IMHO

So what I am hearing is that it is not me you love....you just need me for your Grog porn needs....disgusting.....but ok.


Apologize in advance as I am not the best screen shot guy.  (Top T64B1s...love that tank, Bottom BMP 1PK,,,lookin bad ass.)
 

Wow...no pressure.  Ok, so this is not as formal turn report, I will do a summary once we get a bit further but here is an example of the Soviet Missile Hell ("SMH" copyright) awaiting the US player.
First a M150 get cocky and crest a hill, and three AT 3s light up (red circles)

And 2 out of 3 aint bad...(Capt's Rule #4)



Bil is lucky that was an M150 because those AT 3 would have killed anything short of an M1.  [edit AT3Bs..my bad, AT 5s are even deadlier].

@Rice I'll try to find. But here's the excerp from the BMP-1 technical description

It says:
"Ports for mounted element to fire small arms: PK MGs - 2, AK assault rifles - 7"

@Rice I'll try to find. But here's the excerp from the BMP-1 technical description

It says:
"Ports for mounted element to fire small arms: PK MGs - 2, AK assault rifles - 7"

Same 105mm gun. M1 and M60A3 share the then-latest depleted uranium APFSDS round, the other tanks use earlier rounds. One notable thing, no smoke shells for Abrams. That round needs to be stowed vertically due to the nature of its contents but there's no vertical round stowage in Abrams. So no smoke shells.

Nah, for the Soviet side of the time the idea was to get as fast as possible to the ports to deny the US the ability to reinforce/resupply NATO forces in Europe. So as such:
Attacking force is not expected to face a defence not thouroughly softened by conventional artillery or tactical nukes. Heavy fire support would be used against probable enemy positions BEFORE the attack. Not a concept of a move to contact, relay enemy coordinates and lay in wait to see them destroyed. However attacking units would expect a SWIFT fire support should they run into troubles. I'd say in 80s Soviet fire support would be WAAAAY quicker then US's. And even in CMBS Russian fire support is unrealistically retarded as compared to US IMO. At the beginning of the UKR hostilities UKR Army basically didn't exist yet today UKR fire support is world class. Attacking units would need to absorb whatever casualties happen in the process. If a unit is thouroughly degraded then it will be replaced by a reserve one yet the tempo of operations needs to be maintained. Nobody cares to cleanse fortified areas, rather you avoid a head-on fight, go around and leave the mopping task to rear echelons. No one's stopping for a "smart" tactical fight - keeping the movement tempo is uber alles. As such the TACTICAL direction of attack may be changed at the discretion of lower-level commanders. It's up to the rear echelons to keep up. Again tempo is uber alles. You achieve "overmatch" on the battlefield first and foremost not by putting up an overwhelming force to fight in direct contact but rather by avoiding the costly head-on confrontation, maneuvering around the enemy and degrading it by fires. Then annihilating the weaked enemy if it's required for keeping your logistics lines. If it's not - then leave it behind and move on. So:
No sure if CMCW will show it this way - it's totally different from previous CM titles IMO. Hope it may expain many things about Russian side in other CM titles. To understand the origins of the concept it's worth reading about the political/economy side of the equation for both the West and the East.

Nah, for the Soviet side of the time the idea was to get as fast as possible to the ports to deny the US the ability to reinforce/resupply NATO forces in Europe. So as such:
Attacking force is not expected to face a defence not thouroughly softened by conventional artillery or tactical nukes. Heavy fire support would be used against probable enemy positions BEFORE the attack. Not a concept of a move to contact, relay enemy coordinates and lay in wait to see them destroyed. However attacking units would expect a SWIFT fire support should they run into troubles. I'd say in 80s Soviet fire support would be WAAAAY quicker then US's. And even in CMBS Russian fire support is unrealistically retarded as compared to US IMO. At the beginning of the UKR hostilities UKR Army basically didn't exist yet today UKR fire support is world class. Attacking units would need to absorb whatever casualties happen in the process. If a unit is thouroughly degraded then it will be replaced by a reserve one yet the tempo of operations needs to be maintained. Nobody cares to cleanse fortified areas, rather you avoid a head-on fight, go around and leave the mopping task to rear echelons. No one's stopping for a "smart" tactical fight - keeping the movement tempo is uber alles. As such the TACTICAL direction of attack may be changed at the discretion of lower-level commanders. It's up to the rear echelons to keep up. Again tempo is uber alles. You achieve "overmatch" on the battlefield first and foremost not by putting up an overwhelming force to fight in direct contact but rather by avoiding the costly head-on confrontation, maneuvering around the enemy and degrading it by fires. Then annihilating the weaked enemy if it's required for keeping your logistics lines. If it's not - then leave it behind and move on. So:
No sure if CMCW will show it this way - it's totally different from previous CM titles IMO. Hope it may expain many things about Russian side in other CM titles. To understand the origins of the concept it's worth reading about the political/economy side of the equation for both the West and the East.

