landser

I use the box formation extensively in Combat Mission. But in order to do so you need lavish tank strength on hand. Here's a shot of the final mission in Blunting the Spear, and you can see the four Panthers in the foreground set up in a box. It's a beautiful formation because it puts two barrels in line, anything the lead tank can see and shoot the one behind can too. Mutually supporting. And it is flexible, as the box can rotate in any direction and maintain its integrity.
 

BFC is going to go whichever route they choose, but I hope that if there ever is a new generation, that it is Combat Mission as a base game and every module plugs in to that, so that it all works together as one.

I don't trust 'em. I recall playing Blunting the Spear a couple year ago. It was the final battle of the campaign, a big one too, about a battalion. Battalion commanders surely drink a lot of coffee.
To get an idea of the scale of this battle I offer this wide shot about half-way through it.
 

 
That's a big battle. If we could focus in on the upper center it would reveal a situation which played out like a white flag ruse. Trees are turned off. The two soldiers who surrendered were visible to me, but not the one laying down with the LMG. Thinking the position was secure I advanced to cross the open ground beyond (you can see the smoke deployed in anticipation), but as my troops neared the captured soldiers the hidden Ivan opened fire and you see the damage he's done. The bastage.

Be wary of surrendering soldiers. Not all their mates might have signed on.

I don't trust 'em. I recall playing Blunting the Spear a couple year ago. It was the final battle of the campaign, a big one too, about a battalion. Battalion commanders surely drink a lot of coffee.
To get an idea of the scale of this battle I offer this wide shot about half-way through it.
 

 
That's a big battle. If we could focus in on the upper center it would reveal a situation which played out like a white flag ruse. Trees are turned off. The two soldiers who surrendered were visible to me, but not the one laying down with the LMG. Thinking the position was secure I advanced to cross the open ground beyond (you can see the smoke deployed in anticipation), but as my troops neared the captured soldiers the hidden Ivan opened fire and you see the damage he's done. The bastage.

Be wary of surrendering soldiers. Not all their mates might have signed on.

I don't trust 'em. I recall playing Blunting the Spear a couple year ago. It was the final battle of the campaign, a big one too, about a battalion. Battalion commanders surely drink a lot of coffee.
To get an idea of the scale of this battle I offer this wide shot about half-way through it.
 

 
That's a big battle. If we could focus in on the upper center it would reveal a situation which played out like a white flag ruse. Trees are turned off. The two soldiers who surrendered were visible to me, but not the one laying down with the LMG. Thinking the position was secure I advanced to cross the open ground beyond (you can see the smoke deployed in anticipation), but as my troops neared the captured soldiers the hidden Ivan opened fire and you see the damage he's done. The bastage.

Be wary of surrendering soldiers. Not all their mates might have signed on.

I don't trust 'em. I recall playing Blunting the Spear a couple year ago. It was the final battle of the campaign, a big one too, about a battalion. Battalion commanders surely drink a lot of coffee.
To get an idea of the scale of this battle I offer this wide shot about half-way through it.
 

 
That's a big battle. If we could focus in on the upper center it would reveal a situation which played out like a white flag ruse. Trees are turned off. The two soldiers who surrendered were visible to me, but not the one laying down with the LMG. Thinking the position was secure I advanced to cross the open ground beyond (you can see the smoke deployed in anticipation), but as my troops neared the captured soldiers the hidden Ivan opened fire and you see the damage he's done. The bastage.

Be wary of surrendering soldiers. Not all their mates might have signed on.

I don't trust 'em. I recall playing Blunting the Spear a couple year ago. It was the final battle of the campaign, a big one too, about a battalion. Battalion commanders surely drink a lot of coffee.
To get an idea of the scale of this battle I offer this wide shot about half-way through it.
 

 
That's a big battle. If we could focus in on the upper center it would reveal a situation which played out like a white flag ruse. Trees are turned off. The two soldiers who surrendered were visible to me, but not the one laying down with the LMG. Thinking the position was secure I advanced to cross the open ground beyond (you can see the smoke deployed in anticipation), but as my troops neared the captured soldiers the hidden Ivan opened fire and you see the damage he's done. The bastage.

Be wary of surrendering soldiers. Not all their mates might have signed on.

