Cheers mate! Keep up the fine content! 🤗

we also have a subreddit at r/CombatMission

ive expired

Do you have an updated discord link? I used to binge CMBB/CMAK/CMBO back in the day as a kid and I just full dived back into it when I saw Black sea, SF2, and Cold War on steam. I'd love to get involved making custom maps and try my hand at head to head battles with other players. The community is something I've missed out on in the past when stable internet in rurual areas was harder to come by.

The Ukrainians are bringing John Deer.

@@NorthForkFisherman Nonono that's bringing a combination of mud and a tractor to a tank fight

Well, it would have looked a little silly if I'd gotten up to compound wall and couldn't get in :P Good spot though!

Welcome to the Combat Mission party! 🙏

Yeah I was off I'm at 33 now haha

It has been out for a couple of years now outside of steam... ;D

gnarlyification I just checked the purchase date on CMSF in my battlefront account. 2007! I’m so old! And so is this game! 😁

@@absolutmauser haha too true. I was just meaning SF2, though it is mostly a 'remastered' SF1

I hope he covers urban fights too. Its where I always have trouble.

I've got a multiplayer campaign I need to make videos out of which includes an urban attack and an urban defence. Just got to find the time... ;)

No worries take your time. I currently use your multiplayer game Semper Gumfy. I really liked those showcases format, it's clear and understandable under 30min. Thanks again for sharing this! :)

General Guidelines for Urban Combat are to spread your firepower through as many positions as feasible do not engage in cqc unless you absolutly have to and alway bring as many explosives and launchers as possible. Make sure to get those from the Vehicles before dismounting and keep in mind to use them from roofs or outdoors preferably (backblast). Never fight outside of buildings and keep in mind that the final argument in a Firefight is a 120mm from a near invicible abrams (when screened and positioned properly). Keep throwing everything including the kitchensink at enemy buildings before you send your lemmings in. The enemy moral should brake after enough fire coming their way eventually and they are going to retreat out of their pos. And if you have your forces properly postioned that should be in los of an mg team or vehicle who will then do most of the killing(In TF Thunder one of my mgs got around 80 kills from covering one street that way.

Also Javelins are really really Usefull.

Originally the T55 was going to come over the hill halfway through and the Base of Fire would have had to panic-Javelin it, but I thought that was a bit much.

@@usuallyhapless9481 The Javelin is a key weapon and far superior to the Soviet era Sagger. I see to many people who don't look what is inside their APC's or IFV's. I nominate veteran troops who are on a +1 or +2 bonus to use these weapons. I make them my security squad.

This captures one of the two main issues with the Combat Mission series of games: the AI is so dumb that I can't play single player anymore. That T-55 sitting alone in the middle of the desert was completely wasted. The AI starts engaging at maximum range, where only SAWs and light machine guns are able to open up and in doing so it reveals the position of the enemy while doing no damage at all. The other issue is the bottom up simulation philosophy whose effects are excacerbated in modern titles: as the author of the video rightly says, in modern warfare what can be seen can usually be destroyed in a very short time span. This makes technologically advanced armies much more effective. But when the advantage is a matter of seconds, getting the simulation right is very hard and there is no guarantee that the folks at Battlefront are doing things right. In Combat Mission Black Sea, the M1 has a substantial spotting advantage on equivalent russian-made tanks even though all those machines have modern imaging technology. IR technology generations are supposedly taken into account, but how accurately can anyone guess the difference in spotting times between different versions of such technologies? And yet those few seconds are what makes the difference between winning and losing. The more sophisticated and detailed a model is, the more affected by the value of its parameters it becomes. It's also true for much more important issues these days (like Covid-19 epidemiological models). I don't know... I'm becoming somewhat disillusioned with these simulations...

Unfortunately not- I'm doing it by saving each turn, filming them from the same angle and then editing them together.

"Dismount" will make them get out at the beginning of the turn. Giving them a move order will make them get out when the vehicle finishes its last move order. Took me a while to get used to.

@@usuallyhapless9481 Thanks buddy. Same, I could never tell what was what, some turns they'd just jump right out and it'd cause some headaches for sure.

