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Hello,

I just bought this game.  I went through the tutorial and I really like it.  I'm quite new to this kind of tactical game.  Closest thing was Close Combat, many years ago.

I then tried a campaign and there are 100's of individual teams.  I'm pretty overwhelmed.  I then checked the scenerios.  Besides a couple small ones, there are many many teams in those too.  Are there any battles that have maybe 20-30 teams?  I can't seem to find any.  The game kinda seems to have you go from the very small tutorials, to huge, overwhelming battles.

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To learn this game, learn the editor and make small battles that you feel comfortable with and interested in. It's easy to do, I started with small tank battles and then added infantry etc.. Small QBs are good too. But I think learning the editor might be more efficient in the long run. It should not take more than a few hours, given all the resources now available, to be playing a cool battle. 

Kevin

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oh, and don't forget to 'cheat'.  if you play a scenario & get whupped early on, go to scenario editor & give yourself more tanks, artillery, or some such.  It's very easy to do & can get you enough success to start to build some confidence. 

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when you say you got hundreds of individual teams...

i guess that you are playing the russians ? 

If this is so...you should know that HIGH numbers is what makes them russians...

i think that it is stated in the manual even...

'playing the russians you will be commanding one level up...if you as the americans, brittish or germans use a platoon to carry out an assignment...as the russians you will be using a company.

simularely in situations where others use a company the russians will be using a battalion...

this kind of results in a rather high unit count when playing the russians...

 If you are not discurraged and feel that you can afford them...other titles...especially CMBN and CMFI usually have a somewhat smaller unit count in their scenarios IIRC...

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The main single-player campaigns for Red Thunder have a lot of really huge battles and it can definitely be pretty overwhelming. It's better to play some of the smaller single scenarios first, but once you get to playing the campaigns, you might want to play the Russian one first. The German campaign follows a huge mechanized force and you have dozens of tanks and halftracks packed with troops to deal with. I found it pretty overwhelming to deal with such a huge number of vehicles plus every infantry squad having its own carrier.

At least with the Russians, you have mostly infantry and can just move everyone forward in large groups. You don't even have to worry about casualties that much. You just drop down a giant artillery barrage and then start throwing waves of men at the enemy. Remember that you can double click on units to select their entire formation and move them all at once. So if you double click a company HQ, you will select the entire company and you can move everyone together with the same command. That can help quite a bit.

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Try 'Tankovyi Desant' as the Soviets.....It's a great little scuffle.  B)

PS - Don't be scared of the difficulty settings, if you are new, go straight to 'Iron Mode', it's actually no more difficult and you will learn how the game really works (as opposed to how you might think it works) a lot faster.

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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CMRT, especially as the Soviets, tends towards massive battles. It's one of the defining traits of the game. Other CM titles are much smaller - Shock Force in particular has many more platoon-sized or company sized scenarios than the later games.

This is also one of the core challenges of Combat Mission in general - you have a game where you can make interesting and meaningful decisions on the scale of a single *squad*, and then you're handed a battalion.


There are a few ways to approach that. The main one I find useful is to think in terms of formations - then it's not 100 men, it's one Company split into three Platoons.

That means that in terms of your thinking you can focus on one Platoon at a time, have an idea of what you'd like it to do. Then you can think about that Platoon in the context of the Company, and what the Company is trying to achieve. Platoons in the game and in reality should only really have one objective at a time, so in this manner you can parcel this out.

In this way, with your "Company Commander" hat on, you only have to think about three elements at once. Then you can put on your "Platoon Commander" hat and then also have to think about only three elements or so.

The way the C2 system works in the game, this will also help them fight better, ultimately. 


This, obviously, still takes time, and the larger battles can grind on. Keeping motivation for the really large scenarios can be difficult, and there are good reasons to keep things small and focused. It also helps to be able to iterate these rapidly, so you can learn an awful lot faster.

Tankovyi Desant is a great scenario in CMRT, with limited forces - basically two platoons of infantry and two platoons of armour, with some attachments. There's a reason it was in the demo.


I'm a big proponent of small scenarios these reasons, but I do think they're tough to design. My favourite CM campaigns ever are The Devil's Descent and The Outlaws for CMBN - both narrative-driven US Airborne campaigns where your force over the entire campaign totals up to a single company - most of the scenarios are then much smaller than this, and you really get a chance to focus on your resources and losses.

