Arjuna.R

I just did a quick test about this:

6 full US squads vs 12 US half squads with same soft stats and same cover.   The split squads were in adjacent action squares, so no advantage from spacing.  Each squad vs half squad was partitioned, so units could only exchange fire with units directly in front. At the end of 1 minute of exchanging fire:
6 of the 12 half squads were pinned. 13 casualties
0 of the 6 full squads were pinned.  10 casualties.

From this 1 min test, it seems to me the main advantage of splitting squads is spacing and multiple order options.

Well, with his personal history he would do well to make place for his son as soon as possible. But traditions are important, now more than ever.

If anyone was worthy of the title 'First Lady' it was her. May she rest in peace.

That's like stealing! I don't think I've ever regretted a single cent spent on Battlefront releases. 

Yeah, I was in that one too. 
I want the West Germans but would be happy with the Brits too...
Who am I kidding?
I'm going to buy the module pretty much whatever the content* is. I get hundreds of hours of entertainment time so the expense per hour is very low. 
H
*If we get the Brits we could use the Shock Force maps and make Iran/Iraq war scenarios. 

That's like stealing! I don't think I've ever regretted a single cent spent on Battlefront releases. 

Me neither. And yes, you're right, it does feel like stealing.

That's like stealing! I don't think I've ever regretted a single cent spent on Battlefront releases. 

I don't want to alarm anyone, but there appears to be a HUGE problem with the Canadian uniforms in CMSF:2.
Have a look at these fellas that greeted me when I loaded up the Cunuckian campaign:

Year 2008. Arid CADPAT - check. C7A2s - check. BEWs - check. Olive green Load Bearing Vest circa Bosnia 1994 ... what in the tabarnak is this?
Alright, drama for the sake of comedy aside, this is a strange one considering in CMSF:1 Canadian troops were (correctly) represented as wearing all Arid CADPAT gear. Where as it seems for CMSF:2 a conscious decision was made to change the Canadian uniform artwork and clad troops in their ancient OG LBVs.
Yes, the Canadians kept using the LBVs well out of the 90's - even surviving the introduction of CADPAT. In fact the initial force into Afghanistan wore Temperate Woodland CADPAT and OG LBVs. Afghanistan c.2002 (source and  source) :

Not long after in 2003, the new Tac-Vests are introduced, albeit still in "Temperate Woodland"; the LBVs are never seen in combat operations again. (source and source) :

Then in 2004 Arid uniforms and C7A2s were introduced. Can you believe they still drove the ILTIS in Afghanistan in 2004? (source and source) :

"Arid uniform - Green TacVest" combo survived for a while, well into Op Medusa in 2006 (source) :

By 2007 however, the entire ensemble can be seen in Arid CADPAT; also issued ballistic eyewear is introduced (source and source) :

Thank you for making it to the end of my brief on The Woes of the Canadian Military Equipment Procurement.
Seems pretty clear that by mid-2008 CMSF timeline the gear would be all Arid CADPAT and new-pattern TacVest ... as it was in CMSF:1.
Anyone have any insight into what happened in CMSF:2 with the LBV's? @MikeyD or @BFCElvis perhaps?
Cheers!

Well based on the time period we are more likely talking the Pattern 64 webbing.

"Hyena Road"...yeesh that brings back the nightmares.
Anyway, I can shed some light on the mystery.  So as I recall back in the day when they were putting all this together the questions was "if Canadian deployed to Syria in 2007 what would they be wearing?".  This question was being asked in, I wanna say 08-09 while the NATO pack for CMSF was in dev.  We went around the tree a lot on this as we were in the full arid sets by 09 but as can be seen Canadian uniform procurement is a splendid affair.  In the end, as I recall, the decision was made to go to the green/arid mix (not sure why it is straight olive and not CADPAT) because it was probably more accurate of where we were wrt FG in 06-07 and it also made the Canadians more distinctive.  Not sure where it all went from there...largely due to the fact that I was in Arid CADPAT for a significant slice of the next two years.

I used this set-up for CMFR Feierabend - fight a delaying action then retire when ordered. It's a tough one to fight.

