Halmbarte

Even the dimmest Modern Soviet Man can see there are better ways to shut down the American meat grinder than by sticking your arm into it until it seizes. Playing as the Soviets in either WWII or CW I'm always going to try infiltration and recon with the hope of finding an unguarded path to the enemy rear that can be exploited. You don't always have time for finesse and there are occasions where you have to do a full frontal assault. But just because you have a force that's pretty good at hey diddle diddle straight up the middle doesn't mean every tactical problem should be solved that way. H

There already is such a thing in the base game. H

They give up a little range to the TOW but they will kill everything the Americans can bring before the M1 is a thing, they are actually man luggable, and the supporting vehicle has loads of reloads. The Sov in '79 are scary. They have good kit and the doctrine to use it well. H

The BMPs have more firepower if you’re going to stay mounted and fast moving, but the BTR company has ATGMs that are the equivalent or better of the Dragon (lighter and they have more AT7s) and access to AT4s, which are almost as capable as TOW and much more mobile. H

Insane manga/anime about some couriers in SE Asia running a PT boat 'delivery' service. Balalaika is the name of the head of the local Russian mafia group. Real fun people... H

Everything has a cost, even in a command economy like that of the Soviet Union. If the Sov decided to upgrade all their tanks with thermal sights, what new equipment would they have to forego or other upgrade would need to be canceled? With hindsight not upgrading to thermals was a mistake, but it wasn't nearly as obvious at the time. The NATO countries felt that they were behind in numbers of tanks and were going for a qualitative edge to offset Soviet numbers. The NATO countries could also leverage the West's strengths in electronics manufacturing to make each thermal sight made a smaller chunk of the available GPD. H

Black Lagoon reference or...? H

A lot of the squadrons have been around since WWII. I suspect that Robotech took some inspiration from them. H

I noticed that the point values for the 2S3 SP battery seem to be odd. The 2S3 with cluster munitions is 40% the cost (discounting rarity) of the 2S3 with HE, although the cluster equipped 2S3s do have 60% of the ammo of the units slinging HE. Is the point cost and ammo quantity deliberate or an error? H

A tank unaccompanied by infantry should be the unit that in danger. Modern infantry can wreck tanks from the top, rear, or sides and the tank crew have very poor situational awareness. You can see that starting in the Western European campaigns in 1944/45. Tanks can't just roll over infantry anymore as the infantry has PIATs, bazookas, Panzerschrecks, and Panzerfausts and just kills the tanks. And the Soviet RPG is a better weapon than any of those and every squad has one. H

No, they had some close hits earlier and had already buttoned up. You can kinda see the hole in the roof right by the TC’s hatch. H

Never seen this before. I was dropping a 120mm mortar smoke mission on this M901. Apparently a 120mm mortar bomb will penetrate the roof of a M901 and I'm supposing not do the crew too much good. https://i.imgur.com/TFR6kh7.jpg H

With Sov tactics the structure makes more sense too. You'd not send a single platoon off to do anything important, you send the entire company. The Sov company has the larger command structure and key weapons available to it to make it more capable. H

The 1st rate Sov troops in game are armed with 5.45x39 weapons, including their RPKs, which makes their small arms ammo weight similar to if not less than the Americans, who are hauling around 7.62 NATO belts for the M60s. H

The M60 was intended to replace the BAR in the LMG role w/o a tripod and to replace the M1917 in the heavy MG role with a tripod. That the M60 wasn’t a great GPMG shouldn’t be too controversial a statement but it was intended to be used as a LMG. H

Every competent military has plans for everything, even an invasion by the armies of Middle Earth*. Just because the USN had plans for a naval war against the UK** didn't signal the intent. H *Tip of the hat to C Stross: https://www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Stacks-Laundry-Files-Novel-ebook/dp/B016JPTNZW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0 **https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red

Spoilers: The easy way up the road is a death trap. It takes a long time but the BRDMs and BTRs can drive thru the forest on the left and right and drop your ATGM teams and GMG teams in locations overlooking the town in the forests. Tanks can support by fire from the right hand forest. You can then do a BTR supported infantry assault from the left rear of the town once most of the US vehicles have been taken out. It's a long wait for the vehicles to drive ever so slowly thru the woods but you have enough time. H

The Germans taught the Sov Army how to fight in WWII. It was a pass/fail course with failure = dead. By the end of the war the red army is pulling off sophisticated operational deep maneuver warfare that's up to Heer early war standards, while the Germans are executing Stalinesque 'not one step back' tactics that waste their army. H

Have you been drinking the hydraulic fluid again, comrade? H

I do not believe that your unit dispersion is within norms, comrade! H

One thing that I have learned is that Sov pattern troops will burn through their basic load fast when doing suppressive fire. I run them back to the BTR/BMPs to get more ammo during lulls in the actually shooting. H

Not that I have been able to discover running CM on Mac, but I'd love to be able to do this. H

Translated Sov AK manual says each rifle is issued with 6 magazines. Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B09fZpC9S7gDMmYyMGI2Y2MtMzQ3MC00MDU3LTk0Y2ItYjBlZTNiNDc5NWE0/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-aA95cgoT5SK0Cvqs44GOhQ Snip below is from page 55. H

Right, you do what you need to to accomplish the mission. But given somewhat open terrain, I'll lead with tanks 1st then infantry. The tanks might be able to take a hit and still be mission capable but the BMP or BTRs will not. A burning APC with a dead squad inside isn't helping accomplish the mission. A burning APC with 9 pairs of eyeballs outside to see where that TOW or ATGM came from is still being useful. H

The Sov APCs and IFVs are part of the squad and aren't intended to be separated. Although I still tend to dismount Sov troops before I expect to make contact and move the infantry forward with the tanks or at least in front of the BMP/BTRs. I really hate losing a whole squad and neither the BMP or BTR will keep out much more than a pointy stick. H