zmoney

UPDATE
It seems like it works again with version 21.12.1!

This pic was taken in my back yard. Got tired of the neighbors trying to spy while I sunbathe.

That’s it thank you.

I left a positive review (I know, I know, you are surprised). 

I thought the DCS World and various flight sim forums I frequent were the place for jet wars but apparently I have found my new Mecca lol
This is great 😅

Since in the modern titles - CW, SF2 and BS - spotting to extremely important and technology driven, information on the spotting ability of the unit - especially vehicles - would be exceptionally useful.
The place for it would be on the Defenses Report panel under the armour rating where the info on smoke etc currently goes.
With a bit of remodelling the icons, I would think an indicator of the times zoom available (eg 3x or 10x) to the unit, IR, or Thermal optics would be great to know. It would allow players to get more into the technical details of the equipment and game, and get the game under control a little more.
Note I'm using names of the GUI panels from the CM manual so BFC can understand what I'm suggesting.
 

I actually joined the Chinese army yesterday I was so inspired. Ship off next week.

Me 2...!  See you on the cruise ship!   

First rule of CMCW cup is, you don’t talk about CMCW cup!!!!! Looks like he past the test.

Squeeze bore?

There's lots of fun to be had in the editor.
The first use I made of the editor was to edit CMBN QB maps. Being such an early release, a lot of them came to look a bit featureless compared to later maps, especially the rural ones, so I would add fences, bushes, footpaths, vary the ground cover and so on, just to make them prettier to play on.
Another really fun thing is to make QB maps from Master Maps. The newer titles have excellent Master Maps (CMRT/FR is my favourite for this) - and you can find interesting tactical challenges in them, and throw together a really fun QB map in less than an hour.
 

I'm surprised that I managed to complete "Czechmate" scenario from the second attempt.

While I do understand where a lot of the complaints are coming from and I don't judge people for wanting things, I find it amusing, in a cute and innocent fashion, to read year after year. CM has always been artesanal and boutique in nature. It's the original indie game. Mainstream is mainstream but CM is a counterculture institution. So many businesses have sold out and lost their way when expanding. 
Something happened to Games Workshop and Warhammer. The original crew created a nihilistic, fatalistic counterculture hobby with some decent social and philosophical commentary. Now it's a soulless, faceless corporate juggernaut that churns out bland Disney-tier material. They became a parody of themselves. A similar thing happened with the Simpsons. Counterculture became mainstream.
CM is an amazing game but the slightly anachronistic "stick it to the Man" attitude is what elevates it to such a special place. But then again I'm a weirdo, so there's that.
 

Over the past few weeks I've been extensively testing the firepower of different American, British and German rifles, SMGs and LMGs in CMBN 4.0. I originally wanted to make a complete series of tests before 'publishing' the results, but I understand that there is an update in the making that will, as a minimum, adjust the rate of fire of some weapons, so for my work to have any impact, I should show them now rather than later. I am posting in general CM discussion. Although the tests were CMBN-specific, I believe that the same patterns in weapons effectiveness will be found in other titles as well.
Method
13 lanes, target troops in foxholes (4-man U.S. medium mortar ammo bearer teams, regular, fanatic, no ammo). Walls are used to separate the lanes over the last 40 meters only, to prevent ricochets from affecting the results. In each lane, one firing team (regular, normal motivation, no leadership modifier) engages the target troop unit using a target arc order. The firing team is so set up that there is only one man in the team with the tested weapon, and he is the only one firing. Ample ammo is provided from supply trucks so the firing unit does not run out of ammunition during the test. There always is a leader in the team with binoculars to aid with spotting at long distances. 13 firing teams with the same weapon are tested in parallel at distances from 40 to 600 meters. The test runs for 10 minutes or until all target troops are eliminated, whichever comes earlier. The total time in action for the 13 teams (between 0 and 7800 seconds) and the total casualties (between 0 and 52) is evaluated. Each test is repeated 26 times, therefore each weapon is tested 338 times at each distance.
An example of the test file is found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/d5b7qoex6cmigm0/Weapons effects BAR (Gunner) 400m.bts?dl=0
In total, there are 106 files like that one, each run 26 times for up to 10 minutes. About 10,250,000 rounds were fired by the firing teams and 72,530 casualties taken by the target troops.
Distance to target is the average distance of the 13 firing teams to the target action spot (as the firing team's action spot is 8 m wide, this needs to be adjusted for)
Firepower is here defined as the average number of casualties suffered per unit time by the target troops. Minor wounds do not count. The unit is bpm, "bodies per minute".
Rate of fire is taken from ammo consumption during the test, averaged from 26 instances. The unit is rpm, rounds per minute.
Accuracy is the number of casualties per round fired. It may not fully correspond to the number of hits per round fired as one casualty may receive multiple hits, especially with automatic fire. The unit is bpr, "bodies per round", multiplied by 1000 to make the numbers easier to interpret.
Tested weapons
MP40 (Leader), Sten Mk II (Leader), Sten Mk IV (Leader, Soldier), M1A1 Thompson (Leader) - distances 40-192 m MP44 (Leader), MP44 (Soldier) - distances 40-320 m Karabiner 98K, Gewehr 43, Lee Enfield No 4, M1 Garand (all Soldier) - distances 40-320 m Lee Enfield w/scope (Marksman) - distances 40-600 m MG42 LMG, Bren, B.A.R. (all Gunner) - distances 40-600 m [I am going to break up this post here, results come next]

