domfluff

Not yet, but there's a big patch due soon - it's reasonable to presume that there wasn't any point in a hotfix in the interim.

The Market Garden maps were the first of the concept (there were some vague plans mentioned around the idea of making generated maps, built from pre-made tiles, but this didn't come to anything). I think the idea of keeping master maps in their own directory came later. Functionally, they're just scenarios (big, empty scenarios), so there should be no harm in moving, altering or deleting them.

There were quite a few WW3 games, but there's a fair chance you're actually talking about the boardgame of Red Storm Rising.

Yeah, this is a CM thing in general. A similar problem happens with a scenario that ends with a number "Scenario Title 1982" will save as "Scenario Title 1983", then 1984, 1985, etc. Not really a bug, but it's a poor choice of formatting for the titles.

Every infantry unit can grab ("share") ammunition from an adjacent vehicle, regardless of formation. That's important to allow things like the Supply platoons to work. I don't believe this works whilst mounted, for the same reasons that tanks in the same platoon can't share ammunition. I do think the Vickers MMG teams should be able to Acquire ammunition from their carrier (it'll be more to do with the way the carrier is set up than the MMG team), but it's a minor point.

As mentioned, the MMG carriers can be fired mounted or dismounted. They can use the ammunition in the carrier if they are nearby, but they can't Acquire this ammo for some reason. They could be resupplied from other sources, certainly.

Doctrine and the TO&E go hand in hand - each absolutely lead the other. You're certainly free to use any tactical approach you'd like, but the kit is designed to be used in a particular way, and trying to force it into a different direction will usually be deficient in some manner. The Tutorial scenarios do a very good job of demonstrating the core principles of Soviet doctrine. The first (attack) will teach you about mass, maximising firepower and coordination with a layered plan for fires. The second (meeting engagement) will take those same core principles, and then show how they apply in a much more fluid and subtle battle of manoeuvre, in a manner which is suitable for implementation in the campaign, but also in the context of multiplayer quick battles. This kind of tutorial scenario is something which I think is lacking in CM generally - there are an awful lot of questions that could be answered by this kind of thing. Typical examples have included how best to employ a Commonwealth rifle formation, and what the purpose of the two inch mortar is - if there was a simple, doctrinal setup that you could point to and say "if you can't win this with minimal losses, you don't understand it", that would be extremely useful, across all titles and factions. The Cold War campaigns do an excellent job of demonstrating the doctrine of the two sides, but often with additional complexity, since we're no longer in a tutorial. There is at least one US campaign mission which is an excellent demonstration of Active Defence, and the Soviet stuff is well represented throughout their campaign. There could always be more documentation, naturally, but field manuals exist and they're mostly very accessible. A "strategy guide" would mostly involve re-writing those.

The Carrier platoons in the British rifle battalion are a really interesting unit, with multiple roles. They provide a level of mechanisation at the leg infantry level, and therefore can act as a reconnaissance element, a cavalry screen, a base of fire, limited transport or a base of fire - there isn't one single role for it, and there's a lot you can do with it. Your basic carrier platoon is perhaps most similar to US Cavalry - they punch well above their weight in terms of firepower (the platoon has about as much firepower as a rifle company, including PIATs, 2 inch mortars and the Brens), but obviously suffer badly from any losses. The machine gun platoons also ride on universal carriers, and these *do* mount a Vickers MMG, which can be fired whilst mounted or dismounted. The Vickers performs well for it's class in CM in terms of putting out suppressive fire at range, and the carrier will provide some mobility, protection, and additional ammunition. One of the downsides to the Vickers MMG with comparison to something like the US 1917 on a tripod, is that the latter has a much larger squad attached to it to carry around the ammunition. This is negated by the carrier. Those Carrier-mounted MMG teams can't acquire ammunition with the Acquire command, for some reason, but if they are mounted or within an action spot or two they'll use the ammunition anyway.

Air assets will be degraded in high EW settings - mostly that they will take longer to call in. The ability of SAMs to engage aircraft will also be degraded in the stronger settings. UAVs will have trouble spotting things in higher EW scenarios. Aircraft do not supply any EW in CM, but it does appear as though countermeasures are modelled.

