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IICptMillerII

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Everything posted by IICptMillerII

  1. I wouldn’t recommend using it. If there is any kind of glitch in the system and your turn file gets eaten by the digital abyss, there is no way to revert the turn or redo it. You have to restart the whole battle. The system doesn’t allow any access to the files so there is no way to revert to a previous turn. These glitches happen more often than you think and are incredibly frustrating. Also, if the Slitherine servers go down for whatever reason, you’re outta luck until they come back online. Also frustrating, and also happens more often than you would think. I stick to manual PBEM myself for these reasons. Plus, with the various user made PBEM programs out there you get all the benefits of automated PBEM without the headache of Slitherine.
  2. Sadly no. Should have been something added to the game at some point in its long lifetime in my opinion. Having to individually order lots of units around makes turn by turn gameplay incredibly tedious, and time consuming as well. Platoon level movement using formations would simplify (in a good way) much of the standard gameplay loop. Also, vehicles absolutely would travel in formations regardless of terrain. In fact, the whole purpose of different formations is to ensure that vehicles are moving in some form of formation despite the terrain. For disruptive terrain, the file/column is generally used, and depending on how disruptive the terrain is will also influence the spacing of the formation. I can assure you from personal experience that vehicles do not just wander around on their own, and especially not in a tactical environment (at least in properly trained militaries). Safety and unit cohesion being chief reasons why. There is no desire to develop formations by the powers that be though, sadly, so no use in wishing for it.
  3. Thanks! Unfortunately I just completed a long distance move and had to leave my main PC behind, so I don't have access to my reshade files I made for CM. One thing I can say from memory is that I find the depth of field effect (Ibelieve it was the cinematic depth of field, specifically) really helps to make the models and lighting pop. I think a good argument can be made that the 3D models are the best visuals that CM has to offer, and having DoF focus on that while blurring the less than stellar other visuals helps highlight that. Beyond that, I'm no graphics wizard, or even artistically inclined at all. I just played around with the reshade settings until I found something that, to my eye at least, was somewhat presentable. I still have lots of criticisms of my reshades too, but if you fool around with the settings enough you might find something you find appealing. Good luck!
  4. Thanks! Glad to see this AAR still gets some traffic. I don’t know any off the top of my head and I (sadly) cannot check CMO right now as I am away from my personal computer gif an extended period. But I think the community scenario pack would be a good place to start. I also wouldn’t be surprised if someone hasn’t already made a scenario based on current events and uploaded it to the steam workshop. I have a number of ideas, but the issue is always making it happen in CM. Everything in CM takes so long to do (making/tweaking a map, playing a battle, rewatching replay turns, etc etc) that it’s not practical to pump this kind of stuff out. Consulate Crisis took me something like 4-6 months to finish, and that was with a premade map in CM that I only had to tweak a bit. That said, I would like to do another. Sadly that will have to wait a while as I am currently away, but when I get back, who knows? Thanks again for the interest and kind words!
  5. Thanks! I find the depth of field really helps the images pop, as well as helps to hide some of the muddier textures that are unavoidable in CM, as well as the bright sky. That said, I do want to experiment with less blur, and trying to get more of the screen in focus, while still getting that pop effect I mentioned. Thanks! Some more shots:
  6. This was my first dive back into the world of reshade. Some are better than others (at least to my eye) as I was figuring out how reshade works again and trying out different settings. Not sure why I decided to go with CMFI to test this out, something about this game always seems to pull be back from time to time. It's got a certain character to it. There are a handful of mods alongside the reshade in these pictures.
  7. This pair of shots gets its own post. A with and without reshade, for comparison. Guess which one is stock? Might just be me, but the reshade Abrams looks really incredible to me. Might end up as a wallpaper on my computer.
  8. I've been playing around with reshade and have gotten some decent results. These images feature a WIP reshade preset as well as numerous mods.
  9. I've been playing around with reshade recently and have been getting some pretty nice results for the most part. Besides the reshade, these pictures feature a handful of mods, such as the DDR mod, the US OD reskin, as well as S-Tank's excellent MERDC reskins, to name a few.
