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A More Realistic Iron Mode?


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50 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:

I would rather see a module for Black Sea that adds the VDV, and adds new vehicles/formations to the US and UKR forces. Or, I would rather see a new expansion to CMSF2 that adds even more content. Or, I would like to see a new game that covers 1950 Korea. Or what I really hope for is a game that covers a 1980s Cold War gone hot scenario. 

My point being, I would rather see the devs working on new/more content than a small features such as an increased difficulty setting. I have a different list of things I want BFC to do than you. Most people here have different ideas of what they want done. If BFC tried to deliver on every wishlist item of everyone on the forums, they would never get anything done. Just because you want something added doesn't mean everyone does. 

Ok, more content, less development. Then you must be perfectly happy, because engine improvements over the last few years were almost nil anway.

Or do you mean even the minimal improvements should have been shelved for even more content?

IMO it has been a receipe to shrink the community in a negative feedback loop: less improvements of the engine -> the smaller the community becomes. The smaller the community -> the less user made content is created.

 

Looking at the number of forum posts clearly shows, that releasing new content does not increase the customer base. It melts away.

Exciting new features and big improvements bring cutomers back and grow the base, not content with different textures and infantry with a slightly different equipment.

Why do you think the vehicle pack did not do well? Because it makes tactically and realism-wise absolutely no difference.

Edited by CarlWAW
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1 hour ago, CarlWAW said:

Ok, more content, less development. Then you must be perfectly happy, because engine improvements over the last few years were almost nil anway.

Or do you mean even the minimal improvements should have been shelved for even more content?

IMO it has been a receipe to shrink the community in a negative feedback loop: less improvements of the engine -> the smaller the community becomes. The smaller the community -> the less user made content is created.

 

Looking at the number of forum posts clearly shows, that releasing new content does not increase the customer base. It melts away.

Exciting new features and big improvements bring cutomers back and grow the base, not content with different textures and infantry with a slightly different equipment.

Why do you think the vehicle pack did not do well? Because it makes tactically and realism-wise absolutely no difference.

Umm exactly how did you determine the vehicle pack did not do well? "tactically and realism-wise absolutely no difference." Maybe you didn't buy it, but even just looking at the announcement page- Mine clearing equipment has no tactical affect?  Once again you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.  It certainly isn't the impression BF has given as packs are still on the table as they see places where they fit.  And your statement about "engine improvements over the last few years were almost nil anway" is just so ridiculously wrong I am beginning to wonder if you just use a magic eight ball to come up with random complaints.  Complaining about "how could they get rid of that" about a feature that has been gone for over 10 years and you JUST noticed because someone told you would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.  The owner of the company has repeatedly clearly stated that BF is doing fine yet you insist on peddling this doom and gloom nonsense.  Doesn't it embarrass you at all that you are contradicting the people in the know with absolutely no access to relevant data?

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1 hour ago, CarlWAW said:

IMO it has been a receipe to shrink the community in a negative feedback loop: less improvements of the engine -> the smaller the community becomes. The smaller the community -> the less user made content is created.

 

Looking at the number of forum posts clearly shows, that releasing new content does not increase the customer base. It melts away.

Exciting new features and big improvements bring cutomers back and grow the base, not content with different textures and infantry with a slightly different equipment.

Why do you think the vehicle pack did not do well? Because it makes tactically and realism-wise absolutely no difference.

Sburke already nailed it on the head. The exact opposite of what you said is happening is actually happening. Not only have CM sales increased, but the return of previous customers (as in, people who bought one CM game and then come back and get another) have increased as well. Sounds to me like BFC is doing quite well. They aren't losing customers, they're growing. 

1 hour ago, CarlWAW said:

IMO

This is the key phrase of your entire argument. Its your opinion. Its also wrong.

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Fans always suffer from the same problem: emotions cloud their ability of rational thinking.

9 hours ago, IICptMillerII said:

Sburke already nailed it on the head. The exact opposite of what you said is happening is actually happening. Not only have CM sales increased, but the return of previous customers (as in, people who bought one CM game and then come back and get another) have increased as well. Sounds to me like BFC is doing quite well. They aren't losing customers, they're growing.

Hm, then I am wondering why here are maybe just one dozen regular posters left, or why the communities at theblitz.org and thefewgoodmen are becoming less and less active?

I find that especially interesting, since they offer more products with the newest features than ever before.

But thats only subjective and I understand that fans always suffer from the same problems.

