Duckman

Maybe we can just say the A-10 is busy fighting some colonial war? If the scenario takes place in 2017 Iraq and Afghanistan might still be going on. Having the F-35 in service an hot-war capable by 2017 seems more unrealistic than the A-10's absence. The trusty ole F-15E and F-16 are the prime candidates for ground support in a war that soon.

Even if you have air superiority there is still a chance the other air force shows over the battlefield from time to time, like the Luftwaffe in 1944-45 (admittedly less often in the west) or the Arabs 1956-82. Also the Ukraine is pretty big (not to mention Russia), so showing up locally is still possible even if Nato controls the skies most of the time.

When it comes to air power in the game you can always argue different scenarios. Maybe there is a political decision to localize the conflict and not target the Russian supply convoys before they cross the border? Or not to target Russian airbases, similar to Vietnam? All sorts of strange things happen even in the real world. As for air power's true and best calling, there is a problem in most conflicts where the enemy doesn't have an elaborate supply train. In COIN wars you get a lot of close support, observation etc missions where fast jets are extremely expensive overkill compared to Super Tucanos or somesuch.

Give me everything Ukrainian, including the mashup jobs. As for the US and AD, the Sgt York project was cursed and after that mobile AAA has kind of fallen out of favour in the West. The Gepard soldiers on (mostly in mothballs), but its replacement will probably be missile-based. The Russians still like guns, maybe because they found the Shilkas very useful in Grozny.

It's a classic case of conflicting priorities and missions. The A-10 is great for colonial policing and third world show of force, i.e. the main missions for the US (and most other militaries) both historically and today. But against first or even second world opponents it is probably quite vulnerable. So which war do you buy equipment for? The statistically most likely or the worst-case one? It's not an easy question, and you might even be better off with two air forces or letting the army operate its own A10s, Super Tucanos, Cessnas, helicopters, and UAVs.

You always have to make a few assumption for a nonhistorical game scenario to work (and even for historical ones as well sometimes). In the case of CM: Black Sea I can imagine something like a Nato rapid reaction or tripwire force going in even if conditions are not optimal. 100 per cent realististic? Maybe not. Plausible enough for the game to work. I think so. We make the same "balance" judgments in historical scenarios by not giving the Allies ungodly amounts of arty, for example.

Here it is, at least one killed: Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/20/372043/2-more-israeli-soldiers-killed-in-gaza/

I'm pretty sure at least one Israeli soldier was killed or seriously wounded by Trophy in the recent Gaza war. It's like standing close to a big shotgun blast, so obviously dangerous. But I guess the risks, and resultant casualties, are less than you would get without said protection.

Thrown AT weapons (like smoke grenades) is one of those things that tend to get overused in wargames. Close Combat was probably the worst. Unless there are special circumstances (e.g. built up area, or the enemy does something really stupid) it's pretty much a suicide mission. The casualty rates for Molotov squads were horrific.

Not to mention making a fantastic target for artillery, which the Russians had ample time to preregister...

I guess it comes down mostly to experience. The majority of Tiger units were veterans, while the Ferdinands and Panthers were in newly raised units that hadn't had time to work out tactics or procedures. It's about the men and not just the machines, to use a cliché. The Panther brigades were mauled by Patton's 75 mm-gunned Shermans at Arracourt, which again lends support to the above cliché. Hitler gets blamed for everything, but he seems to have been the driving force behind making the Panther overweight and constantly raising new units that worked better on the parade ground than in combat. Thanks for the info about Panzer Lehr, I was wrong about their Panthers.

At Kursk the Panthers were all in independent tank brigades (two of them I think). Tigers were both in independent Abteilungen (i.e. corps assets) and in divisions, since the SS panzer divisions and Grossdeutschland all had organic Tiger battalions. I'm pretty sure the only panzer divison ever to have only Panthers was Panzer Lehr, which was a demonstration unit before being sent to Normandy. The rest had a mix of Panthers and Panzer IVs (and sometimes exotica like Jagdpanzers) in their tank regiments, usually on a 1:1 basis.

As disgusting as it may sound, I think we have to admit to the fact that the war in UKraine has increased interest in a modern CM. Those Resurgent Russia scenarios aren't fantasy anymore.

I think there was a problem with Soviet optics (and a lot of other things) in the beginning of the war when factories were relocating. After that they were up to par as far as I know, and differences in gunnery would rather be due to German tanker training which (under Guderian's supervision) was the gold standard until late in the war.