Interesting point that highlights a designers dilemma.  In CMCW we built in 'consequences' into both the US and Soviet campaigns.  The player does need to worry about tomorrow as losses carry over from one fight to the next.  We also added "a" and "b" versions of fights to reflect a win or loss previously and here we added support and position incentives and punishment.  Originally we had these settings as very realistic.  For example in this sort of war scenario logistics are going to be extremely strained and units cannot depend on reinforcements or replacements in a tactical window of a CM campaign.  The Soviet doctrine was designed for this specifically.  Then on play testing it became apparent that brutal realism will put most players behind a loss curve from which they will not recover.
So we design realistic campaigns that most players will only make it half way through...wee.  This required a lot of RRR balancing, particularly on the US campaign.  We left the Soviet March or Die campaign along the lines of the original and I do not doubt that it will be the least popular of the bunch based on feedback to date.
So the CM designers dilemma is that players want 'realism' and I am not being sarcastic here, this is a high end realistic wargame and level of detail is downright crazy sometimes.  This is attractive to die harder wargamers who don't want an RTS or broad chess-like abstraction.  But "real war" is not fair in the least (trust me).  So how does one design a realistic scenario/campaign that doesn't lead to grossly unfair end states that leave a player that has invested money and time completely and irreversibly screwed?
The answer is very carefully and accept the fact that you are not going to make everyone happy.  In CMCW, the Soviet campaign specifically, we went with two options, Standard which is more forgiving and "March or Die" where if you play loose and reckless you are not going to make it that far because the MRR you are fighting will be in tatters by the end...and we even dialed it back.
Now what I would like is the ability to make "tomorrow" operationally significant in a much broader context but given the current engine that ability to effectively create meta-campaigns is just not there.  Maybe on CMx3.

A lot of 'real world stuff' has the small problem of not being particularly fun.
Yes, you can literally construct a game scenario where you lay artillery onto a objective for 3 hours 55 minutes before moving forward in the remaining 5. It might make for an instructive 'demonstration scenario' but nobody would play it. I'm not sure, the game might take into account artillery tubes overheating and the fire rate dropping dramatically. Its rare that anyone abuses their artillery privileges to that extent so I'm not certain.
Out of perversity, I did build a Cold War scenario that starts with a battery of three  BM21 artillery rocket launchers barraging the player's setup zone on the first move. Because that is likely to be exactly what would happen in those circumstances. For one CMRT Fire and Rubble scenario I heavily weighted armor on the side of the Russians (like nine IS-2s-to-zero) because we're talking the Vistula-Oder offensive which rolled over the Germans like a steamroller. Basically, if you can think of it you can probably build a demonstration scenario of it (after a little practice).
Its no secret (anymore) that CM is being marketed and sold to armies as professional training aids and as a tactical sandbox to test concepts in. By all accounts 'they' are well pleased with the results - even awarded Steve a medal or award or something.

The primary impediment to scenario realism is the player. Its an old joke that most CM players would make great WWI French generals. Or, to paraphrase a line from a Usually Hapless Youtube video, "Throw bodies at the enemy until they drown in your own blood." The body count can get a bit excessive. Then again, the Battle of the Bulge saw some 188,000 casualties and 1,300 tanks lost over the course of just 5 weeks. It would be difficult to reproduce carnage on that scale using CM.
A nice realistic engagement (though a fictional battle)? I'm (a bit too) partial to my own scenarios, I'll admit. I'd pick:
CMRT Fire and Rubble module:  the scenario 'Katabasis'
CMFI Rome to Victory module: the scenario 'Pursuit Force'
CMSF2 NATO module the scenario '25km to Suran'
CMSF2 UK module the scenario 'Outmanoeuvred'

MoD's diversity request was super-easy. it was already 80% done before they even asked. The problem was their request for female faces. I had my doubts about being able to properly texture the generic soldier model. I was VERY surprised when it actually worked! Here's a couple women soldier heads being tested in CMSF2.
 

