liamb

Thanks so much @BFCElvis, Charles, @Battlefront.com, @Ultradave and @Buzz for getting a fix done quickly.
My Chaffees have commenced screening for the incoming Pershings ...

Thanks so much @BFCElvis, Charles, @Battlefront.com, @Ultradave and @Buzz for getting a fix done quickly.
My Chaffees have commenced screening for the incoming Pershings ...

Thanks so much @BFCElvis, Charles, @Battlefront.com, @Ultradave and @Buzz for getting a fix done quickly.
My Chaffees have commenced screening for the incoming Pershings ...

Not how it really works.  Mainly because “the law”.  The international community has never passed laws on the use of nuclear weapons.  Restrictions and limitations on their use are all managed by treaties.  The employment of nuclear weapons is essentially off the legal map.
As JonS pointed out, striking a large dam that would lead to massive civilian casualties is against the law.
Fellas can we not drift into “let’s do warcrimes because XYZ?”  C’mon, we are supposed to be the adults in an internet of children.  No, we can not condone warcrimes because Russia did them (and oh we made a lot of noise when they blew that dam down by Kherson).  We cannot condone them because “back in WW2 everyone did it” - doesn’t freakin matter, take a look at your calendar…what year does it say.  Most international law on warcrimes were written after WW2 because everyone was doing them.  WW2 was an example of what a total war looked like when everyone sat around after WW1 and did nothing.  So we decided that was a bad thing and passed a whole bunch of laws to prevent it from happening again.
We do not do war crimes for some very good reasons:
Unity.  If Ukraine (or anyone else) starts playing fast and loose with unrighteous targeting, we risk splitting the coalition of support for Ukraine.  Canada for instance would lose its mind and likely start turning off the taps.
Escalation.  Ok, we take out a dam, kill a bunch of civilians.  Russia potato-in-the-exhaust-pipes a nuclear power plant.  You see where this goes.
Post-war justice.  You want criminal prosecution for Bucha?  Might want to skip committing warcrimes of your own.
Utility.  It won’t work.  A mass killing of Russian civilians anywhere will very likely drive enormous active support into Putin’s arms.  We will wind up with a stronger Russian Will, not a weaker one.
So can we please skip warcrimes week…again?

Doesn’t the briefing explain that the point of the scenario is to demonstrate how the Starship would perform against each generation of Soviet tank and that is why they appear in waves?

Ah well then clearly this is nothing more than a bitter-drive by.  You are not really here to help, just resurrect old gripes. 
As to "old tanker" if you could point that one out?  As you can see, I was heavily involved in both of those posts - dbsapps (may he rest in piece) pretty much tried a lot of weird stuff to try and prove "CM spotting is broken!" and really did not get anywhere with it.  A lot of us ran extensive tests (again) and found the spotting was pretty much in line with reasonable expectation for the equipment and era - not perfect but there you go.
The major difference between you and me is that I am one of three game leads for this title and actually has a chance to get things changed, if it is merited. And I am totally open to this, we have a list of fixes and outstanding tweaks.  However, it has to based on solid data, not anecdotal drive bys.  Why?  Well because the fastest way to get caught in a CM-Karen loop is to correct one way and then be yelled at by the next person that we are doing it wrong and to go the other way.  That is a fools errand and incredible waste of time. 
I personally think that if BFC scrubbed the outliers from the game they would pull the life right out of the simulation.  War is outliers, a lot of weird stuff that everyone remembers.  They not only enhance the experience, they add to combat friction - war is chaos and a lot of the fun in playing is embracing that.
Back on topic.  VAB results are a solid representation of what we should be seeing.  A T72 did not have the same spotting abilities as an M60 - technical, ergonomic or even training and doctrine.  Given even ground an M60 should see a T72 first, they were designed to do this because the Soviets had a lot more T72s.

