panzersaurkrautwerfer

I'd just like to chip in blood is too far. The damage model for person in the game is operational, lightly damaged and broken. The running around mostly fine, or not running around because dead options are more than sufficient. Tanks have a pretty wide range of broken though, so it might be helpful to have visual feedback to some of the more obvious damage.

As sort of a tangent, one day they'll have to have more interesting vehicle kill models. Not exactly for the ooooh factor (although there is that too), but with how far CM has come in showing the battlefield, it is a little silly to have a really destroyed BMP just be a fully intact BMP sitting at the bottom of a self made crater. Something like CCTT where a mobility kill shows a knocked off track, and firepower kills are blackened turrets would be nice. If we're going over the top having the flying turret effect for catastrophic detonations would be nice too. Not asking for twenty different kill animations for the BMP-2 alone, just the sort of visual feedback on the model of what might be broken. I mean if this is something Combat Mission Alpha Centauri never fixes, I'd still buy the next game in a heartbeat. Just something I'd like.

They are pretty awesome. 40 MM HEDP sneaks up on you. Back in CMSF I spent the better part of 10 minutes sneaking a dude with an AT4 into position to knockout a BMP-2. BMP-2 moves a little, hits LOS for a rifle squad with a few M203s. Goodbye BMP.

Those seem like good choices. The almost certain Polish module has me more excited, like the rest of NATO is cool and all, but not quite the whole West+East+being serious about defense spending aspect of Poland makes them exciting. If there's still a DPRK in 2017, I will be here to annoy Battlfront into setting a game on the Korean Peninsula . Dear god how many Army guys are on this forum? But yes. That and retired Colonels who will talk your ear off about when the Army was at peak hardness in 1996. Exceptions to both apply though. I'm really happy with this game. CM is one of the few series that does realistic without it being an exercise in masochism. BS furthers and refined that great lineage.

Well the real genius is training on tanks is expensive, and the training area can be quite small depending where you're stationed. Something you can hand to your dudes as "homework" or just provided without guidance as a sandbox lets them get a better understanding of mounted tactics at the cost of 50 bucks or so a Platoon Leader. Also throwing "Team Yankee" at them works well too.

I bought multiple copies of CMSF to give to some of my Lieutenants. I am really at a loss why the Army doesn't at least look into Combat Mission as a low investment sort training. Likely because it doesn't require a dedicated guy to show you how to do things, or a complicated infastructure to run. So really, I think if Steve just made a "Department of Defense edition" that was less user friendly, and required some retired Sergeant First Class to baby sit it, and made the graphics worse and introduced more bugs, CMDoDE would be the system of record in no time!

Abrams will eat your face. TOW-2B is likely the most APS resistant missile outside of the out and out APS dodging Javelin. Going face to face tank to tank etc with the US has not been a good idea for a few decades. Also depends greatly on posture and who's defending/attacking and weather conditions (the US face eater ability goes through the roof once it's dark/raining/etc)

It is the best so far. It'd be pretty sad and rather like some wargames that I will not mention, if it was just the "new" version vs an improved model. It's a really great addition so far, and by god compared to other Combat Mission games, this one was polished to a high gloss when it hit my hard drive. Been a long time since I've enjoyed a game this much right on release day.

Yes, but in CM terms, there's not much terrain difference between Eastern Ukraine and Poland. The official scenario will totally be the Poles going all Sobieski at Vienna (well Kiev) however. That said I rather fancy the idea of doing the Russo-Polish War of 2020 as a 100 year reunion event.

F'ing massive. Basically in terms of CMBS, the MRLS type strikes is better modeled by scenario design than call for fire.

That or it's part of the uncon module, so NATO/Ukraine can mop up surviving separatists in Donbass/Russia can clear out the remaining Ukrainian nationalists in the east. Would not make the "official" scenario invalid, and would still let user campaigns in the dead of winter exist. (Also if there's a Polish module I am totally doing the Battle of Warsaw all over again, and while not historic, the winter would be an awesome setting for that).

