IICptMillerII

Very true, seeing as how NATO has been ruthlessly conquesting its way closer to the Russian border, consuming country after country --- wait, what? NATO membership is voluntary? And after the fall of the Soviet Union many states eagerly sought membership with NATO? Nations are still requesting memberships with NATO? Oh, that kinda puts a dent in my "NATO is literally Hitler" philosophy... Seriously this attack on NATO is absurd. They are not 'marching' anywhere, especially considering the only nation in NATO that maintains a fully capable military is the US. All other nations (except Poland) don't even bother to meet military spending requirements. And the tired line of NATO "promising" not to go east after the fall of the Soviet Union is a myth. No such promise was ever made, its not in writing anywhere. Show me the official NATO document saying "NATO can't go farther East than here" decree. Spoiler alert, it doesn't exist.

All the CMx2 games do have the same manual, the game engine manual. It covers all aspects of the games, both modern and WWII. The game specific manuals give background information to the specific titles as well as provide a quick reference encyclopedia for the forces involved. Combatintman is right, it would be best if everyone took the time to skim parts of it first to better understand the game, at the very least skimming it before posting outlandish accusations here on the forum. That said, I'm pretty sure its an unwritten rule of humanity that all manuals must be thoroughly researched, written, and published, then promptly forgotten about and never read by anyone As is tradition.

I'm actually a bit surprised by this. I tend to avoid Strykers if I can, and I especially try to avoid the MGS. It just doesn't carry enough ammo to justify its use in my experience. Since you have had good success with it, care to share your secrets? Do you tend to use it in a more niche role or is it more a one size fits all type deal?

Glad I could help! I am not entirely sure how weather conditions, specifically Thick Haze impacts the effectiveness of drones. My educated guess would be that drones equipped with thermals would not be hindered. Someone else can likely provide a more thorough answer, or digging through the manuals may yield a sufficient answer. This is starting to get ridiculously off topic. A question was asked about the cost effectiveness of planes and UAVs in an upcoming battle. Speculating what anti-air assets IS has access to is a topic for a different thread. To bring this back on topic, I will say that MANPADs and other infrared based anti air missiles have a service ceiling of 15,000 ft AGL. Aircraft that fly above this altitude generally only have to worry about longer range radar missiles. However this is not simulated in CM, as any and all aircraft can be engaged by any ground based AA system. This adds to my point about how aircraft are vulnerable to AA and can easily be interdicted (drones too) and is more reason why artillery is likely a better choice.

There is a thread in the CMBN forum that is currently talking about the new infantry behavior in V4, and I brought up your point there. In essence I agree with you, men should not break and flee from artillery while it is falling on them. I also mentioned in the other thread that one way to get around this is to give units you do not want to move an indefinite pause command. Its a stop-gap measure, but it works. Here is the link to the CMBN thread:

My advice would be to skip the aircraft and use those points for more artillery. Currently, US aircraft (and Russian aircraft for that matter) are pretty similar to a precision artillery fire mission in effect. They primarily drop precision explosives on a designated target. The two main downsides to this is: 1) they can be interdicted and 2) they only drop one bomb per target. With artillery, you can dump a lot more rounds on the same target, and the artillery cannot be interdicted once fire for effect is called. Artillery more effectively covers a larger area and in generally more useful all around. Fixed wing ordinance is best used for destroying key targets, such as a building, or other high priority targets of opportunity, like tanks if you don't have any armor of your own. Again though, this only works if the enemy doesn't have effective AA on the field. Helicopter support is essentially only useful against tanks/AFVs, and can also easily be interdicted by enemy AA. UAVs are very prone to enemy AA and I personally have found their use limited at best. Just my 2 cents on the matter. Hope it helps, and good luck in your battle! Some added advice, just remember that weapon systems are extremely lethal on the modern battlefield, and they kill very quickly over great distance. Abrams are amazing at what they do, but that makes it all the more important to remember what they do NOT do. Good luck!

This is mainly because the Stryker is not nearly as useful on the tactical battlefields portrayed in CMBS. When you compare the firepower and ability of the Stryker and Bradley, the Brad comes out on top. This is likely why you're seeing less of the Stryker, although I do remember seeing a fair amount of them in the stock US campaign. This all could change if the US goes through with the planned 30mm autocannon upgrade to the Stryker, and then if that vehicle is added to CMBS.

