Centurian52
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Posts posted by Centurian52
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I'm toying around with the Chieftain in the WoT armor inspector, and I'm considering revising my opinion of it. My initial assessment was that, despite its heavier armor, it would not prove any more survivable than the M60 on the late 70s battlefield, since late Cold War HEAT and APFSDS ammunition was so deadly. But although nothing the Soviets have should have too much difficulty penetrating it in this time period, it may nonetheless manage to bounce an appreciably higher proportion of the shots that hit it. So it may have noticeably better survivability after all.
Granting I'm not working with a particularly detailed data set. The only source I know of that has a listing of ammunition performance that is as comprehensive as I need is the Steel Beasts Wiki. But I went ahead and grabbed the following, on the assumption that this was all ammunition that the Chieftain might face from 1976-1982:
100mm BM-8 HVAPDS-T (1968) - 300mm
100mm BM-20 APFSDS-T (1976) - 390mm
100mm BM-25 APFSDS-T (1978) - 430mm
100mm BK-5M HEAT-FS-T (1955) - 380mm115mm BM-21 APFSDS-T (1975) - 430mm
115mm BM-28 APFSDS-T (1978) - 460mm
115mm BK-4M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 440mm125mm BM-15 APFSDS-T (1972) - 350mm
125mm BM-22 APFSDS-T (1976) - 440mm
125mm BK-12M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 440mm
125mm BK-14M HEAT-FS-T (1970s) - 500mmI then clicked on the WoT armor inspector model a bunch of times from the frontal aspect, trying to be as random as possible in where each "shot" landed, and I recorded the los thickness that shot would have faced. I got the following:
1: 430mm
2: 343mm
3: 429mm
4: 551mm
5: 140mm (joint between the upper and lower front plates)
6: 554mm
7: 384mm
8: 141mm
9: 407mm
10: 658mm (ended up getting a particularly steep angle on the hull armor on this one)Ignoring range, forgiving the small sample size, and taking both the WoT armor inspector and Steel Beasts ammunition data at face value we get the following performance for the Soviet tank ammunition.
100mm BM-8 HVAPDS-T (1968) - 20% of shots penetrated
100mm BM-20 APFSDS-T (1976) - 40% of shots penetrated
100mm BM-25 APFSDS-T (1978) - 60% or 70% of shots penetrated (one shot is right at the cutoff, perhaps it would have only gotten a partial pen or spalling)
100mm BK-5M HEAT-FS-T (1955) - 30% of shots penetrated115mm BM-21 APFSDS-T (1975) - 60% or 70% of shots penetrated
115mm BM-28 APFSDS-T (1978) - 70% of shots penetrated
115mm BK-4M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 70% of shots penetrated125mm BM-15 APFSDS-T (1972) - 30% of shots penetrated
125mm BM-22 APFSDS-T (1976) - 70% of shots penetrated
125mm BK-12M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 70% of shots penetrated
125mm BK-14M HEAT-FS-T (1970s) - 70% of shots penetratedSo it would seem that every Soviet ammunition type is still capable of taking out the Chieftain from the front, but it isn't as certain as it was with the M60. Considering that it feels like more than 90% of shots that hit the M60 manage to penetrate, that might translate into noticeably improved survivability. But we'll only know when we actually get to see it in action.
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I haven't seen non-cluster artillery take out a tank in Cold War, but I put that down to me not having played enough of it yet (working my way through the WW2 titles before getting on to CMCW, though I've played a bit out of sheer excitement and curiosity for the time period). I have seen artillery take out tanks in WW2, although it's rare. If it can take out a tank in WW2 then it can take out a tank in the Cold War. A 155mm shell is absolutely capable of taking out any Soviet/Russian tank if it gets a direct hit. I sometimes use artillery as a last ditch anti-tank option, if I'm out of better options. It works much better in the modern titles, since artillery is so much more accurate today than it was in WW2. Even in the modern titles it isn't ideal, since it takes several minutes to call in and I need the tank to obligingly sit there and wait for the arty barrage to arrive. In WW2 it's even worse, since it takes even longer to call in and is far less accurate. But I have tried it out of desperation from time to time and have gotten lucky a few times. I haven't called in enough point target barrages in CMCW to get a feel for how accurate Cold War artillery is compared to WW2 or modern artillery, though the call-in times seem to be closer to modern artillery. Overall I'd say it's not worth doing if you have better options (unless it's one of the modern titles and you have access to precision artillery), and it's never worth trying to hit a moving tank with artillery.
