accuracy/efficiency of machine gun fire

[Apocal]

I not only noticed this issue with machine guns but also with mortars, at least when they have inexperienced crews. Now I don't even know how you aim a mortar so I can't really argue about details but I don't see how even the stupidest of any crew could aim a mortar about 50 degres to the side of the target!

Basically, to aim a mortar, you first emplace it on *level ground* (with some minor tolerance involved) then set out an aiming post (a red- and white-striped stick) some distance away. When you get a call for fire, you use a little cheatsheet or whiz-wheel to calculate the firing data, making sure to add or subtract from the range if you're firing from a different elevation than the target. Once you'd set the quadrant and elevation on the mortar and check the level-bubble (which tells you that the mortar is level), you spin it around and fine-tune until you're aimed at the red and white post. Finally, you hang the round and drop it.

Note, I am not talking about absolute ranges I could believe it deviating a few metres to the side if at extreme ranges but I am talking about it hitting about 50 metres to the side when the range is only 200 metres! That also looks messed up because you see the mortar being perfectly aimed and then the shell exits the mortar tube at a totally different path than the tube is pointed at somewhere to the side of the target.

The only time I've seen someone who's nominally trained screw up that bad was when an inexperienced (still trained) mortar crew forgot to check the level bubble after they'd set up.

[JasonC]

So recently I've been playing GMTs board game "Panzer", a reworking of an old Yacquinto title from the 1980s that I played back in the day. With vastly improved components and an updated game design, etc. I've having a lot of fun with the system. Obviously it is not the immersive FPS experience that CM is, but its designed for effect infantry combat system seems to work pretty well, even though it is designed as an armor game, and the whole infantry subsystem is definitely second fiddle.

So as part of learning the system I reproduced the sort of situation discussed on this thread, in which a single HMG team in cover faces a full infantry platoon that is initially a full kilometer away, and has to hold them off. What are the options open to the two sides, and what typically happens?

First, an HMG team in medium cover cannot be spotted, even when firing (small arms), until a good order spotter gets within 5 hexes = 500 yards. A German HMG team fires on the GP column as a "4" at kilometer ranges. The opposing infantry is not spotted at 1100 yards if it isn't moving, and it can choose to "crawl" 1 hex a turn to get closer, but once inside 1 km without cover, will be spotted. If can stay prone ("full cover") while crawling and gets a GP defense of 3 if it does (2 base in the open, +1 for full cover, which restricts the units own spotting and fire etc). Or it can move 2 hexes a turn but suffer the -2 defense for moving infantry, adjusting to the minimum 1 defense.

Assume all 3 squads just use move orders, the HMG team will start on "overwatch" and get to fire in response to their moving into spotted range. It basically has about a 1/3 chance of missing, a 1/3 chance of suppressing one squad, and a 1/3 chance of cutting a squad in half and automatically suppressing the remainder. The other 2 squads will make it to 800 yards, the "picked on" squad has only 1 chance in 3 of doing so.

Assume it suppresses and go to the next turn. The squad hit cannot rally yet because it just took the suppression result - in the system's mechanics, it only gets to try to rally at the end of the following turn. It's chance of rally goes up if it is given no order. So it chooses to go to "full cover" (effectively, goes prone), and picks "no command" for its order the following turn (avoiding a 20% penalty to rally if trying to do anything).

This means the following turn, the HMGs options are to shoot at a squad closer in or at the suppressed one out at 900 yards. The latter would be a 3 defense shot, the former are more threatening and defense only 1, so naturally it shifts fire to another squad. it gets to fire before they take another step, because it is no longer on overwatch, but direct firing at an already spotted target. The range fell a bit but the same bracket, same chances against the second squad.

Meanwhile the 3rd can make it to 600 meters. The first has a 50% chance of coming off suppression, as left alone and not under other orders. If it tried to keep moving, it would make only 1 hex (suppressed movement is halved), still be defense 1, and have only a 20% chance of rally if shot at, 30% if moving but not shot at.

No one has touched or even spotted the HMG yet, notice.

