PSY

Will units gain experience and improve during the campaign?

I definitely would like to see a roster. The lack of a roster is my biggest frustration with CMBO and CMBB.

Apologies if this has been covered before. The demo does not appear to have any settings on AI difficulty level. I would consider this a very useful feature. I'm sure BTS has already thought these through, but here are my thoughts on some of the techniques used for handicapping the AI or player: <UL> <LI>Adding or Subtracting Forces. I think this is probably one of the best ways of handling difficulty levels. <LI>Changing AI Behavior. Another good approach, although I imagine it could be difficult to do, depending on how the AI is programmed. If it's simply a matter of reducing the depth of search trees used by the AI, then this is a good way to go. <LI> Skewing Odds For/Against Player. Some games tweak with the combat odds to make the game harder. I'm not a big fan of this approach, but I suppose it's probably the easiest way to go and certainly is better than nothing. Speaking of adding and subtracting forces from the AI, is there an option allowing players to pick and choose their forces for a given scenario using a point system ala Squad Leader's Design Your Own scenarios. I know it's probably difficult to get the point values balanced, but I find these lots of fun.

Hi everyone, I think things are escalating a bit too much here. While perhaps it's not my right/responsibility to say anything, since I've been a part of the "Please add an OOB in" movement, I'd kind of like to do my best to return things to a more cordial level. As many of you probably know, studies have shown that computer communication has some major limitations. E-mail and BBoards lack the visual feedback found in real face-to-face meetings or even the audio tone of voice feedback found in telephone conversions. As a result, when disagreements occur, participants often assume that people they are communicating with are writing with a hostile tone of voice when they aren't. The result is that each participant responds with a slightly more hostile tone of voice and the conversation escalates into an argument. Ultimately this leads to flaming. I think both sides in this debate feel like they're being attacked. I was quite suprised to discover that some of the anti-OOB crowd feels like their being attacked by hoards of pro-OOB types. Personally, I felt that Hagen, Scott, I, and a few others were being attacked by Steve, Moon, Fionn, and others who were saying basically we were idiots who just didn't get what CM was all about. (By the way, thanks Fionn for your conciliatory posts in another thread on this issue). The point is, I'm sure both sides feel like they are under attack and both sides are starting to escalate. This is unfortunately par for computer communication. I think the important thing to do is to realize what's going on and for us all to make a very sincere attempt to return things to a cordial level. [WARNING WARM FUZZIES ON, GROGNARDS TRY NOT TO GAG] Anyway, let me just say that I very much appreciate the effort that Bigtime has put into creating a game for us. I appreciate the fact that Steve takes the time to communicate with all of us on this board. I definitely appreciated Fionn and Moon taking the time to do the AAR for us. I think it's safe to say, as others have pointed out, that those of us posting in disagreement are doing so because we see this great game and want to make it better. [WARM FUZZIES OFF] That said, I still want my OOB DAMMIT

Well, for what it's worth, my troops took down all three Hellcats with the loss of only one Stug. The Tiger and the surviving Stug were out in the open and I think they were buttoned up (the Americans had been dropping some kind of nasty artillery in the area the turns prior to the Hellcats arrival--I supposed it could have been the 60mm mortars, but it looked pretty big). The Hellcats arrival kind of suprised me. First thing I noticed was that my Tiger wasn't shooting at the infantry target I had told it to. Then I noticed that there was a smoke column coming from the far hill. Then I discovered that something was shooting at me. I think the Tiger took at least two hits with no penetration. My Stug on the left was hit and was abandoned by its crew. At the end of the turn, the Americans had a Hellcat left and I had a Tiger and a Stug left. I was a bit worried because the Hellcat was hulldown and I was out in the open, but I didn't think trying to pull my armor back was going to work, so I left them there to just slug it out. Tiger and Stug took the last Hellcat down. End of enemy armor threat. [This message has been edited by PSY (edited 11-01-99).]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>My thing is I think it would tend to hurt the average gamer, because he or she would begin to focus on units that were indicated on the chart to have had some major change (morale dropping like a rock, casualty figures for a unit mounting, ect) and start to forget about some of the units that nothing is happening to.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I dunno, I think the opposite is true, at least for me. Running the game by replaying and viewing from angles makes it easy for me to lose troops. I played "Last Defense" as the Germans. Midway through the game I discovered that my Company HQ was still sitting at the start line! I had left him there at the start and as I was focusing on my other units he never showed up on my replays because he was behind my camera angle. I had no idea he was even there until I happened to scroll back a bit further than normal ... oh, I have another unit ... Now I do realize, that I could have found him if I had done the +/- go through every unit thing, but I find that a bit tedious. If BTS is opposed to a list of units because it reduces immersion, perhaps a set of goto previous formation/goto next formation keys would help. The keys would move from platoon HQ to platoon HQ and from major vehicle to major vehicle allow us to easily check the status of our platoons and tanks (not sure what it should do if platoon HQ is KIA, perhaps go to squad 1). Since the platoon HQ shows command lines to its units, it should be fairly easy to track almost all units this way. I still think having an available list of units would help. A list of enemy units should be included too, if we're worried about units popping on an off the list as they appear and disappear, just list them all with a notation that they aren't present all the time. (If you want to get really fancy, if an enemy unit appeared/disappeared during the turn allow double-clicking on an enemy unit to change the time to the point at which that unit appeared/disappeared). Another addition that I think might help and still fit in your interface is addition of a next target/previous target key when a particular unit is selected. So when we were looking at a particular unit, we could cycle through all enemy units in LOS. Also just as a random, slightly off topic suggestion, how about a single window summarizing the status of our "Warning Labels", "Path Display", "Weather Display", etc. I occasionally accidently turn them on or off and it's hard to determine their status without having to cycle through all the SHIFT hotkeys.