No, the missile just gravitates to your mark so knowing the distance to the target and the missile speed you can firstly aim higher then lower the mark to the target. The missile will follow. The technique was actually developed early on to avoid entangling (and tearing off) the control wires in bushes that grow near the straight line to the target. So with BMP-2 you can go "hull-down" behind the bushes and yet launch the missile. And your skill will be your sensor  

No, the missile just gravitates to your mark so knowing the distance to the target and the missile speed you can firstly aim higher then lower the mark to the target. The missile will follow. The technique was actually developed early on to avoid entangling (and tearing off) the control wires in bushes that grow near the straight line to the target. So with BMP-2 you can go "hull-down" behind the bushes and yet launch the missile. And your skill will be your sensor  

No, the missile just gravitates to your mark so knowing the distance to the target and the missile speed you can firstly aim higher then lower the mark to the target. The missile will follow. The technique was actually developed early on to avoid entangling (and tearing off) the control wires in bushes that grow near the straight line to the target. So with BMP-2 you can go "hull-down" behind the bushes and yet launch the missile. And your skill will be your sensor  

Both sides were prepared for an attack by the other. To put it in the CM Engine realistically there were no attacking triggers.  

Nah, for the Soviet side of the time the idea was to get as fast as possible to the ports to deny the US the ability to reinforce/resupply NATO forces in Europe. So as such:
Attacking force is not expected to face a defence not thouroughly softened by conventional artillery or tactical nukes. Heavy fire support would be used against probable enemy positions BEFORE the attack. Not a concept of a move to contact, relay enemy coordinates and lay in wait to see them destroyed. However attacking units would expect a SWIFT fire support should they run into troubles. I'd say in 80s Soviet fire support would be WAAAAY quicker then US's. And even in CMBS Russian fire support is unrealistically retarded as compared to US IMO. At the beginning of the UKR hostilities UKR Army basically didn't exist yet today UKR fire support is world class. Attacking units would need to absorb whatever casualties happen in the process. If a unit is thouroughly degraded then it will be replaced by a reserve one yet the tempo of operations needs to be maintained. Nobody cares to cleanse fortified areas, rather you avoid a head-on fight, go around and leave the mopping task to rear echelons. No one's stopping for a "smart" tactical fight - keeping the movement tempo is uber alles. As such the TACTICAL direction of attack may be changed at the discretion of lower-level commanders. It's up to the rear echelons to keep up. Again tempo is uber alles. You achieve "overmatch" on the battlefield first and foremost not by putting up an overwhelming force to fight in direct contact but rather by avoiding the costly head-on confrontation, maneuvering around the enemy and degrading it by fires. Then annihilating the weaked enemy if it's required for keeping your logistics lines. If it's not - then leave it behind and move on. So:
No sure if CMCW will show it this way - it's totally different from previous CM titles IMO. Hope it may expain many things about Russian side in other CM titles. To understand the origins of the concept it's worth reading about the political/economy side of the equation for both the West and the East.

@kinophile, apart from maps being too small
CM packs too many men per each square for infantry units. Thus a well placed HE shell can cause too many casualties within a SINGLE unit. So to compensate for this... HE damage radius is artificially reduced so that this lucky shot won't kill half the units on hands. Add to the this the fact that HEFRAG damage to vehicles is drastically reduced and you'll end up with a model that's hardly comparable to RL. However were it ever made as close as possible to RL then it would be pretty boring a game.

@Sgt.Squarehead
Can you elaborate?
It's no joke in Russia now. We have quite a real guy serving quite a real time with his only offense being an off-hand analysis of two **official and properly vetted** articles by Russian weapons producers. It was a forum discussion on a well known Russian weapons community. He had no direct or indirect access to the relevant classified information. Just he had the knowledge of the underlying physics so he was able to put two and two together. And he got jailed for that 

Infantry squads have more sets of eyes than an FO team, or a tank crew.

