Normandy: Immobilisations

[flamingknives]

Err, didn't it used to be like that? Is there any evidence that it has changed?

[Battlefront.com]

I think CMBO had a flat random chance based on terrain, weather, and ground pressure. I know for sure that CMBB/AK had speed factored in and the weighting of various variables done differently. But no, CMx1 didn't have a complex physics environment where higher terrain was more likely to be dryer than lower terrain and stuff like that. It's not in CMx2 either and we have no plans to add it.

One thing I will say is the general rule of higher terrain being dryer, proportionally, to lower terrain is a crock of poo SLOPED terrain higher up is maybe better than flat terrain lower down, but sloped terrain along the same slope generally is about the same. Likewise, flat terrain at a higher elevation might actually be worse than flat terrain at a lower elevation. Has everything to do with vegetation, soil type, where bedrock is, springs, etc. I have 1st hand experience with roads on top of small mountains and I can tell you that bogging can happen even when at higher elevations. Even with a 4x4 military vehicle with some of the best offroad capabilities of any vehicle out there. Even when you're saying to yourself "hmmm... this isn't good. Maybe I should park and walk the rest of the way". Fortunately, military 4x4s come with shovels and axes to help get yourself out of a situation where the nearest aid is about 40 minutes away and likely to get stuck LONG before the winch cable can reach you. Not that I would know, but I will say that it is helpful if the axe isn't dull as wet noodles

Steve

[Boris Balaban]

Sorry Steve.

Just want to keep CMx2:Normandy alive.

What about in the setup phase "Topographic Mapping"?

[theFightingSeabee]

I've been bogged in all types of vehicles, so I know that any time you're off road, it can happen. I've even seen bogged vehicles in dry spots with really soft dirt or sand. Bogging can happen almost anywhere and does quite often. It should stay in the game.

One of my favorite scenarios from cmx1 was one in which a single german tank was bogged. Your small group of infantry had to take it out. It was fun and made you use some really interesting tactics to win. Whenever I have a vehicle bog down, I think of that. Sometimes the unexpected bad luck makes for the most interesting tactical situations.

[MarkEzra]

One of my favorite scenarios from cmx1 was one in which a single german tank was bogged. Your small group of infantry had to take it out. It was fun and made you use some really interesting tactics to win. Whenever I have a vehicle bog down, I think of that. Sometimes the unexpected bad luck makes for the most interesting tactical situations.

That, I believe, was the work of the Great Wild Bill Wilder

[Malakie]

I remember being a part of as discussion last year about this issue. I thinking bogging is and should be part of the sim... however as I had argued then, I think there should ALSO be some kind of support ability perhaps controlled by command points or some other means.. Using command points you could call in a support vehicle to tow a bogged vehicle clear or perhaps do battlefield repairs on a damaged vehicle.

Of course shorter scenarios as well as those that are small tactical situations this is not feasible. But for larger well planned combat situations, this would really add a new element to the gameplay.

[Redwolf]

I've been bogged in all types of vehicles, so I know that any time you're off road, it can happen. I've even seen bogged vehicles in dry spots with really soft dirt or sand. Bogging can happen almost anywhere and does quite often. It should stay in the game.

One of my favorite scenarios from cmx1 was one in which a single german tank was bogged. Your small group of infantry had to take it out. It was fun and made you use some really interesting tactics to win. Whenever I have a vehicle bog down, I think of that. Sometimes the unexpected bad luck makes for the most interesting tactical situations.

Sure, but keep in mind we are talking about half an hour timeframe here, how often did you get stuck, statistically, per hour for all your offroad driving? And many of your boggings you probably got out of in -say- 10 minutes and without complete immobilization.

Nobody in this thread said anything against leaving a good chance of bogging and immobilization in. All I say is that the effective resulting chance in CMBB and to a lesser extend in CMAK was excessive, and that it was made worse by not giving the player access to realistic method of minimizing bogging, namely by avoiding depressions in the ground.

CMBB took iy far enough that even normal ground pressure tracked vehicles could get stuck on roads with a high probability inside 30 minutes. That's obviously not right, how would Army Group North drive all the way up to Leningrad?

Tune it down and if you can't give us the depression realism tune it down some more, that's all I (we?) ask. It was already better in CMAK, just cut it back another notch. Everything in moderation.