Cluster artillery is a completely different story of course. If you have access to cluster artillery then it is absolutely worthwhile to lay down an arty screen in front of an enemy armored advance. There is a good chance that you will take out a few of the advancing enemy vehicles that way. Cluster artillery isn't magic, and most tanks will probably get through as long as they are spread out and keep moving. But it is orders of magnitude more effective than conventional artillery against armored formations.
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I'm sitting at work and I can only work on certs for so many hours straight before my brain just starts to shut down (no projects going on right now). Does anyone have anything interesting to share about the British, Canadian, or Soviet armies in the period from 1976 to 1982? @The_Capt We got any screenshots on the way?
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Ok, I got some information on 84mm gun armed Centurions. It looks like our best bet is the Canadian army. They purchased 274 Mk 3 (84mm gun) Centurions from 1952-1953. In 1971 supposedly they had 322 Centurions, of which 81 had 105mm guns (meaning the other 241 had 84mms), and they started replacing their Centurions with Leopard 1s in 1977. Only one regiment of four would be fully equipped with Mk 11 (105mm gun) Centurions before they were fully replaced in 1979. So it sounds like the majority of the Centurions we'll be getting with the Canadian army in the early years will be 84mm. Though it sounds like the regiment with the Mk 11s was the one stationed in Germany, so any 84mm Centurions will have to come as reinforcements.
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Same question goes for 84mm gun armed Centurions (Mk 3-Mk 5). Basically I want to know how far back we need to go to see NATO 1st gen MBTs with their 1st gen guns face off against Soviet T-55s. While I am among the advocates for eventually getting around to the late 80s, I'm equally curious about how some of the earliest NATO equipment would perform against the Soviets. In particular, I understand that part of what prompted the development of the 105mm gun was alarm over the armor properties of a T-54/55 captured during the 1956 Hungarian revolution (supposedly driven onto the British embassy grounds by the revolutionaries), and I'm very curious about to what degree that alarm was justified (would 90mm or 84mm armed NATO tanks have struggled to defeat T-55s). I'm sure this or that penetration table says yes, or maybe no, but I will be satisfied by nothing less than getting to actually simulate it under realistic conditions using whatever data BFC gets about these vehicles in their back alley briefcase deals (or however they get their data).
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On 10/19/2022 at 4:43 AM, FuGaZi said:
Last few mucking about
Looks awesome! Just the hype material I need now that CMCW:BAOR has been announced.
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Perhaps the effects of wearing MOPP gear could be partially modeled by lowering fitness in the editor? That would make troops tire more quickly at least. As far as modeling the reduction in situational awareness and overall effectiveness that comes with wearing restrictive NBC protection, perhaps lower experience a bit in the editor?
As far as modeling the aftermath of a tactical nuke for scenarios exploring efforts to exploit the resulting holes in the front line, that would require a considerable amount of research in order to get the density of surviving troops and equipment right. Certainly the battle would see sparse defenders with very low unit strengths (perhaps 10% strength as a ballpark figure, depending on yield and distance from the blast center). Lots of destroyed tanks as flavor objects mixed in with the working tanks. Tanks might be tricky. Tanks and other armored vehicles could survive much closer to the blast center than infantry could. But just because the crew has survived the explosion inside the armor protection of the tank doesn't mean that the tank is still effective (all of those subsystems outside the armor would be destroyed at a much greater distance than the tank itself would be destroyed at). Things like terrain (hills would be an obstacle to the explosion, while valleys would funnel the explosion (changing the shape of the destructive effects from concentric circles to more oblong concentric shapes)), buildings, forests, whether troops were dug in or in the open, would all have complicated effects on the survival patterns of troops and equipment. The defenders should also probably have very low moral, in addition to having low unit strengths, on account of having recently been nuked. Overall such a scenario would be both difficult to get right, and extremely unbalanced. So I can see why no one has attempted it.
