HerrTom

Look there's a Ukrainian BTR-70 coming! We have an RPG-7, and 4 RPG-26s. Get them!
 

 
To be on the safe side, let's fire all our AT weapons! 5 projectiles away!
(the fifth is aimed so high it is not visible on the screenshot)

 
Of course, all of them missed...
 

 

First I want to say I fully support Battlefront's and the Cold War designers decision not to simulate chemical weapons use in Cold War.
I'm not qualified enough to critique the linked essay, but the author argues, despite all the major players training to defend against chemical attack, their use would probably not have occurred in our Cold War gone hot Germany setting.
 
Collections: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore? – A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (acoup.blog)

But he doesn't ignore them.

Apologies for the error and confusion created by the reference to a "First Blitzkrieg". The mistake has been corrected and the responsible parties have been sacked.

No - Combatintman was on the other side .... surprised they hung on for so long really ...
 

Something else to note re: ZSU-23-4 vs M163 is that the former had a Radar fire control system while the latter only had a Radar ranger. Thus, the Shilka can leverage its FCS to put shells where the computer expects the aircraft to be when they arrive vs the M163 where the gunner has to eyeball it.  I think this disparity, more than any other, makes the Shilka far more effective at the AAA role.

You're all missing the point ... given BFC's record with predicting conflicts in their games, it must mean that Black Sea will get Brits in a module.

Lots of other big maps in the other titles too though. Blur and lack of detail has been a constant issue with these games since I started playing about 8 years ago. Lots of posts about it too. It's not something that started with CMCW.

At QB start, export the roster of your side as a text file (indented for unit hierarchy), possibly also listing their key equipment (as seen in the "special equipment" slot). Ability to define fixed camera positions that can be called with a shortcut. Use system fonts instead of the tiny pixelish fonts we see today. Ability to run app in a window (as opposed to full screen). This would enable me to see the battlefield while doing my admin in external apps (like map.army). Ability to re-name units or leaders. This would solve the problem that the QB random unit roster gives me 3 "Recon Platoons" (i. e. all with the same name) or multiple leaders with the same name. Of course, the AI could simply avoid that problem by itself. Not a high priority. Some things that have been mentioned before:
Co-op support, i. e. splitting the force of one side between at least 2 players. Contour lines or better terrain shading to see elevations better. LOS check improvement, as asked for by RocketMan. That said, I am mostly happy with the game as it is. I come from boardgaming and consider CM as a replacement for admin-intensive games like ASL, so graphics etc. do not have a high priority for me.

Thanks and very glad you enjoyed it.
That is not a bad point, I think we can amend the mission briefing.  As to the tac map, lemme check but if you keep going the follow on forces fall more in line with the Tac map.  The thing with the Soviets is that at a tactical level they were pretty much committed from the word “go”.  As a Bn commander you would not really have the FSE pull into those woods and carefully prod for enemy contacts (that is more the CRPs job).  Force preservation is very important but so is momentum, that is the Soviet dilemma both in the game and historically.  But Soviet force preservation is different than US definitions, losing 30% is not out of the ordinary..again so long as you can keep momentum.
We can look at giving the player more of this in the briefing so it feels a bit less like a “gotcha”.

Something else to note re: ZSU-23-4 vs M163 is that the former had a Radar fire control system while the latter only had a Radar ranger. Thus, the Shilka can leverage its FCS to put shells where the computer expects the aircraft to be when they arrive vs the M163 where the gunner has to eyeball it.  I think this disparity, more than any other, makes the Shilka far more effective at the AAA role.

I've noticed BMP-2s using HE-I against M113s which seems like an odd ammo choice. Could it be because they're targeting the gunner?  It ends up my BMPs failed to kill M113s multiple times because they fired HE at it.  This one fired 26 HE rounds, getting lots of hits but no kill.

