Centurian52

One thing to keep in mind is that CM is modeling spotting under combat conditions. I feel like the issue may be that people have an inflated idea of how well humans perform under combat conditions. It's why everyone thinks that Stormtroopers are bad marksmen (when by all accounts they are actually pretty amazing marksmen). It's why my mother is harshly critical of military leaders who made famous historical blunders (and I have to keep pointing out "actually you probably would have made the same mistake or worse", or "based on what they knew at the time, that was actually the right call"). And it's why CM players are constantly complaining about the spotting mechanics. Your intuition is telling you that you would be able to do better in the same situation. But the truth is that your intuition is a big fat liar. Our threat-response systems evolved to keep us alive as hunter-gatherers. Not to make us effective modern combat soldiers. It assumes we have already identified the threat (which is why we tend to get tunnel vision, making it difficult to spot new threats). It assumes that we are either going to run away, or fight the threat off with either our bare hands or a rudimentary tool like a pointed stick (or a particularly sharp mango). Neither of which requires clear thinking or the ability to shoot accurately. Your body is putting all of its resources into the functions it thinks it needs (the ability to run fast or fight hard), and is pulling resources away from the functions it doesn't think it needs (including but not limited to your situational awareness, your ability to think clearly, and the concentration you need to line up accurate shots). The spotting mechanics in CM are a bit abstracted, so of course it's possible to find situations where units spot too quickly or too slowly (and of course we are more likely to complain when they spot too slowly). But I feel like they've gotten the spotting mechanics about right on average, and the outlying situations aren't so far off as to bother me to an unacceptable degree. It might be nice to refine the mechanics a bit to get rid of some of the abstractions, but that would almost require a full overhaul of the entire game since it would mean eliminating abstractions from all aspects of the game where spotting could come into play.

So, with the accusation that US/NATO tanks spot better than red tanks. My experience so far is that this is only true provided you have an M60A3 or better. And this is, as far as I know, entirely realistic. An M1 Abrams does spot better than a T64A. And an M1A2 SEP Abrams definitely spots better than a T72M. But I don't think the "Blue always spots better than Red" accusation holds up when you look at anything that predates an M60A3. I have not so far noticed a significant spotting advantage for M60A1s over T62s. And M48s definitely don't seem to have a noticeable spotting advantage over T55s. We can't directly test the WW2 equipment since the US/Commonwealth and Soviet WW2 forces are confined to separate titles. But comparing them by proxy with how they perform against German forces, they feel like they are probably about on par with each other. One thing that could be skewing the results in favor of the US in CMCW is that the Soviets are more likely to be on the attack. And a stationary and partially concealed defender definitely has a huge spotting advantage over an attacker that is only making short stops and frequently has to cross over open ground, even given identical training and equipment.

Any of those updates include SteamOS support? I'm thinking of giving Windows 11 a miss, which means switching to Linux by 2025. I would very much like to continue playing Combat Mission past that point.

Since these are pouring into my YouTube recommendations now (thanks for that), here's another How To Fight video featuring Soviet ATGMs

The probability only remains static for events that are independent of each other. Die rolls are independent events because there is no way for the first roll to influence the second roll, and so on. So the probability of rolling a nat 20 on a d20 will always be 5%, each and every time. But shots fired by an intelligent gunner are not independent events. The gunner may lose his sight picture when he reloads, but he still knows he was low or high, or too far to the left or right, and that is going to influence how he aims the next shot, changing the probability of a hit. Anyway, if I haven't already skimmed over the answer, my bet is a hit on the second shot.

Good explanation, and I loved the stop motion animations

Had the Soviets produced enough AK47s by 1957 to arm every rifleman? Or was the SKS still filling some gaps? I actually can't find any information on that. Every time I try to search AK47 production I get figures in the tens of millions, which are probably including AKM production.

This sounds like it will be a nice hack to have on hand as a work around for a little while. I haven't tried it to see if it will work for me yet (sounds like it works well for some people, and does squat for others). With any luck it won't be necessary for long. I recall reading somewhere that the next engine upgrade is going to focus on performance rather than features, so we should soon be able to make use of more cores and more graphics RAM.

