theforger

Hi no probs with being pedantic, and hope you enjoy the campaign. Absolutely correct, and you cannot beat walking the ground in scenario design. I've discovered more info as time goes on, better pictures of Buchholz station and Lanzerath have come to light, for example the location of the old church as opposed to the modern one, but you can only try your best with resources you have access to at the time. I did base Losheim water courses on the attached, so genuine error if incorrect. 

This was Rollbahn A on Saturday. Just returned from my first tour of the Ardennes provided by Leger, with the highly knowledgeable Paul https://www.legerbattlefields.co.uk/guides/paulerrington
It was fantastic for me to experience some of the battlefields first hand and compare with the scenario landscapes in Combat Mission. Will attempt to walk the ground before releasing campaigns when possible.

Hi no probs with being pedantic, and hope you enjoy the campaign. Absolutely correct, and you cannot beat walking the ground in scenario design. I've discovered more info as time goes on, better pictures of Buchholz station and Lanzerath have come to light, for example the location of the old church as opposed to the modern one, but you can only try your best with resources you have access to at the time. I did base Losheim water courses on the attached, so genuine error if incorrect. 

Hi no probs with being pedantic, and hope you enjoy the campaign. Absolutely correct, and you cannot beat walking the ground in scenario design. I've discovered more info as time goes on, better pictures of Buchholz station and Lanzerath have come to light, for example the location of the old church as opposed to the modern one, but you can only try your best with resources you have access to at the time. I did base Losheim water courses on the attached, so genuine error if incorrect. 

Appreciate your comments, and thanks for playing through. I put sooo many hours in building and testing it was a project that somewhat snowballed!  I did enjoy the research.
I'm on the eastern front atm...but it's going to take awhile. 

Appreciate your comments, and thanks for playing through. I put sooo many hours in building and testing it was a project that somewhat snowballed!  I did enjoy the research.
I'm on the eastern front atm...but it's going to take awhile. 

A selection of snow-covered flavor objects for CM:FB.
Includes: Petrol Pump, Post Box, Barrels, Water Pumps, Wood Piles, Tires, Some Sacks (from Santa!), Fuel Drums.
I was able to duplicate models for barrels and drums, but use a different texture if they are sideways or upright.  This way they look nice with snow added, but it means I had to include the non-snow versions of these too otherwise it all gets messed up.
They may work OK in other titles too but I haven't tested them there.
Download link: Mediafire
Might also have a dig around in my folders and scrape together a few other bits and bobs I've made for the other CM titles.
 
 

I was playing this one split with a friend but we wound up stopping. It's a fantastic campaign.

It's a gold mine of information and lessons learned. Required reading.
At the height of the fighting in Donbas, Russia was using more ammunition in two days than the entire British military has in stock. At Ukrainian rates of consumption, British stockpiles would potentially last a week. Of course, given that the UAF fielded more than 10 times as many operational artillery pieces as the British Army at the beginning of the conflict, it might take more than a week for the British Army to expend all its available ammunition. All this demonstrates, however, is that the British Army lacks the firepower to deliver the kind of blunting effect that the UAF achieved north of Kyiv. The oft-cited refrain of the UK Ministry of Defence that these deficiencies are not a problem because the UK fights alongside NATO allies would be more credible if the situation were much better among any of the UK’s European allies. It is not, except in Finland. Nor – as Ukrainian troops discovered to their surprise – are ammunition, charge bags and other essential consumables consistent between NATO artillery systems; there is an inadequate capacity to draw on one another’s stocks.

A very lovely video laying out the terrain of Eastern Ukraine including history from both WWII and presently to explain why offensives have occurred where they have in Kharkiv and rest of the fronts. Broad overview but I like how the ww2's 4 battles of Kharkiv are explained why and how they occurred with visuals and it dovetails nicely with how Kharkiv and the urban Donbas factors now.
 
 

RUSI higher level overview of the UKR and RUS performances in the war so far. 
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/preliminary-lessons-conventional-warfighting-russias-invasion-ukraine-february-july-2022
Jack Watling et al. 
Full Pdf here. 
I knew it was high,  but I thought maybe 75%.  So yah, Drones functionally = munitions. 
 

