Centurian52

I started playing Combat Mission in 2009, a couple years after Shock Force dropped. Prior to that the most realistic game I had ever played was Rome Total War, and the most realistic modern war game I had played was World in Conflict. So to go from that straight to CMSF absolutely blew my mind at the time. I've been an avid consumer of every new Combat Mission game that has dropped since then (and I've even gone back to the first gen games and am currently playing through CMAK). But I've always had a nostalgic place in my heart for World in Conflict (which only intensified when I discovered Operation Flashpoint), and for over a decade now I have been craving a game that could bring the incredible realism of Combat Mission to the fascinating Cold War setting of World in Conflict. So when I first saw the announcement video for CMCW back in February I just about exploded with excitement (I was actually screaming with glee). CMCW is the most satisfying scratch to the longest itch that I've ever had. It is literally a dream come true for me.

This is how misunderstandings escalate into full blown fights. It starts with an innocent criticism or disagreement: which then gets interpreted as hostile: and then actual insults start getting thrown: There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other. Healthy human discourse requires disagreement and argument. But you can't let it antagonize you or make you defensive. If you feel attacked by a certain statement stop and reread it a few times until you can find a non-hostile way of interpreting it. If there is no non-hostile way of interpreting a statement then just ignore it. It probably wasn't relevant to the topic of the argument anyway. Above all, never insult or attack the character of your opponent. Personal attacks and hostility are the fastest way to derail what could have potentially been a perfectly rational argument and cause it to devolve into a fight.

I can't speak for the T-34, but Sherman crews actually had very good survivability in terms of crew casualties per Sherman knocked out (everyone can get out quickly because almost everyone has their own easy to reach hatch). Not to mention that if you are in a German tank the odds of your tank getting knocked out are actually much higher since there are far fewer German tanks around. Yeah if I happen to be in a one on one engagement between a Sherman and a Panther I would much rather be in the Panther. But how likely is that to happen anyway? On the rare occasions where a Tiger or Panther are encountered it will be a full platoon vs 1 cat. If you are in the cat your odds of being knocked out are almost 100%, but if you are in one of the Shermans then the odds of your tank getting knocked out might be closer to 40% or 60%.

Sherman for medium. Not the heaviest armor, but still pretty good frontal armor. Good optics for the time, good attention paid to ergonomics. And of course the crew survivability is outstanding for the time, what with there being a hatch for every crewman making it easy to escape quickly. And even the 75mm gun performance is more than adequate against most enemy armor, only really struggling against the heavier Tigers and Panthers. Plus going for an Allied tank greatly increases my overall survivability simply on the grounds that the Germans are getting pretty heavily mauled by the timeframe of most of the current Combat Mission games (less likely to die in an off-map air attack, more friendly tanks around to take the hits (if I was in a German tank I might be the only tank on the map), etc...).

That reminds me, is the game doing alright financially? I've been trying to promote it as much as possible among my friends, but I don't know many wargamers in my day to day life. I just really hope it does well enough to eventually get us a Bundeswehr/NVA module and/or British module. Anyway, to keep this comment more or less on the topic of the thread, as I recall tank riding in the Red Army emerged in WW2 as a way to allow supporting infantry to keep up with the tanks despite lacking sufficient motorization to create actual motorized infantry units (one of the things that went wrong at the battle of Dubno apparently was that they didn't have enough trucks for the infantry to keep up with the tanks, so the tanks went forward without the infantry). After the war the Soviet Army (now officially rebranded from the Red Army) invested heavily in mechanization. Once that investment paid off and their infantry were almost universally mounted in APCs tank riding became a pretty moot concept. But of course it would take a minute for that investment to pay off, so it makes sense that the T-55 and T-62 would be designed with rails for riders.

A Germany module seems the most important to me. The West Germans would have been the most numerous NATO force on the ground at the start of the war and would have carried the majority of the early fighting. So we desperately need to have them represented. Next most urgent after that is British forces. I've just got to take that Chieftain out for a spin.

This has all been very helpful. I am just getting into the 1st generation Combat Mission games (they are the only ones with any early-war content) and figuring out how arty works in this engine has been one of the learning hurdles.