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16 hours ago, jalapen0 said:

Hello,

I just bought this game.  I went through the tutorial and I really like it.  I'm quite new to this kind of tactical game.  Closest thing was Close Combat, many years ago.

I then tried a campaign and there are 100's of individual teams.  I'm pretty overwhelmed.  I then checked the scenerios.  Besides a couple small ones, there are many many teams in those too.  Are there any battles that have maybe 20-30 teams?  I can't seem to find any.  The game kinda seems to have you go from the very small tutorials, to huge, overwhelming battles.

If you search for stuff by @SeinfeldRules over at https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/ you'll find a load of small to medium size CMRT scenarios which might suit you. Small maps, small forces, brilliant wee fights!

Edited by George MC
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19 hours ago, jalapen0 said:

The game kinda seems to have you go from the very small tutorials, to huge, overwhelming battles.

Welcome to the forum @jalapen0.  This is a good place to come with questions.  Use of this forum will greatly speed up your understanding and enjoyment of the game. 

Just curious, what skill level are you playing the game on?  (Basic training, Veteran, Warrior, Elite or Iron)   

 

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I completely feel your pain.  It seems like as CM2 has developed, scenario builders have built larger and larger scenarios.  There is very little command and control of formations larger than a platoon.  If you want to play the game the way scenarios are being built, you'll have to learn to break it down into phases and spend a lot of time planning routes for small scout teams all the way up to IS-2 tanks. 

The selection of games by size helps a little, but its dependent on the scenario builder to assess the size.  People who build massive scenarios will look at a game with 100 units per side as a mid-sized scenario.  So you do have to be careful.  I solved this for myself by playing a lot of QBs and building my own scenarios.

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22 hours ago, jalapen0 said:

Hello,

I just bought this game.  I went through the tutorial and I really like it.  I'm quite new to this kind of tactical game.  Closest thing was Close Combat, many years ago.

I then tried a campaign and there are 100's of individual teams.  I'm pretty overwhelmed.  I then checked the scenerios.  Besides a couple small ones, there are many many teams in those too.  Are there any battles that have maybe 20-30 teams?  I can't seem to find any.  The game kinda seems to have you go from the very small tutorials, to huge, overwhelming battles.

 

Some links that might help:

http://www.combatmission.lesliesoftware.com/RedThunder/Scenarios/index.html click on the column name "Battle Size" to sort by size (click a second time to reverse it).

https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/search-2/#search/category=CM+RED+THUNDER+[SCENARIOS] The Scenario Depot

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I don’t think there is anything wrong with starting with CMRT. I know that I was a terrible, truly terrible player when I started with CMBN. Too many assumptions on how things work based on the wrong (fictional) sources. I also played Close Combat, so I know where you are coming from.

  My suggestions:

1. Sit back, relax and watch the 6 videos by a real Lt Col showing you how to play the game. Seriously, it’s fantastic. A good base to build upon. You may not grasp all of it, but as you play and experiment it will all make more and more sense.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ6dDlqye9Q

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zHm6FDh1738

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HI4MNt-BtBM

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fQgFnIW3VtE

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XFc6ge53jZQ

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zvoKNVDNtVI

They are informative, but also entertaining. Don’t look on them homework. 

2. Try some smaller scenarios ( “Battles” in the game menu) and also generate some Quick Battles as well. You can choose sides, maps sizes, force sizes, etc. It gives you a chance to start quite small, and get familiar. 

3. I learned a lot as I write my AAR (After action report) as the Russians. I humbly offer you an chance to learn from some of my rather terrible mistakes. The comments and suggestions are quite helpful. It’s not done so more to come in the future days...

 

Edited by Bud Backer
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On 6/6/2019 at 11:41 PM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Try 'Tankovyi Desant' as the Soviets.....It's a great little scuffle.  B)

PS - Don't be scared of the difficulty settings, if you are new, go straight to 'Iron Mode', it's actually no more difficult and you will learn how the game really works (as opposed to how you might think it works) a lot faster.

Second this. Great small sized scenario to play from the Russian side and you have plenty to accomplish the mission as long as you aren't (too) reckless.

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