Bozowans

Awesome line charge! I really need those to prevent empty AFV traffic jams!
Why not use a mine clearing crab tank?

I was looking through my old screenshots folder and couldn't remember if I had posted these anywhere.
An advancing Soviet rifleman stopped to take a shot with his Mosin at a German AT gun across the street.

 
The view from the gun:

 
The gun fired and the shell flew through the wooden fence, between the guy's legs, then through the front door of the house behind him, and then finally exploded against the opposite wall. The shell was flying mere inches from the ground.



 
That was one lucky bastard! The gun crew was not so lucky considering what happened to them a few moments later. I thought that was one of the more unusual shots I've seen in these games.

I was looking through my old screenshots folder and couldn't remember if I had posted these anywhere.
An advancing Soviet rifleman stopped to take a shot with his Mosin at a German AT gun across the street.

 
The view from the gun:

 
The gun fired and the shell flew through the wooden fence, between the guy's legs, then through the front door of the house behind him, and then finally exploded against the opposite wall. The shell was flying mere inches from the ground.



 
That was one lucky bastard! The gun crew was not so lucky considering what happened to them a few moments later. I thought that was one of the more unusual shots I've seen in these games.

I was looking through my old screenshots folder and couldn't remember if I had posted these anywhere.
An advancing Soviet rifleman stopped to take a shot with his Mosin at a German AT gun across the street.

 
The view from the gun:

 
The gun fired and the shell flew through the wooden fence, between the guy's legs, then through the front door of the house behind him, and then finally exploded against the opposite wall. The shell was flying mere inches from the ground.



 
That was one lucky bastard! The gun crew was not so lucky considering what happened to them a few moments later. I thought that was one of the more unusual shots I've seen in these games.

There is an interesting paper I read a long time ago called Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afghanistan: Taking Back the Infantry Half-Kilometer, by US Army Maj. Thomas Ehrhart.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a512331.pdf
You might find it interesting since it goes into a lot of detail about modern infantry doctrine and weapons. It argued that U.S. infantry have been very under-powered for the type of fighting they were doing in Afghanistan. Back in the early 20th century, the U.S. went into WW1 with a professional army and a doctrine emphasizing marksmanship and accurate volleys of long-distance rifle fire. They used bigger rifles and bullets that could hit things pretty effectively out to 500m, and be very lethal even at 1000m. Going into WW2, Korea and then Vietnam, the U.S. had gotten used to dealing with large conscript armies on a very different type of battlefield, and doctrine shifted away from marksmanship and moved toward fire and maneuver tactics, with the emphasis on putting out a high volume of suppressive fire at shorter distances. Current U.S. equipment, training, and doctrine are optimized for fighting on level terrain at ranges less than 300m.
According to that paper, "Not only is the current U.S. infantryman less equipped to kill his enemy than his World War I predecessor, he is carrying far more weight than him." The 5.56 ammo used these days is less lethal and less effective at long range. In Afghanistan, the Taliban liked to park themselves up on mountaintops and just plink away at distant U.S. infantry using heavy machine guns (like the DShK with those giant 12.7x108mm bullets) and mortars, and the U.S. infantry down in the valleys would not be able to put down effective return fire. The heavily-laden U.S. infantry could not effectively maneuver in the rugged terrain and high altitudes, and would often have to sit there helplessly until they either pulled out or called in big guns and air support. 
CM seems to simulate this kind of thing pretty well. Weapon ballistics are what these games do best IMO. Sometimes I'm surprised at how under-powered my infantry is and I find myself relying very heavily on my vehicles and big guns in order to do anything. I remember playing many Shock Force scenarios where my U.S. infantry are getting sniped away or getting hit by DShK fire at long range and my infantry are helpless to do anything about it. Or maybe I'll pour thousands of rounds of 5.56 ammo into a building only to realize that it had little effect.
I don't know much at all about British or the other NATO forces though, but they seem to be pretty similar to the U.S. I haven't played with the other Western forces very much. At least with the U.S, their vehicles and artillery and air support is their biggest asset. The infantry is there to be bodyguards and scouts for their vehicles. Once the infantry spots something, the vehicles roll up and destroy it. With the Syrians, it seems their best tactics are to either ambush the enemy at close range, or snipe and harass them at long range and then relocate before they can call in those big guns. Getting into an extended firefight at medium range is what Western forces are best at. They carry loads of ammo and their good morale and high volume of fire means they will always get fire superiority eventually and win. With the Syrians (especially the uncons/insurgents), running out of ammo can be a big concern, so you want to either harass and ambush or hit the enemy as hard as you can as quickly as possible with everything you have, to try and overrun their positions.

