ratdeath

That sucks my friend. It’s the luck of the draw. Hopefully we can get some etiquette established around ghosting tourney oppos and ruining their chances.
i saw that some of the top games did not finish and I find that a little weird. 
 
Better luck next time. If u are needing some CM,  I’ll offer you a PBEM.

Today I was busy re-installing all my old CM games in Steam, transferring keys from BF to Matrix to Steam.
I run them on a laptop, and because of my old eyes my laptop displays default 1920x1080 at 125%, but this gives very bad rendering especially of the UI text.
Going to the CM.exe properties -> compatibility tab -> change DPS settings -> ignore system scaling, gets rid of the bad character display in the UI caused by the 125%, but it makes the text too small for my old eyes.
So I edit display.txt to "1366 768 0" (choose a resolution that is possible in your windows display settings, otherwise it doesn't work).
Now I have decent quality graphics with large UI text.
I had done this successfully for CMSF2, CMRT and CMBS, but when I tried to do it with CMBN, I got a video driver error at start, because I had forgotten to modify the cm.exe properties, and the video card couldn't find a valid resolution.
Just posted this here so it may help some other poor soul.

This is Part 2 of a short series giving a summary and overview of the tactical fundamentals and principles behind WWII German and Soviet armoured unit tactical drills and combat formations commonly used in 1944 using examples from Combat Mission Red Thunder to illustrate key points. 
Part 2 Covers how tank formations helped German panzer commanders control their units, stay aware of potential threats, and use their firepower effectively. It follows on from from:
Part 1 which covered the difference between formations, drills, principles and tactics?
 

Thank you George MC.
Done the first one with a successful result, just started the second one :)

EDIT
Thanks to @Monty's Mighty Moustache who picked up a briefing error in TTP No2. This has been amended and the attached zip file below has the updated file.
This series of three missions is very loosely based on several of the ‘Tank Battle Problems’ detailed in the Nafziger publication ‘the German Tank Platoon in WWII: Its Training and Employment in battle’.
Whilst the series of ‘problems’ outlined in the book appear to be pre/early war I have updated the fundamental concepts to a later period in the war i.e. 1944.
The key intent of these tank tactical problems is to give the player new to using German armour an opportunity to use them in a more doctrinally ‘correct’ manner within the limitations of the Combat Mission game engine.
This series complements the German halftrack (SPW)/panzergrenadier training lessons in the CMRT Battlepack 1 where the main focus is on using SPW in Combat Mission.
For the tactical problem series the German player uses Panzer IVs. This tank was used in significant numbers during the war and though starting to become outclassed by 1944 by the Soviet T-34/85 was still a significant part of the tank strength of most panzer divisions. Though Panthers were slowly starting to form the main panzer strength in the panzer regiments. The player cannot rely on superior armour/armament to bully through this series as the Panzer IV’s armour is comparatively speaking, inadequate. 
All the missions are best played as German Vs Soviet AI. 
There are NO German AI plan. 
Each tactical problem has a ‘Tactical Top Tips’ at the end of each briefing (under ‘notes’) which may help the player new to using tanks in Combat Mission get the most out of them.

Plan is when done to convert them to Soviet versions so players can contrast.

If you get a chance to give em a whirl I'd appreciate any and all feedback thank you.



You download  https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-red-thunder/cm-red-thunder-add-ons-scenarios/cmrt-german-tank-tactical-problems/
 
 

Anodai was my opponent in round 2. Our pbem started late. Then he would send several turns/day, and sometimes he would go a week without giving any news.
He is a good player, tactically aggressive. Beware he is without morale: I saw his guys take money and watches from the corpses of my poor murdered pixeltruppen, I have proof.

This is Part 1 of a short series giving a summary and overview of the tactical fundamentals and principles behind WWII German and Soviet armoured unit tactical drills and combat formations commonly used in 1944 using examples from Combat Mission Red Thunder to illustrate key points.
Part 1: What is the difference between formations, drills, principles and tactics?
This video defines these terms and may also help the viewer differentiate between a potentially bewildering array of terms and puts them into context with German armoured doctrine.

