domfluff

NTC campaign might actually be my favourite campaign in all of CM, it's an amazing little thing.

One thing that's really surprising about the period is the lack of laser rangefinders on non-Soviet equipment. The T-64 is more accurate, with a faster-travelling round, giving it a flatter, more accurate trajectory. Broadly speaking, in the period before the Abrams, the Soviets had the superior equipment. That means that in CMSF terms, and particularly in 1979, you're not playing as the US, you're playing as the Syrians. You have WW2-era gunnery, and both main tank rounds and even ATGMs are not laser-focused kills like they are in the other modern titles. The end result is that you're forced to concentrate mass - if one tank has a 20% chance of a kill, then five of those same tanks will have a 68% chance of a kill, assuming you can get them all to bear on the same target at the same time. You're forced into defence in depth, and relying on combined arms, since every individual part of your force is likely to be worse than what you're up against. Naturally, that's hard. It's an awful a lot easier to manage a single powerful vehicle than five weaker ones, and the real problem is that whilst you may well take out that BMP with your tank platoon, the end result is that you'll upset his two friends, and possibly the remainder of the company. The one lesson driven home in all Combat Mission titles is that quality is better than quantity. The US in CM:CW has neither. Abrams and Javelins teach bad habits. The NTC scenarios in CMSF would be a joke - you could roll your Abrams to the top of a ridge and blatt away the incoming Motor Rifle companies without too much thought.

It'll be the same deal with the US bunkers in Normandy - they'd exist so that you can put scenarios together, not because they're reasonable additions.

If you put motivation and especially fitness way down, you'll get very close to the tactical effect of fighting in an NBC environment, even more so if you put visibility way down as well. I'm fully expecting an NBC gear mod to come out at some point too. Not that it isn't a reasonable question - it's definitely a choice, and something that would be interesting to hear discussed.

Honestly, I think CM would be a better game if it didn't feature aircraft at all, and left them as something outside of scope (and limited to the pre-battle phase). It does a pretty poor job of modelling them (they're too effectively co-ordinated for most of the WW2 titles, and not sophisticated enough for the modern titles), their use in scenarios and quick battles tends to be extremely random and binary, etc., etc. Even in the situations where it's tactically relevant, it's basically a dice roll, and not a terribly interesting one. It's obviously important in the modern titles to have some CAS coordination, but really it's only barely within the purview of a CM battle.

#1 The laser warning behaviour is a point of some contention, but I think the behaviour is at least defensible (I do think it's a bit too crude as-is) - if someone can lase you, they can see you, and it's reasonable to assume they can kill you, since even if you know that pretty much nothing in Black Sea can hurt you, your dudes *don't* know that. What if the enemy has a weapon you haven't seen, or is attacking from a vulnerable aspect? The fact you know it's a demo scenario in the editor with nothing scary doesnt mean your troops have, or should have, the same information. Train as you fight. #2 They'll do what you ask. If you ask them to do something stupid, they'll do something stupid. Aside from the listed, where you've hypothetically told them to dp exactly that, most of the "troops going in the wrong door" comes down to traffic management. Movement is based on fireteams, so an unsplit squad will sometimes try to jam both elements through a door at the same time to fulfil your order. If there is a second door, they will send one team through that instead when they find the first route blocked. Split them, and give them different orders, with perhaps a pause to stagger them.

That kind of unit isn't a permanent reconnaissance unit, it's assembled from within the battalion, so it's nowhere near as capable. It's actually one of my favourite little units in CM, for reasons I'm not entirely clear on - typically it's something like two BMPs, an HQ, two half squads and an ATGM. Typically this unit is supposed to observe, fight for information or set ambushes, and is supposed to be aggressive in its application. It doesn't have any of the toys of the dedicated recon units - binoculars, radios(!) or fancy things like the radar in CMBS.

Are the Bradley's firing ports supposed to work? I haven't been able to get them to fire.

