Bozowans

Sometimes it's hard to believe that that kind of stuff is even real. The four sniper teams I had in that scenario took down 14 Germans by the end though.
 
Anyway, I am very glad I got Fire and Rubble when I did, because soon afterward my internet got knocked out for a week due to storms. I didn't have much else to do but play it. 
The Night at the Opera campaign is good. Very atmospheric. Seeing green tracers flying across Konigsplatz was bringing back Red Orchestra memories.
The amount of firepower that the Soviets could bring to bear is kind of terrifying. My biggest concern in this campaign so far is not casualties but ammo usage. 



 
A Soviet assault team comes over a rise only to run right into a couple squads of Fallschirmjager at close range:

 
The fight didn't last long though. After a couple seconds of heavy shooting, a 122mm shell slammed into the building, killing or wounding several Germans. Five of the Germans surrendered after that.

 
That was a typical encounter. Germans would reveal themselves only to be completely plastered by a massive storm of bullets and explosions. My casualties haven't even been that heavy, but I'm going into the second mission of the campaign with ammo problems. There are multiple entire platoons that are basically out of ammo. I also should have conserved my artillery ammo, because now I don't have anything to blow up the Reichstag with. Except tanks.

I just started up Fire and Rubble for the first time, and the very first casualties of the module were caused by one of my Soviet sniper teams. They took down two Germans within seconds, one shot each. These Soviet snipers are awfully lethal. 
Meet Efreitor Kapitonov:

 
The battle had only just begun, and I had an infantry company advancing toward a German-held village. I was taking some sporadic MG fire here and there, but nothing serious, and no casualties yet. Kapitonov himself took a burst of MG fire as he was moving into position. Eventually some Germans were spotted. Kapitonov's partner took a shot at a German rifleman at 320 meters, taking him down instantly.

 
The German was hit less than a second after he fired his rifle. It looked like he was hit right in the gut. Ouch.

 
Only two or three seconds later, Kapitonov himself took a shot at a German machine-gunner at 400 meters.

 
The last thing the German saw:

 
It looked like he was hit through his left shoulder. Lying prone, the bullet probably would have went through the shoulder and down his back. 

I just started up Fire and Rubble for the first time, and the very first casualties of the module were caused by one of my Soviet sniper teams. They took down two Germans within seconds, one shot each. These Soviet snipers are awfully lethal. 
Meet Efreitor Kapitonov:

 
The battle had only just begun, and I had an infantry company advancing toward a German-held village. I was taking some sporadic MG fire here and there, but nothing serious, and no casualties yet. Kapitonov himself took a burst of MG fire as he was moving into position. Eventually some Germans were spotted. Kapitonov's partner took a shot at a German rifleman at 320 meters, taking him down instantly.

 
The German was hit less than a second after he fired his rifle. It looked like he was hit right in the gut. Ouch.

 
Only two or three seconds later, Kapitonov himself took a shot at a German machine-gunner at 400 meters.

 
The last thing the German saw:

 
It looked like he was hit through his left shoulder. Lying prone, the bullet probably would have went through the shoulder and down his back. 

I do agree that tanks are overpowered, but everything else is overpowered too IMO. I don't think this is an issue with tanks alone. Foxholes don't provide that much cover from even small arms fire. There is not enough fog of war in the game. For one thing, they never managed to replicate what they did in the CMx1 engine, where the game would deliberately mislead you about where enemy units are. If an enemy unit was firing at you at long range, a little 3D soldier model named "sound contact" would appear somewhere, but it might appear dozens of meters away from where the actual unit really is. So if you were taking long range MG fire from a cluster of buildings off in the distance, you would not be able to tell which building they are firing from. You can try plastering the location of the sound contact with HE fire from tanks and artillery, but once you get closer, you might find that the enemy unit is in a slightly different location completely untouched.
In CMx2, if an enemy sniper fires just one single shot, you can pinpoint his exact location easily and order every single one of your units to mass fire on that exact spot in the next turn. Real life wars on the other hand seem awfully boring and confusing most of the time, with firefights consisting of hours of ineffectual and mindless shooting in the general direction of the enemy, with the outcomes decided more by morale than anything else. Both sides will put on a big display of noise and shooting until one side cracks, thinks they are going to lose, and then they run away. In CM, units are not allowed to rout off the map, and every battle is a brutal fight to the death with enormous casualties. Battles in CM are decided more by fire superiority and destroying the enemy as completely as you can. 
I think the tank issue can be solved if the game just had more mystery to it. Enemy locations and unit types need to be much more vague. You should not be able to tell that an enemy unit 1000m away is an HQ team located in that one precise action spot. You should only have a general idea that there is enemy infantry "over there" somewhere. That way, battles would be decided by throwing suppressing fire over a large area and then assaulting up close, instead of pinpointing the exact action spot the enemy is located in and then just hammering it with HE fire from tanks and artillery until everyone is dead.