Hi all,
Just wanted to say hello and I hope I get to play some PBEM against some of you when I get better.
I'm a huge history fan, and also a fan of Graviteam Tactics: Mius Front, but it never quite did what I wanted. Games like Gates of Hell: Ostfront, looked gorgeous but were tactically shallow experiences that in no way represented the battles I've read about in books. The closest I could get was warg ames like War in the East 2, which still were fairly abstract. 
I found out about these games a few weeks ago and...Well, with the Steam sale I've purchased CM:BS, CM:SF2 and CM:BN, plus all the respective DLCs. I've been wanting games like these for years. Can't wait to start building the hours. I've clocked up 30 hours in two weeks which, for me as a 37 year old with a job and girlfriend, is fairly extreme.
 
Cannot believe I didn't try them sooner. 
 
Nice to meet you all

Ha! I drew Elvis for the next round !!
Prepare to die my friend !

This but more. I was playing a massive PBEM many years ago and noticed I had a whole platoon routed and couldn't figure out why. I loaded up the last few turns and watched just that platoon until I could see what happened. 
I had smashed one of my opponents units and then sent in a whole platoon to go clear them out. Rookie mistake but I sent them all to move at once figuring they would cover each as they ran, no need to area fire to keep the fleeing enemy fleeing. As my platoon was filtering into his postions, the squads got a bit bunched up. One enemy stopped fleeing turned and fired a single shot. It hit one of my guys who was about to throw a grenade. He falls, the grenade bounces into the pile of friendlies. It goes off and down go a bunch of my men, including two others who were also just about to throw grenades. As they fall, their grenades also land at the feet of their comrades and a bunch more guys drop. One single bullet and he took out half a platoon.
I watched that single turn so many times because I just could not believe what I was seeing. Had we been playing real-time I would have missed it but instead I was able to go back a few turns and see what I had missed. WEGO only ever since.

What Centurian52 said. 
WEGO also facilitates the learning process.  In real time you will often miss something that happened on the map.  2nd Platoon lost two tanks while you were concentrating on 3rd Platoon.  With WEGO you can rewind and observe every platoon for their minute of action. The turn can be replayed until you hopefully understand why/how those two tanks were destroyed. Then with that lesson learned you adjust your tactics and play on. 
Also replay facilitates screenshots. Replay, change the angle, zoom in until you get a cool screenshot of the action. 
A screenshot from each game since, as a CM addict, your going to eventually get them all.....😎 
CM Battle for Normandy

CM Red Thunder

CM Afghanistan 

CM Shock Force 2
 
CM Fortress Italy

 CM Final Blitzkrieg 

CM Cold War

CM Black Sea
 
Goood luck!  

Welcome to the forum
My gaming journey started with Gunship (C64), Project Stealth Fighter (C64) & Red Storm Rising (C64).
Combat Mission is the best tactical wargame, in my humble opinion.
If you haven't discovered them already there are some great video guides made by Usually Hapless.
There is also the Battle drill site by Bil Hardenberger.
 

Welcome to the forum
My gaming journey started with Gunship (C64), Project Stealth Fighter (C64) & Red Storm Rising (C64).
Combat Mission is the best tactical wargame, in my humble opinion.
If you haven't discovered them already there are some great video guides made by Usually Hapless.
There is also the Battle drill site by Bil Hardenberger.
 

My first six months with the Combat Mission WW2 titles were almost definitely the highlight of my PC gaming life... and I started gaming a long time ago, like the Doom and Falcon 3.0 days in the early 90s, with DOS bootdisks, etc., and there've been several addictions along the way. CM was the most almost out of control addicted it ever got. 
In fact, I remember taking a secret trip / vacation when I first got CM (2014/15 for me) and locking myself in a hotel room for eight days just so that I could play it constantly and scratch that overwhelming itch. It was bliss! Hope it's that for you as well.

Hi All, 
First post here, I'm a 44-year gamer who plays a bit of everything but my main interest is anything WW2. I've been playing Gary Grigbsy War in the East, Steel Division, Panzer Corp, Hell Let Loose, and pretty much anything related to WW2.
Took me until 2 weeks ago to actually hear about Combat Mission (probably did but never took note). I took the plunge and picked up Battle for Normandy and have already clocked up 120 hours and barely seemed to have scratched the surface. 
I am so amazed at how low profile this game is considering how addictive and rewarding it appears. I am already installing mods and now pay little interest in graphics, UI, and presentation. It really takes me back to a golden age when you actually bought a good game, book, or film and indulged yourself in it, and keep going back to it! 

