Stardekk

I've been really disappointed with CAS in the few multiplayer quickbattles I've played. Aircraft cost rather a lot in terms of points, but even if limited AA doesn't destroy it or convince it to leave accuracy leaves a lot to be desired, with an F4 making multiple passes dropping only 1 bomb giving AA extra opportunities to shoot it down. Even without AA interference they are kinda anemic.

Probably all the thermal optics, spotting anything from an A-10A isn't going to be easy as it's just eyeballs or a maverick camera. But I agree that aircraft should keep trying unless the request is canceled or they're attacked by AA, I don't think your CAS would just shrug and leave if they didn't see targets right away.  
Also need a one pass haul ass option to drop everything on a point or line like artillery or on the first target in an area. 

Dunno about that, in a recent Black Sea PBEM I used the AT-14 to great effect against US Bradleys and Abrams.
Even without firing a single missile. forcing the US to pop smoke and reverse into cover can be extremely useful.

I second the motion to have LWS just for the Russian (and maybe some Ukrainian) vehicles. It's not a question of whether the US can field this equipment, but of the fact that they choose not to, while the Russians do. It gives them their own unique flavor, and it makes a bunch of anti tank weapons more effective. 
It's kind of ridiculous that Kornet is a force to be reckoned with in Syrian hands (in SF), but in Ukraine it's a flop. 

I really like your ideas. I get that this game is based on a what if situation so it gives a little artistic license to add in what if equipment. So yea maybe limit the amount of APS for the both sides, make it really rare and expensive. I think this along with the LWS removal from the US can really even the game up immensely and I too hope it is done.

Its not a T-90, but another way to kil M1A2s is with the Khrizantema, their missiles are Radar Guided which means they won't trigger the Laser Warnning on the T-90s. And also, I'm pretty sure M1A2s should not have LSW unless its a special modification on the tank like Trophy.

If your only experience with them was the other modern games - especially Shock Force - I suspect that wouldn't be your conclusion. Seeing Soviet stuff in the correct context, finally, is really interesting.

The same will apply to BAOR - most of the British package in CMSF (and to this day) are doctrines and equipment designed for the context of the Cold War, and they make a lot less sense outside of that.

Where Syrian forces often need to throw out the rulebook to be competitive, CMCW does a really good job of showing how and why the Soviet army did what it did on the battalion level, and how Soviet tactics work extremely well in CM, when correctly understood and applied.

I´m to the bone, a true anti Soviet believer. But in the 60th, and 70th. Soviet know that they had, to have a large numerical superiority. And in "Big Mac Index" I think their numerically superior force, was not more expensive for them. 
 
And @The_Capt Hand on the bibel. Did not Nato, and the US have plans. Both for offensive, and defensive operations? In the cold war, both sides had plans for every thinkable scenario. But after the Iron Curtain falled. Some of the Warsawapacts plans came out in the light. And the ones that got most attention, is the offensive ones.
 
War was probably close, a few times. But I think, neither side really wanted it! But at the time, we all belived that the other side wanted war. And a strong Army/Air Force/Navy, was the only thing preventing the opposit side, to make a move! I´m glad, that the trigger needed to start things, never happend. Because in the nuclear armsrace age, anything bad could had happend!
 
