MHW

I've seen this become a popular cry among young users (not all young users) over the last 10 years in a couple of forums for games I have played for 20+ years.  They will say anyone that posts about how the game is good let's the developer slack off and not make further improvements. Throwing your toys out of the crib is the way to get things done according to these users. 
Many, I won't say all because I know it's not all, of these young posters, IE " the tolerant crowd" aren't tolerant at all if you don't agree with whatever they are going on about. There is no middle ground. You are wrong and any name they call you is deserved. Just remember to never call them out because, "that's not being tolerant". lol
 
This is a quote I ran across on another game forum. 
Lot's of truth in those words. 

The comments people had were interesting. For example:
"I wonder if this accounts for the growth of the gaming population. Are there actually less people interested in strategy now? Or is it just a smaller percentage of the whole because the whole has grown?" 
"I wonder if they took into account was age. A lot of people who used to play the long winded strategy game just don't have the time anymore as adults with kids and a job and responsibility." 
"I'd love to still have time for those games, but I rarely get more than one uninterrupted hour in a day if that..."
My own thought is that the strategy games being produced in the last decade or longer are not that compelling, and also feature much less attractive graphics.  But then, one could label the successful GTA series as strategy games.  

The US Congress added an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act requiring consent from 2/3rds of the Senators or an Act of Congress in order to leave NATO ( Congress passes bill to prevent the president from leaving NATO without approval (msn.com) 
A President could sort of leave by not co-operating, I suppose.  

Damn, I thought someone had started a punctuation and grammar thread.  FYI we hired a professional editor for the campaign briefs/write ups in CMCW.

On the forum and in various discords, the topic has been raised more than once as to whether there was a ground-based radar on the BRM-1 in our gaming time of 1979-1982. Last week I started researching the topic and came across a reconnaissance vehicle operating manual from 1982. All that is known about the radar itself is that it began production in the mid-1970s. Perhaps the information provided will give us in the future a ground radar on the BRM-1K in one of the patches, since I can judge that a ground radar could initially be on all reconnaissance vehicles.
Documentation of BRM-1K operation

 
 
In addition, I studied the topic of thermal imagers in the USSR and learned some interesting things.
The first Soviet zero-generation thermal imager to go into small-scale production was 1PN59 "Posobie-1", which consisted of 50 sensitive elements and had a scanning frequency of 16 Hz, and a target recognition range of 2000 m. This device was installed on PRP-4 (1984) - a mobile reconnaissance point used for reconnaissance and target designation of missile and artillery systems.
The second thermal imager of the first generation was 1PN71 "Posobie-2" with 64 sensitive elements and a scanning frequency of 33 Hz. The target recognition range increased to 3000 m. This device was installed on PRP-4M (1988).
The first two thermal imagers did not find widespread use in sighting equipment and were used only for monitoring the terrain on highly specialized reconnaissance vehicles. However, even if one wanted to, 1PN59 could not be used as a sight due to the low scanning frequency.
Directly for equipping tanks, work was carried out on "Agava-1" thermal imager, which already had 100 sensitive elements and could recognize a tank-type target at 2000 m. "Agava-1" successfully passed tests, but the military abandoned it due to unsatisfactory characteristics, so the timing equipping Soviet tanks with thermal imagers moved back again. After this, the development of an improved version, "Agava-2" began. The number of sensitive elements was increased to 256 pieces, and the target recognition range increased by 20-30%. “Agava-2” suited the military, but its mass production took place in the early 90s, when the country no longer had time for thermal imagers, however, this sight will be installed on some Russian T-80U/UK tanks.
 

Image from the screen of thermal imager 1PN59.
 
 
 

I see the rabble are getting roused.  We all appreciate the enthusiasm, we really do. As to updates, well I can echo what Steve has already said - we are aiming to have this DLC out this year.  As to progress, well data and research are largely complete (few things left but not biggies).  Maps for the major campaigns are built (I showed off a few and one was used in that CM tourney).  Campaigns are essentially designed and waiting for the kit.  Equipment lists are done, we will likely be haggling these to the finish line.
So over all scope, scale and background are all defined.  What we are waiting for now is the second longest pole in any content creation tent - artwork/modelling.  This is where stuff gets drawn and actually put into the game.  Once we get enough of that we start rolling on really putting it all together, which in the case of BAOR should be pretty quick, but we still need to do testing and polishing.  We still have a features debate - what is in or out features-wise but that will be sorted quickly.
So the short answer is “sometime this year” and we are fairly far along.  Now it is a matter of getting very few critical people’s time to deliver their end and we can then pull it al together.  No Star Citizen, conspiracy or subterfuge, only limited resources available and waiting in line.