In any case, while I think it's an interesting an valuable discussion, this thread is about dismount distance. I only brought up nukes as a probably reason for why the Soviets envisioned dismounting as little as possible. If we are going to continue discussing nukes, and how we can account for them in Combat Mission, we should probably create a new thread for that discussion.
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2 hours ago, Ultradave said:
mostly. [sigh] Ok, whatever you say.
I'm done with this.
DaveWhat? My overall conclusion was in complete agreement with your main point. It is not practical to model tactical nuclear weapons in CM. I just wanted to add a bit of nuance.
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2 hours ago, Ultradave said:
Only if it's somewhere off the CM battlefield. Otherwise, if you detonated a nuclear weapon in the middle of a typical CM battlefield the immediate incapacitating and lethal effects would cover the map. Of course, so would the blast effects, both heat and pressure. Not to mention the fact that the CMCW battlefields in the game aren't big enough for those effects to be confined only to the enemy.
It's really pointless to even think about including it. During the CW period, the consensus was that use of tactical/battlefield nuclear weapons would almost immediately lead to a general exchange of strategic nuclear weapons, so the CMCW battle becomes moot, regardless of what happened in that little battlefield.
This subject has been pretty much covered to death in various threads.
Dave
You are mostly right, but it depends a lot on the yield. From what I can find a typical yield for a tactical nuke ranges from less than 1 kiloton to about 50 kilotons. So I went over to nukemap and repeatedly bombed Rumpenheim (because it's a real world location that I know the CM map size of) with 1 kiloton and 50 kiloton airbursts. One kiloton seems to pretty neatly fit onto a town sized objective on a CM map. The fireball is about the size of the castle on the right hand side of Rumpenheim (60 meter radius). The 3rd degree burn radius stretches from one end of the town to the other (about a 500 meter radius), and moderate blast damage extending out a little ways past the town (700 meter radius). Just the right size to make for an easy, if not quite unopposed river crossing (some troops protected by buildings and some tanks would survive). Light blast damage extends throughout the entire map (2 kilometers), meaning you want to keep your attacking Soviet troops in their BMPs, but they should take no casualties as long as they are mounted up (my guess is that "light blast damage" would suppress and cause light injuries to any troops in the open).
At 50 kilotons the entire map is destroyed. Moderate blast damage extends out to a 2.6 kilometer radius (3rd degree burns at 3.2 kilometers, light blast damage at 7.3 kilometers). Meaning that a hit to the center of the map would reign destruction across even the largest CM map. The fireball alone covers about half of the town of Rumpenheim (290 meters).
So the smallest tactical nukes might fit pretty neatly onto a CM map. But it would be completely impossible to fit the effects of the largest tactical nukes onto a CM map. Of course even the largest tactical nukes would fit pretty neatly onto an Armored Brigade map.
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51 minutes ago, Ultradave said:
Well, that's not true. At CMCW scope battlefield size, direct radiation effects would be as much of a factor as blast and heat. Those troops in buildings that weren't flattened would still be subject to direct radiation.
They would receive the dose of radiation within the scope of a CM scenario. But the radiation sickness would not set in within the scope of a CM scenario.
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Oh, and I very nearly forgot. Another factor in the Soviet preference for no dismounting, or dismounting as late as possible, is that they expected a nuclear battlefield. Vehicles are NBC protected (at least the ones designed during the Cold War). And while individual infantrymen also have NBC gear, it's still best for them to spend as little time as possible outside. In fact this might be a bigger factor in the "don't dismount unless you have to" attitude than the desire to maintain a high operational tempo.
