DougPhresh

I find, and I mean no offence, for any game I'm really invested in, do research, provide a lot of feedback, get involved with the community, particularly Grognard games, I'll get burnt out and take a year or more off the forums. There are a lot of reasons, one of them is that the time between patches or developer updates is really difficult, especially when many of these titles are so close to what I'd like them to be, with mostly janky issues, engine problems, etc. holding them back.

Do Dutch engineers still carry two rifles? I haven't been able to check. I'd just like to know if our bug reports are seen and acted on, is all. What were the major fixes here? "Matrix/Slitherine Tournament scoring fix" does not really address the bulk of the problems. I'm a little disappointed, if I'm being frank.

Hopefully that net can be widened for the Jewish Brigade, Greek Brigade, Co-Belligerents, RSI Partisans etc. I would just say to look at what Eugen did in their Italy DLC for Steel Division 2. It was the most multinational theatre of war for the Western Allies, there's a great opportunity there to showcase it. e: I did not read the preceding discussion and don't want to cause trouble or anything. I just like reading the OOBs for the Italian Campaign and think Eugen did a good job. I just happen to believe Battlefront can do it better.

My only feedback would be that I'm personally a bit put off with the bias towards Axis scenarios, in what feels like all titles, and would like to see more Allied and Soviet long campaigns. I realize that's a personal feeling and a lot of people are here for the Panzers and "against all odds" thing, but I would have appreciated to see more of Soviet forces and doctrine at the close of the war, and a Canadian campaign for Fortress Italy. I would gladly pay for a battle pack across all WW2 titles that gave care and attention to the Allies and Soviets in a Huge and very long campaign. I realize that researching the Soviets in particular can be more difficult, but there are mountains of information on the Free French, Canadians and Poles in Italy, and I feel like they deserve a capstone campaign each.

Many of which are in R2V, I would think.

As a Professional user in my day job and what feels like a lifelong fan, I do think they've done a good job balancing development with a small team. War gamers and staff officers are a tough crowd to please, but their passion comes through in their work and their adaptation of Steam after years and years of discussion shows a willingness to be responsive, listen to the community and reach new fans. I imagine the Professional orders have taken up a large amount of time, in part because we're a demanding bunch, and also because of the nature of government procurement and contracting. Beyond that, current events sunk a Black Sea module that seems to have had a fair bit of work invested in it. The important thing to me is that they're communicating with the community here, and have remained committed to it even when people are disappointed. This has often been a point of contention, and again shows a lot of positive development. I don't want all that to get lost. In terms of specifics, of course I would like to see Partisans, Co-Belligerents and RSI in Fortress Italy, and a fully developed TOE and OOB for Italian forces in Sicily which right now are lacking a lot. I'd love to see Brigade Piron and the Princess Irene's in Battle for Normandy/Final Blitzkrieg, and the Scheldt and Rhine Crossings for the Commonwealth in Final Blitzkrieg. Finally, as with it seems everyone else, minor Axis / new Allies for Red Thunder, particularly the Poles and Romanians who played a huge role in critical operations. This is my "Christmas list" every year, and I want to point out again that in Fire and Rubble, we got partisans. That's a major item was on the list addressed, just as Rome to Victory crossed off nearly all of my wishes for Allied forces in that title. These aren't small things, and I just want to take the time to show that they don't go unnoticed. The new year is sure to be marked with some frustration, disappointment and delay, like every year, but there will be high points too, and sometimes that gets lost in the moment. Merry Christmas everyone.

There were a lot of guys rocking Wheeler (CP Tech) vests when I was there, in both flavours of CADPAT. I had one in TW. I don't think I saw any of the Bosnia vintage stuff, other than the flannel shirts and bush hats guys had squirrelled away and not returned to clothing.

I came in expecting all Campaign plausibility discussion to be about BS.

Battalion v Battalion on Huge would be my ideal QB for every game in the series, and I agree that on CMFI it can feel like watching a slideshow. Hopefully the move to steam and the Engine 5 stuff lets those older titles really enter this decade.

I think all titles should have Huge maps. It’s 2022, our PCs can handle it! Hopefully this is kept in mind as Steam allows for easier updates, maybe making QBs out of the master maps?

“Viking Summer” is also really interesting. Forget the full title offhand.

I'm positive that Ukrainian Mountain Battalions have these in the weapons company in base game CMBS.

Would you say these are the contender for Fortress Italy's Battle Pack? A combination of all three? (You've had 6 years to work on it ) What I would hope for is focussing the pack for Fortress Italy on filling out the Italian roster in Sicily, then moving on to add Partisans, RSI and Co-Belligerents. The upcoming Steel Division 2 DLC, "Tribute to the Liberation of Italy" is doing just that. Working on the Italians would add diverse content for the full period from 43-45. Much of the equipment and vehicles could be used in a great variety of scenarios, and by a variety of forces under the Italian Banner, RSI, Co-Belligerents, and impressed into German Service. It's the most bang for your buck! I hope you take this under consideration, as Italy's continued role on both sides after the Armistice, as well as the Italian Civil War are often forgotten, and I think there are some opportunities here for very unique OOBs and TOEs adding a lot of diversity and fitting well into existing modules and scenarios. Happy New Year!

