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Alchenar posted:I agree with much of the post but for the assertion that politics has no place in videogames. It's a subtle thing and games shouldn't constantly tell the player they are a bad person doing terrible things just because they want to wargame the operational problem of invading Russia as Germany, but choosing to present a 'clean' war is making a subtle political point of its own. Obviously the player should not be given the option to enact the holocaust but it is for example problematic for Hearts of Iron to present WW2 as a grand strategic game but ignore a large sector of the German war effort/economy. I triggered a tactical nuclear war by destroying Tempelhof in a game
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Feb 3, 2015 16:14
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Man I sure love that new Combat Mission video where his Russian soldiers kill a lot of Ukrainians just like right now. 
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Feb 3, 2015 16:20
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Nenonen posted:To think, in many games depicting ye olde wars players are given the option of sacking or pillaging captured towns, which would have meant taking all useful civilians as slaves, raping and killing the rest, looting anything that wasn't nailed down and burning all that is nailed down (including some of the civilians that you'd just crucified). And this isn't controversial at all because you're Genghis Khan or Julius Caesar or some other great old chum. But try selling a game about the Bosnian war with similar player options and you'd be in for a poo poo storm. As I read this, TotalWarOfficial is streaming a preview of Total War: Atilla, and setting a Scottish settlement on fire with his siege weapons. While doing so, he specifically said "Man, these civilians do not know what is going to hit them." In fact, a major gameplay mechanic to set this apart from other Total War games is the ability to use fire as a weapon. The dev's plan in this battle is actually to burn as much of it as he can, because he doesn't think he can take the defenders straight up, so he's going to burn the poo poo out of it then come back with more guys to actually take the settlement. Go vikings!
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Feb 3, 2015 19:15
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Nenonen posted:Stop wasting your Saggers from maximum range, Bates. Let me drive a little closer - say, to 400 meters so you can be guaranteed of never missing! Doh! I set the wrong maximum range on those.  I don't like ATGM reaction fire in general, the AI has a tendency to blow all my missiles shooting at, for example, trucks.
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Feb 3, 2015 22:13
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Are there any cool visual / sound effect mods for CM:RT, and is there a good place to find them?
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Feb 3, 2015 22:37
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Mister Bates posted:Doh! I set the wrong maximum range on those. Yes, it doesn't have a too elaborate logic on what to engage. OTOH technicals carrying infantry are legitimate targets for them to engage, it all depends on circumstance. Btw. I'm pretty sure that no one ITT got my little  joke there - AT-3 Sagger's minimum engagement distance is 500m both in real life and in game.
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Feb 3, 2015 22:37
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maev posted:Are there any cool visual / sound effect mods for CM:RT, and is there a good place to find them? They have a mod forum and several are hosted on the battlefront website. The other main place is greenasjade. http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/
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Feb 3, 2015 23:02
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Nenonen posted:Btw. I'm pretty sure that no one ITT got my little Grog-guards; take this man and put him in grog-prison and never ever let him out.
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Feb 3, 2015 23:07
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Didn't Matrix used to run a weekly sale on a game or am I crazy? I looked on their store page and don't see anything mentioning this at all.
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Feb 4, 2015 20:28
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It's still there - Magnifico this week. http://www.matrixgames.com/news/1591/Deal.of.the.week.Magnifico
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Feb 4, 2015 21:16
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Baloogan posted:Grog-guards; take this man and put him in grog-prison and never ever let him out. I'm beggin ya, Baloogan. Get air-refueling fixed once and for all. Even if it takes a bubble of like... 2-3 miles to refuel aircraft rather than directly atop.
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Feb 4, 2015 21:27
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Oh poo poo, is this where I can talk about Black Sea? Because I'm having so much fun in the American campaign, I'm not sure I'll be able to go back to WWII games after playing with all the modern toys. I finished the first two missions with 7 casualties vs 200 and 10 vs 150 on Elite and I'm not stuck in Bocage and everything is wonderful.
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Feb 4, 2015 21:34
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I'm kinda curious, how did the devs handle the Black Sea campaign "story" given...you know, what's happening right now? Is it professional, is it messy, are civilian casualties modeled, and the like?
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Feb 4, 2015 21:47
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Ok Advance Tactics Gold game! So far I have myself, Nenonen, and VendoViper do we have any more that want to try it? I'd like to get a few more players. As for the settings I'm going to do normal world with a climate, shroud peak, hidden stats, stone age. Should slow things down at first and give people a little time to get comfortable before you are slammed with tanks.