Just my thoughts, and by no means any offence to you

And now we get to why I find the OP questionable in intent.  @dbsapp  has demonstrated, repeatedly, this pro-Russia/Soviet line.  Sure the Soviet Union (and now Russia) are totally innocent of any offensive actions and are totally defensive if you are willing to forget:
- 55k tanks and about 50k tubes and rocket systems all pretty much pointing West.  Anyone with a basic understanding of military force ratios can see that those are offensive postures.  They had actual plans for western invasion scenarios.  If the Soviet Union never was intent on a European invasion then why all the hardware?  Just cause?
- Proxy Wars in just about every corner of the globe - and no, they were not all started by the US/NATO
- the crushing of any dissidents or counter-narratives, a trend that continues to this day.
- A long history of invasion - Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and, of course, Afghanistan.  The West is not innocent of these either (we call them interventions) but both Russia and the Soviet Union were (and are) egregious in the "near abroad" by any standards.
- The hybrid/grey/espionage/subversive actions that were endemic of the Cold War and again are still with us today.
  No sale.  I am not saying we in the West are a clean as new driven snow, far from it but the whole "we are only defending our poor huddled selves from the nasty West" is so laughable as to be trite.  The Soviet Union was a great power and like all great powers was interested in keeping that power at all costs.  It was not an innocent grass roots movement just "trying to save the children from the US", it was a massive war machine capable of, and clearly demonstrating intent to throw down if it had to or if it saw a clear strategic gain to made.  The fact that it could not keep up is a bitter pill to swallow but try a larger glass of water.
   The Soviet doctrine in CMCW is built on what we understood it to be based on decades of research, spying and analysis.  Unless someone can some up with direct and substantiated Soviet era primary sources that differ, I am very untrusting of any counter-narratives coming to light in this current strategic environment.  

Every. Single. Soviet campaign mission is a battalion level action, and the final battle is a regimental action. And all of them are on large maps that accommodate the force size. Most of the US missions are battalion level as well. The training scenarios for the Soviets are all battalion level actions, and a good number of the independent scenarios are battalion and larger actions as well.
The record is so beyond broken at this point. Have you even played Cold War? Sheesh.

Great summary and to build on that point about AT assets. 
Sov platoons have different AT assets than an American platoon, although in a lot of ways the RPG-7 is better than a 66mm LAW and you have more HEAT ammo than the US  has. BMPs bring their organic ATGMs and BTR companies have the frequently under rated AT-7 and they bring a lot of them.
The thing that is frequently missing is scale. The Sov should never be sending a infantry platoon off by themselves, devoid of long range AT weapons. If it's an important objective then send a company and support them adequately with FOs or other assets. 
H
 

I think  this hits the nail on the head. I don't think it's a matter of whether Soviet doctrine works 100% like the simulations but playing to the TO&E and letting the strategy flow from there.
US
Tons of binoculars, forward observers at the platoon level. Less artillery, more air power Tanks (to me) have worse spotting at least until thermal imaging and have terrible hull down positions more organic infantry AT access APC's are useless besides transporting troops The US wants to keep you at a distance, observed while you bombard them with air support. They want to use small, flexible, independent units to make their own space and take ground.
Soviet
barely any binoculars, you get maybe one or two forward observers More artillery, less air Tanks have decent spotting, high speed, low silhouette Less organic AT access APC's can help support infantry Soviets need their entire battalion to function to make one set piece attack after gaining as much intel as possible
 
Maybe certain aspects of Soviet doctrine doesn't work but it looks pretty close to me just with TOE.
 

Well, T-14 is not in service even now, in 2022, so not in 2017 too... 
And you don't need the T-14 to balance the game.
 
First of all, I'm aware that CM is a simulator and not a strategy game where balance is up most important.
But you could change some stuff based on historical accuracy so the game can be more balanced:


I do wonder if they could change is some stuff that Battlefront fought the US will have in 2017 in 2014 but they don't have IRL. 
If you will remove the LWS for the Abrams and Bradley it will not only be more historically accurate but also more blanced, they could instead put it with a different variant like they did with the APS. M1A2s do have APS IRL (they will likely buy more Trohpy APS from Israel as tensions rise before the conflict itsealf) at the time, but the Bradleys don't, and they don't have any LWS too. Also, if you carry the trophy with the M1A2 i'm pretty sure you can't carry ERA at the same time.


About the Marines, they still have Javelins.... What they will not have is a commander sight for the Abrams (M1A1 FEPs don't have does...), not Bradleys and no MQ-1Cs (which means the russians will have Drone superiority 100% of the time).


As far as I'm aware of, T-90s and T-90Ms do have a LSW as standard issue, and also, unlike in game, their smoke is quite effective and you do not need to wait 5 seconds until the smoke lands on the ground and starts to spread. 