[Runaway!!!]

Let's just have an ingame option to remove the tracks and make them hover tanks.

[Dietrich]

No plan survives first contact with the enemy . . . and sometimes "the enemy" includes the terrain.

The other is when your tank gets a track hit and takes out your “1” track (you have 2 tracks) that you should be able to rotate your tank using the other track so you can utilize your bow mg.

In Theatre of War, when a moving tank gets one track shot off, it yaws around as much as 120 degrees; more often than not this results in the tank being not only immobilized but immobilized with its side or even rear armor facing the enemy. Now, I'm not saying ToW is realistic in this regard per se, but according to my understanding, if a tank suffers a broken track while under power, that track will drag on that side of the tank, while the intact track will propel the tank from the other side. The drag induced by the broken track will probably not bring that side of the tank to a halt right away, but within a couple seconds the drag will slow it down enough that the propulsion from the intact track will push the tank yawingly around a new axis created by the halting friction generated by the broken track. In other words, if a tank is under way and suffers a track-breaking hit, it won't continue on in a straight line, at least not once the track finishes rolling off the wheels.

My only real gripe with the bogging model both in CMx1 + 2 is when a is when a unit bogs on a road or track, there really should be some 'bonus' for using a road.

If bogging on a road supposed to model a thrown track ot blown tire(s), from my reading there should be at least a chance of even a broken track being fixed even under fire in the timescale of a CM battle. Hell a blown tire or two shouldn't even stop most vehicles, in an emergency, at least till they get out of LOF and can change it (in 5-10mins tops on a road or dirt track).

Sure, a Leopard 2 can undergo a complete engine change in 15 minutes, but have you seen photos of WW2 tank crewmen changing a track? It sure looks like back-breaking work to me, and I don't think it would be realistic within the scale (two hours or so) of a CMx2 battle. And besides, wouldn't fixing a broken track require the crew to get out of the tank? Even assuming that they were out of LOS/LOF while outside the tank fixing the track, wouldn't they be vulnerable to be taken out by an enemy flanking maneuver, even if it were only a rifle squad or a lone scouting sniper which performed said maneuver?

Im not sure how its setup right now but bogging should be linked closely to the experience of the crew (driver). Having operated both wheeled and tracked heavy equipment and as a avid 4x4er knowing your rides capabilities and limits is what keeps you rolling!

Sure, there are types of terrain which vehicles are disallowed from moving through, but could the TacAI be made able to decide not to traverse certain areas which could be tactically disadvantageous?

If you watch the damage tab closesly, you'll see wheels occassionally go from big green to little yellow, which I'm lead to believe is a slightly damaged/degraded system. I'd always assumed someone managed to put some lead into my wheels when that happened, but the Stryker or BTR just kept on trucking.

Tracks too can be lightly damaged (from big green "+" to little yellow "+"). In the case of a more-than-four-wheeled vehicle like a Stryker, even if one tire had been punctured definitively (as by a 14.5mm MG round) and was flat but the other tires were intact, this would (as far as I know) change the

...losing a point blank dual by 2 mili-seconds...

In one of my last (so far) CMBB games (me versus Soviet AI), a Panzer IVG of mine spotted a T-34/76 amongst the houses of a village from about 50m away through the fog. Just as my Panzer fired, I saw the T-34 fire -- and they knocked each other out only a few milliseconds apart. A fair fight, I thought, which happened to have a mutually un-serendipitous outcome.

Put another way... if Combat Mission doesn't produce real world results that frustrate, and perhaps even anger, players then we're doing a piss-poor job simulating real combat.

I agree.

[flamingknives]

Sure, but keep in mind we are talking about half an hour timeframe here, how often did you get stuck, statistically, per hour for all your offroad driving? And many of your boggings you probably got out of in -say- 10 minutes and without complete immobilization.

Nobody in this thread said anything against leaving a good chance of bogging and immobilization in. All I say is that the effective resulting chance in CMBB and to a lesser extend in CMAK was excessive, and that it was made worse by not giving the player access to realistic method of minimizing bogging, namely by avoiding depressions in the ground.

