Is CMBS dead?

[Sgt Joch]

Yes, it’s too bad the expansion pack is dead, there was a lot of interesting stuff in there, although I understand BFC’s decision.

Now CMBS itself is not dead, the game still works fine. There are some mistakes since a lot of stuff had to be guessed at, but on the whole it is pretty accurate.

Now in terms of simulating the current war, that can actually be done as well, you can build immense minefields, fortified lines, play around with morale/command capacity, give both sides lots of UAVs, etc.

You can also easily upgrade UKR forces. The scenario editor is flexible enough that you can easily add U.S. weapons to UKR units. I have done various quick and dirty scenarios and UKR forces with Abrams, Bradleys, U.S. artillery and drones are VERY capable. Unfortunately, any U.S. vehicle you add to UKR forces will still show up as U.S. and speak English, but that is a minor point. Hopefully, that could be addressed by modders.

All CMx2 games are ultimately sandbox games and you can do a lot with them.

[arpella72]

On 1/15/2024 at 8:37 AM, chuckdyke said:

BS is just not worth playing it is a hypothetical game and biased US No 1 Russia No 2 Ukraine No3 and no expansion pack is planned to rectify this. Kudos for the WW2 games it is where BF shines and we really enjoy playing it. FI is the next game I will buy. 

I couln't agree more. Somehow,modern combat doesn't fit well in CM mechanics.

[Anthony P.]

If there's anything the war's taught us, I'd say it is that CMBS' prediction of Russia's military abilities was vastly, vastly overestimated. With the advantage of hindsight, the amount of BMP-3s and T-90s available throughout the game seems like a Russiaboo's wet dream. The default equipment state used in the editor for all Russian units should be "Poor", and the T-72B3 shouldn't even be the worst tank available.

A realistic revamp would probably see Russian and Ukrainian units on a shared second place, if not reversed even.

Edited January 23 by Anthony P.

[Centurian52]

On 1/23/2024 at 6:33 AM, Anthony P. said:

If there's anything the war's taught us, I'd say it is that CMBS' prediction of Russia's military abilities was vastly, vastly overestimated. With the advantage of hindsight, the amount of BMP-3s and T-90s available throughout the game seems like a Russiaboo's wet dream. The default equipment state used in the editor for all Russian units should be "Poor", and the T-72B3 shouldn't even be the worst tank available.

A realistic revamp would probably see Russian and Ukrainian units on a shared second place, if not reversed even.

I'd say it depends to an extent on which point in the war you're trying to model. At the beginning of the war I would say the Russians do have an advantage in the quality of their armored vehicles, but not by as much as you would see in a typical CMBS scenario.

At the beginning of 2022 roughly half of Russian tanks were "modern" (T-90A or later), and roughly half were Cold War vintage (T-80U, T-80BV, T-72B, etc... (all of the visible tank wrecks in the infamous failed river crossing were T-72Bs)). The most common Russian tanks by far were T-72B3s and T-72B3Ms. T-90Ms were basically non-existent at the beginning of the war (less than a hundred in their whole inventory), and T-80BVMs were very rare. The most common Russian IFV was the BMP-2, and (correct me if I'm wrong on this one) I think the BTR-82A was the second most common. There were significant numbers of BMP-3s, but I'm pretty sure they didn't make the top two most common Russian IFVs. I think BMP-3s were either the third or fourth most common type of Russian IFV.

Most Ukrainian tanks were T-64BVs, with some T-64BV(2017)s, small numbers of T-80BVs, small numbers of T-80BM Bulats, and almost no Oplots (despite them being so common in CMBS, I think the Ukrainians were only operating around 10-20 Oplots in reality). Their most common IFV was the BMP-1, and the second most common was the BMP-2.

Throughout the war the fighting has been far more even than either the most optimistic pro-Russians or the most optimistic pro-Ukrainians have cared to admit. But at the beginning of the war I'd say it was mostly even with a slight edge for the Russians, and by a year or so in I'd say it was mostly even with a slight edge for the Ukrainians. Actual casualty estimates tend to put the Russian casualties 1.5-2.2 times higher than Ukrainian casualties. But I think that is partly reflecting that the Russians have generally been on the attack, and partly reflecting that Ukraine is a democracy, so is unwilling to throw away its soldiers in reckless attacks.

Edited January 30 by Centurian52

[Erwin]

Attrition realities:

Population of Russia (2021): 143 Million 

Population of Ukraine (2021):  44 Million  

Ratio 3.25.  

