Grey_Fox

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. 

No, I'm sorry, you're 100% wrong.

A spotting contact *is* the unit's memory of a previous spot.
A unit with a spotting contact will upgrade this to a full spot faster than one without a spotting contact.

The spotting contacts are then the representation of a unit's "memory" (or, equally, intra-unit communication, or more broadly the ISTAR picture in general.)
Now, that's the system as presented. Taking exception with that system is one thing, and one can certainly have opinions about that from a design perspective - any wargame design is a conflict between fidelity of representation and how that fidelity will end up being used, whether that's "playability" or something to do with the questions being studied - but to claim that this doesn't exist is just nonsense.

The specific claim was "CMCW units cannot remember what they have spotted". This is trivially simple to disprove, and if you're using as a basis for an argument, your argument can carry no weight.

We know that the spotting model in CM is done from pairs of eyeballs (so an infantry section will have perhaps 10 different chances to spot something), and that there's a larger chance of spotting directly ahead of the spotting eyes, than to the periphery. Moving targets and large targets will inevitably be spotted faster. The individual optics for each position are modelled, so (for example) a tank with a decent thermal optic on the gunner's sight will have the gunner spotting better than the driver. Depending on the vehicle, commander's often have access to the gunner's sight, and sometimes have an independent sight of their own (to a large extent that's what the M60 cupola is doing).
Plenty of other factors will be at play here, including the individual line of sight of each spotter (it's entirely possible for a tank commander to see something and the gunner's sight to be blocked by complex terrain). and the soft factors involved, not to mention the spotting contacts that have been shared across the C2 network.
So sure, all things being equal, a stationary unit should tend spot a moving unit before the moving unit spots a stationary unit. I cannot imagine what hoops you'd need to jump through to engineer a situation where all things were actually equal, and even if this was the case, it can only be a probability and a tendency, there will always be outliers.

In the case of armour specifically, the chances of spotting is also going to be atrocious (even in something ultra-modern like an Abrams or a Bradley, by comparison to infantry), so your initial chances of anyone spotting anything are going to be terrible. Your baseline in all situations, but especially in CMCW and the WW2 games, are that tanks are blind. Infantry are your spotters, and that's one of the many reasons why "combined arms" is a thing.

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. 

Also, of course there's an RNG aspect to spotting - that's how spotting has been modelled since there have been models for spotting.

As the basic example, Koopman in Search and Screening (1946), who theorised that the detection rate is proportional to the solid angle subtended at the point of observation of the target.
Since your chances of finding something is going to be harder the larger an area you're looking at, that's a base-e relationship of some kind. The Koopman probability of a detection in time t is P(t) = 1 - e^(-yt), with your y in Koopman theory being y=kh/r^3, h and r describing the height and distance to the target, and k being a value for how complex the search operation is.

Call that a "dice roll" if you like, but that's how modelling this kind of thing usually goes.

 

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.

I guess I should have titled this thread with the words 'Multiplayer campaign'.
Added a new command order chit, 'Reserve'. This use if a commander isn't sure of the next enemy attack direction, costs 1 AP to activate. Meant to add it in originally but forgot.

I've been working on a new system and I've built the Vassal engine for the campaign. 
Download link

So how it works is that each formation HQ has a certain amount of AP's (ACTION POINTS) .
Each unit that is on one of the highlighted hexes, must be given orders.

This practice will help myself in building the CM battle, if a delaying action is selected, I exit zone is placed on the map for the defending player.
Assault/Hold Position - I place capture points on the map for both sides to capture/hold.
Probe - Is really a recon in force order, a capture point is placed on the map for the defending player to hold the attacking player is checking out what's there but the defending player doesn't know that.
Place an order on top of the units just moved/placed, and be sure to right click and select 'mask'.
When the campaign starts, make sure the Soviet AP markers are topped up.

AP Costs
Move - 1 AP per unit chit. This moves units two white outlined hexes, the AP points are deducted from the formation HQ, in the example below it's the 3rd Bn HQ.

Assault/Probe - this costs 2 AP's to the attacking formation HQ.
Support assets - 1 AP per support, this brings in CAS and/or artillery support if it's available.
If unavailable they will appear like these.

Deploy formation - 1 AP cost to the Higher HQ (in this campaign the 17th GTR and the Blackhorse HQ).
Attach a unit from one formation to another - 1 AP cost to the Higher HQ, both units must be on the same hex or in the holding box before deployment.
The higher HQ's.

When the Soviet AP's are topped up the NATO commander gets to place one formation onto the battle map.
In this example, the NATO commander places B Company in Grusselbach, as he places each of the 'chits' onto the battle map he right clicks and selects 'mask' and then places a 'Delaying' order, which is also masked.

We now begin Turn one, the Soviet commander deploys his first formation, 1st Bn 17th GTR and the GTR HQ spends one AP to do so.
Notice that the NATO forces on the battle map are masked to the Soviet player.

