Shady_Side

One thing I would really like to have is a faster way to get extra ammo in the set up phase. Maybe by being able to get it a platoon at a time instead of squad by squad. If nothing else would make a lot of defensive battles less time consuming to set up.

I was not offended by it being called gamey. I just like to chat about these games, but that more often than not means saying why one technique or another I use is not dumb and is not gamey. These games like everything in life have their flaws but I enjoy playing them. I know going into it I am not going to get a true to life simulation out of it though because even if you could get the perfect A.I. and a perfect realistic OOB.. There is still no way of getting around the fact that you has the player have a gods eye view of the battlefield and can literally what everything that happens thru the eyes of every unit you have and no commander has ever had that kind of situation awareness. Not to mention you can't get a true recreation of a historical battle because chances are you already know what the winning and losing sides did and will try a different plan for the losing side or have bit of prior knowledge for the winning side. That being said I really enjoy historical campaigns and scenarios anyways but I find that these days I am drawn more to the modern titles. I know some clever little C2 tricks in those to if your interested.

Ok guys I understand they will be getting a big upgrade in their capabilities. And I understand that a battlefield is not exactly the right place for a little on the job training. I understand that starting with a freshly enlisted man it will take a very long time to teach him to be a soldier, before you even begin trying to teach him to be an armored soldier. Then teach him to drive a tank, shoot it's cannon, hit what he is shooting at way more often then not, making sure what he is shooting at is never a friendly, teach him to communicate inside his tank, teach him to communicate with other tanks. If our tanks are going to come with a radio system it will take a month to teach him how to use, how about unplugging that one and putting it on the shelf for the time being and putting their radios or something similar to in it's place and get these tanks into the war a month sooner. It just seems logical to me that operating tanks would have more similar things then they would have things that are wildly different. For an overly simple example my old Ford Escort I learned to drive in has a lot of basic things in common with supped up Dodge Charger. I would need some time to learn how to get the most out of that Charger but I dont need to learn to drive all over again do I? I understand learning how to use newer better optics will take some time and with those new better optics might come a new tactical trick that is not currently available. But at the end of the day it is still a large heavy metal box that they will be driving to the best location he can find that allows him to look into his much improved optics adjust a set of crosshairs onto an enemy and pull a trigger. I know that is grossly oversimplified but these are not cavemen we will be teaching how to use this fancy new stuff were going to let them use. They are veteran tank crews that I am sure already know a couple things about modern armored combat. I know there will need to be some training done that will take some time but the timeframes I hear just don't make sense to me. And if it truly does take this long to train them on this new equipment then we should have started the training process months ago. Every day the war can be shorten is one less day of Russians doing god knows what to some civilian unlucky enough to have been occupied to long already, one less day some Ukrainian POW spends in some crappy Russian jail under at least the threat of torture or execution. One less day of all the miseries this war shown us seems like something to strive for. This is a subject I am very interested in but don't know anything at all about using any of this stuff outside of a video game (which Battlefront assures me if very realistic ). So if none of the skills I learned for fighting a T72 are useful in training me how to fight in an Abrams why is that? Respectfully guys, can I get an answer with a little more depth to it. If the answer is really just our stuff is so complicated it takes a year for a veteran soldier to use properly then I think a good argument could be made for giving me the older simpler equipment and I will overrun your whole country while your troops are redoing boot camp.

I have I dumb question that I know some of you guys on here will have the answer to. The time to train Ukrainian tank crews on new western tanks seems extremely long to me. Assuming they are not picking troops out of boot camp, they will be starting with crews that already know the fundamentals of armored combat. Probably better than the trainers do. Been a long time since desert storm after all. The only real life thing I can think to compare it to is something like this. My first care a Ford Escort. Every car or truck I have had since then has been more modern, and more capable, and did take a little bit of time to adjust to but not that much. Maybe a better example is I have operated all different kinds of heavy equipment some bigger and newer with lots of upgrades and some old bangers that would take half a morning to get started. Point is a lot of the fundaments are basically the same and sure I need a little bit of time to adjust but not long. I can even understand a longer time period need to train for the properly maintain them. But as far has the actual driving on a battlefield and shooting the gun with a crew that already know and understand their tactical role. Why the long training period? So what am I missing guys??

