HerrTom

Oh, I'm taking my own notes

Understood, thanks for spending the time that you did!

Advancing to contact, an airborne squad's second team dashes forward until they encounter strong enemy fire. They decide discretion is the better part of valor and book it back into cover. I think I got the NV feel pretty good, though there sill are some rough edges.

That's definitely true, not sure how much I can do about it. I have a bunch of explosion animations that I've collected on my computer, many of which I've drawn myself (don't ask me why - I'm not sure myself) and this one ended up looking the best. This one was collected from some video which probably reduced its quality. Nice boom booms, I dig. What I really want to do, and may be inspired to do, is take the explosion animation all the way to the smoke bitmap, so that it's perhaps more seamless?

Almost - Gewehr der Unterstützung - lit. gun of support. It does exactly what it says on the tin! Technically it should be Selbstfahrlette Gewehr der Unterstützung mit besonderem Schwachsinn, or Sfl. GeUnStütz mit bes. SSinn. (Gotta love those abbreviations, eh?) @Mord Great to meet you! I admire your attention to detail here and elsewhere.

Airborne troops watch an 81 mm mortar strike a grain tower. 3rd platoon suppresses a sniper.

I'm sorry - the BTRs in the background which are a couple of hundred meters behind the group of 3 tanks. Is it because in replay there are tentative contacts on the other BTRs that they don't dim? If that's the case, then I'm sorry - I only really have played the modern games significantly.

Wait a minute... isn't that just showing the other units at that organizational level? Maybe it's the icon mods or something but you can see it in my CM:A screenshots (behaviour is the same in CMBS and CMFB) Mister T-62 has good contact with the two BTRs along the road, as well as his buddies. But in orders: There is no dimming for units out of contact... all the BTRs are the same colour. I completely understand if you don't want to spend the resources fixing it - since it's quite a niche problem (that clearly only a select few care about!), but it regardless doesn't appear to do what you're saying. Cheers! Don't drool too much now... it's hard to clean from your keyboard! Edit: @kraze I think the "replay" bit is a bit more nuanced than that - it appears it precalculates everything for we-go and replays it. Spitballing, but it probably simulates where all the units go, makes rolls for whatever it needs to, then records whatever results it gets to replay it back. In real time mode, this is happening, well, real time. To get a replay there'd have to be a lot of swapping or disk writing or something to get that when I don't think the engine is set up for that kind of action! (I agree, full replays would be awesome, though I dread to think about how big they'd be. Each turn I sent for Road to Odessa was like 40 Mb! Imagine that over 120 turns - 5 Gb!)

Man, I feel dumb now. That's the missing link! I for some reason had it in my head that that happened in all the other modes too... shows what I know!

I told myself I was going to leave this thread - but this keeps coming up and I'm going to try one more time to clarify this. People keep saying that - how does Iron mode let you do this compared to the other modes? I'm genuinely curious here. I'm not sure what will help it get through my thick skull - a couple of screenshots or something detailing how you do it? If you don't want to bother, no worries! But only with enemy units unless you're playing Real Time in which case this will happen with friendly units in Iron mode. And that isn't supposed to happen in WeGo, correct? Out of curiosity, does C2 affect anything else, like morale for example? Or is it solely an information pipeline? Sorry for all the questions, Steve.

Thank you for taking the time to respond so quickly. I'm still not sure I understand but at this point I'm not sure I ever will haha. I'll keep playing iron since I always have, even though it doesn't seem to really do anything . Clearly I'm in the minority here.

But how does iron give you any idea about C2 like sburke was saying if it literally does nothing during the command phase where that kind of information is useful? Do you go through your units in the replay phase and memorize the patterns? Why not behave like it does in the replay phase where that information is not useful? It just seems a little backwards. I'm not trying to be combative here, it just seems like you're writing off a central feature in Iron as WAD when it's clearly inconsistent. In the end its your game so do what you want, I'll still be a customer

Thanks Steve! In case you want screenshot proof - I took some just now. Unit selected in replay phase: Unit selected in orders phase: Pardon the different camera angles. And it's the same in CM:A which definitely isn't engine 4 haha! In replay phase: In command phase: Edit: This is why I was so confused in this thread - since what people were saying happens in-game versus what actually happens seemed to be completely different things to me!