We often forget about the nuclear aspect because nukes aren't represented in Combat Mission (they are obviously a bit outside the scope of a tactical sim, since even tactical nukes are probably more operational than tactical assets (though it's possible that the effects of a tactical nuke could fit in a CMCW scenario (especially given that CMCW scenarios tend to be larger by map size than other CM games), and still leave some scenario to play (infantry hiding in buildings, forests, and trenches would be able to survive much closer to the blast center than infantry standing in the open, and armored vehicles would be able to survive even closer) so perhaps it would make some sense to include the occasional tactical nuke in our indirect fire assets (you don't even need to account for radiation effects, because those don't manifest until well past the scope of a CM scenario))). But of course they played a big role in the assumptions that Cold War doctrine was designed around.
I don't know if this was part of the consideration for choosing the timeframe of the base game. But the game's timeframe of 1979-1982 is probably the period that had the best chance of seeing both sides just use conventional arms. Any earlier than this and the US lacked confidence in the ability of its conventional forces to stop the Soviets, and viewed them more as a tripwire for destroying the Soviets with tactical nukes. Much later than this timeframe and the Soviets lose confidence in their ability to overrun NATO defenses with conventional forces alone, and start depending far more heavily on the use of tactical nukes in their attack plans.
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Soviet doctrine I think fostered an attitude of "death before dismount". As everyone else has been saying, the Soviets would rather not dismount at all if they can get away with it. Given their focus on operational mobility this makes a lot of sense, since dismounting to assault a position with infantry means slowing the pace of the advance to the speed that an infantryman can run. And it makes sense to focus on operational maneuver, since if you can maneuver faster than the enemy you can flank them, surround them, or do all sorts nasty things that make it easier to outright destroy them. But reality often intrudes on idealized doctrine. I think they likely would have been forced to dismount more often than they had hoped in their prewar thinking, at greater distances than they had hoped in their prewar thinking. Perhaps they could have conducted the kind of maneuver warfare they wanted in the early days, but as NATO and WP troops poured into Central Europe the force to space ratios would have skyrocketed (we are talking about a front that is somewhere between 600 and 700 kilometers long with somewhere from 2 to 3 million troops pouring in on each side, giving a force to space ratio of between 3,000 soldiers per kilometer and 4,000 soldiers per kilometer), and with high force to space ratios comes less room for maneuver and a greater emphasis on taking and holding ground, which requires more infantry (infantry are less important if you are just going to blow through a position rather than clear and occupy it (which is perfectly viable in an environment with low force to space ratios)), and frankly on just battering your way forward through sheer attrition (which, despite their reputation, I think the Soviets would rather avoid).
Basically there's what the Soviets planned to do (no dismount, or dismount as late as possible). And there's what they probably would have had to do in the face of reality (dismount far more often and earlier than they want to).
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Ok, I think I've been able to mostly piece together the Canadian infantry platoon. Most of the details are in a link left by The_Capt in an earlier post, with some more details on another webpage I found. It's three 10 man rifle sections and an HQ section. The rifle sections consist of a three man C2 group and a seven man rifle group. The rifle group is led by the section commander, with a C1, and has six riflemen, with C1s. The C2 group is led by the section 2IC with a C1, and has two C2 gunners (apparently they felt it takes two automatic rifles to sufficiently replace the Bren, since otherwise the section is the same as the WW2 Canadian rifle section, just with new weapons).
In the mechanized infantry it looks like one of the riflemen is replaced by an M113 driver, armed with a C1 submachinegun (sterling). There is no mention of one of the members of the section being designated as an M113 gunner, so either these websites are neglecting to mention it or the gun was manned on an ad-hoc basis, or left unmanned when the squad dismounted (that will definitely enforce treating the Canadian M113s as battle taxis if that's the case (no more trying to use M113s as undergunned IFVs)). So that's 8 or 9 dismounts, depending on whether or not someone stays behind to be an M113 gunner. It looks like we've got a Carl Gustav on every section, although I'm not sure if that's specific to the mechanized infantry or if it applies to the light infantry as well (the rifle group of the light infantry section is just described as having six riflemen, with no mention of any of them being given anti-tank weapons, which could just be an omission on the part of these websites). There is no mention of the section being divided into a rifle and C2 group in the mechanized infantry. It is just described as having the section commander (C1 rifle), section 2IC (C1 rifle), M113 driver (C1 SMG), 2 C2 gunners (C2 automatic rifles), Carl Gustav gunner (Carl Gustav and C1 rifle), Car Gustav No. 2 (C1 rifle), and 3 riflemen (C1 rifles).