Well, all war games are going to have gamey aspects to them. Some worse than others. But to make it more realistic I can easily envision a situation where company A and B were going into a battle and for technical the 2 HQs were going to have trouble communicating with each other and tasking their XO's to with the other units HQ to help info flow easier. Just has I can imagine a battalion commander telling his subordinates to work out a better way to communicate with each other instead of waiting for all info to be passed to him and then for him to pass it back down another C2 chain. As for locating weapons platoons HQs with other units leadership seems like the more useful thing to be doing. I know they supposed to have a moral effect on their subordinate units but I question how effective that is because most of the time their weapons teams were supposed to be farmed out throughout the platoon anyways. Attaching a MG to a particular squad for example. To me it seems like less gamey and more like a smart unit trying to maximize the equipment they have to work with no matter if it is in the field manual or not. I do get why some people would say it is gamey though and it is a matter of taste in the end. I don't like the gamey things like last minute rushes for objectives knowing that even if you do manage to get a fingernail grip on it you would never be able to stay there if not for the clock ticking down. Don't get me wrong in tournament games for example you are pretty much forced into it. There is the always gamey aspect of putting a scoreboard at the end to try to show in a point value who won, and there really is no better way of doing it, but for my own enjoyment I prefer to look at what the mission spelled out to me was and whether or not I accomplished it at a reasonable cost to determine within my own mind if it was a win lose or draw completely independent of what the final score is.

One thing I like to do when my force has more than 1 company but no battalion HQ, is to place company A's XO with company B's commanding officer and company B's XO with company A's C.O. This allows cross communication between the companies and having them in different locations makes certain one unlucky shell wont decapitate all higher level info sharing. If a battalion element is present placing weapons platoon elements with battalion XO or CO. And I still cross the company CO's and XO's with each other because it seems to allow info to pass quicker between companies that way. So rather than company A's info passing up to battalion HQ and then to company B it can pass directly between A and B.

This is a great video. It is very helpful in understanding how the Soviet forces were designed to be used. I would love to see a similar one done for the Russians in CMBS.

If nothing else videos like hapless and free whiskey make are the best advertisements for the game. They are what hooked me on the games and now I own almost every title they have and will be waiting on something else to be released so I can buy it to.

Shady Side is not trying to undermine Ukraine at all.......................................................... Reread what I said... I want Putin to have a quick and fair trial.....and then be escorted to the hangman...... And if anything that approaches justice comes out of this war Russia will have to pay reoperations for all of the damage they have caused to property. There is not enough money in the world to pay for even a tenth of the suffering and death they have caused to Ukrainian soldiers not to mention all the murder, rape, and torture of the civilian areas they occupied. That is a debt that only the hangman can take a deposit on, and the balance can be paid in what comes after for them. Again though. After a fair trial. That is every bit as important as my focus on punishment. If the people that took part in the act can be found after the war, great they can have their trials to. Something I firmly believe now, is a piece of advice I got years ago when I was promoted into a management position in a small family business in my hometown. Everything the people under you do is something that you either taught them to do or you tolerated them doing. Either way your responsible for it. Maybe I am wrong about that when you scale it up to a military and the country that supports it. If I am a fair trial would sort that out.......... Since you have me on a rant let me continue. I hope that what I said was not taken by many of you all as me attempting to undermine Ukraine. I do get an uneasy feeling that because of how well Ukraine has done so far that it has lead to some unrealistic expectations of how this war can end. Mainly because no matter how brave of a fight Ukraine puts up how this thing ends is largely dependent on how much we in the US and the West in general is willing to support Ukraine. About that support. People seem to fall in 2 categories. Those on the internet that closely watch everything and strongly support Ukraine and KNOW they are going to win. And those in my everyday life that either don't know much about it or don't care much about it. But they know we have already spent to much money on it and don't want to get world war 3 over a country they occasionally see on the news, usually because we just sent them another billion or two in aid. So the longer this war goes on the softer western support will be. In closing let me be clear I think we should do everything possible to ensure a quick and complete Ukrainian victory but I am not sure Western support will last that long or run that deep. I could fill up another page or two on why I think that but will spare you guys from reading all that for the time being. I just did not want any misunderstandings from anyone on what I want to see at the end of this war, even if it is not what I think we will see

I have the same question. I think maybe first thing to do would be define winning. Hold a stalemate till Russia agrees to go back to where they started February 23rd. That might almost sound like losing now and certainly for all the blood sweat and tears it has costed the Ukrainians it is an unsatisfying outcome. But if you had ask them on Feb 25th last year if it was an acceptable outcome they would have been very happy to have it. If you call winning pushing the Russians into the black sea and back to their original borders. That still seems a little out of reach to me. Though that is not an opinion shard by many people on this forum. I think that Russia has more cannon fodder that they are willing to use, and that cannon fodder is still willing to be used. So the only way you get that outcome is to hold a back and forth type of stalemate until something fundamental in Russian society changes. For a lot of reasons that either takes decades maybe centuries or does not happen at all. See North Korea. Or it is something that could happen next week. That is one of those things that tends to happen slowly and then all at once. Personally I would like to see them march to Moscow. Give Putin and his enablers the quick and fair trial that he deserves followed by the quick hanging or toss from a very high window. He deserves that to. Leave a bill they are owed for the rebuilding of their destroyed cities and scholarships for the children of Ukrainian mothers and fathers killed in this war.......... but I dont think i am getting what I want on this one

