Comments on Combat Mission Afghanistan

[DeeYay]

Hi guys.

The more I play Combat Mission Afghanistan (CMA) the more I realize that the game is not as fantastic as the manual or demo depicted.

No weather options, a dull campaign, no aphiboius vehicles, no visible aircraft and many more are just fails and the tip of the iceberg.

Maybe it would be a little selfish to demand improvement but honestly said.. I paid like 40$ for this game and it feels like half-finnished. Now I realize that I have to think twice before I buy any future products from Battlefront maybe?

I want to share some ideas in this thread regarding possible improvements that could turn this hopeless trainwreck into a usefull game. I appreciate your comments about my ideas and further imput of your own ideas.

1. Buildings are so boring and boxed. No bridges are in the game. Flavor objects are too few. Where is my tanktrench, foxholes, underground tunnels?

2. Weather is boring. It apparently never snows or even rains in Afghanistan. Ohh really?

3. Aphibious vehicles are amphibious and that big fact cannot be ignored can it?

4. Effects are seriously dull. I want to see my Drozd in action, my buildings blow up in a spectacular blast. Helicopters crashing to the ground when shot down. Parts of vehicles and bodies flying around when blown up by mines. I want this bloody war to really feel bloody and horrible!

5. Airborne troops. How cool would it have been to see Mi-24s and Mi-8s dropping of infantry, either by paradrop or airdrop, maybe even vehicles.

6. Aircraft must clearly be visible when appearing on the map. Okay this may not be that important but it contributes to a better atmosphere.

7. Civilians are a vital part of the war. Maybe the manual thinks they are not necessary but I believe that they are since they contribute to complicate operations. How easy is it to misidentify civilians for possible combatans?

8. The editor is too restrictive and cumbersome to use. I have to switch between editor and 3-d preview 1000-times before I am finnished with just the elevation setting to check if every single square meter is as I want it to be. Is it that hard to use terraforming tools to paint and change the terrain directly in the game like almost all other editors do? And what is with the limitations.

I dont want the editor to tell me how big my map should be. I want to make it 10km wide or 1m by 1m if I want to. Since when are operations bound to timelimits? The mission is done when the mission is done, regardless if it takes 30minutes or 15 hours to complete.

Considering the editor.. I have to change elements like 20 times until my specifications are met regarding unit selection. If I want only T-62 to be on the map then that is my decision not the games.. its not harder than that.

9. Hopelessly dull and uneventfull campaigns. The two campaigns are not very impressive. They may be large but there are no goodies and fun parts.

- Maybe movies and animations instead of boring text to explain what you have to do?

- I wanna personalize the campaign with my own troops. I am the Officer and i want to decide what forces are going to be in what battle and what forces are resting and repairing for another battle. I wanna make tactical decisions on what weapons I wish to use. Maybe a tankplatoon? Maybe its enough with just helicopters to deter an enemy attack?

- Apparently all missions in Afghanistan are 1 hour long? Really? Ususally a single mission or battle can take hours and days to complete not one smelly hour..

- Day and night circulation for such long missions maybe?

- The damage of a battlefield is transfered into the next battle if the battle is the same map. Sound like a matter of course... but apparently they decided not to incorporate this neat feature from the early Combat Mission maps into CMA of some reason..

Thoose were my 9 points that can be improved to make this game usefull and fun..

Let me hear what you think and what you would like?

[Stagler]

Agreed, thats why I didnt buy Normandy. Waiting for BF to pull their finger out and make a game for the 2010s not the 1990s.

[Erwin]

That'll be in a few years when CMSF2 is released.

[stikkypixie]

Combat Mission was/is conceived as a tactical wargame, not an operational wargame. It gives you the flexibility to scale up somewhat but that's not what it's good at.

10 by 10 km maps or "missions" that last more than a couple of hours are not on a tactical scale any more. Things like fuel, fatigue and supply lines then become a factor.

It would not be realistic to have them in otherwise. They are other games which are more suited for that .

I would like to note though, that if you play scenarios that are set at dusk and last long enough, the skies will become brighter. So day/night cycles are in.

I do agree with you that the game could use some bells and whistles. I do not agree with being to see aircrafts on the map when in reality they are several km away from the action. And as for civilians, that's just one big can of worms.

Just my two cents.

[Phantom Captain]

If you want a good campaign to try, download Fredrock's Major Nosov's campaign. It was nicely designed, implimented and really fun to play. I can't wait for his next iteration.

I love Afghanistan. I only wish there were tons more community support and scenarios. The balance is really nice and the forces are incredibly interesting to play with, as is the conflict in general.

I'm soooo hoping the next big announcement is a 1980s eastern europe NATO vs Warsaw pact thing.

Many of the things you are complaining about have never been in CMs scope. If you take the game for what it is as other's have stated, a tactical small scale wargame, there isn't much out there that compares. Play more and I think you will start to realize that what the game does and how it's designed are incredibly well done.

[Glukx Ouglouk]

You do make some good points DeeYay, but here's where I disagree:

Now I realize that I have to think twice before I buy any future products from Battlefront maybe?

Do keep in mind that CM:A was developed by a Russian company who partnered with BFC, not directly by BFC. Not all of CM:A's shortcomings are BFC's fault (the campaign and scenario design, for instance).

