The_Capt

Outstanding. "Speaking of post-mortem heroes..." is one of the best lines I have heard yet.

Yes, problem was we corrected some versions, including titles which cause duplication. Simply delete the older versions and you are good to go. Most edits were to the briefings because there were comments on grammar and writing. So we hired a professional writer and they scrubbed every briefing and title. There are still a few errors, I am sure but a lot less than before. A few scenarios got minor in-game edits as well but these were minor tweaks here and there. Enjoy.

Not sure what the offensive “bad taste” element is here but it is very realistic. This stuff happens all the time on exercises and we develop all sorts of methods to try and control it. The lesson here is that spotting in a buttoned vehicle RL is much harder than a lot of people believe.

Super interesting and excellent overview. I wish it came out about a year earlier, would have saved us some research time. In CMCW, we are really talking about the seam between these two concepts as Active Defence was still in play but Starry's thinking was beginning in inculcate the US Doctrine (he had just been V Corp Comd). So for example the US Campaign is a narrative of what Active Defence would have looked like as the US player bounces backwards against the Soviet hordes. Other lateral forces (3rd Armd) even swing over as per doctrine in the campaign. If the player makes it to the end, they essentially get a proto-AirLand scenario of a deep counter-strike, as opposed to what Active Defence dictated (i.e. park here and wait). The Soviet campaign is the mirror opposite and demonstrates the weaknesses of Active Defence. Despite the difficulty (and it would have been high in RL) the Soviet player always has the initiative up to Battle 4, when a US counter-attack occurs - again emergence of maneuver as oppose to KZ-centric. Further, the Soviet demonstrate the real flaw in Active Defence, in my opinion - the Soviet "bot" concept. Active Defence relies almost entirely on the Soviets not maneuvering below Div level and that is one helluva weak assumption. We have had a lot of discussion (and some noise) on how nuanced Soviet C2 was or was not and some of it was likely reality and some US/western wishful thinking. I do believe that at a tactical level MRR and below the empowerment of tactical commanders was low, they were really pointed at something at told to "go at it" but I do not believe that at the Div level the Soviets were going to stick to the US template in Active Defence of conveniently marching through 3 KZ layers. Based on what I have seen Soviet operational doctrine was far more nuanced than that. So in the Soviet campaign we see the 120th MRR actually shift deep objectives, from Lauterbach to Alsfeld. Alsfeld was originally the objective of the 172 nd (see game manual); US Active Defence has no room for Soviet MRRs shifting dynamically but I do not believe for a second they would not. If the Soviets shift the line of main effort the entire house of cards of Active Defence falls apart. Back in the day when we were doing tactics training we were still doing pre-set KZs and in gaming the Soviets would obligingly drive straight into them and die...very nice for us, tea and medals all around. Soviets may have had a largely conscript Army that trained to mass-template standard but these were real people with brains and, as far as WW2 demonstrated, could improvise very well. So the points on US/western biases have some validity, we needed the Soviets to be a mindless horde to fit our plan and not necessarily their own; there is truth in this. In reality the 79-82 timeframe was a collision of bad assumptions on both sides. US - active defence, Soviets - tactical and operational fluidity with very centralized command and control. Frankly after designing, building and playing the game, and watching numerous other do the same, I really have no idea how this whole thing would have turned out. Some days I think - "no way the Soviets would have run out of gas in the first 48" and others " the US were totally screwed". We knew this was a bit of a sweet spot but the depth of this weird little window into the Cold War continues to surprise me.

