SimpleSimon

The author's methodology is suspect.  You can only arrive at that particular conclusion if you conveniently ignore Iraq, Rhodesia, the use of defoliants in Vietnam, the use of CB weapons in China during WW2 et al.  He's right in that NBC would make an unholy mess of the battlefield, but ignores the fact that these decisions are made by national leadership who have incentives differing from the military.

We've all been wishing for a FOLLOW command for years. I know i'm really starting to desire that the MOVE command default to the prone state when under fire rather than converting inexplicably to QUICK. It has very little contextual usefulness right now as a result.
I also think that AT guns and especially light guns should have their QUICK move enabled, and are far too unwieldy in their current state especially being unable to re-crew. I can see it being very tiring for the crew, but you can literally watch YouTube videos of 2-3 reenactors shoving the Pak 36 or 19-K around with some serious dash. 

I think the thing about Fire and Rubble I did like along with RT in general was how non-combined arms many of the scenarios are. The Panzer Blitz style of design tends to obscure how often it wasn't possible to construct the stereotypical Tank-Infantry-Artillery triumvirate-especially when the frontline wasn't established and units were engaged in maneuvering. The Germans were generally able to show up with a Combined Arms kit in these circumstances-because they built so much organic support into formations at the Division Level and downwards. Thus the Panzer Divisions and Motorized Infantry Divisions were the ultimate "medium" formations of all times-ready for anything but not the best at anything either. This is why the Panzer Divisions tended to do so well in running campaigns and the infamous Blitz they were known for. The Allies seem to come off a little worse in these situations, all the cases of Russian Units showing up without infantry or without artillery but heaps of something else like 100+ SU-85s or T-34s. A toolkit imbalance, but this pretty much a result of the way the Allies fought-configured heavily around sieges and cracking a frontline. As long as the enemy mostly wasn't motorized it worked well but it could lead to infamous bloody disasters if your unit ran into say...a Heavy Panzer Battalion but how many of those do the Germans have? The Russians gambled a bit on that and answered "not many" and 1944-45 proved them right. 
Thus you had lots of cases of German units just being overrun by the infamous T-34 hordes that their luxurious combined arms kit couldn't do much about. There just wasn't enough of anything to stop the SCALE of the Eastern Front and this slope only got steeper from 1942 onwards. So that's what I like about Fire and Rubble, I think they got that a lot of the time the Russians show up to scenarios and seem really uneven-but that's because a balanced tool kit isn't necessary. Your tanks all have 85mm or 122mm guns and pray tell what on Earth could the Germans possibly have that is proof against those in a given scenario or map? 

Stuff like this kind of just emphasizes to me how over-configured CM is for the Panzer Blitz style operation, and how much we all seem to be very captured by very "Prussian" ideas of fighting. Moonscaping the land with thousands of rounds of heavy artillery fire? Measure coverage by gun per 7 meters or gun per meter or guns per meter even? Yet for Allied Commanders such questions were the norm, not the exception. 
Rolling barrages can be managed with the  tools CM happens to have, but admittedly only very crude ones. CM just isn't configured around operational or the sort of day-to-day activities of fighting Armies-the support tabs are both holdovers from Shock Force's 2007 design and philosophy and are aging the fastest, second only to the non-contextual hard map edges...

Fortress Italy has the widest variety of campaigns and scenarios and features the Italians-an Army pretty representative of the shape most of the world's Armies were actually in during the 2nd World War. 
The terrain of Italy and the nature of much of the fighting there fits the model of predominant Company-scale engagements very well. Everything happened in Italy from trench sieges more in style with 1918 to Glorious Panzer Death Rides to restore lost segments of the line.

Fortress Italy has the widest variety of campaigns and scenarios and features the Italians-an Army pretty representative of the shape most of the world's Armies were actually in during the 2nd World War. 
The terrain of Italy and the nature of much of the fighting there fits the model of predominant Company-scale engagements very well. Everything happened in Italy from trench sieges more in style with 1918 to Glorious Panzer Death Rides to restore lost segments of the line.

