James Crowley

I found the BBC series to be rather good.
It certainly was not highly fictionalised. In fact it follows Ben Macintyres book pretty closely.
Most of the major incidents and raids are portrayed much as they happened; indeed some have been slightly downplayed as it was felt that they would be too unbelievable.
Sure, there is some dramatisation - its a TV series; what do you expect? Could have done without the totally fictional love interest and some of the timelines are a bit wonky. The music? .......depends on personal taste.
But it captures the wild nature of the formation of the unit and does a pretty good job of capturing the personalities of the main (real) characters. And it was never meant to be a documentary.

For what it's worth, I think that improving the force selection process in QBs would go a long way to increasing the mileage that can be obtained from the huge amount of material and content that we already have available.
I find the whole process of generating a battle that has a decent match-up of forces is just massively frustrating and one of the prime reasons that I frequently stop playing CM. I don't like having to pick the forces myself, as that ruins the FoW and uncertainty factors and feel that, with a computer simulation, I really shouldn't have to.
If force selection really worked properly I would be quite happy playing QBs until the cows came home and not overly concerned with new modules and packs coming out quickly. But that's just me.

So, looking on the bright side, two months down and only three to go.
Don't know what's worse; the groundhog day that is the pandemic or waiting for this module to appear.

You are correct in that the scenarios and campaigns in CM are essentially hypothetical.
They are, however, and no matter how loosely, based on real and factual events. Such events can be studied in great detail through a huge amount of written material, placing those hypothetical scenarios into the reality of history.
The cold war battles, as per the CM title, didn't happen. Anything that is available to read about them is hypothetical. There is no historical reality backing them up and, therefore, they are essentially science fiction.
Yes, they might have happened as might a lot of things; perhaps space lobsters of doom!
I'm not knocking the Cold War battles; I know a lot of folk really like the subject and to each their own. But, for me at least, they are not on a par with battles based on historical reality. 
And, documentaries tend to display the 'truth' that the documentary makers want to be displayed.

You are correct in that the scenarios and campaigns in CM are essentially hypothetical.
They are, however, and no matter how loosely, based on real and factual events. Such events can be studied in great detail through a huge amount of written material, placing those hypothetical scenarios into the reality of history.
The cold war battles, as per the CM title, didn't happen. Anything that is available to read about them is hypothetical. There is no historical reality backing them up and, therefore, they are essentially science fiction.
Yes, they might have happened as might a lot of things; perhaps space lobsters of doom!
I'm not knocking the Cold War battles; I know a lot of folk really like the subject and to each their own. But, for me at least, they are not on a par with battles based on historical reality. 
And, documentaries tend to display the 'truth' that the documentary makers want to be displayed.

Thank God! At 69 I'm not the oldest member on the forum.

I agree with you that CM "historical" scenarios are, at best, a close approximation, although a lot of **** happens to me when I play them!
I just like the fact that you can "measure", so to speak, historically based scenarios by reading up on them. Something you can't do with scenarios that never happened.
 

With the exciting news that a Ver, 4.00 of CMX2 will be under development at an unspecified time in the future and that the features to be included have yet to be decided on, do any of the features on this whimsical wish list, many of which have been raised before and which apply equally across FI, BN and RT, strike a chord?
 
Or are many/all of them merely tilting at windmills?
 Make the branching in AI orders have more conditions, make it non-binary.Similar in Campaigns, plus simple dialog-based choices so the designer doesn't have to insert a scenario for every choice they want to accommodate.  Updating all the UI elements to C21st standards (scalable, configurable, incorporating standard UI conventions like scroll bars and in-place editing). Camera height going to actual eye levels of selected elements. Allow Broken troops to rout off the map edge in all cases if they're still running away and they hit it; if they leave from within a setup or exit zone, they're not counted as casualties;if they leave off an unmarked edge, they're MIA. Improve the TacAI so it's more aware of what's around it and can react to that knowledge. Including more surrendering when cut off, surrounded and about to be wiped out. Especially allow it to abort/reschedule script movement orders when it's being forced to run a gauntlet. Tagging for units and AI order groups so that groups get orders appropriate to the kind of assets which will be assigned. Make screen edge scrolling toggleable. Being able to Tab to a waypoint. better representation of close assault on vehicles. The current one, whereby an AFV can be 'assaulted' from up to 30m away - sometimes with an obstacle to movement in the way - is far too generic and allows something that happened on a vanishingly small scale to become almost commonplace. The real short range danger to AFV's were 'zooks, 'shrecks, fausts and Piats not 'improvised' weapons. better auto-selection of forces in Mix option, in QBs, particularly in the tiny and small categories. stopping the heavy 'clipping' that is still possible with AFVs. I know Steve has said this is very difficult but having, for instance, a tank drive 'through' another tank on a narrow bridge is a real immersion killer, IMO. Never going to happen but... Tighter C&C around out of command units. Ideally, no communication with them at all but, more likely, some limitation on command options. Less casualties, much more suppression effects on infantry under fire, particularly in heavy cover/buildings.

With the exciting news that a Ver, 4.00 of CMX2 will be under development at an unspecified time in the future and that the features to be included have yet to be decided on, do any of the features on this whimsical wish list, many of which have been raised before and which apply equally across FI, BN and RT, strike a chord?
 
