Halmbarte

I don't know that that statement is correct. The US Army's tanks were frequently a generation behind what the Sov was fielding. In general the US Army was plagued by the problem of waiting on perfection. They wanted the perfect infantry rifle, the SPIW, and continued to field the Garand or product improved Garand (the M14) until being in a real war forced their hand. They also kept mucking about with revisions to the M26 while waiting for a supertank that couldn't actually be built. We eventually get the M1 tank (austere MBT70), but that could have been replacing something more like the Leopard 1 or a tank with silica core composite armor 20 years previously. The problem I have with the M60 is that it can't do its job. Firepower is either just barely adequate (or barely inadequate) The armor is thick enough that the engine can't move the bloody thing very fast but not thick enough to actually take a hit and protect the crew and systems. In short, it's not fit for purpose. Plus it's a huge and easily spotted target. Faced with the technological limitations of when the M60 was designed it probably would have been better to acknowledge that you can't put enough steel on a tank and preserve mobility. Take the route that the Germans did with the Leopard 1. The tank should be proof against light auto cannons and shel fragments and that's it. If you can't keep nasty stuff from penetrating the armor it doesn't really matter by how much you can't keep nasty stuff out. H

I was just hiding them in the trees so the big bad airplanes don’t get them! H

Yeah, in the previous 2 turns I gave them move orders and they dropped the orders when I hit go. I did get them to bail out and remount, but they still won't move for me. Tank hunter 6 now has a slow move order in this save and they dropped it when the turn started: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pnne0e3d7m6z9dx/US Campaign (1979) 33.bts?dl=0 H

Got another bug: tank hunter 6 drops all move orders when I press go. https://www.dropbox.com/s/0esbc79hm0x42is/US Campaign (1979) 20.bts?dl=0 H

Sometimes you just gotta have troops on a location you expect to get hammered. I'll keep a scout team out if I need a set of eyes and keep the rest of the infantry in their AFVs to protect them form fragments. Although I did loose a full squad doing that when a 122mm rocket hit the top of their M113. That didn't turn out so well for them. H

To be sure, that would add a measure of reality to the game. But can you imagine the player complaints when the WWII German player buys a platoon of Panthers only to have two catch fire on the way to the fight while the third breaks the final drive, immobilizing it? Meanwhile, the American player's 'inferior' tank company of Shermans all show up to the fight... H

The T64's engine was a reliability problem. That and shear cost (and ego conflicts) lead to the development of the T72. OTOH, the M60 series were not paragons of mechanical reliability. The chief reason for the alphabet soup of versions were field modifications for better reliability. And that's leaving out the poster child for unreliability, the M60A2. The tank so bad even the Army decided to salvage the hulls for useable variants. H

The M60 would have been a great tank, in 1950. My general impression is that the US Army missed a generation of development due to the reliance on nukes before the Sov had their own deterrent capability. They really didn't recover the technological edge again until the M1 & M2 were in service. H

The M60, the evolutionary dead end of a series of stop gap tanks going back to WWII. I'm very glad that the US Army never used these in a general war. H

I think this was happening before, but but my guys get stuck bailing out of a wrecked Vulcan. They had move orders 3 turns in a row but the loader is still exiting. https://imgur.com/76uOkX7 Also, the left drive sprocket on the M48 & M60 is still not turning. H link to save game: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0esbc79hm0x42is/US Campaign (1979) 20.bts?dl=0

I started playing a new scenario as US and was dismayed to get a platoon of M48s. Oh, well, I guess I just need to use them like I would tank destroyers, a egg carrying a hammer. Although in the case of '79 the APDS of the 105mm can hardly be described as a hammer. Then I realized that even if I had M60s, I should be treating them the same way. None of my units in '79 can take a hit from a Sov tank gun, ATGM, or BMP1. They will all be holed and killed. I can't use the US tanks like tanks because they can't tank a hit. I should be using them like TDs, like my M150s. A 11' tall, slow, noisy TD that has a main gun that can't reliably hit at range without doing ranging shots, and, if it gets a hit, won't reliably kill T62s (and will only damage the paint on a T64) from the front at range. But besides that, they are ok tanks. H

I hadn't thought of using the metadata in finder to sort out which ones to keep. Thanks for triggering that. H

Thanks! H

Just noticed this, which Lions campaign should I use? I'm assuming one is patched for 1.03 but I don't know which one it is. H

Nice to know it's just not me. H

All this talk about Sov tactics from the Brit training film thread* got me thinking: Are there any scenarios where US is defending and you've got a battalion that's down around company strength as fresh(freshish) Sov 2nd echelon troops roll in? Most of the US scenarios I've played have the US at full strength and with full loads of main gun ammo & missiles. I'm suspecting those initial conditions wouldn't be tru after the first 72 hours of combat. H

