Centurian52

Ok. My prediction is only that the next western front WW2 title will be Tunisia 1943. I do not necessarily predict that the next title will be WW2, or that the next WW2 title will be on the western front. I would also be very excited for Kursk.

Interesting. Maybe Free Whisky's small sample size meant that the personnel fuse just randomly performed better for him in his tests. Or it could be another era-dependent effect. He only tested the personnel fuse in the modern titles for his video (probably to ensure that all the shells he tested would actually airburst). The greater variability in when WW2 personnel fuses burst could mean that more of them are exploding too early. Edit: A lot of stuff in CMCW falls somewhere in between WW2 and modern. I've noticed that US artillery is very modern in terms of accuracy and call-in times. But I haven't fired many (possibly any?) personnel barrages in CMCW (there are usually vehicles around that I want a chance of hitting). So I'm not sure if the personnel fuses behave more like modern fuses or more like WW2 fuses. Modern personnel fuses will all explode pretty consistently at the same height, while WW2 fuses will explode at varying heights, some on impact with the ground.

Depends on the era. Modern fuses are more reliable than WW2 fuses. So some WW2 shells set to airburst will explode on impact with the ground instead. Modern shells set to airburst will pretty much all airburst as intended. Free Whisky tested this. The difference in infantry casualties between a 'general' and 'personnel' fuse is narrower in forests, but the personnel fuse is still more effective. The general fuse detonating in the treetops is effectively just converting some of impacts into airbursts.

Ah. In that case no. It is not 100% safe for armored vehicles to drive through a general artillery barrage regardless of which side fires it. But, while there are no guarantees, they are pretty likely to make it through, especially if they are dispersed and keep moving, since it takes a direct hit or near-miss to knock them out. Since an artillery barrage would have to be falling over a wide area to have a decent chance of catching moving vehicles, it wouldn't make any difference if the barrage is being fired by NATO or Soviet artillery. So the chance of an armored vehicle being destroyed in that case is pretty low whether it's a NATO artillery barrage or a Soviet artillery barrage. It will make a much greater difference if it's a point barrage fired against a stationary target. In that case the NATO artillery, being so much more accurate, is much more likely to destroy the target. But either way, it's still probabilistic, not deterministic. There is still a chance that the Soviet artillery will hit, or that the NATO artillery will miss. Even WW2 artillery can get lucky. I was playing the Welcome to Sicily campaign for CMFI not so long ago. My first Sherman to land had to drive through a very light and scattered artillery barrage to get off the beach. The chances of it getting hit were very low. But, I just had monumentally bad luck that day. It got hit just as it was about to clear the last sand berm. It was a one in a million hit, but such things do happen from time to time. My second Sherman, which had to drive through the exact same artillery barrage, did not get hit.

I don't recall the type of rounds or barrage being color coded. Do you have any interface mods? If you're asking if armored vehicles will drive safely across 'personnel' barrages, the answer is yes, as far as I've seen. They probably shouldn't. All that shrapnel flying around wouldn't be able to penetrate them, but it should still do a lot of damage to subsystems. In a personnel barrage the rounds are fused to airburst, spraying shrapnel over a wide area and normally inflicting much greater casualties on infantry. In a general barrage the rounds are fused to explode on impact with the ground (or the first thing they hit). A personnel setting will inflict higher casualties on infantry in the open, in woods, in foxholes, or in trenches. A general setting has a chance of scoring direct hits on tanks, will kick up far more dust than a personnel barrage (giving you some of the benefit that you would get from a smoke barrage), and is much more likely to inflict casualties on infantry in buildings.

They are going to keep making WW2 games. And early 44/late 43 is the obvious place to go next for the eastern front, and North Africa is the obvious place to go next for the western front. They're coming. We just need to be patient. Give it a year to wrap up the current set of projects and greenlight the next set, plus 2-3 years to develop the next module/game for both the western front and eastern front, with the announcement probably coming after the first year of development. I figure we'll have a new 43/44 eastern front module, and a new North Africa game in the next 3-4 years, with the announcements for each probably coming within two years.

As I've said several times recently, I can almost guarantee that the next western front title will be in North Africa. In fact it is almost certain to be Tunisia 1943. They haven't gone backwards since Sicily because they prioritized finishing up the late war first. The late war is finished. There is no direction to go now but back. The next step back in time from Sicily 1943 is Tunisia 1943. It's going to be Tunisia 1943 next.

