Robert Mayer

This will be my fifth E3 in a row. God, I hate them. A long flight in coach, days spent on my feet in an ear-splittingly loud convention hall, bad or no lunches (dinners sometimes make up for it) and a fair amount of high-pressure press room work to boot. It is exciting though, sometimes--and it's a great place to watch idiots at work/play. Drop by the Computer Games/theglobe.com booth if you like, any CM'ers who are visiting the show, and look me up.

Hmm, sort of a "operational intel" variable, maybe. Say the designer of a scenario can specify whether to use Operational Intel (OI) or not. If he doesn't, it's like it is now, If he does, each side gets an OI rating. For instance, maybe the Germans would have an OI rating of 2 and the Russians they are facing in a 1944 battle would have an OI of 4. Mabye 20% of the Russian units would be revealed in some fashion before the first turn, and 40% of the German units would be revealed to the Russian player at the same time (percentages pulled out of a hat, BTW). Let designers also specify which units are exposed instead, so they can set up battles where one side always knows where that AT gun is (for whatever reason) maybe, too. Dunno how much this would add to the game in terms of enjoyment, but it seems it would allow the simulation of certain types of engagements better. Then again, I'd rather have the work put into a good night fighting system <g>. Or horses!

Ah, who cares about silly things like machine guns when there are horses to get into the game!

I think the reason for having a rarity-based point system _as an option_ is for those of us who want quick-battle flexibility, and historical fidelity. We want quick, random battles that will more or less resemble an "average" or at least "feasible" encounter on the WWII battlefield, rather than a battle balanced purely for game purposes but lacking any sort of historical equilibrium.

Well, with relative spotting we should be seeing better ambushes, I hope....

I've been training my dog to attack tanks, too. I set a bowl of kibble under the car, and whenever she eats, I shout "boom!" really loudly. So far I haven't been attacked by a single tank in my neighborhood!

I think "silly and unimportant" refers mainly to the overall sense of the game. Obviously, a bunch of rockets landing on your position is rather significant, and quite un-silly, but generally company commanders don't worry much about the tactical employment of indirect support rockets, except to know where not to go when they come down, I'd suspect.

Try HPS Simulations and their Panzer Campaigns series. They're done by John Tiller, the guy who basically did the Battleground and Campaign series for TalonSoft. There are three battles so far: Smolensk '41, Normandy '44, and Kharkov '42, all at the battalion level mostly. Yeah, it's 2D stuff with counters, but the maps and units are very attractive, and they've just upgraded the 3D view mode to include counter information, so it's actually usable. East Front II and the fully-upgraded West Front stuff, as well as the fully upgraded Rising Sun (Pacific) games of the Campaign series are actually pretty fun, if you don't let the granularity of the scale and some weird design decisions scare you off. [This message has been edited by Robert Mayer (edited 02-16-2001).]

Personally, I think those guys were all smart. Even if they noticed each other (not a given, seeing that one was lugging a heavy weapon and the other was trying to fight with one while under fire), who would benefit from getting into a short-ranged pistol fight? Best to just let it be .

Well, the subject's been brought up before, and it seems IIRC that the general word is that the Powers that Be consider such campaigns a bit "gamey," and out of synch with the game's realistic bent. Me, I am with you; I love campaigns with carried over formations. I care not if that aspect of the game isn't realistic; I can play historical scenarios for that. I would love to be given a company, then a reinforced company then a battalion, etc. over the course of a campaign, with units gaining experience from green guys just out of basic to hardened veterans, etc. Who knows? Maybe it will happen one day....

Agreed, Steve, the game does an admirable job at punishing you defensively for putting too many guys together. The point in question I think is whether it punishes you offensively as well. One could argue that sufficient penalties to massing, in the form of increased casualties, makes it irrelevant whether the game doesn't penalize your ability to fire that mass, because massing will get your guys killed faster. But that dodges the question, partly on philosophical grounds and partly because it's always possible that you'll avoid the negative consequences of massing (no one fires at you for some reason) but still get the benefits (unearned) of overconcentration on the attack. I won't lose any sleep over it one way or the other, however. CM does penalize you for bunching up, no doubt about it. Most of the time, using sound tactics is the best way to fight. So I'm happy . It's just that there are some areas that could use perhaps some tweaking, if possible. True for all games.

Jeez, that's tough. In a laboratory setting, 3% with rare probability of kill sounds uninviting. But in "real life," whatever that is (I've never fired a bazooka at a Jagdpanzer, nor have I been shot at to my knowledge!), I suppose the zook team might not anlyze things that closely. But that brings up another question. If we, as players, can make decisions based on discrete bits of info like hit percentages and kill chances, shouldn't the AI do the same? In that case, if we as the human would most always eschew the shot, shouldn't the AI do the same? Admittedly, this is a pretty easy example: few if any humans would take that shot. But what about 10% to hit? 20? With slightly greater chances to kill? Any trigger level the AI uses will be arbitrary and will tick someone off ; goodness knows I've yelled at the computer for firing off the last 'shreck round at a halftrack half way across the map before. But I'm not sure we could ever get a formula that would satisfy everyone... ...short of being able to set at least general engagement parameters for units; i.e., SOPs.....

I think CavScout has hit upon something that's pretty significant, the idea of diminishing returns. We already have realistic penalties for cramming in too many soldiers in a small space in terms of incoming enemy fire--arty on top of too many men makes lots of corpses. But there's less of a disincentive to cram together loads of men on the assault (where you're not likely to get hit with arty that close to the enemy's lines). I'd suspect that realistically you reach a point where you have too many men in too close proximity to each other to effectively deliver all of their firepower. Is there any way to simulate this at least? Perhaps not without the performance hit BTS is talking about--it would require some more elaborate LOS/LOF calculations I suppose. But it would be nice. Still, with turns being one minute, and a lot of things being abstracted, it's not too bad--there's a lot you can "factor in" and assume in the internices between discrete actions depicted on screen.

