Shady_Side
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Posts posted by Shady_Side
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On 1/16/2024 at 6:14 AM, The_Capt said:
“Shrinking the map”. It is one of the largest issues we have at this scale of wargaming. One cannot employ the same map scales for WW2 in a modern title. We will continue to work the artillery issue but the hallmark of CM games is tactical realism, maps will have to adapt. In CMCW we pretty much pushed out to the outer limit of what the game engine can handle with respect to map sizes. It wasn’t artillery that was the forcing function, it was ATGMs. A system that can reach out 3kms with very high Pk forces a much larger map. That, and Soviet formations needed room to manoeuvre. As we move into more modern era, say CMBS, the maps will need to get even larger. This reflects what we are seeing on the battlefield - dispersion and increased range and lethality per combat element. I suspect that after seeing the Ukraine war unfold that CM artillery will be readdressed. There is too much evidence of its effectiveness to ignore. CMx3 will need to take into account much larger map sizes as a result.
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
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On 1/17/2024 at 1:28 PM, Butschi said:
I guess we are not entirely contradicting each other here. I mean, as I wrote above, I agree lining up your tanks and charging forward is the way to offset the disadvantages from worse spotting etc. Maybe I'm just now very biased from the tournament. My point is, the training scenario (referring to the first one here), is really an idealized scenario. You start at pratically optimal engagement distance for your tanks, you have an entire TB (or MRB) against a company(-), you have overhwelming artillery and the enemy is conventiently clustered such that you can make best use of the artillery.
I was thinking of Valley of Ashes as a counter example. The two hillsides are more like 3km apart, the force ratio is way closer to 1:1 and you don't have sufficient artillery to saturate the other hillside enough to suppress or blind a significant part of the opposing force. You also don't start out with all your forces at once. The tournament had the additional problem that it had a time limit of 40 min. So, of course you can wait until you have all your forces but then more than half the time has ticked down, already. All the while the enemy gets reinforcements and brings his units into position. What's more, you don't have an assembly area where you can line up your forces without the enemy spotting (and shooting at) you, like in the training scenario.
So it is quite likely to lose a few tanks to TOWs before you even spotted the enemy. Sure, at some point, your tanks will make the spot and shoot back. At that distance, don't expect to hit with the first, second or even third shot, though. The US side has M60A3s (TTS) tanks. These are more accurate at that distance and if the situation gets too hot for them they pop smoke. At that point they have several turns in which you can't see and kill them while they can see and kill you.
Still, you have a significant force there and while taking losses (probably without doing much damage in return) many of your tanks made it to within a distance more similar to the training scenario. But then you discover that the enemy forces aren't just conveniently sitting lined up and clustered in front of you. Instead your tanks come under enfilading fire from tanks and dragon ATGMs. Add some DPICM to the mix and you have a really bad day.
Now, of course this is all just anecdotic evidence and you may well have had a different experience. Coming back to what I said initially. IMHO, the lining up part is effective given the right circumstances - it is just necessary to get into a position/situation where these circumstance apply.
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
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56 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
It was half the US doctrine really. The US knew that if all they did was fall back then the Soviets would be able to control tempo and initiative. So there were c-attack plans with limited goals, more jabs really (but would not look like it on the ground), to disrupt Soviet tempo. Also an operational fall back means some local tactical hard defensives on key terrain to prevent the whole thing becoming a rout. So while kill count is a solid metric, it was not universal and some key fights would have been US offensives and hold outs.
In game tactical advantage swings hard in the US direction by 82 as more advanced systems show up. One thing I would very much like to see is a re-visit of artillery effects on tanks and AFVs. The data used in the engine now is looking very shaky based on what we have seen in Ukraine. General HE artillery can seriously damage armoured formations. This would likely make 79-80 even harder on the US and return 82 to more parity. We do know that by about 84-85 the thing was done. The Soviets were not able to keep up and their concepts of mass were in serious trouble.
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.
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9 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Have you noticed the changes when you roll to '82 and M1s and M60A3s show up? Did you have to shift tactics?
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.
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7 hours ago, Butschi said:
If you have really superior numbers (like battalion vs company) and you don't have to care about force preservation that works. If the force ratio is closer to 1:1 then in my experience the blunt weapon approach doesn't work so well. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, though.
