Centurian52

That's fair. And really that item is only a must if they ever make Combat Mission: Great War (a fantasy that I know will never come true, but that won't stop me from listing engine features that could make it viable), since the early war "squads" will be much larger than could ever fit on screen at one time.
edit for clarity: In 1914 the smallest maneuver element in a lot of armies was the company of 200+ men. You could never fit all of those soldiers on the UI at once, so a hypothetical CMGW would need the ability to scroll through them.

Oh, and one more thing comes to mind. The ability to disable time limits. I love Combat Mission for its unmatched realism. But there is really nothing realistic about time limits. Granted there may be rare instances where time limits are narratively important, such as if the next battle in a campaign is set an hour or two after the current battle, and in that case it would be weird if you kept fighting for over two hours. But the vast majority of the time time limits are unrealistic and unnecessary.

Your experience tempts me to walk back my statement. But it will take quite a lot of convincing to bring me around to the idea that so much of the military history I've learned over my life could be so wrong. From what I've heard and read it is pretty rare to accomplish something such as capturing a heavily defended city block inside a single hour of fighting (for example). While fighting over a single CM scale objective won't generally take multiple days (sometimes it will, but those can be pretty easily broken up into multiple scenarios) it is not uncommon for it to take several hours to decide a single engagement. 
Some examples of real world CM scale engagements:
-The assault on Brecourt Manor took around 2-3 hours (Winters started his reconnaissance at 0830, I'm not sure exactly when the first shot was fired and the assault began, the force withdrew at around 1230, https://www.wwiidogtags.com/ww2-history/assault-on-brecourt-manor/ said 2-3 hours for the assault so I went with that).
-The capture of Carentan (just the town itself, since the whole battle of Carentan is a bit larger than you would expect to fit in a single CM scenario) took around an hour and a half (0600-0730) for the force attacking from the north and the force attacking from the south to meet in the middle.
-The Battle of Bloody Gulch (a large CM scenario, but definitely small enough to be a CM scenario) took about 7+ hours from the commencement of the German attack at 0700 to the arrival of tanks from 2nd Armored Division at around 1400 (I'm not sure exactly how long after the tanks arrived it took to actually drive the Germans off).
I chose those three examples because they were relatively easy to look up. I did my best to avoid cherry picking by choosing to include a particular engagement before looking up how long it took. While these examples represent a small sample size, I hope they are enough to illustrate that while it is not uncommon for CM sized engagements to take approximately a standard CM time limit amount of time to play out, it is no less common for them to take considerably longer.
I suppose as a nod to the fact that leadership really does have expectations for how long it should take to accomplish a given objective you could introduce time based objectives that give the player X points for defeating the enemy within a certain amount of time. But I suppose the main motivation for my statement "...there is really nothing realistic about time limits." is this: How common is it for a mission to be considered a failure because it wasn't accomplished within the expected amount of time? I haven't heard of many missions that were scrapped just because they took longer than they were supposed to.

The Iraqis had just fought the Iranians for almost a decade and had a very good appreciation of what their forces were capable of: ie. holding static positions and conducting limited offensive actions only if planned and rehearsed down to the tiniest detail. So that's what they did.
Hiding in cities might seem sensible in hindsight, but the Iraqis are trying to hold onto Kuwait which is mostly open desert with limited- and easily bypassed and surrounded- urban areas, so it's not going to achieve anything for them. You could maybe argue that the Iraqis would perform better tactically in the cities, but they even managed to lose the Battle of Al Khafji against the Saudis who were... not really representative of the quality of the Coalition.

Seems to work for me, just checking as my dropbox with the same has been busy today.  It's all for the greater good 👍.

So out of the gate I just want to say that Combat Mission Cold War is fantastic and is probably my favorite Combat Mission. Overall everything seems exceptionally well done and I am having tons of fun with the Campaign and Scenarios. I think I may have found an issue with M735 and M774 ammunition however. While playing various missions and some quick battle multiplayer with some friends, I noticed that the T-64A was remarkably durable. I didnt think too much of this at first, because I was expecting the T-64 to be a tough nut to crack. But as time went on I started to notice that it might be a bit too tough.
M735 and M774 are not capable of penetrating the front glacis plate of T-64A, in combat mission. I have not tested this agaisnt the other Soviet tanks with similar armor compositions, so I am not sure if this potential problem pertains to those tanks as well. If the same issue exists there, much of this post may be relevant to those tanks also since they have the same or similar armor profiles on the glacis.
 
