|
As requested! THE GAME Combat Mission: Shock Force is a grognardy turn-based wargame, released by Battlefront.com Studios in 2008. It was the latest entry in their Combat Mission series of unique 'WEGO' strategy games, marked a huge departure from previous entries, and set the standard that all later games in the series have followed. Combat Mission games of the same generation (there's a 'first generation' which started with the original Combat Mission in 2001, and a 'second generation' which started with Shock Force) all use the same engine, have the same UI, and play approximately the same, with the differences between the games mainly being in the force composition of the sides, the weapons they have access to, and the terrain they fight in. Combat Mission takes place on a fairly small scale - the combat is usually between battalion-sized or smaller units (the larger battles might have a couple battalions but this is rare), with the player having direct control over the actions of every unit in the formation down to the fireteam level. From Shock Force on, every single individual soldier, tank, gun, and piece of equipment is simulated separately; there is very little abstracted. The small size, highly granular simulation, and extremely free camera (you can zoom all the way down to eye level and get the same view your guys on the ground get) combine to make a highly engaging play experience. The main draw of the game is its unique 'WEGO' simultaneous turn-based system. Battles in Combat Mission happen in real time, but are turn-based. What that means is that every 60 seconds the game pauses, and the player gets to oversee the battlefield, plan their moves, and give orders like a turnbased game - then, when both players have committed their moves, the orders they gave are executed during a 60-second real time phase, during which the player can move the camera freely and pause/fast-forward/rewind at will. It's not perfect but it works drat well and is a blast to watch in action. The games are still basically running on tech from 2008, have been using the same battle background noise track with no changes since 2001, have some pretty ugly graphics by modern standards, run like dogshit on most computers, are expensive and almost never go on sale, and are developed by a company which actively hates its customers, can barely maintain its own website, and has notoriously bad customer service and tech support even by the extremely lax standards of grognard devs. They are some of my very favorite games ever and I've spent an inordinate amount of money on them. I may hate myself. Anyway, on to Shock Force specifically, and the focus of this LP. Imagine you're Battlefront and you've spent years making WW2 games. You're kind of bored with them and you want to try a new setting. You flip on the news, and since it's the mid-2000s, the Iraq War is taking up most of the news cycle. You point your cheeto-stained finger at the television and declare 'this shall be our game!' Unfortunately, when you bring it up to the rest of the team, they point out that making a video game about a war that is currently happening might be seen as a bit insensitive. Unfazed, you go through your design document for the game and Find-Replace every instance of 'Saddam Hussein' with 'Bashar Al-Assad', 'Iraq' with 'Syria', and '2003' with '2008'. Voila, now you have an original fictional setting for your modern wargame. It sure would be embarrassing if an actual war in Syria were to break out a few years after you released the game, but there's no way that's going to happen, right? By default, the game has you playing as the US Army, bringing down the full force of the most powerful military that has ever existed on a bunch of reservists with equipment from the 1970s and packs of armed civilians who may have never fired their AKs before. It's a pretty fun simulation of asymmetric warfare and a much different experience from every other Combat Mission game - it's basically impossible for you to lose militarily, so the game is more about you winning efficiently (and, in the later campaigns, within your increasingly-limited ROE), minimizing your losses and accomplishing as much as possible with as little as possible. It's a unique experience in these games, and it's also not at all what I'm going to be playing. With one or two exceptions in the single missions, none of the game's official content is designed to be played from the Syrian side at all. There are no Red-side campaigns. It is, so far, the only game in the history of the franchise which is intended to be played as one side only. Fortunately, there's a wealth of user-made content, and that's the direction we'll be taking this LP. We're going to be playing Syrians. Mostly.  