Saint_Mattis

Save scum here, I can attest to this working well. I do this for 2nd play through campaigns and scenarios. Even if I get low casualties I always try to improve and cheese it a bit in an attempt to receive the fewest casualties possible, and it can be quite enjoyable coordinating.

I've had a jolly time watching Steam-related CMSF2 Youtube videos from  payers who make up for their lack of skill by a great deal of enthusiasm.

You can replay any turn. This way you can complete campaigns without a single loss of anything.
 
Its only a matter of savescumming.

A player on the Steam forums seemed to be having a problem like this, which is something never encountered before as far as I know.  They indicate a reinstall resolved the issue.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1369370/discussions/0/4712410385450456811/

I always try to go for zero 'unnecessary' casualties. 
Apart from that I don't really think of a % of acceptable losses. Like others said, there is just to much variation to have a fixed % of acceptable casualties. In a campaign there is often something in the briefing which tells about acceptable casualties for being able to continue the campaign.
Usually I realized during and after the battle if I'm doing good or if I'm not doing good. I might feel that I did much worse in campaign battle where I incurred 5% casualties, compared to one where I took 20%. Shooting up some militia hiding in the desert isn't comparable to assaulting a city district crawling with elite enemy troops, mines, IEDs, etc.
With regards to TF Thunder campaign I think that most of the earlier missions are achievable with minimal casualties, however further in the campaign the quality of enemy forces improve and it will logically mean more casualties on average.

acceptable casualties are highly dependant on the difficulty and importance of the mission i would say...
 

Total Victory amount of casualties, i go for that 

This scenario is based upon reports I have seen regarding the ongoing battles around Tal Malah.
Feedback is appreciated. I had to drop the tactical image from the file, as it made it too big to upload. This is my first attempt at a fully fleshed out scenario from scratch. Hope you enjoy!
Respectfully,
LL
Tal Malah.btt

I rushed a portion of the fourth mission of the main campaign and lost so many vehicles to ambushing recoilless rifles. This is after I lost two Bradley's (one lost crew and pass and the other had crew and pass walk away).
I'm going to redo the mission because I really didn't do it justice to rush and watch the Raptors game (my CO would be disappointed), and I love my pixeltruppen too much to allow too many casualties. 
What does everyone figure is an acceptable casualty rate? Realistically 30% is an acceptable statistic but it feels hard watching my troops walk into a bad spot and get cut down by a lone gunman with a 7.62. 
What kind of tactics do you deploy to counter this? Infantry wait to shoot up my GIBs as they debus the LAV, meaning my armour usually doesn't spot them until they start to open up. Spec fire works, but in built up areas theres suually more windows than barrels

When playing US/NATO vs Syrians in CMSF it's normal that more than a handful of friendly casualties should get one so many demerits (or the Syrians got many points) that it was hard to win.   The challenge of CMSF is in using the overwhelming firepower effectively so that one has hardly any casualties.  But, anything over 10% casualties would seem to be a very bloody battle.
CMBS was a shock as it was a peer-peer fight and heavy casualties are very common.

It depends on how they die and what they accomplished. I generally try to take lower casualties as NATO then I do as the Allies or Germans in WW2. 

I always play aiming for zero casualties, especially single player. That obviously doesn't always work out.

The Raptors needed to play Matt Thomas more and then maybe they could still have a chance to take acceptable losses! /s
Typically the modern titles would be 20% as the maximum and 30% for WW2 titles.

0% Vehicles can get replaced but im very careful with my infantry and air assets

If the mission statement or tasks require a threshold then anything above that is a fail as it is inherent to the mission or is a specified task.  Otherwise my benchmark is to maintain above 75% CE which by many professional standards is one at which your unit does not need to be pulled from the line to rest/refit.
Trying to achieve zero casualties or ridiculously low levels of casualties is unrealistic and unprofessional.  I recall reading something in one of the Australian Army's professional journals which made the observation that practically every junior officer prior to a deployment in response to a question along the lines of 'what do you hope to achieve during your operational tour to Afghanistan' said 'to bring everyone back.'  While laudable the correct answer, as pointed out in the journal, should have been 'to achieve my mission.'
 

0% is what i personally would like to achieve. i know it wont happen every time. but i try to find alternative ways to beat each scenario. Even if ive played it a million times

My main annoyance is a tank with IR optics not being able to spot anything in a treeline, the vision needs to be improved

Lots of designers have Anglish as a 2nd language so they should be congrachulated for what they can do.  Am less vorried about grammer and speling than about breefings that are either inaccurate, to complex and/or hard to unnerstand or omit important info dat the player needs in order to plan proper.  

