Hapless

Completely off topic, but I just spent a minute trying to work out what the huge exhuast pipe on the back of the turret was for. Is it actually a disassembled snorkel?

Obviously hard to judge from the screens and the map but... the end of Route 2 looks like a good position. From there you are blocking Bil moving directly to the objective and he will have to come into the woods to get you on your terms (a stronger option if you could bring the infantry along, but that ship may have sailed). As a bonus, your tanks will be concealed from air and artillery observation. If Bil tries to bypass the wood on either side to get to the objective, then you should be able to hit him with flanking fire as well as fire from the Eyes on your valley side. It's... not very dramatic, it's objective rather than force focused, a man in a scary hat may ask "Why have you lost your forward momentum, Comrade?" and (more disturbingly) it basically involves seizing a position and saying "What're you gonna do now?" to Bil Hardenberger... but, ground depending, I think he's only got bad options if you're in those woods. Whatever you choose, you are currently on the wrong side of the valley and should rectify that as soon as possible

Awesome, ta very much!

I've spent ages trying to find the full version of that Fighting in Woods video! Thank you very much! There was another British Army one describing an encounter battle floating around, but it seems to have been taken down. Here's another:

I think Bil and The_Capt are more focused on smacking each other around than the actual objective. After all, if the other guy is dead you can take it anyway.

My concern for Bil is that he will still be OOing when The_Capt DAs all over him.

Not sure. It looks like there might be a bit of crossfire in the offing- the M150s covering the right treeline and the M60s covering the centre and the left. That said, I feel like I would want to be on the other side of the valley by now (terrain, speed and fields of fire permitting obviously). There's nothing like interrupting someone's Boyd Cycle by assuming a position they can't afford to ignore.

The firing ports are entirely functional in CMSF and CMBS. Testing as many Syrian MG teams as I can fit in a BMP-1 shows that they only seem to fire their AKs though. I'm sure I've heard an SVD and PK fired through a firing port, but that was when I was testing the BMP-3 in CMBS and that probably has a different system.

I was actually wondering whether all those PKs can be fired from the BMP's firing ports. You know, so you can conduct a drive-by on your way to Bil's rear areas.

Is that some kind of Machinegun Team clown car in the bottom centre there?

No smoke launchers on the M-150? That could make the ATGM getaway phase tricky...

Infamously, 000000. Can't have those PAL codes slowing down things down, can we?

What I'm looking forward to most is testing Lend Lease Shermans against T34s. CM Unthinkable when?

Not going to lie, I'm not that familiar with the campaign scripting stuff. I was under the impression that it made no difference though: any wound significant enough to incapacitate a pixeltruppen means he gets evacauted to the rear and doesn't come back within the time frame of a CM campaign, with replacements coming from a different source.

7.5. You can do everything wrong and still win.

In that case, clearly a Sherman should be cheaper than 191 points because it can be knocked out by a 52 point Panzershrek team. You can't have it both ways

I feel like actually launching a Mercedes Benz S class at a building is something I would like to see.

Hmm. Quick test and I got it too. And you're right, it's pretty annoying! If I had to guess, it's the unit in question trying to process conflicting incoming info-shares in realtime. The icons have always had little jumps and blinks as information changes, fades or solidifies... but it usually updates every 5-10 seconds or so, not all the time.

Out of interest, what difficulty are you playing on?

Re that Bradley loading diagram: so that's why BF put extra seats in CM's Bradley!

Acceptable casualties are pixeltruppen expended to good effect

Can confirm mods will work. They need to go in a folder named "Z" in SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Combat Mission Shock Force 2\Data. You'll probably have to make the folder, but it works. They don't work if you put them in UserData/Mods, which confused me for a while.

Just wondering if I've missed this all these years, but it looks like some of the US Army Humvee crews are armed with M16A4s instead of M4s?

I just about managed to watch it all- mostly trying not to backseat command from the comments. Sometimes it's more interesting to watch someone who isn't 100% familiar with the game play than someone who makes it look easy- after playing CMx2 for an entire decade it's easy to forget how different it is from other games (and how punishing it can be). He did pretty well in Allah's Fist though: a little bit of patience and he killed 5 Abrams and left one immobilised. That's a glorious victory for the Syrians!

Of course I could only think of one question. Kinda wanting the Professional version now though.