Something else to note re: ZSU-23-4 vs M163 is that the former had a Radar fire control system while the latter only had a Radar ranger. Thus, the Shilka can leverage its FCS to put shells where the computer expects the aircraft to be when they arrive vs the M163 where the gunner has to eyeball it.  I think this disparity, more than any other, makes the Shilka far more effective at the AAA role.

Something else to note re: ZSU-23-4 vs M163 is that the former had a Radar fire control system while the latter only had a Radar ranger. Thus, the Shilka can leverage its FCS to put shells where the computer expects the aircraft to be when they arrive vs the M163 where the gunner has to eyeball it.  I think this disparity, more than any other, makes the Shilka far more effective at the AAA role.

It hits the tree and the T-64 fires back accurately destroying the launcher? 😎

Remember your training, Corporal!

Corporal did not in fact remember his training. The Dragon ploughed into the street and they received a kindly worded reply delivered by 125mm express mail.
Meanwhile, the rest of the company deploys on a hillside, searching for signs of Ivan.

Good scouting gave us some good warning, allowing us to catch a forward security element by surprise.

T-64s are beasts! This one ate a TOW and kept trucking along.

Thankfully, Potash Platoon was able to finish it off.

Meanwhile, Sgt Frazier of 2nd Platoon/B Company unloads into defensive positions, ready to hit the Soviets hard!

 

Soviet forces cross the Czech border into Bavaria.

Long time player of CO2 (and 1, which was just CO). Better than OK, it's an outstanding game. I suppose you could use it for scenario creation, keeping in mind that in pretty much any CO2 scenario, you'd have to play to some point and then pick an interesting section of the overall battlefield and slice it to be a CM scenario, due to the map and unit sizes of CO2. There is plenty of detail under the hood listing all the equipment and personnel of every unit  and their casualty state, which you could take and apply to force selection in CM.
What you'd be doing is taking an existing historical battle/mini-campaign, playing it out partway using your own methods, and then at some point stopping to select part for a semi-historical/what-if scenario for CM. Getting all that info from CO2 to CM would be kind of tedious, but you could do it. Plus you'd have to create your own map based on what you sliced from CO2. The fidelity of the maps in CO2 is nice, but not the level of granularity of CM.
Anyway, CO2 is a lot of fun. Different level, but a pretty capable AI, and there are many scenario sets available. Also if you check the LnL forums there are some user made battles that are excellent. There's a 3 or 4 scenario Caen campaign that's really great (and huge!).
 
Dave

The fact that some  of the scenario names end in number really messes with the PBEM numbers.
First turn auto names from "Tank training 1980" -> "Tank training 1981" -> "Tank training 1982" and so on.....
should be "Tank training 1980 001" but I think this is "engine limitation" so I renamed to "1980 Tank training 001". I think this should be the fix implemented to the game.

Good question.  First off we wanted to make sure that if a player got stuck that they still had a chance to play out the scenarios in the campaign.  Second we wanted to give them a chance for H2H, some really good opportunity for play there.  We did do minimal rebalancing here because players can simply go into the editor and tweak for 2 player.  In other days we could do an entire Rumblings of War tourney using these ten scenarios.  They are not symmetrical by-design so testing out players under these conditions would be highly interesting.
Why '82 and no Blue AI?  Same answer to both...we ran out of time.  I was close to pulling the trigger on doing up Blue AI but we did not have time to properly test it.  And '82, because it was really the original US Campaign to coincide with the Soviet one (which we did leave all locked up and nasty), and again we ran out of time to take on '79.
The campaign standalones are really there as bonus content to allow you guys to play em or play with them in the editor.  The risk was people could go in and see all of the AI plans (i.e. cheating) but our thinking was "well it is your money" and so should be your choice.
 