I would like to start out by showing how the current game models the mentioned APFSDS vs the named target. I performed this test at 1000m, 0 degrees angle. I used RISE Passives for the M735 test and M60A3 TTS for the M774 testing. I counted each APFSDS fired to ensure I was not confusing sabot hits with other types of ammo the AI might choose to fire. I did the tests after noticing the durability of the T-64 glacis in various battles to verify under controlled conditions what I suspected was happening. In the screenshots you will notice that HEAT and Sabot hits have a different damage decal. To summarize the results, neither round can reliably penetrate the T-64 glacis. The game appears to model the weak point near the drivers hatch as the "upper front hull" and the main glacis as the "super structure front hull." M735 is ineffective against the superstructure and can occasionally gain penetrations against the driver plate area. M774 is slightly more effective with almost all rounds that hit the superstructure bouncing off, but very occasionally one will get though. M774 also tends to get through the driver plate area fairly reliably. However in both cases many of the hits to the driver plate area are counted as partial penetrations and not complete penetrations, which is odd considering that there is basically no composite armor in this area. Partial penetrations can seen in these screenshots via a smaller hole decal. They are rare for both rounds, especially vs superstructure.
 
M735:




 
M774:


 
The T-64A glacis plate uses a laminate armor array that consisted of 80mm of steel followed by 105mm of texolite followed by a 20mm backing plate of RHA. This armor greatly increased protection against shaped charges while still providing good protection against kinetic threats.  For additional visualization purposes, I will use some screenshots from war thunder in some areas. There will also be screenshots from various books and webpages.
 

 

Source: https://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/t-72-part-2.html#8010520

From Zaloga's T-64 Battle Tank:

 
 
 
 
The Combat Mission CW manual states that M735 has 410mm of penetration and M774 has 440mm of penetration. These numbers are identical to the ones quoted on the steel beasts wiki, and are listed as being for a range of 3000m. I will include the table here, as well as some other rounds which will be relevant.

 
From Tankograd: https://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/t-72-part-2.html#8010520

 
The above simulation shows that M735 would certainly penetrate the 80/105/20 array and then some at 1000m.

 
The Israeli M111 APFSDS was a derivative of the M735. It would appear to be ballistically of similar performance due to that and the penetration values on the SB wiki. Russian testing of this round revealed that it could penetrate

From Tankograd:

It should be noted here that the T-72A and M1 featured a even thicker armor array than the one on the T-64, going to 60mm RHA/105mm texolite/50mm RHA. So if this could be penetrated by M111 it stands to reason that M735 could go through the weaker T-64A armor.
 
After the end of the cold war T-72M1's were shot at with various German ammunition, including DM33 which is similar in performance to M774. These T-72s have the extra armor added later in the early 80s. It should be noted as well that the extra armor plates are past the scope of CMCW since they were not implemented until after the 1982 Israeli conflicts. DM33 105mm APFSDS penetrated the hull at 2km.

 
Additionally, here is how M735 performs in steel beasts at 1840m, which is using the same penetration numbers as the CMCW manual (the picked range was just as close as I could get to 2km in the editor without spending 1 million hours trying to get it exact):


 


 
 
Based on the general evidence, I think that the M735 and M774 ammunition should be made much more effective in game. M735 should be effective agaisnt the T-64A armor out to any practical range and M774 should be capable agaisnt the T-72A armor if it is not already, which I am guessing it is not based on in game performance agaisnt the worse T-64A armor array.

