Speculation on game style, plus will teams become unbalanced towards the end

[Andreas]

I think however that stacking will (despite shortcomings in the CM engine) not always work, because of the human element.

This is based on my experience from CMMC, where I have seen operational and tactical commanders on both sides take some spectacularly bad decisions. in CMMC1, the Allied side managed to defeat the German thrust (but not win the game) by a defense in depth. I have seen battles there where a whole reinforced battalion was ground up by a German armoured attack. In the next battle, that same armoured spearhead consisting of numerous Panthers was mauled very badly in an ambush by two Churchills and a few 57mm ATGs, because the German commander got cocky, and the British tactical commander was a genius.

If the attacker has a large advantage and is playing the top of his game, he should not have trouble defeating the defense. But that does not always happen. I think Jason is right to raise the problem, and I do not think that any of the replies thus far have really addressed his point.

Originally posted by Runyan99:

You can't allow the concentrating player to simply abandon the rest of the map to the enemy. A good campaign will provide opportunity for attack and counterattack on both sides, thereby punishing the attacker for putting 80% of his units in one place.

I disagree - the attacker will only get punished if he does not pre-empt this action. If the campaign is good, it should have a realistic OOB, giving the attacker the assets (e.g. in the form of mobile AT or reserve AFV formations) to defeat such attempts at counter-attack. I do not believe that in a realistic campaign you will see lots of maneuvering and counter-encircling going on. That's early war stuff. The average CMC player will quickly figure out to avoid such mistakes.

All the best

Andreas

[Sailor Malan]

I am assuming the key to all this is in the scenario design, given the (I hope) features of CMC. The designer needs to ensure that the attacker has objectives (on the CMC board) that force linear lines (or pseudo linear flank protection/defence at least). Alternatively, the supply lines models need to be adequate. No fist (if all in a single CMC square) will be able to move after say 4-6 hours of moving and or fighting. No combat unit will have ammo after 1 or 2 good CM battles (or shouldn't).If the defender has any mobility at all (even 1 or 2 MEs,) and can isolate the fist or capture the objectives it has no choice but to stop, summon help (what help? It's all in the fist). Thus it is no longer persuing its own objectives. Anyone fancy an overstacked CM battle, with all your troops out of ammo (or down to 10-20%), all fatigued, and low morale (another side effect of not being fed!). I think fists would become a whole lot less popular.

If this isn't doable in CMC we need to stop right here because we will not be simulating WW2!

[Bigduke6]

More than anything else this is an issue of force to space ratio, and so in the hands of the scenario designer. However, there are things the game could do as well.

A fist/stack is often an excellent technique in a campaign based on CM because the course of the campaign comes down to a few decisive battles, almost always of armor, and once one side gains a armor preponderance it can usually dictate terms for the rest of the game. It goes where it wants, and does what it wants.

Players, being (mostly) logical, key on this, and do what they can to win the armor fight. Jamming a lot of tanks into a small area is fine approach with plenty of historical precendent.

The problems with a big mass of armor, real life, don't enter into CM at all, and it is not easy to do in a player-run campaign. Were CMC to build them in, and remain true to history, that would give players decision-making problems similar to the real deal.

So what can happen if you lump too much armor together in RL?

1. Roads go to hell

2. Resupply becomes a real pain, because even if the roads aren't torn up you are trying to run too many trucks over too few supply routes.

3. In a dynamic action anyway the enemy's armor has a tendency to get loose in the rear area of the stacker, and that can put the brakes on the stack, as a big mass of armour isn't going anywhere quickly if several of its rear area communication notes got smacked by the enemy.

4. Tanks break, and the more you drive them the faster they break, and if they break in an area your mechanics/recovery teams cannot reach, the tank can be just as permanent loss to your side, as if it got whacked in the side with a big main gun round. A giant mass of armor RL not only has problems returning technical casualties because all the mechnics and recovery teams are using too few roads, but also because where it is not, its mechancs and recovery teams must take a risk to go - the enemy is there.

And so on.

If CMC turns out to be an engine that strings together CM battles dynamically, and little else, then certainly gamers will make humongous stacks. There's no down side.

