Aquila-SmartWargames

Not that it helps, but there is a spotted icon for the tank you label as "invisible". So, if you've selected the Panther, that front tank is KNOWN to the Panther, it just doesn't have enough information to solidly ID it. (CMBO had generic tanks that would be used for this type of thing: you'd see a blocky tank instead of a missing tank with an icon.)
As well, the way LOS works with foliage is a bit spotty. There's some fuzzy LOS to take into account breezes and openings. So, with foliage, what you see (on your screen) is NOT what you get (with LOS calculations). It is frustrating, but like many aspects of any game, without that simplification there would be too much of a burden to let the game be playable.
Not excusing it, just explaining it.
A final note: LOS uses spotting cycles. At certain intervals (with some random elements and with weight given to optics, field of view, experience, suppression, etc.), and ONLY at that moment, does a unit check for LOS. An interval of 8-15 seconds "feels" about right from my experience with the game. Meaning, if that Panther waited longer, it may eventually get a solid LOS to the tank marked with the spotting icon.
(All the above is based on "Iron" difficulty. It is the only level I use. It allows the player to know what each selected unit sees and knows about. I find Iron is much more conducive to good Situational Awareness than the other difficulty levels.)

They decided to move alot of the effects into "legacy" when installing which isn´t downloaded anymore by default but has to be selected manually, perhaps thats the issue.

Without further ado:
You can all get your hands on version one here
It's still the weekend where I am!
Enjoy!
LS

I said I needed 15 maps for the People's Militia campaign however one of the maps is slated to perform double duty, so it's really 14 now.
The latest map conversion is based off a @Paper Tiger map...




... I only have two more maps to go & they're both planned to be on the smallish scale so we're looking good for the release of the 0.97 'People's Beta'.
 
I also quickly tried out one of the 0.96 scenarios & realized I forget to update that scenario's briefing (despite me having a very specific memory of having done so)...
... so that's another fix that has been added to the "to do" list.

I also wonder about wether the amount of tank gun damage in CMWW2 is authentic or not. Furthermore putting tanks in hull down might be problematic. There was already some discussion and testing done on this topic lately:
 

- German addon skirts were introduced to tackle the Soviet ATR threat in order to interfere with the projectile before making contact with the main hull. It seemed to work good, also good effectiveness was reported against 76mm HE which also was used against vehicles. It was never designed with HEAT protection really in mind as primary.
- With the arrival of the Western Allies and its HEAT based portable launchers it was reported to offer (some) protection "by accident". It seems there was no real consesus even back in the days about how effective it is and it remaints a controversial topic to this very day. A typical problem is also that alot of individuals also approach this topic with this "all or nothing" or "x-yes/x-no" mindset ala "is skirt X protecting from HEAT weapon Y" which is simply not working when talking about many topics of real warfare. Overall evaluating the additional protection value with "low" might be the safest bet.
- Ít was later replaced by Thoma Drahtgeflecht Skirts because production of these were easier and they achieved the same effect against ATRs as it was already stated in this threat. If they were really more succesful in specifically interfere with fuzes remains in the unclear.
- As mentioned there was a widespread use of field armour including logs, sandbags, welded replacement tracks and wheels. There effectiveness might be even evalued lower than skirts at least against HEAT due to the little standoff it usually provided.
- There is also this consideration that some measures might even improved the HEAT penetration i. e. made it words as due to production and technological limitations alot of these weapons were designed with less than optimal standoff ranges which then could be evened out by the addon armour when pre-detonated by it properly.
- all of this is was in use in many post-WW2 conflicts that featured RPG systems, recently by Western Coalition in Afg and Iraq in order to specifically tackle the popular single stage RPG warheads & its various copies, and in Syria everything that is loose is welded onto tanks. Does it mean it must be super-effective? Not really.
However:
- Could a skirt/wire mesh interfere enough with a HEAT charge in order to fault its fuze or to make its superplastic jet less efficient in penetrating the main hull? Sure. Did a wooden log, a sandbag, or welded tracks, or tank wheels safe the day for a crew somewhere somewhen? Sure there are accounts claiming that. Was it worth the complete fuss especially when taking into account the additional burden on industry, the vehicle engines, transmission, fuel consumption? Nobody might every know and there might be no universal answer.
More important:
- even wide-spread measures weren´t done because some super-brain scientist came over and told them but because of the psychological effect. In the end soldiers are also humans and might try everything to ease their mind or to find some protection against a lethal threat no matter the effectiveness. Im am pretty sure there were commanders and also higher leadership that knew about the little "hard" effect some of this measures would bring but still ordered them because they counted on the psychological effect.
CM specifically:
btw I also did some testing on the single-stage RPG warheads vs Cage Addon Armour in CMSF2. It was a small batch size but it seems that the angle is also calculated into the odds of defeating the charge so it might be not just random luck.
Furthermore I think that CM only shows a single hit message, so if you read (Partial)Penetration doesn´t mean the skirt was doing nothing but didn´t provide enough protection to stop the penetration. Vice versa if you read "HIT: Skirt" doesn´t mean that the charge never made contact with the main hull but that it in no way managed to penetrate it. Furthermore this could mean that there might be a chance that a complete penetration ended up being a partial one because of the skirt. It is a theory might be different.