Including the comments above @Ultradave
-A system of colours or icons to recognizes visually the differents squads
-Representing each soldier in a squad
-Having a Chief of Command Floating Icon
-Introduce horses to prepare a futur early war

Hello Agusto, and thanks for your reply and interest! BLUF(Bottom Line Up Front)- I have gotten very serious about attaining funding for this project. In fact as of yesterday I have a few different funding offers on the table, so I am currently evaluating them. With funding will come full time professional computer development, so at the moment things are looking good for getting this fully under way...but nothing is guaranteed yet...
Please read on as I address the rest of your post. It sounds like you have a skill set that could be of great benefit to this project. If you would like to discuss further, send me a PM.
My operational game's name is Theater of Operations (TOO). TOO will be a fully functioning standalone/independent operational level game. That means no other game/software is needed to play it, HOWEVER I am designing TOO in such a way that it can give an order of battle (OOB) to players that *want* to play out the battle on the tactical battlefield i.e. you don't have to play it out. Most battles will probably NOT be played out on the tactical battlefield for sheer time purposes, but TOO would automatically resolve the battles with its combat engine.
Most likely the early version of TOO won't include a fully automated data transfer process between TOO and CM, BUT the goal is to have one eventually. I have talked to the guys here are BFC and this is definitely all on the table, but I need to get TOO developed first. So when a battle of interest occurs players can get the OOB and set up the battles in CM i.e. they manually set up the battles. This is all a means to an end, because I want to stress that the attainable goal will be to have an automatic data transfer process. A good example of what I am talking about exists. Some of you may be familiar with Field of Glory: Empires which came out in 2019. This is a standalone diplomatic level game, but if a player wants to fight out a battle tactically, a process was developed to let them play it out using Field of Glory 2. Despite the similarity in names, they are 2 completely different games...they share the same publisher, so this is a fair comparison.
Where does TOO stand? I have developed 90% of the game mechanics and algorithms. It is ready for beta testing. I have a fully functioning combat resolution system that gives very reasonable results. Go to my forum (link is at my footer) and you can see a manual playthrough we did of a St. Lo scenario. A battle or two was played out with CM to demonstrate that concept as well. While the game mechanics are mature, I need professionals to make it in to software. The plan is to use Unity.
Why am I wanting to develop a full game? Because that is where my interest lies for one. Secondly it has to do with the market. I can create a operational level game that will appeal to the operational market and the portion of the tactical market that is looking for a campaign system. There is more, but I will leave it there for now.
Check out the forum, look around and feel free to join the conversation over there!

Heh, well I don't think we really have any interest inserting this into CMCW ( I am tracking the scout tac aviation).  First Soviets in AFG and Russian in Chechnya are not aspirational military historical examples, no matter what they did or did not do.  In terms of CMCW, I think it would be suicidal (as has been mentioned) if for the amount of artillery in play alone, to the point that if we modeled it accurately (and I like to think that we would), no one would use it after the first try or two.  DPICM is bad enough on infantry when they are inside the vehicles...outside is bordering on silly.  
FYI, over the last 20 years NATO troops fought in some of the most mined/IED's parts of the world and we never rode on vehicles as a matter of SOP.  Being inside a burning vehicle is bad...being under a burning vehicle that has been flipped on top of you is worse.

Are you using the France 40/Sealion mods?  
FYI:  I dug thru my old folders and found the Sealion mod pack - it's about 322 MB.  

This is how misunderstandings escalate into full blown fights. It starts with an innocent criticism or disagreement:
which then gets interpreted as hostile:
and then actual insults start getting thrown:
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other. Healthy human discourse requires disagreement and argument. But you can't let it antagonize you or make you defensive. If you feel attacked by a certain statement stop and reread it a few times until you can find a non-hostile way of interpreting it. If there is no non-hostile way of interpreting a statement then just ignore it. It probably wasn't relevant to the topic of the argument anyway. Above all, never insult or attack the character of your opponent. Personal attacks and hostility are the fastest way to derail what could have potentially been a perfectly rational argument and cause it to devolve into a fight.

This is how misunderstandings escalate into full blown fights. It starts with an innocent criticism or disagreement:
which then gets interpreted as hostile:
and then actual insults start getting thrown:
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other. Healthy human discourse requires disagreement and argument. But you can't let it antagonize you or make you defensive. If you feel attacked by a certain statement stop and reread it a few times until you can find a non-hostile way of interpreting it. If there is no non-hostile way of interpreting a statement then just ignore it. It probably wasn't relevant to the topic of the argument anyway. Above all, never insult or attack the character of your opponent. Personal attacks and hostility are the fastest way to derail what could have potentially been a perfectly rational argument and cause it to devolve into a fight.

