Centurian52

Facing effects spotting, in that a unit will spot better to their front. Your units focus greater attention to their front than in any other direction. And target arcs effect facing (your units will generally face towards the center of a target arc command). But how wide or narrow the target arc is will have absolutely no effect on spotting. There is no inherent bonus to spotting enemy units inside the arc vs outside the arc. Your units will not focus greater attention inside the arc vs outside the arc. They will probably be more likely to spot enemy units inside the arc, but only because enemy units inside the arc will tend to be to your units' front.

Not gamey at all. From what I hear it's quite normal to use mortar teams as riflemen in real life.

I don't know if this map was ever released. But if you want to play Carentan then you just need to wait a bit. Carentan is part of the Utah Beach Battle Pack that's currently in the works.

I support reminding people that reality is more complicated than they think. I oppose using that as an excuse to not have a discussion. Frankly no two weapons are exactly the same, have exactly the same role, or exactly the same doctrine for their use. So taken to an extreme this means that no two pieces of equipment can ever be compared. It's worth reminding people that fair and meaningful comparisons are far more difficult and complicated than they assume. But we don't want those reminders to become a way of hand waving any attempt at making comparisons. The complexity involved in making a fair comparison between such different weapons requires digging deeper into the technical characteristics, design philosophies and tradeoffs, the theoretical doctrine, and the real world tactics of the weapons. All of which I think makes for an inherently valuable discussion even if no conclusion is actually reached about which one is better. In any case, the issue of "different roles" is exactly why I limited the discussion to the LMG configuration of the MG42. The MG42's "role" is different in that it can be configured for a number of different roles. In its LMG configuration the MG42 is not filling a different role from the Bren at all. It is filling the role of the squad LMG, which is precisely the same role as the Bren. Your point about different doctrines is precisely one of the things that I think is worth exploring in greater detail. It is entirely possible that one of these doctrines ended up being a better fit for the reality of 1940s infantry combat than the other. If so, why? If not, why not? But I think you have made an important point. No weapon in any army is a perfect counterpart to any weapon in any other army. Ultimately we fight with formations, not with individual pieces of equipment. Each individual weapon is designed to fit into its respective formation in a certain way. So in the long run we really want to be comparing whole formations. But that's an even more complicated question, of which this thread's question is only a very small subcomponent. Every piece of equipment, every point of doctrine, the full organizational structure, the logistics, communications, repair, and replacement systems, everything that effects the capability of the formations would need to be compared. All of that is well worth doing, but it probably can't all be done at once. That's the sort of thing you work your way through over a lifetime.

Wait do the T-55s have laser range finders? I thought it was the T-62 (specifically the 1975 version) that had the laser range finder fitted (though I'd still expect the 1972 version to outshoot the M60A1 just because it has a higher velocity gun).

According to Wikipedia (so, grain of salt) the first version of the Chieftain to be fitted with the Barr & Stroud TLS (Tank Laser Sight) was the Mk 3/3 in 1971. So I'm guessing they will have laser rangefinders in the 1976-1982 timeframe that we're concerned with. That might put them on par with the M60A3 in terms of accuracy against stationary targets. No mention of automatic lead on the Wiki page, so probably not as accurate as the M60A3 against moving targets.

The L23 APFSDS doesn't enter service until after CMCW's timeframe. So the Chieftain is still using the L15 APDS, which doesn't outperform any of the M60's AP ammo except perhaps the M728 APDS round at some ranges. Still, a larger caliber means it can fire a bigger HE round. And the Chieftain has a HESH round, while the M60 (at least in-game) only has HEAT for anti-personnel work. So the Chieftain will not outperform the M60 in this timeframe in anti-armor work*. But it should be much more impressive when performing anti-fortification and anti-personnel work. The gun itself is probably better than the M60's gun. But a gun by itself produces no effect. It's the gun + ammo that actually has an effect. *Excepting that it may be more accurate than the M60A1. Certainly more accurate than the base M60A1, though I'm not sure if that still applies after the assorted RISE, RISE+, and RISE Passive upgrades.

This has already been discussed to death over the last two years. There is no doubt that plenty of people would buy it, myself included. But Battlefront, and their partners at Slitherine, have decided that it would almost certainly be a bad PR move. However we feel about it, the matter has been decided and there is no point in us discussing it further.

As a Combat Mission player I would have liked for them to release the module. But from a business perspective the decision not to release it was probably a sound one. In any case, it's hardly worth discussing since the key decisionmakers have already made up their minds. It's not like this subject hasn't already been beaten to death over the last two years.

Ok I've just gotta say it once. A lot of people all over the forums (I really don't want to imply I'm picking on you specifically @waffelmann) have been typing 'loose' when they mean 'lose'. There's loose, as in loose an arrow or loosen a knot. And there's lose, as in to lose your keys or lose a fight. I tried so hard not to say anything, because it really doesn't matter at the end of the day. I really don't want to be the sort of person who goes around correcting everyone's spelling (that could only come around and backfire on me if I did, because god knows I make far worse spelling mistakes all the time). But this isn't the first time I had to reread a sentence because my inner voice read 'loos' the first time when the intended pronunciation was 'looz'.

An abstraction meant to eliminate some unrealistic edge cases, which has unfortunately created some new unrealistic edge cases. I recall Steve mentioning something about this sort of thing a long long time ago. Something about tail chasing?

Sorry. I guess that's what I get for skimming through the bulk of the thread. In your fist post you mentioned your mortar team had four rounds left, which led me to believe you were trying to fire the mortar's HE rounds. But you can order the mortar team to fire using their carbines. You just need to pack up the mortar. The carbines still have a shorter range than rifles though, so it's possible that they still won't shoot if the enemy is too far away.

They will fire on the player's orders. I use mortar teams a lot to deal with HMG teams or ATGs (or just massed infantry behind cover) without bringing in an HQ or FO as a middle man.

I would like to see more of the French. I think Steve announced that the focus will be on the oddball forces, so possibly not a specific timeframe. And the French seem to have the most unique equipment of any of the oddball factions, with most of the other Allied armies using the same organization and equipment as either the British or Americans. Specifically I would be thrilled if there was a campaign dedicated specifically to the French actions around Cassino (the Polish actions around Cassino are also pretty interesting, but they are already represented in the Gustav Line module). I also think the Brazilians are pretty interesting. They're organized like the Americans, but without the Garand to carry them, making them possibly the most firepower challenged faction in any of the games.

I have five going right now. One CMFI, one CMCW, and three CMBN.