Well just about every tank during the 2nd World War was a death trap. By today's standards they'd all be unacceptable. Most of them stored ammunition in open racks for instance. The Sherman was literally the only one at least trying to decrease the brew up chance. 
I'm sure it's going to be mentioned ad nauseum too but Ronson didn't come up with the slogan "lights first every time" until the 1950s either. I think Tommy Cooker was in use during the war, but no one's sure if that was just meant for the Sherman or any tank the British were using. The fact that crews were running around complaining about the Sherman all the time is sort of interesting-because it implies the crews tended to survive enough to complain at all. I definitely do not want to turn this into another Defense of the Sherman thread however lol...

Statistically the Sherman. Grand scheme you'll probably be fine but even if you're unlucky, the Sherman is the only tank of the war with wet stowage for its ammunition and an escape hatch beneath the hull. Very important for evacuating the vehicle under fire. 
The Sherman's sheer mass went a long way into enabling crew survival by making it easier to evacuate and taking hits from shaped charges a bit better than smaller tanks. Mainly due to greater volume between ammunition and fuel stowage. If you're a tank crewman there isn't a lot of certainty, but one thing that's bound to happen to you? Your tank will be shot out from under you at one point or another. Whether you can get out of it easily enough to fight another day is the big priority for me. 

I think the net effect of many decades of media familiarization, video games, movies, tv, books, etc is that there's an inability to see things the way people saw them in 1941. Many people in the world in 1941 did not have electricity or indoor plumbing, had never seen a car or an airplane before, and essentially still lived as peasants. Even the ones that did had very little familiarity with something like a tank aside from maybe hearing about it as the nebulous "land battleship" of the Great War. If a T-28 emerged from the treeline it would for many soldiers I think it would be equivalent to something quite actually biblical, and would not be laughed at. It just so happened that by 1941, German troops were pretty seasoned and also probably had a pretty good idea of what its limitations would be. (Avoid its line of sight, wait until it runs out of gas). If you were green and did not know these things as many conscripts in many armies in 1939-41 it would be much worse. Until the advent of credible infantry anti-tank weapons though, such as the Panzerfaust and Bazooka there really wasn't much you could do to challenge a tank assault except hope engineers chose your sector to mine. Most early war infantry anti-tank weapons were improvised weapons or just placebos. By 1943 there was enough warning, enough collective experience, and most importantly of all just enough anti-tank weapons around to at least keep the frontline from melting rapidly in a tank assault-as long as it was a smaller than a Corp attack. It really wasn't until the 1980s that there was much prospect of stopping a Tank Army though...

I've seen the Panther in real life and while its smaller than I thought it would be it's still a very...sinister looking tank. Has a predatory vibe like its namesake. 
The multi turret monstrosities look pretty stupid-the rationale behind them was that they could multitask and cover each other or suppress multiple enemy positions etc but in practice it didn't work on only one tank commander and tanks with all those turrets just look really crowded. I certainly wouldn't laugh at a T-28 if it came at me, but the turrets definitely don't contribute to why i'd view running into it as a major bad day for me and the boys. 
 

I think people care too much about armor. Someone would always turn up with the gun to defeat it, and tanks were generally killed by AP shot from anti-tank guns which were way common. Fact was even armor that technically "overmatched" the oncoming projectile was still vulnerable to spall/lucky gap hits. Savvy crews understood the only thing their tank was actually proof against was bullets and fragmentation. Anything else needed to be dealt with before it got a shot off. The Panther looks really survivable in theory, but the side armor in the track wells was only 40mm thick and could be penetrated by anti-tank rifles and definitely so by the tiny 45mm anti tank gun the Russians had tons of. 
Other than that distance was also pretty equivalent to safety for a tank, since physics meant lots of small rounds lost performance rapidly over wide areas and there'd be fewer hiding options for anti-tank guns that would put them close enough to endanger your tank. Even something the size of the Tiger is pretty hard to hit at 1000m and if you're in something like that or the Panther looks good right? At the kinds of ranges they could fight at the T-34 and Sherman would have extreme difficulty even hitting you. Unfortunately, shortages of infantry mean that your tank will frequently be sent into close fighting a lot-Rattenkrieg'ing it up along with the bloody Landwehr. Since "Divisions" are down to single Regiments or even Battalions at this point that's just how it's going to be. Crew losses in the Panzer Divisions accelerated throughout the war for this reason, and it was major element in the decision to expend so many of them in Glorious Panzer Death Charges where the chances of survival might actually improve with operational mobility and disruption of the Allied line. Maybe if you're lucky you'll be able to extract the crews too once their tanks run out of gas. 
Yeah, gonna go with the Sherman.  

