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Holman

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Posts posted by Holman

  1. 9 hours ago, db_zero said:

    Perhaps the fleeing is somewhat realistic? I reading a book and around Villers Bocage a British platoon fled and was forced back into position at "gunpoint" only to flee again. It was pretty much accepted that many Allied generals would lose about a divisions worth of men before they finally began to catch on to the art of waging war and many never really did. 

    Under those circumstances the largely conscripted armies of the day probably did melt away more than we think. They had been in combat for extended periods of time and there is simply so much one can take.

    Even in elite German SS units I'm reading form the same book "The Guns at Last Light" German commanders resorted to things like tossing live grenades at reluctant troops to get them to move forward and fight

    There has been a lot of discussion about this.

    There has been a change (I'd say a dramatic change) in game behavior, and it seems to involve units fleeing where before they would merely cower in place for a short time.  Units in good cover (a heavy building, a trench) coming under fire will now get up and run into the open rather than hunkering down in place as they used to.  This is as true of Elite British paras as it is of Italian conscripts.

  2. 11 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

    Why are there six men sitting on that T34-85 M1943? Photos like that are usually assumed to be of a tank crew with their tank. So six is too many. Another oddity, there's no roof panoramic sight over the gunner's station.

    I've seen WW2 pics of all nationalities with larger-than-crew groups posing on or around one tank--enough that I've wondered the same thing.

    I would guess that they are friends from the same unit posing together, and they just picked one tank to do it with.  Or perhaps you sometimes see a tank crew posing with their platoon or company (troop, whatever) leaders.  Or maybe the mechanics feel attached to the crew, etc.

  3. Just saw a fresh veteran British airborne team run out of a building under mere rifle (not even MG34) fire.  They have taken no casualties at all.

    Some mild HE had fallen nearby (not very close) earlier in the turn, but no one was even wounded.

    The two or three HE rounds and the incoming rifle fire were the first action the airborne team had seen in the whole scenario.  In fact I don't believe I had taken more than one casualty on my whole side yet.

    Needless to say, these are not Iraqi conscripts.

  4. One other ting I've noticed just in the past few turns.

    We all know that a shreck or bazooka firing inside a building can suppress the team.  Under 4.0, I've seen three or four instances of this suppression causing the shreck team to vacate the building.  Under 3.0, they would have cowered in place.

    They are not taking any kind of fire.  They fire the rocket, get suppressed, and stand up and run out into the street.

  5. Oh, I know.  I wish I had the time to do repeatable tests.  I might even learn that I'm wrong, which would be reassuring about the game.

    I hope I haven't come off as a whiner.  I genuinely trust BTS to get things right, and I greatly admire their design vision. It's just that I've never before had this strong sense that something changed to make the game less realistic.

  6. 3 hours ago, LUCASWILLEN05 said:

    Fair enough to want BF to provide some reasoning for he change. However, you yourself do admit the squad was as you say "pretty beaten up" From that I would infer that morale and suppression was pretty bad. Maybe the squad in fact panicked. When people panic in dangerous situations i is not unknown for hem to do stupid things that get them killed. Such people are not in a state of mind to do he sensible thing - in that particular case to remain in he cover of that church. They just panicked and wanted to get out of there. What do you think is the psychological state most likely to get you killed in a fire or a stampede, You panic, make the wrong choice and you probably die

     https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/extreme-fear/201011/caught-in-stampede-what-would-you-do

    Going back to what I said n an earlier post in situations like this these particular soldiers are no longer under your control and will act according to their perceptions of events around them. Not your perception as he overall battlegroup commander. OK so those guys panicked and got killed. That, and I do not wish to be callous, means a few more sad letters to write. Right now however you have a battle to win.

    I think you are over obsessing about one incident here. Now a unit that panics might actually run away more often whereas before they might have cowered in place. I can live with that even of they do something dumb in a blind panic and that gets them killed That can be what happens sometimes and again what they actually do might well depend on other circumstances or even chance:-)

    I feel like this discussion is going in circles, but I need to add that, while I gave one example above, it was only one example among many I've seen.  I'm not basing my sense of the 3.0/4.0 difference on that one instance alone.  That one merely illustrates the larger pattern.

    Once again, the problem is not squads panicking or that their behavior is out of the player's hands when they do; the problem is what the game has them do when they do panic.  In about ten or twelve games under 4.0 I've seen multiple instances of infantry bolting into the open when they would have cowered in place under 3.0.  I believe the older behavior is more realistic, and in 4.0 blindly running upright into the open out of cover has become unrealistically common.

