womble

Sheer, unadulterated class 1 trolling of the Russians. The best thing is, they had to *bring* the wrecks because no Russian armour got anywhere near...

Any spotter (HQ or FO) will spot less well if they are hiding while the spotting rounds are falling. While Hide-ing, a unit doesn't Spot as frequently, so will potentially miss any given fall of spotting shot and take another round to generate the bracket (which it may also not see). If the unit is Hide-ing while you're trying to set up the mission, it will likely be prone and therefore unable to see the same range of target locations as it would be if it were not given a Hide instruction. If it can see what you want to shoot at, the Hide won't affect anything. They can Hide while waiting for the spotting rounds to start and any time the FFE has been called. Since Emergency missions don't have a spotting phase, they can Hide as soon as they have called in the mission. There are two aspects to the number of assets: number of batteries and number of tubes. Each battery has a number of tubes (usually 2-4) and an allocated number of rounds. The duration of a mission is somewhat indeterminate, but is measured, I believe in "rounds per tube" or "salvoes" so a given duration of mission will use ammo proportional to the number of tubes assigned to it. A spotter can combine eligible batteries into one mission, and each battery gets the same orders, so ordering a one tube mission from 4 batteries will send the same number of rounds downrange in the same time as a 4-tube mission from one battery, but the ammo expenditure will be spread across the 4 batteries. There may also be some subtle differences in the timing of the shell impacts. What to use, when is, unsurprisingly, situational. The more tubes you assign, the more rounds you'll get landing. The longer the mission, the more shells you'll get landing over the course of the mission, from start to finish. The more intense the barrage, the faster they'll arrive. A common tactic is to assign a "Maximum", low tube count (1, maybe 2) Harrass mission to an observer, since adjusting a mission is faster than calling a new one. This can be used to bring low intensity, so mostly suppressive, fires to bear quickly if you have a good perch for the observer, or a scattering of well-placed TRPs. If you want a position obliterated, hit it with a Heavy, Maximum mission with all available tubes. But be aware you won't have any ammo left on those assets for later. In general, specific missions are probably better shorter than longer. If you want to keep a position's heads down for a while, use low tube counts and longer missions. But it's very situational.

Aye, like any ammo selection (other than smoke), what shell gets fired is down to the TacAI of the element, so the 37mm has AP, HE and CAN options, and will fire what "it thinks is best" in a given situation. My experience says that the algorithm doesn't draw the line at the right range for the "HE or CAN vs Infantry" choice, and will fire its CAN at ranges where it is ineffective. So, yes, Target Light makes sure they only fire their MG "by default", and when I find the unit shooting at infantry, I'd cancel it if they're "close" (like "Shreck Range") and the CAN will be effective, or very far away when the AI will probably choose HE. If you're going into "close terrain", I'd even consider putting a short, circular TA on, so that it won't "plink" at distant targets (I don't think most CAN-equipped units in the WW2 title are good "plinkers" anyway This may change in later time periods (I think some 120mm-plus MBT guns get such rounds...) under AI control, but will respond with gropo-shredding CAN if infantry threats appear.

This makes me wonder whether the necessary quantity of HE could've been driven onto base by UKR SOF using faked Russian bonafides, and parked up or even unloaded as "legitimate resupply", all detcorded together to go off at once on either a timer or by radio control... Would "enough" HE make the wreckage of trucks undetectable at the crater locations? How much time would the subterfuge have had to have bought to allow the commandos to offload their little presents? Or could the SOF demo guys have arranged the "initiator" explosion from the ordnance already stored in place, cleverly combined together to make big enough boom?

Whatever atrocity Russia claims someone else is going to do, they have done already or are planning to do themselves. Their credibility is right there in the flushing pan alongside their chances of winning this war. Of course, the credulity of their intended audience is nearly as great as their believability is miniscule.

Like any infantry element that you want to remain unseen, use cover and concealment, Slow move commands from defilade into the back of concealing terrain. You can see out of "forest" from further in than you can be seen. Trees on their own are not good concealment... Make sure you put a short (generally circular) Target Arc on your observation elements (even scouts) and use directional, (even shorter) Target Arcs to set your element's facing once they're in position (you can generally go back to a circular self-protection Arc once they've settled down). I usually put a 25m-50m Arc on, just for self-defense in the event of surprises. If you do not restrict their fire, they will engage targets as if they are a rifle team... If they are seeking elevation within a building, also use Slow movement, or they'll be easily spotted. If you don't want to move them out of their hidey-hole as IanL suggests while they wait for their fire request to be processed, give them Hide orders while they're not needing to spot.

For comparison, the terminal velocity is faster than most WW2 tank shells...

