billcarey

I'm being misunderstood, and it's my fault for not communicating what I mean clearly, so I'm going to try again. 1. I recognize that there are many more states a weapon can be in that firing and reloading. 2. I recognize that in the vast majority of circumstances a relatively small percentage of a unit's weapons were firing simultaneously. 3. Having read these boards actively for four (?) years now, I've tried to pick up as much history and information as I can from the posters who obviously know their stuff. Here's my suggestion: As I understand the current state of the game squads have only two states: firing and not firing. If the squad is firing, then it is simulated as firing all weapons, and if it is not firing, then it is simulated as firing no weapons. I would suggest (and I think that the historical anecdotes presented in this thread bear this out) that very often it was only some fraction of a squad's firepower that was being employed at any given time. That being the case, I would suggest that squads project firepower more often (if not more or less continuously) but at only a fraction of currently rated firepower. The product of firepower and time would not change from what it is now. Maybe that will clear up what I'm suggesting. - b.

I would humbly disagree. I am most certainly not assuming that all weapons that are hot will fire. Much to the contrary. The game right now is assuming that all weapons that are hot will fire. All at once. Right now either all weapons are firing or no weapons are firing. My suggestion is that instead of the two binary states, firing and not firing, each individual weapon have a firing / not firing state. This would mean that the firepower exerted by a firing squad would, instead of being a discreet curve, be a more stepped smoother curve (obviously not a smooth function, but a much smoother that the current binary one). I would think that this would simulate the historical reality you describe, Jason, better than the current system. I think the effects on the game would be less dire than you suggest as well. The most significant change that I percieve fromt the current system is that it would require better suppression to effectively move units, penalizing those who tear around the map willy nilly. - b.

I think it would address the binary nature of things now. Maybe I didn't explain it well. Right now lets say the squad fires once every ten seconds with a firepower of 100. In my system it would fire four times every ten seconds. The first two time would only be with a fp of 15 because only three rifles are firing. The third time would be with a fp of 40 because the lmg engages. The fourth time would be with a fp of 30 because the lmg and some rifles are firing. Each shot would only have a fraction of the squad firepower, but there would be more shots. None of this would be controllable by the player, though. - b.

I've been turning this over in my head for a while and wanted to run it by people. I think that the current modeling of infantry firepower may be the tiniest bit too abstracted. In situations where a squad has a "snap shot" at another moving squad sometimes it will unload on it with full firepower, and sometimes it will not shoot at all. This means you have essentially a binary result: either the squad is firing or it is not. I suspect that this is different from the historical use of small arms where some portion of the squad would be ready to fire. Here's what I would suggest: Instead of two states, firing or not firing for the squad, CMX2 could track weapons at the individual level. You would need three pieces of information for each weapon: 1. Firepower - already in the game. 2. Time to Reload - emperically determinable. (mostly) 3. Chance of Stoppage - emperically determinable (?) I am assuming that currently the TacAI requests a squad to fire, and it then fires or not based on some internal timer. If this is not the case, then it will make my suggestion more difficult to implement. Under the new system, when the TacAI requests a squad to fire, the squad would fire it's available weapons. What weapons are available would vary depending on the time spent reloading and stopped. Also, weapons that are patently out of range (SMGs) could be considered stopped for purposes of this little algorithm. The advantages of a system like this are: 1. Squads will behave in what I believe to be a more realistic manner. They will fire much more frequently, but with a much reduced firepower. The product to firepower by time would remain unchanged. 2. Squads could then be partially suppressed (some weapons suppressed, some not) which would force more realistic infantry tactics and better use of suppressing fire. 3. I think it would be cool. This might model the advantages of the Garand as compared with bold action rifles and the advantages of bolt action rifles as compared with the gGarand. The disadvantages of a system like this are: 1. Ammunition and Weapons States must be tracked at the individual weapon level instead of the squad level. I can imagine this taking a large amount of ram/processor cycles. 2. Players will begin to desire (and request) the ability to direct the fire of each weapon individually, which I believe they shoult not have at this scale and scope. 3. It could be difficult to program. I don't have a lot of experience with this sort of code, being more a html/php/perl guy myself. (?) -b.

I think that the confusion may be that the game shows an ammo field for every vehicle - for tanks it would haev the HE and AP and C and whatnot. For vehicles that don't have any ammo (or just machineguns) this field is blank, meaning they don't have any ammunition because they don't have any main weapons. So, the trucks aren't carrying ammo, much the opposite: they don't have any ammo. - b.

Trucks carrying ammunition actually are in the game. You just can't see them. In between battles of an operations (some of) your units are resupplied with ammo. There're your ammo trucks. Resupplying units while engaged in a tactical firefight was by and large beyond the scope of action in actual tactical World War Two combat. (Or so this board has led me to believe.) Even if such trucks were added to the game, I'm dubious of how useful they would be. Presumably if a gun (or mortar or heavy weapon) runs out of ammo, it's because it's been shooting at things right and left, willy nilly. Eventually some of them will shoot back. I can only imagine what the life expectancy of a truck filled with ammunition would be when under fire. - b.