  10. All fair points! Again, not trying to poopoo. I get it, something to do with the anticipation generated energy. Like you, I am really interested in seeing how Chieftain ends up performing. It is a tank with quite a reputation to it, and I wonder if some may be a bit chafed by its in game performance. Or not! I also agree that it should generally speaking be a bit more survivable than the M60. The ability to take one on the chin (even if its a marginal advantage over the M60) could end up being decisive. I think I am most interested to see Chieftain take on T-64 equipped Soviet formations.
  11. Some quick points: War Thunder and World of Tanks should not be taken seriously. Their armor modeling is, at best, a gameplay gimmick, and is not particularly accurate of a multitude of reasons. This image is regarding War Thunder, but it makes a point nonetheless: This is a point that is made (and argued against a lot) both here and in professional circles, but the survivability onion strikes again. The best way for a tank to not get penetrated is for it to not get shot in the first place, even in direct combat. (Break out the bingo card) Things like hull down, berm drills, prepared positions, battle positions, engagement areas, and displacing to alternate firing positions (bingo!) all work in concert. The armor itself is the last resort defensive measure of a tank. Not trying to poopoo your post. I understand the anticipation. I will say this: I am very interested to see how the Chieftain ends up performing whenever this module comes out. As discussed in either this thread or elsewhere (can't recall at the moment) the Chieftain was fielding rather lackluster ammunition during this time period that (at first glance) appears to be even less potent than the early US ammo already present in the game. Given that, it'll be interesting to see how the Chieftain performs.
  12. The Republican guard tanks do have better ammo. Iirc they are slinging BM42, whereas the regular Syrian tanks are firing BM32 and worse (depending on the tank variant) Actually, it stands for toenail. Source: it came to me in a lucid dream induced by mandatory malaria pills.
  13. A few quick general thoughts. Generally speaking the 2 echelon attack is the way to go for the Soviets. Single echelon attacks were more circumstantial. Terrain always dictates frontage. If you can spread out all 3 battalions to attack on line, great. But usually terrain will be too restrictive to do that (especially in the forested hills and valleys of the Fulda region of Germany) and so your frontage will have to shrink. Roads are very important, especially for the Soviets. While combat vehicles can generally go off road, long supply convoys cannot (for extended distances). The roadways are always going to be vital. Cutting cross country can be done, but if you are traveling cross country for 10s of kilometers with no main roadway connecting your supply chain to your front line units, then its no good. This is another example of terrain dictating. Many times your maneuver plan was drawn by a civil engineer decades ago. Not to beat a dead horse but another issue with this is logistics. If you stick some T-80s into a unit that is fielding T-55s, you are going to be missing spare parts, mechanics, and even fuel (T-55s used diesel while the T-80 used gasoline in its gas turbine engine). It turns into more of a headache than it is worth in my opinion. That said, the Soviets did plan on cannibalizing manpower and equipment and recycling them into follow-on units. It would have been an inefficient process to say the least. The best way to represent that in my opinion would be to maybe have a "reformed" battalion or two, using better equipment that is still comparable to the overall makeup of the division (say, some T-62s making up 2 battalions in the same regiment, and maybe the battalions are at something like 80% strength). Just an idea if you really want a mix of equipment. So, kind of. Task Forces for the US at the time were task organized. Meaning, they were on the fly formations, so they could vary a bit depending on the mission, available units, etc. CM cannot do this very well due to its rigid TOE structure (everything has to be "pre-baked") so it gets around it by giving you formations that are already task organized into the most common Task Force organizations used. That being either a infantry heavy task force or a tank heavy task force. Its a 2:1 ratio either way (2 infantry to 1 tank, or vice versa) though there are also some 2:2 organizations as well. Task Force usually refers to a battalion level formation, whereas the company level equivalent is a Team. This is where the book Team Yankee gets its name for example, as it follows a mixed company team of 2 tank platoons and a mechanized infantry platoon (with 2 ATGM vehicles attached at the company level, plus the company support stuff including a FIST vehicle). It can get a bit confusing (I've gotten tripped up by it a few times myself) but the TOE in Cold War does a good job of giving you realistic task force organizations out of the box. My recommendation would be to roll with that. Good to know! Must decrease visibility, but I doubt it has any other meaningful effect (like weapon degradation or anything like that). Happy to help, and looking forward to more from you, be it questions or otherwise!