A Battle Pack. Obviously there's nothing for it if they're running behind. But if they get done ahead of June 6th then I'm thinking that it would make all the sense in the world for them to hold onto it and release it on June 6th. Releasing a Battle Pack with a focus on the D-Day beach landings on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings would just be too perfect to miss.

He said we'll see the second half of the update sometime this month. It's still possible he'll drop the new thread by COB Wednesday. But I'm already assuming he's going to slip his original statement by a little bit and we'll see the new thread sometime in early February. Still, I was feeling optimistic that even if it isn't out before the end of January it will still only be a few more days. I'm not sure I have any reason for that optimism beyond blind faith though.

Now that Downfall has been released, and we can start turning our anticipation towards some of the other upcoming projects, does anyone have any theories on what this could be? I'm sure we'll know in a few days or so, whenever Steve makes the part-2 thread. If the focus is on giving us more time with some of the oddball forces, then it may be revolving around an operation in Italy that wasn't principally US or British led. Or it may be giving a finer resolution to operations that were already covered. I understand the French played an important role in the Battle of Monte Casino, but there were no French forces in the game back when Gustav Line was released, so their part in the battle had to be skipped. Maybe they're going to rectify that?

I'm sure the tank has to be opened up. I don't think remotely operated MGs were a thing yet. I don't normally see the 0.50s on my Shermans firing, since I usually keep them buttoned up. But the few times I did see them firing, they were opened up. The commander is usually firing the pintle mounted MG without any specific target orders on my part. I haven't tried to see if there is a way to use it intentionally, with a target command.

There's little point in taking a frontal shot at a T-64 or T-72 with a LAW (unless you get lucky and hit the lower front plate or the weak point in the upper front plate for the driver's hatch/optics). But a LAW can easily penetrate the front of a T-55 or T-62. So I suppose it will depend on when in the Cold War era were talking, and what kind of Soviet tanks you expect to face.

I remember really enjoying this campaign when I first played it, sometime around when the Commonwealth module for CMBN was first released. Combat Mission has improved so much in that time that the potential for revising this campaign seems exciting. But, @Paper Tiger, please don't tone down the difficulty too much. I did find this to be a very difficult campaign when I last played it. But that's a huge part of what I enjoyed about it. Besides, I'll always take historical accuracy over balance. And my understanding is that this operation was no cakewalk for the Allies.

While there is nothing you can do about team formations, you can put your squads, platoons, and companies into whatever formation you like. The squad formations you can form are limited by the number of teams you can break the squad into. You cannot form a late WW2 daimond formation with a US infantry squad, for example, because you can only break the squad into three teams, and the diamond formation requires five elements (the four points of the diamond, plus the BAR team in the center). But you can create any triangular formation, such as line, column, wedge, vee, echelon left, and echelon right. It's just a matter of placing your teams in the right places to get the squad formation you want, your squads in the right places to get the platoon formation you want, and your platoons in the right places to get the company formation you want. You then just need to give group orders to the whole platoon or company and they will maintain that formation (more or less, it might start to break up a bit over longer movement orders). I was just playing The Battle for Borgo Cascino, for CMFI. That scenario features a US infantry company advancing over a wide expanse of ground towards a hilltop villa and a hilltop farm. For my company I opted for a two up, one back (vee) formation, with each of the forward platoons advancing towards one of the hilltops. The rear platoon would reinforce whichever of the forward platoons needed help. Each of my platoons was in a two up, one back formation (though in retrospect a one up, two back (wedge) formation would have made more sense, since you generally want to make contact with the smallest force possible). And each of my squads was in a wedge formation. Since the terrain was so open I opted for a very dispersed formation. Each of the teams in my squads had three action squars of horizontal separation, with the forward team in the wedge being a further three action squares ahead of the rearward teams. The two forward squads in my platoon were 6 action squares apart, with the rearward squad 6 action squares behind and centered between the two forward squads, and the HQ team dead center of the formation. My two forward platoons were 12 action squares apart, with the rearward platoon being 12 action squares behind and centered between the two forward platoons, and the company HQ and XO teams together in the center. So yes, you can have almost all the formations you want in Combat Mission. You just have to arrange them manually. There is no button for automatically getting your units into formation.

