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WeGo Moments


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There is always a debate about which way is better to play the game, WeGo or real time. For me, it is WeGo all the way and the following two moments sealed the deal for me:

The first PBEM match I ever played in CMBN was a quick battle against a friend from college. I was trying to advance under fire into the next set of buildings in a town. The squad I was moving came under fire and all the men but one ran up to a fence, jumped it and rushed into the safety of a building. The straggler, held tight at the fence and cowered. The turn ended with him kissing his butt goodbye, bullets bouncing all around him. I figured it was only a matter of time until he died, so I tried to move the squad into a better position in a different building. When the next turn started, they cancelled their movement order. The squad leader ran out of the building and stood over top of the cowering solider. He turned and fired in the direction of the incoming rounds. Several bursts of fire came flying at him but nothing hit him. The guy on the ground stopped cowering but he still refused to move. The squad leader fired another burst and then another at the enemy. He then turned and faced the guy on the ground. With only a few seconds left in the turn, the cowering solider got up and ran ahead of his squad leader into the safety of the building.  Neither guy suffered a scratch. I must have watched that turn at least a dozen times. I told my friend and he could not believe it when he watched it over and over again as well.

The second time I was truly impressed by this game was another CMBN battle. I had an entire platoon moving from one section of woods, across the road and into another set of woods. There was a two man scout team in the woods who opened fire as my men moved out. They hit one man and then began to take a whole platoon worth of return fire. One scout was killed right away but the other took careful aim and fired. He shot a guy from my platoon who was just about to throw a grenade. This man dropped dead and dropped his live grenade. It went off and killed three men in my platoon and lightly wounded several others. Unfortunately, one of the men who was killed also dropped a live grenade. It went off killing another 4 or 5 guys and lightly wounding a bunch more. My entire platoon panicked and ran away.  I had to watch 4 or 5 times just to figure out what had happened and then another 20 times to finally believe it was true. It was such a clear demonstration of the randomness of war I was too impressed to be mad.

I saw neither of these events on the first play through of the turn and it was only because I rewound the turn to see what had happened on the other side of the map that I even saw it all. If I had been playing in real time, I would have missed them entirely. Once I found out about this little program called FRAPS, I always load it up first just in case another one of these moments happens again, I can have video evidence to share with you all.

 

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YEP! YEP! YEP! Exactly why I've been running my face on here about WEGO forever and a day.

I remember the very first game I played of BN back when the demo came out. I had ordered a squad to run through a farmyard towards some cover. To my surprise there happened to be a couple Germans in a near by house I hadn't counted on. My guys were trotting right past them, fish in a barrel, stacked up to be mowed down. The last guy in the squad spotted them, stopped mid stride and shot a rifle grenade through the window they were standing in and killed both of them. Then he continued on like it was no big deal.  Not as dramatic as your cool stories of course but it was the type of fidelity in a WWII scene I'd been pining for since CMBO. Basically, 10 years of dreaming come to fruition. Beautiful moment.

I started a thread like this for SF many years back that got pretty big. Hopefully this thread will balloon like that one did. I love reading these types of posts. I want more.

Great stories, man. Thanks!

Mord.

Edited by Mord
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5 hours ago, Heirloom_Tomato said:

The squad I was moving came under fire and all the men but one ran up to a fence, jumped it and rushed into the safety of a building. The straggler, held tight at the fence and cowered. The turn ended with him kissing his butt goodbye, bullets bouncing all around him. I figured it was only a matter of time until he died, so I tried to move the squad into a better position in a different building. When the next turn started, they cancelled their movement order. The squad leader ran out of the building and stood over top of the cowering solider. He turned and fired in the direction of the incoming rounds. Several bursts of fire came flying at him but nothing hit him. The guy on the ground stopped cowering but he still refused to move. The squad leader fired another burst and then another at the enemy. He then turned and faced the guy on the ground. With only a few seconds left in the turn, the cowering solider got up and ran ahead of his squad leader into the safety of the building.

In your case, it worked out well and looked like a movie scene, but I think it's actually caused by a kind of bug or issue with the squad cohesion programming. I've seen the same thing happen many times; that members of a squad will sometimes run back a good distance and then run forward again. 

Usually, I see if happen when I move  asquad across a field and up to a hedgerow. When they get to the hedge, they take some fire from the other side, and then 1 or 2 squad members will turn and run back into the field, then turn and come back.

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3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

In your case, it worked out well and looked like a movie scene, but I think it's actually caused by a kind of bug or issue with the squad cohesion programming. I've seen the same thing happen many times; that members of a squad will sometimes run back a good distance and then run forward again. 

Usually, I see if happen when I move  asquad across a field and up to a hedgerow. When they get to the hedge, they take some fire from the other side, and then 1 or 2 squad members will turn and run back into the field, then turn and come back.