Graphics have never been a priority for me. The classic Combat Mission games may not look as nice as the newer ones, but they are still among the best tactical wargames around (probably second only to the the newer Combat Mission games). And besides, if you want to play any early-mid WW2 content (1940-1943) then you pretty much have to go back to the older games. The CMx2 games simply haven't released any content for those years, with the absolute earliest setting so far being July 1943 for the invasion of Sicily in CMFI. And unfortunately even the older games haven't gone as far back as September 1939 or May/June 1940. To get those campaigns I had to turn to Theatre of War which, although it is also among the best tactical wargames around, is still not as good as the early Combat Mission games. I am doing some May/June 1940 gameplay in CMAK, but since there are no French tanks in CMAK (since the game is supposed to be set in North Africa) I have to turn to Theatre of War to get some scenarios with French armor. So a full WW2 run from beginning to end requires a combination of Theatre of War, CMx1, and CMx2.

Good graphics are nice to have, but they have never been a priority for me. I am finding that the classic Combat Mission games to be a lot of fun.

I am currently playing through all of my realistic tactical and operational games in chronological order(so mostly Combat Mission and Command Ops). I'm not entirely sure how many scenarios and Campaigns I have since I did bulk downloads of custom scenarios/campaigns/operations so I have a lot of duplicates and H2H only scenarios. But it is somewhere north of 2,000 total scenarios between CMAK, CMBB, CMFI, CMBN, CMRT, CMCW, CMA, CMSF, & CMBS. I have spent the last couple years just sorting all of them (renaming each with the date at the front of the filename in YYYY-MM-DD format so that they order themselves in chronological order when sorted alphabetically) and haven't actually been playing them during that time (to minimize spoilers) so I am very rusty now. But at long last sorting is finished, and playing has now commenced. I have just finished uploading the first CMAK scenario of the playthrough, this one set in France in 1940, to youtube and I thought I might share it here in case anyone is interested.

Well, I still haven't figured out the unreadable text issue with the Battlefront version (which is the latest version, 1.04). But I managed to get the GOG version working fine by setting my display resolution to match the best resolution offered by the game (2048 x 1536). Which with the benefit of hindsight probably should have been the first thing I tried.

I just realized that I should have posted this under CM1 > Combat Mission: Afrika Korps > Combat Mission -Tech Support. Is it possible to have it moved?

I have the battlefront.com versions of both CMAK and CMBB. When I initially load up a scenario in either game I have an insanely low framerate (perhaps 2 or 3 frames per second). This is easily fixed by alt-tabbing out and loading back in. The games then run smoothly, but much of the text becomes completely unreadable. I tried downloading the GOG version of CMAK. That launches with a smooth framerate and clear text. But half of the screen is blacked out. I am on PC running Windows 10 Pro My graphics card is an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT My CPU is an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor I am using DirectX 12 My display is 3840 x 2160

I was just looking for some good music mods for CMBN, CMFI, and CMRT (ideally featuring contemporary music). Unfortunately the link seems to have died sometime in the last 8 years. Any idea where I could find it now? Edit: Nevermind, I believe I've found it: https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cmbn-sound/cm-fi_rt_bn-music-splash/

Thanks! I've been a big fan of your tactical icons mods since I first discovered them (I think the first one I came across was the one for CMSF, but it's been a couple years). I now have a Cat Tactical Icons mod sitting in all of my z folders.

