Thewood1

Graviteam did the Iran-Iraq war. It was very cool. M-60s, and Chieftains fighting T-62s and T-55s and the like. There were M-113s and BMP-1s thrown in for good measure. I have also done a couple IIW sandboxes with Steel Beasts. Everything you need is there.

I would easily take Pacific over CMFB and CMBS.

As much as I like the Pacific theater, I would be all over Fulda Gap in the 80's or 90''s. Its the main reason I stick with Steel Beasts.

This I wholeheartedly agree with. I have always been concerned that with the number of games out right now, combined with the pace of development, some would end up being orphaned.

Not much fighting actually happened in the jungle in the pacific. Just like in Europe, armies didn't fight much where they couldn't move or survive. There are exceptions to that, but the majority of the actual fighting took place in open areas, around junctions, in towns, and in cities. All places that CM can represent well. Exceptions were a few islands in the Solomon Is., parts of New Guinea, etc. Even where the Japanese got their fame for "jungle" fight was more about moving through the jungle to flank than actually fighting in the jungle. The fighting mostly happened for clearings, roads, and towns.

Hold on...I came up with three examples in a span of five minutes. How many examples would satisfy you? So think about this...regardless of tank combat, my issue was with the perception that the Pacific war was all jungle or even majority jungle warfare. I was answering Sgt Square because he asked a complete non-sequitur. Pacific can't be done because of jungle warfare...Isn't that what you said? Are now trying to twist my original comments around to saying its all about armor? Do I have to go through every battle. As a student of WW2, I would think you be very interested to see how much non-jungle warfare happened. Just like the good fight was fought in early CM days about the uber-dominant Panthers and Tigers, some people just need to open their minds to the possibility that they never looked beyond some of the perpetuated myths about half of WW2.

Why would I need to? Can you only play combat mission if you have two battalions with of armor? I didn't see that as a requirements. I was talking about the ignorance of the terrain that battles were fought on. But just in case...Here are great example of tank combat in the Pacific... The battles around Clark Airfield in 1945. One I can think of is 6-7 Japanese medium tanks with infantry counterattacking a US Army infantry units in a town that had 2 M7s and 2 M18s. There were dozens of the type of encounters all throughout 1944 and 1945. How about the US Army 192nd Tank Battlion that fought with Stuarts from Dec. 1941 through until Bataan fell? Both larger Company-sized battles and small battles against Japanese infantry and armor units. The battles entering Manila with US M4s fighting Japanese AT guns and tanks. How's that? I even managed to include one near battalion-sized encounter. And I haven't even touched on Burma and Marine battles, let alone US Army and the China theater. Again, I completely understand BFC's position on a Pacific game. This thread alone shows how little even WW2 wargamers know about the incredible variety of land combat situations in the Pacific.

Considering the ongoing conversation about jungle warfare being the main focus of the Pacific war, it isn't either of those things.

Not really an advocate for a Pacific version of CM...but why does everyone think the Pacific only had jungle warfare. Battles were fought over a huge expanse of the Pacific and Asian regions. Battles were fought in terrain not very different from parts of Europe. Even on some "jungle" islands, large battles were fought over open spaces, towns, and airfields. One of the largest urban battles of the war was fought in Manila. The US forces would be almost the same as whats in CMFI. Again, not advocating a Pacific version because of commercial concerns. But for a bunch of people thinking they are students of World War 2, you seem to not know a lot about a huge part of the war. Just look up some of the battles in the Philippines in 1942 and in 1944/45. At CM's scale, there are some battles that would be great for CM to simulate, especially in 1942.

You can pick up the "Transformation to Combat. The First stryker brigade at War" for $0 at https://history.army.mil/brochures/Stryker/Stryker.pdf I think that's the same book. I downloaded it a couple years ago.

This is starting to sound like the old CMSF forums circa 2007.

Interesting video. But what the heck is going on with the trees constantly changing color?

I just got an MS Surface Book 2 13" with i7 (8th gen) and nVidia 1050. I am replacing my HP Omen laptop that had a slightly slower CPU (7th gen) and nVidia 940. Both had SSDs and 16Mb of RAM. The laptop ran CM very well with even large scenarios chugging away at over 20 FPS. The SP2 is about 10% faster on the same scenarios, even though the CPU is theoretically only 5% faster. I think its because all the components are optimized to operate much better together than in the HP laptop. What is cool is the display pops off to be a tablet and it can play CM relatively well, even on its Intel GPU. It is much slower but seems to run well. Getting about 25 fps in medium-sized scenarios. My old Surface Pro 4 could barely run small CM scenarios in comparison.