The third turn, maybe the 1st squad has rallied, maybe it hasn't. Maybe the second squad was cut in half and suppressed, maybe it was missed outright. The possibility tree of the engagement is spreading. But for any outcome so far, the HMG can still fire unspotted at the start of the third turn and engage the last squad, before it gets inside 600 meters. The damage chances are also rising as the range falls, though not dramatically - a previous 2/3rds chance or some effect is now around 75%.

If one of the squads makes it to 500 meters but does so suppressed, it still won't be able to see the HMG, because the spotter being suppressed is as big a spotting modifier as the target being in medium cover. They need to not only reach 500 yards, but also to rally to unsuppressed at that range, to get a spot. The HMG team will hammer whoever is closest with a 70% chance of sending them to ground if moving, and still a 55-60% if they are prone and trying to take cover. A shot squad will rally from suppression only 40% of the time, even inactive.

When a squad does get a spot, it can fire at medium range with 5 firepower (a bit less at that distance than the HMG team), but the HMG in medium cover has 6 defense. The shot has only about a 40% chance of inflicting suppression. If only a half squad is firing this drops to more like 30%.

Suppressing the HMG at that range is about the only hope the attackers have, however. If it stays unsuppressed it is killing an expected half squad every 3 turns and inflicting 2 suppression results averaging 2 turns in length every 3 turns.

Still there is plenty of variation - if the initial 5 MG shots are good, good, medium, bad, bad, it will be facing 1 rallying half squad at 800 meters, and one half squad and another full, both suppressed at 800 and 600 meters. If it starts with bad, bad, medium, medium, medium, it will be under fire itself from 2 squads at 400-500 meters, and the attackers might manage to suppress it.

But the expectation is for the attackers to pin with loss around 600 to 500 meters, and then to wallow there very uncomfortably, eventually breaking apart.

The attackers have realistic options - crawl in with better cover but a lot slower; try to keep moving even suppressed but be slowed and much slower to rally, pause to win a firefight at least to the point of suppressing the MG at 400-500 meters, if enough good order men can collect there. Just rushing in at max movement rate with each unit able to do so, will normally get them cut apart.

Any second shooter and the affair is hopeless. A previous spot and one medium mortar team suppressing the HMG on the way in and the chances more than double.

Now, all that was with a full platoon, 3 squads. With a single half squad - as in one of the original complaint examples - the chance they can walk to 500 meters unsuppressed and get a spot, are about 100 to 1 against. (They need to pass 4 shots, with 1/3, 1/3, 1/4, 1/4 chances, roughly, or about 144 to 1 those all miss). Even if that happens, the half squad is about a 3 to 1 underdog in the firefight at 500 meters, with in game terms 3 GP attack hitting 6 defense, while at that range the HMG is firing back with 7 GP attack against (stationary in the open) 2 GP defense. At 600 meters or less, if the half squad ever suppresses it is 5 to 2 against that it ever gets up again, rather than dying to the HMG fire.

Basically a single squad, let alone a single half squad, doesn't have a prayer of advancing over a long stretch of open ground at an HMG in cover, in this contemporary board wargame.

It doesn't take great realism of detail to get the overall tactical relationships right, in other words. The HMG having twice the range of the rifles, being hard to spot for fully half its range envelope, firing fast enough to suppress 2/3rds of the attackers (in expectation) before they can even get to spotting distance - all follow from simple but realistic spotting, damage chance, rally, and movement rate subsystems, in tune with each other, in a designed for effect sense.

For whatever it is worth...

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

Yet another splendid, incisive analysis. How's that book coming? I really do hope you write one.

The situation is, in reality even worse for the attackers. The German MG is firing smokeless flashless powder, and the tracers don't ignite for 200 meters. Unlike the yard long tracers we see in the game, in daylight, there's little to see, and I distinctly remember a U.S. account of not being able, even with binos, to spot a known to be there MG-42, from something around, I believe, a few hundred yards range. Thus, your analysis, grim as it is for the attacker, understates the true battlefield dynamics.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Killkess]

Glad to see the thread came up again... Still no response from BFC? What a shame!

JasonC, since the HMG in your test is able to hold a whole platoon at bay it is a multitude more "effective" than what we see in CM2. Thx for your effort.

[c3k]

If you've read my posts about MG effectiveness in-game, you'll know that I am sympathetic to the view that machineguns are not as effective as I think they should be. Having said that, JasonC's post is worthless to this discussion. Seriously? Comparing another game system's treatment of machineguns does nothing to bring light to how machineguns should be treated in CM.

