The_Capt

So some details would help a bit. Which Campaign, which mission and how far into that mission were you?

Good question. First off we wanted to make sure that if a player got stuck that they still had a chance to play out the scenarios in the campaign. Second we wanted to give them a chance for H2H, some really good opportunity for play there. We did do minimal rebalancing here because players can simply go into the editor and tweak for 2 player. In other days we could do an entire Rumblings of War tourney using these ten scenarios. They are not symmetrical by-design so testing out players under these conditions would be highly interesting. Why '82 and no Blue AI? Same answer to both...we ran out of time. I was close to pulling the trigger on doing up Blue AI but we did not have time to properly test it. And '82, because it was really the original US Campaign to coincide with the Soviet one (which we did leave all locked up and nasty), and again we ran out of time to take on '79. The campaign standalones are really there as bonus content to allow you guys to play em or play with them in the editor. The risk was people could go in and see all of the AI plans (i.e. cheating) but our thinking was "well it is your money" and so should be your choice.

Well thank you for the feedback, always gratifying to see that the campaigns are making people happy. I really hope you saved and can take another run at mission 5. So Route 66 is where the campaign kind of takes the kid gloves off. First off, it is an ME with very little intel on the enemy, highly realistic by the third day of the war. Recon assets would be highly degraded by this point, so formations are at risk of smashing into each other without the "layers of eyes" they would normally have. So in this mission you need to really lean in quickly, find the enemy and interdict them before they can get on their terrain objectives. The US side wins by denying the Soviet side, and not losing too much in the process. "But where are the Soviet objectives, Capt?" Ah, again part of the puzzle, the US player need to kind of figure that out with what recon assets you have, or simply cut out the mystery and hit the Soviet forces as early as possible. Soviet follow the standard doctrine template for an ME. If you stopped the Soviets in your game, then my guess is that you lost just a few too many friendlies doing it. You were so close, tactical victory is the threshold to move on. I hope you can make it past, I really like mission 6, 7 and 8. If you find it impossible, you can always play them as standalones, they are; Bad and Worse (mission 6), The Citadel (mission 7) and Unhook the Leash (mission 8). But based on your track record, I don't think you will need to. I don't think we are doing Steam achievements but if we did there would be one for making it to Mission 5 along the victory track in a single go. And then another for making through the entire US campaign in a single go. If you can beat the Soviet March or Die in a single go, the military should recruit you Enders Game style.

To answer the question of "troop quality" between the US and Soviet in and around the late 70s/early 80s? Not really...that is kind of my point. I mean the only conflicts of note to see US and Soviet involvement were Vietnam and Afghanistan and neither were 1) the same, or 2) a resounding success. All those prove is that big conventional militaries suck at COIN...not a real surprise there. It also shows that troop quality for both superpowers in these conflicts was poor; both sent largely conscripts and dumped mountains of hardware on the problem. That said, both the Russians and US were capable of producing excellent troops as was demonstrated in WWII (Soviets in the East and US in the Pacific). In the timeframe of the game I would probably give the tactics and operational edge to the Soviets. They were playing an old rulebook but had mastered it. The US was in transition and hadn't a good grasp of their former or new strategies yet. Hardware was again at parity, with definite edge to the Soviets on mass. I guess the answer is that both sides were capable of pushing out excellent-to-'ok'-to-poor troops so any and all combinations/matchups are probably on the menu depending on the context of the fight.

Well it really isn't apples to apples even in the time frame. Grozny was something closer to hybrid warfare in a dense urban setting with the Russian military a shell of its former self. Desert Storm was a large mechanized fight between two "peer" forces with the US at the top of its game...and the Iraqi's who were frankly bafflingly bad. In reality Gulf War probably gives enough of a hint at where things would have stood in a late 80s fight but in 82 things were very different. The US was still rebuilding in the post-Vietnam era. Goldwater Nicols had not passed yet and Airland Battle was in its infancy. The US definitely did not have either a quantitative or qualitative edge yet. As to troop quality comparisons, again really hard to do, there isn't much point to it really as it becomes a philosophical discussion really. You can argue both sides without a definitive answer, so we have best guessing and play balance considerations at the end.

I started with them closer to parity, again Soviets slightly higher, and then through playtesting we increased Soviet quality where it looked needed. If anyone plays the US Campaign standalone scenarios as H2H, I would probably go in and tinker with the experience settings much closer to parity. We really did it by feel, as opposed to any "realistic" metrics, largely because "realistic" metrics available were (and are) highly subjective. The line in the West is that that the Soviets were largely nearly useless uneducated conscripts (which frankly has some truth) while NATO had highly educated professional armies. The line in the USSR, was that the West was soft, weak and entitled (which frankly has some truth) while the troops of the Soviet Union were made of steel and sacrifice. Which one is accurate?

