Centurian52

Bummer that they have so few to lose, but they were always going to lose some once they started using them. There is no surer sign that these are finally being used in action than to see one lost. I've been refreshing the Oryx page on Ukrainian losses every day for over a month now waiting to see the first Leopard 1 loss. Because once they start losing Leopard 1s, that means they finally have units fully equipped with Leopard 1s that are ready for action.

I'm just getting started on catching up on this weekend's events. From the looks of it either Ukraine made some good progress this weekend or ISW finally updated their map with last week's progress.

I've never heard of Counterstroke before. It may be as simple as it being the British term for Active Defense (sort of like the distinction between HESH and HEP, or using "fin" vs "sabot" as a shorthand for APFSDS). In a similar vain I remember FM100-2-1 explicitly described the Soviet concept of a "fire sack" as being almost identical to the US concept of a "kill zone". Can you describe it?

Well, ISW still hasn't updated their map with any recent Ukrainian advances (though it does look like they've improved their visual representation of Russian fortifications). But they were surprisingly prompt with their monthly update to their time-lapse maps! https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/733fe90805894bfc8562d90b106aa895

I seriously doubt that cluster munitions are well suited to clearing minefields.

ISW hasn't updated their map in a couple of days, so I'm not sure how many of the recent Ukrainian advances have actually been confirmed yet (maybe there will be a big map update today?). But they did assess earlier that the current Russian line would probably be less effective than their forward positions. The Russians committed very heavily to defending their forward positions, those forces should have been significantly degraded by that fighting, and it doesn't look like they have anything in reserve. The Russian static defenses in this area certainly look intimidating. But as had been discussed before, static defenses are only effective when overwatched by fire. Static defenses which aren't being overwatched are more of a speed bump than an actual obstacle. So if the Russians don't have enough troops left in the area to actually man all of those defenses, then they are not going to get the full potential out of those defenses.

How did you get those bottom two screenshots? Is there a thermal vision mod that I missed?

The way returning Vietnam vets were treated was really horrible. I think we have a more nuanced understanding these days. Even if we don't support the war itself, there is a broader understanding that the men and women sent to fight in it aren't to blame. My understanding is that Soviet soldiers who returned from Afghanistan faced treatment similar to US soldiers returning from Vietnam. So Russian society went through a similar experience, and had the opportunity to draw similar lessons. But it seems that self reflection is not an area in which the Russians excel.

That's a thought that had occurred to me, and which I remember being raised by other people a few hundred pages ago. I am hoping and expecting that the Ukrainians will be able to cut off Crimea for the obvious military utility in doing so. But there is no doubt that it will make life very hard for you and everyone else who lives there. My hope is that the Russians will run out of ammo before civilians start running out of food. For this reason the Ukrainians probably shouldn't just sit and wait for the Russians to starve once Crimea is cut off, but actively put pressure on the Russians to force them to expend lives and ammo faster than they can be replenished (some supplies and reinforcements should still be able to come in by sea even if all land routes are cut, so active pressure will probably be necessary anyway). Whatever happens, I hope you are able to stockpile enough food to make it through.