THE LP This will be a single-player campaign LP (if you're interested in some Goon-on-Goon play, the world-famous Grey Hunter is running a campaign of Combat Mission: Final Blitzkrieg right here in this very forum). It will be mostly screenshots and gifs but there will be occasional videos where warranted (mostly when heavy fighting is happening or something else interesting occurs). There will be goon participation after the first 2 missions (you'll see why I'm waiting until then soon), which I'll be through fairly quickly. If all goes according to plan, we'll be playing multiple campaigns, as different sides, in different settings and timeframes. We'll start in Syria, play both sides of the Syrian Civil War, may play a platoon of US Marines stranded deep behind enemy lines during a fictional Coalition invasion, might ride along with Dutch armored cavalry or Canadian paratroopers, possibly stop by Libya and fight for the Colonel, and may even fight our way through Kansas shortly after the Cold War escalates to nuclear armageddon. Who knows where, or when, the winds of war will take us. We'll be starting at the very beginning of the Syrian Civil War, on the loyalist side, with the campaign Guardians of the Homeland. This was intended to be a campaign in which you command an elite company of Ba'athist Republican Guards during three phases of the war - first a counterinsurgency campaign against the rebels, then fighting against a fictional conventional US invasion of Syria, and finally playing as insurgents yourselves in the post-invasion phase after the collapse of the government. Unfortunately it was abandoned early in development with only part of the first act finished, so what we got instead was a very well-designed and fun Red vs. Red mini-campaign. The missions are relatively short, the force sizes are small, and the objectives are simple. It'll make a fine introduction. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Aug 28, 2018 |
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 02:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 03:36 |
|
|
reserved
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 02:30
|
|
|
Part 1: Guardians of the Homeland The Story Thus Far  We are Captain Faraj, commanding A Company of the 101st Regiment's Reconnaissance Battalion. A Company is a small, light, and highly maneuverable formation of highly-trained scouts. It has four 'platoons' – I put this in quotations because our company is about the size of a regular army platoon, and our platoons about the size of squads. 1st Platoon and 2nd Platoon are infantry, consisting of three four-man rifle sections armed with AKS-74 assault rifles, (one of which is led by the platoon commander), a designated marksman with an SVD sniper rifle, and a three-man anti-tank section armed with a single deployable AT-7 Saxhorn wire-guided missile launcher (for which they carry five missiles). 3rd and 4th Platoons are vehicle sections, with each 'platoon' consisting of 2 BMP-2 Infantry Fighting Vehicles. The BMP is a tracked, turreted armored vehicle roughly analogous to the US Bradley. It has a crew of two and is armed with a 30mm autocannon for engaging infantry and light vehicles, an AT-5 Spandrel wire-guided missile launcher for engaging tanks, and a PKM machine gun as a secondary armament. In addition, there is a three-man company command section, consisting of ourselves, an executive officer, and a radioman, along with a BMP-2K, the command variant of the BMP-2, with identical armament. 3rd and 4th Platoons are capable of carrying the entirety of 1st and 2nd Platoons respectively, while the command section typically rides in the command BMP, allowing the company to function as a very small mechanized formation.  these BMP-2s are fitted with improvised Explosive Reactive Armor, which ours definitely aren't If our weapons loadout seems rather anemic, that's because it is. We're a scout company. Our job is to find the enemy so the actual army can engage it. We have no machine guns or squad automatic weapons at all, extremely limited anti-tank capability, and such limited numbers that even a single death represents a significant loss in our combat capability. Our vehicles have paper-thin armor which will stop bullets just fine but is defenseless against even light cannon fire, and while their missile launchers will gently caress up tanks, they fire excruciatingly slowly (they have to be reloaded by hand, from outside, a cumbersome procedure which is highly dangerous in combat). Our men are extremely well trained by the standards of the Syrian Army and are held to high standards of professionalism. The unit, like the rest of the Republican Guard, is mostly composed of members of ethnic and religious minorities (primarily Alawites, the same as the ruling Assad family, but there are Shias, Christians, and other groups as well) and is fanatically loyal to the Syrian government. Like most of the Republican Guard, most of our troops have never seen combat. That's about to change. The company has been out of contact for weeks, performing field training exercises in the desert near the Iraqi border. The return trip was supposed to include a stopover at the 20th Brigade (regular army) HQ near the city of al-Tanhir for rest and refueling, then a leisurely drive back to our barracks in Damascus. The return trip is interrupted when we are ambushed on the road by a large group of non-uniformed men, who attack the column with RPGs and improvised explosives. They are quickly driven off, but manage to immobilize one of our BMPs. Radio communication with other units in the area reveals a scattered, disorganized mess; numerous attacks have taken place and nobody really knows who is responsible or what is happening, entire units have dropped off the net, and no one is really making any concerted effort to restore order, at least not in the local area. Leaving 2nd Platoon behind to guard the vehicle