So it's good to see I'm not the only one. I don't think I've ever played real time since I've gotten the game! Funnily enough, the v4.00 game manual says this about Iron mode: Iron is an optional setting that goes even one step further than Elite, and introduces special restrictions on what the player can do and when. While even more realistic than the other settings, this option introduces a number of interface limitations which might put off the casual player, so it is strictly an optional choice. Friendly units need to be spotted just like enemy units. If you have a friendly unit not in line of sight or in contact with another friendly unit, then the only way to find this unit is by either re-establishing contact with another friendly unit or by clicking through the chain of command in the game interface, jumping from unit to unit Clearly the mode doesn't even do what Battlefront intended (indeed what they wrote in their manual)! I can see why they're reluctant to add more things to it or add another mode like Sly mentioned. The inconsistent behaviour between RT and WeGo for this mode further confounds the issue - almost makes it seem like it was never really fully implemented...

I don't really get this because it really doesn't. Maybe I'm missing something but everything appears the same to me except if I select a unit during the replay phase. Everything else looks exactly the same as the other difficulties. I see your point. Things like command delay work in games like FPCRS or Graviteam Tactics because it's acceptable on that scale in the former and there is a more independent AI in the latter compared to CM's tighter scale and finer control.

Thanks Steve. I know they're just dumb ideas that I half baked on my lunch break!

Something occured to me. What about never getting solid contacts from units out of C2? You can still react as the NCO that there is an enemy down the street but it becomes much more limiting in how the player is able to process the information? Or with order delays, short distances have zero delay to allow you to get out of Dodge City, but you can't get them to hump it across the battlefield? I like the idea of increased fog of war, just trying to think of some solutions to the stated problems, even though it seems very unlikely to be implemented!

Is CM2 really large address aware? I haven't really looked to see, but the normal limit for 32 bit programs was 2 gb, less than 32 bits would have you believe. I think this had something to do with leaving RAM for the OS and background apps to keep them front crashing, but don't quote me on that!

I'm a little lost, I have to admit. Iron mode restricts what you can see when you're selecting a unit in replay mode but in the orders phase doesn't appear to do anything. What real gameplay effect does it have beyond other settings that puts it similar to this (cool) suggestion. I'm particularly a fan of the C2 restrictions. I play computer games so I don't have to do the bookkeeping like in the classics. While I like the idea and would use it, I don't think I'd go out of my way to use Bil's Aide de Camp...

I dunno about good use - but I'm doing something with it, that's for sure haha.

Expanded the buildings that (I believe) represent part of the 208th Guards Air Defence Brigade. Barracks are below. If they weren't part of the brigade before, they are now! Looking back to the Dniepr from higher up. I changed the weather conditions to match the actual day this takes place on (thanks @Ithikial_AU and @IanL for bothering to put together that data! ) Here we look from ground level back to the river in the same spot. Mostly to show off the haze effect that I added to reshade to better reflect the conditions: foggy and warm. I also replaced the highway bridge with a rail bridge like it's supposed to be! I'm thinking of adding an objective for the Ukrainians to evacuate the SAM complex, while the Russians need to search the buildings and exit their troops off-map.

No worries. You gave me a good idea! I'm only 2 turns into this one so far haha!

Since I'm still waiting for his turn I looked at updating the map to make a more interesting battle from input from @Haiduk. If he doesn't get his turn in before I get the map looking passable we might switch to the bigger one, expanded about 1km north.

I'm definitely not talking about ATGM warheads! I was looking at artillery shells in nearby hits within around 10 meters. It's the fragments from the shell that pose a danger though, not the blast itself. As far as I know, ATGM warheads don't produce much heavy fragmentation, so you'd only be worried about the 'jet' of metal from the HEAT warhead.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't another major reason that Drozd was dropped was its hazard to nearby fleshy infantry? Compared to Kontakt it would be very lethal. Since tanks in Afghanistan operated very closely with infantry when not used as bunkers one can imagine that being troublesome!