The mechanics of spotting are obfuscated, but they're clearly decided per-soldier, and there is a random element. All things being equal, a squad is making more dice rolls, and therefore has more chance of seeing something.

In addition, all things are not equal. US rifle squads that pick one up will carry the Javelin CLU, which has tremendously powerful spotting abilities - to the extent that they remain useful even if they have no missiles. They are some of the best optics available in the game. You'll likely see similar or better results with other purpose-built spotting kit, for example the M1151 Reconnaissance Humvee with the LRAS3 system in CMBS.

Now, should your SOP be to lead with an infantry squad? Not necessarily. Spotting passively requires time and location, and a smaller FO team will be harder to spot, and will not reduce your available combat force by devoting a squad (and perhaps a Javelin) purely to spotting duty - sitting quietly in a location with good visibility is pretty much what you want to be doing with an FO, whereas a squad is a manoeuvre element.

Further, the FO isn't a scout. Their job is to control fire missions, and therefore they need information relayed to them through the C2 network. They don't need to be spotting the enemy, as long as they can call down fire onto areas where fires are needed.

Heh. So, step aside from the world of Javelins and Abrams tanks for a second, and look down a couple of rungs. Ukraine vs Russia or Syria vs Syria, perhaps.

At that level, access to ERA can become a serious benefit, and APS is a "magic shield", as per reports in Ukraine. ERA is no good against tandem warheads, and APS in CMBS has no protection against the top-attack Javelin, but if you don't have access to that (or, more importantly, if defences exist to defeat these), then suddenly this isn't true anymore. There is no plausible defence against the main round from an MBT of any reasonable size, and that doesn't look like something which is likely to change any time soon.

In “Lessons Learned” from the Russo-Ukrainian War by Phillip Klaber, he lists four tactical lessons, applicable (and predictable!) from CMBS:

- Ubiquitous Presence of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
- Increased Lethality of Indirect Fires
- ATGMs and Armor’s Counter-revolution
- Declining Survivability of Light Infantry Vehicles

That is to say:

- UAVs are used en masse, especially to plan and direct artillery. Not necessarily for Precision attacks, as in the US, but for sighting massed bombardments.
- Indirect fires are called faster, and with increased numbers. Since these are co-ordinated over UAV, indirect fire is more important than ever.
- The above mentioned technological advancements - first ERA, then APS, have fought back against the supremacy of ATGMs predicted since 1973 or so.
- Conversely, IFVs are more suspect than in previous conflicts - there's a push towards developing heavier APCs/IFVs, since light armour is so vulnerable. Infantry are fighting dismounted, without direct support from their vehicles. As you can see from CMBS or CMSF, fighting without a BMP strips the squad of much of it's needed firepower.

So... no. ATGMs do not make tanks obsolete, any more than they did in the Sinai. The game has certainly changed, but it's not as simple as "you can do without armour", in a purely tactical, wargaming sense. Now, what the role of the British army should be, and what's motivated this announcement are very different questions.

Can you get away without them? Sure, if you can guarantee that you stay at least one generation ahead of the armour/anti-armour race at all times, and that this is even possible conceptually. The minute that isn't possible, you run into major problems.

@kinophile, apart from maps being too small
CM packs too many men per each square for infantry units. Thus a well placed HE shell can cause too many casualties within a SINGLE unit. So to compensate for this... HE damage radius is artificially reduced so that this lucky shot won't kill half the units on hands. Add to the this the fact that HEFRAG damage to vehicles is drastically reduced and you'll end up with a model that's hardly comparable to RL. However were it ever made as close as possible to RL then it would be pretty boring a game.