while repairs are effected, we take 1st Platoon and our command BMP forward on a mission to figure out what in the blue gently caress is going on.  the tactical map for this mission is rock-simple, so this is the only image you're getting; later missions will feature a more detailed overview Mission Briefing Shortly afterwards, we encounter some unarmed men in Army uniforms fleeing down the road. They explain that they were guarding a nearby ammunition depot when dozens of heavily armed men stormed the place in pickup trucks, shot the commanding officer dead, and disarmed the garrison. The hostiles ordered the garrison to begin loading weapons and munitions into trucks, but these men escaped and ran away. Allowing rebels (for these are almost certainly local rebels, not foreign commandos) to have access to heavy weapons is unacceptable. Sending 1st Platoon's BMPs ahead to recon the main garrison, we take the dismounted troops and our command BMP to go put a stop to the situation.  our forces, such as they are Our mission here is simple and straightforward: destroy every truck before they manage to load them. We don't actually need to take and hold the dump, and in fact I'm not even certain we could. Although we do not know the enemy's composition or strength, we are certain to be outnumbered and outgunned and the enemy has a commanding position. We'll have to be smart about this. We could assault the dump directly, of course...  the dump is well-fortified and there's basically no cover to speak of on the approach ...but what if we didn't?  the radar tower, on the other hand, is much easier to approach safely...  ...and has a nice view Either way, we'll need to move quickly, they'll be finished loading those trucks in minutes. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Aug 28, 2018 |
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 02:35
|
|
|
Turns 1-5 We have a single armored vehicle and twenty men. A direct assault on the dump would be suicide. Captain Faraj gambles on the rebels not having had enough time to fully fortify their positions and orders the entire platoon to move en masse on the radar station.  tactical movement is something we'll get some experience with from mission 2 onward, but right now, we're effectively working with a single squad, so we move it like a single unit. none of these formations are really capable of operating on their own, it's best to think of these guys like one body. normally we'd stagger movement and use bounding overwatch but we don't have time for that, and our enemies are likely not going to be able to deliver effective fire from that range, especially with the stone wall and wheat field in the way Having been spotted immediately, the unit takes sporadic ineffective fire from the direction of the ammo dump, but advances in good order regardless. The command BMP reaches a hull-down position relative to the radar station and sprays it with suppressing autocannon fire. We have, as of yet, spotted no hostiles in the vicinity, but better safe than sorry.  an RPG could easily kill us here, which is why we're not going to give them an opportunity to breathe, much less shoot us. Cannon shells are cheap, yo. It takes about three minutes for the platoon to catch up with the BMP; there is more scattered fire from the ammo dump but none of it comes close. The plan from here is simple – we have almost no time to work with and only one viable path. The platoon charges at a dead run under heavy and relentless covering fire from the command vehicle, popping smoke as they go.  smoke not depicted here, it hadn't gone off yet The incoming fire causes extensive damage to the structure.  30mm HE is no joke Even in the face of this barrage, our paranoia proves justified, as we spot an armed man somehow still standing in the wreckage. Contact!  genuinely have no idea how this dude survived; who knows how many others died when the building collapsed, hopefully a lot His single rifle is answered by 20, and he falls away from the window with a scream. Some of his compatriots are caught outside, and suffer an equally dire fate.  one of these guys got hit in the chest with a five-round burst from the autocannon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lEohy_Wr2I) and should realistically be puree, but this game doesn't really do gore We need to go faster, we've wasted five minutes on this already, push and overrun. This rabble is clearly no match for the Republican Guard.  this might look like we've got this well in hand, but we can't afford to get complacent; all it takes is one guy in a good position to completely ruin our day here Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Aug 28, 2018 |
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 04:14
|
|
|
Mister Bates posted:This rabble is clearly no match for the Republican Guard.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 04:28
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r35q8syktPY
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 04:32
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6yngSPAIds
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 04:53
|
|
|
gently caress yeah, never got to play Shock Force, so this is extremely my poo poo. I'm also wondering how much this version of the CMx2 engine sucks compared to the modern releases.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 05:57