Thanks for the welcome guys. I have been very interested in reading this forum since the beginning. It is a great place to get some opinions of people who have spent a lifetime doing professionally things that for lack of a better word have only been a hobby for me. No matter how many books I have read, documentaries I watched or hours I spent playing combat mission, war is something I dont really know anything about. From what I see though we in the west have given enough to ensure a stalemate. Maybe a stalemate where Ukraine has a bit of an upperhand, but not enough to push Russia completely out of their country. At least has long has the Russians are willing to throw enough draftees to bog down and stop an offensive just because of the time it takes to kill them all. Big dumb mass as the capt calls it. I dont believe Russia can win with it, if you call winning pushing into Kiev installing a puppet getting "legal" control of the territory they want and heading to the victory parade in Moscow. But they can drag Ukraine back into the trenches and hold them there a very long time with it. Thing is I don't see Ukraine winning either with what they have if you call winning shoving the Russians into the black sea in the south and back over the borders in the east. Not with what they have and not with what we are even willing to discuss giving them anytime in the near future. Sure Russia will likely come up with another big offensive that will take some ground before it falls apart. Just like Ukraine will have another big push somewhere but it will probably start drowning in Russian blood and have to stop even if they have a shiny new battalion of Bradleys and Marders. A division or two would make the difference but that is not coming anytime soon. So they will end up back in the trenches again. Rinse and repeat with neither side being able to really gather enough strength to finish the other off So far the only ideal for a complete Ukrainian victory is waiting on Russia to collapse from within. I am afraid that will be a very long haul. Once a society or a structure is in place and standing it usually takes a helluva long time to fall not matter how flawed the original design or how many signs of rot we clearly see from the outside. See North Korea as an example.

Hi guys. I have been reading this forum multiple times a day since the 25th of February last year. This is the first time I have posted anything on here though. What brings me out of the shadows after all this time is some growing questions I am beginning to have. There are almost 1900 pages showing Russian incompetence and brutalities and of course Ukrainian bravery. Those pages along with 1 working eyeball, 1 working ear, a thimble full of common sense, and a Tic Tak sized amount of human decency should be enough for anybody to know the righteous side of this war and who we all should be doing something big or small to help them win. Here is the thing though, Why have not they won? As much as I have read on here that Ukraine won this war in the first week, they still ain't done it yet. Large parts of their country is still occupied. Their soldiers and civilians die and get maimed everyday. God only knows what their civilians currently occupied suffer everyday and their p.o.w.s that for whatever reason the Russians decided a long time ago were not going home. I think that this talk of a building Russian offensive should not be so flippantly dismissed. As much as we like to poke fun at the draftees that got scooped off the street handed a bolt action rifle and sent to soak up Ukrainian lead and gunpowder and bog down their offensives. They accomplished that mission and got Ukraine back in the trenches It is clear Ukraine is winning... but they ain't won nothing yet. When you look at it from the other side, sometimes when your losing, you need to slow down the process drag it out see if circumstances change. Has much has we poke fun at those draftees all of them where not used has lead sponges. Those guys are coming up on what 3 months of some form of training. And to me it is impossible to think that that training has not vastly improved over what it was a year ago. Simply pulling a few vets out of the trenches and telling them how to survive and how to fight and maybe not worrying so much about if they can march a straight line. And poking fun at all those T62s and T64s being pulled out of storage to be sent into the fight. They are still tanks and there is still a lot of them. While I am happy Ukraine is getting 50 Bradleys and a few other modern I.F.V.s.. still though that is a Bradley battalion. Maybe add a Marder battalion to it... maybe not..... guys its gonna take lots more than that. Before I ramble on anymore let me just ask it simply. After years of overestimating Russia, are we now underestimating them? Is that a dangerous path that this small echo chamber, like the larger western ones to be leading public opinions and expectations down? The Ukrainians have proven themselves to be as tough and brave has any army and are fighting for a righteous cause. This ain't a movie though and the good guys don't always win

It is my game and yes Red Thunder runs great. I just got it with fire and rubble and the new battle pack. I also have CMBS, CMSF2, and CMBN and they all run great. CMCW will not launch though.