THH149

Or maybe this ....
 

Even more so ....
 

One of my tabletop wargaming colleagues posted this video based on stunning high res clips from above film, whose title translates as Officer. It's a kind of music video and has no sound other than that or subtitles either. These said, compared to all the period training videos we've seen, in terms of image quality, this thing is incredible. The main stars are T-55s and T-72s, but you'll like the other goodies, too. 
 
Regards,

John Kettler

For stock mod tags, the textures used are already included in the game and so nothing needs to go into a mod folder. However this does mean the tag can only be activated in the editor.
The final option in the mission part of the editor is the mod tag tab. Selecting this allows you to upload into the scenario a simple .txt document.
This only needs to list the tags you wish to activate, so for example if you want to activate the mowed lawn and camouflage face paint you would just list
lawn
night
Activated tags show at the top of the mod tag screen once added.
HTH as its easier to do than describe
 
P
 
 
 

To update the conflict and allows us new 'new' tech toys to play with ...
More drones, T-14s, better Ukrainians ...

And continuing the third mission: 
 

I started playing a new scenario as US and was dismayed to get a platoon of M48s. Oh, well, I guess I just need to use them like I would tank destroyers, a egg carrying a hammer. Although in the case of '79 the APDS of the 105mm can hardly be described as a hammer. 
 
Then I realized that even if I had M60s, I should be treating them the same way. None of my units in '79 can take a hit from a Sov tank gun, ATGM, or BMP1. They will all be holed and killed. I can't use the US tanks like tanks because they can't tank a hit. I should be using them like TDs, like my M150s. A 11' tall, slow, noisy TD that has a main gun that can't reliably hit at range without doing ranging shots, and, if it gets a hit, won't reliably kill T62s (and will only damage the paint on a T64) from the front at range. But besides that, they are ok tanks. 
 
H

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/15/science/russia-anti-satellite-missile-test-debris.html Like mean satellite survival being measured in hours.
 

I'm so confused as to what modern war would look like. Sometimes I think it'll be a quasi world war one bunker and trench line about 10-km wide over which nothing could move as it would be constantly monitored by ATGMs, drone swarms and satellites, while other times I think it'll be fast moving tank warfare entering the operational depths of an enemy within hours.
How about CMBS 2024 to test the theories?

I played this campaign back in 2017 and I found some savedgame files for for mission 2.  IIRC the "trick" is to understand that the main tank killers are not your tanks but your ATGM's.  You have a drone for spotting and can use your arty to blind the enemy.
The first half of the scenario is about scouting to locate enemy tanks and then carefully moving ATGM's to positions where they can kill those tanks.  Your own tanks are useful for mopping up after the enemy has lost its AT capability.

Tried this again recently.....Stopped the first assault dead with absolutely no losses to our force.  I dropped 120mm PGMs on the Russian artillery spotter and killed him and I used sneakily placed ATGMs to destroy or immobilise all the Russians tanks, without loss to the ATGM teams! 
Then I got overconfident and my infantry died in droves! 
Tactical Defeat. 
Still a brilliant challenge. 
PS - @Pete Wenman There are a couple of buildings on the map that do not have any doors at all, the two I found are in the area just north of Block Bravo.....Small single floor with no access at all, you are either in or out:

Medium two floor building, accessible only via the roof, which will get your pixeltruppen killed every time in this scenario:

It looks like both of these buildings were meant to interconnect with the buildings adjacent to them, but some clicks went missing, as they are so often wont to do on maps of this type (so many clicks)! 
I'm going to make a fixed version for my own use, as I suspect it WILL make a big difference to the fight.....There's no back door to several of the buildings that look like they were meant to interconnect, notably the big five floor one seen in both images, which turns them into death-traps.
PS - IMHO attatching a Breach Team to each Ukrainian rifle platoon could make the world of difference to this scenario.....I may make a modified version to test the theory.

So, something like this terrible paint mashup:

For x10 Magnification (I have no idea if that's correct for the M60A3 TTS), Laser Rangefinder and TI for Thermal Imager.

I'm not sure how much room there is in that segment in the modern titles when it's full of acronym soup (ERA, APS, LWS, etc) and it could get complicated fast when you take into account, for example, differences in magnification resolution or thermal imaging quality (ie. an M60's optic at 12x mag is likely to be less clear than an M1A2 SEP2's optic at 12x mag; and there are various generations (and resolutions) or thermal imagers). Maybe a traffic light system would work (red for poor, yellow for mediocre, green for good).

But I think it would be a super helpful addition, especially for new players.