Are we now going to add dice to CM? I thought not.

Perhaps I should post how my PanzerBlitz Panthers are able to destroy T-34's in PanzerBlitz the next time someone questions T-34 armor thickness?

Let us assume that JasonC's posting of how GMT's "Panzer" treats machineguns shows how well that game models machineguns. It is the "true" representation of how machineguns and infantry interact. What does that do for CM? Nothing.

This is just another, "I don't think machineguns work the way they should" post.

C'mon. You're better than that.

BFC responds to "Here is a cited example of how a single machinegun worked." And then another, and another, and another. When the body of EVIDENCE proves that they got it wrong, they will fix it.

Ken

[JasonC]

To c3k - Panzer has it right. It shows that design for effect easily gets these things right, where engineering literalism struggles to do so. I've no doubt many prefer the greater immersive atmosphere of engineering literalism. But it is not more realistic, until it is perfect. It is less realistic. Notice, several subsystems have to all get it right for the cumulative effect to be right, including the tactics, options for both sides, way it scales or interacts with odds, addition of other arms, changes to cover etc. But for pure game design, it is a solved problem to get not just one of these things right, but all of them right enough.

And at the moment I am playing lots and lots of Panzer on a paper mapboard under plexiglass, or on VASSAL, and remarkably little CM. I am merrily designing new scenarios based on this or that Russian front operation, for Panzer, and I am not currently designing scenarios for CMx2. Why? Because personally I don't give a tuppenny darn about immersive realism. I know that puts me in a distinct minority, but for me it is true. The tactical realism question trumps the visual spectacle, every day of the week and twice on Saturday. For me it is all about the game design. Your mileage may vary.

[Thomm]

JasonC,

You described what happens in that game and why.

But is that specific outcome historical? And if yes, are there sources to prove it?

That is the point of c3k, I think.

Best regards,

Thomm

[JasonC]

We've had that conversation a million times already, up to Rand studies of breaking behavior in company and battalion level engagements, to examples of pure magazine rifle infantry doing it, to analysis of losses when the like was tried. We know what is realistic performance for HMGs vs modest amounts of infantry trying to cross wide expanses of open ground. The attackers should take losses getting to half a kilometer and normally pin there painfully, sometimes a bit closer with enough numbers, the leaders, etc. Only if they win a firefight at that distance to suppress the MG fire, should they be able to continue. Morale failure is the normal way the attack fails, not being shot down to the last man, but it normally does fail.

[Sublime]

I fall in the middle. Realism is a priority for me. or Id play company of heroes or even theater of war. However, abstraction to the point of hexagons, or three man abstracted units is a step backward IMO. Besides being an immersion killer, and keeping many new players from joining, it actually takes away from realism I believe. Units having a fire power number isnt realistic, and 3 man abstracted squads arent realistic either. Its not as if CMx1 was tracking every bullet and man but just not showing it. That was part of the problem because it took away a lot of vagaries of combat and other stuff. Just didnt do it for me. I loved it for its time but could never go back, and even the first time I played it I remember being disappointed at the soldier abstraction coming as i did from the Close Combat series. I stuck with CM because it was way more realistic, had way more options but I did miss the campaigns (especially the ability to fight them H2H) and I REALLY missed individual soldier modelling. Almost killed it for me sometimes.

[JasonC]

Sublime - I loved CMBB because it was the most realistic available game, any format or medium, when it came out and for quite a while afterward. But as this thread discusses, CMx2 with its current teething pains is not more realistic. Some of its systems are. Its approach might eventually prove to be, and thereby raise the bar. Its immersion and visual appeal certainly are already there. Bully, on all those counts. But it is not more realistic in its depiction of such bread and butter issues as the interaction of infantry, machinegun fire, and terrain cover, as half a dozen other offerings out there in multiple media - including CMBB.

I wish Battlefront all the best in their ambition to make a yet more realistic game. I want to help them get there any way I can. But I can see they are not there yet, and so can plenty of other people. They have to make the call whether any design for effect principles should inform their revisions, or whether to stick with tweaking the engineering approach until they get all of it right. I am just pointing out how easy these particular things are to get right with that older and tested, if less ambitious, approach. Make of it what you like.

