Panzerpanic

2 intersting videos on soviet materials:
 

2 intersting videos on soviet materials:
 

Is that some kind of Machinegun Team clown car in the bottom centre there?

2 intersting videos on soviet materials:
 

7. "Fulda Gap": 1970-90
Europe WWIII

I posted DoD guidelines on actual Mk19 accuracy. Clearly CMSF2/CMBS Mk19 is waaaaaay off mark when compared to real life.

In general, that distance is important. 2km is a long way, especially on a CM battlefield. In the WW2 titles, the german halftracks have an MG behind a gun shield, which is far more effective when placed ~1000m away from their target - the distance limits return fire and increases the effective angle that the shield protects.

In CM terms then, IFVs tend to be effective as support assets, hull down, and as part of a fire plan.

In general I find myself dismounting much later with Russian-type assets then I do with Western ones. Part of that is the lack of man-portable radios in CMSF - the squads rely on the BMP for that, and if they're dismounted then they're cut off. Aside from seeking hull down positions, the main safety net which BMPs have are their exceptional firepower - this is (again) muddled in CMSF, since the Syrians mostly use older kit, but easier to see by comparing the BMP-3 to the Bradley - the former will explode violently if you glare at it, but it can pour out fire and suppress anything that's vaguely likely to have infantry inside.

Dismounting is always a die roll - you can never be 100% sure there's no small arms targeting your dismount location, since your visibility will always be worse when mounted up. This applies double for BMPs, since their vision is terrible, but it's also the reason why you need to lean on their radios far more.

Smoke is handy to cover dismounts if there is no suitable cover. Popping the smoke, then rushing to set up MGs such that if there is to be an immediate firefight, you'll have the best chance of winning it.

Western smoke is defensive, and Russian-type smoke is offensive - it will fire significantly forward of the ifv's position. Again, this is to cover the infantry advance onto the target, which means that I often find myself engaging with the BMPs whilst mounted (from behind cover, and at range), then dismount to actually fight to the objective. That way I feel like I'm maximising both my BMP firepower and offensive smoke charges, to give my comparatively weak infantry the best shot at it.

This is actually a core tactical question, and one which does not have a best answer.

Doctrines differ, but the general advice with any transport (be that halftracks, bradleys or trucks) is to dismount out of sight of the enemy, and proceed on foot. The vehicles in a tactical sense are there to redeploy quickly, possibly across otherwise open ground, and to provide protection against unexpected fires (especially mortars).

That's useful as a default tactic for all transport vehicles, in all eras.

Where this gets complex is when you start sticking guns on them.

Your basic APC (say, the British FV432, or the US WW2 halftracks) are fulfilling the same role as unarmoured trucks, with a little more protection against unexpected fires. That's one extreme, and should be used as the above. The MG in this case is not intended to be used as a fighting platform - it's a defensive tool and one mostly of desperation. It can be used in support, typically from a hull down position, but it's rarely a great idea and should never be the primary plan.
The other extreme are the varying models of BMP in CMSF and CMBS. These carry a ton of firepower and weapon systems, to the extent that they severely limit the abilities of the attached squad. In these cases, the IFV is supposed to be used as part of the squad, and therefore has to be exposed. This doctrine has some significant and obvious disadvantages, but does mean that the Russian-type squads have a significant advantage in firepower over their equivalent.

Example of this. Note that the BMP and squad elements are in covered positions.



BMPs have firing slits, so the squad can fight mounted, but really shouldn't. That's useful in an NBC environment, which doesn't apply here.

In Afghanistan, new tactics were developed, of dismounting the troops and combining the vehicles into a flanking/support fire unit. That will be stronger tactic against irregular forces, which lack the amount of AT weaponry that a conventional army will have.
 
Bradleys in CMSF are a bit of an outlier - they match up well against pretty much everything in the Syrian arsenal. The troops should still not engage in a fight mounted, but you can afford to be much bolder with your transport vehicles in that game. That's pretty much unique to that setting though - they're not as scary in Black Sea.

