Kinophile

Small (easy to oversee) ridges bare of concealment that cannot be flanked/evaded are the worst kind of thing, especially if there are no hills around to take a look what's behind them. A few ideas:
Have a TRP - my latest game reminded me of that. If there are reverse slopes on the map, buy that TRP. 30 pts is still cheaper than the squad you're going to loose if you crest that ridge without smoke. As far as I know, onmap mortars can also target reverse slopes, so if the ridge/hill is not too steep, you should at least be able to lay down a smoke screen that lets you crest the ridge even if you don't have a TRP.   The problem when going over the ridge with infantry is that the enemy usually is waiting for you - he's prone and stationary (good spotting, hard to spot), while your guys are moving upright (bad spotting, easy to spot).This is especially true if there is no concealment on the ridge. With vehicles, you have a very similar problem (hidden + stationary versus moving). With infantry, consider crawling over the ridge if some concealment is available. Even if you suffer casualties, they will be more limited. The big downside is that it will slow you down horribly, which increases the danger of an artillery strike if you're detected. In modern titles, this is obviously more risky as better spotting devices are available (IR/heat detection). PS: Don't fire!!! (unless you're already detected by many enemy positions). Soldiers are spotted individually. Even if one gets spotted and shot, the rest of the squad might be safe - by firing, they give away their position. When you really have to push, I think it's a good idea to take a look first. Crawl some infantry up the ridge, use the hide command to stay low, un-hide your infantry for a few turns so that they can just look over the ridge (some guys will kneel). Crawl a bit further and unhide to risk another look, etc. This increases the area you're exposing yourself to and you can observe in little increments. At some point you will have gained a picture of what's awaiting you in the dead ground on the other side. Needless to say that this takes lots and lots of time. Next, share this information (via C2) with the troops who are going to push. For the actual push, make sure that all assets crest the ridge at the same time to throw the enemy's fire into chaos (that's why I find crawling is not the method for infantry to push over a ridge) and reduce your units' total time of exposure. Area fire at the targets that you've been scouting. Try to get to the depression on the other side of the ridge fast - often the top of the ridge is exposed to many enemy positions.   With vehicles, shooting and scooting can be usefull. First scout for targets with infantry as described above. Then drive up your tanks/vehicles in hulldown positions for 10 seconds or so, either with a target arc on an identified target or an area fire order. After 10 seconds, your vehicles need to reverse back behind the ridge. Unless the enemy is very close and experienced, 10 seconds should give you a chance to retreat back into cover before the enemy can spot and zero-in on you. This is especially true against ATGMs who travel at relatively slow speed. For your next shoot & scoot, pick a different spot (the enemy will still have a suspected contact on your former position). As with infantry scouting, fight as little of the enemy at any time, expose yourself little by little. Again, fighting like this takes a lot of time. More time than many scenarios would give to you.

That might even be true
As humans we constantly are picking at what is wrong with <insert anything here> and frankly it can get a little tiresome. It is nice to be reminded to sit back and see the roses all around you so I for one am happy to see this thread start up. Thanks @kinophile. Let's keep it on track. If you want to complain about (sorry I mean suggest) something feel free to start a new thread for that there is plenty of room for all that - I'm talking to you @Pericles ...

I love the fact that after playing these games on a daily basis for years and years and I still get those "did I just see that?" and "did that just happen?" moments when units interact in surpising ways. That's a lot of credit to the engine and the realism it generates - that things never get stale and commonplace.

Steve, as someone who knows the above-mentioned Jason Williams as a personal friend (heck, we went to each other's weddings), I can assure you that game development is his full time job. You know I love the work and the games you develop, but I'm one of those that believes your frequency/methods of communicating updates with the community could be a lot better. 

The scale of the games, breadth of options available for constructing and playing through a wide variety of scenarios, and the nebulous relationship between the two of them. The decisions involved in play are often both meaningful and meaningless, a difficult paradox to replicate artificially but one true enough to the realities of tactics and war. Captured in a way most video games cannot construct convincingly because of their sterility and excessive fixation on the superficial. 