Very carefully :p

'Is the AI good?' is somewhat difficult to answer: it's somewhat two tier. If you flanked an enemy unit, the TacAI for the unit might make it cower under fire, pivot to engage, displace or flee depending on the circumstances... but the AI 'Player' wouldn't adjust it's scripted plan to compensate by moving other units, deploying reserves etc. This isn't necessarily a problem in tailored scenarios, especially when the player is attacking and the AI can be really challenging, but it can't compare to a human opponent. (Which is good because, you know, skynet etc.)

@@usuallyhapless9481 thanks for the reply man, i think I’m gonna get this game at some point, also lol

They're all on a Steam sale at the moment!

Cheers man! Tank/infantry cooperation is one of those "it depends" questions and in MOUT situations it would depend a lot on what kind of urban area too. As long as the infantry and armour are working together (ie. tank protects infantry by blapping enemy positions, infantry protect tank by spotting and destroying enemy AT teams) then finding the right balance between infantry and vehicles is just an exercise in fine-tuning.

It is just video editing unfortunately. It's doable, but takes a while (at least as long as the game, plus loading times)

@@usuallyhapless9481 Ah, thought it might be. Thank you for the quick response. I guess full-game replays will just have to live in my imagination then. If they had the option to show you both sides as well I'd find that really interesting to watch. Also, unrelated, but thanks for putting together all these videos. As someone with video editing experience I can tell just how much work is going into them. CM is pretty opaque and your basics/tactics videos have been extremely useful. I also binged your excellent Road To Montebourg playlist recently and it was also pretty educational - like a 'worked example' of sorts! I'm currently playing the campaign myself and rewatching each video after I finish each mission.

I definitely intend to do a few of these for the WW2 titles, don't worry. They're CMSF2 focused purely because it came to Steam. It is exactly the same though- the difference is that the blunt instrument is more massed infantry and infantry heavy weapons, plus mortars and artillery because obviously IFVs aren't really a thing.

@@usuallyhapless9481 Can't wait to see it!

Overall; Shock Force 2 or Fortress Italy. If you want a highly deadly, armoured focus; Black Sea. WW2 Armoured focus; Red Thunder Want a lot of infantry focus with lots of hedgerow fighting (at least before Market Garden); Battle for Normandy Want deadly late war with Americans and German Big Cats; Final Blitzkrieg.

WW2 is a lot more forgiving than the modern titles, but it really all comes down to whichever setting you prefer. Shock Force 2, Battle for Normandy and Fortress Italy are the 'complete' games that have all their modules, Red Thunder, Final Blitzkrieg and Black Sea are all currently just base games.

See unlike all the plebs here (joking) my first Combat Mission was Afghanistan. Seriously though don't pick Afghanistan.

I think I removed the files for the nation-specific HQ icons- I like the little flags.

No. You have to use your camera angels and use target or target briefly to check your LOS.

Cheers man! I guesstimated the hull down position for the Stryker in the deployment phase- using the Hull Down command would work, but it's a little finicky and I'm so used to doing it manually I don't really use it very often.

I'm a big fan of the Hull Down command. Doing it manually is fine, but you can get some great results with it with some practice.

You can use a small target arc if you don't want them to fire at all, target armor arc if you only want them to fire on tanks, or target light if you want them to attack a specific unit with small arms only. I think that's the best you can do.

@@zengenite7643 Thanks for this - forgot about arcs, sounds like the best solution might be splitting off the anti tank element with the armor arc like you suggest

It's the map from the Canadian Club scenario

Check the top comment on CMMODS for the updated links.

What @Domfluff said!

Ah, Z folder needs to go in the Data folder with all the BRZ files, it won't work in the Userdata folder.

@@usuallyhapless9481 Ah that would explain it thanks a lot.

Well spotted. Shows how often I check it's been updated!

@@usuallyhapless9481 Your HQS link here is actually dead.

@@karlhungus545 That is not surprising at all. I think this is still up and running: cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=7273

@@usuallyhapless9481 Yah, I have it already thanks, just thought you may want to update your link. HQS is the best sound mod by far for all of them IMO.

community.battlefront.com/topic/137434-how-to-get-your-cmsf2-game-on-steam/ should work