Centurian52

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).

I frequently reference 100-2-1 (tactics) and 100-2-3 (organization). I consider both of them to be essential reading for understanding the Soviet Army

I have been using it to go with custom scenarios set in France in 1940, though I'm not sure which of them were specifically meant to go with this mod. Good to know, I don't exactly have a lot of space in my dropbox.

@StieliAlphaI don't like making assumptions about what people mean by things. But the line struck a nerve with me because if felt like the subtext was "this is a safe space BECAUSE there are no RT players here", implying that there is something wrong with plaything CM in RT rather than WEGO (again, not saying that's what you actually meant, but that's what it looked like to me). Which is not only absurd, but it would seem rather arbitrary for the community to fracture over something as trivial as WEGO vs RT. Talk about some weird gatekeeping standards (we probably want avoid any sort of gatekeeping at all come to think of it, since I assume we all want CM to do well commercially).

Well that is a very false statement.

Yeah, Leo2 shows up about a year earlier than the Abrams. I wouldn't expect any to be available in 79, since deliveries only just started in late 79. But by 1980 they should be available with about the same rarity that an M1 Abrams would have in 1981. With similar armor protection and FCS to the Abrams, and a much more powerful 120mm smoothbore gun, the Leopard 2 will easily be the best tank within the time period of the game.

eh, I'm finding the CM1 games to be perfectly serviceable. When BFC gets back around to releasing brand new titles I'm hoping for campaigns that they have never covered before in any title. Things like Poland 39, France 40, WW1, Korean War, etc... I would love to have North Afrika and Barbarossa updated to CM2, but only if we could somehow magically have that AND all of the countless campaigns that they haven't done at all yet.

I mean, feel free to keep coming up with useful commands, but I think the recent interview indicated that Engine 5 was going to focus on performance improvements rather than the addition of new features (about time actually)

Civilians never deserve it. The deliberate bombing of civilians was a serious atrocity committed by the Allies during WW2 (not just German civilians, but Japanese civilians as well (and I don't just mean the nukes)). I don't want to create a false equivalency mind you, what the Germans and Japanese did during the war was far worse than anything the Americans or British did (I'll not be accused of defending the Nazis). And the Germans were no less willing to bomb civilians when they had the chance. But just because someone else did something worse does not mean the terrible things we did don't matter. Also worth noting that while the deliberate bombing of civilians is always horrific, when Allied strategic bombing (and I do make a distinction between strategic bombing and terror bombing) was directed against industrial targets the impact on the war was decisive.

Excellent point. If BFC can get the rights then a CMA2 might be a good jumping off point for expanding the CMCW timeframe forward as far as 1989.

Ok yeah that makes sense. I'm pretty happy with the features that are currently in the engine. But when it comes to performance...I have noticed that it isn't hard to push the game to the point where frames per second become seconds per frame.

@Battlefront.comSo you said that you wouldn't be realeasing any new games for a while, but will instead be focusing on modules (not gonna argue with that prioritization, since I'm eager to see some Cold War modules. But in the far future when you do get back around to releasing new titles, would a Combat Mission: Great War be something that could ever be on the table? Or is that never going to happen in a million years?

@ProbusYikes! Thanks for the heads up. I know updates are critically important for security, but given how important it is to me to be able to run CM I wonder if I should disable them for the time being. Or if a future patch or the tool mentioned by @BFCElviswill make that unnecessary. edit: Come to think of it, if I might have to start running my CM games in compatibility mode in Windows anyway, I have been thinking of switching to Ubuntu, with the main thing holding me back being concerns of running my Windows games. Has anyone had any luck running CM in a Linux environment?

I'm betting the first module is going to be the addition of West/East German forces. It seems to be the most popular choice based on a poll that was posted a while back (which I have reposted here), with the results so far being 55% for a German module, with British forces in second place at 25%. I know eventually I would like to see some Battle of West Berlin scenarios/campaigns, which will require the addition of British, French, and East German forces. But I tend to think that the addition of West German forces is the most urgent, since they would have accounted for the largest portion of NATO forces in West Germany at the start of WW3, and as such would have carried much of the early fighting. As far as expansion of theater, I'm hoping we get some North German Plain maps (one of the other probable Soviet axes of advance alongside the Fulda Gap and the Hof Corridor). https://www.survey-maker.com/results3624833x06d04c29-109#tab-2

Having read through the interview it doesn't look like that is happening anytime soon. It looks like they will be focusing on making modules for existing games like Black Sea and Cold War for a bit, and won't be making any brand new games for quite a while. Which on the whole is probably the right move. I absolutely want to play a Combat Mission: First Blitzkrieg (a different title might be preferable since CMFB would become an ambiguous shorthand) and a Combat Mission: Great War one of these days (please let this happen someday). But I think it is more urgent to add additional forces to Cold War, so I think they have their priorities right.

