Panzerpanic

One other factor to keep in mind is that the commander of an M60 can override the gunners controls, which can reduce the time from spotting to engaging. Soviet-era Russian tanks don't have this capability. CM does not explicitly model this, unfortunately.

We clearly have some philosophical distance on game design.  When you get one off the ground, let me know and we can compare notes.

One thing with dragons, and really any missile in CM games, is how easily tracks are damaged or destroyed from turret hits. I'm not an expert, so maybe that is completely reasonable, but it seems to me that with a missile impact on the turret, the hull of the tank would protect the tracks from feeling the effects of the missile impact. I've had several T64/T80 forces disabled by multiple Dragon hits on the turret breaking their tracks.

I had included T72s in my Fahrbahns scenario because I imagined they might never show up in a scenario otherwise. Because why would anyone pick T72 when you can play with T64s and T80s? I guess i underestimated the nostalgic appeal of T72.

It's worth mentioning that in the first mission of the Soviet campaign, you'll have pre-battle intel, and enough artillery to lay down a decent fire mission.

This is doctrinal - about 10-30 minutes (which isn't a long time!) before the Forward Security element, you'll have a combat reconnaissance patrol to find enemy positions and routes of advance. That's partly simulated with pre-battle info, and partly explicit with the BTR platoon in the Soviet campaign. Those pre-battle spots should be hit with pre-planned barrages.

When the FSE advance guard arrives, they immediately attack. The intention is that they engage with the known enemy straight away, and try to break through by themselves. If they can, great, but if they can't then the FSE will act as a base of fire for the main body when it arrives. Implicit in this is that there will be some *unknown* enemy positions, and that's the licks you'll have to take. If the CRP has failed to do its job, then the FSE needs to do a probing attack instead, and pretty sharpish.

This is the "flexible" side of Soviet tactical doctrine - there's not much in terms of small unit tactics, since platoons tend to act as one, and on-line, but the how you use those platoons in concert, especially coming off the match, is really important, and can be very sophisticated.

To illustrate, an example of a successful FSE attack from The Russian Way of War (Grau, 2017):




 
The Russian Way of War is focused on modern Russian operations, but the principle is identical to the Soviet method (and the diagrams are great).

Again, "How to Soviet" is a combination of Firepower, Speed and Aggression. Push, push, push. Keep them off-balance and reeling from the amount of fire you can lay down, and then use your speed to destabilise and not give them the chance to recover.
 

The Soviets outnumber to American force 3 to 1.  There is one thing that you neglected to notice in your Soviet OB.  You have a lot of ATGMs that apparently you chose not to use.  You also have way more infantry firepower than the US force.  The US force is anti armor focused and the Soviet force is Infantry heavy.  The American ATGMs are easily taken out with the mortars because they are not dug in.  The problem isn't the Soviet OB.  The problem is your ability to use it to best advantage.
The American force is only two platoons btw.  Well, one infantry platoon and one Cavalry troop, but the Cavalry troop has no infantry so it's really like a big tank platoon.
Regarding the Soviet ATGMs since you asked - the 2500meter variety show up near the top of the hill on your side because - well if you were smart you would put them on that hill so they can fire into the town since they can see all the way down into the valley from up there.  The other infantry all have 1000 meter ATGMs that if you happen to notice the bluff near the bridge - well a smart man would notice that if he put his ATGMs up on that bluff maybe, just maybe, all those ATGMs could also fire into the town.  At that point you wouldn't need any tanks because your ATGMs would take out the M60s and your artillery could take out the TOW.  Now that I told you what to do maybe you can try it again.
Honestly I'm having a lot of trouble understanding why so many are having so much trouble with this scenario.  The bluff on the other side of the river near the bridge is just sitting there screaming "hey come on over here and deploy on me".  If you don't like that bluff there is plenty of high ground on your side of the river too.  The TOWs can only take out so many vehicles so if you wanted to rush them up to the intersection above the bridge you could put ATGMs in several locations over there too.  You are only dealing with one American infantry platoon and you have two Soviet infantry companies.  I mean seriously....
 

Never stay stationary!

So you're either just trolling, or you have no idea what this is trying to achieve, or what a typical scenario count is for a CM title. Either way, it's just noise.

So, because this was becoming a rather vocal issue, and I began to doubt us for a second, I exported 19 of the standalone scenario briefings (both Blue and Red) out of the commercial scenarios and cut and pasted them into Word.  That came to 20727 words in total.  Scrubbing through them all and using the Word spelling checker, we come to a grand total of 15 real spelling mistakes (not military slang or funny abbreviations) out of the sample.  This yields an error rate of about .07%, which in just about any industry standard is well below the accepted manufacturing rate errors (outside of the nuclear and space industry).  It is even lower than accepted experimental error in engineering. (https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/virtual_lab/LabZero/Experimental_Error.shtml#:~:text=Engineers also need to be,analysis techniques to get any). 
The worst offending scenario had 5 spelling errors and the writer is not a native English speaker, but we can make sure we get help with that.  So now I am going to do a grammar and punctuation check but from that I can see so far (again thank you MS Word) we are doing better than a lot of adult students I know. 
Now we will continue to try and get better in all things in order to continue a solid wargame to you all...thank you for your patience. [Note, I am sorry but I cannot share the Word Doc here as it is company IP etc.]  Oh and as an aside, I hold a Master's degree and still managed to spell "Frankfurt" wrong in Valley of Ashes, so human error happens.