Loved CC back in the day, still one of my best gaming experiences ever although that was partly because I was young and impressionable. They nailed the infantry part almost perfectly but never got the armour quite right (ie the exact opposite if CM1) . The 1:2 scale maps was another issue that got worse as the series went along with more tanks and air and arty, with the last two almost parodically badly implemented. CC2 was probably the best of the series, with a good campaign game as well. In retrospect they should have moved it to the Pacific where the infantry-centric model could shine, but D-Day and late war tanks (whose guns could kill anything on the map instantly) won out... It's funny how both CC and CM started out as Computer Squad Leader and then went down separate paths, failing and succeeding in differerent ways.

The Total War games with mods (primarily to slow things down and increase fatigue), sensible unit selection (no exotica), and restricted camera is CM-ish. It's been a while since I played TW, but I think there is a game mode where you can only see what your general sees which combined with camera restriction means you realistically have to ride around the battlefield giving orders. The effect is quite similar to real-time CM where you have to position units well and rely on the Tac AI a lot.

Have you tried the Storm Eagle games? http://stormpowered.com/stormcloud/store/index.asp

WWI is probably the least popular tactical wargaming topic. Too bad really, the early war tactics are quite interesting (albeit rigid and company scale at the minimum) and the 1918 stuff is basically WWII. As for trenches and foxholes, I'd love to have better visual representation of those and I hope it's on the agenda. Now that we have little people jumping on and off tanks it's time for proper looking earth heaps!

I think the "game of inches" aspect is appealing, and best brought out in a campaign game where you're fighting over the same ground again and again. Close Combat did that part pretty well, even if there were other issues with its urban combat (the half size maps were really unsuitable, for one). That said, games like ASL (where Stalingrad is one of the most popular settings) tend to have a lot of special rules to cover urban combat, like sewer movement, which wouldn't fit as easily into CM.

Apart from simple bad decisions and sometimes byzantine command relationships, I think there is also a tendency by Western observers to underestimate the very serious resource and geographical constraints faced by Japan and some other countries. Some of the famous "bizarre" decisions, like not having armour on the Zero, which are sometimes attributed to cultural factors like "samurai spirit" were really about compromises. In the Zero's case they couldn't achieve the range required (remember the Pacific is huge) with armour, at least not given their engine tech, so it was either or. The poor equipment of the Japanese army was also partly due to resource constraints, with the navy and air force having priority. In the ETO Germany's allies (and to a degree Germany itself) where also quite constrained, and in several cases unable to manufacture e.g. armour plate. Plus of course there was never enough oil to go around, which answers some of the classical "why didn't they...? questions (e.g. "why didn't Germany build a strategic bomber force?").

I'd love the PTO too and I actually think the CM engine could do it well, but from what I've gathered the developers don't think so. We'll see what the others say.

Well, Kursk with the new engine should be a treat while we wait. I can't help wishing for something totally different though........like CM: Stalingrad.

One thing I hope we get in Black Sea is paramilitaries. They've been an essential part of every conflict that Russia's been involved in since the breakup of the USSR (Georgia, Chechnya, and now Ukraine) and would add a lot to both realism and gameplay. Now in Ukraine we even have paramilitary tanks...

I don't know if that kind of detailed statistic exist. I do know that bullet wounds were a minority, so in any case the number of ricochet casualties would probably be fairly small. If you scroll down 4/5 of this page: http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/woundblstcs/chapter1.htm you'll find statistics from US First and Third Armies. Shrapnel caused 60% of (non-lethal, if I read it correctly) wounds and bullets 25%, with the majority probably coming from machineguns. (Notice also that the "Other" category is quite significant at 6%.)

I dunno about the methodology here. There's nothing wrong with using pictorial evidence, but Soviet lab and firing tests did show quality problems: Link: http://english.battlefield.ru/was-the-tiger-really-king.html Admittedly this was on the Tiger II, but if they were showing defects already by mid-44 I fail to see how the quality of the Panther's armour plate would be problem free given that it was produced in much bigger qualities and right until the end of the war. It is of course possible that the Germans kept special reserves of high quality steel and used it for the glacis and perhaps other especially exposed areas, but we'd need more evidence on this and it again seems unlikely given the scale and decentralized nature of late war Panther production. An interesting subject, nonetheless.