DerKommissar

Elvis has left the building.

Only serious defeat besides Dieppe, Crete, France, Norway, Battleaxe...
Time to start up your Market-Garden campaigns. xD

I'll be happy if we actually get to SEE helicopters.
Big C&C fan here. Shame what EA did to it. Rivals... *shudder*.
You can actually put a lot of heavy weapons in buildings, which is cool.

Elvis has left the building.

Elvis has left the building.

Even with my napper removed from my body, by the foul Charlie Stewart x 2.  I can agree with Doug and ME.

Elvis has left the building.

I made this scenario to honor my step-father who was a 19 year old aid-man during this battle (just turned 93).  It is based on a battle faught by the CCR of the 5th armored division on November 25, 1944.   I have made a little sub-game in which the player can get points for not getting Paul killed and using him to treat wounded soldiers (no cheating!).   I would appreciate feedback.
Save Paul!.btt

What about the passengers? At least one of them will have binos, do they not use em? e.g. the platoon leader.
To add - SOP for me with SPW, prior to moving into contact is suppression fire both from the tracks and their own heavy weapons company. These 75mm cannon SPW are really effective at long range and even danger close as they are not unduly affected by rifle/MG fire at 200-300m or even closer.
 

Here is a shot of the original map.

The G41 is an interesting piece of firearm history. Very thematic for German design and production of the era. I'm getting flashbacks at my rant about problems with early war German tank design. It was designed with the requirements that it had to be semi-auto but work like a bolt action. Why? Germans wanted firepower of a semi-auto and the reliability of a bolt action.
One of the requirements was no gas piston system, which explains the gas trap (named Bang after the Dutch inventor) at the muzzle. The other was a back-up bolt action mechanism. Last one was that it needed to load like a '98. They got Walther and Mauser to design them:

Mauser G41

Walther G41
Mauser followed the requirements, Walther cheated. Too bad for Mauser, the requirements were bollocks. Both were produced, almost 7k for for Mauser variant and around 100k for Walther. Both of the rifles were loathed on the Eastern Front. They were inaccurate, didn't cycle properly, were easy to damage and expensive to produce.
A good chunk of them got returned, I'm guessing even more of them got tossed. Walther solved the biggest issue, being spawned by unrealistic requirements, and scrapped the Bang system for the SVT-40 gas-piston. This became the G43. Too little, too late. As the war neared its conclusion, production was eventually shifted to Volksturm bolt action rifles.
I'm not surprised to see the Mosin still being used. The Enfield is still being used, and was used for a long time post-war as a marksmen's rifle. If it was good enough for Simo Hayha, it's good enough for Donbass.
SVT-40 had a funny history too. Very much akin to those Hollywood underdog stories. It was first designed and produced as the replacement for the Mosin. It was very much on track for that, until Barbarossa. A LOT of them were produced (1.5 mil or something like that). They were excellent semi-autos introduced into an army that needed simple bolt action rifles.
They were very much coveted by the Germans, the Fins and later, the Soviets. Germans actually issued their own field manuals for these things. Not only am I not surprised that they are as common with the Soviets in RT, I am surprised that I don't see Germans using them.
The Soviets were purposefully SMG heavy during Bagration, the cheap PPS-43 being an engine for that. Those things took a few hours to produce, and hundreds of thousands of them were being pumped out monthly. Hardly exotic. Great SMG too.

What's wrong with tacticool fanny packs? xD
A question, while we're on the subject: why do these guys got goggles on their foreheads?
I don't mind them in-game, because I always see RL RF infantry with these things on their foreheads. All the time. In Syria, in Ukraine -- everywhere. What's their purpose?
I know that helis pick up a lot of dust and it's generally a good idea to keep things out of your eyes (when driving, etc.). But, why does nobody wear them and yet are issued to absolutely everyone? Why are they always on the forehead, and not in the fannypack?
Is it a fashion choice? Is the RF falling victim to our tacticool NATO fashion?
(Also, I really don't get the concept behind the PKP...)

Steam is a 'parasite' business. It gets between the producer and customer sucks all the profits from the middle.

Here is a diagram I've quickly tossed together, showing the effect of distance and muzzle height in relation to the aimpoint. If your aimpoint is at a different height than your muzzle, increasing the distance to the aimpoint results in a flatter trajectory, which can be used for grazing fire. Note that for the two muzzle points at lower height (red + blue), the intended grazing zone would be reverse-slope and could not be targeted. 
(Of course there is always some random inaccuracy/deviation from the "ideal" lines. This is not shown in this pic.)

