The BMP-1: Really that bad?

[Sixxkiller]

Bump, bump. Who cares for a Putin vs the US in the Ukraine 2014? Not me. How many of us Cold Warriors would freak over CM 1985?

Well there is room for both. I care because well, I am not over 50. But I also think the more product we put out, the happier you guys are and the bigger the base of customers becomes. Truthfully my wish list is PTO and the Korean conflict far before we do anything that never happened.

[LongLeftFlank]

Give this stuff a listen and see if you aren't up for a little Red Storm Rising.

[Vark]

Well I'd have prefered a hypothetical conflict between equally matched forces rather than a hypothetical mismatch in Syria or the Ukraine. Also modelling cold war kit would allow many real world engagements to be developed, including Vietnam (both French and US conflicts), India v Pakistan (pitting UK versus US kit) the numerous Arab Israeli conflicts from 48 onwards.

The other advantage of Cold war scenarios over futuristic ones is the depth of knowledge we have with the former and educated guesswork with the later.

[dpabrams]

Look, it's really all just a hand job, leading up to a hypothetical 1985 NATO vs PACT BFC tactical game. Once the public gets in hands on this game, all others will be obsolete. When Ivan and Johnny get their hands on an American Armored Calvary Sqd. vs a Soviet MRR Battalion, all other games will be deposited in the dust bin. Think of it 4x M1A0, 2x Bradley CFV and 2x M901 against 10x T-80B, 10x BMP-2 what more could you want?

[Vark]

Main body battalion artillery, plus RAG support, if I can get it, for my FSE! Think, with a two hour game you could model an advance to contact with your Combat Recon Patrol, then Forward Security Element and the Main Body coming as sequential reserves, each trying to expolit any gains, all taking place on a beautifully modelled map of Germany.

[dpabrams]

plus RAG support.

You had me at Rgt Artillery Group...............

[Tank Hunter]

So how should it look like?

Base Game

US Army vs Soviet Forces

Period 1985-1990?

Expansion 1

Germany & UK

East Germany & Poland

Expansion 2

France/Belgium/Netherlands

Czheckoslovakia/Hungary/Romania

All East European Countries were using more or less same equip so it should be fairly easy to create their armies.

[sburke]

Main body battalion artillery, plus RAG support, if I can get it, for my FSE! Think, with a two hour game you could model an advance to contact with your Combat Recon Patrol, then Forward Security Element and the Main Body coming as sequential reserves, each trying to expolit any gains, all taking place on a beautifully modelled map of Germany.

Oh man I hate it when I get drool al over my keyboard.

[Vark]

Drool 2: Soldiers from elements of the 40th Air Assault Regiment and 35th Border Regiment attack German police companies in the wreckage of Tempelhof airport, their objective, the control tower.

Or how about the Campaign Red beret, Blue beret: Paratroops from the Polish Sixth Air Landing Division struggle to hold on to their bridgehead in Zealand, waiting for the forward elements of the Seventh Landing Division. The marines have been delayed by stronger than expected coastal defences and race to help their airborne comrades who are facing aggressive probing and increased counter attacks. Airstrikes from supporting Russian Air Regiments have slowed the gathering Danish armour; but intelligence has picked up communications from Special forces units, who have broken emcon to report a US mechanised column is moving quickly to intercept the Marine spearhead.

The list is endless and doesn't have to be slugfests in the Fulda Gap. BF do sumfink, or I will have to download SPMBT and indulge in gaming masturbation, i.e. I know its a poor substitute, but at least it's some sort of relief, all be it short lived.

[Vark]

So how should it look like?

Base Game

US Army vs Soviet Forces

Period 1985-1990?

Expansion 1

Germany & UK

East Germany & Poland

Expansion 2

France/Belgium/Netherlands

Czheckoslovakia/Hungary/Romania

What about them Scandewegians? Those Vikins can put the feer a god intah any godless eethern chomyunistz!

[Combatintman]

I'd like to see Norwegians and Danes as well because it gives scope for the deployment of the ACE Mobile Force, the UK/NL Amphibious force and the USMC - however the scope of the project would be huge once you add it to all of the good stuff listed by Tank Hunter.

I'd so love to see all of this though - would be an awesome game.

[Stagler]

Perhaps, but Russian kit can be a fearsome opponent in Pro PE. I find CMSF 'easier' as blue, if that makes any sense.

It seems that the BMP3 has been infected with the same incompetence as the BMP1 too. Seemingly they just get wasted by bradleys left right and center even after scoring several direct cannon hits.

Blue side must have some mad luck coded into them.

[Dietrich]

Some of the sentiments expressed in this thread lead me to the (perhaps wild) surmise:

What's the second most (after NW Europe circa summer of 1944) fantasized-about, near-fetishized wargaming area/era? Cold War turned hot, Central Europe, circa 1985.