Or are many/all of them merely tilting at windmills?
 Make the branching in AI orders have more conditions, make it non-binary.Similar in Campaigns, plus simple dialog-based choices so the designer doesn't have to insert a scenario for every choice they want to accommodate.  Updating all the UI elements to C21st standards (scalable, configurable, incorporating standard UI conventions like scroll bars and in-place editing). Camera height going to actual eye levels of selected elements. Allow Broken troops to rout off the map edge in all cases if they're still running away and they hit it; if they leave from within a setup or exit zone, they're not counted as casualties;if they leave off an unmarked edge, they're MIA. Improve the TacAI so it's more aware of what's around it and can react to that knowledge. Including more surrendering when cut off, surrounded and about to be wiped out. Especially allow it to abort/reschedule script movement orders when it's being forced to run a gauntlet. Tagging for units and AI order groups so that groups get orders appropriate to the kind of assets which will be assigned. Make screen edge scrolling toggleable. Being able to Tab to a waypoint. better representation of close assault on vehicles. The current one, whereby an AFV can be 'assaulted' from up to 30m away - sometimes with an obstacle to movement in the way - is far too generic and allows something that happened on a vanishingly small scale to become almost commonplace. The real short range danger to AFV's were 'zooks, 'shrecks, fausts and Piats not 'improvised' weapons. better auto-selection of forces in Mix option, in QBs, particularly in the tiny and small categories. stopping the heavy 'clipping' that is still possible with AFVs. I know Steve has said this is very difficult but having, for instance, a tank drive 'through' another tank on a narrow bridge is a real immersion killer, IMO. Never going to happen but... Tighter C&C around out of command units. Ideally, no communication with them at all but, more likely, some limitation on command options. Less casualties, much more suppression effects on infantry under fire, particularly in heavy cover/buildings.

With the exciting news that a Ver, 4.00 of CMX2 will be under development at an unspecified time in the future and that the features to be included have yet to be decided on, do any of the features on this whimsical wish list, many of which have been raised before and which apply equally across FI, BN and RT, strike a chord?
 
Or are many/all of them merely tilting at windmills?
 Make the branching in AI orders have more conditions, make it non-binary.Similar in Campaigns, plus simple dialog-based choices so the designer doesn't have to insert a scenario for every choice they want to accommodate.  Updating all the UI elements to C21st standards (scalable, configurable, incorporating standard UI conventions like scroll bars and in-place editing). Camera height going to actual eye levels of selected elements. Allow Broken troops to rout off the map edge in all cases if they're still running away and they hit it; if they leave from within a setup or exit zone, they're not counted as casualties;if they leave off an unmarked edge, they're MIA. Improve the TacAI so it's more aware of what's around it and can react to that knowledge. Including more surrendering when cut off, surrounded and about to be wiped out. Especially allow it to abort/reschedule script movement orders when it's being forced to run a gauntlet. Tagging for units and AI order groups so that groups get orders appropriate to the kind of assets which will be assigned. Make screen edge scrolling toggleable. Being able to Tab to a waypoint. better representation of close assault on vehicles. The current one, whereby an AFV can be 'assaulted' from up to 30m away - sometimes with an obstacle to movement in the way - is far too generic and allows something that happened on a vanishingly small scale to become almost commonplace. The real short range danger to AFV's were 'zooks, 'shrecks, fausts and Piats not 'improvised' weapons. better auto-selection of forces in Mix option, in QBs, particularly in the tiny and small categories. stopping the heavy 'clipping' that is still possible with AFVs. I know Steve has said this is very difficult but having, for instance, a tank drive 'through' another tank on a narrow bridge is a real immersion killer, IMO. Never going to happen but... Tighter C&C around out of command units. Ideally, no communication with them at all but, more likely, some limitation on command options. Less casualties, much more suppression effects on infantry under fire, particularly in heavy cover/buildings.

A very good, and appropriate list.
 
To which I would add:
 
better representation of close assault on vehicles. The current one, whereby an AFV can be 'assaulted' from up to 30m away - sometimes with an obstacle to movement in the way - is far too generic and allows something that happened on a vanishingly small scale to become almost commonplace. The real short range danger to AFV's were 'zooks, 'shrecks, fausts and Piats  not 'improvised' weapons.  better auto-selection of forces in Mix option, in QBs, particularly in the tiny and small categories. stopping the heavy 'clipping' that is still possible with AFVs. I know Steve has said this is very difficult but having, for instance, a tank drive 'through' another tank on a narrow bridge is a real immersion killer, IMO. Never going to happen. I know but I can still hope. Tighter C&C around out of command units. Ideally, no communication with them at all but, more likely, some limitation on command options. Less casualties, much more suppression effects on infantry under fire, particularly in heavy cover/buildings.

A very good, and appropriate list.
 
To which I would add:
 
better representation of close assault on vehicles. The current one, whereby an AFV can be 'assaulted' from up to 30m away - sometimes with an obstacle to movement in the way - is far too generic and allows something that happened on a vanishingly small scale to become almost commonplace. The real short range danger to AFV's were 'zooks, 'shrecks, fausts and Piats  not 'improvised' weapons.  better auto-selection of forces in Mix option, in QBs, particularly in the tiny and small categories. stopping the heavy 'clipping' that is still possible with AFVs. I know Steve has said this is very difficult but having, for instance, a tank drive 'through' another tank on a narrow bridge is a real immersion killer, IMO. Never going to happen. I know but I can still hope. Tighter C&C around out of command units. Ideally, no communication with them at all but, more likely, some limitation on command options. Less casualties, much more suppression effects on infantry under fire, particularly in heavy cover/buildings.

Hear, Hear!

I enjoyed the film and, yes, the final battle was somewhat exaggerated. How unusual for a Hollywood film!

Now back to my CM battle where a single, wounded soldier, hiding in a hedge, has denied my opponent the victory zone.