According to German propaganda (can't really fault you, since German propaganda pretty much dominated western historiography on WW2 through the entire Cold War, and historians have only really been starting to break it down relatively recently). But not in reality. They definitely had a superior operational level doctrine in the early war (though the Allies generally did better than they get credit for at the tactical level). But by 1944 they didn't have the fuel to carry out their early war maneuver doctrine, and the Allies had gained considerable experience in how to conduct effective operations. German troops in 1944 were fighting with skill and determination (though in general the quality of the average German soldier had dropped since the beginning of the war as a result of attrition, and there were some very low quality formations mixed in with the higher quality formations), but Allied troops were also generally well trained by 1944. It isn't clear that the quality of the average German soldier was significantly higher than the average Allied soldier by 1944. Allied forces were fully motorized, while German forces were not (only the Panzer divisions and a handful of mechanized divisions were ever motorized). When Allied soldiers had to redeploy over a long distance they were always carried in trucks, while most German troops had to march on foot. Allied supplies always came in trucks, while German supplies were mostly horse-drawn. The Allies had lots of tanks, the fuel to run them, and the spare parts to repair them. The Germans had lots of tanks, most of which couldn't be used because they didn't have enough fuel or because they were awaiting repairs (finding a German tank in the front lines by 1944 was not impossible, but they were certainly a lot rarer than they had been a few years earlier). The Allies had a lot more radios than the Germans (the Americans had a radio in every infantry platoon, given them a degree of communication that most armies wouldn't see until the Cold War). Allied rifles, particularly the M1 Garand, but also the SMLE to a more limited extent, were generally better than German rifles (not enough G43s or Stg44s to tip the balance). German tanks, when they were working, were mostly on par with Allied tanks (most German tanks were not Tigers, and a Panzer 4 is a pretty even match for a Sherman). German machine guns were admittedly better than Allied machine guns (its hard for someone who's played CMBN to maintain otherwise, Lindybeige's stance on the issue notwithstanding). German submachineguns were about on par with Allied submachineguns (honestly not much to choose from between a Sten, an MP40, and a Thompson (they'll all pour 30 rounds out at a pretty respectable rate and do nasty things to anyone in close quarters)). As far as I know, gun for gun, German artillery was about on par with Allied artillery, but the Allies had a lot more artillery (more of which was self-propelled) and a lot more ammunition for it. German anti-tank weapons were pretty good, probably somewhat better than Allied anti-tank weapons, but not decisively so. The 17 pounder was probably about on par with the Pak-40, while the 6 pounder was still more than adequate to deal with most German tanks. The Panzerfaust had excellent penetration and was produced in large quantities, but was inaccurate and had a short range. The Panzerschreck was certainly, tube for tube, better than the bazooka or PIAT, but there were a lot fewer of them. Overall I just don't think the claim that the Germans were better equipped holds any water. It was admittedly pretty intense. But most intense battle of WW2? I'm not sure it was even the most intense battle on the western front. It's probably possible to determine once and for all which battle was the most intense (take the casualties suffered, divide that by the number of troops involved in hundreds of thousands, divide that by the number of days the battle lasted, and see which battle had the highest number of casualties per day per 100,000 troops (I'm betting Normandy would be on the high end of the spectrum, but not the highest)). But for now it's probably sufficient to say that there were some battles on the eastern front that were definitely more intense than Normandy. And actually I decided to do what I just described for Normandy. I found wide ranging casualty figures for the Germans, so I just did the Allies, which I found more consistent casualty figures for. Over 77 days around 2 million Allied soldiers suffered 226,000 casualties. That gives a figure of around 145 casualties per day per 100,000 soldiers (there is some rounding involved). That casualty rate is no walk in the park, but there were definitely battles with a higher rate.

