Centurian52

Sadly, the opinion seems to be that this period would not sell sufficient copies to be the "first and biggest" launch of a new title.
However, with some clever architecture choices, my pessimistic outlook might be unwarranted. One of the big chunks of work for any of the titles is the TO stuff, and the base data for that changes not one whit with a new game engine. All that work could be re-used. Similarly, the data behind all the armour values and such is already crunched, and could be imported. So perhaps the CM3 family would inflate with Big Bang speed (relatively speaking), rather than taking a decade and a half to get from partial '43 to mostly-ETO '45... which would mean that the AK period and first couple of years of Ger-v-Sov could come along sooner than we might think.
There's hope yet.

Ok, well I'm proud to have kicked off such a heated discussion. I really like some of the points that have been raised so far.
Points I found convincing:
-It takes just a few moments to increase the time limit in the editor anyway.
-The time limit is necessary for scenario designers to employ the 'reinforcements that never arrive' trick in order to prevent the AI from surrendering before the designer intended.
Points I didn't find convincing:
-The time limit helps with balance. While this is true, I kindof feel like balance is overrated (a very fringe opinion, I know). I care far more about realism than I do about balance. And a time limit feels like a very artificial and gamey way of achieving balance.
-Real world orders almost always tell you to accomplish an objective within a certain amount of time. This is also true, but I tend to file this under 'one of the most common parts of the plan to fall apart on first contact with the enemy'. You usually won't give up trying to take an objective just because you didn't take it as quickly as you were supposed to. Engagements don't suddenly end just because they took longer than intended. It is reality, not command intentions, that I want my games to emulate as closely as possible.
Ok, I actually found that last point semi-convincing. The reason is because I like the idea of having some victory points being dependent on winning the battle within a certain time-frame. So while you can take as long as you want if you are content with a tactical victory, if you want a total victory you need to keep an eye on the time. 'You are ordered to accomplish the objective in a certain amount of time' isn't a good reason to have a firm time limit (in my opinion), but it is an excellent reason to tie some victory points to a soft time limit.

This is an interesting idea and is possible with the current editor when building scenarios. 
The CMSF scenario Coup d'etat has this feature.  The scenario starts at 0400hrs.  The briefing advises that the AI player is awarded 200 Victory Points if the human player continues past 0614hrs.  The human player may fight on until 0800hrs (the 4 hour engine limit to scenario length) at the cost of the AI opponent earning the 200 VPs.  The briefing also advises that regime supporters will take to the streets sometime after 0645hrs (variable timer) which, of course, causes more problems for the human player attempting to consolidate and hold onto gains made during his coup attempt.  So the human can play on past 0614hrs but the longer he plays the more potential consequences there will be that can effect the final Victory Point score.    
 https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-shock-force-2-2/cm-shock-force-2-scenarios/coup-detat/
         

I'm not sure a direct comparison of CM1 and CM2 in terms of longevity is quite appropriate. ISTR that one of the reasons for getting rid of (rather than iterating upon) CM1 was its monolithic spaghetti code which was not amenable to updating without totally breaking. CM2 was designed, I get the impression, to avoid (at least to some degree) that stumbling block, and that's why we're on engine... is it 4? now.
Nevertheless, the base engine and concept is, for some values, showing its age now, and there are obviously some core tenets of the code that would be good to upgrade, in the light of experience, but which are too deeply embedded to be readily changed. A fresh start on CM3 would be good, especially if it could leverage the non-code-specific work that's been done. But then we would definitely never get to the early war setting...

Well... many of us have been faithfully supporting BF as they told us when CM2 was released that the plan was to work back to Early War.  We're disappointed that process seems to have been abandoned - apparently BF doesn't consider it profitable enuff as the main US market simply wants to play US forces beating up on other nationalities.  Ditto re Afrika Korps - even tho' we already have xnt desert terrain in CMSF.  However, it seems that Afrika Korps games and some Early War are staples of most cardboard wargame developers.  So, this prejudice against Early War (incl AK) could be merely a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Right now we have Koh leading the heroic work to produce both AK and EW mods.  When CMBN was released, some scenarios were produced that simulated East Front.  So, if the demand is there, you never know...
 

+1   And mebbe even Afrika Korps.