I remember that in CM1, the game would fool you about the location of distant shooters. At very long range, you might get a "?" mystery contact that is several tiles away from their true location. Then after you've blasted that spot with area fire, you discover later on that their real location is 50m off to the right or whatever. That was a pretty cool way to handle the problem. Whatever happened to that? I've always felt that CM2 gives you way too much info about the enemy. Not just with the sound exploits, but with other things as well, like being able to tell who is an enemy HQ team and who isn't at 1000+ meters or whatever. Or the game telling you the exact moment that an enemy MG or AT gun position is destroyed or abandoned. Or always being able to tell the exact type of enemy tank. I liked how in CM1, your troops could mis-identify enemy tanks, thinking one is a Tiger when it really isn't or whatever.

I take it that means Shock Force 2 is doing well then? 
It's a shame to hear about the decline of wargaming. I'm quite young myself and it makes me wonder what wargaming will look like decades down the line (if it doesn't just die out). CM is like the dream wargame I had when I was playing with little toy soldiers and reading history books as a kid. I was amazed when I first saw CM with the 1:1 soldier representation and all that.
Seems like one big cause of that decline would just be the sheer number of games there are now. It's like we're living in a golden age of video games where there are thousands and thousands of them to choose from. Someone else mentioned Paradox games like CK2 and EU4, and just those alone can suck hundreds of hours of your life away from you. I've spent way too much time with just CK2. Then there's all these other countless genres that I want to try out now and then. On top of that, people tend to work longer hours these days for less pay, and at least in the USA, the vast majority of people here live paycheck to paycheck or are outright in debt. So who has time to sit down and learn how to play complicated wargames? Gamers these days seem to demand infinite replayability for the cheapest possible price and the lowest possible effort, and it's easy to find some cheap game on Steam for a few bucks until you get bored of it and then go on to the next cheap game. It doesn't seem like there is really any answer to that.

I may have missed it but I didn't see this talked about anywhere else on this forum. They are all invisible in the setup phase, but the moment you hit go you can see the outlines of every enemy trench on the map even if they haven't been spotted by your units yet. Is that a bug or what? That doesn't happen in the WW2 games. It kind of defeats the point of putting those new trenches in the game instead of the ditches from Shock Force 1 doesn't it?
Here's one "spotted" trench piece yet you can still see a ghost outline of the rest of the entire trench system:

 
And another:

I'm pretty sure the answer to all of those is yes. You can have a scout team run ahead, spot something, then run back and tell someone with a radio, then the info spreads through the radio net until everyone connected knows about it. It could take a few minutes for it to spread around though. It's especially important in the WW2 titles. In the modern war titles, the force sizes are usually smaller and every squad has their own radios so information spreads quickly, but in WW2 you get those huge battles with multiple large formations sometimes not connected to the same radio net, like multiple companies or battalions that don't have a higher HQ represented in the scenario. In that case, you can use a squad (XO teams are good for this) as liaison units that act as runners between companies, so that the spotting info from one company gets shared with the neighboring company.

I thought this was an interesting firefight in the last game that I played. Russian troops attempt to cross a bridge under heavy fire from Ukrainian positions across the river.
The view from one of the Ukrainian positions:
'''
 
An RPG slams into one of the lead vehicles:

 
Seconds later, another RPG crashes into the middle of the infantry huddled behind the vehicles, causing four casualties:

 
The Russian APCs are all destroyed and the infantry are pinned down behind the vehicles, taking heavy losses. With the APCs down, more Ukrainian infantry emerge from hiding and the defensive fire intensifies. The bridge fills with dead and wounded.

 
The Russians have decided they have had enough and are sent streaming back across the bridge in disarray.

I don't like the idea of BFC doing a USatia vs China War game. Given recent events, it is liable to kick off on the Moon, and as we all know the good Lord made the Moon from cheese, so things could get just a tad sticky from melted cheese, and that would play havoc with our automated typing machine thingamajigs.

I thought this was an interesting firefight in the last game that I played. Russian troops attempt to cross a bridge under heavy fire from Ukrainian positions across the river.
The view from one of the Ukrainian positions:
'''
 
An RPG slams into one of the lead vehicles:

 
Seconds later, another RPG crashes into the middle of the infantry huddled behind the vehicles, causing four casualties:

 
The Russian APCs are all destroyed and the infantry are pinned down behind the vehicles, taking heavy losses. With the APCs down, more Ukrainian infantry emerge from hiding and the defensive fire intensifies. The bridge fills with dead and wounded.

 
The Russians have decided they have had enough and are sent streaming back across the bridge in disarray.

