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.

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.

I'll believe it when Steve says it 😉, but you might be right.  My wallet is ready anyway.  But if I'm honest (and of course I am) I would prefer:

Do this:


Get this:

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.

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.

Yeah. Don't use that method.
The HD point is determined by either the final move point or the target specified on that final point. Above, people are talking about the first method. Do not do that. If for any reason you make a mistake your tank will drive to that point - which is nearly certainly not what you want.
You may ask "what mistake"? If your tank starts out in a place where they already have LOS to the HD place then it will never stop moving since it never reached HD.
So what you do is add your move orders out of LOS of the place where you want to be HD to. Then specify the HD move command up to the crest of the obstruction. Once there set a target order to the place you want to be HD for. This is a bit iterative just keep tweaking until you get the target command set. This way the worst that can happen is your tank stops at the top of the obstruction. Which is much better than driving down the other side and into the open.

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.

Ok, that's a fair point. A vehicle pack with some mine clearing equipment would be nice.

@Bearstronaut:
Of course 👍🏻
There will be a last (small) delay of maximum 1-2 weeks🙏🏼 Sorry for that, but reworking some missions costs more time than expected and I want to give you high quality content. 
 
Regards 
Mr.X

So, after I learned more about how Soviet tactics are actually supposed to work from watching @domfluff's collaboration with Free Whisky, and giving FM 100-2-1 a full reread*, I found that Soviet doctrine actually works really well. I was even able to use it to good effect in CMBS, even against American forces.
One of the most important things to remember is that it's not about just lining up and charging forward (in fact I rather got the impression that the founding principle of Cold War Soviet doctrine was "let's not do things the way we did them in WW2" (more emphasis on maneuver and avoiding frontal attacks, and more emphasis on artillery)). The most important part of the Soviet army isn't the tanks, it's the artillery. The tanks come in 2nd place in importance after the artillery, and the infantry come in 3rd place (though the infantry are still important, they understood completely that tanks need infantry support**). It's true that the Soviet army is less flexible than NATO armies at lower levels. It's true that lower ranked leaders (platoon and company commanders) were not supposed to exercise the kind of initiative that lower level NATO leaders were expected to exercise. So from the battalion level down it was a very battle-drill focused army. But from the regimental commanders up there is considerably more flexibility to come up with detailed plans, which should account for multiple contingencies. The lack of emphasis on lower level initiative (in fact outright discouragement of lower level initiative) isn't about stifling flexibility, it's about ensuring the will of the commander is carried out. So how well a given Soviet force performs will depend very heavily on the quality of their regimental and division commanders.
Again, the battalions and companies fight according to battle drills. But the regimental commander had a lot of flexibility in how and where to employ his battalions. Assuming the regimental commander is competent (granted, a big assumption, based on what we've seen from Russian commanders), he would try not to just use his battalions as blunt instruments. He would come up with a detailed plan, using deception, maneuver, and overwhelming firepower. In Combat Mission terms, since you rarely have full regiments, you'll be wanting to do this detailed planning with whatever sized force you have available, even if it's only a battalion or company.
When it comes time for the main attack you should go all in with everything you've got. But you shouldn't send the main attack in until you're ready. You'll want to spend a large chunk of the scenario just preparing things for your main attack. Think hard about the avenue of approach you want to use for your main attack. The Soviets would try to attack from an unexpected direction (for example: they absolutely will attack through forests if they think their vehicles can get through and it might allow them to emerge on the flank or rear of enemy defenses). So if you think you see an approach that the scenario designer wouldn't have thought to defend, and which you can get your forces through, then that approach is in line with Soviet thinking. A key element of the main attack, when it is finally time to send it in, is overwhelming firepower. The artillery fire plan is one of the most important elements of the overall plan. The Soviets were an artillery army first and foremost. Every attack would be supported by mass concentrations of artillery. You'll want to time your main attack to coincide with a full barrage consisting of all of your guns (the main attack is not the time to save ammunition), hitting both known and suspected enemy positions that might