My path to Combat Mission was a direct line from more mainstream arcadey RTSs to incrementally more realistic RTSs. The first RTS I remember playing was Red Alert 2 (I remember being so excited when my parents got me the expansion pack, Yuri's Revenge, sometime while I was in middle school). As you can imagine, my standards for realism could only go up from there. My next stop from there was Command and Conquer: Generals. Which wasn't much more realistic, but it did feel slightly more realistic at the time (some of the units' attacks appeared to involve actual projectiles). The big step up was that was around the time that I first learned that modding was a thing. I got my hands on some third party tool that allowed me to edit the units' stats, and so began my lifelong immersion into finely nuanced military history as I made every effort to make sure every unit had the most realistic stats allowable by the engine. The fact that most of the weapon systems in-game were complete fantasy didn't stop me from finding real world analogs to base the stats on for most of them. It still wasn't very realistic by my current standards, given the limitations of the engine and the fact that (with my simplistic understanding of warfare at the time) I only accounted for the capabilities of the weapons, and didn't account for the limitations of the humans operating the weapons (my personalized version of C&C Generals become a very lethal environment (in retrospect it was actually pretty Shock Force-like, so maybe I didn't do such a bad job after all (the massively increased ranges did force me to account for the depth of the battlefield in a way that the vanilla version never did))). The next step up from C&C Generals was World In Conflict. This was the first time I encountered an RTS that didn't involve building bases, and I never touched a base builder again (except Red Alert 2, because nostalgia is pretty powerful). Vanilla WiC was already much more realistic than vanilla C&C Generals (every round is modeled as an actual projectile!). But the more powerful game engine (and my improved understanding of warfare) allowed for much more realistic modding (I actually took human capabilities into account so, while every hit from infantry small arms resulted in a casualty, most rounds missed (my infantry in C&C Generals were mowing each other down at 500 meters)). I actually got Rome: Total War for the same Christmas that I got World In Conflict. But I exclusively played WiC for a few months before I even really gave Rome: Total War a look. The Total War games were the first games I had ever played which accounted for soft factors such as moral and fatigue (though in retrospect the moral in those games is still way too high (historically, ancient/medieval/Napoleonic soldiers generally weren't willing to endure melee combat long enough for most of them to be killed (ancient and medieval melees were probably series of short clashes that may have only lasted a few seconds each before one side retreated and the forces returned to throwing projectiles and taunts, and Napoleonic bayonet charges usually resulted in one side running away before bayonets actually clashed))). And while WiC's system of paradropping troops onto the map was better than building bases, Total War's system of recruiting troops in cities on the campaign map was the first recruitment system I had seen in an RTS that had a passing resemblance to how things work in reality. There wasn't much modding I could personally do to make Rome or Medieval 2 Total War more realistic, though I did find mods by other people which made those games significantly more historically accurate. But I did mod the hell out of Empire and Napoleon Total War*. For several years the Total War games, particularly the modded Total War games, were the gold standard of realism for me. And then, shortly after graduating high school (this would have been around 2009) I discovered Combat Mission: Shock Force, and my gaming experience would never be the same. I still play games other than Combat Mission. Nothing beats Combat Mission for representing ground warfare on the tactical level from WW2 to the modern day. But I also have itches to scratch on the operational and strategic levels, in different domains, and in earlier eras. Command Ops 2 has the market cornered for the operational level (I always play with max orders delay). There still isn't really anything that does a good job of modeling the strategic level. I've looked into Strategic Command and Gary Grigsby's War in the East, but their turn based gameplay (alternating turns, not WEGO) lacks any sense of realistic time flow, so for now I'm sticking with a modded Darkest Hour. I like Hearts of Iron 4's production mechanics, population mechanics, and map, but Darkest Hour has better combat mechanics and lots of juicy statistics screens (I love my statistics screens!). For 20th century naval warfare I play Rule the Waves 3 (honestly it figures that one of my favorite games would be 90% spreadsheets), and I've been intending to play Command: Modern Operations (I'll probably finally get around to it once I'm done with my current Rule the Waves campaign since the time period it covers pretty much picks up where Rule the Waves leaves off, with a couple of decades of overlap). For the Napoleonic era Scourge of War has completely replaced Total War for me (it has been years since I've played a Total War game). Like Total War, it still required some modding to get the weapon ranges and accuracy right (conveniently, I was able to recycle the same research I had done to mod Total War). Unlike Total War, it does a much better job of representing the scale of warfare in this time period (in Total War 2,000 troops is a huge battle, while in Scourge of War 20,000 troops is a pretty small battle). Also unlike Total War, and like Combat Mission, it has historically accurate tables of organization and equipment. Unlike both Total War and Combat Mission it has a pretty good orders delay system. With the poor graphics and the sprite ratio I consider Scourge of War to be pretty analogous to CMx1. I've really enjoyed Scourge of War, but from the looks of it General Staff: Black Powder may soon be taking its place in scratching my 19th century warfare itch. Unfortunately I don't have anything covering ancient and medieval warfare anymore. I still don't know of anything better than Total War for those time periods, and it doesn't quite meet my standards of realism anymore. Theatre of War was part of my lineup for early WW2, but the CMx1 games have mostly replaced it in that role (I say mostly because even the CMx1 games don't go as far back as Poland 1939 or France 1940). * I increased ranges and reduced accuracy among other things. Figuring out what the ranges should be was fairly straightforward. I just used what contemporary sources considered to be the effective ranges. The "battle range" (what we might call the area target effective range) of a smoothbore musket was considered to be about 200 yards, assuming that the target is a battalion in close order, while most artillery of the time should be able to fire out to 1-2 kilometers (depending on the size of the gun). Figuring out what the accuracy should be was a pain, especially since the engine didn't include any ways for accuracy to vary depending on circumstances. Single volleys fired by unbroken troops at close range could be quite accurate, while 200-500 rounds expended for every casualty inflicted was typical over the course of an entire battle. But that includes ill-disciplined troops wasting ammo at ineffective ranges, ammo fired blindly through smoke, ammo not recovered from casualties, ammo ruined by bad weather, ammo fired at troops in skirmish line and/or behind cover, etc... But eventually I figured that about 2% hits on a unit in the open in close order at 200 yards was close enough.

