New features/feature ideas for CM for the next few years thread

[mjkerner]

- The ability to set AI movement plans in 3D mode (like we currently can deploy units). If you could view AI plans with roughly the same guide lines as you see in a normal game it maybe easier for Scenario Designers to use and get a better idea visually on what they are setting in place all at once.

This is a good one, Ith!

[agusto]

Dont know if that s been mentioned already, but i would like to see AI triggers. If we had those we could make much more complex scenarios with an AI that doesnt just follow a scripted plan but one that dynamically reacts to the players behaviour.

[Canada Guy]

1. I would still like to see the red/black lines (but with toggle for those of you who do not like it) to show the status of subordinate units attached to an HQ.

Perhaps throw in a solid green line if attached to a superior and a black with green outline if the unit is not attached to a superior but you need to know who its superior unit is and where it is located. I really miss that as I have no clue sometimes which is the superior unit and with many multiple units do not want to click on all of them.

But remember have it toggle-able as I remember asking for this a while ago and some guys were like "No Way Man!" I really found this very useful.

2. Have something that reflects the conscript/green-ness and the lack of radio contact in tanks so that conscript tanks cannot charge ahead and act as elites. I loved the increase in reaction times for conscript/green units. With nothing having been said directly about the actual mechanics of conscript vs elite units and how it affects the game, I would vote for some sort of restriction for conscript/green tanks and their ability to react to other units and to restrict their ability to do as much as when they were in complete contact with their superior units. (yes, make it toggle-able for those that think conscript and elite should act the same of for those that did not like the delays - not the best but we as a group have not come up with anything better that I recall from a design point of view - though BF may have and we just do not know about it yet).

[A Canadian Cat]

Have something that reflects the conscript/green-ness and the lack of radio contact in tanks so that conscript tanks cannot charge ahead and act as elites.

With nothing having been said directly about the actual mechanics of conscript vs elite units and how it affects the game

There are already differences between the training levels. Elite troops and crews spot better, react faster, have a higher rate of fire, make better decisions about cover and fire more accurately when compared to lower levels of training. Seems like BFC has this covered.

[Childress]

I find it mind blowing that not a single poster has mentioned SQUISHIES! Soldiers too slow or too old or just guilty of having dozed off in their foxholes who end up coating the treads of of a Sherman or Panther like chewing gum on the soles of your girlfriend's Reeboks. C'mon, Battlefront.

[Canada Guy]

Ian,

Yes, I understand that there are inherent differences between the troop types but nothing explicit. If you ever read the old CMBB players handbook (or some such), it actually gave a breakdown of how different grade of troops reacted. It also only let certain grades perform certain actions. I always liked that aspect as you really knew you were commanding conscripts as it felt more restricted when you did. I do not get the same feeling when I am playing CMx2.

What I am hoping for would be actual differences that you could see or feel when commanding troops of different grades. The command delay (though admittedly a game fudge) helped with that feel. Even if it was under the hood, the feel would still be there. I though cannot for the life of me think of something that would replace that delay to get the same feel (though I have not really spent a lot of time thinking about it). I am hoping BF can come up with something. When playing Barbarossa, I really want to feel that difference and not have the t-34s act like super tanks because they have the same reactions and reaction times as veteran PzIII gunners.

[AlexUK]

May have been raised before, but a hotkey toggle that would show suppression state (icons have different colours for different levels of suppression). If unidentified shooting occurs, I sometimes spend a while clicking through the units to see who is being shot at.

May also be handy to have the same for condition (broken, etc).

[womble]

Ian,

Yes, I understand that there are inherent differences between the troop types but nothing explicit. If you ever read the old CMBB players handbook (or some such), it actually gave a breakdown of how different grade of troops reacted.

The problem there is that the breakdown would have to have 6 x 6 x 5 entries to cover all the combinations of Experience, Morale and Leadership that affect the performance of the troops. And those combinations would all have to be woolly "This is a bit better than that and a bit worse in this respect than the other," type descriptions because their pretty fuzzy effects. Deliberately.

It also only let certain grades perform certain actions. I always liked that aspect as you really knew you were commanding conscripts as it felt more restricted when you did.

Assault isn't available to Conscript troops. But you can still split the squads into teams and achieve similar results by manual control. Perhaps Conscript troops should (like Italians) be prohibited from splitting the squad? What other things would you say Conscripts shouldn't be allowed to do? (Don't remember what the restrictions in CM1 were).

