Londoner

I was lockdown bored just before Christmas and almost bought Cyberpunk 2077. In the end I saw reason and just found a couple more CM PBEM opponents. However it's still the same price as December - £49.99 on steam and according to the steam info page the publisher is CD Projekt, a Polish developer and publisher combo?! Given the size of the title, one would assume they're not simply ducking any new HMRC regs?!

True Cool Breeze, wonder if anyone has tried it. Was thinking versus a human opponent Vas - the tac AI would be fine, after all it would just sit doing nothing/cowering/observing etc after the last waypoint/order was completed, just like now but for longer, arguably what men do for the most part in battle anyway.

Noooo, quite the opposite. CM tends to compress tactical battles, would much rather the option for a two or three minute round, in all the titles, old and new, would in a way....add a whole new dimension to the orders phase.

Finally got my dense head around this and works for the first time - what an elegant, simple but fantastic little bit of software - with zero admin maybe I can add another game or two to the opponent list! Many, many thanks GAJ!!!!!

Can't disagree with any of that but don't think wanting to nerf Soviet infantry is the driver. Am just a humble CMer trying to establish what a (as ambiguous as that may be) typical Soviet rifle unit/company should look like - in game terms - for both designers and quick battle picks. That's not to say I don't appreciate yours and others narrative, on the contrary - it makes this forum a fascinating virtual place.

Oh agreed, re training - as you said earlier, the ability to operate/maintain a bolt action rifle is negligible - it's the (forgive a Humanities grad') people stuff that's important. Certainly can't argue with the latter - always believed the old Normandy myth about green units and getting off boats. However for the sake of CM/game considerations don't we have to agree on definitions?

Or even "up to", surely 5-10% would be a more accurate figure? Going by CM definitions one could argue even the last group - men "in their early 20s who would have been with the unit a few months up to 2 years" could generally be considered green, although as you say, that's open to interpretation. Additionally would it be harsh to say training method/tactical doctrine and even combat experience (i.e. at least what's disseminated down to rank and file) differs between German and Soviet enough so to not make the below CM definitions entirely comparable? Conscript: draftees with little training and no combat experience whatsoever. Green: draftees with little training and some combat experience or reservists with some training and no combat experience. Green can also represent professional soldiers whose training is substandard in comparison to another force. Regular: professional soldiers who went through extensive, quality training programs, but lack combat experience. Or, Regular can represent troops that received mediocre training that have a fair amount of combat experience.

If we're talking about the actual combat infantry companies, not the parent units they're attached to, I'd be very surprised if typically a third of them were men who'd been there from 41/42.

Exactly. We all surely appreciate that having half your force made out of conscripts will not be to some tastes however we're discussing what constitutes a typical Soviet force makeup no? Going by the quoted CM definitions, a mix of conscript and green seems historically appropriate. A mix of low leadership and possibly high motivation could indeed be very interesting and more apt. Sburke - wasn't meant as a criticism - was only recently praising your amazing Touch of Frost scenario, and totally get it's a tough job - creating both an entertaining and historical scenario, in fact one could argue that the two are almost mutually exclusive, at least in lots of minds.

* My bold. This is really the problem (for the most part), in relation to John's original post and question. Apologies for moaning at poor old Ian L in our RT games - designers simply aren't choosing enough green and conscript troops (with leadership minuses) in their force choices. Every RT game I've played thus far has consisted of a Soviet force with (for the most part) well led regulars and vets. We all know by '44 operational Soviet management was an entirely different creature but its staggering casualties amongst, to be frank, an organisation with significant illiteracy all the way through the war should typically be reflected/represented accordingly on the CM tactical battlefield. As for ranges/maps mentioned earlier - try Hunting for the Bug. Just got my first 2000m RT kill (Ian again, sorry) and felt oh so very smug.

There's obviously rational, pragmatic, societal reasons for that, read Burke - An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-face Killing in Twentieth-century Warfare.

That's the one - most frustrating. Will ping you over the file on game end.

Wish that were my only problem with foxholes. In our current game hind - would you believe I have a couple of mg42s that have not discharged a single round due to the the gunner constantly "moving". Have tried facing and moving/redeploying them in the foxhole to no avail, I can't even area fire with these teams!

Looks like it's down to processor and graphics. My new hazwell lappy and 780 geforce loads any scenario (in full hd, all settings maxed out) in under a minute. Have got rt installed on an ssd and bn on a standard drive and there's no significant difference.

Utterly nuts....for the price of a couple of pints...