Centurian52

The more I think about it the less I think I'd mind CM3 starting over at Normandy again. It would mean backtracking on any progress towards eventually covering the whole war. But CM3 would presumably represent such an increase in realism that it would be well worth going over old ground again. I'm sure there will be significant improvements in the ability to represent modern warfare in particular (better handling of drones, EW, modern air support, and modern air defenses). But as far as improvements that would significantly improve the representation of WW2 I'm hoping that we'll get assisted loading for crew served weapons. I believe that will significantly narrow the current gap between the Bren and the MG42. I still hope that Combat Mission will eventually cover the whole war (and hopefully a few other wars as well). But maybe recycled TO&E and vehicle data from CM2 will help to streamline the rate at which they can cover larger stretches of time on each front.

I hope they find a way to upgrade the existing CM2 content to CM3. But I'm not sure how that could be possible. The reason CM3 gets a shiny new number is that it will be an entirely new game engine, not just another upgrade to the CM2 engine.

Yeah, that's pretty much a guaruntee for me too. There's nothing that it could possibly be that I wouldn't end up buying. Even if it turns out to be the most anticlimactic thing imaginable, like coffee mugs themed for each of the CM2 base games, I'd order the whole set in a heartbeat.

He denied that Vietnam could be done in CM2. It may very well be CM3 Vietnam.

I think I'm coming around to CM3 as being most probable. It would seem to be the only thing that would warrant this much secrecy and build up.

There are a bunch of possibilities streaming through my head. A new '43/'44 CMRT module is already in the works CM3 is well underway, and they found a way to port existing CM2 content into it A new North Africa base game is already in the works CMCW:BAOR is going to be way bigger than anticipated A new modern war game is already well into development If I have to pick one I'm leaning towards the '43/'44 CMRT module. It seemed like Steve may have dropped a couple hints suggesting that would be it over in the Part 1 thread. Although, The_Capt started acting real sus over in the CMCW:BAOR thread right after the discussion came around to CM3 and I had been confidently claiming that the next western front title would be Tunisia. So either of those are also strong contenders. Of course maybe his sus behavior was related to the thread topic, rather than anything we had recently discussed. Then again Steve was talking about "the next modern warfare game" before he closed out the Part 1 thread. Ok, it could really be any of them. And probably something I haven't thought of.

Shock Force wasn't WW2.

Yeah, me too I suppose. I'd certainly be dismayed to start all over again at Normandy in CM3 since I'd like to see them get around to covering the whole war eventually. And starting back at the start line (Normandy) over and over again isn't a very efficient way to get to the finish line (the whole war). But I'd still buy it. And I'd still enjoy the hell out of it.

The problem with going more than a decade or so into the future is that there is no way to guess at the kind of equipment that will be in service, and the capabilities it will have, with the kind of precision needed for Combat Mission. I think there's nothing for it but to accept that another CMBS situation will always be a risk with near-future conflict settings. In large part because it's the most plausible near-future conflicts that are most worth covering. If you want to avoid that risk with a hypothetic modern warfare game the best option would seem to be to go for hypothetical scenarios in the recent past, rather than the near future. Sort of like what CMCW did. But I think the risk of a hypothetical near-future setting becoming real is worth taking, in large part precisely because it might become real. I certainly feel that CMBS helped to give me some insight into the Russo-Ukraine war well before it broke out into the current full scale invasion. And a near-future game setting in Korea or Taiwan has the potential to provide the same sort of insight ahead of potential real conflicts in those areas as well. But if BFC feels that risk isn't worth taking, then I'll certainly be very happy with a greater focus on CMCW instead for the time being.

Eh, I'm no newcomer to Combat Mission. Been playing since 2009 (that's still 15 years ago by now, even if it means I wasn't part of the initial CMBO crowd). I could get a decent, but never a perfect hull-down position prior to the introduction of the hull-down command. The hull-down command makes it possible to get pretty much perfect hull-down positions with relatively little effort. I'm still working out some of the details of how it works. I think the tank stops the moment any member of the crew, not just the gunner, can see the targeted point on the ground, since I've sometimes had the tank stop too early when I've had the commander turned out. If that's the case then I may be able to turn that to my advantage by effectively using it as a turret-down command when the commander is out. I just need to remember to close up when I want the tank to actually go hull-down.

