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I've made a comparison between visibility in CMCW and Steel Beasts. Perhaps it could shed some light on the discussed issues.

Steel Beasts is a tank simulator that is used in several countries to train military personnel. Combat Mission Cold War and Steal Beasts have a lot of things in common, so it would be interesting to compare how two games simulate combat. In order to do that and to make as precise experiment as possible I put t72A (m1) tank that is featured in both games against M60 TTS tank that is also present in both of them. To keep experiment clean I used default "flat map" and the same weather and time conditions - clean weather, the time is June the 1st, 12:00. In CMCW I had to use additional "formation" units of observers, but I put them behind tall walls, so they didn't interfere in the process. In CMCW skill level of both of the tanks was put on "regular". Steel Beasts doesn't have skill level feature. Under created conditions t-72A looks directly at M60's side. It is oriented from South to North, M60 - from West to East. The distance between them is 2 km. The conditions are the same in Steel Beasts and Combat Mission Cold War. That how it looks like in Steel Beasts: How it looks like in CMCW: What T72 gunner sees from his position from the very start: As you can easily notice, M60 is immediately and perfectly visible from gunners sight. The same with T72's Commander's sight: The results: In Steel Beasts t72's AI spotted M60 almost immediately, which is not surprising, taking into account that it has perfect view on the target. It took t72 about 2 seconds to spot the opponent and about 18 sec to hit and destroy it. In CMCW something opposite happened. I ran several tests and t72 couldn't spot m60 once. Its optics was not enough to spot the tanks directly ahead of it at the distance of 2 km during clean daylight. In fact, every time M60 spotted t72 first and killed it. It took about 2-3 rounds and from 1,5 min to 5 min to kill t72. t72 didn't see the opponent despite m60 was firing at him. How it ends in Steel Beasts: How it ends in CMCW: The CMCW test scenario is attached. You can make your own conclusions. T72VISION TEST.btt

@IanLIt was Greek tender of 1998, not the Swedish one of 1993, my bad. It seems like @Armorgunner also meant Greek trials, because his description seems to resemble it. I'm not sure that in Sweden T80 had thermals, though it may be true. If I remember correctly, Leo won both of them. In Greece corruption scandal followed with acquisitions of bribing Greek officials by German contractor . The report on T80 performance in Greek trials (quite critical of the Russian tank) is widely available on Russian AFV themed websites. @IICptMillerII I don't know why are you argue with me over the notions that I had never tried to dispute. Maybe it fits your definition of "feeding trolls". I never said that optics doesn't matter or thermals don't make any difference. I also never accused anybody of being "NATO shill" or whatever. Of course thermals give a huge, huge advantage. Of course, tanks don't provide the best spotting opportunities. Those are pretty self evident ideas, but repeating them over and over again can't negate what I'm trying to say. Maybe metaphor would work better? Mercedes CLS500 is faster car than Honda Civic, that's obvious. But if you would play car simulator game where Honda's max speed is 20 miles per hour, and game designers argue that it's all right because Honda Civic is not as good as CLS500, you will call it absurd.

You mean that it's one of those things in the game that is visualized, rendered, you can see it, but in fact it's not really there so you should not count it. Contrary to those many things that are not visualized, not rendred and players can't see, but in fact they exist and should be taken into consideration.

I suppose that Russian AFV's visibility in game has always been the issue of game design\political bias, it doesn't depend on any facts.

There are 2 main reasons. 1) It's the "feature" of game engine that usually calculates armor and personnel vision in a very strange and quite random way, not only in Cold War, but also in other titles as well. 2) In Combat Mission "world" all Soviet\Russian regarded as inferior to Western\American, especially in terms of vision. In many respects it's true to the facts (as far as I know), taking into consideration thermals, optics etc. But what CM games do is taking this technological gap to absurd levels, making "Red team" almost absolutely blind. It feels very unnatural and counterintuitive when several of your tanks can't spot enemy tank directly ahead of you at the distance of 200 meters. Many times I witnessed how Vulcan's Gatling gun sends the river of red bullets to my AFV, but my tanks\BMP don't see it, despite they are several dozens meters away and not under fire themselves. "Buddy to my right is under uninterrupted rain of hot red bullets from the Vulcan that is 300 meters in front of us... well I don't see anything because... well you know, Soviet optics is bad". In this regard famous Swedish tank tender of 1993 is very instructing. Swedish Ministry of Defense organized the competition between different tanks, including shooting, terrain and visibility trials. Russian T-80 took part in competition alongside with Leopard and Abrams. In the end it was reported that T-80 spotting was equal to the Western tanks on the distances below 2500 meters in the daylight and 1000 meters in the night (although on the distances above Western tanks had an advantage).

