hoolaman

Putting yourself on the ground with the platoon has a different purpose from what was proposed. As a solution to borg spotting, ie. you, the player being able to respond to every threat on the map instantly, neither limiting the view to what a squad sees on view level 8 or on view level 1 will make any difference. You can still see all, you just have to cycle through every unit and mark spotted enemy units on the map to do it. Combine this with actually recieving fractured messages for each squad and interpreting them from suad perspective and this would be very tedious and slow. Currently, putting the game on view level 1 as per "frankos true combat rules" is not practical, because often trees or other graphical elements obscure the view of the player to something the squad has spotted in the game engine. This is because cover is treated like a block of translucent glass instead of like the sprites we see. I would like to see a "units-eye" option but not have it be integral to the game system, but only to judge terrain etc.

Mr. Tittles: I quite like some of your ideas about SOP and limiting the types of orders available to the player. I am not sure I fully understand what you mean though. If a platoon commander assigned "hold fire" or "cover" SOP orders, why would the company CO come along and change them? After all, the player inhabits the minds of both, the player would have a consistent plan in mind. If it is easy to change from attack to defend, and therefore have access to all the orders, what is the point? Ok, having modified slightly my ideas to take into account the valid points made in this thread, my command idea is as follows. * At setup, a plan is formulated and communicted to everybody. This plan is in the form of command zones plotted for each unit as mentioned above. * More detailed plans can be formulated and waypoint clicking reduced by assigning "SOP zones" for the waypoint corridor orders. Things such as rally points, danger zones, safe zones, patrol zones, recce zones etc. could affect the disposition of troops within them. * There are two ways a player can change the command zone waypoints. 1- A change in circumstances such as change in enemy contacts, a unit falling behind in a formation (maybe), or a change in combat status, ie. pinned, cautious. This reflects initiative. In this case, the unit is on its own initiative, and can change its own waypoint, but not that of other units around it. This level of initiative would be based on experience: a green unit would go to ground and stick even more tightly to the plan, a veteran would know that it could back off or outflank. 2- An order has been recieved by the next highest commander. In this case, a HQ can only change waypoints on a turn if he has one of the events in 1 reported to him by simulated battlefield C&C. He then takes a simulated delay to get his ordes out. This is the only way to change the whole focus of an attack. If none of these things happen, there is no reason to change any plan. * Within the command zone, a platoon has little to no command delay. Squads can zig-zag or run form house to house or swing from tree to tree with no delay within a 150-200m wide area. This is not intended to be very restrictive. Squads may get a delay in movement proportional to a NCO experience rating. If enemy contact is made, the command radius might get larger or smaller to reflect initiative and allow tactical manouvres. * Each unit has its awareness individually calculated, and when clicked on its LOS and unit tracking is shown, including reports of enemy activity which would be marked on the map as "reported MG" or something. * Moving out of a command zone would thus become a bizarre illogical occurence, based on no enemy contact, no intelligence, no higher orders. If the player does it, the troops take a big morale hit, get fired on by friendly forces, cannot recieve reports of new enemy contacts, get struck down with plague, etc. etc. I think that is all. If better comms methods and training are available, an advance might take on near borg like quality, but with no radios and green troops, you have potential for chaos, and a good adaptable plan would be essential. I'm on board with this idea in theory (although in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is The trick to making this effective is going to be taking into account all the communication paths that exist on the battlefield. There's a lot more to it than just radios and runners. Furthermore, sometimes you can communicate battlefield information without needing to actually intend to communicate it. Consider an infantry advance with tanks in support in reasonably open country. The tanks are ~200m or so back of the infantry. Crew commanders and drivers are unbuttoned. Crew commanders are scanning with binos, gunners are scanning with optics. Suddenly, the tank crew hears MG fire, and the infantry ahead of them hit the dirt and start carrying out their reaction on contact drills - which involves them shooting back. The sound of the MG and the sight of the infantry chewing dirt draw the attention of the crew commander - he now knows there's a contact to his front, pretty much instantly. This intensifies the scan, and between the sound/sight of the actual contact itself, plus the reactions of the other units (ie, they're all shooting at a particular place) this helps him locate the contact on his own. Then, because his standing orders are to support the infantry, he opens up on the contact. There's a delay there, ranging from "instant" (MG was directly in front of him in LOS and in the open) to some other value (a bush was blocking LOS and the tank had to manoever a little bit to get LOS) but the net result was a contact established without having to get information directly from anybody else.</font>