[ForwardObserver]

To c3k - Panzer has it right. It shows that design for effect easily gets these things right, where engineering literalism struggles to do so. I've no doubt many prefer the greater immersive atmosphere of engineering literalism. But it is not more realistic, until it is perfect. It is less realistic. Notice, several subsystems have to all get it right for the cumulative effect to be right, including the tactics, options for both sides, way it scales or interacts with odds, addition of other arms, changes to cover etc. But for pure game design, it is a solved problem to get not just one of these things right, but all of them right enough.

Great post Jason, and your corollary sums it up pretty well. What always needs to be perceived as 'realistic' is the effect, not the underlying mechanism. Very much like in Searle's Chinese Box thought experiment, the fact that actually there's a guy toiling with the rule books to put together Chinese sentences inside the box, and not a native Chinese speaker, doesn't detract from the fact that the person outside the box is having a fluent conversation in Chinese.

The CMx2 engine can be seen as consisting of three types of components (or models) addressing the physics, the human factor and the terrain.

CMx2 features very high fidelity models of ballistics, troops, trees, walls and terrain elevation. However, some problems turn up quite regularly in these forums with the spotting/concealment model (AFV sighting vs. infantry) or the lethality of certain types of ordnance (light mortars), just to name the two that I find the most problematic. The experiments conducted by people like poesel71 on a variety of such topics, show clearly that 1) either some of these models is just 'wrong' in some sense, when compared to statistical data compiled in military sources or 2) the interaction between two or more of them - say, ordnance explosive power and terrain - is 'wrong'.

On the other hand, it's also true that some of the 'oddities' or somewhat unrealistic effects we're perceiving, are related to us not understanding well the role of parameters such as troop 'experience', 'motivation' and 'leadership rating'. I do indeed think that troops in CMx2 are more 'robotic' - as in too responsive - than they were in CMx1 (and certainly more than Close Combat). This might have something to do with having removed command delay, but also perhaps, because we're too keen on ranking troops in the editor as 'regular' with 'high' motivation and appotinting +0 leaders, when, given the effects we're seeing, the most common values should be 'green', 'low' and leaders with '+0' rating being 'good commanders'.

And then there is the high-fidelity terrain, collated through the discrete notion of 'action spot'. After a year and a half of playing with the CMBN and CMFI editors, and trying to learn from the many official and community-made scenarios, it's clear to me that there's quite a tendency to equate 'clear' terrain with the concept of 'clear' as modeled in other tactical wargames such as Panzer or Conflict of Heroes or ASL. Or woods with clumping together a few tree 3D models. That's wrong, because CMx2 physics model handles these in a, in principle, high-fidelity way - there are no rules of thumb here. That explains quite a few problems sometimes, but not all.

I'll make a different example of the problems JasonC identifies on a topic I think I understand well, since I have spent a lot of hours on the editor playing with terrain and testing a few things.

One example of where 'engineering' is defeated by 'design for effect' is in the effect of foliage and spotting. It's quite obvious that CMx2 engine, when checking whether unit A spots unit B, it is tracing rays from each component (man, gun, etc.) of unit A to each component of unit B, and testing whether the ray is going through any 'blocking' surface. Foliage 3D model, as one can see before the shaders kick in, is modeled as billboards (i.e. flat 2D boxes). Testing intersection of a 3D line with a plane is something that can be done quite quickly and relatively inexpensive. I think CMx2 adds some refinement to this, by considering whether the texture applied on the billboard representing the foliage is 'transparent' or represents actual foliage.

But it's woefully prone to cause all kinds of outliers, such as the too common case of units moving amongst trees, getting fires from units in more elevated positions which can see them through holes in the foliage from, say, 300 meters away. Human vision just doesn't work that way: even if using a sniper rifle scope, you'd need to be looking exactly at the right spot, for enough time, in the right light conditions and with inhuman concentration.

Obviously, a truly realistic modeling of human vision would tax our systems in a way we wouldn't be able to simulate an interestingly sized battle. Here we have the case where going all the way down to a physically and biologically meaningful model of reality is beyond Battlefront human resources and the power of a desktop computer. Under many conditions Battlefront approximation is right, but sometimes, it's totally wrong.