There is no reason to put your M577 anywhere near the front. They are there to give your HQ units a ride, and to facilitate their job. That is, they gain some mobility, some protection against artillery, and access to a radio and the facility to make tea.

The viewpoint does negate a lot of the advantages, which is a shame. The ones that remain are really about margins - an existing spotting contact will resolve into a target faster than not having a spotting contact (by "faster" I actually mean "more likely", as in "will take fewer spotting cycles to resolve into, on average"). This basically means that you want to send a tank platoon over a rise into a known enemy with as many spotting contacts as possible, and give them the best chance in the upcoming engagement. It's very far from an automatic thing, but like everything else it's about tipping the scale in your favour in small increments, enough of which combined will sum to a perceptible advantage. A lot of the time it won't matter - superior optics, numbers, position or relative suppression will wipe out any marginal benefit, but that's nothing new to stuff on a CM scale - for example, it doesn't really matter how your light machine gun compares technically to those of your opponent when you're being wiped out by heavy mortar fire.

It does work in all titles. I've mostly been using it in Cold War.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the M577 has any exceptional spotting gear (it has a night vision sight, but that's not uncommon). That would mean that it's main use is as a radio hub, and to transport and keep your CO alive.

I use this, which helps me: https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cmbn-other/cmbn-hi-vis-trps-by-juju/ The option I've been using is the plain white one, which I've found easier to spot from a distance.

Yup yup. Have you seen the recreation in CMBN? It's not the full battlefield, it's the mound and Wellington's area, but it's in the CMBN battlepack.

I've been making some basic topographical maps of Darwin hill in CM:CW, and it was a little shocking quite how small everything is. H Jones' run was certainly up a rise, but yeah, it's surprisingly flat - the folds of ground (and fighting at night, naturally) are really important.

Quite right about the Milan usage and the other details (although you could reasonably question precisely *why* a battalion commander was charging an enemy trench with an SMG), but the above isn't strictly correct. Mark Adkin's Goose Green is a fantastically detailed breakdown of the battle, in all particulars. Goose Green was indeed a battalion attack against a regiment, but only on paper - they were extremely understrength, and in terms of actual fighting men, the ratio was almost exactly 1:1. That's not great, obviously - attacking over open ground and uphill against even odds is a massive failure on several levels, especially in intelligence, but the narrative of the paras winning outnumbered 1:3 isn't actually correct.

Most of the C2 mechanics aren't in the manual, so that point (at least) is nothing new.

58 minutes would be a problem, and sounds like a broken link somewhere. That's definitely worth testing in clean conditions.

If there are C2 links off-map, they'll take longer to communicate. With both the company and battalion commander off-map, that'll take longer still. Even if there's no hard coded degradation of timing here (which is something I haven't tested, but does seem to be the case), then an on-map battalion commander can receive multiple strands of information, whilst the off-map commander will not - consider something like a battalion commander standing next to their 2IC, they might be transferring spots through the radio net, but also getting anything horizontally from the 2IC unit, and this kind of incidental thing can add up, possibly by accident. I haven't seen anything particularly unusual about the Cold War spotting or information sharing (aside from the M113 bug, obviously). I *do* find it amusing that most of the early complaints about the title were alternately "BMP spotting is far too good" and "My BMPs are totally blind".

I haven't seen anything which isn't a specific anti-air asset firing at air targets, but then I haven't played around with WW2 air all that much. There's a bit of a design trade-off there - Bren guns, .50 cal, etc. were intended for the anti-air role, but weren't very good at it, and firing ineffectually at air assets is a great way to give away your location, especially given the gods-eye view of the battlefield in CM. Since there is currently no method of preventing anti-air assets from firing at air targets, this is a real concern. So... would you rather have a practically-zero chance of defending yourself against air attack, versus a very likely chance of revealing your position? Clearly "practically zero" isn't zero, so there's some reason why squads and vehicles should try to defend themselves with MG fire, but it seems to me like the trade-off is far too great - wasting ammunition and revealing your position to your opponent.