First heard of CM1 while lurking on a 'close combat' forum in '99', people were talking about this 3d strategy game in development. When they said it was turn based I thought not for me, it was only later in autumn 2000 that I read a review of CMBO in a magazine (something like 'pc strategy gamer' I think it was called) where they explained the 'wego' system that I thought I would give it a go. After playing the demo I immediately ordered the game (first ever online purchase) and played nothing else for the next 18 months, until 'Rome total war' turned my head. I found the forums at the same time I bought the game, it was a good source of mods and user made missions, there were some actual WW2 vets on the forum back then which was fascinating to read. Anyway I have bought most of the game series as they were released over the years and still play on a regular basis, the only game I've played that this is true of.

Hi,
Am I the only one to be frustrated by low visibility scenarios?
The associated game mechanics is not the issue, even though it can lead to some weird situation (in the last Scottish Corridor night mission, I had a squad unable to see a moving Sturmgeschütz in an adjacent tile, that's less than 12 meters away, while it could area target that tree line 100 meters away?!!.... It looks like the game makes it easier for vehicles to sneak into enemy lines in the dark than for foot soldiers, which is really not realistic).
My main concern is the visual rendering of the lower visibility, which IMHO really hampers playability.
If I'm not mistaken, the game engine always shows ALL TERRAIN FEATURES attached to the map itself, whatever the actual visibility. Wherever you put the camera, you'll always see that house 500 m away, even when visibility is reduced to 200 meters. At least for me, it makes playing very difficult, because I always struggle to estimate what terrain pixeltrüppen actually can cover or not. Agreed, you still have the LOS tool; but in close terrain you always have a doubt wether blocked LOS is caused by some obstacle or by reduced visibility. Ans situation gets worse when it comes to visibility changes: dawn, dusk, etc. Nothing changes visually in the game !!! You have to test and guess every turn to check wether visibility has changes or not...
Presently, when you click on an unit, you can see exactly what is sees in terms of enemy units and fortifications. I'd really, really enjoy the extension of that to terrain features: anything beyond visibility range would disappear when you click on an unit. THAT really would make up for great low visibility scenarios, don't you think?

Alex Wellerstein looks at how the US worked to protect nuclear weapons information, doing compelling research about a little-understood subject. He published Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States a couple of years ago.
Not a book, but there is a steady drip-drip-drip of declassified and FOIA'd materials coming out of the intelligence community, DOD, and State, and GWU's National Security Archive collects those documents. They publish blog posts about the most interesting new items.

I would strongly recommend Paxton's "Anatomy of Fascism" or John Ganz's online writings about anti-Dreyfusard and/or Boulangiste France. The model of fascism represented by Mussolini or Hitler is not quite what's happening to the GOP, subject as it is to the cultural and political mores specific to the United States. On the one hand, that's a good thing because the essentially immigrant/moderate/revolutionary/democratic foundation of the state makes blood and soil dictatorship a much harder prospect. But on the other, the United States also contains within it strains of racism and violent action that, should they ignite fully, can be positively Balkan. 
Luckily, there's one simple and decisive thing Americans can do. Vote. Vote for the current administration even if it isn't your cup of tea. Because if nothing else, it will remain within the normal bounds of politics. And (to remain on topic)...because it is far more likely to see the war in Ukraine to a positive conclusion. 

Stross is one of my favorites. Maybe if we get CM Cthulhu war unicorns will be available as DLC.
H 

If you're going there, make it Lovecraft south pole shenanigans: giant albino penguins, shoggoths, and Elder Things vs intrepid antarctic explorers.
H

I'll post my progress on this campaign in this thread from now on. For those who don't know anything about this campaign, it was my second Red v Red campaign made for CMSF way, way back in the days of the release of the USMC module and its setting is a Syrian civil war scenario where some Syrian generals attempt a coup. The premise is that the coup is launched with thunderclap surprise and so rebel forces are put into action as soon as they mobilise. While a good number of divisions will 'wait and see', the regime has a number of divisions that are 100% loyal so the rebels are on the clock as the more time they take to accomplish missions, the more time the regime has to assemble its own forces to oppose them.
This means that time limits will be reasonably strict to reflect that pressure and so casualties are to be expected to accomplish your goals. However, the campaign gives you quite a large core force of which one company and support (usually tanks) is drawn to perform the mission.
One point is that some of these maps are very large and so it would seem like it's a bit of a stretch just to have a single company when a battalion would be better. For example,

A single company? To take THAT?! Are you HIGH?" And this...