They've been generously donated quite a few from Russia. Over 550 abandoned and captured tanks to date.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
Captured includes approx 87x T-72B, 145x T-72B3s 138x T80s and 13x T90s. Excludes abandoned, and captured but damaged.
Agree with the sentiment though. The West should be doing everything it can in terms of supply and weaponry. Russia is on the back foot and this is the best opportunity to clear them out. 
ISW on August 14 reported
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-14
Russian military leadership has likely rushed a mix of forces to this area to defend it against an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive, which likely explains the wide variety of force groupings in this area. ISW has observed elements of the 35th and 36th Combined Arms Armies (CAA) of the Eastern Military District (EMD), the 22nd Army Corps of the Black Sea Fleet, the 49th CAA of the Southern Military District (SMD), 76th Guards Air Assault Division, and Rosgvardia throughout Southern Ukraine.
To defeat all that was some achievement...it depends how much of it remains intact.

I don't know art, but I know what I like 😀

It's great to see Ukraine take Kherson back, and I managed to get my hands on some Ukrainian beers to celebrate today (the vodka was sold out).
But it's not a total victory. I was hoping to see huge columns of Russian prisoners. Instead, it seems most of them managed to slip away across the river, right under the noses of the Ukrainians, even though there were no real bridges.
If so, this is not a completely broken, incompetent army. Broken, incompetent to some degree maybe, but not completely. That's not a good sign.
But yes, it's still a great victory.

Nothing to be glum about. For months in this thread and worldwide, most people doubted the ability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to retake Kherson, to defeat the Russian military, to illustrate the ability to liberate their homeland through military means and today means all doubters are silenced.
Russia was not supposed to lose Kherson. It was to one day take Odessa from Kherson as a launch point. Nevermind military strategy, the Russian military was supposed to be powerful enough and have defeated the Ukrainian attacks in such a manner that Kherson was "forever Russian".
All of that is dashed and with it, the image of the Russian Armed Forces.

Thanks ) Just became some more of work, my wife turned back and often occupies PC because her work, also it's hard to live three months 24/7 as war news translator, so I took small vacations 

No NLAWs and pick-ups, alas ) Exactly this toy was a hero of initial phase of the war. 

the big ones blew:
 

I am pretty sure that getting to a crisis point has been part of the game plan (as a contingency or a milestone I don't know) since the civil war in Syria started, if not from the day that Bill Clinton (and George Bush later) laughed off the question put forward by Putin to join NATO.  
Following up the discussions on logistics, saw a video of some Russian soldiers helping themselves to the shelves of a supermarket in Melitopol, and I remembered this very good article I read back in Xmas
https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/
 

I see what you're saying but looking at the big picture it's still a masterpiece.  A huge portion of UKR territory liberated without high cost to UKR.  A lot of RU losses along the way in men and especially material.  A lot of RU resources spent on a lost cause for many months.  A political humiliation for Putin.  UKR will be able to redeploy its fully equipped units elsewhere.  RU will have an unarmed, demoralized rabble to redeploy.  A huge victory via an opportunity created by interdiction of supply.
Catching all those men in kessel would be extra icing on the cake.  But it's still a huge and delicious cake.  

this was a decent prediction...
"Nevertheless, Putin seems determined to make Ukraine an example – possibly seizing a land bridge to Crimea, or even extend Moscow’s control of Novorossiaya all the way to Transnistria." 

