HerrTom

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.

I thought this was an interesting firefight in the last game that I played. Russian troops attempt to cross a bridge under heavy fire from Ukrainian positions across the river.
The view from one of the Ukrainian positions:
'''
 
An RPG slams into one of the lead vehicles:

 
Seconds later, another RPG crashes into the middle of the infantry huddled behind the vehicles, causing four casualties:

 
The Russian APCs are all destroyed and the infantry are pinned down behind the vehicles, taking heavy losses. With the APCs down, more Ukrainian infantry emerge from hiding and the defensive fire intensifies. The bridge fills with dead and wounded.

 
The Russians have decided they have had enough and are sent streaming back across the bridge in disarray.

Just a heads up.  The BFC patch page has the patch listed as CMSF2 Engine 4 (v2.0)
I think it should probably read (v2.01) 
After installation the bottom right corner of the load screen does display v2.01   

A terrorist bomb wipes out an open air market.

Thanks for showing an interest.  This is a WIP fictional red vs red AI only scenario of a Coup d’etat set on a 1072 meter by 592 meter urban map.  The map is a modified version of @LongLeftFlank Ramadi-Government-Center map.  The scenario has a variable end time.  The optimal scenario length is two hours however it can be played to three hours.  If the scenario is played longer than two hours the AI is awarded an extra 200 Victory Points.  
The player leads an early morning (0400hrs) Coup d’etat.  The player starts with a small force and attempts to recruit additional units while weakening the regime until ultimately the balance of power flips allowing the player to take control of the city. To achieve this "flip of power" the player can choose a combination of methods: ambushes, street fighting, bribery, assassination, IEDs, VBIEDs, mercenary units, HUMINT, TSE, foreign assistance (in the form of Intelligence, operatives, money, supplies, & SF unit) and radio propaganda.  Wise tactical employment of infantry units in a MOUT environment will also be necessary.  If the player fails in the coup attempt his coup leader HQ team can flee to the US consulate (which contains an exit zone).  The scenario would still be lost but making it to the consulate might be the difference between a major defeat and a tactical defeat depending on the situation etc.  
Waiting on the CMSF2 patch and beta testing.     In a week or two I'll start a forum thread on it like I did with CMBS Tactical Operations Center (TOC).   Below is a screenshot of an IED as viewed by US Marines from the roof of the US consulate (looking northeast).
 

During a coup d'etat two opposing fire teams make contact in the narrow Casbah like streets of the old city, resulting in.........Ambush!!!!!  

Thats a great movie btw. And yes duffelblog is written by vets

Some titles you can combine dirt roads with damp ground with mud terrain tiles with heavy rain 'til you're in a situation of "Why would you even consider deploying armor in conditions like this?" CMFB seems to have more instances of extreme weather/ground conditions than other titles, but you don't often see extremes of rain or snow used. Because they can be show-stoppers, depending on what forces you're trying to deploy, and scenario designers aren't in the habit of making purposefully unplayable scenarios.
Oops! I may have to eat my words. I just played a heavy snow/blizzard QB in CMFB and got no bogs at all, much to my great surprise. Maybe the ground was so frozen that it reduced the chance of bogging. And BTW, after spending much of the year in the Syrian desert I forgot how gorgeous winter Ardennes can be sometimes.

That I ever had.
Firstly Im looking for pbem oppos come one come all - got everything cept Brit module ( always will regret that )
How did I come by that with a record, son, crap job, and all sorts of problems? When I cant justify even spending 5 dollars a pop to up my other titles?
Its because of the extreme generosity of several board members Ive talked to for years who EXTREMELY generously gifted their beta testers final copy to me (Nidan1, RIP, Sburke, mkjerner) and in this case @Lethaface made my Xmas - he upgraded all my CMSFs
I dont post this to brag - its a tad embarrassing but Lethaface refuses any gift back except to keep playing PBEMs and Id like to just point out how utterly kind and generous it is for a guy who lives in Europe, and has never met me, to see my love for the games and spend his hard earned money to let me enjoy my hobby!  Its just utterly generous, benevolent and I cannot thank you enough.
I know Im very divisive and I often upset people and make a fool of myself. I truly wish all of you a Merry Xmas or whatever your beliefs are - and Id like to thank all of you for being here to talk, provide interesting conversations; even unintentionally being a constant in my life when it was all chaos ( literally. I went to jail a few years once and got out now there were smart phones. Most my friends were dead or locked up. My mom was there. And BFC was there. It always was.)
I cant thank all of you enough for well... Being you guys.