 



The lack of LSW (for the most part) for the US Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) means that things like AT-14s (both on BMPs and on foot) Will be much more deadly than they are now. Similarly to Combat Mission Shock Force. 
 
This means that M1A2s will have better spotting than Russian tanks but Top tier Russian tanks (not T-72B3s) will have more defenses  with LWSs.
Both factions should have a rare APS system like they do now. But US's IFVs can't mount them while Russia's can. 

 
 
All in All, what i'm trying to say here is that you could change and tweak some stuff in the base game's units based on historical accuracy and the game could be much more balanced.



 

Great answers everyone! This is what I come to the forums for.

@domfluff What about Stryker infantry ? In my experiance does guys are leaning on mass fire-support from drones, CAS, arty etc. It can be seen in the scenario "Rollin' On The River and the Stryker camapaign, where basiaclly almost every mission there you get an Apache flight. So you might want to attack as fast as possible, before all the Fire Support falls on you. And accept that if you are attacking a Stryker Troop will you lose at least 9 tanks (i.e. the amont of Javelin missiles a Company can get). 
 
 
And also, about the Drone superiority, I will have to disagree. This is very situational- you will need to have a Tunguska in your force and that the enemy force won't have MQ-1C Grey Eagles, which can take out a Tunguska very Easily, (The Tunguska can't shoot at the Drone when its obsderving, and the Drones can call "Point Target CAS or precision artillery on the Tunguska, or even, fire its own hellfires at it, I tested it a acouple times and  you can kill a Tunguska with the hellfires of the drone 80% of the time with getting hand-free if there is no other AA assets in the battlefield).

Anyway, in my Opinion to lose that Drone superiority the opponent just needs to have an MQ-1C, and if you don't want not to lose any AA, you will have to buy more than 1 Tunguska and even then its not 100% success, (I found that MANPADS are sort of inconsistant. Especially if you bring them with only 1 Missile, and they  could also be ignored if you bring Fixed-Wing air).





 

Well, that's what i thought. The "big 5" (AH-64 Apache,M1 Abrams,M2 Bradley,UH-60 Blackhawk,MIM-104 Patriot)  of the US is quite a game changer (both in the tactical battlefield and in the strategic.
     

If Battlefront will release a Module for CW which expands the timeline to 1989, how will it be compared (mostly in terms of balance, that is) to 1982 (CMCW base game timeline) and 2017 ? (CMBS base game timeline).
I know that in 1989 almost every  Soviet tank has ERA, which means your average TOW will have a hard time penetrating tanks (Unless its a T0W-2\A ?)
But, almost every US unit will have thermals and advanced FCS, and if I'm ont wrong in this timeline tanks do not have thermal smoke yet, so you  can fill the battle with dust and smoke and it will very quickly turn into a one-sided shooting range, plus, you TOWs will be able to shoot through smoke, unlike in 1982.

The general trend (which has been echoed by a lot of the literature) is that by the late eighties the Soviets wouldn't really have had a chance. How much of that carries over to the tactical level is an open question, but I do think the trend is definitely going against the Soviets by this point, for a number of reasons, most notably perhaps are the US advantage in microtechnology.

You can see some of that in 1982, even - the more thermals you add to the game, the more Shock Force-like the battles become. It would be cool to see the influence of ERA on things, but I suspect you'll start to lose what makes CMCW particularly interesting. I don't think the advancements are all one-sided, but they seem to be heavily weighted in the favour of the US.

For that reason, if there was to be an extended timeline, I think I'd be more interested in an expansion to the timeline which went earlier instead.

Attacking into Javelins is one of the unsolved problems of Black Sea, and it's tough. It's also why I tried to separate out the "What about the US" from the above, because the situation is so asymmetric that it breaks most of the rules. It's not quite as bad, but it's a similar situation to CMSF - being competitive with the Syrians vs US is so far outside of "normal", that it's actually a distraction.

Along those lines, I don't accept that it's okay to expect to lose at least 9 tanks, or at least the intention has to be to do everything possible to not have that occur. How to avoid that is firmly non-trivial - again, you can do everything right and still lose, and anything you do wrong will be severely punished.

