Centurian52

This is a conversation I've had with my dad (he's a philosophy professor). When is it fair to blame someone for their actions, vs when do the circumstances around the action (mental health, broken home, etc...) add up to the point where it is no longer fair to blame someone? My father considers himself a pragmatist, so it should come as no surprise that his answer is that you should direct moral blame against someone when it works. His view is that the purpose of moral blame is to change a person's behavior. Humans are generally social creatures, so having a bunch of other humans telling them that they shouldn't do a thing should generally make them less likely to do that thing again in the future. Healthy humans are usually very uncomfortable with a bunch of other humans strongly disapproving of their actions. He uses a thermostat as an example. If the room is too cold, you adjust the thermostat. If the thermostat is broken, then adjusting it won't work. So there is no point in trying to adjust it. If someone does something that we think they shouldn't do, we leverage moral blame to get them to stop doing it (and to deter other people from doing it in the first place). But if a person's brain is broken to the point that moral blame is no longer effective at getting them to stop doing the thing they shouldn't do, then there is no point in blaming them for doing that thing (I believe our discussion at the time was mainly about mental health). So, when do the circumstances around an action add up to the point that it's no longer fair to blame a person for their actions? According to my father, it's when the circumstances around the action add up to the point that no amount of moral blame will be effective in deterring someone from doing that thing again under similar circumstances. So, by this logic, can we blame the population of a country for their actions? Maybe? I think there is some precedent for aggressive ad campaigns saying "you shouldn't do the thing!" getting the population of a country to do a thing at lower rates. I doubt there's much we can do to change the behavior of the Russian population, simply because I don't think western media has enough penetration into Russian society. In any case, moral blame is certainly a much fuzzier concept for populations than it is for individual people.

I definitely oversimplified a bit. The Tiger's cupola provides 360 degree visibility, but there are large gaps between each vision block. So it isn't uninterrupted 360 degree coverage. While each crew member doesn't get their own cupola, I believe they each have their own fully rotating periscope (except possibly the driver, who may just have a fixed periscope or vision block to their front (I'm not fully confident about my knowledge of Tiger optics)). I haven't seen the view from inside the T-64. But the periscopes in the T-62's cupola are much closer together, providing a much more contiguous view. The T-62's cupola does not provide a full 360 degree view all at once (the periscopes just cover a wide frontal arc, rather than going all the way around), but it does rotate. And I've heard that the T-34 often just used polished metal (and sometimes not even all that well polished) in its periscopes rather than proper mirrors (apparently this was a result of rushed production, rather than an intended part of the design?). And there are definitely significant differences in gunner sights from one tank to the next (markings, magnification, field of view).

It certainly seems unlikely at this point that the Chieftain will hold up better against 125mm or 115mm HEAT or APFSDS rounds than the M60. Though maybe once we have it in CM the various unusual angles that it might get shot at from in dynamic combat will show that it's actually more resilient than the youtube simulations suggested (maybe its frontal armor can bounce a 115mm APFSDS round if it comes in from about 30 degrees to the left while the tank is in a hull-down position that is tilting the hull up a bit to put the upper front plate at an even more extreme angle...or something). In any case, I think one of the first things I'm going to do when we get the module is set up a Chieftain and an M60 on a shooting range and see if I can't find something that the Chieftain is more resilient against than the M60. It sure would be a shame if it turned out that all of that extra armor was nothing but a waste of steel and hp/ton. But based on what I've seen so far, my current guess is that the French and Germans probably had the right idea with their light armor/high mobility designs in the AMX-30 and Leopard 1.

Also it looks like your German tanks have an FO team nearby that may be assisting them in making the spot. Units in CM that are in communication with one another will share spotting information. That FO team looks to be in the same formation as the tanks, and probably has a radio, which means it is probably in communication with the tanks.

Both the Tiger and the T64 are using unenhanced optics. Visibility out of either one of them relies on fundamentally the same technology, periscopes and vision blocks. Both provide the commander with a cupola. Neither has thermals or CCTV screens. So on the face of it I would expect their spotting ability to be more or less the same. But, as others have pointed out the Tiger has more crew members to assist in spotting. And, probably more importantly, spotting in CM is random. There is a chance that a given crew member will make a spot on a given target in a given amount of time. But there is no set amount of time in which the crew member will make the spot. This is realistic, but it does also mean that you need to run your tests more than once in order to get any sort of meaningful results. Each time you run the test it will take each tank a different amount of time to make the spot. After ten or so tests you will start to get a somewhat reliable average of how long it takes each vehicle to make the spot. The fact that it took the T-64 longer to make the spot in a single test could very easily just be statistical noise.

