Halmbarte

A little bit of Chinese ammo leaking in via 3rd parties can remain deniable by the Chinese, just the same way that recently manufactured Western electronics found in Iranian drones are considered 'leakage' w/o anyone calling for sanctions against Phillips or Siemens. 
Entire ships or trains worth of munitions would be much more easily trackable and much less deniable, which is why I don't think the Chinese would go that route. 
Much better to keep buying oil & gas at a steep discount and make the Russian economy even more dependent on the Chinese w/o taking any big risks. 
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This and an AI plan will get you most of the way there. 
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Better than if Microsoft made Javelin. Clippy "It looks like you're trying to top attack at T72. Do you want some help?"
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Better than if Microsoft made Javelin. Clippy "It looks like you're trying to top attack at T72. Do you want some help?"
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And now for a completely different problem. My vehicles are getting stuck on the 1st bridge along the main highway. They had no waypoints on the bridge itself and I re-did orders after the 1st turn they got stuck. To clarify the 1st BMP on the bridge got stuck rubber banding and the other two are blocked by the 1st BMP. 
Link to save game: https://www.dropbox.com/s/60krhw4tdpshpjk/TV 98-3 Attack at Brandenburg REDFOR 007.bts?dl=0

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I'm on a Mac also, and am patched. 
No problems opening the scenario, winning OTOH...
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Downloaded. 
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"they did a massive and honest assessment"
Who got to tell Stalin the outcome & how long did they live afterwards? 
"Soviets adopted an incredibly well thought out defense-in-depth strategy"
The incredibly well thought out strategy of multiple massive counter attacks against a superior opponent that resulted in the death or capture of millions of soldiers? 
H
 
 

Four T62s attacking over open ground. One of them spots a M150 after it launches a TOW at a different T62.

The T62 fires as the TOW is in flight. 

And the APFSDS hits the M150 before the TOW can hit, causing the misses to go out of control.

I've known that it was theoretically possible to leverage the superior speed of tank main gun rounds to kill a ATGM before it can hit, but this is the first time I've actually seen it happen.
H 

"they did a massive and honest assessment"
Who got to tell Stalin the outcome & how long did they live afterwards? 
"Soviets adopted an incredibly well thought out defense-in-depth strategy"
The incredibly well thought out strategy of multiple massive counter attacks against a superior opponent that resulted in the death or capture of millions of soldiers? 
H
 
 

I'm really looking forward to these!
 H

I decided to browse through Battle Order's videos to see what we've got to look forward to. This is the British rifle section we'll have through this timeframe (saved the video URL at the timestamp for the late 60s-mid 80s section): 
 
So it looks like an 8 man rifle section consisting of a four man rifle group (plus the section leader) and a three man GPMG group (including the 2IC). That'll be five L1A1 rifles in the rifle group, with two of the riflemen being equipped with L1A1 rockets (M72 LAWs) by default, with a possibility of equipping more of them with L1A1 rockets. And two L1A1 rifles and an L7A1 GPMG in the GPMG group. As we get into the 80s it looks like one of the L1A1 rockets is replaced by the L14A1 MAW recoilless rifle (Carl Gustav) with the MAW gunner's rifle being replaced by the Sterling SMG.
Should be interesting.
 

Will the boiling vessel be modeled and if it's destroyed or damaged will the AFV crew take a morale hit? 
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Agreed, but it really will be some kind of seal clobbing. Create a test scen dated 1982, put an Abrams Coy against advancing T-80s or T-64s and you see what I mean. Beef that up with M901, if you like. They wipe the floor 4000m and beyond. Introducing smoothbore 120mm Leo 2s, 120mm Abrams and rifled 120mm Challengers into the mix doesn´t make it any easier for WarPac in the 80s-90s.

Although I think exploring some of the earlier Cold War periods is interesting I do wish there would be a later time period included like 1987. 
 
Those later T-80 and T-72 models with all of the ERA bricks look so good. Not to mention Challenger and Leo if they decide to include Germany. 
 