I guess I am a serial philanderer.  I play all the games and my favorite always seems to the be one I neglected for a while and started again -- "wow, this one is the best, why did I stay away  for months?". 
But I gotta say CMCW is f-ing fantastic.  I've got F&R campaign and a CW campaign going and keep sneaking over to the CW one when F&R isn't looking.  The torture and then joy/disaster of watching those slooooooooow ATGMs reaching out....  those saggers scare me to death
If I had to choose one game?  I can't do it. 

I started playing Combat Mission in 2009, a couple years after Shock Force dropped. Prior to that the most realistic game I had ever played was Rome Total War, and the most realistic modern war game I had played was World in Conflict. So to go from that straight to CMSF absolutely blew my mind at the time. I've been an avid consumer of every new Combat Mission game that has dropped since then (and I've even gone back to the first gen games and am currently playing through CMAK).
But I've always had a nostalgic place in my heart for World in Conflict (which only intensified when I discovered Operation Flashpoint), and for over a decade now I have been craving a game that could bring the incredible realism of Combat Mission to the fascinating Cold War setting of World in Conflict. So when I first saw the announcement video for CMCW back in February I just about exploded with excitement (I was actually screaming with glee). CMCW is the most satisfying scratch to the longest itch that I've ever had. It is literally a dream come true for me.

I started playing Combat Mission in 2009, a couple years after Shock Force dropped. Prior to that the most realistic game I had ever played was Rome Total War, and the most realistic modern war game I had played was World in Conflict. So to go from that straight to CMSF absolutely blew my mind at the time. I've been an avid consumer of every new Combat Mission game that has dropped since then (and I've even gone back to the first gen games and am currently playing through CMAK).
But I've always had a nostalgic place in my heart for World in Conflict (which only intensified when I discovered Operation Flashpoint), and for over a decade now I have been craving a game that could bring the incredible realism of Combat Mission to the fascinating Cold War setting of World in Conflict. So when I first saw the announcement video for CMCW back in February I just about exploded with excitement (I was actually screaming with glee). CMCW is the most satisfying scratch to the longest itch that I've ever had. It is literally a dream come true for me.

Well we like to think we have been "part of the team" for quite some time now (Bil and I were beta testers for quite awhile and they are definitely a key part of the whole outfit).  That said, this time was definitely a different level of commitment but we are really glad that Steve et al took a chance on us.
Right now we are focused on continuing to support CMCW as we roll from BFC early access to wide release under Slitherine.  After that we will see.  Nothing is written in stone just yet, but I can say we do have plans...and then a plan after that...and maybe one more after that.

Very nice.  If this is from Neuhof, you are doing very well.  That scenario is designed to be a bit of a wake up call (i.e. what an angry MRB looks like when it is let off the leash)...glad you are enjoying it.

Enjoying it?  it was crazy good fun.  I cease-fired w about 20 minutes left, there was no more significant movement happening by red team.  I only got a tactical victory despite putting quite a hurt on them.  They got the two phase lines but not even close to the road junctions.  I knocked out 11 tanks and 33 APCs and caused ~65% casualties.  That MRB aint gonna bother anyone else in this war.  Only succeeded because I set up flank ambushes and didn't try to have long distance shoot out -- I learned that lesson a while back (those damn saggers and 125mm guns). 
I am starting to feel the attrition -- my infantry were shorthanded and short of dragons.

Hey Guys,
  Thank you very much for the very positive feedback.  Gotta say that beyond Bil and I dreaming away about the "bads ol days" we were really hoping to deliver something that might bring some entertainment and happiness in what have been some pretty crappy times.  
   CMCW is the game that fit the niche we didn't know we were missing (well some definitely did), it is in that sweet spot between WW2 and the modern titles that not only blends but has a unique identity all its own.  I know not everyone will take to it but there are more than enough time-titles in the BFC library for everyone, we are just really glad we could maybe get one more out there.

This is how misunderstandings escalate into full blown fights. It starts with an innocent criticism or disagreement:
which then gets interpreted as hostile:
and then actual insults start getting thrown:
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other. Healthy human discourse requires disagreement and argument. But you can't let it antagonize you or make you defensive. If you feel attacked by a certain statement stop and reread it a few times until you can find a non-hostile way of interpreting it. If there is no non-hostile way of interpreting a statement then just ignore it. It probably wasn't relevant to the topic of the argument anyway. Above all, never insult or attack the character of your opponent. Personal attacks and hostility are the fastest way to derail what could have potentially been a perfectly rational argument and cause it to devolve into a fight.

