SimpleSimon

A lot of the time scenarios seem too light on TRPs I think. Especially if fighting in the area had been an ongoing or routine event generally the battery commanders would keep data on previous fires. I also think TRPs are a good abstraction for the quality reconnaissance flights you can achieve with air supremacy. Every US Army Infantry Division had a component of around 10 or so Piper Cubs-organic to their formation, not USAAF aircraft-who's job was aerial spotting for the Division's artillery. 
At this time most designers seem to emphasize TRPs in defensive situations and discourage them in offensive situations and they've got it backwards. Attackers have the benefit of initiative and planning, they are initiating which means the T junction at the back of the map was planned as a point of advance for your assault a week ago and yes there's a TRP for the player to use in his assault. Conversely, unless the Defender has had time to entrench and plan, he really shouldn't have TRPs as often as he does since attacks generally come as a surprise. For the Germans especially there was a tendency to husband guns and keep as much firepower in reserve as possible for the inevitable counter-attack to seize lost ground or more usually because of insufficient ammunition reserves. 

I despise even seeing forest objectives because the context for them is always poor. Who cares about 100m square capture in the middle of a forest? The enemy can have it and when they emerge from the forest in a few weeks from depletion of rations and ammunition or just fear of what the Partisans will do to them then you can capture the wood. Otherwise what sensible Commander would send men into such a place? To capture the enemy's supply of birch trees??? 

I despise even seeing forest objectives because the context for them is always poor. Who cares about 100m square capture in the middle of a forest? The enemy can have it and when they emerge from the forest in a few weeks from depletion of rations and ammunition or just fear of what the Partisans will do to them then you can capture the wood. Otherwise what sensible Commander would send men into such a place? To capture the enemy's supply of birch trees??? 

I despise even seeing forest objectives because the context for them is always poor. Who cares about 100m square capture in the middle of a forest? The enemy can have it and when they emerge from the forest in a few weeks from depletion of rations and ammunition or just fear of what the Partisans will do to them then you can capture the wood. Otherwise what sensible Commander would send men into such a place? To capture the enemy's supply of birch trees??? 

Biggest thing for me was the infantry behavior fix. It wasn't that they were retreating too much that bothered me, it's that they were retreating into the enemy's fire. 

Biggest thing for me was the infantry behavior fix. It wasn't that they were retreating too much that bothered me, it's that they were retreating into the enemy's fire. 

Also it's not tactical level but Unity of Command is an outstanding virtual board game too. 
Other cool thing about DVG is that many of their games are available for virtual purchase for use in Vassal Engine, and they're much cheaper than the physical editions! I might grab Warfighter that way soon. Lock n Load Tactical is also starting to show up on Steam and it's way cheaper than the $80 modules for the regular edition. 

It should. Remember you'll have to dig a little for the expansions too but they're all great and absolutely worth it. They make the units more distinct and even include insanity like Spanish Civil War scenarios. 

I played A las Barricadas and wasn't too impressed by it at first. I did grab La Battaile de France but by then I modified the rules of the War Storm Series to make more sense and clear up some oddities or translation errors.
 Memoir 44 can be had with all of its (gigantic) set of expansions for free on Vassal Engine and tbh it's great that way. It's way more granular with its subsequent add ons but easy enough to play still. The DVG Board Games are also all great. Sherman Leader and Fleet Commander Nimitz I had tons of fun with, and they're solitaire based so you don't have to arrange anything like other players or make single player rules for them. 
The trouble with a lot of these games is the BOX O DICE' stuff with way too much +1/-1 stuff going on in the rules. It's not always bad, but too much of it gets really grating. War games tend to work a lot better on cards I feel, and i've been meaning to try out Warfighter or at least give the rules a read sometime soon. 

MOUT operations in CMx2 titles have always been pretty bloody if not executed without exceptional care. I can not make a statement regarding your specific situation, but what i ve observed in the couple of years playing CMx2 is that clearing a building occupied by hostile forces is
Best avoided if possible If avoiding clearing the building is impossible, destroy the building or its occupants using heavy fire power (tanks, aircraft artillery, what ever you' ve got). If destroying the building or it's occupants using heavy fire power is not possible, prepare it for infantry clearing by first spending a couple of turns suppressing it's occupants using at least a 3:1 force ratio and the target or target light command. RPGs and the like are wonderful tools for convincing an enemy in a building to leave it. After preparing the building for assault, keep suppressing it with a target-light command and a 2:1 force ratio an send a 1:1 force ratio troop into the building, carefully. Use the pause command and suppress each room with the assault element using target-briefly for at least 10 seconds before entering (this also leads to some grenade throwing, etc). If possible, send the assault element into the building using demo charges by blowing in a wall that has no windows and from the top most floor possible (because hand grenades work best if thrown from an upper to a lower floor). If heavy resistance is encountered in a room, retreat and try to destroy or at least suppress the enemy using your over-watch element from the outside. Using above listed steps, MOUT against an inferior force as the Syrians in CMSF2 can usually be done relative casualty free. Fighting an equal enemy such as the Russians in CMBS, on the other hand, will always cause you some losses, there is no way around it. Just accept it and keep pushing forward towards your mission objectives.

