niall78

I play the Russian side a lot. This is vital information I wasn't aware of. Thanks for the tips antaress73.
I find all sides ultra lethal in CM:BS. What sees first usually kills or cripples first.
Modern era requires a bit more patience in general compared to the WW2 titles. Sneaking small forces into positions to try and get spots on at least some of the OPFOR before you advance and being prepared to wait till your force generate those spots. Any major movement without reconnaissance in the battles I play usually end up with my units burning after a few turns. Even as the US non-KIA hits will often degrade an AFVs fighting ability dramatically - I've lost numerous main guns for instance on my Abrams to missile teams I never even spotted during the action.
I like Bradleys but they die very easy. I keep them well back over-watching from the backfield with their TOWs. I also dismount any forces inside as soon as any type of contact with the enemy is possible. This is vital for any type of APC or IFV from any of the forces in the game I feel. There's an ever present threat of mass-casualties any time a full infantry hauler is exposed to any type of AT fire. Artillery or air-power makes such full haulers dangerous even when traversing non-exposed parts of the map in CM:BS - this is a big difference from the WW2 titles where air and artillery are a lot less decisive.

Brother Ed is happily making craters on a 3-D printer, and I unearthed this to help him. Turns out this is a blast from my past, in the form of a runway cratering study I used when doing a report on US rapid runway repair capability in my early days at Hughes. This is, in part, quite the tutorial on crater configuration from aerial bombs and addresses dimensions  for a range of bomb sizes against both a range of runway types and against bare soil. It's called BOMB CRATER DAMAGE TO RUNWAYS and was authored by Peter Westine of the Southwest Research Institute. 
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/907456.pdf

P.S.

I give up! This post won't delete. Tried doing that after realizing I put it in the wrong place. Should be in CM GDF, not CMFB. Mods, please move it. Thanks! 
Regards,
John Kettler

Hello it will be a year now that I discovered CMBN and this forum and  is time to intervene to say thank you
I'm not the only one to do it but the repetition is good
Since my childhood I have a dream, a desire, to see with my eyes this battle that has rocked my childhood, imagining to travel the battlefield like a drone.
I was born in Falaise in 1970 and my family suffered the battle : 4 killed, the house bombed, the exodus on the road, the strafing of the bomber fighters, the artillery, the fighting but also after the battle, the destroyed houses, the burning vehicles and corpses littering the battlefield were all family meal conversations. Here in Normandie this was an important trauma.
It always impressed and interested me, in a word: fascinated. I constantly asked for clarification and to question civilians or soldiers who had experienced these events.
All the film reports on the subject, I watched them. I think I have seen ¾ images known from the battle.
 I never stopped walking the battlefield, collecting vestiges and remaining some hours to imagine the events.
I used every means to immerse myself in this battle and the battles of the second world war in general. Movies, books and even games
Squad leader then Close Combat  that I practiced  a long time.
But although this battle has become my daily life because I have made it my job (I am a guide of  museum and even considered as an expert of fighting led by the Poles during the Battle of Falaise pocket), the time passing my imagination has declined. and little by little the image of these fights in my mind was becoming more and more abstract. I ended up consoling myself by telling myself that if I go to paradise there I  will can achieve this wish
i was not counting on CMBN
What a shock and even if it remains a game, my imagination work and as in my childhood events come to life in my head.
 After a year of practice my enthusiasm is not blunted my dream is somehow realized.
So for that:
thanks for this formidable game
thanks to the moder who improves even more are aspect,
thank you to  persons who animates this forum
thanks to the battle designers (for the anecdote I live on a map of the game !)
I'm begining to smoke again and  to say some nastiness on my neighbors, paradise has lost its appeal !!!

Will the King Tiger be modelled as an M47 Patton?

I believe that politeness is key for good critiscism.

The first thing to do is to never, never attack your opponent directly. Always remember: Engage the problem, not the opponent. Else you won't be able to move forward.
 
