Ryujin

To clarify I wasn't talking about target sharing or it not working in CM. Obviously any tactics will work fine in CM as you can never lose the ability to get info from or order a unit when they go out of C2. I'm talking about comparing real doctrine to CM tactics and why things in real doctrine can feel off in CM. Your example actually works well for my point though. You're ordering around those squads with no contact to any command. Something a WW2 commander literally cannot do. Having telepathy tends to skew the perspective of real tactics when they're applied in CM. Real doctrine can't rely on that and so it tends to seem simplistic in CM where we get used throwing units spread all over and little need for pre-planning as we can instantly react to anything.

When comparing how tactics work in CM, also worth noting that a lot of doctrine is done for command and control reasons, not necessarily disregard for casualties or theoretical best tactics. Command and control really isn't a factor in CM, you have prefect instant command of everyone and real time accurate information. You can dismount a radio-less squad and coordinate them with no problems, where as dismounting and spreading is going drastically reduce control for an actual soviet commander. Once you dismount and push out those infantry, trying to react or change orders is going to be a long, difficult process which is a big part of why soviets wouldn't want to dismount if they could avoid it.

I think one of the other factors is the armor protection is fairly uneven on on something like a T-72/T-64. While there are really tough spots like the pockets of composite in the cheeks, there's a lot of areas where even a little change in angle will let a Dragon through. In practice while the best armor of T-72 is impressive for the time, the actual coverage of that best armor isn't great so stopping rounds can be a bit more of dice roll than on an M1 or similar with big consistent blocks of armor.

I completely agree with that, the maps are larger for sure. But CM still inherently operates on a smaller scale and generally focuses on a specific point in the battle where there's an attack and both sides fight it out. The size of CMCW maps helps for cold war battles, but even the big ones are still on the smaller side for mechanized battles. For example in something like Steel Beasts I'd tend to keep my infantry mounted a lot more as you can end up doing maneuvers across what would be entire CMCW maps to position for fights and have to cover a lot more ground in those fights. So you'd spend more time mounted vs dismounted in the actual engagement. CMCW isn't wrong, but all of the battles are going to be focused on a bit more restricted settings where you're directly being attacked so fighting mounted is going to be a bit less necessary/practical where as the manual is going to cover a wider range of situations so it'll get a bit more emphasis. You're not going to be doing a lot big multi-km moves to get your reserves to cut off an attacking force or defend in depth in CM.

Also keep in mind that CM maps are still pretty small and unit dense, so you're generally getting a more narrow set of situations not suited to lots of driving around in your M113.

Turning out will improve the commanders view to the sides and rear, especially as many of these tanks have pretty crap periscopes. I meant it won't effect the thermals as the commander only has an extension of the gunners thermal sight at best and the gunner is already using it.

There's a hatch on the roof for loading.

However it feels like there's some reasonable improvements they could make within existing tech. It seems worth it to try some new orders considering how awkward the time based work arounds are and how frequently needing to fire and reverse comes up. I've used the pause based approach a lot, but it's really not user friendly depending on guessing the right timing to spot and engage.

I'd bet everyone who played it has a bit more appreciation for the LAW. Didn't expect it to be that hasty going in for sure.

Yeah more general behavior settings would be nice, but new orders are the most likely thing to be doable in the current tech/UI.

M60A3/M1/M901 have a thermal gunners sight so turning the commander out shouldn't matter.

With some of the discussion of using tanks and hull down positions I was try to think of something simple to improve controlling armor. One thought is maybe an order that is essentially the anti-hunt, where instead of stopping movement on spotting an enemy, it starts reverse movement (or just quick move for infantry). So you could for example give a move order up to a ridge line and then a "withdraw" order back behind cover. The vehicle will move to the move order and sit there until it spots something. Once a target is spotted it'll complete any current action like a short stop to fire, then reverse to the withdraw order location. You could queue a couple moves and withdraws to have the vehicle pop up, shoot, and reverse away. Might also be useful in ambushes or with a hunt order then withdraw to allow scouting.

The Capt has some good advice, here's a few other thoughts. While your M60's don't have smoke grenades, don't forget about smoke rounds for the main gun or artillery smoke. Try to make sure your tanks have good intel on where the enemy is before peeking, infantry can pass info to turned out tank commanders. Pay attention to who has thermals (TOW vehicles) When you do move into a position, don't just sit there, pop up for a moment then back down. Unless I'm sitting defensively with great fire superiority, I tend to be scooting up and back as needed to feel out the situation. You can do all the annoying spotting stuff to the enemy as well to be out of LOS before they get shots on you. The lack of a hull down order that has the AI move as need and reload in cover is unfortunate, but you can roughly time it out once you get a feel for the spot and engagement times. You can use very short peeks from cover to test a new position or to do a bait and switch, with one tank peeking for a second to draw attention and withdrawing, followed by other tanks moving up to engage. You don't need a total victory in every mission, pick your fights if you can.

I'd imagine a looking through up through trees with what I presume is a fairly small wavelength radar is going to be a mess. Radar can't see through solid objects, trunks will be an issue for sure and at a small wavelength my understanding is branches and such would also give you clutter. The radar is to find the target at long ranges day/night/low visibility and give tracking data on the target to aim the guns.

Probably all the thermal optics, spotting anything from an A-10A isn't going to be easy as it's just eyeballs or a maverick camera. But I agree that aircraft should keep trying unless the request is canceled or they're attacked by AA, I don't think your CAS would just shrug and leave if they didn't see targets right away. Also need a one pass haul ass option to drop everything on a point or line like artillery or on the first target in an area.