I didn't get any bayonet training when I went through basic in the winter of 2012/2013. But I was also a POG (IT Specialist), so I still can't shed any light on what the combat arms guys were up to at that point in time.

Might as well start trying to assess their performance right now. The post-war information space is still going to be very muddy, just for different reasons. You still have well informed people disagreeing about how this or that platform performed in WW2. History is a complicated and difficult business, and it never gets easier. We get better informed about historical events as time passes because historians have been putting in the hard work of figuring out what happened for longer, not because the sources became more reliable. There's no harm in starting that hard work now.

Trenches have been used in every single war (that I can think of) since WW1, and many, many wars prior to WW1. Edit: And bayonets were still considered an important weapon at least as late as WW2, and were still retained in many armies until very recently (still a potential backup weapon, and some armies still maintain that bayonet training is a useful way of instilling aggressiveness). It's not so hard to see why bayonets were retained as late as WW2. Imagine you have assaulted an enemy trench or are storming a house and you find yourself in close contact with an enemy soldier. You have a bolt-action rifle, and have missed your first shot. Is it faster and less risky to work the bolt to chamber a fresh round or to thrust your rifle forward to stab the enemy with your bayonet? Stabbing is probably faster and safer in this situation. It's harder to imagine why bayonets were retained for so long after WW2. If you are in the same situation, but you have a semi-automatic or assault rifle, then the faster and safer option is probably to just squeeze the trigger again. So you would think that semi-automatic rifles would have been the final nail in the coffin for bayonets. But, as has been pointed out, bayonets don't run out of ammo.

I wouldn't worry about that. That is, at the earliest, still 17 months away (a new President would take office in January 2025). It's basically a given that the war will go into 2024, but I'm still hopeful that the Russians will be beaten by 2025 (at the very least, they will be in even worse shape than they are right now). And considering that this is mostly a bipartisan issue, there is a fair to decent chance that a new president would still support aiding Ukraine anyway.

Frankly most of what actually distinguishes ethnic groups these days has far more to do with culture than genes. There is certainly an implication that it has something to do with genes, but that's probably just residual 19th century and earlier racism (there was a time when "nation" and "race" were very closely linked concepts). Ethnic Russians are simply those Russians that the Russians consider to be the most Russian. I believe the highest concentrations of ethnic Russians are around Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Non-ethnic Russians would be those Russians who have some lingering cultural memory of having been conquered or otherwise subdued by Russia.