Second: Make the other person feel understood. If you say "I believe that this and that needs improvements" and somebody else says "nope", first follow point one (don't attack) and then show them that you are on their side: IN this case, you both want to get the best out of a game. Don't say "You are a fanboy", or "F****** old breed", say "I can see where you are coming from, and, while I agree with some of your points, I do believe that further clarification is needed, so that you can understand mine". Be constructive.
 
Third: Be careful how you open up an issue. If you say "This is s***, this should change!" you'll immediately see the answers you got: If you attack something others will defend it. Instead, try to show everybody what your motivation is, and why you believe your way is better.. "I'm seeing other games with features I believe might improve the experience for everybody. I know that my position might be controversial, please help me make the game better."
 
Also, note how you should try to, immediately, inlude the people you are talking to. They can help you, you can help them. You aren't engaging each other, but you are tackling the problem. Include them, and ask them to include themselves!
 
And, fourth: Don't hunker down in your position. The moment oyu hunker down is the moment you feel that everybody attacking your position is attacking you and you start attacking them. Take a safe distance from all of your arguments. And, if you realise that you are wrong, take a step back. You aren't loosing if you got the best result for everybody!
 

Criticism doesn't equal attacking something. You can criticize in a polite way. I have never seen something good coming out of anything that startes with "your s*** is s***." While having a discussion in of itself can be fun, I don't think that's your goal here.
 

Techincally not true, atleast if you are refering to the comment I have in mind.
 

Nothing about death. Just about complaining somewhere else. But please don't misunderstand me, I do not agree with this statement.

When should BFC start to develop a CMx3 engine?
 
Whenever they feel it is the right time for them to develop a new engine.
 
Personally I can live with the 'old' engine for years. Same way I was able to live with the CMx1 engine for years. 
 
Nothing else available comes within a asses roar of CMx2 at the moment or even CMx1 for that matter.

When should BFC start to develop a CMx3 engine?
 
Whenever they feel it is the right time for them to develop a new engine.
 
Personally I can live with the 'old' engine for years. Same way I was able to live with the CMx1 engine for years. 
 
Nothing else available comes within a asses roar of CMx2 at the moment or even CMx1 for that matter.

Some people might want to shoot me for this but I've found telling new players to be a bit of a save whore while they are learning the game to be effective.
 
It can be highly beneficial replay certain actions again and again to refine tactics and discover how those tactics are implemented though the user interface.
 
It also reduces frustration for newer players. If you make a bum move and lose half your armour you just reload and try to think of a tactic that would gain you a better result. You can compress hours of scenario experience down to a few games and make the learning experience as fun as possible.
 
You then move on to the school of hard knocks.

Ofc you know by hearth all the routes and the patrol zones, or you have links that document that information?
Do we have an official SAC text documenting the usage of civilian transponders while on patrol? If I'd have to redirect B-52s and B-1s to nuclear strike Russia at a moment notice,
I wouldn't have them broadcasting their ids all over, even to russian civilian airspace controllers 
 
 
 
Really, the Estonians report "Military aircraft penetrated airspace for 600 meters?", the Japanese one is pretty similar. The swedish have a history with unknown submarines in their waters, for which some officers in the swedish navy coined the term "Budget Submarines", since when they appear, some forces advocate the increase of military spending in Sweden.
 
Moreover, when it comes to airspace violations, Americans have been doing that since the end of WW2 - U-2s, SR-71, drones nowadays and so on (Iran and Syria already shot down a pair), yet nobody has never been crying wolf.
 
 
 
 
I don't know if it's an american knee-jerk reaction, or an european one - The statement clearly said that entering the anti-ballistic system would make those country assets targeted by nuclear capable missiles (I presume that they are talking about Iskander theatre systems). Which, for those who can't really read properly, does not mean "We are going to Nuke you", but "If you will join a system which is made to intercept our nuclear missiles, you accept the fact that the assets you employ to contribute to that system will come under strike, IF a nuclear exchange should ever start"
 
Or, in your opinion Russia has to renounce to its nuclear deterrence ? Is that a new find that western nukes are pointed at Russia and Chine and vice-versa?
 