Expression of gratitude to Battlefront team.
Like other players of Battlefront's Combat Mission series, I have my own wish list, of things I'd like to see that I think would make the game better. Now at the age of 72 and wargaming as my primary hobby for 64 years, I have learned that such expressions of "I'd like to see it done this way", appear to be an inevitable response to any set of rules and any game. Tiresome sometimes. To rules writers, game coders and games masters, such feedback can be a bit discouraging. So at this time I want to say:
I am VERY HAPPY playing the WWII Combat Missions series 'as is'. It is afterall - a game.  From my perspective it is a perfect follow-up or replacement for miniature wargaming. To me this is what it feels and looks like. Except it looks better than minis, I can field larger armies, and I don't have to learn a 60+ page book of rules!
When we gamers sometimes appear to gripe about this or that feature no implemented - we might as ourselves, "How long have I been playing these games." For me the answer is "Continuously since the release of series one - Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin, CM Afrika Korps etc." So I must have been enjoying it as is. No? So many years of fun.
And I LOVE having an easy to use Scenario Editor. I probably spend more time tinkering with map making, or tweaking graphics than actually playing. I have yet to play through all of CMBN's over 300 sceanrios in my collection.
In conclusion. THANK YOU Battlefront for many years of happy gaming, for your many hours of coding work, your responses to the community. Given my wonky ticker, I don't knwo if I'll be around to enjoy engine 5. I hope so.
Dr. Wilhelm C.T. Oudshoorn BA, DDS (a.k.a. WimO, a.k.a. Kandu)
 

Thanks for the update Steve.

Can confirm CM works great on silicon Macs

Please keep posting.
Please stop posting.

Congratulations dbsapp you are now my own personal counter-misinformation project.  Don't care about other trolls who come on the forum, someone else will have to deal with them, you are all mine.  What does that mean, well I am going to personally fact check and then post in response to your posts like these [aside, not on things like screenshots, those were pretty cool btw].
So in the first mission of the Soviet campaign we have a Soviet MRB (BTR) in the opening push of the first morning of the war.  This MRB is good but not the best in the Soviet Army, largely because they are saving those for breakout.  You are facing US V Corp 11 ACR who have both M901 TOW and M60A3s (TTS) with a mix of Reg to Crack crews.  A wise man once said "your ignorance of your enemy is not a game bug, it is a 'you' bug".  Even with that stacked against, human players (even you) have been able to overcome this scenario.
 Your sole opinion (and you are entitled to it) but also totally unproven by any of the many tests that make up this very long thread - none of them actually conducted by yourself.  
So you don't play the US side much...interesting.  Anyway, I do believe they took a run at this issue in the first patch but it is not resolved.  M113 thermal/spotting is on the very top of our priority list for the next patch as this is the closest thing to "unbalanced spotting performance" that we could actually find...and you - by your own admission - did not help in this regard.
Wow, so that is clearly simple troll fodder.  You have totally blown any idea that you are "just trying to make the game better".  You are clearly speculating and projecting intent in what looks like a smear misinformation campaign.  The fact that I, and others from the core team, have repeatedly put time and effort in attempts to address the issues you raise (which we assumed was in good faith) is demonstration that we care very much.  BFC has a bench exactly one person deep in core areas and they are supporting 8 game lines and an military contract.  In short, it is a small indie company, sorry CM Karen if they are not hopping too fast enough.
Ah here we are again at Sov mission 3, apparently "patch" means lower the challenge to the point you can beat it, which is of course our company motto.  So to clarify this ham-handed shot, the Soviet Campaign has two versions.  The Standard version works exactly as intended (with the exception of a Tac Air controller, which has been fixed) and has not been tweaked at wrt VPs or win conditions.  Players should enjoy this one, and people have successfully beaten it.
The second version, March or Die, does need tweaking.  As is, it is still winnable (trust me I did the math several times) but it is too hard, to the point of being unfair.  A big shout out to The_Monkey King for helping out on that one.  Anyway it has been tweaked and will be updated in the next patch.
And now we get to the crux, is this speculation or aspiration from someone who slanders?  Regardless, I am not at liberty to divulge details but "we are doing just fine, thanks for asking".  To the point that we were greenlit for the first DLC Module in record time and are working on it now. 
As to the patch, well it is in the works and hopefully will coincide with the Steam release, "coming soon but when it is finished".
 

