Black Hawk Down?

[Field Marshal Blücher]

You do realise that BHD encompassed several very different battles, over a very large area?

I think what the scenario we're thinking about is the part where they were driving through the streets of Mogadishu trying to get the heck out of there. At least that's what I've been basing my comments in this thread on.

[LukeFF]

Green troops better reflects conscripts who have gone through at least some kind of training program. To make them reservists conscripted at very short notice the leadership and morale values should go down.

Hence one of my beefs with both the stock USMC and Army campaigns. There are far, far, too many conscript-level Syrian forces (WRT to the conventional military units), especially early in the USMC campaign.

[Secondbrooks]

You do realise that BHD encompassed several very different battles, over a very large area?

You also realise that CMSF consciously rejects trying to model BHD and its ilk?

Do you realise that battles wished to model from BHD in CMSF have already been discussed and pointed out? Driving across streets while tons of inaccurate RPG and small arms fire (pretty much unsuccesfully) beating the column.

And yes i do realise your last point, as that is what i have already been saying too.

[Secondbrooks]

Green troops better reflects conscripts who have gone through at least some kind of training program. To make them reservists conscripted at very short notice the leadership and morale values should go down.

Well manual says that conscripts have had little training... What is little? I'm prone to think that there would be "clear" difference between conscript (week or two of soemsort training) and zero (few hours or less) experience levels, but i'm not starting to agrue about it as you have valid point which i can't much counter: Conscript experience level performs already very poorly if they become underfire.

[Dietrich]

Well Black Hawk Down scenario shouldn't have Taliban, AQ or Iraqis. I admit i'm not expert on tyhis issue, but uncons there (in Somalia) mostly composed of guys with zero training, they were just given gun and maybe short instructions of how to load it.

Problem in my mind is that CMSF is unable to model guys (=Somalians) who barely understands basics of how weapon functions. CMSF starts from idea that even conscript troops have had at least weeks lasting "intensive" training phase. There is no zero-experience level.

The implicit assumption in this discussion as regards uncons (especially uncon combatants rather than the psuedo-uniformed and somewhat-better-equipped fighters) seems to be that any given uncon fighter has little if any experience using his weapon (whether it's an AKM or an RPG-7).

Compare that assumption with the facts about a not insignificant number of, for example, Taliban fighters and mujahideen in Afghanistan. They wear nothing resembling a uniform, and their weaponry varies one from the next, yet many of them have been fighting for longer than the Marines (and such) they face have been alive. Some have been fighting since before even the Soviets arrived.

Taking this into consideration, an uncon fighter isn't necessarily a couldn't-hit-a-barn-door-with-a-shotgun-from-10-yards-away conscript. As such uncon fighters could vary in skill from the obvious Conscript all the way up to even Veteran, depending on the veteran-ness of the fighters which the scenario designer needs in the scenario.

That said, and to submit my "final answer" in this discussion, I say: If you want hordes of uncons putting out gobs of unaimed ("suppressive") fire, make 'em Uncon Fighters with Conscript experience, vary their Motivation between Normal and Fanatic, and set their equipment to "poorly maintained".

[akd]

After a very rough test, I'm not entirely certain that setting equipment quality to poor (post-purchase) has any effect on RPG accuracy or warhead reliability. For example, conscript RPG combatants with poor equipment still stand a pretty good chance of nailing narrow-side-on humvees at 500m within 4-5 shots (although this is difficult to test because they refuse to fire on humvees when they run low on rockets, which is silly, to say the least).

I would like to see this setting have a much more significant effect on all things other than AKs, but are warhead duds even possible?

[SlapHappy]

After a very rough test, I'm not entirely certain that setting equipment quality to poor (post-purchase) has any effect on RPG accuracy or warhead reliability.

I believe you are correct AKD. I can't substantiate that myself.

[hcrof]

I am suprised that dud warheads arn't included!

For those who are interested, here is the US army analysis of the RPG-7 I mentioned, it goes into quite a lot of detail about hit probabilities about halfway through. I follow its guidelines and the weapon feels right for me in the game. I havn't tried hitting targets at long range enough to comment on accuracy above 300m though.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/rpg-7.pdf

[hcrof]

I just found something very interesting about the RPG-7 which might explain why US and British forces seem so invlunerable to RPG's in urban areas. It was just one line in a reference book but apparently the penetration of an RPG-7 round decreases at short range because the warhead is moving too fast. Presumably it doesn't have the correct stand off so the molten slug cannot form properly.

Has anyone else heard of this?