 
 
My perspective is that all over the west, medias and uninformed people are falling for some who-knows-induced mechanism by which Putin's Russia is the new evil empire.
Frankly what I've seen so far, is that most of the time one could realistically surmise that all the moves Russia has done, have happened after some kind of provocation.
 
I'm not willing to accept a vision to which many in the west are falling today, out of their fears, because they have always been injected by terror raising medias that keep barking about the enemies of our democracies and our way of life.
There is a war party in the west which evidently has the resources to manipulate and even create information that will scare people into thinking that "we need to act before it's too late", and act means usually not good news at all.
 
Older people (and you don't seem to be among the youngest here) remember the kind of "games" happened during the cold war period, and whatever happens today is pretty similar, although on a smaller scope and depth. Older people would also know that this kind of things happen because of economical reasons, and all the sabre rattling normally goes to the public which needs to be constantly pressurized into believing that "your life may be changing for the worse, look at this, how can your children sleep peacefully with Russian aircraft flying into international airspace". When some country, or coalition takes charge, with a self-claimed moral or ethical superiority, while employing basically the same means (and I don't even want to mention the Snowden matter, things he cited would kinda make Putin's secret police appear as amateurs, but for some reason it's totally missing when it comes to draw some democracy rating in the west), my reaction is to profoundly doubt about its agenda.

Jason, have total respect for you, but I have to disagree here. At least for me I find the CMx2 "sweetspot" to be reinforced Company scale... that's my favorite scale to play and I can manage it just fine.  
 
I can also play Battalion-plus sized battles, i actually find that this scale seems to unfold the most realistically.  It really is a personal thing I think, everybody is different and I know many people do not like getting into the weeds like I do when I play.  You only need to read my numerous AARs to see the game played successfully at the Battalion-plus scale... I think only the CMBN BETA AAR featured a Company sized force.
 
Like Holien said though I can also only handle one or two games at a time.. which is fine by me to be honest.  Even with the CMx1 games I only played one or two at a time.

Re: all equally bad
 
The only thing I'd ask people is to stop riding white horses. As Pablius have just said, talks about freedom and democracy sound hollow. Ideals and reality are two separate things.
 
What I think is going on is a giant inequality of social evolution levels around the world. It doesn't go in sync everywhere. It doesn't take the same paths everywhere. The biggest problem to solving this inequality is the fact that you cannot forcefully "uplift" societies in a timely fashion. Evolution takes time. One of the main factors is the length of human life. Ideals often die with people that carry them. But the good news is that, as long as countries are not sealed up as North Korea, you can't stop natural social evolution from happening.
 
I love sci-fi. There were these two great writers, Strugatsky brothers. I very much enjoyed their pure sci-fi stuff, but didn't really want to read their social-related stuff. But, when I was bored (well, this is why I never am, really), I started going through their social sci-fi. And you have no idea how cool it turned out to be. Actually, much relevant even today. Those who want something to read, keep an eye out. They go deep into social problems, and "uplifting" specifically.

While I´m happy that the West won the Cold War and don´t consider myself to be anti american, I`ll take a moment to comment on this from the point of view of my corner of the world, Latin America
 
It´s true, I think, that being in the US sphere of influence is more like having a Boss than a Big Brother, it´s more about money than soul crushing servitude, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of innocent blood spilled over that
 
The US backed/supported/tolerated some of the worst butchers in history in Latin America during the 20th Century, and that has a cost, the cost is the monumental anti american sentiment in the region
 
There were, of course, exceptions, when those butchers sometimes turned on the US or when some US President occasionally decided to call them out on human rights abuses (Carter did it to no great effect, but at least spoke of it)
 
Paradoxically, this is the reason why Cuba is seen as a beacon of hope for so many in Latin America, as the one country that stood against the empire, it may sound crazy, but for many at the other end of the US foreign policy it is not
 
In my personal case I was just a kid in the 70s and 80s when all of this was still going on, but friends of my family disappeared at the hands of the State and members of my family were forced into exile
 
I put the blame of it more on our own shortcomings than on the US or any other foreign power, but the narrative the US propagates about being about democracy and freedom sounds completely hollow for most people here, it´s just the way it is
 
In other regions of the world it may well be the other way around, having endured the tyrants imposed by the USSR.
 