3. Aphibious vehicles are amphibious and that big fact cannot be ignored can it?

The CMx2 engine only gained support for water (rivers, lakes...) in CM:BN - it didn't support water when CM:SF and then CM:A were released. It's sad, but supporting water properly isn't easy for the programmers, and they had to set priorities.

Please keep in mind though that in the real world, amphibious vehicles are actually a very minor concern: in the Soviet arsenal, only the PT-76 could swim well enough to be tactically useful... Vehicles like the BMP-1 had much more limited amphibious capabilities, and its very debatable whether giving them that capability was ever worth it. It's worth noting that amphibious capabilities have pretty much disappeared on most newer AFV designs, compared to designs from the 1960's - because most of the time, those capabilities were too marginal to be useful, except on a few specialized vehicles.

4. Effects are seriously dull. I want to see my Drozd in action, my buildings blow up in a spectacular blast. Helicopters crashing to the ground when shot down. Parts of vehicles and bodies flying around when blown up by mines. I want this bloody war to really feel bloody and horrible!

Let's face it: BFC is a small development studio and they can't compete with AAA titles on visuals. The same is true of all games from small, independent developers.

5. Airborne troops. How cool would it have been to see Mi-24s and Mi-8s dropping of infantry, either by paradrop or airdrop, maybe even vehicles.

Heliporting/airdroping would be done outside the scope of a CM scenario in 99% of real-world situations. Airborne troops are never dropped right on top of the enemy, because it would lead to catastrophic losses. Besides, getting an airborne unit in position reasonably safely takes a lot more time than the typical length of a CM scenario.

There could be some exceptions, but they would likely be very specific special forces/commando actions, or catastrophic mistakes - both far too uncommon to be high on the priority list compared to how much work would be needed to implement all that.

I dont want the editor to tell me how big my map should be. I want to make it 10km wide or 1m by 1m if I want to. Since when are operations bound to timelimits? The mission is done when the mission is done, regardless if it takes 30minutes or 15 hours to complete.

Several points:

- Technical limitations: a 10 x 10 Km map would likely be too taxing for most computers.

- Scale limitation: the CM series are tactical games, and they just can't handle a larger scale well. You'd need a different game engine for that.

- Time limits are needed to balance scenarios (it's been debated to death in the CM:BN forum). Also, a 15 h time limit wouldn't make sense because the game engine doesn't support everything you'd need for such a long scenario (like proper logistics).

- I wanna personalize the campaign with my own troops. I am the Officer and i want to decide what forces are going to be in what battle and what forces are resting and repairing for another battle. I wanna make tactical decisions on what weapons I wish to use. Maybe a tankplatoon? Maybe its enough with just helicopters to deter an enemy attack?

Those decisions are not taken at the level at which you're playing. They'd be taken at a higher hierarchical level. In the real world, a company commander doesn't get to chose what's available to support his company - and CM games try to be reasonably realistic...

About your other points, a lot of them come down to:

- BFC is a small company, with small resources, making games for a small market. Their games have a lot of limitations, but they are still miles ahead of most of what's available on the market if you like modern tactical wargames. If BFC could sell millions of copies and hire dozens of developers, there's no question that the CM games would have a lot fewer limitations, but that's just not possible - there just aren't enough people interested in that sort of games. The same is true of every nich genre compared to more mainstream ones.

- The CM games are wargames set at the tactical scale. It sounds like you want to play games set at a bigger scale... That's fine, but it's just not the same genre of wargames. It's just not possible to design games that are realistic, work well, and are fun to play, at very different scales. It's true of all wargames...

Of course, that doesn't mean CM:A couldn't have been better. We could really have gotten better campaigns and scenarios out of the box, at the very least. But a lot of your expectations are seriously unrealistic...

[DeeYay]

Thanks for your share of the comments but I still think that some points may give the game a better overall score and sharpen the teeth.. if you get my point..

Anyway.. I have a quick question. Is there any (official) archive or site where I can download scenarios and campaigns from other players and maybe even upload my own? If someone knows?

[Schmoly War]

Thanks for your share of the comments but I still think that some points may give the game a better overall score and sharpen the teeth.. if you get my point..

Anyway.. I have a quick question. Is there any (official) archive or site where I can download scenarios and campaigns from other players and maybe even upload my own? If someone knows?

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314

[Erwin]

What is really needed is CMA done with the CM1 engine. Then you could have the 10Kmx10Km maps and larger scenarios that would run on average machines.

It's notable that (on WeBoB at least) we have a move back to the CM1 games as people burn out on the complexity of CMBN.

[Sakai007]

CMBN is a blast, don't get me wrong, but CMx1 is just better for doing a lot of PBEM. The engine is still complex yet simple to learn. There are more commands, and the available units from all three games cover all of WWII in Europe on three fronts, plus North Africa. For a PBEM club, there is no better choice for the time being.

[DeeYay]

Well one reason why I played or still play CMBB, CMAK is because the ideas to create large, complex battles with variety are just so many I I still got like dozens of maps I want to create to have fun on. I hope to get the same feeling for CMA.. I like the ability to go more into detail with the mapcreating but I am dissapointed that some cool features are missing.