Courage Conquers, 1st mission. 
First encounter at 1:46:00, Sherman vs Sherman at 2:35:19
Really liked the idea.

@Aquila-SmartWargames
Thanks Aquila. I saw your camo experiment on YouTube a while back and was very impressed. A lot of what you’re doing is absolutely fantastic and way beyond my poor addled brain at the moment, but I will take a look at the mdr files when I’m done with this mod. 
I’m getting some files together for testing and will upload them later today so you can grab them. I’ll include the ReShade preset as well.
LS

At least it was the case back when I tested it a bit some years ago. I did a 2-player hotseat and ran my troops around behind and to the sides of the Greyhound, and while buttoned, it never knew a thing.

It used to be that if you sent infantry through forest on hunt orders, they would sometimes just stop and go prone for seemingly no reason at all. No contact marker, no shots fired. Then if you told them to keep moving, there would in fact be enemies very close by. So that matches your idea that units can be aware of enemies without getting a contact marker.
However, I think this behaviour has been changed for infantry. They seem less likely to stop hunting now, and also often don't stop even when taking fire.

Tagged mods are only activated when the specific tag is used by the scenario/campaign and AFAIK tagged mods are overwriting every non-tagged mod.

The comparison pic should also suit my colored silhouettes pretty good

Hey there, 
I noticed that the image for the AH-1W Super Cobra in the air support tab uses the silhouette of a AH-1E/F Cobra. I searched the forums to see if anybody has already done a corrected silhouette for download but couldn't find anything. So I sat down and created one on my own. Satisfied with the result, I thought other people might enjoy this as well.
 
Installation:
1. Download
2. Extract the Growler's Super Cobra Silhouette folder from the .zip file to a place of your preference
3. Place the Growler's Super Cobra Silhouette folder in C:\Users\user\Documents\Battlefront\Combat Mission\Shock Force 2\User Data\z (make sure you don't have any other files with the name "silhouette ah-1.bmp" in your z directory)
4. Done. The next time you start up Combat Mission Shock Force 2, this custom image should be correctly displayed for any AH-1W Cobra in the support tab.
 
Included in the mod folder is the reference image I used to create the .bmp file. Hope you enjoy!
Growler's Super Cobra Silhouette.zip

Short Update:
I am confident to finish the map-work until Release of the CMFR-Module - as well the other stuff like tactical/strategic maps, pictures etc.
AI plans and playtesting can start not until the release because of new TOE.
So, I will need numerous volunteers for testing - ideally each tester should not have to playtest more than 1-2 missions.

The finished campaign will include 8 partially huge Master-maps up to a size of 2 x 3 km, 4-5 smaller maps and 22-23 single missions.
 

No, THIS is Ramelle.

What really? Haha it was one of my sloppiest CM playthroughs. I started by taking care of every single man with the observer beach party but when the batallion came into play I started to waste the forces and drive tanks around all over the map somewhat in flight mode.This has something to do that I indeed prefer smaller OOBs up to company level and like to focus on single situations. Yes I´m using to many quick command and not enough rest because time limits ill-trained me once to and it really showed here. I also became hungry.
I guess I am prone to apply a modern mindset when it comes to ww2 air support but yes I know from accounts that it often was next to possible to bring support options to effect especially in the PTO. To my knowledge I didn´t alter any of the air support in the editor but accidents happen. Calling in all support options from the beginning would be also my choice when deciding again.
Very unique scenario. Would like to see a <=company-level campaign based on these Pacific assets.

