Andrew H.
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Posts posted by Andrew H.
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If that was in the game, there are certain spouses that would ensure that it was removed. If not our own, then our customers'
Steve
I doesn't have to be in the game. It could be in the calendar that people who preorder the game will receive with the game. In January 2010.
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Steve's idea of keeping the time limit but allowing extended play is a good one. I think it would be fine to have the battle end for scoring purposes at the time set by the scenario designer, but to give the option to the player to continue just for fun. Or to achieve closure...
Maybe when the screen pops up at the end showing the score, you would have the option of either reviewing the map or continuing the battle with no change to your score.
I do think that reasonable time limits are a good way of making a challenging scenario - I still remember, almost 25 years later, certain Squad Leader scenarios that turned on the outcome of a close combat in the objective building on the last phase of the last turn of the game.
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This is now a wonderful game system!
I bought CMSF when it first came out, and while I played it enough to get my money's worth, it didn't seem to have the extra quality that BF games usually have. Plus, I really missed the blue bar.
After having not played for a little over a year, I checked in to the see what was going on with CM:N and read about the changed that CMSF had undergone over the previous year, in particular the return of the blue bar. So I downloaded the Marines+Brits pack and have been playing it almost every day since then. It is a fantastic game, and I'm not generally a fan of modern war. I am still constantly amazed by how realistically my troops behave on the battlefield, how generally intuitive the interface is, and how intelligently the AI plays in scenarios.
As an example of how good the AI is, I played one scenario (I can't remember the name, but it was a small scenario) backwards (i.e., it's designed for Blue vs. AI, I played Red) 10 times, and the best I've been able to achieve is a tactical defeat. But I'm not losing because I don't have the appropriate equipment to do the job, or because I'm vastly outnumbered...I'm losing because the enemy advances from cover to cover, provides supporting fire, and advances(!) efficiently to its objectives. As much as I still love CMx1, its AI was not *nearly* as smart as this AI - even as it was vastly superior to all other wargame AIs. (And I remember being tremendously impressed in CMBO when an enemy tank appeared on the top of a hill and the turrets of all of my tanks rotated to face the enemy threat).
I'm glad I didn't realize how good CMSF could be last year, as I would have been much more disappointed!
But now I am really looking forward to CM:N; I can't wait to see how the more equal forces and less instantly lethal weaponry will play out. And to really see the difference between Kar 98s, Garands, SMGs, Sturmgewehre, etc.
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We really licked their *sses!
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Our long national nightmare is over!
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I think this is designed to realisticall reflectthe USAF's sometimes slipshod handling of nukes.
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Maybe I missed this on their site, but it looks like the only modding going on is for things that you can already mod in CM - new maps and new scenarios.Originally posted by 'Card:Perhaps, but it's hard to ignore examples like MadMinute Games. It's not a perfect comparison to BFC, but is similar in that they're a small group targeting what has to be considered a 'niche' market.
Their first game TC:Bull Run got some good reviews and sold fairly well. Their second game TC:2nd Manassas, was really little more than an expansion pack (new units, new battlefields, some tweaks to the engine) so you'd normally expect it to sell to the same people who bought the first one, right? Instead the sales of the second game have far outstripped the first, and as I understand it MM feels the primary reason for the increase is that they opened the second game up for mods. It's literally exploded what you can do with the basic game, and seems to have drawn in a lot of buyers who may or may not have been interested in the ACW.
[snip]
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Isn't one of the problems with caseless that it tends to overheat, in significant part due to the fact that you don't have hot brass being ejected to carry away a lot of the heat? Have there been any developments to make heat buildup less of a problem?Originally posted by Battlefront.com:Absolutely! I've done quite a bit of research into caseless ammo recently. The ultimate is to combine the benefits of a bullpup with caseless. Meaning, the trigger assembly is forward of the breach, the ammo is caseless. This gives you plenty of ammo at the ready, excellent barrel:total length ratio, and balance. The G-11 shows the benefits of this type of weapon once the kinks are worked out of it.
Steve
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That's what Pyrrhus said about the Romans. And it's extremely silly to talk about how we "won militarily" even as we lost the war. If "winning militarily" means anything, it needs to mean that you won the war. We can then go on to lose the peace...Originally posted by dynaman200:> The Chinese beat the U.S. to a draw in Korea with a lack of supply, armament and against U.S. air superiority.
The US was also tying it's own hands behind it's back by refusing to hit targets in China Proper (for the most part).
> The North Vietnamese beat the U.S. outright in Vietnam
Never militarily though, they won by wearing down US resolve.
