Pelican Pal

Artillery in CM has two key weaknesses that make it suspect within the context of a mech heavy environment. The first being (as I've been told) that CM does not model vehicles closing up vision ports when under artillery fire. The second that the game does not model fragmentation damage to vehicles.^1 Combined this is causing artillery to under perform against armor. I'm not sure by how much it is under performing but my suspicion is that its not a meaningless loss.
Part of my reasoning is that, as you have said, the Soviet forces are often at a 2:1 to 3:1 advantage. Within this context you might have a M60 TTS platoon against a 2-3 platoons of Soviet armor and the reduction of even a single TTS's capability to effectively engage results in a significant drop in combat power for NATO.

Now this can be worked around but it requires that you use artillery in a way that I suspect most players don't readily take to. For example, you have located a TTS platoon astride the advance of your FSE. A player might drop a large number of shells over 8-10 minutes only to find that no damage has been done at all to the opposing armor. Not only that but during the barrage their spotting ability is not being reduced. The player has therefore expended a large amount of firepower and a significant amount of time for no impact on the enemy. I think this fairly leads to frustration on the players part.

^1 Documented bug but I also have a suspicion that how CM would model fragmentation might be doing a bit of a disservice to them.


~~~

Overall though I actually disagree that the Soviets don't work. But I do think that the peculiarities of both the Soviets and CM work against players having initial success with them.

Artillery in CM has two key weaknesses that make it suspect within the context of a mech heavy environment. The first being (as I've been told) that CM does not model vehicles closing up vision ports when under artillery fire. The second that the game does not model fragmentation damage to vehicles.^1 Combined this is causing artillery to under perform against armor. I'm not sure by how much it is under performing but my suspicion is that its not a meaningless loss.
Part of my reasoning is that, as you have said, the Soviet forces are often at a 2:1 to 3:1 advantage. Within this context you might have a M60 TTS platoon against a 2-3 platoons of Soviet armor and the reduction of even a single TTS's capability to effectively engage results in a significant drop in combat power for NATO.

Now this can be worked around but it requires that you use artillery in a way that I suspect most players don't readily take to. For example, you have located a TTS platoon astride the advance of your FSE. A player might drop a large number of shells over 8-10 minutes only to find that no damage has been done at all to the opposing armor. Not only that but during the barrage their spotting ability is not being reduced. The player has therefore expended a large amount of firepower and a significant amount of time for no impact on the enemy. I think this fairly leads to frustration on the players part.

^1 Documented bug but I also have a suspicion that how CM would model fragmentation might be doing a bit of a disservice to them.


~~~

Overall though I actually disagree that the Soviets don't work. But I do think that the peculiarities of both the Soviets and CM work against players having initial success with them.

In Soviet training missions they show how to concentrate your forces and to use them en masse under heavy artillery support, you gather momentum and rush with all you have in one focused blow. 
In the campaign and many other single scenarios it simply doesn't work. To deploy this tactics means to lose your forces quickly and to do little or no damage to the opponent. The peculiar thing with the Soviet campaign is that it literally asks you to do the opposite things you had learnt from Soviet training missions. What is required from you in the first mission of Soviet campaign is to carefully scout enemy tanks and TOW vehicles and call pinpoint artillery strikes on them.
Cold War Red Army is described as heavily dependent on artillery assets and massive artillery support to pin down the enemy. But in CM world  artillery strikes on areas simply don't do anything to the vehicles, the only application they have is to bombard towns or infantry positions. At best areal artillery strikes can kill one or two lightly armored vehicles, which is far from being enough to suppress enemy defense. Many times I called pinpoint strikes on single M60 tank to find out 10 or 15 minutes later that bombardment didn't scratch the tank, it seats in full health in Moon landscape among craters with no trees around. 
In reality it should be completely destroyed or severally damaged. IRL photos from the tests:

 

 
That's one of the biggest drawbacks of CM engine and inconsistences of CMCW. In theory artillery plays major role in Soviet military planning, but in game practice it has little effect on the enemy. This virtually strips Soviet army of one of its most powerful forces. 
So does "Soviet tactics" work?
In my experience it does, but primary in Quick battles. To work it needs certain conditions. First of all, Soviet forces must have serious numerical advantage. In Quick battles this condition is met by assigning more points to the Red side than to the Blue. Second, the terrain conditions should be more or less equal. This is also true for the most of the Quick battle maps. Even artillery, which is relatively weakened under CM engine framewok, could be applied to block enemy infantry from reaching certain zones. 
But it definitely ineffective under conditions that differs from those of "equal" conditions of Quick battles.  
 