If however CMC could make the following things happen to an ueber-stack:

1. It doesn't get ammo very fast, or sometimes not at all.

2. The worse the road network it is one, the faster it bleeds technical casualties.

3. The more units in front of the stack use the road, the slower the units at the end of the stack move along the road.

4. Roads have quality and tank traffic degrades that quality, and the less quality the road, the less units that can use the road without taking some kind of supply hit.

5. Rear area units involved in making the stack go stop doing their thing, if an enemy unit squishes them.

The point is, of course, to do this right the engine needs to handle supply, both in terms of routes and the intensity of use of those routes.

Not simple, but in a nutshell that's my second answer to the stack.

My first answer is scenario design where the force to ground ratios are such, that if you make an ueber stack you are going to get hurt operationally for not making an attempt to deal with all that other ground.

Also not easy, but a good goal to shoot for I think.

[JasonC]

Pure fantasy. Now the defenders outnumbered 10 to 1 on the concentrated map are going to wait for local superiority in numbers and then open fire. Which the mindless attacker is supposed to give them by - being the AI, I guess.

You can't put pak keyholes in places mortars can't see, that can see anything themselves, because eyes for the mortars go first.

You can't "use FOs to keep the infantry suppressed" against 2 battalions of infantry doing advance drills, because the guns are dry in 4 minutes and the attackers are rallied in 2 more, and you can't cover 2000 meters with a couple of light FOs to start with.

Firing FOs early to just use their stealth is a typical newbie mistake, unable to resist the lopsided "I get to fire without being fired at" thrill and mistaking it for victory. The shells are gone and do not rally. The earlier they are fired the longer the attacking infantry has to rally before contact.

HMGs slow movement over open ground and do so stealthily, but they can't stop jack on their own. A few MGs do not have the sustained firepower to stop a company using proper advance drills, let alone a battalion, let alone two.

Step off the back of the map as many times as you like. Now you are in Moscow. But when exactly did you decide grid A was the stack rather than grid B? Do you think a bell rings and a light goes on flashing "big stack here" on turn 1? "The stack was there last op-move". Fine, which way did it go, though, right left or forward? "Run from them all". OK, now who is flanking who again?

The people peddling their silly solutions simply haven't played a CM campaign.

And no, killing a few tanks without loss is not the typical result of fist vs. typical balanced blocking force of company and teams and a few guns. Annihilation of the defending force is, with loss of a platoon of attackers and a few tanks immobilized, occasionally a few spent. The stack is as killer as ever afterward.

3 op moves later the defenders are out a battalion, and 6 op moves later they've lost the campaign. Maybe they take a company of armor with them and trade 1:2 in infantry loss terms. But a defender facing operational odds can't even afford 1 to 1 trades indefinitely - he has to occasionally "stuff" the attack, stop it cold with minimal losses.

[Sailor Malan]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

The problems with a big mass of armor, real life, don't enter into CM at all, and it is not easy to do in a player-run campaign. Were CMC to build them in, and remain true to history, that would give players decision-making problems similar to the real deal.

So what can happen if you lump too much armor together in RL?

1. Roads go to hell

2. Resupply becomes a real pain, because even if the roads aren't torn up you are trying to run too many trucks over too few supply routes.

3. In a dynamic action anyway the enemy's armor has a tendency to get loose in the rear area of the stacker, and that can put the brakes on the stack, as a big mass of armour isn't going anywhere quickly if several of its rear area communication notes got smacked by the enemy.

4. Tanks break, and the more you drive them the faster they break, and if they break in an area your mechanics/recovery teams cannot reach, the tank can be just as permanent loss to your side, as if it got whacked in the side with a big main gun round. A giant mass of armor RL not only has problems returning technical casualties because all the mechnics and recovery teams are using too few roads, but also because where it is not, its mechancs and recovery teams must take a risk to go - the enemy is there.