I hope this succeeds, as Combat Mission's in a rut, and competition drives innovation. The 'heroic, yet doomed' vibe is strong here, even though Combat Mission is also programmed by one man. Charles may be exceptional, but also an example of why small dev teams aren't automatically doomed to fail (see Seven Years War and Grand Tactician). There's not much game there yet, but in what little we are shown I reckon this new game already has better graphics and camera controls than Combat Mission, addressing two of the most glaring weaknesses in the series. That's not going to dethrone the aging Combat Mission from the top of the sparsely populated tactical wargame genre on it's own, but it's a fair start, isn't it?
Oftentimes in this forum I see comments along the lines of 'we don't want to forfeit gameplay in the name of graphics' as if the two things cannot exist together. It's a slippery position to take, and I reckon done so in defense of Combat Mission, which looks old. I think you can have both. And while I also am one that prefers gameplay over graphics -- I play Combat Mission as proof -- there's no escaping the fact that CM looks twenty years old.
But even if we ignore graphics, Combat Mission has changed little in all that time. The AI isn't really AI, the editor is curmudgeonly, the camera and controls are clunky, the campaign system is too basic, the update and transaction processes are archaic and the way content is generated too trying. I don't want Combat Mission surpassed necessarily, after all I've been playing since the CMBO demo, I want it to kick in to gear, address the weakness, innovate and modernize.
A successful competitor is not automatically going to affect the course of Combat Mission. Steve and Charles have their vision, which they've done well with. They may want to stay the course. CM is a great game. I'm a fan. An increasingly disillusioned fan, but one nonetheless. There are things CM handles better than other games (spotting, ballistics, command and control). What I hope is that those core strengths can be married to modern conventions and conveniences and if an upstart competitor is the catalyst for this change that's a win for all of us.

I've been playing Combat Mission for about 25 years and I don't think anyone has any clue about this. You're best off, I think, to treat it as entirely random. Pick any action, all are just as likely to have the same result, or any other result for that matter. Go slow, go fast, back up, bail out, twist it all about. You'll bog or not entirely due to the whims of the bog god. And the bog god, may she smile upon you.

Similar for me to many posting here. I played CC1 and CC2 prior to picking up CMBO. Steel Panthers was probably my first proper wargame. I was also playing some of the Talonsoft games from the 90s, the Battleground series.
Steel Panthers though is what I credit for kickstarting my interest in all things WW2. Here is where I learned what a Wolverine was, or a Matilda, a Hellcat and all the guns and other weapons systems.I was in my early twenties and knew what WW2 was, but not much more.  This was the beginning of my descent in to grog.
My older brother played Steel Panthers too. I can still recall a battle we played hotseat. This was thirty years ago, mind. I was Germans and he was the British. it was a wide open desert map. I had only discovered what a dual purpose 88 actually meant just a couple days before. So I had deployed a line of 88s backstopping my positions. When my brother's armor appeared on the open terrain I would spring the trap and destroy him in detail. Delighting in the anticipation of my masterful strategery.
On the first turn he sent over a bomber strike that wiped out my 88s before they fired a shot

I've been playing Combat Mission for about 25 years and I don't think anyone has any clue about this. You're best off, I think, to treat it as entirely random. Pick any action, all are just as likely to have the same result, or any other result for that matter. Go slow, go fast, back up, bail out, twist it all about. You'll bog or not entirely due to the whims of the bog god. And the bog god, may she smile upon you.

That's what CMx1 operations were. They were a single large (long) map where the front line moved according to the end state of the previous battle. It allowed the player to capture (or lose) key terrain that would carry over to the next battle in the campaign. It wasn't exact or precise, if a scout team moved to an advanced position you may not have control of it after the re-draw. Front lines seems to be calculated more on your force's mass than on actual occupied terrain.
So you could find that the ridge on the flank you fought so hard for in the dying minutes of the previous battle was 'lost' for the next mission. But overall it worked pretty well. I wish this concept had been kept and refined rather than binned. Having player performance and results in one battle carry over to the next is fundamental to campaign play, but the episodic nature of CMx2 campaigns does not put a premium on this.
Some campaigns do, like Kampfgruppe Engel, which has core forces, and damage and ammunition carry over in some missions. There's one mission in that campaign where you have to cross the river Dives. There is a single, well defended crossing site which under usual conditions would be a reasonable task given the weight of German heavy armor at your disposal. But in the event, I found it very difficult, as my tanks were battered and bruised. Damaged barrels and tracks, shot-out optics and mostly empty ammunition racks. All of which served to add a level of challenge and improvisation that is missing from most Combat Mission campaigns.

If and when there is a new generation of Combat Mission games, LOS should be able to be checked with a single key. Select any unit and hit or hold a key to either shade the terrain that the unit can see, or maybe shade that which cannot be seen. Not sure which is better. This should already be a thing.
And to flesh it out further, instead of shading, use colors. One color for Mark I eyeball and a different shade/color for what sensors detect beyond sight, if that's even a thing in Combat Mission. In other words, does the game differentiate between crew vision and that which is only seen through optics? And of course in modern titles, this would be useful to show how it is the unit can 'see' a certain part of the map or specific units. Is it sight, optics, thermals, radar, etc? 

