Philipp

So it is not me not understanding what is going on? Are the ATGMs a bug too or should they only fire when active? Maybe someone can move the thread to the tech support forum. Should have posted there in the first place, sorry.

When I put a US humvee (the M1152 type with the open back) on a flat map and line up a PKM abd PKP about 300m away they are not shooting at the humvee or its passengers sitting out in the open ever. If I use Russian ATGMs it is the same unless I change the AI to "Active". But with the machine guns they never seem to shoot, even with Active AI. Can somebody explain this to me? Does the AI think it can't harm the humvee with the machine guns and does not want to waste ATGMs on humvees unless told to be active? I attached a test scenario with the machine guns... humveebugtest.zip

Enemy air support, again, same as artillery, can very frustrating if you are at the receiving end. But it is part of the game. Well placed indirect fire can ruin your day, make sure you ruin the other guys day first. I have to say that I lost a lot more troops to mortars than to helos or planes. In some cases then that means to count your losses and ceasefire. In other cases it makes the battle more of a chellange and it can be very satisfying to pull off a minor victory despite first platoon lying dead in a field full of craters.

Same tactics that work against incoming artillery work against air support. In some sense air support is easier to deal with, at least you can shoot back, even if just with tiny stingers. To give a few ideas: - Keep moving. Air attacks are limited to an area on me map. And moving targets are harder to hit. - Take cover. Infantry on lower levels of builings and hide. Trees should help both with cover and concealment. Vehicles snug behind buildings also works sometimes. - Close with the enemy. You might get out of their radius or they might hit their own guys.

Thanks, PM sent.

I finished designing my first scenario and would like some feedback before putting it on the repository. A small US combat patrol in a humvee and a truck tries to reach an air force pilot who came down near a Russian OP. The battle should play really quick, if you want to try it out and give some feedback, please PM me.

the question is which vehicle should I take so that I end up with a single crew member? And it seems like I can't have the vehicle desroyed or burning, that removes the bailed out crew.

It qas discussed in another thread that the conflict in BS is limited to Ukraine and NATO ROE might be that targets on Russian soil are off limits to avoid nuclear retaliation. That would allow Russia to operate long range SAMs without return fire essentially denying higher altitudes. Just one way to rationalize the limitations of the simulation.

Actually, I tried to get a one person unit and could not. My thinking is you need a two man team and reduce headcount to 50%. Most vehicles have more than two man crew. Humvees its seems I can't bail out. Even if I get atwo man crew, reducing the headcount does not seem to work. Selecting dismounted results in ammo crates... Well, I want to go with a touch objective anyways.

I actually was inspired by August morning. I think battles with just a few units get very interesting if one side has to reach a certain map location and get back without beeing chewed up to much. I actually consider having the vehicle parked somewhere in the open, destroyed or immobilized, just for flavor. But touch objective probably is better, that forces the player to move his troops there instead of moving the pilot to his troops. Only trying it out will tell what works best.

Thanks a lot for the great suggestions. I did mot think making the touch objective hidden, that probably is one of the few cases where a hidden objective makes sense! I will do some testing and then decide how I will do it.

I am designing a scenario in which I want a US squad to save a downed pilot. My plan is to simply go with a touch objective but I was wondering if there is a way to represent a pilot using a vehicle crew or something. I know that I can dismount a crew and destroy the vehicle but I don't think there is a way to make the vehicle completely disappear, or is there? Any other suggestions how to represent a mission like this in the editor? Idealy the pilot would only be armed with a handgun....

The backstory and the US campaign make it sound like Russia invaded when there were essentially no US troop in Ukraine except for advisors and such. Only after Russia crossed the Dnepr did US forces enter the country in force to save Kiev from falling. The red line makes sense, "You cross the river, we strike back!" In this kind of scenario I don't think it would be fair to blame a junior Russian office for causing the war by accident. Sounds more like a US president drawing a line he was sure the Russian would not cross. But then they did and to keep his credibility he had to order the troops in, at least for some time. Miscalculations on the political level. I doubt that all NATO parters woul join in on a war that some might say was caused by recklessness. But who knows. The problem NATO is in is obvious: Taking an aggressive stance could ignite the conflict even more, and I don't think the EU or the US actually want Ukraine as their partner/puppet/whatever all that much. Not enough to start a war. Letting Russia get away with what they do on the other hand is equally dangerous. Who knows what they might go for next time if they think the West ist too weak to stop them anyway. Glad I am not a politician...

I am sceptical too. None of the crucial points have been resolved, most importantly, Russia is still free to send troops, weapons and supplies over the border. And the state of the Debalzewe pocket is not resolved, so I guess both sides will just fight it out until Sunday? Looks a lot like Putin is stalling, maybe he wants to see if he needs to get out or can push it a bit more. And he averted US weapons, at least for a now.

I indeed missed that Lithuania invoked article 4.