Direction Found is a cool little platoon attack scenario. My assumption was that the idea of using the weapons as a base of fire in the buildings for the platoon wasn't viable - you might get lucky and snipe the M113 gunners before they take you out, but otherwise you're trying to fight a .50 cal with an armoured LMG, and you aren't likely to win that fight. That means that the LMG and SVD can perform the kind of role that platoon MGs typically do - as a mobile element that can add to a base of fire, or can free up a squad for another movement. I don't believe the M60A2 has thermal optics, so I'd expect the smoke will block LOS, yes.

The files are hosted centrally, and there's a lobby system to find games. Experienced players may indeed gain nothing from it, but the end result is likely to be a pretty huge positive.

The NTC campaign might now genuinely be my favourite campaign in all of Combat Mission. NTC campaign is supposed to be brutal, like the real NTC. Don't believe their lies. The enemy are all better than you - Elite and Crack experience, and they outnumber you. They're also hellishly aggressive and have some very sneaky AI plans going on. They will surprise you - the designers, Bil and Warren, are better than you. In terms of tips: You're playing the doctrinal infantry heavy mixed mech inf/tank company of the period, which I've grown to kinda love over this launch weekend. This is a combined arms formation, and its strength is gained through that combination - each element individually will fall apart. Field manual 71-1 (1977) is really the best guide to "how to do the NTC", since that does a really good job outlining how this works, and how to carry out the various missions you find in the campaign. The terrain is really hard to read at the NTC - you can't line up on a hedgerow or take a building, so it's a fascinating puzzle of reading folds in the ground, using reverse slopes, etc. The campaign gives you choices, and it's probably a good idea to try the other paths (although the last decision point seems to be broken right now). The two most important elements of that formation ("centre of mass" if you like) are learning to use your off-map support correctly, and how to manage a tank platoon. It's been common to be able to run up your tanks into a forward defensive position in most CM games, but here you're outranged, outgunned, and you can't really afford to take losses, since you'll need to use all of this company later on. A large part of using the off-map assets is that you need to read the terrain and the enemy lines of approach. The enemy emphasises speed and aggression, specifically to counter the threat of your off-map assets. This kind of experience is pretty much new for CM, it's rare to be faced with this kind of problem in the other titles. The other arms support these two core elements. Learning how to make the most of your light mortars in this context is important, and how best to site your TOW launchers - the TOWs will outrange a BMP's ATGM one on one, but again if you're in forward defensive positions you'll never be one on one. Infantry have a secondary role. I mostly used them to secure or deny the flanks of my armour, often in complex terrain. The Dragon and LAWs can be useful, but aren't dominant or in large numbers, but they provide the spotting and flank security that the armour desperately needs. The .50 cals of the M113s aren't something I want to be going on the offensive with, but (given how aggressive the enemy are), they certainly had their uses.

I haven't the faintest idea if this is actually a bug or not, but the "amphibious" Bradley... isn't, despite being listed as such.

Dead pixeltruppen stay in place until buddy aided.

I believe that the TTS thermal sight on the M60A3 (TTS) is on the Gunner's sight, not the commanders. That means that unbutttoning shouldn't affect that (as far as I'm aware).

Yes. So, the 2 inch mortars in CMBN are not callable with the artillery panel. The equivalent in CMSF are, but doctrinally there's quite a bit of difference (not to mention different ammo loadouts). I'm not sure what the Canadian doctrine is here - it's not impossible they're 60mm mortars intended for direct fire, but that doesn't seem likely to me.

MT-LBU 1V14 Artillery Observation Vehicle has the commander floating in mid-air (when unbuttoned, and not straight away).

Interestingly, they are for the British in CMSF 2. No idea if that's doctrine, but it's pretty useful.

That, or more passively, using the speed and protection to advance to a flanking observation point. This kind of thing is true for recon vehicles in all periods - mobility is the main point, and the armnament is typically there either for protection, or because there are only so many good observation points, and you'll inevitably run into enemy reconnaissance elements.