Spending money doesn't excuse you from being nasty. Be constructive, not destructive with your feedback. Instead of implying the target of your criticism is a child, perhaps act like an adult and mind your manners. 

That is 100% false. Please don't share misinformation about the game, because it just ends up confusing people.

My idea for an Operation Unthinkable would be to make a standalone module that is just the Allied and Russian TO&E from CMFB and CMRT, grab some QB maps from the same, and throw it all together. I would do a standalone module because to me it makes more sense to do it that way than to tack an Op Unthinkable onto either of the base games. 
It could have something like 4-6 standalone scenarios and maybe a campaign or a mini campaign or two. Basically, anything that could be thrown together quickly. No development overhead for BFC, so it would not cost them much or delay any other projects, and those interested could take it or leave it. 
As much as I would like an Op Unthinkable for the mashup, I think it would be mostly a gimmick. For the most part, I think it would be played a little and then moved on from. 
  
1000% agree.

Working as designed.  The BMP-1, BMP-2, M901 and Bradley all had hatch and launcher arrangements so that the crew was essentially under armor while reloading.  Rather than bespoke animations, simply staying buttoned is considered closer to reality than having crew completely expose themselves above armor.

BMP-1P, however, basically bolted a ground ATGM mount onto the roof, so crew had to reload from above armor.

This is exactly spot on. 
So is this. 
Dom has it right on both counts. 
Yikes.

Do you guys fight with your (soviet) tank buttoned down or buttoned?

Also for people that know more about soviet tactic of the time, what do TC should do in battle?

Soviet doctrine was to fight buttoned. "Why" isn't entirely clear to me, but I imagine it's a number of factors - NBC, vulnerability to small arms since you're planning to close aggressively, the general low height of the Soviet armour, etc. It's probably a combination of factors.

The unbuttoned position for Soviet TCs isn't really conducive to it either - they're pretty exposed.

In practical terms, it shouldn't really matter. If you're following Soviet doctrine, you're massing armour in line, and so making up for poor spotting with multiple rolls of the dice - ten tanks with poor spotting will have the edge over one with better optics, at least until you start hitting Abrams and the technological edge takes over.

I'd much rather see other countries in the time period that CMCW is about rather than backtracking all the way to WW2 again. It seems like a huge waste of potential doing that.

Quick battles being what they are, you pretty much cant avoid this.
The AI plans have to work without the knowledge of what they're ordering - the same orders have to work for an engineer platoon or an abrams company.
QBs are not good against the AI, except as a way to test things with some rng/hidden information. It might accidentally create a competitive game occasionally, but it'll be entirely by chance.

Building a QB AI plan, you don't know if the player is going to select all tanks, all infantry, all recon armor or all light trucks That necessarily limits your ability to be 'clever' in planning your AI movements. One thing I've done in the past is import a QB map into the editor, import the troops I want, massage the AI orders so they act logically for what they are, then resave as a 'scenario'

The reason is because it looks cool.  Looking at the reference literature Sagger commonly came painted both ways. Sometimes the various pieces got mixed-and-matched!

Ah...a journey of learning about to begin.  So for the Cpt Miller has given you the Soviets.  For the US I would suggest:
https://www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd-us-archive/FM71-100C1(79).pdf (Div level....very big picture, more for context than use in CM)
https://www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd-us-archive/FM71-2(77).pdf  (Bn TF, start here, this one will walk you right through)
https://books.google.ca/books?id=My8-u2rYNVoC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&dq=tank+and+mechanized+company+team+fm+1977&source=bl&ots=qqIQKfV9MT&sig=ACfU3U00aPRhU6AIK2f45OySHMo3SQX7Xw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjkj9nanKnwAhV2Ap0JHeqIBQ0Q6AEwEXoECAgQAw#v=onepage&q=tank and mechanized company team fm 1977&f=false (Coy Tm Bible from 1977)
https://books.google.ca/books?id=V7rLfdbG5QcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (Mech Inf Platoon, 1977)
Attached.  FM 17-95 (Cav Troop, 1977)  [Edit.  MikeyD already posted The Tank Platoon)
 
The_Capt's advice:  Keep your gun pointed at the enemy, keep one foot on the ground, timing, timing and....timing, weapon ranges=the point of your existence, make them dead - they fight poorly when dead.  Oh and do not overextend....I always break that one.
 
 
FM_17-95_1981.pdf

Lol. Just finished the first scenario - and I am HAPPY with this result

Ok, so no aircraft in mission for Soviet side.
But what about Helicopters? They are more blind then my grandfather...

I think BFCElvis gives the servers an hour or so before he sends out the e-mails.
But yeah, reading and follow instructions is not always easy and I guess most of all everyone is happy and when you show your wife the email and you get a very pitiful look and a nod... you need to share with some who understands!!