Centurian52

Maybe someday in the distant future, when we all have our own personal moon-sized supercomputers, someone will make a single game that fully integrates air, ground, naval, and space warfare on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels in the full rich detail in which Combat Mission currently covers tactical ground warfare. For now though, there's Combat Mission for tactical ground warfare. There's Command Ops 2 for operational ground warfare. And there's Command: Modern Operations for air and naval warfare. There really isn't anything that does a good job of covering the strategic level, though I suppose either Darkest Hour or Hearts of Iron 4 are ok until someone gets around to making something better. For nuclear warfare I can highly recommend Nuclear War Simulator. In any case, I don't see any sense in Combat Mission trying to push up into the operational layer. The tactical level is where it specializes.

It actually should help a bit. Have you ever watched over a friend's shoulder as they were playing a video game, and you spotted an enemy that they seemed completely oblivious to? You're both looking at the same screen, so should theoretically be capable of spotting the same things. But they're focused on one part of the screen, while you are free to scan another part of the screen.

I'm still hoping for that eventually. But I think it's going to be a while. A lot of other things may take priority

It's funny because it's true Anyway, I've been away from this thread for a while, so I'm not sure when we got the greenlight to discuss something as sensitive as US politics (I suppose US politics are directly relevant to the war, since so much depends on continued US support). But my view on the consequences of a second Trump administration are that it would be more of what happened the first time around. Which is to say that it probably would not lead to a sudden and immediate collapse of US democracy. US institutions would probably emerge largely intact. We're probably just looking at further degradation, not outright destruction, of US democracy. Norms around acceptable political behavior would be further eroded. More dangerous precedents would be set. The Republican Party would be further radicalized. US political discourse would be further radicalized. Taken far enough this sort of thing can weaken a democracy to the point that is ceases to function. Democracies can and do collapse, and it would be arrogant for us to assume that the US is somehow immune. But how likely things are to go that far in this case is hard to say. My guess is that it's unlikely to go that far in this case, but it's a real concern and something to be on guard against. The main thing is that it would be frustrating. I doubt any of the damage would be irreparable. But it would still be further damage at a time when we are still trying to recover from the damage of the first administration (damage to norms and discourse, not so much direct damage to institutions). All that said, I don't think a second Trump administration is even legally possible. After the January 6th insurrection I don't think he's even eligible to hold office. So I think it's a moot point. If he is allowed to hold office at all, that would be setting a dangerous precedent for how the constitution is interpreted. So far it looks like most, though not all, states are allowing him to be on the ballot. But we'll see how that pans out.

It's not mine. You'll have to ask @Unremarkable Sunray. And I'm not sure he ever developed it further into a mod. He could replace visual assets. But those L1A1s will still be functioning like the M16s or AK74s they replaced (depending on whether he replaced US or Soviet infantry to get the British infantry). So it probably wasn't possible for him to develop it further as a playable mod.

This all aligns well with The Dictator's Handbook. Definitely a book that I can highly recommend to anyone who wants to understand how autocrats tick.

Another reason why it makes sense for the Ukrainians to try to hold it for at least another month or two, even if it can't be held in the long run

It's far from an ideal situation. But continuing to inflict Pyrrhic victories on the Russians until the West provides enough aid to enable to Ukrainians to attempt another major offensive is not an ineffective strategy. I don't think the Russians have ever really recovered from Mariupol, Severodonetsk, or Bakhmut. It makes sense to me for the Ukrainians to try to hold Avdiivka for as long as it remains a strong position and the Russians are willing to throw their lives and equipment away there, even if it turns out that it can't be held in the long run.

Despite having played CMSF extensively, I haven't spent much time with CMSF2 yet. Based on my experience in CMCW though, particularly in 1979 scenarios in which some, but not all, of a US infantry squad may be equipped with NVGs (something like 1/3rd to 1/2 of the squad members have NVGs), I'd say that having some members of a squad equipped with NVGs gets you most of the benefit of having the entire squad equipped with NVGs. The squad members with NVGs can spot the enemy and open the firefight on favorable terms, with the rest of the squad soon joining the firefight as they spot the muzzle flashes from the enemy.

The issue is how to award points to side A right? So side B gets more points if less of side A exits. But since giving the enemy a bloody nose is generally one of the goals of a delaying action, side A can get points for doing damage to side B. So side A gets points by destroying side B's units, and denies points to side B by exiting its own units. Side B gets points by preventing side A units from exiting, and denies points to side A by preserving its own units. Side A wins if the points value of the side B units it destroys exceeds the points value of its own units that it fails to exit. Then it's just a matter of adjusting the points until side A achieves a major victory at the thresholds you want (80% of forces exited while destroying X% of side B). Since it's a delaying action it would also be nice if there was a way to award points to side A for keeping side B off of a terrain objective for a certain amount of time. But as far as I'm aware there's no way to do this in Combat Mission.

