Flibby

Firepower is just too strong for infantry to assault an objective. Infantry’s greatest strength is its ability to observe undetected.
a Russian squad in a BMP is not meant to do the fighting but to be the eyes and ears. Screening the vehicle and only engaging as a last resort against a suppressed enemy.

The responses here have been really helpful.
From watching some more videos, the father away modern warfare is from my in-built belief of how infantry combat should work - mainly due to the fact that infantry, or at least infantry using rifles, are not the key players in many attacks as a rule.
It is fairly rare, from what I can see, that you are going to be able to perform an 'Assault at Brecourt Manor' type infantry assault. There is simply no need when you are trying to minimise casualties, and have access to stand off weapons. I have to try to plan along the lines of minimising exposure on the modern battlefield, picking my matchups where I can mass overwhelming or unmatched fire power, and blow everything which might even smell like an enemy soldier, to kingdom come before I get there.

Hey folks, thanks for the support - yes, even you @dbsapp
All reviews are taken with a grain of salt.  Steam is pretty good if one looks at all the reviews (about 86% positive) and these are early days.  As to the issues, well they are well known and big reason for the push to CMx3.  That said, CM will likely always be the Dwarf Fortress of the wargaming community with a dedicated following of people who really love the game but still a niche for the hardcore.  We are doing fine as far as I know - game sales once they go on multiple distribution platforms is a labyrinth- and the BFC Modern Titles group is becoming a real thing with the Superpack release (that CM modern meta-verse idea is really sticking in my head). 
Again, big thanks to the biggest bunch of hardcore and salty grognards the industry has ever seen in supporting us so far.

Abrams, Leopards, Challengers vs Toyota Hilux. 

Hi all, I uploaded a video AAR of Combat Mission Cold War to Youtube. I thought I'd post it here so you can all tell me what it was you believe led to my demise 😉
 
https://youtu.be/qxLCkSFYq2c

Yup. Indeed, to quote the reduced-to-bullet-points part of FM71-2:

 

Just on this point, FM 71-2 (US CW era battalion tactical manual) emphasizes that the commander (you!, CM is ultimately based around the battalion) should focus on maximizing his force against a single platoon at a time and move forward in increments going platoon to platoon to platoon. Imagine two companies of infantry and armor approaching the same scenario as a Dom illustrated above. You double your attacking force, maximizing their opportunity to cut up the enemy. Meanwhile emplaced forces can either suppress or destroy discovered positions. Smoke or geography can isolate the enemies further. Now obviously you wont always get those favorable overwhelming match ups, but then again you often have to create those match ups through planning and concentration. 
Another tip, just because you dont see the enemy doesnt mean you cant shoot at them. You can use the cannons on BMPs and Bradleys, M2s from Humvees, or even a squad or platoon emplaced as a base of fire element. So imagine Doms example. You may not know where red is, or that youre walking into a kill zone. But if you move up into those areas while also pouring fire into some of the most threatening positions, you could get those guys to duck their heads and open up maneuver where previously none existed. 
Ultimately there is no one solution, instead you just have to play enough to get a fingerspitzengefühl for battle and your own capabilities. Every game and every era is a little different but eventually you figure it out. 

I'm assuming your talking about the FM?

To be honest I haven't looked at those in years and years but they generally exist to teach the basics/bare minimum. So applying them 1:1 to CM can be very hard because its super rare that a CM scenario will treat you to the basics. In addition I find that they seem to geared towards a sorta WW2/Cold War setup and that makes them even less applicable to something like Black Sea.

TL;DR: the FMs teach people how to crawl and CM is all about walking.

This is more or less the core of it.
1. Recon the enemy position and identify as much of it as you can without revealing yourself/taking losses

2. Identify the weakest link position. Any set of mutually supporting positions will have  one that is the easiest for you to kill.

3. Setup the situation needed to kill the weakest link.1

4. Kill it.

repeat.

1  There are a multitude of ways to do this and its going to be largely up to you to identify the best way given the tools at hand. Some quick examples though:

- keyhole position that is only exposed to the weakest link
- use smoke to isolate the weakest link
- use artillery or direct fire to suppress other positions while you kill the weakest link
- use artillery to kill the weakest link
- etc...

Against a human player you can use maneuver to threaten their mutually supporting positions and hopefully force them to react to you. Dom's example is a decent one showing that in action. But against the AI you aren't going to get them to maneuver against you in that fashion so its more puzzle like.

Indeed. The point, naturally, is that this kind of thing is a building block.

It's very easy to look at a tactical problem (indeed, any problem), and to throw your hands in the air and claim it's too complex to solve. This is both very tempting, and very common. The way to counter that is to break this down into sections, get a good understanding of the fundamentals, and then apply those fundamentals to ever more complex scenarios.

To give you an excellent CM-relevant example: 

In CMCW, there are a pair of Tutorial scenarios, which are intended to teach you Soviet Doctrine. The first is a basic attack, which is intended to teach you the Soviet principles of combining mass with the support of massed fires. This exact situation is *not* one which you are likely to see, either in CMCW, or even historically in Soviet doctrine, but the principles taught are applicable to everything that follows, because they represent two of the most fundamental pillars that everything Soviet is built on.