According to GAME Studios, the new incarnation of what was once The Learning Company's entertainment division, which was once part of Mattel Interactive and which includes SSI (now as a brand within GAME Studios), Harpoon 4 is slated for publication in July of this year. This info was as of January 10. Now, I've been trying to get a hold of someone over there to talk about Harpoon 4, and haven't heard squat. I talked with Larry Bond at E3 last year, and the game sounded good, but there wasn't enough to see to make a call on how far along it was. The team seemed pretty good, though, and from my conversation with Mr. Bond it seemed that most of what wargamers would like was going into the mix. Where all that stands now is hard to say. SSI in the past has had problems with releasing games in semi-finished states. Now that the upheaval surrounding the Mattel-Learning Company debacle has begun to subside, we may indeed start seeing more games from this venerable company. How good they'll be is anyone's guess.

Hehe, I didn't say fausts didn't fire, just that my guys seem to not fire them...I think they get killed too fast . Shrecks definitely kick butt though. Still, I have to agree that sans fausts or shrecks or zooks, killing armor with infantry has become a rarity for me.

I can't even remember the last time I saw a German infantry unit actually fire a faust at anything, anything at all....

I played the first few turns as the Americans, then switched over and tried it from the distaff side. I like a lot of things about this operation. It's big, it gives you a lot of toys to play with, and you have some interesting decisions to make about setups. I do have some concerns, however, that are probably related to CMs AI rather than the design of the op. It's very possible to start a battle with the enemy deployed inches away from your front line, leading to some furious exchanges and a 25 turn battle being decided in four minutes <g>. And the American defenders have a tendency to launch very ill-considered counterattacks when they should be hunkering down to ambush the Germans. The attackers, for their part, often fail to concentrate their power or support their armor. But those are CM issues. Overall, the op is quite nicely done, and it's indeed impressive when you can bring that American arty to bear.

While I agree with you that some form of keeping track of your troops would be a nice thing (I subscribe to the "this is a game first and foremost" school of thought), this issue has certainly been discussed at length: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/005175.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/008614.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/008662.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/008759.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/008782.html I believe the upshot is that we'll probably get something to help track troops--maybe--but probably not a full roster.

I dunno, I for one would pay to see the Pikachu Battalion in action!

I'd like to see fuzzier ending times as well. Of course, it's a tough thing to do right I guess. Turn limits are an abstraction and a game-play convenience mostly--a "real" battle doesn't usually end because the combatants look at their watches and see that twenty-five minuts have passed . Time is useful though because most engagements will have a timeframe within which the task at hand should be accomplished. We have to have time limts though because the reasons for breaking off battles in reality doesn't usually exist in games. That is, in real life someone would make a command decision that the attack was fruitless and should be called off, or that the position couldn't be held and thus it was time to withdraw. Battles tend to go on, in the absence of environmental changes like darkness or weather, until one side or the other is exhausted or chooses to stop fighting. That would take waaaaay too long for most gamers if CM did it that way <g>.

The question might be, is it Hasbro we're dealing with here, or Infogrames, which bought Hasbro Interactive? Hasbro sold off the ASL rights to Multi-Man Publishing (www.advancedsquadleader.com). I don't know if that includes the computer rights. Infogrames has the rights to computer versions of pretty much everything Hasbro (and perhaps AH as well), while Hasbro retains non-computer game rights. So, if lawyers are the culprits here, it's tough to sort out whose legal eagles are doing the swooping.....

I use a GeForce 2 (OEM, from Dell) and don't use Anti-Aliasing at all. I've found that works nicely for me at high res. I really haven't tried using the AA feature--does it help a lot?

It seems that the main difference between an APC and an IFV is firepower, at least in practice. AFVs tend to be "armored taxis," with maybe a MG or two, while IFVs usually have a light autocannon plus an ATGM, or something equivalent. Besides, maybe it's easier to get funding when you tell Congress or Parliament or whomever "it's an Infantry FIGHTING Vehicle" than when you say "it's an Armored Personnel Carrier." As for doctrine vs. reality, a very good point. What then should a game replicate? Armies are built and equipped according to doctrine, but they have to fight according to the reality on the ground; the example of the US and its antitank policies in WWII is an excellent illustration of what happens when doctrine doesn't match up with reality. If a game assumes armies fight (for purposes of AI modeling and the like) according to doctrine, then you get weird things happening, and most likely you get an AI that gets its butt kicked, as players will learn and it won't. If you base your AI on what the armies in question should do, though, will you compromise historical accuracy? I rather suspect you need to model it closer to what happened, rather than to what was planned, but the question is a live one.

Off the top of my head, Thomas L. Jentz's two-volume set Panzertruppen: The Complete Guide to the Creation & Combat Employment of Germany's Tank Force, covering 1939-42 and 1943-45 (Vols. 1 & 2) has a lot of excerpts from after action reports and field tactical briefings and training stuff. He's also got a book on Tiger tactics, which I don't have, and one on tactics in the early part of the war in North Africa, which I do have (and it's pretty good for German and British stuff in the Western Desert). I'm sure there are others, but I don't have my resources with me at the moment....

I just got that message too. My guess, and this is <FONT COLOR="red">only a guess</FONT>, is that some sort of copyright problem reared its ugly head....