HerrTom

Try Red Army by Ralph Peters.  Lt Plinnikov is commanding a BRDM platoon.  He doesn't last long in the story, but it is a good description of how the asset is used in the larger picture.

Soviet forces cross the Czech border into Bavaria.

Soviet forces cross the Czech border into Bavaria.

Soviet forces cross the Czech border into Bavaria.

Soviet forces cross the Czech border into Bavaria.

Ahh ok, that makes sense. Most of the screenshots I take that I want to stylize I after the fact in photoshop. Like here:

Being able to toggle a setting on and off for screenshots is a really good idea though!
Now that you mention it, I do notice it, but to my eye (admittedly not very artistic at all) I don't find it too off putting. 
Btw, I really like the second shot with the BTRs. Very immersive, has a great weight of events feel to it, like the calm before a huge storm. 

Soviet forces cross the Czech border into Bavaria.

A couple of random piccies 

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Follow the link from sburke you modding maniac ............
 

Congrats to all you MFers that have been hamming away on this for the last twenty years. You did it!
Now, where's my Nam?
 
Mord.

I've only had a chance to play with Killing Time at Kirtorf in detail so far and am having a blast. Everyone has done an amazing job and deserves all of the kudos. I'd like to say it feels like we've come a long way, every CM title has better and better maps. (Plus, I'm a sucker for really big maps)

Don't forget France. Unique and seriously good kit.

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.

About 250 square kms worth for the US and Soviet campaigns, if I recall.  A lot of very big maps and they are all avail in the Master Maps folder....the really good ones are Pete’s, the less-so are mine.

That's very kind, but kudos to all the usual suspects who also contributed. I'm only responsible for the US campaign maps and two scenario maps. Plenty of good stuff all round.
P

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.

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.

First off, thank you and welcome to the game.  This post is really a place for you guys to Q&A with the game designers.  Questions on features, campaigns or scenarios can go here and we will try to get to them to help you out.
So if you are new to the CM you probably want to start easy and small to get the feel for the game.  Check the scenario notes as designers often will highlight which side may be easy or harder.  For example, "Valley of Ashes" is by-design, pretty easy for the Blue side as an opportunity for beginners to get a feel for a larger scenario.  While the Red side of this scenario is pretty tough.  I will let the other scenario designers chime on on their babies.
I will say that the Soviet Training scenarios by Cpt Miller are a very good place to start for a lot of people as full Cold War Soviet formations, in all their glory, are a bit of a new thing for the series.
For the Campaigns, I highly recommend people start with NTC.  Bil and GeorgeMC did a really good job in putting together some very good scenarios that can get people into the groove of maneuvering in the context of a Cold War battlefield. 
Then I would suggest moving onto the US Campaigns.  1982 was designed to be the primary but 1979 turned out to be really interesting, so players choice really.   1982 is probably a little easier as 1979 can be challenging with the older equipment set.
Finally, I would then suggest that players can gird their loins for the Soviet Campaigns.  These are designed to be tough and a challenge to manage.  Every battle is battalion sized and frankly pretty tough.  The March or Die version is designed to be downright unfair to the loins, but also probably the most realistic....you have been warned.
Anyway, enjoy and have fun!   

No patience is not my strong side.  In my meager defense I have been retired for about 10 years now...I don't golf and I don't surf....I do walk my three dogs and love my disabled wife of 29 years.   Just saying
 

Manual is in russian, I think you can skip through google translit.  😃

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.

For most line units during the soviet era it was pretty much completely numeric IIRC. 
It depended on the commander of the higher unit, but the numbers on the side of the vehicles were the callsign for that squad + vehicle (especially because the squad's radio was the vehicle). 
One way I've seen it was XYZ, where X was the battalion number, Y the company in the battalion, and Z the squad/vehicle in the company.
So 346 would be 3rd battalion, 4th company, 6th squad/vehicle. Soviet companies were usually 10 strong, with XX0  being the company commander, XX1 through XX3 1st platoon, XX4 through XX6 2nd platoon, XX7 through XX9 third platoon. The 1, 4, and 7 callsigns would be the platoon leaders for their platoons.
Because the vehicles were their main radio source, I believe most units simply stayed and communicated on their respective company net. 

