hoolaman

The are pretty tricky. The only way you will kill them with a tank is with a firing slit penetration. It may take 10 shots to get one, by which time your tank will be dead. My advice is to keep tanks away from AT pillboxes at all costs, and use infantry to sneak around to them. The one disadvantage is that they can't turn around so use them. Machinegun pillboxes should be isolated and hit with tanks. Small calibre guns with high rate of fire also kill them well due to the % of hits which can go in the slit, but this is considered cheating by some.

Ok I see my last post has sparked some heated response. I think you should compare just how different what I have proposed actually is from the current system. In the current CM engine, you have almost no control at all over what a unit targets during the turn. You can set a covering arc, but thats about it. The only way you can effect changes are at the one minute turn order phase. Now I have seen some horrible frustrating things done by the TacAI with targetting, and using some form of SOPs to control what a unit fires at during the turn would surely only improve control. Steve has already more or less confirmed that there will be a model for "relative spotting" in the next game. Think about the implications of this. Even if a tank pops up into the field of fire of your gun, you still may not be able to target it manually because the unit has not spotted the tank itself. So we are already halfway to what I proposed. My idea is to balance out the uncertainty brought in by relative spotting. Giving a unit detailed fire discipline orders via an SOP would allow the unit to behave more reliably of its own accord. I'm sure you could imagine what commands could be included, but things like priority targets, what to do if fired upon, times to remain concealed, and the list goes on. Naturally, I also expect an improved targetting TacAI. What is achieved by putting a command delay on (manual) targetting? Well, you then have an abstracted method of dealing with a "report" of enemy activity. Changing the SOP and covering arc would be the equivalent of warning a AT gun that a threat is coming over the hill from a certain direction. Manually targetting some concealed troops is the equivalent of someone coming over and pointing them out. All this instead of the little voice whispering in your unit's ear "psst look behind you!". All this, as I said, is nothing to do with any model for movement. I am also very much in favour of more control at the lowest levels and I see this as more control not less, with a relative spotting model.

.....but if the option is available, it would be best to back up EVERYTHING and format the HD and install new operating system. That's what I would do anyway......... Then I would bash my head against the wall when I forgot to backup that important folder or piece of info I will never see again.

I kind of have a grand plan for a C&C system, which I have tried to explain in other threads before now, but I will try to explain my philosophy on the C&C issue. In an abstracted way, I think it is neccesary for realism's sake to simulate where an order comes from. Does it come from "on high" and have a command delay, or does it reflect the initiative of the unit and so have no command delay? I think that C&C and command delays should be considered in two parts: fire and movement. An important addition to the fire part of the equation would be "fire discipline" SOPs. Fire discipline and concealment preferences could be included in SOPs to encourage the TacAI to behave in the way you want it to. I think it would be realistic to put a command delay on changing these SOPs as normally such an order would come from above. Also, if you wanted a unit to target a specific enemy unit there would be a command delay. All other targetting, maybe even including covered arcs could then be left to the AI with an expectation that it will behave in a reasonable manner. If it doesn't, well war is hell, and that is not unrealistic to my way of thinking. Using relative spotting, a unit must then spot and attack units of their own accord. To direct a unit to attack something it hasn't spotted could be done, but it would have a delay to reflect a report about the enemy position. A perfect example is a concealed stationary AT/AP gun far from an officer. This gun would know in advance what are priority targets, what direction to expect contacts and when to remain concealed within the constraints of the mission. To change any of these perameters, an officer would have to send out a runner or whatever to "change the SOP". What an officer could not do is say target this or that. That is the job of the men on the gun, and depends completely on their skill and awareness, not on a voice from the heavens whispering "pssst, over there". This is not a lot different to the current AI led system in CM, except producing command delays where they really should be. It could also be applied to every unit in the game. As far as I'm concerned, this fairly simple solution would produce realistic results almost every time. It would also be a fix to "borg-spotting" problem but not, of course to the "god-like awareness" problem. Keep in mind that none of this applies to movement, only targetting. The movement part of the equation is a much more complex issue. This is where the "god-like" issues or the "borg-swarm" comes in, and I will add my thoughts on this later. [ January 22, 2005, 10:34 PM: Message edited by: Hoolaman ]

I think the key is to remember the real life roles of each HQ level. As I said earlier, the problem limiting orders according to a time is that the order you as a player are giving MAY have come from a platoon HQ, it may have come from company HQ, or it may have been the NCO saying "come on lads, follow me". If you are to simulate how long giving orders is going to take down to seconds, you must be extremely careful about who is ordering what.

I agree Midnight Warrior's idea could form part of a C&C model. And the logic behind it is certainly sound and based in realism. However.... What happens to the squad left high and dry at the end of the commander's turn limit? Are they again stuck in the middle of the road awaiting orders to move to that patch of cover? Are they left in the not too capable hands of the TacAI? My take on any C&C system is that it must simulate where the order came from. It is quite sound to say that an officer can only order so many orders in a turn, but it must be remembered that not every action and fire order comes from the HQ.