"Someone dropped a cigarette" looks like sheer desperation propaganda. It's not even really worthy of the classification, given what we think we know about what really happened. Even if it was just one ammo store going up, what does it say about a) the quality and training of the personnel handling munitions (and by extension the whole RU armed forces), and b) the quality of the facilities in which the ordnance is stored? Neither of the answers to these questions could be considered "encouraging" news, or news to inspire the listener to avenge the dastardly actions of the Enemy. It just makes Russia look bad. That the mouth pieces of the regime have such a low opinion of their audience (to the extent that they believe the Russian people will mostly not even consider the first-order implications of clumsy smokers in explosives storage) remains incomprehensible to me, even with all the cogent explanations of how the "average Russian's" thought proces have been shaped over the last few centuries. They'd rather look like idiots than give the foe any credit at all. Sabotage is a more credible explanation that doesn't require the whole Ukrainian nation to be scarily competent, just that some (obviously mythical) "Ukronazis" managed to sneakily and unfairly infiltrate an installation with a large boundary situated in an area where such "cowardly" attackers could easily blend in... Do they have interns working the propaganda first level desk?

Try Googling "playing steam games on Chromebook"... Looks like you orter be able to, if you've got a Windows PC somewhere that'll play the game, and a fast network to stream it between devices. No help if the Chromebook is your only platform, but if you just want to be able to play from rooms where the tower PC isn't, it might suffice. Not tried it myself, so I don't know how well it works, but you can access some of the CMx2 titles on Steam, so it's a possibility.

Not to mention that they didn't capture Kiev, so why would they be meeting with greater success now they're not conducting a "surprise attack" and UKR is mobilised and has even greater Western material support? Sure, it's always wise to retain a cautious thread to your assessments, but this does seem overly pessimistic, beyond the point of "reasonable restraint", for someone who orter know.

This has to be a UKR patriot who stayed behind in his police unit with the intent of disrupting what he could, entirely according to the letter of the rules and regs, knowing that the RU troopers would be shoddy and breaking all the rules.

The comments (gTranslated) are suggesting that, given the hatches and the ladders on the side of the cylindrical superstructure, it's a tanker, not a TEL. So if that's true and it's been "working", it might be due a repaint but doesn't necessarily reflect the readiness state of the RU nuclear deterrent. Though I'm wondering what the camo net skirts are meant to be concealing... They don't do much to break up the outline of the thing from the sides or above...

Apologies if dragging this out isn't sufficiently on-topic; I'm just thinking that the psyops/infowar front is an important part of the conflict. It seems way past that, though. You can almost excuse everyone for "victory fever" on behalf of the Third Reich in the early part of WW2, but with this one, it's as if even drastic setbacks that obviously stemmed from serious losses are irrelevant, whereas expensive, tiny gains are "pivotal". It's like the "press" (or at least some of it) just swallow Lavrov's newest, pared-back declared war objectives (ignoring what the Russians said only weeks ago), and adjust their "war progress" assessments accordingly. Is it just that the "endless resources" or Russia automatically make any setback temporary (even if the response to the setback is trivial gains for disproportionate losses)? I guess it's a question that may not have an answer we can get at; the motivations and thought process of the newshounds are theirs to own, in the end.

This does seem to remain a particularly Russo-optimistic view on "getting their asses handed to them and barely getting out with enough of their hide to bother carrying on fighting" as seemed to happen around Kyiv and Kharkiv. I'm puzzled as to the influnces that seem to prevent the meedja from recognising these "setbacks" (to put it mildly) for the Russians as being significant successes for UKR. What is generating the disconnect here. You'd expect it to be the other way around, where the tiniest success by "the underdog" (UKR) who's pretty obviously fighting for Good and Right and Liberty against an Evil Oppressive Aggressor was hailed as the greatest military achievement since Dunkirk, but it seems to be the other way around: UKR major successes are ignored while trivial gains by RU are received as if they're fully accredited heralds of the Apocalypse. What is going on here? The "press" also seem to ignore the constant goalpost-shifting by the Russians, taking pronouncements from the Kremlins (they're like Gremlins but have nastier weapons) that "everything is going according to plan" as unassailable truth rather than the transparent Doublespeak that the record shows they are. Why are they doing this? Don't they remember 5 months ago? Who's pulling their strings to be this credulous in public? Is it Russian infowar success?

Do they actually? I mean, their whole house of cards rests one corner on the stone of "Evil Imperialist Western hordes will sweep across the border and burn the whole USSR Rodina, raping and pillaging on the way," (because what evils Russia says others will do, Russia's already done), but their military was a mirage in the first place, so they only need to maintain the illusion of having a conventional force capable of fighting an aggressive NATO, since that would maintain the status quo of an ersatz defense against an imaginary threat. So any real assets they had committed to defense against NATO can readily be redeployed into Ukraine (if they haven't already been).