What I am hoping for would be actual differences that you could see or feel when commanding troops of different grades.

I really think that already exists. I don't play with a very wide range of experience levels (Green-Vet, with the odd Elite team for flavour-bomb in QBs, but discount the snake-eaters for now), and I find the differences noticeable. The difference between -1 and +1 Morale is quite drastic. Leadership has a more subtle, but still noticeable, effect. I do spend inordinate amounts of time on poring over turns, though, so I maybe have more opportunity to let such differences (and their causes) sink in than someone who plays, say, mostly RT.

When playing Barbarossa, I really want to feel that difference and not have the t-34s act like super tanks because they have the same reactions and reaction times as veteran PzIII gunners.

Green, low leadership tanks don't perform as well as Veteran tanks with good leaders (there's no particular reason to have the Red Army generally at a lower motivation level, necessarily; they were quite keen, on the whole, to defend the Rodina). You might feel they're a bit "super" because of some of the game artefacts, but that's just making the common baseline for tank spotting and reaction times too high.

[Michael Emrys]

To reinforce what womble wrote, I recently played against troops who were green and with leadership ratings of -1 and -2 but with normal motivation, and those troops were pretty incompetent. They spent most of the game trying to run away and getting cut down in the open. It was less of a battle than a slaughter. Giving them a higher motivation would only have meant they would have died in place. Going with conscript troops would have only heightened their incompetence. The combination of conscript and low leadership should allow the player to replicate the most extreme degree of incompetence and disorganization to be expected anywhere.

Michael

[poesel]

Lines (paths, targeting, facing) should always be above the ground - even if hilly.

FTFC - fix the f*ing compass so that it works like - a compass!

Clicking on a major direction on the compass should orient the map to that direction. Handy for screenshots.

[cool breeze]

Lines (paths, targeting, facing) should always be above the ground - even if hilly.

FTFC - fix the f*ing compass so that it works like - a compass!

Clicking on a major direction on the compass should orient the map to that direction. Handy for screenshots.

But wouldn't it be confusing to switch now that we are used to it?? lol

"What I am hoping for would be actual differences that you could see or feel when commanding troops of different grades. "

Canada Guy

"The combination of conscript and low leadership should allow the player to replicate the most extreme degree of incompetence and disorganization to be expected anywhere."

Michael

With the infantry I notice/feel the differences a lot more in CMx2 than CMx1, because when they suck I see their crap shots and cowardice and unwillingness to follow orders or throw grenades. Their incompetence is marked by a line of dead bodies in the wrong direction. Good soldiers are the opposite, they do better than I asked and are murderers. It is a little harder to tell with armor, since who/what the armor is fighting and what vehicle they are in matter so much on top of the crew. I think command delays are still a little to gimmicky of a way to add difference between experience. If the commander says charge, they drive forward, no too complicated. Kind of a basic language skill not tank skill. Ok thinking aloud here, what if only armor or only armor that's not open or opened up had command delays, and they were all short and didn't care or at least didn't care much how complicated the order is. No working radio doubles it? Seem to much of a slippery slope to touch but I wouldn't complain if not open armor in general got a 15 or so second command delay. Not exactly realistic, but it does put in a tinny bit of the natural friction between armor and infantry beyond the C2 stuff already in it.

[Canada Guy]

Womble,

I agree with you in regards to elite vs conscript infantry. You do not see the distinction as well though in the use of tanks.

It is a difficult balance between being gamey and being 100% historically neutral. One of the problems with ASL, though I enjoy it immensely, is the use of nationality modifiers to reflect different leadership/training doctrines but it does work to a limited extent.

E.g. (Using The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich - Robert M. Citino

One of the German strengths in WWII was the training doctrine that allowed lower level leaders greater initiative at local encounters. This was slowly eroded as time went on and training that had occurred over years (1938-1943) was compressed due to need for some type of leadership replacements in 1944-45. The Soviets though had strict lines of hierarchy that prevented this type of independence (though I am sure that due to tactical situations was present from time to time).

How then do you reflect this in the use of tanks. Yes, conscript level would restrict acquiring targets, firing, maintaining fire discipline and morale, but how do you reflect the lack of radios and the use of semaphore flags that was used by the tanker leader to direct his subordinates early in the war? The command delay reflected this in a sort of gamey method but not as gamey as some people make it out to be. Subordinates would not actively take measures independent of their superiors as per doctrine.