A good thought - the CMC movement system needs to understand columns/road density, not just square stacking limits - if a fist is moving using a road, or any type of non-billiard table terrain, the number of units (squads/vehicles, not MEs - to allow for different size MEs) that can cross a given 2x2 'square' side per turn/hour etc should be very restricted. Thus a fist should not 'all' be present in the first CM battle of an advance into a new CMC square. The 'top' ME of the stack (or partial ME) should be there on CM turn 1, with either the rest of the ME, or possibly the next ME arriving as reinforcements. Only if the CM battle results in the attacker retaining some of the 2x2 should more MEs be allowed into the square. If the attacker loses the CM battle sufficiently badly, the engaged ME should recoil onto the rest of the fist (involuntarily) and take a considerable amount of confusion into the rest of the stack (no resupply, morale/fatigue affected etc)

Jason - you are right (as usual) about the CM aspect, but I can see ways in which they could program CMC to avoid/minimse them. Any 'overstack' worked in RL because they took the time to set them up - you should not be able to sustain one on the move against even half decent opposition. In other words the only way a fist can move at more than a fraction of the constituant MEs movement rate is if they have no significant combat, no terrain damage, no interuption of resupply (intact supply routes etc). Any other issue should cause major loss of cohesion (=CMC 'movement/order following potential').

BTW I would count any 'significant combat as one that fails to capture all 4 CM 1x1 squares, takes any significant damage at all (more than 1-5%, yes: 1 tank in a Btn, or 10-20 infantry casualties), or uses enough ammo to require any resupply (more than 10% of on hand stocks or something)

These sorts of (realistic) penalties will stop fists being that easy of effective to use, and hence people wont use them - thise that do would deserve what they get.

Now what we REALLY need on this isues is Hunter or the team to comment on this. If Jason's fears are realised this could be a game breaker (only way out I could see would be a shed load of house rules)

[JasonC]

Speed, road, or supply limit penalties imposed on 4-6 hour time scales against forces the size of a single armor battalion or less, are hopelessly unrealistic. It was in fact perfectly normal for 2 km frontages to be hit by 100 tanks at a time, let alone 30. No, defending armor did not get behind such formations on 2-4 km spatial scales. No, roads do not fail when 30 tanks drive over them - they take entire divisions.

Kursk northern, 41st Panzer corps attacks on a sector 12.5 km long - that is supposed to be 6 CM map boards side to side. They had 2 infantry and 1 panzer divisions, 22 infantry type battalions counting recon and engineers, and 300 full AFVs. And they still concentrated within that space, rather than being spread uniformly along it. The whole attack was wider - a corps just as strong was hitting on their right. They did spread some back to front - the first wave was the IDs only and around 2/3rds of the AFVs - but the concentration along the attack avenues was easily at fist levels in CM campaign terms.

And no, they didn't fail because roads couldn't take it or anything remotely like it. They fought through 2 layers of rifle divisions before hitting reserves that stopped them.

Clearly, not every CM campaign is going to be operational spearhead levels of force concentration. My point is, instead, that trying to address the CM playability issue by imposing imaginary penalties to supposedly "large" stacks will be hopelessly unrealistic, itself. 2 km frontages are huge, in terms of the realistic concentrations of force that would be present on them, without encountering such problems. And in terms of the command span and resulting micromanagement problems for the players.

When I ran my own campaign, I did not use such large op squares. My standard was 1 km by 1 km, not 2 by 2. I further divided them into even narrower sectors if too many forces were present - which I measured in CM point total terms. Yes that imposes realism costs of its own - flanking fires and long range overwatch etc. Boards will always have edges, there is no getting around that. You won't ever be able to fire across their "join", when in real life you could. We have a trade off.

My way of addressing it was that attackers bringing too many points would have their forces divided into narrower maps, and staggered front to back as to arrival time. The command span would always max out at around 2000 points by the time all forces had arrived - with only about the first 1000 present at set up. If you sent too much stuff, you got a less coordinated attack, effectively.

This wasn't entirely realistic. It still let the attacker send so much that he would overload the limited defenders on a narrow pipe of a map. But on a narrow map, 640m or even 500m wide if you send too much, AT mines and artillery strikes are a lot more daunting than they are on a 2 km by 2 km huge one.

I also did this to keep the games playable TCP/IP in one sitting. I knew I was giving up some kinds of accuracy as a result. But it pretty much tamed fists as a trump suit. They could still do things, but they were not a single optimum.

Unadaptive, huge maps are going to feel very empty if they only have a company of infantry on them, and they are going to be paradise for large forces (in game winning terms - not in command terms, there they will be a micromanagement nightmare). If people always put a battalion on them you might think it a playable scale - but they won't. It would be mindless to do so.

Force to space is not a constant nor is it set by the scenario designer. It is up to the players. And putting such an important playability and realism factor in their hands will mean trouble, you can count on it, unless the whole game design takes into account the likely uses of it and their effects.