I also don't think that is really Soviet doctrine. While doctrine emphasised mass and drilled maneuveres to offset their disadvantages due to e.g. their conscript setup, this whole dumb human/steel wave thing IMHO is a Western cliche and not what would have happened.
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.
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21 hours ago, The_Capt said:
As I have watched CMCW player evolve on the Soviet side over the last 3 years, one can see that manoeuvre approach being adopted at the tactical level as well. I think we were betting a lot on Soviet indoctrination, but that might have also been a cognitive trap of our own making.
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....
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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.
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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?
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Yes Brille beat me to this but he is right. Fixed all my games right up....
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Thanks guys this got my games up and working!!
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24 minutes ago, Erwin said:
It's an obvious idea, but just in case... make sure you have something plugged into your machines audio output socket. For some reason CM games do not start without that.
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
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2 hours ago, George MC said:
Which games? BFC or Steam?
Assume you tried running the games by tight clicking ‘run as administrator’?
Common reasons are borked install, and anti-virus interference.
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.
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16 hours ago, Field Oggy said:
Problem solved, Please ignore.
How did you solve it? I currently have 2 games refusing to start and am coming up pretty dry when asking for help.
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37 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:
Exhausted Units can Move go Slow and Evade. As bad as it gets spotting is not affected as far as I can tell.
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.
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9 hours ago, George MC said:
I've made some updates based on feedback so far (with thanks to @domfluff )
What I've done is added an additional mortar battery and a 1 x 2 x122mm SP howitzer tube module and also beefed up the BMPs to BMP2s (so more supporting firepower) and added additional breach teams and sniper team to each platoon (so Delta mech plts have 3 x squads/2 x breach teams/ 1 x sniper team/ 4 x BMPs) so bit more oomph for bashing a way into houses but still requiring some careful management. Shame no way can add a supply vehicle with additional demo charges cos the 2 each breach team carries is a tad light! Still adds up to an extra squad and the sniper teams could be useful.
Updated file below.
Cheery!
TV 98-3 Attack in Brandenburg REDFOR_v4.btt 2.36 MB · 1 download
just downloaded looking forward to giving it a try!!
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3 hours ago, Vacillator said:
If other experiences earlier in the thread are anything to go by, it could be that the patch installed itself somewhere that isn't your particular CMBN location. It asks for confirmation of the location but it's easy to just click yes and keep going.
If you do use the full installer, you should avoid this issue as everything will go in the same place.
I did use the installer. I have another issue that might be connected. I have CMBS CMSF2 CMRT all run great on the same machine all have all the mods and battlepacks. I also have CMCW that will not run. CMBN ran great on it till I installed the patch.
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1 hour ago, Redwolf said:
Don't mess with patches. Download the full installer from your user account.This is what I was thinking of doing unless I hear a better ideal from the help desk. I have another ticket going and am hoping to get a fix for both.
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I downloaded and installed the new CMBN patch 4.04. Now my game will not start has anybody had this issue with it? Any ideals for a fix?
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Anybody besides me have tech problem with new patch? I installed it now CMBN will not run.
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On 2/18/2023 at 1:06 PM, PEB14 said:
I cannot distinguish any visible difference between the pro and commercial version at first glance. Does anybody know what are the main differences?
There is a short vid on YouTube that has what I think is the modernized Strikers in it. Auto-cannon and a javelin mounted outside the vehicle instead of the TOW. They fire it without the operator having to be opened up to. I just watched it a couple days ago but could not find it just then. I think it is from one of the fight club channels though
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On 2/16/2023 at 4:00 AM, chuckdyke said:
The important thing is there are choices, and you can make use of them. Don't be a lazy player and let opportunities slip.
In the example your talking about I will pile on some extra fire if it can safely be done and the unit is worth going the extra mile to eliminate. Sometimes just have the second angle of fire coming in is enough to take it out. Even if it's just a target briefly for 30 seconds or so.
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Sorry it has been a couple years at least since I played single player so I could not remember the names of most of the missions. I have to agree with you about the modern titles being a little more interesting. CMBS was my first CM game and I guess will always be my first love but once you get a little better at the game you realize just how wide the gap is between the US and Russia. It makes getting a fair game in a quick battle next to impossible without adding a lot of force restrictions to the US side.
I had forgot to mention much about SF2 though. I remember being a really big fan of the NATO campaigns in that game. Given what you have to work with, the gap in the quality of forces they were all pretty good and all had some pretty tough missions, again without piling masses of forces on the map and trying to make the blue force drown in the red force's blood.