Okay I´ve played the scenario. It comes with a big OOB which was absolutely beyond my personal comfort zone and left me playing rather thoughtless and laid back. Preferring smaller OOBs is personal preference and others might look exactly for something like this, specifically if you always wanted to recreate the Iwo Jima Yellow Beach landings.
Would´ve welcomed a couple of TRPs. I´m not a big fan of time limits and changed it to 4h, again personal preference. Map alongside terrain mod very beautiful, really liked the ambience sound and Japanese voices.
It was challenging to adapt which is good news. Not just a reskin which means that this provides some kind of new gameplay experience as fighting on this map and the situation felt different, like playing a different CM game.
 

tHANKS i WILL probably not be the only one to download it, but I can tell you that I am the one that really enjoying to waching the video, this was like you said a new CM !

Okay I´ve played the scenario. It comes with a big OOB which was absolutely beyond my personal comfort zone and left me playing rather thoughtless and laid back. Preferring smaller OOBs is personal preference and others might look exactly for something like this, specifically if you always wanted to recreate the Iwo Jima Yellow Beach landings.
Would´ve welcomed a couple of TRPs. I´m not a big fan of time limits and changed it to 4h, again personal preference. Map alongside terrain mod very beautiful, really liked the ambience sound and Japanese voices.
It was challenging to adapt which is good news. Not just a reskin which means that this provides some kind of new gameplay experience as fighting on this map and the situation felt different, like playing a different CM game.
 

Scenario alongside the Pacific terrain and ambience mod is great, unfortunately the Japanese Infantry and US WW2 Marines mod comes in legacy CMBN file standard. The Japanese are a real challenge. They are using Luftwaffe airborne skeletons in British infantry slots and renaming everything in order to make it work can really start to let your head smoke.
I just tried to convert those Japanese and managed a partial half-hearted result but I had to remove the LW skeletons because otherwise they got weird faces and uniforms, there is a chance that I incorrectly changed files.

Perhaps somebody that is good with CMBN naming conventions, dependecies, and conversions like @LongLeftFlank himself, @37mm , @Mord or somebody else knows if this can be converted without extensive rework.
This is really a gem of mod I didn´t know that it existed. It comes with alot of content, Japanese audio, UI mod, and pacific terrain. Taken together with the content that was recently provided by the H&E mod there are alot of options to go WW2 Pacific or whatever similar.

Ok let me some min to come back... and starting the computer and I will try to linked it !
Sorry yes I make a mistake is from CMBN !

I also wonder about wether the amount of tank gun damage in CMWW2 is authentic or not. Furthermore putting tanks in hull down might be problematic. There was already some discussion and testing done on this topic lately:
 

Thats not really how distance vision and visual acuity is working. I´ve had contact with real military simulators and shortcomings are described on exactly the opposite. Due to limitations of most in-use displays - thus videogames and recordings - may have a limitation of proper farsight and distant stimulus aquisition in a visual busy environment when compared to the capabilities of the human eye. This is the reason why games like Arma provide the player with an artifical zoom in order to try simulate proper eye capabilities.
Its the eye feature called accomodation that is shifting the lens in order to adapt the focal point on the retina/fovea centralis in context to distance. Thats how we manage to accomodate close and distant focus. A healthy eye without lens, bulbus, retina, muscle anomalies is able to accomodate into the infinite. What you´re describing sounds more like what shortsighted individuals may experience who can´t accomodate their focal point to distance properly. Also there is often haze which becomes more noticeable on distance.
Low resolution textures don´t make it more realistic. Grain doesn´t make it more realistic, (radial) blur and field of depth are resembling this but are nowhere realistic as this effect appearance and strength is tied to the videogame POV and not player eyes´ fixation and accomodation.
Nevertheless the screenshots you´r e mentioned look good. It looks like the Tilt Shift effect in Reshade. I would like to use some sort of depth of field effect alongside @37mmScreenshots profile. Problem is that it is tied to screen position and not ingame distance. Not sure if there is a way for Reshade to "read" CM´s ingame distance... would be definitely great.

In CMFB, I'm playing around a bit with the 57mm AT gun VS Panthers.
But I am nearly unable to make the gun fire its APDS ammo. The Panther is coming straight towards the gun, and I tried firing at various distances. The gun keeps using regular AP ammo, which has no effect. Only when the tank got closer than 190m, the gun fired one single APDS, which penetrated the hull, but then it kept firing more regular AP.
It has 22 APDS shells available. The crew is regular, +1 motivation, in close contact with HQ.
So, why isn't it using it? Any ideas?