I don't have anything in the current period of the game (1979-1982). But I found a wonderful document giving the OOBs of the Warsaw Pact forces in Europe in June 1989: http://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1377961541351.pdf As of 1989 it seems all formations are equipped either with T80s or T64Bs. I wasn't quite satisfied with this and wanted to know what type of T80 each unit had (who had T80Us and who had T80BVs), and got this answer on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Where-were-the-Soviet-T80Us-stationed-in-1989-What-kind-of-T80s-were-stationed-in-East-Germany-in-1989?q=t80u The relevant excerpt: "Divisions of 8th guards army: 27th: T80U, 57th: T80?, 79th: T80?, 39th: mixed, one regiment of T80BV (1987), and two regiments of T80U (1989). Divisions of 1st guards tank army: 9th: T80BV, 11th: T80BV *, 20th: T80BV. Divisions of 3rd shock tank army: 7th: T80U, 10th: T80?, 12th: T80?, 47th: T80?. Divisions of 2nd guards tank army: 16th: T80?, 21st: T80U (1991, differs with your OOB), 207th: T80? (1991, differs with your OOB), 94th: T64B (1991, differs with your OOB). There are also 20th guards army (presented in your OOB but omitted in your list): 6th separate motorized rifle brigade: T64B (omitted in your OOB), 25th tank division (disbanded in 1989): T64B, 32nd guards tank division: T64B, 35th motorized rifle division: T64B, 90th guards tank division : T80? (1990, differs with your OOB)." Again, unfortunately this information applies to 1989, which is currently outside of the scope of the game (although could be useful in designing scenarios in Armored Brigade, which is what I initially wanted the information for since CMCW hadn't even been announced at the time). Anyway, still no T72s in Germany (plenty waiting back in the USSR though, and I'm sure it wouldn't take long for them to join the fighting).

Yeah, that matches pretty well with what I've been learning about armor and armor penetration (detailed simulations seem to have exploded on youtube recently). If the armor is strong enough it will be able to stop or bounce the penetrator. If the armor is weak enough the penetrator will "over-penetrate", passing straight through from one end to the other and not doing much damage unless something important is in its path. But there is a dangerous middle ground, where the armor is just strong enough to break up the penetrator or cause it to tumble, but not quite strong enough to actually stop it. So everything behind the armor gets shotgunned by the fragments of the penetrator as well as bits of spalled armor, or torn up by a tumbling penetrator cutting a wider path than it otherwise would have. It sounds like the feeling at the time was that the flak jackets were hitting this middle ground. Being effective enough to cause a rifle bullet to break up or tumble, but not effective enough to actually stop it. Resulting in a more lethal wound than if the soldier had just relied on his woodland pattern fabric for protection. Still, given the Soviet superiority in quantity of artillery, I wonder if the protection provided against small fragments would have made wearing flak vests worthwhile anyway, even if they would have been less than helpful in protecting against small arms.

I'm also going to guess April 30th. But that is also academic for me as well since I am about to be playing through all of my CM scenarios and campaigns in chronological order, going back to CMAK and CMBB. So it's going to be a while before I get to the 70's/80's. As for daylight savings time, my understanding is that it started in Germany in WW1 because someone thought it would save on coal. It doesn't seem to have made any measurable difference, but somehow it managed to catch on and now we're stuck with it.

My overall impression of the outcome: I would call this a tactical victory for the Soviets, seeing as they hold the objective and I don't think the local US forces currently opposing them have the strength to drive them back out (I assume that was Bil's assessment when he decided to ceasefire). But this may be an operational defeat for the Soviets, or perhaps an operational draw (assuming that the operational context is that the Soviets are on the offensive) since the forces present have been so badly mauled as to be rendered combat ineffective. They will have to rotate in a fresh unit in order to resume the offensive, causing a delay and giving NATO time to set up a better defense further back. Of course the other side of that coin is that the US forces present have also been so badly mauled that NATO should probably consider rotating in a fresh unit to take over the defense of that portion of the line. If the operational context is a NATO offensive than this is just a straight up Soviet victory both tactically and operationally (NATO will have been stopped locally and will need to bring in fresh forces or find somewhere else to strike). From an attritional standpoint we know the Soviets lost more vehicles thanks to Bil's blood board, although we don't know the personnel losses yet since we haven't seen the end game screen. But the Soviets have more vehicles to lose so I'm not actually sure that either side really came out ahead here attritionaly.

Ooh yes! Not only would this be epic for us to get to watch this in video format, but it would give an excellent preview of the game to potential customers who don't frequent the Battlefront forums. If Bil, Cap, and Hapless (and whoever from Battlefront would be needed to authorize it) can be brought on board with the idea then I can think of no reason why they shouldn't do this.

I check back after a couple days and there are six full additional minutes of battle. You spoil us sir!