As for people still dreaming that designers can do anything by putting objectives here or there, I don't know how many times it has to be stated before it begins to sink in, but objectives don't matter diddly. Campaigns kill entire side forces. Casualties racked up enourmously when you can fight "to the death" battles in sequence. What matters is how much force is left before the last 2-3 op moves. Holding anything before then is utterly irrelevant. Dead men hold nothing.

[Sailor Malan]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Speed, road, or supply limit penalties imposed on 4-6 hour time scales against forces the size of a single armor battalion or less, are hopelessly unrealistic. It was in fact perfectly normal for 2 km frontages to be hit by 100 tanks at a time, let alone 30. No, defending armor did not get behind such formations on 2-4 km spatial scales. No, roads do not fail when 30 tanks drive over them - they take entire divisions.

I must have missed the post that said we were limited to 4-6 hours. I know that the actual limit will be the number of CM battles the players (teams) can get fought. A single tank btn on a 1 hour basis does take a finite time to pass if on a single road, and if I read the FAQs properly, default CMC turns are 1 hour. If on a billard table, they could line up track to track, and drive on instantly. However, as a defender, either you would have the means to take them out (technology, or numbers), or you would do what would happen in RL - pull back, or die... If not on a billard table, you would have the option to hide in place and contest the follow up (especially if the tanks drive straight though). A well set up campaign should not be open to 'one tactic auto-victory'

Kursk northern, 41st Panzer corps attacks on a sector 12.5 km long - that is supposed to be 6 CM map boards side to side. They had 2 infantry and 1 panzer divisions, 22 infantry type battalions counting recon and engineers, and 300 full AFVs. And they still concentrated within that space, rather than being spread uniformly along it. The whole attack was wider - a corps just as strong was hitting on their right. They did spread some back to front - the first wave was the IDs only and around 2/3rds of the AFVs - but the concentration along the attack avenues was easily at fist levels in CM campaign terms.

And no, they didn't fail because roads couldn't take it or anything remotely like it. They fought through 2 layers of rifle divisions before hitting reserves that stopped them.

If we accept that CMC will not be able to produce a fun campaign based on even small elements of Kursk, does that help? I rather think there are a lot of battles that weren't at this scale or density. I know Arras is the wrong front, but I would think this scale would be perfect. If the victory condtions were set wrong the British armour could do a 'fist', but that isn't the only way to fight this battle.

I wouldn't design an air warfare game centred on the Marianas Turkey Shoot, or the Soviet front line aircraft on the first day of Barbarossa.

Clearly, not every CM campaign is going to be operational spearhead levels of force concentration. My point is, instead, that trying to address the CM playability issue by imposing imaginary penalties to supposedly "large" stacks will be hopelessly unrealistic, itself. 2 km frontages are huge, in terms of the realistic concentrations of force that would be present on them, without encountering such problems. And in terms of the command span and resulting micromanagement problems for the players.

When I ran my own campaign, I did not use such large op squares. My standard was 1 km by 1 km, not 2 by 2. I further divided them into even narrower sectors if too many forces were present - which I measured in CM point total terms. Yes that imposes realism costs of its own - flanking fires and long range overwatch etc. Boards will always have edges, there is no getting around that. You won't ever be able to fire across their "join", when in real life you could. We have a trade off.

My way of addressing it was that attackers bringing too many points would have their forces divided into narrower maps, and staggered front to back as to arrival time. The command span would always max out at around 2000 points by the time all forces had arrived - with only about the first 1000 present at set up. If you sent too much stuff, you got a less coordinated attack, effectively.

The problem with your solution is that you remove a lot of tactical options to the players. I like single companies on the large map. The CM game is one phase in the larger game. I have played 3 a/c vs heaven knows what (reinforced company with Stugs?) - I had only one objective (classify what's there and bug out). Still ok, because the answer feeds the whole. Now, are there enough players like me out there... who knows, but CMC should be a whole lot easier on the umpire than manual campaigns.

This wasn't entirely realistic. It still let the attacker send so much that he would overload the limited defenders on a narrow pipe of a map. But on a narrow map, 640m or even 500m wide if you send too much, AT mines and artillery strikes are a lot more daunting than they are on a 2 km by 2 km huge one.