|
|
|
Turn 6-End Maintain the offensive, keep the pressure on. Cover the left flank.  Two rifle sections to the left to lay down fire on the ammo dump, one rifle section and the ATGM team on the right as infantry support for the BMP These guys were just cowering here and hadn't recovered from the autocannon barrage. One of them has an RPG but makes no attempt to fire it. Our infantry following the BMP cut them down where they lie, while the BMP focuses on another new threat spotted directly ahead  all lined up like ducks in a row and facing the wrong way  surprise motherfucker The weapon on the back of this truck is a ZU-23-2, a Soviet twin-barreled 23mm autocannon. It's designed for anti-aircraft duty but will gently caress up basically everything short of a main battle tank. The large, powerful round and terrifying rate of fire make it a credible threat, and had these idiots positioned it better it could have actually handled our entire force single-handedly. It would perforate our BMP's armor as easily as if it were cardboard. We'll get to play with its big brother, the ZU-23-4, later on in the campaign. Had we attempted to assault the dump, this gun would have been in enfilade position with a commanding view over our avenue of approach. As-is, it's target practice.  weapons mounted on technicals turn very slowly, with the sole exception being the PK; this is one of their biggest weaknesses, because if the technical is facing in the wrong direction, it will nearly always be dead before it can bring its weapons to bear. learn keyholing or die. Toyota may make a good pickup truck but the warranty doesn't cover damage from high explosive shells.  Unfortunately, one of our men is hit by the insurgents as they're wiped out. He's alive, but incapacitated. One of the other men tends to them.  even panicked and cowering guys with AKs are still guys with AKs, and all it takes is one errant bullet From this point forward it's a slaughter. They have another technical, this one with a powerful recoilless rifle on it, but it doesn't live long enough to matter. We open up on the ammo dump with everything we've got.   fish in a fuckin' barrel These trucks are going nowhere.  this took less than two minutes of sustained fire Our celebration is short-lived, though – an RPG rocket fired from the complex, by sheer dumb loving luck, strikes 1st Platoon's executive officer directly in the chest! He's killed instantly, and his comrades scatter.  bullshit, absolute loving bullshit, hit him dead on With no reason for us to remain here, and not wanting to take any more casualties, we pull out. Our work here is done.  I ended the mission prematurely; we have all the victory points we were going to get and there was no need to keep risking my men Losing a man after our mission objective had already been accomplished really stings, particularly considering his high rank. We'll be putting him in for a medal. Although the majority of the enemy force survived, they're not schlepping out an entire munitions dump full of supplies on foot with less than 40 guys. With our objective accomplished and the rebels' operation severely hindered, we're calling this a victory.  Now, let's regroup with the rest of the company and push on to the 20th Brigade's garrison. The radio chatter we've picked up indicates it may be under attack, and if it falls, our forces in this area will likely fall into complete disarray. Final Assessment I'm legit pissed about that loving rocket, I very nearly managed this with zero KIA. That having been said, this went extremely well. This mission is a lot harder than it looks; the enemy has very good positions, and although their weapons are inferior and their training minimal, there are a lot more of them than there are of you, and all they have to do is spray enough bullets at you to eventually hit something. In my test runs before this LP I lost this mission outright twice and suffered heavy losses on my first victory. The key is to pick your targets carefully and focus your fire on them – you have better weapons and better people operating them, meaning that while you can bring less fire to bear than the enemy can, you can bring more effective fire to bear, and once the platoon is zeroed in on a single target that target is pretty much dead. For the curious, the enemy's force composition at the dump at the end of the battle included 16 or so riflemen, three RPGs, four RPD light machine guns, and one PKM machine gun. While they were pinned down by the fire coming from the hill, that's still more than enough to shred us, and we had no real way to dislodge them. If I'd had twice the men I could do it. The guy in the collapsed radar station actually was in fact the only enemy in there; the rest of his squad had fled the building before it collapsed and spent the entire rest of this short engagement cowering in a ditch in the corner of the map. This is by far the shortest and simplest mission we'll ever play in this LP; consider it a prologue. It's a nice introduction to the mechanics and is a fun little tactical vignette in its own right, but it's time for us to move on to much bigger and better things.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 05:59
|
|
|
how far was the shooting distance from the radar station to the ammo dump?