Would someone perhaps elucidate just why (some) people are so droolingly keen to wargame this strategic scenario? Is it because such never actually came to pass (i.e. the Cold War never turned hot and in fact fizzled out altogether)? Is it because NATO spent decades preparing for such an eventuality but never had occasion to employ the fruits of its preparation? Is it the implicit assumption that such an eventuality would somehow not entail the subsequent use of nuclear weapons by both sides?

That said, I'd still be interested in playing a NATO-vs-Warsaw-Pact c.1985 Cold-War-turned-hot game.

It seems that the BMP3 has been infected with the same incompetence as the BMP1 too. Seemingly they just get wasted by bradleys left right and center even after scoring several direct cannon hits.

In my experience, BMP-3s are not to be taken lightly, even if one is playing Blue and has MBTs. Sure, a BMP-3 is apt to explode spectacularly if one's Abrams scores a hit or if a TOW from one's Bradley finds its mark. But I find that with the firepower BMP-3s can dish out and their superior (to that of their forebears) targeting, I'm wary of just driving my Abrams and Bradleys into their LOF like I would be with BMP-1s.

[Vark]

Dietrich, one could argue the reverse, why are people playing a fictional scenario in Syria, that is so massively mismatched? As you said, you can drive your AFV's into LOS and not worry, too much, try doing that in the 80's with a T-64 or BMP 2! As I said before I'd rather play a fictional scenario which allows Red a good chance of winning, other than killing a score of Blue soldiers and a handful of vehicles. Yes, knowing you might loose a scenario, in this situation, is tense and perhaps realistic, given todays instant blanket media coverage of conflicts, but it also shows how asymetrically Red has to play. In a CWTH or WHITTLOB (What Happens If They'd Turned Left out of the Barracks) game both sides would face a formidable opponent, who could win by traditional military methods. As for use of nukes, Russian literature at the time stressed use of such weapons to aid and assist the advance, whether tactical weapons would have led to strategic launches is anyones guess.

The fascination is simple, it's the big what if, that pits two differing design, deployment and fighting philosophies and sees who theoretically would have won. It would also allow a game engine to create the hundreds of conflicts spawned and succoured by the Cold war. I lived my teens wondering if I'd hear the sirens go, knowing and talking to people who went off to fight this 'phantom conflict'. I gamed it during the conflict with rules thay really might as well have been labelled fantasy, given the paucity of knowledge one could get from open sources, though I was told about two RTR blokes who used their threat update reports to keep their copy of their "Challenger" rule sets up to date!

You asked whether it was because NATO spent decades preparing for such an eventuality but never had occasion to employ the fruits of its preparation, one could could argue they did, under perfect conditions against an army that made the third echelon Warpac troops look good, I'm of course refering to 91.

[PaulMG]

Maybe "some people" grew up listening to how Patton should have kept on going through Germany to Moscow. We watched black and white TV PSAs about Civil Defense shelters. We dived under our school desks for drills or learned stop, drop and cover. We crapped our pants in October 1962. We watched Krushchev slap his shoe on the podium. We watched those movies that told us the evil Commies were coming to get us.

Suppose that the Commies decided to take over the rest of Germany and whatever else and told the USA and NATO that you don't have the balls to use nukes? While the West wrings its hands and ponders, the East starts to move.

That is what we want to play. That short time span of ground combat before the feces hits the fan.

[Dietrich]

The fascination is simple, it's the big what if, that pits two differing design, deployment and fighting philosophies and sees who theoretically would have won. It would also allow a game engine to create the hundreds of conflicts spawned and succoured by the Cold war.

Fair enough. So I say bring it on and rhetorically ask "Why not a CWTH game?"

I lived my teens wondering if I'd hear the sirens go, knowing and talking to people who went off to fight this 'phantom conflict'.

There, methinks, is the proverbial "kicker". I'm a few months shy of 30 years old, whereas (so I infer) y'all who long for a CWTH game are rather older than that. Also I'm relatively new to wargaming (aside from a few flight simulators, my start was with CMBB and CMAK in the mid 2000s), so I don't have a stemming-from-when-the-Cold-War-was-still-ongoing history with such.

With regard to "arguing the reverse": I don't play Blue and think "Take that, you [insert hateful, propagandistic epithet here]!"; nor do I play Red and think "Take that, you [insert hateful, propagandistic epithet here]!" I'm just a sucker for whoever has the better "toys" and/or the better-developed tactics. My interest in CMSF stems from an interest in military stuff generally; that's why I'm interested in all types of scenarios (Red-vs-Red, Red-vs-Blue, as well as the more "stereotypical" Blue-vs-Red) and in playing all the forces (the various branches of the Syrian military included in the game as well as the several "NATO" forces in addition to the US ones). And I find interesting the juxtaposition/opposition of (late) Cold War-era equipment and tactics with post-Cold War-era equipment and tactics.