Yeah, I saw that one. The thread I'm thinking of was at least a couple years ago and was the annual debate about Iron vs elite mode. There were actual tests done to get some answers. Its one of those that should have been saved for posterity.

I asked about mode because there was a thread years ago about the mode having an impact on the range for visual comms being impacted my game mode.

What game mode were you playing...Iron, etc.?

My understanding is that a 30mm turret would eliminate carriage by anything smaller than a C-17. That would eliminate a part of the strategic mobility that was the reason for acquiring the Stryker. Also, I think the turret also eliminates most of the dismounts and a good portion of the internal stowage. I assume that would mean less AT weapons carried. I think the LAV-25 can only handle 4 dismounts and the 30mm turret is even bigger and requires more room for ammo storage. And the LAV-25 has no Javelins. That is mostly from memory so the level of confidence is limited.

I would argue back that morale and experience are just as arbitrary. There is no field manual that tells you how much experience a unit has that can be boiled down to a number. Even more so morale. Yet, we all love those factors. Command delays are no worse or better. I understand how command delays could be a real pain in the ass when you just wanted to plot 5 waypoints down the road. But on the other side of it, it fairly unrealistic to have you troops instantly move and execute commands. To me, it was the one thing that didn't carry over from CM1 that stands out now with a lot of the old features slowly making it back into the engine.

CM1's command delays, as implemented, did lead to unrealistic play. But this quote from above sums up my remembrance of it... "If anything, it trained me to keep things as simple as possible." And that is why I liked the command delays. It really forced you to assess your troops capabilities against you plan's complexity.

Again, you implied that from my statement. As I said, its all relative. Nothing is ever simple. I am not sure what I can say beyond what I have said to keep you from thinking that I think its absolutely simple. You are reading things in my posts that aren't there. If you want to interpret that as me saying something is simple, that is something you need to deal with. You haven't answered any of my responses...how is developing an OOB for CMSF2 any more or less difficult than doing it for CMBS? I will come back to the relativity of it in that most of the 2008 theoretical US/Syrian war OOB work has been done. So RELATIVELY, the OOB work for CMSF2, whether in CMSF2 game engine or as a CMBS module should be less resource intensive. I will be explicit in that comments are in relative terms. I don't want someone to think I think its simple. Is that explicit enough? I really didn't expect the discussion to be about how simple or not simple its is. But why is one way of doing it harder than another...relatively.

I went back and looked at my post and saw nothing about me saying it was simple, so I don't know why that is the first point you're making. At the same time, Steve and others have talked about how the OOB portion is one of the biggest issues in developing new modules. So my question would be, why is developing CMSF2 as a standalone game any more or less work then developing it as a module. I would also find it odd that IED capability can be developed for CMSF2 and not for CMBS. My reading of BFC's statements is that CMSF2 and CMBS are on the same CM engine. So again, since I didn't say it was easy to begin with, I know it might not be easy in absolute terms. But in relative terms, why is developing CMSF2 as a game, any easier than developing it as a module? There is a bit of cross over in units, especially for the US side. It would really eliminate the hassle of the DRM and install. Plus it would give players a little more of a sand box to play with. As to development of new OOBs for other countries, I suspect we might be years away from the British ever showing up in CMBS. So that OOB work will get done when it gets done. Meanwhile, with CMSF as a module for CMBS, all your modern CM gaming is under one exe. Other than having two sets of dates for playing, 2008 and 2017, I Don't see a gaming downside or much of a development downside. If BFC doesn't want to upgrade the NATO OOBs, that's fine, just use the same OOBs as in CMSF. I thought that was what we were getting in CMSF2 anyway. If BFC decides to upgrade the NATO OOBs for CMSF2, then there is no harm in using that in CMBS. Now if the purpose is to charge for a full game in CMSF2 over a module approach to CMSF2, I have no issue paying full game price for CMSF as a module in CMBS. Again, just trying to understand why CMSF2 couldn't be an expansion of CMBS. It is the exact same question I had about CMFB and CMBN.

I actually think that is very doable.

Actually just saw the operator's field manual... FM 3-22.37. Javelin -- Close Combat Missile System, Medium Page 1-3 confirms the above. https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-22-37.pdf

Not exactly final authority, but a lot of real military users and their sources are typically DoD and MoD for training... From Steel Beasts wiki... "Minimum range in direct-fire mode is 65m, while the minimum for top-attack mode is 150m;"

Since this is wishes and dreams...How about making new module for CMBS that is CMSF2, or vics versa. I would like to think that moving the OOB from CMBS to the new CMSF2 would be a lot less than developing a new module for CMBS. I would gladly play a full game price for combining CMBS and CMSF.