In the end the big powers play their game, they may not be equally evil but the simple truth is that their interest come first and the lives of the people in smaller/weaker countries comes second, it`s the nature of the nation-state model, certainly in a smaller scale similar dynamics occur everywhere, smaller/weaker countries are not blameless 
 
Sadly, after the Cold War the international community was not able to find a working status quo and today`s stage is even more complicated by the appearance of non-state actors and global economics, I don´t think the US or any other country has enough power to shape the world, and would probably be better served by using it in a targeted form that apply the notion of personal responsibility and not collective punishment or on the basis of broad regional consensus (like against ISIS) and not by large scale interventions in most cases

The British supplied, trained and provided intelligence to Loyalist gangs that murdered numerous British subjects over a forty year period. Going so far as to equip the gangs with captured weaponry to further escalate sectarian tensions. That's one example over a long time period that I am aware of.
 
I'm not sure what any of this thread has to do with Combat Mission, Battlefront or as background to the released games. I don't come here to be propagandised to by any side of the debate. In fact reading this thread is like listening to a group of nearly bald men arguing over who has the best hairstyle. Not good Battlefront - please uphold your own rules and end this type of debate on your games forum. There are thousands of places on the web such discussions can be had if people want to have them.

Aured - Did the Russians use the same fire and maneuver tactics with typical triangle tasking used by the US in WW II?  No they did not.
 
Did they understand the basic principles of fire and maneuver, sure.  But the whole army was organized differently, tasked differently, placed less reliance on close coordination with artillery fires, wasn't based on small probes by limited infantry elements to discover the enemy and subject him to more of those fires, etc.  Basically there are a whole host of army-specific optimizations in US tactics that just don't apply.
 
The Russian force is divided into its mechanized arm and the rifle arm (called "combined arms" at the army level, but still distinct from mech).  Each had its own specific mix of standard tactics.  There are some common elements between them, but you should basically think of them as two distinct doctrines, each tailored to the force types and operational roles that type had.  Conceptually, the mech arm is the arm of maneuver and decision and exploitation, while the rifle arm is the arm of holding ground, creating breakthroughs / assault, and general pressure.  The mech arm is numerically only about a tenth of the force, but is far better armed and equipped, and controls more like 2/3rds of the armor.
 
The Front is the first element of the force structure that does not respect this distinction and is entirely above it, and Fronts are not uniform in composition, but always contain forces of both types (just sometimes only limited amounts of the mech type).  From the army level down to the brigade level, the distinction applies at one level or another.  Below that level it still applies but cross attachments may blur somewhat, but normally at all lower levels one has clearly either the mech or the rifle force type and uses the tactics appropriate to that type.
 
The army level is the principle control level for supporting elements and attachments - much higher than in other armies (e.g. for the Germans it was almost always the division level, with little above that level in the way of actual maneuver elements). The army commander is expected to "task" his pool of support arms formations to this or that division-scale formation within his command for a specific operation, depending on the role he has assigned to that formation.  This can easily double the organic weapons of such formations, and in the combined arms armies, is the sole way the rifle divisions get armor allocated to them.  What are we talking about here?  Independent tank brigades and regiments, SU regiments, heavy mortar regiments, rocket brigades and battalions, antitank brigades and regiments, motorcycle recon regiments and battalions, extra pioneer battalions, heavy artillery formations from regiment up to divisions in size, etc.  Basically, half of the guns and all of the armor is in the army commander's "kit bag" to dole out to his divisions depending on their role.  A rifle division tasked to lead an attack may have a full tank brigade attached, plus a 120mm mortar formation to double its firepower at the point of the intended breakthrough.  Another rifle division expected to defend on relatively open ground, suited to enemy tanks, may have an antitank artillery brigade attached, tripling its number of 76mm guns, and a pioneer battalion besides, tasked with mining all likely routes and creating anti tank ditches and other obstacles, etc.
 
