domfluff

One of the cool things about CMCW is that we'll be able to compare NATO doctrine.

The British, the West Germans and the US were all trying to solve the same problem, but did so in very different ways. Where the US were attempting to create depth through elastic defence, up-front, then rotating back, the British were more about static defence in depth and counter-attack. Where the TOW is really the centrepiece of US defence, for the British it's Chieftain, and anything armed with Swingfire is in a more supporting role. They also tend to embed recce assets down to the company level, so perhaps a pair of Scimitars in front of a mechanised company team.

Honestly I'm mostly excited about seeing the CVR(T) line in context and in full. All the major vehicles are in CMSF already, aside from Scorpion and Striker.

One of the cool things about CMCW is that we'll be able to compare NATO doctrine.

The British, the West Germans and the US were all trying to solve the same problem, but did so in very different ways. Where the US were attempting to create depth through elastic defence, up-front, then rotating back, the British were more about static defence in depth and counter-attack. Where the TOW is really the centrepiece of US defence, for the British it's Chieftain, and anything armed with Swingfire is in a more supporting role. They also tend to embed recce assets down to the company level, so perhaps a pair of Scimitars in front of a mechanised company team.

Chieftain was the heaviest tank NATO had, on the best tank country. All of the heaviest Soviet armour was pointed in that sector. You'll see more T-64 and later T-80 than you will against the US.

The maps should often be more open, with defences on ridgelines. Defence in Depth and Counter-attack is the basic plan, on all levels. The UK formations should have similar combined-arms company teams to the US, with the aforementioned differences. 

One of the cool things about CMCW is that we'll be able to compare NATO doctrine.

The British, the West Germans and the US were all trying to solve the same problem, but did so in very different ways. Where the US were attempting to create depth through elastic defence, up-front, then rotating back, the British were more about static defence in depth and counter-attack. Where the TOW is really the centrepiece of US defence, for the British it's Chieftain, and anything armed with Swingfire is in a more supporting role. They also tend to embed recce assets down to the company level, so perhaps a pair of Scimitars in front of a mechanised company team.

Chieftain was the heaviest tank NATO had, on the best tank country. All of the heaviest Soviet armour was pointed in that sector. You'll see more T-64 and later T-80 than you will against the US.

The maps should often be more open, with defences on ridgelines. Defence in Depth and Counter-attack is the basic plan, on all levels. The UK formations should have similar combined-arms company teams to the US, with the aforementioned differences. 

...in the seventies and eighties, sure.
If you take a look at the Slitherine releases anytime recently, you'll note that the Normandy games far outstrip the Eastern Front ones.
It was indeed a sales tactic to stick an SS officer on the cover (Up Front is the most blatant example), or as many swastikas as you could physically fit into the game (Eastern Front Tank Leader, among others).
Fashions change. "Miniature wargaming" used to shorthand for "napoleonics", but now means Warhammer 40,000 by default.

Similar in basic dimensions and role. M113 has the .50 cal, the FV432 has the smaller calibre 7.62 GPMG. The FV432 does have smoke launchers though, I believe, which the earlier M113s do not.

In employment, very different. The US manuals have some extremely aggressive uses of the M113, dismounting on or past the objective, and fighting from the vehicle where possible.

By comparison, the FV432 would debus troops, then withdraw to a Zulu muster point, safely in the rear. The vehicle wasn't meant for fighting, and there was no expectation that it would.
The FV432 is already in Combat Mission - the version still in use by the British army has been up-armoured and upgraded, and is known as "Bulldog". This vehicle is in CMSF.

A tripod mounted heavy machine gun is a complicated piece of machinery, that needs to be correctly sited to be effective. This is what the "deployed" state represents - it's not only on the tripod, but properly levelled and firmly positioned.

CM adds a time penalty to setting up machine guns inside buildings. This is supposed to abstract the difficulties of preparing the position - knocking out windows, moving furniture, creating a stable and raised base to fire from, etc.

Obviously it can still be a good idea to fire from buildings whilst deployed, but you need to allow for enough time to do it. The UI will show you this additional time. 

Similar in basic dimensions and role. M113 has the .50 cal, the FV432 has the smaller calibre 7.62 GPMG. The FV432 does have smoke launchers though, I believe, which the earlier M113s do not.

In employment, very different. The US manuals have some extremely aggressive uses of the M113, dismounting on or past the objective, and fighting from the vehicle where possible.

By comparison, the FV432 would debus troops, then withdraw to a Zulu muster point, safely in the rear. The vehicle wasn't meant for fighting, and there was no expectation that it would.
The FV432 is already in Combat Mission - the version still in use by the British army has been up-armoured and upgraded, and is known as "Bulldog". This vehicle is in CMSF.