Thank ya, my Aussie brother! If you run into that dude that punched the Kangaroo in the chops, buy him a beer for me. He's my kinda guy. My cousin tried that crap with a black bear last summer. He had to give up knitting and now writes with his feet. I gotta say his penmanship has greatly improved though. Go figure.
 
It was actually Charles after the sixteenth time Steve said I want to add just one more thing to SF2. The Bigfoot part was probably for legal reasons.
 
Mord.

Throughout the past wargamers all over the world (the groggy, semi-groggy and non-groggy alike) have gathered on December 24th, in a far corner of the internet, to await the arrival of Santa Steve. It is a storied tradition that has been passed from father to son, and son to another son, and that son to his imaginary friend, Jim. For what? at least four years now? So, it's time-honored. Like drunken derelicts in a Mexican whorehouse, a whiskey, beer, (or in Emrys' case, egg nog spiked with ex-lax) in hand, they jostle excitedly to be the first to sight the legendary WaffenKringle of the Great Northern East. For they know, with his arrival come tidings of war and what shape that war will take in the following year. It's the kinda joy that brings a tear to a grown man's eye and divorce papers from that same guy's wife.
However, this December an old friend from the desert landed in a LZ that normally would be abuzz with the cries of "BONES! BONES! BONES!" This friend had lost ten years, and gained ten pounds, and looked like a million bucks! Seemingly sated and awash in desert badassery most have turned their attention to blowing the crap out of Syrian crewed T-72s or RPGing a Leopard or three. So, it begs the question, with our old friend to keep us knee deep in cordite and the WaffenKringle elves busy as only WaffenKringle elves can be, will Santa Steve ride tomorrow night? Will all the good little wargamers gather in the hopes that Santa Steve soon will be here? Or will it be the year without a Santa Steve? I for one hope to spy him drudging out of the snowy wilderness, brain-in-a-jar in hand, the pockets of his coveralls packed to the brim with CM news and wargaming goodness. But regardless as to whether it happens or not, I am thankful our stockings were stuffed early with SF2. It was a great ending to a very dry year! Here's to killing it in 2019; Russian winters and Brazilian waxings in North Italia!
Merry Christmas, Fellas!!
 

 
 
 

 
 
Mord.
 
P.S. A year ago yesterday. Wow. We made it!!!
 
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/126131-the-night-before-cm-mas/?tab=comments#comment-1731593

Oh and the wire fence vs ditch CMSF-1 to CMSF-2 conversion has been formally reported as a bug.

I am calling this a win.  Made some dumb mistakes but clearly better this time.  Clear win if I am writing the history of the battle.... 
They'll never get to Kiev at this rate....
 
 
 

Ya I picked  up SF2 because I do enjoy SF very much BUT the way the patch for all the other games that I have so much invested in has been handled really leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.  As much as I love these games they have been sitting on the shelf for 2 years more or less.  That is really just an unacceptable amount of time for a developer to fix a problem that was introduced in a paid upgrade to a product.  I don't think they feel this way but it really seems like they just don't really care about those who play primarily single player.
Well we pay the same amount for the games.  I am really sorry to come across so negative and I am sure I will get jumped on by the usual people but just remember there are probably very few people who have been more ardent supporters of these games to everyone I could preach to about how great they are than me.  So feeling the way I feel about this whole patch issue is NOT something I enjoy.  I really want to continue to support Battlefront with my hard earned money but I seriously have to question that going forward, which really breaks my heart.
To the devs who might read this I truly am sorry for the negativity, I sincerely mean that and I hope you can get where it's coming from.
 

I've gone from looking for the patch weekly to monthly... soon it will be annually. No info, no nothing... this is tedious in the extreme and no way to retain customers.
 

UKR can be depressing. I recently fired 3 ATGM in quick succession against a T72. Just got soaked up by the ERA. 
Made the next few turns very exciting, which is why I play UKR in the first place. :) 
The lesson is that with RUS ATGM you're not guaranteed a kill, buts probable. 
With UKR ATGM you really better have a back-up plan and assume 50/50 failure. 
With US its fire n forget, brah. Press the trigger and refresh Facebook. 

Images from testing:
Setup

Button clicked causing 'The Jump' (tanks redeployed according to chosen AI Plan):

So it's still as I observed, but assuming @IanL didn't keep rolling double ones, it seems the choice of plan will always be the same, the plan is predetermined at loadup.....Will run a few multiples to confirm. 
Many restarts later.....
Yup, looks like he's right.....Apologies to @ctcharger for the bum steer. 

Blue Vs Blue (US vs Germans) and M1 driving into ambush, panzerfaust rocket en-route.

Took multiple hits and crew bailed.