I'd argue that from a realism stand point the usual culprit is too large a force on too small a map. Rather than vice versa. The pain in the ass that is scenario design makes it clear why we have that problem. I've done some personal editing of scenarios and increasing the size of the map and adding/moving some of the supporting troops out of the immediate combat zone has usually worked although for obvious reasons the new terrain isn't terribly detailed.

Which from a gameplay perspective I think works just fine because the player is never meant to walk over there.


@RepsolCBR

Just being able to have persistent map damage would be fantastic. Literally just exporting the map out as is would be nice.

The other thing I should ask Fibby is if he's playing Syria. I'm not sure if he's using standard icons and such. It's just that with REDFOR in particular you really don't have much to gain splitting your forces into a fire base and maneuver element typical of western infantry tactics. Needless complication of what should be simple straight on pummeling. Mass your whole force on the high ground and hope the guys can bag a few hits on the structure with their RPGs which can devastate buildings with thermobaric rounds. Then just advance straight on. 
EDIT: Looking at it might also be Fortress Italy but tbh, there's just about no advantage to be gained that I can see from executing a Fix-and-Flank from the given position. The enemy is in a hardened structure with superior overwatch on both flanks. The disadvantage is that the enemy's position is obvious, and you should be able to overpower it eventually in a simple uncomplicated gun battle. 

Bingo. Map's too small for the given scenario and forces involved. The player doesn't really have many options and the one he has is very exposed to return fire. 
The map i'm looking at seems appropriate for a squad+ size engagement at most. Even a pair of Platoons can make a 500m area pretty lethal. 

7. "Fulda Gap": 1970-90
Europe WWIII

4. Expansion of Combat Mission Games to VE-Day on Both Fronts: 1944-1945
End-of-war module that includes Brits, crossing the Rhine and the Ruhr pocket
A siege of Budapest for Hungarians
Battle for Berlin
(East vs West, 1945, 46)

3. Afrika Korps: 1940-43 
WWII North Africa
Operation Torch, American North Africa Invasion Libya, Egypt, and Tunis 1942-43

2. Barbarossa: 1941-43
WWII Eastern Front
Can Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin data be used as sort of an upgrade?
Invasion of Yugoslavia
Operation Typhoon
Case Blue
Blau to Stalingrad
Warsaw to Moscow
(also Finland)

1. Blitzkrieg: 1939-40 
WWII Early war
Poland
France
(also Finland)

We're just the guys who post on the forum. So it's important to keep in mind we may represent only a small sampling of the customer base that BFC has other data on. 
But as usual ma wishlist as follows,
1. Combat Mission Blitzkrieg. Warsaw to Moscow. 1939-1941 
2. Combat Mission Fulda Gap 1970-1990. 
3. Combat Mission Afrika Korp. Libya, Egypt, and Tunis. 1942-43. 
4. Combat Mission Case Blue. Blau to Stalingrad 1942. 

I think the big picture for me is that in the abstract, there was really no great difference in how fighting happened in 1917 vs how it happened in 1943. Tanks Divisions could prevent frontlines from bogging down and were why the front wouldn't remain static for years now, but frontlines and trenches and static fighting indeed still happened a lot and were little different in execution between the two wars. 
The World Wars were fundamentally wars of attrition, World War 2 enabled more maneuver this time but a lot of that was also due to far different political circumstances of that war which were happening outside of the purist military perspective. There was less of some stuff in 1917 than there would be of it in 1943, but the only major innovation of 2nd World War as far as organization goes was the Division-Level Tank Formation. The Armored Division, Panzer Division, Tank Corp, etc. If you want "World War 1 CM" you seriously get 90% of that by just leaving out tanks and vehicles entirely and abstracting infantry movements in the planning phase as "dismounted cavalry troop". 