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Feb 4, 2015 21:49
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Dandywalken posted:I'm beggin ya, Baloogan. It should be working  Do you have a .scen that shows bad air-refueling behavior you could send me?
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Feb 4, 2015 21:57
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What's advanced tactics gold like? How does it rate compared to Decisive campaigns?
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Feb 4, 2015 22:04
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The engine is the predecessor to Decisive campaigns so it is immediately familiar. I really enjoy ATG because it provides this crazy hybrid that similar games really lack. The combination of controlled research, production, and organization with an almost complete break from "reality" or rather history, makes it really fresh. My main complaints would have to be about the AI and the world generator. I find it really hard to get the world generation process to not horribly gimp the starting locations of some of the empires. Once you get used to the shortcuts I find navigating the interface to actually be relatively painless [this comment clearly brought to you by Stockholm syndrome], its better than a lot of grog games. I am really looking forward to playing multiplayer, I fully expect to get stomped. I guess another way to put it is it really scratches the itch that I want Hearts of Iron to. You get to fully control your country and all of its military production and decisions. But the time scales make the game actually fun to play and responsive, and you don't have all the political garbage to deal with. Are we going to be playing the (new dawn?) game mode with hero officers who get cards and stuff, or the regular mode?
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Feb 4, 2015 22:12
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Generation Internet posted:Oh poo poo, is this where I can talk about Black Sea? Because I'm having so much fun in the American campaign, I'm not sure I'll be able to go back to WWII games after playing with all the modern toys. I finished the first two missions with 7 casualties vs 200 and 10 vs 150 on Elite and I'm not stuck in Bocage and everything is wonderful. Try CMSF with Marines, Brit and Nato, too. It's good fun. A lot of CMx* players discovering they like modern who I can only assume were scared off by the rocky CMSF launch.
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Feb 4, 2015 22:14
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Davin Valkri posted:I'm kinda curious, how did the devs handle the Black Sea campaign "story" given...you know, what's happening right now? Is it professional, is it messy, are civilian casualties modeled, and the like? The story isn't a thing so far that I've played (2 missions in one campaign). It's presented like any other briefing: Here's what we're doing, here are your units, here's our intel. There's no commentary or tone, it's all dry, "We're trying to push them from Kiev before NATO bolsters their defenses." Civilians, so far that I've seen, aren't talked about or mentioned in the least. Standard relatively tasteful grog fare.
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Feb 4, 2015 22:27
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Davin Valkri posted:I'm kinda curious, how did the devs handle the Black Sea campaign "story" given...you know, what's happening right now? Is it professional, is it messy, are civilian casualties modeled, and the like? In addition to what DSM said, the very first paragraph of the manual says that they've apparently been planning a Russia/NATO conflict in Ukraine since 2009, and made a deliberate decision to carry on with the concept once actual poo poo started going down. They're actually relatively vague on the story, they only give the broadest of outlines for two potential scenarios, a NATO victory and a Russian victory, which is apparently so scenario designers have a carte blanche to create new scenarios with. Makes sense, given that there's no longer massive WWII campaigns to base battles off of. Civilians were a factor in the last mission of the American campaign I played, but only in the loosest sense of 'don't demolish these apartment buildings, there are civilians sheltering in place'. The 'preserve' objective doesn't seem to care if you knock a few walls down, though. I do remember watching a stream by one of the leads, ChrisND, where he mentioned that while they didn't want to tackle paramilitaries right away, irregular forces were a possibility for an expansion module.
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Feb 4, 2015 22:59
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VendoViper posted:The engine is the predecessor to Decisive campaigns so it is immediately familiar. I really enjoy ATG because it provides this crazy hybrid that similar games really lack. The combination of controlled research, production, and organization with an almost complete break from "reality" or rather history, makes it really fresh. My main complaints would have to be about the AI and the world generator. I find it really hard to get the world generation process to not horribly gimp the starting locations of some of the empires. New dawn. I really can't think of a reason to ever go back, I love it. Do you guys want to throw in a few AI players?
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Feb 4, 2015 23:00
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dtkozl posted:New dawn. I really can't think of a reason to ever go back, I love it. Great, I really like it too, and I think it has nice synergy with Stone Age, forcing you you spread your PP around. No opinion.