Heh, we call it "agency vs formation". Last time big dumb mass 'worked' was the 19th century and that is really abstracting the realities on the ground but large formations blasting each other, with the one who could hold its mass the longest winning is the "provenance of this idea" and historically it held some water [aside: on retro-grade doctrine, happens all the time. Militaries has shown they can un-learn incredibly well. For example, the Romans revolutionized "smart mass" in comparison to its peers and the "mass agency" of the warrior cultures they faced in conquest but many militaries forgot the "smart" part later. Thanks to education and liberalization (damn you literacy), the idea that we can simply send 18 yrs old into a slaughter in formation kinda died in WW1 (with notable exceptions). So in WW2 we see variations on "smart mass" theme which carry over into the Cold War. The issue between the Soviets and western forces of NATO seems to be "how smart does that mass really need to be?" and here we have a spectrum, and a lot of speculation. NATO leaned towards, smarter = better, Soviets (at least as far as mainstream sources note), "just smart enough, because we are really smart at operational level" [note, CM is Bn and below, but for the Soviet-o-philes out there I suspect advantage for them lies in their operational doctrine, not tactical]. So what? Well Gulf War was a demonstration of the collision of these two principles and it appears, to even the most cynical eyes, that "smart wins out". This would be why every modern military on all sides, Russian, Chinese, you name it, moved away from dumber mass and towards buzzwords like "information dominance" and "decision superiority". The COIN-Hell we have lived for 20 years even demonstrated that we were the "dumb mass" compared to really empowered insurgents. So here we are, everyone trying to be smarter even in the unmanned space. This is where "CM should model virtues of centralization" kinda sticks in the throat because I am not sure there is any proof there was any. Why? Because human beings of late 20th century, even those Soviet kill-bots, were nowhere near the same as human beings of the 19th century with respect to agency/awareness and ways of war must adapt to the medium they are within and in this case that medium is the people.

Hey at least we are citing sources now so that is a start. So all the sources in "part one" really support what we already saw going in, Soviet doctrine stressed centralized control at the tactical level. The strengths and weaknesses of this system may be debated but essentially there appears, from a western assessment at least, that there was little to no empowerment at a low level in Soviet C2. So what? Well this is not as much about "giving fire orders", which I would be surprised if the Soviets did not do, even if it was adoctrinal when they came under fire, this is about peer to peer passage of spotting information. When one is advancing in a Cbt Team or some combination thereof the ability for eyeballs in the same tactical sub-unit to talk to each other is key. So this is tank 1 telling all tanks in the platoon "I see something over there". The US C2 system allows for inter-platoon communications and has developed sophisticated procedures to allow one group to communicate directly with the another below the platoon level on the platoon net. I do not see a lot on the equivalent occurring in the Soviet system. Now some may say, "well the Soviets will do it under fire anyway (i.e. 'extreme')" but it does not work that way. If you do not train for it and develop sub-systems of information flow then when the shooting starts you wind up with total chaos. In fact the Soviet idea what "we can all wait til the shooting starts to talk" is pretty risky but even then the only people doing the talking are company and platoon commanders. One will get more centralized control but you lose a lot in the peer-to-peer space and slow things down with respect to targeting. That US "squawking" you mention is actually really important. Now to "part 2 - Soviet were really using radios". That video is something but I am not sure I would put much more stock into it than I would a western training film. These sorts of things tend to be idealized versions of how things are done, as demonstrated at 21:55 (just after the guy in the hole uses a radio) with the Soviet officer bravely marching, head held high, into the middle of a firefight. Written sources, well now we have something, but as Grey_Fox mentions a lot from WW2 which makes me wonder if the Soviets did not have much more democratization of information flow during the war, which for some reason their doctrine tried to scrub out. In that link, that is Cold War era, again comms all seem to pretty much flow up in a nice tight system with no mention of lateral flow; however, it does speak to the idea that a squad (assuming it doesn't have the one-way R-147P) can pass information to platoon. I assume these comms are open and in the clear every call is a "charlie-charlie" so peer squads are privy to it, this is a sub-unit C2 system. The website is unclear on when and where this system fits in (it mentions "80s") and the authors are guys I really want to talk to as they have veterans from the era. So maybe the organic C2 system was much better than western assessments, nothing here is a slam dunk but that site does sow a seed in the mind. As to the "up side", ya not really buying it. Over the last 40 years the limits of centralized control at a tactical level and advantages of decentralized have been aptly demonstrated (e.g. Gulf War). The US/western system does allow for direct calls to all units (we called it the "charlie-charlie") but it is the sub-systems built in that allow for empowered use of that information that appears to be the fundamental difference in the C2 systems, again matters of degree here. The only spin I can think of is that the Soviets mastered their system and somehow took it to a whole new level that allowed it to transcend the friction and chaos of warfare. I am not sure that the Soviets believed "a battalion still something a commander can directly control" to be honest, if they had they would have invested a lot more redundancy around that commander. My sense is that a battalion, in the Soviet thinking, was a piece of ammunition and their operational method of warfare was to fire it for effect and then load another one behind it. So "control" only had to be just enough. The US and west had a very different philosophy. In game, these are soft factors. We have run tests that show 4 tanks can spot better than one, the question was can 4 US tanks spot better than 4 Soviet tanks, with C2 as a factor in that advantage/disadvantage (i.e. horizontal)? Whether this is a factor in vertical targeting is an interesting question, never tested that. In conclusion, this does open up the door to the idea that we have fallen into a western bias trap in the assessment of Soviet Cold War tactical C2. I suspect that adjusting troop quality can amend this in game right now but I would definitely like to see more from actual veterans of the era on how their sub-platoon and Coy C2 actually worked. If we can get enough of that, then perhaps a revisit of some soft factors in-game is required.