 

But there is a method how every customer, who has bought products for a sufficiently long time, can easily verify that their sales, despite more up-to-date products on sale, are becoming less: every shop transaction receives a number...

And whoever has a friend can obtain even more numbers and the date of transaction.

It doesn't take a MSc to calculate the sales per day.

So contrary to your claims, the hard numbers from the shop transactions show me, that the sales per day are becoming less.

 

And btw, the numbers, btw, fit perfectly to the activity in the community - what everyone with an open mind recognizes easily - fanboys not so much.

 

Since recently my suspicion, that they are a military contractor and therefore are not that dependent on retail anymore was confirmed, I do not believe, they are going out of business anytime soon. I hope not. But the military contract doesn't touch my argument, that despite them releasing more products, the community is shrinking. Which I think is not good.

You are living in a total fantasy land, if you believe the community is growing.

It is shrinking and if fewer and fewer customers would not buy two, three, four times more products, their sales would have fallen probably 80-90% compared to the 40-60% according to my calculations.

Edited by CarlWAW
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I recall someone telling me that there was an order processing time lag in older CM titles. Order time and execution depended on the complexity and amount of consecutive changes made. Higher commanding skill impacted all aspects like time to process information and so on. Why not bring this system back for Iron and Warrior difficulties?  

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Because it was an awful feature. CM lets you play all the roles of leadership from the battalion CO down to the squad NCOs. While the command delays did a good job of representing high level command and communication issues it utterly failed at the squad level basic soldiering decisions.

Imagine for a moment you have a squad crossing a street and they come under fire. Do you think it is reasonable for them to stand still in the middle of the street for 30s or a minute while they wait for direction? No way, thier Sargent would take action immediately to ensure his men's safety.

Any time there was close action that needed low level leadership decisions command delays were a failure.

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6 hours ago, CarlWAW said:

Hm, then I am wondering why here are maybe just one dozen regular posters left, or why the communities at theblitz.org and thefewgoodmen are becoming less and less active?

Your perception is not reality. 

Forum posts do not equal number of active customers. Steve himself has said that they have plenty of return customers and new customers with each release. 

We all want new features and content. What you're forgetting is that we get new features and content. But trying to make the false claim that BFC is on the verge of going under (they aren't) by using a false metric (forum posts) and saying the only cure is an iron mode + feature is just pure sensationalism. 

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snort!  Damn got coffee up my nose on this one.

First I would have to believe you have friends.  That's a tough one.

Second I'd have to believe you have enough friends constantly buying BF products to be able to graph sales over time. On a daily basis no less according to you.  Somebody here is in fantasy land.

Fluctuations in sales are a part of any business.  Also in this particular business certain theaters sell better than others.  NW Europe WW2 sells pretty darn good.  Italy and Russia not so much so.  I am absolutely sure in your detailed modeling (read stalking) of BF's business you took into account the changes in market dynamics to reflect an expected change in sales?  Yep I am so sure you did cause no one would ever consider just throwing numbers together to make them appear to back an assessment for doom he's been peddling for years

Oh and thanks for tossing out the obligatory "fanboy" assessment.  Was beginning to wonder if that had gone out of fashion.  Good to know my fanboy club membership is still valid.

@IICptMillerIII suspect we are getting rolled and he is just bored and looking to see if it is possible to cause someone to have an aneurism by just pushing more and more nonsensical statements

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11 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Doesn't really seem to be going anywhere useful anymore does it?  :rolleyes:

It could have.  Wouldn't be the first thread discussing tougher C&C rules as is noted from the various proponents - Peregrine, Bil Hardenberger.  It went off the rails because the OP somehow decided the those rules were for a minority of a minority while somehow sidestepping that his proposal fit the same standard.  From there it just went downhill.  I still like both Bil and Peregrine's ideas.  For sure they aren't for everyone.  Heck even standard Iron mode isn't for everyone.  I know some who use it, but I'd be hard pressed to say that any significant portion of users take advantage of it.

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I'm not asking or arguing for the feature discussed above - but one way to achieve it, which might be fun once in a while, would be to have something like an 'intel-view' lock hot key.

If you could lock the intel-viewpoint onto, say, the company commander, then until it was unlocked, you could select and give orders to other units (assuming you could see them, for example in Iron mode), but the intel you received would remain that of the company commander.

It would achieve most of what those above are asking for without reworking the whole game, and might be interesting.