CMBB took iy far enough that even normal ground pressure tracked vehicles could get stuck on roads with a high probability inside 30 minutes. That's obviously not right, how would Army Group North drive all the way up to Leningrad?

Tune it down and if you can't give us the depression realism tune it down some more, that's all I (we?) ask. It was already better in CMAK, just cut it back another notch. Everything in moderation.

Beg pardon, but wasn't the first post in the thread asking for an option to turn bogging off, at least for certain terrain?

Depressions are frequently bad for bogging, but not necessarily and usually only local depressions. i.e you can't avoid it by keeping to the ridgelines. It could be a slippery up-slope that does it, or a bad rock or small rut that causes a puncture or breaks a steering linkage. If, as a map designer, you want to make low-lying ground a bad deal for vehicles then the addition of a suitable terrain type to those locations should prove adequate.

With the more detailed vehicle models in CMX2 perhaps we will have more detailed breakdowns too. While it would be nice to have the armoured AA turn up, I don't think that the return on the coding would be sufficient for BFC to do it.

[Battlefront.com]

Keep in mind that whatever was in CMx1 is irrelevant to CMx2 simply because the chances of bogging are specific to whatever code we have to work with. From our perspective it's far easier, and more relevant, to look at what we have now and assess if it's "about right" rather than to look back at other games. We had this same way of operating when we made CMx1 too. Which is, use reality as the guide for realism, not other people's interpretation of it.

Right now we have arid terrain so when we do Normandy we'll not pay much attention to how CM:SF works. Same code, but the environments are too different. We'll look at how bogging works as part of the general testing of the temperate environment. It's just one of many things we have to pay attention to.

I'll stress again... there's no way we're going to put the time into a more detailed simulation of bogging. It simply isn't worth it.

Redwolf,

it was made worse by not giving the player access to realistic method of minimizing bogging, namely by avoiding depressions in the ground.

But as I said, you're assuming that depressions in the ground are relevant. I've bogged vehicles on dirt roads in real life before, so avoiding depressions didn't help I also have a well drained sloped field next to my house at the top of a 100m hill. Guess where I've got stuck before? You guessed it... right smack in the middle of the field. Not a depression in sight. In fact, the ground looked pretty damned hard to me, but it was a false frost on top of solid mud. I got out only because I was aimed down hill.

The best advice to a player for avoiding bogging is to stay on roads whenever possible. When you do go offroad, hope the ground is decent and your vehicle up to the task. It really is that simple

Speaking of bogging, here's a picture I found last night while looking for something else.

Good thing they stayed away from those depressions

Back to another point about vehicle recovery. Unfortunately, the long scenario times we've allowed since CM:SF came out do present a bit of a problem for some battlefield conditions. In the past we've limited scenario time, in part, because we don't have the time to simulate all kinds of things which only come into play when there's time to use them. Like a recovery vehicle, medivac, higher level resupply, replacements, etc. Just like with CMx1 and massive battles, we're currently allowing longer battle times only because it's easy to change the time limit. If we were forced into a position to choose between allowing longer battles with no extra features or having to make longer battles with extra time related features... we'd opt to not have longer battles at all. Therefore, recovery vehicles are not going to happen.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

I meant to address this...

CMBB took iy far enough that even normal ground pressure tracked vehicles could get stuck on roads with a high probability inside 30 minutes. That's obviously not right, how would Army Group North drive all the way up to Leningrad?

Two can play the law of averages game

How many engagements have you guys (in total) played over the years? A couple of million? How many millions of vehicles were moved around in those battles? How many of those had bogged vehicles that became immobilized? I'm sure quite a number, but percentage wise I'm sure it was much lower than people imagine it to be. On top of that, there are some battlefield conditions for specific vehicles where bogging SHOULD BE a 100% chance for at least one of your vehicles.

Was bogging too high in previous CM games? Personally, from my own experience, I'd say it wasn't outrageously off. A little too harsh? Perhaps, but as I said we're already way too easy on vehicles so I really don't think it's a big realism problem. Perhaps more of a gameplay issue for some more than others, but is it a HUGE problem which destroys the credibility and believability of the game itself? No. If it were the last game you (and everybody else) would have played of CMBB would have been sometime in 2002. If you've played a few times since then... well, I rest my case

Steve

[JonS]

For those with JSTOR or similar access, there is an article entitled "Military Geography: Terrain Evaluation and the British Western Front 1914-1918" by Peter Doyle and Matthew R. Bennett (The Geographical Journal, Vol. 163, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 1-24), which goes into great detail about why some locations were good for building trenches, and why others sux0red.

