Canada Guy

Although I think the terms 'left' vs 'right' are inadequate and lead to narrowmindedness, this description is far from accurate or complete.
Anarchists are generally considered / see themselves as extreme left while those that want state enforced rules  for discrimination and oppression of specific groups of people (fascists) are generally seen as extreme right.
FYI large parts of Western Europe have been or are successful social-democracies for a long time. 
To not go off topic too much conceptually left is more about social equality while the right is more about each men for himself. But then there are many more perspectives. Generally the 'extreme' variants of either spectrum are considered to be conceptually similar if implemented in practice by a state. It always leads to autocracy / dictatorship.

Anyway to describe right as freedom and left as control is far to simple besides plain wrong.
 

Worth noting a broad but extremely important distinction: 
Communism s is based on the idea that men are perfectible. 
Fascism is based on the idea that men are defined by their intrinsic characteristics. 
Both resemble each other in application but those distinction above leads to very significant practical differences.
One obvious example would be that in a fascist state, private property is allowed to flourish as long as it serves observes the ethnonationalist priorities of the regime. Conversely, in a communist state, private property is only allowed to the degree that it does not contradict the ideological ones.
Another obvious example (which obscures the left/right distinction) is that Communist states are based very firmly on an ideological foundation. Fascist states only require a more or less finely graded identitarian set of rules and then can be fairly pack-rat about everything else. 
The above examples show how crucially important those basic foundations are because they have enormous downstream effects...not least who gets killed/invaded/pogromed and why.
I would strongly suggest reading Robert Paxton's "Anatomy of Fascism" for a fuller exegesis of the topic.  

Yes. Bolstered by immigration. 

I don't own CMBS or any modern titles. Too intense for me. Plus I have no knowledge of the equipment vs "learning" about WW2 from long long ago <since age 5???>. I have active duty kids and right or wrong some part of my brain shudders away from modern warfare. I hope this hell ends soon. 
Anyway, the above photo made me want to make a mod for you fellows who play CMBS to consider using. I suppose the file nomenclature would have this be for the CMBS UI "portrait ukrainian armor.bmp"...? Please rename if I am incorrect.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sshijv6ox3gpjy8/portrait ukrainian armor.bmp?dl=0

Hey all, I might get in trouble for this but I'm gonna do it anyway.
While we are all very concerned about the deaths in UKR it's also important to remember the other slaughter that's been going on for two years.  Another covid wave, very contagious, is on the way.  I know this crowd skews a bit older so lots of folks here are more at risk.
If you aint vaxxed, get vaxxed.  If you aint boosted, get boosted.  Only 50% of americans are boosted, though 75% are vaxxed.  Immune system resistance wanes over time, particularly w Pfizer (moderna better in this respect).  At Omicron peak we were losing ~2500 americans a day (~4000 per day at the pre-vaccine covid peak last year).  That nearly all those omicron deaths were PREVENTABLE is a tragedy.  And that tragedy is driven by propaganda, much of it spawned from Russia and percolated thru facebook.  So if you want to give a big FU to Putin, get your shots! 
I don't want to lose any of you excellent Combat Mission aficionados.
Hong Kong has a huge percentage of old people who refuse to get vaxxed, it's gonna be a bloodbath.
Thanks, I will take my vacation now.

After reading this religiously, I am always impressed with the level of knowledge and access to detail in this forum. I am again 15 pages behind so hope I am not regurgitating the same discussion.
This war though has caught me off guard with how bad the Russians are performing. I did not think they were up to the standard of the US military but . . .  I wrote my Masters Thesis on the Soviet army in Afghanistan and did see evidence of a change in tactics and improvements in performance over the 10 years as they implemented needed reforms, especially if you compare their performance in the first years of the war against their performance during the Apr 1985-86 offensives with their enhancement of CI/Air mobile units etc.. My mistake was to assume that improvement is continuous and that the Russian force today was much better trained than in the 1980s based upon the lessons of the past. What I see though are the same problems; relying upon an untrained conscript NCO corp, fighting a guerrilla war with no real interior lines, and allowing the enemy to attack supply lines such that eventually 35% of all combat power was devoted to securing those supply lines. The Soviets always fell back upon increased intensity of firepower to compensate – exactly what you are seeing in Ukraine. “It was a tactical fight that demanded tactical flexibility [and] the Soviets had to reinvent tactics in the middle of the conflict’ [Lester Grau]. They don’t even have a sympathetic puppet regime to absorb much of the casualties.
There is a good article in the Atlantic with an interview of a foreign volunteer which paints much the same picture.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/american-volunteer-foreign-fighters-ukraine-russia-war/627604/
I see there being a need to adjust CM to take into account a nations model of operations where a top down model should be penalized if C3 is not rigidly maintained way more severely than one that relies upon a professional NCO corp (most Western armies, Germany 1939-43 vs Soviet/Russian/Arab forces). The Soviets/Russians seem to be paralyzed when C3 is broken and they wander in the woods with disastrous consequences. Another book that I really enjoyed was 'Armies of Sand (Kenneth Pollack) that goes over the same type of analysis and comes to very similar conclusions.