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56 minutes ago, Freyberg said:

I'm not asking or arguing for the feature discussed above - but one way to achieve it, which might be fun once in a while, would be to have something like an 'intel-view' lock hot key.

If you could lock the intel-viewpoint onto, say, the company commander, then until it was unlocked, you could select and give orders to other units (assuming you could see them, for example in Iron mode), but the intel you received would remain that of the company commander.

It would achieve most of what those above are asking for without reworking the whole game, and might be interesting.

I'm agree with you. Good idea !

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Carlwaw, 

What is your point, to put yourself out there as a target for the few fans that sit around here and post all the time.

Are you wanting to be a prophet and show us your foreseen powers to tell us what the future is, so we might follow you as the great all knowing war gaming god predictor.

or are you just someone that likes to see if they can stir up trouble because there not enough of that around already.

 

Whatever it is, which I really do not care what your motive is.

You logic is as stupid and that of most of it here from posters on the forum.

 

Look, there is no question as to this forum and any associated with these games as becoming less active on their sites. How could it be any other way.

How many people want to spend day in and day out talking about the same old thing. Thus the lost of interest, thus the reason most have moved on.

 

Most don't visit the sites much anymore because there is nothing new to discuss or learn.

When there is not much change in the game, not much different in the tactics to use and not anything new to learn how to play the game better. (then why would anyone in their right mind spend much time here on the site.)

Even when a new game release is had, the activity is nothing compared to when the first CMX2 game first came out (and it wont be)

Until a day that a new entire game engine is made and a new way of having to play because of it is had.  Then and only then will there be a increase in what we see as a game community on these sites.  

 

But as to how many play these games, how many drop in from time to time to see when the next is available and to what extent they manage to keep their costumers. The only source worth listening to is BF, because they are the only ones with any real facts and knowledge on the issue.

From what I can tell, they seem to paint a very different picture than yours.

Plus I know enough to know that those interested in these games are not the normal type of consumer anyway. For most its more like a addiction, seeking for a fix for a need that they have.

For me, its that need to have the mental challenge of dealing with the tactical decisions that the game creates as one plays it, I love to put my wit against another's and see how well my decisions do. For some they are addicted to armor, they drool over the models like a work of art and are always trying to make them better. For others, its a way to experience history , history they cannot live for themselves. And the reasons go on.

But the fix for their addictions is very limited, and BF is one of the very few places to get a hit, and they do just a good enough job that they want that hit again and again.

So calm down, I know you are presently in withdrawals for whatever the fix is you need, or you would not be here in the first place at this time and with this attitude of yours.

BF is wanting your money, they have product on the way and when it comes we can all get high on it for a moment til its time to beg for more. 

 

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On 2017-10-17 at 9:00 PM, CarlWAW said:

In that mode the player's ability to move over the battlefield freely would simply be removed! The camera view would be fixed on his unit (with a certain tolerance, for example around 1-3 action squares; maybe dependable on unit characteristics; same with the ingame zooming option).

You can actually play the Total War games like that, with the camera slaved to the general. It's quite an interesting experience and has you running around the battlefield. It also puts even more of a premium on sound prebattle deployment.

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On 22.10.2017 at 5:33 PM, IanL said:

Because it was an awful feature. CM lets you play all the roles of leadership from the battalion CO down to the squad NCOs. While the command delays did a good job of representing high level command and communication issues it utterly failed at the squad level basic soldiering decisions.

Imagine for a moment you have a squad crossing a street and they come under fire. Do you think it is reasonable for them to stand still in the middle of the street for 30s or a minute while they wait for direction? No way, thier Sargent would take action immediately to ensure his men's safety.

Any time there was close action that needed low level leadership decisions command delays were a failure.

I see. I suppose with the current TacAI there is no proper way to impement higher roles of leadership properly. That said, the fault of being stuck in the middle of the street for X seconds instead of getting out of the way to cover quickly is also somewhat present with current WEGO system. 

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On 21/10/2017 at 0:28 AM, Battlefront.com said:

Well put.

Gamers (of all types) have a very bad habit of doing three things and often doing them together:

1.  Over estimating the ability of their suggestion to yield the result they say they want

2.  Under estimating the amount of effort it will take to produce something that they won't find flawed to the point of frustration

3.  Don't understand or reject how their suggestion fits into the Big Picture

This is not limited to customers, it also happens with our best testers.  The guys who know the game better than anybody AND know how we design behind-the scenes very often do this too.  In fact, just this week there was a tester thread with a couple guys pushing a particular "solution" onto a particular known limitation in CM.  I kept explaining it wouldn't work as intended, but instead would make things worse or would grind the computer to a halt.  After several very deep technical explanations as to how the feature works and how their suggestion couldn't achieve what they had asked for, they said "OK, now I see" and we moved on.