[Centurian52]

8 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Attrition realities:

Population of Russia (2021): 143 Million 

Population of Ukraine (2021):  44 Million  

Ratio 3.25.  

True. But I seriously doubt that Russia will be able to use anywhere near as high a proportion of their population. And critical inputs other than manpower will probably collapse long before manpower does anyway. While casualty rates in the war are high, they aren't anywhere near high enough to run down either country's recruitable manpower on timescales less than decades.

In terms of actual number of troops in uniform in Ukraine, Ukraine has probably maintained a slight numerical advantage throughout every phase of the war except the beginning. The Russian army + proxies would have had a slight numerical advantage at the beginning of the war. Ukraine's current numerical advantage should be much less by now than it was towards the end of 2022, prior to Russian partial mobilization, but they should still have a slight numerical advantage. While most Russians will not vocally oppose the war, support for the war in Russia has never been as high as support for the war in Ukraine. So it is doubtful that the Russians will ever be able to translate their 3.25:1 population advantage into anything like a 3.25:1 numerical advantage in the field. It is equally doubtful that the Russians will be willing to endure 3.25 as many casualties as the Ukrainians.

[simovitch]

BFC's marketing decision notwithstanding, I think the fact that the CMBS setting depicts what would happen if NATO intervenes with all the superior weaponry and technology makes this a go-to title for me. It's not too far of a stretch to imagine that NATO intervention might have spawned a mobilization of higher-quality and trained Russian manpower so the discrepancies with what we are seeing today as far as Russian troop quality can be rationalized away for me.

I'm playing the Russian side on the "Crossing the Dnieper" campaign and it's really quite fun. 4 games in and I Just had my first encounter with a Bradley and learned a few hard lessons on the outskirts of Dnipropetrovsk.

[Sequoia]

Regarding the current war in Ukraine- You do all know there is a thread that is now 100s of pages long discussing it in the Black Sea forums. Can we not digress into discussing the war itself here in this thread please?

[Sequoia]

That said one possible idea is IIRC the upcoming module was to feature US Marine forces. If that's correct, perhaps they could be used in a new game about a fictional Russian attack on Norway in 2017. I believe the response force to an attack on Norway has always been the USMC. Sure, taking such a path runs into the same issues as listed by The Captain above, but the initial game need not have more than Norwegian frontier forces whatever they are, if that.

Yeah new maps would of course be required but, wow, it would be quite a different setting.

 

Edited January 31 by Sequoia

[luigim]

Or maybe a Baltic Sea/Kaliningtad game... With Russia Belarus and VDV.. vs USA, Poland and of course the baltics

[Anthony P.]

Both of those alternatives involves basically creating a whole new game: completely new maps, and completely now TO&Es for new militaries.

[Centurian52]

7 hours ago, luigim said:

Or maybe a Baltic Sea/Kaliningtad game... With Russia Belarus and VDV.. vs USA, Poland and of course the baltics

I expect anything in eastern Europe would be a no-go while the war is still on, for the same reasons that further work on CMBS had to be shelved. I think there are some interesting prospects for a new modern war game set in SE Asia/Pacific, if they are up for doing the artwork for the new terrain. Either a game depicting asymmetric warfare with North Korea vs South Korea and the US, or a game depicting peer/near-peer warfare with China vs Taiwan and the US.

The advantage of doing China vs Taiwan/US would be that a lot of the work on CMCW US forces could be carried over directly for Taiwanese forces. The advantage of doing N. Korea vs S. Korea/US is that there is probably a lower chance of the real thing breaking out a few years after the game is developed. And there is a lot of S. Korean kit that I would be very interested in seeing in action.

Wherever a new modern warfare game ends up being set, there is a lot of interesting new kit that will be entering US service in the next few years that will be interesting to see in action. The M10 Booker, the new, smaller, and more easily deployable cousin to the Abrams, will be entering service with US airborne units in the next few years. It would make sense to see it with the first American units to arrive in Taiwan. There are plans to get a new IFV to replace the Bradley, but I think we're still early in that process, so it's unlikely a Bradley replacement would make it into a new near-future title. There aren't any plans for a new MBT yet as far as I'm aware. So a new modern war title would bring us a shiny new light tank in light US forces, but we'll still be seeing the same Bradley/Abrams combo in the heavy forces.