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 06:08
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:how far was the shooting distance from the radar station to the ammo dump? almost exactly 500 meters Squiggle posted:gently caress yeah, never got to play Shock Force, so this is extremely my poo poo. I'm also wondering how much this version of the CMx2 engine sucks compared to the modern releases. It looks a lot rougher and is somehow even more poorly optimized than the newer titles, and is also missing a lot of little improvements from later titles that you don't think are essential until they aren't there anymore. Red vs. Red play in particular has really made me feel the absence of a 'Target Briefly' command; there's also no ability to order a unit to target and fire from the location it will be, only from the location where it currently is. the official campaigns, or at least the early ones, are also mediocre-to-bad by modern Combat Mission standards; it was the first time they'd ever designed missions for the new engine and they hadn't really figured out everything they could do with it. they got steadily better with the later DLC, and the NATO campaigns (which I may LP in this thread later) are extremely good, but that just makes the roughness of the earlier poo poo stand out even more. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Aug 28, 2018 |
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 06:22
|
|
|
Good application of those cold war Pact tactics in miniature: keep everyone together, demolish opposition with overwhelming
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 07:14
|
|
|
whelp
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 11:49
|
|
|
....killme....
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 12:56
|
|
|
wait, you can actually download this now? I thought it wasn't released yet.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 15:59
|
|
|
Don't do it you fools, don't give these fucks more money when we can just live vicariously through Mister Bates.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 16:20
|
|
|
 Mission Briefing 2nd Platoon, having finished repairs to the immobilized BMP, resume their drive to the garrison as 1st Platoon pulls back from the ammo dump. They arrive at about 6 PM, shortly before sunset (the previous engagement happened in the early evening, about 5 PM). Just in the nick of time, too – a massive attack is in progress and the base has suffered heavy damage. Most of the base is already in enemy hands.  ominous We manage to establish consistent radio contact with the 20th Brigade's commanding officer, who is pinned down in the headquarters building with four men. He must be rescued – if any kind of local response to this chaos is to be organized, the Army will need as much of its officer corps intact as possible.  these guys have a good position and will punch well above their weight if they need to shoot, but we'll try to avoid that if possible In addition, we encounter the remnants of the base's military police detachment organizing for a counter-attack at the front gates. They're down two squads, but the remaining men are fully armed and ready for a fight.  these guys are regular infantry, not as good as us but still pretty decent Fittingly for an important military facility, these men are well armed and trained to a decent standard. They're carrying AK-74M assault rifles of comparable quality to ours, three RPK-74 light support weapons, and three RPG-29 rocket launchers. Each of the three squads (two of which have 9 men, one of which has 8) has a single underslung GP-30 grenade launcher. Alongside them, we have 2nd Platoon and their BMP support. They're identical to our core force in the last battle, except that they have two BMP-2s instead of one BMP-2K. They are currently mounted but we'll be unloading them pretty early in the engagement.  Our objectives here are twofold – first, as our highest priority, we must rescue the 20th Brigade's surviving command staff, currently pinned down and expecting another attack at any second. Second, we must drive off the rebel forces and retake the base. Special priority is being given to taking the main barracks...  ...and the supply depot.  We do not know the exact composition of the enemy force, but they are clearly heavily armed. From experience with our previous engagement, we must be prepared for technicals armed with heavy weapons, PKM machine gun teams, RPG-7s, and large numbers of AKM assault rifles. Successfully preventing their compatriots from looting the ammo dump has limited their access to modern weaponry, but we should expect some AK-74s and other relatively modern firearms looted locally. Some of the armored vehicles stationed at the depot are also unaccounted for; we should be prepared for the possibility that the rebels have commandeered these vehicles. In addition, the base security checkpoint bears obvious evidence of a vehicle-borne IED attack, another threat we will have to keep in mind. The Terrain  if you're wondering why it's dark now, the game's real-time day/night cycle continues to run even while the game is paused. it'll snap back to daylight once I actually start running turns. The base is a relatively built-up area compared to our last engagement, with few unobstructed lines of sight and a lot of cover and concealment. We are located on the northern end, facing south. To our west is a very steep hill commonly called 'Mount Agony' by the troops who have to do PT there. While it provides a commanding view of the entire base and would make a fine place from which to establish a base of fire...  