I think you're right that for a guy on the recieving end a semi-auto and a bolt action cause the same reaction: seeking cover. What I'd add to the discussion is the issue of uneven engagements. A platoon armed with bolt-action rifles would be hard pressed to deliver that supressing fire on a company size formation. A platoon armed with semi-auto or burst fire rifles would still be hard pressed to keep a company head down, but they'd be less hard pressed than the group armed with bolt-actions. I'd suggest that in defensive engagements a force armed with bolt action rifles would be able to suppress fewer than a force armed with semi-autos assuming that the men shooting are of equal quality. If you have problems with training and marksmanship, it might be better to concentrate your firepower in one or two high r.o.f weapons and give them to the best shooters. I'd like to know more about this, can you reccomend any good books that talk about this sort of thing? - b.

Here's my (mostly uninformed...) take on the difference between the weapons: 1. I agree with Dorosh and Andreas that Germany having a SLR would not have had any particular effect at the operational or strategic scale (beyond a larger expenditure of ammo). 2. At the tactical level, I think that there are advantages to having rifles capable of faster fire than bolt action rifles. Here's my argument: Let's say that there's some number of rounds delivered per unit time that will effectively suppress a position and that any fire beyond that is (effectively) wasted. I'd submit that this is true in high-cover areas, and less so in very open areas. At least in paintball I've found that a three round burst every three or four seconds will keep green people pinned, and a two round burst every two or three seconds will keep most people down in good cover. Obviously in a real combat situation, the numbers will be different. A bolt-action rifle is clearly capable of delivering ranged accurate fire above that supression threshold, especially when multiple bolt action rifles are employed, as in section fire, they are quite capable of supressing a section sized target. I think the advantages Pillar pointed out for the SLR are very good, but I would add one more. Because the SLR is capable of more fire per unit time, it can suppress more targets simultaneously than a bolt action rifle. That's the advantage I've noticed in paintball - I can point suppress two or three targets at intermediate range simultaneously. So my questions would be: 1. Were infantrymen trained to use their faster firing rifles against *more* targets or just to shoot more at one target? 2. Have any armies done studies on what volume of fire is necessary to suppress someone in various types of cover? I await enlightenment eagerly from those who know more than I. - b

Welcome to the boards! This is a wonderful community, and I'm sure people much more in the know will be along to give you better answers, but: The easiest way to stop buying a lot of games is CMBB or CMBO. They are enormously deep games, and take practically forever to play out. I'm still playing mostly '42 battles - haven't really gotten to anything later. If you haven't already, try out the demo of CMBO as it gives a better feel for the gameplay than the CMBB demo (which was aimed to show the differences between the two games). I'd suggest picking up CMBB now, and possibly skipping CMBO for the new game about the Medeterranean campaign due out later this year. Just my thoughts. - b.

As far as I can reckon, the question you're asking is, "Why isn't there a platoon level Tac AI?" which is a fair question. I suspect there are three reasons why a platoon level AI is absent: 1. As Eric pointed out so sagely, it would be very difficult to program a Tac AI at the platoon level that worked well in all situations. There is already a fair amount of moaning about the squad level Tac AI, and it only has to manage one unit, not seven or eight. 2. Determining to what extent platoon level co-ordination occurred in the various armies would be difficult. The program would have to represent differences in platoon level command quality much more than it does now. How would this AI function if the platoon leader were incapacitated? Conscript? Killed? 3. If the AI managed control of platoon sized elements, that would fundamentally shift the scale of the game to platoon scale from squad scale, which I'm not sure BFC wants to do. Your request would also remove the player from the game even more than presently, which would surely annoy as many users as it would please. It is something to think about with the (possible?) advent of SOPs in CMX2. Should the player be able to designate SOPs at the platoon level and higher or just the squad level? My thoughts. -b.

I've noticed this too every once in a long while. It seems to me that leaving the preview mode and re-entering it will fix the problem. Haven't ever noticed it in actual play though, which is odd. (I guess?) - B.

If the unit has come under fire, the Tac AI might have decided not to carry out your orders (especially with low quality troops.) This happens to me more that I'd like. - B.

You might also consider having the Soviets arrive as reinforcements in the middle of the german positions. They should have the element of surprise if the Germans are suppressed and tired to begin with, and will simulate that kind of close combat I think you want. This will also ensure a most most chaotic battle. - B.

Part of the 'problem' with fatigue in CMBB may be an issue of terminology. i'd suggest a change to the following: Tiring -> Winded: Heavy breathing rhythm, quickened pulse. Muscles pushing hard, but not losing performance. Recovery time of about a minute of rest. Tired -> Tiring: Heavy breathing rhythm, quickened pulse, some shortness of breath. Muscles have lost peak performance. If they are pushed they will degrade quickly, but are still capable of 'normal' levels of exertion. A couple of minutes of rest or ten to fifteen minutes of low level activity to recover from. Exhausted -> Tired: Heavy breathing, rhythm broken. Muscles have lost peak and normal performance. Ten or fifteen minutes of little muscular activity to get back to peak performance. In my mind exhausted is something you are at the end of the day. Something that takes a whole night of sleep (or not) to cure. I don't think troops should get exhausted in a CMBB scale battle (or if they do, then they should be out for the count) My thoughts. When I have some time off from work and exams I may try my hand at a fatigue label mod.

Or had to carry not only your own pack, but a radio and a stokes litter 200m up a steep hill covered with icy leaves. That'll own you in about 20 steps. Then we get to carry it back down with a patient inside too. The whole team's pretty shot after semi-technical rescue and it takes us five or six minutes to get back to a ready state.