Machor,

The  missile sponge aspect is the least of the impacts. For starters, RuAF pilots get very little flying time, and their know-how toolkit is extremely limited in terms of what they can do. Free hunt is by far their worst historically in terms of fighter ops. It is, after all, the antithesis of rigid GCI (and these says, maybe MAINSTAY AWACS) control. Consequently, this requires the best and most experienced crews to fly the missions. These, of course, are the senior officers. Noticed how many of these guys are on the running dead and captured list? Not an accident!  These guys are already run ragged and now have a whole new unforeseen problem and a very angry customer screaming for relief from it. And. when people are tired and stressed, the already fundamentally dangerous act of flying a high performance aircraft becomes far more that way. This leads to crashes on the one hand and avoidable downings on the other.

Today's SAMs are not the SA-2s of yore and demand more more in terms of reaction time, proper CM selection and radical evasive maneuvers. Thus, the planes being flown by the best RuAF has in any unit fighting the TBs are not well postured to deal with UKR SAMs or even AAA, given how low the TB2s fly. 

But there's much more to cover.The Su-35 is, by Russian standards, an extremely sophisticated and complex bird, on par, say, with the US F-14A, at best, the F-14D. This is based on F-14 type (stolen) TWS radar, long range AAMs, etc. As of the late 1970s, the readiness rate of the F-14A was a mere 60%, a situation so dire that, in order to conduct strike ops, the US Navy had to rotate assignments between two carriers in the same battle group, with one doing nothing but strike, the other strike escorts and various CAPs. Yes, it was that bad! 

But remember, the RuAF squadron is 12 planes, not the 24 in the US Navy and Air Force, so there's far less resilience to any number of problems, including possibilities of cannibalization to keep planes flying. In turn, an entire aviation regiment of this type is 24 planes, one US squadron equivalent. The maintenance specialists are at regiment, not squadron level. And if an all-out effort to find and kill TB2s is the regimental combat assignment, that's where all the scarce resources and skilled people will be focused, sidelining most of the regiment as a result. In some ways, the Su-35 is even more complicated than even the F-14D, because it has thrust vectoring nozzles. All in all, the logistics and maintenance situation for an Su-35 unit is super demanding in peacetime and perdition defined in war. High tech is simply not the Russian strong suit, and there's much competition for technically qualified staff to keep high complexity, high leverage equipment operational. Those TOPOL-M COs, for. example.

Do you believe the RuAF is immune to the same systemic influences that have tires failing wholesale in the ground units? Do you believe that the Russian spare part situation is better than what the US has? Do you believe their supply chain is more efficient than ours? What is the RuAF fuel situation and near term forecast? How deep is the RuAF Su-35 level flight crew bench? What are the MTBFs for their FCS, engines, fly-by-wire, other avionics, etc.? 

All in all, it seems to me that Ukraine should do anything and everything to flood the sky with drones of every sort and cause the best RuAF units to wear themselves right out of the sky--in combat, in crashes by mechanical or electronic failures, exhaustion of flight crews, landing and takeoff accidents, not to cumulative wear and tear on systems and subsystems with far shorter service lives than, say, US aircraft of the same type. How well do unexpended missiles handle repeated takeoff and landing cycles? Crew burnout requires weeks of rest, might I add, to fix. The Soviets learned this the hard way in North Korea. But it's not just the aircrews that get exhausted, but the crew chiefs, techs, planners, tower personnel and more, with the resulting loss of efficiency, attention to detail, decision making and. more. The best pilots in the world can't fly if their crew chiefs and underlings can't function.

Regards,

John Kettler


 

I have decided to quit my job in order to devote myself full-time to reading this thread.

Logged. Thanks!

