Zveroboy1

US Afghani Stan That's the name of the scenario. I have to say I got wrecked in this one. It went pear-shaped real quick. I haven't seen this documentary, it looks interesting. Thanks for posting it. I was actually thinking of a different one :

Yeah no worries, I was just trying to provide some context for the scenario. It requires a different mindset than the usual scenario I think. In CM you don't usually want to just walk in the open in order to draw fire. But that was just what the British forces were trying to do here. They were gagging for a proper fight and being frustrated by all the IED's and the "dickers" watching them at all times but that they couldn't shoot unless first shot at etc. In the real operation, they had some units in reserve that they planned to commit once the understrength bait element was successfully engaged by the enemy. It is loosely based on a documentary that you can watch on youtube. I think I have linked it at the beginning of the thread. It is a good watch, only the first two episodes are relevant to this scenario, so you don't even have to watch the whole thing. What you describe, a raid to capture Taliban leaders, it could work too of course. Actually I think there is one made for SF1. I could find the name of the scenario if you are interested. Combatintman thanks for the insight.

Of course you're free to experiment with the scenario and tweak it to your heart's content. For instance it would be fairly easy to replace the british forces with marines or units from another ISAF contingent. But I have to admit, I am not sure how much sense it would make to have this take place at night. The reason being that this isn't supposed to be a commando raid or more generally speaking the type of engagement where you try to sneak in, avoid detection and reach the objective unseen. You're not trying to achieve surprise here. On the contrary, in this particular case, the purpose of the patrol is to draw fire from the insurgents. Maybe I didn't make it clear enough in the briefing, or maybe it is just the inclination of CM players, i.e try to use cover as much as possible and stay out of sight to avoid casualties. But here, historically, the purpose was actually to act as bait in order to keep the Taliban busy and away from the reconstruction effort taking place in the village to the north. The village is actually just a couple hundreds of meters to the north of the map. This doesn't mean that you should forego basic tactics like scouting, having a base of fire, force preservation etc but the goal is to provoke the Taliban by patrolling in the open and draw them into a shootout where you should prevail because of your superior firepower. Finally, I am not even sure the Taliban often operate at night, well besides the planting of IED's, but I mean as far as combat operations are concerned. It would be interesting to hear from someone who has been there but I am thinking that they would be at an even bigger disadvantage because of night vision and the lack of civilian crowds to blend in. Anyway just my two cents.

It might just work, I haven't tested it. I think most vehicle mods work fine for SF2. However for infantry, I am not so sure. It is likely that either file names or 3D models have been changed. If it is the former it is not too hard to fix but if it is the latter, the skins will look all wrong.

For the talibs, I made a fix. You can find it here, on page two of this thread, second post : Unfortunately my ANA mod uses Syrians whereas dragonwynn in his campaign used the mod that Blimey created which is based on Dutch troops. So that won't work.

I don't use fps mode, so I am not entirely sure, I just move around with wasd and rotate with q and e with the occasional control + click to fast forward to a point far away or click tab on a unit to teleport there. I think moving the camera with the mouse is mostly used for youtube vids so the camera movement can be controlled smoothly to make it look cinematic. The popping in of textures is normal. There is one of the two settings, either texture or models quality, I forgot which, that will slightly increase the size of the "bubble" around the camera but the effect isn't super dramatic and on a big map if you're flying over the battlefield as opposed to be being near the ground, there will always be the game switching to low res textures and removing trees at a distance. I don't want to tell you how to play the game and some people would probably disagree with me here, but often it is useful to keep the camera fairly low in order to get a good idea of the terrain, to get a feel for the elevations and lines of sights etc, to be able to see what your pixeltruppens see. You can't play like this all the time and of course you will zoom out fairly often to get a global view of the battle field. But if you do this, then the textures popping in and some of your issues with the controls won't matter as much imo. You can disable shadows. With a PC like you have, you probably expected higher fps, but if you're getting 60 now, that's plenty for this type of game really.

It shouldn't be choppy unless you're playing on a huge forested map with an old PC. You know you can control click somewhere on the screen to move the camera there. Also clicking on a unit then hitting tab will select it and focus the camera on it.

How about India-Pakistan?

Anything by Kieme really, especially the buildings he made. Either Vein's or Kieme's sky and mountains Mord US AFV chatter mod Mord Allah's army sound mod HQS for sounds MikeyD's pickups and T55's and T62's A special effect mod for explosions, tracers etc, either Vein's or the one 37mm made. Rambler's night vision mode is fun too for night battles. Vein's markers Scipio's silhouettes for SF1 the squalor mod For the brits : Camo netting by MikeyD Mord and George MC's cuss mod

Okay here is the updated ANA mod for the latest version of SF2 (patch 2.02). Download : https://www.dropbox.com/s/1hv74axe8ie1gub/zzana_2.02.rar?dl=0 Credits : Garrett124 for letting me know there was a problem with the patch. 37mm for the actual fix.

Okay thanks. I saw that on the previous page but I thought there were more fixes.

Right yes it should be enough. Hopefully this is only a temporary fix.

If you're not familiar with the editor, it might be easier if you take the attacking side yourself and just worry about setting up a static defensive position for the computer. No need to worry about triggers and fancy movement orders this way. That's a good way to familiarize yourself with the editor without doing anything too advanced for your first try.

Okay it has come to my attention that the 2.02 patch breaks the ANA mod. Here is a quick fix in the meantime until I find a way to fix it : delete the "ak74m to M16" folder inside the mod. I think the string.txt used for the weapon swap must have changed and it is causing all sorts of weird issues. The uniform mod will work, you just won't get M16's on late war ANA soldiers.

Could someone please link me to the 2.02 patch notes or paste the changes here?