Having learned the full context with the direction the discussion went in this thread, this is excellent advice. Wasn't aware that there was an ignore feature, but I may need to look into it, if only to know how it works in case I need it in the future. Guess I started paying attention here too early

This perfectly sums it up!

A little trick I discovered back in V3: Any unit you want to hold its ground, give it an indefinite pause command. This essentially prevents them from running/evading, even if they're taking direct HE fire. The downside here is that if you give a unit a pause command and then it becomes very obvious that they should fall back, you have to wait until the next command phase to do so. It also obviously doesn't apply to the AI, so if you're having an issue of enemy troops breaking and running, there isn't anything you can do about it. It is a nice stop-gap though. I've found it to be very useful to use on units that I need to stay in position for their own safety, such as trenches and foxholes. Buildings too to a lesser extent. I'm sure we will see further tweaks to the TacAI as we move forward, and as I already said I think that the new features are by and large improvements over the old system.

What? I've not been following the thread these past few days. How did things stray from Leopards in Syria to Panzers on Mars? Sounds like a sci fi book in the same vein as the John Carter series (of which I am a big fan. Great fiction) Somehow this feels like the always present underlying secret request of the forum community that BFC cave in to public demands and make Combat Mission: Space Lobsters of Doom...

So no sailor in any navy has ever drowned? Oh wait, many sailors in many navies have drowned? How can this be?!?!?! Didn't they realize they were on a ship, in a profession in which it is possible that at some point they could get wet, or even submerged in water? How can this be? Seriously, your statement is silly. Yes men drowned on the beaches. So did paratroopers who landed in flooded fields. Germans starved to death at Stalingrad despite having been at war with the Soviets for over a year at that point. Hadn't they learned the importance of food? I can go on and on but I won't as its not worth my time. For the record, the soldiers who landed on the beaches did have flotation devices on. Some failed to function, others were damaged by battle, and yet others were not enough to help the men who had too much equipment weighing them down. Paratroopers also wore live preservers in case the plane went down over the channel, and again these were prone to all the possibilities of failure. Sure, no one can know all the eventualities of war, or regular life for that matter, but to propose that those who lead the invasion were utterly unaware/incompetent to the extreme is pure stupidity. No one on a strategic level blunders into or through these things, despite how historians sometimes wish to portray the affairs of warfare to add some dramatic spice to their texts. By all means contribute something worthy of discussion, but spare us your overly absurd two sentence statements. wew lad indeed

Yes, the bocage country did lend a massive advantage to the defender. But thats about where it stops. First off, many of the German units defending the Normandy section of the Atlantic Wall were of very poor quality. Many were Osttruppen, men from the Eastern front forced to fight for the Germans. They were meagerly equipped and poorly trained. They were occupation troops, nothing more. Many of the regular German units in the area were also of either depleted strength or ability, or both. There is a reason they were posted to backwater garrison duty, and not off at the front fighting. Plus, the best of the German coastal defense forces were all in Calais where the Germans believed the inevitable invasion would come. The best German units did not arrive in the fighting for Normandy until July or later, with units such as the Panzer Lehr and others forming the best of what the German army had to offer in mid 1944. The reason the Germans were able to put up such resistance in Normandy is not because they were highly trained veterans. This is a myth. The reason the Germans were able to put up such heavy resistance in Normandy was due to the terrain. Ask anyone with military experience and they will tell you; "terrain dictates." You do not need a highly trained veteran soldier to defend narrow killing fields. You just need a guy with a machine gun, which is what the Germans did have a lot of in Normandy, and plenty of other places in WWII. Yes, there were elite German units in Normandy, like the 6th fallschirmjager division, but you will note that not only did they fail to prevent the fall of St Lo to the 29th ID (a supposedly weak and poorly trained force of high schoolers) but they were nearly completely annihilated in the process. Many other German units suffered the same fate. The 352nd Grenadier division, also opposing the 29th ID and defending from Omaha to St Lo, where also nearly annihilated. In fact they were so bloodied that the 352nd Grenadiers was disbanded and reformed as the 352nd Volksgrenadiers for the Battle of the Bulge. Casualty rates for the US were quite high, but that is entirely to do with the nature of the terrain they were fighting through and how much it benefited the defenders. Poor tactics/training was NOT the reason for the high casualty rates. Again, this myth has been debunked many times over now. In fact, if anything US soldiers showed great tactical flexibility and ingenuity. From developing various ways to cut through bocage, to developing entire doctrine on the fly on how to attack through bocage country, the Normandy campaign is many times cited as an example of how well Americans can adapt to new and strange battles and problems. During both WWI and WWII officers in line units suffered much higher casualties proportionally than their enlisted counterparts did. This is generally true for all major armies engaged. (Besides the Soviets, as I do not know about their officer casualty rates) These high casualty rates among officers was a constant throughout the war, not just in Normandy. I already mentioned that a lot of the units on garrison coastal duty in Normandy were not the best that the German army had to offer, or were sent there to train and refit after suffering heavy losses somewhere else in the war. So no, many of them were not long term veterans of the Eastern front, or the fall of France in 1940. Besides if they were all made up of veterans who had been fighting since 1939, then their combat efficiency would actually be WORSE. Soldiers peak in their battlefield ability (if they survive long enough to) and then begin a rather drastic decrease the longer they are forced to stay on the battlefield, on a timescale of months and years, not individual battles. The British 7th Armored Division, the famed Desert Rats, are a prime example of this. They had been fighting the war all over since 1940, but by 1944 they were so combat ineffective that they were taken off the line (after their poor performance in operation Goodwood) and broken up. This is because they had passed their peak, and had been on the battlefield for far too long without adequate rest and recuperation. Every nation suffered from this as the war dragged on, especially the Germans. All of this is to say that just because a unit has been fighting since the first panzers rolled into Poland DOES NOT make them an extremely good, combat efficient unit, and if anything it degrades their overall combat capability. Oh and for the record, no, highschoolers did NOT make up the majority of the units who landed at Normandy or who continued the fight across France. The average age of a US soldier in WWII was 25, not 17-18. Yes, many 17-18 (and in some cases even younger than that) fought and died on the Allied side, but it was not the average. Plus, even if they were all highschoolers, they had years of training before hitting the beaches of Normandy. So either way you cut it, they were not "fresh out of high school."