(This is referring to the BRDM-1 and -2, not the ATGM versions, which are hell on wheels and a very different animal). Like other light reconnaissance vehicles, they roam ahead or to the flanks of a formation, scouting the enemy, enemy communication lines and the terrain. They are sometimes also used as transport for engineers, especially if they need to survey terrain - whether a river is fordable, or so forth. They're quick, armoured and amphibious, with really good vision (the hatches open when unbuttoned for a large windscreen). In that sense, they're not a fighting vehicle, and the armour and armament are really there to win a recon fight - consider if the BRDM came across something like a humvee or a Jeep, and how much advantage the armoured vehicle would have in a clash of those elements. That means that the BRDM can "fight for information" to an extent, or fight for control of observation points, or to deny them to the enemy. That also means that sometimes using them as transport and scouting on foot is appropriate, depending on terrain or conditions.

Who do I have to thank for splitting the Soviet Motor rifle squads correctly in Cold War? (The four/three split with all the weapons in the four section, rather than the LMG and RPG in different fire teams). That's going to make a ton of difference at the low end, and means the AI can manage them doctrinally.

The engine tries to downgrade things to keep a decent framerate, and that scenario is both a large map, and has a ton of stuff on screen at once. It's not going to look great.

The CMSF 2 release is likely to always be the record, but that's cheating.

Well, that's part and parcel of a simulationist design. There have been very few attempts at true determinism in wargame design, and the ones that have (the games of Bowen Simmons are perhaps the most notable in recent years), have replaced the friction of die rolling with the friction of hidden information, which can be mathematically identical. Starcraft has units which will follow the precise inputs reliably, but Starcraft is gamist in intent. The point of a sim is frequently *not* to have these kind of slavishly repeatable results, because that doesn't reflect the reality of the player role simulated. In the case of CM, broadly everything platoon leader and up. A platoon leader will be doing a pretty poor job if they were attempting to micro-manage the location of each individual and weapon system in their platoon. So, if the question is "why does this work this way mechanically", it's as I said - you're juggling tendencies between security and speed. Not firm numbers, but probabilities. If it's "why does it modelled in this manner?" then that's the kind of abstractive line that wargames have taken since Kriegsspiel - you're relying on the soldiers to do their thing, anyone in the role of a platoon leader or higher would do. The latter is a significantly more interesting question, since there is far from one possible answer, but philosophically the role of variance in wargaming dates back to at least Clausewitz.

If I'm following the actual question, then that's essentially "Why do troops react differently when moving and they come under fire". The design intent is really part of the underlying logic. CM offers you a number of orders, and they all have some underlying logic to it, which might not be entirely intuitive. As a simple example - "Face" isn't just "turn in that direction", it's more like "be prepared to fight in that direction", meaning that the Face command cancels cover arcs, turns the troops to face, and they'll shuffle into covered positions where they can, taking up positions against a wall, behind trees, etc. The movement commands then are a trade-off between speed and caution. "Fast" isn't just "move over there quickly", it's "Your priority is to move to that location as fast as possible, to the exclusion of all else" - Fast moving troops should rarely stop to fire, and instead they're focused on sprinting. "Fast" then is ideal for crossing open streets, or getting away from incoming mortar rounds - anything where being precisely here is a bad idea. The movement orders then all represent this trade-off, speed for security. Hunt-Move-Quick-Fast represent the spectrum between maximum caution (and stealth) and maximum speed. "Slow" is really "Crawl". It is the slowest and most cautious, but the crawling is the thing, since it maximises stealth and minimises exposure when cresting a hill or whatever. This control is really important - there are situations where you really need one or the other, and having these options is important for simulating real behaviour. Now, wherever you draw the line it's going to be wrong in some way - there's arguments to be made about whether the AI is operating reasonably for the incoming stimulus. What makes that more complex is that what you see and what the squad are aware of are not necessarily the same thing.

As silly as it is, it's not a bad scenario for seeing both halftracks and anti-tank rifles doing something of what they're supposed to do. The German halftrack (unlike the US one) is supposed to be a vehicle which supports by fire. It's certainly not an IFV, but it's more than just a truck. Further to the above, I'd suggest looking at the crossing and working out where you're best going to concentrate your forces and making your crossing. Going left, up the centre and right all have their merits, and it's worth considering both what the enemy can see and what fires you can bring down on each approach avenue.