Zveroboy1

I really like some of these rules, especially the higher importance given to platoon leaders and their positioning. But there is something that bothers me a little about not being able to direct infantry fire. The main reason is that if I understand the rules correctly, you are allowed to perform area fire under certain circumstances and that basically means that you can give an infantry squad an order to shoot at something unseen but not to switch fire and shoot at something they do actually see. But I considered this problem before. It is interesting. I have played several times with a house rule where conscripts or green troops couldn't be given targeting orders. The rest could though. I also strongly disagree about irregular troops. The way I see it, one of their strengths is that they don't have a strict hierarchical structure and don't have to follow a rigid chain of command. Well of course they do to some extent but I see them as being able to act on their own initiative more and therefore they should be more flexible. Perhaps less well coordinated too and I see how both can be hard to reconcile.

I don't know if I'll be able to contribute to this project but I think it is important that before proceeding you think long and hard about which type of unit will represent what and have some sort of plan. Think about the pros and cons. But like Sgt.Squarehead mentioned above, it is perhaps quite a stretch to use SF2 as a base for this : weapons in a way but mostly equipment and even buildings are all drastically different between the Syrian conflict portrayed in SF2 and the Vietnam era. One problem with this idea could be that ideally you'd want to find someone who could make a 3d model of a Viet Cong rice hat and one of a NVA pith/safari helmet. And both Syrian mech infantry and reserves use the same helmet.

Yes go ahead, I don't mind. Give it a try. There is a post in this thread that explains the method. Message me if you struggle too much. Hmm of course you'll have to pick one of the uniform sets, early early or late. And if you succeed, you'll have to kneel then I'll tap you on the shoulders with a kalashnikov and make you a knight.

Has anyone seen this behaviour elsewhere than in CMBN? I have been playing SF2 quite a bit and never noticed anything of the sort. It might have something to do with hedgerows perhaps. Maybe someone could modify the map in the editor and replace the hedgerow by say a low wall and replay the battle. It'd be interesting to see if the bug still occurs.

I don't know, not really planning on it at the moment. I wanted to focus on mapping for another Afghanistan scenario. One of the reasons why I did the swap for the uncon fighters after you asked for it, was that they could also be used alongside my Taliban combatants to supplement them with heavy weapons that fighters lack. If you're motivated you could do it yourself though. All the files you need are in the ANA mod. You just need to unpack the right brz where all the uniforms are located, find the dutch infantry texture, the dutch infantry mdr, then rename the skins and the model included in my mod accordingly. It is just a matter of renaming files.

Yesterday in SF2 while playing a QB, I had a BMP-1 launch an atgm at a 90° angle from the enemy's direction toward a friendly infantry squad in a building. That was a bit odd. But there was absolutely no enemy in that direction so it wasn't a missed shot from what I could tell. Unfortunately I don't have a save file so probably not super useful for debugging purposes. Here is a screenshot I took 2-3 turns later. Path of the atgm in red. All the spotted enemies are along that main north-south street.

Both special forces and airborne troops use AK-74M. Only the squad leaders use AKS-74U. Mech infantry uses AKMS. Some HQ's use AKS-74U. Uncon and Syrian reserve both use AKM. So I think it all works but let me know if there is an issue somewhere with the swap.

Yes it was him. By the way your modded vehicles look good. And I don't consider myself super talented with photoshop at all. I just got into it seriously barely a year and a half ago. You just need to watch tutorials on youtube and practice. There is no lack of tutorials online about this topic if you want to learn.

The only problem with campaigns is that the creator needs to add mod tags for each battles. If he doesn't, you can't just do it yourself in the editor like with a regular scenario.

I haven't played puje's campaign yet. Does it use ANA forces? It should work though, it is just like any other mod really. I don't think puje bothered with mod tags in his campaign unfortunately. That's a pity but my ANA mod is not tagged unlike my other Afghanistan mods anyway. You'll just have to add/remove the mod(s) manually.