I can see my house from here ...its sides are very nearly sheer rock slope, impassable for our vehicles and very slow and exhausting for our infantry to scale.  not a climb you want to make carrying a combat load To the east is dense woodland, bisected by the base's outer wall.  To the front is the base itself. The outer wall is about chest-height and can be both easily scaled and shot over. Just past the outer walls are the base trenches, which, while intended for defense against threats from outside, will work just fine in the other direction. There is an identical trench in the woods to the east.  Between the trenches and the rest of the base are fields of relatively barren, open terrain, gently sloping downwards. The barracks buildings have taken battle damage but are still standing. 20th Brigade tells us that there has been no contact with friendly forces in those buildings for some time and we should expect them to be occupied by enemy troops. The base infirmary is located between Mount Agony and the headquarters building; it has not yet fallen into rebel hands and will likely not be playing a major role in this battle.  Along the main north-south road through the base is a row of officer housing, with fenced yards. The buildings, and their ten-foot-tall fences, completely block line of sight between the main road and the depot, effectively requiring enemies approaching from the east to either take those buildings or go around them if they want to threaten troops in the road. In addition, line of sight to the west is blocked by more high walls. If we can clear the northern barracks building, this will give any vehicles stationed in this road a very narrow cone of fire directly forward which is the only direction they can be threatened from and which any approaching enemies will have to cross. This is called a 'keyhole position' and I will absolutely be taking advantage of this.  To the west is a nearly identical potential keyhole position which will provide excellent coverage against any attackers trying to move on the headquarters building.  South of the base buildings is open scrubland. The mess hall is not considered a critical objective and we will likely be ignoring it. The Plan The terrain thus analyzed, we develop our initial plan as follows: One squad of military police will move into the eastern trenches to secure our left flank. They will immediately begin laying down area suppressing fire on the depot and will spend the entire engagement doing this, focusing their fire on specific targets should the enemy attempt to fire back at them. Simultaneously, the rest of our infantry (including our dismounted scouts) will advance to the western trenches, while the BMPs advance down the main road. If there are enemies in the officer housing we should spot them here and we will reorient, if not we will continue with the plan.  The BMPs will lay down fire into these buildings...  ...while the infantry assault them, advancing in fireteams with bounding overwatch (this means that half the squad will advance while the other half hangs back and shoots, and then the advancing team will cover the trailing team while they leapfrog past them, repeating the process until the entire unit has reached its destination). The military police will head for the barracks, the scouts will take the small buildings to the west (our right). When the infantry approach the buildings, they will storm and capture them. The BMPs will advance in support, with one BMP immediately laying down fire on the southern barracks building unless higher-priority targets present themselves, and the other positioning itself to guard the headquarters building from enemy advance.  Once we have established these positions, we will methodically roll up enemy opposition in a west-to-east pattern, securing the area around the Brigade HQ as our highest priority, then moving the forces there forward to clear the barracks.  Leaving a unit in the southern barracks to secure our right flank against enemy counterattack, the rest of our force will move to clear the depot.  Once the depot is clear, we will advance our entire force as a single body to the south and sweep any stragglers from the area. That's the idea, anyway. We'll see how well it works out in practice.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 18:48
|
|
|
Onwards to victory ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJLbsizAmEw
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 19:46
|
|
|
Pharnakes posted:Don't do it you fools, don't give these fucks more money when we can just live vicariously through Mister Bates. yeah do not feed into the overpriced jank rear end engine from ten years ago c'mon have you seen a grey thread the janky weirdness is not because of grey
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2018 00:19
|
|
|
Lum_ posted:wait, you can actually download this now? I thought it wasn't released yet. Nope! The link is a readme file that says the download is not available. Mister Bates posted:
Instead of doing these in paint, I would recomment http://getgreenshot.org/ - a free, light screenshot tool with built in editor that lets you draw neat arrows and poo poo over the screenshot.