Oh god here goes Simon again...
If we widen our scope even more it's worth pointing out that even the Tank Division sort of falls out of consideration as a major innovation. The chief benefit it granted a combatant was in efficient use of manpower. Five men in a tank could go many battles and encounters and never suffer any casualties because armor plating means you're immune to 99% of the threats present on fragmentation and machine gun saturated battlefields. This would not be reflected by a simple glance at casualty figures suffered by Armored Formations, in fact you'd frequently see higher than average figures because Tank Divisions were frequently tip of the spear and this naturally meant the enemy would throw every kind of arm and the kitchen sink at them. That's a losing proposition for the enemy though, because the necessary investment on his part to stop an armored thrust is disproportionately higher than what you're paying for a Tank Division or a Panzer Corp. Remember the Soviets constructed a defense like no other and bogged themselves down quite a bit just to achieve a very narrow victory over German Tank Armies at Kursk. 
This is where the big ideological split between Schwerpunkt and Deep Battle happens by the way. Because the German's idea of that manpower efficiency use was inherent to the tank's mobility and using that to stretch frontlines to such length that the enemy becomes overstretched and formations mutually unable to support eachother-thus enabling defeat in detail. The Soviet idea thought more from the former notion I listed above wherein the defender was simply overwhelmed by facing multiple simultaneous and catastrophic manpower shortages at critical points of the front, just crumpling and melting the entire frontline rather than unhinging it and swinging it open. Only at a level above the Wehrmacht's world (the world of politics) it was hoped that the enemy's leaders would crack and throw in the towel, that shock would prevail, because in fact if the enemy had enough time to start offsetting the German's tank/manpower advantage with their own tank/manpower investments the German Armies would quickly find themselves in the same unwinnable war-by-attrition that we all say was unique to World War 1. Well hmm sort of? 
It's also tempting to highlight the airplane as a major innovation and again, from a military perspective it's a crucial difference between the world wars, but in fact it's another form of manpower-efficiency in wars of attrition. The chief benefit of the airplane was its reach. The ability to fly past the frontline and strike enemy targets or even the enemy's home itself required the enemy to again make disproportionate and costly investments into intricate anti-aircraft defense networks, as well as set aside huge reserve armies of workers to repair infrastructure damage. 
It's true that on a rather conventional analysis of the 8th Air Force's performance, strategic bombing looked rather disappointing. It certainly fell far short of all the pre-war claims by lobbyists that bombing would win wars by itself. Lots of heavy losses in men and equipment failed to stop Germany's arms production from increasing every year right up until 1945 when the frontline finally began to overtake industrial centers. However, this sort of ignores the mere 200,000 men of the 8th Air Force were in fact pinning down over 1 million men in Germany who had to man AA batteries, and staff Luftwaffe airfields. That's 1 million men who might otherwise have ended up at the front. (Tooze) What's that not counting even, is the huge numbers of men being retained in cities to clean up and repair damage everywhere too for which i've heard numbers thrown around for that workforce of anywhere from 500,000 to one million. 
In the First World War neither the airplane or the tank had proven sufficiently able to tie down large enough numbers of men and equipment to materially affect the frontline. Airplanes began and ended the war still fundamentally best for reconnaissance and tanks remained seen as self-propelled siege engines swatting individual machine gun nests so the infantry could advance. After the war politicians frequently seized upon strategic bombers to argue and push points about national defense though, but ironically they usually highlighted the capabilities of strategic bombing to point out how investment and rearmament was pointless and that war could only be prevented via diplomacy otherwise the bombers would flatten Paris and that'd be the end of it. 
Without a way to sink manpower on other activities, it naturally tended to end up with the Army. This is why few of the Ground Forces of the First World War's powers were broken in battle. They were all more or less defeated by the outbreak of political instability at home (so called "stab in the back" mythology). Because strategic reserves were just so plentiful! There could be chronic manpower shortages but there'd never be an acute manpower shortage. The kind of shortage that would cause whole frontlines to collapse and roll up and induce million man Army Groups to retreat 500 miles all at once as they would in 1944. Not generally a problem until the Bolsheviks happen or the Czechs declare autonomy right? 