You're right about the Grey Eagle, but the US has significantly worse anti-air options in CMBS than the Russians do. You also *always* want to have air defence in a Russian force, probably down to the company level (and ideally leaning on at least medium Electronic Warfare), because these are aspects that are your advantages - it's not coincidence that both of those are central to their planning in general.

Now, again, "How to beat the US with the Russians in Black Sea" is fundamentally a different question to "How do the Russians play similarly/different in Cold War compared with Black Sea?" - the former really doesn't have any good answers in the game or real life (although is fascinating, and well worth discussing), whilst the latter has some firmer grounding, I think, and it's what the above is what I was trying to offer an answer for.

That's quite a layered question, with some curveballs thrown in, so bear with me:

Firstly, sourcing:
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/Hot Spots/Documents/Russia/2017-07-The-Russian-Way-of-War-Grau-Bartles.pdf
In some respects this is apparently (and unsurprisingly, since it's five years later) out of date by now, but it's absolutely relevant for CMBS.

In there, you can see that the majority of the fundamentals of Soviet doctrine have survived intact into the modern day - attacking on-line for maximum mass, the focus on meeting engagements, on counter-attack in the defence, etc. In this sense, CMCW lets you see those fundamentals very clearly, in their intended context, before you translate them to a new one.

First curveball - there's a large difference between Russia vs Ukraine and Russia vs the US here. The latter is significantly more asymmetric, so ends up breaking a lot of the rules or otherwise forcing you out of where you want to be. That's essentially why things like Javelin exist, of course - they're supposed to be disruptive technology, aimed at plausible opposition. Will focus on Russia vs Ukraine then, with some notes on the US at the end.

Second curveball - I'm not convinced that all Black Sea scenarios capture or represent the main tropes of hyper-modern warfare as well as they could. Arguably that's true for all CM titles, but I suspect it's inevitably a little worse for Black Sea, due to the speculative nature of everything. As an example of that, Between Two Fahrbahns in Cold War. That's scenario that's great fun to play from either side, plays well H2H, and it's perfectly competent... but isn't terribly representative of "Cold War", and doesn't really make an argument, express a concept or investigate a tactical problem of the period. The same scenario might as well have Shermans vs Panzer IVs and it would work equally well.

So, what defines Black Sea? Philip Karber has a definition of the real combat in the region as "high intensity combat on a low density battlefield", and I think that core idea should also define CMBS. As a basic rule of thumb then - it's pretty common to use a Quick Battle map that's one size larger than your force. In Black Sea I think that should really be two sizes larger by default. That same thinking can/should apply to scenarios, but it's intended as a quick representation of the idea.

The other difference in theme is that in Cold War the operational tempo is paramount. Typically the tactical battlefield is not something that needs to be taken, it's something that needs to be move through, as fast as possible. This is part of the reason why the Soviets could be (had to be) comparatively free with casualties - gaining operational freedom is the goal here, and the tactical-level losses are acceptable.

This is not true for Black Sea. The Russian army is smaller, more casualty-adverse, and isn't screaming towards the Rhine at maximum velocity. This means you'll be more interested in capturing objectives, and can't afford to take the losses. In addition, the Russian army has significantly improved equipment. Much better spotting and C2, faster call-in times for artillery, ERA and APS, drones to call in massed fires, etc. They also have pushed assets down to lower levels - not as much as the US do, but significantly more than the Soviets, meaning that small units are significantly more capable and independent. The Russian air defence is significantly better than the US, so they should have drone superiority (and the US have nothing that can shoot down Zala at all). 

So how do you marry these two ideas? Soviet fundamentals, whilst being casualty-adverse? This is perhaps the major problem to solve as the Russians, but a lot of it comes down to controlling your engagements. You still want to be attacking on-line, with maximum firepower against a subset of the enemy, but you want to be careful as and when you engage, and to control that engagement with overwhelming firepower. An actual engagement might only last a minute or two, and a battle might be a lot of sneaking and manoeuvre, followed by a brief period of devastating fires. High intensity, Low density.