Has anybody thought of doing a contour map mod? You could colour each elevation to make it esy to change in paintshop. Or you could make it black and white with grid overlay, and symbols for the trees, houses etc.

I think it is more important to actually simulate what each unit sees and knows for the TacAI rather than preventing the player from seeing everything at the same time. This is not a solution to the spotting issue, as you can still see everything, you just have to cycle through every damn unit to do so. I would like to see it exactly as suggested above, where clicking on each unit displays only their LOS and the units they are aware of, except when you press a hotkey, or have no selected units, the most accurately spotted versions of everything on the map can be seen all at once.

It would seem that to be considered realistic, a command system must be able to be applied to any real world combat. Taking DG's tank simulator as an example, (although not exactly a real world example!), I don't think the command zone system prevents any of this from happening. Initally, the orders of all the tank sections on his side were "all ahead full". So imagine all tank sections plotting wide waypoints dead ahead, taking in some good cover, and allowing mutual overwatch. It didn't sound like there was an overall commander of these forces, but either way, to change this plan, there must be a coordination of all elements, or a change in the situation of some sort. I think the initial plan should stand as it was initially set up until something changes. For example : * Enemy contact or report of contact by another unit. * Unit dropping out of formation * Unexpected obstacle or terrain feature (assuming maps and stuff are in the game) * Change of disposition ie. change from offensive to defensive if outnumbered. So, when DG's bradleys fell behind, they dropped out of formation and recieved the possibility of replotting an order. The M1s which were barrelling along as planned had no incentive or stimulus to change their plan and continued ahead. The bradleys cancelled their order, deciding to keep themselves in reserve. If a higher HQ is present, they would need to actually recieve an order to halt, otherwise they would continue moving forward as ordered. When the M1s make contact up ahead, the bradleys become aware of the situation either by sound contact or by radio reports. The bradleys can plot another order on the basis of the enemy contact, and knowing everything about the enemy, they plot a wide flanking move among the green tent trees, toward the enemy flag. They advance down this flanking corridor, and cannot plot more orders until they are fired upon by the flag guard. They then plot another flanking order around behind the enemy units. Game over man. At the front, when the M1's hit the enemy, they also would get to plot new orders. If a higher HQ was in command, they would report the enemy contact and the HQ would relay orders, resulting in a command delay. When they hit enemy units, the corridor could even balloon out to form a battle zone where all the units have free movement. Bear in mind that these individual tanks are not on rails. They move around and change formations with no command delay within their zones. The corridor of advance allows manouvering at will, but not changing the whole tactical focus at will. As you can see this is a kind of vague application of the concept, but I think it give a good idea of what it involves and the potential it could have.

