Doug Williams

Looking forward to seeing this play out.
 
I am, of course, rooting for you man !
 
No mods is fine, but can I beg you to at least turn off the VL's for your vids ? That luminous green really breaks the immersion

Great to follow this matchup - intriguing map. 

Thanks for the video that really helps, wondering what you will decide on for force...

Nice video: That really showcased the terrain for me (after I got over my motion sickness!).
 
Ordinance: Laws and rules.
Ordnance: Things that go "boom". 
 
If you plan on deluging Bil with 1,000 points of "ordinance", I -do- think you'll win!
 
 
As far as ANY plan against Bil, don't bother. He is the plan-master. Seat of the pants should do just fine... I suggest a surprise attack!
 
Ken

Give him h*ll

I know you are talented enough to beat him and I like nothing better than to see him get beat.

I LOL'd at the title Bil came up with for our AAR game. I'm the "Gamey SOB" in this match.     I should show him "gamey" and dump 1000 points of ordinance on his tiny setup zone during Turn 1.    But no, that's not going to happen. I'm going to be a good boy and play fair this game.
 
So, after some negotiations we agreed on a Medium QB CMFI Meeting Engagement, using the following "house rules": no preplanned arty, no TRPs, and the 33% armor rule, which should give us a maximum of 853 points to spend on tanks, SPGs, halftracks, etc. Bil also wanted mountainous terrain, so I sent him three maps to choose from, and he picked number 290.
 
I did a YT video "flyby" of the map, just so you guys can see how steep this terrain is without having to start the game and load the map up. My forces start at the North Road, and Bil's forces start at the South Road Junction. Our start zones are also victory locations, and there are two other victory locations in "no man's land".
 
http://youtu.be/hwL7GWGY_MI
 
Video is with the game set to hide the tree limbs/leaves, to give you a better view of the terrain (and that's how I usually have it set when I'm playing anyway).
 
Looking at the map again, I see that I have already given Bil an advantage by designating him as the "attacker".....his starting zone gives him the high ground and pretty good overwatch.  Damn.
 
I don't normally play with the 33% armor rule, but don't believe that will be a handicap in this game, because it looks like a significant portion of the map is impassible to vehicles.
 
Bil has already done his force pick and sent me turn 2, so now comes the hardest part for me.....picking forces and the setup. This might take me a day or two.
 
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and, in my mind, a video is worth at least a dozen pictures, so I do plan to post further YT videos of the action as this unfolds, as well as static screen shots (as time permits). Also please note that I'm not really into mods, so all my game vids and pics will be with plain vanilla out-of-the-box CMFI textures.
 
This is my first attempt at an AAR, so happy to listen to your suggestions in order to keep this interesting.
 
I realize Bil is a very accomplished and methodical player, whereas I'm more of a "seat of my pants" type player, so I may be in for the ass whuppin of my life here, but at least I'll have you guys to make fun of me while the spectacle unfolds.
 
Also, as Bil and I discussed, neither of us plan to play until the other side is wiped off the map. I fully expect this game to end in a Cease Fire or Surrender, rather than one side trying to hunt down the last enemy half squad hiding in a corner of the map. A real commander would normally retreat whenever casualties became too high, but unfortunately CM2 doesn't really allow that (at least in QBs).
 
Edit: Decided to add this song, as it seems apropos to the title Bil gave me. :-) 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyXz6eMCj2k

Doug Williams,

Classically (Cold War early-mid '80s) the US Army's official view was that a buttoned tank was only 50% as combat effective as an unbuttoned one, but I suspect that, depending on range and other conditions, has changed, at least for the US. And I expect the driver in this notion of mine will be the CITV. The CITV provides undreamt of capabilities compared to then, such as being able to see through smoke and fog, utterly eclipsing a TC scanning the battlefield with eyeballs and his Steiner binos. panzersaurkrautwerfer, can the CITV used by the TC while unbuttoned, or are the controls and display configured such that this can't be done? In my latest, yet to be reported QB, my Abrams platoon, left as is by me, always fought buttoned, as was true in my first QB and in my toe dipping exercise before that. For sure, it frustrated my sniper in the latest QB, for there wasn't a TC head in sight!