I love seeing bravery.
I recall early in CMBN playing a game where a flanking force got the jump on me and even through I was rushing reserves to the bocage line on my left flank it was going to be tight. We all know what happens to troops that are running across and open field towards an enemy sitting and waiting in said bocage. My one team on sentry duty was already down to half strength and as the fire came in and the enemy approached one of the two remaining guys gave up an started surrendering. The lone soldier left held it together and got off a few more shots hitting one of the enemy squad. The wavered and then turned and ran. The next turn my reserve arrived and secured the area.

What I love is when one guy is wounded while throwing a grenade and that this grenade is exploding killing his friends.

Scalable UI and Front end graphics. 
The front end stuff especially might require the least effort, to allow/render 1080+ size images. 
Speaking of which - enable rendering of JPG/PNG.... good lord, STILL on BMP's? 

Ability to split a squad inside a vehicle or something like that. If I have a squad inside a Bradley, I would like to be able to disembark a scout team of two men without
exposing the entire squad to small arms firing.
 

The "follow the leader" or convoy command has been a much requested (and IMO a much needed) feature since the CMx1 days.  It was mentioned as being on the drawing board for inclusion in the 4.0 upgrade, but somewhere between that upgrade's inception and its release it was dropped.  Like ammo sharing between vehicles, it appears that BF couldn't get it to work within their code.
Sadly, it's being dropped from the 4.0 upgrade does not forebode well that it'll ever be part of CMx2.  If that's the case then it's unfortunate because one of the most tiresome things about CMx2 is plotting the road movements for numerous vehicles.  It's just so much micromanagement with all the waypoint setting and use of the pause command.

Um... Hue? Fallujah? Debaltsev'? All involved "non-standard" infantry units (Marines, Mountain) performing outside their paper missions. 
The statement of Mission isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Facts and needs on the ground trump any kind of beaurocratic terminology. 
Paradropping/amphib assault/ mountain etc units are infantry with an extra feature, different tech and TOE to deal with a particular situation or provide a certain strategic, operational or tactical flexibility - but they're infantry first. That extra training often seems to instill better discipline, morale etc, making those specialized infantry even more useful outside their stated role. 
The Marines are a perfect example of a specialized yet flexible force, operating at a higher tempo and level than main stream units. All that does is make them in more in demand, more useful, more desirable to have on hand, even for situations that don't match their "stated mission". Witness, Fallujah.
Why try to force a committee's limited, politically oriented thought process on a military reality? Its pointless. No military commander pays attention to that crap, they solve the issue with the best units they can get.
If the army's Cooks just so happened to have a perfect skillset for MOUT CQB I guarantee every Colonel  would be demanding a unit of Head Chefs attached to his/her point units, the perfect beef stroganoff be damned
 
Spoken as a non-Mil, utterly lazy lay person, wedged firmly into my armchair.. 
 

