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Ah, that would be what is in this picture then. Yet it seems to me that the black smoke is always in front of the soviet vehicles, same as when you give vehicles in Combat Mission the "pop smoke" command. Funny that no one really seems to be sure; would be interresting to know why the design decision was made. First time I saw it I thought that some destroyed vehicle was smoking up the place and that this was a new feature.

So since we're on the topic of Soviet smoke... I noticed that the Soviet vehicles pop black smoke, rather than white smoke, when fired upon. I've never seen or heard of this before. Does anyone know what this is about? What were they using that produced black smoke and why did they prefer that?

You should see what @Megalon Jonesis doing to it in our other battle... I was creating openings into town, he's removing the town itself! He must have fired some 50 artillery rounds in today's turn alone, all aimed at the one part of Rumpenheim that kind of still looked like a town...

Hi all, I have a new video AAR out today. Since the battle plan kind of flows from the doctrine of the time one on one, it's a bit lighter on the "explaining my plan, showing how that works out, what goes wrong and how to I improvised" content than my last videos. But I hope it's a fun report of this very enjoyable scenario non the less.

That's absolutely how I see it as well!

All I knew was that there was 'a' vehicle in the forest and that it could be an M60, that would not have been taken out by the arty. I saw no choice but to clear to forest with infantry before letting my tanks pass by it, exposing their flanks and rear, but figured it was no big deal because it would take three minutes (and it did). That's why I stopped in the first place. Then, when the 2nd M60 appeared, my tanks were standing still. I figured that this was a good thing because their chance to hit the M60 would increase, opposed to when they would have been on the move. But then, after the 2nd M60 killed two of my T62's, still none of my (by this point remaining 4 or 5) T62's had spotted it yet, while they did have line of sight. What was I going to do? Risk yet another turn of the M60 shooting at my tanks and MAYBE that my tanks would spot it? Nerves got the better of me, I suppose, and I steered them out of harms way. I knew that it wasn't very 'doctrine' but I had fully expected the AT inf to clear the way in a clean, neat way in a matter of minutes. Thanks, I like that. Sounds like, after a few video's, I could do a "lessons learned" summary with the info from this thread . My main army experience was as a FO attached to a recon platoon of a tank batallion (Netherlands) - so kind of what we're talking about here. But unlike Soviet tactics, all of our SOP's were centered around seeing without beeing seen, so that's what I went with in this battle (even it wasn't really featured in the video). Now that you mention it; I do remember an instructor telling me that the Soviets did (or would do) recon with tanks. Seemed incredibly impractical to me at the time, but since CMCW came out and I became a bit more versed in Soviet doctrine, it makes more sense to me. That's another suggestion that I quite like... I do wonder if it would work in Combat Mission, tough. In real life, it'll be pretty hard to tell someone "see that road with all the arty falling on it? Go through there". But in CM, your troops will do it without question (until hit) and specificly tanks will likely come out unharmed. Moral is a factor in CM, but only as a response to current and immediate threats - not in the sense of fear of what MIGHT happen if I do this or that. The only sense of that is the fear that your opponent might have of sending his pixeltruppen into a situation, and I'm using that word to expres that your opponent might not be as afraid of giving that order as he would in real life . But then, I do enjoy a realistic fire plan in Combat Mission, even if it's more because of the 'authenticity' and realism of a plan than because of the effectiveness in game. In that sense, I'll add it to my lessons learned . It's a QB so I could not be sure what Megalon brought. If he had brought M60A3's, then he would have had thermal optics and smoke would have been a bad idea for me. He brought M60A1's, but I didn't know that until I made contact. I did consider to smoke some area's, but then, I was shelling every location where the enemy could have been with HE, so why bother also putting down a smoke screen? That was my thinking at the time, anyways.