I wholeheartedly agree that the CM units on the ground should have less limitations not more. In fact as I stated at the start of the thread, it was the opinions of Mr. Grant that kind of got me thinking that the command delay in the game now is rather unrealistic. A tank commander or squad NCO, if they decide to go "over-there", would take mere seconds to order the unit to do so. The only problem with taking away command related limitations altogether is the risk of creating a true "borg" army. The current CM places time limits on squads out of C&C that prevent them from reacting to changing circumstances in a realistic way. It assumes that they have to get orders from an officer to know what to do. The current system does not prevent a whole platoon from having psychic awareness of a tank popping up on the other side of the hill. The current system allows scouts up ahead of an advance to instantly report info to everyone everywhere at once. Some may enjoy that aspect of executing the perfectly coordinated and psychically tuned attack, but I disagree that too much is made of borg spotting. The system works because most CM players prefer to play in a realistic way, but I think it would be good to have an option where both players are forced to play in a realistic way. I do not claim to be an expert, but if you were in a real-life infantry advance, and could not maintain really effective communications with the platoon to the left and right of you, except to keep track of their relative positions, then you would have little choice but to stick to the plan that had been decided. If you did not, you may endanger everybody. So I don't think it is very unrealistic to prevent a unit totally abandoning a planned advance. I think vital elements of a simulated command system are as follows. * Individual per-unit calculation of spotting and awareness. Some units may be capable of tracking several targets, some units may not see things until they are pointed out by the CO. The player still sees all, but cannot make his units be aware of something unless the game engine deems they have seen it or been told about it. * Some calculation of effectivness of communication methods between units for both relaying reports of enemy activity and giving and changing orders. eg. Line of sight allows x% detailed reporting of enemy positions, and allows y% quality of orders. And take z seconds. Runners allow x,y,z Radio comms allow x,y,z etc. * Some system that distinguishes an order from company CO from an order from a platoon CO, and an platoon CO from an NCO, etc. To allow appropriate command delays where they are realistic, and no command delays where unrealistic. * Allowing NCO experience levels and bonuses and 2IC's to substitute for dead commanders. * Not limiting the players ability to see the battlefield from their movie director's chair if they so choose. The best way I think to do all this is by command areas. This may change fluidly as enemy units are encountered, or orders are modified. Experience and initiative may give a wider radius in which a unit may operate. Obviously it would take some work to work out how to make a system unobtrusive and intuitive. Perhaps units could leave a command zone if they feel they have to, but somehow penalties are applied for breaking from the plan and the cohesiveness of the advance, and not being in a location they are expected to be. Maybe a unit out of a command zone is less confident and likely to break, or may be much more likely to be fired on by friendly forces, or will be unable to be reached by runners to report enemy contacts. [ October 24, 2004, 09:56 PM: Message edited by: Hoolaman ]

Hello again. If I had it my way C&C in CM would include SOP's and new order systems for basic commanding of units in addition to some kind of command zone concept. I like the idea of only being able to give certain units certain orders. It would be interesting to have to make use of a commander who is reluctant to give certain orders, or cannot give detailed SOP's because he is incompetent of panicked. Using this for targeting relies to a certain extent on the ai making a decision the player is happy with. @ Dennis Grant: I take your point about your simulator experience. If corridors of advance were too limiting, a clever unit would not be able to exploit an obvious opportunity to outflank or to make a larger tactical move on its own initiative. As for the "gameyness" of the simulator, it sounds like you probably knew unrealistic details of the enemy forces and objectives, you had a 100% secure map edge flank, and once the flag was taken, the game was over. Would you attempt a move like this in real combat? If things went badly, more enemy forces turned up, I am guessing there is a chance you are stuck in a very bad position. Also, if you had been ordered to advance, in a combat situation, would you be disobeying orders by lagging behind and going on an adventure behind enemy lines. I only ask this to judge whether such a situation is comparable to a real life situation in WW2.

Indeed. I pity the poor guys, as the level of anticipation is likely only going to increase over the next year. Us forum monkeys must get a bit tedious. Anyhow, BFC: are our ideas and suggestions still welcome, or should we shut up and go and do something constructive?

And some more, although I expect this sort of thing to be on the drawing board already: Varying types of terrain, as in twenty different degrees of woodlyness between woods and scattered trees. Maybe it would be easiest to choose the level of undergrowth separate to amount of trees. So you could have scattered trees with thick scrub, or forest with clear pine forest floor. Another perameter might be the bumpiness of the terrain. So you could have broken lumpy ground through to smooth flat ground. Ten different types of scrub, ten different types of trees, ten different densities of trees, making about...... a million different combinations. This takes away some of the black and white chess style issues, where you know to pour arty on that patch of forest because that is the only place to be. The variation in terrain, as well as historical accuracy of terrain and natural, realistic appearance of terrain, are not just eye-candy graphical issues. Terrain is integral to warfare as we all would know, and accurate simulation of it is vital. That is all. Until next time.