Every division is given enough of the supporting arms to just barely fulfill its minimal standard role, and everything needed to do it better is pooled up in the army commander's kit bag, and doled out by him to shape the battle.  Similarly, the army commander will retain major control of artillery fires and fire plans.  Those are not a matter of a 2nd Lt with a radio calling in his target of opportunity, but of a staff of half a dozen highly trained technicians drafting a coordinated plan for days, all submitted to and approved - or torn up - by the army commander.  This highly centralized system was meant to maximize the impact of very scarce combined arms intelligence and tactical skill, which could not be expected of every green 2nd Lt.  
 
Within the rifle divisions, each level of the org chart has its own organic fire support, so that it does not need to rely on the highest muckety-muck and his determination that your sector is the critical one today.  When he does decide that, he is going to intervene in your little corner of the world with a weight of fire like a falling house; when he doesn't, you are going to make do with your assigned peashooters.
 
The divisional commander is assigning his much smaller divisional fires on the same principles, with the understanding that those smaller fires become not so small if the army commander lends him an extra 36 120mm mortars for this one.  The regimental commander may get his share of the divisional fires or he may get nothing outside what his own organic firepower arms can supply - but he gets a few 76mm infantry guns and some 120mm mortars and a few 45mm ATGs so that he can make such assignments even if he gets no help.  Frankly though the regiment adds little - it mostly assigns its battalions missions, and the regimental commander's main way of influencing the fight is the formation he assigns to those component battalions.  Formation in the very simplest sense - he has 3 on line to cover a wide front, or he has 3 in column on the same frontage to provide weight behind an attack, or the 2-1 or 1-2 versions of either of those.  It is not the case that he always uses 2-1 on all roles.  The most common defense is 2-1 and the most common offensive formation is column, all 3 one behind the other on the same frontage.  Notice, this isn't about packing the riflemen in - those will go off in waves at proper intervals front to back.  But it puts all 27 of the regiment's 82mm mortars (9 per battalion) in support behind 1 or 2 kilometers of front line.
 
The fire support principle at the battalion level is not implemented by having one of the component battalions support the others by fire from a stationary spot, with all arms.  Instead it is a combined arms thing inside each battalion.  They each have their 9 82mm mortars and their 9 Maxim heavy machineguns organized into platoons, and the "fire support plan" is based on those infantry heavy weapons.  Battalion AT ability is minimal - 2 45mm ATGs and a flock of ATRs, barely enough to hold off enemy halftracks and hopeless against whole battalions of tanks.  But that is because the higher muckety-mucks are expected to know where the enemy tanks are going to come and to have put all the army level ATG formations and their own supporting armor formations and the pioneers with their minefields and obstacles, in those spots.
 
Down inside the battalion, the same formation choices arise for the component rifle companies as appeared at battalion, and the usual formations are again 2-1 on defense and all in column on the attack.  And yes that means you sometimes get really deep columns of attack, with a division first stepping off with just a few lead companies with others behind them, and so on.  This doesn't mean packed shoulder to shoulder formations, it means normal open intervals 9 times in a row, one behind another, only one at a time stepping off into enemy fire zones.  These "depth tactics" were meant to *outlast* the enemy on the same frontage, in an attrition battle, *not* to "run him off his feet in one go", nor to outmaneuver him.  The later parts could be sidestepped to a sector that was doing better and push through from there.  The last to "pancake" to the front if the other had all failed, would not attack, but instead go over to the defensive on the original frontage and hold.  One gets reports of huge loss totals and those "justifying" the attack attempt when this happens - the commander can show that he sent 8/9ths of his formation forward but they could not break through.  It is then the fault of the muckety muck who didn't gauge the level of support he needed correctly or given him enough supporting fires etc.  If on the other hand the local commander came back with losses of only his first company or two and a remark that "it doesn't look good, we should try something else", he will be invited to try being a private as that something else, etc.
 
What is expected of the lower level commander in these tactics is that he "lay his ship alongside of the enemy", as Nelson put it before Trafalgar.  In other words, close with the enemy and fight like hell, hurt him as much as your organic forces can manage to hurt him.  Bravery, drive, ruthlessness - these are the watchwords, not cleverness or finesse or artistry.  
 