20 minutes is short enough to fit into a CM scenario, so I don't think it's entirely outside the scope of Combat Mission. Of course I have no idea how BFC would implement deploying a snorkel, or a vehicle being able to ford a 5 meter deep river while still disallowing it from fording a deeper body of water. And it's possible that very few players would be willing to have their tanks out of commission for so long, and most would rarely or never use the feature anyway. So it might not be worth implementing. Still, I'd add it to the list of features that would be nice to have. I'd just add it towards the bottom of that list (it is definitely meant more for operational mobility than tactical mobility anyway).

Your options in the NTC tank missions are fairly limited since tanks are the only thing you have. But when you get into the other missions, as has been mentioned before, combined arms is the name of the game. Each arm has different strengths and weaknesses. If we had an arm that could do everything better than every other arm, we would only have that one arm. When they work together they augment each other's strengths, and cover for each other's weaknesses. As you gain experience you will develop your own tactics, but that will be easier if you have a good understanding of each of the arms under your command. The most important arms available to you in Combat Mission are: infantry, tanks, artillery, and aircraft. I would also add in ATGMs (for the modern titles)/AT guns (for the WW2 titles), since they are a distinct and critical tool in your kit. Infantry are the queen of battle. They are sneakier than your tanks, and have better situational awareness. They are essential for clearing woods, buildings, and trenches where the enemy could easily remain hidden from your tanks. They are also very useful for spotting potential threats to your tanks before they spot you. Their weaknesses are that they are soft, squishy humans who will die quickly to anything that can spot and hit them, and they lack heavy firepower of their own. They will need the help of tanks and artillery to achieve fire superiority. Artillery is the king of battle. Your artillery accounts for the majority of your firepower. It is useful for leveling buildings, destroying identified ATGM positions, and suppressing enemy infantry positions. Its weaknesses are that it has no eyes of its own (it relies on forwards observers to spot and relay targets) and it isn't available at a moment's notice (it will take several minutes to arrive). With cluster munitions available it is significantly more useful against tanks and other armored vehicles than in other titles, but that is still a relative statement (AFVs have good odds of getting through a target area if they just spread and keep moving). They are also unlikely to get every last man in an entrenched position, so if you want an area clear you will need to follow up the bombardment with an infantry assault. Your aircraft work similarly to artillery in Combat Mission, in that they need an observer on the ground to call them in. They don't carry as much firepower as your artillery, but they have the advantage of being able to spot and aim at specific targets. They can hit targets that you can't see yet and that your tanks don't have a line of fire on. But like artillery they aren't readily available at a moment's notice, and will take several minutes to come in. There is also a danger of them getting shot down by enemy anti-air assets. Your tanks account for the majority of your readily available firepower. They have the firepower to destroy anything on the battlefield. Their main guns can clear out enemy armored vehicles, as well as deal with infantry in buildings and bunkers. And their machineguns will shred infantry that are caught out in the open. Their weaknesses are that they are very large and hard to hide, and they have poor situational awareness (the crew see the world through a handful of vision ports and periscopes). They will need the help of infantry to provide security against ambushes and to have the best chance of spotting the enemy before they spot you. ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles)/AT guns. These are your primary anti-tank asset. The greatest threat to your tanks isn't other tanks, but ATGMS (although other tanks are probably the second greatest threat to your tanks). When I spot an enemy tank I always prefer to kill it with an ATGM if I can, rather than with one of my own tanks. Since a tank on tank engagement is a fair fight, and I prefer to avoid fair fights when possible. ATGMs will either be mounted in vehicles or carried by infantry. When carried by infantry they share the advantages of infantry in that they will be very sneaky and easy to conceal. But infantry carried ATGMs also share the weaknesses of infantry in that they are squishy and easy to kill. Vehicle mounted ATGMs are harder to conceal than infantry carried ATGMs, but are still usually smaller and easier to hide than tanks. The main advantage to vehicle mounted ATGMs is that they are significantly more mobile. While ATGMs are deadly against tanks, they are pretty useless against infantry. When it comes to the WW2 titles you have AT guns instead of ATGMS. AT guns aren't tremendously less effective than ATGMs, and you mostly use the same tactics to employ or deal with them. The differences are that AT guns are significantly less mobile than ATGMs and they aren't as abundant. I should also mention anti-air for completeness sake, but it honestly isn't hard to use them. Just keep them behind your main battle line, where the enemy ground forces can't see or shoot them, and where they have a good view of the skies (don't place them in thick woods or inside a building where they can't see the sky), and then just leave them there all mission and they will do fine.