But what we did in Vietnam was lose a war of attrition, even as we won every battle. But we didn't win every battle *by enough.* We took more casualties than we could afford. The Vietnamese took even more casualties, of course - but they could afford them. And the battles we won were not decisive; they didn't interfere with N. Vietnam's real warfighting ability.
But Vietnam (and Korea and WWII and the Civil War) aren't particularly relevant to the way the US fights wars now because our new warfighting doctrine (AirLand Battle and its friends) is the direct result of our failure in Vietnam.
The US strategy in the civil war was to use our superior manpower and material resources to outproduce and outman the CSA. Essentially, we fought and won a battle of attrition.
This was the exact same plan we used in WWII - the US plan was not rely on our technological prowess to overwhelm the Germans (good thing); we relied on our tremendous (and unmolested) industrial capacity to vastly outproduce the Nazis and then to engage in a war of attrition (in which we substituted using and losing materiel for men). But the materiel we used was not technologically superior to what the Germans had; it was generally good enough, and we had a lot of it. The Sherman gets a bad rap; it was a completely adequate tank - but certainly not technologically overwhelming compared to German vehicles. But we could produce lots of them (and part of the reason why more powerful tanks were not produced sooner had to do with the fact that we could produce and transport lots and lots of Sherman tanks). We also produced lots of artillery and radios and planes and fuel and trucks, etc. None of this was particularly better than what the Germans had...but quantity has a quality all its own, whether you are talking about soldiers or equipment.
Anyway, the american plan of relying on attrition and our overwhelming industrial capacity was a strategic failure in VN and (IMO) Korea. It works fine when you are locked in a life or death struggle with an adversary and can turn the entire economy to warfighting. It doesn't work as well when you are fighting a war on the side.
Anyway, the failure in VN, the lack of a clear victory in Korea, and the recognition that the USSR might also be pretty good at industrial production and attrition led the US to develop a new way of fighting wars, which is the American method described in the original post - it relies on *overwhelming* technological superiority, on having very well trained troops (necessary if you are relying on tech anyway) *and* on the principle of decisively destroying the enemy's warfighting ability. The point is to win like we won at 73 Easting; not to win like we won in Hue. Or even the Bulge.
But I think it's really hard to know how this would actually work against, say, the Soviets. One analysis of the new doctrine in the 1st Gulf war showed that it dramatically increased the cost of mistakes made by the enemy forces because the dramatically increased situational awareness allows the mistake to be fully exploited. (Cf. the Iraqi reinforcements apparently destined for Khafji that were destroyed in column while still far away.) This means that this sort of warfare may lead to particularly asymmetric losses against poorly trained and led troops. While there is undoubtedly still a significant advantage against well led but technologically inferior troops, it's not clear what the technology multiplier is.
And while I have no doubt that if the US had had to fight the USSR in 1989 for some reason the US would have prevailed decisively (because of technological superiority *and* because the USSR's doctrine severely underestimated the multiplying effect that sufficiently mature and synergistic technologies would have on warfighting).
And certainly today US methods still have the edge. But it's hard to know how great that edge is, since all potential adversaries have been feverishly studying US procedures in the 17 years since Gulf War I.
And, as was pointed out above, it's important to keep in mind that soviet doctrine as implemented by Syria or Iraq is sort of like US doctrine implemented by, say, Egypt - a poor reflection.
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Looks like a VW engine.Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):Small, compact, perfect for covert operations.
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Yes, Type I's are very flexible, especially if you buy the mail-order aftermarket kit that eliminates the loud overload warning. Still, though, I'd hate to blow up my living room.Originally posted by dalem:You could carry a satchel of Type Is - just twist the little knob on top for the overload setting and lob them like grenades.
-dale
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A lot of people swear by the Type II Phaser, but I really don't like it. It's bulky, doesn't fit my hand right, and I really don't like how the power pack attaches to the base. I'm always afraid that if I hit the phaser on the side of a door as I come through it, I'll end up facing the bad guys with just a power pack in my fist! Plus, for the weight of one Type II Phaser, you can carry 3-4 Type I's. It's easy to hold one in each hand and have two on your belt for back up. I even know people (well, really just one guy) who use Type I's as key fobs. (I don't though; I've always been afraid of accidentally vaporizing my car while trying to unlock it in a dark parking garage.)
The Type II does have more power, but the Type I can disintegrate a man with no problem at all common ranges - and really, who needs more power than that?