We try harder....

So you read Section IV of course and noted that a lot of these points have already been brought up here? It also notes that "...limitations gives US tanks have the advantage on the modern battlefield", so long as we take our training seriously, which makes sense for a TRADOC document. I actually think this part here is a little slanted. It really does paint Soviet forces as robotic drones driving into kill zones, which I personally think was a wishful thinking myth.

So this is actually good but as was posted above, and talked about at length here, this goes beyond tank-on-tank gun accuracy. A link to that TRADOC Bulletin would be nice too btw, dates kinda matter. Anyway there seems to be a typo here as the graphs show that the M60A1 gun is slightly more accurate, not less: I read 55% vs 50% for T62 at 1500, and the Heat round is a lot more accurate at 1500: 35% vs 20% Advantage still looks like it goes to the M60A1 but not by an overwhelming margin: Spotting: 10 vision block vs 7, the T62 has 4 periscopes vs 3 on the M60A1, the T62 one for the loader is the extra but that is a pretty narrow field of view. But lets give this one to the T62 but it feels shaky. Range finding. M60A1 has coincidence rangefinder (M17A1) while the T62 has stadiametric which is much less accurate. Gotta give this one to the M60A1 Fire Computing: M60A1 has a mechanical ballistic computer, T62 has human eyeball and brain. Ergonomics: M60A1 is larger than a family RV, the T62 a freakin nightmare (see my previous posts) C2: US pushed radio comms to lowest level and worked very hard on collective fire control at a platoon level. Soviets had radios but they were "listen only" for the most part and doctrine basically kept everyone below Coy Comd on mute. US takes that one. You are literally the only person saying this. And you keep saying this no matter what evidence is presented. Not only that, I already demonstrated that if you are not happy with the current balance just use crew quality to adjust it and you can come up with whatever "super-Soviets-hold-off-US-attacks-on-motherland" scenario/campaign you like, the 60 bucks you paid for the game gives you that ability. I would offer that if your aim is for the developers to go: "Hey this dbsapps guys was right all along, let's totally revamp the stats on Soviet tanks until he says he is happy, cause he never has come back with 'what right looks like'", that ship has pretty much sailed. We get a Soviet tank commander from 1979 in here who we can have a conversation with, I am all ears, but I am sorry to say that your credibility has pretty much been sunk by this point.

