Grey_Fox

I don't believe the IR optics are like thermals in that they don't see heat signatures. The smoke may well be obscuring the ability of the T80 crew to see the US armour.

It's also night-time isn't it? Bradleys have thermal optics, while the T-80s don't, they have IR lamps which only provide visibility out to something like 100m. And I'm not even sure if they're used. Edit: yeah it's 4.30AM, so visibility would be very low for non-thermal optics.

Yes, tanks have very narrow fields of vision, which means that the closer they are to something the less likely they are to see it. Remember, you're essentially looking at things through letterbox-sized periscopes or viewports, and in the case of the gunner through a straw. To overcome this, they should be used en-masse where possible. Western doctrine is to fight with the commander at least partially turned-out. Soviet doctrine was to fight turned-in and en-masse.

I'll be streaming @domfluff's take on the Czechmate scenario shortly:

One anecdote isn't proof of anything. There's always going to be a chance that something like this could in fact happen at least a few times, and we also don't know if the tank already had a spotting contact, be it from pre-battle intel or a scout.

My understanding is that they are modeling the individual eyeballs of the troops and where exactly they are looking at any given time. For instance if somebody is using binoculars to observe something from a few kilometers away, that is a pretty narrow cone of vision to look through. Viewports and the position of troops within the vehicles are modelled - in fact there was a bug where a crewman was positioned facing the inside of the tank rather than their assigned vision ports and so couldn't actually see anything. If there is an obstruction between the viewer and the target, say a cluster of trees or whatever, then there is a percentage chance that that the viewer will be able to see past each individual tree towards the position of the target. You also have to remember just how limited the fields of view armoured vehicles have. You're talking about narrow slits in the armour, with often fairly big gaps between them. This is why it's often highly recommended to turn your tank crews out as often as possible, and why it's the practice in western armies. Soviet doctrine was fight buttoned-up, and rely on mass to overcome the reduced fields of view that would be the result.

Firing an MG at a tank can cause subsystem damage, damage optics, perhaps incapacitate any crew may be turned out. I have seen tanks knocked out by direct hits from artillery if they hit in the right place, I have also seen them immobilized by near-misses. I have also seen turned-out crew killed by nearby artillery and mortar blasts. But it requires concentration and luck, and isn't a guaranteed outcome. Some argue that there should be more subsystem damage from nearby shells landing or airbursting.

And continuing on:

I'll be streaming the continuation in a few minutes here:

Playing some CM Pro:

It was an attempt at space armour to protect the side of the tank from oblique fire. It may have some small merit, but apparently the plates fell off fairly easily and were a maintenance headache.

So the troops are set to "hide", correct? If so, that's why they didn't open fire a javelin, assuming the enemy tank was outside the minimum range of the Javelin. Also, it takes about 10-15 seconds for a gunner to go through the firing cycle of a javelin, from initial identification to targeting to firing.

Do they have ammunition? Are you using target arcs? Does the javelin gunner have visibility on the tanks? Not via the target tool, since that's unit-level, I mean the actual javelin gunner. Does the second floor have windows in the direction of incoming armour? Is the team set on "hide"? They will not open fire in this state until they are engaged, unless you use a target arc and the enemy enters it. What version are you playing on?

Is this a bug because you don't like how reinforcements work? What game and campaign are you talking about?

My understanding is that you do not need to give a pause while guiding, the vehicle will stay in position until the missile either hits or misses its target.

BFC releases the patch for the standalone straight away, and send it to Slitherine at the same time. Since it went out on a Friday that means that Slitherine probably won't be finished with their integration testing for a couple of days yet.

Does it? BFC has a habit of not including many changes in the Readme.

It's pretty skimpy on details.

Further to @HerrTom's point, am I right in thinking that the sights on the LAV-AT in SF2 is still broken, several years after release?

The update will come through steam whenever Slitherine are ready to deploy it. BFC will release as soon as it's ready and send the update to Slitherine. And it's a Friday, so...

Is there a full change log?

Awesome, love CW.

It does work in single player on CM Pro because it generate saves for every turn. It doesn't work for real-time. I want it specifically to make videos of the PBEMs, which always generates saves.

That's profoundly disappointing. The reason I know about CM and bought the games is due to AAR videos on youtube created by the likes of @Hapless I've created my own videos in a similar style, and it is an incredibly time-intensive task to load and reload saves in order to create recordings. The replay feature present in CMPE would make life an awful lot easier for people like me to create videos. I recently made a video which contained 11 minutes of footage, and it took approximately 3 hours to record and edit it, without any attempt at music or voiceover. Making it easier to review game footage would allow more videos to be made, which would then reach a wider audience and create additional revenues for you at zero cost beyond the implementation of the existing CMPE replay feature into the commercial games. For PBEMs, the save files already exist in the incoming and outgoing email folders. Why not make use of them? @Hapless

I think it's great, would be perfect if we had an extra 10 minutes at the start to do recon with the CRP.