Erwin

In most NATO missions one has 155mm which is accurate and great for demolishing even large building complexes in urban/buil;dt-up scenarios (the German Campaign "Die Kunst des Krieges" has several). But, am puzzled about the tactical use for the 120mm mortars. They don't have the oomph to destroy large buildings and also seem rather inaccurate. What is the RL tactical use for the 120mm?

Looks very good. Since it's very big I'd go for the Canadians and give them transports at least... (if you don't want to give LAV's or Coyotes). Nyalas are rarely seen in missions. G-vehicles are useful as well.

Even if that is correct, that is an amazing ratio. I wonder if there are statistics for how many tons of HE (arty/air) is required to kill one trooper. With the advent of precision weapons one would think that has gone down a lot.

I found: "...statistical studies typically come up with 20,000–100,000 rounds expended per casualty caused by a unit."

I had the impression that 2IC's/XO's need to be kept safe in case the CO is KIA. Of course in the game I often use em exactly as benpark says (altho' I try to discipline myself not to do that).

The briefing actually says that it is the same day?

In terms of economy of scale, producing the units for 1939-41 would enable several products: Early War in Europe, Poland '39. And of course North Africa/Afrika Korps.

Brilliant!

Ah... that would be good addition.

Is the MG3 still set for 1000-1300 rounds/min? Or can one lower the rate?

I had thought that AI actions could be activated by the player's units entering an area/zone on the map. If AI units can do so, then it seemed logical that AI arty could also respond.

Having played the original Dinas I like this idea. Several times I found I had insufficient troops to keep going, and that meant having to replay several of the earlier missions - which was a major PITA as there is nothing worse than having to replay 3 or 4 earlier missions in order to progress.

Thank you for the updates. Much appreciated. You have made many dozens of winter mods (I count around 68(!) in my "SNOWY MODS folder). Am wondering will ALL of them work in CMFB?

Yes, that seems to be the best tactic pretty much for all CM2 games. (Leastways I do that 100% of the time.) I thought that maybe in RT play one is pausing every few seconds to see what is happening over the entire battlefield. ie: Playing like WEGO with 5-10 second turns, but with the advantage that one can radically change plans immediately - avoiding the situation where a unit gets massacred cos it stubbornly will obey orders for the rest of its WEGO minute and walk into an obvious ambush. It's good that in (at least) some briefings you caution the player that he doesn't have to do that. However, we are all used to scenarios where indeed one does have to capture all objectives. Often CM2 will let a player win if he simply kills enuff of the enemy without actually capturing objectives. (Can be frustrating if one is looking forward to executing a wonderful assault plan.) Re Preserve locations... One can do a certain amount of damage without losing points. Estimating how much damage one can get away with without losing too many points comes with experience (and luck). But, sometimes it is best to destroy a Preserve location if it also destroys a lot of enemy, or allows one to fire over the Preserve building rubble into enemy held territory that was shielded by the Preserve location. As you know, that has become my own SOP.

Hey Greg... Did you get the CMFI weapons mod I sent?

Pic from "Ice Station Zebra"?

Am not claiming that is the problem... but AFAIK spotting is from the position of the CO. It is possible for one tank to see a 2nd without the 2nd having a clear shot (ie LOS from the gun barrel) at the first.

Have been chanting for NA and DAK campaigns for over a decade. But, BF has said it was the least profitable theater for CM1. Let's hope there is now enuff support for NA to get taken seriously.

Looks good. Since you test playing RT, am assuming that enables one to have much more micromanaging and a game that takes a lot less time. It's often that casualties occur when one sees an enemy in the first seconds of a turn during which one's units are moving, but one can do nothing but watch that enemy shoot up the oblivious moving units for the rest of the 60 seconds. Please allow extra time (and units) for those who play WEGO.

Lovely. Note that the challenger files are both jpgs. No mod. Also noticed that the Churchill mod says "White" bit it's "Snowy". Is one version missing?

Unless things have changed, Engineers can only detect mines, and if they sit on them long enuff can "mark" them to make them a little safer to move through (slowly). But, the mines are never "cleared".

