domfluff

If it works the same way that it did for the previous titles, then you will be able to redeem your BFC key as a steam key, probably when this is actually released on Steam later in the month. Whatever your BFC key(s) can do, this steam key(s) should be able to do, so whatever DLC has been purchased. It's worth saying that there is no guarantee of this actually being the case. Just because they've done it in the past does not mean they are bound to do it in the future. They probably will, but there's no requirement for this to actually happen.

So, on this point, and as per the discussion earlier. 3:1 is a useful fiction, which derives from Lanchester's laws. Specifically, it's the break-even point - it's the stage where you're going to achieve parity in attrition. You will wipe out the opposing population, and lose one third of your number. Lanchester's laws are not a good model for anything in reality, but they were the first to really do it - and they do offer a simple approximation that isn't a bad place to start from. That's... sort of it. It isn't an idea that has any more weight than that. Specifically, "mass" has never referred to raw numbers, outside of a highly abstract piece of maths. Mass should, and has always, contained more than just numbers - it has to mean "combat effectiveness", with all that implies, outside of abstract situations where you're lining up clones with identical weapons. So yes, there will be information advantages. There will be motivational advantages. There will be terrain advantages. All of the above and more. Does this equate to a "force ratio"? Well, that idea is still pretty suspect. It's a potentially powerful tool for historical analysis, and a highly useful gamism, but it's generally better as a post-hoc justification when applied to the real world.

Cease fire has never been immediate, or at least automatically so. In the same way that the game will go for variable amounts of overtime, cease fire can take a few turns to take effect - this seems to be related to how close the scores are, but it's not clear what the factors are.

Cease fire has never been immediate in Combat Mission, outside of a single player context.

So yes, but that's besides the point Scimitar in particular is an excellent platform for precisely the task it was designed for - a small, fast light recce vehicle with the power to overmatch Soviet recce if necessary. That should be something demonstrable in cmcw, but not really something you can see in cmsf.

Warrior is outside the timeframe without serious bending. Challenger 1 might just slot in there, with the usual "+/- 6 months" thing, although the rarity should be very high in 1982. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not in. What we should see is the full CVR(T) lineup, which is pretty exciting.

CMFI has so many TO&E options that it's hard to pin that one down, and in addition you can have units which start at less than 100% strength, which will complicate things. Still, the point here is that the "SMG" guys are really "binocular" guys (who carry around a light weapon, so that they don't have nothing), and having a chap with binos paired with a sniper has been standard practice forever.

Yes. To grab the CMFI TO&E, this is the Ranger company in 1943: In this case, these are the sections equipped with BAR. There is an option for them to have the M1919A4, in which case the MG team is split off as a separate element. These sections look more or less like a conventional US rifle squad, albeit with satchel charges, since each squad has two engineers organic to it. The HQ element looks like this: This is a commander and XO, a radio operator and a marksman. The SMGs are there to provide close-in protection, but they aren't the reason this exists - the main point of this formation is that you have one chap with the Springfield, one chap with a radio, and two with binoculars. The main strength of any sniper team is rarely in the rifle, but in their spotting and their radio, they are primarily an ISR asset, and can call in indirect fires they can call in. There's no real reason for the other men in this unit to carry anything other than an SMG or a carbine - the binoculars and the radio are the main assets.

Morale in CM is a dependent variable, not an independent one. As an element takes suppression, this will tick up, and when the bar fills up the element will shift to the next morale state. Leadership, experience and motivation are the independent variables, and provide a buffer to this, as well as determining the rate these reduce. Thus, a higher leadership formation will tend to have better morale, and one with a worse leader will have worse morale.

The leadership factor for the team will be that of the team leader. The initial leadership value is what has been set as one of the units soft factors, and the other one is inherent to the team leader (or whomever is highest ranked and alive at that point). So, yes, splitting will tend to have between a zero and negative effect on morale. Does this mean you shouldn't split? Not really, the effect is usually minimal or unnoticeable.

So I don't know why the US didn't adopt a HESH/HEP round for the 105mm, they certainly could have done, so it was presumably a choice. I suspect it wasn't a reaction to the Soviet armour - any problem in that direction is even worse for the M60A2, and those are still around in the timeframe. Honestly it might be as simple as not wanting an additional nature to add to the logistics chain - that the M60 had the tools they needed it to, in their estimation, and wouldn't gain much from adding another ammo type.

By this point (as in, CMCW timeframe), yes, but there was a period of a number of years where this was apparently a pretty big surprise.

You will have superior optics, but a worse fire control system - you'll usually spot first, but the T-64 will tend to *hit* first, and the T-64's armour is a significant advantage.

I think that's pretty unlikely in practice, which is a shame. It's something which the AT-3 can do as well on a smaller scale.

Chieftain, mainly So, Carl Gustav was the main section AT, alongside a pair of LAW. Milan was the main dismounted ATGM. Wombat was a 120mm recoilless rifle from the 1950s, but Milan is correct for the time period currently in the game (we might get both). Swingfire was the more powerful, longer ranged ATGM, and that would be mounted on FV432 or CVR(T) ("Swingfire" or "Striker") One thing you're going to find is that, similar to WW2, the BAOR should be made up of specialists. A single element isn't expected to be able to do everything, and you'll need to court synergies to be effective. As a simple example, the M60 MBT is more or less an all-rounder. It's not the fastest tank, doesn't have the biggest gun or the most armour, but it's at least acceptable at everything, and as such can play multiple roles and enable others. Chieftain is designed for a more defensive, static battle, so has a ton of armour and firepower (especially for the 1960s when it was introduced), but sacrifices mobility to do so. That means that they should generally be a little harder to use than the US, but potentially more effective if you can use them well.