So, what you're really running into is the problem that the 8.8cm Flak is actually pretty awful.
It absolutely would not be a fun thing to be shot by, but the system itself is large and immobile, and so is extremely visible, and highly vulnerable to HE in any form, especially indirect fires.
It earned a reputation in North Africa, partly because it was the biggest boom, but also because it was an expediency - there wasn't much else that could penetrate the thickest British armour. It was still not a particularly efficient system, and required entire tactics to be built around it's limitations - hit and run, with the "run" being into range of the static line of 88mm AT guns.

Aside from the power of the thing, the other advantage it has is range. To take advantage of that requires long lines of sight, possibly over multiple km, which would be available in the desert.

Notably, it's something that's firmly unavailable in Normandy. The 88mm in Normandy is powerful, sure, but it's a liability. Short sight lines, a massive body and immobile means that there's just no way to hide, and nowhere to run.
AT guns are tricky to use. They're ambush predators, and you typically want to use them in dispersed pairs, such that a single tank can't suppress both at one time. Ideally, one can get a flank shot whilst the other is being engaged, but that's not always possible. You do want to limber and unlimber them, and understand how and when to move them. Practice is genuinely useful here.

 

I think the first campaign mission is pretty great. It's brutal, sure, but it's doable with minimal casualties, with a sound approach.

A quick sketch of the first part:



Each element in the Soviet scheme sets the conditions for what follows.

The CRP's first role is to find the enemy units on the near hill. This means taking up forward positions in the treeline, and also calling in fires on the obvious AT positions. Since AT 1 won't have line of sight to where the FSE is coming in, AT 2 is the focus of these preliminary fires.

The FSE will then turn up, and will start to engage targets. The gamism here is that these won't benefit from the spotting contacts from the CRP, but you the player can still do so, and should. The FSE should be able to fight it's way up, with the intention of forming a base of fire on the hill.

When the main body arrives, they have two potential avenues of approach. AoA 1 will be faster, and will push across the open. AoA2 is using the dead ground to follow the same axis as the FSE.

Again, each element enables the following. In this case, the FSE's base of fire includes getting line of sight to AT 1. AT 1 is far too large to deny with fires in total, so you need the ISR picture from the FSE to discover where things are, for the main body to exploit.

There are still some high levels of variance in this scenario - CAS and AA in Combat Mission don't offer much in the way of deep decision making, so the losses there will be fairly random.

So no, I don't think it's a bad scenario. I'm not sure it's a particularly pleasant one, and you may well take extraordinary losses, but you have an enormous force and all the tools you need, and I think it does a good job of making you use those core ideas in terrain that's pretty challenging. I don't think the scenario is without fault, but I've seen a lot of people rage at it, and I just don't think that's remotely deserved.

I think the first campaign mission is pretty great. It's brutal, sure, but it's doable with minimal casualties, with a sound approach.

A quick sketch of the first part:



Each element in the Soviet scheme sets the conditions for what follows.

The CRP's first role is to find the enemy units on the near hill. This means taking up forward positions in the treeline, and also calling in fires on the obvious AT positions. Since AT 1 won't have line of sight to where the FSE is coming in, AT 2 is the focus of these preliminary fires.

The FSE will then turn up, and will start to engage targets. The gamism here is that these won't benefit from the spotting contacts from the CRP, but you the player can still do so, and should. The FSE should be able to fight it's way up, with the intention of forming a base of fire on the hill.

When the main body arrives, they have two potential avenues of approach. AoA 1 will be faster, and will push across the open. AoA2 is using the dead ground to follow the same axis as the FSE.

Again, each element enables the following. In this case, the FSE's base of fire includes getting line of sight to AT 1. AT 1 is far too large to deny with fires in total, so you need the ISR picture from the FSE to discover where things are, for the main body to exploit.

There are still some high levels of variance in this scenario - CAS and AA in Combat Mission don't offer much in the way of deep decision making, so the losses there will be fairly random.

So no, I don't think it's a bad scenario. I'm not sure it's a particularly pleasant one, and you may well take extraordinary losses, but you have an enormous force and all the tools you need, and I think it does a good job of making you use those core ideas in terrain that's pretty challenging. I don't think the scenario is without fault, but I've seen a lot of people rage at it, and I just don't think that's remotely deserved.

Oh sure, but there have been plenty of complaints about this since release - it's very rare to hear anything positive about it at all, and I think that's an enormous shame.

@Free Whisky & @domfluff, what a difference a bit of organization makes!  I'm still playing the campaign game and I've gone from decimated in my first game to barely scratched in my second game. I've coordinated my artillery, used my echelons to pave the way for the next echelon and stuck to a single plan.  I'm pretty much using Domfluff's AoA 2 route.
Practically all of my casualties have been from air strikes, which I really couldn't do anything about (so don't count ).  My first two echelons were just eventually chewed up by US airpower, but not after achieving their objectives of scouting the enemy and prepping the route. As soon as my main body arrived the US airpower was just swatted out of the sky.

