Centurian52

Ah, in that case it was not what I thought it was.

If the Sherman Tulip is what I think it is then I'm guessing it would have been used as self-propelled rocket artillery, rather than for direct fire against targets the crew could see. In which case, if it is in the game, it would probably be best represented as off-map artillery. The game can handle off-map rocket artillery, so if it isn't included then a lack of provision for it in the game engine isn't the reason.

I'm right there with you. I can hardly wait for Battlefront to get around to covering the early-war period. In part because I find all military history fascinating, so I will always advocate for any period that I feel is underrepresented in wargaming. In part because I have a particular love for early-war tanks, such as the R-35 and Panzer 2. And in part because I believe that giving people an opportunity to experience this period for themselves will do much to bust the myth that these early campaigns were a complete walkover for the Germans at the tactical level. Despite the speed of the German advance on the operational level, the small scale fighting at the tactical level was much less one-sided than most people realize. For example, while the German army as a whole was basically unstoppable in Poland in 1939, there were no shortage of occasions in which individual tank attacks were stopped cold by Polish anti-tank guns. And there were even a handful of moderately successful Polish counterattacks. But, they'll get there. Impatience does us no good. Battlefront made the call to finish up the late-war period first. And whether or not you think that was the optimal call, I don't think any reasonable person could argue that the late war period wasn't also worth covering. Now that they have finished up the late-war period we can be very confident that future work will start incrementally rolling the clock backwards until they reach the beginning of the war (there will probably be more Battle Packs covering certain late-war campaigns in greater detail, but future modules and base games will certainly be going backwards from here on out). I'm hopeful that they'll get back to the beginning of the war before the 1st of September 2039 (I definitely intend to start another chronological CM playthrough around this date).

I'm expecting those scenarios to start to feel a lot like CMCW. Which wouldn't be at all surprising considering that the early-gen tanks of CMCW (M48A5, M60A1, T55, T62) feel a lot more like really powerful WW2 tanks than like modern tanks.

Maybe a good compliment to the upcoming Utah Beach Battle Pack would be to cover Gold, Juno, or Sword beaches? I'm always happy to see a bit more representation of Commonwealth forces. I know you said you wanted to do German campaigns, though honestly I think I'd prefer to play these from the Allied perspective. Maybe split it with a couple Allied campaigns and a couple German campaigns? Edit: Nevermind. I just reread the initial post and you said no Normandy in addition to no Italy.

I'd definitely buy Combat Mission: Operation Unthinkable. Though, seeing as I've already affirmed that I'd buy any Combat Mission game, that may not count for much.

Why not both? I find the best learning comes from a variety of sources (in my case books, youtube, and simulations). The quality of the military history content on youtube has reached really spectacular levels. They usually have much higher research standards than traditional documentaries. Real Time History isn't even the best of it (as much as I enjoy their content, they tend to repeat common myths a bit more often than most of the other channels I go to, so their research standards seem to be a bit more on par with traditional documentaries). There is Eastory, Drachinifel, Military History Visualized, TIK, Military Aviation History, Usually Hapless, Battle Order, The Operations Room/Intel Report, Kings and Generals, Forgotten Weapons, The Chieftain, The Western Front Association, GI History Handbook, and so many more that I'm sure I'll remember in a few minutes. No source is perfect, and I've caught all of these channels making the occasional mistake. There is just so much misinformation out there that it's impossible for even the best historian to filter out all of it. That goes for books as well. The format that the research is presented in has no effect on the quality of the research, so books will contain as many errors as videos. I was just reading James Holland's book on Normandy, in which he repeated the myth that the Bren was extremely accurate and the MG42 was extremely inaccurate (they actually seem to have roughly the same accuracy, about 4-5 MOA). I doubt anyone could say that James Holland isn't a good historian. There are simply so many myths out there that it's impossible for even the best historian to catch them all.

Oh, for those of you who have a Nebula subscription, the upcoming release of Downfall means that now might be a good time to point out that Real Time History has done a series on the Allied fighting over the Rhine river in 1945. For those who don't have a Nebula subscription, unfortunately this series isn't available for free on youtube, but I seem to recall that Nebula was pretty cheap back when I signed up for it. https://nebula.tv/videos/real-time-history-1-come-hell-or-high-water-i-rhineland-45

They spent their time bringing all the fronts up to the end of the war. And honestly I think that was a good use of their time. But now that all of the fronts have been brought up to the end of the war, there is really nowhere for them to go but back. We can be very confident that the next WW2 CM release will be an incremental step back in time, promises or no, because there is no direction left to go but back. The only things that are in question are how far back will the next release go, and which front will they roll the clock back on first. Will it be earlier in 1944 on the eastern front next? Or will it be Tunisia 1943 next?

I think they'll do early war eventually. They just need to work backwards towards it from what they have right now to minimize the number new assets that need to be created with each release.

While I'm dissapointed that we probably can't look forward to Korea anytime soon, I'll buy whatever you put out in any time period. It's all interesting to me.

Seems to do modern warfare just fine to me. But, while I'd like to see a new modern warfare game (China vs the US/Taiwan seems the obvious pick for peer vs peer warfare, while NK vs the US/SK would be much more assymetric, though I would be very interested in seeing SK forces in action), I wouldn't want that to come at the cost of Cold War content right now. There are so many armies that need to get added to CMCW, so I hope it doesn't take too long to greenlight the next module after BAOR is released. And there are other conflicts in the Cold War era that could use some attention, particularly the Korean war now that all the late WW2 equipment is in.

There are already BMDs in CMA. So in theory 1980s VDV should already be ready to go. I don't know if there are any licensing issues around that though, since the partner company behind CMA is defunct.