On reflection you are absolutely right. My inner voice was telling me that I was probably saying a bit too much when I was originally writing my comment, and I really should have listened to it. I have edited my comment.

I don't think so. The Chieftain hasn't gotten its newer better L23 APFSDS ammunition yet in the game's timeframe, so it's still using the L15 APDS that it had when it first entered service in 1965. I believe that performs better than the M728 at certain ranges, but not better than the M735. In practical terms the chance of hitting a point on the T64 that it can penetrate should be exactly the same as for the M60, though it may be more accurate than the M60A1. They aren't that slow. Their mobility certainly doesn't stack up well compared to a modern tank. But I really don't think modern standards are the right standards by which to judge Cold War equipment. The M60's mobility feels about on par with a WW2 medium tank to me.

So I'm not the only one. I'm doing CM as a whole. I was including CM1 in that, but decided that really was too much (though getting a taste of early-war combat was really interesting). But I'm continuing with just CM2, starting from Sicily and with the intention of going all the way to Black Sea (and at a pace of 10-15 scenarios a month, I'm well aware that this is going to take a few years, but maybe that means more NATO armies will be present in CMCW by the time I finish WW2?). I'm currently at the tail end of Sicily, battling my way towards Troina. Although where I'm really currently at is a pause on my chronological playthrough while I focus on testing things that are not set where I'm currently at in the timeline . Unfortunately I haven't found any easy way to sort my scenarios in chronological order. The system I've come up with is labor intensive, and required renaming all of my scenarios with the date they were set in 'YYYY-MM-DD Original Scenario Title' format. After they're renamed sorting them in alphabetical order automatically puts them in chronological order. It sure would be nice if a future update would add a button to automatically sort scenarios into chronological order based on the date in the scenario data...

I was just about to comment the same thing. (the rest edited out)

Yes, definitely. The North Korean kit would mostly be a repeat of CMCW or CMSF2. But the South Koreans have some really interesting kit that I really want to play around with (I'm a huge fan of the K2 Black Panther). It would definitely be another asymmetric warfare title, like CMSF2. But that's ok. CMSF is a lot of fun, and it would be asymmetric warfare with very different kit over very different ground. And it can always be upgraded to peer vs peer warfare by adding in Chinese forces later down the line (it's definitely plausible that the Chinese might intervene in a 2nd Korean War, or that the North Koreans would only feel confident in attacking if the US and China were already at war anyway).

Awesome! I'll get it set up as soon as I get home. You're definitely going to do fine. That position would be a tough nut for me to crack even against the AI. Just so you're not at a disadvantage in terms of technical knowledge, there are a small handful of differences in 1943 tank/anti-tank combat from the 1944 combat people are more familiar with. Your 88s and 75mm Pak 40s can of course penetrate my Shermans from the front at pretty much any range, just like 1944. But your 50mm Pak 38s, which are more common than Pak 40s at this point, will struggle a bit more. The Pak 38 apparently cannot penetrate the front of the Sherman's hull (in my experience, though perhaps shooting down from your hilltop position will nullify some of the angling that makes the Sherman's frontal armor as good as it is), and I have only seen it achieve partial penetrations against the front of the turret (not that it's safe for me to sit there and take it, since even non-penetrating hits will tend to inflict subsystem damage). But the Pak 38 has absolutely no problem penetrating the Sherman's side armor. I have no idea how effective German 75mm infantry guns are against tanks, because it has been a very long time since I have seen one of my Shermans get hit by a 75mm infantry gun. I believe those are intended to be used mainly for anti-personnel work anyway, though I'd be surprised if they didn't have at least some anti-armor capability (too low velocity to have a useful AP round, but they may have a HEAT round). You will also notice that your infantry don't have any Panzerfausts or Panzerschrecks. Those don't start appearing until late in 1943. I'm honestly impressed that they are so common by June 1944 given how late their initial appearance is. To sum up, you can set up your 88mm and 75mm anti-tank guns however you like. You'll want to set up your 50mm anti-tank guns for flanking shots. Your guess is as good as mine for how best to use your 75mm infantry guns. And you have no infantry-carried anti-tank weapons at this point in time.

Ok, how about Caltagirone? American attack against a German held town in Sicily. Plenty of tanks, artillery, and mechanized infantry for the Americans, and lots of infantry, anti-tank guns and dense urban terrain to hide in (on a dominating hilltop position no less) for the Germans. Which side would you prefer? I may have to wait until after I get back from work to actually get the game started up, but I'll PM you the password once I do.