interfere with your advance. And don't just leave it up to the artillery either. Don't wait for your tanks to spot targets, but give them a large number of target briefly commands to hit every potential enemy position you can think of, even if you don't know for certain that it's really an enemy position (my rule of thumb as the Soviets/Russians is that my infantry never storm a town until every floor of every building has been hit by at least two HE rounds, regardless of whether enemy troops have actually been spotted in that building). Again, the main attack is not the time to try to save ammunition. I'll generally chain up multiple target briefly commands for each tank to execute each turn by targeting them from waypoints, sometimes with a 15 second pause order at each waypoint for better control (though firing on the move is probably more in line with how the Soviets wanted to fight). Whether I intend to bypass a position or storm it with infantry, I want to make sure no point in the position remains unhit with HE. And I always endeavor to have my infantry, coming up in their vehicles just behind the tanks, enter the enemy positions mere seconds after the last HE round has hit them (the timing on this can be tricky, but it is possible). Mass is an important component of Soviet doctrine. But it's really about massing firepower, not massing platforms. Massing platforms is merely a means to massing firepower.
In a meeting engagement (or any attack that does not start with Soviet forces already in contact with the enemy), they would have an advance guard ahead of the main body, itself broken up into three parts. The first part is the Combat Reconnaissance Patrol (CRP), consisting of one platoon. Their job is to find the enemy. Ideally by spotting them, but if necessary by dying to them. The second part is the Forward Security Element (FSE), consisting of a company minus the platoon that was split off to form the CRP. Their job is to brush aside a weak enemy, or fix a strong enemy in place for the third part. The third part is the advance guard main body, consisting of the regiment's lead battalion, minus the company that was split off to form the FSE. Depending on the conditions set by the CRP and FSE they may try to flank the force that was fixed in place by the FSE, or pursue some other objective that the fixed force can't stop them from taking. In this sort of battalion-sized advance to contact the battalion commander has more of the flexibility and initiative normally reserved for the regimental commander. Technically the Advance Guard main body is still setting conditions for the regiment's main body to do whatever it intends to do (larger flank attack, breakthrough, exploitation). But in Combat Mission terms I think it's good enough to just think in terms of your CRP, FSE, and your main body (the regimental main body behind the advance guard main body is probably out of scope for a single Combat Mission scenario anyway). You may want to have an FO with your CRP or FSE to start calling in the barrage that will support your main attack. Or you will want to preplan your artillery (you can certainly have a more complex fire plan if it's preplanned), with your main attack timed to go in at the 15-minute mark, and the CRP and FSE expected to have done their jobs before the 15-minute mark.
When an attack starts in contact with the enemy (they aren't moving to contact, and they already know what's in front of them), the Soviets wouldn't have an advance guard. The attack would go in more according to the 'deliberate attack' training scenarios. Whether you choose to employ a CRP and/or FSE in advance of your main attack, the important thing is that you have a good idea of what you are facing so that you can decide how, where, and when you want your main body to spring the main attack. Again, you are trying to avoid a frontal attack (hit their positions from the flank or rear if such an approach is available), and go in firepower-heavy with everything you've got, when (not before) you are ready to spring the main attack. Do everything you can to prepare the way for the main attack before springing it (recon, fix any forces that need to be fixed, start calling in fire-missions timed to support the main attack).
*I had read parts of FM 100-2-1 before. But I had skipped to the parts about platoon, company, and battalion formations and battle drills. But those are just the building blocks of Soviet doctrine, not the actual substance of Soviet doctrine.
**In fact they apparently decided that they were a bit too tank-heavy at some point in the 80s. One of their late 80s organizational reforms (which I don't think they ever actually completed before the Cold War ended (the 1991 edition of FM 100-2-3 suggested they were still early in the process of implementing this reform)) was to replace one of the tank regiments in each division with another motor rifle regiment. So tank divisions were to go from three tank regiments and a motor rifle regiment to two tank regiments and two motor rifle regiments. And motor rifle divisions were to go from three motor rifle regiments and a tank regiment to four motor rifle regiments, with the only tank support being the tank battalions organic to each motor rifle regiment. One can imagine how this would have resulted in a much more sensible ratio of tanks to infantry.