I like the way the mouse works for moving and rotating. However, sometimes I would like to scroll left and right instead of rotate. How about if you move the mouse of to the left or right it rotates, unless the SHIFT key is down. When the SHIFT is down it scrolls. I do realize, that the arrow keys can be used to scroll, but I think addition of a SHIFT and mouse move option for scrolling would be useful.

Thanks for the replay suggestions. I do seem to be getting better at it. One thing that I think might help is assignable hotkeys. If we could save and restore specific camera locations, that would be great (please let me know if this is already in there and I don't know about it!) Back on topic for Pirate Bill, I timed some turns on my PII 450 and they are running 5-8 seconds from the time I hit "Go" to the time the replay starts.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> PSY, I would be curious to hear what is the difference between a "tactical simulation" and a "tactical wargame". <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> A simulation tries to make the player feel as if he is there. It uses sights and sounds to increase immersion. In a true simulation of a infantry company commander, we would try to simulate the confusion found in the battlefield by reducing the information to what a true company commander would know about. Note that this isn't the same as what his troops know, it's specifically what the commander knows. I've seen several comments on this thread that suggest that many people think that that's what CM is aiming for. For example Preacher says "How do i know if my fire is suppressing the enemy? Watch him. Does he go to ground? Does he reduce his volume of fire?" Kingtiger notes: "watch the soldiers closely, they will provide other clues about being hit. An example is head will bob backwards. Another example is the arghh sound made immediately after being hit. My favorite is when the soldier cries "MEDIC". " Now obviously CM isn't a completely accurate Company Commander simulation , but it's headed in that direction. What do I see as a Tactical Wargame. Well, it's more of a "game". Not in the sense that it's inaccurate and "gamey", but more in the sense that it's at a higher level of abstraction. It's a intellectual excercise done either for military training or for fun. It doesn't assume that we know any more than the total sum of what our troops know, but it does assume that anything that our troops do know we also know. It may also assume that information has been processed for us by our staff. For example, those head bobs which we see in CM indicate that casualties have been taken. If our troops see that the enemy has had some casualties, this can be processed and filtered back to the company commander as "our troops report that the enemy in the big stone house are taking casualties and the volume of their fire has been reduced". I don't have to go watch the troops in the stone house and see them take hits. I don't have to watch each individual enemy unit to see if their volume of fire is slacking off. Instead the information is passed to me and has already been processed and evaulated. Note that I'm not suggesting that our "Tactical Wargame" provides more information than CM already presents to me, I'm just saying that the information is presented to us in a clear and lucid format. I think this last part is really the crux of what I find problematic about CM. I don't see the information known to my troops presented to me in a clear and cohesive manner. Instead the interface is designed to provide an immersive experience, but as a result, the information is harder to find. Yes, I can find out information on troop casualties by listening for screams and calls for medic. I can estimate the effect my troops are having on the enemy by carefully watching each unit's drop in firing volume. Yes, I can determine my own troop status by clicking on each of them. But there is no quick and easy way to tell what's going on. We could present the information known by adding a Table of Organization for our troops, by adding casualty and moral indicators for our own troops, and perhaps some indicator of enemy troop status as far as is known given FOW. This would make it much easier for a player to see exactly what was going on. It would also make the experience less immersive. Of course that's a game design decision, and if you want to keep it immersive at the cost of making information harder to find, that's your call. But that's why I think Tim was correct when he suggested CM is a "tactical combat simulator". It's really kind of a wargame/simulator hybrid. Personally, I would have prefered just a wargame. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> However, if you simply don't want the level of realism and detail that the Fog of War brings, not to mention the challenges it presents, turn Fog of War off. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I certainly don't have a problem with the FOW. I like the way CM handles FOW. The generic units are great. Dropping down to insignia's for last known positions is great. The "infantry sounds" markers are nice. Presenting information in a different more accessible format, such as the addition of TOE lists of units or morale or casualty bar indicators (on friendly units) does not change the information presented. It just makes it faster to access (admittedly at the potential cost of making the game look like "playing a spreadsheet"). Simply having a list of all my units along with current morale and strength levels and an indication of current order status would help out a lot IMHO. A list of enemy units would also be helpful. As you noted in another thread, enemy units do pop in and out, but I would like some indication of how many new enemy units have been spotted in the turn. I don't want to miss some new threat on my flank, simply because I didn't do a replay with the camera angle in the appropriate position. Please note that I'm not saying CM is a bad game. I'm having fun with it and I certainly expect to buy it. But if you can add additional features to make information more readily accessible, I think CM will be the better for it. [This message has been edited by PSY (edited 10-31-99).]