The 1st Bn 17th GTR HQ orders his formation to move, 1 AP for each unit (3 AP's) to Assault (2 AP's) the NATO position for a total 5 AP's.

The NATO retreats to the next legal hex still with delaying orders.
The Soviet player declares that the 3rd Bn has finished it's actions and gives it Hold Position orders and then deploys the next formation.
This process goes on till the Soviet Higher HQ can't deploy anymore formations and that each formation has useable AP's left.
Now you might be wondering why the Soviets are the only one that get to move one turn one, lets say that they had the strategic surprise.
Each following turn, NATO gets to deploy/move one formation then the Soviets get to move one formation and so on till both sides pass then the turn marker is moved one square to the right.

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.

Apologies for the double post here. Wanted to break things up for readability sake. 
Generally speaking that is correct. This can vary as well depending on the mission. For example, you could conceivably see 3 regiments committed to the main effort if given high enough priority. There was some flexibility built in. 
Also, the echeloning you have is generally correct as well. As a rule of thumb, the Soviets planned to use tank units (regiments/divisions) as exploitation units, and for the motor rifle units (again regiments/divisions) to be the penetration divisions. So the motor rifles should (again generally speaking) be going in first. 
Combatintman is right, the Soviets would generally task organize the battalions to be combined arms formations, so the tank battalion would get distributed out to the motor rifle battalions, with each battalion getting a tank company. It is possible for that task organization to change though. If the regimental commander determines he needs the concentrated power of the tank battalion, there is nothing stopping him from concentrating the tank battalion. But generally speaking you have 3 maneuver elements as the Soviets in a regiment, the three combined arms battalions. (Same goes for tank regiments, tank battalions with a motor rifle company distributed to each)
Combatintman is also right (smart lad, him) in mentioning recon. At the regimental level and above, the recon battalion organic to each Soviet division would be playing a role, generally feeling the way forward in front of the regiments. Their tasks were mostly things such as making sure the maps are correct (is that road/bridge/terrain feature/farmhouse/etc actually there? Is there a terrain feature not accounted for?) You can probably get away with abstracting their job for the purposes of your campaign, especially at first for a mini campaign.
Hmm, this one is a bit more tricky and will inevitably come down to your narrative to set the stage. A lot will rest on how ready the US unit is. Have they already taken up defensive positions, or are they still arriving to the area of operations? If they have already arrived, then they will generally arrange the defense to cover the likely enemy axis of advance(s). If they are not prepositioned yet, then the engagement will start (at least initially) as a series of meeting engagements (a mix of spoiling attacks and delaying actions meant to make contact with the advancing Soviets to find and then slow and attrit them).
First off, love the graphics! I'm a sucker for these kinds of things. And I really appreciate the use of unit boundaries here. Throw in some phase lines and you've got a proper battle plan!
For the Soviets, the main thing I see is that the units proposed are too small and divided. The smallest Soviet maneuver unit was the battalion, meaning that units smaller than a battalion were not meant to perform independent combat actions by themselves, but as part of the battalion. Battalions advancing to contact (expecting a meeting engagement) would have a combat recon patrol (a CRP) and a forward security element (FSE) in front of the leading battalion, but once these elements hit contact they were not expected to fight on their own, but to set conditions for the coming parent battalion to break through whatever resistance was encountered. The important thing here is concentration. You do not want your companies to be so far apart that they cannot support one another, and by that I mean support via direct fire engagement. 
Its not unheard of for a Soviet company (or company sized task organized force) to take independent action, but their roles were more meant for things such as screening the regimental flank if other assets weren't available, or a special task such as a company sized air assault to seize a bridge or something like that. 
As for which route is best, general practice is to come up with a main route and an alternate route. You'll probably find from looking at the terrain that there are only a handful of viable routes to advance down anyways, especially when you factor in unit boundaries and terrain boundaries. Pick our routes, and from there it comes down to finding the best way through, using recon assets attached to the division/regiment and the maneuver battalions themselves. 
For the US, there would be a screen set up by recon (cavalry) units out front to act as a tripwire. The goal of the cav units would just be to determine the size, strength, and direction of the Soviet main effort. The real fighting would be up to the maneuver battalions (usually task organized into company teams, which were intended to work together). 
These look great! More than enough to start putting forces down on the map and getting a better feel for how the fight will develop, and if anything on the map needs to be tweaked by hand. This is really good stuff!
Hope all of that helps a bit. I'll certainly be following along and would love to help out more however I can!