In both these situations, the friendly forces arrive in small packages and so the action unfolds over time. My plan is not to change the nature of the campaign too much and keep the player's forces small and have lots of artillery support as well as as many 'cool' toys as I can find in the Syrian OB to play around with.

Hi all, its been a while... in fact so long that I had to create a new account for the Forums... Anywho I started revamping some of my old work so it will play better in Game Engine 4.x and also I am back to creating some new scenarios (some fictional, some semi-historical)... Also redid my Combat Mission Site (haven't touched it in 7 years)... Since I lost touch with all the people that use to playtest for me I ask if you have feedback; Good, Bad, and/or Ugly that you submit that via the Feedback button in the site's menu... I have done extensive testing on the vs. AI battles but, the Head to Heads I have not been able to test... Well I am active again, who knows for how long but I do have a lot of time on my hands and a lot of scenarios/campaigns on the production schedule...  You can check every thing out at Fredrockers Combat Mission Site ... Enjoy

Don't know if either below will be of interest to you or not, both are higher than tactical discussions. The second one may already have been referenced by the CMCW designers.
Into the 80s in Mech Bns Pre-Bradley/still 113 based, the MECH Bn/TF TOW company was a support and admin HQ. TOW Platoons were attached to Mech Companies to give the Mech Cos. long range AT fires, just as you posit.
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA384122.pdf
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://history.army.mil/html/books/069/69-4-1/cmhPub_69-4-1.pdf

I tend to feel that balance has always been seriously overrated in game design. I'm perfectly capable of having fun while taking a beating from a stronger opponent (desperation and despair can be a lot of fun in a simulated environment), or ruthlessly crushing a weaker one (indulging in a power fantasy is also fun). And thinking of CM as an educational tool, it's certainly valuable to learn how to fight a set piece battle against an equal opponent. But learning how to exploit against a weaker opponent or withdraw in the face of a stronger opponent is just as important.
Withdrawal and exploitation are two skills that us wargamers get precious little practice with. There is probably a bit of sport/tournament thinking going on. People think that once victory/defeat is determined, the battle doesn't matter anymore. All that matters in a sport is who wins and who loses. There are no higher or lower gradients of victory or defeat. But in reality it mattes a great deal whether you can turn a victory into a decisive victory, or prevent a defeat from turning into a decisive defeat.

VT fuses of the CW worked great, but we didn't have a large amount of them. I don't know if we had a WW3 in Europe if we would have been provided a lot more or not). You can't fire them over water because they'd get a very strong return off the water and explode too early. And by firing over water, you're probably ok if the body of water is at the apex of the trajectory. If it's closer to the target you may get premature firing. A small stream isn't going to do it. A wide river, small lake definitely would. The same can be true over forested areas if the tree cover is very dense. Strong return off the forest canopy means the fuse can fire too soon - above the canopy. A snow covered canopy would be even more likely to prematurely trigger the fuse. Firing at personnel in heavy woods we would have used Time fuses so that the fuse explodes at a preset time of flight. That flight trajectory is adjusted when computing data so that the shell explodes in the air about 7m above the target rather than impacting the target (basically lifting the trajectory so the point of impact would be behind the target). With time (Mechanical Time) fuses, there's no "radar" component, just a clock, so no chance of that VT premature triggering. You can also use "Quick" fuse (point detonating/impact) and get good results because some of them are going to go off when hitting a tree, creating an airburst in the middle of the woods. (think of the Bastogne perimeter episode of Band of Brothers where they are in their foxholes and trees are "exploding" around them.)
So that tracks pretty well with the in game results above with VT fuses into woods. The game doesn't model mechanical time fuses at all. It's either HE Quick or VT, or later, some time of precision munitions. 
Pretty good but very short article on US designed fuses. The mechanical time fuses I saw were the MTSQ-564 - first pic, left hand fuse. Rotate the top to select the time. They'll still go off on impact if for some reason the time doesn't work - either failure or hitting something before time expires. 
http://www.inert-ord.net/usa03a/usa6/fuzes/index.html
Dave

I'd say it depends on. Soviet doctrine absolutely was "fight buttoned up"... but that doesn't mean the Joes doing the fighting weren't capable of determining what actually worked out in practice and what worked better in manuals. I read wartime recollections of an Su-76 commander a few years ago, and he discussed this specific topic. What he'd been taught in training was that the commander should always use the periscope, but he soon understood that the old hands in his crew advising him that he really ought to just stand up above the armour plating and use his binoculars if he wanted his SPG to actually hit anything were right.
The notion that Red Army TCs religiously buttoned up instead of getting outside and using their binoculars even when fighting tanks at range isn't reasonable just based on the fact that it would've been obvious that doing so would not be conductive to surviving against an enemy TC actually unbuttoning while you yourself stayed inside a cramped fighting compartment and peering through narrow, dirty, un-magnified vision slits.
I make an exception when it comes to Cold War tanks and only peer out occasionally when closer than 1km simply because the crew becomes very handicapped if the TC is hit, as well as the role play aspect (official doctrine is less likely to be flaunted only a few days into a conflict than it is several years in).