It was benpark who gave me the idea and it is actually really easy to do a model swap, no need for a long guide or fancy software. Well at least for soldiers, for weapon swaps it is a bit more involved, same principle but more files to modify. You have weapons sounds and the UI to take care of as well. 37mm did this part for the ANA mod. You simply copy the model, the mdr file found inside one of the brz, of what you want your unit/object/weapon to become and rename it with the name of the unit you started the process with. In other words, you want A to become B. You copy the B model and rename it A. The game doesn't care what the model looks like. It just sees that the ninja model points to the Syrian uncon combatant and that's it. The 3D engine then simply renders an uncon combatant whenever the oob of a battle has an uncon fighter. For instance in the ANA mod, you have this file smod_syrian_helmet-soldier.mdr. That's actually the special force helmet model. But here it uses the name of the regular Syrian infantry helmet. Once that's done, you do the exact same thing for the texture. You grab the corresponding bmp, copy it and rename it so it matches the new model. smod_syrian_helmet-airborne 1.bmp, that's the special forces helmet texture recoloured and renamed. Without this last step, the game would use the regular Syrian helmet texture on what is now a special forces helmet and obviously that would look wrong. It is not that easy to explain clearly, but in practice it is not that hard to do.

Thanks but please guys use the other thread if you want to leave a comment. This was just a WIP thread.

Link to the finished mod below :

By the way I didn't bother with mod tags because the weapon swap folder includes a string.txt file and a wav sound file and I didn't know if you could add tags to these types of files. I figured you would then have to manually swap the weapons folder anyway so it sounded a bit pointless. If someone knows please tell me and I'll make a mod tag version if people are interested.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Afghan National Army for Combat Mission Shock Force 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay so I am going to release this because it has been sitting on my HD for about a month without me tweaking it further. So it is probably good enough in its current state. This is a two-in-one mod that turns some of the Syrian Infantry into Afghan National Army. Here is what it does in detail : Syrian mech infantry ----> Early Afghan Army Syrian airborne infantry ----> Late Afghan Army So basically you get both uniforms in a single mod and it is up to you to decide which type you want by selecting the corresponding branch. Early Afghan National Army : They replace Syrian mech infantry and use AK's with a woodland camo uniform. The camo is supposed to represent either regular US woodland, a variant from Iran or Pakistan or a cheap chinese knockoff with a slightly different pattern and colours. Late Afghan Infantry : They replace Syrian airborne infantry, field M16's and their uniform is a mix of woodland camo and the new Spec4ce Afghan Forest camo. If you plan on using late war afghan infantry, I suggest you use regular airborne infantry as opposed to mech airborne infantry, both located under special forces. They will have a full allotment of RPG ammo. When to use early or late war? There isn't a clear cut date really but here is what I could gather with a quick search online. Uniforms : The ANA began to issue its own pixelated camouflage design in 2008-2009, designed by Hyperstealth Industries and named "Spec4ce Afghan Forest" pattern with some initial batches of these uniforms were made in China. Weapons : The U.S. military began shipping about 55,000 used Marine Corps M-16A2 rifles to Afghanistan with the intent of outfitting every soldier in the Afghan army with one by the late spring of 2009. Of course both of these changes happened gradually but before 2008, you should opt for early ANA and after 2009, go for late war ANA. Issues : 1/ The texture for the buttstock of the AKS-74U used by the squad leader of the paratroopers and the AKMS of the mech infantry looks a tad messed up. I think this is caused by the weapon swap and shared parts so I don't think it can be fixed for late war ANA. For early ANA, you could just temporarily remove the AK74M to M16 weapon swap folder from your mod directory. 2/ This isn't directly related to the ANA mod because the issue stems from the Syrian uncon fighters-Taliban conversion that I made previously, but since both mods are likely to be used in conjonction, I should mention it here. In my Taliban fighter mod, I swapped uncon fighters (the guys with the black pajamas and balaclava) with uncom combatants models and re-textured them both to use the same skin. Syrian uncon fighters and Syrian regular soldiers share the same boots though. If you want to pit ISAF forces versus Taliban, there is going to be no issue whatsoever. However if you plan on having a battle with ANA on one side and Taliban on the other, either the boots worn by ANA soldiers or the boots worn by Taliban fighters (depending on the load order) will look messed up because they share the same texture. Again, I need to emphasize that this will only be an issue if you are using both my ANA mod together with my Taliban fighter mod (And NOT combatants who don't wear boots but trainers). To keep it simple, I recommend that to represent Taliban forces, just use my Taliban combatants mod and only use my Taliban fighters mod sparingly. Only if you need heavy weapons like Dshk and recoilless rifles that combatants don't have for instance. And finally make sure the ANA mod loads after the fighters. This way the glitch won't be as noticeable. How to install : Extract the mod in the following directory : Documents/Battlefront/Combat Mission/Shock Force 2/User Data/Mods Credits : 37mm did the weapon swap for the late ANA. Without his help I would probably not have bothered with the weapons and only modded the uniforms. Download : https://www.dropbox.com/s/9gcpgmkwc8lgga2/zzANA.rar?dl=0 Let me know if there is any problem or error with the mod. Zveroboy