As I said, I would love to see some other solution but without something gamey (e.g. half all firing, acquiring, morale discipline percentages outside of leader contact and without radios, only be in contact if within visual range (to see semaphore flags) if HQ tank is unbuttoned.).

Yes, I understand wanting to get away from nationality stereotypes but how does one insert training doctrine in a nationality neutral way? It is not that I want to see Soviet troops penalized for being Soviet, but I would like to see some differences due to training doctrine between nations. You see this with squad composition (US vs Brit) and BF has introduced the idea of non-splitting squads for Italians. This is nationality composition doctrine. We just need to extend this to include training and leadership doctrine without succumbing to nationality stereotypes. German troops were not supermen and Soviets were not inept, but their training/leadership doctrine sure helped one and not the other in fulfilling goals, especially in the 1939-1943 timeline.

Again, we are almost there with infantry with some tweaks but I feel it is lacking for the tanks. (and you will probably not see much of this effect or the need to implement in CMBN or CMFI as they were more evenly trained and matched and had somewhat similar training/leadership doctrines at this time and the composition doctrines are well represented)

[womble]

...I feel it is lacking for the tanks....

I have to disagree. Green, low motivation Semovente "Tank Destroyers" will lose out to .50cal-armed halftracks because their crews bail the moment there's "armour spalling". Low motivation tanks back off like scared cats if they spot any infantry anywhere near.

What you're asking for re: C2 problems also is already represented; Italian vehicles with no radios are noticeably worse at spotting things than the US ones with a) better vision arrangements and hints via C2 as to where to look. Bil v GaJ showed that poor vision arrangements (I'm looking at you, buttoned M10) are largely faithfully modelled (to GaJ's cost), so cheap-ass early T-34s may suffer from similar problems. Maybe the disadvantages need tuning a little, but they're there.

[Freyberg]

I think it's reasonable not to impose too much of a command delay on low-experience units, inasmuch as the skill of the player represents both training and doctrine, and all levels of unit command (down to the team), so it shouldn't be assumed that all command comes 'down the pipeline'. The lousy way low-quality armour acts and reacts in combat is ample representation of their greenness.

[Andrew H.]

What you're asking for re: C2 problems also is already represented; Italian vehicles with no radios are noticeably worse at spotting things than the US ones with a) better vision arrangements and hints via C2 as to where to look. Bil v GaJ showed that poor vision arrangements (I'm looking at you, buttoned M10) are largely faithfully modelled (to GaJ's cost), so cheap-ass early T-34s may suffer from similar problems. Maybe the disadvantages need tuning a little, but they're there.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if CMx2 already had all (or almost all) of the tools to model 1941 Soviet troops and tanks; there is a profound difference between playing the US and playing the Italians in 1943. Even with tanks - play with green tanks and keep them buttoned up and they have a hard time spotting *anything*.

But it's also important to remember that the Soviets weren't really like the Italians - they did tend to fight pretty hard, and they didn't readily surrender. They carried out attacks which failed not due to the troops giving up as much as through the attack being somewhat inept. (And the ineptness was partially due to bad leadership, but also partially due to the fact that the training and equipment of the troops at that time did not usually permit good inter-branch cooperation, and the absence of lower level leaders often meant you had larger (and clumsier) maneuver elements than would have been true in the German army.

But it's also important to remember that 90% of the Soviet tanks were not T-34s or KVs; they were T-26s and BT-7s and other tanks that were, overall, quite inferior to the Pz III's, IV's, and even 38(t)'s fielded by the Germans.

T-34s and KVs were, of course, a different story...but I think that some historical successes against these tanks could be duplicated due to the tanks (presumably) weak spotting ability in CM terms, allowing weaker German tanks to evade, or flank, or allowing AT guns to be set up. (The more common way of dealing with large number of these tanks - bypassing them and waiting for them to run out of gas - is outside CM's scope.

(It's also important to remember that German initiative in Barbarossa meant that the Germans generally had numerical superiority where and when they attacked).

[SmittyJ]

I'd like to see more attention paid to individual soldiers morale, skill set etc. Something like the system in Close Combat that rated each guy on a few different attributes like courage and perception.I enjoyed those moments in CC when I could curse Private Jones for turning tail at the first shot yet again and mourn the death of the guy who you could count on to be the first through the door. Also I think troops should be able to dig in in-game. Maybe a cover bonus for each minute that the "dig in" order is in effect representing the evolution from a shallow skrimsher's trench after 4 or 5 minutes to something like a proper fighting hole in 30 or 40.