Yeah that's what makes this scenario hilarious to play. The AI will suicidally charge every last one of their units ahead toward the objective zones, eventually feeding even their HQ units into the meat grinder. Broken squads will retreat a short distance, then recover, turn around, and charge back in again until every last man is wiped out. It always bugged me that units can't rout off the map in this game (yet they could in CMx1 IIRC). In the end it's still a lot of fun to play though. One of my favorite parts:

 
That was a spot where the Russian infantry would turn the corner and then immediately get mowed down by a bunch of my guys a few houses down. Eventually there got to be a nice pile of bodies there. The Russian company commander is lying in there somewhere. 
I definitely agree with buildings being death traps a lot of the time. Especially in Black Sea where the weapons are so lethal and accurate. The WW2 games are more forgiving. Buildings can be great cover in a straight-up infantry firefight where you're only taking small arms fire at long range, but in Black Sea every infantry squad usually comes with their own vehicle with a big gun. One tank shell or missile or APC autocannon hitting the side of a building from a mile away can shred a whole squad in seconds. So I'll put guys in buildings that have a good keyhole view of the enemy or are otherwise protected from view (like the ground floor of a walled compound). Or I'll put them in there strictly as observers and tell them to hold fire. Otherwise that building will be their tomb.

I thought this was an interesting firefight in the last game that I played. Russian troops attempt to cross a bridge under heavy fire from Ukrainian positions across the river.
The view from one of the Ukrainian positions:
'''
 
An RPG slams into one of the lead vehicles:

 
Seconds later, another RPG crashes into the middle of the infantry huddled behind the vehicles, causing four casualties:

 
The Russian APCs are all destroyed and the infantry are pinned down behind the vehicles, taking heavy losses. With the APCs down, more Ukrainian infantry emerge from hiding and the defensive fire intensifies. The bridge fills with dead and wounded.

 
The Russians have decided they have had enough and are sent streaming back across the bridge in disarray.

I thought this was an interesting firefight in the last game that I played. Russian troops attempt to cross a bridge under heavy fire from Ukrainian positions across the river.
The view from one of the Ukrainian positions:
'''
 
An RPG slams into one of the lead vehicles:

 
Seconds later, another RPG crashes into the middle of the infantry huddled behind the vehicles, causing four casualties:

 
The Russian APCs are all destroyed and the infantry are pinned down behind the vehicles, taking heavy losses. With the APCs down, more Ukrainian infantry emerge from hiding and the defensive fire intensifies. The bridge fills with dead and wounded.

 
The Russians have decided they have had enough and are sent streaming back across the bridge in disarray.

You mean having infantry hug a wall so they look around the corner? That can be tricky to make work sometimes (though I did have an RPG guy take out two APCs by doing that). I meant more like having guys waiting far back down the street, so the enemy gets blasted one at a time as they turn the corner onto the street. Or something like that.
Like for example, one of the most successful positions I had on the map was this one down the street by the bridge:

 
That's the view from the window that one of my RPG guys was shooting out of. He could sit there and fire at each APC as they crossed the bridge one by one and none of them could fire back before they were hit.

You mean having infantry hug a wall so they look around the corner? That can be tricky to make work sometimes (though I did have an RPG guy take out two APCs by doing that). I meant more like having guys waiting far back down the street, so the enemy gets blasted one at a time as they turn the corner onto the street. Or something like that.
Like for example, one of the most successful positions I had on the map was this one down the street by the bridge:

 
That's the view from the window that one of my RPG guys was shooting out of. He could sit there and fire at each APC as they crossed the bridge one by one and none of them could fire back before they were hit.