Not to rederail, but simply in passing, it is sort of a simplistic version of events you presented. Iraqis blamed us for things that were in no way part of anything the US had ever done to Iraq. What we did do to restore prosperity even at great cost in human lives and resources was always not enough. If you helped the Shia it was not enough (because we should have built houses for everyone, and assigned a squad per family to serve as their personal servants) and the Sunni just become certain it's part of the American-Shia plot to sell all Sunnis to Iran as slaves. You help the Sunni, and the Sunni are unhappy because you haven't restored the Ba'ath party, shot all the Shia for being insolent, and the Shia think you've actually secretly cloned Saddam and he's now calling the shots. In terms of the absurdity, imagine yourself and all your coworkers (even the ones you really don't like) scooped up, put on a plane, and dropped in some other country. Now your country may (or may have not) done some questionable stuff to the country you're in now that has created some instability. However instability does not pick up a bomb vest and walk into a market because God thinks it is a great idea. It does not scoop kids up on the way home from school, hold them for ransom, collect said ransom and then kill kids because they're the wrong sect anyway. It does not pull people off of a bus, and decide who lives or dies based on a theological dilemma from centuries ago. So now you're sitting there, with your coworkers, and someone is holding you responsible for the inhumanity of man, and for being simply from a country that's contribution to this whole catastrophic mess in terms of causing it, was maybe building about 20 meters of the 100 KM highway to chaos. The US may have opened pandora's box, but it didn't build it, fill it for a few hundred years, and for a long time it valiantly tried to stuff all those evils back into the box, again at the cost of thousands of American lives and billions of dollars (again, the US plan for Iraq was "Saddam is dead, high fives, maybe like 20,000 dudes stay behind to help clean stuff up for a year or two" not seven to eight years depending on your math of suck). Even more the box existed, and was out in the open. Someone was going to open that box, and someone was going to unleash hell on Iraq. It might have been in the eventual "which of Saddam's Sons will rule next?" conflict of 2014. It might have been the hypothetical Iranian invasion of 2016. It could have been when the peace loving Alpha Centurians come to earth in 2021 to bring love and sharing to all men, but they accidentially fly too close to the Golden Mosque on approach and now it's all Allah Akbar because that shows a clear disrespect for Shia so the aliens must be secret Sunni. So again, sitting there with your coworkers, you are responsible for the sins of Iraq's fathers, grandfathers's and great grandfathers. So as you stuggle, as you work, as you bleed, you will be eternally blamed for things you did not do, stuff that happened sometimes before your country even existed, and most damning of all, the people blaming you will simply sit there and contribute their part to the chaos (giving money to insurgents, not calling the police/tipline when they see someone planting a bomb etc etc) all while pointing the finger of blame at you.

Conversely if you're setting up an infantry strongpoint, carrying all 48 HEDP M320 rounds can have its uses. Same deal with dismounted MMG teams, they usually don't carry the sort of rounds for continued operations. Easier to pull all the rounds upfront, than have to break contact for more bullets. Also balancing what AT systems you send with the infantry is a good idea. Javelin is amazing, but it doesn't do much for clearing rooms. Scooping up the AT4s in that case might be a better choice in case there's a BMP on the objective.

It's like the Stryker. The senior dude on the vehicle is the squad leader, he goes with the dismounts. The gunner takes over the vehicle, but from my understanding of Russian doctrine, the BMP is supposed to operate similar to a large armored heavy weapons team in relation to the squad, so the squad leader is still "vehicle commander" he's just doing it from out and about.

Addendum to my earlier precision fires statement: Precision mortars are a bit of a wash. They're not a lot more precise than regular mortar shoots (for the US at least) without the sort of killing power of a full barrage. Precision artillery however is murder on armored vehicles. Additionally: At least for the US in the defense, dismounting your FO teams is a must. It really lets you split the ability to call down artillery/air assets super-quick. Also the detection threshold for the dismounted team is insane. It's not shooting, and unless the enemy starts just popping every tall building, or hilltop, he's going to struggle to kill them. Also the FIST vehicle itself is still able to accomplish calling for fires very effectively. I tend to outpost the FIST team with some infantry for security someplace with good observation (but often marginal cover/concealment for AFVs), while keeping the FIST vehicle with my main line of resistance. All US Bradleys carry a Javelin and reloads (with the exception of the FIST model). Letting this sink in for a second, the US Armored Cavalry Platoon (as in from the Cavalry Squadron, not the Battalion scouts) has six Bradleys, each with a three man scout team. So in so many words, the Scout Platoon can throw out 12 TOW-2Bs in short order (six vehicles+two missiles in the launcher), and also have up to six Javelin teams operating at once. Even a single section of them is pretty fearsome (two brads+scout teams) in terms of AT capabilities. While it's a scout platoon, if you're thinking in terms of defending, it's pretty potent to rounding out armored forces, or giving more AT capabilities to infantry. The scout team is also tiny and will often be shooting missiles before you see it (and because it's the Javelin, your APS and ERA don't help very much). It's a very frustrating experience to see four to six Javelins in the air to put it mildly, and having that be your first sign of contact.

