IICptMillerII

Exactly, on both points!

The 1500m figure comes from an average designed to measure combat LOS in Germany. It may have been specific to the American sector, which is much more wooded and hilly than Northern Germany. Anyways, the point is, it is a combat average. Nice pictures though!

Combat LOS, not a typical LOS of a civilian driving down an autobahn.

Any tank is capable if in a good position, or if they just get lucky. This platoon of M48s caught these T-62s in the flank at pretty close range. The results speak for themselves.

Sure, why not! One of the great things about CMCW is that if you want to, you can create your own backstory to inform the context of your scenarios. Its all what you make of it.

One of the really cool elements of this title is the shift from "smoke is my best friend!" to "smoke just blinds my men as I die from targets I can no longer see." This is part of the technological shift Warren has mentioned a few times. In 79 there are essentially no vehicles with sights that can see through smoke, so the use of smoke can be very important to blind enemy positions and protect your men in the open. However, by the end of the titles timeframe (82) there are a handful of vehicles on the US side (Abrams, Bradleys, M60A3 TTS, M901s are the big ones that come to mind) that all have thermal imagers and can see through smoke no problem. The Soviets employing smoke to conceal their men will not work against these threats. Anyone who has played CMSF2 or CMBS is aware of this. Luckily for Warren, Bil has very little assets that have thermal imagers, so heavy use of smoke will likely benefit him greatly. Just thought I would point out that dynamic. It is another element of this title that makes it unique.

It does not perform well against the T-64 in a stand up fight. 1500m is the figure I see thrown around most often.

In the editor the US is "Blue" and the Soviets are "Red."

That blog is great. I’ve been following it for a while now. The author is turning it into a book which is coming out soon. I’m excited for it!

Luke is a beta tester and has put his own time into helping to make and improve CM over the years. His criticisms are legitimate and come from someone wanting to continue to improve CM. Might be useful to understand context before flapping your gums.

Glad to see you back Kohl!

it didn’t help that the screenshots they use (CMFB, SF2 and now CW) were terrible quality. FWIW I think the graphics in CM are good for a sim. If I wanted to overhaul the looks I would start with the terrain, then add some more animations in. Beyond that I think it’s functional and even looks pretty good sometimes.

In the campaigns at least, the average map size is somewhere around 4x2km. We’ve found this to be an ideal map size to allow period appropriate forces (a Soviet motor rifle battalion for example) the proper room to both maneuver and fight. It also allows for weapon systems that are more modern (ATGMs, Abrams FCS) the right amount of room to stretch their legs. I know that “knife fighting in a phone booth” has been a common complaint of CM games in modern warfare settings. I think this title goes a long way to mitigate that concern. Also, Pete is a goddamn wizard with the scenario editor. His maps are honestly jaw dropping. There are others too of course, George MC and MOS come to mind, and that is only a partial list. This title has been blessed by the skillful touch of some of the best mappers out there

Ach, you're right Ian. Bit of a brain fart from me. Zooming the camera is ZX, raising and lowering is the scroll wheel. Doh...

Sorry if I am not understanding your question/request, but if I am reading this right, this is already possible. When I play CM, I use the WASD keys to move the camera around the battlefield. QE rotate the camera left and right. If you press and hold the right mouse button it will rotate the camera around, and if you press and hold the left mouse button and then move the mouse, it will move the camera around at varying speeds. Using the mouse wheel is how I zoom in and out as well. In the controls section of the options menu, I have the camera config set to "Standard." I have it set this way in all my CM games.

That's a great collection! I'm jealous of "The Third World War." I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy despite trying for a while now. I recently looked into getting "Armies of NATOs Central Front" too but same issue. "The War That Never Was" is really good. I just finished reading it. Definitely some good ideas in there for modules...

IIRC the turret armor was slightly beefed up, but not by a ton. The blowout panels for the ammo were also tweaked as was the ammo stowage, which theoretically would have improved crew survivability even more. But you are definitely right that the DU armor that came with the HA was a pretty decent leap forward in (already pretty exceptional) armor protection. Its also important to remember that the size of the gun doesn't matter nearly as much as the ammo the gun is firing. There are 105mm sabot rounds that outperform 120mm rounds.

You beat me to it! Fantastic soundtrack. I've already made a personal mod that has 3 of the songs as the menu, loading, and end game music. Might release it as a day one mod when CMCW comes out.

Not to nitpick, and I am sure you personally know, but the M1A1 was not just the M1IP with a 120mm. The A1 came with even better armor and a new fire control for the 120mm gun as well. And it was the M1A1HA that added the DU armor. Just so everyone else is aware

Well, there is DPICM now. So, if you are using HE artillery against tanks it is now doubly wrong.

Bless you for posting these words of sanity in an otherwise "nukes gone wild" speculative environment.

Developing CMCW did not detract from the development of F&R. CMCW had a very small development team for the vast majority of its development cycle. We didn't open it up to the full beta tester team until only about a month or so ago now.

Well put! Not to detract from anything you have said here, I do want to point out that I think the original poster meant the title as slightly tongue in cheek. I understand the frustration, but I do want to quickly point out that there were some very real (and serious) life complications that cropped up (multiple times unfortunately) that caused a fair number of the delays. It is not my place to comment on those. I only mention it to try and give some context.

I have this, and I think its worth picking up. It isn't exactly overflowing with content, but there are a lot of decently put together scenarios, and they all come with some cool custom drawn maps as well. I would say its worth it. The older edition is much better. The new edition has a ton of typos and grammatical errors. The editor really dropped the ball on the re-release.