As a ex-artillery officer, here are the principal differences between the types of platforms.
Mortars are high angle only and are incapable of direct fire.  Given an equal caliber, a mortar will have a higher rate of fire than a howitzer or a field gun.  Mortars (except for the very largest) can be broken down and man packed or carried by improvised transport (like the bed of a pickup truck).  For getting directly behind tall intervening terrain with fire, they are a preferred weapon.  Most effective against infantry, limited effectiveness against vehicles, emplacements and buildings.   Lethality inceases with caliber but portabillity/mobility decreases.
Howitzers are capable of direct fire, indirect fire and high angle fire.  They are either towed or self propelled.  Can get really big calibers.  Very effective against infantry, limited against vehicles and emplacements.  Preferred weapon of choice of you don't have airpower and want to level a position, a building or structure.  Biggest variety of ammuntion type - illumination, Smoke - Base Ejecting, Smoke - WP, Cannister (anti-infantry direct fire),HE, ICM, DPICM,  and smart munitions and variable time and time fused ammunition.
Field Guns are direct fire weapons and in a pinch, can do low angle indirect fire, limiting their range and usefulness.  A anti-tank gun is a example of a specialized field gun, for example.  Can get to big calibers like howitzers and are either towed or self propelled.  Not a lot of field guns are made anymore due to their limitations as tanks have largely taken over the roles the field guns used to provide.
In general, the larger the caliber, the bigger the lethal zone.  The larger the round, the smaller the CEP (Circular Error Probable) footprint - a fancy way of saying that if you want to hit a point target, you get the biggest caliber you can get as the round is more stable in the air and less affect by meterological and has a smaller CEP footprint.
The larger the caliber, the more destructive it is to vehicles and structures and emplacements.  Bigger is better.
Call or response times are not weapon dependent.  They are determined by the communications capability and doctrines of the C3 systems used by the army in question.  Lighter weapons like small mortars can be set up quickly and torn down quickly but once emplaced, once a call for fire goes out, it is the C3 systems, crew training and observer training that determine how fast you see a round on the ground.
Combat Mission games try to simulate artillery systems and capability.  Why does it take longer to get a 155mm round on the ground verses a 80mm mortar round base on what I stated above?   The delay is to simulate the fact that mortars are closer to the enemy than howitzer systems and to reflect time of flight realities.  For example,  most of the time, a mortar 1 km from the enemy will tend to have a round on the ground sooner than a 155mm howtizer shooting from 7 km away. And the chain of command / communication issues are simulated as well.  A US 155mm is not inherently faster than a Soviet built 152mm yet in game, the US player will get fire for effect well before the Syrian player will.  This is doctrine and C3I being simulated in game.  So the bigger delay in response time is coded into the game to 'simulate' that.
Hope that answers your questions.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7m1arosxuiflpa/Shader profile.7z?dl=0
Just unzip that in your CM game folder...
I have it set up so that "Shift+F1" toggles reshade on & off & that "Shift+B" toggles a border on & off.
 
PS
 
I also use the "Advanced War movie shader" for CMBN (the others seem too dark for my system) by BarbaricCo...
http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=2747
Kieme's mod pack...
And have my graphics card profile set up to overide a lot of the games functions...
 
 

That was some quality necromancy.

I wouldn't mind a Combat Mission Encyclopedia, like in ToW or Graviteam. So, you can read and learn about the equipment as it is presented in-game, compare them and maybe even just mess around. Or maybe give every unit in the game a more verbose unit card, like in Wargame. Where it tells you what the viewing angles and spotting modifiers you get. Maybe a cross-section of the vehicle with all its components specified?
I usually look these things up on google and expect them to work the same way in-game. So it's no biggie. Would be helpful for newer players though, especially those unfamiliar with certain equipment. There's always this:
http://combatmission.wikia.com
Really recommend this site, if any of you guys post there: thank you!

BTR and sburke already have given to you full answers, I can add that platoon and squad leaders in real world have much better spotting, when found themselve outside BMP. Of course, BMP has many observation devices and combined day/night sights (one for commander, one for gunner). But its angels of view too narrow: sight BPK 2-42 for gunner and TKN-3B for comamnder are both have 10 degrees only. It symply to get out and observe battlefield with own eyes and binocular. In that time gunner can observe to with own sight, which almost the same like commander.'s  When they spot target, which need supressing with BMP weapon, they communicates with own vehicle by radio or jump to the hull and shout into the hatch: "MG nest on 10 hours!!! No! Not the bush!!! Do you see a tree some right?! Did you see! Here !!! Yebash!!!" For examle, for this purpose on the side hull of tanks there is a telephone, in order an infantry has opportunity to communicate with crew w/o radio and make targeting.  