I really don’t agree with the devs that they think it would start to resemble the more modern titles like Black Sea or Shock Force too much. Different time period by like 20+ years if they did late 1980’s. Different environment and unique units. Using that false argument you could say the same thing about a lot of the WW2 titles too.

A lot of the NATO tank's spotting advantage is/should be from fighting heads out, which isn't normal Sov doctrine. 
When I am playing the Sov one of the things I make a point of is to use artillery or MG fire to get the Americans to button up. 
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Four T62s attacking over open ground. One of them spots a M150 after it launches a TOW at a different T62.

The T62 fires as the TOW is in flight. 

And the APFSDS hits the M150 before the TOW can hit, causing the misses to go out of control.

I've known that it was theoretically possible to leverage the superior speed of tank main gun rounds to kill a ATGM before it can hit, but this is the first time I've actually seen it happen.
H 

Every Marder in SF2 & every BMP should be able to dismount its ATGM too, but we can't. 
Carl & MILAN should be doable for anti-armor weapons. I remember the MILAN has a 400m(!) min range and I'd expect Carl to cover what the ATGMs can't. Although I'm suspicious of the ability of an unguided rocket to hit moving targets at 400m. My preference when I have RPGs is to set the engagement range to ~200m for better chances of actually getting a hit. 
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Will the boiling vessel be modeled and if it's destroyed or damaged will the AFV crew take a morale hit? 
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Will the boiling vessel be modeled and if it's destroyed or damaged will the AFV crew take a morale hit? 
H

Since I greatly enjoy Cold War right now, I cannot help but think how great a depiction of the Arab-Israeli conflict would be. Of course, I would love to see a Merkava. But what about the Sho't? What about that weird WW2 Soviet equipment the Arab forces were attacking with around ~1970s?
I think it would be as interesting as the Cold War, maybe even more since those Arab-Israeli conflicts actually happened and there is less speculation about how the respective TO&Es worked out in actual combat.
Man, the more I think about it! What a perfect CM title it would be!
Every single tank in those conflicts is unique:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_of_the_Israel_Defense_Forces#1967_Six-Day_War
 

Thanks for all the views and facts in regard to my beginning post I now do realize that I started a never-ending discussion as I now see from all the informative and useful comments that there is no one correct answer.  It was an interesting topic to me however so again thanks to all that contributed.    

The big problem I have with the M60 series is they are really big, really slow, and can't hardly handle hits. 
I think the Germans had the right idea with Leopard 1. If you're limited to steel only (no composite) make the armor just thick enough to keep out auto cannon fire. Pretty much any HEAT is going to be able to penetrate any reasonable thickness of steel so why try? Focus on firepower and mobility i instead. 
With the M60 we get a tank with thick enough armor that it's slow, but the steel still can't keep out HEAT from pretty much anything the Sov can bring, including RPG-7s. 
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Yes.

T-64 had composite armour, and the T-64B had even thicker armour. Composite armour is extremely effective at dealing with HEAT rounds, to the point of making them essentially ineffective. Wikipedia gives the T-64 a protection of 440mm RHa versus sabot, and 575mm RHa versus HEAT, and that's before taking slope into account.

The M60A2 fires the enormous six inch MGM-51 Shillelagh, which Wikipedia lists as being able to penetrate 600mm RHa at zero degrees... since you'd be unlikely to get a zero degree angle on the front of a T-64, that's very likely not to penetrate. M774 APFSDS (a sabot round from 1980 or so) is similarly listed as having a penetration of around 440mm RHa, but this will drop off with distance and angle, so is equally likely not to penetrate.

So even if all of the figures above are wrong, you can see the problem. The T-62 was considered to be more or less an even match in the literature, and the T-64 and T-72 took the west by surprise. This kind of logic is why the Dragon was considered a weapon of last resort in the Gulf War - there was no expectation of that ATGM dealing with even the Iraqi export version of the T-72, let alone top of the line Soviet equipment.
 

The wheel on the bus goes round and round... 
I've seen the bug reported in the forum before. It is an annoyance, for sure. 
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