THE BASIC PROBLEM:
I'm sure that you've all noticed over the years that this scenario plays itself out over and over:
Person A: "Hey, does anyone still have X for $Insert_Game_Name$ ?"
Person B: "Yeah sure, here, let me put it up on my webspace or on a random download server like Mega.NZ"
<five years pass>
Person C enters the thread and gets excited.
Person C "The link doesn't work anymore!"
*pause*
Person C "Hey, does anyone still have X for $Insert_Game_Name$ ?"
A Potential Solution: Might be with the Internet Archive. It's funded by a foundation and they seem to be relatively durable; so they're the closest thing to archival on-line storage we might see for some time.
With that in mind, I've been slowly working on a project for the last month to quasi bring back the old Wargamer.com scenario archive back from the dead -- and that's morphed into a general archiving program for old game mods and such.
Naturally, I did the Combat Mission x1 series.
============================================================
GENERAL INTERNET ARCHIVE NOTE: 
If you wish to download a specific file within the main ZIP container, just click on the (View Contents) link on the contents page.
============================================================
============================================================
The Proving Grounds / The Scenario Depot II Site Rip (with Meta Data)
(NOTE, I've duplicated the scenarios themselves in each CMx1 individual
scenario archive, but this is here for completeness since TPG/TSDII were quite
important CMx1 websites back in the day)
============================================================
============================================================
https://archive.org/details/wargamer-depot_TPG-TSD2_siterip
Main Page
https://archive.org/download/wargamer-depot_TPG-TSD2_siterip
Information Page
From 5 to 8 May 2021; I ripped the following websites:
THE PROVING GROUND (TPG)
http://garykrockover.com/cmbb/index.html
Site Rip as of 5 May 2021 has:
6 x CMBO Scenarios
281 x CMBB Scenarios
223 x CMAK Scenarios
2 x CMBO Maps (some are not downloadable)
73 x CMBB Maps (some are not downloadable)
43 x CMAK Maps (some are not downloadable)
THE SCENARIO DEPOT II (TSD2) 
http://63.249.17.36/www.the-scenario-depot.com
The original Scenario Depot (I) was at http://www.dragonlair.net/combatmission/ until it's hosting company crashed with no backups.
It's successor, The Scenario Depot II was at http://www.the-scenario-depot.com/ until the domain wasn't renewed.
It was then "lost" for several years until I contacted the site owner; and got this URL:
http://63.249.17.36/www.the-scenario-depot.com
Site Rip as of 8 May 2021 has:
52 x CMBO Scenarios
587 x CMBB Scenarios
527 x CMAK Scenarios
15 x CMBO Maps (some are not downloadable)
26 x CMBB Maps (some are not downloadable)
36 x CMAK Maps (some are not downloadable)
============================================================
============================================================
CMMOS/CMMODS DVD Backup
============================================================
============================================================
This was created from an old DVD that I burned with about 3.7 GB of Combat Mission CMMOS data on or around 2004.
A lot of the information on this was "lost" over the years, and this is my way of giving back to the CM community.
Here is a file list:
Total number of folders = 62
Total number of files  = 1809
Sum of file sizes = 3.5~ GB
It's all within several spanned ZIP files.
https://archive.org/details/wargamer-depot_CMMOS_mods
(information page)
https://archive.org/download/wargamer-depot_CMMOS_mods
(contents page)
============================================================
============================================================
CMBO Mods:
============================================================
============================================================
https://archive.org/details/wargamer-depot_CMBO_mods
(information page)
https://archive.org/download/wargamer-depot_CMBO_mods
(contents page)
On 5-10 May 2021, I cleaned out the following CMx1 repositories:
cmx1mods.greenasjade.net
in an attempt to archive as many of the old Combat Mission 1 (Beyond Overlord/Barbarossa to Berlin/Afrika Korps) mods as possible to safeguard against the probability of greenasjade.net disappearing in the near future.
I downloaded 458 out of 458 files; and their total size is 1.46 GB.
============================================================
============================================================
CMBB Mods:
============================================================
============================================================
https://archive.org/details/wargamer-depot_CMBB_mods
(information page)
https://archive.org/download/wargamer-depot_CMBB_mods
(contents page)
On 5-10 May 2021, I cleaned out the following CMx1 repositories:
cmx1mods.greenasjade.net
in an attempt to archive as many of the old Combat Mission 1 (Beyond Overlord/Barbarossa to Berlin/Afrika Korps) mods as possible to safeguard against the probability of greenasjade.net disappearing in the near future.
I downloaded 1,806 out of 1,811 files; and their total size is 4.35 GB.
============================================================
============================================================
CMAK Mods:
============================================================