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Feb 4, 2015 23:07
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Generation Internet posted:In addition to what DSM said, the very first paragraph of the manual says that they've apparently been planning a Russia/NATO conflict in Ukraine since 2009, and made a deliberate decision to carry on with the concept once actual poo poo started going down. They're actually relatively vague on the story, they only give the broadest of outlines for two potential scenarios, a NATO victory and a Russian victory, which is apparently so scenario designers have a carte blanche to create new scenarios with. Makes sense, given that there's no longer massive WWII campaigns to base battles off of. Combat Mission is a good example of a game which can do well at tackling the war-crimes problem - the 'preserve these buildings which invariably are full of snipers' objectives can make scenarios extremely interesting when used well.
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Feb 4, 2015 23:10
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Davin Valkri posted:I'm kinda curious, how did the devs handle the Black Sea campaign "story" given...you know, what's happening right now? Is it professional, is it messy, are civilian casualties modeled, and the like? You can read the backstory in the manual posted here: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/117390-black-sea-manual-get-it-here-while-its-hot/ TL;DR version is that the current situation stabilises roughly as it is now. In 2016 a pro western government comes to power in Kiev and announces it wants to join the EU and NATO. Russia naturally sees a NATO member on its border as a threat. Fast forward a few months and Kiev announces its going to accelerate the integration process, and also cuts off the land routes into the Crimea. Russia reacts badly, and when the eastern regions of the Ukraine revolt and call for Russian protection, a 'peacekeeping' force moves in to occupy that section of the country. Tense stand-off until summer 2017 when a firefight breaks out between Ukranian and Russian troops and it all kicks off. I've seen no mention of civilians so far, and there are no militia or unconventional units in the game so they've avoided that can of worms. Given the circumstances I think battlefront have handled it relatively tastefully. As far as the game is concerned, this might be my favourite Combat Mission yet. The sheer lethality of the weapons involved mean that compared to the WW2 games it is incredibly fast and incredibly brutal. You can be wiping the floor with your opponent only to have a couple of Hinds pop up and kill all your armour in a couple of minutes. edit: drat i'm way too slow
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Feb 4, 2015 23:17
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dtkozl posted:New dawn. I really can't think of a reason to ever go back, I love it. I think that would be a good idea, then I might have a few months before I get stomped by veteran players... 
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Feb 4, 2015 23:20
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Dekko posted:...You can be wiping the floor with your opponent only to have a couple of Hinds pop up and kill all your armour in a couple of minutes. Are air assets like helicopters on map, like winSPMBT, or are they just the whirring sound of rotor blades and then missiles fly out of the sky box like in the WW2 games for planes?
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Feb 4, 2015 23:28
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VendoViper posted:Are air assets like helicopters on map, like winSPMBT, or are they just the whirring sound of rotor blades and then missiles fly out of the sky box like in the WW2 games for planes? They're like in all the previous CM titles, so the latter, except Tunguskas kill 'em all with missiles and gunfire and then continue to rape enemy ground forces with gunfire. My main problem is that all air missions are either heavy, medium or light, with no indication what the options stand for?
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Feb 4, 2015 23:41
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I would have hoped by now they would have come up with an actually context sensitive menu for air missions. The call in for air assets doesn't shoe horn well into the options provided for tube/rocket fire missions even with WW2 fighter-bombers, with modern air assets it makes even less sense.
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Feb 4, 2015 23:43
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maev posted:Interesting, the Dev for the latest DC game: Barbarossa has made his latest blog about how he's going to implement war crimes. http://www.vrdesigns.nl/?p=888 I'm tempted to send this link to Tomislav at 2x2 and tell him "Hey, this looks like a great idea for the next installment of Unity of Command!," watch him have a heart attack, then email him back "Just kidding!" In all seriousness, one thing I've learned working for a European game developer is that in Europe, the past is most definitely not past. Tempers still run high about things that happen during WWII - I have to be very selective about what I post to their Facebook and Twitter. Photos of axis soldiers and other stuff that wouldn't even raise an eyebrow in the States could land us in serious poo poo in Europe. People who look at social media and think "Oh yeah, that sounds like an easy job," have never had to chart a course around minefields like Gamergate, historical sensitivies, trolls, and wehraboos. EDIT: If you want to see a tasteful attempt at the same sort of tension, look at STAVKA-OKH http://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/STAVKA-OKH.html You are rated not only on your performance, but also your obedience to orders and you get to see what your general's fate is depending on whether you won or lost. Myoclonic Jerk fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Feb 4, 2015 |
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Feb 4, 2015 23:44
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Stop talking about Combat Mission, my laptop's graphic card hates it 
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Feb 4, 2015 23:45
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Nenonen posted:They're like in all the previous CM titles, so the latter, except Tunguskas kill 'em all with missiles and gunfire and then continue to rape enemy ground forces with gunfire. Rape.
