HerrTom

I said I'd make an illustrated guide, and I did!  Hopefully it helps some of those who were asking me about it  
Step Zero is to download the Reshade distribution at the bottom of the page here: https://reshade.me/
Steps 1 through 8 are in my guide here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1LG9Og33Re95sPx4KyKtk98DjyUyK-Qcn
And my preset is here https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dQ5zgLkyS5RRI559yJG929QFs2YqnRdb
Hopefully the archive works, I didn't really do extensive testing on it.

None of us believed that we would actually use those tactical nuclear weapons. I was nuclear artillery qualified back then. The most important thing we learned was how to use the explosive charges to blow them into tiny pieces so they didn't fall into the Russians hands when we got overrun. 
NO ONE believed we would nuke West Germany to save it. Everyone believed that once any nuclear weapon was used, it would be impossible to contain it to a strictly "tactical" exchange. That was the entire reason for the INF treaty. The weapons covered by it are very destabilizing as they leave almost no reaction time for the other side to make a decision on what to do. And there were  A LOT of them. 10s of thousands.

I'm seriously enjoying this demo.  I ❤️ my Marder.

A Syrian ZSU-23-4 eats a MILAN, courtesy of the Bundeswehr

Los, Hunde! Wollen sie ewig leben?!

Syrian Infantry dismount under accurate German rifle fire.  Apparently MILAN-3 has quite the minimum range that I had forgotten about!
(Side note - CM:SF2 foliage is opaque! Looks a lot better, I think)

Did you ever read Red Army by Ralph Peters? It came out in the late '80s, which is when I read it. It covered some of the same ground and I found it to be in many ways the most plausible book in this genre at the time. Of course a great deal has changed since then, but if we are talking about a Fulda Gap scenario, it would be well to study this.
Michael

OK so let me get this straight. So far HerrTom and a couple other people agreed with Capt Miller agreeing wirh Bil Hardenberger who agreed with me about the use of tac nukes? Geez you guys think if you.re gonna toss kudos out you could name the first guy in the chain.
Ok Bil H i think you may have me, and JK may be right I may be thinking of the Sheridan.  HOWEVER to remark on the service trials thing... Im certain youve heard the tales and seen the movies about the Bradleys development cycle and the pentagon/mil indust complex trying to just push through an inferior weapon system knowing it had major flaws..
DMS Gorbachev was ONLY in power in the 80s for about half the 80s. And I think thats a sorta "unique" view to say he "surrendered" to the west. i hate to see what you think him "winning" would have looked like.
Of course Soviet 60s plans had zillions of nukes. NATO plans until the 80s had nuclear response if you guys shat and didnt wipe enough with old Pravdas   (interestingly when you read BAOR yarns on Arrse.com the stories from the Brit SOXMIS mission - basically legit open spying - one of their absolute gold mine sources for info was old Soviet latrine spots after maneuvers. The socialist paradise didnt have toilet paper for the average folk I guess, nor even lower field grade ones.)
Ohh JK that was interesting to bad Suvorov has been thoroughly discreditted and I dont believe anything he says. Especially about WW2. ESPECIALLY.

Some facts to go with all this fascinating punditry.

Firing the 152 mm gun/launcher on the Sheridan WOULD decollimate the infrared beam transmitter from bore axis, killing ATGM capability. This was because of the shock loads on a very light chassis and was reported in ARMOR magazine in the late 70s or early 1980s. Never saw any such discussion regarding the much heavier and stoutly constructed M60A2. What I did see were complaints about what a beast it was in terms of maintenance, what with all that advanced tech.
Shortly after the Berlin Wall fell, Armed Forces Journal, a big deal defense magazine, published a brief but harrowing report of a key finding from a recovered Soviet war plan for Europe. Hope you're sitting down. It envisioned the use of no fewer than 200 tactical nuclear weapons (strategic weapons held in reserve as a deterrent) and being to the English Channel in two weeks. Memory hazy as to CW, but I recall no mention of BW. Would further note the Russians had 'mask breaker" agents to defeat respiratory protection and new gen CW weapons combat tested in Afghanistan--Novichok (recently in the news) and a super powerful knockout agent called Blue X,. The last was used in Afghanistan for sure. And let's not forget the tricothecene Yellow Rain munitions. Don't buy the bee poop nonsense. It doesn't cause whole villages to projectile vomit blood, which is but one of the grisly effects.