The idea that higher is better/dryer is simplistic at best. There is a cross-section of the Somme area showing that - because of the various layers of different types of earth and the way they're stacked - that high ground is the worst place to build trenches (more prone to flooding), while low ground is the best. Granted that is for digging, rather than driving, but we can reasonably equate a higher likelihood of flooding trenches with a higher likelihood of bogging vehicles.

Should CMx# forces scen designers to specify the underlying layers of earth, their thickness's, and their order in order to accurately model bogging chances?

How detailed is detailed? How good is good-enough?

[BlackMoria]

I'm amused by this discussion. It gives me memories of my officer training days in Canadian Forces Base Gagetown. If you ever trained there, you wouldn't be giving Steve the gears about bogging probabilities because for anyone who has been there, the chance of bogging a vehicle after any rainfall is nearly 100%.

As a gun end officer in the artillery, I have deployed an entire battery of towed guns into a firing position. No problems. A half day of rain and the gun tractors and howitzers are sinking into the ground and we have to get a tracked Leo ARV to pull the ENTIRE gun battery out of the mire.

In one gun position recce, I POed the Directing Staff (DS) because after literally getting all four vehicles of the recce party hopelessly mired, I commandeered the DS vehicles one after another and got them mired as well. I got a good chit for initative for that.... and a bad one for making off with the DS vehicles and making the DS walk....

I've seen a Leopard 1 tank mire to the TOP of the hull when it got into the boggy areas (shows with swamp symbols on the map) by a training crew. It took daisy chaining two Leo ARVs and three hours to pull it out.

It is the only place I have been where I have seen bullrushes on the top of hills.

Which is why I don't have an issue with the bogging.

[Battlefront.com]

heh... good stuff. Thanks for the contributions.

We must remember that there is a difference between bogging and immobilization. In game terms bogging is simply getting stuck for a bit of time. This simulates any number of conditions which temporarily stop the vehicle from continuing on its merry way. The game over simplifies this because often someone should have to dismount to figure out what's holding the vehicle up and how to work around that particular problem. Tree stump stuck under front left wheel? Do A, B, and C. Right two wheels or track sunk down low enough that the hull is bottomed out on that side? Do D, E, and F. Different things for different situations but in the end the vehicle gets out.

Immobilization is when bogging becomes permanent (for that scenario). This can encompass anything from simply lacking traction to get free to something getting stuck in the suspension that can't be easily removed to a part breaking under the stress of self extraction attempts. A good example of the latter is in this video of Canadian forces in Afghanistan:

Check out at about 18:30. It's a great piece so worth seeing the whole thing anyway

Bogging should be fairly common, generally speaking. Immobilization, however, should be fairly uncommon *if* the ground conditions and player choices are in synch. As I said, and as BlackMoria said, there are just some situations where immobilization is inevitable. An example of that from Iraq is An Nasiriyah:

It took several hours to organize and conduct the recovery of six stuck Bravo Company vehicles. It was a very tenuous situation as the Iraqi's organized to exploit the Marines' predicament. Marines fanned out through in a circle through the neighborhood around the vehicles to provide security. Several wounded Iraqi civilians approached the Marines and requested medical treatment. Enemy fire increased and became more accurate as the Iraqi's homed-in on their position. 1/2's TAC CP abandoned their stuck armored vehicle, jumped in soft-skinned HMMWV's and moved back into position where they could control the battle.

http://www.iraqi-freedom-diary.com/tac-cp.html

This was the infamous example of driving on what appeared to be hardpan but it turned out to be a thin crust of dirt on top of (basically) sewage. The armored vehicles that got stuck there included Bradleys, Abrams, and IIRC at least one M-88 tank recovery vehicle. They went through a series of rescue vehicles needing to be rescued themselves.

Again, bogging should be fairly common... immobilizations should be fairly rare. An Nasiriyah was definitely not the norm, but 8 vehicles with presumably very experienced drivers got stuck. They didn't have the information they needed to avoid that situation, so the player shouldn't either.

