Howler

Another writeup for those of you who can pry yourselves from the Ukraine thread. This time, the topic is mission planning, specifically how to do it in relation to Combat Mission scenarios. 
The basic idea is:
Planning Framework for Combat Mission
The workflow for planning how to play a scenario in Combat Mission can be broken into four parts and are done in order. They are:
     1.      Receive OPORD/WARNO/FRAGO
     2.      METT-TC
     3.      OKOCA
     4.      Enemy Course of Action (ECOA)
Read along for the full breakdown and explanation! https://millerswargamingvault.blogspot.com/2022/06/introduction-planning-is-critical-to.html 
Feel free to discuss. Just remember that this is a very complicated subject if you decide to get really into the details. There are entire doctrinal publications covering each one of these topics. This is a more general overview meant to be easily digestible in a single sitting, as as such some nuance is lost.
Fair warning for my fellow rock bangers, there are no pictures in this entry besides the cover image.

I can make no sense out of the Russian plan here.  I can make sense out of the Ukrainian one.
If the Russians plan to "breakout at Popasna" then taking Severodonetsk is not a require pre-condition - so why do it?  Taking the far bank positions offers no advantage to an encirclement battle coming from the West.  Further if Russia could do that encirclement, then do it and cut off both Lysychanks and Severodonetsl from supplies and support...now!  
"But could this not be a Russian attritional strategy as well?"  Maybe, but employing attrition as the attacker is kinda upside down, unless you have a massive resource overmatch and can afford the upside down loss equation - and Russia cannot at this point.  Further the Russians are also losing another resource they cannot afford; time.  No, Severodonetsk has the hallmarks of a political vanity piece, which is normally what happens when military logic stops applying.
Ukraine employing an attrition strategy, particularly against Russian artillery and logistics, makes all sorts of sense.  That, and they employed similar strategies in the opening phase of this war, Mariupol in particular.  The UA is not "trapped" by any stretch.  It has plenty of opportunity to withdraw...so they are staying for a good reason.  As to "cutting off Ukrainian defenders" on the far bank of the Siversky Donets; the Ukrainians know that river a lot better than the Russians and they likely know where ford sites and ferry crossings can be establish.  Further the Russians have not demonstrated the acme of ISR integration so I am betting the UA is hedging that they can keep defenders supplied for some time by means other than the bridges.  
This bring up an interesting point that should be underlined: we have asymmetric strategies at play here.  The Russians are focused on terrain gains to demonstrate "victory", while Ukrainian defence has the overall strategic goal of "killing more Russians".  We should keep this in mind - it won't explain every operation, but it appears as the overarching design for each side.

I've just passed to this page and read THIS. Guys, I though this was just a joke, but now my heart is melted down and I can't reject this gift. Though, I feel myself awkward... and also huge gratitude to all of you and Kinophile personally for idea     

Welcome aboard, Twisk! Always good to have someone new in the conversation.
I think it's partially a matter of definitions. The casualty-aversity discussion usually seems to be framed in terms of "modern" starting between the World Wars, if not later.
As for the "modern decadence" issue, I think most of us probably see the emphasis on limiting casualties as a feature, not a bug, of modernity... certainly on balance. Aversion to casualties is not inherently the same thing as a lack of resolve.

Chuckie is most likely splitting the squad into teams before he gives them the order to enter the vehicle. I suspect that there is another type of team entering in between so the squad stays separated.

Why would you fight so hard to keep monuments for people who fought for the right to keep other people as slaves?

For some reason I can't edit the thread or post so I'm replying here until Elvis deletes it like I requested. In hindsight, battle pack 1 was a bad choice of words. I meant to present it as a Community Battle Pack much like the community scenario packs for other CM titles and CMO. 

This is simply a community made campaign with love and passion poured into it. Nothing to do with Battlefront in any official capacity. I apologize for the confusion. I am simply an idiot it would appear lol. 

I know that in the modern games it's to differentiate between normal smoke, which only blocks normal vision, and multispectral smoke, which blocks thermals. Idk if that was the rationale for CMCW.
Note that artillery smoke, despite being white, isn't multispectral in any title.

Nobody noticed mate ... I think you got away with it 😉 - I had similar with trees once ... "why can't I see a bloody thing from this open field?"

I've done this a number of times, even after playing of years.  Dang it, where's my smoke fire mission?????  -- oh, I turned it off earlier to see something and forgot to turn it back on.