So I believe the term you are looking for is superfluous: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/superfluous
Not “redundant”; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundancy_(linguistics)
You are also pivoting on your premise to simply be argumentative, or at least that is how it appears.  I thought I was “redundant” because you were all discussing spotting between different vehicles.  Now it is buttoned/unbuttoned.  This is an old-school Internet forum ploy of niggling as opposed to actually presenting any facts to support your position - attack everyone else’s without any real logical framework.
So the OP, sounding like a new guy, came on the forum and declared “CM spotting is broken!”  We have seen this post perhaps a thousand times in 20+ years.  The post is an emotional one and that is fair.  Invariably some old timers jump in and try to help out.  VAB just did and posted some controlled test results that show what we have also known for years - CM spotting has pretty reasonable means but wide outliers.  The outliers represent the effects of warfare on human cognition and perception.  I have done dozens of these tests myself, as have many others.
And then we get old timers who just want to grind some old axes and be rude.  They are not here to solve anything, nor do they put in the actual work to demonstrate their position, because if they did they would get the same results as VAB.  They invariably play Reddit games etc until things peter out.
But you are correct, we were talking about unbuttoned…even worse for spotting in some circumstances.  You see here in the back room of CM we have more than few combat veterans that know exactly what it is like to have someone try and kill them on a daily basis.  If one is unbuttoned, unlike the Sunday driver, you are exposed to the environment and specifically to having severe trauma projected onto your head and upper body.  The human reflex to this is to look around quickly…furtively and anxiously.  This means that one’s concentration is not great and depending on the situation a spotting outlier is likely going to happen.  Ivan missed the big tank in the field because he was too busy looking for the sniper in the trees.
So here is what you can do to be helpful beyond simply being rude and attacking everyone in some weird strategy to make your point.  Go run a series of controlled tests - different vehicles, buttoned/unbuttoned etc and them come back and we can look at them.  I would suggest you start with trying to replicate the conditions the OP posted at the start and see where they take you.  
Less noise, more work (I should put that on coffee mugs).  

Just a quick post to reassure you that I am still working on this. However, Age Of Wonders 4 dropped last week and I've spent all my game time playing that and will likely be playing a lot of it for some time to come. I'll be working on this in the evenings in the future as I don't generally 'play' games then. It's also good because it prevents burnout from being a thing.

Ok, pre-Alpha disclaimer so details are subject to change but this is the first map in the Canadian campaign "On the Weser" - got big plans for this one. A Pete Wenman original:

Just southwest of a little town called Boffzen and south of Hoxter (From Google Earth):

Blow up of Canadian AO with rough zone of this map:

Hello ChatGPT, who is John Kettler?   John Kettler is a name that is associated with conspiracy theories and alleged government cover-ups. He claimed to be a former Defense Department contractor and intelligence analyst who had insider knowledge of secret government programs, extraterrestrial life, and advanced technologies. He gained a following online by sharing his theories and information through his website, blog, and social media accounts.
However, it is important to note that there is no independent verification of his claims, and many of his theories and stories have been debunked by experts and fact-checkers. Some have also raised questions about his background and qualifications. Therefore, it is advisable to approach any information or claims made by John Kettler with skepticism and critical thinking.

Hello ChatGPT, who is John Kettler?   John Kettler is a name that is associated with conspiracy theories and alleged government cover-ups. He claimed to be a former Defense Department contractor and intelligence analyst who had insider knowledge of secret government programs, extraterrestrial life, and advanced technologies. He gained a following online by sharing his theories and information through his website, blog, and social media accounts.
However, it is important to note that there is no independent verification of his claims, and many of his theories and stories have been debunked by experts and fact-checkers. Some have also raised questions about his background and qualifications. Therefore, it is advisable to approach any information or claims made by John Kettler with skepticism and critical thinking.

I've been playing around with reshade recently and have been getting some pretty nice results for the most part. Besides the reshade, these pictures feature a handful of mods, such as the DDR mod, the US OD reskin, as well as S-Tank's excellent MERDC reskins, to name a few. 

Any way to fill in for "NO SHOWS"?

I left the password blank for the battle. I meant the password for logging in to PBEM++

Still painting it.

Some Cold War love of recent PBEMs of @Bartimeus scenarios..