I also did this to keep the games playable TCP/IP in one sitting. I knew I was giving up some kinds of accuracy as a result. But it pretty much tamed fists as a trump suit. They could still do things, but they were not a single optimum.

Unadaptive, huge maps are going to feel very empty if they only have a company of infantry on them, and they are going to be paradise for large forces (in game winning terms - not in command terms, there they will be a micromanagement nightmare). If people always put a battalion on them you might think it a playable scale - but they won't. It would be mindless to do so.

Force to space is not a constant nor is it set by the scenario designer. It is up to the players. And putting such an important playability and realism factor in their hands will mean trouble, you can count on it, unless the whole game design takes into account the likely uses of it and their effects.

As for people still dreaming that designers can do anything by putting objectives here or there, I don't know how many times it has to be stated before it begins to sink in, but objectives don't matter diddly. Campaigns kill entire side forces. Casualties racked up enourmously when you can fight "to the death" battles in sequence. What matters is how much force is left before the last 2-3 op moves. Holding anything before then is utterly irrelevant. Dead men hold nothing.

You assume objectives only have value at the end - objectives at x points per turn can modify behaviours. Points for casualties can modify behaviours. If a campaign can not be won if losses exceed a small % of total forces, and a wide spread of objectives have to be captured I suspect the Death Star will not be a useful approach.

Also, a 'to the death repeatedly' player is an absolute gift to the 'lets keep some reserves' player! Thwart objectives, slow advances

I say again, what we really need is Hunter...

[JasonC]

Once again, people utterly unwilling to face the problem deliberately missing the point, repeatedly.

4 hour supply problems were a solution proposed by others. I was pointing out that there are hopelessly unrealistic as a solution. Nowhere did I say or imply anything about the length of op turns.

And I explicitly stated that most CM campaigns would not have the density of Kursk spearheads. But if in real life, densities equal to those in Kursk spearheads encountered no supply or movement difficulties to speak of on short time scales, while stacking 3 times as high as what I'm worried about for CM campaigns, then no artificial penalties via supply etc like those others propose can be remotely realistic.

You can't make players dance with scenario design and victory conditions. It doesn't matter how many points you give for possession of what. One side utterly dead means the other side is going to win. There isn't any realistic objective you can set for a side that can't be achieved after everybody on the other side is gone. And killing the other side completely will, in all but ridiculous VCs, amount to victory anyway.

Scenario designers are not in charge of how players play, that is half the point. You can't micromanage them. If you could they'd have no reason to play - they'd just sit and watch some movie you directed. Personally I'd rather watch paint dry than submit to some designer's arbitrary edicts about a scenario. The designer has to shut up and go away and let players matching wits decide the outcome. If he doesn't, the game sucks.

When part of the design decision is to give players complete control over force to space, that will have consequences. There are only certain ranges of force and space for which CM is (1) playable and (2) remotely realistic. One mind directing a regiment with perfect minute by minute coordination down to the level of every gun and vehicle, is not one of them. Not with borg etc.

If you give players control of the forces sent, as you must, then either space adapts to how they use that power of decision, or they decide force to space as well. If they decide force to space completely, and the game is broken for some levels of force to space, then they will drive it to the places where it is broken, seeking advantage against each other. And arrive at the mutually disappointing outcome of unrealistic and unplayable monster fights occasionally relieved by pointless and indecisive recon actions on empty maps.

You might find some other solution besides adapting the space to the forces dynamically. But if you just pretend there isn't a problem or a bandaid will fix it, you are just wrong and it just won't work.

Incidentally, you can easily have 3 acs vs. whatever, or occasionally small forces on large maps, in the system I have described. I had them in my campaigns, regularly. What you can't have in the system I've described is 10000 points worth of forces on one map.

When the forces on the map go too high, the map splits and 2 fights take place rather than one. Coordination, borgness, etc all decline. Command spans stay livable. The intended fist may have odds but it still splits and it needs to win in each of several parallel battles to advance. Quality in one area can check anything that can be packed into that area, at least temporarily. Etc.

If you have a different solution you are welcome to share it with us. Pretending there is no problem or that dictating VCs can force players not to do things that are both historical and tactically sound in the CM game system, will not cut it.

