NATO and Russia wouldnt leave a winner. Both sides know that, so if there was a conflct between the two, they would probably stick with conventional weapons as long as both believe they are able to defeat their opponent. Both have first and second strike capabilities, so a surprising nuclear beaheading strike wouldnt lead to sucsess either. The 'balance of terror' strategy works surprisingly well.

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=2565 http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=1084 http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=1885 Those should help you to get better match ups.

1. I spend most of time during the command phase on the lower camera levels. For determining an infantry units FOW, i go down to the eye level (lowest camera position). I then use the 'Target' command and the zoom function (x/c) to determine LOS/LOF. For vehicles like Panzers, i use the second lowest camera position ( i dont use the number keys but the mouswhell instead) because that position is at the same height that the vehicles turret is (usually. turretless german TDs are different). 2. The 'Target' command and going down to eye-level with the camera. 3. No. They will only do what you tell them. A way that works rather well to determine if a certain tank will be in hull down at a certain spot is to go to the second lowest possible camera poistion (again, i am usng the mouswheel, dont know where the keyboard commands have their lowest position) and then use the target command and the x/c zoom keys (with zoom i mean zoom, not height control). EDIT: To get the big picture you mentioned, i watch the movie during the replay phase at least one time on maximum camera elevation.

I recently noticed that all of Aris incredible special effects mods (smoke, dust, fire, explosions, tracers, small arms and vehicle muzzle fire) also work properly in CMSF. Now, maybe to some of you this is nothing new, but because i only noticed that this works half a year or so after i first found Aris' mods at the Repository and because this adds so much to the game, i though i ll post it anyways. Besides that, at the Repository it says that Aris' special effecty mods are only compatible with CMFI and CMBN, if i remeber correctly. The following screenshots are from the Zrawya Uprising campaign, i added them to show how well Aris smoke and dust fit into Syria: BMP-3 of the 1st Special Forces engaging a possible rebel ambush position. Smae scene, few seconds later. The explosions are Veins, btw. I like them better, they look more fiery.

In 1942 and 43, i think that could be true. The allies in North Afrika had almost nothing that could threaten the Tiger I, and the combat ranges in the desert were probably very long, so to the Tigers advantage. In Russia '42 and '43 the T34-76 varaints were not able to penetrate the Tigers frontal armor and needed to be within 100m meters to penetrate the sides. The Su 122 also was unable to effectively fight the Tiger afaik. In the later stages of the war (1944-45) both western allies and the USSR had developed weapons to effectively counter the german heavies, so the surviveability of Tiger crews was probably not that much better than the surviveability of Panzer IV or Pnzer V crews.

Panther > IS2 > Tiger

You will have the easiest possible learning curve if you watch these great tutorials, btw: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy-tactics-a-video-series EDIT: this vid is probably also going to answear some questions that might occur:

Maybe that s the 'Something Nice' that Steve mentioned?

I just checked it out and there are no new terrain textures available, it s just possible now to select 'Patchy Snow' as ground condition.

I do that all the time when i have enough ammo. Sometimes even if there would be other options left, I just love to blow up stuff so much.

Awesome! The first thing i am gonna do now is opening the editor and create a MG firing range.

My guess is that those are 3D models - would make sense, since there are no turban-wearing syrians in the stock game. I saw the same mod at the repository and thought about downloading it when i play a mission set in afgahnistan next time. The model on teh screenshot at the repository did look as if the Taliban models and textures were those from CM:A.

It depends on how good you are at the game if a campaign is challenging or not. If i remember correctly, you will have numerical superiority in all battles of Die Letzte Hoffnung unless you take too many casualties.