Do you have smoke turned on? I think it's Alt+K....

Do you have smoke turned on? I think it's Alt+K....

Hello,
I haven't touched CM in ages, having mostly lost interest in it, but today I had an itch and looked at the code I had written for the uncam tool and somehow ended up rewriting the entire thing in one setting. I fixed some issues and it should be possible to unpack CMCW campaigns as well as potentially campaigns of yet unreleased games, as long as BF does not muck with the file format. Anyways, I don't have CMCW so I can't test and there are no campaign files in the scenario depot. If it doesn't work, send me the campaign file (or a download link) and I can take a look at it. I don't even have a Windows PC anymore, so I couldn't test the Windows version either, so please report any issues.
Best regards
PS: If anyone wants the source code, feel free to ask but I didn't include it this time in the archive.
uncam-0.10.zip

A few general rules of thumb here.

The first is recon. The Soviet method is a command push - that is to say that you are using an element (typically an infantry platoon) to advance on the same axis that your main force will follow, perhaps 10-30 minutes ahead.

The purpose of this reconnaissance element is to find the enemy position, and to report back. They may well find it by dying, but that's not a requirement - the important bit is an aggressive probe that takes risk, but reveals the enemy efficiently.

When you know this, you have a couple of things - you have a target for your artillery, which should start being called in immediately, and you have spotting contacts which can be transmitted to the rest of the force. The recon platoon is usually one of the infantry platoons for this reason - they'll send contacts up the C2 chain to the follow-on forces.

The artillery is not necessarily being called in on the spotted targets (although it might be). The aim here is to shape the later tank engagement, either by suppressing or destroying the targets, or by denying the supporting positions that the targets will need.

The core of any US position in CMCW are the TOW vehicles, which are extremely squishy (even if artillery doesn't destroy them, any fragmentation on the M901's hammerhead will usually take that out). It's then important to target those, or where they could be (or more accurately, where it would be terrible for you if they were).


So the endstate here is that you're not running into the position blind, and expecting your moving, blind tanks to out-spot the stationary, prepared tanks with good optics, because you're never going to win that fight.


The second point is the use of terrain. The Soviets want to create situations where they have relatively short ranged engagements (sub-1.5km) and enough space to mass fires. You want to be engaging with a line of tanks all at once, so that they maximise their chance at spotting.

That means you need a covered approach, and enough space to operate in. Smoke can be useful here, and would form part of the fireplan which you have been calling in since the recon elements first made contact, such that they will start falling when the main force arrives. 

The Soviets had three defined uses of smoke (blinding, camouflage and decoy) - on your own position to conceal your movements (i.e., creating "terrain" to mask your movements) on the enemy to blind them (using smoke to shape the engagement, cutting out sections of their line such that you can put maximum force on a minimal portion of the enemy - don't fight through your own smoke), and deception (to confuse as to the actual direction and shape of the attack). Clearly that last point only works against a human opponent. Smokes can be Frontal, Oblique or Flank, depending on the situation.


So, the current position:


- You know where the enemy is, with a fair degree of certainty, and you've shared the spotting contacts with everyone.
- You've worked out what axis you're going to attack on, with as covered a route as possible
- You've been planning and preparing your artillery mission(s) to support the move.

A really important point at this stage is not just to plan the target of the move, but the direction of further advance - you need to know where you're going afterwards at all times.

When the shells start falling, you move up the armour. Tanks-first. You already know the locations of some of the armour, so they will start getting spots, but there's also nothing stopping you area-firing to supplement that. "Maximum fires" is the go-to, since you're trying to overwhelm the enemy with a sudden, devastating attack.

Further, once this starts, you *keep moving*, at least on the macro scale. You need to press forwards, and not get bogged down. It's very, very easy to focus on the one objective, and then to get stuck aimlessly, coming under artillery fire or counter-attack. This does mean that when you commit, it's important to commit fully, and to follow-through. It's very tempting to hold back and to lose confidence, but "audacity" is the term in US military parlance - you need to be bold and confident in what you're doing, and force a situation where you're the proactive party, and the enemy has to react to you.


 

Posted 2 hours ago That was it!!!  All that troubleshooting and it was something so simple.  Many thanks!

I doubt that the author of the test would deliberately subvert his setup in that way  Nevertheless, I have seen no indication that the target arcs improve spotting* or hit accuracy. See point 4 in my initial post in this thread. They just restrict the area in which the unit will engage targets, that's all.
*other than as a result of the unit turning in the direction of the target...
 

