domfluff

I have a weird fixation on Syria mech inf recon platoons. Not because they're good, but because they're a challenge to make useful. I quite like the British carrier platoons in the WW2 games, but they're a lot more capable.

It really depends, both on the scenario or my mood. Sometimes I feel like you can get a lot out of scenario as a tactical problem, attacking it in varying ways and trying out different ideas. Clearly the latter attempts are easier, even with varied AI plans (even just being familiar with the terrain will help), but when talking about a single player game, I'm not sure that matters. It does mean that "high scores" and the like are pretty meaningless. This is a large reason why multiplayer quick battles are nice - you're doing everything only once, ever, and you can't know what you're figh

Some brief, unstructured thoughts: Broadly speaking, ATGMs are like better versions of AT Guns. They're similarly hard to see, and they're countered by many of the same things (mortars and HE fire). They're a lot faster to set up and remove, so you can shoot and scoot with them, and probably should. The increased lethality means that you do need to relocate more often. A revealed position can often come under effective mortar fire within 5 minutes (regardless of which side you're talking about). Some US formations with crack FOs and the right equipment can reduce that to more like

Sure, so there has definitely been a change. This may have been intentional, or it may have been unintentional. It's not that this is broken, it's that the threshold has been tweaked, and perhaps this has been tweaked to the wrong level. Or not.

The behaviour certainly has changed. I ran some tests with CMBN, with a squad under fire from an unspotted SMG at maximum range. The squad stopped moving on the third burst. They will stop moving immediately if they see a target, or if someone actually gets hit, but it takes them a while to react to incoming fire itself. Now, I don't know whether that's strictly a bug. It's observably less sensitive than it used to be, but the functionality does work. It's reasonable to state something like "they aren't behaving as I think they should", rather than "this is broken".

The ones we know about are road-following and/or vehicles following the one in front, which was intended to be in engine 4 in some manner. It's a shame that never came about, but obviously not everything works out.

Any cliff notes on major changes for this campaign? (or any of the updated ones really, now that they've all been done).

They are still supposed to proactively avoid HE fire. Baseless speculation, but if they were getting HE fire from the rear, then the bocage is doing nothing to protect them, so there would be some logic in a panicked run through. I've shelled the near side of bocage with direct fire HE (e.g., infantry guns) since the patch, recreating the scenario where I was reliably able to replicate this, and they do not evade forward now.

I think I'd like to clarify the "zero casualties" remark a little: Take a basic react to contact/squad attack. The lead element comes under fire and goes to ground, then the rest of the squad builds up a base of fire, suppresses the target, clears them out and gets on with their life. Assuming proper movement discipline, you can't do much about the initial contact - losing a chap here might be impossible to avoid. You also can't suppress people with 100% certainty, since there are too many random or unknown factors, so it's always possible to lose people randomly whilst engaging in the f

I always play aiming for zero casualties, especially single player. That obviously doesn't always work out.

So, firmly speculating: Thematically, increased fire accuracy would be the HQ pointing out targets and coordinating fires, possibly with a laser pointer in the modern titles. That means, if there is an effect, I'd expect any platoon-level bonus to only be seen with an active C2 link. Further, I'd expect this to probably be a flat bonus, as suppression seems to be, rather than something related to the leadership values of the platoon leader. That means that the main effect would be per-unit, I expect. A real test of this is probably to create units with only small arms (perhaps somethi

These look great, thank you

Yup, the manual does say that. To my knowledge this has not yet been demonstrated in any tests. This doesn't mean there is no effect (and indeed, there will definitely be an indirect effect, as maintaining C2 will reduce suppression).

It's still true though - the main gun of a battleship would still be an effective weapon against anything afloat, it's the delivery method that's the issue. This isn't true for ATGMs, and whilst it's possible to discuss this in terms of scale, that's inevitably an argument with sliding boundaries. ATGM countermeasures are usually extremely cheap compared to ATGMs, and allegedly pretty effective in percentage terms, based on the available data. Now, in terms of hard data, it's the case that the trend - particularly from experience in Ukraine - has been that heavier IFVs seem to be needed

In Josey Wales' testing, he didn't see any direct correlation between Leadership rating and firepower output. Firefights being what they are, there will be an indirect correlation - if your guys are spending less time cowering, they'll be putting out more fire over time. Higher leadership squads will therefore put out more effective firepower, even if there is no direct effect. The same applies to the leadership of an HQ element - the Leadership rating of the HQ doesn't appear to have an effect on the platoon as a whole, but being in C2 does. Cowering will break C2, so a well-led pla