I'm a little concerned reading some of the feedback here - I was looking forward to buying FR, having just read The Wehrmacht's Last Stand, The End, and Violence In Defeat: The Wehrmacht on German Soil. I would have really liked to see the Wehrmacht as a broken force fighting a lost war, with cobbled together groups of stragglers, depleted and disorganized units, and disheartened Volkstrum clinging to the field mostly out of fear of falling into Russian hands rather than anything else. That's a Wehrmacht we hardly ever get to see in wargaming, while we've all seen the force depicted at its apogee.

Could someone please upload a pdf of the manual?

Is there any chance someone can upload the pdf of the manual supplement for the FR module? I like skimming them before buying a title, and for some reason they haven't done that lately. I'd "trade" the manual for RtV, but I'm not on my computer that has it installed at the moment. As an aside, I thought the quality of the manuals has really improved lately. The Black Sea manual did a great job explaining formations (which I'd like to see for all title) and the RtV manual charted the availability and fighting quality of the multitude of nations and forces that fought in Italy, really great stuff.

This takes me back to being the Safety Officer’s assistant and realizing the mortar course we were supervising had one tube on a reverse bearing as was about to drop rounds on Ontario Highway 7, which runs between the training areas. I was a 22 year old Bombardier and turning “oh **** oh **** oh ****” into “in theory could do the job almost as well” was probably the first time I earned those chevrons. Even then, I was glad Range Control was able to ask me the right questions so I could calm down and do my drills. Just funny to think about when you see your little CM team and think “well, the Corporal should just take over from the FOO in the middle of this situation”.

I can't comment on this, but field phones and pen and paper Artillery Command Post operations are back in a big way. I learned how to use honest-to-God signal flags for the first time in 2018. Having said that - this is why planning in advance is useful, and field phones allow most of what radios do, as long as the wire can be run out. We in NATO are so used to having CAS, MEDEVAC and everything else a five minute radio call away, but that's not the only way to fight a war. I think in a lot of ways Afghanistan and Iraq have lowered effectiveness because having all of those things uncontested was taken for granted. I disagree that we'd go back to bugles and drums, but visual signals are a very reasonable tool, and like reading a map instead of using a GPS - we probably shouldn't have let that atrophy in the first place. The signaller would have all of the skills and tools to end that mission, for sure. I think someone would need to order it, but if they were near another officer who could direct them to call it off, that would seem reasonable to me. That's an interesting problem, I'll give it some more thought.

like @Ultradave I’m on my phone so I left a lot of detail out. For sure, we’ve gotten more flexible. With CM spanning 1943 to the present date, there are all sorts of details there. On top of that, how things were done in Task Force Kandahar is not how they’d work in a full-strength Brigade Group in the Baltic, so you can see there’s a wide range of ways fires might be organized. Even in ww2 we’d liaise closely, and you’re right about organization of Under Command and Support. It’s by no means impossible to end a mission, only much more complex than the Inf Co radioing the Bty directly. It still needs to be processed and then passed along. For a little write up on the system in theory This puts it in game terms , and there’s also a gameified Description of the Cold War Canadian Army.