Why is CM great? Good question to be honest. But maybe the question should be "why is CM great, for me?" Clearly there is a gaming population out there that love the franchise or it would have gone out of business years ago. CM has its quirks and every game is an abstraction so I guess it all comes down to what gaming experience the player is looking for, and enjoys. Lotta wargames out there that span the old school hex based, turn based "chess with guns", to the RTS click-heavy affairs. CM, and a few other titles, kind fall right in the middle of the spectrum [aside: been seeing comments on micro-management in CM, yeesh try playing Steel Divisions 2]. It has a mid-level pace (WEGO slowest, RT quickest), low-tactical level scale (Bn and below for the most part). The issues that get raised in CM, spotting and unit behaviour tend to get the most ink, when these come up the first question we ask ourselves in the back "is this a feature or a bug". First off, players need to re-visit "what they think should happen". Pre-conceived notions drive a lot of the negative feedback which is to be expected and frankly if a player really does not like enough of them then one has to ask if "CM is for you?" That said, we have a lot of veterans in the back room -the last 20 years has provided plenty of them- so when we analyze combat behaviour we do have people who can carry it over to RL. So when a player asks: I get the question but I can also tell that this person has never actually had effective fire pointed at them. Green inexperienced troops may believe this and they do not live long enough to become "battle hardened". An MG in a turret is an exposed position and once you start taking fire from multiple directions and incoming is bouncing off around you, battle hardened troops duck...fast. Why? Because at this point someone else's fire is all that will save you; veterans are veterans because they know when they are suppressed and know what to do. There are times when you get off the X and shoot your way out and then there are times to get your head down and call for support, try very hard to avoid situations that lead to that first one. CM has a lot of what I call "chaos features", at a micro level individual behaviour follows a set of standard rules but embedded in that is a level of chaos. Units will cower at odd times, miss something right in front of them (trust me this happens in RL all the time) run away or not run away. This chaos is the essence of tactical warfare. Atypical behaviour is the norm as combat is an atypical environment. People crack, shock and fear have really strange effects. It is that chaos that makes the game realistic. I often say that many players do not want full "realism" because if they find the game frustrating at times now... Why is CM great for me? Well, I do enjoy the realistic tactical level but what always hooks me are the micro-dramas that pull one in. That last Dragon missile, holding off that last T64, a crew, down to pistols, that hold out for just one more minute and that stupid APC that zigged when I told it to zag. But every devotee to the brand probably has their own reason and hopefully the OP can find his/her own, if not, well then keep wargaming at least and thanks for trying.

As far as I can tell/know there is no "soft factor" pre-set that would place the Soviets behind the US forces modeled in game, if that is the question. Regular = Regular when it comes to troop quality and then scales from there on an equal playing field. In reality, and this is highly debatable, US forces would likely be Green-to-Reg (by game definitions) and Soviets would be Conscript-to-Green but again, debatable. US forces had veterans from Vietnam (especially commanders) and were an all volunteer force by this point, better paid and better trained (per pound), while Soviets still had a largely Conscripted Army with a weaker NCO/junior Office Corp. Even given our fictional narrative the effect of Veterans coming back from Afghanistan would not be really seen even as late as '82 (and both Vietnam and Afghanistan were very different wars). However, as has been mentioned the Soviets also did highly realistic training, a lot of live fire and in some cases live agent(!), so there is that. For the in-game content, here is where we probably played looser than anywhere else and that did have to do with gameplay. For example, in the US Campaigns the Soviet forces are Veteran/Crack while US forces are regular, which not only reflects them being the "best" (equipped and trained) units in the Soviet Army but also the fact that no AI is ever going to be at the same standard as a human commander (at least not yet, maybe someone is working on a Deep Blue for CM) so we had to tweak things to aim for the right challenge levels. Soviet Campaign we did the opposite, with Soviets being Regular for the player and US forces as Veteran/Crack. But there are also scenarios where we just turned it up because highly trained forces tend to equal more intense fights. In Valley of Ashes, both sides are Vet/Crack and I let the terrain and situation decide, and on this one the Soviets definitely have a steeper hill to climb. I suspect the Soviets "feel worse" for a number of factors: - Not playing them right. The player base looks like it tend to try and play them as western forces, while those that are successful fight them as they were intended. And by this I mean "not mincing around looking for shooting advantage". Soviet were designed to get in close fast and then chew hard, accepting 2-2 or even 3-1 losses. - Russian equipment is tough but as has been aptly demonstrated did not have the optics, targeting or C2 systems at the same level as the US. They did have mass. This takes a different mind set. - Preconceptions. A lot of plyers have been told for decades that Soviet forces were lower quality, so that might be what they "see". But we get this the other way, in fact the first comments we got were how fragile the US forces were in-game and this is a modern preconception of US superiority, especially if one is coming from SF2 or BS. We are running some scenarios for upcoming tournaments right now and we are finding that Soviet players are winning more often so I am not sure how much of this is reality or just biases of many shapes and sizes.