Dude he wasnt even fit for his first term.

What part of the US? I know for a fact that anyone who went around waving a swastika where I live would be shunned. Maybe people can get away with it in private circles. But definitely not in public.

If and when there is a new generation of Combat Mission games, LOS should be able to be checked with a single key. Select any unit and hit or hold a key to either shade the terrain that the unit can see, or maybe shade that which cannot be seen. Not sure which is better. This should already be a thing.
And to flesh it out further, instead of shading, use colors. One color for Mark I eyeball and a different shade/color for what sensors detect beyond sight, if that's even a thing in Combat Mission. In other words, does the game differentiate between crew vision and that which is only seen through optics? And of course in modern titles, this would be useful to show how it is the unit can 'see' a certain part of the map or specific units. Is it sight, optics, thermals, radar, etc? 

That's a fine trait to possess when talking about Combat Mission.
But yes, it's the finest tactical-level wargame out there, still. WEGO is brilliant, it must be said, and the command and control, ballistics and spotting are all top notch too in my view. Enjoy your new game(s). And welcome to the boards.

Cripes, do you absolutely HAVE to be a supercilious ***, at all times?
This is an incredibly interesting point one of our relatively new and well-read Polish community members has raised here, inviting discussion and disagreement. But nope, as always, Jon is going to quash it right out of the gate. Because all further discussion must take a back seat to his know-it-all-seen-it-all sarcasm.  There are other ways to debate, you know, without being a putz.
...Also, how's your Polish mate? Nowhere near as good as 'Mac's' English.
[yes, I'm still lurking here every couple days, just fed up with all the downtalking here from the cool kids. And feel free to suspend me Steve, I don't give a rats]

If and when there is a new generation of Combat Mission games, LOS should be able to be checked with a single key. Select any unit and hit or hold a key to either shade the terrain that the unit can see, or maybe shade that which cannot be seen. Not sure which is better. This should already be a thing.
And to flesh it out further, instead of shading, use colors. One color for Mark I eyeball and a different shade/color for what sensors detect beyond sight, if that's even a thing in Combat Mission. In other words, does the game differentiate between crew vision and that which is only seen through optics? And of course in modern titles, this would be useful to show how it is the unit can 'see' a certain part of the map or specific units. Is it sight, optics, thermals, radar, etc? 

If and when there is a new generation of Combat Mission games, LOS should be able to be checked with a single key. Select any unit and hit or hold a key to either shade the terrain that the unit can see, or maybe shade that which cannot be seen. Not sure which is better. This should already be a thing.
And to flesh it out further, instead of shading, use colors. One color for Mark I eyeball and a different shade/color for what sensors detect beyond sight, if that's even a thing in Combat Mission. In other words, does the game differentiate between crew vision and that which is only seen through optics? And of course in modern titles, this would be useful to show how it is the unit can 'see' a certain part of the map or specific units. Is it sight, optics, thermals, radar, etc? 

Good hunting commander.

Having read your post, I think Shock Force 2 might be the better choice. Black Sea is harder, not that you cannot handle it. But SF2 has much more content, including all SF1 stuff which carries over. The chance of finding scenarios and campaigns that suit you is higher with Shock Force.
The asymmetrical nature of the forces within SF2 does make it a little on the easy side in many missions. But it's still a good Combat Mission title with a boatload of content available.
 

I still play it occasionally. But far from regularly.
CMx2 is better in most ways, but there a few things about CMBB that still stand out
Command delay is nice feature and gives the forces a certain dissimilarity that I like
Operations are a great concept that didn't quite live up to the potential in my view.
Full war OOB, that we will never have for Red Thunder (Prove me wrong Battlefront)
Hunt works the way I want it to
Indirect fire can be directed to locations without LOS. Like they have maps and can do geometry. Crazy concept I know.
Combined Arms force selection in QB, still better than any in CMx2
 
But it does show its age, and is missing the improvements that came with gen 2. It's still a great wargame. 20 years ago it was the bee's knees. One of my all timers

I don't have any suggestions for single scenarios, I don't play them.
But for campaigns there are a number of good choices for Normandy.
 
