Well obviously your right. However, Im certain that you dont exclusively play the 3 CM games?
Real time actually works quite well in a single player game. Escape key lets you pause at any time and issue orders to any unit.
Let's see - in single player, you fight against a Tac AI who is programmed to run down a checklist of timed items rather than responding to the tactical situation. Multi-player, Real Time is not possible if you are commanding anything more than a platoon and interested in anything more than a frontal assault on a narrow front.
PBEM works fine too as I said, and the bonus is that you get to watch the movie and issue orders every turn.
PBEM has the same Tac AI issues, and the same scale mismatch issues. If I want to get more anti-tank missiles from the armoured carrier, I have to detach an entire squad from the firing line to run back and get them (if Syrian; the US can detach "only" a fire team). Other features like "buddy aid" make it clear CMSF doesn't have a distinct focus - are medical and supply functions to be abstracted, or not?
The entire 1:1 focus is poorly done; individuals are on the map but where you would expect them to act as individuals - either by command or under computer control - they don't. You can't send 1 or 2 men ahead to scout, run up to the top of a building to look out over a valley or street, look around a corner, assault a tank, stand sentry or do an ammo run. There should be some function to allow things like this to happen; the willing suspension of disbelief simply isn't there for many people.
I get the impression the game was intended not as a game at all, but as a Blue Force Simulator, with an outclassed Red Force tacked on in hopes of selling this to DoD at some point. There is plenty to suggest this scenario - the fidelity to a physics model rather than simply finding simpler ways of calculating in-game stuff (and keeping the file sizes lower for PBEM and streaming TCP play, for example).
As an electronic shooting gallery, CM:SF is more stimulating than Pong, so if that is all anyone wants to get out of it, it has advantages over CMX1. I mean, the enemy doesn't counter-attack with mortars and platoon HQs in the lead anymore. Trouble is, he often doesn't counter-attack at all any more...