I am still not sure about the nuts and bolts of making it work, but better brains than me can figure that out. The fact is that this is all not as revolutionary as it may sound. You can still include things like formations, SOP's follow the leader orders, and a whole lot of new orders to allow more variable game control as many have asked for in the new game. If you look at the "command-zone" concept from the ground up, it makes things a lot easier. Each squad is free to move exactly as it pleases when it pleases. No more command delay on that common-sense dash to better cover. Yes! I like it that someone is excited about this idea. If a plan can only be adapted by "realistic" means, then adaptability must be instinctively included in plans. HQ's will need to place themselves at vital communication points, and may have to put themselves in danger to do so. Recon will be essential. Triangle (eg. two up one back) formations will be essential. Things like rallying areas for elements to regroup would be easy to include. The idea of patrol zones is a good extension of this. A squad may be told to patrol a 200m wide zone between point A and B. A squad could act as an autonomous entity within the confines of these orders, which was often the case IRL and missing from CM. In CM now, a squad would sit in the middle of a field until word comes from HQ to walk 30m and get into cover. Sergeant Bloggs didn't need to be told how to command his men on the ground, only where he was supposed to go to do his mission. Here is a website that has great original info on these sort of command and tactical issues at platoon level and squad level. If BFC could simulate half of this stuff I would be very happy! Squad and Platoon combat

I found this website on my travels. It would be great if a new CM game was capable of this sort of squad level stuff. Platoon and Squad Tactics

Having a bonus for the initiative or experience of nco's would be great. If the boundary lines were sort of fluid, a contact with the enemy might make a difference to the boundary. Say an experienced German NCO, on contact, has a radius balloon out from his relatively thin ordered path. A green Russian NCO might have no extension of the radius, or even a shrinking of the radius, when under fire or supressed. Some guys would know better that the plan can be "bent" as circumstances dictate. Some guys, when under fire, would cling even tighter to the plan even as it was pulled from under them. I don't know how easy it would be to accurately simulate this stuff. Simulating numbers of radios and communictaion methods may be all you need, with a certain level of abstraction. I think we should remember that CMX2 will not just be ASL on steroids 1999 CMBO style. Whatever era BFC chooses (and I think it will still be ww2) they will no doubt seek to put in all they have learned and personally wished for in the past 5 years, but have been limited by their CMBO foundations. I don't want a "command game", but to simulate these issues in some small way is vital.

I would be content to know if the coding and planning of the game has reached a point where our genius suggestions are a complete waste of typing energy. Is BFC still constructing the graphical world with gameplay and interface yet to come, or has the game plan been laid out in (semi-permanent) stone?

Thanks for your replies everyone. I am certainly not an expert on ww2 era c&c, and I hope people can provide ideas to improve this concept. As I said at the start, I don't really know if my idea would be so amazing! if it was put into the game as I describe it, but I think it is an exciting idea (if I say so myself) This is a problem I thought of too. Making an arbitrary black and white boundary that cannot be crossed may not be ideal, but if the boundaries between units were done correctly, ie, wide enough or variable enough that it would not effect things too much, it would be ok. The very concept is intended to prevent the player from being severely limited in control of the men on the ground. I am proposing no command delay at the squad level. If squads decide to move here or there, the sarge on the spot decides to do it, even if they are out of command of an officer. However if the squad decides to walk over to the other flank to kill a sniper it should know nothing about, it should be prevented from doing so. For those in the know; what would be typical of orders from a company commander? Were they mostly administrative, simply assigning objectives and letting platoons work it out? Even if the plan was worked out by the platoon officers themselves, they would still be locked into zones and plans that they have decided for themselves, unless they can get a message out that they are changing course. All these factors would hopefully be addressed by this system. 1) Well in CM the player knows when his forces must arrive, so this is probably not applicable. 2) This is exactly what I am getting at. The company CO assigns boundaries where his platoons are expected to advance. Starting at the setup point, you could assign a suitable corridor of advance, between this landmark and that, and not beyond that road. Within this area, a plan of attack would be decided, whether by the platoon officers, or the company, it doesn't matter, that group 1 goes this way, group 2 goes that way etc. If the plan suddenly needs to change, that can be done easily, but only if communication can be made with all the elements to let them know what to do. 3) Still a little half baked in my plan, but similar concepts for moving up support weapons after contact is made would be applied. Here is another little picture to illustrate a bit of what I mean:

Any comments, either positive or harshly negative would be welcome!