The second then is an attack from the march (a "meeting engagement", in Soviet terms). This is necessarily a more fluid and complex scenario than the former. The fundamentals of mass and coordination with your fire plan remain identical, but the application is significantly more complex, especially as troops will be arriving in sections, and the enemy position is not known at the start of the engagement. In Soviet thinking, this kind of battle would represent the most common form of engagement, so this is teaching something that is a lot more directly applicable than the former.

Then, after you've learnt these fundamental principles, the first mission of the Soviet campaign is another meeting engagement. The structure is firmly recognisable, but the situation is more difficult still. The terrain is significantly more complex, and the enemy are a lot more active in trying to compete with you and prevent you from winning.

Jumping straight into this scenario without the grounding of the first two will mean you're missing a lot of the nuance and sophistication that the former two will bring. You have to learn the alphabet before you can spell. Without the former education, the more complex stuff is impossible to correctly parse, and it will not be possible to solve this to an acceptable degree.


 

Good question.
That's certainly true for squad and platoon level manuals, not so much for the higher level stuff. The difficulty is that the higher you go, the less practical and the more abstract the concepts inevitably get.

The first point is that it's important to recognise and accept that what you're describing is a disadvantaged position. If you are literally forced to walk into a kill-zone, then you're going to suffer for it.

In the extreme case, where all other options are exhausted, the only option you'll have left is pure attrition - sending in a force which can put out overwhelming fire all at once, and just pushing through head-on, accepting the inevitable casualties.

This is obviously a worst-case scenario, so the challenge (and indeed, the point of manoeuvre warfare as a basic concept) is to do everything you can to maintain control of your options and the situation as a whole.
 
 
The concept then is to use manoeuvre to gain an advantage. I'm going to sketch out something overly-simple, but that illustrates the fundamental points I'm trying to make. Your question is around Black Sea, but really the fundamentals are applicable to everything ever.

A basic killzone in a town environment. L-shaped ambush, two elements which are either obscured from the approach, or close to it, until the point is reached. Clearly if the blue forces walk up the road here they are in trouble. Scale here is intentionally fuzzy, but it's probably something like a platoon.


 
So, the application of manoeuvre: 


With this kind of approach, the terrain will mask the fire from the far element. The red forces will be unable to get both elements firing at the same point, so blue will be able to put their force against a minority of the enemy at any one time.

However, this isn't really enough. This action creates an advantage, but that's not really enough to turn that advantage into something decisive.

A basic rule of "how to win" is "Take an action that forces an enemy reaction, then ensure that this reaction cannot happen".

In this case, this might look something like this: 



In this case, the enemy should move the blocked element to a position where they can support by fire. You can't know in this instance which direction they will move in. If you can prevent this movement by application of your supporting elements (example here might be the platoon MG teams), then by manoeuvre you'll have isolated the enemy near element from any support, and can defeat it with your force.


Obviously an ideal example, but that kind of principle is the thing you're looking to achieve - working out ways to control the battlefield, to isolate portions of it and to create locally-advantaged situations.

The above example implies a close-ranged light infantry fight, but there's no reason why this would have to be the case. Equally, the above example involves squad or platoon movement, and the same principles can be applied to other elements. Artillery is a big one - if the far element was supressed with mortar fire, then the blue forces could overwhelm the near element in the exact same manner. The same thing can apply to obfuscation via smoke - smoke used in this case can create blocking terrain, and in general terms "shaping the battlefield" is one of the primary roles for artillery. Clearly suppression is a temporary and uncertain state, and smoke even more so, but these are the kind of trade-offs and decisions which are important to consider at this level.

Other than using massive firepower (if the designer has provided) to destroy walls and buildings, that's about all one can do.

I said don't censor them - I agree we don't need to see dead UKR soldiers or orcs in this thread. 100%.
I met up with some friends last night. Their daughter in law spent the last couple of nights in the underground station in Kiev. Her son is in the UK on holiday to see them. To say he is distraught is an understatement. He would much rather be with his wife in their home in Kiev despite the risks but now cannot get there to help. 
I must admit that I was very sceptical of the repeated US warnings of impending invasion. How wrong I was.

The last thing we need to do is to censor the images coming out of Ukraine. The fact is that people have become removed from the horror and the real suffering which war brings. Only by showing that horror can you ensure that people realise that it must be avoided where possible. You can guarantee that the orcs are not showing those images to their population and will be suppressing details of their casualties which seems to be mounting up.

I said don't censor them - I agree we don't need to see dead UKR soldiers or orcs in this thread. 100%.
I met up with some friends last night. Their daughter in law spent the last couple of nights in the underground station in Kiev. Her son is in the UK on holiday to see them. To say he is distraught is an understatement. He would much rather be with his wife in their home in Kiev despite the risks but now cannot get there to help. 
I must admit that I was very sceptical of the repeated US warnings of impending invasion. How wrong I was.