@Ultradave, I really appreciate your posts. Thanks for the insight. My Old Man and mentors were Cold Warriors, but I joined up after Bosnia and my only NATO time in Europe was in Norway. It’s great hearing from someone who was around for those days. When I got out, we were just starting to practice firing by Regiment again, as opposed to trying to teach the ANA how to … well do much of anything really. Besides OP Medusa, and before my time Anaconda, there was not much need for that skillset, and now in the Baltic everybody is trying to re-learn it. If you have as much time to read in your retirement I do, and you’re curious about how and why the Commonwealth developed our approach, you might like reading On Commonwealth Military Culture: Military Identities: The Regimental System Monty’s Men: The British Army and the Liberation of Europe, Monty and the Canadian Army, Crerar’s Lietenants: Inventing the Canadian Junior Officer, The Madman and the Butcher: Sam Hughes and Arthur Currie, Politics of Command: McNaughton and the Canadian Army, On Commonwealth Artillery: British Artillery on the Western Front: The infantry cannot do with a gun less, Gunfire: British Artillery in WW2, Battle Tactics on the Western Front: British Army Art of Attack, British Artillery Between World Wars, Field Artillery and Firepower The Best Overall Book, Which Puts It All Together: Fire-Power: The British Army Weapons and Theories of War If I could summarize what sets us apart, and I’m curious about your input, it's this: Commonwealth soldiers serve in (traditionally locally recruited) Regiments for life. This is an incredibly close bond. It’s also an elite and prestigious social club for officers, who are expected to have a paternalistic attitude towards their men due to how rigid class was in English-Speaking countries besides America until very, very recently. Networks of officers from the same Regiment have an informal “Regimental Mafia”, identical with the “Old Boys Network” of elite British schools c. 1900 (down to being identified by striped ties). They are expected to advance the interests of their Regiment, and the careers of their chums, even when they are senior policy makers. When there was still a British Empire, over half of the Army, in fact one battalion of every Regiment would be serving overseas at any given time (mostly in India). This meant that the field army available for continental war was small, much smaller than other major nations. Canada, Australia and New Zealand had (and have) small armies by virtue of small populations. South Africa had a small Army because it excluded black people, and Boers did not want to join after being enemies in the Boer War. Similarly, in Canada French Canadians were discriminated against, the Army was entirely English, the Militia (much more posh culture than National Guard, hard to explain) even in Quebec was English, and the French were not eager to serve the British Empire either. Right so, in the Great War, I can’t really explain to Americans how deeply it shaped all of our countries. Much more than yours. These small armies went through the grinder at the Somme and Gallipoli, I don’t think Americans have had anything like it in their history. Almost the entire peacetime establishment of professional soldiers who started the war in August 1914 was killed or wounded by the following summer - and the war went on for 3 more years! In 1916-17, a Way of War was developed that traded time (planning), firepower (sheer size of the artillery arm) and logistics (shells) for lives. This was required because when those locally recruited regiments went into action on the Western Front, whole communities lost their military age men in an afternoon. There were Pals Battalions, where people would be encouraged to enlist together, so you can imagine how devastating this was. In Britain imposing Conscription caused a crisis, but in Canada it almost caused civil war. French Canada saw themselves getting sent to their doom for a cause and country that didn’t care about them. Using Firepower to preserve Manpower, using staffwork and cautious planning to reduce casualties, you can see how important this became. These societies, and of course armies, could not endure a war of attrition. Morale was shot, civil society was splintering. The closest I can think is maybe what I’ve heard the US Army was like in the 1970’s, and how it also had to change the way it did things and service culture. After the war, all of those conditions remained true: Britain still had to maintain a global empire, Canada, AUS, NZ, ZA, still had tiny recruiting pools, only on top of that there were fewer men to recruit after those devastating losses, and civil society was not going to support anything like it again. Again, it’s hard to explain how much the Great War shaped our culture and politics. When the Second World War started not only was the public memory dead set against heavy losses, the institutional memory remembered them and the Firepower and Planning focus, but also the personal memory of every notable senior officer in the Commonwealth. They had all seen their companies wiped out in an afternoon as subalterns. Monty in particular was, what we would say today, deeply traumatized by this experience. So - all effort went into keeping losses low. Even then, in late 44-45 manpower ran low again, there was another Conscription Crisis in Canada. Monty kept 21st Army Group in the war by all of the things Americans criticize him for: being cautious, premeditated, waiting for support and logistics to build up, executing a detailed plan. We could not have stomached the Hurtgen Forest. I hope this wasn’t too digressive, only Americans sometimes wonder why our militaries are so different. The short version is because of The Somme.

Ditto. Surveillance and Target Acquisition and FOOs, plus time instructing. No jump wings, but nobody’s perfect. I’m by no means a Master Gunner, but I started by linking the relevant doctrine and manuals as well as a well-written website that translated the Commonwealth (and other nations’!) artillery procedure into gameplay! The Artillery Net is not just something you can hop on. There are callsigns and authorization, and as @Ultradave said, even if we teach other arms the basics, we still have to allow them on the net to process their requests. Particularly with cancelling a mission, you would need to authenticate yourself and then read back the mission to the CP. If it wasn’t your callsign that issued it, presumably because you weren’t on the artillery net, this is not going to be a quick process. Remember, our Command Post is connected to all of our assets - Recce and FOOs - as well as the Brigade net, Artillery Regiment net , who knows who else. I understand Americans don’t maintain Artillery staffs as large as ours so they may not also have such an intricate planning staff, but the gist of it is - artillery fire is not spontaneous but part of a larger plan. Yes, we’ll approve calls for fire - if we want to, if we’re able to, if we have time to. That means you can’t call down fires that are busy or under someone else’s control - but you also cant just break into net and cancel someone else’s mission! Like I said, this may be a Commonwealth thing, because we’re in the business of planning and artillery, and there are of course exceptions to all this (which the CP, Bty Staff, Regt Staff and Artillery Staff attached to Bde will evaluate depending on what’s being asked), but “messing” with someone else’s mission and/or the existing plan is not something someone will let an Infantry Lt do without a second glance.