I just started up Fire and Rubble for the first time, and the very first casualties of the module were caused by one of my Soviet sniper teams. They took down two Germans within seconds, one shot each. These Soviet snipers are awfully lethal. 
Meet Efreitor Kapitonov:

 
The battle had only just begun, and I had an infantry company advancing toward a German-held village. I was taking some sporadic MG fire here and there, but nothing serious, and no casualties yet. Kapitonov himself took a burst of MG fire as he was moving into position. Eventually some Germans were spotted. Kapitonov's partner took a shot at a German rifleman at 320 meters, taking him down instantly.

 
The German was hit less than a second after he fired his rifle. It looked like he was hit right in the gut. Ouch.

 
Only two or three seconds later, Kapitonov himself took a shot at a German machine-gunner at 400 meters.

 
The last thing the German saw:

 
It looked like he was hit through his left shoulder. Lying prone, the bullet probably would have went through the shoulder and down his back. 

I just started up Fire and Rubble for the first time, and the very first casualties of the module were caused by one of my Soviet sniper teams. They took down two Germans within seconds, one shot each. These Soviet snipers are awfully lethal. 
Meet Efreitor Kapitonov:

 
The battle had only just begun, and I had an infantry company advancing toward a German-held village. I was taking some sporadic MG fire here and there, but nothing serious, and no casualties yet. Kapitonov himself took a burst of MG fire as he was moving into position. Eventually some Germans were spotted. Kapitonov's partner took a shot at a German rifleman at 320 meters, taking him down instantly.

 
The German was hit less than a second after he fired his rifle. It looked like he was hit right in the gut. Ouch.

 
Only two or three seconds later, Kapitonov himself took a shot at a German machine-gunner at 400 meters.

 
The last thing the German saw:

 
It looked like he was hit through his left shoulder. Lying prone, the bullet probably would have went through the shoulder and down his back. 

I just started up Fire and Rubble for the first time, and the very first casualties of the module were caused by one of my Soviet sniper teams. They took down two Germans within seconds, one shot each. These Soviet snipers are awfully lethal. 
Meet Efreitor Kapitonov:

 
The battle had only just begun, and I had an infantry company advancing toward a German-held village. I was taking some sporadic MG fire here and there, but nothing serious, and no casualties yet. Kapitonov himself took a burst of MG fire as he was moving into position. Eventually some Germans were spotted. Kapitonov's partner took a shot at a German rifleman at 320 meters, taking him down instantly.

 
The German was hit less than a second after he fired his rifle. It looked like he was hit right in the gut. Ouch.

 
Only two or three seconds later, Kapitonov himself took a shot at a German machine-gunner at 400 meters.

 
The last thing the German saw:

 
It looked like he was hit through his left shoulder. Lying prone, the bullet probably would have went through the shoulder and down his back. 

I just started up Fire and Rubble for the first time, and the very first casualties of the module were caused by one of my Soviet sniper teams. They took down two Germans within seconds, one shot each. These Soviet snipers are awfully lethal. 
Meet Efreitor Kapitonov:

 
The battle had only just begun, and I had an infantry company advancing toward a German-held village. I was taking some sporadic MG fire here and there, but nothing serious, and no casualties yet. Kapitonov himself took a burst of MG fire as he was moving into position. Eventually some Germans were spotted. Kapitonov's partner took a shot at a German rifleman at 320 meters, taking him down instantly.