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2018 11:34
|
|
|
V for Vegas posted:Nope! The link is a readme file that says the download is not available. Paint.net is also great for this sort of thing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2018 18:11
|
|
|
In addition, it would be awesome if you could crop your screenshots to a smaller size and put them in regular [img] tags rather than [timg] - having to expand twenty thumbnails per update of a screenshot LP gets pretty tedious. Otherwise enjoying the LP so far - I've always enjoyed the Combat Mission series despite being atrociously bad at them so it's nice to watch someone else give them a go.
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2018 20:49
|
|
|
writing up the next set of updates now, and I'll definitely try slightly smaller images in [img] tags for this one, should make it a bit easier to read also, a small preview: for the hell of it I decided to try ordering my ATGM team to hike up Mount Agony to put a Saxhorn up there and they decided that the nearest slope was so steep they weren't even going to attempt it, even if I directly ordered them to, and instead decided to take a leisurely walk around the entire hill to a slightly less steep area e: another small preview: it turns out shrapnel can travel really, really far under certain circumstances Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Aug 30, 2018 |
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2018 01:50
|
|
|
Turns 1-4 I said videos would be relatively rare, but there's actually three in this update; these were very eventful turns There is no time to lose. Smoke is rising from the base in thick columns, there are fires burning, and we can still hear sporadic gunfire and screams. The battle is already in progress, brothers, we need only join it.  initial orders General Raboud of the 20th Brigade reports visual contact with three armed pickup trucks, two of them mounting PK machine guns, one of them mounting a powerful but slow-firing SPG-9 recoilless rifle (an anti-tank cannon, more than capable of destroying our BMPs with a single shot and a credible threat to massed infantry as well). He is laying low and will not engage unless fired upon.  the view from the General's window, looking east   As soon as Captain Faraj gives the go order, the men spring into action. The BMPs surge ahead and begin laying down fire. As-yet-unseen adversaries return fire, and the battle is joined.  Onward!   As the battle revs up, with cannon thundering and bullets whipping past, Corporal Al-Razi and his anti-tank team take it calm and casual, strolling past military policemen with their heads down in the trenches with a confident swagger. We're Guardsmen, their walk seems to say, don't gently caress with us.   just taking a leisurely Sunday walk They have permission to take it slowly; they've got a strenuous climb ahead of them. The Captain wants a missile launcher atop Mount Agony in case of any rebel armor. For everyone else, there's no time to waste. Laying down suppressing fire as they move, the men surge forward.  But wait, what's this?  a would-be martyr The old sedan floors it down the road. Here's some video footage of how that works out for him: https://youtu.be/7gT-zpAOJ-g should have gone with a car that has better acceleration, buddy The explosion has three immediately obvious effects. First, it blows the gently caress out of one of the officer houses, leaving it a husk. Second, far more importantly, the shrapnel from the IED scythes down the crews of the technicals in the roadway, and the survivors abandon the vehicles, running for cover.  holy shiiiit, that couldn't have gone better if I had loving planned it that way Third, unfortunately, an errant shrapnel fragment strikes one of our Guardsmen, sending him to the ground, either dead or severely wounded. There is no time to stop and tend to him.  a fair trade, all things considered As a huge cloud of smoke and dust billows and our men maintain the advance, let's turn our attention to the drama unfolding at the headquarters building. About three seconds after the car bomb explodes, the rebels decide to launch the first wave of their assault. They probably assume their IED hit something vital and that we'll be pinned down.  The General's view, looking south They are very, very wrong. video https://youtu.be/_YEJIAb41Ks holy poo poo, this general is a bad motherfucker  The buildings which are the initial target of our advance are looking a little worse for the wear.  In fact, one of them actually collapses entirely under heavy fire, which is not ideal, we could have used that building. video https://youtu.be/K0GJ1JSkYMM  No matter, a minor inconvenience. Press on. Keep the pressure on 'em  the huge smoke cloud is from the IED explosion and will take minutes to completely dissipate Against all odds, our troops spot a sniper in the wreckage. Either he's the luckiest man in the world or he was waiting just outside the building.  Either way, he doesn't have long. Our advance continues. The military police stack up on the doors of the northern barracks, and will storm it at any second. The BMPs begin pouring fire into the southern barracks. Total time elapsed: less than four minutes. Let's not get overconfident, anything could happen.  current battlefield overview I tried to crop these images down enough that they shouldn't break tables; let me know if some of them still are and I'll shave them down a bit more Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Aug 30, 2018 |
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2018 04:56
|
|
|
I only ever played the Demo of Shock Force and I have since forgotten how lovely the game looks. Those maps are naked.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2018 08:51
|
|
|
use ur imagination
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2018 09:16
|
|
|
this is how ugly the game looks with 2GB of graphical enhancement mods
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2018 15:32
|
|
|
Mister Bates posted:this is how ugly the game looks with 2GB of graphical enhancement mods 
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2018 14:23
|
|
|
quote:That firing position... looks unsafe.