Steve

P.S. For those of you in harsh winter climates, you're probably aware that it is possible to get "bogged" and even "immobilized" on solid pavement with or without snow. Just have your truck slide sideways down a highly sloped ice covered driveway for instance. When your front wheels come to a stop in a drainage ditch covered by 2' of snow and your rear wheels are on said sheer-ice... 4 wheel drive just doesn't cut it. Trust me

[Redwolf]

Beg pardon, but wasn't the first post in the thread asking for an option to turn bogging off, at least for certain terrain?

The first post was asking for a switch for the player. That's a solution that's certainly not going to happen for a variety of reasons, so the discussion quickly drifted into "why don't we try to give bogging probabilities that people are happy with and be done with it?".

Details aside, I don't see a real disagreement between any party in this discussion (except those who's mental capacity is limited to binary thinking and don't grasp what probabilities and discrimination of those probabilities means).

[flamingknives]

Oh, do name those people, let's not be shy.

As I read it the discussion started off with Paul AU asking for the option for bogging/immobilisations to be turned off completely, at least for certain terrain. You will note that it was I who first replied to the subject. Therefore Paul AU is a person on this thread who asked for bogging/immobilisations to be turned off completely.

Towards the end of page 2, it seems that you are the first person to talk about specific probabilities, which I agreed, two posts later, were something that should be discussed.

At the start of page four, you claimed that no-one in the thread had asked for bogging to be turned off, which is manifestly untrue, cf above.

Is the questioning of people's mental capacities justified here?

[Battlefront.com]

Redwolf,

The first post was asking for a switch for the player. That's a solution that's certainly not going to happen for a variety of reasons, so the discussion quickly drifted into "why don't we try to give bogging probabilities that people are happy with and be done with it?".

But there is no such thing. As is often the case there is absolutely no way, no how, not in a billion years that we can change this so "people are happy with it and be done with it". You've been here long enough to know that isn't possible. So we have to make the most amount of people happy, and for the right reasons, as we can. My position is we've already done that because it's obviously not that big of a deal overall. If it were we would have tweaked things more than we did 6-10 years ago.

Could it be tweaked a tiny bit more to make a few less people complain and yet not start to make the other side complain? Sure, there's always squishy room in the middle. But the thought that there is some sort of magical number we can pluck out of thin air that will stop discussions like this is beyond wishful thinking.

The reason is that some people want the impossible. They want bogging to be included (because they know it's unrealistic to have it excluded), but they never want it to affect their precious little virtual vehicles. Ever. If you look at the arguments that have come up each time this discussion happens that is always what it boils down to.

What I mean by that is nobody likes having a vehicle bog down, especially immobilize, because it always has some bearing on the tactical battle. It is also something that people feel they should be able to avoid having happen to them. This is the sort of thing you're asking for, in fact. "Give me the feedback I need so I can avoid getting my vehicle stuck". But as the rational and real life examples presented here show... that's just not the way the real world works. So in a round about way even you are saying the same thing, though far less extreme as some have argued for.

Details aside, I don't see a real disagreement between any party in this discussion (except those who's mental capacity is limited to binary thinking and don't grasp what probabilities and discrimination of those probabilities means).

The only binary thinking I've seen is "if I don't like what the designers have chosen then I want to be able to turn it off". I have seen, and continue to see, a resistance to the fundamental fact that bogging is NOT uncommon and NOT easy to simulate in detail. Therefore, we're not going to do anything more complex with bogging/immobilizations than we already have in CMx2. There are far more important things to spend our time on than something which will always have some people complaining because they got a vehicle stuck when they didn't want it to be.

As I've already said, we haven't even done bogging/immobilizations for a temperate environment yet. CMx1 doesn't count because CMx1 isn't CMx2. So when we do get to that stage OF COURSE we are going to try for the right balance. But if it turns out to be similar to what it was in CMx1, then obviously our understanding of realistic bogging/immobilizations is different than your own. Since we can't possibly have everybody agree on this issue, we're comfortable with a certain level of disagreement.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

flamingkinves,

Is the questioning of people's mental capacities justified here?