At least based on Closing with the Enemy, CAS - at least at the extreme low level of focus we see in the Combat Mission series - really didn't happen at all. There were a tiny number of attempts at coordination on that level, and they were notable for two main reasons - firstly that they were a large exception to the norm, and secondly that they were very rarely less than a disaster. Air was very important in the second world war, naturally, and attacking ground targets was a thing, but supporting an individual rifle company is pretty implausible.

Ah yes, they will stop moving in the modern titles as well. One thing I tend to do is put Anti-air assets on short target arcs, so that they won't waste their limited rounds on ground targets (unless I want them to). The short arcs have no effect on their ability to engage aircraft.

Yes. Actual time varies, but generally within a minute or two. It's enough time to fast move into the treeline, or disembark AA assets. You really have two options - get into cover, or to leave the area as fast as possible (air missions, like artillery, will be called in on a limited area of the field. Which is better will depend on a number of things, including the air assets that are attacking you (e.g., air assets with thermals won't be as degraded by trees as one relying on visual cues only). This will vary. The game does simulate air assets as being in a specific location, relative to the map, which means that they need LOS to that attack run - putting AA assets in a position where they can have an unobstructed view of the sky will maximise those chances. How close they need to be depends entirely on the asset, but the general rule is that you want to keep them close to what you want to protect. Clearly anti-air missiles are going to have a longer effective range than the cheap Syrian option, of sticking machine guns on the back of pickup trucks. Anti-air assets can't be relied on to actually shoot down aircraft, with the possible exception of the Tunguska in CMBS (more on this point later). This means that they're really there to give you enough time to get under cover, or the hell away from that area. AA fire can cancel attack runs and provide you with some extra time. If you're lucky they can actually hit something. Yes. Point targets from a dedicated air controller will lead to faster call-in times and more accurate shooting. Further, in the modern titles you'll have laser guided munitions that require an observer with a laser designator to fire at all. Smaller target areas (small radiuses, or point targets) will also make it easier for the aircraft to spot targets. *** Now, a more fundamental point: The way that CM models air is pretty bad, in general, and I'm generally of the mind that the game would be better for not having it, as it currently exists. The WW2 titles have far too much control over the air assets - that kind of co-ordination on CM scale is wildly unrealistic. The modern titles have too little control (the aircraft behave like the WW2 assets), and since the aircraft behaviour was changed from the original CMSF, they're significantly less useful. In a tactical sense (especially against a human opponent), they're a highly random asset, that can be blind-countered by anti-air assets, which are also highly random. Air assets as-is will tend to do pretty much nothing, or delete things, at random, and there's little you can reasonably do to influence this, so there aren't any interesting decisions to make. It's random and it's boring, and doesn't add to the game. Still, in the modern titles (especially Shock Force), you can't really get away from it or explain it away with scenario design, so some possible solutions using the existing structure: My preference in the modern titles would be for fast jets to specialise in being point-target destroyers. They would call in and either deny a small, specific area of space, or be called in on a target to delete a specific building or attack some oncoming armour/whatever. This would probably mean dumping all of their ammunition in a single pass, or something close to that. The purpose of jets would then be single, highly destructive asset, one and done. I'd then like helicopters to behave far more like they do in CMSF 1 and CM:A, with increased loiter time and 2-3 passes over a two minute period. That would mean that you'd be able to use helicopters to support an assault by suppressing specific targets, rather than having a strafe Hind come in, strafe something random, then disappear for 5-6 minutes, giving them time to recover. Clearly the latter would be hilariously vulnerable to anti-air, and I think that's sort-of the point - it means that employing this kind of thing would involve ensuring that anti-air assets are neutralised beforehand - this would add decisions, not take them away. For the WW2 titles, I'd like to see air assets disappear entirely, since they're completely inappropriate for the period and scale. I appreciate that this won't be popular, so if they have to exist, I'd like all WW2 air to work the same way as it does in CMRT - i.e., with zero control, and as much of a risk to your own forces as the enemy.

One interesting hypothetical that Cpt. Miller has suggested is the deployment of US airborne as a quick reaction force reacting to a Soviet invasion through neutral Austria. Light forces would likely be the only troops that could react in time, in a similar situation to the deployment of the 82nd Airborne to Saudia Arabia in the first Gulf War - a speedbump, probably, but the only one available.