I've found a Battle Order video that goes into depth about Soviet artillery tactics. Basically they heavily concentrated their artillery for major offensives. Up to 150-200 guns per kilometer in a breakthrough sector. They also apparently made a lot of use of artillery in the direct-fire role (which helped to save ammunition). I can't find the video that I remember watching a few years ago which does a comparison between Allied and Soviet artillery usage. But I remember that, by weight of ammunition expended per year, the Allies used a lot more artillery overall. I'm working my way through James Holland's books right now, and he never misses an opportunity to emphasis how firepower-heavy Allied tactics were in WW2. My guess is that the Soviets probably concentrated their artillery more in major offensives, while the Allies probably made greater use of artillery in smaller actions.

The Red Army in WW2 actually used a lot less artillery than the western Allies in WW2. Someone, I think Military History Visualized, did a video on artillery usage in WW2 a while back. I'll see if I can dig it up. I don't think it had anything to do with them not wanting to use more artillery, and they certainly weren't lacking in numbers of guns. But they never had as much ammunition to fire as western gunners.

In the sense that a minute passes between when new orders can be given in WEGO. But that's not really how actual orders delay systems work in games that implement them intentionally (at least not in games that implement them well). The point of a delay isn't to inconvenience the player, but to model how real communication works. The delay is supposed to be based on the amount of time it would take for a message to travel from its point of origin (the overall commander), over the available communication channels, to its intended recipient. So if the overall commander is a company commander, and the player decides he wants to send a platoon to take a hill, the delay would be the amount of time it takes for the company commander to transmit his orders over the radio (or via voice if he's close enough, or via runner if the radio is destroyed/jammed) to the platoon leader, plus the amount of time it takes for the platoon leader to pass on his orders to his squad leaders. Any good orders delay system has no choice but to assume that the player is only role playing as one officer, the overall commander of the battle, so that there can be a point of origin from which the delay is calculated. If there is no point of origin, then the delay is arbitrary and effectively meaningless. Any arbitrary delay, which is not based on the amount of time it takes for a message to travel through the available communications links from a point of origin, does nothing to improve realism (which is probably why CM2 very sensibly abandoned the delay system from CM1). And an orders delay system can't be implemented unless AI leaders under the player (platoon leaders and squad leaders, if the player is the company commander) are self-sufficient enough to make some basic decisions without any player input at all, since the system would make micro-management impossible. One neat thing about an orders delay system is that it opens up the possibility of units being cut off from player command and control. If a platoon's radio is destroyed, it is out of voice range, it is out of line of sight (so no visual signals can reach them), and no runner can survive the journey, then a player might find themselves completely unable to issue orders to that platoon. The AI platoon leader would have to act on their own initiative alone, without any player input. Which is something that can happen in real life. Another neat thing is that the player would have no way of ensuring that the message reached all of their subordinate AI commanders at the same time. So if they want their subordinates to attack at the same time, they will need to set a start time for the attack that is sometime after they can expect all of their subordinate leaders to have received the order. Which is also how things generally work in real life. Going a step further, it looks like General Staff: Black Powder will be implementing an information delay system (I'm not sure if that's actually what they're calling it). So the player only knows what the overall commander knows. They do not get to see an enemy unit appear on the map the moment any of their troops spot the enemy, but only after a message about the enemy unit can travel up the available communication links to the overall commander. This system should allow players to get a better sense of the fog of war as it exists for real commanders. Again, in any good delay system, the delay should not be any arbitrary number. It is the amount of time it takes for a message to travel from a point of origin, through available communication links, to an intended recipient.

I've downloaded Downfall. And I see each of the campaigns have an "Easy" version, and a "Hard" version. I'm not interested in which will pose more or less of a challenge, only in which is more or less historically accurate. Would it be fair for me to guess that I will want to play the "Hard" version of the campaigns then?

If your argument is that the target command should be removed because it allows units to react to situations as if they had a telepathic link to their commander, then all movement commands should be removed as well.

