domfluff

If Combat Mission has taught me nothing else, it's that a lack of patience leads to a lot of dead pixeltruppen. Each time you F5, another digital chap eats it from overly-friendly mortar fire.

The issue with CM is not to do with controlling the game, issuing orders etc. The UI isn't the greatest, but it's far from the worst, so in terms of actually playing the thing there isn't much to get to grips with. Learning the capabilities of the weapons and units is a decently long study, but the manual and/or wikipedia will help a lot, and whilst this will help this is not required up front. Tactically, there are plenty of resources for how to manage things on this scale - Bil's Battle Drill blog was eye-opening, but there are tons of youtube videos which illustrate the same kind of planning that's required - but again, that's really a guide to how to do this *well*, rather than how to play at all. The actual difficulty with CM is that it's a harsh and unforgiving sim - depending on the scenario, a single mistake can set you back a lot. What really compounds this is the length of the feedback loop - CM scenarios tend towards the long side (even short ones will usually take a couple of hours of actual-time to play out minutes of game time), so it can take a long time to learn from mistakes. Liberal use of the save button can help, but not if the mistake happened significantly earlier in the game, and the thought of reloading a real-hour worth of time can be demoralising. One of the advantages of Shock Force over some later titles (Red Thunder in particular) is that there are a lot of scenarios with a comparatively small number of (US) units, even in larger battles. That makes CMSF one of the better titles to learn with, alongside CMBN.

I suppose it's pretty unconventional.

Syrian uncon AT-3 team, apparently Have never seen this one before, probably won't see it again.

Interesting, the one I got from the Scenario depot didn't. Perhaps they're on variable reinforcement timers, and I just kept getting unlucky? In any case, what you start the mission with didn't match the briefing. Doesn't matter, really.

Yeah, the scenario depot version. The one there is one of a series of "randomised" scenarios, that have additional AI plans and less deterministic reinforcements - chap did the same thing for "CMFI In For a Pound".

The alternate version is actually missing some things - you don't have air cover, for a start, and you're missing some artillery and drone assets.

It didn't ship with CMBS. It's probably worth uploading to the Scenario Depot though.

Oh yes, that's going to be true for reality, but I wonder how CM models the difference. In particular, I wonder if the Garand has better bocage or wall penetration, and how that's accounted for. It'll definitely have a longer effective range, which tends to be more important in CMFI or CMFB than CMBN, given the average terrain. Obviously a carbine solider can carry more ammo too, which isn't nothing.

I think having two squads without an LMG (on that Excellent generation), or zero at all (on Typical) is pretty huge for anything WW2 - arguably the US LMG is less important than the equivalent in a German or Commonwealth unit (since the BAR isn't really a light machine gun, or particularly good at pretending to be one), but losing that automatic firepower is a losing large chunk of why the squad exists by doctrine. I haven't really played around with the Carbines enough to know if there's a major difference in practice - obviously it's a smaller, less powerful round, but I don't know if that actually matters all that much in actual hedgerow-to-hedgerow (or house to house, or whatever) combat. Essentially, without the specialist kit, what's the intended role? They don't have the comms or transport to be effective scouts, they don't have the firepower to be effective infantry - they're a stop-gap and expedience, which seem appropriate to me for "stragglers".

Setting up two platoons to "Typical" in the Editor - The Infantry Platoon consists of: 39 dudes w/ 3x Thompsons 3x BAR 3x M7 Rifle Grenades 2x Bazookas 3x AT Grenades 2x Carbines +Rifles Each 12 man squad (something close to) 1620 .30 cal rounds 180 .45 cal rounds 16 Grenades 3 66mm HE The Straggler section consists of: 51 dudes w/ 4x Thompsons 10x Carbines +Rifles Each 12 man squad (something close to) 1056 .30 cal 180 .45 cal 150 .30 cal Carbine 12 Grenades Soft factors were generated identically in this test. Setting this to "Excellent" gave me two BARs on this test, obviously there's a die roll involved here for all of this, but I think you usually won't get BARs. Speculating, but I wonder if "Typical" is lower than "Average" for Straggler sections? Obviously there are the aforementioned differences up the org chart as well. They're definitely a weaker formation, and very different to the mainline infantry.

Straggler sections tend not to have BAR's or other specialist equipment (they don't get bazookas, BAR, rifle grenades, etc.), and have a mix of Garands and M1 Carbines. Typical settings seem to give them lower motivation and possibly lower leadership, although I'm not confident about that one. They also have fewer grenades and less ammunition per soldier. Infantry battalions also have integrated AT, Engineers, Jeep transport , etc. Having access to integrated Jeep transports will mean access to more ammunition. The infantry HMG's are part of the Weapons company, along with the 81mm mortars, which the Straggler formations also don't have access to. With how comms work in the game, having weapons integrated into your command structure is more effective than attaching them ad hoc. With any points-buy system, there's always a possibility that you can break things by min-maxing, picking and choosing elements from A or B to produce something ahistorical, that's just the nature of the beast, but the main thing is that these are worse units, and ones you can't create in the editor.

You could check the forum four times a day.

I've tried this in CMSF 1, and couldn't get anywhere - it was all or nothing. Now, "unfun" in multiplayer? Maybe. A lot will depend on points values, and especially rarity. This is something which we've never really had the chance to test in CMSF 1. Insurgent forces don't really have many other advantages, so I suspect it'll be fine.

Is there actually any reason why the pre-planned artillery can't be "x minutes", rather than 5/10/15 - having "danger turns" seems incredibly gamey, given the information you can derive from it.