Regards,

John Kettler

Some vehicles do not get benefit from their primary thermal sensor if buttoned:
 
M1151 Recon Humvee
M1167 ATGM Humvee
M1127 Stryker RV
M1131 Stryker FSV
M1200 Armored Knight

Well, I can confirm Doug is a Good player. And maybe he claims he does not like scenarios. But I recall him doing extremely well in a Tournament I hosted where it was based on scenarios.
(like he won it)  So a little too modest with that reply.
 
I will donate some of my service time to him. (but it requires he post a AAR of your battle with Bil)

Bil is so old that he was born in the time rationing was so bad his parents could only afford one "L".

Is this addressed to me?  Hard to tell as I only have one L in my name.  
 
Doug, yes I have at least one game going on at a time.
 
Bil

Blood for the Blood God!!!!!! Crush, kill, maim!!!!!

Build a throne out of skulls and wear a crown made of entrails. Grind those weak girly men into pixie dust!

Also I believe that the points costs of rockets were recently changed in Red Thunder
 
I mention this just to annoy Doug, of course

WEGO only player here: I don't think a lobby would help me much in finding opponents. Committing to a game that will last at least several weeks if not months needs some kind of trust. This I can find in one of several hobby clubs. Each club has its own appeal so I can choose the one I like best.
A BFC lobby would have all sorts of players and this would make finding a suitable opponent more difficult.
 
OTOH I would like CM to have more interfaces to control or be controlled from the outside. That would give players the freedom to add what they like.

Very good that you play PBEM. That is really what CM is all about. The AI is just a practice dummy.
 
No need to be confused. That is indeed canister shot the Greyhound is firing. Best thing to do is ignore the troublemakers and play CM. That's what I do. :-)

Hope that also some badly needed attention is given to develop new pillboxes and overhead covered foxholes/trenches, to make combat for fortified positions, particularly the Siegfried line, a more realistic experience, than it is now with V3.0 CMBN!

Honestly, ...the current pillboxes and shelter thingies, simply don´t work. We need neutral objects, that can be entered and used by all parties, until they´re blown up by lots of TNT. During the siegfried line campaign, countless hardened structures were engaged, captured, lost, recaptured and used, by both the western allies and germans. Can´t imagine to recreate any such battles and situations with the current immobile vehicle type oddities.

There´s no realistic Ardennes, or Hurtgen forest combat with entrenchements, that are death traps to tree and air bursts, as they are now. There was some good suggestion in the forum to vary entrenchement types by applying an "experience" soft factor to them. So a "veteran" foxhole type might have added some log and earth cover, to provide overhead protection against shrapnel and medium mortar direct hits, while "regular" and below means, it does have not.

Another overhaul for a new game family deserves heavy buildings to be treated as more massive and having basements, or half basements, to offer better protection vs artillery and bombs, as well as providing well covered fire positions (from half basements).

I´d also wish for more and larger types of trees, incl. fir trees that extend branches to close to above the ground. With the current assortment of trees (in CMBN V3.x), forestst are still too open and lack a realistically varied look.

These would be some new features that would make me interested to invest in the Bulge family. New vehicles and OOB´s of the period and autumn/winter textures ain´t enough for me.

Yea, I knew what you meant, Ian. Just funnin ya.

Wiggum, I took the time to go to the BFC store and yep, it looks like if you purchase the download only CMFI + GL bundle for $75 that you do indeed have to spend another $10 for the Upgrade to be completely up to date.
 
I did some further checking, and it doesn't look like there have been any further patches released since the 3.0 upgrade.
 
So, $85 total to have a completely current version of CMFI + GL.
 
Whether or not it's worth it is completely up to you. It's totally worth it for me, and I spent full price for the base game, GL, and the patch, as separate purchases.
 
If it makes you feel better, I agree with you that BFC ought to go ahead and include the 3.0 Upgrade with the purchase of the CMFI + GL bundle. But then, I don't make my living running a computer wargaming company.

Bull****.
 
Absolutely we should support the paid engine Updates. That is what keeps the older titles on par with the newer ones.
 
What I would support is lowering the "bundle" prices for new players on the older titles, thus reducing their initial expense for buying a "Family".
 
I will never begrudge $10 for updating an older title to a newer engine.