Every military has variations on the same theme of "shellscrape, foxhole or 'hole to die in'". Doesn't look like the Soviets believed in overhead protection in standing trenches and most western militaries went with the standing trench as perpendicular to incoming fire (I am sure there are exceptions) had to do with ricochet risk I think. That earthen berm is frankly adorable, it will not stop 7.62 or higher and a close hits by HE (let alone thermobaric) will likely turn it into a sandblaster. But hey, any hole in the storm and all that.

I thought this whole series was great.

"Next Year in the Holy Land!"

And can we talk about the Centurion? Is this thing the T55 of NATO in our timeframe?

Basic shell scrapes on decent ground will take 30-60 mins, under fire guys will dig a hole much faster. Ground conditions really matter, rocky ground can take forever. A prepared 2-3 man fire position, say with overhead protection and deep enough to stand in can be done in 60 mins with heavy equipment support, think about 2-3 hours with just shovels. One does not just "throw up" sandbags if you actually want them to stop something, they need to placed and tamped. Fire positions use some on the overhead cover but bunkers take the most and it could be half a day to build a real bunker. Barb wire is a freakin nightmare that takes hours/days to get out there in any density. Better hasty obstacles are abatis, crater groups and nuisance minefields, engineers can all get these done pretty quickly (say 3 hours). So rule thumb, you can go from a bunch of guys standing on a hill to a semi-decent prepared position in about 3-6 hours if you have all the support and logistics in place. This would be considered a "hasty defence". A true deliberate defence, dug in fire positions, some bunkers and moderate close obstacles is going to take 24-48hrs at least and if we are talking a strongpoint - communication trenches etc, that could be a week.

Fair points: - As to BMPs, well we did go with the manual/doctrine on dismounts. This is the never-ending problem with all IFVs; is it a vehicle with supporting infantry, or infantry with a supporting vehicle? I think the answer is to build in an option to have a 2 or 3 man crew based on situation, but the game is not built to model that right now, maybe in the future. - On Map Arty. I get Soviet arty response times resentment, but they are based again on Soviet doctrine, it is their C2 system being modeled. I have no doubt the Soviets were capable of far more nuanced artillery approaches, during both world wars Russian artillery was very good. In-game spotters can be pushed forward and times can be tweak based on experience. As to on map guns; well that does not make a lot of sense on a 5x3 map when the D-30 effective range is 15 kms, as were most tubes in that era. Having guns on map would happen, particularly if things went badly, but as a matter of standard procedure it would only make sense if the maps were about 3-4 times the size they are now...again, not this engine unfortunately. What is weird about this Soviet-US debate is that in-game result are not really matching the complaint. I am seeing plenty of Total Soviet Victories on YouTube streams, hell I even managed a marginal win against Bil in the AAR. Usually Hapless last game stream only had a "Minor US Victory". We have some Matrix tourneys coming up so we will be watching these to see if the game actually slants towards the US, because right now I am not seeing it to be honest.

Just to add/follow up to my first post on this whole Soviet/US force balance thing, I can't speak for CMBS but for CMCW the were never any secret meetings in dark rooms where we all went "Wow those Soviets are too good, we need to nerf them to maintain US superiority". First off, I am not a US citizen so not really interested in some sort of US superiority myth. Second, I have never seen or heard BFC promote the same, they are simply interested in trying to be as accurate as possible because it is core to the brand. Third, it would have been a really bad idea game-wise to do this. Both CMSF2 and CMBS already demonstrate asymmetric superiority of the US inventory, well into the modern timeframe when the US Army has been unchallenged and at its height (how long that will last is a matter of rigorous debate). Why on earth would we want another game that models that direction? It is a big reason why we stayed away from the 1985-1991 timeframe. We were looking for later Cold War balance that makes for a different gaming experience, more like the WW2 titles with modern kit. I can recall exactly one US weapon system we pushed to have beefed and that was DPICM, we really did not tinker under the hood for anything else. We knew we had balance from the the very first Alpha scenario tests. So I know there will be those that cry "lies, lies, it is all a BFC conspiracy", fine we can post facts and analysis here all day and they will remain unconvinced. For everyone else, as I said we no doubt have western biases - it is almost unavoidable - however, we also remain open to credible facts that tell us we are missing something.