I agree, in hindsight. Didn't dare to move past the forest where I first disembarked (part of) my infantry because I was afraid I would find one or two M60's shooting my batallion in the back as they passed. But perhaps I should have relied on the artillery more to suppress whatever was there as I moved through. It was a QB and I did bring TRP's, you can see them at some points in the vid. Like on top of the mound, and near the ambush site at the bend in the road. I never go without them

I did consider going left, actually. But it was a long way to the objective and going left meant that it would be slow going, with all the dunes that the enemy could be hiding behind and the forrests that could contain enemy units. I feared that Megalon would have plenty of time to shift his defences to that side of the map if I did. Ofcourse, I didn't know that he didn't put anything there.... Plus, I really would have needed to stick to the roads because of the mudfields in that area. I took two BMP's and one BRDM off road on the left side of the map and one of the three was immobilized in the mud. If there is a world where I would have gone left, it would have been a world with dry ground, I suppose. yes, I suppose that you could say BMP's have a hard time defeating armor. But I would argue: so does everything that's not armor, in a general sense . Getting around eighteen cannon wielding, ATGM-toting vehicles with every single infantry company is one of the main selling points of the Soviet army for me. Imagine if I had attacked as the US Army and I had lost my tanks like I did in the video... It would have been harder to continue the fight with M113's rather than BMPs I believe, even if the US Army infantry has dragons.

I agree that the fog of war played a large role in this battle, and that the trouble began when I lost the initiative. I had expected to get more intel from my recon in the opening phase, but since Megalon hadn't set up any troops in the first half of the map my scouts almost didn't find anything in the first fifteen minuten. And so I went in basicly blind. The setting to give the attacker some intel definitely looks appealing after this battle . My wife watched the video today and halfway through she turned to me and asked me what the other half of the video was about since I clearly lost my battalion in the first half . Yes, I was a bit more nervous than usual to press play when Megalon had in sent a new turn, as my stuff was going boom a lot more than it had done in other battles so far .

Hi all, I uploaded a video AAR of Combat Mission Cold War to Youtube. I thought I'd post it here so you can all tell me what it was you believe led to my demise https://youtu.be/qxLCkSFYq2c

I don't think they are gone... There are challenges from about a week ago in the list.

I would like to know this as well. I'm holding off on playing CMCW multiplayer for now because I'd like to avoid using both the old PBEM and the new PBEM++ at the same time. So any information about the implementation of PBEM++ would be appreciated.

Yes! That was it. I now have CMBN up to version 4.03 and I have Market Garden activated. I hadn't seen the 'activate new products' shortcut, and I had not seen it referenced anywhere on the site.... Thanks for the help!

Hello all. I haven't played CMBN or the Market Garden module in years, but I thought I'd pick it up again today. I originally bought CMBN v. 1, and through the years I upgraded this to v. 2 and v 3, and I also got the Market Garden module. Then I stopped playing. Today I paid the ten bucks to upgrade to v 4 and downloaded the full CMBN install v.4 and the Market Garden module. When I first started CMBN today, it asked for the activation code and I entered my code that I recieved today when upgrading to v. 4. I launched CMBN and saw that the version was v. 4.03. Then I downloaded and installed the Market Garden module. When I launched CMBN, it asked for my activation code from when I upgraded to V.2... That's weird. So I entered it, and the game reverted to V 2. I deleted everything and started again. First I installed CMBN V. 4.03, activated it, and checked the version. V. 4.03. Then I installed Market Garden, activated it with my key that I recieved when I bought Market Garden (and not my upgrade code for V. 2) and boom..... the game was back to V 2 again. So I thought I'd be clever and re-install V 4.03 over the same path, but while this did upgrade back to version 4.03, it de-activated Market Garden. How do I install and activate the Market Garden module while still maintaining version 4.03? I'm at a loss... EDIT -------- I now see that I now have two icons on my desktop. One named "CM Battle for Normandy" which launches V.4.03 but without Market Garden. And one named "Launch CM Battle for Normandy" that launches V.2, with Market Garden. So, I suppose the question is how to get the best of both worlds... V.4.03 with an activated Market Garden module...