Honestly my feeling is that some tanks are always better than no tanks. The M22 Locust may have had weak armor and a weak gun. But those were acceptable tradeoffs for making it air transportable and giving airborne forces some armored support in my opinion. I don't think the reason it wasn't a huge success had anything to do with its armor and firepower being insufficient (again, better than no armor or firepower). I think the real problem is that there just wasn't a satisfactory way of delivering it to the battlefield. Trying to transport it by glider didn't work out very well. Some were lost outright due to accidents on landing, and I believe most of the ones that survived the landing were damaged to some degree.

I have been fully won over to the hull-down command. It's fantastic if you use it right. But there is a right and wrong way to use it. DO NOT set the hull-down waypoint to the position you want to be hull-down to. Set the waypoint to the top of the crest you are trying to peek over, and then set a target command from the waypoint to the position you want to be hull-down to.

Well, yes. But that applies to all CM2 WW2 content so far. The earliest point in the CM2 timeline so far is Operation Husky, by which point the Germans already had absolutely no chance of winning the war.

So I have guessed that it probably takes them around two to three years to make a new game or module. Game development is normally measured in years, not months, so two to three years is most definitely not an inordinate amount of time. If it took them five years, that would be pretty concerning. If it took them ten+ years, then we'd be looking at Duke Nukem levels of procrastination. But two to three years is pretty bog standard. As to the research. You know how difficult criminal investigation is. I don't. But I suspect that historical research is probably harder. I assume that you run into a lot of the same difficulties in criminal investigation that can cause so much trouble in historical research (unreliable witnesses, contradictory sources, etc...). But think about how difficult criminal investigation was for you, and now imagine that most of your witnesses have died of old age, and most of your evidence has been degraded or destroyed by the ravages of time. I'm impressed that Battlefront is able to conduct such incredibly detailed research with time to spare to finish full games and modules at what is honestly a pretty reasonable pace.

@Erwin The latest on the prospect for the early war are from this very thread. When FredLW brought up the idea of going straight back to 1939/1940 Steve replied with: And in the same post in which he shot down our hopes for a CM: Korea he said: So I think our prospects for seeing earlier war content are very strong. The sheer amount of time and number of releases it will take to work their way back to the beginning of the war is large enough to introduce a fair amount of uncertainty as to whether they will actually get there (it took a bit over a decade to reach the end of the war, and it will presumably take just as long to reach the beginning of the war). Enough that it would be very risky for Steve to announce a formal intention to work their way all the way back to the beginning of the war. But even if it's never announced, I think that's the natural direction they're likely to be progressing in from here on.

What I heard is that they can't go straight back to the early war in one go. It wouldn't be profitable enough to offset the time and cost of creating nearly 100% new equipment. So the only realistic way to do it would be to move back incrementally. Getting all the way back to the beginning of the war would take long enough that there's no sense making any promises. But I don't recall Steve ever saying that they have no intention of ever doing the early war. I recall him saying that they felt it was more profitable to do the late war first. Now they have done the late war. I'm confident they'll start inching the clock back with the next set of projects.

I'd say you'd have about 18 months* of severe shortages and making do with whatever you can scrape up. And then more VT fuses (or whatever else you need) than you could ever dream of. *This based entirely on how long it took the US to spin up full-scale wartime production in WW2. It's a good thing we got that process started in 1940, before we actually entered the war. Factory automation was already having a noticeable impact by the 1970s, so perhaps the production spin up time could have been shortened a bit for a WW3 in 1979. Probably not to anything less than 12 months though. Even if you don't have to spend as much time training workers, because most stuff is automated, you still need to build the factories and make the machine tools. And actually, I generally assume that if a major war involving the US were to break out today it would take a full 2 years before we started seeing WW2 levels of war material being churned out. Because I assume that we'll spend the first 6 months holding out hope that it will be a short war.

I wish I could be enjoying the module. I've bought it, and it looks great. I've spent some time just admiring the Pershing and Comet. But I committed myself to playing my CM2 content in chronological order a few months ago (I think I'll finally be wrapping up Sicily this coming month, and I'm hoping to be on to Normandy by the 80th anniversary (I wish I had started this on the 80th anniversary of Husky)), so it's going to be a while until I play anything set at the end of the war. The good thing though is that it's going to be long enough that I'll probably have forgotten any spoilers, so I think I can get away with drooling over other people's Downfall gameplay when it starts getting posted to YT.

Everything seems obvious once you've thought of it. It's actually thinking of it that first time that's the tricky part.

