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OT-Graviteam Tactics


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I'm pretty sure that all of the negative comments come from bots and fake users. However you may be surprised, that  whenever CM is mentioned on the Mius Front forum, people usually hold in high a regard. Even more surprisingly, there're apparently people who seem to like both games. Life's a mistery indeed...

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Welcome to internet comparisons: some people like neither. Some people like both. Some people like only either of the things. Of the latter group, most either ignore the other, or values it for what it is, even if they don't prefer it - which seems the be mostly the case here. But typically, for either party, there is a last small subset that is very vocal about the perceived flaws of the other thing.

Even if I don't play GT, I can certainly see the appeal of less micromanagement, but alas, current solutions are not good enough: offsetting a unit by a single action tile can have great ramifications for a unit in CM (just look at the problems with AI fleeing), but in my experience an 8m displacement matters little in GT, so to reduce the micromanagement in CM would require a much more intelligent AI that understands these ramifications.

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As far as I understand, cover in GT is highly abstracted, so it doesn't matter exactly where you place your soldiers, as long as they are in a square with a nice colour.

Whereas in CM, you need to find cover behind walls etc, and if there's a tiny gap in the wall, that means LOS in a line behind it.

I lost count of how many times I lost guys from a freak burst of MG fire through one of those bocage gaps, when I thought I was moving in concealment.

This "micromanaging" can be tedious, but it's also what gives CM its tactical nuances, I find.

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I tried to get into GT Operation Star and Mius Front (I have both).  I still play them on occasion but tactical combat is lackluster. Combat Mission is king when it comes to tactical combat. 

The appeal in GT with the AI lessening micromanagement is there and it is a plus, but I feel like the game is abstracted too much. It becomes almost like an arcady simulation with mortars setting up and firing at a moments notice etc. Even on "simulation setting". 

The strategic map doesn't really add much in GT either.

 

Combat Mission is the better game in my opinion, albeit the micromanagment in the bigger scenarios can make it a chore. I wish there were a way to give general orders to an AI computer to at least advance etc in formation instead of indivudally clicking and placing units, but oh well. 

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I have refrained myself from barging in on this thread... 

But I do agree to a great extent with @vonmanstein1944. GT to some extent feel a lot like Command Ops but replacing the counters with a 1:1 3D representation of the men in units etc. It is also better - after the latest iteration - at conveying what units are doing and why - LOS & LOF displays are incredibly informative and high fidelity. AFV combat is top notch - the origins of the engine as a tank sim attest to that - and far more convincing that in CMx2. You can even see diagrams - displayed on real time - showing what the crew of the tank can see...

For instance, AFVs do actually stop to fire, the effects of partial penetrations or armor spalling become more evident (instead of text, you get to see melted bits of armor flying around). Command & Control is cheesy and gamey, but does limit the rate at which one can pump orders to the units (which is actually the point of any C&C simulation at its core). The 2D tactical map view was better in previous iterations, imo, but helps immensely to get a grasp on the tactical situation at a glance. You have flares and comms are modelled to a great extent.

Also, the maps fidelity blows CMx2 out of the water by a wide margin.

Those are facts, rather than some of the half truths and literature - some very talented writing though -  some of the testimonials on this thread have put forward.

Regarding limitations, all the glitz of the stuff above has its limits. For instance, cover is greatly abstracted and you won't find any linear obstacles other than fortifications in the games. People here have pulled their hair out because of CMx2 infantry Tac AI not taking advantage of terrain... I invite them to send a platoon on a linear formation along a road or a crest in GT. Good luck with that!

GT AI task planning (e.g. attack/assault) is somewhat formulaic, probably because infantry and its interaction with the environment being abstracted. In any case, if you want to do something fancier than a frontal attack, you have to micromanage. Basic stuff like using a fire element to pin down the enemy, and having a maneuver element to actually maneuver into position feels a bit like fighting the UI (which is totally geared towards you focusing at the platoon level). To be fair, steady improvements have been made on infantry combat, but I still find CMx2 to be far superior as a "study sim" in that regard.

Also as I interpret what @vonmanstein1944 says, the op layer is basically a quick battle generator... and it gets very whacky, as the match ups are most of the time fairly ridiculous since the op level map is actually "discretised" into "action points", of which I have always thought there were an insufficient number so as to accommodate forces with meaningful densities.

Indeed, as some have indicated above, one can increase the "radius" at which the OP layers trawls units to setup the battle... but since most of your actual force is off map (since it does not fit into the action spot grid, and you have to "rotate" units) you end up more often than not with your platoon of AT guns being supported by the Bn mortar platoon or the supply platoon of the adjacent Tank Brigade (helpful!).  

If you want a proper Bn level engagement, then you have to design your own battle. The Op layer won't generate easily anything like that.

Also, the other big issue with big battles - that is, like when you have an actual Bn, with its three companies and supporting armour on the map - is that the game stops to a crawl on top of the line rigs (I just did a upgrade to a 16 core i7 with 32 GB Ram and a GTX 1080...) so you can't use time acceleration as things get really, really choppy. I can't sit through a 2 hour battle running at 1:1... I can't hardly muster about 1 hour of spare time a day, let alone 2! That is basically because you need to go for a humongous map area so it has enough action spots you can accommodate the Bn subunits, and then LOS/LOF calculations slow things down - that's my educated guess at where the CPU time is going.

GT games are interesting, and I play them often... to find myself inspired to make a small scenario for myself or tweak one of the ones supplied with CMx2... until I get frustrated again with CMx2 and then I go to GT, and back and so on. Probably we're lucky than we can change horses like that when feel like it.

Edited by BletchleyGeek
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