Mixed Blue and Red forces

[Alan8325]

With international arms sales apparently increasing with the U.S. leading the way, "Blue" vs "Red" conflicts, as in CM:SF, may be a thing of the past. Some of the EU countries aren't far behind Russia (which is 2nd) in arms exports and if you add up the total arms sales values for 2007 of just Germany, France and the Netherlands, they surpass that of the U.S. for 2007. This should be something to keep in mind when designing CM:SF2. Strict Blue vs Red in terms of units and technology may be unrealistic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_russia_france_navy_ship

[Montecuccoli]

I think a Blue and Red Order of Battle can be fair as far as weapons will continue to come from the main differences based on Nato and former Warsaw pact... for example APCs and BMPs... M16 and AK47...

So a Force West Vs a Force East should be fair, but just with the availability to let the player mix the order of battles (like now for Blues and Reds)

Once (5 years ago) i worked for a Military Supplying Firm and at International Convention (Milipol Paris and Qatar) i saw the division between a Nato way to make weapons and a Russian way to produce weapons can be done... by now i can't say, but i sense that this difference is still there in terms of know-how and production way of thinking.

[MikeyD]

On the BBC yesterday I saw video of Iran conducting AAA exercises. They paraded a fair number of U.S. HAWK AA missiles up and down the street. Their home-built Toophan anti-tank missile is a reverse-engineered TOW! There's some irony that U.S. recently had to discontinue their wire-guided version because they lost their sole spooled command wire manufacturer!

You can mix & match weapons now in the game. You just have to be willing to live with the soldiers coming along with the weapons. A Syrian "Toophan" launcher would be a U.S. TOW with crew imported into Red, complete with U.s. body armor.

[Alan8325]

I think a Blue and Red Order of Battle can be fair as far as weapons will continue to come from the main differences based on Nato and former Warsaw pact... for example APCs and BMPs... M16 and AK47...

So a Force West Vs a Force East should be fair, but just with the availability to let the player mix the order of battles (like now for Blues and Reds)

Once (5 years ago) i worked for a Military Supplying Firm and at International Convention (Milipol Paris and Qatar) i saw the division between a Nato way to make weapons and a Russian way to produce weapons can be done... by now i can't say, but i sense that this difference is still there in terms of know-how and production way of thinking.

I believe that there are still significant differences between NATO/Blue and Russian/Warsaw/Red ways to develop weapons, but the ease at which information can travel around the world these days makes me think that the techniques that tend to work better will not stay isolated for long anymore. The other factor is money, which determines to what extent R&D and production can be done. Unfortunately the U.S. does not have such a huge advantage in wealth anymore.