Strykers in particular are useful for their electronics and networking. Paying attention to C2 links and using them as communication hubs can be very important, but this can be done with minimal or zero exposure of the actual vehicle.
 
So... think of it as a spectrum, with unarmoured trucks at one end, and BMPs at the other, with all other APCs and IFVs in between. If you never use the weapons of a Bradley, BMP or Warrior, then you're wasting a resource. On the other hand, the more you expose them, the more you're risking the resource. The IFV concept has this dilemma at it's core, and it's not a problem with a clear solution.

I don't understand the childish downplaying. 
What is the purpose of this comment? 
And this? 
I think you have a great point John. A fatigue feature which affects more than just running speed would come with a very welcome yet drastic change in gameplay. 

ok I posted the missing "Mech Airbone Battalion" in QB as a bug report. However I don't know how long a fix will take. R2V is the priority right now.

Fatigue has no effect on a units accuracy or on its morale state regardless if the current morale state is as a result from either Combat Stress or Combat Shock or a combination of both.
Fatigue will only affect your movement options;
Tired troops cannot Fast Move.

Fatigued troops cannot Fast, Assault or Hunt Move.

Exhausted troops cannot Fast, Assault, Hunt or Quick Move.
 
Maintaining a C2 link with a Plt HQ for example provides that squad with a resistance to Combat Shock  i.e. its morale state will not drop as low under incoming fire as it would if it was out of C2 link.
Whether you want to maintain the C2 link is up to you as a player. Well trained, led and motivated units have a built in resistance to Combat Shock  whereas poorly trained, led and motivated units are more susceptible to its effects. You could make a case that its more important to keep the C2 link with lower quality troops when they are in contact, however even good quality troops get worn down and will benefit from maintaining the link when taking incoming fire especially if they have taken casualties and are suffering an additional impact on their morale state from Combat Stress.

Wait a BMP-2 spotted something? That's amazing
Kidding aside - very cool.

I don't play QBs that often but every time I do I usually end up with "so that's what I got" after purchasing my units and the battle starts. I have a fair understanding, but the composition of squads, equipment, weapons, amount of ammo etc is impossible to keep in mind.
When making scenarios in the editor there is the "deploy units" feature which basically is putting the purchased units where you want them on the map. The unit purchase for scenario making and QBs is identical as far as I can tell. In QBs there is the "preview map" feature. Would it be possible to port over the "deploy units" feature to QBs so that you not only get to preview the map, you would be able to preview the units currently purchased and that would bring an opportunity to change your mind in time. Deployment should be limited to your setup zone so not to be able to abuse figuring out LOS too much from the oppo side.
Would this be possible tech wise? I know for sure it would make QBs much more appealing for me.

this bunching up of units in quick battles bothers me too. I think your idea is a good one. I would also like to see a feature for reinforcments. perhaps making them cheaper but can only enter after a reasonable amount of time has passed. this would also help with clutter.

1. French DLC gets my vote. For whatever it's worth.
2. UNFUK also gets my vote. Because somewhere, someone will do it.

I would like to see Canada before UK, because Canada is acutally there now. So it would make more sense. French army and UK would be great as well. 
But most desired are (from my point of view): Poland, Canada, France. 