From my limited observation, the bosses at Battlefront appear to be very happy campers about CMCW's reception and will be doubly-pleased when its anticipated sale on Steam comes about. There's still the plan to get everything in their catalog up for sale on Steam. I don't really know what left. CMFB isn't up on steam yet, is it?
Another aspect of infantry in cold war is NBC. WWII-style tank riders would be exposed to nerve gas, radiation, and nuclear blast effects. The Soviet offensive concept is buttoned-up forces rolling through a devastated landscape.

Something else to note re: ZSU-23-4 vs M163 is that the former had a Radar fire control system while the latter only had a Radar ranger. Thus, the Shilka can leverage its FCS to put shells where the computer expects the aircraft to be when they arrive vs the M163 where the gunner has to eyeball it.  I think this disparity, more than any other, makes the Shilka far more effective at the AAA role.

Well, in game SPAAGs could be perhaps overperforming but, in real life, the M163 should be wimpier than the ZSU-23-4. I remember back in the '80s that the consensus was that US Army lagged behind the Soviet Army in the mobile air defense department, and the eventual demise of the ill-fated M247 Sergeant York added insult to injury.
It will be interesting to see the Flakpanzer Gepard in action when the Bundeswehr/NVA module will be released! 😁

Warren gave a great breakdown. I would add that one of the most common complaints I see everywhere about CM games set in a modern setting is that the maps are too small. "Knife fighting in a phone booth" is a phrase that is usually thrown around quite regularly. I sympathize with that assessment to a degree.
I think that Cold War goes a long way of showing that with the proper sized maps, you can get real maneuver in a modern setting. Of course, the double edged sword here is that some people prefer those phone booth knife fights. I think that Warren is correct that Cold War currently is mostly the larger fights and does not have many smaller fights, and that going forward it will be important to try to include more of those smaller fights. But I think it was the right call going with the larger battles for the first game. After all, this was to be a massive mechanized fight, and I think it was important that Cold War capture that feeling and sense of scale out of the gate. 
All that said, I do think that Combat Mission has an issue with what I call administrative burden, or overhead. The player has to give so many orders to so many individual units, that it can get really tiresome keeping up with everything. Just getting a single company to road march can take hundreds of clicks and pause commands, etc. 
Reducing the admin burden on the player I think would go a long way to facilitating the playability of the larger battles. But that is completely in the hands of Steve and Charles, and is well beyond the scope of a game or module. 

Now some of you pay attention...this is good criticism.
So yes, if someone asked me "what would you do different", I would have to say that the balance of scenario sized for this title is it.  We have only a minority portion of Tiny and Small battle in CMCW and we wrestled over that somewhat.  So why did we go this way (and there was a deliberate consideration):
- CMCW is mechanized warfare.  One could argue it is set at the apogee of peer mechanized warfare.  So this does not mean infantry do not have a role, far from it; however, the infantry-only or infantry dominant fights are less realistic.  They definitely would have happened but they happen in context of a much larger mechanized battle.  The main problem here is weapon ranges and real estate.  As weapon systems evolved the frontages and area of effect for formations increases dramatically.  So the risk here for small force battles is big nearly empty maps or tiny fights at point blank range.  Not impossible (see Hunter or Prey for an outstanding small fight) but harder to consistently produce as realistic.
- Casual vs Hardcore.  This one is much tougher...who is the audience?  Here we really had to stick with the CM brand, which is more hardcore in its niche.  The brand is based on hyper-realistic, to the point of being a simulation vice game, at the tactical level.  The target gamer is someone who wants that as part of their hobby.  So we leaned into that with realistic scenarios and campaigns, many of them pulled straight from period doctrine, which in this context as mentioned previously is fast moving mechanized based warfare.  This pretty much need the Coy Tm as a minimum in order to showcase accurately and the Coy Tm in 1982 needed a 2x2 km battle field as a minimum, in reality it could probable handle a 4 x 4km battlefield (terrain considerations).
That said, I would really have liked to see good smaller scenarios and we will definitely take that into consideration for any DLC moving forward.