[Hunter]

Originally posted by Sailor Malan:

I say again, what we really need is Hunter...

Well I am here, but I am not sure what you want me to say. JasonC has some analysis / opinions, other people have others. Play testing will determine whether it is a problem or not.

Hunter

[General Bolt]

Originally posted by Hunter:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Sailor Malan:

I say again, what we really need is Hunter...

Well I am here, but I am not sure what you want me to say. JasonC has some analysis / opinions, other people have others. Play testing will determine whether it is a problem or not.

Hunter </font>

[Hunter]

Yes, ok, I have asked some of the beta testers to prepare an AAR. There are not a lot of volunteers, but hopefully we will see something soon.

We just released the latest beta, with a few more features. Our scenario editor code is lagging a bit behind, so while airpower is now fully implemented, you cannot put it in a scenario easily

Hunter

[C'Rogers]

I have asked some of the beta testers to prepare an AAR. There are not a lot of volunteers, but hopefully we will see something soon.

Hopefully this is because the volunteers are going "this game is so ridiculusly great I'm not going to stop to write something. Must play more!"

[General Bolt]

Originally posted by C'Rogers:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />I have asked some of the beta testers to prepare an AAR. There are not a lot of volunteers, but hopefully we will see something soon.

Hopefully this is because the volunteers are going "this game is so ridiculusly great I'm not going to stop to write something. Must play more!" </font>

[Steiner14]

ROFL!

Anyway, where can i send my money?

[JasonC]

Well, if such testing as has occurred has neither uncovered nor refuted the existence of the problem discussed, I think it is fair to guess they haven't progressed all that far yet.

The first few op moves new campaigners tend to stay too evenly spread along the frontage, in cookie cutter exactly balanced forces unadapted to the local mission or terrain etc, but they quickly learn how poorly that works compared to the alternatives.

Next comes similar scale forces with different weapon mixes, based on terrain etc, and then somebody notices nearly all the armor in the best spot for it is "trump". After that the scale dial is the main one used.

I doubt they've finished a day of action in any campaign currently underway.

[37mm]

Jason C obviously has a point (which no-one appears to have addressed) but IMO his solution sounds too complicated & is unlikely to be implemented (I, of course, mean unlikely as in ‘not a chance in hell’).

It seems to me that the key to CMMC will be how the artillery is implemented… will it be like CMx1 (i.e. neutered to a ridiculous degree in regards to both shell quantities & points expense)?

Or will FO’s be more numerous & will they be given FAR MORE firepower.

Jason C is correct in stating that defenders will be annihilated by massively superior attackers... and that is as it should be... but what if those defenders are backed up by two 122mm FO’s each with hundreds of shells?

That amount of firepower can obliterate even tank companies especially if they’re ‘over-stacked’.

What if FO’s can be assigned, moved around quickly & then given large quantities of ammo?

Surely even a single 81mm FO dropping a thousand shells (the maximum it can have in the CM engine) will do a lot of damage to an incoming stacked Battalion?

Meanwhile the FO's of the Deaths Star (please let’s stop using the term fisting) will do less damage over time because they’re bombarding mostly empty space.

Does that make any more sense?

[Sailor Malan]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Once again, people utterly unwilling to face the problem deliberately missing the point, repeatedly.

If you mean me, I was not missing the point. I was attempting to show that there are ways to mitigate the weaknesses of CM under certain circumstances that you were outlining, and that Hunter was required to comment on a) whether he agrees with you, and what (if anything) he has done about it.

Is it not possible that the CMC engine would only work for a subset of ww2 actions, say overall low force to space ratios, and small MEs (e.g. company), but that that would still be a viable game? Hows about a btn defending 6km of line with a fire brgade of a Panzer company, being probed by a regiment, with only 1 btn 'up' and the remainder as break through, starting well back and only available to add to a Death Star if you advance too slowly to win? (For instance)

[JasonC]

People don't attack with negative odds.

There is little point in a "campaign" that consists of exactly 3 maps.

As for the idea that FOs should just be given massive numbers of shells, it isn't realistic. A couple of CM "shoots" per day is realistic, with abundant supply occasionally possible, and meaning more like half a dozen shoots per day. Not 10 shoots per op-move - that's way outside realistic levels.