Is there a repository of Campaign Script Files for reference? I am interested in editing the CMSF2 and CMBS campaigns (Though CMSF2 campaigns don't seem to be able to be unpacked given current tools). I have extracted the campaigns, edited the core forces, I just need to compile but I'm a bit lost with the campaign script file (not a programmer), and would love to at least see the CMBS one for reference if anyone has it.
Thank you for any help. 

Heaven & Earth, the "Vietnam-esque" Super-mod, is still very much a work in progress but I think we're now at a stage where we can start an 'open beta'.
Enjoy & don't hesitate to give the team some feedback.
 
The download link (includes the manual)...
https://www.mediafire.com/file/ij3gj4f3qmosjny/H%26E_0.96.7z/file
The manual only (for those who just wish to peruse) link...
http://download1979.mediafire.com/t2e7pgu84vqg/9vrw3i18q5qpydf/H%26E+0.96+Manual.pdf
The kind of stuff that you can expect...
Content includes...
Two "Bong-Hai Civil War" Era Campaigns (one original 15 mission campaign by @puje and a 7 mission "conversion" campaign by myself). Eleven "Bong-Hai Civil War" Era scenarios (all "conversions"). Nine Modern Era scenarios (one original scenario by @Sgt.Squarehead and eight simple conversions by myself). Three Quick battle map conversions by @Combatintman.  
Installation & set-up
The Heaven & Earth modpack is designed for CMSF2 version 2.02, it is advised that you use no other mods alongside Heaven & Earth as it is a complete package with a unique UI, sounds, scripts, special effects, vehicle's & weapons... many of which are swapped by the use of tags.
 
Place the mod pack into your empty mod folder in C:\Users\user\Documents\Battlefront\Combat Mission\Shock Force 2\User Data
Place the contents of the scenario folder into your scenario folder in C:\Users\user\Documents\Battlefront\Combat Mission\Shock Force 2\Game Files
Place the contents of the campaign folder into your campaign folder in C:\Users\user\Documents\Battlefront\Combat Mission\Shock Force 2\Game Files
Place the contents of the map folder into your map folder in C:\Users\user\Documents\Battlefront\Combat Mission\Shock Force 2\Game Files

 
In terms of settings, because Heaven & Earth maps are often more complex than the desert maps of CMSF2, you may find it useful to slightly reduce your '3d Model Quality' settings... 'Balanced' or 'Improved' should be sufficient for smooth gameplay. Remember you can change your '3d Model Quality 'in-game using Shift+[ & Shift+]. You can also toggle shadows with Alt+W.
Some of the newly created objects may look odd with shaders off. Alt+R will toggle your shaders in-game.

<sigh>  Alright... Ran another spotting test:
Moved a scout team (NO BINOCULARS, only Mk 1 eyeballs) plus a FO with targeting tech and a JAV AT team to exactly the same location where I knew from past tests they should be able to easily spot an enemy AFV.
1)  After about 3.5 minutes, the SCOUT team with NO BINOCULARS spotted the hulldown enemy AFV. at 2,658 meters distance  The FO and JAV team have not positively spotted the AFV despite having high tech optics and binoculars.
2)  After 6 minutes the SCOUT with NO BINOCS has spotted a 2nd enemy AFV at about 2,789 meters.  The FO and JAV team have still not positively spotted any AFV despite having binoculars and the JAV optics.  Neither has the SCOUT communicated anything about the AFV to the FO or Jav team as one would expect if the C2 system is performing as advertised.
3)  After 10 minutes of no change to the above situation I quit the test.
Questions:
Why is a scout with no optical tech able to spot the AFV at over 2.6Km when the FO with its targeting tech and the Jav with superior optics and binocs cannot?  
What hasn't the scout communicated this info to the other teams which are lying on top of him?

Hmm... since no one else wants to examine this, I did another test using "Tactical Vignette Attack in Brandenburg" (another good scenario by George MC).  I thought that perhaps long range spotting is bugged.  So, the Brandenburg map is much smaller - so distances are in hundreds of meters rather than thousands.
However...  once again scouts with NO BINOCULARS or any other aid, are able to spot enemy ATGM's with ease - within a couple of minutes.  The HQ cannot see them even when the HQ in on the same roof as the scout for several minutes.  Why don't they communicate?
Ditto: The Javelin Teams also cannot spot the ATGM's.
Also, the Bradleys and M1's also cannot spot the ATGM's after many minutes.  One has to Area Fire em at where the scouts know the ATGM's are located.  
Unless someone has an explanation, this seems to indicate that SPOTTING does not work as advertised.  But, please do your own tests.
 