The Forty-Eighth Minute
Objective ROT
Here you go Sgt Plucky, have some of this!

The scouts continue to advance and get a spot in the trees outside the objective.

It's another AT rifle team. I wonder if this is the same one who fired on me from the scrub at the start of hostilities and retreated?

A Tiger and a Panther are moving into firing positions.

The Panther starts firing this turn on the reverse slope at the western end of the village.

Next turn the other panzers will be moving up and start to area fire on the objective. The scouts will stop and engage the AT rifle team while the rest of the zug catches up. The SPWs are going to be moved up too.

NAI5
The AT rifleman is taken out very quickly by a burst from a SPW. I must admit I'm impressed with the accuracy of my troops thus far.


The contact icon is still there so I assume his pal is still alive. I'm going to start advancing towards the treeline net turn.
SITMAP

Still quiet on the right, the attack continues on the left. As I identify units in the objective this map could get messy so I'm going to provide a close in view whilst the attack is underway.

Things should start heating up nicely now. It'll be interesting to see how he reacts to these attacks, if at all.
MMM

The Battle Continues 

Bravo

The battle continues! Bad news, another AT-14 team is spotted on the left side of the map behind defilade by Bravo. Luckily, they won't be able to get a shot on my men unless they reposition. Bravo will keep a close eye on them and report in.

The BMP-3 that was harassing Bravo's men reappears, pouring down coax fire onto SSG Raney's position. Luckily, his grenadier SPC Bannon was able to send a 40mm HEDP round onto the front of the turret. This round partially penetrated the turret, but more importantly scared the **** out of the BMP-3 crew. 

Bravo's 3rd platoon takes contact from a SLA sniper across the bridge leading into town. Other than that, Bravo's sector has no other significant events.
Delta

Back to my company. The first spotted AT-14 is knocked out by my first platoon (led by 2LT Valente, a great armor commander), specifically SGT Lerner's M1A2 SEP. 

The last major event of the second minute of combat is the spotting of a second AT-14 on the mosque hill by my men. Luckily, the 107mm mortars are doing a great job of keeping the crew's heads down. Unluckily, from what my men have reported, the AT-14 crew is unhurt. Good thing I have tanks
 
Had a bit of a hiatus between turns, but I should be back to posting updates pretty regularly! In the meantime, enjoy some action shots of us boys from TF 1-8.
 