Since in the modern titles - CW, SF2 and BS - spotting to extremely important and technology driven, information on the spotting ability of the unit - especially vehicles - would be exceptionally useful.
The place for it would be on the Defenses Report panel under the armour rating where the info on smoke etc currently goes.
With a bit of remodelling the icons, I would think an indicator of the times zoom available (eg 3x or 10x) to the unit, IR, or Thermal optics would be great to know. It would allow players to get more into the technical details of the equipment and game, and get the game under control a little more.
Note I'm using names of the GUI panels from the CM manual so BFC can understand what I'm suggesting.
 

Since in the modern titles - CW, SF2 and BS - spotting to extremely important and technology driven, information on the spotting ability of the unit - especially vehicles - would be exceptionally useful.
The place for it would be on the Defenses Report panel under the armour rating where the info on smoke etc currently goes.
With a bit of remodelling the icons, I would think an indicator of the times zoom available (eg 3x or 10x) to the unit, IR, or Thermal optics would be great to know. It would allow players to get more into the technical details of the equipment and game, and get the game under control a little more.
Note I'm using names of the GUI panels from the CM manual so BFC can understand what I'm suggesting.
 

Since in the modern titles - CW, SF2 and BS - spotting to extremely important and technology driven, information on the spotting ability of the unit - especially vehicles - would be exceptionally useful.
The place for it would be on the Defenses Report panel under the armour rating where the info on smoke etc currently goes.
With a bit of remodelling the icons, I would think an indicator of the times zoom available (eg 3x or 10x) to the unit, IR, or Thermal optics would be great to know. It would allow players to get more into the technical details of the equipment and game, and get the game under control a little more.
Note I'm using names of the GUI panels from the CM manual so BFC can understand what I'm suggesting.
 

Since in the modern titles - CW, SF2 and BS - spotting to extremely important and technology driven, information on the spotting ability of the unit - especially vehicles - would be exceptionally useful.
The place for it would be on the Defenses Report panel under the armour rating where the info on smoke etc currently goes.
With a bit of remodelling the icons, I would think an indicator of the times zoom available (eg 3x or 10x) to the unit, IR, or Thermal optics would be great to know. It would allow players to get more into the technical details of the equipment and game, and get the game under control a little more.
Note I'm using names of the GUI panels from the CM manual so BFC can understand what I'm suggesting.
 

Since in the modern titles - CW, SF2 and BS - spotting to extremely important and technology driven, information on the spotting ability of the unit - especially vehicles - would be exceptionally useful.
The place for it would be on the Defenses Report panel under the armour rating where the info on smoke etc currently goes.
With a bit of remodelling the icons, I would think an indicator of the times zoom available (eg 3x or 10x) to the unit, IR, or Thermal optics would be great to know. It would allow players to get more into the technical details of the equipment and game, and get the game under control a little more.
Note I'm using names of the GUI panels from the CM manual so BFC can understand what I'm suggesting.
 

Since in the modern titles - CW, SF2 and BS - spotting to extremely important and technology driven, information on the spotting ability of the unit - especially vehicles - would be exceptionally useful.
The place for it would be on the Defenses Report panel under the armour rating where the info on smoke etc currently goes.
With a bit of remodelling the icons, I would think an indicator of the times zoom available (eg 3x or 10x) to the unit, IR, or Thermal optics would be great to know. It would allow players to get more into the technical details of the equipment and game, and get the game under control a little more.
Note I'm using names of the GUI panels from the CM manual so BFC can understand what I'm suggesting.
 

Wow, that is an outstanding performance!  So this is a scoring oddity.  We locked the Soviet March or Die campaign so that someone could not simply hit “ceasefire” and get a minor victory (happens with reinforcements and other conditions).  To do that we add a Blue bonus and that is what you are seeing at games end, even though the US is wiped out.  For Greatest Dawn (and a couple others) this means that Major Victory is the highest a player can go but it is a numbers thing for this scenario.  Were we  in a perfect world I could tailor the victory conditions and rescale the victories like we can in campaigns but scenario conditions are locked.
But hey, who cares, your crushed it.  You are going to miss those 7 tanks but you still have plenty more.

I have never seen this before. BMP1 rolling, they hating, they see my M113 hiding behind a building (in ambush with the leader unbuttoned) and not only are the passengers firing on the AT team in the building on the left, the passengers on the other side acquire and shoot down my M113 TC before he can engage with his M2...
 
H

Actually we testers did notice and complained about it a lot, but problem is you are trying to graft a system, PBEM+++, onto the CM engine which was not designed that way ... so you have to use a lot of duct tape and cross your fingers 🙂.  Hopefully, it will be improved, the team has been working on it a lot over the past few months.

This mostly only applies to TO&E changes that alter the structure of a unit (rather than equipment carried on soldiers).  This is to preserve stability in existing scenarios, and updating a scenario to include structural changes requires "repurchasing" the units, which can entail a pretty extensive rebuild, possibly for only small changes.

