Apocal

Directional mines such as claymores and the MON-series are more common and more effective at producing casualties since they spray fragments in a horizontal fan instead of a vertical one. Also the MON-200 is freaking huge, with a two hundred meter casualty radius.

I don't know CMx1 that well, but from a max suppression bar to clear suppression bar takes around 30-60 seconds in CMRT, generally speaking. Morale is harder to quantify, but most infantry units -- placed in scenarios or purchased in quick battles -- are fairly resilient and will not reach broken status until taking at least half their number as casualties.

The radio frequently goes offline when the tank is moving. Less commonly it will do so -- at random, it seems -- when the tank is stationary as well.

Either one works, but I think a direct input on the point totals would just be fantastic.

It generally shouldn't matter in terms of performance: plenty of times in QBs my forces have been ripped the hell up by machine guns. And yes, positioning is extremely critical to how units perform. For MGs specifically, you generally don't want a wide field of fire; it just invites your opponent to pile more firepower opposite the MG to silence it. Instead, you want a keyhole -- a narrow strip of coverage that the enemy is forced to cross -- with overlapping coverage from a second, third, fourth, etc. MG to cover the first, mutually supporting. That's when MGs become absolute murder to attacking forces.

I've forgotten if I brought this up before, but the spate of posters requesting more small scenarios (low unit count, not just labelled small) reminded me that point scaling in quick battles is a bit off. Right now, a tiny probe in CMRT gives approximately 1100 points; enough for a full company of Soviet SMG infantry, a battery of 76mm guns, the associated FO for said guns and three or four TRPs with modest amounts of point at mostly default quality. That isn't tiny to me, it's more like medium sized. I'm not sure my perception is calibrated with the rest of the forumites or CMers at large, but this is what I think: Tiny: reinforced platoon of infantry (maybe rifle plt + mortar or HMG) or lower-tier AFV + squad. Small: Two reinforced rifle platoons (with artillery) or a slightly reduced infantry company (with mortars). Medium: Reinforced infantry company with artillery and maybe a section of light armor or a pair or trio of upper tier AFVs with a pair of rifle squads for support. Large: Multiple infantry companies with all the trimmings or two full platoons of armor with a platoon of supporting infantry plus mortars/artillery/air. Huge: Anything above large. Obviously there is some leeway, such as an assault providing a noticeable overage or a meeting engagement stripping some away, but overall I think it should hold.

It would also help greatly if the "tiny" quick battle setting gave fewer points. In CMRT, it provides enough for a full Soviet SMG company, a battery of 76mm guns and FO, with three or four TRPs to round things off. While that certainly can be a fun force mix, it's decidedly above what I would consider "tiny." I'm not sure if my perception is reflective of the community as a whole, but I think of them as: Tiny: reinforced platoon of infantry (maybe rifle plt + mortar or HMG) or lower-tier AFV + squad. Small: Two reinforced rifle platoons (with artillery) or a slightly reduced infantry company (with mortars). Medium: Reinforced infantry company with artillery and maybe a section of light armor or a pair or trio of upper tier AFVs with a pair of rifle squads for support. Large: Multiple infantry companies with all the trimmings or two full platoons of armor with a platoon of supporting infantry plus mortars/artillery/air. Huge: Anything above large.

Where is Field Marshal Bulcher when you need him? He made some really good company(-) campaigns back in the days of CMSF and CMBN.

I wouldn't call it gamey, but there is an advantage, insofar as suppression is shared across infantry units, even those that occupy two or three action spots. Taking a single casualty can "spike" the suppression bar of a entire squad, right? But when you split the squads into teams and spread them around action spots -- even adjacent action spots as if they were still part of the squad -- the shared suppression effect is lessened or eliminated. You're basically making it harder for your opponent to suppress your forces, in exchange for more work giving units orders. Obviously in WEGO you have all the time in the world to command your forces so it just makes sense to use split squads the majority of the time. In real-time it is a bit more of a tradeoff and most guys don't bother, except for dedicated AT teams. How is suppressing with machine guns and then killing with mortars/arty even remotely gamey? Those are explicitly their functions within the infantry company's sphere. The infantry's machine guns force the enemy to use covered routes not exposed to direct fire. The infantry have mortars to handle those areas so sheltered. The game relationship is a bit rough due the line-of-sight requirement on calling down fires, but it is completely consistent with reality for an attacking force to find itself "hung up" by a couple of machine guns and then hit with mortars as they hunker down. You're complaining that (much more numerous) automatic weapons kill and suppress better at short range than (a smaller number of) automatic weapons at long range. I... I don't see a problem with this at all on its face. Small arms are more lethal the closer you go. Also, I have a different experience regarding the effectiveness of the MG42 when it comes to inflicting casualties and causing suppression of (unsupported) infantry attacks in CMRT. It's generally capable of stopping SMG-equipped troops as long as you don't allow them too close, <250m or so. Below 200m, you might as well just break it off though.

Armed drones fly above 20,000ft bro.

