Centurian52

In real life a time delay like that would be done with FFE only, and not an adjust fire mission, for some of the reasons you outline. The time to adjust is variable, and the scenario for use would be something like - there's an infantry company moving and we want to hit them right when they get to that bridge over there, and have estimated their movement rate. Something like that. So you would not adjust fire - you'd want to just hit them with the FFE. If it's a larger or more lucrative unit, it could be a time on target battalion mission (all 3 batteries of a battalion fire maybe 2 or 3 volleys coordinated to hit simultaneously at time X minutes from now. Works best with a feature that can be easily ID'ed on a map and accurate grid coords passed to the FDC. Bridge, road intersection, hilltop, etc.
You can't really do this in CM, even though it's pretty much a standard mission to perform. The only way is a preplanned mission on turn one, but not later in the game at a target of opportunity. The procedures from WW2 through the Cold War would not vary very much at all. The CW period in game predates most GPS and computerized fire control. It was just coming into service then. Black Sea would be different as by then there were many changes.
I would love to see finer control of artillery, but I wouldn't like to see it become an artillery centric game - perhaps some toggle on/off realism features. Some people (like me) would love the artillery aspect. Others may not care so much and prefer the abstraction.

Dave

It would be nice however to be able to specify the delay on pre-planned artillery to whatever time interval you want (e.g., game opens up a text box, and you enter 33 minutes), instead of 0, 5, 10, 15 minute delay.
Also would be nice if you pre-plan on map artillery unit to go at a time, that other on-map units can begin their pre-planned missions at a different time.  Currently they get fixed to whatever time you set your first on-map barrage delay to. 
And on my next point -->, and I am not sure I am remembering this correctly, but it may also be that if you pre-plan an on-map unit barrage, then off-map units also have to fire with the same delay.  But as I said, I am not certain I am remembering that correctly.

They begin spotting at the end of the delay. And since spotting takes a variable amount of time, each battery will fire for effect at different times. The difference in when they open fire will be less though, since differences in call-in times are no longer a factor (provided that the call-in time was less than the delay). But when each battery opens fire could still be a turn or two apart. I would prefer if they fired spotting rounds ASAP, and then fired for effect at the end of the delay. That would make truly synchronized artillery fire possible. But that might give more warning to opponents in H2H battles that a barrage was incoming, so I suppose I can understand the reasoning for why it isn't done that way.
The fire will be synchronized if you call in the artillery during the setup phase. But there will still be some variation in when the first rounds actually land, which could be tens of seconds in some cases, since there is still some variation from one battery to the next in how long the rounds are in flight.

I mostly don't use the 'assault' order at all. I generally prefer to micromanage the bounding of individual teams. I get better control over who moves first and where they bound to that way. And I can have greater dispersion between bounding teams that way. The trick is working out how long the pause orders need to be between bounds. I figure about 5 seconds for each action square that I want the teams to cross per bound (assuming a 'quick' movement order) on most terrain types. That's a bit of an overestimate, but the slight timing errors that will accumulate can be corrected between turns. So for my standard short bound (3 action squares, or 24 meters) I'll give 15 second pause order on each waypoint, and for my standard long bound (6 action squares, or 48 meters) I'll give a 30 second pause order on each waypoint. The team that I want to move second will get either a 15 or 30 second pause order at the start of the turn.
I'll generally only place a couple waypoints each turn (about the number I expect my teams to actually reach during the turn). That way I only need to guess one minute's worth of timing, and the timing errors that accumulate over a single turn will generally be negligible. Since my teams have usually reached all of their waypoints by the end of the turn, the timings for the next turn are starting on a clean slate. You may need to adjust timings on certain terrain types. I'll sometimes deviate from my standard 3 and 6 tile bounds if there is a particular feature I want that team to bound to that is an action square further or closer (adjusting the timing accordingly, so 10 seconds if they're only bounding two action squares this time, or 20 seconds if it's four action squares). In dense woods I'll generally do very short bounds of only two action squares (16 meters) with 15 second pauses between each bound (the terrain tiles that frequently accompany dense woods will tend to slow infantry movement). You can give target orders from each waypoint if there is a particular position that you want to keep suppressed while you're moving.

I'd include 1939 in that range. There's something about the near-peer combat in Poland that sets it apart from the peer vs peer fighting in France. I also just want to see the Polish in action with their own uniforms and equipment, before the loss of their country forced them into a Commonwealth force structure.