The US is also getting new small arms. We're going back to the battle rifle concept with the XM7 rifle (presumably it will just be called the M7 when it enters service (the 'X' is usually dropped when a new system actually enters service)). The theory being that the greater penetration of a battle rifle is more useful now that all infantry are wearing body armor. And optics being available to all infantry means that modern riflemen should actually be able to take advantage of the greater range and accuracy of a battle rifle, which was completely irrelevant back when riflemen were limited to iron sights and the mk-1 human eyeball. But it still has most of the classic drawbacks of a battle rifle. It will be heavier than the M4, and troops won't be able to carry as much ammunition for it. It is reportedly softer firing than most older battle rifles, so it may still be controllable in full auto (certainly more controllable than the M14 was). Getting to play around with it in Combat Mission should give us a sense for whether going back to a battle rifle is actually a good idea.

But the XM7 rifle is actually the least of it. Maybe the brass think that going back to a battle rifle is a great idea, maybe they don't. Either way, that's not really why we're going back to a battle rifle. The biggest reason is for ammunition compatibility with the new light machine gun we're getting. The XM250 (again, presumably it will just be the M250 when it enters service) is going to be significantly lighter than the M249, significantly more accurate than the M249, will have significantly greater range than the M249, and will have almost no felt recoil. There's some give and take as to whether the XM7 will really be an overall improvement over the M4. But there is absolutely no doubt that the XM250 will be a huge improvement over the M249 in just about every way. Whatever you might think of the XM7, I have no doubt that the XM7/XM250 combo will represent a significant improvement in US infantry firepower over the M4/M249 combo. And I can hardly wait to try them out in a new modern warfare Combat Mission title.

[Sequoia]

59 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

Both of those alternatives involves basically creating a whole new game: completely new maps, and completely now TO&Es for new militaries.

Yes, we are grasping at straws attempting on reviving in some way the new content that is presently frozen the way they say Walt Disney is (but actually isn't). I'm curious how much of the scenario and new campaign work was already completed?

[Simcoe]

11 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

I expect anything in eastern Europe would be a no-go while the war is still on, for the same reasons that further work on CMBS had to be shelved. I think there are some interesting prospects for a new modern war game set in SE Asia/Pacific, if they are up for doing the artwork for the new terrain. Either a game depicting asymmetric warfare with North Korea vs South Korea and the US, or a game depicting peer/near-peer warfare with China vs Taiwan and the US.

The advantage of doing China vs Taiwan/US would be that a lot of the work on CMCW US forces could be carried over directly for Taiwanese forces. The advantage of doing N. Korea vs S. Korea/US is that there is probably a lower chance of the real thing breaking out a few years after the game is developed. And there is a lot of S. Korean kit that I would be very interested in seeing in action.

Wherever a new modern warfare game ends up being set, there is a lot of interesting new kit that will be entering US service in the next few years that will be interesting to see in action. The M10 Booker, the new, smaller, and more easily deployable cousin to the Abrams, will be entering service with US airborne units in the next few years. It would make sense to see it with the first American units to arrive in Taiwan. There are plans to get a new IFV to replace the Bradley, but I think we're still early in that process, so it's unlikely a Bradley replacement would make it into a new near-future title. There aren't any plans for a new MBT yet as far as I'm aware. So a new modern war title would bring us a shiny new light tank in light US forces, but we'll still be seeing the same Bradley/Abrams combo in the heavy forces.

The US is also getting new small arms. We're going back to the battle rifle concept with the XM7 rifle (presumably it will just be called the M7 when it enters service (the 'X' is usually dropped when a new system actually enters service)). The theory being that the greater penetration of a battle rifle is more useful now that all infantry are wearing body armor. And optics being available to all infantry means that modern riflemen should actually be able to take advantage of the greater range and accuracy of a battle rifle, which was completely irrelevant back when riflemen were limited to iron sights and the mk-1 human eyeball. But it still has most of the classic drawbacks of a battle rifle. It will be heavier than the M4, and troops won't be able to carry as much ammunition for it. It is reportedly softer firing than most older battle rifles, so it may still be controllable in full auto (certainly more controllable than the M14 was). Getting to play around with it in Combat Mission should give us a sense for whether going back to a battle rifle is actually a good idea.

But the XM7 rifle is actually the least of it. Maybe the brass think that going back to a battle rifle is a great idea, maybe they don't. Either way, that's not really why we're going back to a battle rifle. The biggest reason is for ammunition compatibility with the new light machine gun we're getting. The XM250 (again, presumably it will just be the M250 when it enters service) is going to be significantly lighter than the M249, significantly more accurate than the M249, will have significantly greater range than the M249, and will have almost no felt recoil. There's some give and take as to whether the XM7 will really be an overall improvement over the M4. But there is absolutely no doubt that the XM250 will be a huge improvement over the M249 in just about every way. Whatever you might think of the XM7, I have no doubt that the XM7/XM250 combo will represent a significant improvement in US infantry firepower over the M4/M249 combo. And I can hardly wait to try them out in a new modern warfare Combat Mission title.