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This is a statement so vague as to be meaningless. Customers want free products. Customers want flying cars that last 50 years and run on tap water. So giving customers free, reliable, water-based cars is a no-brainer.Originally posted by Cid250:It's a valid rule for any kind of company, of any size... any business starts just because you fill the needs of some customers.
That's why is very important to take a look to the real needs of the customers. It's a well known universal rule of the economy.
[...]
[snip]
Other products are trickier.
J.K. Rowling wrote a wildly successful children's book. Many other people during this time wrote children's books that were not nearly as successful. In one sense, of course, this is because Rowling gave people what they wanted and the other authors did not. But it's not as if that explains Rowlings success and the other authors' failure.
Everyone who is not an idiot is trying to give the customer what they want, within reason. (More accurately, they are trying to produce something that customers will pay more for than it costs to make it). It's just that having the ability to predict what customers will value is not at all simple - it is, generally, a matter of intuition.
(Obviously it is a mistake to know what customers want and deliberately ignore it (see Cupholders in German Automobiles in the 80's).
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I'd like hyper-realistic water, snow, and mud terrain. If it's muddy, I want to see my troops struggling to pull their boots out of the sticky mire. If it's snowy, I want to see drifts and troops fighting their way through them...I also want to see wheeled vehicles, including motorcycles and bicycles, slip on icy roads. For water, I want lots of rivers, streams, and creeks, and I want boats to realistically cross them...and get carried away by the current if it is strong and the casualties can't paddle hard enough. Or I want to see it sink...
I want to see cool explosions if you blow a bridge, and splash animations as the debris lands in the river below. I want there to be rules for what happens if an explosion knocks a horse off a bridge and the horse lands on a fully loaded assault boat.
Or if a *team of horses*, harnessed together and pulling an ammunition cart is rammed by a jeep and they all plunge into the river below.
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I'm downloading it even as I type this...
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Yes, I'm really looking forward to those, too.Originally posted by Mishga:Glad you liked the maps, Andrew.
Mark and Myself worked on them and tested, tested, tested and then ....tested some more to ensure a decent play experience, hopefully from both sides of the battle.
There is a new and improved map pack coming this weekend with another stonking 20 maps/scenarios all with good AI scripts. I really hope you like these ones too!
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I mentioned this briefly in another thread, but I think it's important and worth expanding upon. A few days ago, I downloaded the 20 new QB maps posted on CMMODS by MarkEzra and used them to replace the QB maps that came with the game. This has, at least so far, vastly improved my QBs. The AI controlled enemy troops are now behaving much more realistically. They seem smarter and I'm losing against the AI in QBs now because they are playing smarter (and not due to troop selection issues, weird set up locations, etc.)
Alternatively, there may be something in the new maps that makes me dumber.
This makes me wonder to what extent some of the unrealistic behavior we sometimes see has to do with mapmakers and scenario designers still being at the beginning of the learning curve.
More importantly - and I think this is also worth emphasizing - the stratAI's behavior on the new maps is *much* better than it would have been in CMx1. Better StratAI was one of the promised benefits for CMx2 that I, at least, was looking forward to..and based on playing of QBs vs. the AI so far it seems to be present.
Here is a concrete example. I'm doing a meeting engagement; I have a small Syrian armor force with a platoon of T-72s and a handful of other infantry. I've forgotten exactly what map I chose, but it's fairly hilly, with a sort of saddle in the middle that's open, with higher hills on both sides of the saddle. My troops and the AI troops both start on slopes that lead up to the saddle.
On the right side of the map there is a fairly covered approach that leads to the other side of the map; it is only wide enough for two tanks to pass through at it's narrowest part, but it is screened from the rest of the map by higher hills (and by the map edge on the other side).
I'm not sure I would have done this against a live player, but I send two of my tanks hunting down the narrow covered route and hold the other tank and infantry in reserve in the center. But the AI was too smart for this plan; it left put an infantry squad with ATGMs in cover covering the route; they destroyed my two tanks before I even spotted them. Just a few turns later, the AI's main armor force crested the ridge and my remaining tank and most of my infantry were immediately destroyed by the bradleys and M-1s of the main force.
A couple of points: 1st, at the risk of being repetitive, this was a QB, not a scenario. IME, the CMx1 AI would never have covered that smallish lane with, say, an AT gun. In CMx1, I may have had a fight on my hands once I was in the AI's rear area (because I would be outnumbered and because AI tanks sometimes mill around in rear areas, and so might have been facing me coincidentally).
