Centurian52

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.

Apparently realistic.
It does help to have someone in the commander's seat for the BMP 3. I'm not sure about the BMP 2
It might not open a top hatch without someone in the commander's seat.
 

Friendly reminder that if you want to see a module at all, get your friends to buy Cold War. The better it sells, the more likely the chance of a module!

you expect me to remember something from April?  I can barely remember yesterday... what day is it?  Is the Canadian module out yet?

"Using drones" as in using the code to simulate a scout helicopter viewing a particular area. AFAIK scout helicopters were abundant around this time period. 
The TOEs for V corps and VXIII corps call for lots of kiowas. 

Nationale Volksarmee (or something like that). The East German Army.

what's NVA mean when attached to Bundeswehr?
and yes, Germans, Brits, Canadians, Dutch, French, and everyone else please. 

A Germany module seems the most important to me. The West Germans would have been the most numerous NATO force on the ground at the start of the war and would have carried the majority of the early fighting. So we desperately need to have them represented. Next most urgent after that is British forces. I've just got to take that Chieftain out for a spin.

A Germany module seems the most important to me. The West Germans would have been the most numerous NATO force on the ground at the start of the war and would have carried the majority of the early fighting. So we desperately need to have them represented. Next most urgent after that is British forces. I've just got to take that Chieftain out for a spin.

Bring in the French and we have 1812 Redux!

Perhaps another data point some might find interesting is frontal arc survival chances for the T-64/72/80s. Those three models and their variants were converging on the same numbers, so I'm calling them equal for simplicity.
This is of course not in hull-down and is not a reflection of Dragon's lethality - but rather the odds of hitting the lower front hull sweet spot at 980 meters.
This is also only counting hits which connected with the target, not shots fired - so does not account for Dragon's (lack of) reliability.

TL;DR - about a 50% chance that a single Dragon hitting a T-64 or better from the front will knock it out. It compounds from there with multiple hits - >90% of K/O if four hits are allowed to connect.
Seems the lesson for anyone playing OPFOR is to keep your T-64/72/80s hull down or roll the dice with shoot-and-scoot. With Dragon teams being plentiful and carrying 3 ATGMs each, the odds are still very much against any Soviet MBTs caught in the open.
Oh yeah, and send the T-55/62s to the scrapyard. 😁

Did a bit of repetition - recorded the outcome of 550+ Dragon hits on various Soviet tanks at various aspects.
I'll keep it to the point:
If a Dragon manages to score a penetration, it is a guaranteed K/O - 292 penetrating hits recorded, all of which resulted in a (often catastrophic) K/O. The real weakness of the Dragon is reliability. I didn't keep track of how many nosedived and hit the dirt short of target, but it was a lot; and that's considering the Dragon teams were not being fired upon. T-55s and T-62s have no protection against the Dragon - first hit to connect is a guaranteed penetration at all aspects and hit locations. I stopped recording 55s/62s results after the first 48 frontal hits resulted in 100% K/O rate. All other Soviet MBTs seem almost impervious to the Dragon in the upper frontal arc (front turret, weapon mount, upper front hull). Of 280 hits that landed in upper front, only 2 managed to penetrate (0.07% rate).  At the same time, all other arcs offer no protection - of the 290 hits recorded to sides (even at rather shallow 30* angles and including turret sides) and most importantly lower front hull - all scored a penetrating hit, a 100% K/O rate. So a true case of YMMV:
On one hand, a T-64/72/80 in a perfect hull-down position might appear "invincible". During one contrivance, I had to stop after 30 (thirty) consecutive hits failed to K/O a single T-72; however, make no mistake, there was not a single relevant subsystem left functional on that tank. Where as on the other hand, something as simple as a 30-degree traversal of the turret relative to the ATGM team pretty well guarantees a K/O on the first shot to reach the target. I think no matter which side of the Dragon ATGM you find yourself in, such dramatically polarized results can most certainly lead to frustration.
p.s. In case anyone is curious what my last two hours looked like, here's a 12 min segment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2midc46M9CA
(You can also get a sense of how many missiles fail to reach target ... or even clear the launcher, as a few unlucky teams caught their own shrapnel)