Statistically the Sherman. Grand scheme you'll probably be fine but even if you're unlucky, the Sherman is the only tank of the war with wet stowage for its ammunition and an escape hatch beneath the hull. Very important for evacuating the vehicle under fire. 
The Sherman's sheer mass went a long way into enabling crew survival by making it easier to evacuate and taking hits from shaped charges a bit better than smaller tanks. Mainly due to greater volume between ammunition and fuel stowage. If you're a tank crewman there isn't a lot of certainty, but one thing that's bound to happen to you? Your tank will be shot out from under you at one point or another. Whether you can get out of it easily enough to fight another day is the big priority for me. 

I saw Lieut. Grant. He has altered very much: he is a short thick man with a beard reaching halfway down his waist and I fear he drinks too much but don't you say a word on that subject.
-John Lowe, Grant's West Point classmate during the Mexico campaign.

The genetic component of alcoholism these days is now considered settled science. Ulysses S. Grant's father was a teetotaler but his grandfather, Noah, was not. His drinking caused him to squander a comfortable estate and leave the youngest children to be adopted by neighbors. Grant's son was arrested by George Custer for chronic drunkenness during the Black Hills expedition in 1874. 

It was during Grant's outstanding service in the Mexican War, a conflict punctuated by many long periods of inactivity and boredom, that Grant realized that he might have "a problem". After his marriage to Julia, in 1848, he was assigned as an officer at a post near Ontario. At that cold and isolated outpost he resorted to booze, but always self-aware he decided to quit altogether in 1851. He wrote Julia: "I have become convinced that there is no safety from ruin by liquor except by abstaining from it altogether." 

Grant joined the Sons of Temperance, a precursor of Alcoholic Anonymous. It didn't last; his next military assignment to the Pacific Coast would break his solemn vow. His roommate: "I would hear him once or twice, sometimes more, open the door quietly and walk softly over the floor, so as not to disturb him; then I would hear the clink of the glass and a gurgle." Grant was forced to resign. 

After his separation from the army, Grant returned to Missouri with Julia and their four children; they led a hardscrabble life. He sold firewood door-to-door and he was often compelled to borrow money from her slave-owning father, a humiliation, and he began again to resort to the bottle. But Grant's father came to his rescue; he proposed that he join his brothers' leather shop in Illinois. There he was able to pay off his debts to Julia's father and during that time it appears he was sober. Nevertheless, Grant felt unfulfilled and following Fort Sumter, he jumped at the chance to become a colonel in the 21st Illinois Volunteers. The rest is history.



Many historians assert that Grant’s penchant for binge drinking was kept in check by his teetotaler adjutant, Colonel John Rawlins, but rumors that he was intoxicated during and after battles swirled around him for most of the war. These rumors may be exaggerated, however, Grant did suffer occasional relapses although he would go cold turkey during very long periods. But a reporter from the Herald Tribune was stunned to find the General in a state of intoxication during the bloody battle of Shiloh in 1862. Also, there's strong evidence that during the siege of Vicksburg- a tedious, long drawn out affair- he occasionally fell off the wagon. (1) 

Grant was never a mean or obnoxious drunk but, in the words of the historian, Ron Chernow, liquor reduced him to a “babbling, childlike state", something that unnerved his lieutenants during his rare lapses while prosecuting the war. They also observed that after one glass of liquor, Grant's speech would become slurred and two or three would make him stupid. Their strong reservations about the General reached the unperturbed Lincoln who remarked  “Tell them you’re going to find out what brand he drinks, and then send a case to all your other generals." (2)  