Justified? No. Surprising? No. Often when someone can't make a rational argument to support their point of view they resort to insulting the other side. It's a typical attempt to try and turn the tables of the discussion to avoid having to actually back up their point of view. Much easier to say "I don't like it the way it is and you're too thick headed to grasp that".

Over at the other Forum that Redwolf hangs out at they must be having a field day with this thread. The fringe can always be counted on to be nasty, counter productive, and cowardly. Which is why I stopped reading what they say ages ago No need to waste time on people who spend all of their energies being irrelevant.

I give Redwolf credit for at least having the strength character to post where someone might disagree with his point of view instead of a clubhouse where manners, intellectual integrity, and an open mind has to be checked at the door or you're run out.

Steve

[Redwolf]

The comment about "binary" people is just that, there's always somebody who's not comfortable in expressing things in probabilities. These people randomize threads by dragging everybody who wants "lower probabilities" into a "THIS GUY WANTS IT OFF" category and vice versa.

Calling them out for it within some forum defined limits (aka just insulting enough to get the attention) can get threads back to be useful.

So we have to make the most amount of people happy, and for the right reasons, as we can. My position is we've already done that because it's obviously not that big of a deal overall. If it were we would have tweaked things more than we did 6-10 years ago.

Well, you did tune it down in CMAK, along with raising the ultra-slow turn rates quite a bit.

CMAK felt a lot better from what I feel are "unrealistic slowness" factors. Some other things went away not because of engine change but theater changes, such as the extra Soviet delay in early war.

So, if CM:Normandy cuts another notch off that seems like something nobody in this thread speaks against.

And whether Normandy does that by just lowering the probabilities, or by applying a more detailed model of when and where bogging and immobilizations happen doesn't matter at all. The result is what counts.

Anyway...

For those with bad memory, and I think some people here never played CMBB in the first place, I think I collected the bog probabilities per traveled meter for CMBB and CMAK on a couple of different ground conditions. When I say "Barbarossa would have bogged down just east of Koepenick" that's really not far from the truth. But since I don't see those values coming back I hope we don't have to go through that much history.

The point is: when somebody calls for lower immobilization probabilities that might look silly if you only played CM:SF. But it's a different perspective if you played CMBB.

[flamingknives]

Redwolf, do you stand by your statement or not? Name names.

Otherwise I can only assume that you meant me and take offense.

I am more than happy to discuss probabilities. In fact if you read the rest of the post that you took your nasty little snipe at you'll find that I was in fact discussing probabilities. A sort of "Well that's not entirely true but seeing as we have addressed that let us discuss the current issue."

I played CM:BB quite a bit and never really found bogging to be too much of an issue unless I played in "Mud" or went off-road.

I have some thoughts on why you would want to claim that no-one had asked for bogging to be turned off, but I'll give you opportunity to justify yourself first.

Feel free to start a flame war to talk about elsewhere though.

Calling them out for it within some forum defined limits (aka just insulting enough to get the attention) can get threads back to be useful.

No. It was rude and unnecessary.

[sfhand]

So far I haven't seen Steve take an unreasonable stance in this. Sure, the time I played a pbem game with one of my more challenging opponents where my defenses were centered on the roads while he moved his 20-30 AFV's through snowy mountains without a single bog ticked me off (did someone say that CMx1 over-modeled bogging?).

But what I hear Steve saying is that they could write a more in depth bogging simulation but since that would take already scarce resources they choose not to. While I think it would be cool to have to expose vehicle crews after a minute or two of being bogged I don't think the time required for animations and such would be worth it so I certainly am not inclined to think coding an entirely new mechanism to model something that in my opinion isn't broken isn't needed. That said, if time were to be spent I'd rather see it spent on dismounted crew animations...

Sometimes, when bogged in snowy mud, it helps if your vehicle has a hydrolically powered articulating arm... like a skid steer that went out to move snow in the spring without snow chains.

[Battlefront.com]

I have to agree with Flamingknives on this one Redwolf. Someone DID ask for the option to turn bogging off and that someone started this thread. So it looks like you were taking a swipe at either PaulAU, or Flamingknives, or me. Why? Nobody took a swipe at you and I honestly don't think there is anything wrong with PaulAU asking for bogging to be turned off. It's a valid point of view to have if your perspective is focused on the game impact of bogging instead of the realism argument. The fact that we don't deliberately undermine realism for the sake of gameplay means that we're not interested in pursuing that sort of feature request, but I don't have a problem with it being proposed.

