Kraut

kip said : "The AI is superb; you can trust the individual units to aquire the correct priority targets while you concentrate on the overall tactics. If you want to micro-manage an assault you can but you don't HAVE to, as I say you can trust the AI" The AI takes a lot of control away from the player, IMO, by retargeting the way it does in the beta demo. And as far as micromanaging your assault ... well, i don't "feel" like it's me, the commander, who is in control. It seems everytime i issue a critical fire-order on a specific unit i need to attack, the AI retargets ... wack, my plan is dead. I still hope they will tweak this a good deal for the real demo, and the final version. It's about the only thing that i find extreamly annoying in this game. MK

Ooops sorry zackary, i didn't even see your post. See, after i'm done reading fionns huge and verbally challenging (in a good way) posts, i need to guzzle a few beers and smoke a pack of cigarettes (and i don't even smoke ... lol). So i probably missed your first post. Ok, now i read it ... yes, some "guard" command would be really helpful. Or, how about a "defend-arc" like in cc. You have an area, say form 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock you want to defend (you know the enemy is running through there), so you order you unit to focus on that area. Just a quick thought there ... basically anything to reduce the effects of massive retargeting will help. I also feel a bit disturbed at some of the comments i see from steve and other "defenders" of CM. I feel there is an issue here, and try to explain my viewpoint. It always happens (not just in this thread but in the past months with other issues) that at some point things start to come down to "they don't know ****, so they're wrong" or "they have no experience in gaming, never even played the real game". It might be, but how the hell are we supposed to know. I'm not gonna take anyones word for anything ... i'll keep an open mind and continue to look into the issues i raise, but i won't let myself and my viewpoints be shoved under the carped like that ! I'm no OSCAR ! Again, the re-targeting is an issue for me, but steve or fionn said there will be some small tweaks to help out a little. I'll have to check out the real demo to see if that helps. But even without these tweaks, i feel there is still a good deal of game for your money here, it's just i feel it would be more enjoyable with the tweaks. Others might not think so, including the makers, but they get to post here too ... fair enough huh ? MK

Steve said, while scratching his head and wondering if this will ever end: "Schrecks firing at 200m is a concern, but if it happens once (in a situation I can not see in detail) that isn't enough for us to tweak a value. This could be robbing Peter to pay Paul. You say it is too far, we tweak, then someone says it is too short, we tweak, then you say... aw, you get the picture Again, I am not saying that tweaks aren't needed here, but please understand that we can't go jumping in and twisting numbers based on one instance. Just to be clear too, there is no über value to tweak. So what an MMG or Bazooka does is not related." Well, then i would say you'll have to hand over a few more scenarios for us to "test". lol Just a serious side-note to all this "value-tweaking" business. When we were testing cc3 for MS, there wasn't enough time for us to experience the game, to say "hey, the infantry suck ... needs tweaking". Sure, there were voices raised about this issue and other issues, but we didn't have enough game-time and enough variety to say with definity: "THE INFANTRY STINK !" I hope that your "testers" are enough to eliminate balance-problem. Was the retargeting issue raised by them, or did it only appear after the public demo ? I think from this group, which has DLed the beta-demo, you're getting good feedback on issues, so releasing a few more scenarios wouldn't be too bad for ya Preferably some with JT's and other heavy guns, please *cough* ... just to see how they *cough* stack up. Fionn said: "It's not that the AI is disobeying your orders its that you are giving the "wrong" orders" Great, blame it on the customers ... now where did i hear this type of talk before ? lol Man, reading your responses is always painful. Remember, you have a genuine cc-player here, who has only played SP and EF and a few demos of other hex-based wargames before. This player wants control ! This player is GOD of the battlefield ... he needs that fix or he'll die of ego-spatistic-hyper-spasm. I gotta check out the ambush some more. Maybe after that, i'll come back with more ammunition to fire at you, or i'll be converted and join you in the holy crusade, to enlighten the world with CM. ROFL A few new scenarios could aid me in my quest for wisdom you know ... MK