Only to bail out into a storm of small arms fire. You can see bullets kicking up the dust to the bottom left of the crewman. The M1s wingman is heading to the rescue.

Too late though, the bailed-out crew are quickly cut down, and the rescue M1 is in trouble of its own. The driver steps on the gas and the M1 attempts to roll out of trouble.

It takes fire from a Marder. The M1 turns towards its tormentor and the gunner draws a bead on the Marder.

Only to fire and miss as the earlier volley of cannon fire had damaged the fire control system... Both vehicles live to fight another day.

I've had the same thing happen. Tank, spotted, sitting in the wide open and a Konkurs more than a km away staring at him for several minutes without firing.

THAT, made me laugh out loud. 
Something you can do, especially when you're first learning the game is "save".  Load everybody up with ammo (I also many times cross load teams in vehicles) and position troops and vehicles at their starting locations within the setup zones.  Basically do all the administrative stuff in your SOP during setup phase and then SAVE.  If you have to start over (which you may, since you are just learning this simulation) you go back to the setup save.  It would get tedious having to repeat all the administrative stuff over again.   

Rule Number One:You never can judge the threat of a RPG-7 without taking its warhead into account. While the launcher system appears almost unchanged for many decades, warheads evolved over the time and in CMSF2 you will encounter many different ones with penetration values ranging from 280mm up to 700mm RHA.
Starting with the PG-7V and the PG7VL, these are simple HEAT rounds whith the VL being the improved more powerful version. They come with the iconing mortar/rifle grenade shaped warhead everybody knows from movies, games, and photos. It´s basically the most widespread warhead on the world and saw widespread use in Afghanistan and Iraq which prompted the Coalition forces to issue "up-armor kits" for their vehicles with addon armor systems like ERA blocks or the Slat/Cage Armor (which was already introduced in a smiliar fashion by German Forces back in WW2.) Both armor systems have the goal to "pre-detonate" the HEAT grenade before it can make contact with the main hull and inject its charge into it. You will see in this test that both systems work although success is definitely not guaranteed thus don´t "count" on them. Even may these armor systems look imposing and bulky they are just raise the survivability odds in situations you never wouldn´t like to find your vehicle in the first place. Also naturally the grenade can always hit parts that are not covered by both systems. You will also see that the impact angle contributes to the system´s effectiveness.
However the Syrian Forces and also the UNCON forces in CMSF2 evolved and now possess warheads that can overcome these two systems like the PG-7VR which comes with a Tandem warhead that has the ability to defeat counter measures first with a smaller charge before the main charge makes contact with the main hull of the target. Furthermore they even more powerful than previous warheads also against conventional armor. In other words ERA or Slat is pretty useless against them (ERA at least is able to substract of its penetration value). The vastly different shaped PG-7VR is a very lethal threat to almost any vehicle in CMSF2.
Furthermore there are the HE and Thermobaric Warheads which are designded for anti-personnel or attacking fortifications. So in CSMF2 you want to use them against infantry, especially in buildings. You can engage unarmored or very light armored vehicles but other than that they are quiet ineffective against defeating the armor. However they can damage optics and other systems outside of vehicles with their HE effect. It may also cause crew interference due to psychological stress and could trigger retreats (inexperienced, nervous crews). So it may be a viable option to use these against heavier targets via the target command to degrade their combat effectiveness.
Also in the second video when firing from distant ranges you may notice a complexity of CMSF2 that isn´t represented in many games. While the RPG is quiet unprecise at greater ranges, the AI soldiers aren´t bricks, they "learn" with every suceeding shot and thus accuracy isn´t calculated always from the scratch (this is true for all weapon systems by the way). What I often did (better said not did) is that when I heard the sound of flash of an AT being fired towards my vehicles which then missed, I found myself relieved thinking "missed, everything fine again" but especially with RPG teams being able to carry alot of ammunition you may consider to reposition your vehicle as these shots may become more precise pretty quick maybe the 2nd shot already will be enough.
Also keep always in mind: When the enemy AI fires something at you it does that most of the times because it thinks it can hurt you and achieve this with a considerable precision. So when unknown AT ordnance impacts beside your Abrams it may be able to hurt that Abrams and that the threat may be close by. The chances that this was just a guy who found an old ineffective HE warhead in his basement went to the streets and casually fired it towards your Abrams from 600m just to return to home after that is very slim.
 

I agree, diminished is a better choice of word than defeat. 