Oh god here goes Simon again...
If we widen our scope even more it's worth pointing out that even the Tank Division sort of falls out of consideration as a major innovation. The chief benefit it granted a combatant was in efficient use of manpower. Five men in a tank could go many battles and encounters and never suffer any casualties because armor plating means you're immune to 99% of the threats present on fragmentation and machine gun saturated battlefields. This would not be reflected by a simple glance at casualty figures suffered by Armored Formations, in fact you'd frequently see higher than average figures because Tank Divisions were frequently tip of the spear and this naturally meant the enemy would throw every kind of arm and the kitchen sink at them. That's a losing proposition for the enemy though, because the necessary investment on his part to stop an armored thrust is disproportionately higher than what you're paying for a Tank Division or a Panzer Corp. Remember the Soviets constructed a defense like no other and bogged themselves down quite a bit just to achieve a very narrow victory over German Tank Armies at Kursk. 
This is where the big ideological split between Schwerpunkt and Deep Battle happens by the way. Because the German's idea of that manpower efficiency use was inherent to the tank's mobility and using that to stretch frontlines to such length that the enemy becomes overstretched and formations mutually unable to support eachother-thus enabling defeat in detail. The Soviet idea thought more from the former notion I listed above wherein the defender was simply overwhelmed by facing multiple simultaneous and catastrophic manpower shortages at critical points of the front, just crumpling and melting the entire frontline rather than unhinging it and swinging it open. Only at a level above the Wehrmacht's world (the world of politics) it was hoped that the enemy's leaders would crack and throw in the towel, that shock would prevail, because in fact if the enemy had enough time to start offsetting the German's tank/manpower advantage with their own tank/manpower investments the German Armies would quickly find themselves in the same unwinnable war-by-attrition that we all say was unique to World War 1. Well hmm sort of? 
It's also tempting to highlight the airplane as a major innovation and again, from a military perspective it's a crucial difference between the world wars, but in fact it's another form of manpower-efficiency in wars of attrition. The chief benefit of the airplane was its reach. The ability to fly past the frontline and strike enemy targets or even the enemy's home itself required the enemy to again make disproportionate and costly investments into intricate anti-aircraft defense networks, as well as set aside huge reserve armies of workers to repair infrastructure damage. 
It's true that on a rather conventional analysis of the 8th Air Force's performance, strategic bombing looked rather disappointing. It certainly fell far short of all the pre-war claims by lobbyists that bombing would win wars by itself. Lots of heavy losses in men and equipment failed to stop Germany's arms production from increasing every year right up until 1945 when the frontline finally began to overtake industrial centers. However, this sort of ignores the mere 200,000 men of the 8th Air Force were in fact pinning down over 1 million men in Germany who had to man AA batteries, and staff Luftwaffe airfields. That's 1 million men who might otherwise have ended up at the front. (Tooze) What's that not counting even, is the huge numbers of men being retained in cities to clean up and repair damage everywhere too for which i've heard numbers thrown around for that workforce of anywhere from 500,000 to one million. 
In the First World War neither the airplane or the tank had proven sufficiently able to tie down large enough numbers of men and equipment to materially affect the frontline. Airplanes began and ended the war still fundamentally best for reconnaissance and tanks remained seen as self-propelled siege engines swatting individual machine gun nests so the infantry could advance. After the war politicians frequently seized upon strategic bombers to argue and push points about national defense though, but ironically they usually highlighted the capabilities of strategic bombing to point out how investment and rearmament was pointless and that war could only be prevented via diplomacy otherwise the bombers would flatten Paris and that'd be the end of it. 
Without a way to sink manpower on other activities, it naturally tended to end up with the Army. This is why few of the Ground Forces of the First World War's powers were broken in battle. They were all more or less defeated by the outbreak of political instability at home (so called "stab in the back" mythology). Because strategic reserves were just so plentiful! There could be chronic manpower shortages but there'd never be an acute manpower shortage. The kind of shortage that would cause whole frontlines to collapse and roll up and induce million man Army Groups to retreat 500 miles all at once as they would in 1944. Not generally a problem until the Bolsheviks happen or the Czechs declare autonomy right? 

There was also campaigning in the Balkans, Italy, Baltic Ocean, and African fronts as well. Little known is the great number of amphibious invasions that happened in the First World War which are usually overshadowed by all the British historians shrieking about Gallipoli. An example of such is Operation Albion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Albion
There was also lots of naval fighting in the Baltic during World War 1 as well and frequently the Germany Navy had to balance deployments of ships between that theatre and the North Sea. Contrary to the "Fleet in Being" inactive German Navy rhetoric, naval forces of the Central Powers were often very active. It's just that since the oceans they tended to be active in weren't where the Royal Navy was...you don't hear much about it lol. 