Never saw this 1977 gem in my entire career as a Soviet Threat Analyst, a career which began in 1978. Not only does this show the ins and outs of the T-62 and how it operates with BMP-1s and AT-3 armed BRDMs, but it shows US capabilities, too, including the hulldown disparity, telltale reload indicator, low T-62 ROF and more. On the US end, everything from tanks to tacair and scatterable mines (by automatic minelayer or helicopter dispenser) are all there to see. Nor is the terrain the sere NTC, but someplace very European looking. Not only is there lots of great footage, but some remarkable model work, too. Of particular intetest to players will be the comments on open fire ranges, engagememt philoposophies, ammo selection and other game useful groggery. 

Offhand, I can't think of a better intro to the real world which CMCW seeks to depict.
 
Regards,

John Kettler

I recall reading an old article about Bovington Tank museum taking possesion of a running IS-2M in exchange for a Conqueror (I believe) and the Brits were shocked by how quietly the IS-2 ran. It was something of a revelation to them. The Brits were used to tanks that made a 'BBLAAP! BBLAAP!" sound on starting up. 🙉

The differences between CMSF2 and Professional Student version.
 

The differences between CMSF2 and Professional Student version.
 

The differences between CMSF2 and Professional Student version.
 

Ah, so we have been expecting the "NBCD Question".  Yes, we did look at it in detail and the decision to leave it out was a conscious one.  We knew some would disagree but hear me out:
- Nukes.  Ok let's just put that one to bed.  We have a beta tester who was in the "nuclear artillery" in the time period and the smallest strike would wipe out our largest maps, so not real point in modeling this as there is already a ceasefire/surrender option in the game.
- As much fun as it would be to drop a nerve gas salvo on the enemy and watch them squirm (I think inside all of us is that kid with the magnifying glass and the anthill) this is highly inaccurate use of these weapons in context of the game.  At a minimum chemical warfare was controlled and used at the operational level or higher due to the whole escalation dynamics.  So in game it really becomes an environmental factor much like weather or EW as opposed to a tactical weapon system (i.e. it is highly unrealistic for a Bn CO - the main rank of players in the game - to have control of chemical rounds.)
- So that fact really impacts the whole cost/benefit equation for the feature, we prioritized new features that the player can actually employ (e.g. ICMs).  So as an environmental factor, unlike rain or fog, chemical warfare was basically invisible beyond the initial drops, which look like smoke rounds.  So modeling smoke rounds outside of the players control, who then has to live with the effects is starting to sound shaky.
- So what does chemical warfare do.  Well it puts everyone in TOPP/MOPP whatever, so there are now uniform modeling efforts which are not small.  Then play-wise it slows everything down.  All infantry take a serious movement, morale and fatigue hit (which as has been noted the player can already model), vehicles are fully buttoned so spotting goes down.  And probably most importantly logistics take a serious hit, which was the actual main point of chemical warfare, strain operational logistics.  [Aside: this was over 60 years after Ypres, so no one was expecting magic breakthroughs, that is what the nukes were for].  So now supplies may run low and medivac becomes a nightmare.  Interesting but who does that really effect the 90 mins of a CM Battle in any better way than what we already have?
- So now we have a significant amount of work to essentially take decisions out of the players hands.  Play would risk slowing to a drag, which really goes against the fun factor.  And, if a scenario designer really wants to, they can already simulate some of this in the current game. 
So at the end of the day, even though we knew many players had been talking about this feature and it is likely that chemical warfare would have been employed, the effort was simply not worth the potential gains to in-game experience.   We needed to put it on the shelf right next to real-time area denial through flooding and psyops as all really cool and realistic stuff but simply not worth the level of effort to implement while a lot of other priorities existed.

Make sure your GPU is running CM and not an integrated graphics chip on the motherboard.  This makes a significant difference.  As GeorgeMC notes this may be worth a trouble ticket as The Citadel is probably the biggest battle in the game, especially on setup (once the zone is removed it should speed up) but in testing it runs at workable frame rates on computers over 5 years old.  So something is definitely going on here with your experience.

I can run that mission on a ten year-old i5. Perhaps BFC should update the recommended system requirements to convey that running a huge map with lots of units is not going to work on a weaker computer. It's nothing to do with 'less graphically demanding', software is more complicated than that. 

The CMRT / F&R patch was just released and the servers seem to flatline.

Reminder for everyone to and get their friends to buy CMCW on battlefront.com, BFC gets more of a cut + like stated earlier; day 1 access.