So this is in relation to a topic I posted just before Thanksgiving.... There may be some mild spoilers ahead, but nothing I think is show-stopping.
Just recently I was playing The Lions of Carpiquet. For those who don't know it, it's a challenging campaign that covers a difficult battle in the Commonwealth sector west of Caen. It's one of the few that really gives the player some serious time to make decisions on how to approach the objectives and neutralize the Germans. The first two scenarios offer the players three hours to complete them; the second, I believe, is somewhere in the two-hour range. I was able to make good use of reconnaissance and artillery spotters to locate and eliminate German positions with supporting arms and shape the battlefield to make the best use of my infantry in the attack, and my armor when it was needed. I even got the chance to clear a mine belt with flail tanks, which was really cool to watch. I took casualties, but they felt reasonable to the firepower and deployment of the Germans and the unforgiving nature of the terrain (it's almost pancake flat throughout!). I remember thinking "Finally! I'm able to actually to use recon, tactics, and mission planning in a way that maximizes mission accomplishment while minimizing casualties. Scenarios 2 and 3--the first big moves of the campaign after the recon mission--were tough, but they're engaging. 
I had started this campaign after dropping Courage & Fortitude at around the Razorback Ridge scenario. I had managed through scenarios two and three, but once I hit Razorback Ridge I just gave up. It's an absurd scenario... Not because its a necessarily unrealistic piece of ground to have to take, or an unrealistic enemy, but because the scenario conditions themselves--the time and map limits--make it an over-the-top "lesson" in taking casualties just for the sake of doing it. Once I began Carpiquet, it gave me an opportunity to contrast between the two and learn a little bit about what frustrates me about the average scenario design, and learn a bit about myself as a player.
Here's what I learned: I hate taking casualties. But not just any casualties. I hate taking casualties that are forced on me by the conditions of the game itself and the scenario, NOT the conditions related to the enemy and the terrain. If I take casualties because I misread a piece of ground I can generally stomach that. I made the mistake. What I can't stomach is when I have to rush through a scenario because I have to take two or three objectives over a kilometer away, through a defender, with a rifle company or so, with less than an hour on the clock. I get frustrated near to the point of yelling whenever the morale model forces a squad to effectively commit suicide by running into the open, or worse, toward the enemy (which has happened more times than I can count), when they break and run from perfectly good cover when under fire. I want to throw my mouse through a window when a tank crew bails out of a perfectly good taken when they get nervous only to get cut down by an MG on the outside. 
Some of these are controllable, some of them are not. At least not yet. The engine is great, but flawed. But I'm confident that at some point those flaws will inevitably be worked out with enough time and programming. It's maddening beyond belief, however, when I have to take casualties over something completely avoidable within a scenario. . . . Or with how it's design.
Case in point: When I reached the fourth scenario in Carpiquet was was deployed with two companies, in the open, looking at a ruined, but dense town filled with Germans. I hid both companies, plus my mortar assets as best I could where they were placed. I pre-registered my mortars on likely areas with troop positions and called in my air where I felt it would do the most good, all as recommended in the scenarios briefing. Then I hit the Red Button.
Within the first five minutes my on-map mortar section was obliterated. A German sniper had popped four or five guys from one platoon. Mortars and MGs from within the town were raking another. I had no way of avoiding any of it. 
So I restarted the scenario.
On the second go, I replotted my fires and hid my guys. This time I avoided using the on-map mortars as that might be what was bringing down the mortars--perhaps they had been spotted as they fired. Instead I used my air and off-map 107mm to handle the prep. I pressed the Red Button. . . . And within five minutes the results were about the same. 
What I quickly realized was that the scenario, unlike the previous two, doesn't give the player the option or room to deploy in any other way. The Germans in the town were able to spot the Bren carriers and call in fire on that position. I have no way of repositioning them or getting them out of the way until after the scenario begins, and they happen to be carrying a good bit of my 81mm ammo. They're big fat targets and I have to just take whatever comes from because of it. I have to take casualties not because I failed to move my guys, provide cover for them, lay down suppression, or any other mistake. I have to take casualties because the scenario essentially forces me to take them. I don't get to have a say. Just press the Red Button and die. 
I tried the scenario two or three more times with different variations. The results were about the same each time. I was disappointed, but it's something I see time and time again.
Aside from some aforementioned issues with the program itself, which will undoubtedly diminish over time, the game borders on a simulation of combined arms combat, and yet when it comes to scenario design it often seems like the game inevitably gets boiled down into a "gamey" reenactment of history, or worse, a war-movie replay, that basically remove all the agency from the player and force decisions that are tactically unwise and nowhere even remotely realistic and in keeping with the tactical and operational considerations of the type of conflict the game seeks to simulate. Why even move soldiers on a map if all I'm supposed to do is send them to their death without cause?
It's not my intention to necessarily hammer the designer of the Carpiquet campaign, or any campaign. I get that it's a difficult and often thankless job. I only use them as examples in order to pose a question: Why is it necessary for me to take casualties outside of my own errors? What am I supposed to be learning? Why create a simulation that represents the tactical landscape of modern warfare, then limit the tactical options for the player to a binary choice?
 