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Feb 4, 2015 23:49
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Russian rape no less
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Feb 5, 2015 00:25
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Myoclonic Jerk posted:I'm tempted to send this link to Tomislav at 2x2 and tell him "Hey, this looks like a great idea for the next installment of Unity of Command!," watch him have a heart attack, then email him back "Just kidding!" The Axis soldiers can be a problem, but try and post glorious soviet troops in a forum with Czech, Polish Hungarians etc and watch the fireworks. As a Britisher or American you can recollect on World War 2 having both won historically and not actually suffering a great deal in the process. Poland (for one example) got trampled twice then got a glorious 45 years under communist dictatorship which was a direct result of the war and is still within living memory. maev fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 00:27
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Myoclonic Jerk posted:I'm tempted to send this link to Tomislav at 2x2 and tell him "Hey, this looks like a great idea for the next installment of Unity of Command!," watch him have a heart attack, then email him back "Just kidding!" Are wehraboos the guys who make forum posts about very specific nazis being excluded from obscure battalions in wargames?
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Feb 5, 2015 00:39
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Chump Farts posted:Are wehraboos the guys who make forum posts about very specific nazis being excluded from obscure battalions in wargames? Thank God we don't model stuff like that. Gary Grigsby, you mad bastard. I was referring more to the guys who take every opportunity to crow about how superior German technology was. The sherman was a crap tank, Panthers uber alles! maev posted:The Axis soldiers can be a problem, but try and post glorious soviet troops in a forum with Czech, Polish Hungarians etc and watch the fireworks. Exactly. I've had to pass up a lot of fascinating historical material because I don't want to step on anyone's toes. For instance, I found a great set of photos of reenactors dressed up as Slovak soldiers, complete with Pz38t's. Beautiful photos, obscure piece of history, directly relevant to our game - nope, too risky, and some of those re-enactors might be closet Neo-Nazis. We Americans really are able to look at history with a detachment that you don't often find in Europe. EDIT: Oh, and despite us being a wargame, Gamergate is a problem for us too. Some guy submitted a fan made scenario about some kind of poo poo like the heroic attempt to attack Anita Sarkeesian, who was sheltered behind two games websites. I just . . . don't . . . no. https://twitter.com/jamesnicksoner/status/523732490008002560 
Myoclonic Jerk fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Feb 5, 2015 |
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Feb 5, 2015 00:49
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We americans have our own blind spots. There was a fun article in the new york times a couple months ago written by a marine who served right after the war talking about how he had a lot of former german soldiers in his platoon who were unabashed nazi's and thought the idea of him being jewish was hilarious.
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Feb 5, 2015 01:01
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dtkozl posted:We americans have our own blind spots. There was a fun article in the new york times a couple months ago written by a marine who served right after the war talking about how he had a lot of former german soldiers in his platoon who were unabashed nazi's and thought the idea of him being jewish was hilarious. The South is still pissed off over the civil war and that was 150 years ago. You can stand on virtually any spot in Europe and within living memory an army marched over that spot, then a few years later another army marched over it in the opposite direction. Only twenty years after it had all been done before. In many places the second army never went home.
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Feb 5, 2015 01:17
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Yeah my next door neighbor is flying the old stars and bars right now and during the war the confederacy had to occupy this area because it was pro union. People are just crazy.
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Feb 5, 2015 01:18
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dtkozl posted:We americans have our own blind spots. There was a fun article in the new york times a couple months ago written by a marine who served right after the war talking about how he had a lot of former german soldiers in his platoon who were unabashed nazi's and thought the idea of him being jewish was hilarious. Back then everybody was a Nazi. On NPR, they were talking about this book http://www.amazon.com/The-Nazis-Next-Door-America-ebook/dp/B00HK3LRKW and the author discovered some phenomenal Patton quotes about the Jews. The Jews who were in camps that Patton was now responsible for, and that he left under the same German administration. He was apparently really pissed off about being investigated for why so many prisoners were continuing to die after the war. Looking at CM:BS, is it just me or do the hvwy weapon/support lists get smaller and smaller with every CM release.
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Feb 5, 2015 01:32
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Nenonen posted:They're like in all the previous CM titles, so the latter, except Tunguskas kill 'em all with missiles and gunfire and then continue to rape enemy ground forces with gunfire. My main problem is that all air missions are either heavy, medium or light, with no indication what the options stand for? ChrisND mentioned in one of his streams that heavy was basically "shoot hellfires at main battle tanks," with lighter variants focusing more on rockets or guns engaging softer targets.
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Feb 5, 2015 02:39
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