@Ultradaveif it helps to run any system reports or diagnostics just let me know what's needed. H

There is charging in blind and there is audacity. From what I've read the Sov perspective is that audacity shortens the fighting by seizing chances that a more cautious approach would lose. The corollary is that the overall shortening of the main conflict is better than a more cautious approach in money and manpower. Maintaining momentum is the key to how the Sov wanted to fight. It's easy to see how they came to that perspective. Early in the GPW(Great Patriotic War) the Germans were audacious and brushed aside Sov troops that were just barely not in position yet, grabbing huge advances and capturing millions of Ivans. Late GPW was a meat grinder for both sides. The meat grinder was better than losing, but the Sov thought hard and long on how to avoid a repetition of the late war attrition tactics. Audacity and echelons was the answer they came up with. How well that would work at the pointy end of the stick is one of the reasons for a game like CMCW. H

The primary air defense asset of the US Army since WWII has been the Army Air Corps and then the USAF. The US Army has never* fought under conditions where the enemy had air superiority. The Soviet Army has and devoted a lot of resources to effective air defense and other counter air measures like camouflage designed to defeat air/satellite recon and attack. I agree that after a couple of weeks of full intensity fighting air power is going to be greatly reduced. Between combat losses, planes down for heavy maintenance, and attacks on airfields I wouldn't expect there to be much left flying. I do think that in a degraded situation the Soviets have an edge because of the design of many of their aircraft allow for operations from damaged facilities or alternate locations like straight sections of highways or improvised airfields. The question for the Soviets is did they bring enough spare parts to keep their planes flying at a high sortie rate. My suspicion is that Sov logistics and maintenance wouldn't be up to the task since they didn't like to accumulate hours on air frames in training. H

I actually have 2. Both exhibit the same behavior of crashing to desktop when hitting go at 30 minutes remaining. https://www.dropbox.com/s/zcwbp7hs78e7plq/Ashsh al-Dababir (The Hornets' Nest) 31.bts?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/txkh340ao08ksgk/Ashsh al-Dababir (The Hornets' Nest) bmp3 34.bts?dl=0 I have prior save games for both too if that would be useful. I was only able to complete the 1st scenario when the author ran turn 30 on his computer and he sent ma back another save file. H

The one crash to desktop that I have that's reproducible is hitting go on turn 30 of the Hornet's nest scenario. That crashed out every time. Otherwise the crash to desktop happens when I'm rapidly switching thru camera groups to check on troops. The second type of crash happens intermittently. H

I too have experienced crashes to desktop with various CM titles on Mac on various OS versions. It's made me be paranoid about doing saves every couple of minutes just so I don't lose too much progress. H

As the WP side, you flood the zone. get all the subs out to sea, the USN can't track them all and can't dedicate a SSN to each Sov sub worldwide. USN has to have priorities and tracking and tailing the SSBNs are probably going to have a higher priority than attack subs. The SOSUS net will tell you there are Sov subs out there and where they generally are, but precise attacks are still going to rely on a local asset. And there are big chunks of the ocean that are out of range for land based patrol aircraft sorties. The GIUK air bases are well within easy range of the Sov Naval Aviation arm carrying their full load out of fast cruise missiles. Use the subs for attacking targets that are out of range of the aviation assets, like the panama canal. Is trading 1/3 of the fleet of Oscars worth shutting down the US ports and the Panama canal? Maybe... H

The range of the SS-N-19 is 300nm if I remember right. That's a lot of square miles to look for a sub in, especially when those subs can be prepositioned off the coast and sitting on the bottom. And if your 1st notice that you're in a war is 18 SS-N-19s coming onshore there isn't a lot of time for sinking subs. 
 Plus the Sov did have other cruise missile capable subs besides the Oscar. 
 When running the WP side in CMO the hardest part of attacking USN assets is finding them. It's a big ocean and a CV battle group that's silent is kinda hard to find unless you get lucky with a RORSAT. Norfolk and Reykjavík (or Kadena or Andersen) aren't going anywhere. And AA vs terrain hugging cruise missiles in the '80s is a joke. 
 I'm not saying that the Sovs get away scot free in this scenario, but it would offer a lot of reward compared to the risk of the assets involved. This is in the context of a general NATO/WP war. Blowing up the ports of Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, New Orleans, and attacking the Panama canal would be an escalation, but it's a reasonable tactic in a general war against a naval power. 
 H

A lot of the Sov cruise missiles flew at >Mach 1 and a lot of the latter types were low altitude. And to make things more confusing most of the Sov cruise missiles had nuke and conventional versions in the same airframe. You find out which version you get when it pops. Park Oscars off New York and Naval Station Norfolk and the opening salvo looks a lot like Pearl Harbor. H