Ryujin

I agree, probably better to end up to flanking too far than not committing to the flank enough. It seems like tanks across the valley should be able to cover dead ground in front of your ridge top units and be supported by them. Kinda hard to tell, but seems like the short COA would be difficult to directly support from the ridge without exposing those units? It also looks like the short COA could get you bogged down in mopping up all the infantry trickling towards the town when there's armor to fight.

Don't think so, I think he's shooting APDS so even at close ranges the T-64s are going be tricky to take on frontally. He's got to get flank shots or overwhelm them with a lot of hits.

The big advantage for the soviets in this period is they have loads of ATGMs in their units. Having IFVs with missiles (BMP) while the US doesn't (until the Bradley shows up) gives them a lot, as well as having a lot of ATGMs that are both very capable and also much more portable than TOW. The other US ATGMs are functional, but not great. ATGMs would have to be fired from a halt, the main advantage of the soviets having so many is that they're hard to avoid and counter if they stop and use them. There's always the risk that at least one of those ATGMs will get a shot on you and if you suppress or destroy one ATGM, another will get a shot off. West Germany however should have a lot of Milans at this point, including on Marder IFVs. So the relative ATGM balance is going to depend on which NATO country they're up against.

Arma3. VBS is the military version, but both are extremely similar. DCS also has some military contracts, the A-10C there is pretty much their same product for the air national guard. Usually military customers don't want to pay for graphics since they don't really care. But not because that's a limiting factor in simulation. There's nothing stopping you from making a simulation with good graphics. Scale might limit you, but that's not really a factor unique to simulations, but any large game. Military simulators aren't fundamentally different under the hood from CoD. They aren't made of magic. If the only thing making it a simulator is user rules and nothing about the software, then it follows if I did room clearing drills imposing realistic rules in CoD it is now a simulator? I think we found your military simulator with CoD graphics...

Yes, computers have limits, however there are different aspects to performance. Improving the visuals isn't zero sum. Shock Force 2 for example tends use maybe 10% cpu utilization and ~30-40% GPU (which seems a little high for what's on screen) on my 2700X/2060 super. Even with CM not being on particularly modern or optimized tech, we aren't at any risk of maxing out what current PCs can do. While CMx2 didn't run particularly well when it came out, improvements in hardware have at least compensated for rough optimization. If tactical integrity depends on the users for you, then why are you worried about anything compromising it? That said if the tactical simulation only comes from the users, then it's not really a tactical simulator? Something like ArmA3 with a bunch of real people and a radio simulation mod of teamspeak is probably a better simulation of the tactics aspect and "integrity". Just you, binoculars, radio, and topographical map to explain your orders to people in real time. And graphics. Putting yourself in the shoes of every individual is precisely what compromises it. If Private Jones spots something you as the CO/BN commander don't know that. You don't know what transpired between Private Jones and his squad leader. You only find out sometime later IF it gets reported to you up the chain of command. Hopefully it's reported accurately and it's not the third report of the same tank. Things like being able comb through the replay to know exactly what Private Jones sees as soon as he sees it for an instant, even if Jones isn't in contact with anyone and dies 10 seconds later dramatically changes the tactics you use. There's no uncertainty, no inertia, it's about as realistic as if the TO&E had laser rifles for the US in WW2. I like replays and I like that the game has customization, but those should be acknowledged as compromises. There's no reason to oppose changes to improve player experience solely on the basis of preserving a non-existent tactical purity. Also graphics wouldn't effect any of that under the hood calculation anyway. A lot of changes probably wouldn't even add meaningful CPU load.

Doesn't seem like the T-64s were turned out or hull down. There's a lot of factors here so it's hard to really tell the spotting, but the T-64s shouldn't really be at a disadvantage with optics AFAIK. Being turned out, sitting in position, crew quality, and information sharing probably favored the M60s shooting first. Once they shot the T-64s didn't really have anywhere to go but slowly backwards, so they kept getting hit. The T-64 is a good tank, but I don't think the outcome seemed that strange in this situation.

"Don't compromise the game as a tactical simulator" is always an odd argument. Making the game look better isn't going to compromise it. Adding better performance, models, animation won't change how it works under the hood. The other aspect is tons of things already compromise it as a tactical simulator for user experience. You get a god perspective of everything, instant perfect information, replays, and a flawless robotic level of command and control. CM is a great strategy game with many realistic aspects, but getting too concerned with "tactical simulator" doesn't make a lot of sense when you're playing ww2 scenarios with the tactical control of the borg and doing things that would be literally impossible for a real commander. A few changes for user experience aren't going to make a big difference.