 
 

I must admit this often makes me angry. There are so many great campaigns and missions out there with their fun completely taken away by enforcing those cheap time limits, especially in the WW2 titles but also the modern titles suffer from this: If I recall correctly the Black Sea BP1 campaigns were just outright absurd in this matter. "Hm I have no idea how to present the player with challenges, let him do this assault in 5 minutes, works every time"
- do proper recon before the main body develops an assault? - nope, recon are just another word for light assault infantry.
- establish proper base of fire element covering assault elements? forget it
- pick up the wounded and dead? - no time for that nonsense, there are no score points given for that, and points are everything in a real war right?
- reserve your artillery elements for important moments? - nah best is to unleash them before even the missions starts as calling them in may take half of your mission timer away and we got no time to wait for artillery strikes or support to arrive unless you´re ready to run your troops into your own artillery, I suggest just throw bodies at that enemy MG.
- carefully work your way forward and exchange units that suffered casualties and stress with reserve elements? Sure why not but won´t take long and you´ll notice that there are only ten minutes left and half of the map is still not under your control, just end up spamming those quick and fast commands and have fun getting your pixeltruppen killed like in a C&C game because time is money and manpower is not important right?
Disabling time limits or extending them manually is requested since the stone ages but you hear the same two arguments:
a) in the real world time is also very important and "insert babble about the hard truth of war operations here".  I served and read enough about every modern conflict out there that I can promise you that no modern army in the world demanded such gains in so short time from you like it is daily business in many of the CM scenarios. No not even Peiper and company was demanded to storm 5 heavily defended villages in 45 minutes.
b) the AI actions are tied to the timer and because of that allegedly the timer can´t be disabled or extended. 1st) in most scenarios there is not much going on with the AI in the last minutes, in fact you notice that in most there are no AI commands or waypoint given out by the script anymore, they just hold their positions being completely passive except their built in 4.0 behaviour, they could do that for hours. This is especially true for the scenarios where you have to attack which is basically 95% of what you have to do in CM.
I get it that some hardcore WEGO CM vets playing this for 20 years may accomplish everything with 10-30 minutes remaining on the ticker in scenarios while I´m suffering to take  half of the objectives in time... So what? Good job! They can be proud now and hit the cease fire like a hero and be happy. Why scenario designers always assume "okay lets remove that spare time and everything is fine" forcing everyone to eat this artifical difficulty.
Take this post with a grain of salt but I don´t know how often it get so annoyed to realize that I started one of the CM scenarios and campaigns, applying real life tactics and procedures you´ve learned or read about, just to find me in the usual endgame rushing click- and die-fest more resembling one of these Korean starcraft matches than real world ground operations. This is extremely fun-limiting especially when you´re one of these roleplayers that focus more on recreating/reliving what-if moments, who just don´t do everything for the sake of getting some gamey virtual highscore. I wouldn´t even care if I get a Marginal Victory or a Draw but often you don´t know if your campaign is botched and lost just because you didn´t Zerg Rush the objectives or wasted your time with "silly" things like recon or real life tactics.
I really hope one day this custom and game mechanic changes allowing for individual preferences or that a hacker comes by and finds a way to cheat-modify the time limit 😂