I agree, it would be fascinating to see how the US adapts to the warfare environment we're seeing in Ukraine.

I'd rather them focus on Combat Mission 3. Unless we get some huge changes to how drones are handled, EW, artillery and aircraft a new modern game is still WW2 mechanics crudely bolted onto a modern game.

[Traitor]

A shame that the DLC is scrapped, but for very understandable reasons.

I think the main appeal of CMBS was the near peer/ near future setting where we could get a taste of how modern wars, or wars in the near future would be fought. The trouble with it is that potential options for a near future/near peer setting also tend to be conflicts that might very well happen in reality.

Additionally, the conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated that a lot of the original assumptions about modern war were incorrect, drones, loitering munitions, tactical ballistic missiles, mines, artillery, mines delivered through artillery, electronic warfare, guerilla style tactics, field improvisation (strapping everything to a MT-LB) and improvised vehicle armor all play a larger role than most people expected. While this might not be applicable to every country, I think quite a lot of it is.

Hopefully a CM3 would be designed to fully accommodate for the advancements in modern warfare.

I still want a CM game set in a near peer/ near future setting, but perhaps the next "modern" game could either use a fictional setting like in the ARMA series, or one that is extremely unlikely to happen such as China vs EU, Russia vs China, EU vs USA etc to avoid a repeat of CMBS.

[Centurian52]

On 2/2/2024 at 10:47 AM, Traitor said:

I still want a CM game set in a near peer/ near future setting, but perhaps the next "modern" game could either use a fictional setting like in the ARMA series, or one that is extremely unlikely to happen such as China vs EU, Russia vs China, EU vs USA etc to avoid a repeat of CMBS.

The trouble is that it's the most plausible real-world settings that are the most interesting. I doubt I'd bother buying a game pitting the EU vs the US, because I know there's no chance in a million years of that ever happening in real life. I might have a bit more interest in a fictional setting. But really, it's the most plausible near-future wars that I (and I suspect most people) would be most interested in seeing simulated. I think the chance that the real war might actually break out is a risk you just have to take with near-future modern warfare settings. You either accept that risk, or you don't make near-future modern warfare games.

[Traitor]

On 2/6/2024 at 12:30 AM, Centurian52 said:

I might have a bit more interest in a fictional setting. 

A fictional setting doesn't mean it can't be based in reality, you can have fictional alliances of real countries like they did in ARMA, where there's a Chinese-Iranian led alliance doing a proxy war with NATO in a fictional Southern European country. It sounds plausible-ish but there's no such alliance in reality (yet) so there's no risk of it turning into a real conflict in the short term.
 

On 2/6/2024 at 12:30 AM, Centurian52 said:

I think the chance that the real war might actually break out is a risk you just have to take with near-future modern warfare settings.

I don't think you can eliminate the risk, but there are ways to minimize it, such as having the game take place a decade or two in the future where you have a bit more freedom in the geopolitical backstory. A EU vs USA scenario might not be as ridiculous if there's 10-20 years of backstory to get to that point: democratic backsliding, radical political parties and leaders seizing power, new alliances being forged with traditional adversarial countries, increasing resource scarcity and certain flashpoint locations (maybe even a fictional flashpoint location) can create a reasonably plausible scenario where such a conflict can happen. It depends on the writing and how far in the future you are willing to go, we have to remember that current global alliances are not set in stone.

Or there can also be realistic-sounding scenarios that are extremely unlikely to ever happen, such as China vs Japan, with the potential involvement of Russia, North Korea, South Korea, USA and maybe Iran or select EU countries as expansions (North Korea vs South Korea directly is too risky of a title in my opinion). Such a scenario is probably impossible in real life, but you wouldn't have to suspend too much disbelief for it.

[Traitor]

On 1/23/2024 at 10:33 PM, Anthony P. said:

If there's anything the war's taught us, I'd say it is that CMBS' prediction of Russia's military abilities was vastly, vastly overestimated. With the advantage of hindsight, the amount of BMP-3s and T-90s available throughout the game seems like a Russiaboo's wet dream. The default equipment state used in the editor for all Russian units should be "Poor", and the T-72B3 shouldn't even be the worst tank available.

A realistic revamp would probably see Russian and Ukrainian units on a shared second place, if not reversed even.

