Blazing 88's

I would pay at least $100 for SPMBT in the CM engine.

Top notch advice in this thread. My two cents:
I remember reading a translated excerpt from a late Cold War Soviet infantry manual: "Fire [superiority] is maneuver." The meaning of this is that fire superiority is potential for advance. You can see why an army geared towards breaking through the Fulda would prize oversized canons (for their time) on everything from MBTs, IFVs, SPGs, ETCs. If you lose that superiority, you become suppressed and cannot advance. How does one gain or lose fire superiority?
In WW1, folks found out that attacking across wide fronts, like was done in Napoleonic Wars, lead to little gain against a modern defender. In comes the success of the "Schwehrpunkt", which means main point. In order to succeed against a modern defender, your attacks must be concentrated on small, but significant, locations. This way, an attacker, with potentially less fire support assets, can break through a defender that spaces out their, potentially over abundant,  assets. The famous Desert Storm is the manifestation of this concept, where a modern attacker faced a WW1-minded defender.
Tactics are all about location. Terrain makes or breaks battle plans. A canon on a hill is more effective than a hundred canons stuck in a ditch. A tank behind a hill is more effective than a a tank platoon on a forward slope. As such, the attacker must choose their Schwehrpunkts wisely and a defender must anticipate them. You can see why knowledge of the terrain is such a critical part of success from the ancient days to modern Ukraine. In order to get to favorable locations, one needs to maneuver. As such, Maneuver is fire superiority.
Much like matter and energy, the name of the game is finding the most efficient transfer function. Maneuver the right assets into the right locations to gain fire superiority and use fire superiority to move to the next good location. I think the historical zenith of this concept must be Operation Citadel. I suggest you read up on it, it can teach you how to use and not use these concepts to the maximum effect more than I can. The Soviets made diamond shape fortifications, with some of their guns facing backwards. They knew the Germans were going to out-maneuver them and they were ready to slow them down even after they passed their front-line. 
This is why reconnaissance and careful planning is key. The choice of Schwehrpunkts should be made way in advance, and the entire attack based off of that. In order to do that, you must know where the enemy's assets lie and the terrain. Even in today's age of satellites and UAVs, nobody has total omniscience. The defenders do well do conceal their assets, as to not allow the attacker to find the right Schwehrpunkt. Well prepared artillery barrages and air attacks will establish your fire superiority, surprise ambushes by hidden guns will take it away.
In CM, much of the high level recon and planning of Schwehrpunkts is done for you. Yet, you must do the same on the low level. Before you even start positioning your forces, take a good long while to observe the terrain. My advice to any CM player: "Think like the Hun"! If you were OPFOR where would you place your assets? The more you play, the better you will be at thinking for OPFOR. Unfortunately such forethought only comes with a lot of mistakes and a lot of blood. Every new terrain you find yourself in, and a new enemy you face will require you to relearn and adapt.

One addition, if I may.  Use smoke!  Popping smoke or shooting smoke tank / artillery / mortar rounds between your positions and enemy locations can momentarily screen your movements for safer withdrawal.  However, smoke takes a few moments to establish itself and you will need to prevent enemy advances towards the forces screened.

Jolly good, that!

Michael

Absolutely - I do.

September.

FIXED!!  🤡..........

Few things I have been working on for your gaming pleasure!


Still have work to do for the full RT mod but this was a nice change of pace and theater. It's the early stages but I have been itching to get moving on all the other titles.
 
Mord.

F'n assume books!!  I have approx. 12 or more from the series.  Love 'em.
Not just those books...  Many, many accounts.  But hey believe what YOU want to believe, I am not going to try and change your mind about what you think about those accounts.  I will say this though...  MORE PaK!!! 

That's how the Soviets dealt with German armoured counter attacks and why the Germans liked to attack ASAP before the Soviets had time to build an AT defence. So it would depend on the context but having to fight your way through a wheen of Soviet PAK is not ahistorical.

Thanks. You gave me that link sometime ago! I found it helpful. For example I had a German infantry squad killed a T-34 with a grenade bundle or Panzerwurfmine - cannot recall. Spike showed the distance you needed to close to, to make this work. Thanks again.

Thanks, Mord.

In what way will RTX cards break Combat Mission? It's unlikely that any PC hardware will drop support for OpenGL, we aren't suckers running Apple computers after all.

That is not true. At a certain load point the unit will no longer be able to Fast move. Pile on more ammo and it can't Quick move either.

lol...  tears. 🤣

What in the h*ll are you talking about?
 
I went on Steam and then they said go away, and then some comments were deleted, then Combat Mission, then you don't own your games, then EULA stuff...then I passed the bong.
This is like a an acid trip where I didn't get any.
EDITED: Yes, I know, I mixed my drug metaphors but it seemed to fit into the gibberish theme this thread evokes.
EDITED: I do not condone drug use except on days ending with sunsets.
EDITED: I don't do drugs. I can barely do mornings.
Mord.

Are you sure the game is using the GT1080 card and not the I5 inbuilt graphics?
You can check it is using the GTX1080 by using the nvidia control panel 'Manage 3D Settings' CUDA - GPUS
 

+1
Even though ones gets hostile reactions from some here whenever one talks about wonderful aspects of CM1, the virtual operational scale of CM1 (8 Km x 4 Km maps and a Regiment + on each side) is what keeps some of us still playing over at WeBoB.   At that level, mobility and recon become much more important as one doesn't have a fixed front line and one can get a much more fluid mobile game.
We'd need more powerful computers top play that scale in CM2, and due to CM2's greater detail it may not be playable (in a reasonable amount of time) with that many units.  But, the moving window effect that CM1 operations has would be wonderful to see in CM3.