I also believe that the icon blinks off if it still exists, but isn't linked into anything yet. So if you start the game, and the radios/coms aren't linked into the network yet, they won't display (same way the visual/shouted orders icons come and go)

I read a paper once discussing the voting habits of the average American. In so many words it came to the conclusion the lack of interest in many affairs or areas was not ignorance as much as the subject area was so remote to most folks as to not merit an especially deep level of concern. So speaking in even wider terms, the Soviet war in Afghanistan is less important. It's an interesting part of the late Cold War, and important to understanding events of several decades past, but the actual conduct of the war is irrelevant, and to the American audience could be summed up as "we supported anti-Soviet resistance, and that helped contribute to making the war an unwinnable mess." If you're playing a game like Combat Mission you likely place a higher emphasis on military matters, and historical events of that nature. However if the Soviet war in Afghanistan had been an amazing Soviet victory based upon the 30th Shock Guards tank division outfighting the Afghan Panzer Legions until Rambo showed up, so long as the war still bankrupted the USSR, and left Afghanistan a mess, which contributed to the even more macro historical downfall of the USSR for other reasons (that might be more interesting or relevant to the person in question), there is not really more that the common dude on the street needs to know about it.

M25 is really...something. I'm not sure if I like it either, less lethality, less capable against light vehicles (I've killed many BMPs with HEDP in CMSF), but on the other hand a lot of cover that should have kept enemy targets safe is at least somewhat mitigated. Also seems to be more useful at range. Could be wrong though.

T-64 is good stuff. Like the lower tier REDFOR tanks in CMSF were only a threat if you were really not that good (or just new to realistic games), or really, really, deeply unlucky. T-64 while being the bottom of the tank stack, is the bottom by a much narrower margin than I think CM players might be used to. It'll turn even fairly modest mistakes into a right mess if you're not careful.

I figured this would be a good place to hang impressions of some of the new for CMBS hardware for folks who are playing now (or like me, have stopped playing to eat/let fingers depart from mouse operating position). 1. Vehicle Air Burst is brutal. Russia definitely has an advantage in the sheer proliferation of airbursting rounds. It makes facing down BMP3s potentially messy with infantry, and tanks just as perilous. On the other hand the US airburst capable platform is Odin level optics and sees all. Seems well suited to killing ATGM teams and the like 2. ATGMs have been shaken up a bit. ERA is much more common, and APS makes what used to be a lot of sure-shot dead tank shots into total whiffs. This seems to hurt RU/UKR more than the US. Javelins are still something to hide under the bed from though. 3. BMP3s are pretty much rolling JDAMs Seriously. They almost always wind up at the bottom of self generated craters if struck by large weapons. It's rare to see one merely knocked out, the default hit is total vehicle, crew, and passenger loss. From my experience so far the APS is the only protective package worth the effort. On the other hand, the 100 MM is an awesome tool, and the ATGMs are as good as any of the other standard vehicle ATGMs in the game. Might be better if you keep them back, feel forward with tanks and dismounted infantry, and then call them forward to deal with threats. 4. Precision fires is kind of cool Haven't quite achieved the lethality I'd hoped for. Mostly called for the US stuff, think part of it has just been a matter of how I employ fires. 5. Ukrainian tanks are a mixed bag. They're both the bottom of the pecking order, and if you're playing as Russia, still capable of delivering very nasty surprises. If I had to tier them against CMSF, they're comparable to the high end Syrian T-72s, with the Russian tank falling into the less capable NATO platform range. The T-90 models especially are definitely superior, but it isn't the M1A2 SEP vs T-55 sort of superior. 6. M1A2 SEP is still a monster. With the APS it certainly needs effort to KO. On the other hand, I've had more than a few knocked out frontally from T-90s and the like, or badly damaged by 30 MM fire, or lesser tank rounds. It's advantage is usually it gets the first shot in most engagements, hits in the 80-90% range (conservatively, I've certainly seen them miss at least!), and has almost universal lethality against what it hits. Best I've seen a T-90 get off with was having surviving crewmen after it was knocked out. 7. ADA Is a pain. Even MANPADs Seriously. If you're a CMSF NATO person used to having your way with airstrikes, prepare for sadface. If you're expecting the Russian Air Force to nimbly pave your way to victory, again, expect some sadface. Best tool so far is if you know about where the enemy MANPADs are, dropping an artillery barrage to suppress them during your strike. This requires some good optics, situation awareness, or really good guessing though.