So I think that CMx2 modeling of major topics is most often sound, but that boundary cases for these, otherwise perfectly useful models, are interacting in a way that just don't work well, when the effect which is sought after is to make credible the action being portrayed on the screen.

[DavidFields]

Sublime - I loved CMBB because it was the most realistic available game, any format or medium, when it came out and for quite a while afterward. But as this thread discusses, CMx2 with its current teething pains is not more realistic. Some of its systems are. Its approach might eventually prove to be, and thereby raise the bar. Its immersion and visual appeal certainly are already there. Bully, on all those counts. But it is not more realistic in its depiction of such bread and butter issues as the interaction of infantry, machinegun fire, and terrain cover, as half a dozen other offerings out there in multiple media - including CMBB.

I wish Battlefront all the best in their ambition to make a yet more realistic game. I want to help them get there any way I can. But I can see they are not there yet, and so can plenty of other people. They have to make the call whether any design for effect principles should inform their revisions, or whether to stick with tweaking the engineering approach until they get all of it right. I am just pointing out how easy these particular things are to get right with that older and tested, if less ambitious, approach. Make of it what you like.

As usual, these days, I absolutely agree with JasonC.

And, again, as I have asserted before: either everything we have been simulating over the past 30 years, and the source material that JasonC quotes, is off, or CM2 is off: MGs, Mortars, and Spotting (as another post in this thread has pointed out--I had noticed the odd distant spotting issue, but could not put my finger on what the problem was).

So I would flip the challange around: what data does BFC have that so alters our understanding of WW2 tactics?

[JasonC]

FO - most of that makes sense to me. But one part kinda didn't. The part about open ground and CMx2 players expecting it to be like open ground in other systems, where there is some assumption of micro terrain for cover and such. I can see there could be a difference there, sure, and take the point that if scenario designers want micro terrain in their open ground, they need to put it there.

But that isn't the problem with things like advancing unhurt into machinegun fire. The CMx2 open is protecting the CMx2 pixeltruppen more than the abstracted Panzer open hex is protecting the Panzer cardboard-truppen. When the HMG fires at a moving squad in the open at 800 yards in Panzer, it suppresses the squad 2/3rds of the time and cuts it in half a third of the time. If that happened in half a minute or a minute of fire in CMx2 we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I think a big part of the tuning problem comes, instead, from CM needing to break apart the engagement and its effects into many more discrete shots, and the rally into a continuous process. The above effect in Panzer is in a game turn, the period of time it would take the squad to advance 200 meters. The effect in CMx2 needs to be less than that for each burst, because it might have 12 such bursts in the time it takes men to advance that far. Panzer can model the suppression effect as lasting that long at a minimum and twice that long as an expectation; CMx2 needs rally to happen in continuous time.

Comparing the two, it is clear the biggest difference is in rally. In CMx2 a typical shot effect is not going to put the squad into a morale state that fails to clear before the next shot arrives, at that distance. Or there is only a modest chance that each shot drives the suppression / morale level to a new lower low. In Panzer, the squad is likely to get suppressed over the equivalent of a couple of minutes, and is likely to need more like 4 minutes to get out of it - only a 50-50 chance at best of getting out of it in half that time. So the biggest difference is how easy it is to get the suppression level to go deep and how long it lasts once it is "on".

It is harder to tune correctly the binomial or balanced rate process with 12 shot elements and 120 rally-seconds, than the process with one probabilistic binary outcome. You need to get both a likely cumulative and an instantaneous effect right, over a wider range of scale.

But in any event, the problem is not that the men don't have as much micro cover as they should, in this instance. It is instead that they don't hit the dirt and stay there, nearly fast enough, even under fire and with the absence of cover of any kind.

[Killkess]

BFC responds to "Here is a cited example of how a single machinegun worked." And then another, and another, and another. When the body of EVIDENCE proves that they got it wrong, they will fix it.

What else do u want me to do? I´ve posted screenshots, videos, my testing scenarios. I cant realy see what is missing in regard to this specific issue. A statistic analysis?

I dont think that something like that is neccesary because what we speak about is not an outlier outcome of the event but the average/normal one.

Everyone can fire up CM2 and do the test with very little effort and get instant results.

