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Anyone getting tired of WWII settings?


istari

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My two bits:

Give me Europe/North Africa/Russia/China/Pacific (including Burma) 1939-1945. Maybe horses, motorcycles and wagons.

Aside from that my true wet dream is a really good Battalion Level, Black Powder, build your own, 1750 to 1890 Game. An updating of the old SSI Napoleon at War would send shivers up my spine and my ......

DavidI

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Originally posted by WindyCity:

Just polish the graphics and animation forget trying to reinvent the wheel.

Which BFC already did anyway. :D

WWII, I'll never get tired of. But hey, I'm open to new stuff. Worst case scenario for me: BFC gets on some other era, I buy it and love it, and still play CM for the WWII settings. Its a win-win situation. My only real hope, although I understand those who like napoleonic wars, would be to keep mechanized warfare in. That's what made it for me in the first place.

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istari,

A most interesting thread! Since you invoked MBT, though, I feel I must comment on the game I bought with eager anticipation, only to find it made opium dreams seem more substantial. In a nutshell, it represented an American treadhead wet dream, NOT

a terrifying reality. Why?

In 1984?, the Defense Science Board (Summer) concluded that the U.S. was in deep trouble in both armor and antiarmor vs. the Soviets, a problem so acute that only the Hellfire and Maverick were deemed adequate to remain in service as originally designed. The LAW, Dragon, and TOW were all deemed useless and in need of either massive upgrades or outright replacement. I was a Soviet Threat Analyst back then, first at Hughes and later at Rockwell, and attended Soviet Threat Technology conferences hosted by the CIA at which all the various experts spoke. The 1985 conference, in the "Year of the Spy" was simply stunning in its candor, with many conclusions subsequently reported in the SOVIET MILITARY POWER annual reports. We couldn't pierce them, but they could pierce us. Some highlights.

U.S. 105mm tank cannon unable to penetrate T-64/T-72 at tactically significant ranges using the then current ammo. T-80 even worse.

Soviet lead in explosives in terms of both energy and applied design.

U.S. use of static testing for evaluating Soviet HEAT warheads understated their performance, since their design specifically reflected the in-flight velocity component. Call the swing large and militarily significant.

Reactive armor nullified anything smaller than a Hellfire and could effectively turn even a T-55

into a formidable threat, particularly given fire control system and ammo upgrades (much nastier stuff available than the hardened steel projectiles

allowed to be exported). Reactive armor was also identified to have a significant impact on KE penetration.

Family of gun-launched ATGMs.

The discovery that a relatively small HEAT projectile fielded by the Soviets in the 1960s (and not seen by U.S. until after the Yom Kippur War)

could kill a Gen One M-1 tank. This came about because the Soviets were concerned about our first ceramic cored armor--the never fielded T-95--and

deployed a counter. How embarrassing that the M-1

which emerged decades later used the same armor technology.

Some upshots?

Crash programs to:

Improve 105mm ammo.

Upgrade Dragon warhead while working to field what became the Javelin, an IR guided fire-and-forget

missile using top attack.

Replace LAW with off-the-shelf, more capable foreign system = AT-4.

Upgrade TOW to Improved TOW (5 inch warhead with standoff probe), the TOW II (6 inch warhead with

standoff probe, plus beacon able to work through smoke and dust), TOW IIa (as before, but with special precursor charge to defeat reactive armor before warhead detonation), and TOW IIb (top attack

with angled warhead). Warheads completely redesigned, using exotic liners.

Hellfire got same treatment as TOW in terms of warhead approach. Later versions had millimeter wave guidance (Apache Longbow) for all weather capability.

Field first the M-1 HA (heavy armor), then the fully digital M-1A2 with its hunter/killer sight.

Units in hot spots received priority on M-1 HAs with 120mm guns, DU armor, and the "Silver Bullet" long rod DU penetrator. Recall that most of the 105 mm armed M-1s (with the early, vulnerable armor) were replaced before the ground attack was launched in the first Gulf War, using vehicles pulled right out of Germany. This was a direct response to the perceived danger from Saddam's aging T-72 export models.

It further turned out that the Soviets had an extensive guided munition program, including options we ourselves lacked, and also fielded fuel-air explosives and area weapon answers to both the M-113 and Bradley families of vehicles.

This is by no means a complete list and will, I think, show why MBT was completely wrong at its most fundamental level. Considering the game came out years after most of the above was front page news, there's no excuse. The unkillable M-1 (and much else) portrayed in MBT was utterly unrealistic and simply not supported by readily available facts.

As for the CM series, the new engine will be modular, allowing for all sorts of fascinating possibilities, but I fully expect that when the first game with that engine appears, we'll still be fighting World War II, probably in Europe.

Regards,

John Kettler

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Hey John,

That is one interesting post. I guess it goes a long way in showing that going post-WWII in CM would no doubt fire up some rather noisy debate on known/perceived facts about involved gear. I wonder how the available datas compare to WWII stuff, quantity-wise.

Cheers

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