Thomm

Still in awe that a single programmer could pull off something like CMx2.
Best regards
Thomm

Still in awe that a single programmer could pull off something like CMx2.
Best regards
Thomm

This company, Sy Simulations, is showing of its structural simulation chops with a bunch of armor penetration videos like the one below.  These are cool in general, of course, but I like it even more because I use this same SW tool (Abaqus) every day, though my simulations are not this totally cool. 
Excellent representation of advanced material modeling using damage initiation and evolution leading to element failure.  Love it.
 
 

Don't apply shot peening to enemy armor. It will just harden it up.
Best regards,
Thomm

A label indicating weapons as 'deployed'.
The same way 'semi-deployed' is shown.
Best regards,
Thomm

Now that one is really personal!
Seldom does one see individual soldiers being chased by artillery barrages!
Best regards,
Thomm

Thank you for the hints!
Best regards,
Thomm

Thank you for the responses!
Best regards,
Thomm

The thing with scenario size is that, generally speaking, the smallest 'semi' independent maneuver element is typically a battalion - at least for WW2.  Not sure if that's changed for modern or not, but you simply can't find very many situations with a company sized force that is operating independently of it's parent battalion.  Platoon sized actions take place obviously, but those are typically going to be patrol type actions and so you are somewhat limited in what you can do because a lot of patrolling activities simply don't translate into CM very well since they aren't typically going to be a 'capture location x' type of battle.  Prisoner snatch type of things simply won't work since you can't really deliberately capture enemies in CM.  You can do spotting for victory points, but then what's the other side doing during that time frame and if it's a larger enemy force then how does the player keep their 'spotting' units alive - especially if playing head to head.  Then how fun would that be anyway since most of the time would be spent hiding from the enemy.  It works for campaigns but not so much for a stand alone.
On top of that, modern units just have a lot of 'stuff'.  Even a US Mech Infantry platoon is something like eleven 'pieces' if you split your squads.  A US Mech Cavalry troop has something like four tanks, three scout teams, two M901s, and three M113s IIRC so that's twelve pieces to move around for one troop.  Smaller battles are a lot easier and quicker to create, but at the same time there is only so much you can really do with them since you have to come up with patrol type objectives. 
Incidentally the US side in Czechmate is only two platoons (slightly reinforced) and you are defending so it shouldn't be too taxing.  It's still a lot of pieces relatively speaking (in WW2 terms) because of all the vehicles, but the Soviet force is a lot larger so it wouldn't classify as a small scenario given the size of both forces combined.

What I would wish for would be the option to have an AI plan for friendly units on the map. Make some of the friendly units not playable, to stay true to the scope of this kind of warfare, and adding another leven of immersion to the battlefield, because you are now not the god controlling everything, but just one gear in the machine of war.
Of course, this would come with other problems, to keep these forces performing in reasonable behaviour for the mission designer, which would be the job of the scenario creator, but overall, I think it would be a great addition.
It would give you as a player a smaller force to take care for, so you can focus on your units.

I am still creating an experimental scenario, in which you will play as a Soviet BMP company, within a bigger soviet attack, just to check for the possibility of this kind of gameplay.

Warren gave a great breakdown. I would add that one of the most common complaints I see everywhere about CM games set in a modern setting is that the maps are too small. "Knife fighting in a phone booth" is a phrase that is usually thrown around quite regularly. I sympathize with that assessment to a degree.
I think that Cold War goes a long way of showing that with the proper sized maps, you can get real maneuver in a modern setting. Of course, the double edged sword here is that some people prefer those phone booth knife fights. I think that Warren is correct that Cold War currently is mostly the larger fights and does not have many smaller fights, and that going forward it will be important to try to include more of those smaller fights. But I think it was the right call going with the larger battles for the first game. After all, this was to be a massive mechanized fight, and I think it was important that Cold War capture that feeling and sense of scale out of the gate. 
All that said, I do think that Combat Mission has an issue with what I call administrative burden, or overhead. The player has to give so many orders to so many individual units, that it can get really tiresome keeping up with everything. Just getting a single company to road march can take hundreds of clicks and pause commands, etc. 
Reducing the admin burden on the player I think would go a long way to facilitating the playability of the larger battles. But that is completely in the hands of Steve and Charles, and is well beyond the scope of a game or module. 