Nor do I have a problem with it being proposed that our bogging/immobilization guesstimates for previous CM games were too harsh. So we've started to have a discussion about probabilities and possibilities... as it should be. It's just that you don't appear to really want to discuss that again because you feel you already have and that's pretty much that.

As I, and others, have pointed out in this thread... the probability of getting stuck, at least temporarily, ranges from next to 0% and 100% depending on conditions. And yes, there were times on the Eastern Front where nobody was able to do anything (significant) because even road travel was extremely difficult. So if you play a scenario or QB that has similar conditions, expect similar results.

To restate, the real world conditions which determine the probability of a specific vehicle bogging/immobilizing in a specific spot are incredibly complex. Generalizations, such as lower terrain is easier to bog on than higher terrain, are so general that they aren't generally useful even in the real world. For simulating this rather important battlefield condition we're left with two choices:

1. Make an incredibly complex detailing of things like soil, drainage, slopes, interplay of vegetation, etc. This data would then have to be hidden from the user because no soldier on the ground would have anything more than a generalized guess as to where problem areas might be for specific vehicles.

2. Random chance of bogging based on certain basics which are already know, such as terrain type, ground pressure, speed, and weather. This should be intuitive so players, like their real world counterparts, can have some idea that this or that place is more or less likely to cause problems for this or that vehicle.

Obviously we're going with #2 for CMx2 just like we did for CMx1. Especially because we know, for sure, that whichever way we go we're going to have some people not liking what we've done. All we can do is do our best to make sure most people are happy with the results.

flamingknives,

I played CM:BB quite a bit and never really found bogging to be too much of an issue unless I played in "Mud" or went off-road.

Same here. I played more CM:BB than I have any of the other CM games we've ever made (as I've said, I'm an Eastern Front nut ) and I can only recall one or two games where I had instances where my vehicles bogged or became immobilized. That's probably because when I did have things bog they generally were able to keep going, but when they didn't it was chalked up to "within probability". As I said earlier, collectively there's been MILLIONS of vehicles commanded in CM games and I really doubt more than a tiny number of those became immobilized due to terrain. And out of that number, I think most could be determined "reasonable".

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

sfhand,

Sure, the time I played a pbem game with one of my more challenging opponents where my defenses were centered on the roads while he moved his 20-30 AFV's through snowy mountains without a single bog ticked me off (did someone say that CMx1 over-modeled bogging?).

Heh... that gets back to the point I made earlier about our system probably being too forgiving. There should be times when huge sections of a map should be a 90% chance of bogging or higher. But instead we have weighted probabilities which can produce unlikely (if not impossible) results.

Looking back at this picture:

This is obviously right outside of a FOB (see the wall running in back?). You'd think that the driver would "know" the chances of bogging since he's probably driven around the area dozens of times and/or spoken to people who had. Yet there he is with a tow rope attached to his bumper. And I bet you dollars to donuts that if he had picked any one of 2 dozen different points within 100m of his location to go off road he'd probably wound up bogged sooner rather than later.

We'll look at bogging fresh for Normandy, but I know for sure it will produce results that make some people unhappy. It's inevitable.

Steve

[ASL Veteran]

Personally, I think bogging in CMBO was way over the top for the Sherman. It seemed like every time I moved a Sherman offroad it would get stuck at some point no matter what the ground conditions were or where you were driving. The railroad tracks thing was kind of annoying too. Just crossing a railroad track was almost a guaranteed bog (or seemed like it anyway ). The railroad track thing, I'm pretty confident, was mostly targeted upon driving along the tracks rather than crossing them, but when your kubelwagen gets stuck on the railroad tracks when he's trying to cross the tracks while on a road it gets very annoying. Especially when you are trying to give Kwazydog the beatdown in his own scenario (grrrr).

Having said that though, the bogging in CMBB and CMAK didn't seem out of line and the bogging so far in CMSF really seems to be a non issue. Sure it happens every once in a while but it's rare enough that it doesn't really bother me. CMBO seemed like bogging was out of control though. My Shermans lived in terror of every blade of grass in the open fields.