Get the free demos at Battlefront first to decide which one you want to get first. They are all great, but do have differences depending on era, forces, and terrain. It's the BEST type game of this genre bar none!

@@vinnart you have a link to them?

See? SEE? I'm not antisocial, I just have high quality and lots of experience.

Freak accidents aside... :P

I love this game but the spotting is the only thing that pisses me off. A veteran crew in a tank should be able to see the fucking tank in the middle of a field right in front of them, but half of the time they're just blind, even if I'm turned out. So many times have I been watching some sort of opening or crossing, just to see the tail end of a tank or vehicle appear briefly, then disappear around the corner because apparently my crack tank crew has the reaction time of a tortoise. If you're facing a direction and something moves into direct line of sight with little or no intervening terrain, you should spot it almost instantly.

I think most people doe not get to this game because its graphics and clunky mechanics.

Does*

@@stardekk1461 Most people don't get to this game because it's not sold on Steam and instead relies on an archaic on-site purchase system and ludicrous DRM.

@@Gekkibi not anymore

@@Gekkibi Yeah Hapless stands a relatively good chance of becoming the guy with CMSF2 going to Steam, his channel could grow exponentially depending on how well the game is received on a large distribution platform. Here's hoping the game sells well. For everybodies sake.

Coming out on steam there will be more players

The graphics and Animations are alittle bit dated, not to take anything away from the gameplay tho. I would love a remake!

I recently got in an accident an down for a few months so I got none better to do than learn some good old military tactics. Final blitzkrieg is mad fun tho

Thanks man! I've never tried to use hardcore rules... pretty sure I can't trust myself to stick to them. Might give them a shot for a video some day, we'll see.

@@usuallyhapless9481 it certainly gives the otherwise beatable (generally, especially when you are defending) AI a fighting chance of winning

Could u tell us how many range of the voice range plz ?

Oh so this is why I often have schizophrenic tank commanders, I'm annoyed when a commander keep hearing a tank behind a treeline but the tank had moved elsewhere 20 minutes ago.

C2 and Information Sharing post on the official battlefront forums: community.battlefront.com/topic/119474-c2-information-sharing/

Yup, vertical sharing is per unit. That means that a random rifle squad will share with his platoon leader, who will share with the other rifle squads in the platoon, and with his company commander (who will in turn share with the other platoon leaders in the company). Each of these hops takes time, which means that being aware of your TO&E structure and resulting C2 network is important. This is also why recon elements tend to be embedded at a higher level, so that they can share more directly with the commanding officer. This also means it matters where you attach individual FO teams and the like if bought separately. Higher-than-scale formations are represented as off-map assets (e.g., the division commander), but those will take much longer to contact and filter through, and obviously will need a radio connection to do so. Horizontal sharing can be done by anyone, and it's how you're going to manage multiple vertical chains of C2. Spies in unconventional formations are notable for this - spies are great observers, because they're basically invisible, but they don't have radios or other methods of communication. That means that arranging a spy team such that they are in C2 of each other, and that at least one element of this team is within horizontal sharing range (4 spots) of another unit is important. This also means that it can be a good idea to use HQ units for scouting (a "leader recon"), since that'll disseminate the information to the platoon faster. It's also why HQ XO units are for - these are typically otherwise fairly pointless units, but they usually have a radio connection to the HQ, which means they can be sent on an independent mission to share or pick up spotting contacts for the platoon.

What Domfluff said. C2 and Information Sharing is in line for it's own video at some point.

Cheers man! Glad you enjoyed it.

Yes. It was always the plan, but things have also accelerated somewhat :)

That's an interesting idea, and hard to rule out. It's also hard to test that reliably, given all the unknowns. It's certainly the case that recon units tend to have more suitable equipment and (importantly) C2 structure - even things like the Recon platoon in a motor rifle battalion, which may not have the best spotting gear, still benefits from being a single hop away from the battalion commander in the radio net , so will share spotting contacts more quickly than a random rifle squad will (with the radio in the vehicle, at least).

Comparing scouts to riflemen is doable, the problem is that spotting has that random element so you need to do a substantial amount of testing to get a reliable sample. I was messing around with spotting/time-to-kill times with different veterancy values at one point... had a conscript team that spotted all targets faster than an elite team. Couldn't hit those targets mind, but it just goes to show.

Equipment has much to do with spotting as well. A troop carrying a set of Binos will spot much better than one without. This is more prevalent in the ww2 era Combat Mission games.

Sound contacts spotted by a listening patrol aka standing patrols. I found a scout team moving with his plt headquarters in a contact to movement technique gives a pretty good idea of the enemy setup early in the game. I move in hunt mode with frequent stops. Headquarters humping 10 second intervals.

Not sound contacts. Just contacts.

@@Tom_Quixote Spider sense is tingling!

For occupy objectives (the ones that don't go away when you touch them), the side that has troops in the area gets the points assigned to it ('captures the zone'). They have to be in the area and there have to be no enemy troops in the area.

I am 99% sure the game doesn't take shadows into account. The degree to which lighting affects spotting is controlled by the general lighting levels of the battle- this varies by time of day (and can change, particularly at dusk and dawn) but to my knowledge actual cast shadows don't have any impact on spotting.

