Shady_Side

Kinda like the war will be over and the troops home by Christmas..

I have been taking a closer look at the 82 timeframe. A couple quick scrimmage games and tested a few match up a little bit. The biggest difference I noticed is something I don't think I have ever seen mentioned on here. Sure US equipment has taken a big step forward and has went from being behind the Russians to being ahead of them. But from what I have seen so far I cant say they are not that far ahead of the Russians based on equipment alone.... Sure Abrams is a good tank. Great optics low profile. really good armor But that 105mm gun can struggle with Russian armor especially at longer ranges. I think the real game changer is replacing all those nearly useless M113s with an actual combat vehicle. The fact that the Brad is a good vehicle is just the cherry on top. In 79 the US struggled struggled to match up to Russian armor in both quality and quantity. The Brad helps cover both categories. It made me wonder is adding and anti-tank platoon to every company of maybe 6or8 ITOW could have been a usefull stop-gap measure. Like I said

Yeah almost all my experience is in quick battles. Scenarios can be set up to tip the balance in a lot of ways. In the quick battles though I was always up against some ITOWs mixed in and they are the most dangerous A.T. weapon the US had. They almost never got a second shot off though. You are right aboutRussians not getting first or second shots on target but once ITOWs fired usually 4or5 tanks would get the spot on them and of those 1 would get a first shot hit or close enough to damage them as they are fragile. Often quick enough to make the first missile miss. As for tanks I was usually against Rise plus versions of tanks, which were not a lot more accurate then my mix of T64s were but here again the T64s had a couple advantages. One was even if hit there was a descent chance of staying in the fight. Most of the time a hit on one of the M60s was a kill. M60s are outgunned and outarmored by T64s. Also I did not just line up and charge I would be on a terrain feature that I could retreat from if and when the cluster started falling (though rarity in quick battles largely ruled that out). This thread has got my CMCW juices flowing again.. Need to jump back in and see how the 82 match ups play out

We knew kill count was not the only goal of real world US doctrine. But for gaming purposes it was one of the handiest things we had. Our interest tends to swing back and forth between the titles we play the most. So a refocus on CMCW is for sure going to be coming up and when it does a shift from playing in 80 up to 82 is on the agenda. As for the arty thing, this has been a long term gripe for a lot of CM players. In the back of my head though, it seems I saw an interview Steve gave some time back where this issue was brought up. If I am remembering right he said that one concern they had was increasing the effectiveness of arty might have the practical in game effect of shrinking the map which creates another set of issues. It makes sense to me. I don't know the first thing about how to make a video game work on these computer gizmo's but it does not surprise me at all that when it comes down to it there is a huge series of give and take issues behind it that players would never really consider.

Actually we took a bit of a different approach. Our understanding of US doctrine at the time was to fight and fall back. Whittle the numbers disadvantage down as much as possible while looking for localized counterattacks to further nibble away at Warsaw Pact numbers. Rinse and repeat while trying not to go nuclear until somebody wised up and found a peace deal. Good luck on the last piece of that strategy. Back to the point. If the US was supposed to fight and fall back forcing them on a couple stand or die objectives seemed unfair. So we started altering some quick maps into quick scenarios where the US scored for all the kills they could get and gave them an exit zone to simulate the "fall back" part of the strategy. Giving the Russians a rough 50/50 split on available points for killing US units and terrain objectives. Usually with a fairly short game clock. This seemed well on the way to getting a more balanced game but honestly, we are lazy and have most all other titles covered and moved onto something else.

Actually, I found that I took fewer loses doing it this way. It maximized the advantages the Soviets have baked into quick battles i.e. more tanks with better armor, a better gun and with massed eyeballs it compensated for the spotting disadvantage. Plus made an infantry assault to seal the deal totally unnecessary. This is exactly how the tactical doctrine scenario instructs you to use them and it works, every single time. To the point of increasingly restrictive house rules to try to balance the scales.

No doubt that you have at least 2 tones more experience with this game than I do. For me once I embraced truly using the Soviets has a blunt instrument ala the training scenarios. I never lost or really even felt challenged in a quick battle in 79or80. Gimme a Tank Battalion Task Force with mix of T64's (T-62s if I wanted to cut my opponent a lil break) BMP infantry, AA hopefully the more expensive SAM vehicle the name escapes me at the moment, a couple of 6-gun 122s arty support along with battalion organic 120 mortars. I would always have to do some trimming to this which I tailored to the map and opponent. I would line my T64's roughly the way Napoleon would his infantry. Let them bang it out with whatever was on the other side that wanted to play. Once arty or lack of targets would make me move I would move up 2or300meters fill in for whatever tanks I had lost. Sometimes with an odd BMP1P (their ATGM's are pretty good) Rinse and repeat one or two more times and game over usually without even having to go through the infantry mopping up phase....

Thanks. I contacted Elvis about it and sent him a saved game turn Friday. He said he would look at it and get back to me. To answer your questions. My understanding as always been that air support can be preplanned anywhere during deployment. After that to call in jets the spotter has to have line of sight or a TRP. To call in choppers the spotter still does not need LOS to call an area target mission in. This is how my US spotters work and how my Russians did when I first bought the game. It is also how all other nations work in all other titles. I know that drones in CMBS have a linear target mode but I am not certain if CAS used to have that available or not. I rarely use CAS so I am not sure when my Russians changed but I have the game on steam so I should be up to date on everything.

Hey guys I have just noticed the my Air Controllers only have point target available when calling in Russian air. It does not matter if it is jets or choppers or ammo loadout. I don't usually use air when I am playing the Russians. I think I remember using them a while back and it worked like all the others do in all the titles. So is this a bug?

Yes Brille beat me to this but he is right. Fixed all my games right up....

Thanks guys this got my games up and working!!

yeah i started out with cmbn cmbs cmsf2 and cmrt with only cmcw not working.... i installed a patch for cmbn.... and it has not ran since... i tried a completely fresh install and no luck

I always by from BFC. Yes tried running as administrator. This is the wrong forum but CMBN ran fine until I installed the last patch. CMCW never has ran on this laptop. CMBS runs great on it. CMSF2 with all modules runs great on it. CMRT with F@R and battle pack runs great on it. CMCW will not launch. CMBN ran great until last week when I installed the new patch. Before you ask, yes a help ticket was submitted for CW back in December and another recently, and a ticket has been summitted for CMBN as well.

How did you solve it? I currently have 2 games refusing to start and am coming up pretty dry when asking for help.

I agree that F/O's and other units not intended to actually engage the enemy can function just fine if they are fatigued or exhausted. What about actual combat units though? I am under the impression their overall combat performance drops off when they get worn out, which would make sense.