I feel the same way too for all the reasons you mention. And I enjoy playing SF2 and BS a lot more than the wwii titles I own, perhaps because I can't directly compare the modern titles with CM1.

I suggest you read The Nazi Seizure Of Power by Sheridan Allen. You'd perhaps notice that the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) which believed in class struggle, was not revolutionary but pro republic and democracy was the main opponent of Hitler within Germany alongside the communists and how as soon as he got in power, Hitler shut down all the socialists newspapers, sent its members to concentration camps before finally banning the German socialist party altogether in 1933. Meanwhile the nationalists and the middle class flocked to Hitler in droves. So besides the name NSDAP (and if you follow that logic the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is actually a democracy) and a couple of tactical populist measures designed to appeal to the working class and which mostly failed, fascism had fundamentally very little to do with socialism. The same was true in Italy and Spain with Franco. And if totalitarianism in its various forms be it fascism or stalinism have a lot in common in practice, the horseshoe theory might be a good explanation, but in any case they both reach this end state by following completely different paths and with fundamentally opposed ideologies.

Overlays are not that hard to use and they can speed up your mapping so much. In Google Earth, either use the path or the polygon tool to draw a rectangle around the area of the map you have selected. If using the polygonal tool, lower the opacity by going into the style/colour tab of the tool properties. You need to make sure the lines are more or less straight. Use the U shortcut to reset the tilt of the view, so you're looking straight down. Before you do that though, it can be useful to rotate the map in order to get the main roads aligned properly so they're at the right angle for the CM editor. You might want to hide the tool bar at the top of Google Earth and go into full screen in order to have a slightly bigger overlay. Zoom in as much as possible on the selected area. Take a screen capture by hitting print screen on your keyboard. Then you need to use a graphic program, I bet even paint will do, to paste and crop the image you have saved in the previous step and which is now in your clipboard. Crop it so there is only the selected area left i.e inside the rectangle or frame. Save it as a bmp named "special editor overlay". Then copy it in your my documents/Battlefront/Combat Mission/Shock Force 2/User Data You need to relaunch the game. Now in the editor, create a new map with the same dimensions as the area inside the rectangle. And toggle the different levels of transparency with the O shortcut.

usgubgub you should post your maps.

You will encounter odd situations concerning spotting from time to time. But this isn't a problem with Syrians per se. There is almost nothing that separates a US soldier from a Syrian soldier. The game doesn't have the various nationalities behave differently except in some rares cases like split squads. It is all about equipment, materiel and experience level : binoculars, night vision and optics for vehicles. Often for old Syrian tanks you're better off having the tank commander with the hatch open.

Do uncon fighters really benefit from the civilian density parameter? I could have sworn they didn't. Someone should tag the knowledgeable kerbal fellow.

It is not that people don't care, but at this point in the life of the game it is doubtful that anything will be done about it. Either because Battlefront doesn't think there is a problem or simply because it is a game engine limitation (trenches not sunk into the mesh of the map which results in soldiers being too exposed) and finding a workaround is too much work or not a priority. It could also be that if they somehow fixed this, it would mess too much with the balance of existing scenarios but then again that hasn't stopped Battlefront from beefing up mgs so probably not the main reason. I wonder if you have played CM1. Because the offence/defence paradigm was completely different. A lot of people either didn't play CM1 or have forgotten how it was like. Some will say it is the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia but it wasn't that long ago that I stopped playing CM1, 4 or 5 years tops. I didn't bother to reinstall it when I got this PC. But I distinctly remember the defence being A LOT tougher and resilient. A combination of leaders with morale bonus, stealthier shooters (you had to get much closer to get IDs on enemies and the position of the contact markers was a lot less accurate) and much stronger trenches and foxholes made it so you couldn't just have the defenders melt away under fire once you reach fire superiority. They would stop returning fire almost completely when suppressed enough and only sporadically shoot at the attacker but they would often stay put and you had to flank the trench line or assault it with grenades if you didn't have tanks or HE available. I know that's not what fans of the game want to hear because they'd like to think that since CM2 is newer it is automatically better in every aspect. But it isn't so as far as I am concerned. The defence has become a lot weaker and there is less need for maneuvering when attacking entrenched enemies. It is still the best tactical squad level game on the market mind you and CM2 has tons of improvements, not least in the eye candy department but fortifications are definitely a weak point. And yes part of the problem is the full soldiers representation and ballistic model that replaced abstract squads with not all soldiers displayed. It opened a huge can of worms and gives less room for fudging probably. Now of course most of the kinks have been ironed out and the game is really solid. Of course it would be hard to get back to the crude graphics of CM1 but nevertheless it had a couple of things it did better than the current game in my opinion. But it feels like I have typed almost the same rant half a year ago so at the end of the day you have to accept the few flaws of the game. It is still enjoyable. Anyway you're not the only one who has a gripe with fortifications.

Well perhaps yes. But my point is that mech, reserve and airborne infantry all wear the same helmet in the game. So perhaps this is worth taking into consideration in case a modder volunteers to create helmets before a final decision is made on the type of units which will be used to represent the various sides. But then again maybe finding a 3D modder is not likely in which case just disregard the whole thing and go with whatever you want.

Well to be fair, if they're shop keepers they should be represented by conscripts really. And conscripts won't be able to hit the broadside of a barn and will just panic and flee. So they won't be more effective than a fully trained Western style force.

V3 was pretty good really. Personally I don't think infantry being a tad more spaced out and peeking around corners is worth it. Maybe it is because I haven't fully mastered this feature but they rarely peek when I want them to and expose themselves when I'd rather they stay out of sight. And the spacing out is nice but it is a not a dramatic difference in practice.