The last thing we need to do is to censor the images coming out of Ukraine. The fact is that people have become removed from the horror and the real suffering which war brings. Only by showing that horror can you ensure that people realise that it must be avoided where possible. You can guarantee that the orcs are not showing those images to their population and will be suppressing details of their casualties which seems to be mounting up.

Thanks for your advice.
 
I managed to get a total victory by selectively loading up the buildings nearest to the bridge with RPG troops who were able to take out the Tunguska and T90. I could then engage the grenade launchers and once they were out of the way it was plain sailing. Very frustrating mission when it goes wrong.
 
Thanks again for your help.

You have a lot of buildings facing the enemy - so put a lot of teams watching the enemy side. The distance between buildings on your side and enemy side is actually not that large. So to reduce the risk of your teams being spotted by the enemy rather than the other way around use two-men teams and crawl command when entering building squares facing the enemy. Choose whatever flank to cross the deep dividing road. Since you have many BTR-80As and enough RPG and PKM rounds preemptively suppress enemy buildings facing your side whether you spotted any enemy infantry there or not. Quickly cross the road - I used mounted infantry to shorten the exposure time. Coordinate the suppression with the crossing so that all potential enemy teams stay suppressed and not shoot at your advancing teams/armour. I did it on both flanks yet I like the right flank better since:
a) there's no long keyhole fire lane where an enemy armour can hide and be spotted too late; though it can be mitigated is you cross somewhat closer to the center and avoid exposure to this this fire lane
b) there're buildings on your side closer to the enemy buildings so you can put your spotters closer
c) there's a depression on the road leading to the enemy side so you can bring BTRs closer to the enemy side to shorten exposure
d) the road is paved and runs straight to the enemy side - saves exposure time as well; with the left flank you need a fine micromanagement to avoid the firelane yet cross with your armour (if you use the armour) AFAIR I killed almost all - if not all - enemy armour with RPGs except for the tank or BMP - don't remember - that suddenly crosses to your side. Yet as I expected something like this I kept RPG teams and BTR-80s flanking the probable routes of approach so it was easy. Your armour is stone blind and can't spot enemy armour quickly enough so keep infantry nearby and order area fire to the enemy armour spotted by infantry even if your armour can't see it yet. The rest is standard building clearing. Put as many two-man teams as spotters on the enemy buildings. If fire lanes allows preemptive suppression by your armour then do that and move quickly. If there are no fire lanes - then suppress with the infantry teams and risk some low casualties. If you play PvE rather than PvP then you can abuse the engine into opening fire and revealing its positions. Take a 2-3 man team and make it run a short distance from cover to cover in the wide open far enough from the enemy positions. If you do it correctly you won't have any casualties almost 100% of the time. If you use two man teams and the run is too far away from the suspected enemy position then do it 2-3 times - two man teams are hard to spot. The key is to have as many spotting teams in overwatch as possible and avoid revealing them. If you have enough then Russians are playable even against Americans. Though be wary of American thermals that can laser see your spotting teams across the whole map. So put them to the flanks and not so obvious places. Ukrainians don't have thermals so it's a piece of cake.

Never use more than three-man teams and two men are way way better than three. Four-man one is almost as easy to spot as a whole squad. Always use crawl when crossing the crest or entering the building squares facing the enemy. Even inside the buildings crawl greatly reduces the risk of being spotted. Crawl exhaust the infantry pretty quickly and tired infantry is easier to spot. So don't crawl too far a distance - break it down to several hops with a rest between them. Keep a spotting team in hide position till it recovers before unhiding. As per tired teams being easier to spot - that's my impression. I haven't done proper testing.

I won this as Russian in a PBEM.
Talking from my memory, some details could be wrong.
My original plan is to take the left route. I sneak the ATGM teams, RPG teams into a building on the left flank, also put two BTR-82A as a reverse. Everyone hold fire or hiding behind the buildings. Trying to use a Zergling rush to deal with UKR’s BMP-2,  unhide and fire or move into a clear LOF simultaneously. But I accidentally found a different route, next to the left flank main road there is slope leads to the apartment buildings and the tower, infantry can climb it. I send out sappers to breach the wall first, then breach the building, move one room to another. I occupied all three apartment buildings. That cut the distance to the BMP-2 into half. Then a RPG-7 shot from the apartment kills the BMP-2 (or maybe it is the ATGM fired from a two store building in left flank, I can’t remember). Anyway kill the BMP-2 makes a clear breakthrough. I advance from building to building under careful over-watch. Then I occupied all the VP in the center, hit ceasefire , won the battle as Tactical victory.

Thanks Elvis - found it now.
 
Appreciate the help. 😎

The latest releases have been superb. 
 
I hope that sales are strong enough that work on a CM3 Engine can commence. I'd rather have 2 years with no new titles now and a new engine IMO.

CM Cold War sales have been so strong that we broke the site.

 
 

If they see it that way then it would be very disappointing. It would show an intent to milk out the last money from this engine rather than advancing to the future.