I kinda want to get double use from the CMSF2 desert terrain and use in CM2:Afrika Korps...  But...

I have no idea. Most everything is digital now a days. Look at it this way. I built a 2400 dollar monstrosity for my 48th birthday a year and a half back. The first thing I did was install Steam and download my games. If it was a danger it wouldn't be on my computer. I don't do anything remotely risky with this beast. You would love it. You know how you are always b****ing about dealing with mods? You know what you do on Steam? You check a subscribe button and they are automatically installed. If you don't want to use one in game, you uncheck it. For a mod fiend like you, it's a dream. And every game you buy goes in your library under one UI. You can even play them offline once you DL. It's a no-brainer.
Not to mention the sales they run. I just got Sniper Elite 4, for $8.99. It debuted at $59.99.
I thought Steam was stupid, 9 years ago when I first had to join it, after buying Left 4 Dead. Not any longer. Don't be a Luddite, Erwin. The future has arrived!
 
Mord.

Work and computer power permitting, I am going to resume work on this long shelved BN base game campaign, which includes a 2 x 3 km master map of the east bank of the Vire River above Pont Hebert, from la Meauffe to the German fortified heights at le Carillon.... 
Below are a few key snips from the old thread... 
 
La Meauffe had been the front line since mid June, when 175th Infantry occupied it, then withdrew (under fire) to higher ground further north.
 
So I did some more research online and was gratified to find a French chronology of La Meauffe's war. And it turns out the elusive "Gestapo château" which anchored "Purple Heart Corner" is the Chateau Fors, commanding the key T junction and railway crossing at the south end of La Meauffe. Many historians place it wrongly at St Gilles, which was the LXXXIV Corps HQ, rocketed by Typhoons on D-Day and also heavily fortified.
So at long last I have confidence in the start lines and the July 11th objectives for 1/137.

For nigh on ten years now my biggest projects have always been my portrait mods. I have invested weeks and months on end, that have added up to hundreds and hundreds of hours of time and frustration creating them. I have made easily over ten thousand portraits, through trial and error, redesign, and updates. It's been a true struggle at times, and I am never happy with the outcome, though I'll say I am, once a project is complete. But I am always fighting the design decisions I started with way back in SF1 and it's hamstrung me artistically. After the FB portraits I decided I wanted to redo all the portraits for all the titles (the BN mod is long over do for an update) . So, after a long hiatus, I set about trying to get to someplace that would finally make me happy. I decided to start with RT to get ahead of the module release, and after a week or so of fiddling, resizing, making test bmps, and checking in game, this is what I came up with.

For about two seconds I thought they looked good. But once again I was confronted by the poor design decisions I adopted all those years ago. You see, I have been in a constant fight with what I term the "bobble head effect", which causes the portrait heads to appear bulbous and fat-headed. It occurs because I opted to show each portrait with a split face on the bmp. It has been my bane since my BN mod and it frustrates me to no end. And considering how I built each face from screenshots, pieces of faces from all sorts of pictures, and the fact I only worked on the left side of the face, well it doesn't leave me room for presenting them in any other way. And On top of all that, I have always felt there was inconsistency in the quality of the faces, and that they appeared too cartoony.  So with that said, I am putting these portrait mods to rest. I have taken them as far as they will go and they have reached a dead end. They had a good run but there really isn't anything more I can do to improve them.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Now, check out what I have been doing for the last two weeks and tell me I didn't make the right decision...



Now for some comparisons of the old style and the new.


 
Now the portraits in the context of their own mod. It'll give you an idea of the overall design.


 
And within the context of the game UI.


 
Some of the portraits are tentative/place holders until I find something that really blows me away. Or will be replaced later. The Heer Armor and Armor Infantry come to mind as far as that goes. Luckily I haven't made anything yet with them, just tests.
Now, unfortunately I will probably have to share a lot of the portraits (mostly Germans) across games, however backgrounds and the like will be changed for each setting.  And I will of course do all the battalions and regiments etc. Whether or not I will be able to keep the quality across titles remains to be seen but I will do my best. It is going to be a colossal amount of work, already has been. For the Germans alone I have created and discarded over a thousand portraits. LOL. Every time I think I have one down and start producing keepers, I stumble across a better pic, or I adjust some color to better fit the portrait into the overall look and I have to redo a ton of work. I just replaced the Heer Infantry yesterday, now I have to redo 374 that I had already made, as well as the SS Arm Infantry. I have done this a couple times already. But getting it right is what's most important. Perfection is what I am aiming for.
I don't know how long it will take. Getting the right pics is painstaking and laborious as hell. For every good one I make I throw out five. But this style will be the definitive version of my portrait mods from here on out. As I complete them I will remove the old versions from the planet. I'll start threads in the corresponding game forums as I progress.
Welp, that's about it. I was gonna keep all this to myself and wait to surprise everyone, but I have been working in a vacuum for a month and it feels good to talk a little bit about it. Especially as I have been going full bore, night and day for two weeks straight. I Hope you guys like what you see. I think it's the best work I have ever done.

Mord.
 

Sorry Falke... any link that requires me to sign in to yet another group and have to remember yet another password aint gonna get clicked on.

(Not being part of the Facebook generation that is so happy to expose everything about themselves to the world, I don't understand why intelligent folks like being funneled into private groups that now have info on you.)

My only deep desire is for a CM:Afrika Korps game.  I know BF has been disinterested in that idea.  But, it always seemed to be a very popular topic with the wargamers I used to know.   
And much of the work re models and uniforms may already be done for CMFI and its modules.  We already have CMSF's desert terrain and buildings.