More than cool, there are some really beautiful B&W photos there. The captions are cut off and repetitive, so should be taken with a grain of salt. Have a look at the brushed-in swatika on bw_056.jpg. Low light or full light seem to show off B&W photos to their fullest potential.

A bit of googling the other day revealed that the shotgun is not generally considered illegal under any convention of war. The germans protested against their use in WWI under a clause that included weapons designed to cause unneccesary suffering and injury, but the Americans just ignored them. They have been used in all conflicts since then, but are obviously suitable for only certain applications.

A bit of googling the other day revealed that the shotgun is not generally considered illegal under any convention of war. The germans protested against their use in WWI under a clause that included weapons designed to cause unneccesary suffering and injury, but the Americans just ignored them. They have been used in all conflicts since then, but are obviously suitable for only certain applications.

Very Nice! If it looks like that I'll buy it thrice. (I also like the incredibles sheet they were done on)

This is a great concept (not least because it closely resembles my own ideas! ) and seems to be on the right track. Features like command-zones, movement delays for what should be semi-stationary company or higher HQs, and being able to attach units from company or higher level assets, or even for any HQ to take charge of leaderless units all seem to be on the right track. Although I can think of some issues with this particular model, it seems to most closely resemble reality, be transparent to the player, but not be "no fun". Although we know next to nothing about the new game, one thing is certain, if it is a war-game it will feature different units, commanders and heirarchies so any bizarre discussions about C&C will be interesting even if totally irrelevant to CMx2.

See? This is exactly why I am "against" 1:1 representation. Squad level combat games/sims are supposed to keep me, the player, focused on squad level combat. I'm not trying to make my own personal WWII movie with stars and extras and villains and victims and heroes. Put an abstract squad on the screen and there has been a strident cry for individual soldiers, even if the individual sprites (or whatever) are not actually affecting gameplay. Give in that inch and put individual soldiers on the screen and there will now be raised a strident cry for medics and runners and ammo bearers and civilians and dogs and the like. Put all those in and there will be demands for realistic razor stubble, officers' mistresses, fuzing wire, clanking dog tags, oily films on gasoline spills, gruff senior commanders, and all that. Once we get that people will start complaining that after playing the game 500 times there are clearly only 50 random razor stubble skins. Bah. BAH! I say! -grumpy abstract dale </font>

That is about right. Except you are more playing as the platoon as a whole rather than platoon commander. Some of the actions the player orders would come from an officer, and some would come from the squad or vehicle itself. As such it is difficult to say what shoes you are filling when you plot an order. A hull-down order may be likely to come from within a tank, while a move order may be sent over the radio from a HQ, or be a product of the TC finding a more favourable position. Even at a company level, some of what a company does would be coordinated by higher level officers, some would be coordinated directly between the company commanders, and some would be on the initiative of the single company commander. I would think it would be hard to model C&C and radio nets for this hybrid of command levels. This is exactly my way of thinking re: command-zones, and seems to correspond most closely with reality. There has to be a way to distinguish between what a unit has been ordered to do in broad strokes by an officer, and what it needs to do as an individual unit running from house to house. The best I can come up with is a command-zone of a reasonably broad area to reflect the orders a unit has recieved such as "go up the left flank to the town, stay between the road and the forest don't go past the church" etc. The unit then decides how it goes about executing this order as long as it stays within the designated area. (Of course there are issues with system as well, as discussed in the other thread). There must be a way to confine a unit to it's last set of orders and still allow autonomy when out of C&C.

I can totally see the concept and it is not such a bad one, but too extreme for me. I can't see any reason why crews should stay on the map when out of C&C. A case could be made that routed units could disappear too. But then they serve next to no useful purpose. Maybe a sniper could be left to the AI, but I want to see him nailing officers from the clocktower. What if I want to send out a one squad patrol, or even sneak up a jeep for some recon? Why should I have to turn such a risky mission over to a dumbass AI just when a deft human touch is most needed? That's where I'm coming from anyway. I think the system must allow for such situations, letting the player play the role of the gamey jeep, but making it hard for him to respond to what the jeep sees when he jumps into the role of the company HQ. After all, the jeep is only gamey because the player can instantly respond to the info it recieves.

I was just responding to other points made by dandelion & aka_tom. And I think steve was talking about a design perspective rather than an actual army command structure.

My point was that any plan that involves a delay before a spotted unit becomes visible to the player is totally artificial. If a player is controlling squads, he must see what the squad is able to see in real time. If a two turn delay is added before something appears on the map, that is as if the player is taking on the role of a higher commander who may not have an immediate view of the situation. You can't be totally responsible for the lowest levels of command but only be given the situational awareness of the highest levels. And yes, I did mean the command position rather than the rank. Captain is quicker to type than company commander........

The way I see it, artificial uncertainty in spotting makes CM a command-style game, and as such is a bad idea. Your squads are your "eyes" as the omniscient guiding hand player. It is fair enough if the squads themselves do not accurately spot something, but to limit what they have really spotted seems very artificial. What rank does the player take on in a scenario where the map and positions are uncertain? Is he Major, or merely Captain? To limit spotting in such a way, a mid level leader would have much better and quicker response than a high level leader. Which shoes do you want to put yourself in? I think you should always see what your "eyes" see depicted on the map as they see it. Any restriction of the information flow must be in the way the player can make orders come into effect. Squads must always be able to see and react immediately to split second changes, but the further you get up the chain of command, the less able the leader is to immediately react to changes.