The important part is that you DONT support the paid engine Updates.
If they want me to pay for them then make a core version (which could also be the demo) and separate the data content from it so people dont have to pay for every game if they want the new engine.
Imagine v4.0 arrives and you have CMRT, CMBN and CMFI...you would have to pay 30$ to update them all...or just spend 10$ for the update of the core version and play CMRT, CMBN and CMFI with engine v4.0.

Take your rant somewhere else, he can decide what he wants to spend his money on.

Yes, to pinpoint unspotted ATGs to the exact action spot. Really great...
Chess vs checkers.
Trying to attract checkers players to play chess can only result in losing both in the long term.

CM is WAAAY to complex to be attractive for the masses EVER. It will always be a niche product.
Chess will also NEVER appeal to the masses. NEVER. One could pump up the graphics of chess and make it look like a FPS, but after the initial spike of shallow interest, it will again only be played by chess players who are not interested in explosions and action, but like the challenge of the mind.
The same is with CM. I think the core CM-player was interested in realism above all.

Now what will have the bigger impact on sales: those that like CM more because of hit decals, and therefore will buy the next game, or those disappointed customers who no longer perceive guns as threat after the first shot because of hit decals?
I believe each of a disappointed core customer is a customer who bought all their products - contrary to those who are quickly attracted by shallow visual effects like hit decals and other gimmicks at the cost of degrading realism. Graphical effects attract quickly but the same crowd is also moving on to the next shallow effect in the next game.

But beneath everything the core of the problem seems to be something completely different:
The main game designer plays the game not in the mode the vast majority of wargamers play his products. That's never good, if you develop something and don't know, what your core customers need. There are no ladders, no campaigns, nothing played realtime. One could say: realtime does not exist among the wrgaming community.

The result of this dramatic discrepancy could be observed since CMSF was released.
The spotting problems as a result of keeping the calculation affordances as low as possible to make realtime play possible. Spotting works good enough for realtime but often not good enough for turn based.
And I think this has dramatic consequences for potential new turnbased customers: they try the demo, recognize a strange spotting behaviour and lose interest. The 1:1 representation makes things even worse, since it leaves much less room for imagination than a symbolic representation. So again: 1:1 is attracting the visual oriented player, but if there are discrepances between presented action and results, itdegrades the experience of the customer who is interested in realism.

The majority of realtime customers cannot be attracted, because FPS games offer them the much better quick action and cooler graphics. Additionally the game concept is so extremely different, that 99% will only shake their head. So the core group is lost and the big part of the massese cannot be attracted because it is chess and not checkers.

I will never forget the disastrous relative hotkeys-concept when I tried CMSF the first time. What a punch into the face of WEGO-players that was.
Or the water-effects since CMRT breaking FOW. Sounds from unspotted units? A problem since CMSF. But in combination with hit-decals since engine v3 this problem has been even increased instead to become solved. How easily foxholes can be spotted. Bunkers and trenches breaking FOW. And much more.

I believe all these are results of a design process done from a realtime-player's perspective and therefore many of the problems are only discovered very late in the design process, or even too late after implementation.

Instead that Battlefront had followed their former clear path torwards realism and protected and taken care of their brilliant WEGO-child, they lost this focus and now, with an ageing engine, they are sitting between the chairs, trying to keep new shallow action-customers somehow interested while they lose more and more of realism-focused wargamers which one after the other slowly give up, because the problems persist year after year and game after game and sometimes even become worse.

Okay, here she is--hot off the press (I left icons on for this one--from a current QB against the AI):
 

 
This one I did for CMBS moves quite quickly (a very fast effort and real gameplay from a turn), but shows some of the current mods in action:
 

 
And here's one I did for CMRT (very staged for cinematic effect):
 

 
(I can't get the blasted embed to work on this one, even though it's formatted exactly as the others. Aargh.)

You need to quit flappin your gums on the forums and send me the next turn in your ass whuppin. ;-)

OP?  No, the U.S. military is just overall better equipped than the Russian army, simple as that.
 
The phrase "OP" has no meaning in games/simulations like Combat Mission these unless there are abrams shooting jets out of the sky at 40,000 feet, than you can say we have an "OP" problem. The forces represented in CM are as close as the engine can make them to there actual counterparts.