And i advocate that comparing CM2 with different games does tell us something... It tells us that every game (at least those i played in the past 20 years) simulates the same situation dramatically different than

what we see in CM2... including BFC´s own predecessors. Its also very different to what i´ve read about WWII tactics.

I am not interested in why it is the way it is, i dont care about how they technically try to simulate something i want feasible/believable and to some extend consistent results. That is the benchmark i set to a game which tries to simulate/advertise realistic tactical gameplay in WWII: "Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy (CM:BN) faithfully recreates the experience of tactical land warfare in Western France during World War Two."

[Lanzfeld]

Great thread!

About realism, I agree with JasonC. CMBB still does a better job simulating not only MG's, but also foxholes, trenches (except for the supression bug), and buildings. It is to be expected that when you switch to the more "complex" CMx2 engine, certain "already complex" things (like above) will take a hit. I am a big fan of developing a hybrid of CMx2 and abstraction in these cases. So long as the results are ""realistic" in these troubled areas, what do I care?

[76mm]

I also agree with JasonC's comments (and Killkess' and Lanzfeld's and so on...).

It's a little sad when a boardgame "feels" more realistic than a state of the art computer game.

[Childress]

But it is not more realistic in its depiction of such bread and butter issues as the interaction of infantry, machinegun fire, and terrain cover, as half a dozen other offerings out there in multiple media - including CMBB.

Maybe. I remember CMBB. Mortars may enjoy excessive flexibility in CM2 but in CM1 they were wimps, nerfed to the point of being present in a cameo role at best. And the supermen SMG squads which were the mandatory choice in H2H QBs. Not mentioning other modelling deficiencies that have been corrected since. You may be looking at the older series through sentimental lens.

[Redwolf]

So the question is, will BFC do anything about MGs, mortars and spotting?

[JasonC]

Childress - I agree that CMBB had its own modeling issues, though I didn't find the mortars ineffective, at least the way I used them. (Pairs of 50mm or individual 81-82s for 2 and 1 minutes respectively, to get pins). The suppression radius of the medium mortars was on the low side, while really large HE (150mm plus) was overmodeled somewhat. There were armor war quibbles (1943 Russian 85mm e.g.). But overall, it got the tactical relationships more nearly right.

I understand what Battlefront is trying to do by going for more engineering realism, and it is ambitious, but potentially a large payoff if everything can be nailed down near-perfectly. Then you don't have to put correct outcomes in, they come out naturally, and this means you can even discover things you didn't know before. Unfortunately, until you are at that theoretical perfection, 9 times out of 10 a difference between game performance and expectations is going to be due to a game detail that is "off", not to an expectation that is incorrect or a common myth.

What I'd like to see happen is for the suppression effect of MG and infantry firepower to be improved. The player community can provide reports and maybe even specs of expectations there. Even simulate some typical per shot results and suppression recover rate models and see how they scale, whether they end at the expectations we'd like to see. I'd like to see mortar fire incorporate a random "blur" of the actual point of aim off the intended point of aim, and a somewhat more random shot to shot dispersion around it. On spotting, I'd like to see length of time in view have a bigger impact, and vehicles a bit worse compared to unsuppressed squishies with more "eyes out and about".

I don't think these things are untweakable. If some benchmark desired effects are adopted and internal numbers in such routines tweaked to hit them, we could get the main benefits of design for effect without actually adopting it wholesale, or abandoning the CMx2 commitment to engineering realism. I do think there is some tuning needed on the above subjects. FWIW.

[Childress]

What I'd like to see happen is for the suppression effect of MG and infantry firepower to be improved... I don't think these things are untweakable.

Agreed on both points. Also, diminishing the versatility of artillery. For example, should on map mortars, once they've moved, be able to perform such sophisticated missions as linear fire? One doubts it. This ability grants a boost to the attacking side in a similar way that allegedly ineffective MG fire hinders the defender. Some doing PBEMs are reporting a bias favoring the attacking side in CM2.

OTOH, threads complaining about armor ballistics and behavior, a constant source of anguish in CM1, seem to have declined on the new boards.

[Redwolf]

Originally Posted by JasonC

What I'd like to see happen is for the suppression effect of MG and infantry firepower to be improved... I don't think these things are untweakable.