My short version of the excellent write up by Centurian52:
Using Sov tactics to beat the Germans/NATO in RT/CW:
Time spent on recon is never wasted.
Time and resources spent killing enemy recon is never wasted. 
Have a plan and execute it. 
The artillery fire plan must support the maneuver plan. The maneuver plan dictates the fire plan and they must be mutually supportive. 
A company of Sov tanks spots better than any single German/NATO tank. 
Take away the better spotting offered by the German/NATO habit of fighting unbuttoned. Get them heads down to decrease their situational awareness. 
When you attack, attack! Don't poke him with one finger at a time. Make a fist and crush the enemy with overwhelming force. 
Use a platoon to crush a squad > use a company to crush a platoon >> use a battalion to crush a squad. Fair fights are for suckers.
Keep pressing attacks until they aren't feasible anymore, but don't reinforce failure. The Germans/Americans never have enough troops/tanks. 
Just because you have mass doesn't mean the only way forwards is a frontal assault. There are other ways to win that don't involve sticking your dick into the meat grinder until it jams. Recon routes that bypass the enemy, the Germans/NATO never have enough troops/tanks to cover every avenue of approach. Infantry infiltration is a thing.
If you're playing the Sov: Your man portable ATGMs (>AT3s) are scary. Use infiltration tactics to get the ATGMs forward into range to support attacks. Make sure to protect the carriers since they are stuffed with reloads and make big boom if hit. 
Take your time, don't be in a rush to die. You'll probably run out of people, tanks, and/or ammo before you run out of time. 
 
Urban warfare: 
Don't move in the streets. Mouseholing is optimum, then back gardens, then alleyways. Stay out of the streets. Use supporting weapons to create mouseholes and gaps in walls. 
Don't go in through the front door. If you can arrange it start at the top and clear down. 
Suppress every building that has line of sight to your maneuvering force. If you can't suppress or smoke it don't move that way.  
 