Huh... seems to be working now(!!), but I swear that what Centurian suggested was one of the first things I tried. So I have a Ranger Battalion from '43 Italy working with a Ranger Battalion from '44, and something similar for early and late German motorized battalions.
Perhaps there was some other kind of limitation on the formations I'd originally chosen, or I screwed something up, but at least it's confirmation that conceptually it is possible. 
Thanks gentlemen!

Probably the last bone for BP2 before release. A small thing, but the main menu screen is getting cluttered.  

You mean the damage to the early warning radar, or some other installation? I believe you have the burden of proof backwards. I think, far from needing proof that it was the Ukrainians, we would need some significant reason to doubt that it was the Ukrainians. It's a legitimate military target that they have the means to strike, and no one else is at war with Russia, so it would be very surprising if it was someone other than the Ukrainians.

You mean the damage to the early warning radar, or some other installation? I believe you have the burden of proof backwards. I think, far from needing proof that it was the Ukrainians, we would need some significant reason to doubt that it was the Ukrainians. It's a legitimate military target that they have the means to strike, and no one else is at war with Russia, so it would be very surprising if it was someone other than the Ukrainians.

It does matter tho, Russian dual purpose equipment has been used to severely strike significant targets and under take important Russian actions to influence the war in Ukraine. It's also notable to note the degrees of escalation occurring by Ukraine, Russian nuclear capable bombers, Russian warships including submarine and submarine tender capability, now Russian radar sites in both Moldavia and southern Russia. Clearly Ukraine has been operating cautiously with planned step downs and increasing attacks accordingly due to push back or lack thereof.
Again, if Russia really is terrified of NATO moving to end the Russian regime, they wouldn't be stripping forces facing NATO including their air defense guarding against Finland and the Baltics, nor stripping the units in Kalinagrad.
If Russia is terrified of escalation and needs to warn NATO to back down, as it feels cornered why is Russia still undertaking measures to indicate maximalist aims and positions and not attempting to utilize the positions offered by the West in late 2022? If they wanna downgrade the temp, launching offensives in regions quiet since 2022 is the opposite, declaring Zelensky is illegitimate is also not seeking de-escalation.
I'm fact the measures taken indicate Russia is seeking hard line long term war in Ukraine. In these conditions, striking targets in Russia, is unavoidable.

The Maple Feline gave better answers to your current set of questions than I was about to. But if you have further game engine questions I recommend checking out AR's youtube channel. He knows things about the engine that never occurred to me even after 15 years of playing the games.
https://www.youtube.com/@AR-GuidesAndMore

I decided a while back to replace one of the house textures (the one with large grey blocks) with something a little different and ended up adding four new house skins along with two new modular building skins.  While I was working on the files, I also added basic weathering to the tile roofs for all buildings.  You can download the file from the link below and place it in your data/Z folder.  
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OjN0AcVIsFzEthIbAaTBq2CXrhVbLQTN/view?usp=sharing

Already subscribed!! Especially useful for me were the vids on mounting and dismounting and (especially) how to tell the blast command exactly which section you want blown up. Who knew?!?!

The Maple Feline gave better answers to your current set of questions than I was about to. But if you have further game engine questions I recommend checking out AR's youtube channel. He knows things about the engine that never occurred to me even after 15 years of playing the games.
https://www.youtube.com/@AR-GuidesAndMore

New batch of YPR-765 from Netherlands, equipped with more protected combat modules.
These Cold War YPR/M113 showed itself as perfect "combat taxi" - cheap - without surplus high-tech features, well-protected, well-offroad and with proper space inside for equipped soldiers. We need hundreds and thousands of them. 
 
 

Exactly this. To the lay man, nukes are just a weapons system. In reality, they sit within a long thought out and tested set of systems and assumptions that every nuclear power devotes a military and political bureaucracy to. The entire structure is to ensure that nobody, ever, destabilizes the system because destabilization almost certainly leads to use. 
When that system collapses in any country, we are all in a hell of a lot of trouble.

