Hapless

A few points: 1. Syrian airpower is comically unresponsive compared to NATO. It can take anything up to 30 minutes to call a CAS mission in. If you are sat in the same place for 30 minutes against a Syrian force that is not only qualitatively inferior but has chosen to spend precious points on off-map assets that are not in your way then you are probably not pushing hard enough. 2. If you're playing against a human opponent, then just agree not to bring airpower. Or agree that airpower is only an option if EW is, then shut all his radios down. Or fight at night. Or whatever- just because its there doesn't mean it has to be used or can't be 'balanced out' by agreement. 3. Syrian airpower is noisy, dramatic and scary. It is also transitory, inaccurate and not likely to be very effective if you have stumbled upon the secret, ground breaking defensive procedures of concealment, dispersion, deception and keeping on the move. I can almost guarantee that learning how to operate effectively despite enemy airpower is going to be a lot more productive and useful than moaning about it. 4. Some of the light Hind missions are 14-15 points each. I assume that's a bug: it kinda makes sense for Allied strafing runs in WW2 to be cheap because there a thousands of P47s about. Not going to claim to be an expert on the Syrians, but I'm pretty sure that they don't have enough Hinds for that kind of thing.

Presumably it's so no one would make the catastrophic mistake of thinking it can fight tanks.

I've gotten that error too, when trying to uncam the Task Force Thunder and Semper Fi campaigns. It'd be a fun experiment to play the CMSF2 campaigns in multiplayer!

Doesn't look as though you can select Technicals, Transports or VBIEDs in the QB force selector as Uncons. You can choose them in the Scenario Editor, where Combatants and Fighters are separated as different "branches" (they're all mashed into one big group in the QB Selector). No idea if that, or that Uncons can only be picked as "Infantry Only" has anything to do with it. I've got all the modules.

Was going to mention the use of modded icons in the force composition diagram, but I was beaten to it by the man himself! Having being momentarily baffled by unfamiliar little icons on the briefing screen, I was going to suggest either using the vanilla ones as a kind of lowest common denominator or that Bil suggests a mod to play with. Which he has just done. That's a very minor quibble though, based on personal taste. That diagram is actually a very helpful touch, especially when you're a Quick Battler like me and you hate having to work out what units you've got to play with at the start of a battle. I'm looking forwards to giving the scenario a go! My only question mark over the overall concept is whether the key terrain selected as the hidden objective is going to be consistently relevant as different players bring different plans to the table. This is probably not a big deal because the game is so short and the map is so small but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

My location of traffic map from Youtube looks pretty similar this year (might need a magnifying glass for those numbers, sorry!): US dominates, followed at distance by the UK, then a mix of the English speaking world and Western/Northern Europe.

Ha! I was wondering how long it would take those 60 seconds to pop up as an example of how not to do things. My own fault entirely for not covering the basics- one scout team out on that flank and I would have heard it coming and not been caught with my pants down. But that's combat mission: make mistakes, get punished. The trick is learning from it. You can be damn sure that's never gonna happen to me again.

Select the IED, then draw a target command: Target the ground nearby to activate it and the triggerman will try and detonate it whenever something gets close enough. Target a specific enemy unit and the triggerman will try and detonate it when that unit gets close. Bear in mind that if the triggerman is a potato, can't see, is suppressed, dead or generally unable to push the button, nothing will happen. There are also Blufor electronic countermeasures to bear in mind: the British Warriors in Breaking the Bank definitely have little ECM sets on them that may- or may not- prevent IEDs from being detonated. This is a quick, dirty video explanation which I would embed if I could remember how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXwfJbSag1g&feature=youtu.be Note that the triggerman is a green and -1 leadership potato.

I remember using armour missions in CMSF 1 for building busting. Don't know if its a bug, but in the demo the 60mm mortars in Day at the Beach have General, Personnel and Armour settings. I mean, it might not be a bug- and a rain of 60mm airbursting bombs is both cool and useful- but it seems a bit optimistic as an anti-armour weapon...

If you really want to know what your units can see from what position and how fast they're likely to spot, just open the map up in the editor, recreate the exact circumstances, save as a scenario and then play it through a few times. You don't have to redo the entire force, just the relevant units. Then you can test it to death. Sure it takes a couple of minutes each time, but you get solid usable results and after doing this a few times you'll start getting your head around it. Depends a lot on how much you want to win But it makes a lot of sense to "wargame" through all your plans this way before the game kicks off anyway to get sort out time-distance questions and, obviously, how effective units are at spotting each other from different positions. The alternative is to rely wholly on experience... and experience is a harsh teacher because she gives the test first and the lesson afterwards.

On the Firefly, the turret bustle wasn't specifically a counterweight, it was to do with moving the radios somewhere where they wouldn't get crushed by the 17pdr's recoil. Behold! From the mouth of Sir David Fletcher himself:

Cheers guys, was wondering if anyone else had had it happen to them. Bit underhand of my opponent to deploy jellyfish fields across the map but all is fair in love and war, right?

Has anyone had their pixeltruppen getting stuck in a planning loop? This happened in a PBEM: As much as I'd like the pixeltruppen to think more, I'm pretty sure they shouldn't be standing still like that. There's a few others in the same turn who stopped what they were doing and started scratching their heads, but this is the most obvious. The turn is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/16uh5d1gmxjayqs/Hapless Attack 089.ema?dl=0

There's an assumption here that the pixeltruppen actually realise they're being shot at and aren't wandering around asking each other what all the funny noises are. Then if they do, there's a decision to be made about whether they're taking effective fire they need to react to, or whether its ineffective and they should just carry on. If its an ambush, how long is it going to take them to get over the shock and react? It is a surprise, after all. Just to throw extra variables into the mix

I only stumbled on this a few months ago, but if you're playing someone with different modules and you're worried about what's compatible and what's not (ie. IIRC US armoured trucks are part of the British Forces module, not stock Shock Force), then you can check what units come from which module by pressing spacebar in the Quick Battle force selection menu:

Thanks for answering guys! Looking forward to testing them out against a human player...

I've been wondering how something command activated like an IED fits into playing WeGo and thought: "Why not just ask?" I'm guessing that most if not all of the mechanics will be the same as in CMSF1, but I can't remember them and I'm sure other people would like to know... so: Does the TacAI trigger the IED when it thinks the time is right or is it somehow controllable by the player? Are there ways (eg. target commands or target arcs) to use IEDs to target specific units/vehicles or differentiate between infantry and vehicle targets? Is it possible to use IEDs to booby trap buildings? How much do the different types of IED differ? For example: are cell and radio IEDs cheaper than wire detonated IEDs but less reliable because of NATO ECM? If something like ECM is interfering with an IED detonation command, will there be any feedback for the player? (Because while it might realistic that players get very confused when they press a button and nothing blows up, they probably need some way of knowing that its not a bug). Are VBIEDs driver activated, or activated remotely? If activated remotely, would it be possible to detonate a VBIED even if the driver is dead? And on the flipside, can VBIEDs be disarmed by engineers? Does each IED have a separate triggerman? Can one IED be detonated by multiple triggermen and can multiple triggermen detonate the same IED?

Well, definitely nice to see the Abrams has some competition! Despite the fact that the Challenger almost certainly fired APFSDS, I'm quietly wondering what happens when you hit something like an Abrams with HESH (composite armour says "not much", but still curious). CMSF2 is looking plenty appealing based on Blue-on-Blue alone!

Ah, ok. Makes sense.

Awesome stuff, really enjoying it! Interesting to see that the uncons aren't consequential enough to make it onto the fabled Blood Board, though I suppose in their little pixeltruppen heads they might be angling towards a slightly different Valhalla.

Insurgents with US helmets now? Someone has been throwing money at them. Always good to read your AARs Bil, looking forward to some good shots on AA1 from behind KT2... especially if the TOW Stryker actually performs. I never seem to have any luck with them.

My pixeltruppen shoot up surrendering enemy troops with disturbing frequency. Obviously they think its unfair that their opponents can use a Geneva Convention "Get out of War free" card and embrace the safety of captivity while they have to carry on risking life and limb. Either that or the TacAi never got those Laws of War lectures...

Full contact, all the way. On the one hand, it feels impossible to either ignore or expect an opponent to ignore the things that CM inadvertently clues you in on: the sound of enemy mortars, holes magically appearing in fences as the enemy drives through them, being able to back plot tracer fire or penetrations through vehicles back to where they came from. Its much easier to keep things simple and say "Do whatever, just don't bomb my setup zone". On the other hand, exploiting these clues almost always encourages reasonable tactical behaviour anyway: better keep your mortars moving to avoid counter-battery fire, better smash through some walls or fences as part of a deception plan, better play pop-up with your tank destroyers. Even things like splitting your squads and platoons and leaving them out of contact has a cost-benefit decision attached: do I as the player want more information by spreading my troops out, or do I want them to be able to share information between themselves and benefit from being in contact with the platoon HQ? Its nice to have a recce screen out in front. Its not nice to see it crumble at the first sign of contact because the individual teams are scared and alone.

It is pretty entertaining seeing Combat Mission spreading via word of mouth on Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/app/736220/discussions/0/1693795812297693643/

On the flipside though, the defenders can't fortify, booby-trap or generally prepare the battlefield like they can in the real world: no mousehole lines to fall back through, no buildings prepared for demolition, no using tunnels and sewers to get about, etc etc. The more I play CM, the more I want an operational layer to inform the QBs and tie them together. I only want to make that decision to plunge into an urban area after the enemy's mobile forces have been destroyed and the defenders have been isolated, shelled and bombed for a few weeks.