============================================================
https://archive.org/details/wargamer-depot_CMAK_mods
(information page)
https://archive.org/download/wargamer-depot_CMAK_mods
(contents page)
On 5-10 May 2021, I cleaned out the following CMx1 repositories:
cmx1mods.greenasjade.net
in an attempt to archive as many of the old Combat Mission 1 (Beyond Overlord/Barbarossa to Berlin/Afrika Korps) mods as possible to safeguard against the probability of greenasjade.net disappearing in the near future.
I downloaded 1,605 out of 1,605 files; and their total size is 4.69 GB.
============================================================
============================================================
COMBAT MISSION: BEYOND OVERLORD SCENARIOS
============================================================
============================================================
https://archive.org/details/wargame-depot-combat-mission-beyond-overlord
(information page)
https://archive.org/download/wargame-depot-combat-mission-beyond-overlord
(contents page)
This file contains recovered Wargamer Scenario Depot data from two sources:
1.) The 2015 Dump at https://archive.org/details/WargamerGamesDepotArchive20160514.tar
2.) A Internet Archive Downloader Dump in April 2021 to recover what was stored on the Internet Archive's backups.
Out of 5 scenario files on the WGD for "Combat Mission Beyond Overlord",  5 were recovered (100%) directly.
HAVE
3508 - Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord: East of Bryansk
3551 - Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord: 101st in Normandy
3701 - Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord: Big Red Omaha V2.0
4176 - Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord: When Trumpets Fade
4558 - Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord: Fischbach
MISSING:
NONE
Out of 69 scenario files on the WGD for "Combat Mission",  0 were recovered (0%).
HAVE:
NONE
MISSING:
1003 - Combat Mission: Strategic Highway
1198 - Combat Mission: Kelly's Heroes full campaign
1211 - Combat Mission: Cintheaux - Totalize
1273 - Combat Mission: August Bank Holiday
1279 - Combat Mission: We Don't Need No Education
1280 - Combat Mission: Lacko's Centiepied
1281 - Combat Mission: Lacko's Tea Party
1433 - Combat Mission: Parker's Crossroads
156 - Combat Mission: Wonder of Ihantala
162 - Combat Mission: UPDATE: Wonder of Ihantala
172 - Combat Mission: Crucifix Hill
1749 - Combat Mission: Beta Mission
178 - Combat Mission: AG1 Sgt Feibecke at Ozero
179 - Combat Mission: K3 A Brief Visit to a Church
181 - Combat Mission: K2 Pyrrhic Victory
183 - Combat Mission: K1 The High Ground
1864 - Combat Mission: Beta Mission
217 - Combat Mission: der Nebel
218 - Combat Mission: Minor Victory
219 - Combat Mission: Pockets of Resistance
226 - Combat Mission: Attack on Selz crossroads
237 - Combat Mission: Battle of Kiestinki
281 - Combat Mission: Gains Measured in Yards
282 - Combat Mission: Dangerous Information
304 - Combat Mission: Buda Castle
337 - Combat Mission: The Notch
34 - Combat Mission: Zurück on Chainbridge
363 - Combat Mission: Battle Of Honkaniemi
381 - Combat Mission: Gute Jagd
382 - Combat Mission: Falschirmjaeger On The East
383 - Combat Mission: My Grandfather
384 - Combat Mission: Der Erste Marsch
385 - Combat Mission: The Last Hussars
39 - Combat Mission: Dieppe
398 - Combat Mission: Bitche Bulge
426 - Combat Mission: Pacific Mod:  Shallow Water Files Tarawa
427 - Combat Mission: Joe's Bridge
428 - Combat Mission: Brit Burma Uniform
442 - Combat Mission: CM Pacific Theater Mod Iwo Jima
443 - Combat Mission: Combat Mission Pacific Theater Mod
444 - Combat Mission: CM Pacific Theater Mod Scenarios
47 - Combat Mission: Dog Green, 6 June-2
476 - Combat Mission: Maple Leaf Down
496 - Combat Mission: Lacko's Elba
506 - Combat Mission: Screaming In The dark
507 - Combat Mission: Holding Villebaudon
515 - Combat Mission: Hell On Wheels
538 - Combat Mission: Break On Thru
539 - Combat Mission: Back To Hell
564 - Combat Mission: Assault On Gambsheim
586 - Combat Mission: Gheel
621 - Combat Mission: Operation Nordwind
644 - Combat Mission: Bouncing The Rhine
656 - Combat Mission: Ed's Grass Mod
740 - Combat Mission: Bridges Near Stavelot
750 - Combat Mission: Fortress In The Bocage v1.02
868 - Combat Mission: Frontovik Russian T-34 Tank Mods
893 - Combat Mission: DFDR Complete Scenario Set
894 - Combat Mission: DFDR Clubfoot's Scenario Set
895 - Combat Mission: DFDR (Complete) MOD
896 - Combat Mission: Finland MOD
897 - Combat Mission: Frontovik I (Infantry) MOD
898 - Combat Mission: Frontovik  Complete Scenario Set
899 - Combat Mission: Frontovik II (vehicles) MOD
900 - Combat Mission: Fading Hopes III (Germany 1939-40)
901 - Combat Mission: Fading Hopes II (France 1940) MOD
902 - Combat Mission: Fading Hopes I (Poland 1939)  MOD
903 - Combat Mission: Fading Hopes Complete Scenarios Set
904 - Combat Mission: Roadblock At St. Severs
BONUSES
I have included more CMBO scenarios from around the internet. There's likely to be massive duplication between all of the different packs and sources, but put together, I think this corpus constitutes most CMBO scenarios made.
1.) Pacific Mod: 28 scenarios + the graphics to mod them
2.) Rune Pack (in a specific folder): About 59~ scenarios/campaigns
3.) Ardennes DeSobry Pack: 3 versions of this scenario