What is happening in the combined arms tactics within that rifle column attack?  The leading infantry companies are presenting the enemy a fire discipline dilemma - how close to let the advancing Russian infantry get before revealing their own positions by cutting loose.  The longer they take to do so, the close the Russian infantry gets before being driven to the ground.  Enemy fire is fully expected to drive the leading infantry waves to the ground, or even to break them or destroy them outright - at first.  But every revealed firing point in that cutting loose is then subjected to another round of prep fire by all of the organic and added fire support elements supporting the attack.  The battalion 82mm mortars, any attached tanks, and the muckety-mucks special falling skies firepower, smashes up whatever showed itself crucifying the leading wave.
 
Then the next wave goes in, just like the first, on the same frontage.  No great finesse about it, but some of the defenders already dead in the meantime.  Same dilemma for his survivors.  When they decide to hold their fire to avoid giving the mortars and Russian artillery and such, juicy new things to shoot at, the advancing infantry wave gets in among them instead.  And goes to work with grenade and tommy gun, flushing out every hole.  The grenadier is the beater and the tommy gun is the shotgun, and Germans are the quail.  Notice, the firepower of the infantry that matters in this is the short range stuff, because at longer range the killing is done by supporting artillery arms.  The rifles of the most of the infantry supplement of course, but really the LMGs and rifles are primarily there as the defensive firepower of the rifle formation, at range.
 
It is slow and it is bloody and it is inefficient - but it is relentless.  The thing being maximized is fight and predictability - that the higher muckety mucks can count on an outcome on this part of the frontage proportional to what they put into it.  Where they need to win, they put in enough and they do win - hang the cost.  It isn't pure suicide up front - the infantry go to ground when fired at and they fire back,and their supporting fires try to save them, and the next wave storms forward to help and pick up the survivors and carry them forward (and carry the wounded back).  In the meantime the men that went to ground are defending themselves as best they can and sniping what they can see;  they are not expected to stand up again and go get killed.  That is the next wave's job.  The first did its part when it presented its breast to the enemy's bullets for that first advance.  The whole rolls forward like a ratchet, the waves driven to ground holding tenaciously whatever they reached.
 
That is the rifle, combined arms army, way of fighting.
 
The mech way of fighting is quite different.  There are some common elements but again it is better to think of it like a whole different army with its own techniques.  Where the rifle arm emphasizes depth and relentlessly, the mech way emphasizes rapid decision and decisive maneuver, which is kept dead simple and formulaic, but just adaptive enough to be dangerous.
 
First understand that the standard formation carrying out the mech way of fighting is the tank corps, which consists of 3 tank and 1 rifle brigade, plus minimal attachments of motorized guns, recon, and pioneers.  The rifle brigade is 3 battalions and is normally trailing the tank brigades and holds what they take.  Sometimes it doubles their infantry weight and sometimes it has to lead for a specific mission (force a river crossing, say, or a night infiltration attack that needs stealth - things only infantry can do), but in the normal offensive case it is just driving up behind something a tank brigade took, dismounting, and manning the position to let the tank brigade go on to its next mission.  It has trucks to keep up, and the usual infantry heavy weapons of 82mm mortars and heavy MGs, but it uses them to defend ground taken.  Notionally, the rifle brigade is the tank corps' "shield" and it maneuvers it separately as such.
 
The business end of the tank corps is thus its tank brigades, which are its weapons.  Each has a rifle battalion organic that is normally physically riding on the tanks themselves, and armed mostly with tommy guns.  The armor component of each brigade is equivalent in size to a western tank battalion - 50-60 tanks at full TOE - despite the formation name.
 