Or 3.  You and the analyst were (are) basing your conclusions on incomplete understanding - both parties saw what they wanted to see - and when the coin landed, your predictions turned out to be more correct.  None of this is particularly good news as analysis is all about focusing on what you get wrong and digging into that to get a better understanding.  Self-validation creates a reinforcing effect that leads future analysis off a cliff because "you already have it all figured out".  I would say the mainstream analysis before this war did exactly that, but that does not mean you have developed a universal or unifying theory that will inform the next war based on "see, Russia Sucks".  The missing piece as far as I can see is a detailed understanding of "how and why" they are sucking, which I firmly believe the "Russia just Sucks" camp is vastly over-simplifying.
Ok, off the mark, do you have any supporting analysis or post-action to back any of this up?  Is this your perspective of events or does it align with post-war analysis?  If so, well ok, but here is some counter-narratives:
https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NS-D-10367-Learning-Lessons-from-Ukraine-Conflict-Final.pdf  I point to section 3 specifically (pgs 8-13)
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1400/RR1498/RAND_RR1498.pdf  Pages 43-45 cover the period from May 14 - Feb 15 when conventional RA forces were fully engaged to stop the failing of their proxy Donbas forces from LNR/DPR - you can see how quickly the war shifted once the BTGs got engaged and specifically "Although artillery skirmishes continued, both sides took a break to rearm, train, and consolidate between September 5, 2014, and January 13, 2015, when Russia launched a second offensive. Following a second encirclement and defeat at Debaltseve, Ukraine signed the Minsk II ceasefire on February 12, 2015, with terms highly favorable for Moscow." (p45) This Rand document is fascinating in hindsight (note Kofman as lead author) as it gets a lot right in forecasting the weakness of Russian strategic assumptions, particularly in the political and information warfare domain.  It gets a lot wrong with respect to the potential of hybrid warfare, noting it was "inconsequential" when conventional forces arrived on the battlefield (p 70) when the RA crushed the Ukrainian defence.  I think that conclusion led mainstream thinkers down the wrong path at the start of this war.
https://mwi.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Analyzing-the-Russian-Way-of-War.pdf  Interesting peice on the link between Georgia 2008 and Ukraine - punchline the RA learned a lot from Georgia and underwent reforms which led to 2014 success...but not so much in 2022.
And finally the peice by Karber - the guy actually got so close he got hit in an MLRS strike:
https://prodev2go.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/rus-ukr-lessons-draft.pdf
In this peice Karber goes on at length at the effectiveness of the BTG and the emerging "Russian way of War", I know the US military took this pretty seriously, as did we as on paper the BTG could outrange any of our BattleGroups TFs.  We then saw similar trends in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and the mainstream estimate was they would unfold in Ukraine in 2022 - nothing on "Russia Sucks".
So I do not agree that the post-war analysis nor the facts on the ground (see Rand study) support the idea that RA sub-par performance was observed.  The fact that a pretty modest interjection of RA forces in Aug 14 at Ilovaisk ("4000 troops") dealt a major reversal to the UA, and then the decisive defeat of the UA at Debaltseve in Jan 15 forced Ukraine to the negotiation table to sign a pretty bad deal for them (Minsk II).  There is plenty of evidence that the LNR/DPR separatist forces sucked, but Russia was trying very hard to keep a lid on the whole thing for deniability reasons.  Nothing in any of these assessments/analysis (and there are plenty more - Anx A of the first link has two pages of references) point to the pre-ordained abysmal performance seen in this war.
I am not sure what sources you were pulling from to come to your conclusions; however, it might just be possible that 1) all the above mainstream post-war analysis is wrong, and 2) whatever sources you were using were correct, and Russia really did suck...but - the end-state does not support that perspective either.  Regardless of tactical performance Russia achieved pretty much the impossible, it fully annexed the Crimea and over half the Donbas region without a reaction from the West.  The more I read into this, I strongly suspect that Ukraine 2014 was Putin's "Czechoslovakia" moment and he convinced himself the west was so divided (divisions he helped make worse) that we would sit back and let Ukraine fall, so go "full Poland" in 2022.  There is no way to spin 2014 was anything other than a Russian "win" both on the battlefield and on the political stage based on how things unfolded on the ground.
I am afraid that if this served as the foundation of how you saw the outcomes of this war then you too were working with incomplete concepts.  If you had gone into 2014 with "Russia Sucks due to Georgia 2008 = they will lose" you would have been completely wrong.  Bringing that theory to this war does not make it anymore correct - the theory found a war where it made more sense, but that does not make it a workable general theory.  This would be akin to developing a theory "The US Sucks at War" based on its performance in Korea (and there was plenty of evidence in the first year) and then predicting Vietnam as a US loss because "the US Sucks at War" - this glosses over so much nuance and context as to be nearly meaningless.  The mainstream analysis went the other way - "Russia is Terrifying in 2014, so they must be terrifying in 2022", which is not any less incorrect and shame on people who get paid for this work.
So what?  "Russia Sucks at War" is not a workable or even accurate foundational theory in my opinion.  It is inconsistent with observed phenomenon in previous conflicts and fails to take into account the complexities of context and evolutions of warfare over time.  "Russia Sucks at This War", how badly and why is worth exploring in depth, not the least of which is how much the UA/western backed warfare is forcing the RA to "suck".  The very tricky part is to try and distill these reasons into trends that may continue and influence the next war.  There is significant risk in porting over all the observations from this war to the next one e.g. Tanks are Dead - I cannot say if tanks are dead, they appear somewhat out of place in this war but we need to understand "why" before we can say if the next war will see the same thing.  However, I think we do agree that Russian failures and Ukrainian success do not operate in glorious isolation of each other - they have a shared causality with each other.  And the study of that relationship does not neatly sum up to "Russia Sucks", at least not from my point of view. 
 

Lest we forget


"A woman in front of the wall of memory of defenders of Ukraine who fell during the Russian-Ukrainian war, in downtown kyiv, Monday, November 7, 2022. BERNAT ARMANGUE / AP"

This tool might be interesting for @theforgerwhen doing his enormous historically accurate campaigns.

There's a tree line on a crest of a slope near where I walk the dogs...always look up,  checking for movement. Thought it was just me.