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CMSF vs CW and BS


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Ok, I am considering getting Shock Force.  I have had reservations simply because of the disparities between forces.  I am not sure how much fun it would be to take out a 3rd world military with a 1st world military.  Now I am enjoying Cold War and Black Sea quite a bit.  The scenarios are challenging and fun and often difficult.  So is SF as challenging and fun as BS or CW?   Where is the appeal within Shock Force?  It definitely appears to be fairly popular amongst CM titles.  From my perspective, the variety of equipment and nations is appealing but what happens when the rubber meets the road?  

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I'm sure this will generate some responses, but here's my .02.

SF2 is fantastic. Blufor definitely outclasses Redfor, but the challenge is often to win while taking no, or almost no casualties.

There's no APS here, so ATGM's are still scary. Now in BS anything in LOS is potentially dead as the lethality is max in that module, but the challenge in SF2 isn't far behind that.

One of the best things about SF2 is that there's a metric s*** ton of content. Scenarios, Campaigns, mods, and so on.

MOUT ops are so fun, stressful, and immersive and SF2 has them in spades.

Finally, as you said, the variety of equipment and nations is very appealing. Tooling around in British recon AFV's while trying not to die is great fun.

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FogForever, I had the same concerns about SF2.  I had all the WW2 titles but held off on SF2 & BS, but thought the force disparity would make SF2 no fun. GEEZ WAS I WRONG!

Just like Vergeltungswaffe   post above, there's tons of content, lots of varied NATO & US forces.  And you generally need to win w/o taking taking casualties, so you need to use really good tactics relative to each side's strength & weaknesses. 

You won't regret getting SF2.  I finished the 16 battle Highland Games campaign not too long ago, was great fun.

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SF2 Blue vs Red Blue must win by maneuver and Red wins by attrition. Saw a You Tube video as a test, a squad of highly trained US Marines vs a squad of Syrians. Outcome one Syrian running away in panic. The US one wounded and morale ok. However both sides were not capable for future operations. The US squad had only 200 rounds of 5.56 mm left. That is less than a clip each. If a Syrian T55 or a Sagger takes out their Stryker they are left high and dry. Parameters? Storming Norman Schwarzkopf said this: "One Body Bag is one too many!"

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SF2 is one of the most popular titles and I don't get why.

Nostalgia maybe?

Compared to CMBS and CMCW - SF2 just feels bad. Everything feels strange... Almost like slomo...

CMBS has three factions, and if you're like me you'll quickly stop playing US and pit Ukraine vs Russia every time.

CMCW is crazy too, but if you don't own a bunch of titles, you wont own a bunch of maps, and your fun can really be limited.

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57 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

SF2 Blue vs Red Blue must win by maneuver and Red wins by attrition. Saw a You Tube video as a test, a squad of highly trained US Marines vs a squad of Syrians. Outcome one Syrian running away in panic. The US one wounded and morale ok. However both sides were not capable for future operations. The US squad had only 200 rounds of 5.56 mm left. That is less than a clip each. If a Syrian T55 or a Sagger takes out their Stryker they are left high and dry. Parameters? Storming Norman Schwarzkopf said this: "One Body Bag is one too many!"

And with the new patch infantry take foreverrr to kill inside buildings. You can burn through all your ammo real quick.

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Thanks all.  I have been wondering how best to describe CW and BS and immersive is pretty accurate.  Sort of like watching a movie but I am the director.   I think I will try out the SF demo and then make my decision.    If SF also has immersion, I am getting it.

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CMSF is fantastic, possibly still the best introduction to CM (because the US offers you a lot of safety nets), and generally smaller battles. Asymmetric warfare is the draw - Syria is a couple of generations behind, and the irregular forces even more.

As a multiplayer experience, it's a bit lacking - playing Syria vs the US is the kind of thing where you can do everything right and still lose. Partly that's down to scenario design - it's an awful lot harder to design asymmetric scenarios that work really well, compared to CMBN where you could plop down an infantry company on each side, give them an objective in the middle, and have a reasonable outcome. Typically where that works in CMSF, you'll have a blue side which has all the advantages, but can't afford to take losses, versus a Red side where losses aren't important, and the gains are huge.

Blue vs Blue is obviously fine, but doesn't simulate anything real. Red vs Red can be great, but there's still the technological disparity - without some house rules the multiplayer game can be dominated by precisely four pieces of kit (TURMS-T, T90, AT-14, AT-13), which isn't really great either.

There's tons of content, and it references Afghanistan and Iraq, so there's lots of historical stuff to draw on.

The modules are generally a lot more challenging. The USMC, British and NATO forces do not have all of the advantages (read: Javelins) that the US does, so there's plenty of challenge there.

Cold War is high intensity modern warfare, and is a superb look at what could have been. Cold War is probably going to be the best option for multiplayer games, and has some really superb campaigns - I do think it's one of the strongest Battlefront releases full stop.

Black Sea is an insight into the ultra-modern near-peer conflict that the US army is preparing to face if needed. This is going in gloves-off, but is nowhere near the scale or intensity of a Cold War fight. A large number of the "lessons learned" documents that have come out of the real Ukraine are things that could have been learned playing Black Sea (like the best use of the Drone/Forward Observer pair in Russian doctrine).