You can get very gamey with that where you move the camera around to locate the source of the sound. Against the AI it can make things a lot easier but this is really a discussion about your personal difficulty settings. You can do certain things to make scenarios easier for yourself and thats fine. However, if you start to notice that many games against the AI feel too easy and thus less fun it might make sense to increase your personal difficulty.

I've got two scenarios for CMCW and another for CMBS I'm trying to get out before Christmas but they might end up being late and/or just testing versions for anyone who wants more content.

Well, this is a war related forum, so why not have a discord fight?

If anything TRPs are underutilized in CM.

I am on the "unofficial" server and the quality of the admin team leaves something to be desired. There is a lot of "good old boys" atmosphere that allows their preferred users to act without moderation.

https://imgur.com/a/o0AgROV


@MikeyD and @Bootie may be interested in this. But this sort of content has been posted for MONTHS without reaction from the mod team and in some cases in conversations they are participating in.

Help!
I've finished a campaign build, BUT the zip file is 26MB...therefore breaches the 20MB limit on https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/
If anyone can help it'll be appreciated. Already to go on the 16th Dec as well!
 

December 16th 05:35, the “Ghost Front” erupts in a maelstrom of noise and violence as Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein begins.
The Rollbahn D Campaign contains 35 linear scenarios built as historically accurate as I’ve been able to achieve. 
You control the fortunes of KG Peiper, SG Knittel, and Panzer Brigade 150, along with elements from KG Hansen, KG Sandig, and the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division.
Boy did this project snowball!
The Campaign begins with a choice. Either starting at the very beginning or on Day 3 of the offensive. The latter will be an easier route as you’ll have not suffered any losses to your core units. I’ve included here what it takes to progress within the Campaign as not every engagement is balanced. The scenarios range from small to medium to Ben Hur like epics. 
I’ve made minor changes to the Day 1-2 scenarios based on the feedback from the Rollbahn D Part 1 Campaign.
Day1-2
SN01: Murky Merlscheid / Fallshirmjager Regiment 9 / Minor Victory
SN02: Leaving Lanzerath / Fallshirmjager Regiment 9 / Minor Victory
SN03: Minen The Gap / Spitze / Minor Victory
SN04: Breakthrough / Spitze Kompanie and FSJ / Minor Victory
SN05: Hurrying Through Honsfeld / Spitze and Gndrs / Draw
SN06: Bull in gen China Shop / Spitze and Spitze Komp / Minor Victory
SN07: Butchers Of Baugnez / Spitze and KG Peiper / Minor Victory
Day 3 
SN08: Laying Down The Recht / KG Hansen / Minor Victory
SN09: Poteau The Priority / KG Hansen / Minor Victory
SN10: Storming Stavelot / KG Peiper / Tactical Victory
SN11: Trois Is A Crowd / KG Peiper and FSJ / Draw
SN12: Jabos! / KG Peiper / Tactical Defeat
SN13: Probe At Stavelot / KG Peiper and FSJ / Minor Victory 
SN14: Neufmoulin Rouge / KG Peiper / Draw
Day 4
SN15: Duel In The Mist / KG Peiper and FSJ / Minor Victory
SN16: Too Tight At Targnon / KG Peiper / Tactical Defeat
SN17: Vorauskompanie Searches For Gas / SG Knittel / Tactical Defeat
SN18: Ster Way To Heaven / KG Peiper, Sandig, SG Knittel / Tactical Defeat
Day 5
SN19: Stationary At Stavelot / SG Knittel / Major Defeat
SN20: Chewin Them Up At Cheneux / KG Peiper / Tactical Victory
SN21: Treachery At Les Tcheous / KG Sandig / Draw
SN22: Closing The Door / SG Knittel / Draw
SN23: Ambush At Chenai / KG Sandig / Draw
SN24: Violence At The Preventorium / KG Peiper / Draw
Day 6
SN25: KG X Factor / Panzer Brigade 150 / Tactical Defeat
SN26: No Prizes At Noupre / KG Hansen, SG Knittel / Minor Victory
SN27: Punishment At Parfondry / SG Knittel / Tactical Defeat
SN28: TF Jordan Storms Stoumont / KG Peiper / Draw
SN29: Cold Hearts At Froidcour / KG Peiper / Tactical Victory
SN30: Persistence Prevails / KG Peiper / Draw
Day 7
SN31: Borgoumont Blitz / KG Peiper / Major Defeat
SN32: Kicking Coblenz / SG Knittel / Total Defeat
SN33: Festung La Gleize / KG Peiper / Tactical Victory
SN34: Hansens Surprise / KG Hansen / Draw
Day 9
SN35: Katz Und Maus / The Survivors / Minor Victory
 
All the maps are my own, apart from Cheneux, which is stock that I’ve modified. Ranks/uniforms can be inaccurate as command units are above the battalion level.
Each Scenario will be available as a separate download in January.
 