This had not been reported so it is now.

LOL.  The crap we used to worry about...

Two small QOL things, maybe both of them have already been mentioned:
1) The 'acquire' command should become something like 'give/take.' I just played a mission today where I accidentally acquired 7.62 ammo for a squad which I dont think actually has any 7.62 weapons. Would be nice to just place it back into the M2. It would also be nice if infantry could pass ammo along to other squads, like ammo bearers. Could make truck drivers more useful as guys who can bring ammo out to an MG squad or rockets to a bazooka team or something. edit: Passing around ammo could lead to some gamey micromanagey situations (and was annoying AF in Men of War lol) so an easy solution could be for vehicles to 'acquire' ammo back from their carried infantry squads. That would let you put away kit you accidentally grabbed or decided you dont need and dont want to risk. 
2) It would be nice to be able to see basic weapons stats for infantry in game somehow. Maybe by clicking on the infantryman you can see the stats for his carried weapon? Im not a dev, so someone smarter than me could that out. But I'm playing CMBS today and while I think I'm mostly well versed in modern weapons, some things are a little unknown to my Cold War-era brain. Like the M110 CSASS, I assume thats a DMR. But what kind of ammo does it take? Probably thats where all that 7.62 in my squads is going. I could go to Wikipedia and look it up of course, but it would be nice for the game to just tell me that without having to alt tab. 

Now that you're pretty sure it's the Nvidia software causing the crash (makes sense) how about if you completely uninstall ReShade, then do a clean ReShade install and try to run it with the Nvidia software disabled?
I do remember trying the Nvidia Overlay some time ago, but it's impact on CM games was really not worth the bother YMMV. I was happier running just the normal Nvidia control panel and tweaking game settings there with ReShade doing most of the heavy lifting effects-wise. 

All of this kind of thing can't really be considered "cheating", but they are a gamey consequence of the game engine. This kind of problem has plagued wargames forever - it's no more gamey than the existence of a map edge, for example, they do represent the situations where the simulation breaks down.

As an aside, there's an interesting anecdote here. At the Battle of Balaclava, one reason that has been postulated for the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade was that the position of the commanding officers was too high and top down - similar to what you might have looking at a boardgame. The end result is that they didn't have a good idea of the topography, and failed at their analysis of the terrain because of it.

The "Hardcat" rules are an attempt to get around that gameism. I sometimes use a simpler house rule of "No area fire without a spotting contact", which I think does 80% of the same thing, with zero overhead. That rule isn't perfect either, naturally.


5) However, has a definitive answer, and that is "sure". Rules of engagement differ, naturally, but recon by fire is a thing. There isn't the time or the ammunition to shoot everything, but if it's reasonable to expect enemy contact in the area, and no ROE to stop you, then yeah, this is pretty common historically.

 

I think it's priced pretty much where BFC wants to be priced which is the only thing that matters.
As to "sameness", when did that stop being a selling feature? BFC have back ported new features to every previous title. Why is this now a 'bad' thing? 
I'm hoping an engine upgrade will break the 8x8 AS wall and provide something closer to 1x1 along with all the bells and whistles associated to a game engine designed in the last decade or better yet - designed in last few years!  

There's also a few duplicates of scenarios because of slight name changes. You can figure out which are the old ones to be deleted by looking at the file dates. The new ones are all dated November. Old duplicates are dated April.

Thank goodness for that. I hate subscription software - except for things that are actually services (like file sharing, web hosting, email stuff that actually has running costs).
I have dumped companies when they moved to subscription only. Having said that there would be no where for me to go if you guys decided to do that but I would *HATE* it if you did. ;D

Are you serious? Why would *anyone* rap a fire mission? I think a US New England accent or southern drawl, for example, would add some flavor to an otherwise bland trooper. I'd also forgive if both were mixed given the current engine limitations...
You need to engage with folks who didn't see when "Leave it to Beaver" first aired. Or, you can keep forcing the world to remain exactly the way you like it. There's comfort in that for sure which you don't seem to want to extend to others...
We older folks don't need to understand nor agree with what passes for current societal norms. Our norms were formed in a bygone time. We engage with society today by following what is currently accepted. We don't have to like it.
I'm not picking on you specifically - I'm ranting against 'reactionary' group think.