ctcharger

It confused us both, from opposite directions.....As I said, I knew about the 'The Jump' from IED experiments in Mosul, what I hadn't realised was that the choice of plan was fixed prior to the 'The Jump', indeed my mistaken assumption that the AI plan was chosen when the Red Button is clicked was based on observing the 'The Jump'. 

I am calling this a win.  Made some dumb mistakes but clearly better this time.  Clear win if I am writing the history of the battle.... 
They'll never get to Kiev at this rate....
 
 
 

I've modified my post with the pictures to make it clearer. 
Outta likes again, I owe you a couple, again. 

To  go back to the original question: I do think buildings and cover are undermodelled. I can quite understand that a breeze block building won't stop 7.62 but modern concrete buildings, especially those prepared for defence (e.g. a sandbagged position inside) and trenches/bunkers/foxholes do seem to be much easier to destroy than RL as seen in videos of action in places like Syria and Ukraine. In Ed Nash's excellent book Desert Sniper (recommended - see reviews on FGM inc mine) a ISIS fortified house position that has resisted all sorts of attacks is finally hammered by using the YPG "home made" 12.7mm and 14.5mm sniper rifles. (here's hoping we can get some of that stuff in the game sometime) 

You've matched me with that result, I've never won as the Ukrainians that I recall. 
Maybe there's a message for someone in there somewhere.....Picking fights with Russia is a **** idea. 
PS - Had similar issues with the BTRs.....IIRC in my last commentary on this battle I considered stripping out all the gear, dismounting the crews and using the vehicles as roadblocks (Unlike the old CM1 games, enemy units can't just bulldoze them aside, sadly IMHO.  ).

Yes, you will. I am sorry to say that both @MOS:96B2P and @Sgt.Squarehead have it wrong. When you reload the saved game you are getting the same AI plan every time. When you think about it it makes sense. If your side is getting pre battle intel then the other side's setup has to be done therefore the AI plan must be chosen.
To verify I created a simple scenario with two AI plans for red - one had the T90s coming up the eastern side of the map and the other coming up the western side. I created a save during blue's setup and played the setup 6 times - every time the came up the same side. There is a 1/64 ish chance of that happening
When I start the game a fresh each time I see a variety of the two attack plans.
Scenario and save attached...
PlanChoice.zip

Okay, good to know.  Thanks for testing that.  +1 

What Sgt.S said.  

From what I've seen in my experiments in design, the AI plan is chosen when you click the Big Red Button, so a preliminary setup save is cool.....But once the Big Red has been clicked, your path is chosen. 

I've had the same thing happen. Tank, spotted, sitting in the wide open and a Konkurs more than a km away staring at him for several minutes without firing.

In my experience, cover doesn't even really matter that much in these games. It's more about fire superiority. You can attack across wide open ground with zero cover whatsoever as long as you have that fire superiority. And the best cover in the world doesn't matter at all if the enemy has fire superiority and can just sit there blasting away at you without you having an answer to it. If the enemy outmatches you in firepower, then foxholes and trees are not gonna be much better than concrete buildings. I wish foxholes provided better cover in these games but they often don't do very much except against light small arms fire.
When it comes to defending in urban areas, it's often better to not even contest the outskirts. Like you said, anyone who opens fire gets immediately taken out (unless you have a really good keyhole position or something). Have some scouts out front with target arcs so they won't give their positions away, and then pull your troops deeper into the inside of the town where the attackers can't as easily bring their weapons to bear. Have your dudes sit behind buildings rather than inside of them. If enemy infantry tries to storm the building, your guys will fire in through the windows and mow them down as they run through the doorway. If your guys are inside the buildings, they will cluster around the doors and windows and be easy targets. One tank shell or RPG smacking against the wall can blow a whole squad to bits. 
This is all more easily said than done of course. I think I played that scenario but it was a really long time ago and I don't even remember how I did. Now I kinda want to pull myself away from Shock Force 2 for a moment and try that again.

Was the ATGM inside a building at all? 
IIRC not all ATGMs can be fired from inside closed structures.
PS - You've gone and done it.....I'm going to have to play it again now! 
 

I like that idea for vehicles, but there would be problems when you're using "Hunt" to make infantry advance cautiously and take cover if they're shot at. In that case you probably don't want them to get back up and start walking again in 15 seconds or whatever, since most likely the same MG that stopped them will just open up again.

I guess there could be different actions if the "stop" was caused by enemy fire or spotting an enemy target. But that would get complicated to understand and predict.