It only took one module, in addition to the base game (total of two installments), to cover one year on the eastern front (CMRT + Fire and Rubble), from mid '44 to mid '45. Five installments (CMBN, Commonwealth Forces, Market Garden, CMFB, Downfall) to cover the same timeframe on the western front, though one of those only added new forces rather than expanding the timeline. And three installments (CMFI, Gustav Line, Rome to Victory) to cover two years (mid '43 to mid '45) in the Mediterranean. So the number of games/modules it takes to cover one year for one front is not consistent (probably highly dependent on how much happened and how much changed on that front in the given time span). But it's more than one. If we assume two modules per year for the eastern front, then we'd need six more modules to fully wrap up the eastern front. Optimistically that might take around 18 years (assuming 3 years between each module). It might end up taking considerably less time than that, as there should be less and less new equipment to create as they go. And large spans of time might be handled with Battle Packs rather than modules. It should be possible to do North Africa in considerably fewer modules. Most of the fighting in 1941 and 1942 was going back and forth over the same ground, so it might be possible to capture both of those years in as little as one module each. Operation Torch and the fighting in Tunisia will be quite different from the Western Desert Campaign. I assume Tunisia will be the base game. The Vichy French forces opposing Torch folded pretty quickly, so it might not warrant a full module. Maybe Torch will get a Battle Pack later. An El Alamein module can probably cover most of 1942. One more module to get most of the equipment needed to represent the fighting in 1941, with plenty of room for Battle Packs to cover individual operations. Then a base game for The Battle of France, and that's the western front covered. I shouldn't think that there would be much left to do for France '40. Most the German and British equipment will already be in from North Africa. There may be a few British vehicles that were in France, and not Africa. But there shouldn't be any German equipment in France that wasn't later used in either Africa or the Soviet Union. Most of the French equipment will have already been generated for Vichy and Free French forces in North Africa. There may still be some new French tanks that will be needed. The game already has western European terrain. It would be nice to cover the fighting in Greece in 1940 and 1941, but there might not be enough interest to make it profitable. Poland '39 needs to be covered of course. That might be covered in one base game with no modules, or there might be a module adding Soviet forces and covering what fighting there was in the east from 17 September on. If CM3 comes along and presses the reset button before they can wrap up the beginning of the war in CM2, then hopefully they'll at least have generated enough early-war content in CM2 that can be leveraged to make starting at the beginning of the war in CM3 a bit less daunting (it would suck to have to start all over again at Normandy).

I expect anything in eastern Europe would be a no-go while the war is still on, for the same reasons that further work on CMBS had to be shelved. I think there are some interesting prospects for a new modern war game set in SE Asia/Pacific, if they are up for doing the artwork for the new terrain. Either a game depicting asymmetric warfare with North Korea vs South Korea and the US, or a game depicting peer/near-peer warfare with China vs Taiwan and the US. The advantage of doing China vs Taiwan/US would be that a lot of the work on CMCW US forces could be carried over directly for Taiwanese forces. The advantage of doing N. Korea vs S. Korea/US is that there is probably a lower chance of the real thing breaking out a few years after the game is developed. And there is a lot of S. Korean kit that I would be very interested in seeing in action. Wherever a new modern warfare game ends up being set, there is a lot of interesting new kit that will be entering US service in the next few years that will be interesting to see in action. The M10 Booker, the new, smaller, and more easily deployable cousin to the Abrams, will be entering service with US airborne units in the next few years. It would make sense to see it with the first American units to arrive in Taiwan. There are plans to get a new IFV to replace the Bradley, but I think we're still early in that process, so it's unlikely a Bradley replacement would make it into a new near-future title. There aren't any plans for a new MBT yet as far as I'm aware. So a new modern war title would bring us a shiny new light tank in light US forces, but we'll still be seeing the same Bradley/Abrams combo in the heavy forces. The US is also getting new small arms. We're going back to the battle rifle concept with the XM7 rifle (presumably it will just be called the M7 when it enters service (the 'X' is usually dropped when a new system actually enters service)). The theory being that the greater penetration of a battle rifle is more useful now that all infantry are wearing body armor. And optics being available to all infantry means that modern riflemen should actually be able to take advantage of the greater range and accuracy of a battle rifle, which was completely irrelevant back when riflemen were limited to iron sights and the mk-1 human eyeball. But it still has most of the classic drawbacks of a battle rifle. It will be heavier than the M4, and troops won't be able to carry as much ammunition for it. It is reportedly softer firing than most older battle rifles, so it may still be controllable in full auto (certainly more controllable than the M14 was). Getting to play around with it in Combat Mission should give us a sense for whether going back to a battle rifle is actually a good idea. But the XM7 rifle is actually the least of it. Maybe the brass think that going back to a battle rifle is a great idea, maybe they don't. Either way, that's not really why we're going back to a battle rifle. The biggest reason is for ammunition compatibility with the new light machine gun we're getting. The XM250 (again, presumably it will just be the M250 when it enters service) is going to be significantly lighter than the M249, significantly more accurate than the M249, will have significantly greater range than the M249, and will have almost no felt recoil. There's some give and take as to whether the XM7 will really be an overall improvement over the M4. But there is absolutely no doubt that the XM250 will be a huge improvement over the M249 in just about every way. Whatever you might think of the XM7, I have no doubt that the XM7/XM250 combo will represent a significant improvement in US infantry firepower over the M4/M249 combo. And I can hardly wait to try them out in a new modern warfare Combat Mission title.

