domfluff

Yes, but in reverse. The technique that Chuck is talking about is placing a movement order on the enemy location, and drawing a target order from there, to find the friendly location you should occupy for LOS. That's potentially a little faster than plotting a movement order, then a target to the enemy location, finding it doesn't work, then plotting another one and re-testing. I don't really agree that it ruins the "integrity" of the game in any real sense. Obviously, the LOS tool isn't a perfect match for your solider's eyeballs. The LOS tool uses the pre-built lookup table to generate its result, and so this will only be accurate to a limited extent. Individual weapon systems may still end up behind trees, walls, rises in the ground, whatever.

Sure, but it was released in 2007. 1984 is not a book set 37 years in the past...

I do think there's some truth to the fundamental point here. I don't agree that NATO would operate without concern for the population, but CMSF in the broadest sense does sometimes find itself confused. Sometimes CMSF feels like a direct conflict - a twist on Desert Storm or OIF, and sometimes it presents itself as representing COIN. Sometimes it feels like the scenarios and campaigns are trying to achieve both at the same time, which can be confusing. (I do mean more than one transitioning to the other - there are some official scenarios and campaigns that feel like they don't agree on what the CMSF high concept actually is). This is obviously compounded with user-made content, but that's not really a fair thing to critique by the same standards. This isn't necessarily a problem - despite CMSF having being set in the near future, it does a good job of representing the last few decades of warfare, and importantly can cope with hybrid warfare in a manner which none of the other CM titles currently touch. I do think there's a lot of value in having a firm background to the hypothetical modern titles, but the degree to which the scenarios stick to that background varies.

Good work man, well done. When CMSF 2 was first released Civilian density didn't work at all, so I'm guessing this was broken then.

Combatants have always been stealthy in CMSF. The only real change there with CMSF 2 has been that civ density protects them whilst quick moving, which means the AI can actually use it.

I asked this recently, but didn't get a response. It used to be a percentage die roll for each unit - if this was set to 50%, then there would be a 50% chance it was restored fully, or not at all, and this die roll would be made per thing. With Engine 4, there was a patchnote about this being shared or evened out somehow, but exactly how that works is not clear.

I can definitely see why Spies and VBIED can't occupy objectives (the latter would have difficulty occupying anything for very long). I can also see it as a deliberate decision - stealthed combatants with short target arcs could well be a degenerate strategy.

Ah, interesting. They certainly use it in-game though, since they can spot through smoke. The US forces in game have night vision sights on various weapon systems. AN/PVS-4 on all M60 (so, every squad again) and some of the M16s, and AN/TVS-5 on the M2. That's quite aside from the vehicles. I imagine that altering the Tac AI to not use it in a surveillance role might be pretty tough. There's going to set the thing up when stationary, and it's going to be hard for the AI to determine your intention when stopping a squad at an arbitrary location. In addition, The night spotting in particular makes for some fairly ridiculous battles in Cold War - the US has an extreme advantage there. I could well believe that the Dragon's AN/TAS-5 is being used like a Javelin CLU by the TAC AI. Whether that's appropriate in the circumstances (regardless of the manual) is a different question, and one I'm not equipped to answer. In terms of battery life: Most scenarios (and all Quick Battles) are under two hours in any case, so I'm not sure that battery restriction is terribly relevant. Indeed, the Javelin CLU's battery life has been quoted as lasting a varying amount of time depending on temperature, between half an hour and four hours, with most conditions being around a three hour expectancy. This is not modelled in CM either, and I don't think I'd expect it to be.

It's certainly not documented. I do wonder whether it's intentional. I agree that it can and has caused confusion.

In CMCW, the TOW launchers, and every M47 Dragon (so, potentially every US infantry squad) has a thermal imager - they will and should have better spotting. Not Black Sea levels of spotting, but certainly superior to the Soviets. The tanks will also have superior optics in general. In addition, we know there is currently a bug with specifically the M113, where it can see through smoke. This is due to be patched out.

It's a "Meeting Engagement" in the Soviet definition of the term - i.e., an attack from the march, preceded by CRP and FSE, and followed by the main body of the battalion, which has to manoeuvre and adapt to the terrain and situation. It's also something which is a direct upgrade from the "Meeting Engagement" tutorial. The deliberate attack would be on a fixed position, where the battalion had time to assemble in whole before being engaged. That's definitely not that scenario. The term "meeting engagement" in most wargames tends to mean "two equal sides rush to the centre" or the like, which is not what I meant there.