I'm not finding much information about how many men were in the HQ section. Obviously it has the platoon leader. There's no mention of an M113 driver, but there must have been one (surely the HQ section has its own M113? That would make four M113s in the platoon). The HQ section does have an M1919 (C5) machine gun (I will persist in calling it a medium machine gun, though if the Canadian army insists that it's a GPMG I can't stop them (I can't help but notice that they didn't use it for the squad automatic weapon, so they can't have thought it was all that GP)), and a 60mm mortar. There is no mention of how large the MG team is, or how large the mortar team is, but presumably either two or three soldiers each.
As usual it looks like there will also be number of M72s scattered throughout the sections in addition to the Carl Gustavs.
I am definitely curious to see how this platoon fares in combat. Their firepower might be anemic, having only 1 medium machinegun on the platoon where the Germans, Brits, and Americans (mechanized infantry) have 3 GPMGs in their platoons. On the other hand they have two automatic rifles on each squad. So while an automatic rifle may not be an equal to a GPMP, the Canadians still have twice as many automatic weapons in their platoons as other NATO armies. So their firepower may turn out to be perfectly competitive with other NATO infantry platoons after all. That's something we'll only really know for sure once we have a chance to try it out. For my part I'm not sure how I feel about the C2s being grouped together into a C2 group. If you're going to have two automatic weapons on a squad, that offers the perfect chance to create two balanced fireteams, which avoids the issue of having a lull in the firing as you move your automatic weapons forward.
https://www.waylandgames.co.uk/free-nations-infantry/52830-canadian-mechanised-platoon
https://www.canadiansoldiers.com/tactical/infantrysection.htm
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6 hours ago, Centurian52 said:
the M2 .30 cal
M1919. I don't know why I typed M2
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I know it's hard to keep this thread running while the module is still early in development and there aren't any screenshots or details yet. But I'm just too hyped to leave it be. Expanding our NATO tanks to include the Chieftain, Centurion, and the Leopard, and getting our first FN FALoid rifles, plus whatever @The_Capt is hiding from us about their plans for the red forces (speculation time! a WP nation? perhaps VDV? or just new vehicles and equipment available in the earlier timeframe?). Does anyone else have any more details on the British or Canadian armies in this period? More training videos or details on platoon/company organization/tactics? What variant of the Centurion did the Canadians have before they replaced it with the Leopard?
We've gone over squad organization and tactics. I find it interesting that the Canadians are using a variant of their standard service rifle to be their squad automatic weapons (the C2 rifle is a C1 with a bipod and a thicker barrel to withstand sustained automatic fire). I think the US was trying to do the same concept with the M14 and M16 in the light infantry, designating one rifleman in the squad to be an automatic rifleman who would fire their weapon on full auto, but they didn't give them a modified variant that was more suited to automatic fire than the basic version of the rifle, so the Canadian approach is probably better, and in practice the American automatic rifleman in the light infantry is just another rifleman (thank goodness the American mechanized infantry have the M60 machine gun at the squad level). That might result in the Canadians having more anemic squad firepower than the armies that have GPMGs on the squad, although that will probably be mitigated by the fact that they do have medium machine guns at the platoon level (I think it is correct to classify the M2 .30 cal as a medium machine gun, rather than as a GPMG, since the defining feature of a GPMG is that it will work well in either the light machine gun role or the medium machine gun role).