I had problems with processing the newest nvidia utilities. I would suggest using msconfig to remove the nvidia utilities from the startup list, that is if you don't use virtual desktops or the enhanced nvidia stuff. The file is nwiz.exe on my pc. Don't remove nvcpldaemon cause I think it is the driver. Alternatively revert to an older nvidia driver set, which may help.

I think the problem is that you need to know some real world combined arms tactics, what all the units are and what they do, and master the interface. You also need to read the manual. Most people are not up for any of these things.

Hello all, I am sure many of you have been following the "what do we want in the new CM" thread, and I have posted the same idea there, but I wanted to get some feedback in a dedicated thread. I was thinking there must be a way to simulate the C&C limitations and situational awareness (or lack of) of each level of command while still maintaining the ability to micromanage the smallest elements under your command. My idea is for each HQ to have its own level of command waypoints. To illustrate with an example, imagine this situation in CM; a company advances on a farmhouse, the company HQ gives orders to one platoon to move forward. It wants PL1 to go sneak around the farmhouse and setup in the woods on the other side. PL2 and PL3 and support weapons stay behind with the HQ. The player plots the rough path that PL1 should take, using company HQ orders. These HQ orders plot a wide corridor of advance for the platoon, say 100-200m. Next the player plots the waypoints for each squad, exactly like what happens now, except these squad waypoints must be plotted within the HQ's assigned corridor of advance. The platoon moves out, but the Lt. can get to those woods any way he sees fit, the player can micromanage, as long as he stays on the path given to him by the company CO. This way, even when the platoon goes out of company C&C, they are still limited to the orders given to them, but are capable of autonomous action, which I think would be something like "Real Life". This exact concept can be extended to batallion level as well, only with companies as the subordinate units, and maybe a 400-500m wide corridor. Now imagine the situation changes, and company CO wants PL1 to return. To do so, the player must replot the company waypoints, which would require a large level of command delay appropriate to the situation, as runners go out to get the squad back, or maybe both HQs are in radio contact, and a nearly intant reverse could happen. This concept could improve the borg spotting issue as well. Say Platoons 1,2 and 3 have been given orders by company CO, and move out. PL1 spots some enemy activity. This spotted enemy would be instantly revealed to the player like happens now, but to respond to the situation by sending platoons 2&3 into the fray, the CO would have to change their orders, which would take time. This is a good concept, and if you combine the different command levels with this concept of limiting the orders a HQ could give, or the areas of the map you could give them, may improve the concept. At setup, the HQ gives orders to all units. This is "THE PLAN". No further orders could be given by the HQ until the situation changes in some way. After all, why would he deviate from his plan unless something happens to change it. In the example above, PL1 spots enemy units while out of command. The units are reported to the player instantly on the map, and the platoon can deal with the threat as it sees fit with no command delay. To simulate the delay before the CO hears about the enemy contact, the player may be unable to give any further HQ orders until it is simulated that he gets a report. So 20 seconds may elapse before the company CO can even begin to respond to the situation. So he cannot give orders to his support elements to move forward or platoons 2&3 to change course until he gets a report about enemy activity. This could be apllied using some points system where a detailed report allows more orders or something. This concept would make higher level HQ much more important. To do this, there must also be 2ICs which take command if HQs are killed. Of course the delays would be much higher for both reporting enemy activity and giving orders if a 2IC was in command, but the system would not break down entirely. Most of the game would be played exactly as it is now at the squad level, but recon, probing attacks and a good adaptable battle plan would also become vital under this system. Anyway, that is my idea. I am not sure how it would apply to vehicles, although the concept is the same. I hope everyone here will have comments and criticism. If I have explained anything badly as I often do, please let me know. These posts by Dennis Grant and Phillipe gave me the ideas, so thanks guys, and I hope you see where I am coming from. [ October 17, 2004, 11:21 PM: Message edited by: Hoolaman ]