Oh, I'm sure, Heriloom, understands what is actually happening under the Hood is completely different then his 'Feel Good' moment story lines. However, it's those 'Feel Good' moments that brings us all back to CM.

Corporations give money to 'Charity', and the public feels good about it...Thou, the only reason for Corporations giving that money is for Tax write-offs.

Edited by JoMc67
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10 hours ago, Heirloom_Tomato said:

The second time I was truly impressed by this game was another CMBN battle. I had an entire platoon moving from one section of woods, across the road and into another set of woods. There was a two man scout team in the woods who opened fire as my men moved out. They hit one man and then began to take a whole platoon worth of return fire. One scout was killed right away but the other took careful aim and fired. He shot a guy from my platoon who was just about to throw a grenade. This man dropped dead and dropped his live grenade. It went off and killed three men in my platoon and lightly wounded several others. Unfortunately, one of the men who was killed also dropped a live grenade. It went off killing another 4 or 5 guys and lightly wounding a bunch more. My entire platoon panicked and ran away.  I had to watch 4 or 5 times just to figure out what had happened and then another 20 times to finally believe it was true. It was such a clear demonstration of the randomness of war I was too impressed to be mad.

Oh nice. I remember the first time I saw a guy drop a live grenade because he got hit and took out his own team. It was a heart breaking and exciting at the same time.

 

10 hours ago, Heirloom_Tomato said:

I saw neither of these events on the first play through of the turn and it was only because I rewound the turn to see what had happened on the other side of the map that I even saw it all. If I had been playing in real time, I would have missed them entirely. Once I found out about this little program called FRAPS, I always load it up first just in case another one of these moments happens again, I can have video evidence to share with you all.

Just in case you didn't know you can load FRAPS up after starting the game if you like. It still works if you <alt><tab> away from the game and start FRAPS.

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Thanks the stories, HT. I fully agree that WEGO is one of the most appealing features of CM.

Here's one of my own moments, that I found both nerve-wrenching and hilarious at the same time (from a recent replay of my own CMBN scenario "Tiger by the Tail"). I had ordered this guy to move left around the buildings to left. The plan was that he should then ambush the King Tiger with his PIAT from within one of the buildings. But apparently that wasn't exciting enough. :)

 

Edited by umlaut
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10 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

In your case, it worked out well and looked like a movie scene, but I think it's actually caused by a kind of bug or issue with the squad cohesion programming. I've seen the same thing happen many times; that members of a squad will sometimes run back a good distance and then run forward again. 

Usually, I see if happen when I move  asquad across a field and up to a hedgerow. When they get to the hedge, they take some fire from the other side, and then 1 or 2 squad members will turn and run back into the field, then turn and come back.

I don't see this as a bug but rather an expected feature of the game. I have been in a few "risky" situations where some of the people involved ran away while others of us ran towards the "risk". In none of these situations was anyone's life on the line or in any real immediate danger.  It is not unreasonable to me to see a few guys from a squad turn and run when coming under fire, especially if they are already on the move.

In the game situation I quoted, I was impressed that it was the SQUAD leader who came back to his cowering man, stood his ground, got the guy to his feet and brought him safely back to the rest of the squad. As you say it looked just like a movie and was very easy to visualise all the profanity being directed at the guy on the ground.

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5 hours ago, umlaut said:

Thanks the stories, HT. I fully agree that WEGO is one of the most appealing features of CM.

Here's one of my own moments, that I found both nerve-wrenching and hilarious at the same time (from a recent replay of my own CMBN scenario "Tiger by the Tail"). I had ordered this guy to move left around the buildings to left. The plan was that he should then ambush the King Tiger with his PIAT from within one of the buildings. But apparently that wasn't exciting enough. :)

 

At least he threw a grenade at the tank. I bet it at the very least it gave one crew man a slight headache or ringing in his ears for 30 seconds. I was surprised to see your guy made it into the building and was not shot down by the bow gunner. When I watched the turn I could not help but say out loud "You idiot!!! What are you doing......"

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14 hours ago, Mord said:

YEP! YEP! YEP! Exactly why I've been running my face on here about WEGO forever and a day.

I remember the very first game I played of BN back when the demo came out. I had ordered a squad to run through a farmyard towards some cover. To my surprise there happened to be a couple Germans in a near by house I hadn't counted on. My guys were trotting right past them, fish in a barrel, stacked up to be mowed down. The last guy in the squad spotted them, stopped mid stride and shot a rifle grenade through the window they were standing in and killed both of them. Then he continued on like it was no big deal.  Not as dramatic as your cool stories of course but it was the type of fidelity in a WWII scene I'd been pining for since CMBO. Basically, 10 years of dreaming come to fruition. Beautiful moment.

I started a thread like this for SF many years back that got pretty big. Hopefully this thread will balloon like that one did. I love reading these types of posts. I want more.

Great stories, man. Thanks!

Mord.

That is awesome. These little details make the game so exciting. 