Been lurking for a while and decided to sign up for the forums and hopefully add to the discussion since I'm all hyped up for CM:CW!
I was browsing the Googles and found this bibliography file of 10 Cold War related books and figured I should share. I believe almost all of these have already been mentioned, but I like the brief description for each book. 
I'd like to make it clear that I did not make this list - I'm just sharing (and formatted and edited it a tiny bit to make it easier to read!).
https://img.lib.msu.edu/general/events/contest/2006/2006GrevstadBib.pdf  written by Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock
For those who don't want to click away: copy/paste below the break - book names are in bold, author names in italics.
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“Ten Literary Accounts of a War that Was Never Fought”
Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock
Bibliography List:
- World War 3. Bidwell, Sheldon, ed. (1978).
Though non-fictional, Sheldon's work takes on an air of fiction when it hypothesizes about how a third world war in Europe might realistically start, and how it would play out. Like other books in this collection, slogging but indecisive conventional warfare inevitably leads to the use of nuclear weapons.
- Red Storm Rising. Clancy, Tom. (1986).
Clancy is, of course, the best-known author of the group included here. This work, one of his earliest, describes a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict on land and on the seas.
- Armor at Fulda Gap: A Visual Novel of the War of Tomorrow. Cook, J. L. (1990).
Cook's illustrated work is an unusual mix of fact and fiction-of real-world armaments that would have been used to fight a third world war as well as fantastic imaginings of what the near future might hold. The title of the book makes reference to two common themes in the theory and literature describing a NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation in Europe: the Fulda Gap, a historical passage-a "gap" in the otherwise rough terrain-from eastern Europe to the west, named after the German city; and armor, the tanks and mechanized vehicles that would contend for this strategic region.
- Team Yankee. Coyle, Harold. (1987).
This best-selling work intimately chronicles the efforts of an American tank platoon in defending a small swath of West Germany during a Warsaw Pact invasion. The story is based on the Hackett's The Third World War: August 1985, which Coyle acknowledges in his introduction.
- The Third World War: August 1985. Hackett, John, General Sir. (1978). 
This influential account of World War III is told by a British general. The illustrated edition features images of the battles, including the two terminal moments of the short war: nuclear strikes on Birmingham, England and Minsk.
- The Third World War: The Untold Story. Hackett, John, General Sir. (1982).
 Hackett's follow-up fleshes out and expands the narrative begun in "August 1985."
- First Clash: Combat Close-Up in World War Three. Macksey, Kenneth (1984)
First Clash offers a Canadian take on NATO's efforts to repulse the Red Army during its invasion of West Germany. That this fiction is based in fact is emphasized through the use of annotated maps, images, and text boxes that contain discursive notes on tactics, armament, military organization, etc.
- The War That Never Was. Palmer, Michael A. (1994).
Written after the Cold War ended, this book describes World War III on a global scale (a war that "never was"), as told by a fictional Russian character to his old enemy and new ally: an American.
- Red Army. Peters, Ralph. (1989).
Peters's book is unique in that it tells the story of a conflict in Europe from the perspective of soldiers in the Red Army. This is perhaps one of the best written of the books of this genre.
- Red Thrust. Zaloga, S. J. (1989). 
Though no less fictional than any of the other works included here, Zaloga's text reads almost like a casebook. He offers a series of hypothetical NATO-Warsaw Pact battle scenarios in Western Europe, each with an accompanying postmortem: tactical strengths, weaknesses, and what might have been done by military leaders to affect a different outcome.
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Hope this helps some, and also thanks for all of the recommendations so far. I currently have a few of these on the way!
-RT

After the exam, in hindsight, I realized this was a... Hind sight! 😂

Really enjoying CMSF2, two missions into the Highland Games campaign. After playing CMBN for the last few months fighting and manoeuvring in the desert feels very fast paced and exciting, not to mention how great it feels taking out a tank from across a huge map with a Javelin launcher..