whitehot78

I guess that these systems are more aimed at saving the vehicle from ATGM fire. A subsonic ATGM fired from, say 3 kms away would need several seconds to reach its mark. Smoke plus evasive maneuvers give a very high chance of being missed . Would also be interesting to know if newer smoke grenades, working also into the thermal spectrum, would break lock to IIR guided missiles. imho, they should, but don't know if in practice that's true. Anyway, said countermeasures should be close to useless against incoming tank gun rounds

will the LWR be triggered also by the laser rangefinders carried by forward controllers? I mean, that way wouldn't be that easy to call a precision strike (at least with the RUS/UKR formations) over a LWR equipped vehicle

russian infantry has those too, but i don't feel it is such an issue - besides, combat mission games always had displayed the ammo caliber in that way. maybe sometimes can be a little "zealous" but come on now.

Didn't those Spike ATGM systems find their way to georgian army during the august war of 2008? I read somewhere about a russian tank disabled by one of them but anyway. Not that they had much weigh in that conflict

Surely you have to consider the pros and cons of the situation. There are several aspects which should be pondered, but I was thinking anyway it would be a nice possibility. Having for example a mech company moving, you could employ formations in which the mounted AA squads have firing arcs covering the company conveniently. Also, I don't agree with the notion that an AA squad would be much hampered from that position: -They have a 360^ arc field of view and also from a slightly elevated position -The sounds from the engines wouldn't matter that much to me - Those operators wear headphones to "listen" to their missiles lock tones. -Every unit on the battlefield who detects an impending air attack would be relaying the information ASAP, it would be a priority notice to higher level command, who will pass it to relevant AA assets istantly (at least with the modern information sharing equipment present in CMBS). This means that most AA units would be alerted about the general direction of the strike. -Ofc those MANPADS would be unprotected against small arms fire, arty shrapnel and so on. - Abt the firing ports thing: I don't think we are talking the same playground here. Those ports cover a very small firing arc, they are on vehicles who can employ much better suppression methods, they are probably unused mostly, since infantry should be dismounted when in contact. Having a chance to throw a light SAM at an attacking helicopter or slow flying AC would be much more valuable, battlewise

I still haven't been able to find out if the MANPADS sections like Iglas and Stingers can engage enemy air support aircraft while being loaded on their vehicles but with the "open up" command issued. Saw lots of videos and pics where eastern armies, including an AA section at platoon level, have their AA missilemen pop out with their launchers from the open upper hatch in their bmps. In fact would be a nice thing, since you wouldnt have to stop and deploy the AA squad to cover its vehicles. If its a not included feature, could make for a nice addition in a patch, if the engine permits it

OP I must say I really agree with you. Combat Mission games (At least since SF, for me) have always given me a feeling like the one you describe. Can't really remember another strategy game causing said emotions, except maybe for Hearts of Iron 2 and 3, but in that case we are talking about the higher strategical level - You feel "responsible" for the entire management of your nation resources in a time of great effort and grief

many many thanks. Your sound mods have always been a real game changer for me - if there is really one thing I don't like in all the CM titles since SF, it's the toyish sounds.

-More single player campaigns - jeez in CMSF we had tens of missions in campaigns.. -ofc more countries. They will probably add UK and Germany, but it wouldn't be bad if we could have something totally new. France for example: would love to see the Leclerc in action, and the organization/doctrine of that country military formations. USMC is quite a logical presence in the region. Eastern NATO nations like Poland and Czech, maybe Hungary and Romania. -more Russian formations and equipment - VDV and Naval Infantry should be a must in this setting.

I wanted to drop my 2 cents on this since I've been affected by something similar lately. In a CMBN night battle, with the British vs Germans, I knew the rough location of a tiger tank. Sent a 76mm Sherman to flank the german heavy. So I make the brit tank follow a route among some buildings, then turn a corner - the TIger is about 40-50 meters away. give the sherman a tiny armor arc contact - nothing comes out. Make him go closer, nothing. In fact, at a point the Sherman literally bumps into the Tiger, I make the crew unbutton, rotate turret etc but nothing for a long while. So basically I managed to spot the Tiger by moving some infantry in adjacent buildings to spot it, caught it rotating its turret to shoot my tank, but thankfully the british 76mm blasts it (the gun muzzle so close to the enemy steel that reminded me of those situations in which somebody gets a pistol pointed to the dome). Anyway, also got in a couple other situations which made me think that night spotting has some issues to iron out.

sometimes I get the feeling that they actually do that to convince western public opinions that a full scale ground war is necessary, but this kind of things usually makes me think more questions than answers so I prefer not to indulge in them