H

So, after I learned more about how Soviet tactics are actually supposed to work from watching @domfluff's collaboration with Free Whisky, and giving FM 100-2-1 a full reread*, I found that Soviet doctrine actually works really well. I was even able to use it to good effect in CMBS, even against American forces.
One of the most important things to remember is that it's not about just lining up and charging forward (in fact I rather got the impression that the founding principle of Cold War Soviet doctrine was "let's not do things the way we did them in WW2" (more emphasis on maneuver and avoiding frontal attacks, and more emphasis on artillery)). The most important part of the Soviet army isn't the tanks, it's the artillery. The tanks come in 2nd place in importance after the artillery, and the infantry come in 3rd place (though the infantry are still important, they understood completely that tanks need infantry support**). It's true that the Soviet army is less flexible than NATO armies at lower levels. It's true that lower ranked leaders (platoon and company commanders) were not supposed to exercise the kind of initiative that lower level NATO leaders were expected to exercise. So from the battalion level down it was a very battle-drill focused army. But from the regimental commanders up there is considerably more flexibility to come up with detailed plans, which should account for multiple contingencies. The lack of emphasis on lower level initiative (in fact outright discouragement of lower level initiative) isn't about stifling flexibility, it's about ensuring the will of the commander is carried out. So how well a given Soviet force performs will depend very heavily on the quality of their regimental and division commanders.
Again, the battalions and companies fight according to battle drills. But the regimental commander had a lot of flexibility in how and where to employ his battalions. Assuming the regimental commander is competent (granted, a big assumption, based on what we've seen from Russian commanders), he would try not to just use his battalions as blunt instruments. He would come up with a detailed plan, using deception, maneuver, and overwhelming firepower. In Combat Mission terms, since you rarely have full regiments, you'll be wanting to do this detailed planning with whatever sized force you have available, even if it's only a battalion or company.
When it comes time for the main attack you should go all in with everything you've got. But you shouldn't send the main attack in until you're ready. You'll want to spend a large chunk of the scenario just preparing things for your main attack. Think hard about the avenue of approach you want to use for your main attack. The Soviets would try to attack from an unexpected direction (for example: they absolutely will attack through forests if they think their vehicles can get through and it might allow them to emerge on the flank or rear of enemy defenses). So if you think you see an approach that the scenario designer wouldn't have thought to defend, and which you can get your forces through, then that approach is in line with Soviet thinking. A key element of the main attack, when it is finally time to send it in, is overwhelming firepower. The artillery fire plan is one of the most important elements of the overall plan. The Soviets were an artillery army first and foremost. Every attack would be supported by mass concentrations of artillery. You'll want to time your main attack to coincide with a full barrage consisting of all of your guns (the main attack is not the time to save ammunition), hitting both known and suspected enemy positions that might interfere with your advance. And don't just leave it up to the artillery either. Don't wait for your tanks to spot targets, but give them a large number of target briefly commands to hit every potential enemy position you can think of, even if you don't know for certain that it's really an enemy position (my rule of thumb as the Soviets/Russians is that my infantry never storm a town until every floor of every building has been hit by at least two HE rounds, regardless of whether enemy troops have actually been spotted in that building). Again, the main attack is not the time to try to save ammunition. I'll generally chain up multiple target briefly commands for each tank to execute each turn by targeting them from waypoints, sometimes with a 15 second pause order at each waypoint for better control (though firing on the move is probably more in line with how the Soviets wanted to fight). Whether I intend to bypass a position or storm it with infantry, I want to make sure no point in the position remains unhit with HE. And I always endeavor to have my infantry, coming up in their vehicles just behind the tanks, enter the enemy positions mere seconds after the last HE round has hit them (the timing on this can be tricky, but it is possible). Mass is an important component of Soviet doctrine. But it's really about massing firepower, not massing platforms. Massing platforms is merely a means to massing firepower.
In a meeting engagement (or any attack that does not start with Soviet forces already in contact with the enemy), they would have an advance guard ahead of the main body, itself broken up into three parts. The first part is the Combat Reconnaissance Patrol (CRP), consisting of one platoon. Their job is to find the enemy. Ideally by spotting them, but if necessary by dying to them. The second part is the Forward Security Element (FSE), consisting of a company minus the platoon that was split off to form the CRP. Their job is to brush aside a weak enemy, or fix a strong enemy in place for the third part. The third part is the advance guard main body, consisting of the regiment's lead battalion, minus the company that was split off to form the FSE. Depending on the conditions set by the CRP and FSE they may try to flank the force that was fixed in place by the FSE, or pursue some other objective that the fixed force can't stop them from taking. In this sort of battalion-sized advance to contact the battalion commander has more of the flexibility and initiative normally reserved for the regimental commander. Technically the Advance Guard main body is still setting conditions for the regiment's main body to do whatever it intends to do (larger flank attack, breakthrough, exploitation). But in Combat Mission terms I think it's good enough to just think in terms of your CRP, FSE, and your main body (the regimental main body behind the advance guard main body is probably out of scope for a single Combat Mission scenario anyway). You may want to have an FO with your CRP or FSE to start calling in the barrage that will support your main attack. Or you will want to preplan your artillery (you can certainly have a more complex fire plan if it's preplanned), with your main attack timed to go in at the 15-minute mark, and the CRP and FSE expected to have done their jobs before the 15-minute mark.
When an attack starts in contact with the enemy (they aren't moving to contact, and they already know what's in front of them), the Soviets wouldn't have an advance guard. The attack would go in more according to the 'deliberate attack' training scenarios. Whether you choose to employ a CRP and/or FSE in advance of your main attack, the important thing is that you have a good idea of what you are facing so that you can decide how, where, and when you want your main body to spring the main attack. Again, you are trying to avoid a frontal attack (hit their positions from the flank or rear if such an approach is available), and go in firepower-heavy with everything you've got, when (not before) you are ready to spring the main attack. Do everything you can to prepare the way for the main attack before springing it (recon, fix any forces that need to be fixed, start calling in fire-missions timed to support the main attack).
*I had read parts of FM 100-2-1 before. But I had skipped to the parts about platoon, company, and battalion formations and battle drills. But those are just the building blocks of Soviet doctrine, not the actual substance of Soviet doctrine.
**In fact they apparently decided that they were a bit too tank-heavy at some point in the 80s. One of their late 80s organizational reforms (which I don't think they ever actually completed before the Cold War ended (the 1991 edition of FM 100-2-3 suggested they were still early in the process of implementing this reform)) was to replace one of the tank regiments in each division with another motor rifle regiment. So tank divisions were to go from three tank regiments and a motor rifle regiment to two tank regiments and two motor rifle regiments. And motor rifle divisions were to go from three motor rifle regiments and a tank regiment to four motor rifle regiments, with the only tank support being the tank battalions organic to each motor rifle regiment. One can imagine how this would have resulted in a much more sensible ratio of tanks to infantry.

