Operation Flashpoint: Two further thoughts.

I would kill (even more than I'm already doing in this game) for an easily-used, point-and-shoot 20mm grenade launcher in this game: not the OICW-GL as it was in reality (with its eight D-cell batteries and its computerized sight with fiddly, mud-vulnerable controls), but the OICW-GL as it was depicted in Far Cry 2 (quick-firing, contact-fused grenade launcher with a *slightly* arcing trajectory).

Some training with the M203 would be a great substitute for this, though: it's a devastating weapon but its shots have a lower muzzle velocity than I expected; I need to get a better sense of how high to raise the gun barrel for a shot to reach a particular range. Twice now I've surprised Soviet patrols in the open (their tactical doctrine is not much better than our own), and could have taken them out in one shot if I'd had an accurate, quick-firing explosive weapon, but instead had to engage them at range with much less ammunition than they had (one soldier versus four), after they had gone to ground.

Poole is right in observing that laser weapons will be a light infantryman's dream come true: no muzzle flash, no sonic boom produced by the bullet's travel, no need to lead on the shot, and much more ammunition.


Also, did I mention that that the squad-leader UI is positively oppressive in its over-controllingness? I don't need to be able to order my men to assume different marching formations and approach certain objectives -- all I want as a squad leader (to say nothing of "as a company leader"!) is to give orders as to what task to accomplish, and leave it to the men on the ground, who are actually risking their lives, to decide how it would best be done. Poole is right: training, skill, and good judgement on the part of the ordinary infantryman (especially one as fearless and as self-sacrificing as the modern American soldier -- we have a quality of men that Genghis Khan would have destroyed a city for) are far more useful and more effective than micromanagement by high command.