Let's also not forget that The_Capt hinted that they have plans for the red side as well, though is holding that information back for now so that there are still details to drop later. VDV might be easy enough to do, since the 1980s VDV are already developed for Afghanistan, and apparently for Black Sea as well (although that module is still waiting on the war to end). Polish forces might also make sense, since I remember someone saying that they would have had an important role to play in the BAOR sector way back when CMCW first launched. My guess is that if a WP country is added it will not be East Germany, since I think it makes more sense to hold them back until West Germany is added, so that there can be a general German forces module. If we get a WP country that should mean we'll see a lot more T-55s. Perhaps earlier vehicles. Does anyone know how late the T-34-85M was still in service with WP countries like Poland and East Germany? At the very least I assume we'll be getting some new Soviet vehicles (whatever was still in service as early as 1976, but wasn't in service by the 1979 start date of the base game). Thoughts?
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4 minutes ago, Vacillator said:
You do know you can change that? I had a similar issue, a mis-type now corrected
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It's grown on me now. I think the misspelling adds character.
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It's too late for me to edit my earlier comment. But it's spelled "Pentomic", not "Pentatomic". And now that is going to bug me until the end of time. At least with my profile name I can pretend the misspelling was intentional.
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8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
The patches for Steam went up this past weekend. At least that is what I was told, I haven't double checked
Steve
I had updates to apply on the steam versions of CMSF2 and CMBS this weekend, so I think the patches went out
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4 hours ago, Sunbather said:
And you should play in turn-based anyway.
I disagree with that last part. There are trade-offs. Turn-based is easier on your hardware, and has the advantage that you can replay exactly what happened in all parts of the battlefield over the last minute. But there is nothing more frustrating that watching your pixeltruppen mindlessly continue to carry out an order that you've just realized will get them slaughtered. In real-time I have far more precise control over my pixeltruppen. I can do things like cancel their movement orders the moment they come under effective fire, so they are never moving without fire-superiority, and I can have very tightly controlled area fire.
My own feeling is that sometimes turn-based is better and sometimes real-time is better. I always play small scenarios in real time. My hardware has no trouble handling small scenarios in real-time, and I can see everything that is happening so I don't benefit from be able to rewind to check out action on other parts of the battlefield. The largest scenarios pretty much have to be played turn-based. My computer struggles to run those large scenarios in real-time without stuttering, and it is impossible for me to see everything that is happening without being able to rewind the action.
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4 hours ago, Artkin said:
Well Phil was talking about a whole new game.
And I was emphasizing how valuable a whole new game would be, because there is only so much we can do with CMBS.
The 14 T90Ms we've seen on Oryx are hardly what I would call large numbers. And CMBS doesn't have T-72Bs, T-72B3Ms, T-80BVs, T80Us, or T80BVMs. It does have T-90As, and those are more common than T-90Ms (perhaps common enough to warrent representation), though those should still be rare in scenarios based on the current war. So yeah, until we get a new game, scenarios using what we have in CMBS should mostly limit the Russians to T-72B3s (perhaps very occasionally they can have T-90As). My point is that I was agreeing that a full new game based on the current Russo-Ukrainian war would be nice to have.
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18 hours ago, Artkin said:
Limit the russians to t72b3? You should check out Oryx lol there's a lot more than t-72b3 being fielded currently. Same for ukrainians and t-64.
The T-72B3 is the only Russian tank in CMBS that is actually present in large numbers. So a realistic scenario representing the current war in CMBS would have to limit the Russians to the T-72B3. Same goes for the Ukrainians and the T-64BV (actually The Military Balance 2021 says they should have had about 100 Bulats at the start of the war, but I haven't seen very many Bulats show up on Oryx). In order to represent the other tanks that they are using in large number in this war (T-72B, T-64BV 2017, T-72B3M, T-72M/M1, T-80BV, etc...) we would need BFC to release a new game or module that included all of those vehicles.
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On 3/2/2023 at 9:37 AM, kohlenklau said:
I think we need this damn war to end so BFC can publish CMSU "Combat Mission Slava Ukraini"
and sell 100,000+ copies.