I will get to the larger scale tactics of the use of the tank brigades in just a second, but first the lowest level, tactical way the tanks with riders fight must be explained.  It is a version of the fire discipline dilemma discussed earlier, but now with the critical difference that the tanks have huge firepower against enemy infantry and other dismounts, making any challenge to them by less than a full panzer battalion pretty suicidal.  What the tanks can't do is force those enemy dismounts to open fire or show themselves.  Nor can the tanks alone dig them out of their holes if they don't open fire.  That is what the riders are there to do - kill the enemy in his holes under the overwatch of the massed tanks if and only if the enemy stays low and keeps quiet and tries to just hide from the tanks.  That threat is meant to force the enemy to open fire.  When they do, the riders drop off and take cover and don't need to do anything - the tanks murder the enemy.  Riders pick their way forward carefully after that, and repeat as necessary if there are enemy left alive.  This is all meant to be delivered very rapidly as an attack - drive right at them, take fire, stop and blast for 5 or 10 minutes tops, and move forward again, repeating only a few times before being right on or over the enemy.
 
So that covers the small tactics of the mech arm on the attack.  Up a bit, though, they are maneuvering, looking for enemy weak spots, especially the weak spots in his anti tank defenses.  And that follows a standard formula of the echelon attack.  
 
Meaning, the standard formation is a kind of staggered column with the second element just right or left of the leading one, and the third off to the same side as far again.  The individual tank brigade will use this approach with its component tank companies or pairs of companies, and the whole corps will use it again with its brigades.
 
The first element of such an echelon attack heads for whatever looks like the weakest part of the enemy position - in antitank terms - and hits it as hard as it can, rapidly, no pausing for field recon.  The next in is reacting to whatever that first one experiences, but expects to wrap around one flank of whatever holds up the prior element and hit hard, again, from a slightly changing direction.  This combined hit, in rapid succession, is expected to destroy that blockage or shove it aside.  The third element following is expected to hit air, a hole made by the previous, and push straight into the interior of the enemy position and keep going.  If the others are checked, it is expected to drive clear around the enemy of the harder enemy position - it does not run onto the same enemy hit by the previous elements.  If the enemy line is long enough and strong enough to be neither flanked nor broken through by this process, well tough then.  Some other formation higher in the chain or two grids over is expected to have had better luck in the meantime.
 
There are of course minor adaptations possible in this formula.  If the lead element breaks clean through, the others shift slightly into its wake and just exploit - they don't hit any new portion of the enemy's line.  If the first hit a position that is clearly strong as well as reasonably wide, the other two elements may pivot outward looking for an open flank instead of the second hitting right where the first did, just from a different angle.  The leading element can pull up short and just screen the frontage if they encounter strong enemy armor.  Then the second still tries to find an open flank, but the third might slide into reserve between and behind the first and second.
 
The point of the whole approach is to have some adaptability and flexibility, to be designed around reinforcing success and hitting weaker flanks not just frontal slogging - all of which exploit the speed and maneuver power of the tanks within the enemy's defensive zone.  But they are also dead simple, formulas that can be learned by rote and applied mechanically.  They are fast because there is no waiting for recon pull to bring back info on where to hit.  The substance that needs to be grasped by the leader of a 2nd or 3rd element is very limited, and either he can see it himself or the previous element manages to convey it to him, or gets it up to the commander of all three and he issues the appropriate order downward.  They are all mechanically applying the same doctrine and thinking on the same page, even if out of contact at times or having different amounts of information.  The whole idea is get the power of maneuver adaptation without the delays or the confusion that can set in when you try to ask 3 or more bullheaded linemen to solve advanced calculus problems.  There is just one "play" - "you hit him head on and stand him up, then I'll hit him low and shove him aside, and Joe can run through the hole".
 
There are some additional principles on defense, the rifle formation forces specially,  where they use 2 up 1 back and all around zones and rely on stealth and field fortifications for their protection, while their heavy weapons reach out far enough to cover the ground between each "blob", and their LMGs and rifles reach out far enough to protect each blob frontally from enemy infantry.  That plus deeper artillery fires provides a "soft defense" that is expected to strip enemy infantry from any tanks, or to stop infantry only attacks on its own.  Or, at least, to make it expensive to trade through each blob in layer after layer, in the same "laying his ship alongside of the enemy", exchange-attrition sense.  Then a heavier AT "network" has to cover the same frontage but starting a bit farther back, overlapped with the second and later infantry "blobs".  The heavy AT network is based on cross fire by 45mm and 76mm ATGs, plus obstacles (watrer, ditches, mines, etc) to channel enemy tanks to the locations where those are dense.  Any available armor stays off the line in reserve and slides in front of enemy penetration attempts, hitting strength not weakness in this case, just seeking to seal off penetrations and neutralize any "differential" in odds or armor concentration along the frontage.  On defense, the mech arm operates on its own principles only at tank corps and higher scale, and does so by counterpunching with its offensive tactics, already described above.
 