Fionn, welcome to advanced game design 261 .You're talking about extreme cases here. I'm talking about a unit that *I* ordered a fire-command on which i can see will most likely move into an area that is open. I predicted this move, so i tell my gun to target it. Well, it happens that i overlooked a small patch of trees halfway between the starting and ending point of the path the unit will take. Well, for a short instance the unit is out of LOS. But as i predicted, the unit walked further and headed to the ending point. My MG didn't do anything to stop or pin the enemy. Bummer ... I do see your point with the constant retargeting. However, you can work around it. For instance, the MG shouldn't retarget to a new unit in the instant the first unit is out of LOS. Maybe pause a few seconds, then look for a new target. This would eliminate the constant retargeting issue (for short-time 'out of los' cases). *Maybe* you can have a different fire-order that would force the MG to shoot only at the unit you specified, and if it goes out of LOS, it would stay focused at the area where it lost contact. If the unit pops up again, it could continue firing. This might not be the best thing to do, but something has to be done about this constant re-targeting. Like i said many times (and probably too often already), it is annoying greatly when a computer does things for me, that i enjoy to do. Let the computer crunch numbers, i'll do the "thinking" MK

Steve, i don't know, i always feel we are talking past each other ... no side seems to get their poit accross here. It's crazy ... lol I'm sure that 20% for a zook is good, i believe you. BUT, that's not the point i was trying to make. I was trying to explain that *I*, the commander, set up and ambush to be set at a certain time. Specifically at the time when the stuG was *at least* under 100 meters away (it was coming directly at the zooka's position). I would have liked to wait until about 60-80 meters. The tacAI decided to disregard this order which could have been very bad for my total plan, which again annoys me A LOT. btw. ALL my men were in range of a platoon commander. Please condiser tweaking the hide command a bit more, especially with AT teams. Ohhh, also, what do you think about the case where my Panzerschreck fired at a sherman at 200m ? Damnit ! I didn't want him to fire at that range ... grrrrr ... MK

I'm with fred all the way on this one. I want gameplay, i want to make mistakes and see which orders don't work and which ones do. I do not want the AI to take over most of the time. Now, granted, you have no control for 60 seconds, and the AI has to make some decisions for you, but in my view it is making some very poor choices. Poor chaoices in relation to MY overall plan and MY style of play. Yesterday i played the last defense battle again, using a lot of the ambush commands. I must say it did work a lot better. However, it still feel this is a poor work-around. MK

Dave - No, i did not use ambush. I am aware this should be more effective, and keep my zooks from firing at a tank too soon. But this is not a good solution IMO. Why do i have to order an ambush just so my men keep their heads down and wait for a good time to shoot or, more importantly, for me to give them an order to fire ?! What would happen if that HT were to come from an entirely different direction? Can the zook still fire at it (that is, keep still until it gets closer, then fire, or get a fire-command form me)? If so, this might be a better way of doing things, but still not good enough IMO. MK