2d, the AI force that came through the middle was in an effective formation - the M-1s and bradleys led, with the infantry 100-200 meters behind them. (The armor was kind of in a gaggle rather than tight platoons, but they were close enough together to provide supporting fire for each other and to concentrate fire on enemy units without being right on top of each other.) I don't think that a CMx1 force would have had such an efficient formation - IME they tended be in a wide line formation, which did not provide good supporting fire to other units if there was a lot of cover.
3d, the AI force moved quickly - more quickly than the the relatively leisurely AI tended to move in x1. I suspect that they were Hunting, but I can't be sure. Regardless, they got to the center of the map sooner than I was expecting.
Anyway, while I don't want to claim that this is perfect, I do want to note that, with the new maps, the strat AI is both (1) not broken and (2) better than x1's. And I can't wait to see how maps develop after the makers have been doing this for a while.
But my advice would be to go to CMMODs and download the new maps.
(My advice to BFC would be to include these new maps in 1.04, if possible).
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Yeah - I swapped out the existing QB maps for the new ones - and it's like I'm playing a completely different game. So much so that I wonder if there were as many problems with the game as I thought, and more problems with the QB maps.
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Pretty good, although I thought Cobra II's (much longer) description was better, especially at showing Fog of War issues.
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I had no idea that programming was so violent.
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For more straight-up fighting, use Syrian special forces - they are really quite competent and have a better weapons and ammo loadout than the normal Syrians.Originally posted by ToadMan:As for routing and morale, I think that the Syrians become suppressed a bit too easily and/or the US not easily enough.
[snip]
The Syrians, well they're fighting "at home" and while they're less coherent, I think they're probably also a bit more likely to die for their cause and so not break quite so easily.
As it is, when I've played as the Syrians they're usually pinned quickly and basically become uncontrollable while the US units in the same situation are still under control. Seems a bit back to front to me.
TM.
In CMBB terms, Syrian regulars are Russian Green/Conscript troops; Syrian SFs are Russian Regular/Crack troops. (US troops are gamey crack German Fallschirmjaeger...) Also, every Syrian SF squad has an RPG-29, and there is a separate RPG 29 team attached to every SF (two squad) platoon.
IMO, they are the best matchup for Stryker units in QBs...
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When I played this as the Syrians, I had a similar experience - the US infantry were kind of caught in a crossfire and basically went to ground while the Syrian infantry ineffectively shot at them with AKs, slowly wearing them down.Originally posted by thewood:But Jason, wouldn't you expect that the US infantry, after taking 8/14 casualties would probably broken off or gone for cover.. I find that anything over +1 for the US makes them fanatics.
But I'm not sure that this is unrealistic - I think it's certainly more realistic than what would have happened in CMx1, where the squad would have eventually broken, run for the rear, and gotten slaughtered. Assuming it didn't get caught in a loop causing it to run back and forth until it finally died..
In this case, they stayed in place, returned fire sporadically (they were fully surpressed), and were eventually picked off...but I think that is not unrealistic (given that there was no cover to speak of), and certainly more realistic than would have been the case in CMx1.
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It seems to me that the BMPs are a little too hesitant to fire their weapons, too...although another problem could be that they gunner has been killed. This has happened to me a couple of times - the stryker's 12.7 MG can penetrate the BMP fairly easily from the front, causing crew casualties...and it seems like the gunner is the one most often killed. Apparently the driver can't fire the weapons on his own.
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Using the system as Steve explains it does make a certain amount of sense. Although I do miss more hotkeys and even right click menus.
Is there any reason why the hotkey customization function couldn't allow you to use special keys (i.e., ctrl-a or alt-f) in assigning keystrokes? If that were an option, you would be able to assign more memorable hotkeys - probably almost all of the ones you would regularly use - to ctrl-key combinations. I.e. Ctrl-T would be target, Ctrl-F would be fast, Ctrl-Q would be quick, Ctrl-S would be slow, Ctrl-H would be hunt, etc. Absent a programmy reason not to do this, wouldn't this alleviate a certain amount of UI complaints?
Next release: Nato-Modul!
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
You guys have *completely* misunderstood the revolutionary nature of the MG4.
The new German doctrine calls for every 3 MG4s to be accompanied by the KQLLS1 - the artificial spring barrel quenching system. In addition to cooling overheated MG4 barrels, the artificial spring also provides a source of drinking water for the platoon, a means of heating MREs (3 heated MG4 barrels simultaneously placed in the spring will bring it to the boiling point), and may be left behind to provide a source of water for the indigenous population, which assists in nation building.