That's it, in a nutshell.  I hope this helps.  

10th September, 1944 just south of the Dutch-Belgian Border. The Irish Guards launch a hasty assault on a bridge to make Market Garden possible. British vs AI, H2H only. Stronger player should play Germans.

More...

The stugs presently have a issue, along with the fact that most players do not know about it. Combined to create the problem.

The only way to use them is force them to stay Buttoned up, which if I recall correctly, even the AI will override that if it has a infantry target at times. The only MG gun on the Stug is the exterior mount. So if the tank thinks it needs to use the MG, the crew man pops out. Not a good default move. Thus the reason for the Stugs issues. But for most other tanks , the programmed AI response is fine since using MG's does not require the crew to expose themselves.

That is just a programmed decision that does not take the Stug in concideration

And the Pogues nail it. Remember!

I'm in the same boat. I'll pay for any upgrades available. That isn't blind faith - it comes from getting years of fun out of quality products. I've never been let down by BF (I've blanked the first year of CMSF out of my mind ).
 
 
I'd love to not only Kickstart AI improvements but Kickstart whole new series within CM such as France and Barbarossa.

Don't forget about LHX Attack Chopper for those of us old enough to remember it!
 
 
 

 
 
Happy days indeed.

Like a human would react? You are asking for something no AI can do in any game at the moment. And probably wont be able to do for decades.

It seems odd that players involved in wargamming don't understand that simple fact. There are numerous articles on the internet specific to our hobby explaining how proper AI is a trick and how we are probably still decades away from any true AI where a computer actually thinks its way though a problem or situation like a human. All any game has now is pre-programmed routines. Players wishing BF would have a proper functioning 'real' AI want something that others have poured untold millions into and are still no closer to success.
 
I can understand the call for much better graphics - I'd love that myself in an ideal world and it is possible if there are no monetary or time constraints. But to call for a thinking AI is absurd to anyone who has spent five minutes reading about AI in games - it's history, where it's at now and where it is going in the future. 'Good' AI now in certain games is a mirage - a trick played by programmers who have found a semi-plausible way to use set-routines to mimic 'real' AI.

Pardon me folks, I typically do not wade into threads like this one, but Steve’s post on page two (#33) made me have a Colonel Kilgore moment…
 
 
There is not a single untrue word or sentiment in his post, which is why I got a bit of a twinge upon reading it.  Having migrated from Close Combat to Beyond Overlord way back when, Combat Mission has earned the top spot in my rather limited gaming time over the years.  It has been a fun ride watching the game, company and the people behind it grow over time.  While I selfishly fantasize that Steve, Charles and the crew will produce Combat Mission games late into their lives the likely reality is, as Steve planted the seed, they will eventually move on to other pursuits.

As this thread shows, we will all determine how much enjoyment we permit these titles to bring us.  As for myself, I plan to soak up every last minute of wonderfully engrossing fun Combat Mission brings because…
 

I always see Combat Mission as virtual tabletop miniature war games. Seen from this angle the graphics are hyper real. To ask for more 'realistic' graphics would be a step back.
 

Unit cost of a Tomahawk “Block IV”  :  $1.59 Million
 
Can't see this getting used with any regularity as a tactical asset on the battlefield.
 
A Hellfire missile comes in at about $110,000. A GBU-12 Paveway II at about $22,000.

I hope the hell not. I'd rather pay fees to upgrade what we have even if they are full price. I don't wanna go all the way back to 2007 and wait and wait and wait.
 
 
 
 
Now there is something we can definitely agree on.
 
Vietnam would be my personal gaming Nirvana...I don't think I'd have enough pee in me if they ever announced that one...I'd have to borrow some from a neighbor.
 
 
 
Mord.