We did, for the T64 and T80s the AT 8 is onboard for the B series in game. And the M60A2 has that Shillelagh. I think that for offence, the Soviet approach may have been to try and strip off enemy armor at range and then close in with tanks. Or maybe, as you point out, it was a defensive measure. Soviets were ATGM crazy compared to the US, that is for sure.

Excellent post. I gotta say that I do disagree with this part though, at least a bit. Western Bias is a thing, don't get me wrong, so is Eastern bias. Almost all of our sources are in English (we do use translated stuff when we can find it) and therefore are going to have that bias built in. But as a Game Lead for CMCW, I gotta say I really agree with a lot of what Zaloga is saying and the game as modeled leans more in this direction. Further it lines up with the single case analysis by Nordeen and Isby M60 vs T-62 Cold War Combatants 1956-92 almost exactly. On pages 85 and 91 there are handy accuracy assessments that show exaclty what Zaloga is talking about, once you get under 1000m the disparity between NATO and Soviet tanks starts to evaporate. So what? Well as early as the Beta ARR it became apparent that for successful use of Soviet tanks you need: - Mass - Soviets had lots of tanks so even at tactical level you need to manage for overmatch - the echoes what @Grey_Fox posted on the "other thread" - Range - Get in close, do not play western style and try to play long range sniping-counter sniping because that will not work. A Coy of T64s at 1000m versus a Coy of M60A1s (equal crew quality) is not a fair match up - I have run some basic test and am seeing 2 to 1 in favor of the Soviets, particularly if you open up the T64s and offset the ergonomic issues. I think most of the Soviet-Frustration centers on employing western tactics on them. In the end the technical realities of Soviet equipment are likely accurate (night vision argument accepted) while Zaloga adds context. Although one thing I cannot rationalize is that if Soviets knew they were looking at the close game, why did they keep trying to put ATGMS on absolutely everything, even tanks? A long game eventuality had to be in the calculus somewhere.

Fair point and accurate for the M60A1 series but if you check that pictogram I posted above (from dbsapps document) you can see that the overall assessment of optics and targeting gave the advantage to the M60A1. This matches the accuracy of the range finding sights: Now unless I am totally off, the T62 had stereoscopic sights for the commander https://sturgeonshouse.ipbhost.com/topic/945-tankograd-t-62-khruschevs-bastard/ [Tank Nerd Site] "As befitting his tactical role, the commander's general visibility is facilitated by two TNPO-170 periscopes on either side of the primary surveillance periscope in the fixed forward half of the cupola, and further augmented by two more 54-36-318-R periscopes embedded in the hatch, aimed to either side for additional situational awareness. Overall, this scheme was sufficient for most purposes, but was deficient if compared to the much more generous allowance of periscopes and vision ports found on NATO tanks." Which matches this: "Despite its range, the new gun was not a success mostly due to crude gun control, and firing on the move or on a moving target accuratey was tricky even at short range. Second-hit capabilities were limited. It was aggravated by a low rate of fire, very slow traverse for the turret, and limited depression/elevation (tradeoffs of the low-profile design) (a liability on a sloped terrain, as shown in numerous engagements of the cold war)." https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/coldwar/ussr/soviet_t-62.php While the gunner had: "The TSh2B-41 is a monocular telescopic sight, functioning as the gunner's primary sight for direct fire purposes. It has two magnification settings, x3.5 or x7, and an angular field of view of 18° in the former setting and 9° in the latter setting. As was and still is common for all tank sights, it has an anti-glare coating for easier aiming when facing the sun. It comes with a small wiper to clean it from moisture, and it comes with an integrated heater for defrosting. "Like most other tanks of its time, the T-62 lacked a ballistic computer, but it was also unusually deficient in the rangefinding department. For rangefinding, the gunner had to make use of a stadiametric ranging scale embossed on the sight aperture. Compared to optical coincidence rangefinders, stadia rangefinding was terribly imprecise, but also much simpler in both production and employment, and much more economical than, say, optical coincidence rangefinding. In fact, stadia rangefinding is essentially free, since all that is needed are some etchings into the sight lens. The savings made from the exclusion of an optical coincidence rangefinder were enormous, amounting to many thousands of rubles. Ranging errors of up to several hundred meters is often the norm, especially if some of the lower part of the target vehicle is obscured behind vegetation or other terrain features. It isn't uncommon for the first shot on faraway tank-sized targets to fall woefully short or fly clear over." Emphasis added because that is how militarily procurement really works - cheap as possible - lowest bidder. While the M60A12 had the M17A1 rangefinder, which is a coincidence range finder: https://books.google.ca/books?id=Z4OcF_VeEokC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=M17A1+coincidence+rangefinder&source=bl&ots=fMPNLuzFki&sig=ACfU3U1CEbUUFvBmnaCMRCL4ud-avEZxPg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj0iOCPnPD1AhWVjIkEHXiaBxoQ6AF6BAg9EAM#v=onepage&q=M17A1 coincidence rangefinder&f=false Backed up with a mechanical fire control computer (M19E1). This is probably why in the Nordeen and Isby book they assess accuracy of the M60A1 as nearly twice that of the T62 at 2000m (pg 85 and 91) 44% for the US APDS round vs 27% for the Soviet BR-5 APFSDS. In fact based on these charts, parity for gun accuracy (let alone all the other factors) does not start to occur until under 1000m. Gotta say that no matter how one stacks it up, there does not seem to be a realistic 1:1 clash outcome between the M60A1 and T62 based on targeting alone, let alone all the factors of ergonomics and C2. This is the part where the "Soviets are not well represented" club comes back with some counter-facts that may offset this, because I for one am a fan of the old T62 and in the right hands she can deliver.