I say this to remind you guys that I don't sit here and think you're all a bunch of moronic children when you push for something that I've clearly said "no" to.  It is very helpful to have you guys advocate for new features or for us to look at things a different way.  WE NEED THAT to make CM better.  However, when it comes down to only Charles and I are truly armed with the necessary knowledge and experience to understand and evaluate what is being requested.  If our position is rejected, even after a factual explanation for it, then things become unproductive.

I'll say it again... we are not interested in trying to shoehorn 1st Person features into a game that is inherently 3rd Person.  It's vastly more complicated than people think.  If you find yourself thinking "but all you need to do is X" then you've not understood a word I've said :D

Steve

Hi Steve,

I know we discussed this before and I do not want to take too much of your precious  programming time for one of my favourite games...

But you seem to seem to be quiet active on the forums the last days and I feel I have to support the argument for a "improved fog of war" while the discussion came up again.

I know from my kids that sometimes they do succeed in getting their will after asking me multiple times because i can see the issue is really important for them. -and their arguments get better and better.:P

Two questions:

1.Can you actually see or estimate how many players play in which difficulty mode?

2.Can you see or estimate how many players play in SP or MP (sometimes I am worried with games shifting more and more to MP)

 

I ask because I would expect most players to be interested in the most realistic difficulty setting.

They chose to buy a game that is proud to be one of the most realistic and well researched games on the marked. It is not the easiest game to buy / install and understand and there are many  games on the marked that have a similar setting and are more accessible. The biggest difference is focus on  realism and detail, which is best represented in iron mode. Maybe the naming "iron" is a bit confusing. Often in computer games the higher difficulty settings mean more enemies and unfair advantages for the AI. This is not the case in "iron mode" and maybe "realistic" would be a term that would motivate more people to play this mode.

 

Concerning the MP / SP aspect of the game: If you still want to invest in the SP aspect of the game, all improvements to the tac AI should be a good investment.

The argument that you need the player for every decisions  of a small teams /squad works best in the MP environment.

In SP you want your AI opponent to react reasonable too!

I think that it is important that the AI can react appropriate when coming under fire so I would not mind if some units with broken chain of command do their own "AI thing"

(of course there is room for improvement still... did you not say it is on top of your list for the next patch ;))

Probably your military contract would also be interested in more realistic representation of broken comms and the ensuing loss of control and confusion.

I would love to see what the missing radio would do to my T34 platoons or if I would succeed in commanding a Italian battalion with the few radios they have.

Maybe I would understand that it was neither the  Italian soldiers nor the Italian officers that failed but the problem was that the soldiers never found out what the officers wanted them to do:rolleyes:

 

Just as a reminder what I would like to see:

-loss of chain of command: unit greys out and becomes unresponsive/ continues orders, no updates to intel from the unit.

- after a certain time without orders/ out of contact the unit try´s to re-establish contact.

- a new, more robust waypoint order where a unit advances until contact, fights and continues to the waypoint as soon as the contact is lost. (would make it possible to make battle plans for units without comms in the beginning of a scenario)

- an after action review where all units are visible (so we can see what the AI did while we could not see them)

 

Remember such an update would make it interesting to play ALL the games again (oh wait - I do not have the time to do that...:lol:)

Hope you can accept that I had to push for my favourite topic again. (hope you do NOT stop all work on comms and AI in protest :wacko:)

 

 

 

 

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On 10/22/2017 at 6:45 AM, CarlWAW said:

Fans always suffer from the same problem: emotions cloud their ability of rational thinking.

Couldn't have said it better myself.  So check your emotional cloud for signs that you're not rationally thinking :D

On 10/22/2017 at 6:45 AM, CarlWAW said:

Hm, then I am wondering why here are maybe just one dozen regular posters left, or why the communities at theblitz.org and thefewgoodmen are becoming less and less active?

Oh good God, are we going down that tea leaves reading route again?  Do you know for a fact that all those people are leaving for the same reason?  I doubt you do because I doubt they are.

On 10/22/2017 at 6:45 AM, CarlWAW said:

I find that especially interesting, since they offer more products with the newest features than ever before.