For me, the whole point of simulationist games (computer or otherwise) are that you create a feedback loop with real-world information - i.e., with Combat Mission I want to play CM, find an organisation, battle or piece of equipment that I'm unfamiliar with, and play with it in-game. Frequently fail, which encourages reading around outside the game, which should feed back into using the equipment more successfully. As a recent example, although I was pretty familiar with the British CVR(T) designs, I'd never really understood the Scimitar, or why that survived longer than the Scorpion in service. It took reading about the development of the family to finally grok that the intended purpose of the design was to take on enemy light armour - which will mean BTRs and BMPs in context. With earlier understanding about BMP usage - BMP mechanised infantry are intended to use their BMP as fire support, since it's supposed to be a fighting vehicle, albeit a weak and explodey one. In that sense, a BAOR vs Soviet fight may well have had Scimitars neutralising BMP support, whilst the infantry deal with their counterparts. That's a role which is equally applicable in 2008 Syria and 2017 Ukraine, whereas the Scorpion's more anti-infantry role is less relevant. So... I'm not sure I'd call it "roleplaying" per se, but I certainly attack these kinds of games as simulations first and games second - I'm more concerned with what it can teach me than how to exploit game systems to win.

Last word on that was that Shock Force 2 would be an entirely new game, but would have a discount for current owners.

(Whoops. I might have had a little to do with the post being changed...) In computer game terminology, "strategy games" is the correct genre for CM. In military/grog terminology, CM is a 'Tactical' game. At best it might be a "grand tactical" game, on massive maps. It doesn't really have enough logistical nuance to really be considered an 'Operational' game, even in the campaign system. You can fiddle around with that to a certain extent (e.g., branch a mission into two options with different reinforcement rates, depending on whether a supply cache was blown up or not), but it's crude and not terribly satisfying. CM is certainly not a 'strategy' game in the military/grog sense, since there's none of the political/diplomatic concerns that define that. The definitions are pretty vague, still: The Australian defence force defines them as follows: Strategic Level of War The strategic level of war is concerned with the art and science of employing national power. Operational Level of War The operational level of war is concerned with the planning and conduct of campaigns. It is at this level that military strategy is implemented by assigning missions, tasks and resources to tactical operations. See also campaign. Campaign A controlled series of simultaneous or sequential operations designed to achieve an operational commander’s objective, normally within a given time or space. See also operational level of war. Tactical Level of War The tactical level of war is concerned with the planning and conduct of battle and is characterised by the application of concentrated force and offensive action to gain objectives. CM is a tactical game, and it can be a Campaign game with... campaigns. It's not an Operational or Strategic game at all. As far as computer games are concerned, 'Strategy games' is a shorthand, nothing more. That serves a purpose. If I was after deep comparisons of wargame titles, I wouldn't go for a top ten list like this. I'd much rather see something like that Armchair General series on CM, or an article a while back that was using CMANO to model the F-35 and try to understand it's role in some plausible contexts. 'Wargames' is a similarly dodgy shorthand - there's a reason why 'Consim' has been preferred for a while. 'Conflict Simulation' is a term which more accurately covers most simulationist games.

Hide doesn't entirely stop them from firing, it's more of a "get down!" than an "ambush" or "hold fire" - they'll still fire if enemies are close enough. In a lot of situations, Hide will break LOS. The best way to "Hold fire" is to set a short covered arc, circular or otherwise. It's a really useful thing for scouts, HQ units, or anything you want to be watching more than fighting.

Combat Mission will kick your arse. It's scenario dependent, of course, but a lot of scenarios have a high difficulty level, and it's a game that is very unforgiving of errors. In terms of learning - Josey Wales and Usually Hapless on Youtube do excellent Combat Mission videos, where they go into their thinking and analysis of terrain and forces, they're well worth a watch. Christopher Maillet (SLIM) has a great series of Tactics, Techniques and Procedures that are worth a look, and Bil's Battledrill site (http://battledrill.blogspot.co.uk/ ) is a mine of useful information. There's also an older Armchair General series of CM tactics which is superb. There are other sources, of course, and some excellent youtubers (Ithikial, for example), but I find those less useful for base-level learning of the planning and thinking that's required.

"Whenever is most inconvenient to Erwin" seems like a fairly reliable estimate, to be honest.

Oh, you're quite right, but I do think there's scope for flexibility within CM scenarios - depending on the narrative you're painting, it can definitely be appropriate to shift experience levels around, even if only to model relative differences. For the 101st example, Veteran vs Regular German troops would be fine, but you could certainly argue for Regular vs Green, depending. This is the "design for effect" part of CM (and wargame design in general) - occasionally you need to bend the model to suit the outcome, particularly if the events you are simulating are significantly outside of the norm.

I think that definition has been an unresolved argument for as long as wargames have been a thing. It's a consequence of being forced to supply hard numbers for soft factors, and there isn't really a great solution - are the 101st Airborne on D-Day "green" troops, since they hadn't dropped before, or "Veteran" troops, given the higher levels of training? With how specifically Combat Mission models "Green" behaviour (i.e., designing the scenario for effect), you're probably better modelling them as Regular or Veteran, but it's not a question with a single answer.

I usually think of Green troops as being able to do one thing. You can rely on them to take that hill, defend from this position, kill one vehicle with their AT assets etc., but you can't rely on them to do more than this. In CMFI, Italian troops are usually Green by default. Ideally, you use them in the attack against a fixed position. You give them a ton of supporting fires, preferably from Brixia mortars, and you hope that enough of them make it to grenade range to make the difference. Any more complex plan is inviting failure - you can't guarantee that any individual part of a Green formation will actually be able to do it's job, but with careful hand-holding and limited expectations, they can still be useful.

You'll be waiting some time for Shock Force 22222222222222. I'm looking forward to Shock Force 183376 personally. That's when they're adding the ability to put things back when you "Acquire".