The Russians didn't trust the Poles as allies and didn't at all relish the thought of the Poles being in a position to strangle their all-important rear and transshipment point (rail gauge conversion) where reinforcements and supplies came in from Russia. Suvorov/Rezun says this was the view when he was in the GRU working in the GRU HQ for the Carpathian Military District, and I've seen it elsewhere. Meanwhile, we in the West were concerned about the significant force increment and modern equipment the Poles contributed to the overall effort, including highly capable SOF equipped to do Skorzeny type false flag ops while equipped with the right vehicles!
What was the only NATO (including US) ground force unit that scared the Russians, per Suvorov/Rezun? The BAOR.  The GRU was so obsessed with it that when a TOP SECRET message from agents of the Carpathian Military District reported two Chieftains had been seen on a certain bridge, but the agents failed to note direction of travel, GRU there sent a blistering admonishment regarding this, for it was vital to know whether the tanks were being added to or subtracted from the BAOR's force strength. 
Finally, as I've said many times, if BFC is going to do a Fulda Gap game, it is essential that the armor-anti-armor situation be correctly depicted. As I've noted previously, we were grossly deficient on both ends of the equation. LAW was obsolete, likewise Dragon, even TOW until mod after mod was fielded. In fact, the classified assessment in 1984 was that the only two  weapons we had that could reliably defeat Russian MBTs frontally were the Hellfire and the mighty Maverick. On the other end of the scale, we discovered that in the early 1960s, in response to the T95 we didn't build), the Russians had developed and deployed HEAT munitions which would defeat that MBT's silceous cored armor. CIA's assessment in 1985, and which was briefed to some 200 defense contractor threat specialist personnel, was that the HEAT round recovered from PT-76s (using the same gun as the T-34/76) could get a frontal kill on the brand new XM1. Lots of gasps in the auditorium over that one. Felt nauseous. We also discovered that static firing cannon launched Russian HEAT munitions was a bad idea. Why? It had to do with the way the warheads were designed to take advantage of the impact kinematics, resulting in performance understatement of some 40%. Memory fuzzy on the missile side of things. This list isn't complete by any means, but I think it important to note that Shtora has proven to have significant effect vs. even TOW 2 in Syria. That being the case, I shudder to think what it would've done to stock TOW. In a nutshell, we were in a horrible situation in armor-anti-armor at a time when we were counting on our tech to get us long range kills to thin the horde, but the Russians had the cards to win the ground war, and that was their General Staff conclusion. But if you read the debriefings of top Russian defense officials, they didn't attack because of our strategic superiority. There was also the small matter that they were reading our mail in real time, thanks to the Walker-Whitworth spy op which gave the Russians key settings for crypto gear recovered from the USS Pueblo by Russian crypto specialists who went to North Korea. Said ex-KGB Major General Kalugin flatly of the situation, had war come "We would have won."
Regards,
John Kettler
 
 

I bagged a Leopard! Not in and of itself extraordinary, but I didn't take any casualties from it in the process!
A small achievement, but an achievement nonetheless.
@Vikingo I'm running with Reshade, using an Ambient Occlusion and some colour correction.  See the previous page for a link, though I've tweaked my settings since posting.

Could this be an auxiliary effect to the fleeing implementation in engine 4?  It's possible that we never really saw this happen because fleeing (without losing command, perhaps?) is more common?
Anecdotally, I've found myself disappointed in the choices the TacAI makes when it does the "self preservation" pathing mid-turn (as opposed to broken/transparent icon running).  It occurs to me that I don't really pay close attention to what the broken units are doing...