SUMMARY

The preponderance of evidence tells us that Grant was an alcoholic, albeit a functioning one. In the 19th century, most people drank far more than today; Americans over the age of 15 consumed on average seven gallons of alcohol — generally whiskey or hard cider — each year. (3) However, at headquarters, officers were expected to hold their liquor. Grant couldn't and he knew it, when the craving came upon him he would imbibe alone,

Today we understand that alcoholism is a disease. One of the most frustrating factors in dealing with alcoholism is it is almost always accompanied by a phenomenon known as denial—a refusal to admit the truth or reality of the condition. Grant was an exception to that rule, he was fully aware of his devil within thus his successful career may be attributed to pure will.
 
1- But Grant had a critical asset, his wife, Julia, who with his oldest son were often present at headquarters. With her, he stayed sober.
2- Another version: “for if it made fighting generals like Grant, I should like to get some of it for distribution.”
3- (lost link)

Army crews have 32 even, but rarely are they much good for indirect fire I felt. Too much complication for too little kaboom. My own preference-but I usually just order them to direct fire at targets they have visibility on. 
There were reports of the 60mm round it used landing right next to Germans and not killing them. 60mm produces very little fragmentation (less than a hand grenade in theory) and a lot of Armies ditched light mortars during the war. Sort of off topic in this case I know but the key to me is just that I don't rely much on them. I prefer to expend their ammunition at first opportunity and use the crews as line infantry. 

Many of the scenarios are designed around puzzle solving and play out almost every time like a siege. There are many symptoms of these conditions, but one of the most prominent is of closely matched headcounts or map populations between defender and attacker and this invariably promotes high lethality within a given slice of map. Force-to-space ratios with a high density of units promote extremely meticulous play and are often excessively relied upon to make up for a perceived passivity of the AI on defense. 
As long as you're making reasonable decisions you have a right to expect reasonable results, and the game should score you fairly for that. Unfortunately, I think the way that we score the player's conduct in most of the scenarios is sort of poor and in a minority of cases, egregiously unfair or abusive. 
 

Usually I give any scenario in the game one go as a series of saves from various points I consider "junctions" in my plan and see how often I need to save-scum my way to victory. Two or three reloads is ok to me but if I have to go more than that I discontinue and hit up the editor. 

Do not take this completely the wrong way but you are a product of your time.  Do not feel bad as I have to continually remind the current crop of officers at a staff college that they are as well.  It is also my fault for not qualifying the context.  You quote above speaks to where we are as modern militaries, completely overwhelming the current battlefields so that we can "hold a battery for 20 mins".  Our current way of warfare, which is about 30 years old has now become doctrine...it is also very dangerous to assume all warfare will nicely line up with it.    
In a high intensity peer fight, I am afraid we are going to have to re-learn a lot of lessons the hard way and this would be one of them.  In this case that battery of howitzers might be dead in 20 mins and any ideas of hold fire "on my command" will likely go out the window extremely fast once we are at parity or worse. 
So in context of the original posting, we are talking in CM (which you are correct has abstractions), so WW2, Cold War, fictional Syria (which is probably as close to the current thinking aligns), CMBS (to which we are not well aligned at all).  In all but Syria any idea of bottlenecking calls for fire when they are 1) likely to be quickly overwhelmed and 2) at threat of being knocked out,  is simply not realistic nor historical.
Don't worry, there will be hard lessons for everyone (e.g. Air Supremacy), or maybe we will get lucky and it will be small asymmetrical wars for awhile longer.
 

It's a movie made by guys with pretensions of fidelity but is really fairly by-the-numbers American Action-Melodrama. The action sequences in it are certainly problematic-but I think the biggest problem is that they're not very exciting and are badly planned. Why are the Germans in X treeline? What's the reason for approaching them head on? When I watched interviews with the Director and Producer years ago they both seemed to have a very foggy idea about the kind of film they wanted to make. In the end the whole film really just feels like recordings of re-enactors fighting mock battles you could see at...well...your local re-enactment group. 
By comparison Saving Private Ryan and Thin Red Line are both way better movies in just about every sense-with Directors who understood that their first objective was a compelling drama merely backgrounded by-the Second World War. That's where Fury just totally fumbles to me. It's a movie that's trying to be about World War 2...a subject far too dense to confront with a 135 minute film by itself. This confusion of setting for story and story for setting is the underline to me. 