A new episode of Anti-Tank Chats just dropped which probably belongs on this thread

I remember getting a whole bunch of 30s and 40s music from Britain, the US, the Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy, and using them as the music for CMBN (got the US and British music), CMFI (got the Italian music), CMRT (got the Soviet music), and CMFB (got the German music). I don't remember where I got it from. I'm sure it was one of the usual places to find Combat Mission mods. I think it was this one, but I don't want to download it to my work computer to check: https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cmbn-sound/cm-fi_rt_bn-music-splash/

BMDs are less armored than BMPs. The armor is aluminum. It is tough enough to withstand small arms fire only, and will be easily penetrated by even an HMG. The BMD-1 has the same firepower as the BMP-1. The BMD-2 has the same firepower as the BMP-2. And the BMD-4 has about the same firepower as the BMP-3. The BMD-1 and BMD-4 each have room for 5 dismounts, while the BMD-2 can carry 6 dismounts. As the airborne equivalents of the BMP series, the design priority for the BMD series was to make it air droppable, not tougher or more "elite". They needed to be lighter, so they are smaller (less room for dismounts) and more lightly armored. Whenever any army in any time period gives armored vehicles to its airborne forces, those vehicles are always lighter than the equivalent armored vehicles given to the regular infantry, so there was never any chance of BMDs being given more armor than BMPs. The low number of dismounts that can fit into a BMD compared to a BMP is a serious problem for the VDV. Squad size does matter. Small squads can't absorb many casualties (everyone always seems to forget the importance of being able to absorb casualties). And having too many key weapon systems and too few riflemen can seriously hamper mobility and limit your offensive capabilities (who wants to assault a trench while lugging around an MMG? How many spare riflemen do you have to assault a trench if everyone is either manning or assisting a key weapon system?). And casualties can force you to abandon key weapon systems if you don't have enough riflemen in reserve to pick them up. VDV are not the only contract soldiers in the Russian army. The pre-war Russian army was a two tier army made up of contract soldiers and conscripts. Every Russian unit had both contract soldiers and conscripts (except the VDV, which had no conscripts). Russian law prohibited conscripts from being used outside Russian borders except during a time of war (which is why Russian units were generally understrength at the start of the war, since they had to leave their conscripts behind, though it's a curious feature of Russian law that mobiks don't count as conscripts). Since Russia never declared war, if VDV were the only contract soldiers in the Russian army then only VDV (and no other Russian soldiers) would have been in Ukraine. It would have been a very easy war. There is no internationally recognized set of standards that defines how much training is required to qualify a soldier as being "elite". But VDV troops are better trained than regular Russian soldiers (at least they were before the war (high attrition rates may have changed that)). So by the loose definition of "elite" as meaning "better than the typical formation", pre-war VDV formations were "elite" formations (don't think of "elite" as being equivalent to the "elite" experience level in Combat Mission), though I've read ISW assess that they are probably no longer elite formations.

I don't really have a precise formula. In general I think it's a good idea to start with the big picture. Set a camera angle that lets you see all of your unit icons at once, and note important events to zoom in on later, such as where casualties occur (so that I can investigate what caused the casualties). Once I've got the big picture I start zooming in on smaller events. If the scenario has developed into several distinct actions I like to get a close up view of each action. I definitely make a point of getting a close up view of anything particularly cool or cinematic that happens during the turn. And sometimes I like to view the turn once with all visual aids (unit icons, objectives, landmarks, hit text) turned off to get a better impression of what the battle actually looks like (it's amazing how invisible the battlefield can become when every unit doesn't have a brightly colored icon above them). But all of that is just when I'm being really meticulous. When I'm being a bit more fast and loose I tend to just follow whatever looks interesting and I may be more likely to miss stuff. So the most important thing I do is that I save each and every turn, so I can always go back and view it again if I realize that I missed something. I rarely skip through a turn unless things are exceptionally uneventful.

I don't think the Panther would make a very good T-34. Truth is there isn't a tank in the Western Front titles that makes a good T-34, but I would favor the 76mm Sherman. Even the Sherman doesn't really have the right armor profile, since it has tougher frontal armor and weaker side armor than the T-34. But the firepower of the 76mm Sherman is about right for the T-34-85, so it's probably the best candidate overall. The Panther is way off the mark for a T-34, though perhaps it might make a pretty good Centurion.

