Vanir Ausf B

Unity, IIRC.

The waypoint was probably added by the TacAI. It often does this presumably to gather all the individual truppen before embarking. If you plot a movement order to embark that requires the unit to move for more than one turn to reach the vehicle you will often see the added waypoint at the beginning of the next turn.

I've always referred to those as passive IR and active IR. They are both very good for seeing in darkness. Semantics aside, the manufacture's website for the Raven states it features "infrared imagery". This is almost certainly of the passive/thermal variety for the reasons you mention, so the manual is either right or wrong depending on how you want to parse it, but the bottom line is that the Raven should be able to see through normal smoke.

What is the difference?

You can't really compare CM battles to results for an entire war. The huge range of artillery means that a lot of real world casualties from artillery take place in situations where the opposing forces are not otherwise within shooting distance of each other. There are no CM scenarios where armies do nothing but exchange artillery fire for days on end. Also, considering that most CM battles represent tip of the spear-type actions, the amount of artillery present is often understated compared to reality.

Then the manual is in error. Page 95:

They completely crushed France, which at the time was widely believed to have the best army in the world (in retrospect they didn't really but they were hardly pushovers). They gave the British all they could handle up through the end of 1942 (Operation Sonnenblume, First El Alamein).

Fog and other types of vision-limiting weather will degrade their spotting ability. In fact I just tested a Raven's ability to spot T-72s in dense fog and it couldn't see them at all. AFAIK wind effects on UAVs are not modeled. I assume smoke will affect where appropriate but I have not tested it. Note that all US and one Russian UAVs have infrared imagers and should therefore only be affected by multispectral smoke.

Yeah, I've seen it happen. I'll try to get a bug report submitted at some point.

Yes, over a year ago.

That is impressive. And a little scary.

My own opinion is that snipers in the CM games are less effective than in reality. In fact, their effectiveness has been slightly bumped upwards in Black Sea after heavy lobbying from beta dudes.

You are the first person in living memory to suggest snipers are too effective in the game. That's refreshing.

Gamey is whatever killed your guys. Fair game is whatever kills your opponent's guys

No, on both accounts since running infantry over with vehicles doesn't hurt them in CMx2

Non sequitur. You said there were no Russian tanks in Ukraine. Whether or not there are any NATO-manufactured weapons also there is besides the point as no one has claimed otherwise.

Panzer IVs and Shermans have the same spotting ability in CMx2.

There are multiple causes. A mismatch between the Battle Type and the setup zones in the editor is one. AFAIK those have been fixed for the most part. But even when everything looks correct it can happen. I did some testing on this with BadgerDog just a few months ago. We had a map with which we would get the swapped zones. I fixed it by simply loading the map into the editor and then saving it without making any changes. But the fix only worked for us. When he tried using the same fixed map with another opponent they were switched. In most of the cases that I am aware of one of the players was on a Mac. But I can't say for sure if that is a factor since most reports don't mention the type of computer used by each player.

https://pressimus.com/Interpreter_Mag/press/4270

That is essentially what they did. The Panther did not become battle worthy until 6 months after it's combat debut at Kursk. But from that point on it was generally well-liked by the Germans despite its lingering issues, and was respected by it's opponents. It is true that its armor protection was not great for a tank of its weight. Having said that, the Western Allies were not rushing up-gunned Shermans and 90mm-armed TDs into the theater in late 1944-45 to counter the Pz IV It is unlikely that canceling the Panther would have made any significant difference in the war, aside for saving the lives of some number of Allied soldiers. It would not have greatly increased the total number of German tanks, which they did not have enough fuel for anyways.

Panzer IV unit cost: 103,462 RM Panther unit cost: 117,100 RM The best argument in favor of the Pz IV is that it got better gas mileage

That works exactly the same in Iron as in Elite.

The UI during the orders phase is exactly the same in Iron and Elite. It only differs during playback and in real time.

The game seems to presume that, at the very least, Russian air defense networks are still a threat since Tunguska can engage US F-15 and F-16, so those aircraft are presumably flying NOE.

There are a few things that you can try that will sometimes work. Open up the map in the editor. Look at the setup zones and compare them to the Battle Type. Whichever side is set as the attacker in the Battle Type should have the attacker setup zone (the smaller one). In CMBN the Allies are set as the attacker by default in the stock QB maps. Save the map, even if you have made no changes to it. I have been able to fix the bug simply by doing this, but it doesn't work all the time. Switch who starts the game. Sometimes the bug happens when one player starts the game but not when the other starts it.