I'm running on a PII 450 w 128 Megs and a TNT card. I find the game slow, but not because of the amount of time the CPU takes for a turn. The CPU turn doesn't take long, I haven't tried timing it, but I would imagine it's taking no more than 5-10 seconds. Actually I'm having problems because I find that I have to play the turn over and over again just to figure out what's going on. When I first started, I'd play the turn, hear strange fire coming from somewhere, and have to hunt around trying to figure out where it was coming from. My latest strategy is to play a turn from the top "8" hotkey viewpoint, then try replaying from various angles. This makes the game proceed very slowly IMHO and it gets to be a bit tedious. I don't want to have to watch a turn over and over ten times just to find out what happened in the last minute of combat. Using the "8" view, still doesn't work that well. With the bases on, I can see most of the enemy units, however, from what I've seen, when an enemy unit goes from "generic unit" to "generic insignia" it dissappears from the high-level top view. This leaves me with no easy way to tell what's going on. Some things that might help are a window with a list of my units, where I can click on a unit and move to it (yes, I know there are hot keys, but a list is much better than having to hot key through all the units). Also a list of enemy units (including previously spotted units, which are now insignias) which again I can click on and move to.

The window's standard is ALT-TAB which already seems to be working just fine in CM. I recommend dumping the ESC and just keeping the ALT-TAB.

I'm with Hagen and Scott on the lack of information issue. I think Tim's comment that CM is really a "Tactical Combat Simulator" is dead on. The problem is, I don't want a tactical combat simulator I want a tactical level wargame. I understand CM's approach to fog of war, and I think it's a good one. I certainly don't have a problem with generic units, or no information on enemy casualties, if that information cannot be gotten in any other way. However, if I'm supposed to be getting the information by scrolling the map and replaying the turn over and over again so I can hear the "ouch" and "medic" calls, that's just nuts. I really feel like the interface is getting in the way of my playing the game and that's really annoying. Perhaps, I'm just not used to the game, but I find that I have to play the turns over and over again while searching for information on what's happening, and I don't enjoy that. So hear's a question for the CM experts--how many times do you typically replay the turn, and what are your strategies for getting the most information with the least number of replays?

Another features some games provide after the game is over is to turn off the fog of war and let you roam the battlefield looking over both sides' final position and status. If you can get this in, it's a nice feature. Not worth a major delay though. Patrick

Sounds good. As long as the AI gets to setup its own units and does so differently each time we run the scenario, I'm happy with that. Variable units as well as locations is better, but just different locations will improve replayability many fold over fixed units and fixed locations. Patrick

Going back to the original topic, I agree with Jim. Having some kind of variable placement or even variable units on scenarios is highly desirable in my opinion. One possibility if you can't come up with the randomization code is to allow the scenario designer to come up with a number of possible initial unit mixes and placements and then pick one at startup. I think I've seen this used before (perhaps in Harpoon 1?). Anway, I definitely vote for some kind of randomizer on scenarios. This would greatly increase the games replayability. Its always a dissappointment when you've just played a great scenario and realize that next time you play it it's not going to be any fun because now you know exactly which hills the Panther and Tiger are hiding behind. Patrick

In one of the discussion threads, one of our two PBEM combatants mentioned that he could move a tank hulldown simply by eyeballing the location of the turret in relationship to the hill in front. As I understand it, tanks and infantry in CM are scaled to make them more visible. If this is true, I don't understand how a tank can be placed hulldown simply by viewing its placement graphically. If the tank is shown at three times its actual size, but the hill itself is shown at its true height, then logically a tank shown with it's turret above the hill will actually be well below the crestline. Seems like this would also be a major issue in trying to place AFVs in relationship to buildings as well. Are the size of hills and walls also scaled as the size of tanks is increased? Just curious. I'm greatly enjoying the match. Thanks to Martin, Fionn, and Steve for taking the time to share this all with us. Patrick