I have dabbled quite a bit with the scenario editor myself and trying to design a battle from the ground up gives me a whole new appreciation for those of you that do it well. I have at times made a map I like. I have at times got a mix and match of forces I like. Even harder to believe I have at times came up with an A.I. plan that would put up a descent fight, even a reasonably good attacking plan. What I have failed to do is get all those elements right at the same time lol.
Again I am very much looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I was thinking the other day I would like to play a good campaign like i did in the old days. One advantage single player will always have is being able to finish a battle within a week or so, instead of the 4to8 weeks a h2h game will take assuming your opponent does not bail on you.
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Well I have played every one of these multiple times except Hasrabit which I don't recall ever seeing. The Road To Dinas is the only one I did not complete. I really liked the first few missions but before I could finish the campaign I switched over to only playing H2H. They are all very well done though I do have some criticisms I am sure you have heard before.
The Road To M-burg is my favorite out of these. It has some missions that are pretty easy and some that are very hard to win and a lot of them fall somewhere in between the two.
The Road To Nijmegen would be next though I have to say there is a lot of very difficult missions in it. I did not beat it my first go around. The ideal of adding time and I think full reinforcement to a player after getting on a losing track is a unique way of helping a player along that at least wants to see all the missions but every time it happened to me I stopped the campaign and counted it lost and restarted.
The Scottish Corridor is a downright ornery campaign from the first mission to the last and the bonus mission. This is one that probably put you in a tough spot considering it was a real life losing campaign. It is very well done but it is not for beginners and not for those prone to rage quitting lol...
What I appreciated most about your campaign scenarios was that even for the very hard almost forced losing missions you did not resort to just giving the A.I. seemingly unending amounts of forces or put the player in the absolute worst terrain possible or take any other "cheap" outs. Hell In The Hedgerows for example, sure the enemy has the high ground but you gave the player enough forces to be able to win it. Though it will for sure be an expensive and painful win it is possible.
Anyways based on your past work I am very excited to see that you are interested in making content again and very much looking forward to seeing what you come up with!!
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I thought about this a little bit more, which is not always a good thing. So for me CM is the only video game I have played since my teenage years. The graphics are almost as good has my Playstation was back in the day. So I am completely fine with them, also lets be honest this is not a game your playing because it looks really good. If that is what your after I am sure there has been a new Call Of Duty just recently released or one about to be, likely both.
Sure the games have a few bugs, but my old doggie gets fleas from time to time and I still kinda like him. that being said I would like the game to be a little more user friendly though. I mentioned about being able to ammo up your force with a lot fewer clicks earlier, but there are a few things along those lines I would love to see. Something like a "follow me" movement command to help move out of a bottlenecked set up zone. Without giving a million pause orders to different units and still ending up in a traffic jam. While I am asking for things I probably wont be getting I would like to see a "shoot and scoot" target order for we-go that worked something like hull down command does but in reverse. The only reliable way I can get a unit to pop up shoot and then back off is to use the pause order to get the unit to move at the end of the turn instead of the beginning. Yes I know you can move up pause target briefly then reverse. But a lot of times my unit takes forever to aim and so I get little to no fire where I wanted it or the unit hangs around longer than ordered and gets smoked. To somebody who knows absolutely nothing about how a computer works past waking it up and pointing a clicking my way to some entertainment or news. These things and I am sure the good ideal fairly will drop a few more ideals on me that would help me get the same orders issued with half the number of clicks per turn. would be easy to do. Though I have no doubt those couple little things would be take hundreds of man hours to include in the game if not more.
I guess that is where the rub is with these kinda games though. The extreme attention to detail you can give to every aspect of a units behavior is a big part of the appeal but also leads to some tedious turns of plotting every unit the same basic path thru some close terrain or fiddling with all the other endless details to get the perfect orders to execute the tactical masterpiece you have in your head. Just to see it end with your vehicles blazing wrecks and a field of little red crosses where your pixeltruppen should have been. Which leads to the very natural reaction "WHY DONT THEY GIVE US A BETTER GAME TO PLAY!!!"
Combat Mission Cold War - British Army On the Rhine
in Combat Mission Cold War
Posted
Kinda like the war will be over and the troops home by Christmas..