    I love the degree to which the TacAI is the heart of CM, which is why I want it to be the best and most realistic it can be.  I trust that BTS is aware enough of these sorts of complaints to look into them.  I'd be very happy to hear that that's the case.

  7. For purposes of this debate, figuring out what's going on involves comparing 3.0 and 4.0.  I'd love for BTS to acknowledge that they've made a change for specific reasons or that something unintended has slipped in.

    My sense of something being off comes from things like squads inside a stone church taking rifle fire (not even Bren fire) and running out the door to be killed in the street.  Yes, the squad in question was pretty beaten up, but my strong sense is that in 3.0 and earlier they would have cowered in place in the church (making them immune to aimed fire) rather than running outside.

  8. Well, my comparison is between 3.0 and 4.0, and I feel sure I can see a difference.  Units in buildings and trenches are bugging out into the open under the same conditions that used to cause them to hug the floor.

    The problem isn't that they're being suppressed.  It's that they're more likely to stand up and totally expose themselves when suppressed.

     

  9. I really feel like I'm seeing units flee cover by running when they used to cower in place.  It's not that they're not "tough" enough; it's that they run into the open when they used to (realistically, IMHO) hug the ground until they collected themselves.  I'm seeing this in response to fire from other infantry squads, not incoming artillery.

    I haven't done systematic tests, but this is my impression after about ten PBEM games under 4.0.  I believe I was an active enough player under 3.0 to notice a significant and valid difference.

  10. There is no unit editor in the scenario editor as such.  You can't put particular weapons into the hands of particular soldiers.

    However, it is possible to customize to a limited extent.  All of a unit's stats (experience, morale, etc) can be tweaked, and in some cases it's possible to manually decide which squads have special equipment.  (For instance, you can choose which squads in a pioneer platoon actually have a flamethrower or which gun teams have which model of AT gun.)  Overall, picking the quality of a unit's TO&E will affect how well-armed and supplied it is, but it's not possible to pick everything.

    Above the level of individual squads and vehicles, however, you can mix and match.  You can easily take an infantry battalion and decide which of its platoons are at full strength and which are missing squads.  You can create a tank platoon that is all Panther G's or instead create one that is a mix of Panther G, Panther V, and Panzer IV's, etc.

  11. If you're putting BMPs in front of anything larger than a 7.62mm machine gun, you're doing it wrong.  If they're spotted, they're easily killed or incapacitated.

    Despite the name, IFVs are eggshell-fragile against just about any mounted weapon.  Considering that the Tunguska is designed to spray out AP shells like a firehose, they are the last thing you want to expose any vehicle to. Even a tank can come away with its sensors wrecked.

    If one of those beasts is positioned to spot as you move your large rumbling vehicles into the open, it will kill them before you see it. Probably your best bet is to dismount a foot team and have it creep forward to put eyes on the monster.

  12. That's all very good advice, and it's great to see it presented together.

    But I think the issue at hand isn't players not knowing these things.  It's that the threshold at which infantry run away (especially when temporarily cowering in place seemed more realistic and more likely to keep them alive) has been greatly lowered in Engine 4.0.

    I really have the sense that the balance was just about right in earlier versions.  What was needed, if anything, was more situational behavior ("tank fright," for example, or better choice of routes when retreating), but it seemed to me that behavior seemed believable enough.

    Right now it seems like units in cover run away in the exact same way that units in the open do.  I certainly get the sense that they expose themselves more often than before, and that's the especially unrealistic part.  (Cowering inside a building and crawling to cover inside seems much more believable that racing out the door into the street.)  I almost have the sense that the cowering and running-away behaviors have been swapped.

     

  13. 32 minutes ago, General Melchid said:

    I'm not convinced all of these behaviours people are seeing are new; I'm still running 1.04 without the v4 upgrade. I have certainly had troops take a morale hit because a team was killed nearby as I have had armour get 'rattled' if 3/4 of the platoon is lost in a round.

    From what folk are reporting It seems under arty there may be problem with them too willingly abandoning fortifications, but other then that I have a suspicion the rest is phantom.

    Have you tried the 4.0 engine?  Yes, those behaviors have always been there (I've played CM from the beginning), and they are appropriate under the right circumstances.  What's happening now is a much more pronounced tendency for infantry to break and leave cover much earlier.

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