aaron said : "However: I may have strategic reasons for directing lots of low-effective fire at a unit: e.g., in the next 'turn', the unit will be close-assaulted. The firing units may not know this (and so switch targets), but the company commander sure does, and word goes down the line. The way it is now, coordinating suppression fire doesn't work too well. IMHO, the player-directed target needs a little more priority in the targeting portion of the AI. " -Yes, this must be done! If i need to use suppression-fire on a unit, then i need to do it, no matter how juicy a target 300m away is. The danger is here and now, and not over there! "If someone who has seen actual combat (LOS?) will tell us that units readily dump fire orders to take on seemingly-juicy opportunity targets, then I'll go with it." -Oh common, this is nuts! Just because "someone" who was in combat says that this is how it's done, doesn't make it any more enjoyable ... like i'm gonna sit there going: "damn this sucks, my MG fired at a target of it's choice eventhough i needed suppression fire over there, but hey, someone said this is how it's done, and HE was in combat ... uhh huuu ... " Gimmie a break I just played a good deal of the riesberg scenario as germans, and i compiled some of the cases that REALLY annoyed me during that game. Maybe the BF people would like to comment on them. This issue about hiding infantry and disregarding fire-orders is becoming more and more apparent. - Vet. Volksgrenadier opens fire at an unbuttoned sherman at 175m, eventhough i had him hiding in a house. - Reg. VG squad ordered to shoot at a sherman from 70m with PF100. What does it do ? Well, it shoots at the freakin sherman with it's small arms, then turns around and fires the faust at infantry 50m away !!! ARRG ! - Green VG HMG42 opens up on infantry at 180m, eventhough i had him hiding in a house. - I got the HMG to hide again, but then it opens fire on infantry 100m away. (sorta acceptable, but still not my plan) -Reg. VG squad, hiding in a house, opens up on infantry 250m away. I wanted to use this squad to ambush a sherman coming down the main road. The tank got to a range of 70m, then it was killed by a faust from the squad. This wasn't a bad outcome, but still the tacAI took the decisions away from me! I wanted to let the tank come much closer, then wax it. -Reg. Panzerschreck team shoots at sherman from a 2-story building at 170m. I had this team hiding also. This is unacceptable ! I need my AT assets to hide and hold out so i get let the armor come in close for a higher hit-chance. -Reg. VG squad opens up on infantry in scattered trees at 210m. Two other green VG squads are nearby and do not open up. All were hiding. It appears that a team will open up on infantry when they have reached a certain "firepower" rating, since the reg VG has a rating of 74, while hte green teams had only 6 and 8. -Again, reg. PS team shot at a sherman from a 2-story building at 200m. Nuts ! At this point i had to stop (about turn 12), since it was pissing me off too much. I wasn't losing, but it just seemed like i did very little to win, other than deploy my men at "the right" positions. I do not wish to trash this game in any way. It's an excellent game, and good fun. However this disregarding of orders my men are doing makes me feel more and more like a spectator rather than their commander. The game is becoming more and more dull for me ... i do not want to control every little aspect of my men, but i DO want a considerable amount of control over them, so i can have some fun watching my orders and plans lead to success. MK

Yup, i feel the same way. Fionn and the BF people tried to convince me that it might be because the LOS was broken to the unit i fired at, but reading your examples, and playing a few more games i am convinced that this is not always true. The tacAI defninitely needs some tweaking on this one. I quite often feel like i have little or no control over my units. They basically just fire at what they want, ruining the planning i do between turns. Like i said before, this hurts gameplay quite a bit. I also feel that my units fire at the enemy too soon. This *might* be because they are only "regular" troops (in the last defense battle), but i feel even then they should wait a little longer before they fire, if i have them in hiding status. Just yesterday in a PBEM game, my bazooka started to fire at a stuG from over 120m with less than 20% hit chance. I don't like this at all because it ruined my planning. I wanted to spring the ambush much later so i had a higher chance of taking out the stuG and the infantry that were escorting it. As it happened, the zooka missed the first two rounds, and then took fire from about evenry enemy unit on the map. If the zook hadn't fired i could have dropped more infantry and taken out more armor than i did before the enemy tiger and other units started to fire back effectively. I wouldn't mind this happening occasionally, but this behaviour seems far too regular to me. I too like this game very much, but these two issues really annoy me. MK

Charles, Steve and Fionn ... Well, if the creators say it's so, then it must be so. Unless you're lying to me ... lol It *could* be that the enemy went out of LOS for a moment and my MG retargeted. This would explain a lot. Now, to "solve" this problem, how about putting in some code so the MG will retarget the original target when it pops up again ? If the enemy dissapears for a split second, the MG *should* be able to retarget it when it reapears. This would be a nice thing IMO. MK

Fionn - in response to your response WAAAY up there (i don't like this kind of msg board, ryan got a much better one ). I said, "maybe" they fired at the krauts from the wall. NOT CERTAIN ... anyway Sir Fionn, noble knight of the CM crusade, i'll check out the ambush command and see if that will work better for me. I'm just a cc-player who likes to HIDE his troops and then wack the enemy at close range, ie. ambush him. One other thing ... do you think you could convince the o so nice and understanding BM people to hand over the scenario you and martin played ? Maybe edit it a little to show off some more stuff (maybe some bunkers and some "funky" equipment)? I would love to snow how the snow effects movement MK