Hi @Butschi - I keep looking at this thread and thinking ... must help - but have been a bit overwhelmed by RL stuff.  This is a shorter answer than I'd have liked but something's better than nothing.
First up, your MRR does have four battalions but once you task organize them by giving a tank company from the regiment's tank battalion to each of the three motor rifle battalions you end up with three manoeuvre elements.  Advancing three-up with all three of your battalions would; therefore, be extremely unusual. 
There's no mention of reconnaissance elements in the scheme of manoeuvre - if the finished campaign thing is going to do the whole regiment's advance, rather than just the southern axis you have scope for a series of recce battles employing elements of the divisional reconnaissance battalion and the regimental reconnaissance company.  In fact, even if you only stick with the southern axis you can still have some reconnaissance battles using those elements.
I absolutely wouldn't stretch your narrative to include T-80s in the ORBAT of a Cat III division.  This type of division would be rounded out by reservists who had probably finished their conscription period years and years before - it would be hard enough for them just to recall their skills and drills on the equipment they had used during their service, let alone learn to operate a newer piece of equipment.  Not only that, even Cat I divisions were not fully equipped with T-80 by 1980.  We don't seem to know what 50 GMRD was equipped with in 1980 but we know it had T-62, BMP-1, BTR-60 and BTR-70 in 1985.  I would suggest that in 1980, 69 GTR would have had T-62 and BMP-1, while the three MRRs would have had T-55 and BTR-60.  You can see how far down the food chain it was by looking at its artillery allocation in 1985, the 152mm D-1 which is a towed gun dating back to WW2. 
Regarding the US - I can't give a huge amount of detail but you'll see that the US 5th Division of which 256 Brigade was a part only had 3 tank battalions and 3 mechanized infantry battalions in 1978 - it was therefore massively understrength and I doubt that situation would have rectified itself much before 1980.  Link below, Table 35, page 38 refers:
Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades (army.mil)
I hope this helps.

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

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

Is there a full change log?

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?

Is there a full change log?

Honestly I'm mostly excited about seeing the CVR(T) line in context and in full. All the major vehicles are in CMSF already, aside from Scorpion and Striker.

I think we can come up with something…

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...

Cold Warriors.
  Well it looks like Steve has already dropped the mic over on the annual update thread, so let myself, Bil H and Cpt Miller (along with a small team of unwashed heathens - two of whom are actually from the UK), be the second to announce the first CMCW Module - CMCW - British Army On the Rhine (BAOR).

We are still in development so I will only outline the broad strokes of what we are working on, and insert the caveat that we reserve the right to add/subtract - 
 - Time frame of the game is going deeper backwards into the Cold War.  We are setting the clock back to 1976, so CMCW will now encompass 1976-1982 (including some minor tweaks to the existing US orbats).  As has been noted we are less interested in the later Cold War years largely because they really do start to resemble the later CM titles and we are shooting to keep CMCW distinct in its own right.
- UK BOAR - right now we have a pretty comprehensive build planned for the UK units as they transitioned from their 1974 structures - to where they landed in 1980.  As per the picture above players should be able to become deeply engaged within the historical BAOR sector of the ETO.
- And because I just have to represent the home team, we are also doing the Canadians.  That little black box is the planned 4 CMBG AO - you will note this was right at the tail end when the brigade was still part of the BAOR, although for those that really want to play First Clash and park them down in Lahr you are fee to do so because the basic unit structures remained the same.
- We do have plans for the Soviet side, but are going to hold off on details until we zero them fully in...more to follow. 
- I will let you all speculate and discuss what new vehicles and weapon systems we are talking about but there is a not insignificant list of new ones we are planning - more as we start to get some cool screen shots.  
As noted by Steve, we are well on our way and are planning for a release this year - content and full scope remains TBA.
Thank you all very much for your support, the response to CMCW has been well beyond what we were expecting and that is entirely thanks to you guys.

This was made using the Fight Club version and I was able to edit the CSV's to recreate light infantry Ukrainians with Javelins and AJAX support against Donovians. 
 
 

I don't know the technical workings behind it, but having used the replay feature and being a video editor myself while maintaining an active presence in the discord community of over 200+ people who have bought at least one of your titles throughout the years you've been in business I have to disagree with your assessment. 

Regardless of all the miniscule little complaints that are petty themself, the community as a whole would appreciate this one specific feature more than anything else. Enough to probably pay an additional fee (albeit small, $10-$15) to have this. It's not only useful for your marketing, but the community itself to bring people closer together / create content. 

Not a single user of Combat Mission: Professional that obtained their license through UK: Fight Club has complained about anything regarding the replay feature. Sure, it's not all sunshine and rainbows and the feature is surely not polished to the standard that you would like to release a finished product in, but as it stands it is more than useable. 

If there is a contract stipulation on deliverable features that cannot be released to the public, that's one thing. Telling the community on multiple occasions that we think we know what we want, but we really don't is a little rash in my opinion and I mean this with all due respect. 

My final point, is that if the community is going to find things to complain about year after year, regardless of what you do sir, then why not give them this one thing that they've been asking for so you can either; 1) Prove your point that we don't know what we want, or 2) Throw the community a bone that is appreciated. 

Either way, I respect your judgement but as a user of both the Pro and Commercial titles I do not think your assessment of the usage in regards to Replay Feature is accurate. 

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

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

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