The first mission of the Russian campaign in the core game is indicative, I think. This is fundamentally a Soviet doctrinal meeting engagement. This is identical in concept to Miller's training scenario from CMCW, or the first mission of the Soviet campaign in Cold War, but the differences start to become apparent.

In the Russian campaign scenario, you have all the elements of that meeting engagement - you have a recon platoon, followed by a Forward Security Element of a BMP-3 company and a tank platoon, and they should be doing the same fundamental job.

The differences really start when the follow-up to that FSE is a single tank company, and not an entire battalion. That means that you're inherently more limited in how you can approach this.

The approach I took with this was to advance with the recon platoon and get spots along the route of contact, then advance at the speed of the fireplan. The FSE wants to march into a valley, so, suppressing the high town objective on the valley's far side is what allowed the follow-on tank company to take up a base of fire on the right side hill, on-line, and dominate the valley with fires.

The FSE can then approach into the valley floor, preceded with drone-summoned fires on the central objective, and with covering fires on likely enemy positions to the flanks. This FSE can then bypass, surround and reduce the central objective, before moving on to take on the others to the conclusion.

At each stage the fundamentals are the same - your fire plan is paramount, and in each bound you're attempting to go fires-first, maximising firepower at every engagement. 

So, how about the US? Well, Abrams, Bradley and Javelin represent disruptive technology, that will do terrible things to you. The fundamentals remain identical, but you can do everything right and still lose sometimes, and anything you do wrong will be punished severely. Fighting javelins is about firepower and the terrain read - they're systems used on foot, and the modern US infantryman doesn't like mortars anymore than anyone else does, so denying potential javelin positions is as important as anything. Abrams need to be engaged from the flank where possible (ideally from two angles at once), and Bradleys are near-psychic in their spotting, so you need to engage them quickly and decisively with excellent recon - you never want to get into an engagement where you don't already have spotting contacts.

Runways.
 
NATO is more dependent on large fixed runways the WP is. Too many NATO aircraft rely on big airbases that are relatively easy to degrade with non-nuclear ballistic missiles and air raids. 
 
It doesn't matter how many neat, shiny airplanes you have when the fuel storage at the airfield is burning and the runways are cratered or littered with bomblets/mines. 
 
NATO can attack the WP airfields in the same way, and probably would. However, a lot of WP aircraft were designed with operating from rough fields in mind and have bigger tires that won't sink into soft ground and provisions to prevent debris ingestion into air intakes. 
 
I've played scenarios in CMO* where you're fighting a non-NBC war in the north German theater. As the WP player taking down the airfields with non-nuke ballistic missiles is step one in blunting NATOs air advantages, along with destroying the warning radars. There are alternate airbases NATO can use but they don't have the capacity the the large airbases have, plus the farther from the front you make NATO base their aircraft means water transit time, wasted sorties of tanker aircraft, and a general reduction of NATO air power. 
 
Don't shoot the arrows (airplanes) when you can shoot the archer (the air bases). 
 