Soviet doctrine was straightforward and brutal, and this is reflected well in CMRT. A Soviet battalion attack might be versus an enemy company, but you can shift up and down scale there and have the same basic result. This would mean attacking along a narrow frontage with a company of your own, in the Command Push - that is, relying heavily on your (excellent) terrain read, sending out scouts aggressively on the preplanned route of advance to make contact. Company should be 2 up, one reserve. All the usual small unit stuff should apply, but you're fundamentally walking into the unknown. When they make contact, they engage - not running mindlessly, but attacking in the same manner as everyone else since 1918. If they can sweep aside the force there, great, if not they hunker down in whatever cover they can find, form a base of fire, and start calling in the next set of artillery whilst the second company advances behind. This "If/then" structure is fundamentally similar to the kind of thing you find in US battle drills (and everyone elses), but the scope and scale is a bit different. The RT manual mentions that you "should treat a platoon like a squad", and whilst that's really true, it's a fine place to start. The second company then picks up the attack, along with whatever is left of first company, and the plan continues. When you're down to engaging with the final company then your attack is halted, this is pretty much the limit of your advance, so you dig in and go defensive. So that's the principle - maximum mass on as limited a frontage as possible, movement dictated and coordinated with a sophisticated fire plan (it's an "artillery army"), and a command push, speed-first approach. "Human wave" is a distortion, of course. The Soviets were not stupid, and although the above scheme is simple, it's also brutal and effective.

Both sides aren't using the same eyeballs and binos though - there are significant differences in equipment, even on the rifleman's level - all US soldiers have thermal optics, for a start, and the Javelin launch unit (which operates with or without missiles) might well be the best single spotting device in CM. The tank example was only representative - the principles are identical, and the point is that to overcome the deficiency in optics you need to rely on numbers. It's typically significantly easier to play with quality than quantity, mind you. The point on Training Scenarios is a good one. I've long thought this kind of thing would be good for all titles, and would help things significantly - scenarios which aren't supposed to be difficult, just doctrinal examples of specific things. For example, a common refrain is how "useless" the British 2 inch mortars are in CMBN. This is firmly incorrect, but presumably their use is non-obvious. If there was a doctrinal platoon attack scenario for the British rifle platoon, then you could have a yardstick to measure other things by - essentially, a "If you can't win this, you don't understand it yet" test. Later scenarios can then build off this with greater complexity and additional problems. With the CMCW tutorials, there is a direct line between the tutorials and the Soviet campaign. The "attack" scenario teaches the fundamentals (mass, firepower, speed), and the "meeting engagement" then takes those and adds the complexity of a flexible, more typical scenario, where you have to be fluid and adapt, rather than just move forward and shoot. The first Soviet campaign mission is then a doctrinal meeting engagement, but you're now facing an enemy which is really trying to beat you, and has the ability to put you through hell. A->B->C. If you tried to jump straight in at C you'd miss most of the context.

I haven't had the chance to test this yet, but my starting point would be to check if this same problem occurs with other mixed forces (say, US and US Marines). This is a conventional scenario, not a QB?

Spotting in Cold War is *definitely* not as easy as in Black Sea. The Russian optics are bad in both, but Cold War only really starts having a huge gap in spotting in the later periods, or scenarios with excessive TTS, Abrams and Bradleys. If you play earlier periods (1980 is my sweet spot), then you're down to the slightly-superior optics of the M60A1, or the thermals of the Dragons and TOW launchers, which are a lot more manageable. In Black Sea, there are thermals everywhere - it's possible in Cold War to stick an FO on top of a naked hill in the NTC campaign, and as long as you're maintaining range you can do so safely. This is objectively untrue in Black Sea - you have to assume that anything that can see, can be seen. That means that committing assets means trying to make sure you can win any fight you've just started. Recon is incredibly important, especially with drones. The trick to getting Russian stuff to work, especially in Cold War, is to understand how the probabilities pan out. For a hypothetical example - imagine a US tank that had a flat 50% chance to spot in a given arbitrary slice of time. If you had a single Russian tank that had (we'll say) a 20% chance to spot, clearly the US MBT is going to be expected to get the first spot off, and whomever gets the first shot will usually win the engagement. If on the other hand you had four of the same Soviet armoured vehicle, then the chances of getting that spot is 100*(1-0.8^4) , or 59%. Clearly completely arbitrary values, but they're demonstrative. You don't care which of your tanks gets the spot first, so long as one of them does. The principle then is to get your maximum strength against a minority of the opposition, and also really lean heavily into that Lanchester square law to minimise your own losses.