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.
 

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.
 

I'll generally arrange my platoons and companies into whatever formation I think makes sense for the situation (line, column, wedge (one up, two back), vee (two up, one back)), and then give group orders for the whole platoon or company, confident that if the group does run into the enemy they'll at least be in a sensible formation. That does a lot to manage the complexity of a large formation in the early 'movement to contact' phase of a battle. But once contact is made, enemy positions are revealed, and I start forming more detailed plans, I see no alternative but to start giving more detailed orders to individual squads and teams. I just accept that I'll spend more time on each turn and play fewer turns per day for larger scenarios.

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.

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.

Take a look at "Demolishing the Myth: Tank Battle at Prokhorovka" if your interested in the just the tank part of Citadel. I'm just reading the Russian use of anti-tank strongpoints manned by "destroyer anti-tank artillery units" who got a bonus for destroying german tanks, made up of regiment and brigade level units with 20+ guns of 45mm/76mm guns, some even with APCR.
Glantz has published a book "Defensive tactics at Kursk" which you should be able to get as a free PDF somewhere on the web, it has usable maps and is only 60+ pages, very easy to read.

I'll generally arrange my platoons and companies into whatever formation I think makes sense for the situation (line, column, wedge (one up, two back), vee (two up, one back)), and then give group orders for the whole platoon or company, confident that if the group does run into the enemy they'll at least be in a sensible formation. That does a lot to manage the complexity of a large formation in the early 'movement to contact' phase of a battle. But once contact is made, enemy positions are revealed, and I start forming more detailed plans, I see no alternative but to start giving more detailed orders to individual squads and teams. I just accept that I'll spend more time on each turn and play fewer turns per day for larger scenarios.