I'm going to go with our sales data being more relevant than your anecdotal interpretation of something you clearly don't really understand in the first place.

On 10/22/2017 at 6:45 AM, CarlWAW said:

But there is a method how every customer, who has bought products for a sufficiently long time, can easily verify that their sales, despite more up-to-date products on sale, are becoming less: every shop transaction receives a number...

And whoever has a friend can obtain even more numbers and the date of transaction.

It doesn't take a MSc to calculate the sales per day.

So contrary to your claims, the hard numbers from the shop transactions show me, that the sales per day are becoming less.

No, it doesn't.  First of all, we sell other products than Combat Mission.  Our sales spike MASSIVELY when a new product is released, then tapers off.  You haven't a clue how to interpret those order numbers even if you had a huge sample of them.  Which you don't.

On 10/22/2017 at 6:45 AM, CarlWAW said:

And btw, the numbers, btw, fit perfectly to the activity in the community - what everyone with an open mind recognizes easily - fanboys not so much.

People with axes to grind and a history of combative behavior even less.

On 10/22/2017 at 6:45 AM, CarlWAW said:

Since recently my suspicion, that they are a military contractor and therefore are not that dependent on retail anymore was confirmed,

The only thing you've confirmed is that what the rest of us already know... you are so totally and utterly out of your depth.  We have passively sought military contracts since 2000 and have so far secured two very small ones.  The first was in 2004 for the Australian Defense Force, the second just this year for the New Zealand Defense Force.  We are no more a defense contractor now than we were in 2004.  And with good reason... we sold more CMBN Battle Pack 1 in a month than we are getting for the NZDF contract.  But hey, you probably already knew that because you're so good at figuring out what's going on with our sales, right?

On 10/22/2017 at 6:45 AM, CarlWAW said:

You are living in a total fantasy land, if you believe the community is growing.

It is shrinking and if fewer and fewer customers would not buy two, three, four times more products, their sales would have fallen probably 80-90% compared to the 40-60% according to my calculations.

When one looks at analysts one should be looking for consistency.  I'll grant you that your observational and analytical skills are very consistent, but I don't see how consistently wrong is anything to boast about.

Now, as to the community size and energy... it's always ebb and flow.  And not just day to day or month to month, but year to year and more.  From our perspective our sales and community strength is just fine.  And in the end, that's all that matters.  Because if we're happy, that means our customers are happy and vice versa.

Steve

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18 hours ago, CAS said:

I know we discussed this before and I do not want to take too much of your precious  programming time for one of my favourite games...

But you seem to seem to be quiet active on the forums the last days and I feel I have to support the argument for a "improved fog of war" while the discussion came up again.

Sure!  And please don't take my position to mean that I'm not interested in improving the Fog of War aspect of Combat Mission.  Quite the contrary.  The issue is how does one go about it.  Welding the player to a more-or-less FPS type game experience isn't the path we should go down.

Quote

I know from my kids that sometimes they do succeed in getting their will after asking me multiple times because i can see the issue is really important for them. -and their arguments get better and better.:P

Two questions:

1.Can you actually see or estimate how many players play in which difficulty mode?

2.Can you see or estimate how many players play in SP or MP (sometimes I am worried with games shifting more and more to MP)

No, we don't have Google like statistics gathering methodology.  I certainly wish we did, but it's cumbersome to implement and we get into some areas of privacy that can spin out of control (perception often is reality for critics of metadata gathering).

Which means we have to rely upon a mixture of experience, customer feedback, and detached evaluation.  The latter is critically important to remember... we're making these games for you guys, not us.  NOBODY has more incentive than we do to figure out what is the best mix of features for the most amount of people we can reach.  To the extent we get it right, we "profit".  To the extent we get it wrong, we risk going out of business.  So far we've been doing pretty well with all this, so we're pretty confident we have a good handle on what our customers do and do not want.

Individual customers lack experience, customer feedback, or detached evaluation skills.  Hubris and factually flawed argumentation to back up a narrow and personal agenda is far more common.  And it's understandable since a player is only playing for himself, so why should he care what others want or don't want?

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I ask because I would expect most players to be interested in the most realistic difficulty setting.

Ah... but here we get into two entirely different types of wargamers; the ones that want realism and the ones that want control.  The two are inherently at odds with each.  Pursuing realism requires giving up control, pursuing control requires giving up realism.

I'd guess the majority of our customers are more interested in control over realism.  Where they draw the line between one or the other is likely very different within that group, but I'm pretty certain Iron Man is not what they are using or looking for being expanded.