re: pnzrldr I do have to admit I had to press my face against the screen to eyeball your avatar photo to make sure you weren't one of my ex-bosses. You are most certainly not given some of the stuff you just mentioned, but it was still a small world moment. That was good times. It almost felt like Kafka in that we somehow by existing and walking around were to blame for all ills in the middle east, not the men making bombs and leaving them in markets. Also the irrational expectations of aid money or reconstruction projects. For me it was the whirr of whatever passed for AC in the M1151s and later MRAPs plus that. Also the lovely smell of Ghaz's open air sewage.

The only good monkey is a dead monkey. It is moral and just to remove such creatures from the world, and I content the sport of mounted monkey murder to be the game of kings, and should be an Olympic sport. Also 1.6 gigs down, way too many gigs to go.

Re: Allied bombing in World War Two It's a weird area. I'm less than warm and fuzzy towards 1940's Germany and Japan so I have always tended to be a bit biased in simply chalking it up to reaping what they had sown over London and Shanghai. Also if we want to get weird about it and start looking into Just War theory, I'm going to steal from the Catholic church and throw in that there must be serious chances of success to really call something "just" vs simply killing civilians. The Allied host dumping bombs on Germany and Japan reasonably expected (and could be reasonably expected by impartial observers) to have a severe impact on either of those country's warmaking abilities. Blowing up a market because ALLAH AKABR! does not have a serious chance of success in expelling the infidel and bringing back the caliphate. The grand exception of "except in case of defensive war" does not really seem to wash in terms of most strictly terrorist groups in that they are not the legitimate representation of the party being defended (ISI as a good example, was certainly not defending Iraq and was a lot closer to a second batch of invaders). In terms of nuclear bombing I don't even register it as something exceptional, it's a novel tool to achieve what was already being done at that point. Either way it points out the fragility of the various rules of war. You can see the very early painstaking attempts to avoid causing civilian deaths via bombing by the allies, but once the Germans started, there really wasn't a way to put things back together again (while the first bombing of London was accidental, other cities had already been freely bombed without hesitation or remorse). Once the various powers were dropping bombs, no one was going to stop except for pragmatic reasons (like the sort of hiccup in Allied bombing when the bombing parties were at the lowest level of effectiveness, and German defenses at their highest).

Before we go super off topic: The danger of the word terrorist is that it's a very handy tool to discard opposing forces and view points. The more useful definition is looking to the focus of the group's operations. If it's fighting enemy forces in an asymmetrical manner (blowing up convoys, IED attacks, small unit ambushes), then insurgent or guerrilla is a more balanced perspective. The focus of the terrorist is not so much fighting in an asymmetrical battle against the enemy's military forces, but in fighting the enemy's will to fight through atrocity. Kidnapping and killing random westerners has virtually no impact on the mechanical ability of the west to drop bombs on ISIS, however in their own stupid little way they believe that the fear caused by their actions will cause the west to bow down to their demands. So to that end, the old Islamic State in Iraq was terrorist (as their whole method of operations was seeing what could ft an IED, and get into a highly populated center of civilians), the Taliban is closer to insurgent/guerrillas. Of course guerrillas can commit acts of terrorism (Taliban for instance, despite my distinction operates quite liberally with terrorist acts too), and terrorist groups can fight in more "pure" asymmetrical methods, but certain countries just stamp terrorist on anything that opposes whatever they're up to at the moment which rather takes any meaning away from the word. As an addendum too, I tend to exclude the perceived legitimacy of the party in question. You can be a popular terrorist, or an unpopular guerrilla/insurgent/etc.

] Well. Analog CMBS so far is pretty good. Turns process slow, and the graphics are crap though. Terrain is suspiciously flat. (Sorry. I'm cleaning up my hobby area. Bad lighting/crap phone/odd sense of humor etc)