For the most part in Combat Mission if you can see it you can shoot it, although accuracy will drop off at longer ranges. But even at longer ranges the chance of hitting usually isn't so low as to make it not worth taking the shot (unless you've cooked up a plan that requires extra sneakyness). ATGMs have harder limits on their range, but they will all be able to engage at at least 1 kilometer, and most of them will be able to engage at much greater ranges. As far as tactics, I've got some WW2 field manuals that go into detail on German, Soviet, and American tank tactics that I got from the Nafziger collection. They are 40 years out of date for CMCW, but the basic principles still apply. In general combined arms is the key. Everything is stronger when working together. Of course that doesn't apply to the NTC tank missions, since combined arms really require that you have more than one kind of arm, and those missions only have tanks. For those missions I'd just say spread out and try to control the long sightlines (a.k.a. take the high ground). I also like to avoid cresting ridges one tank at a time, since that runs a danger of an enemy behind the ridge destroying my forces one tank at a time. So I like to form into a line before cresting a ridge in order to get all of my guns pointed at whoever is behind that hill at the same time. Maintaining spacing between vehicles is also helpful. I like to follow the German WW2 doctrine of at least 50 meters between vehicles (available space permitting). https://nafzigercollection.com/product/german-panzer-tactics-in-world-war-ii-combat-tactics-of-german-armored-units-from-section-to-regiment/ https://nafzigercollection.com/product/soviet-armored-tactics-in-world-war-ii-the-tactics-of-the-armored-units-of-the-red-army-from-individual-vehicles-to-battalions-according-to-the-combat-regulations-of-february-1944/ https://nafzigercollection.com/product/employment-of-tanks-with-infantry-fm-17-36/ https://nafzigercollection.com/product/american-tank-company-tactics-fm-17-32/

Having just looked up the M85 it looks like it might have been perfectly fine. Unfortunately, while it took the same ammo as the M2, it took different links. But the ammo came prepackaged in links, and relinking was not practical in the field. I got that from Wikipedia, which I realize not everyone considers reliable (it's a short article, which usually means not many people have contributed it, meaning not many people have fact checked it). But if true then I imagine most soldiers' experience with it really would have been that terrible, even if the weapon itself was basically fine.

I have removed it from my dropbox, so the link will no longer work. There's no reason to shout or use so many exclamation points, I am perfectly willing to comply. All you are accomplishing by shouting is to create a hostile interaction. There is a need for a CMAK Western Front mod, and I haven't been able to find any others out there (some textures for late war, but none for early war). So if you aren't comfortable with other people sharing it then you might consider uploading it yourself. Since it's a mod and not a commercial product (no one can sell it or make any money on it) I seriously doubt you have to worry about copyright.

I look forward to seeing it in 2023

The way building combat is currently modeled is certainly a huge abstraction. But I'd argue that it's probably necessary in order to avoid getting bogged down in getting that one thing working perfectly at the expense of everything else. For the most part I feel like building combat is "good enough". I seriously doubt the tac AI could handle realistic buildings anyway (could you imagine the current AI trying to pathfind through narrow hallways and multiple small rooms?), so an overhaul of urban combat would require overhauling the tac AI, which will require overhauling the entire game. There is no way they have the time or money for that. It's a matter of balancing time and resources. No one has an infinite supply of either, so they have to pick and choose where they put their time and money. In this case they wanted a good general purpose combat simulator that could handle fighting in any environment in any period. So they chose generalization over specialization. They did every environment "good enough" instead of getting one environment perfect. For a game that took the opposite approach you should check out Door Kickers. Door Kickers is an outstanding example of urban/building combat done right. The way it depicts combat in buildings and houses is absolutely superb, because they chose to specialize in room clearing. But it could never represent a moderately sized field battle with multiple terrain types (for example: a small built up area in the middle, dense woods on either side, and open fields on the approaches) the way Combat Mission can, because Combat Mission chose to generalize in everything. Maybe one day we'll get a game that does everything perfectly. But I'm not holding my breath (most games that get overambitious and try to do everything perfectly never make it into production).