Good Luck!
 
 
 
 

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I think he's more referring to the use of recycled assets and "feel" to games released at AAA game prices every couple of years. Not to say that I agree with the position, but its self-evidently true from the art asset perspective, and is perhaps most painfully obvious between RT and BS's rural aspects. Thereafter it becomes a matter of opinion whether you think that diminishes from the game.

To my mind its a necessary time-saver by a dev team that is made up of, essentially, a lumberjack, a brain preserved in a jar (I demand proof of life for Charles now), and a smattering of commissioned persons. People relatively new to the games and ignorant of the context they're developed in may not share my patience or empathy, or don't care if they are aware - and for 42 to 60 bucks a pop for base game titles, I don't blame them if they take a less lenient view than me. 

I suspect a lot of this is due to Battlefront being stuck with a... weird deployment strategy that ends up confusing people with more standard expecations. Battlefront is effectively operating on a core game + DLC system but the core game is obfuscated behind the base games. If you remove that obfuscation it would look like this:

Core game engine  -> base game content ( purchase) - > DLC content ( purchase) This is the Combat Mission layout: https://store.steampowered.com/app/521800/Command_Ops_2_Core_Game/ except the core game is hidden and there is in fact a separate store page for each "DLC".

What that means is that when a new game releases its not clear that its actually a DLC package on the core engine unless you've been following along. You can see that in the way that people on the forums will use CMx2 to collective group all the CM games since 2007 since they are fundamentally the same. A user who casually follows the game (someone who bought CMBN in 2011, for example) returns to the series after a 7 or 8 year hiatus to check out the "brand new game" and its actually just DLC on the core game.
 
Maybe don't call a new user a "clown ass"

Hello gamers and mainly devs.
 
Me, as a youngling to the Combat mission, I'd request developers to add something new other than skin, maps, language and guns. It needs something different! The game is 90% same across all games. If I imported all the models and skins from Combat Mission Shock Force 2 to Combat Mission cold war, the game would probably run it as nothing. And with it, it has the same issues. CQB is nightmare in reality too, but in Combat Mission, it's especially bad. If you have like 1 unit and need to perform CQB. Absolutely impossible. And the "Hunt" command is pretty useless as if they are in Hunt command, they start walking at slow pace and when see someone/something, they stop and will disable all following commands. Can't you guys make it that troops will HOLD for the amount of time they keep seeing the enemy or the enemy is neutralized? That would make CQB soooo much more easier and life would be good.

I've spoken to my friends and this is general feedback I get why they won't ever buy Combat Mission game:
 
Literally every game is same - That is in my opinion very true. It doesn't mean it'd be bad. But the same issue Combat Mission Afghanistan has, it's also in Combat mission Cold war.  Graphics - Irrelavant argument for me but it's also why a lot of players turn down. Especially the edges of the map, the sky Only 1v1 multiplayer with ancient connection system, no coop, no more players than 1v1 scenario. - In my opinion, very good argument. Combat mission is only 1v1 and without coop regime. This needs to be changed in the future (or would be amazing if was changed right now). Price tag too high - Well. If we take in account that all the games are basically same. A skillful modder would probably make Shock Force 2, Cold war or Black Water out of Combat mission afghanistan. It's very high.  Planes/Helis are not part of the game. - We can get in argument that planes / helis fire from kilometers away and are irrelavant for the game, but I think it would certainly be healthy to add visual planes flying above, even if very far away. And when planes crash, you can see it too. The DLC fest. (Mostly Combat Mission Shock Force 2). - For the game where you charge 60€ for a same mechanical features as in every previous game. It's absolutely crazy to charge 20€ for a basically a nation bundle.   
The arguments I expect under this thread:
The price tag is that high because of: Small audience, simulation, bluh bluh bluh.... That is an interesting point, but is irrelavant. The game should be worth its money, which I'm afraid most of the games don't meet. The game is not same because in game XY, they moved 0.3km/h slower and fired 0,8 meters further. Please.... Just don't... Don't consider this thread as a hate. It's more like objectively true. I really love the concept of Combat mission series and I'd love them to continue. But the work / content / features is very much not meet with the price tag.
Also PLEASE guys, create your own discord. Don't be like your MP lobbies stuck in 80's/90's. 