I think it goes beyond political correctness, which was really an exercise in re-labeling and taking into account multidimensional sensitivities.  This is something else.  My working theory is that it is following patterns seen after every major pandemic - a re-evaluation on a broad and deep social scale.  During the pandemic social value paradoxes were laid bare and felt just about everywhere.  Grocery store clerks became front line critical staff while CEOs were stuffed into Zoom boxes with the rest of us - is an example. 
That exposure laid bare all sorts of "hey wait a minutes" that coalesced together incredibly fast.  After the Black Death there was a massive social renegotiation as labour realized that is value had fundamentally changed.  1918 (plus WW1) gender and class value shifted dramatically.
So here we are again as what determines "value" is shifting under our feet.  History shows it can be a pretty bumpy ride but then things settle down and we adapt to new social frameworks.

You also are accepting zero actual risk in all this.  This entire issue comes down to risk/opportunity for BFC.  While for you it is entertainment and convenience.  Those are entirely different frameworks.
The opportunity for BFC is modest - DLCs do not make as much money as main title releases so ROI is limited.  They also have multiple lines of product, so they can offset any losses by shifting focus to offset lost investment in development.  The risk for BFC, in this environment, is significant.  Beyond the fact that releasing a wargame set in an active war zone (there are actual game maps that overlap RL) while people are dying, is going to be considered “bad taste” by most and “a social crime” by some - companies have been cancelled for less.  The risk of significant loss due to perceived exploitation of human suffering is high.
This is existential for BFC.  It is their livelihood.  Are you willing to personally pay for the financial damage this move could do to the company?  Are you willing to put your job on the line for a CMBS DLC?  Because that is what you would be asking BFC to do.  BFCs job is not to make you happy.  Their job is to sustain the business that makes you happy.  Right now risking everything on a single DLC does not make business sense. 

This!
I'm four scenarios in in three days and I'm seeing precisely what you've been describing for the last two years. I was fairly sloppy in Brauersdorf and I lost *two* TOW launchers. One of them had 7 kills. If every third split squad had a Javelin, the Russians wouldn't have made it past the pre-registered arty. It's also revelatory to my understanding of where things stood in Europe in the very early 80's. I had thought the danger zone lasted into 85 or so. Clearly not.  
What are your thoughts on now the Sov's might have fought differently?

So, coming at this from an artillery perspective, it's apparent that 'mass' means different things to different people. A lot of  folks think of mass as something like the Old Guard forming up in columns trying to smash through the heights behind La Haye Sainte in the early evening of 18 June 1815 (which failed), or the tanks of VIII Corps trying to smash past Caen on 18 July 1944 (which kinda sorta worked). Which, sure, that is mass. But that kind of raw and naive mass has been increasingly unreliable for centuries.
The inexorable trend over the centuries has been for units to fight more and more dispersed - the current concentrations in the Ukraine would have been unthinkably thin in 1943.
As time has passed soldiers and their kit at the front line became more dispersed while at the same time firepower and other effects are becoming more concentrated - or massed - in both time and space. This trend is very obvious with artillery once indirect fire became the norm. The fire from of dozens and eventually hundreds of guns spread out over dozens or hundreds of square kilometres could be massed into a single area at about the same time, first winning WWI and then critically influencing the way WWII was fought. Note that this isn't strictly a function of range - the Paris gun had an absurdly long range, but didn't really affect the course of WWI. That said, increasing range definitely drove dispersion.
The ultimate (so far) development of massing effects is PGM (incl ATGM). In some ways that sort of seems counter intuitive - how can less guns/rounds = more mass? - but it really isn't. The effect you want can now be concentrated, or massed, at exactly where you want (to within a metre or two), exactly when you want it (to within a few seconds).
On a graph over time you get two crossing lines; massing of manpower and equipment is falling fast, while massing of effects is rising about as fast.
 
tl;dr: you should be skeptical of massed manpower and equipment. It's been dying for a long time. No pun intended.
 