Honestly I'm mostly excited about seeing the CVR(T) line in context and in full. All the major vehicles are in CMSF already, aside from Scorpion and Striker.

Yes, heyday of the Chieftain would have been the sixties, but 1976 should still demonstrate the difference. Challenger 1 came in in 1983 or so, so the core game is right at the point where Chieftain was being replaced.

Chieftain was the heaviest tank NATO had, on the best tank country. All of the heaviest Soviet armour was pointed in that sector. You'll see more T-64 and later T-80 than you will against the US. The maps should often be more open, with defences on ridgelines. Defence in Depth and Counter-attack is the basic plan, on all levels. The UK formations should have similar combined-arms company teams to the US, with the aforementioned differences.

One of the cool things about CMCW is that we'll be able to compare NATO doctrine. The British, the West Germans and the US were all trying to solve the same problem, but did so in very different ways. Where the US were attempting to create depth through elastic defence, up-front, then rotating back, the British were more about static defence in depth and counter-attack. Where the TOW is really the centrepiece of US defence, for the British it's Chieftain, and anything armed with Swingfire is in a more supporting role. They also tend to embed recce assets down to the company level, so perhaps a pair of Scimitars in front of a mechanised company team.

Similar in basic dimensions and role. M113 has the .50 cal, the FV432 has the smaller calibre 7.62 GPMG. The FV432 does have smoke launchers though, I believe, which the earlier M113s do not. In employment, very different. The US manuals have some extremely aggressive uses of the M113, dismounting on or past the objective, and fighting from the vehicle where possible. By comparison, the FV432 would debus troops, then withdraw to a Zulu muster point, safely in the rear. The vehicle wasn't meant for fighting, and there was no expectation that it would. The FV432 is already in Combat Mission - the version still in use by the British army has been up-armoured and upgraded, and is known as "Bulldog". This vehicle is in CMSF.

...in the seventies and eighties, sure. If you take a look at the Slitherine releases anytime recently, you'll note that the Normandy games far outstrip the Eastern Front ones. It was indeed a sales tactic to stick an SS officer on the cover (Up Front is the most blatant example), or as many swastikas as you could physically fit into the game (Eastern Front Tank Leader, among others). Fashions change. "Miniature wargaming" used to shorthand for "napoleonics", but now means Warhammer 40,000 by default.

So, what you're really running into is the problem that the 8.8cm Flak is actually pretty awful. It absolutely would not be a fun thing to be shot by, but the system itself is large and immobile, and so is extremely visible, and highly vulnerable to HE in any form, especially indirect fires. It earned a reputation in North Africa, partly because it was the biggest boom, but also because it was an expediency - there wasn't much else that could penetrate the thickest British armour. It was still not a particularly efficient system, and required entire tactics to be built around it's limitations - hit and run, with the "run" being into range of the static line of 88mm AT guns. Aside from the power of the thing, the other advantage it has is range. To take advantage of that requires long lines of sight, possibly over multiple km, which would be available in the desert. Notably, it's something that's firmly unavailable in Normandy. The 88mm in Normandy is powerful, sure, but it's a liability. Short sight lines, a massive body and immobile means that there's just no way to hide, and nowhere to run. AT guns are tricky to use. They're ambush predators, and you typically want to use them in dispersed pairs, such that a single tank can't suppress both at one time. Ideally, one can get a flank shot whilst the other is being engaged, but that's not always possible. You do want to limber and unlimber them, and understand how and when to move them. Practice is genuinely useful here.

Oh sure, but there have been plenty of complaints about this since release - it's very rare to hear anything positive about it at all, and I think that's an enormous shame.

I think the first campaign mission is pretty great. It's brutal, sure, but it's doable with minimal casualties, with a sound approach. A quick sketch of the first part: Each element in the Soviet scheme sets the conditions for what follows. The CRP's first role is to find the enemy units on the near hill. This means taking up forward positions in the treeline, and also calling in fires on the obvious AT positions. Since AT 1 won't have line of sight to where the FSE is coming in, AT 2 is the focus of these preliminary fires. The FSE will then turn up, and will start to engage targets. The gamism here is that these won't benefit from the spotting contacts from the CRP, but you the player can still do so, and should. The FSE should be able to fight it's way up, with the intention of forming a base of fire on the hill. When the main body arrives, they have two potential avenues of approach. AoA 1 will be faster, and will push across the open. AoA2 is using the dead ground to follow the same axis as the FSE. Again, each element enables the following. In this case, the FSE's base of fire includes getting line of sight to AT 1. AT 1 is far too large to deny with fires in total, so you need the ISR picture from the FSE to discover where things are, for the main body to exploit. There are still some high levels of variance in this scenario - CAS and AA in Combat Mission don't offer much in the way of deep decision making, so the losses there will be fairly random. So no, I don't think it's a bad scenario. I'm not sure it's a particularly pleasant one, and you may well take extraordinary losses, but you have an enormous force and all the tools you need, and I think it does a good job of making you use those core ideas in terrain that's pretty challenging. I don't think the scenario is without fault, but I've seen a lot of people rage at it, and I just don't think that's remotely deserved.

So this is two different effects. When the HQ dies, the XO becomes a new HQ, the icon and C2 lines change to suit. As a completely different effect, most XO teams have a radio, and by definition they are a single C2 jump from the HQ. That means that the XO team could be placed (for example) with an AT gun battery, and then the infantry squad spots will be passed to them through the C2 network.