IICptMillerII

He was saying that all the beta news and such is being run here as opposed to on the Slitherine website. There isn't a public beta or anything like that if that is what you're getting at.

Slitherine is now talking about CMCW on their twitch stream

Ok, now its about CMCW!

April 2021 for all you crafty cynics out there

Its set to not monetized. There is a copyright claim (was there when the video was unlisted) but I should be all set. The claim is just to say that the video cannot be monetized, but otherwise can be up without issue.

Here is a YouTube link as well. Edit: The stream is live, not sure when it will feature CMCW though.

That's what I was going for!

This is the song. I'll add this link to the video description as it looks like YouTube did not do it automatically for some reason. It did on the unlisted version.

Or an M60A1...

Here is a link to the stream done by Slitherine that is going to show off CMCW: Not sure yet when CMCW is supposed to show up though.

This is something I threw together in my own time. Please remember that this is from a beta build of the game and is subject to change.

I think it’s literally called “Propaganda” haha. Forget where I found it, but I know it was a free download

Damn, these look fantastic. Great work!

EMCON has nothing to do with eavesdropping in on a call, but that is well beyond the scope of this thread. To get it back on track, the thing I love the most about Fire and Rubble is the winter setting and all of the textures that come with it. Both the Soviets and the Germans get all of their winter uniforms which look fantastic. It’s hard to beat the aesthetic of winter on the eastern front. The overhauled Soviet TO&E is also a great plus, as is the improved infantry behavior.

I understand, but this is still not a feature that is coming with Fire and Rubble. Nor was it ever promised by BFC. This thread is about things people are looking forward to in Fire and Rubble, as in known features. Not a wishlist. They are supposed to move around, gather information and pass it along verbally, by word of mouth. They are not forward observers. And again, using open air unencrypted communication devices on a modern battlefield is a death sentence. EMCON and EW. Refer to the first part of this post. Underground warfare was never a promised feature coming with Fire and Rubble and will not be in the module.

Uh... not to burst any bubbles but none of this is going to be in Fire and Rubble, and none of it was promised or even remotely hinted at. Also, using unencrypted, open air civilian telephones in modern warfare is very not smart. Unless of course you like being hit by an artillery concentration mid-call. In which case go for it. Fair enough. Just want to remind you and others reading that F&R is more than just Berlin 45. It reworks the Soviet TO&E in the time period CMRT base game covers to be more realistic and historically accurate. Plus as others have mentioned it adds winter to the Eastern Front, which at least to me is a big plus. Also, the improved infantry AI behavior which is present in all the other CMs will finally be coming to CMRT with the release of Fire and Rubble. Best part is, that part is completely free, included as part of the patch. I get that late war is not some peoples cup of tea, its not exactly my go to time period either. But there is a lot more here on offer that I think makes F&R worth it. If nothing else it will help round out your experience in summer 1944.

There is no borg spotting unless you play on the easiest difficulty, called "Basic Training."

@Aragorn2002

Sorry, no plans for that. We don't own the rights to the content because it was made in partnership with a Russian developer. But it is an interesting idea if we could work something out with them. No promises, but I will ask. @Sgt.Squarehead

Congrats on surviving 2020! Looking forward to all the new great stuff headed our way! I’m personally excited to see all the behind the scenes developmental stuff from 2020 come through to the commercial side to the benefit of all in 2021. Regardless of how 2021 ends up playing out, I think it will be a great year for Combat Mission, and that gives us all something good to look forward to. Happy New Year! P.S Steve, hope all is well.

An additional point on thermals. I think there is some confusion as to what an independent thermal sight for the tank commander means. Many think it is just the commander looking through a periscope and seeing exactly what the gunner sees. In many models of tanks, this is the case, including the M1/M1A1. However, it is not the case in the M1A2. This means that if the gunner is looking North, the tank commander can look South, or East, or West, or North as well, or anywhere in between. The sight is on a 360 degree revolving mount. I whipped up this fun little diagram to help illustrate it, because photoshop and tank sprites are fun to play with. As I've said before, I do not claim that the spotting system is perfect. However, it is not biased for or against a faction, and hopefully the diagram helps to illustrate how it is possible for a tank to see an enemy tank at its flank, or even behind it. And unless the enemy tank is physically out of line of sight, it will very likely be seen in thermals. Even a hulldown tank tends to advertise its position in thermals due to the "glow" effect.