Fionn, "lord of the CM realm", lol, i'll be sure to get a few screenshots of what i feel is no-good retargeting in the next games i play. I posted this reply about the retargeting during an actual PBEM (or more like PBICQ) game, so my memory is quite fresh. I can swear that i targeted a SS squad at 80m with an exposure of 25%, with my MMG. I needed to suppress this team because a position even closer to that enemy team was being overrun. So it was damn important ... Well, the MMG only fired once (not sure if it fired once or not at all, but i'll assume now, it fired once) at my assigned target, then turned some 60% to fire at a target which had 28% exposure at around 300m(granted the exposure was measured by myself after the 60 secs were over, but since the squad was coming closer in open ground, i assume the exposure couldn't have been much more or less than 28% during the 60 secs of action). Basically, all i'm trying to tell you folks is that i don't like it when my men don't do hat i say (sound kinda stupid huh?). I do enjoy it when they "misbehave" occasionally, but not regualarly and as a given. I am the commander, i want to make decisions, and i say: "Soldier, shoot up that target!", or maybe i'll say: "Fire at anything from 11 to 1 o'clock, don't mind about anything else!". I like to think that a game is about making interesting decisions. So if a game takes decisions away from you on a regular basis, even if it's more advantageous for your forces, then i the game is lacking. MK

Dave - in the last defense scen. all troops are regular (as far as i see). I'm very sure the zook was regular. It shot at the stuG from over 120m and with less than 20% hit chance. Luckily though, it nailed the tank. I'm definitly not gonna complain about that (i'll leave that up to my opponent ... lol), but i still will complain about it firing at the tank with such a small hit-chance, since i think it should have waited a little longer to get a bit higher chance. Now again, it might be because the crew was regular ... i would need to compare some elite 'zooks to see if that's the case (so, BF, send me a few scenarios will ya ? lol). Fionn - All i know is that it "feels" like the infantry are spotted too early. It's probably because they actually fired at the krauts and then were spotted (again, i think they should have waited a bit longer). But i'm sure i had them directly next to the wall in a foxhole, because i made sure they were (scaled them to realistic and put them right up on the wall). MK

Well fionn, i gotta disagree with this whole idea/post. I know my MG has a 28% hit chance on that infantry 300 meters away which is running in the open. But i want to suppress/kill the infantry squad in the woods 80 meters away, on which i have a 25% hit-cahnce, because it's more important at that time ! I want to eliminate THAT attacker, on THAT flank, not some other infantry squad at the other end of the map. The more i play, the more i see this "feature" as something really bad for gameplay, realistic or not. It surely takes away some of the fun for me. The game is basically saying "hey, you might WANT to target that squad over there, but this one over here has a higher hit-chance, so screw you, i'm targeting it for you now !" ... really not pleasent. MK

Uhhhh ... my second post for today, my lurker-status is a goner I think bill has a point here, with the infantry-AI shooting at the more immediate threat issue. I do think there is a lot of "game" there despite this, but it definitely is reduced. I played a PBEM game where my opponent had his tiger out in the open. I ordered a MG to fire at it in order to make the commander button up. Well, he fired one burst then selected a more juicy target, and the commander didn;t button up. This in my view is a very disturbing thing. I NEED the MG to make the commander button up. I don't want him shooting at other targets, unless his life is in immediate danger. Maybe this thing just needs some tweaking ... maybe you guys need to change some values so the units will only fire at targets that are a lot more valueable, instead of only a little bit more valueable ... Ohh also, this has not just happened with my MG's firing at tanks, but also while firing at other infantry. It really isn't that bad, but can hurt gameplay quite a bit in some cases. MK

long-time lurker alert ! Well, i have to come out of hiding for this one. CoolColj has a damn good point. Infantry are too easily spotted IMO, and it also seems that your hiding infantry open fire at the enemy at ranges wich will produce virtually no results (i like to keep my men hidden as long as possible, then open up with everything at once). This might be due to the fact that in the "defense" scenario, the US are playing with regular infantry, but even then, a bazooka opening up on a stuG3 with litte more than 10% hit cahnce is a bit far off. IMO this needs some tweaking ... unless of course fionn, "defender of the faith" posts some funky reponse (and probably too long lol), convincing me i'm wrong. MK