As much as I have been trying to stay out of this, I think this brings up a interesting background info point on "How to Research for a PC game". 
I am not going to weigh in on the specific argument, except to say I don't think we are going to see modeling of the current ammunition characteristics change dramatically - if for the reason alone that it basically feels about right.  We may see minor tweaks but right now we are not advocating for major mechanical changes to weapon systems (we would like to see some shifts in ammo types but that is another issue).
So as to these CIA documents.  Well first off, as impressive as the CIA is as an intelligence agency (and here movies and media have probably done more to promote the myth than anything), it is in the end a government agency.  Being government means that any information you glean immediately must take into account the broader context, and all of it with healthy grains of salt.
So John's first link I have actually seen before and it basically lays out the "threat" as they understood it in 1984.  It is a "memorandum" and as such is probably one of the better sources one could draw upon.  It really lays out the Soviet "tank position" and is not bad.  My only concern is that I am left wondering if it is a "say nothing new...because" report that sticks to the party line that the current administration wanted to hear...remember it was 1984 and the US was trying to attrit its way out of the Cold War, which turned out to be a good strategy.
The second link I take with a lot more critical eyes.  First off, it is a "thought piece" which the agency clearly puts at arms lengths ("the opinions of the authors"), so this is a trick that gets played all the time.  When one is trying to make a big argument, get some reputable senior folks to write an "opinion piece".  If it works, great.  If it creates blowback we just say "well it was their opinion".  Further, any "thought piece" sponsored by the agency that basically promotes "a modest improvements in intelligence..." (pg 2) set off that little yellow light. Was this real or was it a promotion piece to try and get more CIA funding. 
Then when one starts to dig a bit and open the aperture, I get more odd smells.  This piece was written in the Carter administration and that was not a great time to be in the CIA (we allude to this in the CMCW backstory), or National Defence for that matter.  Finally, the Director of the CIA at the time was ADM Turner ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stansfield_Turner) who not only was a big fan of technical intel (and put HUMINT in the back seat) but was Navy through and through.  This thought piece is very technical - play to the boss - but also very Army who were competing heavily to get their AirLand Battle concept off the ground and fighting for tenuous funding, all after Vietnam. 
In this context that paper really should be taken cautiously.  It does lay out what was a dangerous situation.  We know the US had fallen behind both technologically but also in over all mass, all the while with no offset strategy beyond nukes...not good.  But is it possible that an Army General is over-polishing the threat to simultaneously promote agency and Army funding...absolutely. 
In the end, when researching one has to remember that we can only see snippets of a much larger game being played at the time...and that matters.  Probably some of the best historical references that I found (and used) weren't locked away in TOP SECRET CIA drawers (and trust me, government overclassifies everything) they are in minutes from appropriation meetings: https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Department_of_Defense_Appropriations_for/llZ5mbGatSYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=US+defence+spending+TOW+missile&pg=PA534&printsec=frontcover
These are not dark assessments, made in the shadows...this is the money trail of what actually happened.  The "truth" is far more mundane in reality and is largely guarded by accountants.

I suspect it is the British Army's version of Combat Mission which Steve announced as something that BFC had been working on as part of a British Ministry of Defence contract over the last couple of years.  If you want it apply here:
Home - British Army Jobs (mod.uk)
 

I just finished this scenario. It was great fun and early on, when my TOWs, Dragons and M60s were having no effect on the T-64s I thought I was in all sorts of trouble. 

But I managed to ambush the main BMP force once they had crossed the river and then manoeuvred an open flank to avoid the overwatching T-64 that still took out an M-60 in the last 5 minutes. 
 
I swear I hit a couple of those T-64s with at least 1 TOW, 2 Dragons and a number of M60 rounds and they were still shooting back and taking out my M60s with their first shot. 
 
Tactical victory

I just finished this scenario. It was great fun and early on, when my TOWs, Dragons and M60s were having no effect on the T-64s I thought I was in all sorts of trouble. 

But I managed to ambush the main BMP force once they had crossed the river and then manoeuvred an open flank to avoid the overwatching T-64 that still took out an M-60 in the last 5 minutes. 
 
I swear I hit a couple of those T-64s with at least 1 TOW, 2 Dragons and a number of M60 rounds and they were still shooting back and taking out my M60s with their first shot. 
 
