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Amedeo

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Everything posted by Amedeo

  1. Well, I don't dispute this. My only point is that, if one wants to but Khrizantema TDs in a QB, it would be pointless not to provide them with IR-blocking smoke cover, considering the only advantage its sensor have that is is the game is the capability to acquire target and shoot them through every type of smoke (real kife Khrizantema has also other peculiarities, i.e. mast mounted sensors and multplte targeting capabilities that, for reasons due to the game engine, are not represented in CMBS). Anyway, the Khrizantema-smoke ruse is old story, not a game-winning strategy but it seems I'm not the only one (see link below) that found it viable to enhance the poor game performance of that TD - then, that that increase in performance is enough to warrant buying them in QBs is another story, but, again, I'm not suggesting buying them, I'm only saying: if you buy them, then buy also smoke covering AFVs).
  2. Well, of course it works only if you are in the defensive and fire from keyholed positions. Smoke can only help you to use these tank-destroyers in their intended role, it won't allow you to use them effectively in the offensive or at short range. In the first situation the original poster described, a smokescreen could have saved its TDs and allowed him to fire back.
  3. Bringing the Khrizantema to a knife fight is a recipe for disaster. Haiduk already explained its intended use. However, dont' forget that this missile tank destroyer has a radar sight that works in game. So, pairing a Khrizantema with e.g. a BMP-3 providing IR-blocking smokescreens will allow you to engage US armour at long range without risking being targeted by them (as long as the smoke doen't disperse). And, when it doesn't risk being fired upon, a Khrizantema can be very deadly, considering that it has enough penetration to frontally defeat an M1A2 and salvo fire to overcome APS defences.
  4. ... and don't forget Leopard 2s! Possibly the best tanks NATO fielded in the game's timeframe.
  5. I doubt that a single "Battle for Scandinavia module", as described, will be viable for BFC: too much stuff (not that I wouldn't buy it instantly). Perhaps, as already stated, an "Arctic" module featuring Norwegian Army, USMC, Soviet Naval Infantry and Soviet Motor Rifle Divisions with infantry on MT-LBs instead of BMPs/BRTs. That's all. Then, maybe, a Danish/Polish module, assuming the VDV and NVA forces needed for a proper "Danish invasion" scenario were already included in the 2nd (Bundeswehr/NVA/US AB/VDV?) and 3rd (BAOR/Canadians/Dutch?) module. Swedes and Finns are probably out of the equation, since this would require more than five CMCW modules! Not that I wouldn't like to see even more, but no CMx2 title managed to have more than three modules, to date. On the other hand, until a few months ago, we were sure that a Cold War CM game would have never seen the light, weren't we?
  6. Polish forces were also earmarked for the invasion of Denmark, so Danish troops should be present in a module featuring Polish paras and marines.
  7. If one nitpicks Napoleon's blunders one can make him look a bad commander enough; but you know that he also won a lot of campaigns and he won them against Armies and States that, at the time, were considered the best in the world. Moreover, he won them with a level of success that was unprecedented (e.g. the magnitude of Napoleon's smashing of Austria in 1805 and 1809 was something that Frederick the Great could only have dreamed of). To say that the best commander is the one that is never defeated puts too much weight on chance. Had Napoleon died for natural causes in, say, 1810, according to your metrics you should have rated him one of the best commanders ever (if not the best). Also in sports, the best team is not the one that has never lost a match (especially if plays only with sub par adversaries in a single season) but is the one that routinely confronts and beat other top tier teams. So, in this respect, I do think that Napoleon was a superb commander. Having said this, I admit that, yes, the 1812 Russian Campaign was a strategic blunder and this error eventually lead to the loss of his Empire. But even if his conquest were ephemeral, it was the personal fate of the individual named Napoleon Bonaparte that was defeated, not what he was actually fighting for: he eventually lost but managed to win enough to make the conquests of Revolutionary France shape the future of Europe, and not the pseudo-feudal institutions of most of the old monarchies that opposed him. In this respect, Napoleon's fate was in somewhat similar to Alexander the Great's one: he died, his Empire fell apart, his son died young and was never on a throne. But what he did influenced for centuries the future of the territories he had "lost".
  8. If the problem originates from the inability of the AI to adapt to these LOF restrictions and not from coding issues per se, it would be nice to have the possibility to disable this feature in human vs. human games.
  9. Well, it was also monobloc. So, save for being tungsten and not DU, more similar to the M774 than to the M735.
  10. The armour on the T-64 (and on base T-72, for what matters) was designed to stop 105mm APDS, not APFSDS (simply because there was no 105mm APFSDS in service or near to enter service at the time). Thus, I expect the T-64A to be frontally impervious to the M728 (save for the lower hull and the occasional weak spot) and marginally effective against the M735. The M774 should not have particular problems at normal combat ranges. On the other hand, the T-64B is a different beast. According to the infamous Kubinka tests, its armour (comparable to the one on the T-72A) should be very good against the M735 and fail against the M774 on the glacis (especially the upper glacis). I'm assuming that the alleged M735 test took place and that the M111 is more comparable in performance to the M774 than to the M735, we have no incontrovertible data about these assumptions but they seems reasonable to me for a number of reasons I have partially detailed in another thread. Considering the data posted above and in the other aforementioned thread, I dare to say that in CMCW T-64A's armour is more resilient than it ought to be, but this advantage is offset by the fact that very few hits land on the turret cheeks (where there's the thickest armour) and a lot on the hull (especially on the lower hull), and US gunners are able to score a lot of hits even on extreme ranges. I presume that some tweaking of the T-64A protection and hits distribution and rate is already in the works but I also presume that the next patch will be concomitant with the Steam release, so we have to wait some more time.