The following is for CMBS and CMSF2. SyriansRussians: Open up until contact is made. If in urban fighting, stay buttoned. The Syrians are using Soviet equipment and tactical doctrine. The vehicles optics are not very good, especially against opponents equipped with thermals, so you are going to want to have your tank commanders unbuttoned to give them a better chance at seeing things. Syrian tanks essentially have the spotting ability of WWII tanks. Even for the thermal equipped Syrian tanks I would still recommend having the tank commanders unbuttoned until contact, because the thermal imagers they are using are pretty terrible. Operating unbuttoned is also doctrinal, the Soviets planned to move into the attack unbuttoned and only button up once contact was made. Russian thermals frankly are not that great either. They are better than what the Syrians are using, but worse than US thermals. They do not have to rely as much on being unbuttoned as the Syrians do, but it still helps more than not. NATO: It depends, but generally speaking buttoned up is the safer option and won't reduce your ability to spot. I say it depends because C2 and situational awareness are still important factors. In real life, tank commanders tend to be unbuttoned until contact because its just easier to operate a tank that way, especially when coordinating with other tanks. the CM benefit of staying unbuttoned is information sharing. An unbuttoned tank commander will have a better idea of all friendly units around him, and can share spotting information with units outside his formation, such as infantry or engineers. Again though, once contact is made and rounds start flying, it is much safer to stay buttoned up. IRL even when driving/fighting through urban terrain US tankers tended to stay unbuttoned, many times firing small arms from their turrets. In a few instances, using those small arms to shoot attacking personnel off the hulls of their tanks, such as during the Thunder Runs through Baghdad. However, in CM turned out crewmen tend to be a bit extra vulnerable to small arms fire, so it is much safer to just keep them buttoned in urban fighting.

Balancing in CM is always going to be subjective. People/communities tend to come up with house rules or tournament restrictions organically. For example, I know there was a CMBS tournament where everyone was restricted to taking wheeled vehicles only, no tracked vehicles. In my opinion you are always best off fighting as proper formations while trying to implement a given nations tactical doctrine. Cherry picking forces almost always backfires, and at the least usually robs the player of C2 advantages. re: Thermals This topic comes up every now and then, along with all the usual myths. All thermal imagers are not equal. Just like all night vision devices are not equal. The thermals on the M1A2 SEPv3 are absurdly good. It has a 1080p monitor with a 50x magnification. This is enough to read the font on belt buckles and other clothing from 2-3km away. I know, I've done it. For comparison, the thermal imager on the original M1 from 1980 was only a 10x magnification and was a 480p monitor. Thermal imagers are significantly better than regular day sights, regardless of magnification. It is hard to describe just how superior a thermal imager is to a day sight when it comes to spotting vehicles in terrain, but it is literally night and day. Vehicles can be very easily seen using low magnification and then quickly zoomed in on and destroyed. There are not very many good images that show how good the thermals are on something like the Abrams, but this picture can help illustrate the effect: This is a low res thermal image as well. But you can see that the tank literally glows. Using proper thermals is like looking for glowsticks in the dark. They tend to stand out rather brilliantly. Night sights/IR sights do not equal thermal sights. A night sight is basically a night vision device for a tank. It is an optic that uses light amplification to "see" at night. It does not function at all during the day. IR sights are worse in that they require IR illumination to function, which makes you extremely easy to spot at night through any kind of night vision device. The effect is the same as seeing a car a few hundred meters down the road at night with its headlights on. You can easily see it due to the headlights, but the car cannot see you until it is much closer and directly illuminating you. To add insult to injury, most IR illumination sights are only good out to around 700-800 meters. Yes, reaction times might be a bit fast in CM, but that is not exclusive to spotting. Some weapon pack up and deploy times are rather optimistic. Some infantry response times are a bit delayed. Many of us have seen infantry run right next to enemy infantry and pause for a few seconds after spotting each other before shooting. It is a computer after all, and is not going to be perfect. And yes, vehicles do tend to have a spidey sense, where they sometimes turn their turrets towards ATGMs in flight towards them, regardless of having a laser warning receiver, but this behavior is universal. I've seen BMP-2s do this as well as Abrams. The simple version is, CM gets it right way more than it doesn't. By the way, the AN/PAS-13 can identify man sized targets beyond 1km and vehicles out to 4km. Not sure where the 800m figure came from, and small arms mounted thermals are not as powerful as the ones mounted in vehicles, so it isn't exactly a proper comparison. And as I mentioned earlier, a thermal sight will outperform conventional day sights, usually by an order of magnitude under ideal conditions.

Glad I could help! I definitely recommend thinking in terms of a whole fire plan as opposed to a single SBF is thinking in the right direction. There are a series of videos on CM that I go back to every now and again. They are extremely good, and teach the application of real world tactics in CM by a retired US Army infantry officer. All his examples are in CMBN but like I said, the tactical principles are the same and apply to the modern games as well. Here is a a link to the first of six episodes: