domfluff

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes, this is correct - or at least by the definitions in FM-100-2-1.

Obviously from the Soviet perspective it doesn't actually matter all that much - the column is coming into contact in echelons, and whether the enemy is in a hasty defence or on the move is mostly just texture.

The important point - or at least the point I was trying to make - is that "meeting engagements" in CM terms tend to match that of traditional tabletop wargaming (say, DBA or the WRG moderns rules), and the desire that players seem to have to have equal forces battling over even terrain, which isn't common historically at all. I get the incentive to do that, but I don't think it tends to show off CM (or any serious simulationist game) at its best.

Yes, this is correct - or at least by the definitions in FM-100-2-1.

Obviously from the Soviet perspective it doesn't actually matter all that much - the column is coming into contact in echelons, and whether the enemy is in a hasty defence or on the move is mostly just texture.

The important point - or at least the point I was trying to make - is that "meeting engagements" in CM terms tend to match that of traditional tabletop wargaming (say, DBA or the WRG moderns rules), and the desire that players seem to have to have equal forces battling over even terrain, which isn't common historically at all. I get the incentive to do that, but I don't think it tends to show off CM (or any serious simulationist game) at its best.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes, this is correct - or at least by the definitions in FM-100-2-1.

Obviously from the Soviet perspective it doesn't actually matter all that much - the column is coming into contact in echelons, and whether the enemy is in a hasty defence or on the move is mostly just texture.

The important point - or at least the point I was trying to make - is that "meeting engagements" in CM terms tend to match that of traditional tabletop wargaming (say, DBA or the WRG moderns rules), and the desire that players seem to have to have equal forces battling over even terrain, which isn't common historically at all. I get the incentive to do that, but I don't think it tends to show off CM (or any serious simulationist game) at its best.

I generally feel like your typical cold war QBs should be Attack/Defend.
Even what would be referred to as a Soviet "meeting engagement" isn't the same thing as a "meeting engagement" in CM/wargaming terms, which typically means "an even fight" or something similar. Instead the term refers to an attack from the march.
With the points from an Attack, a Large qb has enough points for a full BTR MRB, with sufficient artillery support, and a huge qb has enough points for a full BMP MRB with some change.
This force was a little cut down from what would be ideal - an entire BMP company was left behind, and I had lass artillery than I'd like. 
Priorities though:
I start with the combined arms, task group formation.
It's important to have a mixture of infantry, armour and air defence. The pair of Shilkas I had here were very important, because the US had some significant air assets which weren't discussed in the video. You always want two.
Dropping a company as "off-map reserve" is fine doctrinally, sinve that force can exploit your success, so that's a reasonable option.
Dropping armour is suspect, you don't get a ton in an MRB, and you need them to do work.
Artillery then is the interesting bit. I've said before that I don't know how to attack with a red battalion with less than three batteries (a battalion, if you like) of artillery (that is 18 tubes of something).
The reason for this is that the battalion should be accepting three tasks, and each task needs to be enabled by artillery support.
Each battery should have a single FO.
The 120mm mortars are organics to the battalion, so should be taken - since the call-in times for those are reasonable, in my fires plan I often leave those as a "reserve", ready to be reactive, rather than proactive.
Next up are your standard regimental artillery, the 122mm self propelled gun battalion, and divisional artillery, the 152mm self propelled gun battalion and the battalion of rocket artillery.
The lower level assets will have less boom, greater rate of fire, and faster call-ins.
122mm should be your default in CMCW (in cmbs this is now the 152mm). A medium mission on max duration lasts something like 12-15 minutes, which is a lot of rounds going downrange, and a lot of denial.
The 152s have significantly more boom, and a mission there can last 30 minutes total, so is ideal for denying key terrain, or digging out handprints.
Rocket artillery is a specialised tool, and it's hard to use well in a cm context. Ideally it's doing counter-battery fire, or it's targeting fixed positions and hoping to actually kill things, where the other two can aim to suppress or deny. The best generic use-case I've found for it is to target an urban area - Soviets tend to find urban combat especially difficult, so a couple of BM-21 barrage can help a lot.
All of the other artillery is more highly specialised (the big mortars are bunker-busters, for example), so should mostly be ignored.
Ideally, I'd take the battalion mortars, and three batteries of artillery, possibly in a mixed load, with their intended tasks defined well in advance.
Artillery have four jobs - suppression, denial, destruction and obscuration, and each of those assets is good at different things.
In the above QB I have battalion mortars and two batteries of 122mm - less than I'd like, but still hitting that minimum of three groups of artillery.
One nice thing about thinking in threes is that you can continuously adjust and move around these fires having two hitting things, whilst a third adjusts in on to the next step.
One thing that you do see in the video is this continual adjustment of fires - the tempo gains that I'd made allowed the fires to be adjusting whilst free whisky was reacting, so they were able to start landing when he was just getting into position.
Likewise, the same advantages in tempo meant that I was frequently ahead of where his artillery was falling - he was forced to react to things that were by now firmly in the past.
 
 
 
 

Yes, this is correct - or at least by the definitions in FM-100-2-1.

Obviously from the Soviet perspective it doesn't actually matter all that much - the column is coming into contact in echelons, and whether the enemy is in a hasty defence or on the move is mostly just texture.

The important point - or at least the point I was trying to make - is that "meeting engagements" in CM terms tend to match that of traditional tabletop wargaming (say, DBA or the WRG moderns rules), and the desire that players seem to have to have equal forces battling over even terrain, which isn't common historically at all. I get the incentive to do that, but I don't think it tends to show off CM (or any serious simulationist game) at its best.