  14. Apologies for the double post here. Wanted to break things up for readability sake. Generally speaking that is correct. This can vary as well depending on the mission. For example, you could conceivably see 3 regiments committed to the main effort if given high enough priority. There was some flexibility built in. Also, the echeloning you have is generally correct as well. As a rule of thumb, the Soviets planned to use tank units (regiments/divisions) as exploitation units, and for the motor rifle units (again regiments/divisions) to be the penetration divisions. So the motor rifles should (again generally speaking) be going in first. Combatintman is right, the Soviets would generally task organize the battalions to be combined arms formations, so the tank battalion would get distributed out to the motor rifle battalions, with each battalion getting a tank company. It is possible for that task organization to change though. If the regimental commander determines he needs the concentrated power of the tank battalion, there is nothing stopping him from concentrating the tank battalion. But generally speaking you have 3 maneuver elements as the Soviets in a regiment, the three combined arms battalions. (Same goes for tank regiments, tank battalions with a motor rifle company distributed to each) Combatintman is also right (smart lad, him) in mentioning recon. At the regimental level and above, the recon battalion organic to each Soviet division would be playing a role, generally feeling the way forward in front of the regiments. Their tasks were mostly things such as making sure the maps are correct (is that road/bridge/terrain feature/farmhouse/etc actually there? Is there a terrain feature not accounted for?) You can probably get away with abstracting their job for the purposes of your campaign, especially at first for a mini campaign. Hmm, this one is a bit more tricky and will inevitably come down to your narrative to set the stage. A lot will rest on how ready the US unit is. Have they already taken up defensive positions, or are they still arriving to the area of operations? If they have already arrived, then they will generally arrange the defense to cover the likely enemy axis of advance(s). If they are not prepositioned yet, then the engagement will start (at least initially) as a series of meeting engagements (a mix of spoiling attacks and delaying actions meant to make contact with the advancing Soviets to find and then slow and attrit them). First off, love the graphics! I'm a sucker for these kinds of things. And I really appreciate the use of unit boundaries here. Throw in some phase lines and you've got a proper battle plan! For the Soviets, the main thing I see is that the units proposed are too small and divided. The smallest Soviet maneuver unit was the battalion, meaning that units smaller than a battalion were not meant to perform independent combat actions by themselves, but as part of the battalion. Battalions advancing to contact (expecting a meeting engagement) would have a combat recon patrol (a CRP) and a forward security element (FSE) in front of the leading battalion, but once these elements hit contact they were not expected to fight on their own, but to set conditions for the coming parent battalion to break through whatever resistance was encountered. The important thing here is concentration. You do not want your companies to be so far apart that they cannot support one another, and by that I mean support via direct fire engagement. Its not unheard of for a Soviet company (or company sized task organized force) to take independent action, but their roles were more meant for things such as screening the regimental flank if other assets weren't available, or a special task such as a company sized air assault to seize a bridge or something like that. As for which route is best, general practice is to come up with a main route and an alternate route. You'll probably find from looking at the terrain that there are only a handful of viable routes to advance down anyways, especially when you factor in unit boundaries and terrain boundaries. Pick our routes, and from there it comes down to finding the best way through, using recon assets attached to the division/regiment and the maneuver battalions themselves. For the US, there would be a screen set up by recon (cavalry) units out front to act as a tripwire. The goal of the cav units would just be to determine the size, strength, and direction of the Soviet main effort. The real fighting would be up to the maneuver battalions (usually task organized into company teams, which were intended to work together). These look great! More than enough to start putting forces down on the map and getting a better feel for how the fight will develop, and if anything on the map needs to be tweaked by hand. This is really good stuff! Hope all of that helps a bit. I'll certainly be following along and would love to help out more however I can!