  11. Well, the Iraqi T-72s were issued 3BM15 APFSDS rounds, that is an early '70s penetrator that had no chance, frontally, against the depleted uranium armour of an M1A1(HA). So, there's no need to assume Iraqi tanks were issued practice rounds to explain their ineffectiveness, since their best round available was just as useless as a candy bar. Maybe the fact that the obsolete/obsolescent 3BM15 was relegated to "practice round" role in the Soviet Army at the time of the US-Iraq Gulf War, gave origin to the story about the issue of "practice rounds" to Saddam's forces. But, AFAIK, no Soviet client state, outside the Warsaw Pact, had access to anything better than 3BM15 before 1991. Long story short, an M1A1(HA) was able to obtain first round hits and (catastrophic) kills on a T-72M1 at distance at which the T-72 wasn't even able to see the Abrams (at night), let alone hit it. If we factor also the difference in numbers, training, morale, air support etc. I simply don't see the need to explain the one-sided results of the 1991 with further unlikely assumptions.
  12. My understanding is that troops riding outside their BTRs/BMPs in Afghanistan/Chechenia were doing that only where mines were considered a more likely threat than AT weapons and small arms fire. The Soviet Military Encyclopedia (published 19776-1980, thus very relevant to the CMCW timeframe) clearly states that tank riding tactics lost their importance in the postwar period because of the introduction of armoured transports. Of course the practice didn't totally disappear, but I guess that tank riders in the Soviet Army of the '70s/'80s were more likely to be found in propaganda photos than on the field. I'm not saying that it wouldn't never ever happen, but, well, if we are talking about the first days of a hypothetical WW3 in Central Europe, I don't expect to see a Soviet assault with tank riding infantry. Yes, it could be a nice feature to have but, as already pointed out, it would be too much a pain to implement, given it wouldn't be an expected/viable tactic. I think there are a lot of more urgent/relevant features to add.
  13. Yes, a BAOR/4th CMGB module (complete with a First Clash campaign, ça va sans dire) would be a nice second module, after the Bundeswehr/NVA one. Well, actually, it would make also a nice first module!
  14. Go to System Preferences / Security & Privacy and allow your Mac to open the "suspect" CMCW installer.
  15. Yes, there is a Mac version. It runs well on my 2014 vintage Mac Mini but it might have performance issues with the newest Apple computers with the M1 processor. Anyway, if you have a Mac with an Intel processor, you should be able to run it without particolar problems.
  16. Vismod T-44 tanks were often used in Soviet movies as props for German Panzers. Panzer-44: tankist_31 — LiveJournal Moreover, the KV-1 in the movie isn't a real KV but a movie prop with a false turret on an IS-2 chassis.
  17. As you noticed, in 1983 there should be no new piece of kit around that did not already enter service by 1982. On the other hand, new improved ammunition models were introduced in 1983: TOW-2, M833, 3BM26 etc... these could make a difference, although "introduced" doesn't necessarily mean "in widespread use".
  18. Very interesting thanks. BTW, I wonder what the "antitank gun over 100mm calibre" (page 299) could be in 1982, since the 2A45 was still to enter production and service. Maybe 130mm M-46 guns were sometime used as AT assets?
  19. Point taken for the AH-1F/S case. Although I'm still skeptical about the 3BM22/3BK18M upgrade for T-64Bs in 1980. The manual and the patch readme don't explicitly specify years, although both the manual and the readme show a couple typos, so it might also be the case.
  20. Yes. And this answers the original question: is the T-80B in 1980 equipped with a better APFSDS round than in 1979? No, because it won't be possible with the current game engine without renaming it, say, T-80B (1980). Moreover, they wrote in the manual that all T-80s are armed with 3BM22 APFSDS, so I wonder what this "better" APFSDS round might be... Anyway, this is what I got; If I'm mistaken, maybe someone of the devs will chime in to clarify things.
  21. I'm not saying that it is true because it's, in principle, impossible otherwise, I'm saying this is the case because of what the developers and beta testers said about the current game-engine. Please, check this thread: in particular, this post: and (the last sentence of) this one.
  22. All I'm saying is that they explicitly said this is impossible because of how the game-engine is coded.
  23. I presume that with "name" you're referring to "type". Anyway, we do know that the ammo doesn't change because BFC said that a given vehicle can have only a single specific version of a given type of ammo, and something that has a specific name is the same "object" regardless of the year. That is a tank armed with the 105mm M68 gun might have both APDS (say M728) and APFSDS (say M735) ammo, but it cannot have two different kind of APFSDS rounds (say M735 and M774). It's a game-engine thing. Thus the only way to change the specific model of a given type of ammo is to have an identical tank with a different name - e.g. T-72A and T-72A (1980) - yes, I know that the 1980 model sports also additional minor differences (for example smoke grenades) but this is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
  24. I doubt this is the case since developers and beta testers explicitly stated (if I'm not mistaken) that a given tank type always sports the same ammo loadout. I think it's also an engine-feature issue (cannot change the loadout of a vehicle without changing the its name). For the T-72A and the T-72A (1980) the loadout is different but, in that case, the "name" is different too.
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