I didn't make any personal attacks, you did. I didn't call anybody "ADHD 12 year old". It's unfortunate that my "feedback" is not helpful in the least", though it proved to be true. In the end you are doing the "tweaking" based on the issues I raised. It would be much more helpful if you accepted them earlier. Instead of offending your customer, you could show more respect to the person who paid money to do beta-testing and listening to how his "feedback is not helpful". If you made some mistakes - which is quite normal and not shameful, everybody does - so acknowledge them "with grace and class". I don't blame you, don't want to attack you and wish you well.

Oh, now it's my mistake. I would like to remind you that I posted the information on Mission 3 issues on June 15. It made you acknowledge that the mission 3 is bugged. Unfortunately, nothing followed: As for screenshots, well, I made a bunch of them: I understand and I beg your pardon that this is not as enlightening, precise and constructive as: I need to learn a lesson. P.S. Sorry for CAPS-LOCK.

As Reagan said Lol

I hate to be the person who says, but

I hate to be the person who says it, but - "I told you"

Amonge those you mentioned - To Berlin.

Good luck with that, but it's more probable that your Soviet troops would get Lenin's banner posthumously.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was some kind of draw or deafeat. I was really surprised, because I managed to withdraw some of my troops through the extraction zone. In fact even that could be done only via tedious reloading, but as a sick joke in the end they make you lose

THE THIRD MISSION IS BROKEN. It can't be won, it REQUIRES PATCHING AND COMPLETE REWORK. I started March or Die version as well (accidentally), and had to replay normal version of campaign, because it is simply can not be won. The funny thing is that after billion reloads and painful struggle I managed to drive some of my forces to the extraction zone. They left the bettlfield, but the mission ended with defeat. In normal version of campaign it could be skipped.

First they laugh at you Then they curse you And finally they see that Bradlies are ugly overpowered.

More stats on artillery count: In shells: USSR Germany 1942 37,983,800 45,261,822 1943 82,125,480 69,928,496 1944 98,564,568 113,663,900 In tons: USSR Germany 1942 446,113 709,957 1943 828,193 1,121,545 1944 1,000,962 1,540,933

https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2017/06/22/695479-krasnaya-armiya I encountered the notion that Russians spent much less artillery ammo than Germans multiple times. Like recently I read Isaev's book on Bagration, where he cites Soviet and German sources and says ( Google translated): "The main role in the success of the German defense was played by two things in the battles of the autumn of 1943 and the winter of 1943/44. Firstly, it is the armored vehicles used to fight Soviet tanks, and secondly, howitzer artillery, including heavy weapons. The review compiled by the headquarters of the 3rd Panzer Army following the results of the battles directly stated: “The consumption of ammunition in the amount of 1510 tons per day for the corps located in the direction of the main attack, and 2910 tons per day for the entire TA in most cases was significantly higher than that of the Russians. Often it was possible to smash an enemy penetration exclusively with artillery fire. Especially high in comparison with the ammunition was the ammunition consumption of heavy field howitzers mod. 18 y., 21-cm mortar arr. 18 and heavy field howitzers 414 (f) ". As 15.5-cm 414 (f), the Germans designated the captured French 155-mm Schneider howitzer arr. 1917 However, the share of these guns in the total shot was small. Here I would like to note that the volumes of shells launched by the German artillery exceeded those at the height of the storming of Stalingrad in September - October 1942. For example, on September 27, 1942, on the first day of the next offensive, the entire 300,000 personell 6th Army of Paulus released 1077 tons of ammunition. Actually, the Seydlitz corps, which stormed the city, released 444 tons that day. At the same time, September 27 was the day of peak ammunition consumption, in the following days it dropped quite sharply. The corps defending near Vitebsk shot three times more shells than the one advancing on Stalingrad. Near Rzhev, in the midst of defensive battles, Model's 9th Army shot about 1000 tons of ammunition per day". And: Tolkonyuk (he was Deputy Chief of the Operations of the 33rd Army in 1943 and left one of the most interesting wartime memoirs) recalled: “Although we had numerical superiority over the enemy in artillery of small and medium calibers in the direction of the main attack, the enemy fired twice as many shells at the same time than we did. In counter-battery artillery, the Germans outnumbered us by one and a half to two times, which allowed them to reliably suppress our counter-battery artillery groups." Throughout the war USSR had severe shortage of TNT and relied heavily on lend-lease supply.

