Peterk
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Posts posted by Peterk
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To make yourself feel better and maybe get some laughs, take a trip through time and read some of the older messages about people waiting for the game when it first came out. Some of us waited over a month back then.
Oh, and be _really_ careful with it when you finally do get it. The CD is hiding between the pages of the manual.
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Keep the cease fire flags up...the scenario should end within a turn or 2 I think.
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Hi Rett,
I agree with your comments, but you have to remember that if you get pushed back the opponent is probably going to get pushed back as well and that means there will be a nice big buffer between you at the beginning of the next battle - which you can use to your advantage to just run in and retake those hard-fought objectives again in turn 1 with no losses (they shoukd be unoccupied). It's not a perfect system but faults and all I still find the operations more fun than single scenarios.
If anything the system now makes you push harder as the attacker than you would otherwise because you know that a bit of your advance will probably get hacked off between missions.
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You'll see the AI make "mistakes" and wander into your LOS when it could have avoided it so I don't think it's really cheating.
As far as evaluating LOS for locations that you don't occupy - you get better with experience but it's never foolproof, there's no sure fire way of doing it.
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It would look a lot cuter if coupled with the hamster mod!
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A small comment amount the request to define paramaters like weather for each day in an op.
Yeah, it might be nice to be able to get historically accurate weather on every day, but I find that the operations replayability is greatly enhanced by letting the computer make weather decisions as it is now.
I've played A Day In The Cavalry twice so far and the two games were totally different mostly because the computer generated much more horrendous weather the 2nd time around than the first.
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Park the mortars out of sight and use a well dug in HQ unit to spot for them. No more problems.
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I'll make you guys a deal.
I'll buy 500 copies of the game if you hire me to help out with the programming on CM2. Can you say "dream-job"?
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It's not the game's fault! They're doing what you asked them to do. Actually, you've just learned the number one downside of moving your guys quickly.
Basically, if you guve a Fast command, your guys will hustle their butts and try to get to where you told them to go and not shoot back very much.
Move, is a lot slower, there will be more fire coming out of your guys, but the priority is still on moving - not shooting.
Sneak, means to move but if the opportunity to pick up a target appears then stop and start shooting.
Takes a bit of getting used to.
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Nope. The side who is the attacker has the honus to destroy the other side. The defender can hide, run away, and generally make it as difficult as possible but doesn't really have to seek engagement at all.
However, an honor-rule for the Arnhem operation would be to take the bridge and then defend from there instead of playing hide-n-seek all over the streets of the city.
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Hi Franceso,
Do a little browsing further back in the forum or do a little search on "Russia" or "East Front" or "CM2" and you'll see where the game's going.
You're about the 10 zillionth person to ask the question!
Short answer - CM2 is the russian campaign. Estimated time of arrival is middlish of next year. Hope this gives you answer you were looking for.
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I've been wondering about mines for a while. Thanks for the research.
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Seeing the incoming rounds is one of the parts of the game I like best!
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It's definitely a bug and the report is getting sent in. I ran some more experiments and it doesn't seem possible to do it properly the way it is now. 1 player will always lose the chance to move stuff.
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I seem to remember some talk in the early days about only having the foxhole dug if you chose "Hide" for the unit in the setup phase which I remember everyone thought was a good idea.
There's also another weird foxhole niggle that I noticed. In the Aachen scenario one of the german MG teams (the farthest one to the right) seems to have dug a foxhole inside a bulding the 2 times that I played it.
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Just played some more TCP/IP last night. We got through about 20 turns of a large op in about 3-4 hours - that would have taken us 1-2 months or so going by our normal rate of exchange in e-mail. We were using long timers so there really wasn't any time pressure at all so even people who aren't fans of super-quick super-small games should find that TCP/IP still has a place.
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> There were too many problems with the map
...and tardy lazy playtesters.
What was wrong with the map? I have to add that this was the first op I've played where the front lines actually behaved themselves quite nicely. I think it's because the frontage is sufficiently narrow and it's not so easy to sneak guys through the lines unseen.
Had a total blast as the Allies. I'm replaying it from the Axis side.