Well thank you for the feedback, always gratifying to see that the campaigns are making people happy.  I really hope you saved and can take another run at mission 5.
So Route 66 is where the campaign kind of takes the kid gloves off.  First off, it is an ME with very little intel on the enemy, highly realistic by the third day of the war.  Recon assets would be highly degraded by this point, so formations are at risk of smashing into each other without the "layers of eyes" they would normally have.  So in this mission you need to really lean in quickly, find the enemy and interdict them before they can get on their terrain objectives.  The US side wins by denying the Soviet side, and not losing too much in the process.   "But where are the Soviet objectives, Capt?"  Ah, again part of the puzzle, the US player need to kind of figure that out with what recon assets you have, or simply cut out the mystery and hit the Soviet forces as early as possible.  Soviet follow the standard doctrine template for an ME. If you stopped the Soviets in your game, then my guess is that you lost just a few too many friendlies doing it.
You were so close, tactical victory is the threshold to move on.  I hope you can make it past, I really like mission 6, 7 and 8.  If you find it impossible, you can always play them as standalones, they are; Bad and Worse (mission 6), The Citadel (mission 7) and Unhook the Leash (mission 8).  But based on your track record, I don't think you will need to.
I don't think we are doing Steam achievements but if we did there would be one for making it to Mission 5 along the victory track in a single go.  And then another for making through the entire US campaign in a single go.  If you can beat the Soviet March or Die in a single go, the military should recruit you Enders Game style.

Well I think I can answer some of these questions.  First off, let me say that the experience levels in-game are already a pretty soft concept to begin with, so trying to figure out what a "realistic" experience level is for anyone side is accepting a level of abstraction from the start.
So first, the in-game context as outlined by the backstory.  This is a desperate Soviet gambit, they are on a very tight schedule to break through West Germany as quickly as possible before the West can 1) move reinforcements to theatre or 2) collectively decide on a nuclear response.  As such the Soviets are going to put good troops in the initial attacks (as seen in the Soviet Campaign) and their best troops in the break out, which occurs during the US Campaign.  So basically these are the best troops the Soviets have in the entire theatre in this break out push down Route 66 to the Rhine (that is why you see T80s later).  This fits with Soviet doctrine, as well as the strategic/operational picture on the ground.  
The US side is different.  The US put its best troops (in this region, the 11th ACR and 3rd Armd) forward as a screen and held second ech in depth.  This makes sense as the strategy was not an offensive breakthrough but attrition and delay until the West could build mass (or agree on WMDs).  In the US Campaign the player has troops from the 8th Inf Div, that was very deliberate as this division was always considered a depth division in the grand scheme of things.  It had lead elements forward but that is not the 28th Inf Regt, which was actually based west of Frankfurt.  That is why the 28th get M60A1s and not A3s to M1s and is also reflected in troop quality - went with Regular-High-Fit.
So right off the bat, in this what-if universe (remember this is a fictional timeline) there would likely be qualitative disparity between Soviet break out forces and in-depth US ones as portrayed in the campaign due to strategic/operational context.  Now how does that translate to CM?  Good question, probably closer to Reg-Vet, but considering that the vast majority of combatants on both sides have never seen combat and none/very few (perhaps some that observed the Arab Israeli conflict) have ever seen mechanized warfare on this scope and scale, we would realistically be seeing a whole lotta shades of Green.
Then there is play balancing.  The campaign is single player, which means that a human brain is playing a machine.  As strong as the Tac AI is in CM it cannot compare to a human player, so to offset this very real abstraction, a level of tweaking had to be done to make things challenging.  So for some scenarios we went with Crack Soviet troops to ensure that the very unrealistic fact that this is not two human players did not throw things out of whack too far.
Hope that answers your question somewhat.

I'd rather have a campaign that works as intended due to those factors rather than one that was a dud.  I never really get excited or completely bound by experience levels or their labels - ultimately this is a game and if it isn't playable because the Soviets were all conscripts or whatever then that is an epic fail.  The campaign tested well and feedback so far on the boards seems to be good.

CM:A2 Confirmed...
(CMFI maps )
Just need afghani skins!