Well I think I can answer some of these questions. First off, let me say that the experience levels in-game are already a pretty soft concept to begin with, so trying to figure out what a "realistic" experience level is for anyone side is accepting a level of abstraction from the start. So first, the in-game context as outlined by the backstory. This is a desperate Soviet gambit, they are on a very tight schedule to break through West Germany as quickly as possible before the West can 1) move reinforcements to theatre or 2) collectively decide on a nuclear response. As such the Soviets are going to put good troops in the initial attacks (as seen in the Soviet Campaign) and their best troops in the break out, which occurs during the US Campaign. So basically these are the best troops the Soviets have in the entire theatre in this break out push down Route 66 to the Rhine (that is why you see T80s later). This fits with Soviet doctrine, as well as the strategic/operational picture on the ground. The US side is different. The US put its best troops (in this region, the 11th ACR and 3rd Armd) forward as a screen and held second ech in depth. This makes sense as the strategy was not an offensive breakthrough but attrition and delay until the West could build mass (or agree on WMDs). In the US Campaign the player has troops from the 8th Inf Div, that was very deliberate as this division was always considered a depth division in the grand scheme of things. It had lead elements forward but that is not the 28th Inf Regt, which was actually based west of Frankfurt. That is why the 28th get M60A1s and not A3s to M1s and is also reflected in troop quality - went with Regular-High-Fit. So right off the bat, in this what-if universe (remember this is a fictional timeline) there would likely be qualitative disparity between Soviet break out forces and in-depth US ones as portrayed in the campaign due to strategic/operational context. Now how does that translate to CM? Good question, probably closer to Reg-Vet, but considering that the vast majority of combatants on both sides have never seen combat and none/very few (perhaps some that observed the Arab Israeli conflict) have ever seen mechanized warfare on this scope and scale, we would realistically be seeing a whole lotta shades of Green. Then there is play balancing. The campaign is single player, which means that a human brain is playing a machine. As strong as the Tac AI is in CM it cannot compare to a human player, so to offset this very real abstraction, a level of tweaking had to be done to make things challenging. So for some scenarios we went with Crack Soviet troops to ensure that the very unrealistic fact that this is not two human players did not throw things out of whack too far. Hope that answers your question somewhat.

That one is on me, good or bad.

I really did not care about the colour, the damned mag limit was a problem. You needed about 10 for an initial sustained firefight and the thing only pocketed 4 (plus one on the gun). So you ended up stuffing rounds and mags everywhere.

I would not characterize the 1982 version as a "tutorial difficulty", it probably "normal" difficulty. The equipment is better for the US but not overwhelming. For example the core troops tank is the M60A1 Passive which is pretty much right in the middle of the road. It can stand up to T64Bs if it is played right but do not get reckless. The 1979 Campaign is a bit more challenging with the M48, which is a good little tank but T62s will definitely give it a tougher run. My recommendation would be to try the first scenario in the '82. IF you get a Total Victory with zero losses (careful as they stack up for later fights), maybe switch to '79.

Well based on the time period we are more likely talking the Pattern 64 webbing. "Hyena Road"...yeesh that brings back the nightmares. Anyway, I can shed some light on the mystery. So as I recall back in the day when they were putting all this together the questions was "if Canadian deployed to Syria in 2007 what would they be wearing?". This question was being asked in, I wanna say 08-09 while the NATO pack for CMSF was in dev. We went around the tree a lot on this as we were in the full arid sets by 09 but as can be seen Canadian uniform procurement is a splendid affair. In the end, as I recall, the decision was made to go to the green/arid mix (not sure why it is straight olive and not CADPAT) because it was probably more accurate of where we were wrt FG in 06-07 and it also made the Canadians more distinctive. Not sure where it all went from there...largely due to the fact that I was in Arid CADPAT for a significant slice of the next two years.

The install should have built a "Battlefront" folder in your Documents, show you should be able to drop them in there.

Ok, so you need to move "Game Files and User Data" back into your Documents folder (looks like it is on your C drive). Where you have them right now, the game cannot see them. They are there but in order to be seen you need to put them where the game is looking.

Good catch. That seems to be the problem. Where they are the game can’t see them. Documents looks like it is on the C drive.

So those folders are empty? Why do I see the US Campaign “Lions of Catigny”? Open the game and click “Campaigns”...send a screenshot of what you see.

Hey cool. Enjoy.

Ok, so that looks correct. So all of the scenario and campaigns etc are in your Documents - Battlefront folder. You should see them in “Battle” and “Campaigns” in game or you can load them in the Scenario Editor.

Check your Games folder in your My Documents, all of the scenario and campaign files should be in there. If you can’t see them in game then you have got something weird going on and need to ping support.

So the game is up and running? You can play scenarios? But no Campaigns? And where is the map missing exactly?

Well it depends which version of the Soviet Campaign we are talking about. Standard actually allows the player to lose the first battle (i.e. they get a second chance). March or Die...well sorry but as the name suggests...win or die. Scenario one is tough (though not the toughest) but it is built straight from Soviet doctrine for an ME (less main force): The trick on this one, at least as I saw it, was to advance up the right hard and fast with the FSE. You are going to take loses but if you can get infantry in those trees on the first small ridge you are in a good position. You need to keep clearing up on the right until the Adv Guard shows up...and from there I wish you luck. If you hate to lose "anything" I am not sure the Soviet Campaign is for you then. The overall strategy here has to be "lose enough but not too much", which is a really hard balancing act. I specifically designed the Soviet Campaign to be a significant challenge for the advanced player, it is also one of the more realistic set of scenarios for the Soviets in the game.

If that is the strongest negative emotion the Soviet Campaign delivers to you, then you are doing astoundingly well.

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.

Yep, so the extra LAW in the Light squad is for the AT Specialist who is short the Dragon....how is that for detail?

Tombstone worthy epithet.

Wow, looks like I lost the internal betting pool. We are 13 days released and first time someone asks this question. Answer. We spent days of work on this one, round and round. So basically US mech infantry platoon still brigaded the M60s and (technically) the Dragons at the PL HQ level where they would be dolled out as the situation dictated. This is impossible with CM so we created variation to reflect that decision and give the player flexibility in their use. So: Heavy = a bulked up squad, obviously expecting trouble. 2xM60s and the Dragon Medium = originally we were going to only have the medium version but it was too restrictive. Light = 1 xM60 and no Dragon. There were enough Dragons in the platoons and coys for one per squad but they could taken away and sent out to tank hunting teams and some squads might wind up light. Light also does not get the extra M60. In any standard mech infantry platoon the mix would normally be: 2 x Heavy and 1 x Med squads. But now scenario designers can have flex in different scenarios.