Good point. Actually come to think of it a 1957-1962 setting would be great so you could compare changes in equipment over that period. The US Army's organization remained the same through that period (at least on the squad level). So it would be interesting to compare infantry equipped entirely with M1s and BARs at the beginning of 1957, to those same infantry but equipped entirely with M14s at the end of 1962.

CMA is definitely one of my favorites, and I suspect I'm not the only one.

Hmmm, looks pretty 50/50 to me. But I'll go ahead and place my bet on the T62 as the winner. Although I would love it if they both fired at the same time and took each other out.

I know there is no way you will tell us what it is before the official announcement. But did anyone in the 'Cold War Module speculation...' thread guess right?

Modern vehicles will have vastly better long range spotting when buttoned, since the crew have access to advanced optics. But in any era they should have better close-in situational awareness when unbuttoned (even 2nd generation thermal optics can't compete with having full peripheral vision and being able to freely swivel your head), although I haven't really tested this much (exposing your squishy crew members at that distance probably isn't the smartest move anyway). In WW2 any vehicle will have better spotting when unbuttoned in pretty much any circumstance, it's just a matter of how much risk you're willing to take with your TCs. In CMCW it's a mix.

This chart came up two pages ago and @BFCElvisalready stated that it wasn't accurate. But yes, I would be very interested in full mission replays. But I understand the reasoning for why they aren't included (monstrously huge file sizes)

I am only a mediocre programmer and have only learned a little bit about game development here and there, but I have a growing suspicion that nothing is easy in game development. Changing or adding features means changing existing code, and who knows what that might break or how long it will take to get it working right.

I definitely want them to cover the current time period in as much depth as possible before they start expanding it out. Depth before breadth. At a minimum get most of the NATO and WP roster filled out for the Central European front. Getting Scandinavia in there as well would also be nice. When they do start expanding the timeframe I'm hoping they will extend it into the late 80's, up to 89. 1989 is an interesting setting to me because that is the year that World in Conflict is set in and it was WiC that first got me interested in the Cold War. But I would also be very interested in a 1962 setting. In 1962 most of the equipment of the current setting would be present, but it will be earlier variants of everything, all shooting less modern ammunition. The M60 would be as new as the Abrams is in 1982, and the M48 would be sporting the good ol' 90mm gun. I've always been curious how a classic M48 (A3 or earlier) would fare against a T55. US infantry would be armed with the M14, giving them barely more firepower than they had in WW2 (there might be some XM16s with 20 round mags kicking around). Soviet infantry would have the classic AKM. The era of the ATGM would not yet have begun, with the Sagger only entering service next year. The AT work will instead be done by recoilless rifles and old school AT guns. It would be an absolutely fascinating period. If the current setting of CMCW is a perfect midpoint between the WW2 titles and CMSF, then 1962 would be a perfect midpoint between the WW2 titles and the current CMCW setting. And of course once British forces get added in we will get to see the Centurion in action as well, which is something I would be particularly interested in (I chose my username so long ago I don't remember if I was naming myself after the tank or the Roman leadership position, but if the latter I'm happy enough to retcon it to saying that the tank is my namesake (yeah I know my account on the BFC forums is only a few months old, I've been using this name for everything for much longer though)).

If CM Pro has up to date British forces then surely that means that most of the leg work is already done for a British module to CMBS?

Tankers want to live just as much as any other soldier (or any other human for that matter). The odds of getting stuck in the mud while driving across a deep river are rather high, and if you are using a Russian snorkel, which is too narrow to climb up, you are basically just trapped in a steel coffin at the bottom of the river if that happens. I have heard that some Russian tank crewmen will flat out refuse to ford a deep river if they aren't hooked up to a recovery vehicle that can tow them out if they get stuck (in contrast, American tank snorkels are wide enough to climb up, but that means they are too large to be carried on the tanks as part of their basic kit).