Not to mention suppression effect cannot possibly come out of a physics engine anyway. It has to be "abstracted" which is somebody says how much it's gotta be. That is why I don't understand why there's so much reluctance to improve things.

Unless you try to go without psychology, which probably doesn't make a good wargame.

[womble]

...diminishing the versatility of artillery. For example, should on map mortars, once they've moved, be able to perform such sophisticated missions as linear fire?

I know I read somewhere that on map assets aren't supposed to be able to perform anything other than point missions (even though the UI allows the calling of linears from them), and I've certainly seen some on map-fired linears that looked more like point missions than linear, though that could have been due to other factors like not having enough rounds in a "Quick" to really start drawing the line. Another item for the "things to test" list...

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

I hope that, by the time we move East, BFC's gotten the direct fire guns vs. armor issues peculiar to there sorted out. It'd be a real shame to see the same problems as before appearing in the new games. Also, I think that MG and similar weapon modeling is going to become a much bigger deal, since the Eastern Front, generally speaking, has much better LOS, and less cover, than in Western Europe. I've read accounts, for example, in which some 250/9s, in winter, ripped to pieces attacking Russian infantry seeking to take a village while slogging through snow. Likewise, the M-34/42 should really come into their own here, being able to maximize their best features, against a relatively long range firepower poor foe.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ForwardObserver]

FO - most of that makes sense to me. But one part kinda didn't. The part about open ground and CMx2 players expecting it to be like open ground in other systems, where there is some assumption of micro terrain for cover and such. I can see there could be a difference there, sure, and take the point that if scenario designers want micro terrain in their open ground, they need to put it there.

Yeah, I'm not too happy about how I worded that sentence.

The problem I see with 'clear' action spots is that the concept of micro cover is not consistent with the high-fidelity modeling of everything else. I mean, everything else is visible and apparent - trees, walls and bumps in the terrain strike us as solid. And seems to consist in some sort of die being cast. It's not strange to see a bullet tracer going straight through a pixelsoldier without causing any apparent harm, very much as if it was pre-ordained (i.e. the soldier had a good roll on the To Hit table so the bullet doesn't kill whatever the trajectory was).

Comparing the two, it is clear the biggest difference is in rally. In CMx2 a typical shot effect is not going to put the squad into a morale state that fails to clear before the next shot arrives, at that distance. Or there is only a modest chance that each shot drives the suppression / morale level to a new lower low. In Panzer, the squad is likely to get suppressed over the equivalent of a couple of minutes, and is likely to need more like 4 minutes to get out of it - only a 50-50 chance at best of getting out of it in half that time. So the biggest difference is how easy it is to get the suppression level to go deep and how long it lasts once it is "on".

That's a very reasonable mechanism for modelling suppression, and I think BFC has something like that already in place. But for whatever reason, the protective effects of micro cover maybe, the suppression levels either go down quickly or don't get raised as often as they should.

[Sublime]

Jason, in regard to CMBB being that much more realistic, I very much remember your posts in 2003 that were all over CMBBs realism, especially regarding tank combat, and ATGs. You had a major problem with the armor modelling, and IIRC (I dont care enough to search) you thought the T34s were majorly screwed up and the only recourse until 1944 or so was T34/57s.

I think it comes down to first experiences with wargames and such. Older wargamers will always have nostalgia for hexes, counters, and abstract numbers. I really dont see how an abstracted firepower number is more realistic than CM, even with MGs the way they were. Infantry combat was nowhere near as realistic. The only DEFINITE improvement besides fire I can think of is hand to hand combat. Which wasnt graphically depicted well but it did the job.

The good news is you can play your new board game, or CMBB if you like. Anyone can. And for me the good news is that while I had lots of fun with the CMx1 series, its gone, and we're stuck (for better or for worse) with 1:1 soldier modelling.

oh and in response to Kettler - actually unless they do something to the modelling the MG42 WILL NOT come into it's own. You can basically still recreate an 'ost front' map now, just make a huge map with sparser cover and see. MG42/34s on their own wont 'cut to pieces' attacking infantry. At least not in my experience, not how you'd expect them to. Of course I've never been in combat and it's not as noticeable to me because every battle I play has other arms taking part, even if its only soldiers with rifles...