I tend to feel that balance has always been seriously overrated in game design. I'm perfectly capable of having fun while taking a beating from a stronger opponent (desperation and despair can be a lot of fun in a simulated environment), or ruthlessly crushing a weaker one (indulging in a power fantasy is also fun). And thinking of CM as an educational tool, it's certainly valuable to learn how to fight a set piece battle against an equal opponent. But learning how to exploit against a weaker opponent or withdraw in the face of a stronger opponent is just as important. Withdrawal and exploitation are two skills that us wargamers get precious little practice with. There is probably a bit of sport/tournament thinking going on. People think that once victory/defeat is determined, the battle doesn't matter anymore. All that matters in a sport is who wins and who loses. There are no higher or lower gradients of victory or defeat. But in reality it mattes a great deal whether you can turn a victory into a decisive victory, or prevent a defeat from turning into a decisive defeat.

True. But I seriously doubt that Russia will be able to use anywhere near as high a proportion of their population. And critical inputs other than manpower will probably collapse long before manpower does anyway. While casualty rates in the war are high, they aren't anywhere near high enough to run down either country's recruitable manpower on timescales less than decades. In terms of actual number of troops in uniform in Ukraine, Ukraine has probably maintained a slight numerical advantage throughout every phase of the war except the beginning. The Russian army + proxies would have had a slight numerical advantage at the beginning of the war. Ukraine's current numerical advantage should be much less by now than it was towards the end of 2022, prior to Russian partial mobilization, but they should still have a slight numerical advantage. While most Russians will not vocally oppose the war, support for the war in Russia has never been as high as support for the war in Ukraine. So it is doubtful that the Russians will ever be able to translate their 3.25:1 population advantage into anything like a 3.25:1 numerical advantage in the field. It is equally doubtful that the Russians will be willing to endure 3.25 as many casualties as the Ukrainians.

I have no doubt we'll get it eventually. But don't forget that we're expecting incremental steps back in time. So we probably won't be getting Stalingrad '42 before we get Kursk '43

I'd say it depends to an extent on which point in the war you're trying to model. At the beginning of the war I would say the Russians do have an advantage in the quality of their armored vehicles, but not by as much as you would see in a typical CMBS scenario. At the beginning of 2022 roughly half of Russian tanks were "modern" (T-90A or later), and roughly half were Cold War vintage (T-80U, T-80BV, T-72B, etc... (all of the visible tank wrecks in the infamous failed river crossing were T-72Bs)). The most common Russian tanks by far were T-72B3s and T-72B3Ms. T-90Ms were basically non-existent at the beginning of the war (less than a hundred in their whole inventory), and T-80BVMs were very rare. The most common Russian IFV was the BMP-2, and (correct me if I'm wrong on this one) I think the BTR-82A was the second most common. There were significant numbers of BMP-3s, but I'm pretty sure they didn't make the top two most common Russian IFVs. I think BMP-3s were either the third or fourth most common type of Russian IFV. Most Ukrainian tanks were T-64BVs, with some T-64BV(2017)s, small numbers of T-80BVs, small numbers of T-80BM Bulats, and almost no Oplots (despite them being so common in CMBS, I think the Ukrainians were only operating around 10-20 Oplots in reality). Their most common IFV was the BMP-1, and the second most common was the BMP-2. Throughout the war the fighting has been far more even than either the most optimistic pro-Russians or the most optimistic pro-Ukrainians have cared to admit. But at the beginning of the war I'd say it was mostly even with a slight edge for the Russians, and by a year or so in I'd say it was mostly even with a slight edge for the Ukrainians. Actual casualty estimates tend to put the Russian casualties 1.5-2.2 times higher than Ukrainian casualties. But I think that is partly reflecting that the Russians have generally been on the attack, and partly reflecting that Ukraine is a democracy, so is unwilling to throw away its soldiers in reckless attacks.