I agree the turn 1 min time is a pretty good compromise. I would hate to see it increased, because then you are in the territory of not really having control of your troops but instead leaving their welfare to the dreaded TacAI. I think the turn time should be either 30 secs or 1 minute, and with an increase in controls like SOPs, there shouldn't be any problems getting troops to do what you want (realistically). There are also implications for PBEM if you mess with the turn time. Do you want to double the number of emails? I think PBEM has been forgotten a bit in this discussion. I would think that it is still the primary multiplay vehicle. I hope this issue is distict from adding pauses into orders at each waypoint.

This is a good point, and must always be kept in mind when we talk about a single player game. However, we must keep in mind the two separate issues here, which have become known as "God-like view/borg-like swarm" and "Borg spotting". The god-like view of the battlefield is the issue you are talking about, and I for one also do not wish to see it dimimished in any way from the state it is in in the current CM. I want to be able to see everything my lowliest units can see. The "borg" problem, as distinct from the "god-like" problem, comes from the game dealing with an enemy spotted by one unit as if it were spotted by all friendly units simulatneously. So if two units are on opposite sides of the map and one unit spots an enemy which both have LOS to, the other unit will react instantly to it. Relative spotting will take care of a lot of issues with realistic spotting and targeting, which in itself alleviates some of the god-like knowledge of the player. If you are unsure about whether any individual unit has spotted out an enemy that you, the player know about, it will be harder to respond confidently to that threat. Although I do not wish to restrict the view of the player of his "war-movie", I advocate restricting the troops themselves to following realistic chain of command orders. That way, the player can only play god within the limitations of his simulated commanders.

Smiley apart, I think they are -- don't forget that when the US used CW in VN it had not yet signed the Geneva gas protocol. </font>

Smiley apart, I think they are -- don't forget that when the US used CW in VN it had not yet signed the Geneva gas protocol. </font>

Those are some good questions. Firstly I should point out that I intended this thread to be somewhat of a brainstorm, and so a lot of my posts are new and maybe impractical ideas in response to other peoples criticisms. The initial idea was meant to be quite simple. There are indeed two options, one where the command zone is some sort of corridor as pictured in this thread, and the other is, as you suggest, a rolling radius. I am currently leaning toward the rolling radius, but both have their advantages. I agree that the biggest problem with this concept is how to tie in the initiative of a formation to respond to a threat. Part of the solution would be in relative spotting, whereby if a certain formation had absolutely no idea of the presence of any new enemy unit, they would blissfully go on their way. This is easy to demonstrate with one or two units, but would be immensly complicated in a large battle, with new contacts and re-contacts happening all the time. It also takes a certain amount of control away from the player. The basic idea is that the zone of control would be large enough and unrestrictive enough to allow the player to respond to most of what a formation hears and spots for itself. For more experienced commanders, the circle around a formation might be larger. The circle might also be completely fluid. A contact on the edge may cause it to bulge out to allow a slight change of direction on initiative. At the core of the concept is that the player always has intimate control over the squads and teams, but not over whole platoons or companies.

This is true, and should form part of the equation. However, in a single player game, where the player "is" everybody at once, the order to attack would be intuitively known by all the officers. Also how does an SOP limit what a squad can do? A squad can do, and may need to do all the same stuff on defense, assualt, movement. If I need to run for cover or make a hasty counter-attack, I don't want my defend SOP to prevent it. There are of course options to make coordinating an hasty attack very difficult. If orders don't get out, a vital part of your force may be left sitting on the line. But a distinction must be made between a planned attack and a change-of-plan hasty attack. Even an advance is still a big matter of WHERE the formations are. If the last high level order you gave was to send a company to point x, and then suddenly need to make a hasty attack with that company, you are going to have a command delay before it happens.

Right. I think we can safely assume by now that CM will not be a command game. But this still carries the question as to how successfully place 2 -or 13 players on the same side and have them manipulate units and coordinate their efforts, communicate, etc. Beside, although co-op multiplay was presented as a potential solution for borg-spotting, I was more refering to it simply as a game feature. I think it could yield very interesting possibilities, but I wonder how the problem, apparently on Steve's list, is conceptualized and what is the implementation intent. </font>

I just noticed that I said almost exactly the same thing as caesar! I agree, but I think the only way to limit what a formation has been ordered to do by company HQ for example is to limit WHERE it is rather than SOPs. SOPs would control what you can make you units do, or in an extreme case, guide the AI. You the player knows what the mission is. Every level of command of pixel soldiers knows what the mission is. You will direct your squads take realistic actions in fulfillment of the mission. The only thing that differs is that when you play as the lowest level of command in CM you can respond to the larger tactical situation that should be mostly unknown to you. I want to limit a player from responding to the larger tactical situation unless a higher level HQ is used to do so.