Yep. By creative use of the pause command and stacking orders. Ex: You run your guys up to the crest of a hill, select the end waypoint, issue a pause (in 5 sec increments), issue an area target briefly to where you want them to fire or don't issue any target commands and let them choose when they get there. Draw another way point back the way you came or at least out of enemy LOS/LOF. So it plays out like this: team runs to hill top, stops for 10 seconds, shoots at targets of opportunity, retreats/repositions itself.
 
Mord.

But don't use "Hunt" for moving into position, even though it may seem like the right command (and it did to me at first). Once they spot something they'll stop and dump all their remaining orders, including the pause and the movement command to get out of there after the pause!

It might be nice if the Hunt command could be revised in such a way that instead of dumping remaining orders, it would insert a pause as soon as it spots a target, but then continues as soon as the target is neutralized. In practice that might not make a whole lot of difference on most occasions, but in some it might.
Michael

You'll be saying the same thing a year from now. In modern you tend to feel every death twice as hard. Once you get to WWII you'll be running dudes into a meat grinder and won't even bat an eye. Your losses will be 5x higher and you'll feel like a king.
 
You sound just like me back when I discovered CMBO. I went apes*** for everything WWII. Bought all kinds of memoirs and armor guides and watched every VHS tape I could get my hands on. Yeah, VHS, it was that long ago! 2000. Haven't stopped since. My library and DVD collection have expanded with all kinds of military history since then.
I really enjoy your enthusiasm. It's a blast watching you develop a love for the game.
If you have Netflix there is a documentary on their about the UKR. I don't know if it's any good, though.  And if you haven't seen these, they are pretty good.
 
 
 
 
Mord.
 

You're gettin' there, brother! The other day you couldn't walk five feet without losing a platoon!
 
Mord.

That was 3 years ago. I can’t remember but the javelins were crucial iirc

@ctcharger Retired USA Colonel Jeffrey Paulding put together about six u-tube videos on Combat Missions and tactics.  Don't know if you have seen them but they are very good. Below is a link to the first video.  Enjoy. 
 
 

After reading Stalin's Favorite, a late Eastern Front module would be great although I am still hip deep in CM:BS.  Thanks for the update!  (and keep the Fulda Gap 1985 dream alive!)

While it lacks drama, I finally figured out how to see who did what and got my first enemy surrender (where the end game screen just pops up).  Overall, a minor victory but I am just starting out so I will take it!  Took too many losses which I believe could have been avoidable or at least many of them were.
Reminds me of Pavlov's House in Stalingrad.  You shall NOT pass!! (which is Gandalf I know)
So I quit playing to go watch the Brown's with 20 minutes left in the game (They won!) and then woke up for the last 20 minutes of this game.  Kept my guys spread out to avoid airtstrikes (don't bunch up, no straight lines!)
 
Whew!  What a freaking game.
 
Going to read up on the subject and relax today and enjoy the win... maybe do the training again...maybe buy some of the other titles...

About a year ago Steve made a post that I summarized below:
Rome to Victory - this project got sidetracked due to a bunch of issues, but it's getting a lot of attention these days.  When completed, CMFI will have a big list of new forces and the timeframe extended to the end of the war.  It will likely be our next release
Untitled Eastern Front Module - active work has been going on since the Spring and it's shaping up quite nicely.  This will take CMRT up to the end of the war, including some huge Berlin maps. Existing TO&E expanded to April 45, Germans get access to a range of non-Heer forces, new weather stuff, and a couple new Regions.  Waffen SS and rag-tag forces will be available for the Red Thunder Module.
New Zealand Defense Forces training aid - pretty much that's all there is to say about it.
CMBS is owed a Module.  CMBS is theoretically next after CMRT.  Marines are an obvious selection for the first Module and the work being done for CMSF2 is going to pave the way for that to happen.  
 
Then in November 2018 he made a post specific to CMRT which I summarized below: 
For the CMRT module no Polish Home Guard, Hungarians, or other “Axis minor” nations.  The CMRT module will have German and Soviet TO&E updated through to the end of the war, Waffen SS, Luftwaffe (including scratch forces), Volkssturm, Kriegmarine, and most like 1944 Partisans.  This not only extends the timeframe of CMRT through to the end of the war, but it also fills out the Bagration timeframe.  Obviously new weather, a Germany Region (terrain), new textures, and highly detailed Master Maps as well.

As others have said, the acquire system is a bit fiddly and probably not ideal but these dramas add those little bits of tension to the mission and require you to make choices. Kinda tedious, that's logistics for you 😉, but as a famous dead chap said 'amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics'.