IICptMillerII

My desire for a Combat Mission: Fulda Gap (a cold war gone hot CM game set in the 1980's) has been and always will be top on my wishlist for a game that I hope they one day get around to making. It is one that I would genuinely advise BFC to make. I would easily pledge a decent chunk of change to help finance the project, and would likely buy a handful of copies both for myself and for some friends. My more recent comment about an Operation Unthinkable module/expansion is more of a dream project. I think it would be interesting, enjoyed by many in the community, and would be relatively easy for BFC to put together, seeing as all the units and maps are already, or are about to be added to the engine (for the most part). However I understand that this project is very unlikely, so I would categorize it as a dream project that I don't really expect to see. Good grief that was funny!

Also wanted to say that your screenshots look fantastic! Did you make the scenario in the screenshots yourself? Looks very interesting!

Is there any way to get the engineers to clear the hedgehog obstacles directly? I've tried using the breach command before but it didn't seem to work. Is the only way to clear them large blasts? If so is there any way to get engineers to place their charges near enough to them so that when they go off they take out the obstacles as well?

I mentioned barns specifically because I've noticed canister shot to be very effective against it, but I have also seen my Stuarts engage infantry in regular residential houses with canister to good effect. It both causes casualties and creates instant suppression. The second one being as important to the first in any firefight. So even if the canister rounds aren't killing hordes of enemy soldiers per shot, its pinning them which allows me to maneuver, close with and destroy the enemy with other assets. I understand the worry of wasting ammo. I find that US squads run out of Thompson ammo nearly instantly, and I always try to use the 'Target Light' command to reduce the use of Thompson and bazooka ammo. But the reality of combat is that it is inherently inefficient. You aren't always going to have the right ammo for the right shot at the right moment. In fact most of the time you don't, at least I don't. Its more of a 'use what you have at hand' kind of thing. I think that messing with the TacAI, or allowing the player to chose exactly what type of ammo is used in exactly what type of situation is overkill and would just lead to more problems. Personally I find the TacAI in CM to be superb. Its not perfect, but then again nothing is, especially men acting in the extremely stressful environment of combat. If there is any argument, it should be that the TacAI is in fact too good in combat, but that is an argument for another thread (and one I don't actually believe either, just saying that if you had to pick a flaw it would be on the side of too good verses not good enough) In Black Sea I had an issue with the TacAI where Bradley's were not engaging enemy armored vehicles (specifically tanks) with their TOW missiles, even at ranges beyond 1-2 km. They would always default to their autocannon. However the most recent patch to Black Sea solved this issue for me. This is all to say that again, the TacAI is not perfect and bugs exist, but I have good faith in Battlefront that if there are bugs, they will be addressed. It just may take a while, understandably due to limited staff and resources. Either way I do not think your issue is a bug, its a user preference. So I would argue that the solution to your problem is yours to come up with. The use of target arcs to restrict fires or the use of the 'Target Light' command will both ensure that any canister shot equipped vehicles do not use it against targets you do not want it used against. It won't work 100% of the time but it should work most of the time, thus greatly reducing your issue.

Just want to point something out here. In general you are correct, the Soviets and current Russian doctrine does rely on massed artillery fires a lot. However its important to note that this is a primarily operational level consideration. A platoon leader in the Russian army does not have access to a divisions worth of artillery. The massed fires that the Russians have in their doctrine are more like the massive artillery bombardment that kicked off the Battle of the Bulge. There are a lot of pre planned strategic targets that are hit with massed fires (communications hubs, railways/yards, electrical and infrastructure targets like substations and intersections/bridges/important roadways, things of this nature) The aim of these fires is to reduce the enemy's ability to respond on an operational level as well as to create chaos in the rear areas, which are generally most vulnerable to indirect fires. Precision fires, like those used on the tactical battlefields in CM are still used obviously, but they are not the massed massive artillery barrages you may be thinking of. This is one of the main reasons why weapon systems like rocket artillery are not in the game, because they are not used as fire support on a tactical battlefield, but as an operational tool used to strike strategic targets. All those pictures were very cool! I especially liked the Brazilian

I agree, however I do think it would be cool to see an Operation Unthinkable module for either Final Blitzkrieg or Red Thunder. It seems like it would be pretty easy to do, and would open up a lot of very cool what-if scenarios for us all to play around with. But its unlikely to happen, and I would rather they focus on larger more prominent conflicts than much smaller ones.

These look very well done! Looks like Juju has some competition!

There are some pretty impressive SweetFX shader presets that people here on the forums are using to get impressive screenshots with. There's a lot of tweaking that goes into it to get everything looking the way you like it. If you check out some of the screenshot threads you'll see some examples of what people have been able to do. I'm sure using a shader preset along with the Clipper mods would look stunning! I would encourage everyone to not only check out the excellent mod pack for the Operation Clipper campaign, but to check out the campaign itself. Its very well put together and historically accurate. If any are familiar with the book, "The Men of Company K" reading it while playing through the Clipper campaign is even better, as the book follows a unit that was involved in Operation Clipper.

ever see a golf ball go through a house/car window? Imagine a thousand golf balls, going much much faster, going through the window and everything around the window. Now imagine there are people in the room on the other side of the window. Definitely not useless. I've seen canister shred infantry in buildings, especially buildings like barns. Everything seems fine to me.

As I understand it, many of these cluster sub munitions were designed to not explode in order to create a makeshift minefield. At the very least it makes recovering casualties and equipment that much more hazardous to the enemy. I know that in recent years efforts have been made to reduce the amount of UXO associated with cluster munitions due to their impact on civilian populations. I still think that conventional artillery delivered ICM (105 and 155mm tube artillery) is within the scale of CM. MLRS is obviously outside the scale. John, reading a bit of the article you posted, I can't help but think that there is an obvious bias or message being pushed. The idea that the US Military, or even the Army for that matter is completely incapable, or at great disadvantage to a near peer threat is ludicrous. This quote in particular caught my attention; "I couldn’t help imagining a U.S. armored battalion subjected to a similar fire strike." The author may not be able to imagine this happening, but I assure you anyone actually in the Army is more than prepared for this possibility. Casualties are always to be avoided if possible, but are an inevitable fact of warfare. One only has to look at what casualties were expected to be like in the First Gulf War, or what casualties were actually like during WWII to know that the US Army is aware of the possibility of taking high casualties, and in the event of taking high casualties, can still function and complete the mission. Those high casualties effect on public relations are another matter entirely, and do not directly affect the Army's ability to fight tactical battles on the ground. Explosives are not just a simple equation of big boom = big destruction. If you place a large block of explosives on top of a metal plate and set it off, nothing really happens to the metal plate. It may get scorched a bit, and possibly move if not secured down, but it generally will not buckle or be vaporized into shrapnel unless there is some weakness already in the armor. The force and energy from the explosion is directed away from the metal, as it follows the path of least resistance. In order to effectively penetrate the metal, you either need a shaped charge which channels the force of the explosion into and through the metal, or a purely kinetic weapon that is also directing the force into and through the target. Check out this youtube video of shells impacting a metal surface in slow motion. You will note that even though the artillery shells are flying at significant velocity, they do little if any damage to the metal target: This isn't to say that armored vehicles are impervious to HE rounds. It is very possible, and likely that sub systems are damaged/destroyed, such as vision ports and radio antenna to name a few. Its also possible that an HE round gets lucky and punches into the vehicle and destroys it. My point here is that just because an artillery round lands near/on an armored vehicle does not mean there should be guaranteed catastrophic damage. I think that by and large CM simulates the effects of artillery fire very well. My issue is not with the simulation of what is present, but with what is not present. More/different munition types such as ICM would likely result in the mass armored casualties some people expect from a large artillery barrage. A direct hit on an armored vehicles top armor from multiple armor defeating sub munitions would surely result in significant damage or destruction of said vehicle. As I said earlier, I hope to see these munition types added and expanded upon in future modules/updates.

I have a feeling that this may be the reason why Battlefront has not included ICM artillery. Granted, it is only the MLRS batteries that destroy entire grid squares. Conventional artillery would have to be massed in order to do that. That said, ICM capable artillery would still be devastating on CMs scale. Still though, until I hear official word, or see quoted official word, I will remain hopeful that it is eventually added as a capability to the modern titles. I'm hoping for more fire support options in general for the modern titles, specifically air power. We need more munition types.

No time to read the article at the moment but I will check it out when I have the chance. Artillery is very effective at destroying vehicles, even MBTs, but when using ICM. In CM, there is no ICM artillery. We are stuck with HE, smoke and airburst (HE set to explode in the air, not ICM) None of the ammo currently available in CM is very effective at taking out armor. You can do it, but it takes a lot of ammo and some luck. I'm hoping that in the future, whether its a module for CMBS or an engine upgrade, we get ICM artillery. It would add a whole new level of use to artillery in CM. However I am not aware of a reason why it has not been included already, I suspect there is one. Could be coding, or it could be a gameplay thing. I'm sure someone more informed than I will drop by and let us know.

Have you tried the newest update to CMBS? Before the new update I saw my Brads using their autocannons against armored targets way too much, and neglecting their TOWs. Now after the patch this issue seems to be completely gone. My Brads use their TOWs almost exclusively against tanks, and once their out of ammo they retreat to find a place to reload. I've only seen Brads engaging tanks with their autocannons out of sheer desperation, an absolute last resort now. Not sure if this new behavior applies to the BMP as well though. As far as fire and all that, I would definitely like to see smoke effects improved upon. Little things, like smoke and dust hanging around for a bit longer, especially smoke from a burning vehicle and the like. However what I would like to see before any of that is more fire support options. Specifically in the modern titles, artillery needs ICM. I also really want to see cluster munitions deployed by aircraft. They are extremely effective in conventional operations, and would certainly be used heavily in the scenario CMBS portrays. I want to see aircraft with more munition options as well. For instance it would be nice if you could have a plane ripple its bombs off, so instead of taking 5-8 minutes for every one bomb, you could just order the plane to drop all of its bombs in a target area. This would primarily be for dumb bombs, but it would be a nice feature. FASCAM deployed by artillery would be a cool feature as well, but that could pose some gameplay/coding problems so its lower on my list.

South Korea. One of the largest economies in the world today that exports tons of goods around the world, and is a functioning democracy. Would not have existed without US intervention. Dominican Republic 1965. US stops a communist uprising. Grenada 1983. US overthrows a communist government and remains there with peace keeping forces until 1985. Panama 1989. The US overthrows Noreiga and his drug fueled dictatorship. Kuwait 1991. The US and allies drive the invading Iraqis out of the nation of Kuwait. Haiti 1994. After the democratically elected president was overthrown in a coup attempt, a soft US invasion restored the president to power. Bosnia and Kosovo as you have already mentioned. That was just after a quick google search. No, not every intervention had good intentions, and no not all of them went perfectly. But to claim that WWII was the only time the US did anything good in the realm of foreign policy is pure idiocy. Honestly it blows my mind. Everyone gets on ol' Vlads case for believing certain things, and then you read statements like this from someone in the West, where public access to real information is readily available. How about, instead of injecting your world view/politics into everything (The US is just a big bully that does mean things to small countries because it can! Call the whambulance!) you actually look at events objectively. Yeesh

I'll bite. As I understand it, it is simply an abstraction to represent the many actions infantry can take in close quarters with an armored vehicle to neutralize it as a threat. So as an extreme example, it could mean that infantry are able to spike the gun (lets say they put a grenade in the tube and break the muzzle off) and then blind the tank by taking out the vision ports. The tank is now a mission kill, but the tankers inside have been unharmed. They may decide to hop out guns blazing instead of waiting for the enemy infantry to open em up and kill them. So, just because you see a bunch of grenades explode on the tank, and then the tank is listed as 'Destroyed' does not mean the crew suffered any ill effects. Remember, there are many ways to knock out a vehicle. Knock off the tracks, damage/destroy optics and weapons, drop a building on it, mine it, etc., etc. But the only way to harm/kill the crew is to penetrate the vehicle. Detonating a hand held satchel against the tank will probably cause some damage to the tracks and external systems, but the amount of explosives you would need to buckle the armor in and kill the crew would be a lot. Plus, you would need some form of shaped charge to direct the blast into the armor, otherwise most of the energy propagates away from the hard surface and into the near resistant-less air. Yes and no. Fog of war comes into play here, among many other factors. Crewmen that bail out of disabled vehicles are almost always engaged. They are still enemy combatants after all. It is the job of the one surrendering to make it clear that they are in fact surrendering. Jumping out of a tank with drawn weapons is not making it clear. Many times it just comes down to pure luck. In the middle of a large firefight there might not be any way to signal that they wish to surrender, or they may panic and try to run. Again, fog of war here. I think that over 95% of the time CM is simulating plausible results. There is always the chance for an odd anomaly, but its rare.

Remember that CMBS assumes a slightly alternate timeline, where Ukraine builds up and prepares its military. Its feasible that if they started such a build up a few years ago that they would have enough Oplots (hope thats the right name) to matter. The Russians get the T-90AM (a blueprint only hypothetical T-90 upgrade, of which no prototypes exist that I am aware of) and the US gets the Abrams and Bradleys with both LWR and Trophy, both of which have not been deployed in real life. I do agree with you that these assets should be scaled back when used. It wouldn't make any sense to see 30 Oplots in one tactical battle if there were only ~100 total made. Same goes for the T-90AM.

I completely agree with you. In real life, hell even in the game anything that increases survivability for anything are generally a good thing. My primary problem stems from its gameplay behavior, not so much the system itself. I do not want the LWR removed from the game. I just want the ability to take tanks and vehicles that do not have LWR, for the reasons I listed above. I second this. Those darn Ukrainian vehicles... Whichever Ukrainian tank that has the known spotting bug. I would like to see it addressed.

My apologies, this is what I meant. The Oplot spotting bug, not the Bulat.

In my experience, one of three things generally happens when an Abrams is lased: 1) The tank is in the attack, and is facing the threat. Unless at very close range, or facing rare Russian ATGM assets, the Abrams is going to be fine. Sabots bounce, ATGMs splash (for the most part) and nothing else really has a snowballs chance in hell of doing any real damage to my tank from the front. When my tanks are attacking, I want them to attack. I understand that the 'Fast' command will make the tank ignore the LWR, but it doesn't ignore it 100% of the time. Also, the 'Fast' command is not suitable to every action. 'Hunt' is usually more useful (because the optics on the Abrams are so good, if it does not happen to see the enemy first, it will see it after the enemy has fired, having also survived whatever was fired at it) as a general movement command with armor. Instead with the LWR, all a Russian has to do is lase the tank and bam, smoke everywhere and a stalled attack for no good reason. The LWR does not distinguish threats. Many times my tanks are being lased by a vehicle that poses a very low threat, such as a BMP-3. Instead of pressing on a few more meters and identifying and engaging the enemy vehicle, my tanks instead decide to abandon all hope and blow smoke. The smoke makes a real mess of things, inhibiting the spotting of targets (you know, the ones causing the LWR to go off in the first place, which leads to more LWR hits, which then leads to more reversing and smoke blowing) and ruining an attack. 2) I set up some tanks in overwatch. These overwatch tanks get lased by something not so dangerous (again I'll go with a BMP-3 because it tends to be the culprit for me) and blow smoke and fall back out of position. Now, whatever element I had moving across a danger area is unsupported. If its more Abrams, its not a huge problem, just a tactical sin. But if its thin skinned vehicles like Brads or what have you, they could be in some real trouble without the Abrams protecting them. Add onto this all the issues I listed with my first point, and things devolve into a real mess. 3) Whatever it is that is lasing my tank/vehicle got the drop on me. As in, it is engaging my tank from a position of advantage with one of those rare assets that pose a real threat to an Abrams. For example, an ATGM fired at me from the side from within 1km. By the time my tank has received the LWR, stopped moving, popped smoke and started to reverse, its already dead. So the LWR just tells me its going to die seconds before actually dying. Not exactly a real help there. In short, I find it extremely unnecessary and annoying (sometimes infuriating, like when the tank decided to reverse through other moving vehicles/into forests) and I would like there to be a variant of the Abrams that comes without the LWR system. I understand why the LWR was added. I read in one of the earlier threads talking about this, how the beta testers said they preferred having tanks with the LWR. I understand the reasoning for including it, but I do not understand why we can't chose to have tanks without it. We can have tanks with or without active protection systems, so why can't we have a toggle in the editor for tanks with/without LWR? If there are programming issues or something along those lines, then thats fine, I can wait for the next patch/module/whenever to bring it up again. But I haven't seen programming listed as a reason as to why a toggle has not been included. As a gameplay note: I understand that for multiplayer, OOB's chosen by each side generally consist of the best equipment both sides have to offer. This means a higher concentration of high threat anti tank assets fielded by the Russians against the Abrams, meaning the LWR has more value against those types of force compositions. Many of the stock scenarios that involve direct confrontation between Russia and the US also feature these high threat weapons for gameplay purposes. Both to show off the new equipment and to create difficult and interesting missions for the players. However, that is not the only way to play, and if we're being strict as far as actual OOB's go, those high threat weapons are also pretty rare. This isn't meant as a long, pro-US armor rant or anything like that. I just find the LWR system to be more trouble than its worth, even against high threat anti tank weapons. Again, hopefully it will be an easily added feature to the editor/quick battle force screen in the next patch/module. If there is a real behind the scenes software issue with the whole thing, I understand. But if not, lets see a toggle.