They gave that a try. I remember a lot of buzz about Combat Mission: Touch a while back. I'm not sure what happened to it or if it's still available somewhere. It looked like it was basically a mobile version of CMBN

Looking forward to it! I do get a lot of spam, so I may have to filter my email by subject line in order to find it. What should I be looking for?

The site looks good. One small note: On the Scenarios page Fortress Italy is currently spelled Frotress Italy

Pretty much everything I know about crew survivability and brew up rates comes from Nicholas Moran, a.k.a. The Chieftain. So this is all coming from memory of various interviews, presentations, and videos I've seen him do over the years. So there are two potential points of failure for everything I'm about to say. The first point of failure is that I may be misremembering what he said. And the second point of failure is that something he said may have been incorrect (he is probably the #1 tank expert on the internet these days, but even the experts get things wrong from time to time). The Sherman supposedly had a crew survivability rate of 85%. Meaning that for every Sherman knocked out, an average of about 0.8 crewmen were killed. The T-34 was exactly the inverse, with a crew survivability rate of 15%. The Sherman did burn a lot when it first saw combat in North Africa, but not more than other tanks. The "brew up" rate for nearly all of the tanks in the war (Sherman included) was about 70%. The similar brew-up rate between different types of tanks was probably because all of the tanks were brewing up for the same reason, ignition of ammunition propellent charges stored in the crew compartment. Accumulated measures taken over the course of the war to reduce fires (including but not limited to wet stowage) meant that by the end of the war only around 10% of knocked out Shermans were burning. The Sherman's gasoline engine did catch fire at a higher rate than diesel engines. But the rate of engine fires was still insignificant compared to the rate of ammunition fires. And in any case, engine fires were less of a hazard for the crew since the engine isn't in the crew compartment. That's about what I can pull from memory on the subject of crew survivability and fires. Most of it pertains to the Sherman, since this stuff mostly seems to come up in the context of Sherman myths. I'm not sure how to connect any of it back to the M10, M18, or M22. Except of course to say that which vehicles had diesel and which vehicles had gasoline engines probably wouldn't have been much of a concern to anyone who knew the stats. Which is not to say that it wouldn't have been a concern for the crews. Soldiers believe myths about their own equipment all the time. So whether it would have been a concern for the crews depends more on which of these myths were present during the war, and which came about after the war.

GoG does a pretty good job running legacy games on a modern OS, as does Lutris. Maintaining a legacy OS to run legacy software is fine. But I really hope those people aren't connecting their legacy machines to the internet. They will be vulnerable to absolutely everything out there. The machine you use to connect to the internet should be running a fully up to date modern OS.

How much of a concern was that really? I mean the risks of diesel vs gasoline. Fire is of course a huge concern. But the propellent charges for the ammunition are always by far the biggest fire (or catastrophic explosion) risk. Gasoline is of course a greater fire risk than diesel, but I can't imagine how either diesel or gasoline can compare to the risk already imposed by the ammunition. That's before you even consider that the ammunition is in the crew compartment. The fuel isn't (usually).

I think there's a decent chance they'll get around to the early war eventually. Erwin seems to recall Steve saying they were never going to do the early war. Whoever's right, what's beyond doubt is that they aren't going to be doing the early war right now. Unless Steve has been lying to throw us off the trail (possible, but I doubt it) going straight back to the beginning of the war in a single bound just isn't practical. The only realistic way to do it would be to gradually work their way backwards towards the beginning of the war from where they're at right now. If we do ever get any 1940/1941 content, we'll get 1942 content first. And if we ever do get any 1942 content, we'll get more 1943 content first. But for sure there are a lot of early-war tanks that I'm looking forward to. I want to see Crusaders in the desert, T-26s on the eastern front, R35s, S35s, Pz1s, Pz2s, and so on in France. There were big HE chuckers (Pz4, Char B1). But there were no dual purpose guns that could fire both a large HE round and a high velocity AP round (I'm guessing weight was the issue). They were either large caliber, short barreled guns for chucking large HE rounds at low velocity. Or small caliber (still short barreled, but the barrel length is a decent multiple of the caliber) guns for firing high velocity AP rounds. When confronted with the choice between one or the other, most interwar tank designs seem to have gone for small caliber high velocity guns so they would have some decent anti-armor capability, and mostly depended on their machine guns for anti-personnel capability. For armies that wanted both good HE chuckers and good anti-armor capability there were a couple of approaches. The French went for a dual gun approach, with the Char B1 having a small caliber high velocity 47mm in the turret, and large caliber low velocity HE chucking 75mm in the hull. The Germans went for a dual tank approach, with the Panzer 3 being armed with a small caliber high velocity 37mm gun, and the Panzer 4 being armed with a large caliber low velocity HE chucking 75mm gun. It really makes you appreciate the mid to late war tanks like the Sherman that had good dual-purpose guns. I'd say that ATG's already stand more than a fighting chance in the current late-war period. In a given encounter between a tank and an ATG in the late-war the ATG is usually going to win. It's no different in the early-war, though the lower numbers of good HE chucking tanks may make it even more one-sided in the ATG's favor. The big weakness of early-war anti-tank firepower is that none of the man portable HEAT chuckers (PIAT, bazooka, panzerfaust, panzerschreck) have been invented yet. The frustrations of the British 14mm Boys anti-tank rifle are quite the inverse of the frustrations of the PIAT. With the PIAT the struggle is to get close enough to have a decent chance of hitting the broad side of a barn. But if you can hit, that large warhead has an excellent chance of knocking out whatever you were shooting at. With the Boys you can pretty consistently hit what you're shooting at at the most common combat ranges. But few of your hits will penetrate, and most of the penetrations won't cause enough damage to knock out the vehicle. From playing around with it in CMAK I've concluded that you'll get the best results by massing two or more (preferably three or four) anti-tank rifles against each target. Each individual shot may not do much. But the rapid plinking of several AT-rifles striking the armor, causing spalling, and achieving the occasional penetration has a good chance of disabling something important or making the enemy tank crew think twice about staying where they are.