There is definitely software that can build an accurate 3D model of an area based on data gathered from a moving camera. That is not a capability that an image-recognition AI would normally have. It isn't hard to image pairing the 3D modeling capability with the image recognition capability. But remember the first rule of AI. What's hard is easy, and what's easy is hard.
You'd need extra logic to prevent it from spitting out an answer other than "yep, there's a tank at the location of that flat rectangle in the 3D model". You might solve that by building a 3D model recognition AI. But it probably won't always be possible or practical to build a full 3D model, so you'll want to retain the flat image recognition software. But there will be cases where the image recognition software will say an object isn't a tank, while the 3D model software will say that it is a tank and visa-versa. Which do you train the overall program to trust?
For now I think the answer is manned-unmanned teaming (swarms of unmanned platforms controlled from a single manned command platform). If what's hard for humans is easy for AI, and what's easy for humans is hard for AI, then having them work together just makes sense (at least until we can figure out how to make what's easy for humans easy for AI). I think manned-unmanned teaming is the route we're going down in the near-term. It allows us to use AI on the battlefield right now, without having to wait for it to get more advanced, while effectively compensating for the weaknesses of modern AI. And it seems like a natural mid point between a fully manned force and a fully unmanned force (it seems plainly obvious to me that fully unmanned is the way things will be done in the far future).
For sure our 6th gen fighter program is going for manned-unmanned teaming. But I think ground warfare is going to go down that route as well sooner or later. Imagine a tank platoon, or possibly even a tank company, in which all of the actual "tanks" are UGVs and the only manned platform is the HQ vehicle. Or an artillery battery in which all of the guns are UGVs, with their fire directed from a single HQ vehicle. I could even imagine a mortar platoon in which all of the tubes are mounted on UGVs controlled remotely by a specialist from the company HQ.

This, or other tricks like it, would work against modern AI*. We might find ways to teach AI to get wise to such tricks in the near-future (hard to guess how "near", but surely it can't be an impossible problem). So I guess a good question might be, are we discussing modern warfare (say, now to 5 years from now) or near-future warfare (say 10-20 years from now)? If we're talking modern warfare, then stupid-seeming tricks like this will almost certainly work very well against any AI that are put into the field. If we're talking near-future warfare, it's reasonable to assume that we'll have figured out how to make AI that doesn't fall for these sorts of tricks (probably, though the pace of technological development is notoriously difficult to predict, with some breakthroughs coming earlier than anticipated and others coming far later than expected).
*First rule of AI. What's hard is easy, and what's easy is hard. If it's prohibitively difficult for a human to do, chances are it's trivially easy for an AI to do. But if it's something that a human finds to be trivially easy (such as recognizing the difference between a tank, and a billboard with an image of a tank), there's a good chance it will stump a modern AI. The hard part of getting AI to work they way we want it to work isn't figuring out how to get it to do the things we think are hard. It's figuring out how to get it to do the things we think are easy.

This, or other tricks like it, would work against modern AI*. We might find ways to teach AI to get wise to such tricks in the near-future (hard to guess how "near", but surely it can't be an impossible problem). So I guess a good question might be, are we discussing modern warfare (say, now to 5 years from now) or near-future warfare (say 10-20 years from now)? If we're talking modern warfare, then stupid-seeming tricks like this will almost certainly work very well against any AI that are put into the field. If we're talking near-future warfare, it's reasonable to assume that we'll have figured out how to make AI that doesn't fall for these sorts of tricks (probably, though the pace of technological development is notoriously difficult to predict, with some breakthroughs coming earlier than anticipated and others coming far later than expected).
*First rule of AI. What's hard is easy, and what's easy is hard. If it's prohibitively difficult for a human to do, chances are it's trivially easy for an AI to do. But if it's something that a human finds to be trivially easy (such as recognizing the difference between a tank, and a billboard with an image of a tank), there's a good chance it will stump a modern AI. The hard part of getting AI to work they way we want it to work isn't figuring out how to get it to do the things we think are hard. It's figuring out how to get it to do the things we think are easy.

This, or other tricks like it, would work against modern AI*. We might find ways to teach AI to get wise to such tricks in the near-future (hard to guess how "near", but surely it can't be an impossible problem). So I guess a good question might be, are we discussing modern warfare (say, now to 5 years from now) or near-future warfare (say 10-20 years from now)? If we're talking modern warfare, then stupid-seeming tricks like this will almost certainly work very well against any AI that are put into the field. If we're talking near-future warfare, it's reasonable to assume that we'll have figured out how to make AI that doesn't fall for these sorts of tricks (probably, though the pace of technological development is notoriously difficult to predict, with some breakthroughs coming earlier than anticipated and others coming far later than expected).
*First rule of AI. What's hard is easy, and what's easy is hard. If it's prohibitively difficult for a human to do, chances are it's trivially easy for an AI to do. But if it's something that a human finds to be trivially easy (such as recognizing the difference between a tank, and a billboard with an image of a tank), there's a good chance it will stump a modern AI. The hard part of getting AI to work they way we want it to work isn't figuring out how to get it to do the things we think are hard. It's figuring out how to get it to do the things we think are easy.