A target command for infantry that specifies to use grenades (call it: TARGET GRENADES or THROW GRENADES) would be really useful. There have been plenty of times where I have gotten my infantry just to the cusp of a position I want them to storm and I wanted them to throw grenades before storming it, but they just fired their rifles instead. And this should be much easier to implement than a FOLLOW command.

TIK goes into more detail in his Battlestorm Stalingrad series. But basically the city itself wasn't the problem. In fact 6th Army actually took most of their casualties outside the city. The problem is that they simply didn't have enough strength to both defend their growing northern flank and continue the advance at the same time. By the time they actually reached the city itself their strength was sapped due to the triple factors of heavy casualties on the approaches to the city (particularly on the Don bend), most of their replacements being sent to Army Group Center instead (thanks for that Halder), and the fact that they had to pull divisions away from the advance to defend their northern flank. edit: Also crossing the river north of Stalingrad definitely wasn't an option, since there were massive numbers of Soviet troops defending that direction (relentlessly attacking from that direction actually, which kept a lot of German forces away from the city).

I know I would happily buy just a basic black T-shirt with the BFC logo on it (the tank silhouette and muzzle flash). For sure a mousepad or coffee mug of the same.

I think it may have been possible for the Germans to beat the Soviets. I don't think it was possible for them to win WW2 mind you, but that's a separate topic (basically there is no way they build a navy strong enough to beat the British and Americans before the Americans get nukes). I guess my opinion is that Operation Barbarossa went about as well for the Germans as it was ever going to. Some adjustment to decisions made during Barbarossa might make a marginal difference. The real make or break operation (I think) was Fall Blau. Fall Blau of course was the big plan to take the Caucasus oil fields. The original plan was that Army Groups A and B would be launched one at a time, with Army Group B forming a northern blocking line stretching along the Don and Volga to Astrakhan, and then Army Group A would charge into the Caucasus and take the oil fields at Maikop and Grozny (and optimistically Baku as well). The plan changed early on with initially very weak Soviet resistance, leading the Germans to conclude that the Soviet army had collapsed, so they launched both Army Groups at the same time in order to speed the capture of the oil fields. This diluted the strength and logistical support of both Army Groups. On top of that units were pulled from the operation to reinforce Army Group Center. Historically Army Group B only got about half way to Astrakhan, stalling out at Stalingrad. Army Group A was able to take Maikop, but couldn't take Grozny. And the oil fields at Maikop had been wrecked by the Soviets before the Germans could capture them. The Germans would be forced to retreat from the Caucasus before they could repair the oil fields at Maikop. If the Germans could somehow win Fall Blau they could resume the highly mobile warfare that brought them their early successes, and possibly defeat the Soviets. But creating a scenario in which they win Fall Blau isn't easy. The obvious steps involve keeping to the original plan, allowing each Army Group to move with full strength and support (also don't strip any units away from Fall Blau, and prioritize reinforcements to Army Groups A and B, instead of to Army Group Center). This almost certainly would have led to the Germans winning the Battle of Stalingrad, since they were so close to taking the city historically that it seems even the slightest nudge would have made the difference in that battle. But Stalingrad is only a milestone enroute to Astrakhan, and there is no guarantee that this is enough to get them all the way to Astrakhan. If it is enough for them to take Astrakhan and dig in along the planned northern blocking line, then Army Group A has almost a free hand in the Caucasus. The Germans take Maikop, Grozny, and Baku. Of course the Soviets still wreck all of the oil fields before the Germans can capture them (like they did historically with Maikop), so the northern blocking line needs to hold long enough for the Germans to repair the oil fields. Historically the part of the line that had already formed along the Don did not hold against the Soviet Operation Uranus. Perhaps the line is stronger now that Army Group B is no longer trying to conduct offensive operations at the same time. Or perhaps Fall Blau really was doomed from the start. There is no change I can think of that will guarantee German success, only changes that give slightly better chances of success.

I don't have a new command suggestion to add, but FOLLOW does sound like a really good idea. It isn't strictly speaking essential, since it can be mimicked by tedious repetition. But it would be a massive quality of life improvement to, for example, give a complicated series of commands to only one vehicle, and then simply give all the other vehicles in a column the FOLLOW command targeting the first vehicle, or the vehicle in front of themselves.

That'll be fine for the current project you're making the mod for. But if you never mod the angles I won't be able to effectively use this in place of all of the current CM trenches.