domfluff

This scenario really disappointed me. We just abandoned a PBEM after about five turns. The map is fantastic. The tactical problem from the Soviet side (aggressive recon and attacking through a chokepoint) is superb, but the forces given and arrayed against you really hurt this - the briefing tells you you're a second line force, running into other second line forces. From the situation, it's clear this will involve marching into TOWs. The bridge is the key terrain, and the situation (a small cavalry force defending a chokepoint) is plausible and should give them a similarly difficult problem to solve. Instead, the US start with three Bradleys and four TTS M60, so a ton of thermal optics, with the Bradleys sited well forward and in hull down positions against a line of advance. The end result is that the Soviets have three possible lines of advance, and all three are covered by fires - either from the TOWs down the valley, or from the flanking Bradleys. The only element that the Soviets can have is the T-62 platoon, which cant get angles on the Bradleys without coming under fire from the TOWs. Further, the TOWs in the town can shoot into the Russian deployment zone, so not only are all three possible lines of advance covered from turn zero, they also cant stay where they are. If they did, they'd have no chance of winning a duel against TOW launchers at a multi-kilometer range, since they're only T-62. Then you have the Russian forces themselves. Zero TRP, artillery is limited to 120mm mortars, and a tiny force - two companies is not sufficent for this size of target, and I'm not sure why the ATGM assets arent alongside the main force. I'm also not sure where the BRDM scout teams are, and I have some issues with the formations chosen, which will hurt their c2. This is also a scenario where you could legitimately have T-72, so there's that. It's such a shame. This is halfway to being a *fantastic* scenario. The map is incredible, and the tactical problem the soviets have to solve is very thorny. It's just that the US forces dont have a similar problem to solve, and the combination of forces and placement really wipes out any interesting decisions to make. I'm very tempted to do an alternate version of this scenario. I'm expecting the US to have a much smaller force - perhaps an armoured cavalry platoon (or two), in 1979, with maybe M60A1 or M48. I'd need to do something about the sight lines. The aim would be to give the US a similarly difficult tactical problem - how a small, mobile force can use terrain to constrict and defeat a larger one. I wouldn't be upset about this if it was so nearly brilliant - this map could easily be the basis for one of the best scenarios in the game, but currently it feels like a passive tower defence.

Now, I do think that might be a reasonable complaint - whether the default loadout is unsuitable for the situation, and whether it would be changed in the field to add more HE. We dont have control over ammo loadouts for anything else - if that is done doctrinally, I'd expect to see a Warrior (COIN) variant, with more HE.

The BMP AI is pretty good at doing that. It generally wont bother if it sees no threats, but if if fires and there are still visible threats (typically because you just missed), it'll retreat to a spot out of LOS from them. That behaviour can get you into trouble, naturally, but not as much as just standing there. On the subject of behaviour - the BMP has been tweaked significantly. A target order will bo longer fire the main cannon (except against armoured targets). That means that Target is now the 73mm (or autocannon on the BMP 2), Target Light is the MG, and the ATGM is at their discretion.

I suspect the issue is that this process is neither obvious, nor terribly transparent. I certainly had no idea that it was possible to upload scenarios or mods for Cold War to the website, and I'm still not entirely clear how one would go about that, without directly involving you (with all of the demands on your time that would imply). CM has historically thrived on user scenarios and mods, and for the future of the game it's important that this is as accessible as possible, to as many people as possible. CM is a niche title, but it doesn't seem like there's any advantage in making it more niche than it needs to be.

Uh... they're not all white, and never have been. Since CMSF 1 there have been soldiers with light and dark skin in the base games (at least for the US army, and in the modern titles - WW2 is a different story for obvious reasons). Now, that's a fairly basic representation - there's no women, and it's an either/or thing, but still, that's fundamentally not a true statement.

"Wow, these NTC maps are a barren wasteland" "Well, I was *supposed* to have a Combined arms company"

Confirmed that this is the behaviour seen. BMP-1 will fire and reload whilst buttoned. BMP-1P will have the same behaviour as in CMSF - the gunner must unbutton to fire and reload. BMP-2 can do both whilst buttoned. Now, working as designed? I wonder whether this is intending to replicate the above loading hatch. The AT-3 is also significantly smaller than the AT-5, so I wonder if this accounts for the faster loading time.

Before CM:CW was released, I was all about the idea of other timeframes, pushing this forwards and backwards. Seeing the introduction of ERA, or the first ATGMs, and the period when it was debatable whether HEAT or kinetic projectiles were the future of tank warfare, all that good stuff. Having played around with it, I think I've gone off the idea - the start of this period is when the US is perhaps as behind technologically as it has ever been, and the end of the period is where they leap into dominance. Earlier and later won't change this dynamic all that much, and I suspect there's more to be gained from exploring alternative regions (Norway, Afghanistan, perhaps Iran or Korea) than by seeing that development.

Correct. An active IR Lamp for fighting at night is something which most of these tanks will have, and will not turn on, because doing so would advertise their position very clearly. There is no Russian equipment in CM: Cold War that has any thermal optics.

Sure. No thermals on anything Russian in Cold War. That's limited to the Dragon, the M60A3 (TTS), the M901, and then later the Bradley/Abrams team.

It's something that's easiest to see in action in Cpt. Miller's training scenarios. A typical engagement is that you have your tank company in line, and an enemy tank pops up. One of your tanks might spot it, fire, and miss. They return fire, and miss. Then five of yours return fire and maybe three of them hit and kill it. Everything T-64 and higher has an excessive amount of turret armour, and very few US tanks have laser rangefinders or similar aids, so there's a very good chance of a first round missing, and even if it does hit, there's a good chance that it won't kill with the first hit.