Well, if a cavalryman can put his mechanised steed down...

I'd include 1939 in that range. There's something about the near-peer combat in Poland that sets it apart from the peer vs peer fighting in France. I also just want to see the Polish in action with their own uniforms and equipment, before the loss of their country forced them into a Commonwealth force structure.

No. It will not lead to the eventual end of international law. International law might come to an end eventually, but it will not be because we stayed high. If anything, it might come to an end because we went low.
I think you are missing some very basic fundamentals about this war, the relative strength of modern day Russia and the west, how the modern world works in general, and a few realities of warfare.
1. It isn't about going high or low. Russia is making gains in Ukraine right now because there was a gap in western aid, not because the west is sticking to the high road. Now that fresh aid is on the way Russia's window to make significant gains is going to come to a close, even if they keep going low. It will not reopen unless there is another gap in western aid. It has absolutely nothing to do with going high or low. Russia going low is not giving them an advantage on the battlefield, the gap in western aid is. Us going high is not putting Ukraine at a disadvantage on the battlefield, the gap in western aid is.
2. The west is massively more powerful than Russia. The US GDP in 2022 was ten times the Russian GDP. The combined members of NATO (including the US) have twenty times the Russian GDP. If you add in our Pacific and Asian allies it comes out to thirty times the Russian GDP. Now, as we have been painfully learning over the last two years, overwhelming economic superiority does not instantly or automatically translate to a superiority in military industrial production. But, as I expect Russia to very painfully learn over the next (I'm throwing out a guess here, based largely on the mediocrity principle, that we're right smack dab in the middle of this thing) two years, it does translate to a greater potential to expand military industrial production. And it translates to greater economic endurance. Russia cannot keep up current levels of spending forever. The west can keep up current levels of aid to Ukraine (or even many times the current levels of aid in monetary terms) pretty much forever. So the west absolutely has the capability to enable Ukraine to win. The only factor is western will to continue supporting Ukraine, and to hopefully expand support for Ukraine. Provided that western will to support Ukraine doesn't break, it is impossible for Russia to win even if they go low and we stay high. Going low or high isn't even a factor.
3. Going high isn't just about principle, it's where our strength comes from. I mean that literally, not in the vague feel-good sense in which the power of love somehow enables the heroes of a story to overcome impossible odds. Our strength (both military and economic) is literally derived from our alliances, our credibility, and the rules based international order. The United States has a massive network of alliances. You may notice that China and Russia, both of which are far more willing to go low, come up a little short on allies.
4. Going low doesn't actually work. This may be a bit difficult to grasp, particularly since we've been inundated with pessimists who think they're realists for so many years. But just because something is dirty or unethical doesn't make it effective. As one example, Russian assassinations on British soil were probably a factor in why the British have been so enthusiastic in providing support for Ukraine (the small amount of material they've provided has more to do with a lack of material to provide than with a lack of will to provide it). As another example, I have been reading about increasing use by the Russians of chemical weapons in Ukraine. These are outlawed in warfare under international law, so is about as clear a case of going low as you could imagine. But there are reasons why it was so much easier to outlaw the use of chemical weapons in warfare than it was to outlaw the use of, for example, cluster munitions. Chief among them is that cluster munitions are extremely effective, while chemical weapons aren't particularly effective. It was easy to outlaw chemical weapons because their cruelty is far out of proportion to their battlefield utility. They're better than nothing, but they're difficult to maintain and generally less effective than an equivalent amount of HE would have been. The fact that Russia has resorted to using chemical weapons is a sign of desperation, not a sign that these are actually effective weapons. So far I believe all of the recent Russian advances have been credited to artillery and local air superiority, not to their use of chemical weapons.

Even if this approach didn't backfire, which it almost certainly would, we would be winning by defeating the whole point of winning. I think most people here, myself included, want Ukraine to win for Ukraine's sake. But from the West's perspective the whole point of supporting Ukraine is to uphold international law. You can't uphold international law by breaking international law. We would be "winning" by maximizing the defeat of our own political objectives, giving us an outcome even worse for us than if we had lost.

Clearly he's hinting that we're getting CM:Succession Wars with Battlemechs....finally.