So for about a year i've been experimenting with and teaching myself the GEM editor attached to Men of War 2 Assault Squad. I wasn't too crazy about MoW for years but with the attachment of Valour Mod so much material and equipment has been put in the game that you can make a literally unlimited number of potential scenarios involving a shocking number of configurations and setups. It's been very challenging since so little of the Editor has published reference material, I still don't know how to make waypoints and reinforcements for instance and YouTube tutorials i've watched look veeeery complicated. So i've been content to just build scenarios and then just hotseat them playing them out in the editor and i've gotta say i've been having a blast. 
Thus far i've done scenarios from the Battle of France to Kursk and Bagration and yes even North Africa and the Philippines! Japanese forces are not only in the game but are crucially depicted with their full toolkit of heavy artillery and tanks. The Chinese are in the game too, and in theory with Valour Mod you could actually do stuff crazy and obscure in the West like the Mukden Incident. For now though i've decided to show off some pictures of a modest infantry scenario i'm working on at the moment involving a US Infantry Battalion + Recon Troop advancing on a German Aufklarung deployed in a French hamlet. 
https://ibb.co/kyM5TgJ
https://ibb.co/Mg570N4
https://ibb.co/grV21v4
Valour Mod's caveat is that its a multiplayer mod that sets MoW's lethality and accuracy values way high, so to compensate i've buffed all soft units to 600% of their normal health values and 600% health regen rates. This leads to infantry firefights that tend to be indecisive at range and go on for a while, by lowering ambient visibility or changing the spotting values of units (units can be set to be better at detecting objects or have their field of view changed) they can be easy to break off too. With the modifications i've made infantry usually have the ability to get within range of eachother and get into short-sharp firefights that don't usually tend to do much except waste lots of ammo now. Exactly what I want. HE is also somewhat less deadly than in the multiplayer mod, otherwise it was just way too overpowered. 
I'm having a lot of fun using the tools available through MoW and Valour to sort of make my own "game" here since the GEM Editor grants some pretty major control over abstractions such as health, visibility, geography, and yes the AI too although I haven't quite figured that one out yet. I'm prepared to answer some questions here about how to use the editor and some of its tools if anyone would like help crafting their own stuff. 

Chalk me up for France and the rest of NATO. France had some totally insane stuff in their toolkit like the AMX-50. 

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

It made quite a bit of sense when the thinking behind it was that it could plink targets too far out for an autocannon while maintaining stand-off distance from infantry anti-tank weapons. It helped that it outranges some first generation ATGMs and even the SACLOS ones can have their command link severed by blasting the launcher while the missile is still in flight. FAF missiles are making that all a bit of a problem now. 
 From the start though the MGS life has been pretty ugly. Most of the complaints arrayed against the Stryker family in general were sort of dubious-comparing it to the M113 or even the Bradley etc when it wasn't meant to be peer to either of those vehicles-both of which are tracked. The gun system however had a lot of serious issues that were never fully resolved-like the internal cooling system that didn't work necessitating the addition of a big vulnerable air conditioning unit on the side of the vehicle. The gun carousel is also separate from the crew compartment-so a malfunction requires the crew to dismount in order to fix it. Some complaints are also being made about the vehicles vulnerability to IEDs but those i'm not sure are very fair. Everything except specially designed V-hull movers are vulnerable to IEDs. The MGS might've been a particular brew-up risk though. 
I actually found them extremely useful in the games, but the games don't cover a lot of the headaches that came with the vehicle in real life. 

One of my big wishes (Cold War) has been granted. Here's to hoping history will predict the future and we'll all get Combat Mission Blitzkrieg
*whistles*

One of my big wishes (Cold War) has been granted. Here's to hoping history will predict the future and we'll all get Combat Mission Blitzkrieg
*whistles*

As long as it involves a major expansion of the depictions of Italian Armed Forces i'd absolutely be in on North Africa.