From what I recall of the research I did a few months back, it was a 105mm gun variant of the Centurion stationed in Germany in 1976/77 (don't remember the exact number, but 11 sounds about right). But there were a few older 84mm variants sitting back in Canada that might come to Europe as reinforcements.

I've frequently made the opposite complaint. Realistically the threshold for surrendering is way too high. No army fights to the last man (at least not usually, the Japanese in WW2 were the conspicuous exception to this). Usually a loss of 10% of your forces in a real battle is a pretty bad day, and the bloodiest battles in human history rarely go above 25% casualties (remember that real armies have to fight multiple battles, and if you are losing 10% of your forces a day then you are down to just 48% after only a week (also human psychology is a factor, and 1 in every 10 people you know becoming a casualty in a single day is going to severely shake your confidence)). The fact that the AI doesn't know how to retreat naturally pushes casualties above what they would be in real life (in fact I think this is the main reason why casualty rates in Combat Mission are so much higher than in real life (IRL losing armies retreat, while in Combat Mission losing armies keep taking and inflicting more casualties)). But even taking that into consideration, 70% seems way too high. Even cut off and surrounded units which, like the AI in Combat Mission, are unable to retreat don't normally take such heavy losses as that before surrendering. I do know the threshold for surrendering is not a fixed value. It seems to fall somewhere in the range of 70%-80% casualties (I think I've even seen it peek above 80% once or twice when facing really fanatical troops), and seems to be influenced by moral and remaining heavy assets such as tanks (more than once I've seen the AI surrender as soon as I destroy their last tank). edit: Thinking about it further, 70% may not be so absurdly high as a threshold for surrendering. Zooming in to historical engagements at battalion level or below (Combat Mission scale), it isn't so hard to find examples of units, once cut off from any hope of retreat, enduring more than 50% casualties before surrendering. It is definitely way higher than any normal casualty rate. But I think the principle problem remains that the AI has no idea how to retreat. And even if it did, most scenarios don't have exit zones to accommodate a retreat unless the scenario is explicitly a delaying action. There's probably some rather gamey thinking going on in the scenario design there, and I'd wager that most Combat Mission players probably have no more idea of how to conduct a retreat than the AI, since no scenario has ever asked them to try. So both AI and player alike keep taking and inflicting casualties long after any real force would have withdrawn, neatly explaining why casualties in Combat Mission are so high compared to real life.

There have been various upgrades to the CMx2 engine over the years (it's called engine 5, but really it's upgrade 5 to the CMx2 engine (or probably upgrade 4, since engine 1 was probably the base CMx2 engine)). The first few upgrades added lots of features, but it's been announced that engine 5 will focus on performance improvements instead of features. The CMx2 engine is a decade and a half old and it hasn't received any performance upgrades in that time. So it's starting to show its age, hence the focus on performance instead of features this time. Theoretically Combat Mission will run much more smoothly after engine 5 is released.

I'm finally getting back around to Balk's 1911 manual, and I'll follow that up with the British 1914 infantry manual. I had meant to just read FM 100-2-1, but that ballooned into reading the entire FM 100-2 series, so that took me away from the pre-WW1 era for longer than expected. I'm currently in the section where he is discussing how to employ infantry firepower. It seems he has a low opinion of volley fire. And he quotes Prince William of Germany saying the following Which rings true with my study of Napoleonic tactics a few years ago. I think a lot of people think of Napoleonic soldiers as perfectly drilled robots, but contemporary writers seemed to agree that volley fire would almost always devolve into independent fire after a while. So even in the Napoleonic era there may have been more independent firing than volley firing as a rule. It seems that most armies have dispensed with volley fire by 1911. The exception being the Russians, who retained volley by squad as a method of fire control, to prevent soldiers from expending ammunition too rapidly (as noted by Hapless on the previous page). Balk seems to be of the opinion that even this use of volley fire may not be entirely practical.