Thank you for reading to this point.

Yes, this is the most important advantage of CM.  However, CM1 was released in (IIRC) 1999, and superseded after 8 years by CM2 in 2007.  CM2 has been grinding along now for almost 15 years(!)  That's a very successful run considering how little of the fundamentals has changed.  However, CM2 has been showing its age for some time, and many of us old-timers are just hanging in there in the hope that a CM3 will soon be released (in our lifetime).

No, just no. If you're talking about graphics from the year 2000, then sure, but too many things that were acceptable back then just don't cut it any more:
1. The shadows look awful
2. Long-distance rendering of objects is really bad - hilltops covered with trees become as bald as a billiard table beyond about a thousand meters
3. Performance with the latest and greatest hardware is unacceptable, especially as map sizes increase (anything over about 30 FPS is almost never seen). 
4. Fog and flame effects look awful.
5. On a lesser note,but still there, the vehicle models are starting to show their age - seriously, is this the last computer game (and yes, these are all computer games, whether you like it or not) where the main gun barrels and wheels are 8-sided objects?
Don't get me wrong - CM does a lot of things right, but a lot of other things are vastly outdated. 

Coming soon! My work in progress Panzer II Ausf F 

IIRC this was an ongoing issue in CM:SF2. My only BRDM-2 I've seen in Cold War exploded before it was able to fire but I wouldn't be surprised if it presented the same issue.

ATGM vehicles in CM have some weird engine limitations which make them less useful and more annoying to use than they ought to be.

Let's be honest, if you look at the individual negative points (not the weighting thereof which is different for people here) in the negative reviews you don't see much that is factually wrong.
It is just unfortunate that those 5 early negative reviews (only 2 in English) smashed down on us because they were Steam purchases and all the positive reviews were from Steam key activations - which don't count.

Someone is apparently giving out games on that Discord https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatMission/comments/r1dtw7/combat_mission_christmas_game_giveaway/

Not sure why they haven't posted here but eh.

Rain/snow/fog/mist/haze affect thermals but temperature does not. Smoke and dust have no effect on thermals except for IR blocking smoke (red phosphorous, and only exists in Black Sea). The modeling is somewhat simplistic in this regard.

Posters always champion playing Iron mode but I'm perfectly happy playing Warrior. The reason why I like warrior is it (usually) shaves off time on artillery call-ins. 
It makes a difference in-game who is calling in artillery. The more direct the chain of command the better. A dedicated battalion FO calling in TO&E battalion assets while all of his command lights are green is probably as fast as it gets. A FO  purchased outside of battalion command calling in artillery assets purchased separately will be slower. Then there's a non-FO officer attempting to call in artillery, and other permutations that get increasingly worse.

Just off of a bit of gut instinct I ran the same tests with 294 152mm HE guns firing and the Oplots could again see through the barrage. This seems to reinforce the above and also point to maybe some missing modeling. The ideal result here would be for the absurd amount of dust, dirt, explosions, etc... to block the thermal sights of the vehicles.


And just to clarify I'm using more guns than you would ever see in-game (294) since if the game did in fact model some small loss of capability that loss should then be obviously apparent when the scale is so absurd.

Do White Phosphorous rounds cause and reduction in spotting capability for thermal sights in game?

Some people believe that they do but I've found no evidence in the manual or elsewhere on the forums to support that claim. Further I ran a simple test firing 2,940 WP rounds directly in front (and onto) a BM Oplot and at no point did they show any reduction in spotting capabilities through the barrage. Although I would expect that the sheer amount of shells exploding would have blocked vision.

Do White Phosphorous rounds cause and reduction in spotting capability for thermal sights in game?

Some people believe that they do but I've found no evidence in the manual or elsewhere on the forums to support that claim. Further I ran a simple test firing 2,940 WP rounds directly in front (and onto) a BM Oplot and at no point did they show any reduction in spotting capabilities through the barrage. Although I would expect that the sheer amount of shells exploding would have blocked vision.

Just off of a bit of gut instinct I ran the same tests with 294 152mm HE guns firing and the Oplots could again see through the barrage. This seems to reinforce the above and also point to maybe some missing modeling. The ideal result here would be for the absurd amount of dust, dirt, explosions, etc... to block the thermal sights of the vehicles.


And just to clarify I'm using more guns than you would ever see in-game (294) since if the game did in fact model some small loss of capability that loss should then be obviously apparent when the scale is so absurd.