|
|
#
?
Sep 6, 2018 14:42
|
|
|
At least they are wearing flashmasks.
|
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2018 07:29
|
|
|
Pharnakes posted:At least they are wearing flashmasks. It's to make the technicals go faster
|
|
#
?
Sep 8, 2018 19:11
|
|
|
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HIDi07qQNZk Hey does this game allow you to fight the Turkish army?
|
|
#
?
Sep 9, 2018 07:52
|
|
|
This isn't dead, I just got inexplicably slammed at work. I've played the rest of the mission and just need to actually write the updates, which I'll be doing in the next couple days if all goes according to plan.Crowsbeak posted:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HIDi07qQNZk Sadly, no, the only local forces in the game are the Syrian Army and two different types of unconventional forces (literal armed civilians, and relatively well-trained guerrilla fighters)
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2018 04:01
|
|
|
Mister Bates posted:This isn't dead, I just got inexplicably slammed at work. I've played the rest of the mission and just need to actually write the updates, which I'll be doing in the next couple days if all goes according to plan. Can't believe with what's happened they haven't tried to update the game.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2018 05:34
|
|
|
Can we barrel bomb people?
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2018 05:38
|
|
|
SSNeoman posted:Can we barrel bomb people? This is very important. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2018 06:04
|
|
|
Just discovered this - love me some CM
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2018 06:19
|
|
|
So, out of curiosity, does the game model morale? Like, will your dudes panic if they get pinned down or lose half their buddies? Or do they just keep doing as they're ordered no matter what? Soldier stamina? Is damage just damage to hit points, or can vehicles actually take damage to discrete parts like tracks, engines, etc. and still have other parts fully functional?
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2018 20:37
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:So, out of curiosity, does the game model morale? Like, will your dudes panic if they get pinned down or lose half their buddies? Or do they just keep doing as they're ordered no matter what? Soldier stamina? Is damage just damage to hit points, or can vehicles actually take damage to discrete parts like tracks, engines, etc. and still have other parts fully functional? Yes, they panic. You lose control of them temporarily while they do. There are 2 different levels of panic: one is cower in place and the other is run for whatever they perceive to be the nearest better cover and take their chances outrunning the bullets. Stamina is there. There are 5 different levels of exhaustion, plus crawling and hunting (will stop when they see enemies) Hit points are there, kind of. If a bullet hits a soldier it rolls a metaphorical dice and decides if he is a major casualty or minor casualty or light wounds. Major casualties end up KIA at the end of battle, and allies can pick up their weapons and ammo. Minor casualties can be medic'ed and recover at the end of battle I think. Light wounded people can keep fighting in the battle. Vehicles have discrete parts, usually wheels/tracks, optics, weapons, engine, individual crew members with specific functions, and probably a couple more I'm forgetting. They have different armour values for front/sides/top/rear/turret, and open-top vehicles are properly modelled as such. I probably got a bunch of specifics wrong but the general flavour is all correct. The manual for this game is available online from the maker's (Battlefront) website
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2018 20:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 03:36 |
|
|
Stamina exists in that infantry gets exhausted two minutes into the engagement.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2018 05:28
|
|