Now, compared to other games out there even our control leaning players are more interested in realism than the average gamer out there.  Which is why we're only making a living off of Combat Mission instead of owning various tropical islands and yachts to visit them ;)

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They chose to buy a game that is proud to be one of the most realistic and well researched games on the marked. It is not the easiest game to buy / install and understand and there are many  games on the marked that have a similar setting and are more accessible. The biggest difference is focus on  realism and detail, which is best represented in iron mode. Maybe the naming "iron" is a bit confusing. Often in computer games the higher difficulty settings mean more enemies and unfair advantages for the AI. This is not the case in "iron mode" and maybe "realistic" would be a term that would motivate more people to play this mode.

You can motivate them to TRY something, sure, but we can not motivate people to play something they don't inherently want to play. 

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Concerning the MP / SP aspect of the game: If you still want to invest in the SP aspect of the game, all improvements to the tac AI should be a good investment.

TacAI is independent of how many Human players there are.  If we supported 24 players we'd have to have the same TacAI as we do right now.  If we made a multiplayer only game (which would be financial suicide for us, BTW) then we could get away without having any StratAI (the stuff people script in the Editor)

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Probably your military contract would also be interested in more realistic representation of broken comms and the ensuing loss of control and confusion.

Having had countless discussions various militaries and military simulations contractors, as well as two site visits with the US Army, I can say for sure that's not even on their list.  In fact, what we have in the game now is considered more than adequate.  What they're interested more in is figuring out how to work around bureaucratic decisions that prevent them from working with us.  Note lack of smiley!  The next most important thing is having 20+ players per side.  Broken comms and loss of control would be inherently part of that.

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Hope you can accept that I had to push for my favourite topic again. (hope you do NOT stop all work on comms and AI in protest :wacko:)

No problem :D  What you listed off as your priorities come with major ramifications for what it takes to make those features work successfully, even for the small % of people that would really like them.  And that's where we get into the economics of the whole thing... we don't see a major investment in removing control from players as in anybody's best interests long term.  There's more things we could do with the same amount of time/effort that have a much better chance of "paying off".  And let's not forget that "paying off" for us means making a lot of people happy, so in the end something that makes us happy makes our customers happy and vice versa.

Steve

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Something occured to me. What about never getting solid contacts from units out of C2? You can still react as the NCO that there is an enemy down the street but it becomes much more limiting in how the player is able to process the information?

Or with order delays, short distances have zero delay to allow you to get out of Dodge City, but you can't get them to hump it across the battlefield?

I like the idea of increased fog of war, just trying to think of some solutions to the stated problems, even though it seems very unlikely to be implemented! B)

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3 minutes ago, HerrTom said:

Something occured to me. What about never getting solid contacts from units out of C2? You can still react as the NCO that there is an enemy down the street but it becomes much more limiting in how the player is able to process the information?

No :D  This is the sort of thing that incorrectly blurs the lines between the player's roles.  Since units can not act on their own the player must direct them.  It is absolutely BAD to deny the player tactical information that unit would have simply because the player's other hats (platoon HQ and up) are out of communications.  Likewise, what happens when an out of C2 unit starts shooting at something or being shot at?  Should we not show either of those activities?

3 minutes ago, HerrTom said:

Or with order delays, short distances have zero delay to allow you to get out of Dodge City, but you can't get them to hump it across the battlefield?

This is an example of players thinking of about 1/20th of what is needed to make something work well enough to implement :)  There's been long, long, long discussions about "Command Delays" dating back to 1999 when the CMBO Public Beta was released.  There's so many realism and technical problems with the feature that we didn't consider putting any form of it into CM2.  It's one of those things which is an endless source of problems so better to leave it out.

3 minutes ago, HerrTom said:

I like the idea of increased fog of war, just trying to think of some solutions to the stated problems, even though it seems very unlikely to be implemented! B)

The inherent problem here is that if you impose strategic restrictions on tactical units, you need to give up tactical control.  That requires massive amounts of AI and that's not feasible.  Therefore, the more you interfere with tactical information and control, the less realistic (for everybody) and less fun (for almost everybody) the game becomes.  If you notice, something like Relative Spotting doesn't deny the player information or control, but it does inhibit the TacAI's reactions to things.  It has to be that way or the game totally falls apart.  Ironically, it also falls apart from a realism standpoint.

Steve

 

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