Sounds like a Merkava/DD tank crossover! No idea how you could airlift it though. You would need rocket decelerating brakes along with a ton of parachutes to keep it from Hulk smashing itself into the ground. Ah hell, just get Lockheed Martin on it! More on topic, I've heard a lot about proposed upgrades to both the Bradley and the Stryker. Its starting to sound like they want to compromise the capabilities of both vehicles to make them more "well rounded." I'm all for producing new vehicle hulls and making small upgrades here and there to keep them ahead of the curve, but some of the more drastic changes (like the proposed Stryker 30mm firepower upgrade) seem to be moving the vehicles away from their intended purposes. Interested to follow the discussion and see where it leads!

I'll throw my .02 out as well. This times a million. Good grief do i hate the LWR mounted on US tanks/Brads. I say this as someone who generally plays AS the US. I despise them so much because they make attacking with armor so flippin difficult. Whenever I try to do anything with my armor what ends up always happening is that it advances a few meters, gets a LWR hit, pops smoke and falls back. I've tried to find in game workarounds for it, but the best I was able to discover was using the 'Pause' command a lot, and even then it was only a half measure. In larger battles it really becomes a hassle, as you have to babysit every vehicle, and your efforts go wasted many times because the vehicle got a LWR hit in between 'Pause' and 'Move' commands, or something of the sort. I am very much hoping that with either the next patch or (more likely) the next module we either get an LWR free M1A2 (like a toggle in the editor similar to a vehicle and ERA) or a new Abrams variant without the LWR. Something else I've noticed that has been debated before on the forums are the Bradley and its TOW's. I've found that my Brads tend not to use them, even when faced with an identified tank target over 1km away. Seems to me like they rely on the 25mm a bit too much. I never had this issue in CMSF. The Brads always seemed to know when to use the TOWs against the right targets, and generally speaking range wasn't a huge deciding factor in the TOW's employment. Now I don't have any hard data from extensive testing to back up my observations, but it seems like ATGM behavior across the board may be a bit off. I figured if a bunch of the other systems are going to get a look at, might as well throw the Bradly in there as well. Would also like to see the Bulat spotting bug addressed, although I'm quite confident that this issue has already been solved and we're just waiting on the patch to drop to fix it for good.

No issues on my patch install. Thanks for the quick patch! Just in time for the change in seasons, right before the plunge into the winter months.

I can assure you that in 1985, there WERE T-72's deployed in Eastern Germany by the Soviets. Everything between 1986 and 1991 seems to be more of a crap shoot, with everything in near constant flux. @akd: Great summary! Still leaves a few questions unanswered however. It doesn't say anything about what happened to the T-72 in GFSG. Panzer makes good points about the over estimations the West made about Soviet tank forces, commonly referred to as the 'tank gap.' If I remember correctly it wasn't until a few years after the wall fell that we got a much better understanding of Soviet tank forces, both their capabilities and the numbers deployed. My question is still, what happened to all the T-72's? I don't have any sources that talk about this, and it seems that other sources such as Zaloga only mention them off hand, and in contradicting statements as well based on earlier posts here in this thread. The mystery continues...

This and the Rzhev meat grinder are to parts of the Eastern Front that I am most interested in. Would love to eventually see games/modules that cover both. So based on the numbers that we have been provided, it seems that between 1985 and 1991 the numbers of T-80s, and tanks in general in Eastern Germany changed a lot. The numbers and sources I have are primarily for 1985. Some sources come from 83 and some come from 86. The Soviets initiated a massive overhaul of their ground forces in Germany in 1983, and then again in 1986. It appears that the latter overhaul was aimed at increasing the number of T-80 tanks in Guards divisions by a significant factor. It would seem, based solely off the numbers that the Soviets were able to drastically increase the number of T-80s, so that the balance came out to be something like 50% T-80 and 50% T-64. All of this brings a few questions to mind: Where did all the T-72's go? By best guess there was something like 22,000 T-72's lying around (all variants included) Why did the Soviets continue to upgrade the T-72 if they weren't planning on using them? (T-72 obr. 1989) Where did all the T-80's go? It seems that just after the end of the Cold War that a significant amount of T-80's disappeared, and the Russian Federation switched back to using primarily the T-72, specifically the T-72B2/3 and the T-72BU (also known as the T-90) Today, I do not know of any Russian unit comprised of T-80's. Great discussion by the way!

Good list Marshal! I second @Sublime's recommendations. I would also add the following, "The Guns at Last Light" by Rick Atkinson (The third book in his Liberation trilogy) "Crusade in Europe" by Dwight D. Eisenhower "The Men of Company K" by Harold P. Leinbaugh and John D. Campbell "Beyond the Beachhead" by Joseph Balkoski Tons of great books out there. For every book I read, it seems another three are added to my list!