domfluff

How wet were the ground conditions? The approach axis all seem sensible, but I think I'd be concerned about BTRs bogging in the gulley.

You'll have your default for .rar files set to Adobe Reader, which they can't open. You can change that to another program (I usually use 7zip), or reset it to the default. On Windows 10, search for "Default", and it'll bring up "Default App Settings". Under "Default Apps", "Change Default Apps by File Type", you need to find .rar files on the left hand column and change this to something that can open them. Alternatively, right click on the file and "open with" to open this with something other than the default.

Engine limitations though - you can't name your successor. I think that means you've got to go outside and grab the first person you see. "I'VE BEEN WOUNDED, YOU MUST SAVE FOX COMPANY" I can't see any problems with that kind of exchange, I'm sure they'll be very understanding.

Broadly, I think there are at least two classifications of Combat Mission scenarios, but there's a further point to make. One is a tactical problem. This typically has fairly conventional units (e.g., a US rifle company), and might include some interesting tactical wrinkles or a problem to solve. For those scenarios I'd prefer more vague outlines. The point of these scenarios are often to solve the tactical puzzle (for given values of "solve" and "puzzle"), so being over-directed is a problem. You can still give useful pre-battle information, and indeed this information can be a part of the problem - especially if it is misleading in some way. The other are more narrative scenarios, historical or otherwise. These may have to have explicit plans to create the story you're trying to achieve. In this case, the plans might be supported by victory locations - i.e., you aren't just told to take hill X, you're given it as a victory location. The further point comes down to Commanders Intent. When writing orders in reality you need to give instructions on what you want to happen, but that's not nearly enough by itself. "Take hill x by 1800" is accurate, precise and completely useless - if hill x turns out to be more defended than expected, then you'll be forced to cancel the attack, and won't have further direction of what to do. Instead, orders should consist of three parts: The order itself, the reasoning behind it, and the intended outcome. "I want you to take hill x by 1800, so that you can form a base of fire and support second platoon's advance. The desired endstate is that second platoon has freedom of movement to go poke objective Horatio". That means that if Hill x turns out to be too well defended, it might be that there's a Hill Y that would do the same job. That pushes the control down to the lower levels (Platoon/Company/whatever) and gives that low-level commander the tools to make informed decisions.

I do like the idea of naming your leader after yourself. Obviously, in the name of "realism", if you died you should hand over control to someone else

Some thoughts: That's a very different force to Bil's, will be interesting to see how it plays out. Much more mobility, but possibly more brittle. Approve of the AT-7. In general, the AT-7/13 seem the best suited to embedding with motor rifle troops, since I find the extra flexibility (semi-deployed state and shorter minimum range) to be extremely useful on a manoeuvre element. The AT-5 BRDM is potentially extremely powerful here, with the speed to reposition to a decently long LOS and it can rapid-fire those missiles - I've seen one fire most or all of them in under a minute before now, which can wreck things pretty quickly. The AT-5 BRDM is also bugged in CMSF 2, since it has five readied missiles, and can fire six of them before reloading (the AT-3 version has six, which is probably where the slip up happened).

Yup. They exist in CM:A... More of a coding problem, but the range of weapons in CM:A is pretty interesting for Uncons - they go from Lee Enfield rifles and Bren guns...

I thought the UI panel only shows that when your units see identifying information (e.g., the weapon system or radio or something) - certainly if they've only spotted a single soldier the panel won't show that. The area-targeting limitations I understand (and fully support), what I'm less sure of is the use of the Target command in general: Control of fires is part of a platoon leader's job, yes? So allowing your squads to fire as they will will detract from that.

Are your AT teams RPGs or ATGMs? If they're ATGMs, I'm not sure where I'd site them - from the screenshots, the map curvature looks as though any engagements would be limited to a couple of hundred metres, and possibly through wire-catching bushes. Equally, if "Heavy mortars" are the 120mm sort, then you've a hefty minimum range to deal with. That's less of a problem if your targets were worked out in advance, but it's a limitation. (The building is an obvious spot for an ATGM team, but it's probably too obvious - I'd feel remiss if I didn't lob a few mortar rounds in that direction).

Excellent stuff. When I'm playing single player, I've been playing with a set of house rules recently which are similar to the area fire rules above, but a little more concise: "Units cannot area fire into a location where they do not have a contact marker, unless *no* unit has a contact marker in that location". Logic being that genuinely speculative fire is fine, but you need to get that information around the C2 network. I'm not really sure what the targeting rules achieve, and whilst I understand clicking on units, I'm not sure it's a massive deal. "No pre-planned artillery" seems pretty harsh for an attacking Syrian side, but I suppose that's what TRPs are for. Keen to see how this plays out. I'm still unsure how well CMSF plays as a PBEM game, since the Red vs Blue disparities are such that points don't work terribly well to balance things, but Red vs Red should be a lot more interesting.

Is worth pointing out that when you take (dismounted) Syrian Airborne in Quick Battles, they leave most of their ammo behind in the non-existent BMP-3 as well - that means that the dismounted squads only have one RPG round.

From the CMSF 2 manual: Looks pretty explicit to me

Yeah, hybrid warfare is something which CMSF can do well, but Quick Battles can't. There's no need for the networks to be spy-spy of course, so hybrid C2 would look something like this:

C2 is still shared to the spy "hq" unit, so the HQ node of the network will always end up with the spotting contacts before one of the end nodes. That probably means, terrain permitting, that the correct usage is to have a "left" and "right" spy group, with a central one whose job is to collect their info with their extreme left and right units, and pass it to the uncon HQs.

On the correct usage of Spies. Poor C2 is something that comes with the territory, but uncons do get a major advantage in the form of civilian agents who can blend into the local population. Here are a couple of thoughts of how to make the best use of them. These spotting contact can be spread by runners, but are more efficiently spread by creating networks of three man spy teams, within shouting distance of each other, combined with horizontal sharing between these teams. A very inefficient example below, to illustrate the point: In this case, team 3 has a node which is able to horizontally share to the HQ units of the three uncon groups - these will run back into C2 with their groups and share their contacts where appropriate.

Excellent, thank you

"* FIXED: MG42 LMG is 258% more lethal than the Bren LMG and the B.A.R." Curious what that actually means. Giving a precise percentage sounds like it's referring to something like (more) excessive fire rate or extra ammunition.

CMSF and CMBS have the AT4-CS. I've not tested the amount of backblast effect you get from the weapon (or all weapons). It's definitely not the same for everything though, so you'd imagine that this would be significantly less than some.

Huh, interesting. I've never seen that. As above though, it's frequently not a good idea, for anything other than a PIAT or some kind of ideal ambush.

Your men get suppressed, they won't take casualties. Obviously if you've just given your position away and suppressed yourself, you may not be long for this world. RPG-7s can fire indoors, as can AT-4s and RP-O. , AT-7/13 and AT-14. I believe the SPG-9, RPG-22, AT-3 and AT-4 can't. That should be a start.

Even if you never use them for Quick Battles, Quick Battle maps are also useful to throw together scenarios quickly.

Extract it anywhere. When you run the setup program, it'll try to find and suggest your CM install directory, which might be something like "C:\Program Files (x86)\Battlefront\Combat Mission Fortress Italy". CMBN has a different default install path, and if you've moved it it could have trouble finding it - you can select the correct folder manually. That should be it.

Sorry, that was my fault, old patch notes. I'll remove the post. Ah, too late.

The patch notes are with the various modules. For whatever reason, CMBN seems not to have notes for the patch upgrades. But, for example (CMRT) "Disposable AT weapons not disappearing from the soldier's kit after use" and "Sometimes a wire fence would stay upright after a vehicle rolled through it." appear on multiple games, so presumably that's a generic bug, rather than one specific to CMRT. Equally, as ever, the patch notes never seem to list every change made.

CMBN Carrier platoon bug is fixed