(My company is so close to helping Bravo, but we can't rush in and get murdered by those AT-14s)

(SPC Bannon taking aim with his M203)

(PFC Olson laying down fire with his M249)

(SLA paratrooper shooting at Bravo Company men with a Krinkov)

(SGT Lerner's M1A2 SEP engaging an AT-14)
 

Wanted to jump in real quick... 
There is a lot going on in a combat formation, spotting is only one aspect and one of the many things they juggle at the same time.  The way a real world formation works is they spot for activity in a sector or general area, each part of a formation having a different assigned sector, then as potential areas of interest start to pop up (in CM terms FOW icons) these formations can conduct a detailed focused search of those areas to determine what, if anything is actually there.  This takes time.  Just like it often does in CM.
It is rarely fast, unless the enemy units are moving or firing... then units get identified very fast indeed.  Works the same in CM by the way.
I truly believe that CM has spotting about right.. not perfect and there are always odd situations... but its close enough to be a very good representation of small scale combat, in my opinion.
As for Steel Beasts.. I have played it many times though I sold my license several few years ago.  I also preferred to play it as a wargame, but I had a lot of frustrations doing so that I would prefer not to get into on this forum.  Suffice it to say that SB is a wonderful game that has a lot of wow moments, but it has a much different focus than CM.  They are not really comparable, other than the fact that they represent combat in 3D... the approaches are miles apart.  I would be curious to know how detailed the SB spotting system actually is.. but to be honest, the fact that many say they prefer it, and that spotting is easier in SB than CM tells me that it is probably more abstract than you might think it is.  In my experience if some aspect in a simulation is easy and works as expected, that simulation is probably flawed in some way.
Bil - Co-designer/creator of CMCW

Canadian DLC confirmed

Well both sides seem to be fudging with poor quality tanks to be honest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War_tank_formations
 
The Canadians are reporting 195 Cougars and that thing was barely an armoured car.
Can’t speak to that scenario, some are phone booth fights by design.  We have tried to really max out map sizes where possible and are doing so again for the DLC (cant say where but we are making maps).   A 4x3 km map (terrain dependent) is not a bad fit for a Coy TF when we factor in ATGMs etc.

so sometime ago I started working on adding more infantry units to the battle. it took me a while to figure it out because I never knew how to use gimp. So far I've added the 10TH Mountain Division. I've worked on combat shirts, belts, updated Camelback, black gloves, rhino mount (still trying to figure out UV Mapping to turn it black) new boots, IR strobes on the back of the ACH, Rolled Sleeves, and combat patches. ill post the drop box link and you guys let me know what you think. honest feedback please.
 
If you like it let me know what other units i should add and i will add them
 
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eiykk9j50epl4gt/AABYRbGfwwYDX2A40MPCH-yta?dl=0

How different do you think this thread would have gone if you'd run those tests and included them in your original post?  A lot of these 'XXXX is broken - fix it Battlefront' threads go the way this one has gone because of the way the original assertions are made.  As others have pointed out, and yes it may be a misinterpretation of your intent, your posting history makes people think that your intent with these threads is to further an agenda that there is a Battlefront conspiracy to make the Soviets deliberately weak.  This is why I talk about the presentational aspect of your initial post.  You may be right about T-72 spotting, but I'll let others who have greater knowledge and like doing these sorts of tests continue the discussion.  I will also be pleased if you are right and a fix is applied in a future patch.
I personally have not seen much of the T-72 in-game because it wasn't in GSFG at the time and so the stuff that I've produced, which I prefer to bear some resemblance to reality, doesn't have them.  I think I tested an early version of MikeyD's Between Two Autobahns which had them but didn't see anything that looked particularly odd because of the ground layout and how I put my plan together.  I did not expect the Soviet force to have many opportunities to get eyes on and target me and pleasingly enough that is pretty much what happened.
Personally I agree with others that Steel Beasts vs Combat Mission is an apples and pears comparison.  Of course there is some common ground in what they're simulating but they are fundamentally different beasts 😉 .  Steel Beasts I think is probably peerless in its simulation of being an AFV crew member, without the joys of track bashing, getting knocks and bruises from solid bits of metal, living and working under someone's armpit and a heck of a lot of noise, and its sweet spot is AFV vs AFV combat.  It does other things less brilliantly.

If that's the case it makes absolutely no bloody sense whatsoever. 

Boom roasted hahaha

Brittle armour plate and it looks like it wasn't just late Ausf G's, here's an Ausf A with a chunk missing:

 

Yeah, right. Sure. Let’s make up more things that aren’t true.