***SPOILERS***
To be honest it's been a quite while since I played it so I may miss some specifics by now. As far as I remember the only real thorn in the flesh was T-90AM that overwatches the bridges. Both roads to the bridges are too obvious and possible overwatch positions are too enticing so I didn't take them at the start. But that was the first time I met T-90AM and I was too used to Russian tanks having poor situational awareness. So I lost half a squad to T-90's thermals 😭 Sudden onrush of tank reinforcements in the big town was unexpected but since I'm very careful when clearing towns with infantry it was a mere surprise rather than a real threat. The sequence I took was big town in the bottom right corner first, then coming back to you starting position and from that going to the town in the top left corner. I don't remember what route I took to the last town in the top right corner - just recall it was uneventful. Looking at the map again what I'd pay attention is first, I'd have a lot of infantry overwatch in all the woods in the center before moving your armor from your starting location to the top left town. And moving to the last town I'd take fords rather than go through the bridges. Bridges look dangerous to me with plenty of sweet overwatch positions. Other than that it looks like however meticulous but pretty straightforward town clearing with the infantry.
Please don't use spoilers in your reply, Cry Havoc was one of the most enjoyable scenarios I had and now I've forgotten it enough to have another go at it

@exsonic01, and can you explain in short the difference between multi-domain and good ol' combined arms? And how it should be reflected in company-level armor/infantry CMxx?

That glorified Powerpoint presentation reminds me of Pentagon presentations from the 1990s touting 'force multiplier' integrated technology advances, exotic systems still under development that worked-as-advertised perhaps 25%(?) of the time.
Most of the stuff (vaguely) mentioned in that presentation isn't applicable to CM scale. If a supply network is disrupted or an ammo depot hit 200 km away that will only show up on the tactical battlefield as reduced ammo and fewer tanks. If battlefield comms is interrupted that's CMBS's ECM setting (that few people touch because its annoying to play). I'm reminded of players who wanted Panther D's low mechanical reliability modeled in WWII. Well, that's modeled in those scenarios where Panther D isn't present. Because it had broken down 100km back a few days ago, outside the scope of the game.

@Battlefront.com, Steve, thanks for the clarifications!
@Albert DuBalay,
1. I'd be careful with what to expect from big investments into hardware. If you plan to buy eGPU solely for CM then your money will buy more fun if invested in more CM tites. I can compare CM on MacBook Air with integrated Intel graphics at 1440x900, same at 2560x1440, Win7 box with dual NV GTX 690 at 2560x1440 with 4GB VRAM and a Win10 laptop with NV1070 at 1920x1080 with 8Gb VRAM. There's a noticeable difference on MacOS when jumping from 1440x900 to 2560x1440 but the latter is really pushing meagre Air capabilities way way over the limit. And though somewhat slow the game still plays decently at this resolution. There's obviously a difference between MacOs and both Windows machines but there's absolutely no difference between dual GTX 690 and 1070 even though there's a gap of many generations between them.
2. This friend of mine who bought MacBook Pro + eGPU is kind of unhappy with the investment. Not all the games are playable and those that do offer say half the bang that can be expected from fast NV graphics. We were upgrading at more or less the same time - I preferred a MacBook Air for casual use (cheap) and another Win/NV1070 one (expensive back then) for gaming-on-the-go. He bought an expensive MacBook Pro with Radeon and an eGPU box with expensive NV graphics. The verdict is the former is better. If, say, you have a top MacBook Pro then, most probably, you won't see much difference with eGPU. CM titles are really well optimized for relatively slow hardware.
 

@IanL, thanks for the info! Interesting!

Absolutely correct. AFAIK RL range for PG-7VR is more like 100-150m - the grenade is certainly too heavy for its rocket motor.
Just a little correction to the terminology. RPG-7xx has no penetration in itself - it's the name of the "tube". The difference in penetration are in rounds - PG-7V, -7VL, -7VR. RPG is Handheld Antitank Grenade launcher, PG is Antitank Grenade, TBG is Thermobaric Grenade, OG is Fragmentation Grenade. If we take RPG-7, RPG-7V1 and RPG-7V2 then the first will have iron sights and the other two - somewhat different optical sights capable of handling PG-7VR and TBG. Hope I'm not much of a nit picker

BTR-4 has way better situational awareness than BMPs - even BMP-3. BMPs stand no chance against BTR-4 in close encounters.

I posted DoD guidelines on actual Mk19 accuracy. Clearly CMSF2/CMBS Mk19 is waaaaaay off mark when compared to real life.

Can be Kosovo, Libya, Syria, you name it...
Article https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/
117 raw interview transcripts https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/
Additional comments by the interviewees: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/responses-from-people-featured-in-the-afghanistan-papers/2019/12/08/086864aa-0bed-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html