Oh god here goes Simon again...
If we widen our scope even more it's worth pointing out that even the Tank Division sort of falls out of consideration as a major innovation. The chief benefit it granted a combatant was in efficient use of manpower. Five men in a tank could go many battles and encounters and never suffer any casualties because armor plating means you're immune to 99% of the threats present on fragmentation and machine gun saturated battlefields. This would not be reflected by a simple glance at casualty figures suffered by Armored Formations, in fact you'd frequently see higher than average figures because Tank Divisions were frequently tip of the spear and this naturally meant the enemy would throw every kind of arm and the kitchen sink at them. That's a losing proposition for the enemy though, because the necessary investment on his part to stop an armored thrust is disproportionately higher than what you're paying for a Tank Division or a Panzer Corp. Remember the Soviets constructed a defense like no other and bogged themselves down quite a bit just to achieve a very narrow victory over German Tank Armies at Kursk. 
This is where the big ideological split between Schwerpunkt and Deep Battle happens by the way. Because the German's idea of that manpower efficiency use was inherent to the tank's mobility and using that to stretch frontlines to such length that the enemy becomes overstretched and formations mutually unable to support eachother-thus enabling defeat in detail. The Soviet idea thought more from the former notion I listed above wherein the defender was simply overwhelmed by facing multiple simultaneous and catastrophic manpower shortages at critical points of the front, just crumpling and melting the entire frontline rather than unhinging it and swinging it open. Only at a level above the Wehrmacht's world (the world of politics) it was hoped that the enemy's leaders would crack and throw in the towel, that shock would prevail, because in fact if the enemy had enough time to start offsetting the German's tank/manpower advantage with their own tank/manpower investments the German Armies would quickly find themselves in the same unwinnable war-by-attrition that we all say was unique to World War 1. Well hmm sort of? 
It's also tempting to highlight the airplane as a major innovation and again, from a military perspective it's a crucial difference between the world wars, but in fact it's another form of manpower-efficiency in wars of attrition. The chief benefit of the airplane was its reach. The ability to fly past the frontline and strike enemy targets or even the enemy's home itself required the enemy to again make disproportionate and costly investments into intricate anti-aircraft defense networks, as well as set aside huge reserve armies of workers to repair infrastructure damage. 
It's true that on a rather conventional analysis of the 8th Air Force's performance, strategic bombing looked rather disappointing. It certainly fell far short of all the pre-war claims by lobbyists that bombing would win wars by itself. Lots of heavy losses in men and equipment failed to stop Germany's arms production from increasing every year right up until 1945 when the frontline finally began to overtake industrial centers. However, this sort of ignores the mere 200,000 men of the 8th Air Force were in fact pinning down over 1 million men in Germany who had to man AA batteries, and staff Luftwaffe airfields. That's 1 million men who might otherwise have ended up at the front. (Tooze) What's that not counting even, is the huge numbers of men being retained in cities to clean up and repair damage everywhere too for which i've heard numbers thrown around for that workforce of anywhere from 500,000 to one million. 
In the First World War neither the airplane or the tank had proven sufficiently able to tie down large enough numbers of men and equipment to materially affect the frontline. Airplanes began and ended the war still fundamentally best for reconnaissance and tanks remained seen as self-propelled siege engines swatting individual machine gun nests so the infantry could advance. After the war politicians frequently seized upon strategic bombers to argue and push points about national defense though, but ironically they usually highlighted the capabilities of strategic bombing to point out how investment and rearmament was pointless and that war could only be prevented via diplomacy otherwise the bombers would flatten Paris and that'd be the end of it. 
Without a way to sink manpower on other activities, it naturally tended to end up with the Army. This is why few of the Ground Forces of the First World War's powers were broken in battle. They were all more or less defeated by the outbreak of political instability at home (so called "stab in the back" mythology). Because strategic reserves were just so plentiful! There could be chronic manpower shortages but there'd never be an acute manpower shortage. The kind of shortage that would cause whole frontlines to collapse and roll up and induce million man Army Groups to retreat 500 miles all at once as they would in 1944. Not generally a problem until the Bolsheviks happen or the Czechs declare autonomy right? 

I think the big picture for me is that in the abstract, there was really no great difference in how fighting happened in 1917 vs how it happened in 1943. Tanks Divisions could prevent frontlines from bogging down and were why the front wouldn't remain static for years now, but frontlines and trenches and static fighting indeed still happened a lot and were little different in execution between the two wars. 
The World Wars were fundamentally wars of attrition, World War 2 enabled more maneuver this time but a lot of that was also due to far different political circumstances of that war which were happening outside of the purist military perspective. There was less of some stuff in 1917 than there would be of it in 1943, but the only major innovation of 2nd World War as far as organization goes was the Division-Level Tank Formation. The Armored Division, Panzer Division, Tank Corp, etc. If you want "World War 1 CM" you seriously get 90% of that by just leaving out tanks and vehicles entirely and abstracting infantry movements in the planning phase as "dismounted cavalry troop".