I finally got around to playing that scenario and it went surprisingly well! It was pretty nerve-racking seeing the huge Russian force bearing down on me but I ended up with a total victory and forced a Russian surrender with 5 minutes left on the clock. That was a really intense battle. It took me days to play it though. One thing I can say for sure is that the positions that most of your troops start out in are really, really bad. I could tell right away that they start out way too exposed. I ended up spending a crazy long time just in the setup phase, reorganizing the entire defense and moving most of my troops around including the foxholes.
Probably the most important thing IMO is to find keyhole positions or positions around corners, so that you can engage their units one at a time as they come into view. Keyhole positions are such a pain for an attacking force to deal with. I had several good spots where my RPG teams could fire until they ran out of ammo and had to run back to get more. I had one platoon covering the western bridge, another covering the southern approach, and the other farther back inside the town.
The first wave of Russians headed toward the western bridge, and I had a few RPGs plus an ATGM all set to open fire the moment the first vehicle got to the other side. Within a few minutes the bridge was covered with burning wreckage, with the Russian infantry pinned down behind their vehicles. With the vehicles down, I sent up a few of the BTRs and some more infantry and counterattacked them, sending the Russian infantry streaming back across the bridge in disarray, right into an artillery barrage. I took surprisingly few casualties. A handful of Russians managed to get across the bridge and into the outlying buildings and gunned down three of my men, but they were dealt with quickly. 
The second and much larger Russian attack came a few minutes later from the south. With the Russians around the bridge destroyed, I was able to shift my entire force over to the south to deal with the new threat. This force was much harder to deal with and they managed to penetrate into the town somewhat. I took most of my casualties here. Still, I was able to whittle them down piece by piece, and as more of their vehicles were destroyed, they became more and more open to counterattacks.
I found the BTRs to be surprisingly useful. I had them zipping back and forth all throughout the battle, resupplying and shuffling men around, and using them to counterattack exposed Russian infantry. The BTRs are also capable of destroying the Russian MT-LBMs if they get the jump on them. My BTRs caused about 27 enemy casualties between them and I lost two of them, one to a stray artillery shell and one to a tank shell. Toward the end of the battle I had three of the BTRs circle around together and attack a bunch of Russian infantry in the flanks, wiping out a couple of squads. The Russians managed to get a toehold in one of the objective zones, but as the clock ran out I started counterattacking them much more aggressively, throwing them back out of the objective again and forcing their surrender. At the end, they only had one MT-LBM left and one badly damaged tank with a busted targeting system and broken crew.
The end result:

A lot of other game developers release small "hotfix" patches for their games if they find an important issue. Like a patch that just fixes one thing. It makes me wonder why Battlefront never does anything like that. I would rather download several small patches over time than wait two years for one big one. 

A lot of other game developers release small "hotfix" patches for their games if they find an important issue. Like a patch that just fixes one thing. It makes me wonder why Battlefront never does anything like that. I would rather download several small patches over time than wait two years for one big one. 

A lot of other game developers release small "hotfix" patches for their games if they find an important issue. Like a patch that just fixes one thing. It makes me wonder why Battlefront never does anything like that. I would rather download several small patches over time than wait two years for one big one. 

A lot of other game developers release small "hotfix" patches for their games if they find an important issue. Like a patch that just fixes one thing. It makes me wonder why Battlefront never does anything like that. I would rather download several small patches over time than wait two years for one big one. 

In my experience, cover doesn't even really matter that much in these games. It's more about fire superiority. You can attack across wide open ground with zero cover whatsoever as long as you have that fire superiority. And the best cover in the world doesn't matter at all if the enemy has fire superiority and can just sit there blasting away at you without you having an answer to it. If the enemy outmatches you in firepower, then foxholes and trees are not gonna be much better than concrete buildings. I wish foxholes provided better cover in these games but they often don't do very much except against light small arms fire.
When it comes to defending in urban areas, it's often better to not even contest the outskirts. Like you said, anyone who opens fire gets immediately taken out (unless you have a really good keyhole position or something). Have some scouts out front with target arcs so they won't give their positions away, and then pull your troops deeper into the inside of the town where the attackers can't as easily bring their weapons to bear. Have your dudes sit behind buildings rather than inside of them. If enemy infantry tries to storm the building, your guys will fire in through the windows and mow them down as they run through the doorway. If your guys are inside the buildings, they will cluster around the doors and windows and be easy targets. One tank shell or RPG smacking against the wall can blow a whole squad to bits. 
This is all more easily said than done of course. I think I played that scenario but it was a really long time ago and I don't even remember how I did. Now I kinda want to pull myself away from Shock Force 2 for a moment and try that again.

I'm pretty sure the answer to all of those is yes. You can have a scout team run ahead, spot something, then run back and tell someone with a radio, then the info spreads through the radio net until everyone connected knows about it. It could take a few minutes for it to spread around though. It's especially important in the WW2 titles. In the modern war titles, the force sizes are usually smaller and every squad has their own radios so information spreads quickly, but in WW2 you get those huge battles with multiple large formations sometimes not connected to the same radio net, like multiple companies or battalions that don't have a higher HQ represented in the scenario. In that case, you can use a squad (XO teams are good for this) as liaison units that act as runners between companies, so that the spotting info from one company gets shared with the neighboring company.

When the Americans invaded Syria, little did they realize that Bashar "The Lion" al-Assad had been developing super-weapons in secret for many years. A true WMD, this mega-missile was unleashed upon the invaders as they crossed the border. The missile's debut launch was directed right at this dude's face: