IICptMillerII

Just and fyi for Armorgunner and anyone else who wants to modify morale in campaigns; morale DOES NOT effect the current fleeing behavior seen in v4. A unit with maximum morale/training/leadership and a unit with the worst morale/training/leadership react the same to artillery. All flee at the first round that lands near enough to them. If you want to see the topic discussed at length, as well as a video presentation of the issue, check out this thread:
 
 

Good to know! I'll give that a try the next time I get a chance to work on the SLA.
@mjkerner those skins look great! I especially like the tiger stripe one.
As far as additional Syrian army skins go, I have a few that I've been playing around with for a while now. I tend to like the idea of creating skins that represent generic OpForces as I am much more interested in force on force conventional fighting than I am in insurgencies. Heres one of the skins I'm pretty fond of:
http://i.imgur.com/yTiuOyT.jpg
 

Good to know! I'll give that a try the next time I get a chance to work on the SLA.
@mjkerner those skins look great! I especially like the tiger stripe one.
As far as additional Syrian army skins go, I have a few that I've been playing around with for a while now. I tend to like the idea of creating skins that represent generic OpForces as I am much more interested in force on force conventional fighting than I am in insurgencies. Heres one of the skins I'm pretty fond of:
http://i.imgur.com/yTiuOyT.jpg
 

Good to know! I'll give that a try the next time I get a chance to work on the SLA.
@mjkerner those skins look great! I especially like the tiger stripe one.
As far as additional Syrian army skins go, I have a few that I've been playing around with for a while now. I tend to like the idea of creating skins that represent generic OpForces as I am much more interested in force on force conventional fighting than I am in insurgencies. Heres one of the skins I'm pretty fond of:
http://i.imgur.com/yTiuOyT.jpg
 

Thanks Cpt. Miller!  I had checked out sbobovyc's thread but like you, I'm just not that experienced to want to even attempt to tackle 3D models.
@Rokossovski:  I'm working on texture mods for Syrians, among others.  Here are some screen shots of preliminary (that is, slapped together very quickly, lol) tests of some camo for African troops. I have a lot of camo patterns I'm planning for various nations/rebels/etc., and there will be some specifically for Syrians.  But the skins are separate from the uniforms, so they could all be used for Syrians.  With Cpt. Miller's mods and I'm sure a lot of other modders, you should have plenty to choose from! 

 

 

If you use the mod tools by @sbobovyc posted here you can manipulate some of the 3D models in Blender: 
I've tried it myself but I don't have enough experience using Blender or doing any type of 3D modelling work to make anything halfway decent. @Saint_Fuller does however, and graciously made both the ssh-68 helmet and beret for me for the mod. Its also important to note that these models replace existing models, they are not added.
Thanks! I'm still not quite done working on it yet. There are a few odds and ends that need finishing, and I'm still trying to  see if there is any way to make the beret texture less shiny, though so far I haven't had any luck with that. I'm also debating adding roundels to the SLA vehicles. The original SLA vehicles from Arma 1 didn't have any markings, but I thought it could be a cool way to add a bit of flavor. Though adding the roundels is a bit of a headache. I can only add them to flat surfaces on the vehicle textures, otherwise they get warped. This means I cannot add them to the turrets of vehicles, which is where I think they would look the best unfortunately. 

Here are some images of a mod I'm working on. It's a reskin of the Syrian army to look the like the Sahrani Liberation Army (SLA) who were the OpFor from Arma: Armed Assault. It includes 2 model retextures as well, the ssh-68 Soviet helmet, and a green beret for the SLA special forces known as the Especas. The 3D model work was done by @Saint_Fuller.





 

Here are some images of a mod I'm working on. It's a reskin of the Syrian army to look the like the Sahrani Liberation Army (SLA) who were the OpFor from Arma: Armed Assault. It includes 2 model retextures as well, the ssh-68 Soviet helmet, and a green beret for the SLA special forces known as the Especas. The 3D model work was done by @Saint_Fuller.





 

Here are some images of a mod I'm working on. It's a reskin of the Syrian army to look the like the Sahrani Liberation Army (SLA) who were the OpFor from Arma: Armed Assault. It includes 2 model retextures as well, the ssh-68 Soviet helmet, and a green beret for the SLA special forces known as the Especas. The 3D model work was done by @Saint_Fuller.





 

I’d venture to say that if we were hard-wired to destroy one another we’d have done it by now. Plus, you wouldn’t see things like 1.3 million psychiatric casualties in the span of a four year war and moral injury wouldn’t exist. (Like a full sixteenth of the US military in WWII). 
Moreover, the intense training that militaries undergo wouldn’t have to be so intense.
We do have a very intense, primal instinct for self-preservation, though. That’s arguably why you see so many mental health problems in and following a war...most of what we trained to do goes against self-preservation. Hell, the whole reason militaries are so rigidly disciplined is to try to overcome those instincts 
I don’t doubt that some are wired a little differently, and thus don’t have any problems killing. They’re called sociopaths 

I was just able to finish the entire article and wanted to say another well done! I really appreciate that you cite your sources and include them at the bottom. Aside from it lending credibility and support to what you're writing, it also provides readers with some good book recommendations which is always a plus. 
One of the many reasons I like CM so much is how well it simulates soft factors, such as suppression and morale. Most games don't even bother to include these factors, and most that do try to simulate them fall short in my opinion. Speaking of those soft factors, @Josey Wales put together an excellent video series detailing how the soft factors work. Highly recommended for those who have not seen them. 

I haven’t finished all of your post yet, but so far it is fantastic. Really appreciate you posting this here so we can see it!
i remember the first time I read a book that covered the extensive effect of battle fatigue and how common it was. The book was With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge and covers his experiences in the Pacific theater during WWII. Highly recommend to any here who have not read it. 
In the ETO, many are aware of the manpower issues the Army faced, and how replacement depots were hastily put together in an attempt to solve the issue. But what I think many do not realize is that the Army wasn’t suffering a manpower crisis because of KIA/WIA (though the numbers were quite high) but due to the psychiatric casualties suffered. 
Anyways just wanted to say well done on the write up and thanks again for posting it here. Very much looking forward to finishing it, and to future writings by you!

I was just able to finish the entire article and wanted to say another well done! I really appreciate that you cite your sources and include them at the bottom. Aside from it lending credibility and support to what you're writing, it also provides readers with some good book recommendations which is always a plus. 
One of the many reasons I like CM so much is how well it simulates soft factors, such as suppression and morale. Most games don't even bother to include these factors, and most that do try to simulate them fall short in my opinion. Speaking of those soft factors, @Josey Wales put together an excellent video series detailing how the soft factors work. Highly recommended for those who have not seen them. 

I was just able to finish the entire article and wanted to say another well done! I really appreciate that you cite your sources and include them at the bottom. Aside from it lending credibility and support to what you're writing, it also provides readers with some good book recommendations which is always a plus. 
One of the many reasons I like CM so much is how well it simulates soft factors, such as suppression and morale. Most games don't even bother to include these factors, and most that do try to simulate them fall short in my opinion. Speaking of those soft factors, @Josey Wales put together an excellent video series detailing how the soft factors work. Highly recommended for those who have not seen them. 

A great book on battlefield psychology is Brains & Bullets.

https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/brains-bullets
 

The more I learned about the realities of combat in WWII the more I wondered how on earth men withstood it. I found, however, that sometimes they didn’t. 
Below is a link to an overview of battle fatigue in US forces in WWII. I found some rather astounding numbers, and also that the army studied the issue of men’s breaking points very meticulously. Given the numbers involved, they had to. 
The morale model in Combat Mission’s WWII titles are remarkable in their reflection of reality. There have been studies that found that the “soft factors” that determine when and why men will break are not as abstract as one would think. 
Battle fatigue in WWII is a fascinating - even if heartbreaking - topic that I thought deserved some study. Figured you guys might be interested as well 
 
https://battlelines.blog/2019/01/09/the-spirit-of-the-infantry-battle-fatigue-in-the-second-world-war/
 

I've noticed some redundancy in the game files, duplicates and the like. Not sure if/how they are utilized but for what its worth, US Heavy infantry is mech infantry. You if you make a mech infantry themed icon then that'll be the heavy infantry icon in current nomenclature. 

Giving extra AT assets to HQ units is realistic. The mission (or the circumstances you find yourself in) always dictate. In this case you knew you were being attacked by a vehicle heavy force, and you needed as much AT spread out as possible. I can't speak for other nations but for the US it is not uncommon for HQ elements, be it platoon leaders on up, to use AT assets when the situation calls for it. There is a particularly famous example from the beginning of the Korean War in which Major General Dean used a bazooka to knock out a few T-34s as his position was being overrun. Here's a wiki link for those who are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Dean#Taejon
Obviously this is not the norm, but if the situation calls for it then it's plenty realistic to have HQ units with AT assets. After all, rank doesn't protect against tank shells. Might as well be able to shoot back. 
As to the question of a proper load of ammo, CM actually slightly undermodels the standard combat load for the US Army. I don't have the numbers from in game in front of me at the moment, but I recall if you break everything down, the riflemen have a combat load of 7 magazines (which is correct) but the SAW gunners only have half of their typical combat load. I think in game the standard for a US squad is something like 1800 rounds, which is a good 400 rounds or so below the standard in reality. 
Its also important to note that in reality, the situation always dictates how much ammo ends up being carried. A short dismount from Bradley's to clear a building would only involve the bare minimum. Whereas a light infantry patrol over the course of several days would mean that everyone would carry a lot of extra ammo. For example, while a standard combat load may be 7 magazines, most riflemen tend to carry double that when outside the wire. On top of this, certain weapon systems require buddy loading. A good historical example of this is German infantry squads and MG-42s, where the riflemen in a squad would carry extra ammo for the MG. The same holds true today. Extra ammo for squad based SAWs and platoon level M-240s (light infantry platoons) are all carried by riflemen. Same goes for platoon level mortars, javelin ammo, etc. 
All this is to say that, for the US Army infantry at least, it is not unrealistic to load them down with at least double what they carry by default. As to the argument about fatigue and how that extra ammo affects them, I tend to think this isn't a problem. Units have a fixed inventory space (a 2 man team can only carry so many javelin missiles, etc) and Western units in general tend to fatigue pretty quickly as is. Plus, if a team is carrying something heavy, they are automatically restricted from being able to 'Fast' move and sometimes even 'Quick' move. 

Managed to knock out all the Brits today! I got on a roll and couldn't stop. I'll be glad when I finally have all the base portraits down so I can start putting the formations together. That's gonna be a bit of work. I also included some pics of the Marines tanker. You guys haven't seen him yet.
You would not believe just how many separate pictures make up the Brits and the USMC tanker. Unreal. I think the Marine tanker alone was 7 different pics.
 

 
Mord.

This is one of the main reasons why I like CM so much, its fidelity to reality in all respects. There are plenty of games that bend and break the rules of reality on purpose for the supposed benefit of gameplay. I'm glad CM does not do this and that there are no plans to do this in the future.
As I'm sure you know, there are basically two levels to an air defense network. Long range, high altitude, and short range, low altitude. Long range assets include systems like the US Patriot missile and the Russian BUK and KUB. These are well outside the scope of CM.
Short range assets are like the ones you've already listed, MANPADS, AAA, etc. There are plenty of NATO attack aircraft that have weapon systems that have to be employed within the range of these air defense assets. The A-10's gun for example, any aircraft with unguided rockets, etc. Where I definitely agree with you is when you are dealing with an aircraft like an F-16 for example dropping a JDAM on a target. Those can be accurately dropped from 30,000 feet, miles away from the battlefield, thus well outside any SHORAD. My guess as to why SHORAD can still engage aircraft using these types of weapons is that modeling the appropriate behavior would take a lot of time and work for a somewhat negligible effect in game. 
There is also a pretty big grey area with helicopters. This is just an anecdote from me, so I have no idea if this is the actual case, but I have observed both in BS and SF2 that when you assign an Apache to a 'Heavy' mission that favors the Hellfires, it is not readily engaged by SHORAD assets. However, if you assign the Apache to a 'Medium' or 'Light' mission in which it has to strafe, it is readily engaged by SHORAD. I was playing a scenario in which I had an Apache shot down by a AAA technical because I had it set to a strafe mission. I called the other Apache in using the 'Heavy' tasking and it never received any fire despite launching 6 of its 8 Hellfires at targets. I've noticed this in multiple instances in both SF2 and BS. Again, this is anecdote so it does not count as objective evidence, but based on my experience it seems that the Apaches "pop-up attack" behavior (staying at tree top level so that targeting it is extremely difficult) is modeled. 
All that being said, I think the behavior as it is currently is not broken or outside reality. It would be nice to see it refined, but personally there are plenty of other things I would like to see tweaked/developed before time was spent on how aircraft and AA operate. If and when the behavior is tweaked in the future, I think the SOP will still be largely the same. Once AA assets have been identified, its best to neutralize them before liberally using air units.

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.

@Josey Wales I second DaVinci Resolve. It is very powerful, and free. I'm also not sure about composing text, but based on everything else DaVinci is capable of, I'm sure it's possible. The difference between the paid version and the free version is primarily technical software that allows for rendering 3D special effects and the like using a physical hardware bench. they provide a comparison between the paid and free versions on the website, and you'll see that you have all the capability you'll need using the free version. There are no ads or anything like that either with the free version. Here is the website:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/
The only thing to note is that, if you use Nvidia Shadowplay to record gameplay, sometimes there can be some audio stuttering after rendering footage with DaVinci. Apparently the reason is because Shadowplay uses a dynamic framerate in its file recording format, which sometimes causes some hiccups with DaVinci. 
If that poses an issue, I know people have had a lot of success with recording CM using OBS, which is also free. Though I myself have not used OBS to record CM. 

Apropos the subject of suppressive fire...
Firstly, what a fascinating thread.  For what it's worth, here are my thoughts...
1) I'm getting a strong sense of deja-vu here, particularly as I seem to recall once reading that pre 1914, accepted military thinking was that the new-fangled Vickers gun was clunky, inaccurate and definitely no match for the magazine rifle plus an acceptable standard of musketry.  To be fair though, this didn't apply to the Germans who at that stage were way ahead of the curve in all matters Maxim compared to us Brits.
2)  With regard to the new all singing all dancing M27 rifle...  Yes, improved accuracy is always a plus and yes, with the M27 I'm sure this could be achieved on a gallery range, with  firing points every hundred yards, ditto flags to show how the wind is blowing, beautifully mown grass, an inexhaustible supply of tea (coffee for our American cousins) plus a NAAFI wagon.  It would be a completely different story though when you are trying to win a firefight where the enemy is shooting back at you and is exposing himself briefly if at all.  It's even worse when you are assaulting up hill, doing the fire & manoeuvre thing, you are knackered, out of breath and the sweat is trickling into your eyes.  Under those conditions, getting the rounds down is what matters.   Having a sooper dooper Gucci rifle that can shoot the pips out of a playing card at 300 will make no difference at all.
3) An eyebrow was definitely raised at some of the arguments that stated that accuracy of fire trumped volume of fire.  What these arguments seemed to be saying was that the highly accurate Bren gun was better at putting down suppressive fire than the MG34 or the MG42.  Er… Yes!  Quite!!  I would have loved to have seen someone try and run that one past my old man who served in the 8th Army.
SLR

I use DaVinci Resolve, and it's quite powerful, but I'm not sure how easy it is to compose text. There are tools to do it but haven't done it in a while.

37 selected Flavour Objects that I made for Black Sea have been combined and renamed within the SF2 editor as required to be available within SF2
Some textures have been reworked to fit within the Syrian environment.
FO have been added to empty slots within the Map Editor and so the naming conventions in most cases are a little odd.
Download https://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=7737

Read Me
Additional Flavour Objects for SF2 
Additions to the FO as follows
Aircon
3 – concrete barrier
4 – spray tank on wheels
5 – Disc rake
6 – picnic table
7 – fork lift truck
8 – rail buffer1
9 – rail buffer2
ATM
2 – kiosk1
3 – kiosk2
4 – loaded pallet
5 – stack of pallets
6 – pallet on trolly jack
7 – large aircon unit
8 – vending machine
9 – electrical box
Log
3 – concrete pipes spilt
4 – concrete pipes stacked
5 – concrete pipe
Shelter
5 – wooden pitched roof
6 – green plastic roof
7 – pillars and arch
8 – busstop
Bin
7 – large yellow bin empty
8 – large yellow bin on side
9 – large yellow bin full
Pallet
4 – pallet trolly jack (no pallet)
5 – handcart1
6 – handcart2
7 – handcart3
8 – handcart4
9 – handcart5
Barrel
3 – 3pipes standing
4 – 2pipes standing with base
Telephonepole
4 – concrete telephone pole
5 – raised barrier
6 – basketball hoop
7- rail crossing X
 
P