  15. Love this concept! Plus, your operational graphics look great too! I cannot wait for the full/final version of your map editor tool to come out. This is something that should have been done officially a decade ago. But then so are 100 other things at this point. Great to see this glaring capability gap being closed by someone in the community. You deserve a lot of praise and credit for it. I'll try to help with the questions you posted most recently first: I don't have any sources on hand that give a detailed breakdown of the 256th Brigades TO&E, but it might be possible to find something online with a real deep search. Finding detailed sources like that for the 70s-early 80s can be challenging. I'm not 100% sure on this but I don't think so. I do know that time of day restrictions are simulated (you cannot call in aircraft that are not night capable at night in CW). You could probably find out with a bit of testing, though I'm not sure if things like determining how easy it is for the aircraft to spot things would end up being. I can say that historically, at least during the early 80s, most CAS aircraft were not rated as being all weather capable, meaning they would generally not make their presence known unless weather conditions were good enough. So, if you are going by the game definition of reservist formations, that is simply a way for the TO&E to have the same structure but using older equipment, like the T-55. Its a technical difference, not one that reflects the quality of the actual formation. However, if you want to have your campaign follow category B units (units with lower readiness rates, made up by reservists, with less training and worse equipment) that is a different situation. In that case, its going to be a call you as the scenario designer makes. If you want the reservists to be in a bad way, then green and weakened troops is the way to go. Especially so if you are trying to simulate a unit that has been cobbled together and is generally ill prepared. However, it would not be unrealistic at all to give them decent soft stats either. More of a personal choice on your part depending on what you are going for. I concur with everything here. I'll also add that generally speaking you would never see mixed equipment types like the one you proposed (a T-80 platoon being part of an otherwise T-55 equipped battalion). Soviet procurement was wonky to say the least, and is a rabbit hole of a discussion, but the short easy generalized answer is that each battalion was uniform in its equipment, meaning that if a battalion had T-62s, all the platoons/companies had T-62s. Same goes for BMP/BTR variants. Note: there are some examples of T-64 equipped tank battalions being a mix of T-64A and T-64B, broken down at the company level (meaning each company was uniform, but the battalion would have been made up of a mix of T-64A and T-64B companies) but that starts to dive down the rabbit hole I mentioned. I would recommend sticking with uniform battalions.
  16. The lack of composite armor on the M60 series is tough. It makes Soviet ATGMs that much more of a headache, which is a problem considering how prolific those ATGMs are. That said, I honestly like the M60. I know it’s a bit cliche to say but the first line of defense shouldn’t be the armor of your tank. Survivability onion and all that, but not being effectively engaged is much better armor than getting hit, no matter the armor package of the tank. Which brings me to the next major benefit of the M60, its height. Height is an asset for vehicles, not a detriment. Not sure where the “height=bad” myth came from (I blame Pentagon Wars and Sherman WW2 myths) but a myth it is. Height is great because it gives you a better spotting vantage, and more importantly it makes hull down easier to do. Tanks not fighting from hull down are either attacking, caught by surprise, or wrong. The height of the M60 means it can find and fight from hull down positions easier which is a huge advantage. Especially against the Soviets who are both generally on the attack, and their squatter tanks make it very hard for them to fight from hull down positions that haven’t been engineered for them. Regarding mobility, speed is mostly irrelevant on the tactical level. No matter how fast your tank is, you will never outrun a sabot traveling at 1,500m/s.
  17. Glad to have helped! I think you will find that the M60A1 and M60A3 are more than a match for the T-62. Not a cakewalk, especially considering all the other assets the Soviets get (ATGMs, artillery, etc) but certainly much less of a "Panther vs Sherman" dynamic.
  18. Thanks! Very fair points, especially the one about CM moving faster than real life and how long 5 turns (or 12) can be in CM. I always wished there was more modularity in the difficulty levels. Something like reducing the call in times without getting borg spotting, for example. Would go a long way to helping to ease some of the gameplay quirks of the CM system, but I also understand that it would open up a can of worms too.