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I'm playing a large operation with an opponent using a combination of TCP-IP and e-mail and he's just reported that the game advanced a turn without giving him the option to make any moves. Has anyone else noticed this. It's probably not a bug per-se but just a procedural thing that we're supposed to respect when playing this way that we don't know about.
The sequence of events went something like this:
1. I loaded a PBEM game that I received from him (a non-movie file in which he had made his moves but I did not).
2. I saved the game.
3. Later that evening I loaded that game and set ip up as a TCP/IP match.
4. He connected with me and we played several turns.
5. When our 2 scheduled hours or so had ended. We both watched the movie of the last turn we were able to play that evening and hit GO. I saved the game at that point and we disconnected.
6. The next day I loaded the game back up as an e-mail game, made my moves and sent off the file.
7. My opponent received a movie file instead of getting the opportunity to make his moves.
Should moves be made before deciding to terminate a TCP/IP game and continue as an e-mail?
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Kris,
Just wanted to say how much fun I've had with this op. I was one of your original playtest volunteers way back but never got around to playing it in a timely manner but I kept it around and finally booted it up a few days ago. I'm on the 6th battle and ready for that final push to the end of the map.
I think there's at least one other Son operation out that's pretty similar but people should do themselves a favor and give this one a try.
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Hi Freyland,
It's also nice to be able to play a substantial # of turns in a few hours with a good opponent.
Even though the timer is there and a lot of people are playing faster games you can still turn off the timer completely to be able to watch the movies a few times and still get the moves in. I played 2 games tonight - one with no timer and the other with a 15 minute timer and there was no need to rush at all.
Just have to find similar minded opponents I guess.
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2B,
Bite the bullet and go for it. It's not a normal game. It's more of a game construction set. The scenarios are going to keep coming out for eons and it'll never feel like the same game twice. You just can't compare CM to something you'll play for a while, finish, and then zap off your drive a month later.
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> "Would Combat Mission have been possible
> if someone had wanted to make it in Canada > instead of the USA"
What kind of question is that? Of course it would. And we'd charge 50 American bucks for it too after 2 years of development. It's weird - I wrote a text based hockey game about 5 years ago (about a zillion times less complex than CM) and had about 1000 customers or so and charged 49.95 US and I don't think anyone once complained about the price, but BTS has gotten a few comments about CM being too expensive. Doesn't seem fair.
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Aachen is a nice fun uncomplicated little sceanrio. A Day In The Cavalry would also be a good introduction to operations should the fancy strike.
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Tris,
One thing that you don't seem to be able to realize is that there is one person working on this game and there are only 24 hours in a day and you're not going to get every little niggle fixed exactly when you want it fixed. Would you relax??? Jeez.
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I'm going to jump in to because I find operations are probably the most interesting part of the game faults and all.
I have mixed feelings about the objectives. Part of the whole point of operations is that the player is supposed to be the one who decides what on the map is an objective and it's kind of nice not to have the designer spoonfeeding the player and telling him what is important. If I think I can get to the end of the map without taking Hill-123 then why bother? It would however probably be useful in guiding the AI on the attack in these monsters. Objectives for helping the computer to determine frontlines just shouldn't be necessary. The code should recognize that hills, towns and maybe road crossings with active defenders in and around them are considered objectives without being told.
Keeping units where they end the previous battle is definitely not a good idea because they'll start in sight of whoever was firing on them in the last battle. One side almost always needs to regroup between battles and re-setup a coherent defense/attack and doing the regrouping on the move during a game turn under fire just doesn't sound like a lot of fun and isn't realistic.
It seems simple but I think we just have to recognize that front-line calculation is more complicated than we think it is. I can think of one problem right off the bat.
1. Battle ends and computer draws front lines but gives defender in a surrounded town option to keep guys there.
2. Defender decides he doesn't want the town after all and moves everyone back.
3. Now the attacker has to set up but there's a huge black hole where the town is where he can't set up but should be able to.
I'm sure there's tons of little nasty situations like this that Charles has discovered already.
I would bet a million bucks though that operations get a nice look at some time in the future for no other reason that there will almost certainly be a Stalingrad operation (or many!) in CM2. Patience!
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How Long?
in Combat Mission Archive #3 (2001)
Posted
I almost cracked mine in two pieces wringing the manual in anger because I was frustrated at not getting a CD.