Yeah, that's the popular narrative, as well as being the narrative that Van Riper himself was keen on spreading. The reality is more complex (isn't it always). Whether history has shown Van Riper to be right, or whether he was intentionally disrupting the exercise and self-aggrandising is more of an opinion. The truth is likely to be somewhere in the middle. Your fundamental point is absolutely correct though - including the "the game is wrong".

I'd never criticise someone for playing real time (or only ever playing single player, or only playing Quick Battles against the AI, etc., etc.). I think it's pretty self evident that it's not the way to get the best out of Combat Mission, and it's not for me, but that doesn't mean it's an invalid approach. It might be worth pointing out that Steve identified as "real time player", at least during CMSF 1. I do take exception at the idea of setting this up as a strawman to create some kind of divisive outgroup, especially as I can't see anything positive to be gained from doing so. It's ultimately both damaging and immature, and it just creates pointless noise. The exact same logic applies to imagined age barriers, WW2/Modern gamers or any other arbitrary lines you might care to draw. Serious wargaming is a niche hobby, and CM is a small part of that. It's upsettingly common for niche groups to start by eating themselves, defining themselves by whom they reject. It's also more than possible to be better than that, with some work. It's very easy to criticise and bring people down, but it takes a bit more effort to add anything positive back. This thread has been pretty disappointing.

The Millennium Challenge 2002, and it wasn't just digital. It's also rather more complex than that narrative - although that was certainly the one that made the headlines. There has been *endless* back and forth about the specific minutia of that one. One of the more interesting conclusions that no-one seems to talk about, but all agree on, is that despite refloating the ships and proceeding under a more restrictive Redfor ROE (whether that constitutes "changing the rules" is one of many debated topics here), and the Redfor commander resigning six days in, Blufor was still unable to achieve it's objectives. The Red side maintained regional control, albeit in a weakened state. Your fundamental point is completely correct. One thing I've found playing at a lot of tournaments for various things is that it seems really common for (poor) players to assume that their opponent is weaker, stupider or more clumsy than they are.

The battle pack Stryker campaign does a really good job of highlighting the challenges and advantages of the Stryker formation in a near-peer conflict. That inevitably means that it's more difficult (you can't lean on the Abrams/Bradley pair to get you out of your poor decisions), but it's an important piece of the CMBS high concept, that would otherwise be lacking. There is a Stryker brigade deployed to Europe in reality, so this kind of thing is important thematically.

I believe two of the NTC campaign maps currently exist as QB maps in Cold War. Converting and creating the others (or more) would be simple though.

It definitely isn't - spotted targets are aimed at the centre of mass of the spotted model (and deviates from there), whereas area fire hits all over the square. Obviously with stuff like HE or suppressive MG fire that may not matter too much.

That's what the more complex version of them allows you to do. In the simple version, you can't area fire without a contact. In the slightly more complex version, you can area fire with a contact, or if no-one on your side has a contact. Essentially, the only time you can't area fire is when you (the player) know that something is there, but your ordered squad does not. (Again, definitely not perfect, but it's direct and simple.)

The manual claims that higher leadership factors affect accuracy, but tests haven't shown much of a difference as of yet. That kind of specific fire direction would mostly be the squad leaders role though, so aside from a general bonus it'll be a bit below scale.

A simple house rule I've gone with sometimes has been "no area fire without a spotting contact". That's definitely not perfect, but it gives decent results with minimal overhead. Many of the rules You could go one step more complex, and make that "no area fire from a unit without a contact, if anyone else has a contact". That way, you can still recon by fire, but if you actually know there is something there, then you have to use the C2 network to share those contacts and coordinate fire. That's still not perfect, but it does force you to pay attention to C2. In reality though, getting contacts to the people you're expecting to fight is well worth doing, to the point of being the correct approach in most cases. The end result in the non-house-ruled game shouldn't really be too different in practice.

I can't help but notice you avoided my question. You made a statement, clearly directed towards me, which included some shameless and disgusting assertions, which you have zero business making. I would like to know why you think this is even remotely appropriate behaviour.