Many video game companies go against their word, and not include features promised. BFC goes against their word and includes features that were not promised, but highly requested by players. T-72 and mortar fans rejoice!

ZBL 08s are pretty roomy and it is a modular design following trends for increased need for modularity in PLA....    Though i have not seen (nor heard off outside of western sources/mentioned in reliable Chinese sources) the 155mm Variant of the ZBL 08 Artillery....  only 122mm ZBL 08s (PLL 09s) and a 120mm mortar variant (Nona style) for indirect fire 

1.) Yes, you can pre-order the download only version of the game.
2.) You'll activate the product when you first attempt to run it.

I'm just saying that if bullets are bouncing off your vehicle -- you may want to duck. xD
Some of these guys are more brave than Braveheart.

Archibald "Harry" Tuttle: IED mechanic, at your service! 

Maybe best article ever written on subject.  Eg:
"After initial testing of T-64 Army started to understand the scale of failure, how utterly unworkable this abomination was in majority of Soviet Fatherland. The engine had to be warmed before ignition like Italian supercar for rich Italian mafia members that oppress simple Italian workers and parasitize the working class!.  ...if tank lost tracks in combat and Soviet army engineers tried to pull damaged T-64 out of the battle, those punny rollers just buried themselfs because how thin they were, working as a self-entranching knifes and by this completely jamming suspension and not allowing to pull tank from the battlefield, just to ensure that Westerners will win! Those Kharkovites know no shame for their traitor rollers!"
 
 

In March, I preordered a game called Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2. It's a sequel to a shiny game, based on a well known IP and published by Focus Home Interactive on Steam. The release date, on their store page was September 2018 -- beta would be available one month prior for preorders. As the year moved from spring through summer, people in the community started predicting release date -- as there was no communication from the devs since January. Some said the beta would be released in late September -- game being released in October. These were worst case scenario based on info from the dev, publisher and Steam.
As September began, we got an update from the dev. This included a minute trailer and an announcement that they pushed back release to January 2019.
On these forums people often bring up stories about better release dates/communication. The truth is that most of the industry treats their customers much worse, often using communication to purposefully deceive them. Striving for better is always great, but it's also important to appreciate what you do get. You can be getting a broken, unifinished and lackluster game from a company that spends millions on publicity. Demos that are absolutely unrepresentative of the product are industry standard now.

LOL I first read that as "yet unnecessarily sticky in certain places" - which can work for rock stars too

Aye, or if one has a field phone setup. After all, wire was the preferred method of artillery communication, even in the US Army. That analysis highlighted how we look over the role of signal troops. Soviet signal corps had to sneak the wire in behind the watchful eye of the Wehrmacht -- and from the analysis, it looks like they were very successful at establishing hidden FOs.
Can you imagine if we get actual field telephones in CM 3.0?

Yes, it is that time of the year and the big annual exercises begin.
I would try to cover them, as it seems to me that they are not covered otherwise here and that they may be of interest to the public here.
While they may not be as exciting as Zapad-2017 or Kavkaz-2016 to certain observers in Europe (as we can remember said observers claimed that those exercises are a cover up for an attack on Baltic and Ukraine)  they do seem to be the biggest exercises since Zapad-1981 with 3 MDs (East, Central, North) and various centrally commanded assets (VDV and others) participating. Overall it appears that the overall event can be split into 3 main parts:
- surprise alert drills
- logisics/rear area exercises
- actual final exercises
Between the three above it appears that around 1/4 (some 262k servicemen) participated (and/or will participate, as final exercises would be in September) in the event,
The scenario appears to be combating a mass attack by a peer adversary, with a lot of emphasis placed on:
- mobilisation
- rear services such as repairs and logistics
- inter theatre and local relocation of forces (especially aircraft), dispersal (ie to back up airfields or road strips)
- counter sabboteur exercises (by some VDV air assault units and by Navy)
- cruise missile strikes (by Tu95MSs, Iskander-Ms, Bastions)

Overall it is unclear who is the adversary, as large scale invasion, which would warrant the scale of the exercise, by Western Forces seems implausible in the East and China is participating with some 3200 troops as an ally rather than as an enemy.
Some footage by Zvezda:
https://tvzvezda.ru/news/forces/content/201808210347-s1gh.htm/player/
https://tvzvezda.ru/news/forces/content/201808220534-z7b1.htm/player/
https://tvzvezda.ru/news/forces/content/201808211749-lo17.htm/player/
https://tvzvezda.ru/news/forces/content/201808230431-koxp.htm/player/