 
The German was hit less than a second after he fired his rifle. It looked like he was hit right in the gut. Ouch.

 
Only two or three seconds later, Kapitonov himself took a shot at a German machine-gunner at 400 meters.

 
The last thing the German saw:

 
It looked like he was hit through his left shoulder. Lying prone, the bullet probably would have went through the shoulder and down his back. 

I just started up Fire and Rubble for the first time, and the very first casualties of the module were caused by one of my Soviet sniper teams. They took down two Germans within seconds, one shot each. These Soviet snipers are awfully lethal. 
Meet Efreitor Kapitonov:

 
The battle had only just begun, and I had an infantry company advancing toward a German-held village. I was taking some sporadic MG fire here and there, but nothing serious, and no casualties yet. Kapitonov himself took a burst of MG fire as he was moving into position. Eventually some Germans were spotted. Kapitonov's partner took a shot at a German rifleman at 320 meters, taking him down instantly.

 
The German was hit less than a second after he fired his rifle. It looked like he was hit right in the gut. Ouch.

 
Only two or three seconds later, Kapitonov himself took a shot at a German machine-gunner at 400 meters.

 
The last thing the German saw:

 
It looked like he was hit through his left shoulder. Lying prone, the bullet probably would have went through the shoulder and down his back. 

4.26.1945, Battle of Berlin rages on. A Soviets sappers team advances through rubbles under Artillery support. They setup a demo charge to breach the wall, then storm the next building while under two companies Sappers and tank raiders overwatch
 

I want Combat Mission: Star Trek.
Gimme Bajoran resistance fighters against Cardassians. Or Starfleet against the Dominion. Or the Borg. That way you won't have to worry about "Borg spotting" 

A very, very long time ago I made a video about that Burning Bunkers mission. It doesn't show half the battle but it showed my big final human wave infantry assault. My infantry got quite a few kills in there.
 
We are the Soviets here, comrade. We don't have time for any silly bourgeois niceties like "tactics" or "finesse". We just have to throw ourselves at them. The courage and indomitable spirit of the working class shall always prevail!

No, just American.

A very, very long time ago I made a video about that Burning Bunkers mission. It doesn't show half the battle but it showed my big final human wave infantry assault. My infantry got quite a few kills in there.
 
We are the Soviets here, comrade. We don't have time for any silly bourgeois niceties like "tactics" or "finesse". We just have to throw ourselves at them. The courage and indomitable spirit of the working class shall always prevail!

I want Combat Mission: Star Trek.
Gimme Bajoran resistance fighters against Cardassians. Or Starfleet against the Dominion. Or the Borg. That way you won't have to worry about "Borg spotting" 

I want Combat Mission: Star Trek.
Gimme Bajoran resistance fighters against Cardassians. Or Starfleet against the Dominion. Or the Borg. That way you won't have to worry about "Borg spotting" 

I want Combat Mission: Star Trek.
Gimme Bajoran resistance fighters against Cardassians. Or Starfleet against the Dominion. Or the Borg. That way you won't have to worry about "Borg spotting" 

There was an interesting paper written some years ago called "Increasing Small Arms Lethality in Afghanistan: Taking Back the Infantry Half-Kilometer" by US Army Major Thomas Ehrhart.
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA512331.pdf
It argued that small arms fire from modern US troops was not effective past 300 meters. Since the Vietnam era, US equipment, training, and doctrine had been optimized for firefights on level terrain at less than 300 meters, and most effective at less than 200. I don't know if anything has changed at all since the paper was written, but according to the paper, about half of all engagements in Afghanistan occurred at ranges beyond 300 meters, and US troops were often at a disadvantage against the Taliban. Taliban fighters liked to park themselves on high ground extremely far away, and then hammer US infantry down below with mortars and machine guns, outranging them. The Taliban were usually lightly equipped as well, and could maneuver easily through the rough terrain. By contrast, the US infantry were loaded down with heavy equipment and were not set up properly for the high altitude. So the Taliban could both out-gun and out-maneuver US infantry. Some guys would be equipped with M240s and whatnot, but about 80% of a typical US infantry company could not effectively return fire at the ranges involved.
Based on that, a 500 meter engagement range for US infantry in CMCW seems excessive. WW2 US infantry could certainly do that though.