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32 minutes ago, Heirloom_Tomato said:

I don't see this as a bug but rather an expected feature of the game. I have been in a few "risky" situations where some of the people involved ran away while others of us ran towards the "risk". In none of these situations was anyone's life on the line or in any real immediate danger.  It is not unreasonable to me to see a few guys from a squad turn and run when coming under fire, especially if they are already on the move.

I had a situation like that occur in a scenario of FI shortly after it came out. They weren't under fire yet but moving toward contact. One guy broke away from his squad and went tearing off a couple hundred meters while the rest of the squad stood around watching his antics. Eventually, the lone guy turned around and came running back to rejoin his squad, but now the whole squad was shown as "Tired" even though only the one guy had done any running. Finally, they got their wind back enough to move on, but between the time the lone guy wasted running around, and the time it took for the squad to overcome their (sympathetic?) weariness, they were five or six minutes behind schedule. I was not happy.

Michael

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6 hours ago, umlaut said:

Thanks the stories, HT. I fully agree that WEGO is one of the most appealing features of CM.

Here's one of my own moments, that I found both nerve-wrenching and hilarious at the same time (from a recent replay of my own CMBN scenario "Tiger by the Tail"). I had ordered this guy to move left around the buildings to left. The plan was that he should then ambush the King Tiger with his PIAT from within one of the buildings. But apparently that wasn't exciting enough. :)

 

My favorite part of that is when the Tiger's gun barrel slices through the wall of the building without making a hole in it or getting totally bent out of shape.

;)

Michael

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CMBN produced one of the greatest emotional impacts of any game I've played.

Testing a pre-release battle as US vs German AI. I knew there were some Germans in some heavy woods. This was a bocage fight at close range. I split a squad. Team A area fired on the German location for 30 seconds. Meanwhile, Team B split around and approached from the back side to nail the Germans.

Team A, area fire done, advanced as ordered. They spotted the Germans. There was a brief exchange of fire. One German survived. He knelt there, arms raised, surrendering to Team A. But, behind him, Team B saw a "?". They let loose a volley...and shot the German in the back, killing him.

Total kick in the guts.

I only saw it because of WeGo. It was because of WeGo that I figured out what happened.

That was 6 months before the public release of CMBN and it is still a clear memory. Damn. That's the hallmark of a great game.

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I love those moments - I had one just last night: clicked the big red button, watched the digitroops running thither and yon, suddenly realised that the halftrack full of the best guys was going to use to storm some buildings was going to advance into the sights of a keyholed Panther (which I knew was there but I'm often careless). At the end of the turn it was 5 metres too far forward, right in his sights. Next move, gave a reverse order - fully expecting a little rose-garden of red crosses to bloom -  clicked Big Red again. Boom, he fired, clipped the edge of a wall, missed! My men lived to be uselessly sacrificed another day (or a few minutes later, as it transpired).

If it wasn't for WeGo I would be constantly wondering why various of my men and assets were burning or dead.

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„We go“ was what brought me to CM. In the good old CMBO days, a friend talked me into trying the demo. At first, I thought “Crap”. Then, I had one of those moments:

My StuG hidden behind a building and a Sherman coming up. The StuG had a clear flank shot from, say, 30m. And missed.

The Sherman started turning the turret while my StuG was reloading. Gosh, those were exciting seconds.

In the end the StuG made it and I was hooked...

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7 hours ago, StieliAlpha said:

My StuG hidden behind a building and a Sherman coming up. The StuG had a clear flank shot from, say, 30m. And missed.

The Sherman started turning the turret while my StuG was reloading. Gosh, those were exciting seconds.

In the end the StuG made it and I was hooked...

I had a moment like that in playing one of the beta demos of CNBO. To make a long story short, I had a Sherman and there was a Pz.IV that I knew I could not likely survive a toe to toe encounter. So I sent the Sherman racing around the back of an intervening woods and approached the Pz. from behind. Everything went great and the kraut did not register my approach until my cannon fired...and missed! Oh no! While my loader fumbled around and eventually reloaded the main gun, the German's own cannon was slowly turning in my direction and I knew that the next shot had to count or it was curtains. And it die! My cannon fired and KERBLOOIE! went the Panzer. It was a most satisfying fulfillment and the moment when I knew that CM was gonna make it for me.

:D

Michael

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Just had a situation in the Aachen campaign where a German machine gunner shot up one of my trucks and was keeping the two squads in it pinned down in the open. He was using small bursts so I couldn't pin point him but I knew which building he was in but not which of the four floors. Anyway, I managed to sneak a flamethrower team up to a hedge 35 metres from the building. I took a guess at the floor and directed a 30 second fire order. The flame spewed out and though I still never saw anything, I did hear a lot of screaming. There was no more mg fire from the building so I assume I guessed right. I think it's the first kill I've ever had from a flamethrower and it was very cool.

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