H
 
*https://www.matrixgames.com/game/command-modern-operations

This is an interesting question, and one that NATO doctrine generally hinged pretty heavily on. After all, Air is half of the Air/Land battle concept. And even before ALB, which is the era we are playing for CMCW, airpower both in the tactical CAS role and the operational interdiction role was incredibly important (its neither here nor there, but I would personally argue that ALB is simply an extension or a repackaging of Active Defense ideas, critically in regards to controlling and using airspace) This doctrine was pushed not just by the Army, but very heavily also by the Air Force who saw tactical, not strategic, bombing as their future. As a quick refresher, ALB calls not just for air support on the tactical, CM, level of battle (though that is also important) but in the operational realm as well. Active Defense was a doctrine designed to win the first initial clash of tanks along the Inter-German border. Many in NATO felt it did a great job in setting up the conditions to defeat the first echelon of Soviet forces. The problem is obvious: Sure you can beat the first echelon, but what about the second, third, etc? In steps ALB. Conceptually ALB is all about fusing airpower and ground power not just to defeat the first and actively engaged echelon, but to detect, interdict, and destroy follow on forces as they came up. This didn't have to be just about airpower, something like the MLRS and FASCAM systems could potentially do a number on deeper targets. But airpower would be the cornerstone of this concept. It should also be noted that, despite what some seem to suggest online, there is nothing about ALB or Active Defense that necessitates nuclear attacks. By 1982 were comfortably in the era of the PGM, and PGMs offer you all kinds of options that older conventional, or even nuclear, weapons do not. To put it another way, the 1980s were not the 1950s. Nukes were certainly considered, and may well have been used, but there were methods of accomplishing the plan without them and in my mind I think that NATO and the WP would at least have started the war conventionally (minus a few gas attacks, but whats a bit of Sarin between friends?) 
To the central question though: Would it have worked? I think thats hard to say. The US and the FRG in particular got very good at nap of the earth tactics. CAS wouldn't loiter like they might in the GWOT era, or swarm in and dive on targets like it was WWII. The Israelis had made that mistake in '73 and the US was not willing to repeat that meat grinder. Instead, strikes would happen very low and very fast. Ideally this would give AD radars a very short time to detect and engage assets before they released their payload and pulled back. PGMs also would give the US a very strong advantage with standoff attacks. The combination of Wild Weasel and standoff strikes would, in my opinion, be hell on the Soviet's AD network. But thats up front at the FEBA. Knocking out a division's AD net is one thing, punching all the way through to bomb bridges in Warsaw is quite another. Personally I havn't read much on USAF plans for deep penetration raids, but I would imagine this is a problem they worked pretty hard on as this kind of interdiction was key to ALB. Keep in mind though, the F-117 was designed to solve this exact problem and was (IIRC) operational by the mid-80s. 
As for the Red Army, thats a more interesting question. Personally I think they would have struggled much the same as NATO would, US air defenses were pretty good, though not as good IMO as in the Red Army. The biggest difference, IMO, would be training. Red Flag, the NTC, and other USAF programs tried to create hyper-realistic near-combat training experiences which drilled stuff like nap of the earth flying, bombing in simulated heavy AD environments, and of course very intense air-to-air combat. Its my understanding that, at the time, stuff like that was pretty unique to the US and later NATO. On the tactical level I think this training would give the US an advantage in those situations and would probably reduce overall attrition and keep US strikes more active and effective. The PVO, however, might struggle to break through. As others have pointed out, I dont think its a technology problem necessarily. Mostly Russian air tech was pretty good, and anyway until the Patriot came online US AD was a bit more primitive. Personally though I think the training gap would play an important determining role, eventually attritting the PVO away while NATO remains relatively capable. But importantly my understanding of Russian doctrine is that insofar as the consider interdiction attacks, they emphasize SSM strikes over deep penetration air raids. 
I once heard someone say in a documentary, I think maybe it was the Clance himself, who said that in a WW3 scenario both sides would run out of planes before the other ran out of missiles. He suggested that within two weeks the skies would be clear of aircraft. Who can say if thats true or not. Personally though I think if that were to have happened, NATO doctrine would have proved to be grossly unrealistic. If the goal is to attrit the second echelon, the war has to last long enough for the second, third, etc. echelons to move forward. If it does but the USAF is totally spent by then, mistakes have been made. And if the war ends or goes strategic before then, well then thats its own mistake. 

Ugh. Complex question.
I'd say that F-16 and F-15 showing up in numbers, along with decent air defense for the airfields, would be a turning point. So 1981-1982. But that is US only, I think the Germans in particular are not even competing for air superiority in the cold war.

One other small thing that bothers me about fires in CMx2 is the hit probability of cluster munitions. They seem to spread over so wide an area that there is plenty vehicle-sized room between the average submunition impact. AFAIK in real life they are specifically spread (concentrated) to have less than vehicle size spacing on impact.

Yea the replay sytem would be cool, to watch after you finish the battle in Turn based or real-time to watch unfolding.