Having written my thesis on Soviet-Afghan War 79-89, I would love to see an update to this module, having watched 'Valley of Tears', I think I am a convert to Arab-Israeli Wars and now just having finished The Iran-Iraq War by Pierre Razoux, I am really torn - and then there is the entire Korean War that has been much ignored. The good thing about this entire Cold War Base Game is this is exactly what we have been asking for, but writ-small. There has been chatter about having one main engine for all CM games for years but this is sort of that concept but for the time frame of 49-89 (hopefully). We could see all four of my favourites released as modules and then mix and match. 
I ordered F&R last week, CW this week, and will need to figure out a way to tell my wife next week. 

There seems to be a little problem with labels for CM:Black Sea. I just installed (all the way up to v2.1) and the labels are crazy. In the quickbattle screen as well as the in game labels.
Combat force choices are JPz IVs, MG4s or Armoured Knights. 

My Bradleys are carrying 2 x King Tigers each (who knew they were so roomy) which my troops can aquire (turning out to be Javelins).
Has anyone ever seem this behavior before?
Jason 

I had to post this.

I have never seen 1 tank take out 4 targets with 1 shell. SU-85 vs 3 x Puma and 1 x 250/9

I had to post this.

I have never seen 1 tank take out 4 targets with 1 shell. SU-85 vs 3 x Puma and 1 x 250/9

I had to post this.

I have never seen 1 tank take out 4 targets with 1 shell. SU-85 vs 3 x Puma and 1 x 250/9

I had to post this.

I have never seen 1 tank take out 4 targets with 1 shell. SU-85 vs 3 x Puma and 1 x 250/9

I had to post this.

I have never seen 1 tank take out 4 targets with 1 shell. SU-85 vs 3 x Puma and 1 x 250/9

Okay, I know there are a lot of these getting released lately.. but I think mine are just a bit unique, vehicle icons are handled uniquely... when selected the icons flash blue for Ukrainian and olive for US units... 
 
Note that these are BETA.. I will be making adjustments, but wanted to get something out there for those of you waiting to try my floating icons.  I was going for clarity and ease of identification with this set.
 
If you download them and try them out please give me any feedback you like... I know there are some issues: for example the FOW icons, ammo dumps get the ammo bearer icon etc.. I need to adjust those for sure.
 
Grab them here: Bil's Floating Icons-BETA
 
Previews:
 

 

Thanks,
 
about making new threads I will consider it, eventually only for the final releases, while this thread could be used for previews.
 
PREVIEW modular buildings (HD)
 
vanilla building (modded dirt)

modded building:

Kieme CMBS modular buildings add on 1 (HD)
 
Important !!! this mod does not change any file of the game, it simply ADDs 4 new modular buildings types you can choose from the editor while making a completely new map.
 
Download link:
https://app.box.com/s/3whq3ye3oxl5k1ru6qsj7b68xyp0ffxx
 
Previews in previous replies.
 
Changelog:
-additional building (modern highrise, brown, light weathering)
-additional building (modern highrise, white, medium weathering)
-additional building (industrial concrete, light grey, light weathering)
-additional building (industrial concrete, light grey, with rollup doors, light weathering)
-dedicated new doors and windows for each
 
　
Note: this mod is in HD (2x the size of original textures), therefore it will ask more resources to your system and it could slow down your game.
 
Note to scenario designers:
if you wish to use the buildings of this add-on please remember that:
-if a player without this mod/add-on will use a scenario made using this mod/add-on as an option the said player will see the buildings in game but with one of the 8 original textures, being those modded or not..
-the roll up doors in building no.12 do not work in game, they are just aesthetics
-the windows seen on middle facades of buildings 9 and 10 don't work in game, but you can use the long windows + balconies) to match the facade and make it servicable -and yet visually pleasant- in game, see this example:
http://i58.tinypic.com/2j4cyae.jpg

Well, you're here now and apparently, you're a guy from Canada. Don't worry, I won't hold BLSTK against you.  
Now that you've found yourself, happy Combat Missioning

I do not even know who I am so if you know, please tell me. I was planning on visiting an ashram in India to find myself but I should have come here instead  

Kieme,
 
Is this just a hobby or do you do this for a living? I can only imagine the amount of time it would take me to get proficient enough to even attempt this.
 
These are great and thanks for the effort.

I do not even know who I am so if you know, please tell me. I was planning on visiting an ashram in India to find myself but I should have come here instead