Aye, Steve has said he's simply not interested in the Pacific, I believe. Now, if some competent, reasonable, keen and knowledgeable group were to present a cogent plan for them doing it (in the same sort of model as CW was done by an "outside" group), maybe that lack of interest could be sidestepped. The other "obstacles" would remain, however; I'm not sure it'd be a very fun game, personally.

They're getting ready to change sides. Paint an "A" over the top and you have the letters of "Azov"!

I think that the "organisation" that the truck is part of depends on its driver. Since the driver is part of the platoon, "automatic sharing" occurs between the platoon's truck and its mortar crews when the driver is at his post. Otherwise, you'll have to send some other element of the platoon into the truck to grab rounds, which will be shared with any nearby platoon elements. You should be able to tell whether the driver is the right one to make a truck supply "organically" to the platoon, as they will "highlight" when you select a platoon element. I would expect that you can find which truck the driver belongs to by mounting him into trucks until the one he gets into becomes not-"dismounted". However, you might prefer to not have the trucks share organically, since the mortars will use rounds from the truck until they are all gone, if you aren't on the ball. If, instead, you have "ammo carriers" acquire enough rounds from the truck for the shoot you want to make and keep the truck's rounds out of reach of the platoon, you can be sure the mortars won't use more than that. Don't know how many rounds a driver can carry...

The key word in the General's remarks is "permissive". The airspace in Ukraine is anything but a permissive environment. Such platforms would be coffins for their pilots if UKR tried to use them as CAS against RU's AD setup. They can't even use the high tech fast-movers or choppers over RU lines, as things stand, and if the AD is degraded enough to use these Air Tractors (the name does have a nice UKR vibe, I admit ), the jets that the UKR AF already has will be having a field day already.

"Better artillery". If your counterbattery assets can sit outside your opponent's offensive fire envelope and your detection and direction if their fires is fast enough, you can suppress their artillery, eventually (or very quickly, if you have lots of CB available. To some extent it's what UKR is starting to be able to do comprehensively with the advent of the NATO 155 SPGs and their excellent domestically-developed distributed fire control system. The new tubes outrange most (if not all, given the right ammo) of the RU artillery, and can hit RU guns before they can displace, often. At the moment, the destruction of the supply chain is having more effect, but when you get to the tactical level (where batteries trying to shoot at an attacking concentration would only be able to use their on-hand rounds anyway), the effect will only grow as NATO sends more tubes for UKR to deploy. The other way round, it looks like UKR's assets are potent enough to shatter or at least stall some attacking concentrations and agile enough to displace before RU counterbattery can be brought to bear.

One of the most computationally-intensive streams in CM is the LOS/Spotting model. Every pair of eyes and vision block is assessed for what it can see on a dynamically frequent basis. I would imagine the Unreal Engine has methods for doing the assessment, since it has always supported "relatively" competent AIs, so their senses will be modellable. But then, historically, it limits the number of combatants to a few score. That can't be a "graphics" issue, since the LOS calcs can be done on a wireframe and entities can effectively be considered points or simple polygons. I have wondered whether, with the advent of native ray tracing in video cards, it'd be worth handing off the spotting algorithms in CMx3 to the GPU, since they're starting to be optimised for that.

WeGo or NoGo... One of the primary USPs for me is the 1 minute turn and infinite replays of the turn results. If it doesn't have that, it's not a competitor to CM, in my lexicon.

My read would be that they're hunting enemy Air Defense elements ("...threats to air power..."). So maybe* using drones and ELINT to spot AD systems and using indirect fires (either their own, or other units available to them) or possibly air assets, properly briefed and equipped for the SEAD role, to neutralise them. I would imagine the first step of any SEAD attempt is finding and identifying the targets/threats. * IANA RAF Regiment trooper. I know two who are, and one of those was a Forward Observer who was extensively trained in solo infiltration. Maybe that's the skillset they're imparting: "sitting in a tree with a radio and a pistol..." as my acquaintance put it.

Oh aye. Proper "liberated", those guys. Totally welcoming the RU with open arms and flowers in their hair. It's what they've always wanted. Further proof that the Russian expansionism is more closely related to Nazi ideals of lebensraum than to the unification of Germany after the wall came down.

If you're the one giving the Canister-equipped unit orders, I've found in the past that they have a tendency to let rip with the CAN at the first enemy infantry contact they see, so it may be a good idea to consider keeping them busy with Target Light orders so they don't waste the scarce shotgun shells.