I like the new changes overall and think they are a more accurate reflection of reality. If a squad is being pinned down by a machine gun, they are much more likely to break contact whenever possible than just sit there and continue to get clobbered. One thing I noticed before the 4.0 upgrade was units being pinned down by a machine gun would go to ground, and when the enemy machine gun stopped firing at them (presumably because it was engaging due to line of sight, rather than a target command) and the squad regained its wits, they would get up off the ground and become visible again. Many times this would lead to a casualty. This could happen over and over again, either to the AI or an unwatchful player, leading to an unrealistic accumulation of casualties to a single unit. Also, units tend to only break contact when they are faced with overwhelming firepower, such as HE and machine gun fire from a tank. A threat that a squad not equipped with any AT assets is powerless against. Same goes for a team that stumbles into a machine gun nest. Instead of just diving to the ground and staying there, unable to return effective fire to harm the enemy, they now leave said situation. Again I think this is more realistic and representative of what actually occurs in combat. My one criticism of the new system is that sometimes when the units displace, they choose poor routes that take them through enemy fire, or across dangerously exposed ground. In urban settings, sometimes they flee towards the enemy, or flee to buildings that are occupied by the enemy, or are worse off than the building they left. Also, units in buildings under artillery fire tend to flee more often than I think they should. After all it is generally safer to be inside than out in the open while under bombardment, but currently pixeltruppen seem to disregard this and break for it once the shells start landing. This is an over-simplification of the situation pushed by many British historians who wrote about Normandy after the war. The idea that US units who went to Normandy were untrained/poorly trained/generally green is not true. Most units spent at least 9 months rigorously training for the invasion. Some units, such as the 101st Airborne, trained two full years before being shipped to England. Others who staged and trained in England for many months were battle hardened divisions, such as the 82nd, and 1st Infantry division. Even divisions that had not yet seen combat (29th ID comes to mind here) were rigorously trained (using the experience and lessons learned from years of war in North Africa and Sicily/Italy) specifically for the invasion of Normandy. The descriptions for what qualifies 'Green' and 'Regular' troops come straight from the CM manual: "Green: draftees with little training and some combat experience or reservists with some training and no combat experience. Green can also represent professional soldiers whose training is substandard in comparison to another force." "Regular: professional soldiers who went through extensive, quality training programs, but lack combat experience. Or, Regular can represent troops that received mediocre training that have a fair amount of combat experience." (Pg 98, CM manual v4.0) US soldiers in Normandy (those without prior combat experience, such as the 29th ID) should be 'Regular' troops. As you can see for yourself, the manual clearly states that this veterancy level applies to soldiers who are well trained but have not seen combat. There was another thread here on this forum that covered this topic in more detail, but as I understand it the reason many US soldiers (and Commonwealth and Germans for that matter) were set to 'Green' veterancy is because the mission designers thought it produced more realistic infantry behavior, not because US troops were actually minimally trained soldiers who lacked combat experience. In fact, now that 4.0 is out, many of these missions may need a quick revisit to change some soft factors based on the way the engine currently works as opposed to how it worked when the missions were originally made.