I bagged a Leopard! Not in and of itself extraordinary, but I didn't take any casualties from it in the process!
A small achievement, but an achievement nonetheless.
@Vikingo I'm running with Reshade, using an Ambient Occlusion and some colour correction.  See the previous page for a link, though I've tweaked my settings since posting.

I bagged a Leopard! Not in and of itself extraordinary, but I didn't take any casualties from it in the process!
A small achievement, but an achievement nonetheless.
@Vikingo I'm running with Reshade, using an Ambient Occlusion and some colour correction.  See the previous page for a link, though I've tweaked my settings since posting.

Syrian Mechanised Infantry assaulting a MILAN position.
I think I've played Alamo too much, though I find this scenario very hard as the Syrians.  My forces rout as soon as they take fire, and take heavy casualties as they run away (fewer than if they had shot back, I imagine!).  Particularly when storming the keep.

I know there have already been a few of these released, but thought I would show a preview of what I have been toying with...
These are based on the US Army's FM 101-5.1 .... with a little license taken to make them clear at any distance.
This image is an overview of the first AAR map I was playing with @Baneman.. yellow are FOW icons of course.  

This set includes special colors for each nation... 
...in this image I have selected a Bradley Platoon, which if you remember was playing red in this action.  The icons remain the color I chose for the US side (Infantry Blue) while selected.. they will be red when not selected.  

FOW icons showing a selection of different unit types... very easy t tell them apart.  All nations use the same FOW icon set... so no clues as to nationality until you fully ID a unit.

The following image illustrates Syrian infantry.. also note the Blue infantry.. that is one of Baneman's irregulars and was on Blue.. Ihave included an inset of that icon selected, showing that when playing blue, Syrian units will highlight green.

BMP-3 (with one infantry unit selected) showing the darker red Syrian highlight:

On the blue side...highlight insets show a British vehicle (khaki) and a German IFV (gray)...

And finally, the overview I started this post off with, but with one US Platoon highlighted...

Coming soon.. probably this weekend.  Just need to run them through some thorough tests.
Bil

Syrian Mechanised Infantry assaulting a MILAN position.
I think I've played Alamo too much, though I find this scenario very hard as the Syrians.  My forces rout as soon as they take fire, and take heavy casualties as they run away (fewer than if they had shot back, I imagine!).  Particularly when storming the keep.

Syrian Mechanised Infantry assaulting a MILAN position.
I think I've played Alamo too much, though I find this scenario very hard as the Syrians.  My forces rout as soon as they take fire, and take heavy casualties as they run away (fewer than if they had shot back, I imagine!).  Particularly when storming the keep.

I would love to see a Fulda Gap game (as well as a 1973 Yom Kippur game as well) but am fully aware that development of either would not be possible for at least the next 5 years or so. I do hope that one day it'll happen though. 
As always, obligatory +1 for Fulda Gap

Given the limited resources of Battlefront ( look how painfully slow is the proces of remaking SF ), I don't think Fulda is even on the horizon. But in some unspecified future - why not? It would sell like crazy. 

https://i.imgur.com/5Wu84xC.mp4
My understanding is that there is a bit of abstraction going on. They name the destroyer and the destroyer's real life armament, but it's simulated in game using a pair of 155's. 
Though it would be cool if we got a few actual naval gunfire support assets as part of some type of vehicle pack for CMSF2 down the road. 

cool little cinematic scene

I'm seriously enjoying this demo.  I ❤️ my Marder.

A Syrian ZSU-23-4 eats a MILAN, courtesy of the Bundeswehr

Los, Hunde! Wollen sie ewig leben?!

Do we know anything specific about the new patch and the change(s) or improvement(s) it will have?

The demo is fantastic.
That Alamo scenario is tough!
I mostly play quick battle in the newer games, since battalion-level scenarios on huge maps are somewhat rare.
I remember SF having some really good scenarios and campaign missions though.

Funny no matter how much I play this game sand zoom in looking at my pixeltruppen, I always love seeing other folks pics and perspective. Those are some great cinematic shots above.