Centurian52

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.

Exploitation after a breakthrough in a major operation would be its own separate scenario in Combat Mission. But an infantry company pulling back from defending a village would be under pressure from the moment they start pulling out to the few hundred meters they may need to pull back in order to break contact. That is well within the scope of a single scenario.

That's unavoidable. You will get complaints any time you implement a mechanic that makes a wargame more realistic. Combat Mission has by far the most realistic spotting mechanics of any wargame out there, and it's no coincidence that there are no shortage of complaints about the game's frustrating spotting mechanics. It turns out that reality is somewhat different from people's expectations.

I figure the "surrender" option equates to, well, surrender. As in the situation has gotten so bad that it's not just individual soldiers throwing up their hands, but the overall commander deciding to throw in the towel and march his remaining troops into captivity. You'll notice that when the enemy surrenders you aren't just automatically granted credit for all ground objectives, but also parameter objectives relating to enemy casualties, implying that the enemy force is completely destroyed. But there's also more to retreating than just giving up the battle. Retreat normally involves some attempt at pursuit on the part of the winner (if no pursuit is attempted, it's often a sign that the winner is utterly exhausted), and efforts to fend off pursuit and break contact on the part of the loser. Basically the winner is trying to convert a victory into a decisive victory, while the loser is trying prevent a defeat from becoming a decisive defeat. The fight isn't really over until after you have successfully broken contact with the enemy. It's an entire additional phase of the battle that we're largely missing out on.

You'd need to do more than just incentivize the player to take/hold their objectives with minimal losses (that's pretty much how it works right now). You'd need to find a way to incentivize the player to eventually choose force preservation over taking/holding their objectives. For one, it would need to be possible for the defender to retreat. That means exit zones would need to be present in every scenario. An attack against a defender that fights to the last man is pretty much guaranteed to suffer unusually high losses. Beyond making retreat possible, I don't know how you incentivize the player to actually do it. You might be able to program the AI to call off an attack or abandon a defense under the right circumstances. But how do you incentivize a player to willingly abandon their objectives?

Fair enough. I oversimplified things a bit by assuming a unit fought an engagement every single day and received no reinforcements while it was in the line (reinforcements do arrive a bit less reliably for both sides in Ukraine than for the Allies in WW2 though, so assuming no reinforcements was not entirely unjustified). I recall an anecdote of a US infantry division (I don't remember which one) taking 200% casualties over the course of the Battle for Normandy. Assuming they were in the front line from June 6th to August 30th, and were topped off to 100% every day, that works out to an average of about 2.3% casualties per day (3.5% if they took 300% losses over the course of the campaign). Obviously they wouldn't have suffered 2.3% casualties every day, but much fewer casualties on most days and much higher casualties on a few days. That may have been higher than normal, since I recall some WW2 general (again, I don't remember which one) estimating that a typical infantry division will lose 1% of its strength for every day it's in the line (I think I ran across this while looking up casualty estimation methods for large operations). Of course most of the individual companies and battalions in the division won't be fighting every single day. If we assume a two up one back formation, nested all the way down (two of the division's three regiments forward, two of each regiment's three battalions forward, and two of each battalion's three companies forward (I'm assuming that each formation is triangular, but I haven't double checked that for WW2 US infantry divisions before typing this)), then only 8 of the division's 27 companies would be forward on a given day of fighting. In that case a day in which the division as whole suffered 1% casualties would see each of the frontline companies suffering an average of 3.4% casualties. A day in which the division as a whole suffered 2.3% casualties would see the frontline companies suffering an average of 7.76% casualties. A while back I read about a particularly bitter struggle a British infantry battalion had over a hill in Normandy. They took the hill, but suffered 15% casualties in the process. I should emphasize again, there is no typical casualty rate in the real world. Casualties span the whole range from 0% to 100%, with lots of engagements clustering between 0% and 10% and fewer engagements with losses towards the higher end of the spectrum. A typical Combat Mission scenario in which the winner suffers 25% casualties and the loser suffers 75% casualties is not unrealistic if taken in isolation. What's unrealistic is that nearly every scenario ends with losses in the tens of percentage points (in the titles covering peer vs peer and near-peer warfare). I don't think the issue has anything to do with player tactics or weapons being modeled as over-lethal. I think it just comes down to the fact that each side (human player or AI) is determined to fight the battle to the bitter end. We push our attacks far past the point when a real attacker would stop. We defend to the very last because (unless the scenario designer has thought to put in an exit zone) retreat is literally not an option. It really just comes down to the fact that we are taking each scenario in isolation. The larger operational/strategic/political context only exists in the narrative presented by the briefing, so it can't create any real incentive to keep our casualties down or preserve combat effective formations for the long term. Even in campaigns, when we do have an incentive to preserve our forces over several joined scenarios, we are still playing to win against a defender that will not retreat, or an attacker that will push themselves to complete destruction. This is why this is a wargaming problem, not a Combat Mission problem. It's a problem for any tactical level wargame precisely because their scope is limited to the tactical level. But that's also why there isn't really an easy fix. Battlefront was able to deliver such a highly detailed and realistic tactical wargame in large part because they limited their scope to the tactical level. If the reason casualties are too high is that there are no operational/strategic incentives for keeping casualties low then the obvious solution would seem to be to expand the scope to include the operational level. But that would almost inevitably mean a less detailed representation of the tactical level. Effectively you'd be trying to make the game more realistic by making the game less realistic. If there was an easy solution, I imagine the problem wouldn't be so pervasive across all wargames.