thewood

I love the word "foisting".

I always thought CM1 did a good job of reinterpreting my waypoints to keep out of terrain trouble. Some isolated quirks, but nothing as screwy with all waypoints as this.

The looking for cover thing is not true as fas as I'm concerned. Follow an infantry unit at ground level and tell me what its logic is. In completely flat open terrain, they seem to follow an almost random path. I have made maps and tested it.

It has been two weeks, but Steve already said in another thread that it was close, but a couple days away.

The problem is that sometimes they miss the waypoint so far that they come back to it, doing a full circle in the open. Beyond my own stupidity, its the top reason for Stryker casualties in my games.

Actually, I don't think its SOPs, its basic stacking orders. SOPs would be more formalized and almost like prebuilt stacks. What Steve talked about then was being able to apply more orders at waypoints than either CM or CMSF. We already have some of that in CMSF, just not much and some of that isn't working, from what I can see. The best implementation is POA2 and they work very well. POA2 took a few patches to get them working properly, but they are very detailed and work great.

I went back and re-read the original discussion on commands and movement. I know Steve stated very explicitly that it would probably change, but doesn't seem like it works anywhere near what is described here. Am I just too jaded now to see how that discussion relates to what we see today? From Steve... "In CMx1 you could generally only issue non-movement instructions at the beginning or end of a line of Waypoints. In CMx2 that has completely changed. Now you can issue up to three Commands per Waypoint; one Movement, one Weapon, and one of either Special or Adminstrative types. Some Commands are "Persistent" in that you select it once and it applies to all further Waypoints, some are "One Offs" in that they apply only to that Waypoint, and others are used for "Start/End" only. The ramifications of this new system are profound. To illustrate this, I'll describe (in generalized terms) something that was impossible to do in CMx1. In CMx2 if you wish to move a tank moving down a street and moving its turret around to cover potential threats, your Commands might look like this: Waypoint 1 - Move, orientate turret right Waypoint 2 - Move, orientate turret left Waypoint 3 - Move, orientate turret right Waypoint 4 - Stop, orientate turret center, button up So for Waypoints 1-3 the player issues two Commands, and for Waypoint 4 issued three. Note that the player doesn't HAVE to issue three Commands per waypoint, just that it is possible to do this if so desired. Much of the time one Command per waypoint will be the norm because the usual Combat Commands are Persistent and Special/Admin Commands are not generally used. Was the lack of this sort of control missed by players? For sure it was to some extent. However, with the way CMx2 works now we expect that people would find the old system a serious liability. Now, this does not mean the TacAI isn't going to do anything for you as it did in CMx1. Quite the contrary... the TacAI should be quite active in managing the little details. The difference is that the TacAI no longer has to read the player's mind for those situations which fall outside of the norm. For example, you don't have to tell a vehicle to rotate its turret towards a threat in order to engage it, then specify what type of ammo and how many shots to fire at it. 9 times out of 10 the TacAI's default behavior will handle all this stuff exceptionally well, especially because it now has a memory for targets. But when you want to conserve ammo and only whack a bunker ONCE or you have a hunch that a threat is coming from a particular direction, you can now give more guidance to the unit than you could in CMx1." http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=52;t=000537 I don't see this in CMSF. Am I missing this flexibility? I will say this, going back and re-reading those old posts by Steve is helping me understand a little more what's going on in CMSF. Edit: Just finished reading through the entire thread. They were having the exact same debates and dicussions about TacAI, WEGO, RT, etc. Amazing how much it paralles today's discussions. [ August 24, 2007, 08:51 AM: Message edited by: thewood ]

I think the issue is that we are used to the AI in CM1. While, after 7 years we have figured out the AI in CM1, it is still one of the best AI's in a commercial game. We are used to that and didn't expect a step backwards in CMSF.

How does baking help you do that? Are you just using the pause button?

Looking at the issues with 1:1 and finding the level of abstraction that the market would bear, CMSF should have had a public beta. I know contractual and timing issues prevailed, but of all the games that release early demos, this probably needed it.

They are not specific to WEGO, but are a greater factor in WEGO. In WEGO, you can't intervene or work around issues like you can in RT. These bugs make WEGO VERY difficult to play. eg...I have an issue that between 1.01 and 1.02, Strytkers will very reluctantly fire their machine guns. In RT, no biggie, you just iintervene. In WEGO, you now wait 60 seconds to intervene. Add up all the issues like this in WEGO and it is incredibly frustrating. In other threads, the work around is just play in RT. Thats where the comments about this being built more for RT than WEGO come from.

I am quite stunned you were able to breach walls and use them to enter. You had no problems with infantry moving? I'll have to go back and try that scenario again.

Its not just the first round though. I have set up several battles with 72's and M1s and it is useless. The 7s's are chuckin HE left and right.

Vulture, but aren't you basically arguing that we aren't ready for 1:1 soldier scaling. That the abstraction in CM1 was appropriate. That seems to me what Doroash is saying also.

Yeah, reading it I had the feeling it wasn't the same game I'm playing. Especially getting through breaches.

I have almost stopped playing CMSF completely due to issues in all aspects of play. Infantry continues to not follow commands...move to the nearest action point regardless, short armor battles with T72s firing HE only, PBEM totally screwed, and screwy buldings...invisble walls. I have spent three weeks basically testing CMSF to see what and how things work. There are threads in both support and strategy forums detailing glaring issues and gets no response from BFC. Up to this point, I have recommended CMSF to friends, probably resulting in several sales. At this point, I am no longer recommending it. 1.03 better fix a LOT of things or I will feel that I spent about $100 (US) on BFC for the right for them to use up 800Mb of my HD (that includes TOW).

Is wargamer going to do a review?

I am somewhat concerned the action spot thing is a design foundation that may not be addressable. Infantry seem to live and die on the action point. Doesn't seem to be an issue with vehicles. I have yet to see BFC address the automatic quick. Its one of those things that frustrates me so much that I have stopped playing infantry battles until 1.03 comes out to see if it fixes it. I am also surprised that all the discussions around and no one's talking about it.

Status: WEGO 21 RT 12 Both 7 Useless 5 Noted that a lot of the RT answers mention pausing a lot and missing replay. Makes me want to count them as WEGO wanna be's. Also noted a few mentioned that RT is preferred due to mistrust of TacAI.

They already have the 60 sec. playback in there. Called WEGO.

are t72s actually using sabot?

Haven't you heard of the "Universal Soldier"

Answers so far: 14 WEGO 3 Both 8 RT 3 Useless answers

I knew it was too good to be true. btw, you have too much free time to search for that. Try hamster rolling or some other such nonsense.

Are you kidding? At least half of those Peng threads are written in cuneiform. Or somefink. </font>