In my opinion, that's a popular misconception. I would share some of my thoughts on the reasons why USSR failed so badly in 1941. People usually pay attention to the number of tanks and planes - which is a relatively easy thing to do - but it is misleading. There were much more impactful factors. 1) The number one is RADIO. What WW2 researchers often don't realize is that Germans success was very much due to the superiority in command and control system (C2), and how Soviets lagged behind in terms of C2. When you start digging deeper into war history the difference becomes striking. In many aspects it was struggle between modern and antiquated armies. Soviet units almost didn't have radios, and even if they had the quality was so bad, that they couldn't hear anything. Soviet commanders relied on telephone cables, that proved highly unreliable. The cable communication was very vulnerable to artillery, and usually broke down after first artillery strike leaving the hole regiments and armies without control. Soviet officers often didn't know where the enemy was, and what even more important - where their one units were situated. When the telephones go silent they used communication personnel to deliver orders on foot, which if the person with the paper order stayed alive and managed to deliver it, took hours and even days. In most cases those communication officers came to the area where they thought Soviet troops would be, but to their surprise they saw Germans. C2 situation like this couldn't be simulated in game like Combat Mission, where you always watch the battlefield from the bird's eye and can pass the order to every soldier in the matter of moments. 2) The Germans had it the other way around. They excelled in radios and communications systems to the point when they could use COMBINED ARMS strategy. They have the perfect aviation intel, knew precisely where enemy and their own forces where, and coordinated their actions very well. 3) AVIATION superiority. It was absolutely daily and ordinary situation when German officer could call pinpoint airstrike from the frontline tank or observation post and STUKAs could deliver it with great precision in the matter of hour or minutes! Soviet aviation in turn was deaf. The orders to strike took literally days and after Russian planes took off from the airfield they lost contact with ground troops and each other. Ground observation posts used giant white sheets on the ground to communicate with planes and give them directions! Not to mention that Soviet planes where much inferior to Germans in terms of engines, armament, production quality and pilots training. In result in 1941-1943 Germans gained absolute superiority in the air. All those years Russian troops had to operate under permanent airstrikes and observation. 4) AMMO. Do you know that 90% of all T-34 in the beginning of Barbarossa didn't have armor piercing shells? No matter how T-34 was better than TIII, it couldn't fight it without AP shells. Germans had huge advantage in numbers of artillery shells. In 1942 the Germans fired 18 million 105mm shells, Russians - 10 million 76mm shells. The gap in terms of 152 mm was even greater: Russians - 2.3 million, Germans - 4.8 million. Even in 1944 the ratio was 3.7 million to 7.5 million in favor of the Wehrmacht. To sum it up USSR fought Germany in the dense fog of war with inferior aviation and weaker artillery support. Only the personal qualities of Russian soldier could compensate it and eventually win the war.

In my understanding that's more or less true. I would add that USSR was far behind in terms of technology (they put a lot of effort into closing the gap and achieved some success but it still wasn't enough). Hence the casualties ratio.

Yup, sorry, I had to pay more attention.

May I ask what's the first? Just curious.