Grey_Fox
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Posts posted by Grey_Fox
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Will windows users running 1.04 still be able to play normal PBEMs against mac users runnin 1.03?
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2 hours ago, Bufo said:
Patch 1.04 was pushed out on Steam, but there aren't any patch notes either through the steam news, or in the installation folder, or on Matrix's forum, or this forum, or the battlefront.com website. (CMCW ReadMe.txt and whatsnew.pdf).
Apparently it only contains the new tournament pbem+++ feature, and zero bugfixes.
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26 minutes ago, Combatintman said:
Looking at your picture, the text on your pointer is saying your mortar is out of range. Move the mortar closer if it is on map and you should be able to fire at the TRP. If its off-map then you're stuffed.
It's inside the minimum range of the mortar.
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2 hours ago, Thewood1 said:
Might be the fastest I have ever seen a thread start to derail. Especially disappointing considering the excellent topic.
Some of us talk on other services (discord mainly), and there is a feeling of disappointment and something approaching disgust that this forum has become a Russo-Ukraine war rumour outlet where 99% of the activity is relegated to a single thread, rather than a CM forum. Sqook and Miller's comments should be seen in that context.
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2 hours ago, Grigb said:
I am saying there was nothing to deteriorate neither in 60s nor in 50s because there was nothing in the first place in the 40s. Red Army power is invention of Soviet propaganda and ignorant western historians/apologists.
Let me remind you that during 40s Fins defeated Red Army twice. And RU officers admitting Ukraine debacle resembles Finish war debacle.
With the Germans Red Army was throwing bodies and crappy tanks at them trying stay in the fight until allied pressure distracted enough German forces from eastern front for their defenses to start collapsing in 44.
Do you know that did not have adequate AT gun until 45? Do you know that their main 76mm gun of their main tank T-34 had pathetic penetration (much worse then 75mm of Sherman) because they screw up production of AP shells and then they screw up their quality? More or less they managed to overcome that problem in 44 by starting to replace it with 85mm gun. Or that their infantry did not have close range AT weapons until they captured enough panzerfausts by the end of 44? That they were literally defenseless against prevalent at that time night bombers raids?
Red/Soviet/Russian army was always clown show hidden under thick layer of propaganda and western apologia.
For 50 years after WW2 the only history of the eastern front available in the west was written by the Nazis. You seem to be repeating a fair chunk of that here. It was only after the fall of the Soviet Union that we got to examine Soviet records.
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On 6/9/2022 at 8:05 PM, BFCElvis said:
Correct. It's still being worked on but I wouldn't expect it to be released before the war is over.
That's shaping up to be quite some time.
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6 hours ago, SeinfeldRules said:
I'm going to take a minute before work to address this Twitter thread by Trent. I only caught the first part of his thread in my responses yesterday, and I think the rest of what he posted is a perfect example of him taking isolated situations and extrapolating them to create sexy scenarios for public consumption with little additional evidence. In this thread he takes examples of shell burst patterns to build this idea of Ukraine using a vast network of distributed, digital howitzers to shoot and scoot across the battlefield. The tactic is certainly feasible on paper - it's been around in doctrine since WW1, the US Army calls it a "roving gun" - but hardly unique to Ukraine. The AFATDS system and digital howitzers that we use are literally designed to facilitate this function. And while Ukraine may be using a digital system to route and process fire missions, but from what I've seen the vast majority of their howitzers (and definitely not the 122mm D-30s he references) lack the digital systems to make it truly effective to the extent he describes. Trent uses a lot of questionable assumption to build this idea of Ukrainian artillery supremacy that is honestly not backed by the data I'm seeing. If he has more sources to back his claims I would love to see them, because none of his thread passes the sniff test for this artillery officer.
Please don't take this as a slight on you Grey Fox or anyone who found Trent's thread interesting, this is just professionally frustrating to see someone the public "trusts" peddling such poorly sourced information in such a confident manner. Now I get to see his thread linked in every Reddit and Twitter thread featuring artillery, talking about something that is almost certainly not happening, at least not to the extent that Trent describes.
Thanks for the insight
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7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Others seem to be scratching the same part of their head as you on this one. It seems the majority of fire on artillery positions is not in direct response to it firing. Seems mostly "oh, we figured out where they are, let's nail 'em". I say this because most of the hits I've seen on deployed artillery don't appear to be while they are active. Likewise, lots of video of artillery being hit when not deployed (traveling or temporarily pulled off the road).
There may be an explanation for this. Ukraine is leveraging uninterrupted to the Starlink satellite network plus some smartphone apps to coordinate artillery strikes firing from individual guns across the front, and seem to have shown an ability to do so within 30 seconds of the call for fire. The guns are widely dispersed and fire only a couple of shells at a time, so there isn't really anything for counterbattery radar to find.
This Twitter thread goes into it, and granted while there is a fair bit of hyperbole it may be indicative of reality:
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3 minutes ago, Probus said:
We may not like this history (whether we are leftwing or rightwing) but by your reasoning we should knock down/deface practically every monument erected over our civilization's history.
Why would you fight so hard to keep monuments for people who fought for the right to keep other people as slaves?
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9 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
That applies even to all of the WW2 games as they could fire to grid coordinates just as easily in 1940s and they can in 2020s.
Every time this comes up (and it's come up hundreds of times since 2000) I point out that if we implemented this then the game would become instantly unplayable and utterly unrealistic. The reason is that gamers have a very good sense of where the enemy positions are at the start of the battle due to the completely artificial game environment. If I am the defender and I have artillery, guess what I'd do every single game? I'd identify the likely place for the enemy's start position and hit it with artillery in the first seconds of the game. Even before I know if anything is there for sure or not.
This is a rare example of a realistic feature would make the game LESS realistic if it was included. Less challenging/fun as well.
Steve
We can already call in arty anywhere on a map during the setup phase of a scenario.
So far it's worked out fine with gentlemen's agreements to not call in arty on spawn zones, or that defender doesn't get to use pre-planned arty, both of which are common and well-adhered to in my experience.
I'm specifically asking if it'd be possible to call in artillery without a TRP on a location which is out of LOS in modern titles in the middle of a scenario.
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1 minute ago, Ultradave said:
It's on the wish list. Doesn't need to be modern titles either. Perfectly capable of calling in artillery on map coordinates, say on a sound contact that is beyond LOS, with some randomness to the accuracy of the coordinates (for older titles) and of course, your contact location may not be precise.
Dave
Is your wishlist an official feature to be included in the next DLC for BS?
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3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
but as I said in reality if you know where you want to hit you don't need to go through that. All you need is Google Earth.
Steve
If that's the case, why can't we call in arty on ground which is out of LOS in CMBS without a TRP?
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1 hour ago, WimO said:
So far the production of my first video is making positive progress; have condensed 40 minutes of game play down to 25 video minutes consisting of many cut scenes. Still need to process another 60 minutes of game play. Once it is all done I will have two more problems to solve: 1. What software will allow me to add a voice over commentary post-processing? and 2. What software will allow me to 'draw' arrows and such over the video to illustrate my game plan?
You can add voice over using Shotcut.
For graphics, you create them in something like paint, then add it as an overlay using Shotcut.
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3 minutes ago, WimO said:
I have found and d/l OBS. It looks awesome and comprehensive ... and a challenging learning curve.
It's fairly straightforward actually. There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube and on the OBS forums. Same for Shotcut.
With OBS make sure you're capturing the application, not the desktop window.
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I use OBS to record and Shotcut to edit, both free.
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I think this is a timely article regarding Soviet/Russian tank design philosophy: https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/technical-reflections-russias-armoured-fighting-vehicles
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There was a similar bug in CMCW and Red Thunder. Make a bug report through the helpdesk and provide a save file.
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On 4/23/2022 at 1:21 AM, Acorn said:
Gosh, this is fun! - I found it Googling "wrg tanks infantry" as I occasionally do. I've got Jim's book, and I've got the copy of British Army Review in which his brother (who was a TA - reserve - infantry officer, as was I at the time) had an article on "mini-APCs" based on wargaming. That the rules used were WRG 1950-85 seemed likely because smaller vehicles are harder to spot - something which the successor 1950-2000 rules did away with. It's a brilliant book and my former CO is eagerly awaiting his copy. It's easy enough to quibble with, but what would be the point of a book that didnt provoke such a lively and interesting debate? The thing that jarred most with me is that the definitions of "interlocking" and "overlapping" aren't the ones I was taught. Which is basically irrelevant to the book's utility. I'm putting together a Bundeswehr force from 1968 (for WRG), so I look forward to trialling my SPz-12s - and maybe comparing them to AMX VTT/VCI when I get round to Belgians. And I have played CM, but only the older versions.
Hi Jim, do you feel criticism of your book is unwarranted?
Do you mind providing the modified rulesets, and the results of games using those modified rulesets, used as a basis for your book? A number of us have been curious about it. -
Black Sea is a 2015 game based on a fictional Russo-Ukraine war in 2017, not a new release based on the 2022 war. The Russian forces were idealised, sure, but that doesn't make their portrayal in the game wrong.
If you want to make something which you think matches the current state of Russian forces, you can always turn down their soft stats in the scenario editor.
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CMBS was released in 2015 (announced in 2014), looking at a hypothetical 2017 conflict using then-proposed weapons systems, some of which were abandoned.
What this means is that Ukraine has a lot more Oplots than they do in reality and don't have any Javelins. The US squads have XM-25s, which were only ever experimented with and discarded. And Russian forces and performance seems to be idealised.
However, I like it.
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3 hours ago, Simcoe said:
This brings up one more question. Is smoke artillery rounds still useful against thermal sights? I've read that smoke can mess with thermal imaging at least in the Cold War.
It won't affect the TTS or Dragons, but TOWs can't be fired through normal smoke even though the gunner can see you since the TOW in CW doesn't have the IR beacon that gets pit on later versions.
How to survive early barrages? - Spoiling Attack?
in Combat Mission Cold War
Posted · Edited by Grey_Fox
Don't put troops in obvious defensive points, or only put then the there once the artillery has lifted, just like the "race to the parapets" in WW1.
This is part of the terrain analysis cycle - when planning the defense, first look at it from the attackers' point of view.