THENNNNNNNN Steve comes back to bust out some early war. No, not early war as early last year 2022 for Ukraine War!
I mean early in the last century 1939/1940/1941.
YESSS!! This war could definitely use the full Combat Mission treatment. We can do some stuff in CMBS (limit the Ukrainian tanks to T-64BVs, limit the Russian tanks to T-72B3s, give the Americans Ukrainian uniforms and voices so we can use their Javelin teams, etc...), but it is fairly limited and doesn't come close to representing the full scope of the war as it has unfolded. We need a whole host of different Russian tanks (T-72B, T-72B3M, T-80BV, etc...). For the Ukrainian side we need the T-64BV 2017, Warsaw Pact tanks (T-72M/M1), western vehicles (largely APCs, MRAPS, and Humvees for 2022, but IFVs and tanks will also be needed for 2023), artillery, small arms (seeing a lot of M4s in the combat footage these days), and anti-tank weapons (NLAWs, AT4s, Pzf 3s etc...). New formations will be needed. The Russian side will need L/DPR forces, Wagner mercenaries, and the VDV. The Ukrainian side will need the Territorial Defense and the International Legion.
It's a lot, which is one reason why BFC might choose not to do it. But I think it would be worth it. And there may be a strong market for it, it being a recent and highly publicized war (by the time they release it (obviously it's still an ongoing war at the time of this post)). My guess is that the soonest we can hope to get it is 2025. Assuming that the war ends in 2023 and that CMSU takes two years to develop (I am absolutely in favor of calling it Combat Mission: Slava Ukraini). If the war ends in 2024 then adjust that estimate to 2026 (and so on if it lasts longer, although even at my most pessimistic I don't think it will go into 2025). In order to cut down on the amount of work needed the easiest thing might be to release the base game with just enough content to represent the initial phase of the war, from the start of the invasion to the Russian retreat from Kyiv. And then release modules to cover later phases in the war in order to ease the burden of cramming all of that equipment into the game. The fact that between CMSF2 and CMBS a large chunk of the equipment is already done should make it a bit more feasible.
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3 hours ago, Bearstronaut said:
If I won the billion dollar powerball I'd definitely contact Steve about funding a Korean War Combat Mission game.
I second that! If only it weren't for those pesky opportunity costs. I want more niche wars and theaters, but those are the very wars and theaters that are not likely to give BFC a strong return on investment. I bet there's a strong market for Vietnam or the Pacific, but Steve has already pointed out elsewhere that there is no way the CM2 engine could handle that much vegetation.
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On 2/24/2023 at 10:38 AM, Lethaface said:
CM:YK, Middle East '73?
While I would absolutely love to have it, I suspect it is way too controversial to even be an option.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted · Edited by Centurian52
The figure seems plausible to me. 35.5k-43.5k Russian KIA is consistent with estimates in the zone of 150k-200k Russian casualties, assuming that there are usually at least 2 or 3 WIA for every one KIA (my rule of thumb has been to divide casualty estimates by 4 to get a KIA estimate, or to multiply KIA estimates by 4 to get a casualty estimate). Honestly even the highest casualty estimates for both sides seem a little low to me, as someone who as spent so much time studying the world wars (obviously they are astronomically high to someone who has been looking mainly at the low intensity wars of the last couple decades), but I suppose they are actually fairly typical of medium sized wars such as this one.
More interesting than the raw KIA estimate is that the ratio of estimated Russian KIA to Ukrainian KIA is more than 2:1. Despite the wide range of casualty estimates I've seen (they really have been all over the board), Russian casualties seem to be consistently higher than Ukrainian casualties. But for the most part I've been seeing ratios in the range of 1.5:1 to 1.8:1 in Ukraine's favor. So breaching 2:1 is an exciting possibility. That's pushing out of the zone of peer v peer warfare, and into the zone of near-peer warfare, with Russia as the near-peer to Ukraine.