Actually, that's technically incorrect.
The (real world) purpose of the slate cage is to dent the sheetmetal cone of the incoming RPG warhead and short out the electrical connection from the piezoelectric fuse in the nose to the warhead base, causing the warhead to fail. That's why the slats are spaced a bit less than the width of an incoming RPG round. Pre-deployment tests demonstrated that slat cage had a roughly 50% success rate. The very first RPG round to hit a Stryker slat cage in Iraq detonated against the forward cage and pierced the front hull between the MEXAS ceramic tiles, severing engine cooling lines.
When Chinese-made RPG rounds began appearing in Iraq that was the beginning of the end of the slat cage. Because the Chinese round doesn't have the fusing flaw of the original RPG round. You'll notice US Stryker in Iraq during the most recent battles to oust ISIS lack the slat cage.
See the illustration of RPG warheads. That Chinese 'airburst' warhead is interesting. All it is is a delay fuse and a metal ring around the nose of the projectile which causes it to skip and tumble on hitting the ground instead of penetrate.
 

Absolutely - they're all standalone shaders you can mix and match as you see fit.  Me, I'm angsty and gritty so I play with the colours.  But that's just me.

Want only depth effects like Depth of Field and Ambient Occlusion? Check.

Or maybe you want to pretend its' 1999 again?   Good days.
The possibilities are endless!

Ok I spent a significant amount of time messing with reshade last night and decided to make a (took forever!) quick little  primer for people who haven't tried it yet, or for people who (like me) tried it and just had too many problems getting it to work. I solved that!
First off you'll want to head over to Reshade.me and dl the new 4.0.2 Reshade.
Now, go to where you dled it.
 


 

 
 
You can uninstall Reshade by redoing the exact same procedure. This time when you click your CM exe
it will remove Reshade. No muss no fuss.

Ok. Now comes the part a lot of us have had problems with. If you follow my instructions you'll be able to use Reshade with very little hassle. My pain is your gain. READ THROUGH THIS ONCE OR TWICE FIRST.
1b.) Start the CM game you installed reshade on. You'll see this (pic below). DO NOTHING.

 
2b.) Go to the editor (easiest to just do this in the editor).
3b.) Open a map and preview it. (You can open a scenario or QB or just a flat map. Not really important for this first part).
Now this is the tricky part. Just pay attention to your old buddy Mord and I am gonna get this working for you!
While you ARE IN THE EDITOR (AND EDITOR ONLY) hit the "Home" key. It will bring up a menu. Now, when you do this, for a lot of us the screen will rotate. If it does just pay attention to the menu box you see in the picture below. It will stay still. If it gets too much you can click "Home" again and it'll take you back to normal and you can get your bearings.
I suggest skipping through the tutorial you see in the pic for now.

 
4b.) Ok see the set of tabs? Click the Settings tab. EDITED: Go to Settings: Input Processing. Set it to "Pass on all input". No more spinning! BIG THANKS to Captain Reyes! Now choose "Effect Toggle Key". Now choose a key on your keyboard that you would like to toggle the Reshade effects. Make sure it isn't something CM uses. I use Shift+F2. Ok press whatever key you are gonna use. That will be used to toggle your effects on and off, obviously,

5b.) Now I am gonna give you some effects to get you started. These will be a good base for you to experiment with without a lot of guess work right off the bat. Ok, click the first tab that says "Home" next to "Settings" in the menu (NOT the keyboard "Home").
Now find the following and check them.
Tint [sepia]
Emphasize
FilmPass
ColorMatrix
GaussianBlur
Colourfulness
In this pic I chose all of the above and dragged them all to the top of the list so I always know where they are and I can experiment more easily. I highly suggest you do this to make it easy on you later.

 
Ok, do you have them all? Now, click the "Home" key on your keyboard.
Now, if you want to switch back and forth between Vanilla graphics and Reshade graphics you just hit the key you chose in part 4b.)
HERE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: Before you leave the editor make sure you toggle back to vanilla graphics. NEVER toggle Reshade graphics on outside of the editor, or outside of a battle.
NEVER toggle the Reshade menu ("Home" key) outside of the editor or a battle.
 
NOTE: If you screw up and do one of the above you'll have to find a way out of it. It won't damage your game or anything but it can take some trickery to get it back to normal. I've done it a bucnh of times now and am used to it. Don't panic if it happens! SEE CAPTAIN REYES'S POST BELOW.
Sounds like a lot but it's really quite easy. Once you do it for one game it won't take you long to have them all running using Reshade. And trust me it REALLY is worth it. I didn't think it was but now that I figured out not to open the menu or toggle the effects outside of the editor/battle it's a whole new world.
 
The screens speak for themselves!
 
VANILLA

 
BADASSERY!

 
Anybody that has any problems just ask and I'll do my best to help. I want you guys to experience this!
 
Mord.