Ya, not a terrible idea. Problem with spotting is that it is so complex. I mean armor penetration is easy by comparison. Spotting is a combination of soft and hard factors that are dynamic based position, movement and in scenario environmental stuff. The worst part is that there are not a lot of "Big War Books of Spotting" out there for any conflict really. One may get lucky and get a few reports and some historical anecdotes but RL data is hard to come by. For example from that report dbsapp posted: Shows that US Fire Control was judged as better in the same report that says US tanks all suck. Unless you were on the OR team that did the study this is hard to make a call on. And then everyone has eyes, so everyone is an expert on spotting. Gunnery, very few people experience, but everyone has been in a position where they needed to spot something at varying distances. So we wind up with contradictory and often loud opinions and not that much actual data. I have been in the field on dismounted and mounted attacks and can tell you that spotting is really difficult. Not the eyeballs, the communication of targets. Someone will see something and then trying to get everyone else to see it is really tough. We invented a whole bunch of ways to do it (indicators, tracers, smoke, IR lasers at night) and still it is hard to get everyone to see something "right there".

You know after all this fuss and bother, I did some tests and if anyone does not like the match up between T62s and M60A1s the fix is easy: change the crew quality levels. I ran some tests of two Coys (17 tanks each) at 1000m and these are not extensive but here is what I saw in a very small sampling: Reg v Reg - roughly 2-1 for the M60 Crack T62 v Reg M60 - 1 to 1, and even a slight edge to the T62 on a couple tries. Elite T62 v Green M60 - 1 to 3 for the T62 So basically by adjusting crew quality a plyer can adjust the match up however he or she wants. You want Soviet supermen make em Elite/Crack vs Green or Conscript US, you can live out whatever your version of reality is (or is not). Hell, I matched up the M60A3 TTS with Conscript crews vs T62 Crack and got a 1-to-1 result and these tanks are not even the same species. This is the real strength of this game - sandbox.

Well it still feels slow but 10-20% (small sample etc) is not crazy as US crews were not conscripted by this point. To be honest I am not sure the conscription argument equals "lesser trained all the time" but ok can't really get too excited about that. My sense is that under the hood spotting is a beast and there had better be M113 night vision problems before they want to unpack it.

Over a minute for unbuttoned at 150ms does not sound right to be honest. 0 to 45 degrees and 15 seconds, sure, as spotting is not just spotting but identification. The little crew guys do not automatically see the tank as an enemy tank so that takes a few seconds. Regular crew and all I assume? 90 degrees also makes sense as I suspect that spotting is set to a template based on how tanks fight in formation, so unlike say our recent experiences in COIN, 90 degrees is someone else's problem. Any chance you did the US (switched spots) as well?