Now some of you pay attention...this is good criticism.
So yes, if someone asked me "what would you do different", I would have to say that the balance of scenario sized for this title is it.  We have only a minority portion of Tiny and Small battle in CMCW and we wrestled over that somewhat.  So why did we go this way (and there was a deliberate consideration):
- CMCW is mechanized warfare.  One could argue it is set at the apogee of peer mechanized warfare.  So this does not mean infantry do not have a role, far from it; however, the infantry-only or infantry dominant fights are less realistic.  They definitely would have happened but they happen in context of a much larger mechanized battle.  The main problem here is weapon ranges and real estate.  As weapon systems evolved the frontages and area of effect for formations increases dramatically.  So the risk here for small force battles is big nearly empty maps or tiny fights at point blank range.  Not impossible (see Hunter or Prey for an outstanding small fight) but harder to consistently produce as realistic.
- Casual vs Hardcore.  This one is much tougher...who is the audience?  Here we really had to stick with the CM brand, which is more hardcore in its niche.  The brand is based on hyper-realistic, to the point of being a simulation vice game, at the tactical level.  The target gamer is someone who wants that as part of their hobby.  So we leaned into that with realistic scenarios and campaigns, many of them pulled straight from period doctrine, which in this context as mentioned previously is fast moving mechanized based warfare.  This pretty much need the Coy Tm as a minimum in order to showcase accurately and the Coy Tm in 1982 needed a 2x2 km battle field as a minimum, in reality it could probable handle a 4 x 4km battlefield (terrain considerations).
That said, I would really have liked to see good smaller scenarios and we will definitely take that into consideration for any DLC moving forward.

Personal message to the scenario designers:
I just finished my first medium scenario (Brauersdorf), and it was great, but I find it very hard to motivate myself to even start another medium (or larger) scenario.
They are simply too big / too much effort for casual playing.
You (the designers) put so much time into the editor to set up these big scenarios, and I cannot even appreciate your effort, because I simply cannot convince myself to put the necessary amount of time into a single game.
I have no idea if others feel the same way, but for me it would be much better, if, e.g., two thirds of the scenarios would be 'small' or below in size. And not the other way round.
Best regards,
Thomm

Personal message to the scenario designers:
I just finished my first medium scenario (Brauersdorf), and it was great, but I find it very hard to motivate myself to even start another medium (or larger) scenario.
They are simply too big / too much effort for casual playing.
You (the designers) put so much time into the editor to set up these big scenarios, and I cannot even appreciate your effort, because I simply cannot convince myself to put the necessary amount of time into a single game.
I have no idea if others feel the same way, but for me it would be much better, if, e.g., two thirds of the scenarios would be 'small' or below in size. And not the other way round.
Best regards,
Thomm

Hotkeys window:
First line:  1-9
Is:                  Move forward
Should be:   Set camera altitude
Best regards,
Thomm
 

Personal message to the scenario designers:
I just finished my first medium scenario (Brauersdorf), and it was great, but I find it very hard to motivate myself to even start another medium (or larger) scenario.
They are simply too big / too much effort for casual playing.
You (the designers) put so much time into the editor to set up these big scenarios, and I cannot even appreciate your effort, because I simply cannot convince myself to put the necessary amount of time into a single game.
I have no idea if others feel the same way, but for me it would be much better, if, e.g., two thirds of the scenarios would be 'small' or below in size. And not the other way round.
Best regards,
Thomm

Major Victory as Red in 'Between Two Fahrbahns'. In the end, I had a mere three AFVs in the occupy area. And they got there literally in the last minute. Scenario balance does not get any better than that! My last tank, which killed the last M60, was guided by a recon team sneaking up to the bushline next to the street. This last tank of mine was, in turn, destroyed by enemy infantry shortly afterwards. The brave recon team was killed by an AP artillery strike (how mean!!!). Nail-biting action till the end! Good stuff!
Best regards,
Thomm

Update:
All my problems vanish as soon as I run the game as administrator (from my non-administrator account).
Thank you again for all the good advice!
Best regards,
Thomm

Update:
All my problems vanish as soon as I run the game as administrator (from my non-administrator account).
Thank you again for all the good advice!
Best regards,
Thomm

The tree shadows are a blocky, flickering mess on my PC.
Is there any solution for this problem?
My graphics card is a  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB)
Best regards,
Thomm

I mean, isn't this rather unsafe?
Best regards,
Thomm

LOL, I was about to quote the rest of the email.
For those who are wondering: It says not to trumpet out the news publicly, so that the server infrastructure can deal better with the initial load.
Anyway: 15 minute download here.
Best regards,
Thomm

LOL, I was about to quote the rest of the email.
For those who are wondering: It says not to trumpet out the news publicly, so that the server infrastructure can deal better with the initial load.
Anyway: 15 minute download here.
Best regards,
Thomm

In Austria, I imagine heavy demolitions work in the Alpine passes. While fighting off VDV and spetsnaz attempts to seize the same.... 
(btw, this little known Jimmy Stewart film set during the 1944 Japanese ICHIGO offensive against the Chengtu B29 bases, features a fairly realistic infantry firefight, conducted at an appropriate tactical range. In 1960 a lot of Hollywood folks still had first hand experience with the real deal)

Wish 1:  Some form of CM:BO-style shockwave visualization. When in doubt, make it optional!
Wish 2:  Persistent map damage
Wish 3:  Fulda Gap ... Oh, wait! Already preordered!
Best regards,
Thomm