Briefly: Is answered by: and as well as I cannot stress that enough. In any situation where a FOO might be killed (ie contact with the enemy) obviously a main consideration would be that same radio falling into the enemy's hands! You can't just break into the Artillery Net and say "Uh this is Lt. Bob, the FOO's been killed, please cancel all artillery fire on our the enemy position. Danke, Spasibo, Thank you!" There is a process for authenticating, but there is absolutely no, none, could never be "emergency calls". Why? Because some people (like say the Russian Federation) are very, very good at Electronic Warfare and could likely break into a NATO Artillery Net, even without capturing the physical radio. There's the callsign, authentication, and more complex steps than that I won't go into under some conditions, but the short hand is - Artillery Communication is it's own system. There are rules and procedures and a script. There are some emergency procedures - Final Protective Fire etc - but there's no way to skip the steps that authenticate that the call is a legitimate one. The lesson is "Keep your FOOs alive!" and I don't only say that out of self-preservation

A call for fire is a request unless it's pre-planned. The CP won't fire until the FOO completes the warning order. The warning order is the type of mission, size of firing element (troop, battery, X guns), method of target location. If that's not done, there's no mission to process, and no fires. Remember this data has to be processed at the CP and applied at the guns. If someone drops off the net while adjusting, there's no way to know what adjustments to make, so the mission can't proceed, certainly not to FFE. A "Repeat" call would be the exception, but that just means to repeat the last order, in this case the last adjusting round. (This is why we tell infantry and cavalry not to say "could you repeat yourself?" or even say the word "Repeat" on our net. It's why Fire D has that formal script.) If the CP can't raise the FOO, they'd try again before ending the mission. The American Pam is here, I can't post the Canadian ones, but if you find one that's publicly available, most NATO stuff is nearly identical. Main difference is terminology ie CP vs FDE. tl;dr - If you half-ordered a meal, the kitchen wouldn't send it out, would they?

I really enjoyed having the VDV and MP in Barbarossa to Berlin. I know that the nature of CM1 titles led to it being easier to create a wide range of forces, equipment, TOE and OOB, but we've seen the rosters in CM2 titles fill out dramatically. They fought all the way to the end of the war, and in the northern and southern fronts as @Panserjeger alluded to, there are many interesting scenarios or even campaigns possible for the Naval Infantry in 1944 and 45 as they played quite a large role there. The VDV continued to conduct small drops to support partisans, which are now in Red Thunder, giving the opportunity to see the nature of Airborne Warfare on the Russian Front. It was a different sort than the massive Allied operations over Normandy, Holland and the Rhine, but no less dramatic. The minor Axis powers would fit in nicely, and as I have lobbied incessantly for Italian Partisans, RSI and Co-Belligerents for Fortress Italy, I think the addition of the Minor Axis and smaller Soviet formations and allies would be well worth purchasing. I think the "main" stories of these theatres of these base games being completed with the existing modules shouldn't signal the end of the title, but an opportunity for these smaller stories to now be told. I hope that makes sense. Everybody's waiting for a new engine, but I think modules that build on what's already there presents a good way to add detail to what we have, find new angles, tell new stories in the meantime. e: Any rumours about the Xmas bones this year?

I came here to post this. I was Arty Signals both in FOO and STA. There would be absolutely no way to know if anything had happened to the FOO as Artillery Communications (Fire Discipline) follows a procedure, a script. The procedure is designed, as @Ultradave said, so that data is fed to the CP, developed into firing data and given to the guns. Without "Check Fire", that procedure is not getting interrupted. Add to that that in WW2, and often times even today, other arms aren't on the Artillery net. There's no link between say an infantry company and the firing battery, and you're looking at no way to Check fire without the information getting passed up, over and then back down. When we're talking about a time when radios could be few and far between, and relying on telephone links, there's no way to quickly change missions like that. This, of course, is why pre-planned fires were (and are) central to the Commonwealth way of war. The infantry is briefed on the fireplan, and guns assigned to it have a card that tells the 1IC (gun commander) the data for every single round his gun will fire - sometimes for the next few hours. This means that whatever happens on the sharp end, rounds still fall where they are supposed to reliably. It's not as fluid or dynamic as on-call fires, but it works. There's a nifty explanation putting it into gameplay terms Here. A Fantastic Website Here, and the two books we use to teach at CTC Artillery School Here and Here if you want to go deep. I'm not saying all fire planning all the time, but for players commanding Commonwealth troops in BN and FI, and Brits and Canadians in SF2, this is the real solution to delivering reliable fires regardless of contact with the observer. As a rule: Medium guns fire pre-planned, some Field guns do, but some are kept available on-call, and mortars of course, are the Infantry's Artillery, are are most flexible to employ. I hope I didn't get too bogged down with detail there, but I really enjoy discussing the tools of the trade.