That is a much simpler, (and therefore probably better) idea, but it would be good to be transparent to the player. If something kills your tank, you want to be able to engage it. My idea was just a half-baked concept (like a lot of my ideas!), but I will elaborate on what I meant. The basic idea I am getting at is that if a similar battle is raging on your left flank over the map edge in invisible land, the battle going on the "map" next door is somehow simulated, and if you stray into it, all sorts of crazy things may happen. The concept of a laser-straight edge between your units and those in the adjacent sector is a bit silly. Not sure exactly how this would happen. Maybe an AI vs AI battle could be simulated on the map next door, and the further your units go into that battle, the more of these AI units are unlocked for control by both the player and the enemy. Sort of a floating map edge.

Does anybody like the concept of company commander waypoints, or battalion commander waypoints, which give a radius within which platoons may manouvre freely with no command delay? The battalion commander orders his companies axes of advance with x delay, the company co orders his platoons axes of advance within the battalion waypoints with x delay. Platoon CO orders squads around within the company waypoints with little/no delay. This will help combat borg effect, although from the link in the other "what is borg spotting" thread it seems these ideas have been discussed years ago. Combine this with individually calculated spotting by units and you have a decent compromise I think. You would still reveal all units to the playeras it is now. As suggested above you could limit how many orders a HQ can give. You could simulate what the commander knows by giving him more orders based on reports he recieves about enemy activity. Example: A squad spots a tank at the front. The player sees the tank from the squad's POV as happens now. The Platoon commander can respond to the situation with no delay, because he is on the scene. The company CO has Platoon 2 in reserve, but cannot assign orders to Platoon 2 to move up and deal with the tank, unless a report reaches him from Platoon 1 about enemy contact. When it is "simulated" that the company commander recieves a report about enemy activity, he recieves "order points" to enable him to send Platoon 2 forward to deal with the threat.

I would like a "flank zone" to prevent edge hugging effects. Something like a zone on the map edges where a scenario designer can designate what forces are on either flank. These forces never enter the game unless you go out of your designated map area then the adjacent units become available to the enemy player or something. But as long as you play in the right zone, those units never appear. Unrelated: the ability for tanks to have arty spotters inside as was a fairly common german practice.

Try celery and peanut butter. Sounds crazy? Just try it!!!! I promise it is delicious. While I have never seen celery taller than about 60cm, some crops like strawberries are grown in raised mounds, like in one of the photos above, adding 30cm ditches between each row.

For example, a Combat Mission Jeep flies over a ridge at 70kmh, and in the instant before it is blown up it sees the layout of the enemy defenses, how many tanks, where they are, etc. This information is seen by the player, who can respond to the information, when "in real life" the Jeep would not have been able to report anything to the commander, and the player should be no wiser about what lay on the other side of the ridge. The opposite; relative spotting, somehow simulates these communication issues, but seems like it would be impractical to implement it in CM.

I was thinking the same as redwolf. Modern weapons and missiles take engagement ranges out to distances where the best scale for this time is indeed TacOps scale. I am hoping that BFC develops an engine that can be applied to all conflicts from Poland to Korea, maybe extending to Arab Israeli wars. Each installment can then be released as an expansion or something.

Thanks, I am not sure that some of my ideas would work 100% either. I think it is unlikely that BFC will allow units to go "out of contact", or that true relative spotting could be implemented, but it would be nice if C&C could be improved so that the command delays from the HQ 500m down the road are separate to commands for basic manouvres that squads or vehicles can accomplish by themselves. Preventing units from deviating from an original plan unless they are told to do so would be a good way to prevent exploitation of borg spotting. It allows the player to be both "god" and grunt while still simulating the units being blisfully unaware of what is happening 1km away.