Ryujin
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Posts posted by Ryujin
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On 12/29/2021 at 12:04 PM, Phantom Captain said:
Haha! But this is exactly what happens when you use them as the Soviets would. I am learning to stop thinking in CM "casualty terms" and just grit my teeth and realize I am GOING to lose men. Horribly. It's pretty excruciating watching a whole squad (the screams!) brew up in a BMP and just shrugging my shoulders and continuing on.
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.
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8 hours ago, zmoney said:
Not saying that this is what you have observed but maybe. I am actually quite surprised by the dragons effectiveness as well. I personally have witnessed stray shots but generally if it hits, it destroys.
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.
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30 minutes ago, domfluff said:
A point I'm actually going to contest a little - especially in Cold War, which has plenty of multi-km maps, and plenty of ATGMs and armour which can't reach across the entire map, there's plenty of room for mounted manoeuvre - indeed, this is sometimes really important.
It's true that there are examples where that is the case, but it's definitely less true for CW than the other modern titles.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.
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1 hour ago, domfluff said:
One of the curious things about that field manual is how much it emphasises fighting from the M113. Mobility is a huge part of active defence, so there is some logic to that, but it's probably always a suspect idea in Cold War.
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.
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3 hours ago, Redwolf said:
What about vision to the side and rear?
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.
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There's a hatch on the roof for loading.
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9 minutes ago, Chibot Mk IX said:
we got to live with what we get.
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.
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1 hour ago, Hapless said:
Have to say 1a: Hasty Attack felt like a bit of stress test.
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.
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Yeah more general behavior settings would be nice, but new orders are the most likely thing to be doable in the current tech/UI.
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41 minutes ago, FogForever said:
The M901 and M60a3 have thermals. I don't know who else. And high moisture conditions should degrade thermals but I don't know if modeled or not. Also I don't know if the M60a3 or M901 need to be buttoned to take advantage of their thermal capability.
M60A3/M1/M901 have a thermal gunners sight so turning the commander out shouldn't matter.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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8 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:
I definitely agree that in general aircraft do need a bit of love in CM. This is purely anecdotal so take the following with a grain of salt, but in CMSF1 aircraft (especially helicopters) tended to loiter on station more and engage area targets more frequently. However in the current engine it appears that they are much more likely to wave off if they cannot find a target right away. I've noticed this in all the CM games where aircraft are involved.
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.
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7 hours ago, Redwolf said:
How do you run a recoiless rifle in a AFV turret? Does it have a dedicated exhaust port?
It's not recoiless in this setup, just low recoil with a small charge launching it out of the gun before the rocket lights.
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You may also need to go look at the material in blender to see what the specular is like. I haven't done any importing to CM, but that's my guess looking at it.
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59 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:
Have you ever retrieved .50 slugs? They tumble. The Bren was too accurate compared to the MG42 for example. It is comparing apples and oranges. In CM you can't do it but in the HMG role you can use it as light artillery in the indirect fire mode. Tumbling rounds going through the human body make one hell of a mess. Oh, it is a way around hollow point rounds.
I thought you were talking about them tumbling through the air, which you def don't want since unstabilized they're going to go all over the place. Tumbling on impact is different.
Still not sure where too accurate is coming from other than some sort of WW2 myth. The recoil is going to give you some good spread and you could always induce more spread if you want. Having accuracy is going to help if you wanted to actually hit something. Especially if you're trying to use it at very long ranges off a tripod.
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13 hours ago, chuckdyke said:
The Bren for example shot the same .303 round it was too accurate for an LMG.
I'm pretty sure no one has ever complained that their LMG was too accurate. If you want to spread shots around a beaten zone you can do that yourself, you wouldn't need to rely on dispersion from the gun.
Think about it for a second, would you really want an inaccurate LMG or tumbling rounds? It's only going to limit your effective range.
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3 hours ago, DMS said:
In Russian it is called поражаемое пространство. Applies to semi-auto fire also. May be danger zone? Zone where trajectory stays in target height. If you aim at 600m below target, you hit 1m height targets in 90 m long area. (From 510 m to 600 m)
Danger zone is correct the correct term for the area where you'll still hit the target above or below where you were aiming. Also called swept space sometimes.
1 hour ago, Erwin said:In the game, I rarely allow my AK rifles to fire at more than 250m arc. The Reds rarely have as much ammo as the WAllies (the US certainly) and since accuracy goes down, more than 250m I figure one should be using heavier weapons like the ubiquitous BMPs.
Yeah, I think a lot depends on how much ammo you're willing to expend for what effect. With the well stocked units I tend to do a fair amount of massed fire at longer ranges, even if it takes a lot of rounds a bunch of guys with rifles can suppress and get some hits out around 400m. The effect per round is pretty terrible, but it works when you need it and ammo isn't much of an issue.
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1 hour ago, LukeFF said:
It's more to do with the shorter barrel. Firing effectively at more than 300 meters in reality with a 5.56 mm carbine is not easy.
Sure but generally its considered to have an effective range of 500m (effective range depending on the definition of effective). By that stricter standard of effective the M16 probably shouldn't have a 550m effective range in game.
The M4 definitely is a 300m rifle that can be stretched to 400/500, but the main issue is in CM the effective range tends to be a hard cutoff, not a suggestion, for AI firing on their own. So probably better to err a little higher.
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Obviously effective range is somewhat subjective, so it depends what they decide to put in and you can get different numbers from sources (I think the M4 only getting 300m was probably too short).
CMSF marines manual says M16 with ACOG is 550m against point targets, so I'd expect an iron sights M16 to be ~400. I'm assuming the M16 got it's full effective range because of the optic, where as the M4 was reduced from 500m to 300m because of the aimpoint.
I'd also expect firefights to be more like CMSF, everyone has intermediate caliber automatic weapons.
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2 hours ago, Rice said:
Ok maybe Bil has a chance lads. I called it too early. Also, since the cluster munitions' spotted died, does that mean they are completely out of the game? That's going to be a big hit to Bil.
IIRC the artillery will eventually cancel on it's own if it can't contact the spotter. But I think it'll take the artillery a little while to realize no one is answering and then he'll have to call it again (I'd guess he probably has other teams that can spot). But probably too late with how quickly things are developing.
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We haven't seen Bil's Air or ICM really used yet and that could thin out the Soviets BMP herd a bit.
Kinda hard to keep track, but I don't think there's that many undamaged T-64s left. He probably needs only a few hits on them to start turning it around, if his tanks live long enough to get them. Some smoke would likely help.
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Yeah, I don't think I have them anymore. Probably not the .PSDs I think. What period/unit where you looking for?
Does Soviet tactics work in Combat Mission?
in Combat Mission Cold War
Posted
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.