I've made a Bren vs MG42 thread before. But the subject of that thread was accuracy, so I figured I had better make a new thread if I wanted to do a more general comparison between the two.
Before I get started, it's important to recognize that in any Bren vs MG42 debate, we're exclusively talking about the MG42 in it's LMG configuration. The MG42 was what we would now call a General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG). In various configurations it could serve in a Light Machine Gun (LMG) role, a Heavy Machine Gun (HMG) role (though we would refer to it as a medium machine gun in this role these days, since it wasn't firing large caliber ammunition), an anti-aircraft role, or as a tank machine gun (though in practice the MG34 was retained as the preferred tank machine gun). But it's only in its LMG configuration that it's filling the same role for the German army that the Bren filled for Commonwealth armies. Perhaps it might be worth doing a comparison between an HMG MG42 and an M1919 at some point. In its LMG configuration it is mounted on a bipod, and its belt is feeding from a 50 round drum. So it is firing from about as stable of a mount as the Bren, and it will need to reload about as frequently as the Bren.
To those of us who have played any of the western front WW2 CM titles, the answer seems obvious. We all know how difficult it is to gain fire superiority over German opponents when we play as Commonwealth forces. And that comes down to the simple fact that the German machineguns are pouring out more firepower than the Commonwealth Brens. So clearly, the MG42 is better. But I'm starting to suspect that the Bren's top-loading mechanism for speeding up assisted loading, which isn't modeled in Combat Mission (I'm guessing it might be difficult to get the engine to account for whether there is an assistant nearby (it's always possible that the gunner is the last man left), possibly making this feature more difficult to implement than it's worth), makes more of a difference than I had previously realized.
Both the Bren and MG42 are crew served weapons. Meaning that, assuming the chaos of battle hasn't left the gunner alone, he would be assisted in reloading the weapon by an assistant gunner/loader. Assisted loading might shave a couple seconds off of the time it takes to reload the MG42 in-game. It would shave considerably more time off the time it takes to reload the Bren. When he's being assisted, all the Bren gunner has to do is reach up to grab the empty magazine out of the gun, which will be followed moments later by the no. 2 gunner punching the next magazine into the top of the gun. The whole process takes so little time that it might be mistaken for a regular pause between bursts. Meaning that the Bren can pour out almost completely uninterrupted fire for as long as the section has magazines to keep feeding into it. The frequent pauses in firing we see in-game for loading would appear to almost vanish (the unassisted loading currently in game looks like it might take about enough time to dump another 30 round magazine, so with assisted loading Bren gunners in-game might put out nearly twice as much firepower as they currently do).
Anytime this debate is raised, overheating and barrel changes need to be mentioned. The MG42's higher rate of fire meant that it would overheat faster. The Bren's slower rate of fire meant it would take longer to overheat, but it would still overheat eventually. Which is why both machine guns had fast and convenient procedures for replacing a hot barrel with a cold barrel. The MG42 barrel change procedure might actually be a bit faster than the Bren barrel change (haven't timed them, but it looks a wee bit faster), but I think I actually prefer the Bren barrel change overall. Bren barrels had a handle, which made it easy to change out a hot barrel without actually touching the barrel itself. The MG42's barrel had to be taken out with a glove in order to avoid touching the hot barrel directly (though if you lost the glove you could tip the barrel out). Because the MG42 would overheat faster, a German squad would carry multiple spare barrels (I heard they would have six spare barrels, but does anyone know if this is right? Or is this figure for an HMG team?), while a Commonwealth section would only have one spare barrel for the Bren. But carrying so many additional spare barrels apparently didn't encumber German squads to an unreasonable degree. Overall, overheating seems to have been perfectly manageable for the MG42, but it's one more factor that favors the Bren. Overheating and barrel changes, like assisted loading, are also not modeled in Combat Mission. But since barrel changes would be less frequent than reloading, it would probably make much less of a difference than assisted loading (though if overheating was modeled, it would put a cap on how much sustained fire the BAR could put out, since it didn't have a quick-change barrel at all and the gunner would simply have to wait for it to cool down).
There are also a pair of myths, which I've mentioned a couple times in other threads, that the Bren was extremely accurate, and that the MG42 was extremely inaccurate. This was the main subject of another thread, so I won't go into too much detail here. But as far as I can tell they probably had about the same accuracy, about 4-5 MOA. Whatever advantages the Bren had over the MG42, apparently accuracy wasn't one of them.
As the title of this post implied, there have been arguments about which weapon was better overall almost since they first came up against each other. My current thinking probably wouldn't be very satisfying to either side of the issue. I think they're probably either about equal, or the MG42 is slightly better (but not by a large margin). The MG42 could put out extremely lethal bursts of fire, while the Bren could pour out a nearly uninterrupted stream of sustained fire. In some situations the MG42's more lethal bursts of fire will be more of an advantage (higher chance of inflicting casualties on briefly exposed infantry). And in some situations the Bren's more continuous fire will be more of an advantage (suppressed infantry might be less likely to be able to take advantage of pauses in firing to poke their heads up or make a dash for it). Because Combat Mission doesn't model assisted loading, we only see the MG42's lethal bursts of fire, and not the Bren's sustained fire. Which is why the MG42 appears to be better in Combat Mission. Hopefully CM3 will model assisted loading, allowing us to get a higher fidelity comparison between the two. Even if, once assisted loading is accounted for, one still ends up proving better than the other, I think there can be no doubt that both were excellent machine guns.
But what do you think? Have I overestimated the importance of assisted loading? Have I underestimated the importance of overheating and barrel changes? How likely are these factors to be modeled in CM3? Do you think one of these weapons is clearly better than the other?

Thanks, after trying this the other day and it didn't work, it does now.
Release date on Slitherine is showing as 25th (tomorrow).

I have just now successfully registered CMFB and Downfall onto Matrix, got Steam keys for both and registered them on Steam.
Now awaiting release.

Demining vehicle like a mineplow. It was made in BN

Try Colossus Reborn, your eyes will water. Probably the best book I ever read though.