4.) A Scenario Pack (AltWars) I made from an old CMMODS v4.03 database that I downloaded years ago; combined with a trawl through (http://cmx1mods.greenasjade.net); giving about 295 scenarios.
5). CMHQ Depot: About 306 scenarios with metadata
6.) Koen Pack: 4 Scenarios
7.) Rhine Pack: 10 scenarios
8.) St Malo Pack: 5 Scenarios
9.) The Blitz' CMBO Pack: About 187 scenarios and 27 maps.
10.) TheGamersNetwork: About 200 scenarios with metadata.
11.) TLD Scenario Pack : 22 scenarios
12.) The Proving Ground / The Scenario Depot II Scenario Pack for CMBO: About 59 scenarios and 13 maps.
13.) Zuf's CMBO Scenario Pack: 1,645 scenarios
============================================================
============================================================
COMBAT MISSION: BARBAROSSA TO BERLIN SCENARIOS
============================================================
============================================================
https://archive.org/details/wargame-depot-combat-mission-barbarossa-to-berlin
(information page)
https://archive.org/download/wargame-depot-combat-mission-barbarossa-to-berlin
(contents page)
This file contains recovered Wargamer Scenario Depot data from two sources:
1.) The 2015 Dump at https://archive.org/details/WargamerGamesDepotArchive20160514.tar
2.) A Internet Archive Downloader Dump in April 2021 to recover what was stored on the Internet Archive's backups.
Out of 10 scenario files on the WGD, 10 were recovered (100%) directly.
HAVE
3294 - Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin: KH2 The Count
3295 - Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin: AG3 Flak Dance at Vilna
3352 - Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin: HSG AG4 The Cross Roads
3513 - Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin: East of Bryansk
3878 - Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin: Sons of Zrinyi
4017 - Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin: Danzig Panther
4054 - Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin: PreeKuln
4269 - Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin: Hungarian Mission Pack
4366 - Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin: Road to Rzhavets
4823 - Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin: Darsunikis
MISSING:
NONE
BONUS:
I have included a large amount of CMBB scenario packs in the BONUS directory. I think with all this, we have most CMBB scenarios ever made.
I've tried to include everything I can; there's too many to describe here; from the Stalingrad Pack, Kursk Pack, Russian Training Set, Denhost CMBB Pack, Philippe CMBB Pack, a Boots & Tracks site rip (scenarios and AARs).
Some of the packs are:
The Blitz CMBB Pack: 371 Scenarios and 15 maps.
The Proving Ground / The Scenario Depot II Pack: About 840 scenarios and 87 maps.
Zuf's Scenario Pack: 2,164 (!!!) scenarios.
============================================================
============================================================
COMBAT MISSION: AFRIKA KORPS SCENARIOS
============================================================
============================================================
https://archive.org/details/wargame-depot-combat-mission-afrika-korps
(information page)
https://archive.org/download/wargame-depot-combat-mission-afrika-korps
(contents page)
This file contains recovered Wargamer Scenario Depot data from two sources:
1.) The 2015 Dump at https://archive.org/details/WargamerGamesDepotArchive20160514.tar
2.) A Internet Archive Downloader Dump in April 2021 to recover what was stored on the Internet Archive's backups.
Out of 6 scenario files on the WGD, 6 were recovered (100%).
Also included as a bonus is an archive of other scenarios and campaigns recovered from various sites for completeness.
HAVE
3492 - Combat Mission: Afrika Korps: Small Village in Valley
3520 - Combat Mission: Afrika Korps: Village on Hill - Allied Attack
3709 - Combat Mission: Afrika Korps: Kommerscheidt
3746 - Combat Mission: Afrika Korps: Rearguard Action at Fuka
3953 - Combat Mission: Afrika Korps: Band of Brothers, Part 4: Replacements
3960 - Combat Mission: Afrika Korps: Bridgehead Eberbach
MISSING:
NONE
BONUS:
I've tried to include everything I can, including Philippe's 11-part pack that breaks down as:
1940 - 67 Scenarios
Ardennes - 88 Scenarios
East Africa - 19 Scenarios
France & Germany - 95 Scenarios
Greece - 37 Scenarios
Italy/Southern France - 258 Scenarios
Market Garden - 23 Scenarios
Normandy 198 Scenarios
North Africa - 195 Scenarios
Norway - 4 Scenarios
Arab Israeli Wars - 8 Scenarios
Korea -4  Scenarios
PTO - 14 Scenarios
SCW - 7 Scenarios
SeaLion - 5 Scenarios
Vietnam - 13 Scenarios
Everything Else - 10  Scenarios
Along with graphics mods for a SEALION set plus a few scenarios to go with it.
BFC Companion Scenarios: 12 scenarios
CMAK Operations Pack: 59 items?
BootsNTracks Pack: 16 Scenarios
CDST Pack: 16 scenarios
Koen Pack: 5 Scenarios
Random Pack: 62 scenarios (random potporri from my own files)
Small Battles Pack: 68 scenarios
The Blitz CMAK Pack: 117 scenarios
Tiny Battles Pack: 5 scenarios
The Proving Grounds / The Scenario Depot II Pack: 743 scenarios and 73 maps
WBRP Pack: 11 scenarios
Zuf Pack: 1,001 scenarios
I'm confident to say that even though there may be massive amounts of duplicates, this corpus constitutes most CMAK scenarios published.