Good summary of the last ten years of Ukraine war: https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-russia-war-10-year-anniversary-photos-06423029?mod=latest_headlines KYIV, Ukraine—It’s one decade since police gunned down dozens of civilians on a central street here, the first large-scale bloodshed of Russia’s efforts to keep Ukraine in its grasp. The protesters killed on Feb. 20, 2014, had been among hundreds of thousands who for months had been opposing the corrupt rule of then-President Viktor Yanukovych, a Russian protégé. He soon fled to Russia and a pro-Western government took over, prompting Russia to send troops to seize Crimea. In the years that followed, Russia used a variety of methods to try to take control of Ukraine, from a covert invasion of its neighbor’s east to years of political and economic pressure and chicanery. When they failed, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale military invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. That didn’t work either. Ukraine repelled Russian forces from Kyiv and regained about half of the territory that Russia initially seized. However, Moscow still holds nearly 20% of Ukraine’s land. Here’s a look back at a decade of Ukrainian resistance against Russia—years marked by death and destruction, but also resilience and hope. 2014-15: The first Russian invasion It was late 2013 when tens of thousands of Ukrainians began rallying and camping out on Kyiv’s main square to protest government corruption and Yanukovych’s pivot to Russia. The protests were peaceful at first but turned violent when police tried to disperse them. On Feb. 20, two days after hours of deadly pitched battles between police and protesters had ended in a tense stalemate, the cops began pulling back and demonstrators followed them up Instytutska Street.Portraits of Ukrainians in February 2014 whose weekslong protests became known as the Revolution of Dignity.ANASTASIA TAYLOR-LIND As a new government sought to take charge in Kyiv, Russia was launching an invasion of Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea. The troops bore no insignia and were dubbed “little green men,” a crude effort by the Russians to mask their own involvement. Kyiv was in disarray and struggled to muster a response. The U.S., which had years earlier pressured Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons in return for “security assurances,” did next to nothing, and Putin swiftly annexed the peninsula. Next, he set his eyes on a bigger prize. After Russian agents tried and failed to whip up revolutions in cities across Ukraine’s east and south, a team of commandos led by a Russian former intelligence officer seized the eastern city of Slovyansk. Russia poured weapons and irregular fighters across the border. As Kyiv fought back, Russia sent in more sophisticated weapons, including a missile launcher that downed the MH17 passenger jet on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 aboard. A woman on a tram in downtown Mariupol on May 27, 2015. PHOTO: JEROME SESSINI/MAGNUM PHOTOS After Ukrainian forces gained the upper hand, Moscow sent in its regular army, which dealt Kyiv’s troops a devastating blow in the city of Ilovaisk in September 2014. Ukraine agreed to a cease-fire but Russia continued its assaults, eventually taking the airport in the eastern capital of Donetsk after months of battles. In February 2015, Russian forces surrounded the city of Debaltseve, forcing Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to sign a new cease-fire deal known as the Minsk agreement that carved out two would-be statelets in eastern Ukraine that were run from Moscow. 2015-22: Ukraine turns away from Russia That cease-fire agreement largely halted fighting along the front lines, save for a few hot spots. As Russia sought to destabilize Ukraine from within, the country was shifting away from its former imperial master. Hundreds of Lenin statues were torn down. Ukrainians began switching from speaking Russian to Ukrainian. Villagers who support a Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent of Russian influence celebrated a Christian holiday in western Ukraine on Aug. 14, 2018. PHOTO: JOSEPH SYWENKYJ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Ukrainians began turning away from the Russian Orthodox Church, for centuries the country’s dominant church. Individual parishes switched allegiance to a church run from Kyiv. Then, in January 2019, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the foremost leader in Orthodox Christianity, granted Ukraine its own independent church, despite Russian opposition. A Ukrainian soldier fired at an enemy position in the eastern city of Avdiivka on Sept. 16, 2018. PHOTO: MANU BRABO At the same time, Ukrainians were tired of the war and the corruption that hampered the economy and state institutions. In a presidential election, a television comedian called Volodymyr Zelensky won by a landslide in the first round. He promised to bring an end to the war and root out corruption. When he took office, that proved harder than he had thought. Putin showed no interest in a deal unless it gave him greater control over Ukraine. So Zelensky began pursuing closer ties with the West. He sought to advance Ukraine’s efforts to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. Those efforts were going nowhere fast, but Putin was making increasingly agitated statements about Ukraine and stating Russian historical claims to Ukrainian territory and the right to rule there. By fall 2021, he was gathering tens of thousands of troops around Ukraine. The U.S. warned he was planning to invade. Zelensky, fearing social and economic upheaval, urged calm. 2022-present: Russia launches biggest land war in Europe since World War II In the early hours of Feb. 24, Russia launched airstrikes and armored columns against Ukraine. Tanks poured over the border from the north, south and east. The most important initial thrust was on Kyiv, where civilians came to the aid of the army and thwarted the assault. The Russians were halted and, by the end of March, repelled from the capital. When the Russians withdrew, they left hundreds of civilians dead in towns and villages around Kyiv, including Bucha. That hardened Ukrainian determination and support from the West, which began providing dozens of heavier weapons, such as artillery systems. Russia regrouped and began advancing in the northeast, but by fall its troops were exhausted, and a lightning thrust by Kyiv’s forces took back hundreds of square miles of territory around Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv. By the end of the year, Ukraine had regained half the territory it had lost to Russia since the start of the war. Zelensky received a hero’s welcome on a visit to Washington. But Russia had firmed up its defensive lines with thousands of convicts recruited by the Wagner paramilitary group. Wagner led assaults on the eastern city of Bakhmut, the bloodiest battle of the war, that ended in a Russian victory in May 2023. The following month, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive led by thousands of troops trained and equipped with tanks from the West. It quickly went wrong, as the Russians had built stiff defenses, including minefields and trench systems. By fall, Ukraine had managed to take only one village in the main direction of its assaults, and the operation petered out.Ukraine formed mobile air-defense units to defend against Russian missile and drone attacks on cities. As the full-scale war approached its third year, it became a bloody stalemate. Ukraine, its manpower and equipment depleted, is on the defensive. Russia is inching forward, but has been unable to achieve a large breakthrough. For Ukraine, much now depends on whether Western allies can muster more military support.

That is interesting. Have often wondered if the fact that (thanks to historical hindsight) "we know better" means that we are playing (the Russians especially) in an ahistoric manner. Eg: Are players doing the "senseless" human wave attacks that we read so much about? If experienced Soviet tankers did fight open-hatched, then that probably makes a huge difference in play.

It could be his AI doing a "deep fake" on Bootie. How can he prove he is actually alive??

Have noticed the exact same issue in CMSF2 with the TOW carrying Humvees. A bug I would think. BTW: If the TOW's are disembarked from the CMSF2 Humvees, they cannot be moved or reembarked. You do not have the same problem in CW??