HerrTom

Trying to replicate that old Kodachrome look. Not quite there yet. Props to @Pete Wenman for honestly the best maps I've seen in CM to-date! It's a lot of fun to play missions that aren't always knife fights in a phone booth.

I translated a document explaining FAC procedures a while ago, perhaps this might be interesting as well? https://www.mediafire.com/file/z2i597vp4zfdkab/Soviet_FAC_procedures.pdf/file According to this, specific entities might be given a callsign in aviation, typically the brigade combat management group (HAT [kaska] in this case) and the actual forward controller (VOLLEY-21 [zalp-21] in this case). The aircraft is given the numeric callsign, however.

This was a brilliant read and had me on the edge of my seat (quite uncomfortable being there for a month!) the whole time. Congrats The_Capt for the victory, and I think you deserve an honourary medal in trash talk too

Fire and smoke can indeed be modded, though they all have the same limitations as explosions, in that they are only a single texture and their generation is controlled by the game engine. I'd love for some more control over particles, though I understand since smoke is a pretty integral part of the game simulation that that is probably one of the reasons it can't be changed beyond new textures.

Figured this subforum would be best since these explosions aren't really family-specific. The news of CM Cold War inspired me to dig back into making explosions. I present to you my latest (and greatest) explosion! Get it here (link)! Animated demonstration here: https://i.imgur.com/hel1fau.mp4 The animation really sells it I think, since it doesn't look too great in stills yet, but I'm working on it!

Ach! I skipped right over it haha. Agreed, though I recall it being fairly light in the area of land operations. The other two I got some ten or so years ago, found Central Front hiding in the back of a used book shop in Boston.

Decided to pull out all my relevant books in case any have been missed in this thread. Since I realise now my picture isn't too great and I don't want to get them back out:, from top to bottom: First Clash: Combat Close-Up in World War Three by Kenneth Macksey. World War 3 Canadian Style, shows a lot of nitty-gritty tactical detail that many other books find wanting. Super detailed and a good ride too. The Third World War by Sir John Hackett. I honestly found it pretty dry and hawkish, which I guess fits Hackett's objectives in writing it. Lots of scenario ideas though I found a lot of stereotypes (and worse, mirror-imaging!) that I don't think survive a retrospective look. I got it as one of the "must-reads" but honestly am not too big a fan. The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis. The historiography is getting a little dated by now, but it's still a solid single-volume history of the cold war, a real credit to Gaddis and his editors. Red Thrust by Steven Zaloga. Reads like a cross between Clancy's work and First Clash. A good read, showcases some of the major technical gaps between WP and NATO equipment in the 80s. The Offensive by A. A. Sidorenko (translated). I know I already mentioned this, it's a dry but very informative read. Can't get better than a primary source on Soviet military thought, though! Soviet AirLand Battle Tactics by William Baxter. Intentionally misnomered, it's a surprisingly easy read on the complicated subject. Definitely a good way to get started looking at the other side of the Iron Curtain. The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Maneuver by David Glantz. Glantz is probably one of the best experts on the Soviet military in the west. Great historical context bringing the development of Soviet tactical manoeuvre to the modern day. The Bear Went Over the Mountain by Les Grau and David Glantz. Largely a translation of a Frunze Academy report, drills down into specific engagements in the Soviet-Afghan war and identifies problems and failures in the execution of operations. Interesting and detailed commentary by Grau and Glantz ,too. The Soviet-Afghan War by Les Grau. Some duplication from above, includes information on other combat arms beyond tactical units like logistics and artillery. Armies of Nato's Central Front by David Isby and Charles Kamps, Jr. Really just an encyclopaedia of militaries in Europe, good info on OOBs and the like. Kriegsschauplatz Deutschland by Siegfried Lautsch. Lautsch is a retired NVA Colonel, which allowed him some great insight into the Warsaw Pact side of the equation. Great diagrams, clear and detailed language. Honestly my favourite of the books. Also showcases plans and wargames which aren't the much misunderstood Six Days to the River Rhine!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like we can expect both main forces to run into each other in a nice clash of steel that the Capt might win due to his overwhelming firepower advantage. My read of the coming manoeuvres: https://imgur.com/scpRyd I'm not sure Bil is expecting a large push over the southern part of the valley, so it'll be interesting to see if he sniffs it out in time.

A chemical attack would occur before your troops got to the battle anyway. Presumably, you could simulate it in your missions by reducing initial unit strength as applicable and reducing everyone's fitness by a level or two to simulate the NBC gear. Unfortunately, there still wouldn't be visuals for it, though. Maybe a modder could figure out an [nbc] tag?

I love this game, by far the most playable game of its type I've seen. Only one I actually finished a game with (major Soviet victory, I trounced my opponent!). There's also The Next War: Modern Conflict in Europe (1978). Never finished a game of that one, though (the continuation of the series by GMT is much better IMO). If you want to drill down to the corps level there's also Less than 60 Miles by Thin Red Line that came out recently with some really interesting C3 mechanics in it. +1 to this. Dry, but immensely informative, and likely a lot more accurate to the time period of this game than the field manuals or other writings from much later. There's also Dave Glantz's The Soviet Conduct of Operational Maneuver that covers the history and development of modern Soviet operational thought. Soviet AirLand Battle Tactics by William Baxter is also a solid work (don't let the name fool you - he wrote it to be more "approachable" by western officers). Not as dry as many others, too.

Where's my Bundeswehr? Nah, my dog and my wife in turn came to check on me due to my squeals of excitement over seeing this. I'm very excited to see this AAR pan out, especially with your exquisite tactical eye, Bil! The marketing page mentions different C2 systems between the forces. Is this something that might be demonstrated in this AAR (or anything different than what we've already seen like in CMRT?)

ACSM is a DRM'd book format for Adobe Digital Editions. I've heard Zaloga is quite good on the technical side but can be found wanting on the historical analysis sometimes, where there are others who provide a better picture (like Glantz).

Okay, I lied. One more picture. While trying to decide what scenario to do an AAR on, I found I needed to really tweak stuff around to get nighttime looking good. Video here: https://i.imgur.com/BggbJjX.mp4

Now this is seriously cool Unforgivable that I haven't played it yet.

I can't believe I haven't given this project a go yet! Downloading it now... I have some pre-set tweaks I use for time-of-day mostly. Mostly to darken nighttime properly. I generally use the same setting on different maps though. I'll port it over to CM:SF and give it a go

I mostly use my settings for screenshots and videos in-game. It's playable, if you turn off the depth of field, but some of the icons can get hard to read sometimes. Properly implemented, it would of course not apply to UI elements and would properly handle transparent objects. The Menu does odd stuff to it too, so I disable it until I'm actually in a game. @Howler I find it helpful to target a look, and then add effects to bring it closer to your goal. For example, I took this picture a few months ago. I need to keep in mind that the light is yellower in the photo than it should be at noon, so I can tone down that effect. Ukraine is obviously a lot greener than chaparral, another thing to keep in mind. ' My two big things still are that the blacks are too dark (Kodak 800 washes out dark colours to a very dark brown typically) and the film noise in my screenshot is not right yet.

My last bit of spamming this thread... I'm planning on doing an AAR in the near future instead. Russian Razvedka approach a compound sitting on the commanding heights of the town. The heights were remarkably poorly defended. A brief firefight saw the Ukrainian defenders handily defeated by withering cannon fire. (Anyone else notice that Razvedka are reluctant to use weapons other than the SVD? It seems to make them particularly vulnerable in firefights). Strong points identified by the BRDM assault company are blasted by supporting artillery coordinated from the heights. The BRDM company dismounts advance through the village. Even though my Reconnaissance Battalion is facing an entire Infantry Battalion, heavy supporting fires have been instrumental in dislodging stubborn defenders. Unfortunately, every single casualty hurts when all of my squads are 4-man teams, while the Ukrainians outnumber me two-to-one.

I'm not sure what the capabilities of the Nvidia controls are, but I was able to achieve it all via Reshade, you can see in the linked video. It's a number of effects like (off the top of my head) ambient light, depth haze, a levels adjustment, a colour lookup table to get the film look, film grain, and SSAO, plus (depending on the screenshot) a depth of field shader to blur out things out of the focus plane. https://i.imgur.com/XTow0Iq.gifv If there's a stubborn enemy position, but you're the reconnaissance company of the main effort, you can just blow it to smithereens. Also a sneak peak at some new explosions I'm working on. Looks like I can't embed gifv links. I could use a gif but it'd be gigantic.

Thanks! It's not exactly how it looks in-game for me right now... but it could be. I use reshade for the depth stuff and film grain - the real kicker I think is a colour lookup table I applied in Photoshop that transforms the colours to approximate Kodachrome film (my inspiration: I bought an old Praktica a few months ago and have been shooting a lot with that film). It would be pretty straightforward for me to take that LUT and apply it back into the game, though. ...And I got distracted while typing this and just did it. Here's a split-screen including all of the effects. Ambient occlusion is still the toughest to get right... I'm not happy with it yet. Here is the lookup table if anyone wants it:

Been away for a while... Decided to drop back into CM:BS with the excellent Wrong Turn at Albuquerque scenario. Dragged the Russians into a real slug-fest since I didn't get my Javelins into good covering positions. I found my M136s far more useful. Though a Bradley at close range is a real threat to T-72s!

I'm a little late to the discussion, but I'd like to point out that if the IR sight can see through the smoke, and the laser is on a similar wavelength, it too will penetrate through the smoke, allowing guidance. From a systems engineering standpoint, this would make sense. If your operator can see the Target, he should be able to fire on it. That would preclude a visual wavelength laser. Beyond that, you'd want your guidance laser to be on a low wavelength like infrared, since it will be less affected by battlefield obscurants like smoke, dust, and bushes. It depends. TOW is wire guided, SACLOS, meaning instead of laser beam riding, the control unit tracks a flare on the missile and sends commands to the missile to fly down the crosshair. Most Russian ATGMs work in a similar way, except the missile itself guides onto a laser instead of the launch unit guiding it.

I remember in ARMA you could offload all or part of the AI from a server to a particular client that dedicated to doing all of the AI calculations. I think ARMA's AI was CPU limited, so since the client was able to run faster, the AI acted faster and seemed smarter.

I also agree with you by and large, though I would say the key is applying the realism and detail where appropriate. I still play cardboard occasionally (though my wife won't touch them with a barge pole) and something that particularly newer wargames (like the COIN series or even the newer Next War games) have done well is really narrowing the focus of the details to make the point of the wargame really pronounced without dragging you into unnecessary bean counting.

I can see the beautiful pictures too! Further tweaking (and enjoying the huge amount of CMSF2 scenarios!). No post processing. Current post processing. I think this shows off all of the fun depth stuff you can do, particularly the ray tracing. You can pull a lot of depth out of the image and really show how beautiful Battlefront's models are. I agree with Erwin's earlier comment that it was too dark, though I think it also depends a lot on weather and time of day There are two things I wish I could fix, but unfortunately can't. 1) depth based shading showing through smoke (and trees in all other CM titles except this one) and 2) the exaggerated effect on grass.

@Bud Backer I'm seeing your images as grey Do Not Enter signs! I've been playing around with screen space ray tracing in CM... it's a bit finnicky but it can get some nice occlusion and reflection. It's subtle, but look for shading in places that light would have trouble reaching - in corners, in the grille. Wiesels move into position, ready to meet a Syrian assault. Pop goes the T-62. You can see the shading in the Wiesel's tracks in particular.