Shock Force is a vehicle for the low intensity wars that the US has been fighting since 2001, so it's the closest to a modern "historical" game. It's a great introduction to CM, and also offers you something which no other Combat Mission title does.

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3 minutes ago, domfluff said:

I assume surrendering enemy still count as occupying, I haven't checked that.

I start to think that I was not supposed to damage the building. A 155mm shell through the ceiling next door, is not supposed to leave anybody standing. I had 4 killed and 8 wounded, only way to clear the complex you need every satchel charge and Javelin as precision mortars. I was holding back with them as I was expecting some T55's at least. Happy gaming. 

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If you want a challenge, try playing as the Syrians! You don't always have to play as the 1st world army. Playing as the Syrians will give you a very different perspective on things than any other CM game. Even as the western armies though, the game can be very challenging. The Syrians are not defenseless.

From the briefing from the US Army Task Force Thunder campaign:

"Approach every situation with caution until you know what you are dealing with. The Syrians are not the backwards, militarily inept pushovers the blowhards rant about. They are motivated, adequately trained and armed, and quick studies of our tactics. The unconventional forces arrayed against us are, perhaps, even more formidable. Many are veterans of fighting against our forces and they have no fear of dying for their cause. While they might not have a chance at the strategic level, at the tactical level every Syrian unit is perfectly capable of bloodying the nose of your task force." 

Shock Force is one of the more interesting games of the series IMO, and it's also interesting looking back at it now after everything that's happened since the early 2000s. I feel like one of the reasons they made the game in the first place was to kind of push back against the myth of US invincibility that was so common in the early days of Iraq/Afghanistan/GWOT. It's like they wanted to demonstrate through their game that the US can still be tactically defeated with ease if the conditions are right. I remember back during the times this game came out, plenty of people were clamoring for war with Iran and how it would be a cakewalk and only take two weeks or whatever.

That said, some of the missions ARE pretty easy. Some of them are like Iraq-style turkey shoots against poorly motivated conscripts in the open desert, where you barely have to do anything except move your troops forward and watch them annihilate everything like a bunch of cardboard pop-up targets. But I think that's the point - to illustrate the strengths of the US military in ideal conditions, while other scenarios illustrate the weaknesses, where you go up against Syrian special forces and fanatical insurgents in dense urban areas with IEDS and suicide bombers or whatever. This game certainly made me fear RPG-29s. Those things are very accurate at long range and can knock out almost anything.

SF2 does have a ridiculous amount of content now. I've been playing since the SF1 days and I still haven't finished all the campaigns. There is a huge amount of good user-made stuff including a lot of Red vs Red stuff, which is one of my favorites. Syrian Army vs insurgents is always fun.

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As Syrian the strategy should be of attrition. Squad of Syrians get wiped out by a squad of US Marines, but the US Marines will be short of ammunition doing so. Syrian Saggers and T55 tanks can take out their Stryker's. It is not hopeless force The US and its NATO allies in a MOUT operation. 

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1 hour ago, Bozowans said:

try playing as the Syrians!

In this campaign you can't play as Syrians. The so-called 3rd world countries can have more effective infantry forces. They don't have a few million to spare for the training of special forces soldiers. But they get their chicken from the backyard and not from KFC. The 13 yr old will cut the head and dresses the chicken in the kitchen, by the age of 17 they do it with pigs and goats. Our pampered and spoiled urban dwellers have a problem. But this is a game treat it as such. 

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57 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

That would suck too, you can't shoot them the bullets just keep missing. I suppose I had to wait for the white flag. 

Its definitively not that. The syrian side surrendered as you can see in the photo you posted, and in that case all of the ground objectives should have gone to you, even if there were non surrendering syrian units in there. I dont know why the game didnt gave you the points thought. Maybe like you said it was because you damaged the building too much? IDK

Edited by CHEqTRO
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6 minutes ago, CHEqTRO said:

it was because you damaged the building too much? IDK

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. There were some hidden objectives to do with documents for you to discover. I found one of them there may have been more. 

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9 hours ago, Bozowans said:

SF2 does have a ridiculous amount of content now. I've been playing since the SF1 days and I still haven't finished all the campaigns. There is a huge amount of good user-made stuff including a lot of Red vs Red stuff, which is one of my favorites. Syrian Army vs insurgents is always fun.

I like how quick battles allow any of the 8 factions on either side, in the game with all modules. So if you don't mind the historical unlikeliness, you can play Canadians versus British and such. 8 times 7, making 56 different possible combinations (excluding same side versus same side). The advantage of having all these factions in one game. 

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1 hour ago, Kevin2k said:

 8 times 7, making 56 different possible combinations (excluding same side versus same side).

Have to disagree with my own number 56 there, it is actually half that. unless you count the orientation of which faction is on which side of the map. 

2 factions = 1 possible combination ;  3 factions = 3 ; 4 factions= 6 ; 5 factions =10 ; 6 factions = 15 ; 7 factions = 21 ; 8 factions = 28.

 

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