Yes, this is correct - or at least by the definitions in FM-100-2-1.

Obviously from the Soviet perspective it doesn't actually matter all that much - the column is coming into contact in echelons, and whether the enemy is in a hasty defence or on the move is mostly just texture.

The important point - or at least the point I was trying to make - is that "meeting engagements" in CM terms tend to match that of traditional tabletop wargaming (say, DBA or the WRG moderns rules), and the desire that players seem to have to have equal forces battling over even terrain, which isn't common historically at all. I get the incentive to do that, but I don't think it tends to show off CM (or any serious simulationist game) at its best.

So I think the Free Whisky video shows the tactical-scale tempo quite well (John's article is good, but it flips between the tactical and operational, which especially for the soviets is quite different). Notably in Free Whisky's video, the US artillery was mostly hitting where I used to be, because even the really fast US call-in times are slower than a BMP.

Otherwise you're just talking about operational context. I definitely don't think that the NATO player is always in the right place (unless you're talking about Quick Battles, which are their own, warped environment, which will definitely have this problem among many others). There are plenty of possible scenarios where you're playing against a US hasty defence or cavalry screen, whilst the main body tries to sort itself out off-map.

 

Yes, this is correct - or at least by the definitions in FM-100-2-1.

Obviously from the Soviet perspective it doesn't actually matter all that much - the column is coming into contact in echelons, and whether the enemy is in a hasty defence or on the move is mostly just texture.

The important point - or at least the point I was trying to make - is that "meeting engagements" in CM terms tend to match that of traditional tabletop wargaming (say, DBA or the WRG moderns rules), and the desire that players seem to have to have equal forces battling over even terrain, which isn't common historically at all. I get the incentive to do that, but I don't think it tends to show off CM (or any serious simulationist game) at its best.

Yes, this is correct - or at least by the definitions in FM-100-2-1.

Obviously from the Soviet perspective it doesn't actually matter all that much - the column is coming into contact in echelons, and whether the enemy is in a hasty defence or on the move is mostly just texture.

The important point - or at least the point I was trying to make - is that "meeting engagements" in CM terms tend to match that of traditional tabletop wargaming (say, DBA or the WRG moderns rules), and the desire that players seem to have to have equal forces battling over even terrain, which isn't common historically at all. I get the incentive to do that, but I don't think it tends to show off CM (or any serious simulationist game) at its best.

So, firstly it's worth mentioning that a competitive game wasn't necessarily the priority here - it was supposed to be illustrative first and foremost, rather than a "look at how great I am at CM" - I'm not really interested in showing off.

However, T-62s would be the standard here, and the strategy wouldn't really change - particularly at these ranges, the T-64's armour is mostly going to be irrelevant anyway, so there won't be a massive difference between the T-62 (1975) and the T-64 in practice. The T-64 is obviously a better tank in a vacuum, so this will affect the outcome, but not the intent.

Similarly, the exact same approach would apply if the infantry were in BTRs or MTLBs. The low-level specifics would be different (e.g., the BTR formation would use on dismounted ATGMs), but the broad concept would be identical. There might be more losses, and there would be differences in mobility, but the basic structure would be the same.

Yes, this is correct - or at least by the definitions in FM-100-2-1.

Obviously from the Soviet perspective it doesn't actually matter all that much - the column is coming into contact in echelons, and whether the enemy is in a hasty defence or on the move is mostly just texture.

The important point - or at least the point I was trying to make - is that "meeting engagements" in CM terms tend to match that of traditional tabletop wargaming (say, DBA or the WRG moderns rules), and the desire that players seem to have to have equal forces battling over even terrain, which isn't common historically at all. I get the incentive to do that, but I don't think it tends to show off CM (or any serious simulationist game) at its best.

So I think the Free Whisky video shows the tactical-scale tempo quite well (John's article is good, but it flips between the tactical and operational, which especially for the soviets is quite different). Notably in Free Whisky's video, the US artillery was mostly hitting where I used to be, because even the really fast US call-in times are slower than a BMP.

Otherwise you're just talking about operational context. I definitely don't think that the NATO player is always in the right place (unless you're talking about Quick Battles, which are their own, warped environment, which will definitely have this problem among many others). There are plenty of possible scenarios where you're playing against a US hasty defence or cavalry screen, whilst the main body tries to sort itself out off-map.

 

So, firstly it's worth mentioning that a competitive game wasn't necessarily the priority here - it was supposed to be illustrative first and foremost, rather than a "look at how great I am at CM" - I'm not really interested in showing off.

However, T-62s would be the standard here, and the strategy wouldn't really change - particularly at these ranges, the T-64's armour is mostly going to be irrelevant anyway, so there won't be a massive difference between the T-62 (1975) and the T-64 in practice. The T-64 is obviously a better tank in a vacuum, so this will affect the outcome, but not the intent.

Similarly, the exact same approach would apply if the infantry were in BTRs or MTLBs. The low-level specifics would be different (e.g., the BTR formation would use on dismounted ATGMs), but the broad concept would be identical. There might be more losses, and there would be differences in mobility, but the basic structure would be the same.

A highly debatable point, but it's one of the core questions that CMCW can inform, once it reaches its final form.
M60, Chieftain and Leopard should all end up being represented (you'd assume), and each comes from a very different approach to the same problem.
Whilst you shouldn’t really look at any of them in isolation, it's an easy point of comparison, and they each represent a very different philosophy, which will be fascinating to dig into.