Bump... recently I had an idea on how to handle basic update's of CMSF1 campaigns.
There's no way I'm going back & recreating core files & campaign scripts for these campaigns... so instead i'll probably break them up into individual scenarios, update the maps for those scenarios & then play them.
I would track Core casualties as I played through the scenarios... but only in a simplistic & rudimentary manner (i.e 1st Platoon suffers severe casualties in scenario 1, just give it a heavily depleted headcount next time it appears in the campaign).

During the making of Heaven & Earth, I made a few changes to the effects & these have now been fed back to the original dropbox link (beta 4).
 
Changes
Night explosions have been improved (large explosions at night looked odd previously) Slightly tweaked vehicle muzzle fire.

My Special Effects compilation is now ready for beta testing.
Download link is here...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0k0l1qdhqlcle7f/ME Experience.7z?dl=0
This Special Effects package is based, almost entirely, off of previous work from Vein, Herrtom, Barbarico, Drakenlorde, Aris, Scipio, "Pro-effects"(?) & Battlefront.
I have, for the most part, just reordered, renumbered, resized, renamed & rethought the work of those fellas.
 
 
The special effects modding options for Combat Mission are rather limited.
We can change the textures but not the animation sequences or timing. Nor can we create alternate sets of effects for different events (say a fiery explosion when a Tank explodes or a smokey explosion when a grenade goes off). I do suspect BFC plan to move in this direction (why else would they name their current explosion set "explosion a").
Either way, for now, I don't think there is a 'one size fits all' solution to improving the SFX in CM... although Veins effects come pretty close.
Therefore, I created these optional 'effects sets' which players can choose from based upon the CM game they are playing, the time of day, the environment, type of scenario, equipment present & personal taste etc.

TIME OF DAY SETS (place two zz's before either DAY or NIGHT)
DAY effects, these are the standard effects I've chosen.
Drakenlordes flames are, in my opinion, the best looking flames available.
Improved Muzzle blast, I had hoped to create a blisteringly fast muzzle blast however that doesn't seem possible because of how the animation is actually sequenced. Still this should look a little quicker.
Realistic muzzle flash, When combined with Barbarico's gray smoke these look far more realistic & subdued compared with stock or all other effects packages.
Smoke, after Barbaricos gray smoke, I've chosen Veins black smoke.
Vein style tracers, I've created colour coded versions to match the stock effects colours introduced in engine 4. These are smaller & less 'lazer beam-ish' than stock effects however I wanted to keep (indeed expand) the visibility of ricochets as otherwise firefights can look very stale.
 
NIGHT effects
I had hoped to create a much larger range of night effects but may pick that up in future. Either way, I did create a few night effects & these will mostly just make muzzle flashes & the initial flash of your explosions brighter & 'sparklier'.
 
EXPLOSION SETS (place one z before either of the four options)

Herrtoms smokey explosions... based on his earlier works, I find these work great for smaller explosions. Probably would be fine for most WW2 action.
Veins subdued explosions.... quick & effective, these work for nearly every situation. Although they're perhaps too quick for breaching charges.
Scipio's subdued explosions... small & firey, these too work for nearly every situation.
Veins explosions... perfect for when that Abrams platoon meets a T-62 Company.
 
VEHICLE DUST  (place one z before either NEEDED or NOT NEEDED)

The 'smoke dust' effect is used both during combat & for vehicle travel in dry & very dry conditions. Obviously this is important for CMSF2 but, if there are no vehicles or conditions allow it, you may prefer a darker dust effect more appropriate for most combat actions.
Although I've absolutely loved using them, one of the side effects of using Veins (or Aris's) smoke is a faint, but annoying, 'ghost square' halo around battlefield smoke (presumably because they've used the whole of the bitmap with no transparency). So I created new smoke bitmaps myself using some free images off the internet merged with the old, but reliable, "pro-effects" smoke... this seems to have eliminated the 'ghost square' issue.
 
WHITE PHOSPHOROUS SETS (place one z before either WHITE, BALANCED or DARK)

Initially I assumed that the white smoke effects were only used for smoke screens & such like. They are not. Indeed there is an argument to be made that they are the most common CM smoke effects of all & appear to be used for all manner of explosions, building & vehicles impacts.
This being so, I've created a selection of 'white smoke' effects...
"White White smoke" is great for representing WP smoke screens.
"Balanced White smoke" is noticeably darker yet can somewhat represent both WP smoke screens & combat smoke.
"Dark White smoke" is much darker still & excellent for smokey combat scenes... but very poorly represents WP smoke screens.
 
 
As per usual download the mod & place in your mod/z folder. Play around with the different options to your hearts content & give us some feedback.