With regard to the bemoaning of Red's capability in CMSF: Y'all must be far better wargamers than I (which would make sense, since some of y'all have been wargaming since before I was born), since only occasionally (e.g. in old (pre-v1.10), not-well-designed scenarios) do I find Red anywhere near an eye-rollingly yawn-inducing walkover as some make it out to be.

[Grenvill]

Main problem with BMP-1 ingame is its horrendous TacAi. At common engagement range gunner will shoot from 2A28 Grom, turn out, shoot with ATGM and start reloading cannon AND ATGM. Full reloading cycle take up to minute, and as you can guess, BMP-1 probably will not last so long on battlefield (actually its even worse, during reloading cycle driver start panic evasive maneuvers even from good defensive position). Try in QB to expend all its ATGM ammunitions and and you will feel how much more powerful it is with one PG-9 grenade every 7-10 seconds.

[Vark]

I don't play Blue and think "Take that, you [insert hateful, propagandistic epithet here]!"; nor do I play Red and think "Take that, you [insert hateful, propagandistic epithet here]!"

Oh, dear my wife looks askance at me as I am doing just that, especially when I gloat at my enemies misfortune and rail against my bad 'luck', must be my miniatures and role playing heritage!

Thanks for your comments, yes I do think that gaming the conflict and endlessly reading about it was in part a way of dealing with the period. You really had to live the period, where the subject dominated every aspect of life especially for a teenager, especially pop culture and music. I remember the impact the BBC's Threads had on my school, or when we watched the quite dated but shocking "Wargame", and regularly a group, from one of the armed forces, would show us films of the Red Threat This though was highly counter-productive as we wanted to be in the Red Army! Their soldiers seemed to have lots of exciting kit, especially the submariners scrambling to their lined up Victors (ludicrous really but highly impressionable to young minds, they just looked so damned efficient and menacing like the Empire in Star Wars, who I enthusiastically backed as well)

Of course now, older and wiser, I appreciate, a little more what was really going on, but, personally, a CWTH game would not just be a wargame but a link to period I get quite nostalgic about now, almost a computer gaming equivalent of a Harley Davidson, leather jacket, tatoos and a teen girlfriend!

Nostalgia aside, from a purely gamers perspective, a CWTH game would offer massive variety in scenarios, due to the equally massive variety of troops (training, motivation, types) the equipment they used, (especially varients of the same weapon system) and the terrain they would fight on. Something CMSF lacks to be honest.

[Erwin]

"...looked so damned efficient and menacing like the Empire in Star Wars, who I enthusiastically backed as well."

Glad to find another Empire supporter! Just what were those stoopid teenage "rebels" trying to accomplish. It damn HARD to keep the peace in an intergalactic empire fer chrissakes!

I also recall school screenings of Peter Watkins' "The Wargame." Quite chilling to a young mind. Despite it being banned for many years at first, and it sorta broke his career and he didn't do much afterwards. Shame...

[Vark]

" Just what were those stoopid teenage "rebels" trying to accomplish. It damn HARD to keep the peace in an intergalactic empire fer chrissake

Absolutely, and your sentiments mirrored here

[Sergei]

Absolutely, and your sentiments mirrored here

Or here...

[Combatintman]

My interest is two-fold.

First I spent the best years of my life as a member of 1 (BR) Corps freezing my backside off in a variety of German farms/abandoned factories and woods close to the River Weser training for this eventuality and would therefore like to see how it would have panned out.

Second - the possibility of looking at some of the brushfire/proxy wars and the retreat from empire conflicts.

All up I reckon that this has the makings of a great game and is far more interesting than a fictional near-future campaign.

[Erwin]

+1 to that. Altho' I like modern warfare,CMSF would have "meant" more had it been set in Iraq... altho' Syria is a sort of stand in.

I thought Cold War 70's was a very popular subject (maybe only in those days?). I suspect BF was seduced by Aussie govt development money and dreams of US DoD contracts when they developed CMSF.

[Erwin]

I first saw that "Emperor's Call" a few years ago. I keep it on my computer for whenever I need an emergency laugh.

I mean, it would have been interesting to show a poll sequence of just how much of the population was unhappy with a well-ordered Imperial system that provided for so many. Darth Vader must have had a hell of a lot of aspirin or advil stocked away.

(Hmmm... knowing this audience, I better insert a here.)

[LongLeftFlank]

LOL! And don't forget Grand Moff Tarkin: the planetary governors have direct control of their systems. No more know-it-all mouthy feminazi pseudo-aristocrats in the Galactic Senate tramplin' on planets rights!