Dead Cells, Terraria, Undertale, Unturned, Stardew Valley, Stanley Parable, Player Unknowns Battle Grounds (Which is pretty crap but successful nonetheless), Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, Insurgency, Guns of Icarus (Pretty old now with a dwindling playerbase but it was great back in the day), Don't Starve, FTL: Faster then light, Door Kickers, Cold Waters, Atlantic Fleet, Mount and Blade Series.
All of those games are just from my Steam, and I do think countless is a good word for what I was talking about. All of these games were extremely popular due to the exposure/availability they have on Steam, if you asked them what the primary cause of there success was it would probably be that there game was fun to play in the first place and Steam allowed them to promote/sell it. Especially games like Cold Waters which is a niche submarine combat game benefited from the exposure it got on Steam, people who have never played sub games gave it a shot and liked it and it was financially beneficial to the guys who made it. You can tell because they released free updated for a year and an entire new campaign in the South China Sea with new units and the like.
I'm well aware there's plenty of crap on Steam and they do a god awful job of managing all of it but the fact of the matter is that Steam helps way more then it hurts in a lot of cases. The phobia of Steam on this website is frankly hilarious and the world zips on by as all of you laugh into the wind at a service that millions of people benefit from and enjoy.
We're way off topic now, I hope the OP actually got what he wanted from this thread even after it was derailed right off the bat by a useless, toxic comment.

Dead Cells, Terraria, Undertale, Unturned, Stardew Valley, Stanley Parable, Player Unknowns Battle Grounds (Which is pretty crap but successful nonetheless), Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, Insurgency, Guns of Icarus (Pretty old now with a dwindling playerbase but it was great back in the day), Don't Starve, FTL: Faster then light, Door Kickers, Cold Waters, Atlantic Fleet, Mount and Blade Series.
All of those games are just from my Steam, and I do think countless is a good word for what I was talking about. All of these games were extremely popular due to the exposure/availability they have on Steam, if you asked them what the primary cause of there success was it would probably be that there game was fun to play in the first place and Steam allowed them to promote/sell it. Especially games like Cold Waters which is a niche submarine combat game benefited from the exposure it got on Steam, people who have never played sub games gave it a shot and liked it and it was financially beneficial to the guys who made it. You can tell because they released free updated for a year and an entire new campaign in the South China Sea with new units and the like.
I'm well aware there's plenty of crap on Steam and they do a god awful job of managing all of it but the fact of the matter is that Steam helps way more then it hurts in a lot of cases. The phobia of Steam on this website is frankly hilarious and the world zips on by as all of you laugh into the wind at a service that millions of people benefit from and enjoy.
We're way off topic now, I hope the OP actually got what he wanted from this thread even after it was derailed right off the bat by a useless, toxic comment.

Thats great, he wants to add people on Steam as friends so they can communicate together. Your post contributes nothing to the topic.
They're have been countless success stories of indie games succeeding spectacularly on Steam so I would do some research.
 

Thats great, he wants to add people on Steam as friends so they can communicate together. Your post contributes nothing to the topic.
They're have been countless success stories of indie games succeeding spectacularly on Steam so I would do some research.
 

Elvis has left the building.

Elvis has left the building.

Except you'd end up with 17 sniper platoons, a SAM company and 12 supply trucks...

I keep wondering about this so I fired up the game. If you want 8km on one side you can make it 2.3km wide. And you cannot get to 4.5km squared you can get 4km by 4.5km. I made this table setting one side to 8km (maxes out) and then getting the max width. Then I reduced the depth by 500m ish at a time and maxed out the width again. If you continue you get the opposite numbers until you get to a width of 8000m and a depth of 2320.

So the longest you can get is 8km with a width of 2.3km and the max area you can get is 18.6km^2 at 2.6km by 7km. That's 1860 hectares BTW.
OK, OK what the heck is a hectare - in acres that would be 4596 acres.

There's large maps in all the CMX2 series, I believe. Its a function of the Editor, which can reasonably handle up to, I think 5km x 5 km. Not sure exactly, but large enough.
The scenarios in CMBS are, I believe, oriented to longer ranges than the WW2 series (s/o smarter then me can confirm y/n).
Personally, I find the difference is in lethality - in CMBS being seen pretty much means being killed. This makes the battles far more merciless of lazy commanders. Like me .