It always bugged me how easy it is to spot fortifications, but not the guys inside them. I can usually spot foxholes from very far away, but not the enemies in them until I get much closer or they open fire. It doesn't seem quite right. If I know that there are holes in the ground over there and I can see them, why would I not be able to see the big group of helmet shapes and faces sticking up over the top of them? Unless they are all literally hiding down at the bottom of their holes, which is rarely the case in CM.
Seems like it should be the opposite. The foxhole positions themselves should be more difficult to spot than the infantry inside them. If I were looking at enemy positions from a long distance, like through binoculars, I would imagine that the first thing I would see is those little helmet shapes or heads sticking up out of the ground looking back and forth. Maybe I would only be able to see the top of a helmet or two, but the exact nature of the position itself would be harder to tell. Like if they are foxholes, trenches or something else entirely.

I just tried the House Cleaning scenario again as well. I played it way back years ago and got slaughtered. I still remember it from the Shock Force 1 days. The map is too small, you get little room to maneuver, and you're within RPG range right from the deployment zone, and it sucks only getting one .50 cal machine gun Stryker.
I played it for a few minutes, took a bunch of casualties right away and saw a very lucky RPG hit take out the .50 cal gun on the Stryker from all the way across the map, all within the first few minutes.  So I restarted and then tried to play it much more slowly and carefully. It took me a while but I ended up really surprising myself and got a total victory, clearing the entire hospital with only 2 dead and 5 wounded. So it IS possible to beat it with pretty minimal loss.
I beat it by concentrating almost my entire force on the right side of the map, trying to focus on taking the hospital in smaller pieces. I had the 40mm Strykers blow some holes in the boundary wall so more of my guys could shoot into the compound, and then had the infantry advance in short bounds just a little bit at a time across the open ground. There was a pretty fierce firefight and all 7 of my losses were taken on the advance to the hospital. Miraculously I took zero during the final assault and room clearing process.
Your Strykers can drive right up to the boundary walls and shoot over without really exposing themselves at all, which is very helpful. To the enemy they look like this:

 
After about 20-30 minutes I had completely cleared the entire right side (east side) of the hospital all the way to the back of the map. The left side (west) was mostly untouched and still filled with enemies. Once it got quiet again, I had my infantry rearm and regroup themselves with the Strykers and then mass together for the final assault on the other side. The main hospital building is five stories tall, so I tried putting one full squad of infantry on each floor at the corner nearest my side of the map, then had them rush over to the enemy side all at the same time. 
Nearly my entire force was concentrated all on one building tile. Having five full US infantry squads all shooting at the same time from the same building section completely overwhelmed the opposition on the other side. Then I had the five squads (about 40 guys) start moving down the length of the main hospital building on the enemy side, stopping at each building section along the way so they could area fire into the next one for a while before storming into that section en masse. It doesn't really seem to matter what floor you're on when there are enemies in the adjacent building section. I saw guys on the fourth floor shooting down at guys on the first floor for example. So each enemy squad hiding in the back areas of the hospital had 40 guys all come charging into view all at once, guns blazing on floors above them and below. It was like a big wall of death moving down the length of the hospital. 24 enemy troops got wiped out in a couple of minutes. After a few more minutes of mopping up it was over.  49 enemy dead, 59 wounded, 17 captured.

The Khaki Hordes!
 