The New York Times ran a piece about what went wrong with the IDF response on October 7th. The article doesn't reveal any surprises, but it does confirm the early picture and and add detail.
Here is a non-paywall gift link: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/world/middleeast/israeli-military-hamas-failures.html?unlocked_article_code=1.J00.nIkS.Ht8N0K3C2OiF&smid=url-share
This quote sums up the situation:
That might be the most damming point, but it is not news. The particulars about what happened are more telling. Take the case of Maglan, a deep reconnaissance unit. Its soldiers got their information from a civilian monitoring the news, social media, and chats:
Other key points:
The Israeli government intended that civilian volunteer units would protect kibbutzim and small towns near the Gaza border, holding off attackers until IDF soldiers arrived. These units were underequipped and undertrained, and many were unable to retrieve weapons from armories after the coordinators who held the keys to armories were killed. The quick-response force is commandos, maybe a company or two, intended to act quickly against small bands of hostage-takers. The IDF main force along the Gaza border was 3 infantry battalions and a tank battalion. About half of the soldiers were away on leave because of the holidays. Forces were much reduced from their recent strength. One infantry battalion was withdrawn after the completion of the border wall; two commando companies were moved to the West Bank just days before the attack. Units in the area started pulling their leadership back from leave, early that morning, because of unsettling indications that Hamas was about to do something, but those units let their personnel stay in bed. A base at Re’im hosted the Gaza Division's headquarters, and the headquarters for the brigades covering the northern and southern areas. Hamas attacked the base, and the entire IDF command structure for the area went off the air, fighting to survive. An early assessment held that there 200 terrorists had stormed into Israel, when the real number was more like 2,000. Soldiers underestimated the need for firepower and headed south with light weapons and limited ammunition. The article notes, a few times, that Israelis were outgunned. There doesn't seem to have been any kind of sustainment effort, of course, and tank crews ran out of ammunition. The Israeli system relies on mobilizing reservists. That takes time. A reserve major is quoted as saying that his unit planned and rehearsed for deployments with 24 hours' notice. Much of the Israeli response was ad hoc, with soldiers coordinating on social media, through messaging apps and phone calls, and by watching the news. (This type of emergent, self-organized response would be celebrated in some circles but not, I suppose, for a major military force.) Hamas terrorists took up blocking positions on the highways east of the border towns, halting IDF reinforcements.  

The New York Times ran a piece about what went wrong with the IDF response on October 7th. The article doesn't reveal any surprises, but it does confirm the early picture and and add detail.
Here is a non-paywall gift link: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/world/middleeast/israeli-military-hamas-failures.html?unlocked_article_code=1.J00.nIkS.Ht8N0K3C2OiF&smid=url-share
This quote sums up the situation:
That might be the most damming point, but it is not news. The particulars about what happened are more telling. Take the case of Maglan, a deep reconnaissance unit. Its soldiers got their information from a civilian monitoring the news, social media, and chats:
Other key points:
The Israeli government intended that civilian volunteer units would protect kibbutzim and small towns near the Gaza border, holding off attackers until IDF soldiers arrived. These units were underequipped and undertrained, and many were unable to retrieve weapons from armories after the coordinators who held the keys to armories were killed. The quick-response force is commandos, maybe a company or two, intended to act quickly against small bands of hostage-takers. The IDF main force along the Gaza border was 3 infantry battalions and a tank battalion. About half of the soldiers were away on leave because of the holidays. Forces were much reduced from their recent strength. One infantry battalion was withdrawn after the completion of the border wall; two commando companies were moved to the West Bank just days before the attack. Units in the area started pulling their leadership back from leave, early that morning, because of unsettling indications that Hamas was about to do something, but those units let their personnel stay in bed. A base at Re’im hosted the Gaza Division's headquarters, and the headquarters for the brigades covering the northern and southern areas. Hamas attacked the base, and the entire IDF command structure for the area went off the air, fighting to survive. An early assessment held that there 200 terrorists had stormed into Israel, when the real number was more like 2,000. Soldiers underestimated the need for firepower and headed south with light weapons and limited ammunition. The article notes, a few times, that Israelis were outgunned. There doesn't seem to have been any kind of sustainment effort, of course, and tank crews ran out of ammunition. The Israeli system relies on mobilizing reservists. That takes time. A reserve major is quoted as saying that his unit planned and rehearsed for deployments with 24 hours' notice. Much of the Israeli response was ad hoc, with soldiers coordinating on social media, through messaging apps and phone calls, and by watching the news. (This type of emergent, self-organized response would be celebrated in some circles but not, I suppose, for a major military force.) Hamas terrorists took up blocking positions on the highways east of the border towns, halting IDF reinforcements.  

That’s the point. I don’t debate with folks on here about things I don’t know and I actually come here to benefit from those who do. Worth trying…