For purposes of my argument below I'm defining the following terms as:
Tools - Units given the player to fight the engagement.
Parameters - Map size, time limits, objectives etc, the variables that can be adjusted by the designer to promote a certain type of play.
Purely my opinion but the best scenarios in CM are the ones where the designers give the player a clear objective (and secondaries if applicable), a set of tools to use and then let them loose to solve the problem in any way they see fit. When designers start reducing parameters like time allocation and map sizes/design in certain ways they are promoting a certain type of play. This usually means designers are restricting the player to follow a linear path to completing the objectives. Inappropiate map sizes for the forces provided to both sides and restrictive time limits are the usual things I've noticed that designers turn to increase difficulty or try to push the player to follow a historical pathway. Even with some of the stock scenarios I've played, I've come away thinking did they just reduce 30mins from the time allocation to up the difficulty?
That's not to say time shouldn't be a factor for scenarios and racing the clock is certainly viable in some situations, however design and narratively speaking it has to make sense. If you are assualting an entrenched enemy position and you as the player are told you are commanding the main effort, your superior officer is not going to care if it takes you an extra 30 minutes to take that final position. This is where my victory points allocated by time taken comes into play and frees up designers to be more flexible when setting a scenarios parameters. If you take that final objective but you required those extra 30 minutes you won't get the additional victory points that would of made it a total victory... but please keep fighting the battle until you complete it.
Oh and if you are designing a campaign and force me to rush a large map within an hour and then expect the same force to do it all over again with no replacements...  

@George MC is still the master of getting the balance between tools and parameters right in my opinion. If you haven't played this one yet, you've been missing out...
http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-red-thunder/cm-red-thunder-add-ons-scenarios/der-ring-der-5-panzer-division/
My thoughts above also do not mean all battles need to be battalion(+) affairs to give the player variety, however the time allocation and map size should be adjusted based on amount of and the type of forces involved in the battle.

Yeah, I get where you're coming from. An option to turn off the time crunch would be nice, though. It makes sense for their to be a time restriction in Market-Garden, given the context of the campaign, but even then it seems a little tight (I'm thinking of the third scenario/first CW scenario as an example). 
I think much of my concern comes from the way spotting works as it relates to time and planning. There are a lot of in-game aspects that increase the need for extended recon. For instance, players can't call in an indirect fire mission on targets/areas they can't see with a spotter once the scenario begins (aka: a "grid" mission). It's as if maps don't exist in WWII (the drones in CMBS were a god-send! One wonders where the Piper Cubs are in WWII scenarios...). In-game spotting in general isn't as elegant as it is in real life (or rather, much more prohibitive), so players have to come up with creative means of spotting targets without losing troops or needlessly exposing their position, which takes more time. Sometimes I'll do things like "open up" a tank at long range for a moment just to draw infantry fire and expose targets. Not exactly an inspired way to exposed enemy positions, but often there just isn't a better option. 
Also, I think the morale system begs for more time. Because troops can break and run in all sorts of directions (even to their own detriment), or fail to fire back at hidden close range targets, it makes recon all the more important. Entire squads can be neutered with one short range burst. I've had squads break and run from cover into open ground only to get cut down by enemy further away. When I learned these hard lessons, it made planning, recon, and preparatory fires all the more important. This is especially important in campaigns, where losses can accrue from one scenario to the next. 
I do get it, though. . . . It's a tough thing to balance. But the time-hack should definitely be optional. Or maybe even given a point spread, just like with bonuses for taking under a certain number of casualties. Beat the scenario under a certain time and the player is awarded a bonus. Just my 2c...

As long as it is expected for the player to call ceasefire at his discretion, then sure whats wrong with adding extra time. Personally I wish there was a "do you want to end scenario or keep playing" prompt for those situations when I caught on late to the avenue of approach or whatever. I was actually having a good time playing the battle. Experienced players who read the AI can really breeze through scenarios fast, shooting for an AI surrender. That can't be interpreted as a basis to set time for a scenario. Its safe to be generous with time allotment in almost all scenarios, you really can't go wrong. The exception being when time appreciation is the premise of the objective.
 

I don't care. Fight me. 

No Bil, that is just a map of your fan club membership. 😁

I suspect the AT-14 is the far better choice for a static, defensive position, but for a mobile mechanised platoon I think the benefits of the AT-13 are considerable, and probably worth losing some penetrative power.

Hopefully CMSF2 will feature the larger maps that are needed to properly feature modern accurate long range weapons systems.  In WW2 games it's not so bad to have 500m-1000m ranges.  For modern games one needs 2Km+ to do what the weapons are designed to do.  Otherwise there is little point in having RL weapons systems designed to kill at 3Km-4Km ranges.