Yeah, which is an altogether different flavor: the side that wins the firepower fight can roll the side without fires on their side absurdly hard and lopsidedly, better infantry weapons or not. For man-portable AT? I doubt it. Lasers have massive power requirements; for any given weight, HEAT out-penetrates them by an order of magnitude since the power supply for a realistic battlefield laser is massive and battery technology can't keep up. Additionally, there are heating concerns that ships deal with by pumping gallons of water through the thing and land-based systems carrying portable refrigeration systems along with them. Then dust, smoke, humidity, etc. all serve to degrade laser performance. Finally, it is still a strictly line-of-sight weapon, something they are trying to get away from since a tank can pretty much kill anything it sees on the ground battlefield.

I was responding to your claim that swarm-ATGM equipped iinfantry were not able to be countered. They are, as long as field artillery or other firepower assets are available, because the men carrying the things remain vulnerable.

I was arguing that CMx2 doesn't have to be slow. And yeah, there are a lot of slower-paced games played by younger gamers. Part of the problem is that there is no way to quickly drop in and find a multiplayer game. I'm pretty sure I've said before that a rudimentary lobby system for real-time players and more streamlined connection process for everyone would be a boon.

Nah, not really. In practice, you're constantly losing muzzle velocity once the shell leaves the barrel and the aircraft's forward motion doesn't contribute all that much. Unless you were extremely close -- as in, about to fly into the dirt -- the pattern would mostly spatter around the tank, not on it. As you fly shallower, that pattern goes from being a relatively tidy circle to more and more oblong. This effectively chops down the effective range, along with putting you right in the envelope of light and medium AA and presenting the picture perfect "clay pigeon" target for an extended period. So you dive instead. The downside to a steep dive is that it limits firing time. The idea behind rapid fire cannons is that you put enough "steel in the box" that something hits without an excessively long (in time) burst, since your aircraft is in a steep dive for accuracy reasons and literally cannot spare more than a few seconds getting an effective strafing run in.

The problems are that dismounted troops excel at being stealthy, a UAV's perspective on the battlefield is similar to looking through a soda straw and ATGMs don't really have suppressive effects over a large area, which is what you need when dealing with a low-density, low-signature target like dug-in troops. ATGMs certainly work once those defenses are "up" and engaging, but that involves presenting some kind of "bait." Also, as a practical matter, field artillery is one the major users of UAVs. I think they are up to something like a platoon per field artillery fires battalion in the US Army now, with rumblings about adding a full UAV battery?

They had a bad experience doing similar with Shock Force.

In an hour of playing real-time, one can finish two or three small multiplayer quick battles in CMx2. Lacroix does it all the time.

Repairing vehicles would generally happen outside the scope of a CM battle. And engineers wouldn't know how to fix **** on a tank, generally speaking.

One problem I've encountered in games with both tactical and operational layers is that many -- sometimes most -- tactical actions are routine mopping up. Typically players mass as much effective combat power as allowed, brawl over a single critical point and after it is decided, the tactical layer is superfluous. The operational layer certainly has a significant influence in setting up that fight and occasionally leads to truly brilliant and interesting tactical actions... but sometimes one-side makes a serious operational mistake and gets rolled off the map for it. People who play the Total War series in multiplayer or modded so the AI can't just pull armies out of its ass know what I'm talking about. It's illustrative as to why major European powers during many eras would throw in the towel after a single reversal on the field of battle, but it makes for a bad operational wargame.

What are the experience levels on the Panther crews? Is this possibly a case of the given troops in the scenario having excessively high experience (which comes out to being flat out better trained) versus a problem with the underlying gunnery assumptions in the game?

Besides bald-faced lying? No. Then again, that is a bit of "other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" Oh hey, in this interview he keeps pushing the narrative of the Soviets being poised to attack Germany first and that is why Hitler ordered an invasion. "We were attacked by the Germans 70 years ago. But until this day, the deployment of the Soviet troops at the moment of the attack is still a state secret in Russia. Those tanks were written off long, long ago. The veterans lost their lives. But the position of 3rd and 9th armies is still a secret. The maps of the airfields were never published, ever. It is still a state secret how many airfields we had, and how many aircraft were deployed. Why? Because if they publish all this, it will be clear to everybody that it was Stalin who contemplated the war, and that the Soviet Union started the Second World War, because Soviet Union policy required the war. If we admit that the Soviet Union helped Hitler come to power, if we admit the Soviet Union developed Hitler's robust economy, then there will be too many questions to answer. Not just military questions, but ideological and political and geographical, and many others. It is not just the Russian General Staff, but the KGB, SVR and the Russian president himself, and those who are behind the Russian president - all of them are attentively watching and formulating public discourse related to the war." Has this become any more credible in the fifteen or twenty years since he first claimed it?

MOBA - Multiplayer online battle arena, like League of Legends, Heroes of Newearth, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplayer_online_battle_arena

The Wargame series (AirLand Battle, Red Dragon, etc.), ArmA series, World of Tanks, War Thunder, etc. are all probable gateways into niche wargaming, to one degree or another. True twitch FPSes are mostly dead. And the RTS genre is dying, if it weren't for Starcraft, it'd be almost dead, replaced by MOBAs.

Drop artillery on them? DPICM rounds cost about a tenth of what a high-end ATGM does and don't have to expose the firing battery to reply while suppressing dismounted forces through a large (think 3km x 3km) area.

Does anyone still think this guy is credible?