It is a bit rude to imply that my opinion doesn't matter because I haven't gone up against a human opponent. It might be fair to suggest that my opinion matters less because I haven't played multiplayer yet. But to suggest that the value of my opinion is zero? That's just ridiculous. And if I change my tune after I have gone up against a human, then I'll cede your point. I don't think I will though. I may not have the direct experience of how other people play (though again, lots of people have posted their multiplayer matches to youtube, so it's not like I haven't seen people abuse the target command). But I know how I play. And I know how real armies have fought over the last century. Allied WW2 doctrine and Soviet Cold War doctrine were both very firepower-heavy. They would bombard a tree-line, flatten a town, and pump HE into a building now, and find out whether there were really any enemy troops in those areas later. Partially inspired by real-world tactics, my own play style is very area-target heavy (mostly target-briefly commands, since when you combine those with waypoints you can get each unit to fire into multiple suspected locations each turn). The only thing unrealistic about it is that the AI doesn't do it back to me. If you can light up a known or suspected enemy position with heavy firepower, and don't, you're doing it wrong. I fully expect my opponent to take the same view. And I fully expect to take a hammering. I'll always remember something that Pvt Webster (of Band of Brothers fame) reportedly said to a replacement who was reluctant to fire his weapon, because he couldn't see any targets to fire at: "You never see them. Shoot where you think they are." I don't want to imply that there is nothing unrealistic about the way the target command can be used. Of course units can respond too quickly and too accurately to situations they shouldn't even be aware of. But frankly the same is true of every command. Units move into the right positions to support each other and to facilitate your plans far too promptly and precisely for troops who don't have a telepathic link to their commander. The truth is that you can never have realistic command and control in a game in which you are basically playing as every single officer and NCO simultaneously. If you want realistic command and control you need to implement and orders delay system. And because the delay needs to be based on how long it takes for the orders to be transmitted across the available communication channels, they need to have a point of origin, a single officer on the battlefield from which orders are originating and the delay is calculated (if the delay isn't being calculated based on a point of origin, then it's just an arbitrary delay that isn't based on anything in reality). You would cease to be every officer on the battlefield. That is possible, and has been done in some games. And it can really help to give you a sense for the difficulties and complexity of command and control on a real battlefield. But the tradeoff is that you lose any role in the small unit tactics being employed by your forces. You can only macro-manage. So it wouldn't really be Combat Mission anymore. So really, an orders delay system would be the solution (again though, that comes with tradeoffs, and it wouldn't really be the same game). Eliminating the target command is just ridiculous. You would be "solving" the issue, without really solving the real issue (units respond too quickly and precisely to their commander's will), while making it impossible to execute real tactics and making the game far less realistic overall.

Again, without area targeting it would be impossible to correctly execute fire and maneuver tactics. After you have gained fire-superiority, you are supposed to maintain it. You don't stop shooting just because all the enemy soldiers in a position have put their heads down. Making it impossible to properly execute real tactics would rather defeat the point of a realistic wargame. That's before remembering how absurd it would be for modern Russians/CW Soviets, or WW2 anyone, to eschew speculative fire. So removing the feature would very clearly be the greater of two evils, by a very wide margin. I haven't played multiplayer, though I've seen videos of other player's multiplayer matches. I have seen a lot of combat footage though. There is usually only ever one AFV in the frame, if there are any at all (mostly it's just drones, infantry, and artillery). So most of the time it isn't possible to tell if there are even 10 BMPs around to shoot back. But, I've heard an anecdote of a Ukrainian Javelin team that stuck around after firing to see if they hit their target, and were promptly fired on (thankfully they survived this time). And I recall a video of a British volunteer firing an NLAW at a BTR. He promptly turned and ran back into the woods without sticking around to see if he hit, because he obviously understood that if he missed, or if there were any other Russian troops or AFVs present, he and the rest of his team would have been very quickly torn to shreds (the main video was shot from his GoPro, and he turned before the camera could catch if he hit, but drone footage of the same event showed that he hit).

Yes, of course that's part of the game. Do you really think that wouldn't happen in real life? There's a reason that the Javelin being a fire-and-forget ATGM was such a big deal when it first came out. Because being able to run away the moment after you fire, without having to stick around to guide the missile, is really helpful for increasing your chances of survival.

Getting rid of area targeting would be pretty unrealistic though. You don't exactly limit your fire to clearly identified targets in a real war (maybe in a low intensity guerilla war, where your main priority is limiting collateral damage). Particularly not in WW2. Both known and suspected enemy positions are fair game. And properly executing fire and maneuver tactics requires maintaining fire on enemy positions, even after they have all put their heads down and units in CM would lose the spot, so that other forces can freely maneuver.

Hmm. At this point in the war the distances between the fronts are so short that I would think the western front would have the same mix of uniforms as the eastern front.

I didn't have much luck with the previous tournament. But I suppose I should give it another go before I give up on MP entirely. It will be interesting jumping straight to the end of the war. I'm still in Sicily in my current SP playthrough.