While this may be true for small unit tactics/SOP, it is not the case for the larger, more strategic picture. The Syrian civil war has been raging for how many years now, 5? In all that time the Turks never bothered to check in and see what what occurring, specifically that unsupported tanks (of any type/make/country) were getting annihilated by infantry based anti-tank weapons in built up urban areas, and learned nothing from it? Either they have been asleep at the wheel for the past half decade, flat out didn't care, or they really are just that incompetent. From what we're seeing, looks to be a bit of all three. Not a jab at you, just at the state of affairs we are seeing, and all the ludicrous media coming from it. ("MBTs are useless cause these top of the line tanks are being killed by RPGs!!!!") Earlier in the thread I made a joke about the Middle East being the place where all tanks go to get blown up. I'd like to add an addendum to that: The Middle East is where all tanks go to get blown up, and all tactics are forgotten, and one is doomed to repeat the same (laughable) mistakes over and over, ad infinitum. Its like a math problem for elementary school. On the chalk board it says 2+2=4, but all the students insist that 2+2= everything besides 4. At least its predictable...

There are tons of free programs online that will convert a file to another type. I use this website: http://www.online-convert.com/ Once you have the file in .wav format all you need to do is name it correctly and you should be good to go. I changed the main menu music to the theme from Medal of Honor: Spearhead for a bit of nostalgia.

Then Google it. Between Wiki, general Google searches, and the manuals, you should have a pretty decent idea of what each vehicle is bringing to the table. Honestly this is a non issue at this point. The UI will always display the most relevant information to the player, even if it doesn't constantly display every single possible little teeny tiny both and sprocket on the tank/vehicle. Why would a Tunguska need thermals? It has radar and a stabilized optical sight for tracking air targets (which is its primary job) and it can depress its gun and use the optical sight to engage ground targets in a pinch. What does it need thermals for? It is not an offensive ground attack weapon, which means that its only firing at ground targets when the commander was stupid enough to leave it out for the enemy to be a threat. Or if you're using it as some kind of massive pillbox/suppression tool, you're using area fire, so thermals are also unnecessary.

Each game comes with a manual specific to the units/forces the game covers. Its basically an encyclopedia that covers everything in the game. So if you want to know about the weapons/capabilities/munitions/etc of a unit, just pull up the manual and search for it.

Ahh I misunderstood you. My bad. I thought you meant that artillery has caused the most casualties to the enemy using precision fires. (placed artillery shells) I didn't know you meant the enemy literally placing artillery shells as IEDs. My bad. I am not trying to be patronizing at all, and I apologize if I have come off that way. I just mean to explain my reasoning thoroughly. Again my apologies.

For many decades (since at least WWI, but likely before) artillery has been the number one casualty causing asset on the battlefield. That trend has continued in our most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, I don't know of any insurgent attacks that involved tank formations, so all of those casualties FA is causing are against the insurgent equivalent of light infantry. So just because for the last decade and a half of warfare artillery has inflicted the most amount of casualties against enemy personnel, does not mean that HE is effective against armor. HE is effective against armor if you are firing disruptive fires, which according to FM 3-09 are designed to disrupt enemy planning and logistics, time tables, assembly, repair/refit, etc. Disrupted tanks in an assembly area might have a harder time going on the attack, or getting properly organized, or end up attacking piecemeal because being shelled is a chaotic event. The fires aren't designed to destroy every tank in the assembly area, just disrupt whats happening in the assembly area in whatever capacity it can. I understand that artillery has many different uses that are all valuable. Destructive fires, disruptive fires, delay, suppress, etc. Artillery can be effective against armor without having to kill all the enemy tanks dead. Hell, 3-09 considers destructive fires to be effective if only 30% casualties are inflicted on the target. I was merely trying to point out that if it was so easy to kill tanks with artillery, then you could simply rely on artillery to do most of the tank killing. For many reasons, it is easier to mass fires against a target than it is to mass tanks against an enemy attack/defense/whatever.