I agree with this 100%. The way you could just sit back and shoot enemies off of hard cover before was silly. In real life it could take hours just to clear out a single apartment building. 
I'm reminded of the book The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer. He remembered spending much of his time in combat cowering in a terrified, delusional stupor at the bottom of his hole, unable to react or do anything except lie there while the bullets and explosions crashed around outside. He wrote that a lot of his memories of combat were just a blur because of it.
Green or conscript troops should certainly not be running around all over the place whenever they get shot at. I never liked how so many of the battles in Shock Force 2 consisted of the western forces shooting the poor hapless Syrians in the back as they ran away from their positions over and over. Every battle would end in a slaughter. I've always wanted the AI in CM to be more likely to cower and surrender, and less likely to run away. Now it seems I've gotten my wish.
If I put myself in the shoes of a Syrian conscript, handed a rifle, thrown into a hole in the ground and then told to fend off the invading army of a foreign superpower, I would probably not want to be running around outside. I imagine I would probably be like Sajer, cowering in the bottom of my hole soiling myself until enemy troops got close enough for me to throw my hands up and surrender.
One of the first scenarios I played with the new patch was a CMSF2 scenario where you're British light infantry attacking a battalion of poor quality Syrian conscripts in a small town. Their poor quality made them easy to suppress with just small arms fire, and since they weren't running away, it made them easy to capture. Most of the scenario involved my slow, exhausted British troops lumbering from building to building in the extreme heat rounding up large groups of prisoners as they went along. I ended up taking more than 100 prisoners overall, more than any other CM scenario I've ever played. It felt very realistic honestly, kinda like what I imagine a lot of the early Iraq War to have been like, with US troops moving from position to position, and after some token resistance, rounding up groups of Iraqi prisoners as they went along.

IIRC there is a 1 in 4 chance for a wounded casualty to die after the scenario ends if not buddy aided. So if you have four wounded men, chances are at least one of them will die. Eight wounded, two will probably die, etc. You just got unlucky with that one guy.
It doesn't affect anything otherwise, but it can be fun to see how far you can keep your KIAs down during a scenario.
Wounded casualties can also be killed during a scenario too. I've seen wounded casualties get hit by bullets and die, or get killed when an artillery shell lands right on top of them, etc. I've even seen pixeltruppen shoot wounded casualties on the ground and kill them almost like they did it on purpose. It can be kinda funny sometimes.

IIRC there is a 1 in 4 chance for a wounded casualty to die after the scenario ends if not buddy aided. So if you have four wounded men, chances are at least one of them will die. Eight wounded, two will probably die, etc. You just got unlucky with that one guy.
It doesn't affect anything otherwise, but it can be fun to see how far you can keep your KIAs down during a scenario.
Wounded casualties can also be killed during a scenario too. I've seen wounded casualties get hit by bullets and die, or get killed when an artillery shell lands right on top of them, etc. I've even seen pixeltruppen shoot wounded casualties on the ground and kill them almost like they did it on purpose. It can be kinda funny sometimes.

I agree with this 100%. The way you could just sit back and shoot enemies off of hard cover before was silly. In real life it could take hours just to clear out a single apartment building. 
I'm reminded of the book The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer. He remembered spending much of his time in combat cowering in a terrified, delusional stupor at the bottom of his hole, unable to react or do anything except lie there while the bullets and explosions crashed around outside. He wrote that a lot of his memories of combat were just a blur because of it.
Green or conscript troops should certainly not be running around all over the place whenever they get shot at. I never liked how so many of the battles in Shock Force 2 consisted of the western forces shooting the poor hapless Syrians in the back as they ran away from their positions over and over. Every battle would end in a slaughter. I've always wanted the AI in CM to be more likely to cower and surrender, and less likely to run away. Now it seems I've gotten my wish.
If I put myself in the shoes of a Syrian conscript, handed a rifle, thrown into a hole in the ground and then told to fend off the invading army of a foreign superpower, I would probably not want to be running around outside. I imagine I would probably be like Sajer, cowering in the bottom of my hole soiling myself until enemy troops got close enough for me to throw my hands up and surrender.
One of the first scenarios I played with the new patch was a CMSF2 scenario where you're British light infantry attacking a battalion of poor quality Syrian conscripts in a small town. Their poor quality made them easy to suppress with just small arms fire, and since they weren't running away, it made them easy to capture. Most of the scenario involved my slow, exhausted British troops lumbering from building to building in the extreme heat rounding up large groups of prisoners as they went along. I ended up taking more than 100 prisoners overall, more than any other CM scenario I've ever played. It felt very realistic honestly, kinda like what I imagine a lot of the early Iraq War to have been like, with US troops moving from position to position, and after some token resistance, rounding up groups of Iraqi prisoners as they went along.