Soviet doctrine was to fight buttoned. "Why" isn't entirely clear to me, but I imagine it's a number of factors - NBC, vulnerability to small arms since you're planning to close aggressively, the general low height of the Soviet armour, etc. It's probably a combination of factors. The unbuttoned position for Soviet TCs isn't really conducive to it either - they're pretty exposed. In practical terms, it shouldn't really matter. If you're following Soviet doctrine, you're massing armour in line, and so making up for poor spotting with multiple rolls of the dice - ten tanks with poor spotting will have the edge over one with better optics, at least until you start hitting Abrams and the technological edge takes over.

...and this is the worst possible Abrams.

The series of NTC armour battles ends with one where you have an Abrams platoon. They kinda ruin it, really. The Abrams is such a dominant piece of kit that it wipes out a lot of the subtley in the game, and reverts to something more like CMSF. It's not bad as a late-campaign "reward" or the like, and it's interesting to see, but yeah, not really a fan of what it does to the game.

If exposed infantry come under indirect fire, doctrine is to get the hell away from there as fast as possible. Infantry in prepared positions (foxholes, trenches), can stay in place. The Hide command will get them to keep their heads down and increase survivability. They will still take some losses, but you'll have dug in for a reason, and you'll want to stay there. Soviet HE in particular is not good at taking out vehicles (nor is it designed to). That means that you can mostly button up and ride out the attack. Open topped vehicles should relocate, as above. You might still suffer subsystem damage or immobilisations, but again, you're presumably sitting there for a reason (or else you'd leave). It's worth considering what the purpose of the bombardment is. Any kills an artillery attack gets are secondary to the main point, which is suppression of your AT assets. That allows the Soviet armour to move into position to start puttig down effective fire. If it's possible to hold a secondary position that would still control this ground, then sure, but the chances are that this wont be possible, or else the attack would be on a broader front. That means that withdrawing from your defensive position is exactly what they want you to do. This is where the principle of Active Defence really came from. This is the doctrine that the pre-1982 kit was designed for, and it's something of a reality with how disadvantaged the US are in 1979. Similar to how you'd play the Syrians in CMSF, the basic plan would be a defence in depth - multiple pockets of resistance, which can support each other, and slowly bleed the attacker, inch by inch. Active Defence was an attempt to take that concept, but apply it to a mechanised battlefield - rather than having fixed defences, instead having fluid positions that you fight and withdraw from, under cover from supporting positions. Fight, withdraw, fight. Part of the point of this was that it avoids the set-piece Soviet attack, since large set pieces are inherently inflexible. This doctrine is also necessarily defensive in tone. When the US closed the technological gap and started to surpass the Soviets, the doctrine was able to change, and there was increased focus on proactive counterattack and disruption. This is basically the narrative arc of CM:CW, and it really informs what you're doing throughout.

Quick battles being what they are, you pretty much cant avoid this. The AI plans have to work without the knowledge of what they're ordering - the same orders have to work for an engineer platoon or an abrams company. QBs are not good against the AI, except as a way to test things with some rng/hidden information. It might accidentally create a competitive game occasionally, but it'll be entirely by chance.

Doing a couple more tests of the unbuttoning - still haven't seen it outside of that scenario, but the unbuttoning is a bit weird. The driver tends to jerk up in his seat before bobbing back down. Essentially, I think something's a bit screwy with this one.

If you're doing Breaking the Bank as PBEM, then sure, could be anywhere (and that positioning could be terrible, no way to know). As a single player scenario there's a more structured approach to the thing. Great scenario, but it's a ton of effort.

The Warrior is a vehicle that's designed within the context of the Cold War. The RARDEN is designed to take out enemy BMPs from range, and allow the infantry to get on with winning the infantry fight. It's very capable within that context. The infantry are the primary anti-infantry weapon that the Warrior IFV has, with the Warrior's MG as the secondary weapon. The Spartan is a (small) APC, and not a fighting vehicle. Many of the British missions in Shock Force involve you having to use tools which are not designed for their task in creative ways, that's one of the main themes of the module. Breaking the Bank is a brutal scenario, but it's also a heavy urban environment, which means it's a light infantry fight. The armoured vehicles are there to support that fight at best.

At least with the above testing. It could probably do with some more poking.

Hunter or Prey (I sent you the save file for this one).

(Has been reported) This one might just be this scenario though, since I can't make it happen outside of this.

Yup. Doing some quick tests. An FO with off-map mortars only gets the benefit of the radio, and nothing more (this typically seems to shave a minute off, with Regular factors) - there doesn't seem to be a difference in sitting in the artillery observation vehicle over a BMP or Zil-131.

Getting the AI to convoy convincingly (e.g., for a convoy) is quite hard. For the Salang Blues campaign for CM:A (which is mostly convoy ambushes), the designer couldn't solve it, so put in low walls along the road to keep the trucks in place. I do think in general it's worth being "lumpy" with your plans - give the crucial stuff more detailed, individual plans, but letting the AI manage the broader stuff more loosely.

I haven't tested the vehicle in CW (aside from noticing that it's currently bugged when unbuttoned in a pretty funny way), but vehicles like the Bradley FIST in CMSF have the effect of reducing call-in times - an FO might have a 4 minute call in, but the same FO in a FIST might have a a 2 minute call-in, artillery type and soft factors depending. Having access to a radio has a similar effect in general terms, so it's probably similar here - if you're planning to test this, what I'd suggest testing (and what I'd expect to see) is that the FO has the same effect on call-in times if they're physically in the vehicle, or if they're in the same action spot.