Task Force Raff Honestly I would recommend starting with Task Force Raff, the tutorial campaign .It's an ideal primer for CMBN, as the player commands a combined arms force, attacks and defends, has access to off-board arty and there is also some bocage. It's not so restricted as other bocage campaign maps, but it presents the player with some of the unique challenges of fighting in bocage country. The force strength advantage allows for mistakes without losing momentum so it's relatively forgiving making it a perfect choice for a first go at a campaign, but it's still fun for veterans too.
Devil's Descent. This one places the player in command of a 82nd Airborne paratrooper company (C Company, 1st Battalion, 508th PIR) near Sainte-Mére-Èglise on June 6th. For me, company sized forces are the sweet spot for Combat Mission. Not so large as to be cumbersome, but big enough to allow some maneuver and tactical leeway. And paras are just hard as nails, so lots of fun to fight with. Hard to suppress, hard to kill, and stone cold killas. The opening mission is wonderful, reflecting the scattered nature of the drops. Your mission is to capture a farm at night with about a platoon of troopers as they trickle in over the course of the battle. As the campaign continues, your force grows to company strength as the misdrops march to the sound of the fighting and link up with the company. Several missions have decisions to make, for example after one battle you are asked if you want to leave a platoon behind in town, or to take the whole company with you. There are four mission branches that will result in different battles depending on your choices.
Kampfgruppe Engel Over the years I've played many Combat Mission campaigns, but none have been more innovative or memorable than Kampfgruppe Engel. I rate it as hard, and it is. The player is given command of a mixed armor kampfgruppe in summer of 1944 in the Falaise Pocket. Of course we all know what happened here, so you have to reckon that playing a German campaign set then and there would be difficult right? Your task is to act as the German's fire brigade, trying to keep the pocket open so your kamaraden can escape.The missions are diverse and interesting, though one or two I didn't care for. My favorite sort of campaign is one with persistent core forces. Some campaigns, like Road to Montebourg, feature various battles involving separate but related forces. In this one, you get a core force, that grows a bit over time. It's another one where you'll know the names of your tank commanders and squad leaders. But it's vital to keep casualties and losses to a minimum, as the intensity doesn't let up and you need every boot and barrel in the line. At times the player faces huge odds, 20-30+ enemy tanks on the map at once. Careful positioning and terrain analysis are also vital.
The Outlaws Another para campaign for CMBN, the Outlaws is similar to Devil's Descent as it starts small, reflecting the scattered nature of the drops, and the player commands an increasingly larger force through the course of the campaign. The majority of the campaign is played leading a platoon sized element of Company B, 1st Battalion, 506th PIR, with the final missions much larger as the paratroopers link up with forces coming off the beach. Missions are diverse, maps are very good. The briefings are of a different sort. Essentially, the briefings feature excerpts from an interview of the company commander as he recounts his experiences on D-Day. The briefings contain no tactical information, no intel, aside from what was recalled in the interview. It makes for a nice narrative, as you're given a framework and then fill in the blanks in the battle. But useful info for the battle ahead is minimal.
Road to Montebourg One of the most ambitious Combat Mission campaigns, Road to Montebourg places the player in command of various American units during the fighting on D-Day and beyond. At sixteen missions long, RtM is a beast. Missions are highly varied, and some are on the difficult side. Created by Paper Tiger, this campaign utilizes some interesting mechanics. He makes extensive use of AI plans, with I think four for each mission. While Combat Mission is far from dynamic, including a number of AI plans promises some replayability as a subsequent run could see some alteration for enemy unit placement and movement. Of course you could get the same one again too. This campaign also features what might be called branching difficulty. As I understand it, the player's performance affects how hard or easy later missions are. Do well, and it gets harder. Do poorly and you're cut some breaks. In theory this sounds OK. I suppose it allows players of all skill levels to get through it, while maintaining the challenge for the best players. But I think I'd prefer the opposite. If I do well, I'd like to gain some edge. If I do poorly, find myself at a disadvantage.

The campaign opens with an infantry attack over a huge expanse of open ground. At the far side of the map a small German force with pillboxes awaits, hemmed in by mines and supported by artillery. When I first saw the map I thought 'no way'. No way I'm getting across this ground without massive casualties. But this mission is a showcase for suppression in Combat Mission. Combined with tactical use of smoke, machine gun and mortar fire I was able to do it with surprisingly light losses. Find, fix, destroy.

I think it's the second mission that puts the player in command of a combined arms force for an attack on a town called Ecoqueneuville deep in bocage country. When I played it I used a beautiful three-pronged attack, sending engineers the long way 'round the left flank, blowing gaps in hedgerow after hedgerow to hit the final objective from the flank while my main body converged through town. It all went splendidly until the final hurdle. At the last objective, the German company commander went nuts with his MP 40, defiantly mowing down my troops despite the deluge of fire directed his way. Quite disheartening to have such a well-executed plan devolve in to chaos with the finish line in sight, especially when a single maniac wielding a machine pistol holds off a company of well-equipped troops.. But it also makes it memorable. I wish I remembered his name. Respect Herr Hauptmann, respect.

No worries mate, any time. Have fun.
Welcome to the boards.
Good hunting.