  19. Love seeing Cold War get more videos, especially ones of such high quality. Loved the combination of graphics (really well done by the way) gameplay and commentary! I'll echo others in saying that Free Whiskey continues to raise his own bar with each video he releases. Just really well done stuff. Plus, I appreciated the short clip from my tactical doctrine training scenarios of the T-64s all firing on line. Great shot! The commentary from Dom is great as well! Very informative, clear, and well spoken. A fantastic overview of the fundamentals of Soviet tactical doctrine. I can see this video along with the one Hapless did a year ago being go to shares for any newcomers asking about the basics of how the Soviets should fight. Honestly one of the most satisfying things I have seen from Cold War is how much intelligent discussion it has generated. Talking about concepts such as Soviet doctrine, US Active Defense and AirLand Battle, higher level stuff, tactical intricacies, etc. Its all been great to see. Dare I say that CMCW might be the high brow CM title.
  20. This is a pretty good summary, specifically on points 1 and 3. Point 2 however needs a bit of context. CM call in times for artillery are pretty spot on, for both the WWII titles and for the modern ones, for all sides. Yes, the call in times are averages, but that is a product of the CM system and really can't be helped. More importantly, the methodology for Soviet artillery is not the same as its Western counterpart. The way most players tend to play CM is via "recon pull" or by constantly reacting to new information and exploiting it. This roughly translates to one of the strengths of US artillery in that it is highly reactive. If you have a unit driving down a road and it takes fire from an unexpected enemy position, US artillery is flexible enough to be called in quickly against the unexpected enemy position. That is now how Soviet artillery worked, or was intended to function. Soviet artillery was designed to be part of a larger plan. (US artillery is too, but the Soviet application is more rigid). The vast majority of Soviet artillery was templated, or pre-planned. Even the reactionary fire. Soviet preparatory bombardments were complex and involved a constant shifting of fires from the "deep fight" (rear area targets such as command and control, logistics, assembly areas, etc) to the "close fight" (enemy defensive positions directly opposing friendly forces). The term rolling barrage is incorrect, but probably is the most relatable concept to start wrapping your head around. Unfortunately, CM is fairly limited in its ability to represent a proper Soviet fires plan. Under ideal circumstances, the vast majority of the fires plan would all be pre-planned missions, hitting suspected enemy positions and key terrain that moves with the advance of the attacking ground forces. This cannot be done in CM because you cannot plan more than one pre-planned fire mission per battery, and because the time delay option only goes out to 15 minutes. The best way around that is to use a lot of TRPs. There are issues with that as well though both from a gameplay perspective (covering the map in TRPs is considered gamey) and from a technical perspective (a TRP in real life is different than what a TRP is in CM in a few notable ways), but it is arguably the best workaround. A certified CM teaching moment! So in real life, the general rule of thumb is that all fires must be observed. Inversely, unobserved fires are useless. The reasoning is simple; if you cannot see what you are hitting, how can you know if you are in fact hitting anything? Now, there are contexts and examples were firing at a target that you cannot see is a good idea (counter battery comes readily to mind) but the key takeaway is that in CM the most effective fire missions will be the ones that you can directly observe.
  21. This is worth pointing out. It is a known bug that has been logged and is on the list of things that need to be fixed. When that fix will happen I have no idea, but best practice would be to not expect it anytime soon. As others have said, yes it is possible. Even given the above caveat that the frontal armor is overperforming a bit, T-64A/B, T-72A, and T-80/B were all very well armored for the time they were introduced. However: It should be pointed out that during the span of years Cold War covers (1979-1982) the vast majority of Soviet tanks forward deployed (specifically in Group of Soviet Forces Germany GSFG) were still T-62s. Something like 75% of all Soviet tanks in GSFG were T-62 variants. Warsaw Pact allies were even worse off, as by 1989 the vast majority of their tanks were still T-55 series. Further, the majority of T-64/T-80 tanks were concentrated in NORTHAG (3td Shock Army being infamous for having lots of modern Soviet MBTs). All of that is to say that the Soviet tank you should almost always see is the T-62 in Cold War. Why is T-64/T-80 so over-represented? Cool factor mostly. They are the shiny new toys (and also new vehicles in the Combat Mission catalog) and they also make REDFOR much more competitive. This is a big deal compared to the other modern CM titles where REDFOR is at a disadvantage in CMBS and a severe disadvantage in CMSF2. The problem is similar to how CM and other games over-represent things like Tiger/Panther/King Tiger/etc in the WWII titles. People generally are more enthralled by a King Tiger than a Panzer 4, even though in reality the vast majority of German tanks encountered were a Panzer 4 variant. Same phenomenon. A final note on T-72. There were none in GSFG, and so its appearance in CW should be even more rare than T-64/T-80. During the Cold War the T-72 was an export tank. In Soviet service it was relegated to second echelon and peripheral forces. The Soviet army in Czechoslovakia had some for example. Had the war gone on long enough for Soviet reserve formations to get to the front, T-72 would have started to appear here and there, but it still would have been pretty rare.