I might be up for a fight in CMFI. I have at least a couple scenarios that I've been ignoring because they say "H2H only", and I'd be interested in giving them a go.

I don't know what, if anything, I can get away with saying. But progress is being made. I have no idea when it will be done, but I think everyone is going to be very happy with the final result when it is done.

I don't actually know. Someone may have mentioned that it was bugged in one of the threads around here, so maybe it can't be done for Swingfire for the same reason that it may not be working for the TOW. I actually haven't played CMSF2 at all yet. I played CMSF all the time back in the day, but by the time CMSF2 came out life was making it difficult to find time to play any CM games. When I finally got time again I was mostly playing CM1 (for the early-war content that hasn't made it into CM2 yet), then mostly CMCW and CMBS, and recently (a few months ago) I decided to do a comprehensive playthrough of all of my CM2 games starting with CMFI (I'm going in chronological order, which unfortunately puts CMSF2 towards the end of the line).

CMCW definitely did a lot to increase my overall evaluation of the Dragon. Though I don't believe it has ever been the case that the biggest threat to a tank was another tank.

Apparently they came up with a hack to get dismountable TOWs into CMSF2 (which I haven't seen for myself yet, since I just haven't found time to play CMSF2 yet), even though CM2 doesn't really have any way to account for dismountable weapons. Basically it just involved giving the vehicle crew its own TOW launcher and making the graphic for the vehicle TOW disappear when the vehicle was dismounted. Perhaps something like that can be done for Swingfire if being able to dismount it was such an important part of how it was used? I don't know how they could possibly hack together a way to have the control unit work at any significant distance from the launcher in CM2. But maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

60mm mortar round meets MG42 HMG team.

Actually I believe the main CM Pro customer is the UK MoD, not the US DoD.

I think it's going to be an operational level game set in the Pacific Theater featuring space lobsters armed with all of the Soviet Union's stolen DShKs.

That's my experience too. They stop when they trigger a mine on hunt, but not when they just see mines. I usually don't have time for slow though. So I use hunt with the aim of limiting casualties, rather than outright preventing casualties. I generally use slow to move troops out of an already detected minefield when I don't have engineers available to mark the mines.

I'd go with hunt. It'll wear them out, but I believe their situational awareness is a bit better with hunt, and they'll stop moving if they hit a mine. They'll tend to start running after hitting the first mine if you use move, so you'll be more likely to get mass casualties.

It's the best answer that's available. The people who are working on it genuinely don't know when it will be done either. But they're working on it.

I didn't forget it. Logistics are part of the operational layer.

I have never been inside an actual tank. So all of this is based on watching episodes of The Chieftain's Hatch, and playing Steel Beasts, Enlisted, and another game that I can't quite remember (games which restrict/can restrict the player's view to the internal optics of the tank). But, based on that admittedly limited and entirely virtual experience I believe the quality of the internal optics of most WW2 tanks was probably about on par with the M60A1. That requires some qualification. WW2 tank optics come in two flavors. There are the interwar designs that mostly relied on vision slits (mostly forward-facing, but sometimes there's a side or rear-facing vision slit). And there are the designs which came out either during the war or shortly before the war which used periscopes (often rotatable) and which gave the TC a cupola with full 360 degree periscopes/vision ports. The prewar designs with mostly forward-facing vision slits have atrociously worse visibility than the M60A1. It is impossible to see anything that isn't inside a very narrow arc to your direct front without sticking your head out of the tank. These feel practically impossible to operate without being turned out most of the time. The designs with periscopes and a 360 degree cupola have pretty much identical visibility to the M60A1. My impression is that WW2 seems to have more or less perfected the periscope and cupola, and there really wasn't much more to be done to improve visibility until passive night sights and thermal optics came along in the 70s and 80s (and now apparently external cameras and large CCTV screens). Visibility with periscopes and a cupola is still objectively bad, but it feels like amazing visibility compared to vision slits (visibility is much better if you turn out, but it's possible to operate while buttoned up). Unlocking the Panzer 3, after spending a while playing with the Panzer 2, in Enlisted was a huge eye opener. It felt like a massive upgrade, and not because the armor and gun were better. The armor and gun were better, but those felt like very minor improvements compared to the huge leap in situational awareness. The jump from vision slits to periscopes and cupolas felt almost as big as the jump from periscopes and cupolas to thermals and CCTV.