Tanks are high maintenance. However this is probably in man-hours/hour so it's not quite as bad as it sounds.

A large part of this is also that they use their own engine like many wargames, which means that they have to create and maintain any engine features themselves. While there are advantages in being able to make it however you like from the ground up and not paying royalties, I'm not sure that's worth losing out on all the tools, rendering, and performance benefits for a small team. Realistically I'd expect any graphics or performance upgrades are going to be super painful for them. Maybe someday we'll get a tactical wargame on built on modern tech.

Keep in mind this is a compact 1970s radar. Good radar imaging, especially something you could afford for/mount on an IFV is pretty recent. Probably would be an unusable mess without doppler.

Nope didn't know, thought the M1IP armor carried over to the base M1A1, with the A1 being the new gun and fcs. Thanks for the correction, do you know what changed?

there's 4 generations of armor so that chart isn't quite correct: M1 M1IP/M1A1- New turret M1A1(HA/HC/SA/FEP) - DU armor M1A2 - Even better DU armor

Some other things. M60's commander's cupola while being a weak spot does have some advantages. -Has higher magnification, can reload the .50 from inside. M1 is lower magnification (good for most shooting, not good for spotting) -Has a night vision sight and big forward unity sight, M1 commander doesn't have his own night vision sight. -M1 has better vision blocks, where as the ones in the M60 are tiny. While both tanks don't have great visibility by modern standards, from SB experience it generally feels like you get a bit better visibility from inside with the M60 as the commander. In the M1 you're pretty blind turned in. In CM you'd probably want the commander opened up all the time, unlike the later M1A2s. Fire control wise, the M1 has as digital fire control where as the M60A3 TTS is built on top of old tech. M1 is going to be better at lead, firing on the move, stuff like that. If you look at the M60A3 switchology, you can see there's more manual steps. M1's gunners sight is one of the highest things on the tank (on the roof, no commanders cupola), so you can peek from turret down with it without exposing much. Never really tested how well this works in CM.

You can aim above the target for most of the flight and then bring it down before impact. It goes wherever the crosshairs are pointed.

Sure, but those players also likely play balanced, fairly symmetrical quick battles without night, bad weather, or mud. They could continue doing that as much as that wanted regardless of the other options and it wouldn't make sense to remove mud and bogging because of them. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I like interesting conditions and challenges that force you to change things up rather than have every battle in ideal conditions.

The other possibility is that they go through with using tactical nukes per plan and count on MAD to prevent any NATO response beyond battlefield tactical nukes. I have no idea what the decision making in NATO would have been, but an all out nuclear response to an invasion of West Germany means accepting the loss of their countries. When it comes down to it, would the president be willing to give the order and effectively end the US over West Germany? I can't really say the battlefront interpretation is wrong, but it seems like there's a lot of ways this could go.

You can also find some real footage. Chieftain: vs an A2

The steel beasts wiki has a bunch of screenshots of the various sights. http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbwiki/index.php?title=M1A1_(HA) http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbwiki/index.php?title=File:M1A1(HA)_TIS_10x.jpg http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbwiki/index.php?title=M1A2_(SEP) http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbwiki/index.php?title=File:SEP_TIS_50x.jpg

The scape goating was to avoid talking about the army choosing to use out of spec propellant during it's introduction and the all around maintenance disaster. The M16 wasn't expected to replace an MG (except for that attempt at an LMG version).

Pretty sure none of the soviet equipment. The US on the other hand should have access to some thermal sights from the start of the time frame on the M60 TTS and all the TOW launchers (I think), becoming more common later. So pre M1/M2 that should be a big advantage for the US to counter the latest soviet armor. I feel like you're going to be relying on your TOWs a lot.

Slowly circling over soviet troops in a cargo plane would be a real short flight.

I think they were also getting M16s in mid 70s (though I'm not sure how widely issued vs galil)

yes nothing inspires confidence like an armored tent.

I think the current timeframe is before artillery delivered mines. But maybe in an module or some air dropped mines if that's within the scope of a cm battle.

There was a lot of scrambling, they go from the M1 to the M1IP with a new turret in 1984 before the base A1. The A1 upgrades (HA/HC) then got more armor on top of that. The original M1 seems to have about half the turret armor of something like an M1A1HA .