[Lt Belenko]

I'd like to see more attention paid to individual soldiers morale, skill set etc. Something like the system in Close Combat that rated each guy on a few different attributes like courage and perception.I enjoyed those moments in CC when I could curse Private Jones for turning tail at the first shot yet again and mourn the death of the guy who you could count on to be the first through the door.

Within a squad one guy is firing and another guy is cowering seems to take individual morale into account. I never played CC.

[bloodworth646]

One of the German strengths in WWII was the training doctrine that allowed lower level leaders greater initiative at local encounters.

Does this mean that the german platoon leaders (or even NCO's at the squad level?) were less reliant upon the higher rank officers in terms of tactical initiative? If so, i think that it is possible to simmulate this by making the german units less affected by the constraints of being out of C2 links.

It's not optimal but it's still makes sense...if i understood correctly

[womble]

Within a squad one guy is firing and another guy is cowering seems to take individual morale into account. I never played CC.

Yeah, the element's ratings are the average of the ratings of the members of that element, and BFC have assured us that each pTrooper's status in terms of what's happening around him is individually tracked. While one guy cowering at the same time another's shooting back might be down to the cowerer being more exposed to suppression, it can also be because he's not got the same intestinal fortitude. And the exposure thing might be down to a variation in experience level.

[Andrew H.]

One of the changes I'd like to see doesn't deal with the gameplay as much as it does with the QB selector. The way it works now, you can select the conditions of the battle, such as time of day, weather, and terrain, *or* you can set these to random. What I'd like to be able to do is choose random but exclude certain conditions.

IOW, If I set up a QB, I might like terrain to be random *except* I don't want it to chose "city". Hills, forest, rough, village, town, I don't care - just not city. Or if I were planning a tank battle, maybe I woudn't want city or forest. Likewise, I don't care if I fight at dawn, dusk, or midday, but I might not want to fight at night. And maybe I'm okay fighting in most weather conditions, but I want to exclude deep mud.

[Michael Emrys]

One of the changes I'd like to see doesn't deal with the gameplay as much as it does with the QB selector. The way it works now, you can select the conditions of the battle, such as time of day, weather, and terrain, *or* you can set these to random. What I'd like to be able to do is choose random but exclude certain conditions.

IOW, If I set up a QB, I might like terrain to be random *except* I don't want it to chose "city". Hills, forest, rough, village, town, I don't care - just not city. Or if I were planning a tank battle, maybe I woudn't want city or forest. Likewise, I don't care if I fight at dawn, dusk, or midday, but I might not want to fight at night. And maybe I'm okay fighting in most weather conditions, but I want to exclude deep mud.

Good idea.

Michael

[womble]

One of the changes I'd like to see doesn't deal with the gameplay as much as it does with the QB selector. The way it works now, you can select the conditions of the battle, such as time of day, weather, and terrain, *or* you can set these to random. What I'd like to be able to do is choose random but exclude certain conditions.

IOW, If I set up a QB, I might like terrain to be random *except* I don't want it to chose "city". Hills, forest, rough, village, town, I don't care - just not city. Or if I were planning a tank battle, maybe I woudn't want city or forest. Likewise, I don't care if I fight at dawn, dusk, or midday, but I might not want to fight at night. And maybe I'm okay fighting in most weather conditions, but I want to exclude deep mud.

Yeah. Check boxes for things you want to be options. Nice one.

[para]

I would like to see a use/throw charges button. I was playing a battle last night and on several occasions my (different) soldiers threw bloody grenade after grenade at a stug and AFV's, even though they had satchel charges. Why we can have a blast (building/hedgerow) button and not a throw button is beyond me. It's ridiculous!

[poesel]

When you order a 'cancel target' and the unit has only a covered arc you want to remove, the soldiers shouldn't say 'cease fire' or 'munition sparen' because it's mostly just the opposite of what they are going to do. Saying nothing in this case would be good.

[Baneman]

When you order a 'cancel target' and the unit has only a covered arc you want to remove, the soldiers shouldn't say 'cease fire' or 'munition sparen' because it's mostly just the opposite of what they are going to do. Saying nothing in this case would be good.

Yeah, they even say it when you cancel a FACE command.

Actually I'd also like to see the re-introduction of the separate-from-Target LoS tool. As it stands, you can't check LoS from a vehicle like a truck which has no weapon. What, they don't have eyes ?

Or at least give those vehicles an invisible unusable weapon so the Target tool works.