Lethaface

+1   In CMCW a simple mine plow for both sides would be a great addition IMO.  During the Cold War many of the rotations at the NTC involved obstacle breaching.  Obstacles and breaching was a significant element of how units trained and thought they would fight.   

Well, before blaming all your problems on the designer of the scenario, maybe you should evaluate the skill level you are playing at.
I have not finished the battle, but here is where I left off at. I still have a hour and 33 minutes left in the battle.
My losses are at 68 men, the Germans at 194. 
I lost interest because of the ease of the battle at this point.
 
I thought the map to be well done, the challedge to be good and the oppotunity to use  the wasp  as very enjoyable since they are a key to the success of this mission.
If I do ever finish it, I for sure see no problem with getting to the final objective and keeping things  in my favor. So, how can there be so much varience??  The designer cannot solve that problem unless, they started creating 4 or 5 versions of each battle, set for different difficulty levels.
 

There's a book called No Triumphant Procession that covers this battle, with a good deal on the fighting in Rethem. This battle as designed hews close to the actions depicted, down to the placements of units and rendering of the map.
The battle is a question of whether or not a player can do better than the UK force did.

Mounted assault



 


 


 
(Close) Encounter in the dark


 
Just as he was about to throw a frag grenade, the rifleman got hit. This were some bad news for his leader cowering next to him.

 
 
A halftrack formation gets blown to bits by one well positioned US 57mm AT gun.

 
Remember: Enemy artillery can be your worst enemy but can provide good cover too.
Without the previously created crater of the enemy artillery, this fire team would have been blown to bits.

 
"Herr Leutnant...wouldn´t it be wiser to spread the weapons of our fallen comrades around the squads ? They all just have those old bolt action rifles and...."
"God damn it, Feldwebel Heinrich ! When I say that you give the sniper rifle to the machine gunner, I mean it.
Don´t you dare question my leadership !"


 
 
Advance through the smoke.


 
A bit of posing for the Wochenschau.

 
"Hans, you said we should go the right path but I haven´t seen no friend nor foe for hours. Where is the front ?"
"Shut up Klaus and let me think !"

 

Why did I do a weird little scenario like 'Das Hochwasser'? While researching likely battle locations I came upon the picture below. Operation Grenade, the US crossing the Roer river. Conditions looked so miserable that I wanted to try a scenario to match.
You know those famous WWII Bulge battle photos of tanks covered in heavy snow? That snow happened after the battle in January. Photos were taken once combat photographers dared to return to the field. What came after the snow? Torrential rain that melted all the snow cover, flooded the countryside and made forward progress... uh... difficult. To add to the misery the Germans also sabotaged two Roer dams upstream. So, I concluded, this title needs an engagement on flooded ground. 😬

There isn't a listing for the big maps I made for the DF module included anywhere, but I'll attach some images of each them here for some visual reference for people looking to use them for their own purposes. These were either chopped up for the campaigns, QB's, and for the Rethem scenario that I made. There's a good deal of territory that wasn't used, as well.
Rethem:

Cologne/Koln:

Heister:

Kleve/Materborn:

Remagen:

Kranenburg:

Erft Kanal:

Elsdorf:

In the sense that a minute passes between when new orders can be given in WEGO. But that's not really how actual orders delay systems work in games that implement them intentionally (at least not in games that implement them well). The point of a delay isn't to inconvenience the player, but to model how real communication works. The delay is supposed to be based on the amount of time it would take for a message to travel from its point of origin (the overall commander), over the available communication channels, to its intended recipient. So if the overall commander is a company commander, and the player decides he wants to send a platoon to take a hill, the delay would be the amount of time it takes for the company commander to transmit his orders over the radio (or via voice if he's close enough, or via runner if the radio is destroyed/jammed) to the platoon leader, plus the amount of time it takes for the platoon leader to pass on his orders to his squad leaders. Any good orders delay system has no choice but to assume that the player is only role playing as one officer, the overall commander of the battle, so that there can be a point of origin from which the delay is calculated. If there is no point of origin, then the delay is arbitrary and effectively meaningless. Any arbitrary delay, which is not based on the amount of time it takes for a message to travel through the available communications links from a point of origin, does nothing to improve realism (which is probably why CM2 very sensibly abandoned the delay system from CM1). And an orders delay system can't be implemented unless AI leaders under the player (platoon leaders and squad leaders, if the player is the company commander) are self-sufficient enough to make some basic decisions without any player input at all, since the system would make micro-management impossible.
One neat thing about an orders delay system is that it opens up the possibility of units being cut off from player command and control. If a platoon's radio is destroyed, it is out of voice range, it is out of line of sight (so no visual signals can reach them), and no runner can survive the journey, then a player might find themselves completely unable to issue orders to that platoon. The AI platoon leader would have to act on their own initiative alone, without any player input. Which is something that can happen in real life.
Another neat thing is that the player would have no way of ensuring that the message reached all of their subordinate AI commanders at the same time. So if they want their subordinates to attack at the same time, they will need to set a start time for the attack that is sometime after they can expect all of their subordinate leaders to have received the order. Which is also how things generally work in real life.
Going a step further, it looks like General Staff: Black Powder will be implementing an information delay system (I'm not sure if that's actually what they're calling it). So the player only knows what the overall commander knows. They do not get to see an enemy unit appear on the map the moment any of their troops spot the enemy, but only after a message about the enemy unit can travel up the available communication links to the overall commander. This system should allow players to get a better sense of the fog of war as it exists for real commanders.
Again, in any good delay system, the delay should not be any arbitrary number. It is the amount of time it takes for a message to travel from a point of origin, through available communication links, to an intended recipient.

It is a bit rude to imply that my opinion doesn't matter because I haven't gone up against a human opponent. It might be fair to suggest that my opinion matters less because I haven't played multiplayer yet. But to suggest that the value of my opinion is zero? That's just ridiculous. And if I change my tune after I have gone up against a human, then I'll cede your point. I don't think I will though.
I may not have the direct experience of how other people play (though again, lots of people have posted their multiplayer matches to youtube, so it's not like I haven't seen people abuse the target command). But I know how I play. And I know how real armies have fought over the last century. Allied WW2 doctrine and Soviet Cold War doctrine were both very firepower-heavy. They would bombard a tree-line, flatten a town, and pump HE into a building now, and find out whether there were really any enemy troops in those areas later. Partially inspired by real-world tactics, my own play style is very area-target heavy (mostly target-briefly commands, since when you combine those with waypoints you can get each unit to fire into multiple suspected locations each turn). The only thing unrealistic about it is that the AI doesn't do it back to me. If you can light up a known or suspected enemy position with heavy firepower, and don't, you're doing it wrong. I fully expect my opponent to take the same view. And I fully expect to take a hammering.
I'll always remember something that Pvt Webster (of Band of Brothers fame) reportedly said to a replacement who was reluctant to fire his weapon, because he couldn't see any targets to fire at: "You never see them. Shoot where you think they are."
I don't want to imply that there is nothing unrealistic about the way the target command can be used. Of course units can respond too quickly and too accurately to situations they shouldn't even be aware of. But frankly the same is true of every command. Units move into the right positions to support each other and to facilitate your plans far too promptly and precisely for troops who don't have a telepathic link to their commander. The truth is that you can never have realistic command and control in a game in which you are basically playing as every single officer and NCO simultaneously. If you want realistic command and control you need to implement and orders delay system. And because the delay needs to be based on how long it takes for the orders to be transmitted across the available communication channels, they need to have a point of origin, a single officer on the battlefield from which orders are originating and the delay is calculated (if the delay isn't being calculated based on a point of origin, then it's just an arbitrary delay that isn't based on anything in reality). You would cease to be every officer on the battlefield. That is possible, and has been done in some games. And it can really help to give you a sense for the difficulties and complexity of command and control on a real battlefield. But the tradeoff is that you lose any role in the small unit tactics being employed by your forces. You can only macro-manage. So it wouldn't really be Combat Mission anymore.
So really, an orders delay system would be the solution (again though, that comes with tradeoffs, and it wouldn't really be the same game). Eliminating the target command is just ridiculous. You would be "solving" the issue, without really solving the real issue (units respond too quickly and precisely to their commander's will), while making it impossible to execute real tactics and making the game far less realistic overall.