No BAOR screenshots in the 2024 year to come part 2 thread yet. The Part 1 thread did say we could expect some Cold War bones "very soon" now that their artists are freed up from Downfall, so maybe not too much longer (maybe another month or two?). In the meantime, while we wait for screenshots of the real thing, there are still these hacked together screenshots by @Unremarkable Sunray from the Screenshot and Video thread for us to look at.

Not necessarily. English can be tricky at times. It is pretty common to talk about "timelines" for a single project. In that case the plural is referring to the many hypothetical timelines the project may potentially follow, of which only one timeline will become a reality (not that most people would be thinking about it that deeply while writing or talking about "timelines" for a single project). He could have been talking about a singular timeline for each of multiple different CMx3 projects. But I think it's more likely that he was expressing uncertainty over multiple potential timelines for a single CMx3 project (initial development of the engine itself). I believe he was saying that if one of the shorter potential CMx3 development timelines becomes a reality (one of the timelines that sees CMx3 development finished before the war in Ukraine ends) then there would be little point in resurrecting CMBS in CMx2.

Everyone makes mistakes. Nothing earns my respect more than people owning their mistakes.

I suppose that's right. He didn't say that it was anything big. Just that it's something we don't know about (hasn't been announced yet). And that in telling us that they are working on something we don't know about yet at this stage they are breaking their usual rule of not announcing things until they are certain what the game (he did say "game") is going to have and at least a rough idea of when it will be released. So it's not necessarily something ground breaking like CMx3. All we really know is that it isn't one of the things that has already been announced. It's not the CMBN or CMFI Battle Packs. It's not CMCW:BAOR. And it's not Upgrade 5. It's also reasonable to assume that nothing they've said recently as been an outright lie to throw us off the trail. If Steve says that CM:Korea or France 1940 aren't on the cards right now (though hopefully they'll be on the cards someday), then it's probably not either of those. That still leaves open the possibility of it being CMx3, a new modern warfare game, or a new game/module incrementally rolling the clock back on either the eastern front or the Mediterranean front. Or Space Lobsters for that matter.

Thanks. I didn't check my CMFB scenarios folder before leaving for work. But I have the Steam version, so I probably don't have it if no one else who got the Steam update has it. I might regret going straight for the Steam version, rather than buying on BFC and redeeming on Slitherine for a Steam key.

The trouble is that it's the most plausible real-world settings that are the most interesting. I doubt I'd bother buying a game pitting the EU vs the US, because I know there's no chance in a million years of that ever happening in real life. I might have a bit more interest in a fictional setting. But really, it's the most plausible near-future wars that I (and I suspect most people) would be most interested in seeing simulated. I think the chance that the real war might actually break out is a risk you just have to take with near-future modern warfare settings. You either accept that risk, or you don't make near-future modern warfare games.

Yes! And it's a good middle ground if BFC is waffling between starting CM3 off with a modern title or a WW2 title. And it'll allow the modules to keep coming for CMCW after CM3. While CM3 would be exciting, I would hate if it meant abandoning CMCW.

That's the problem with the US Army's 'M#' naming system. It leads to a lot of confusion. I know of at least two M16s (the rifle and the SPAA gun). As you've pointed out there are now at least two M10s (the WW2 TD and the modern not-tank). There's the M4 Sherman and the M4 carbine. The M3 halftrack, the M3 SMG "grease gun", the M3 75mm gun, the M3 Bradley. The M1 rifle, the M1 carbine, the M1 helmet, the M1 tank, the M1 Thompson SMG, etc... Almost forgot. The M60 (tank) and the M60 (GPMG). There may be a need for people to understand that there are different kinds of tanks with different roles. The M10 Booker is most definitely not an MBT. That doesn't mean it's not a tank. As much as the Army wants to insist that it's not a tank, it is very clearly a tank. But it's not a kind of tank that can fight other tanks. It can destroy infantry, fortifications, and IFVs. But if they need to destroy enemy MBTs, the infantry need to get their Javelins out rather than putting their Bookers into a fight they can't win.