That's true, but the game was never meant to depict a real conflict, it was always intended to be a hypothetical scenario, set in the near future against a near peer enemy. When the game was released it was clear that it was meant to represent a hypothetical future conflict, in hindsight given how reality played out differently it might have been a better idea to set the game in 2027 instead of 2017 in order to get the same perspective.

Obviously no military in the world is truly an equivalent to the US army, but that's the suspension of disbelief required in order to have a game with a near future/near peer scenario (It is still useful to model what conventional modern warfare against a similarly equipped enemy looks like). A fully realistic game would probably just play like Shock Force 2 again with the US army stomping any opposition with ease, but that won't be very useful when trying to see how well the US army would do against a broadly equivalent enemy.

Perhaps a realistic modern scenario (without being set in the near future where you can write into the backstory that an adversary greatly beefed up their military and adopted new equipment) that doesn't just devolve into Shock Force 3 would require the US army to not be involved due to the sheer power disparity making the conflict no longer a near-peer one. However, the US army is basically required for a modern war game to sell well, thus the only real way to depict a near peer scenario is to have a hypothetical conflict where the enemy military is better equipped than in reality and have the audience suspend their disbelief.

[Erwin]

14 hours ago, Traitor said:

A fully realistic game would probably just play like Shock Force 2 again with the US army stomping any opposition with ease

With the advent of Cyberwar, and new forms of warfare tech, that is no longer a given.  It is a worry that we have become like the mighty Persian army which came up against the upstart Greeks.  

[Traitor]

19 hours ago, Erwin said:

With the advent of Cyberwar, and new forms of warfare tech, that is no longer a given.  It is a worry that we have become like the mighty Persian army which came up against the upstart Greeks.  

True, warfare is changing, especially with the rise of new technologies like drones. However, I expect most militaries to be rapidly developing anti-drone technology, jammers and the like so the effectiveness of cheap commercial off the shelf drones will greatly diminish and all remaining drones in warfare will need to be hardened in some way.

In a conventional war, the US military does currently dominate over any potential opposition, but it remains to be seen if this lead will last. That's why I think the near future/near peer setting is an important one to model in wargames, sure, it's hypothetical in nature, but we can't assume that the US military will remain peerless 10, 20 or 30 years in the future and it is useful to simulate how well it does against an equivalent foe.

[Erwin]

7 hours ago, Traitor said:

In a conventional war, the US military does currently dominate

The emphasis on "conventional war".  That is rather like the generals who expected horse cavalry to still be useful in WW1.

[Probus]

I wonder if your right @Erwin.  I hope not.

[Erwin]

Things have already changed.  The modern CM2 games demonstrate that long range ATGM's dominate the battlefield and tanks are now very vulnerable vs a peer enemy.  The lack of usefulness of the Abrams and Leopards in Ukraine is a great demo. 

Secondly, we have drone warfare which is just getting started.  Imagine hundreds, even thousands of drones doing an assault - and driven by AI to independently and intelligently target enemy units.

Thirdly, we are in the era of increasingly effective cyberwar and the ability of enemies to devastate the "soft underbelly" heartland causing power, food and water shortages for civilian populations as well as disrupting the financial basis of a society.

[Traitor]

On 2/11/2024 at 7:57 AM, Erwin said:

Things have already changed.

I think we'll be seeing more of how technology can allow for new ways to wage asymmetric warfare. Things you mentioned like drones, cyberwar etc are becoming increasingly accessible to many militaries, and it'll be very interesting to see how such innovations can be combined with more traditional asymmetric warfare techniques like guerilla warfare or traps such as IEDs which can help to offset the advantage that more conventional militaries have, we're already seeing some of it in Ukraine.

We may very well be entering into a new military revolution where conventional warfare capabilities alone may not be sufficient.

[Anthony P.]

On 2/9/2024 at 6:35 PM, Erwin said:

With the advent of Cyberwar, and new forms of warfare tech, that is no longer a given.  It is a worry that we have become like the mighty Persian army which came up against the upstart Greeks.  

I'm not quite sure on what factual basis that fear can actually rest itself upon.

One should appreciate the potentials of cyber warfare, but at the end of the day it's not as though we actually eat cyber food and drink cyber water. The "cyber warfare can destroy society as we know it" can sound reminiscent of pre WW2 "the bomber will always get through" fears of major population centres like London being razed to the ground overnight with millions upon millions of dead and seeing empires begging for peace within weeks of war being declared, or McNamara's technophilia in Vietnam.