Any unit can deactivate a mine or IED. 
 
Once. 
 
H

No its not, its part of the game. Opposing forces quite often fire on one another without seeing each other. Often referred to as suppressive or harassing fire. Although it does give the player an advantage vs the AI since the AI doesnt do this.
But if you dont like area targeting thats fine too, find an opponent that will play by this odd rule. Just dont expect something like this in any tourney.

I made this a few years ago, your screenshot brought it to mind

It being the weekend, I thought I'd post another screenshot. This time of the much-requested Ram Kangaroo. This vehicle turned out to be a pleasant surprise in the game. Bullet-proof all-terrain troop transport and protected close infantry support with the mg subturret. The 14 man carrying capacity is a bit misleading, that number includes tank riders clinging to the engine deck too.

I had pulled a bunch of screenshots for the guys but I don't know which they're going to use. So I'll post a couple of my favorites here to whet your appetite.
First, a tank I lobbied hard to get into the game - uparmored Sherman! One of a number of late war M4A3E8s that went through a field modification program that literally doubled the bow armor (which is now thicker than the Jumbo's). They acted as substitute/additional Jumbos in field units.
 
 

Here's screenshots #2 and 3. Maybe they'll eventually show up on an official screenshots site, maybe not. Late war M4A1 Sherman 76 and Pershing during some QB city fighting. Battling Jagdtigers
 

Heavy metal sounds like it indeed!  Good! I guess there are still more minds of similar 'desire'.

And although I always enjoyed the beta AARs I won't mind unspoiling these myself 

Thanks. More than 70km2 of maps to fight over in this Battle Pack. I'm still creating two more smaller maps for two scenarios. Using a lot of BIGOT maps from 1944 and aerial photos for reference. Some master maps will have variants that will also be provided with the historical German Fortifications placed and ready to go. (<-- That took a while...)
As per last year's bones on the pack, geographically the fighting is focused on the Utah Beach area itself and the area heading south towards and beyond Carentan. All scenarios/campaigns occur between 00:05 hours on 6th of June through to the evening of the 13th of June. Don't expect all of them to be brutal slog fests, particularly the D-Day ones where the Allies at times had significant advantages. I'm going for more of a focus on narrative and experiencing that first week coming off Utah Beach rather than slug fests designed for competitive tournament play. (Master Maps are there if you want to create your own matches though). If you play the pack chronologically and come out the other end content and with a greater appreciation of the challenges the forces faced, then I've done my job.  
The content in this part of the Normandy theatre, though popular, couldn't be created by BF as part of the CMBN base game given the absence of Fallschirmjager and Waffen SS forces in the WW2 titles at the time.

A long time ago we did this in Talonsoft's (and then John Tiller's) East Front 2.  The remains of German forces joining with the US, British and other 'Western' allies to fight the 'refusing to stop' Soviets.  Great fun and LOTs of armour, even if I prefer history to fiction.
So I'd give it a +1 too.

Why not both? I find the best learning comes from a variety of sources (in my case books, youtube, and simulations). The quality of the military history content on youtube has reached really spectacular levels. They usually have much higher research standards than traditional documentaries. Real Time History isn't even the best of it (as much as I enjoy their content, they tend to repeat common myths a bit more often than most of the other channels I go to, so their research standards seem to be a bit more on par with traditional documentaries). There is Eastory, Drachinifel, Military History Visualized, TIK, Military Aviation History, Usually Hapless, Battle Order, The Operations Room/Intel Report, Kings and Generals, Forgotten Weapons, The Chieftain, The Western Front Association, GI History Handbook, and so many more that I'm sure I'll remember in a few minutes.
No source is perfect, and I've caught all of these channels making the occasional mistake. There is just so much misinformation out there that it's impossible for even the best historian to filter out all of it. That goes for books as well. The format that the research is presented in has no effect on the quality of the research, so books will contain as many errors as videos. I was just reading James Holland's book on Normandy, in which he repeated the myth that the Bren was extremely accurate and the MG42 was extremely inaccurate (they actually seem to have roughly the same accuracy, about 4-5 MOA). I doubt anyone could say that James Holland isn't a good historian. There are simply so many myths out there that it's impossible for even the best historian to catch them all.