  22. It happens in the WW2 titles as well, I've witnessed it many times. I would chalk it up as a quirk/feature of the TacAI, which is universal across all the games.
  23. Yup I agree. Keeping the big picture in mind is hard to do because in CM it is usually just extra narrative fluff that people tend to skim or skip entirely. One of the better ways to make that context more relevant to the player is to impose restrictions, such as the time limit. Giving the player too much time to slowly recon forward and pick apart the defense can be largely mitigated by having a tight time limit on the battle.
  24. Here is a quick and dirty AAR for a scenario I've been working on for Combat Mission Cold War. It should be noted that this is a test run through of this scenario. It features two Soviet tank battalions in the attack against a US cavalry troop, with me playing as the Soviets. The goal for the Soviets is to force a breakthrough. High losses are expected but acceptable if a breakthrough is achieved. The goal of the initial fires and maneuver plan is to compartmentalize the battlefield by isolating the far left and far rear enemy positions with smoke, while pummeling suspected strongpoints with massed artillery fire before reducing them with massed direct fire The results are rough. The enemy strongpoints along their main line of resistance are reduced, but it costs the entirety of 1st battalions tanks to do so 2nd battalion (having arrived as reinforcements) is tasked with carrying on the attack to affect a breakthrough To support their efforts, the artillery fires are pushed deeper into the map to suppress known/suspected enemy strongpoints. The town will be bypassed unless an AT threat remains, in which case 1st battalion's infantry will assault and clear the town. And the result of the effort: 2nd battalion is able to reduce the remaining strongpoints and force a breakthrough, taking relatively few losses in the process. Of the 40 tanks lost in the attack, 30 are from 1st battalion in their effort to smash through the MLR. Brief Analysis: Could this have gone better for the Soviets? I think there are two answers to that question. 1) The entire scenario is a forced breach against a solid defense, so heavy losses are inevitable. A big part of the Soviet dilemma is choosing where to take the inescapable beating, or put nicer, spend the combat power. In this case I chose to spend 1st battalion breaking the enemy main line of resistance. The result was 1st battalion getting destroyed, but it was not in vain. 1st battalion reduced enough of the strongpoints that 2nd battalion was able to blow through and achieve a breakthrough with minimal losses. 2) The fires plan could also have placed the smoke in a way that would have isolated all but one strongpoint (as opposed to leaving two open). By blinding all but one, it would have made the initial direct fire engagement with my tanks less one sided, but would have created more difficulties later. I've drawn up another graphic of this modified fires plan, this one: The downside to this is that while it shields the attacker at first, it also puts them in a tough spot that they still have to fight out of. With the far right strongpoint reduced, that still leaves the center and rear right strongpoint to deal with, and the far left strongpoint can still put fire into the kill zone (engagement area) as well, which means follow on forces are more at risk. There are a few tweaks I'm planning to make (the addition of another battery of 152mm 2S3's as noted in the revised fires plan graphic) and I am also waiting on a friend of mine to finish a playthrough to see those results. This will hopefully be revisited and given a more detailed AAR in the future, but for now I thought this would be a fun pocket sized AAR.
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