I think the first campaign mission is pretty great. It's brutal, sure, but it's doable with minimal casualties, with a sound approach.

A quick sketch of the first part:



Each element in the Soviet scheme sets the conditions for what follows.

The CRP's first role is to find the enemy units on the near hill. This means taking up forward positions in the treeline, and also calling in fires on the obvious AT positions. Since AT 1 won't have line of sight to where the FSE is coming in, AT 2 is the focus of these preliminary fires.

The FSE will then turn up, and will start to engage targets. The gamism here is that these won't benefit from the spotting contacts from the CRP, but you the player can still do so, and should. The FSE should be able to fight it's way up, with the intention of forming a base of fire on the hill.

When the main body arrives, they have two potential avenues of approach. AoA 1 will be faster, and will push across the open. AoA2 is using the dead ground to follow the same axis as the FSE.

Again, each element enables the following. In this case, the FSE's base of fire includes getting line of sight to AT 1. AT 1 is far too large to deny with fires in total, so you need the ISR picture from the FSE to discover where things are, for the main body to exploit.

There are still some high levels of variance in this scenario - CAS and AA in Combat Mission don't offer much in the way of deep decision making, so the losses there will be fairly random.

So no, I don't think it's a bad scenario. I'm not sure it's a particularly pleasant one, and you may well take extraordinary losses, but you have an enormous force and all the tools you need, and I think it does a good job of making you use those core ideas in terrain that's pretty challenging. I don't think the scenario is without fault, but I've seen a lot of people rage at it, and I just don't think that's remotely deserved.

I think the first campaign mission is pretty great. It's brutal, sure, but it's doable with minimal casualties, with a sound approach.

A quick sketch of the first part:



Each element in the Soviet scheme sets the conditions for what follows.

The CRP's first role is to find the enemy units on the near hill. This means taking up forward positions in the treeline, and also calling in fires on the obvious AT positions. Since AT 1 won't have line of sight to where the FSE is coming in, AT 2 is the focus of these preliminary fires.

The FSE will then turn up, and will start to engage targets. The gamism here is that these won't benefit from the spotting contacts from the CRP, but you the player can still do so, and should. The FSE should be able to fight it's way up, with the intention of forming a base of fire on the hill.

When the main body arrives, they have two potential avenues of approach. AoA 1 will be faster, and will push across the open. AoA2 is using the dead ground to follow the same axis as the FSE.

Again, each element enables the following. In this case, the FSE's base of fire includes getting line of sight to AT 1. AT 1 is far too large to deny with fires in total, so you need the ISR picture from the FSE to discover where things are, for the main body to exploit.

There are still some high levels of variance in this scenario - CAS and AA in Combat Mission don't offer much in the way of deep decision making, so the losses there will be fairly random.

So no, I don't think it's a bad scenario. I'm not sure it's a particularly pleasant one, and you may well take extraordinary losses, but you have an enormous force and all the tools you need, and I think it does a good job of making you use those core ideas in terrain that's pretty challenging. I don't think the scenario is without fault, but I've seen a lot of people rage at it, and I just don't think that's remotely deserved.

I think the first campaign mission is pretty great. It's brutal, sure, but it's doable with minimal casualties, with a sound approach.

A quick sketch of the first part:



Each element in the Soviet scheme sets the conditions for what follows.

The CRP's first role is to find the enemy units on the near hill. This means taking up forward positions in the treeline, and also calling in fires on the obvious AT positions. Since AT 1 won't have line of sight to where the FSE is coming in, AT 2 is the focus of these preliminary fires.

The FSE will then turn up, and will start to engage targets. The gamism here is that these won't benefit from the spotting contacts from the CRP, but you the player can still do so, and should. The FSE should be able to fight it's way up, with the intention of forming a base of fire on the hill.

When the main body arrives, they have two potential avenues of approach. AoA 1 will be faster, and will push across the open. AoA2 is using the dead ground to follow the same axis as the FSE.

Again, each element enables the following. In this case, the FSE's base of fire includes getting line of sight to AT 1. AT 1 is far too large to deny with fires in total, so you need the ISR picture from the FSE to discover where things are, for the main body to exploit.

There are still some high levels of variance in this scenario - CAS and AA in Combat Mission don't offer much in the way of deep decision making, so the losses there will be fairly random.

So no, I don't think it's a bad scenario. I'm not sure it's a particularly pleasant one, and you may well take extraordinary losses, but you have an enormous force and all the tools you need, and I think it does a good job of making you use those core ideas in terrain that's pretty challenging. I don't think the scenario is without fault, but I've seen a lot of people rage at it, and I just don't think that's remotely deserved.

I'm playing the Soviet campaign Ride of the 120th and just getting slaughtered.  All those tanks on the high ground, its like shooting fish in a barrel.  I'm obviously doing something wrong.  Can somebody explain how to effectively use Soviet doctrine in Cold War?  Or maybe link me a couple good articles to read about it.  Those RPGs just don't have the range to take on long range targets.  Also the Soviet Tanks (T-62s) are really having trouble hitting their targets.  Is it just me, or is the T-64 a much, much better tank?
EDIT: Ah, I see Domfluff has some videos.  I'll watch those and see what I've been missing...

So this is two different effects.
When the HQ dies, the XO becomes a new HQ, the icon and C2 lines change to suit.
As a completely different effect, most XO teams have a radio, and by definition they are a single C2 jump from the HQ. That means that the XO team could be placed (for example) with an AT gun battery, and then the infantry squad spots will be passed to them through the C2 network. 

I think if Hapless and Free Whisky knew how many times I have watched some of their videos they would be a little bit frightened.

At the end of my last video I promised to upload the bits of the conversation that @domfluff and I had and that didn't make it into the video, as a podcast. That's up now. Also included is an extra bit that we recorded later, where we answer some of the questions that were frequently asked in the comment section.
So, if you've got a long commute ahead of you, or it's your turn to do the dishes, or there is some other reason why you can't play CM.... here you go 😉.
 
 

I've said before, but the replay feature would make content creation orders of magnitude easier, as well as being incredibly useful for learning what actually happened during a game, and improving.
To take the basic example - right now, the "easiest" way to make a CM video is to record you playing the thing, mouse clicks and all. There have been some really good content made this way (@Ithikial_AU), but it does result in 10+ hours worth of videos, most of which is pretty dull. The alternative is something like one of Hapless' AARs, which requires an awful lot more time and effort to put together.

With replays, the lowest-effort video would be perhaps a 30-60 minute replay, shot in one take, with someone narrating live. That's not the best possible CM video, but it raises the bar of the lower end significantly, as well as making the high end significantly easier.

The whole point of the US company team is that it's a combined arms team of specialists. No part of that team can carry things by itself, but in combination there's the tools to deal with everything.

Tanks in the US company are the jack of all trades, and as such they are the key enabler to allow all other parts of the team to do their job. The TOWs should be the main killing power of the company, and the infantry are the main defensive power, but the tanks can set the conditions for the other elements to get into position and get their job done - they don't hold ground as well as the infantry, they don't put out HE or smoke efficiently as the organic mortars, and they don't kill tanks as efficiently as the ATGMs, but they're the enabling glue that binds everything together.

That is until you get to M60 TTS, Abrams and Bradley, but since that's a generational change, that's really a very different discussion, and really the high-end of kit in CMCW can represent an entirely different game.

As with many engineering questions, there's no best solution, otherwise everything would be that solution.

I do think it's interesting to consider what armour is actually for. Especially in any kind of modern period, any tank can and will die to a single hit from a suitable anti-tank weapon... so why armour?

Well, the US company team in CMCW is a good example of what armour is useful for. The variant of that in the NTC campaign is: 1x M60A1 platoon, 2x M113 platoons, 2x M150 TOW vehicles and supporting mortars and HQ elements. The M150s are your most important killing power. These have the accuracy, the range and the bunch to take on the heaviest Soviet armour.

So why have tanks? Well, aside from basic concerns like rate of fire, the main reason is that the tanks are mobile, armoured, and have enough of a punch to compete. Ultimately, someone sometimes has to roll the dice - something has to go over the hill first, or rush into contact. Sometimes that can be done with dismounts, but often the pace and size of a battle are too much for dismounted infantry to cope with. You certainly don't want to lead with your TOW vehicles - they'll die to a stiff breeze, and you desperately need them to stay alive.

So tanks give you mobile firepower, and the armour allows you a little more leeway in your actions. If someone has to go first, then it should be the element that stands a chance of not immediately being blown up. This means that for the US, the M60 needs to be heavily protected, it needs to be fairly mobile, and it needs to have some degree of firepower - in the case of the M60, the armour might be the most important concern.

This is in contrast to the BAOR Chieftain, which was central to the British defensive doctrine, which was a lot more static and in depth than the US doctrine of the 1970s. Because of this, firepower was the most important of the triangle for the BAOR. The West Germans instead created depth through counter-attack, and so mobility was their primary concern. The side that can move faster (operationally or tactically) can dictate the shape of the engagement, taking or denying key terrain and being proactive about where and when to fight.

So... no, insofar as the firepower/mobility/protection triangle is useful, I don't think you can rank protection as the most important in all cases. There are going to be situations where this is appropriate, but equipment and doctrine go hand in hand, and one of the really fascinating things about the Cold War was how many different ways there were to achieve the same goal.