That would be so cool - take my upvote

That is because Hollywood has likely warped your understanding of what SOF does.  It can be argued that the core strategic functions of SOF are sensor, signal, weapon and integration. In this context UKR SOF are signalling.  By removing a few Wagnerites from the gene pool in Sudan Ukraine is signalling that it can 1) project power internationally, and 2) will take this war international as well.  This sends a message to both Russia and the rest of the world.
The overall effect is that Russian forces are not safe anywhere and are all fair game.  This will give Russia pause as now its frontline is no longer Zaporizhya, it is wherever Russian military (or paramilitary) are standing. This projects enormous un-decision onto an opponent.
It is working because we are all talking about it.

Well, we cannot be sure. If global warming, which looks to me like an exponentially growing problem, or these wars turns out to make huge parts of Africa uninhabitable, we can expect the amount of asylumseekers and refugees to grow by millions and millions. And that will most certainly fundamentally change Europe. And maybe, perhaps, even global order.
Maybe not. But there is also no certainty the war in Ukraine is going to change the global order. Even if Russia would conquer all of Ukraine, which I personally think is impossible and way, way waaaaay more unlikely than the Africa uninhabitable-doomscenario, that wouldn't necessarely be challenging global order.
It would change life for the Ukrainians, very nastily so, but the West and the Russians and the Chinese and the rest of the world could continue hopping along in the same stupidity as the world does for the last decades. (Centuries? Millenia?)
And societies are as ignorant as individual humans, they (most of 'm) only realize that we should have done something to keep our luck/fortune/well-being, when it has been taken away from us.
I don't know if it can be a bit of a reassurance, but in the foreseeable future millions, or maybe even billions, of people are gonna discover that what people in Gaza and Ukraine are discovering now: the "good times" are gone, and it will take decades for them to come back again. But eventually they probably will.
 
And I do appreciate your postings. Typically human behaviour from me, perhaps? Hardly noticing or appreciating good or even brilliant postings, but immediately reacting to a post that SEEMS to call for criticism, so I can vent my opinion that, of course, is "much better" and "wiser" and what not.  I could make excuses for that behaviour, but I think we all suffer from it, from time to time.
 

@Vacillator: Not at home. I only allow myself the hour around midnight to relax 😉 Work on the BP will continue on January 11th 👍

That's really uncalled for.
My impression is that you, and a lot of people, are angry because you think Battlefront is slow to release products. But are they slow? Do you have a baseline? How long should it take? Is that even a good reason to be angry? I encourage you to go back to page 30 and read Lethaface's comment about the holy trinity of quality, budget and time (seriously, comment of the year, everyone needs to read it). The TLDR is that the commitment to quality means that they need to be flexible with time. If their commitment was to time, then either budget or quality would need to be flexible. I know I play Combat Mission because it is an extremely high quality game series. You may be angry that it takes them a long time to develop a product (again though, does it? compared to what?). But I know I would be absolutely furious if they started compromising on quality in order to crank products out faster.
I can't see behind the scenes, so I don't actually know exactly when their team starts development for a specific product. It looks to me like ~2-3 years may be about the normal development time for a Combat Mission base game or module. So, is that a long time? We'd need some sort of baseline in order to answer that question. Certainly Combat Mission is more detailed than most games. But a good starting point might be to ask how long it normally takes to develop a video game. And isn't game development normally measured in years? If a game came out after only 6 months of development wouldn't that be considered a blisteringly fast pace?
Edit: And I know that Yahtzee Croshaw developed 12 games in 12 months. But first, those were extremely small games, and second, the man was on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time he finished.

Calm down, guys. BF is the best and already gave us so much. I believe they will continue to do so and we should be grateful and supportive.