NEW FEATURES
* Slitherine PBEM++ capability has been added. The game engine manual (found in game install directory) details this system on pages 30-31.
QUICK BATTLES
* Adjusted point values of most tanks and tank hunters. Purchase cost was increased by 15-25%, depending on the specific model, with more modern models tending towards the higher end of this range.
* Thermal sights on a vehicle contribute more to raising purchase cost.
VEHICLES AND EQUIPMENT
* Tanks without laser rangefinders are battle sight zero'd to 1200 meters.
* TOWs should now cause major suppressive effects / injuries if fired indoors.
* Fixes to minor artwork issues with BMP-2 / BMP-2K.
TO&E AND FORMATIONS
NOTE: Most of the changes listed here will not be reflected in scenarios created before v1.02, and will only appear in newly created scenario files using v1.02.
* Added x2 rifles with grenade launchers to US Engineer squads.
* Changes to US Infantry Company Weapons Platoon:
    - Weapons Platoon HQ now has x3 men (a platoon XO and a radioman added), and a Jeep with driver.
    - Added a driver to the jeeps of the mortar teams. The jeep also stocks extra mortar ammo now.
    - 60mm Offmap option will now properly have x3 mortars.
    - Weapons Platoon now has the option to use 81mm mortars instead of 60mm mortars.
* US Infantry Battalion Mortar Platoon now has option to be either M29A1 81mm mortars, or off-map M107mm mortars (was previously just 81mm mortars).
* US Bradley Mech Infantry Rifle Company fire support team's Bradley swapped for an M113.
* Added US fire support formations for sections of x3 60mm mortars and x3 81mm mortars.
* Added Soviet 2S3 formations equipped with cluster ammunition.
BUG FIXES
* FIXED: Some minor flaws in the logic that assigns team equipment.
* FIXED: M113 series vehicles were seeing through smoke.
* FIXED: Various crashes.

If I'm interpreting these screenshots correctly, then I'm not really surprised by the results here.

1) Your tanks are moving, theirs are stationary. All things being equal they should spot first. All things are definitely not equal here.

2) You have no spotting contacts for your armour. Your armour has no idea what they're rolling into, where to look or what to look for. This is fundamentally incorrect technique. Sometimes that's necessary, naturally, since desperation is a thing, but I don't get the impression this is correct here.

3) For the above, that kind of thing is why I tend to repeat things like "Shock Force teaches bad habits" - you can get away with that if you have a significant advantage in quality over your opposition, such as in Shock Force, Black Sea or some situations in the WW2 titles, but if you don't have that quality advantage - and in this situation you firmly do not - then this kind of bad practice is a lot more exposed.

4) It's hard to judge but it looks as though you're exposing a smaller number of tanks than you're rolling into - the enemy platoon in a stationary position also outnumbers you, so there are more eyes to see you than for you to see them. Even if all things were equal (and they're still not), and you weren't moving (but you were), I'd *still* expect them to spot you before you spot them.

Quite aside from arguing about the quality of the simulation here, even if we limited this to discussion in terms of the representation of game mechanics, I'm not sure these screenshots show what you think they're showing.

In a move that clearly worries the Kremlin, which expresses concern about potentially destabilizing the region, the Ukrainian Army conducted its first drone attack and destroyed a  Separatist D-30 howitzer apparently conducting shelling despite the ceasefire. It's unclear what the drone used as a weapon, or whether some sort of smaller suicide drone was a weapon. Whatever it was, one crew member apparently hear or saw it coming and bolted from the gun, but others were nearby when the striking weapon arrived. The explosion size and terminal effects suggest a very small warhead, a notion reinforced by apparent survival (condition unknown) of crew still at the gun position. The gun, the real target of the strike, appears to be out of action or even wrecked, but low imagery res makes determining this difficult.Decoding Kremlin speak, believe what it's really saying is that for the UA to hit back against unlawful attacks during the ceasefire by its Kremlin-controlled Separatists is depriving the Kremlin of its prior ability to continue to inflict attrition on the UA even when there's ostensibly no combat taking place. The casualties are just as real during a ceasefire as they are during outright war. Would expect the Kremlin to be deluged with urgent requests from the Separatists that it deploy drone countermeasures to the Donbass to protect against further attacks on the one hand or even return some drones to sender, as was done in Syria. The strike imagery in the Daily Sabah article was obtained mere days ago--October 27, 2021.  

https://www.facebook.com/DAILYSABAH/posts/2038218113001937

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42894/ukraine-strikes-russian-backed-forces-using-turkish-made-tb2-drones-for-the-first-time

https://bulgarianmilitary.com/amp/2020/07/08/electronic-defense-which-systems-are-developed-in-russia-to-counter-drones/

Regards,

John Kettler