It's not vanilla, it's Vein's Effects.

Video coming on Friday ;)

@@usuallyhapless9481 which campaign is the easiest. Also does taking casualties in the campaign matter. Just lost 2 recon vehicles and a squad to a tank snipe from all the way across the map (they were at the corner of the map so i forgot about them until i saw smoke rising), but i was already 30 minutes in and i didn't want to start all over again. I was using wego/ turn-based mode. Just finished mastering the wargame series and decided to try out this. To think i thought wargame had a steep learning curve

@@georgeofazgad2176 The US Task Force Thunder campaign is probably the easiest. The NATO ones are definitely much harder. Whether vehicles and casualties are resupplied depends on what happens in the campaign, but I would probably try and keep everyone alive.

@@usuallyhapless9481 right but usually how much casualty are you willing to take before restarting. For comparison i lost one striker and took 15 casualties in the final training mission. Would that be considered heavy and warrant a restart in a notmal campaign? (I lost 6 guys to a single at rocket) that slammed into the centre of the rooftop where i set up to scout the town). These losses seem heavy but it is a town assault

Storming any building is extremely hazardous as you've found, the trick is to keep the enemy suppressed while doing so. Either by softening up the area they are in with large HE fire (tanks, mortars) first, and/or small arms fire from your other (non-assaulting squads). Note that friendly fire _is_ a thing in Combat Mission, so use the 'target briefly' command on your suppressing squads to keep the enemy pinned down while your assaulting squad makes its way in. Ideally you want your suppressing squads to stop firing just as your assaulting squad enters the immediate area being attacked, getting the timing right on this is tricky and important, if your suppressing squads stop firing too early, the enemy may recover and take down your assaulting squad, if they fire too long they risk hitting the assaulting squad. Don't even think about using large HE while your assaulting squad is making their move, as blast from these weapons will almost certainly do damage and suppression to your own guys.

Small note: I came into the CM series with most of my tactile experience being with Wargame Red Dragon, a title where reconnaissance troops have much much better spotting capability than normal infantry, although as a whole the WG franchise by Eugen is a much more arcade like take on warfare

The quick answer is that all pixeltruppen are equal... but differences in equipment and organisation matter. So a 'scout' is not inherently better at spotting than anyone else, but he might be more likely to have equipment that that helps with spotting (like binoculars) and scout formations (like Scout Platoons) tend to be quite shallow, which makes information sharing easier because there are fewer levels to travel through.

IIRC this is just a quick battle- if you play hotseat mode you can put the units on both sides wherever you like

@@usuallyhapless9481 Thank you so much for the reply! I posted this only a few minutes into your video, but now having gone through the entire series, You explain things in such a wonderful way. Thank you so much for making these!

Spotting is based on line of sight, so if they can draw better line of sight from a high rooftop, then yes (and they'll be correspondingly exposed to being spotted themselves). Of course, it's usually a good idea to shoot the crap out of the tallest building in the enemy's part of the map for exactly that reason...

It depends a lot on the era. For WW2 and earlier Cold War kit, having the commander out of the hatch scanning with his binoculars and then directing the gunner to use his more powerful, but narrower field of view optic is usually the best move. With the more modern stuff, the TC can have optics and thermals as powerful as the gunner and his own independent viewer to use them through, so it can be better to button up.

If you still haven't seen Hapeless just made video about it.

Sadly, no. The only lights that are modelled are sun/moon light and muzzle flashes. Of course, being next to a burning wreck that might suffer ammunition cook-offs is probably not a good idea anyway...

@@usuallyhapless9481 I was just wondering while playing campaign and there were abandoned pickups that you could easy ignite. Thanks for answer.

"pixeltruppen"

Excellent video though as usual of course :)

@@Mandatory.Testicular.Torsion pixeltruppen. I guess it's a joke.

It would be nice, but it would take so much uncertainty out of the game. That might sound counter-intuitive, but it's a big part of what makes the game stand out from the crowd.

Just use a selected units targeting function will give you its LOS capability.

That's a spotting contact. So your units think there is some kind of enemy infantry over there, but they haven't identified it yet. You can still shoot at it with area fire if that's what you want to do.

It's possible. From what I can tell, the actual pixeltruppen are just as good at spotting but NATO forces have better equipment. So, a US rifle squad has 3 pairs of binoculars, plus 2 M145s on the SAWs (3.4x optics) and 1 4x ACOG on for the Marksman. In your average Syrian infantry squad the squad leader has some binoculars and that's it, so they're seriously underequipped by comparison. Vehicles are even worse- something like a T90 might have thermal imagers, but thermal imagers that are a generation behind those in NATO tanks and simply don't have the same kind of resolution.

At least for the campaigns the biggest impact probably comes from the difference in experience between the NATO and syrian forces. The higher unit experience the harder it is to spot them and the better they spot themselves. In the campaign running green vs crack troops is quite common and that makes a massive difference.

They are from a Mod.

There are some NATO marker mods out there- I've given them a try in the past and honestly find it easier to have a little picture than it is to try and remember what symbol is which.

@@usuallyhapless9481 yeah they are burned into my brain from graviteam and command

This can happen, one shell can also penetrate multiple vehicles. Riccochets can also injure nearby troops.

They are from a Mod