Personally I couldn't care less if there are two empty frames at the top of the briefing window, as long as you have a good map and an interesting tactical situation. I doubt I am the only one. Most people will be happy to be able to play a new user made scenario and won't nitpick about the lack of briefing graphics. These things don't really matter a whole lot. Designing a scenario is hard enough as it is, creating a good looking and realistic map is very time consuming, you need to look at dozens and dozens of pictures of the area to get a feel for the terrain, spend weeks in the editor, do some research, create AI plans, test it etc. Adding an extra hurdle for yourself is a bit absurd and counter productive the way I see it. And sure you can hope BFC does something about it, but I feel it is more important to send the message that the community as a whole shouldn't expect these things in a scenario. If this extra step is what's stopping more battles to be released because designers feel it is expected of them then that's a bit silly.

There is no need for BFC to add a no graphic briefing option though. It is already optional. Just type your briefing in notepad, put it in the required folder then import it. Pretty pictures, the tactical map and the fancy objectives or reinforcement icons are just eye candy that you can do without. The problem is that people feel they are compelled to add these things. But really you can discard this step entirely. If you know how to use gimp or photoshop and you feel like adding graphics then that's great, but it shouldn't be something that's expected or required.

Fair enough but it is still a bit aggravating that a hotfix hasn't been released separately. Because there is a piece of code included in SF2 that works just fine and clearly fixes this behaviour.

Just my two cents, but I think maybe the bar has been set too high as far as scenarios are concerned. You have got to admire how some scenario designers these days are pushing the envelope and thinking outside the box and creating some super polished innovative scenarios or campaigns. But perhaps it is intimidating too, you could even say over engineered in a way and we have forgotten how simple a user made scenario can be. I remember fondly the days of CM1 and its plethora of user made scenarios, probably in part with the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia. And granted not all of them were super good. But I have a feeling there is a level of complexity and polish that potential designers might feel they have to meet which is perhaps both superfluous and disheartening for them. Basically all you need is a map, AI in defensive positions and a bunch of units for the human player to toy with. Then slap together a short briefing and you're done. You don't even need AI plans most of the time really in a simple straightforward attack defense battle. There is no need for the defender to counter attack or pull back or do anything super fancy most of the time. Similarly all the eye candy brought by having a tactical map, slick looking victory objectives in the briefing using official graphics that require a basic knowledge of photoshop etc, all these things are not needed and shouldn't stop anyone in case they don't want to go the extra mile.

I don't understand how TO&E has anything to do with patch 4 issues. I mean I am glad they are trying to fix issues in this area but really all people have been asking for is a fix for infantry under arty fire leaving cover. An issue that was introduced what two years ago? Two years is a long time for a fix. I really feel the TOE should have been tackled separately.

Nice trick. The AI tends to use harassing fire a lot though even with a full ammo load so it is maybe not that noticeable. I was thinking more for the player.

No, it was just a quick fix really and only for Taliban fighters, doesn't do anything for the dutch ANA.

Would it make sense for scenario designers when simulating low intensity warfare like the type which sometimes takes place in the Donbass area to give players only a handful of rounds in order to model this type of artillery fire? You could give the player, i don't know, let's say a dozen rounds, it would depend on the caliber obviously and the number of tubes in the battery obviously. Maybe coupled with a TRP. And then another volley 20 minutes later or so when the gun has relocated. It could add an interesting tactical twist to have support fire with only limited size volleys. It wouldn't be appropriate for every type of battle of course. Not actually recent footage and don't mind the clickbait "phenomenal artillery battle" part but impressive how far the return fire comes though. 80 seconds after the first shells have been fired and as the comment on twitter says, that includes the shell flight time as well. Well of course that's assuming it is not a random stray shell that just landed nearby.

Let's say I wanted to design a scenario that features US Airborne troops, they are not in SF2 right? So what should I use instead? Just regular infantry? Do they have as many javelins as regular infantry? I guess I could search online but I got a lot on my plate right now and there are lots of knowledgeable people on this forum so I thought I'd ask. In case it matters, I am thinking of the 101st airborne division in Afghanistan circa 2010.

Okay I need to fix that, good catch. Yeah you can use every unit that's not marked garrison and take them for a stroll in the pleasant Afghan countryside. You'd get clobbered out there for sure with just one squad. 2IC can tag along too. I usually let him stay with the MG and the sniper team but that's up to you. (by the way i am not Andreas)