Air based fires makes total sense. A COLT's job of destroying enemy armored formations also makes total sense, as in a conventional war this is what he will most likely be arrayed against. I know that we are steadily getting rid of our DPICM artillery as well. (Isn't there some type of replacement in the works though, involving a type of airburst tungsten ball type munition?) I don't doubt you personally, I just find it hard to believe that HE artillery by itself can cause massive damage to tanks. Armored vehicles, soft skinned, support, etc etc are obviously quite vulnerable. But if tanks are so vulnerable to HE artillery, why even bother with your own tanks? Why not just use infantry with organic anti-tank assets and artillery to destroy enemy tanks? Seems like that would be a much more effective route to go than building up and training/equipping the entire armored branch.

Its been said that one of Custers motivations for driving so hard into the Black Hills was because he was searching for mining claims for gold to lay stake on. Regardless, Custer was arrogant. Your second point about tired conscripts helps my point that their technology did not spare them from their lack of experience/adequate training/fatigue. I'm sorry but I have no knowledge of this battle. A quick Google search shows this as a battle where a technologically superior and better organized/trained British force defeated a much larger force with lesser tech and organization. From my limited reading it sounds like this fits in similarly with the Gulf War 1 model; a highly trained, competent force with better tech annihilates an enemy with many more numbers, but lesser tech and organization. I could be wrong however, as I said I know nothing about the actual battle you mentioned. That said, I am still quite confident in my original point, and there are always exceptions to rules.

I have noticed this as well, but I think it is a limitation of the UI. The engine of this tank can still be damaged/destroyed just because you cannot see it listed in the UI. If it were to be damaged/destroyed, then text would appear for it. This minor issue is more prevalent in the modern games, where single vehicles have a lot more sub systems to them. Not all of them are readily listed in the UI, but they are still modeled and can be damaged/destroyed. When they are, they are then listed in the UI damage table.

This is true. What I meant was to say that the US Army at the time had a standardized TO&E whereas the Sioux not as much. The Sioux had a large assortment of different weapons, including modern firearms. Every US rifleman (cavalryman) had a rifle, where as every Sioux warrior had either a rifle, or a bow, or a club, or a few of each, etc. The cavalry lost that fight despite having standardized weapon issuance across their force to the Sioux who used a collection of different weapons. The Sioux won due to better tactics, not because they had better technology. I think we are in agreement, I just wanted to clarify what I meant.

Without writing an entire essay on the topic: Gulf War 1: Most experts (military historians, those in the military, etc) will tell you that one of the biggest advantage the US had over the Iraqi's ended up being the training and competency of individuals. US tank crewmen were much better trained, and had a lot more practical field time in their tanks than their Iraqi counterparts did. Moreover, the Iraqis hoped to win that war through attrition using stand up, Soviet-style doctrine. Also do not forget that military planners in the US were expecting 30k-40k casualties for Operation Desert Storm. Why? Because the Iraqis had a massive military (4th largest in the world at the time) that was fully equipped/styled after the Soviets. US success in the war largely came down to better training and better tactics. The technology helped, but it was not the deciding factor. Gulf War 2 (OIF): The initial stage of the war went great. Coalition forces made a historic drive to Baghdad that would have made Patton jealous. This is largely due to the Iraqis not learning any lessons from Gulf War 1, and the US learning many lessons from Gulf War 1. However things changed when resistance in Iraq devolved from conventional to unconventional guerrilla warfare. The famed insurgency everyone is always talking about. Why didn't the Coalitions massive technological advantage end this insurgency in a few months? Many, many reasons, but my main point is that just because you are fighting a farmer with an AK and an RPG, does not mean you automatically win if you 'counter' him with a multi-million dollar tank/apc/plane/whatever. Zulu: I must admit that I do not know a ton about this subject, but I do know that the Battle of Rourkes Drift (made famous by the movie "Zulu") was won largely to superior training and tactics by the British (specifically organisation and discipline) despite being outnumbered by a massive margin. Take Custers last stand for example. How did a technologically inferior foe defeat a technologically superior enemy? Because the Sioux made up for their technological discrepancies with better tactics. This is the quick and dirty summary of these events. There is a ton more detail that could be gone into, and as always it is never just one factor that single handedly decides victory or defeat, but its a good general overview to back up my point. Just because you have better tech does not mean you automatically win, or that you have that much of an advantage over a less well equipped adversary. Its all about how you use said tech.