Seconded. Making a new near-future base game might be risky with Battlefront's track record so far (I kid, if more conflicts are going to break out, they will break out whether or not Battlefront makes a game about them first). But with further development of CMBS apparently dead, and the modern era still being an area of interest, now might be a good time to look at the possibility of a new modern era base game. Recent lessons about modern warfare could be taken into account (higher density of drones). And I'm very eager to take a US force equipped with M7 rifles (I'm assuming the 'X' will be dropped from the name when it's no longer experimental), M250 machine guns, and M10 Booker light tanks out for a spin.

I doubt they'll ever do anything with equipment that doesn't already exist at the time of development, or at least isn't near enough over the horizon to have a good idea of its characteristics. That being said, that doesn't mean they won't eventually deliver some far-future content (from our current perspective). All we need is for them to still be around in the far future. They've managed to stick around for 25 years already, so what's another hundred? I'm sure the 2124 new year's bones thread will announce some exciting content!

Funny you should mention them doing some other Cold War conflict. It just so happens that I expressed a similar thought over in the 2023 thread as part of the whole "will they/won't they include the Pershing?" The thread is locked now, which seems to have eliminated the normal Quote feature, but it's towards the top of page 30.

The second one isn't a typo. They're just a unit that specialized in anti-airborne operations. But in all seriousness, I just checked and both typos are still there.

I think the only bone to be had is that the module is done, just waiting for the war to end. My guess is that the war will not end in the coming year. But also that it won't still be going on next decade. I think the war will end up lasting between 3 and 6 years in total (fair chance of ending in 2025, a higher chance of ending in 2026, and an even higher chance of ending in 2027), in the ballpark of the world wars in terms of duration. A long enough timeframe that it is probably worth reopening the possibility of releasing the CMBS module before it is over. My understanding is that the decision was made to hold back the module because it was felt that many people would feel strongly against releasing content that relates to an ongoing war, so it might be worth trying to get a feel for how many such people there actually are. Please note that I recognize that this is not the place to discuss the war itself (there is another thread for that), so I have tried to limit the scope of my comment (and I hope others will limit the scope of their replies) to how it relates to the CMBS module. Edit: Ah, well nevermind then...

So it is! I hadn't even noticed until you pointed it out.

Pershings!!! Edit: I'm excited about everything else as well. I'm really looking forward to the BAOR module, and to fighting through Utah beach and Carentan. But we were just talking in the 2023 thread (a couple months ago) about whether or not Pershings would be included in the CMFB module. So I'm excited to see that they have been.

While that would be awesome, I suspect CMRT in its current form doesn't have all the necessary equipment for mid-1943 fighting. I haven't played Fire and Rubble yet, and Downfall hasn't been released yet (I'm doing a playthrough of all the Combat Mission content I have in chronological order, so those two will be the last WW2 content I play in this playthrough, probably a couple years from now (there's a lot to get through)). So I'm not sure what on either front in 1945 would be interesting to cover but that hasn't been covered yet. Maybe Balkans 1944? Of course we're missing a lot of the essential forces to cover that front (no Romanian forces yet). I was going to suggest Tunisia, since I would expect some equipment overlap between Tunisia and Sicily, meaning that we may already have most of what's needed. But if Italy is off the menu then that probably means no Tunisia as well. Besides, Battlefront may yet get around to doing Tunisia themselves one day.

So it's easy enough for me to look up when they were released. Does anyone happen to know when CMBN, CMBS, CMFI, or CMFB started development?

I've recently gotten back into WW2 after spending a while in the modern and Cold War eras, so I'm still relearning how to effectively use artillery in this era. I know WW2 artillery is less responsive, less accurate, and less reliable than modern artillery. While I tended to call in modern artillery on targets of opportunity, I usually preplan my WW2 artillery rather than relying on my FOs to call it in later, precisely because I know it will take longer to come in and be less likely to come in where I want it. Still, you can't preplan it all the time. Like other people have said, making sure your spotter can clearly see the target and the fall of the rounds is important. And choosing the most appropriate spotter will help (a trained FO is better than a regular officer, if one is available). Another important thing to remember is that, since it's so much less accurate, the "danger close" distance is a lot further away with WW2 arty than with modern arty. I also don't think of WW2 artillery as being accurate enough to be worth giving it "point target" missions most of the time, so I usually use it to plaster a large area instead.

That's really uncalled for. My impression is that you, and a lot of people, are angry because you think Battlefront is slow to release products. But are they slow? Do you have a baseline? How long should it take? Is that even a good reason to be angry? I encourage you to go back to page 30 and read Lethaface's comment about the holy trinity of quality, budget and time (seriously, comment of the year, everyone needs to read it). The TLDR is that the commitment to quality means that they need to be flexible with time. If their commitment was to time, then either budget or quality would need to be flexible. I know I play Combat Mission because it is an extremely high quality game series. You may be angry that it takes them a long time to develop a product (again though, does it? compared to what?). But I know I would be absolutely furious if they started compromising on quality in order to crank products out faster. I can't see behind the scenes, so I don't actually know exactly when their team starts development for a specific product. It looks to me like ~2-3 years may be about the normal development time for a Combat Mission base game or module. So, is that a long time? We'd need some sort of baseline in order to answer that question. Certainly Combat Mission is more detailed than most games. But a good starting point might be to ask how long it normally takes to develop a video game. And isn't game development normally measured in years? If a game came out after only 6 months of development wouldn't that be considered a blisteringly fast pace? Edit: And I know that Yahtzee Croshaw developed 12 games in 12 months. But first, those were extremely small games, and second, the man was on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time he finished.

At this scale we are often talking about "pursuit by fire". Think the Carentan battle sequence from Band of Brothers, culminating in them machinegunning the German infantry from the windows as they fled across the fields.