I would jump on an early war game just as fast as CW.  All those oddball funky vehicles, the various early war organizations, it would be great.

They kept Cold War a secret from EVERYBODY. The company Beta board went a bit crazy when CMCW was abruptly presented to them as a fait accompli without the lest prior warning. 

I'm not sure, but you can add non steam games into your steam account. You will not get all the things that normally go with a steam game like store page, community, etc. But they are shown in your game library and can be loaded from there.
For me it helps to keep all my games under one list.
 
Regards
 
Slippy
 
 

The title.
I'm about to buy the old entries on GOG, but, since the new ones are releasing on steam, do you guys think they will add the old ones on steam to?
(Btw)
Hi, it's my first post here

-group isolated soldiers  who have lost their headquarters and be integrated into another squad regardless of their category (one helping each others).
-allow any soldier to use weapons or vehicles with by exemple a penalty in time if this one is infantry (those who must learn the manipulations on the spot) but are able to use it after a certain time (suspense for the player to see if or when and how the soldier with be able to use it).
-different colours to recognize squads.

Ok, well I'm proud to have kicked off such a heated discussion. I really like some of the points that have been raised so far.
Points I found convincing:
-It takes just a few moments to increase the time limit in the editor anyway.
-The time limit is necessary for scenario designers to employ the 'reinforcements that never arrive' trick in order to prevent the AI from surrendering before the designer intended.
Points I didn't find convincing:
-The time limit helps with balance. While this is true, I kindof feel like balance is overrated (a very fringe opinion, I know). I care far more about realism than I do about balance. And a time limit feels like a very artificial and gamey way of achieving balance.
-Real world orders almost always tell you to accomplish an objective within a certain amount of time. This is also true, but I tend to file this under 'one of the most common parts of the plan to fall apart on first contact with the enemy'. You usually won't give up trying to take an objective just because you didn't take it as quickly as you were supposed to. Engagements don't suddenly end just because they took longer than intended. It is reality, not command intentions, that I want my games to emulate as closely as possible.
Ok, I actually found that last point semi-convincing. The reason is because I like the idea of having some victory points being dependent on winning the battle within a certain time-frame. So while you can take as long as you want if you are content with a tactical victory, if you want a total victory you need to keep an eye on the time. 'You are ordered to accomplish the objective in a certain amount of time' isn't a good reason to have a firm time limit (in my opinion), but it is an excellent reason to tie some victory points to a soft time limit.

Time limits should be a recommendation to be able to score a total victory. Also, that the player has his available units of map so that he can deploy his troops at the time of his choosing. 

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.