CPU is the bottleneck in Combat Mission games, even with a five year old GPU. Anyway, So far I havent been able to spot a single hit decal. I tried turning all the options like shaders etc on and off but no dice

i always play real time elite

First of all, I played just abt an hour but great great game so far. I played the second battle of the scenarios, Russian side. Now I dont know if i did something wrong, but i noticed that the smoke mortars on the BTR80s (the ones with the 30mm turret) lay down the smoke at about 170 to 190 meters from the vehicle. Is this normal? because seems a little too far to actually cover the vehicle

To me it is the best ever. I may add, out of personal taste, happy to be back to modern times

Don't forget that the Bmp-3 has a 30mm too

Short answer: I guess that the russian Krizhantema is possibly the best ATGM present in CMBS - at least after having read the equipment list on the website. That said, you have also to find out which weapon system is actually best suited for your tactics. In general, you can assume that russian ATGMs are the best for the russians, while US ATGMs are the best for the americans. Modern anti tank missiles are all able to take out every tank on the battlefield with one shot. Russian and NATO doctrines though, tend to employ these weapons in different ways; based on the different doctrines the militaries of those countries employ.

do I detect a hint of irony? because in fact in this scenario you have the t-34s spawning at points which are already exposed to the enemy fire. And secondly, you don't really know when your reinforcement appear (briefing does not state it). You also only have 82mm mortars to place smoke, although 6 batteries of them. This, just to say that it is practically impossible to coordinate the deploying of obscurants with the maneuver on the left flank. Anyway, I did beat the scenario by trying to make good use of the isu-122 assault gun company. Used them to ambush the KTs from the woods near the center of the map. In this case you have a pretty short range engagement, with the KTs exposing their left side to the isus. Made them fire 1 shot then retreat into the trees, with most shots resulting in solid penetrations and destroyed king tigers. My isus would eventually be all knocked out by a subsequent thrust of a pz.4 platoon, but by that time, the JS-2s arrived on the scene, so I could employ them to finish off the Panthers and PZ.4 still alive (although some losses due to panzerfausts hiding in the woods occurred). Anyway it is my impression that the large number of soviet mediums appearing as reinforcements are there just to be slaughtered - they are exposed to the enemies murderous fire since they appear on the map.

Hey .. I was playing Gog and Magog scenario these days, with the soviets against a german AI. After some tries, I reckoned that the best tactic for my medium tanks was to gather on my left flank and rush down the other end of the map, to launch a massed attack against the german mediums covering the KT advance (hitting them through their weaker right sides). To my surprise, I lose basically ALL my tanks while they try to maneuver, at distances which seem exaggerated to me. I mean, I have t-34s moving at about 50 kmh, and panthers at at least 1800m manage to spot them and kill them with a single shot through the front armor? So basically I will make my next try using smoke screens; what really puzzles me is this feat of the panthers - I find it hard to believe that their 75 guns can knock out a fast moving target (which isn't that unarmored) like t-34s (can't remember if t-34/85 or 76) at those ranges with AP ammo. I would believe that the german crews would be lucky to even manage to land some hits on those. Any impressions?

I was wondering are we going to get guided artillery munitions like Copperhead/Krasnopol/Excalibur and the like in Black Sea? Maybe with an option for the AO to ask for their deployment? I would think that the ground forces involved in such a conflict would make some generous use of them. I'm also curious if the AT-15 Krizhantema is going to be included for the red side..

The "Operation Star" franchise has telephone lines and comms modeled, although I played it too little to ascertain what kind of impact it has on the simulation

I'm not an economist either, but I feel that the west would hardly impose economic sanctions. The reason is basically that most western countries depends on russian energy products to keep their industrial/logistic infrastructures running. Moreover, if the west would stop buying gas and oil from Russia, they would be forced to import those commodities exclusively from the arab countries - which in this aspect normally act as a single entity (similar prices, contracts and so on in different aarab nations). In such a case, they would of course form a sort of "cartel" and guess what measure they would take on prices.

I played dat campaign again after some time and have same problem. At the end of it I got a major victory instead of a total one because of this map. You can anyway safely continue the campaign even with a loss, as this mission result doesn't hamper the global progress

In fact the second largest military in NATO is the Turkish one. I'd also dare to say that France comes third although it could be a very close call with the UK.

I think that a campaign which covers several months, with all the different effects on the terrain by the weather condition would be great from a "game" point of view, but rather unrealistic. I agree with the posters who believe that such conflict would be rather short and bloody, although one could elaborate that, on the grounds of political causes, all the sides could decide to make some sort of stand, and commit some additional operations. This could open up some interesting situations which could accomodate both gaming and realism requirements. As I see it, for example, you could have the base game released with one campaign per side, covering, say, a summertime Russian offensive against NATO and Ukraine. At the end, you have a cease-fire. Subsequent modules could introduce new Units/Countries, for example, more NATO nations send their forces to the theatre and deploy a counter-offensive to liberate territorial gains made by the Russians, this time during winter. I'm just making some guesses on how they could structure the whole thing, in the end everything should depend on the storyline they wrote, and I'm pretty sure that the one they made will suit this scenario right