This is the last time I will react to your highly repetitive postings LUCASWILLEN05: I don't doubt your assessments on a full scale war scenario. Just saying this game assumes a different scenario. Your assessment of the situation seems very stuck in cold war thinking. Open up a bit and look what is happening, the Russian leadership seems to have left some of the cold war thinking behind (not all of it though). They are in the real world having a conflict that they seem to win (or at least on the score board they have the Crimean, NATO has zero). A limited, hybrid war including propaganda and cyberwarfare campaigns. This is not our fathers cold war gone hot anymore, they think and most importantly act different. As I see it the game is one way that NATO could react to this. In the game we see that it would be very bloody, not mass murder like WW3 but even such a limited war would mean huge loss of life and a lot of destruction. I am no expert in treaty law so I will not claim to say anything definite about the NATO treaty. As I understand it article 4 and 5 only apply if a country is attacked. Maybe you should study the manual which clearly states that the conflict breaks out before Ukraine actually joins NATO. And just shooting at US troops in a Non-NATO country certainly does not trigger the NATO treaty.

So despite what LUCASWILLEN05 sees how this conflict would go, and he has any right to envision it any way he wants to, what I described in some earlier posts is closer to what Battlefront envisions the scenario to be. To summarize: 1. Acts of war limited to Ukrainian soil and air space enforced by NATO ROE to avoid triggering nuclear retaliation. Maybe some naval conflict in the black sea. 2. Russia can freely use AA and artillery based on Russian soil, giving it a slight advantage over a full scale conflict. 3. No Articel 4 or 5, NATO forces act together but by choice, not becauce they are forced by treaty. That would probably leave Germany out of the conflict... 4. Both sides have short term war goals that do not aim at total destruction of their enemy. NATO wants an "independent" Ukraine, Russia wants a "Russian Protectorate" Ukraine. Armies are used to create facts and destroy possibilities while the politicians keep talking. That is pretty much what is happening already right now... LUCASWILLEN05, your are free to question the likelyhood of this scenario, but I agree with Steve that this makes for a much nicer game than total anhilation. And no reason to go all red and underline, I read the other things you wrote and did not need additional emphasis to pay attention to what you write.

I'm curious: What is the official reasoning (for the game) that keeps NATO in check. You say Russia simple can't fight a more widespread war but NATO certainly could (after some build up). Do you assume NATO holds back for political reasons? Does Russia threaten nuclear retiliation for attacks on Russian soil? Does NATO simply react too slow? And how are these reasonings actually reflected in what happens in the real world?

And again, all you wtite makes sense in a full scale war. But what is decribed in the manual and this forum does not sound like this is what Battlefront envisioned the setting to be. Anyway, everyone can play the game the wsy he wants and envision his own backstory and setting for his own battles.

Maybe I am worng but remember reading that Battlefront wrote about the game representing a limited conflict between Russia and NATO in the Ukraine. Looking through the manual and the web page I cant find that statement anywhere, but I always was assuming this is not a WW3 setting but rather a "heated" proxy war in which regular troops are fighting on both sides. Maybe it is the optimist in me that assumes nobody would let a conflict escalate to that kind of level. And I stick to the opinion that a conflict limited to Ukraine geographically is much more likely. It does not make sense from a military point of view, but politically NATO can argue that defending the freedom of Ukraine is necessary. Russia on the other side would try to avoid triggering Article 4 or 5 to avoid starting a war that is very hard for them to win. Russian leadership is not stupid. The know that they can win east and south Ukraine without having to go to full scale war. In respect to what is really happening, the reaction that happened in the game, sending regular US troops, is pretty unlikely as long as Obama is in power. By 2017, who know what is going to happen.

After working a bit more with the editor I would say that the lack of copy paste within a map and between maps is a real problem. If you flesh out part of a map and then realize you would want to move it by two squares to the right, that is very frustrating. I guess the solution to that is to work down from the big picture to the small detail instead of say north to south.

You can theorize as much as you want, what you describe is a full out war between NATO and Russia which is even less likely simply because Russia would have to expect to be outnumbered and outgunned something like 3 to 1. And regardless of what you think, the scenario in the game is a limited war, limited in which troops are used and where it is fought. So all your theries of what might happen apply to a scenario that the games assumes to no have happened.

I just started looking into scenario design after years of playing SF and BN. Wanted to start easy by ising a quick battle map but could not find what I wanted. So now I am trying to make a map, lets see where that goes. One suggestion I have would be to add an importer for elevation from some public dat source, like Google Maps. There is a tool called SketchUp that has this feature. You can see it in action here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y4J9sWEZR6E

Note that the scenario I discribe does not result in nuclear war, that is the whole point. Simply the threat by Russia to use nukes would be sufficient to stop NATO from an all out attack. That is the whole point of having nukes. Anyways, the game describes a conflict that is limited to Ukraine, I just suggested one explanation for that. I think Chris Nd mentioned that they might publish a more complete description of how Battlefront envisions the backstory for Black Sea.

As I see the backstory of this game there is no full scale war between NATO and Russia. And as pointed out in this thread, a full scale conflict would end in nukes eventually, not a nice scenario for a game... My understanding is that the conflict is limited to Ukraine simply because both side choose not to fight anywhere else. Probably Russia would say: If you attack anything on Russian soil we strike back with nuclear weapons. NATO says: OK, but your troops in Ukraine are fair game because they are aggressors! Of course Russia could use SAMs and Artillery stationed on Russian soil without fear of attack. That explains nicely why planes fly low in the game by the way and why artillery is available to both sides instead of beeing busy with counter battery fire all the time. Of course, just my two cents on the backstory of the game. Will we actually get in this kind of conflict? As it looks right now the chances are still not very high, but I fear they are not zero either.