Kopijeger

Not at all. Remote control turrets are quite real. See this link for an example of a system that is actually in use on a variety of vehicles. Note especially that the M151 is said to be the standard weapon on the Stryker. See also this wikipedia entry.

Because BIS has decided to give the North the Su-34 (in real life, a technologically advanced heavy strike fighter that is only now coming into service in the russian air force). It would likely not agree with unpaved runways, and at any rate it seems unlikely that they would not be able to afford a paved runway even if they are less wealthy than the South. As for the southern airfield, it seems more likely to be a joint civilian/military one than one constructed for the benefit of the US forces.

Most would say no. There are a couple of missions that are reasonably large in scope and decently designed, but the majority are either simplistic, and/or poorly thought out, and several were heavily bugged, but this seems to have improved with the latest patch.

No, it does not explain the fact that the north has more military hardware than the south when the south is supposed to be wealthier. Also, I found it slightly strange that the airfield in the south is paved, but the two airstrips in the north are unpaved (one on the eastern side of the island, another on a smaller island east of that again). Do you really think it "superb" that the North invaded at a time when they would be sure to draw the US into the war, and that the RACS attacks you without rhyme or reason (even if they south is tyrannic, it is ridiculous to attack your allies with such a weak force) just as you are about to make the final push? And that there are seemingly no consequences for the South?

I actually found a way to do this without losing any soldiers; by making sure the second team does not get involved. The first waypoint is in the middle of the town, if you reach that the second team will proceed to get slaughtered. If you position your team outside the town, on the north side, in such a way that they can view both the centre and the field west of town, they can pick off the lot and only be shot out a little bit (two of them got wounded). When you have killed all, proceed to the waypoint inside the town and then to the meeting point. When you reach the latter the second team will join you and the first team (which you left in their spot) will quickly pick off the new soldiers that spawn in town. Effectively, the town must be cleared twice, and the second team is effectively useless unless you can keep them out of harms way until you gain direct control of them.

I was referring solely to the geographical scale of the islands, which has nothing to do with the hardware available to the different sides.

The "microscopic" thing must be attributed to the limitations of hardware. Current hardware cannot handle an reasonably-sized island at this level of detail, so we must assume it is actually much larger in order to be able to support such forces. For that matter, this was worse in OFP. Kolgujev is so small (ca 10x10 km) that you have to wonder how the resistance was able to remain hidden when you'd be able to search all the island in a single day with a single company. Suspension of disbelief is required here. As for the matter of the campaign, I agree. I had some ideas for a better scenario: Presume that Sahrani is like Cuba would have been if it had been politically divided in the manner of Korea. The two states go to war for some reason, and the initial missions feature clashes between the two. They should be evenly matched in hardware, and have little heavy equipment. It should be mostly infantry and light armoured vehicles, with small numbers of old-fashioned tanks, like T-55s, T-62s, AMX-30s or M-48s, and a few old-fashioned aircraft, like Mig-21s and A-4s. After a while the US decides to intervene against the party they like the least. Then you'd play with US special forces conducting sabotage and recon, before a MEU lands and they together with the local allies push to gain control of the entire island. This seems to me a far more reasonable and realistic scenario compared to the current one. The campaign in general seems rather lazy and sloppily made. As for the question of player heroics; I agree, but I do not believe significant progress can be made in this area unless great strides are made towards creating better AI, one that can be given general instructions and then act autonomously in a realistic and reasonable manner.

This mission is one of the few with no obvious bugs in the execution, but it is probably the one with the most flawed concept. Special Forces attack a town in broad daylight. They have seemingly no advantage in range or accuracy or the supposedly inferior opposition. The team that is not under the player's control will blunder into the opposition and be annihilated. If you leave soldiers behind in the town when you go to the rendezvouz point, they will be killed by a bunch of enemies that seem to spawn out of nowhere, even when you had taken care to clear the town first. If you were allowed to attack under cover of darkness you could probably clear the town in relative safety from a vantage point in the hills above. In short, you have to wonder what they were thinking when they made this frankly ridiculous mission.

Even so, with proper beta testing they could at least have assured that all these "demo" missions work properly.

I wonder if maybe they didn't have dedicated mission designers, but had the programmers knock up something in a hurry at the very end of the development cycle. They should have hired the ones who did the Retaliation campaign. That was the finest user-made campaign I have ever played.

A wider variety of units for the RACS, to fit their theme of having rather oldfashioned NATO type vehicles. - MBT: M-48, M-60, Leopard or AMX-30 would all be suitable choices. - Helicopters: maybe UH-1 in different configurations for transport and gunship. Gazelle would be another possibility. - Aircraft: Maybe F-5, A-4, Hawk or older Mirage types, like the F1.

It does not seem that these markers work. If I place them in the editor they do not show up on the map at all (the BIS ones do), and if I go in-mission and try to cycle through them with the arrow keys, the BIS ones again show up, but these give an error message "picture" and nothing else. Though when I unpacked the pbo I could view the .paa files without problems.

For your pleasure (hopefully), I, a ignorant neophyte in terms of mission editing, have created a silly little mission using these units. It is available from www.freewebs.com/kopijeger, a norwegian version called "Veirydning" and an english one called "Road clearance". I had to use a swiss CV90 since there is not yet a norwegian one. There are readmes included with each of the versions. Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

I remember back when I first played the ridiculous red hammer campaign. I posted some commentaries on it, among them was that I wished that the conversations would be in russian with subtitles, for the sake of atmosphere. Severak people agreed with this, but there were some fools who disagreed, citing that it would take too much time to read the subtitles while in action (even though most conversations were in cutscenes. The retaliation campaign shames these fools, with its splendid voice acting and generally good subtitles (which I usually finish reading before the line they represent has finished playing). I especially like the incidental voices, like the joking crews in the "defend morton" mission and the singing of the gunner (or is it the pilot?) in the helicopter. I would think just about anyone who played this would like to see more.

(You might think this silly, but please indulge me.) I assume there will be some sort of single player campaign shipping with OFP 2. I hereby humbly request that this time BIS makes a campaign which has a coherent, logical and consistent plot, and that missions are based on real military doctrines and tactics. This means that certain features found in the CWC and Resistance campaigns (not to mention that campaign made by codemasters) should not be found in the OFP 2 campaign(s). These include: - Having the player captured and imprisoned by enemies that have already killed a number of other soldiers on the players side, without giving any sort of explanation as to why you are being spared. - Mentioning that a carrier group is on their way to assist and then never seeing any of either the carrier group or their air assets. - Having a resistance group make camp in an high-profile landscape feature or making any sort of camp that is very visible from the air or a road if the enemy has aircraft at their disposal. - Having a resistance group without proper technical expertise to maintain them or even the inclination to camouflage them capture enemy armour and then using them to conduct several armoured assaults against enemy bases. - Forcing the player to assault a bridge in broad daylight and then promptly demolish it. If one is simply to demolish it, it would be easier and far less risky to sneak up to it at night and plant charges. - Having any resistance group conduct any sort of missions that are not either reconnaisance, ambushes or sabotage. - and several other points people can probably think of.