Tactical victory

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

The fire direction center does the calculations for defection (azimuth) and elevation for the firing unit. There are two general types of fire missions "Adjust Fire" and "Fire for Effect" that a FO would call for, and they are exactly what they sound like. So for adjust fire, one round at a time is sent out, the FO sends back corrections, and the last correction should be 50m, so you get close and then call, "Drop 50, Fire for Effect" and the battery or mortar section sends the FFE, whatever that is determined to be (which is determined by the FDC normally, based on the FO target description in the call for fire).
Fire for Effect is exactly that. FO calls in a fire mission with coordinates, FFE, and target description and gets, say a batter 3 rounds on target. The possible error here is greater, unless the FO has a pretty much perfect location coord of the target. Sometimes that's possible (crossroads visible on a map for example).
And of course, if you are in a hurry (and who isn't in combat?), you can abbreviate the adjustment, maybe "Add 200, Fire for Effect" rather than a couple more rounds to get within 50, realizing that the FFE might be less accurate, depending on how good you are at estimating distances at a distance, target movement, etc.
What a TRP does for you is cut time by having firing data to that point already calculated, and typically TRPs are selected so that their location is accurately placed, such as a crossroads, the tip of a treeline, a bridge - anything that can be very accurately picked from a map. The battery (or mortar section) would have pre-calculated firing data to the TRPs on the list, including time round data, so that a FFE call can go out quickly. A typical use would be to specify "From AB001,  Add 400, Fire for Effect, Infantry Company in the open"   AB001 being the TRP number. We had TRP numbers assigned by maneuver unit in blocks when I was doing this. 
In either of these cases you are still going through the FDC, just different procedures/data.
Of course if your FO is standing next to you or can shout, the mortar crew just dials in the pre calculated data. Keep in mind that 60mm mortar crews will be moving around a lot so TRPs are kind of useless for them. They'll know where the TRP is but have to recalculate the data anyway. 
As an artillery battery we knew we'd be moving a lot too, because counter battery location radar was something that WAS quite good back then. Rule of thumb was 6 volleys from a position and time to move. So when you set up in a new position first thing is to recalculate all the TRP data, which you may be doing in between on call fire missions. We had 2 plotting boards, but they'll be busy, because one is primary, the other is the checker, and they'd be plotting a mission AND repotting the TRPs simultaneously. We practiced this a lot.
Now with the more modern titles, like BS, and SF2, the FOs have the advantage of GPS, so they at least know their own positions very accurately. Cold War, GPS was just coming available, not in wide use and certainly not to the FO level. Laser designators were just making their appearance, usually for designating for air strikes. Our XVIII Airborne Corps Artillery did have a limited supply of rocket assisted 155mm rounds (can't remember the name - first ones available), and those were final guided by laser. Pretty much just in field test mode then. Computerized fire control was in its infancy during the time covered by CMCW. TACFIRE was just being tested - computerized fire control system. Very bulky, kind of balky. We had FADAC (Field Artillery Digital Analog Computer). We never used it. It weighed 400 lbs, didn't work after being airdropped (we broke several) and was really slow. We could easily beat it with good old charts and darts, which did not change significantly from WW2, through Korea, Vietnam and the CW period. Same techniques, updated data, more radios to comminicate.
I think most of this is represented in game pretty well. There are 2 things I'd love to see in CM:
1) The ability to call a FFE on a map location, without having any eyes on it or a TRP. In real life this is common. You might have a sound contact or saw a unit that went out of sight behind a rise or treeline and you'd call in a FFE on a map location. Might be accurate, might not. But you'd do it.
2) An initial call to shift from a TRP, rather than wait for the TRP mission and then adjust. Again a VERY common call for fire.
Your last part is correct. Without a FDC and being significantly off line, corrections are going to be iffy for accuracy. I expect you'd do very rough in your head conversion of the adjustment, or the FO would do it before stating the correction. For example a 45 degree offset means .7x the stated correction, that sort of thing.
Dave

You didn't offend anyone or do anything wrong - it was a good question. There's just another participant in this discussion that doesn't like being corrected. 

Whatever. He asked for experience virtual or real. I gave him real world. And I'm quite well aware of the definition of indirect fire, thank you.
I'm done here. 
Dave

I just had a Dragon hit and destroy a BMP frontally and also destroy the BMP parked right next to it. #winning

Dragons should kill BMPs pretty easily, and BMPs killing BMPs is an unfortunate side-effect of being a BMP

meh, stop bragging like that is some kind of achievement. let's face it, we have all been there.

Worst. Day. Ever. for you to miss checking in! A one day only, one-in-a-million release; Sept. 1939 through August 1945. ALL theaters, including PTO, CBI and Finland! BFC figured they made enough yesterday that they decided to retire knowing we'd have enough CM goodies to last the rest of our lives. All of us here bought it, of course, but we were all commenting like "Where's Probus? Man is he gonna be pissed!"
Sorry bro.

So what'd I miss yesterday?  Did BFC release a patch to Final Blitzkrieg that lets you play any front starting with 1939 Poland? 😆

When you are in Germany, there is barely any Army further away than the Australian Army.