Believe me, artillery that fires in op move after op move is plenty nasty under cumulative losses, without upping the ammo per FO. In my Bulge campaign, the US having 2 105 batteries that could fire every 2 hours with little fear of running dry, decimated an attacking regiment singlehanded. But over time, not by smashing any stacking attempt. (The Germans still won that one - they got infantry behind US screens by moving off road, and took out the batteries).

You have to understand that nobody can afford to lose more than about a platoon in an average battle and last. A side that loses a company in each engagement will evaporate completely before the end of the first day. A single day can easily see 20 combats, and nobody can lose 20 companies. That is why losses not terrain are the absolute priority.

If and only if you inflict even greater losses on the enemy - and cover any overall odds edge as well - you can occasionally withstand higher losses. But only occasionally, not in every fight.

[37mm]

Originally posted by JasonC:

As for the idea that FOs should just be given massive numbers of shells, it isn't realistic.

That may be so... but I was trying to come up with a simpler solution to the problem of overstacking… your solution* of endlessly differing map sizes & drip fed battles sounds to me like it is never ever, ever gonna be implemented.

* Which was, by the way, by your own admission not 'entirely realistic'

[JasonC]

What strikes you are so hard about it? I didn't find it hard in a human refereed campaign.

The decision procedure is very simple. There is a (low) max point amount for all units starting on the map (for my 1 km case it was 1000, for 2 km it can be 2000).

From that level up to twice that level (for 1 km - for 2 km, probably only up to 1.5 times), the map remains the same but the excess points appear as reinforcements - after 5 minutes minimum, then at 5 minute intervals in bunches of ~500 points. If lumpy, delay so that no more than 100 points a minute arrive.

Above the reinforcement level (here that would mean 3000 points), the map divides instead. If you want to keep 1 km grid squares you can have only one setting besides the standard 2 km, as 1 km. So those start with 1501 per map. Now with 1000 starting on it and 501 reinforcements.

Since you aren't dividing further the remainder must come in as reinforcements. If someone sends 10000 points at one op square, he gets 2 fights on 1 km wide by 2 km deep maps, he gets 1000 points at the start on each map. The remaining 4000 points per map arrive from turns 5 through 45, making it quite hard to use the last several hundred points. Making it pointless to send them in the first place.

Nobody ever starts with more than 1 point per meter of frontage, already on the map. And nobody gets borg spotting and perfect coordination from more than 3000 points on a big map - with a minor delay of 5-15 minute arrival for a third of it.

So there is a strong coordination incentive to stay under 3000 point MEs.

You can still try to mass if you want - the split 1 km maps will also split the defenders, after all. But their arty and mines etc will be a lot more effective on a narrow 1 km wide map. And you won't get perfect side to side coordination, the ability to mass within a single map at will up to 10000 points, etc.

As for the mechanics of making reduced size maps, it is completely trivial. You have the full sized ones already. You just use the + and - keys to get rid of the right or the left half, and save a copy. Do the same for the other half.

I did adaptations considerably finer than this, and didn't fix map sizes at all in my Bulge campaign (I did for a Kursk one, occasionally going down to 640m to fit 3 fights on 2 gridsquares). You needn't.

There may be other solutions. But you will want something.

[37mm]

Oh no the solution sounds great for a human refereed campaign but for programming a computer game?

Now I know absolutely soddin’ nothing about computer programming, but surely making such a major change to CMC so late in development is simply out of the question (especially considering CMx1 is a cumbersome program)?

If it’s out of the question alternative solutions will be needed.

[JasonC]

Why do you think it is late in development when nobody has seen a single AAR?

[37mm]

Well they did say it was meant to be released by now (then again we should also have been playing CMSF for the past few months)… so one could assume that the game should be at quite a late stage in development.

Like I say, I know nothing of computer programming but I suspect (as surely you must do) that they are not going to go back & start making such major changes as you suggest.

[JasonC]

I doubt it works at this point. And as a programmer myself, I make much larger changes in programs right up until final testing and bug killing. It really isn't that hard. It is work of course, but there are few things more pointless than spending years on a program that doesn't do what people want because of some readily correctable conceptual problem.

[37mm]

It is work of course, but there are few things more pointless than spending years on a program that doesn't do what people want because of some readily correctable conceptual problem.

Well I can agree with that... we wait for the AAR I suppose