markshot

Thanks. That is probably it.

Veteran

I will need to check.

I set an engagement arc of 100M for a pillbox that was mounted by infantry. However, it seems they are firing on targets way beyond 100M. Thanks.

Pelican Pal, How do you manage to be all the places which you need to be to avert AI stupidity? Thanks.

I am right now playing two WEGO style games and one RTS. WEGO = CMx2(WWII) and Alea Jacta Est (ancient Rome operation; a turn is one month) [AGE engine from former AGEOD] RTS = GTMF/GTOS In general, I find WEGO much more relaxing and contemplative. AJE does not have movies, but it has an event log which covers every major event over the month. There are informational screens and overlays. Actual battles provide full AARs which are initially gibberish until you learn how to read them. I have played Panther Games (RDOA/HTTR/COTA/BFTB/CO2) and the GT games above. I think RTS games to allow for strategic play as opposed to click fest require: (1) High-level intelligent agents which work with/for the player (your subordinates) and (2) a well designed order delay system that heavily penalizes micro-managing.

What do I mean "WEGO requires conviction"? I had previously started a moderate lengthy thread discussing GTMF vs CMx2. One thing I failed to say that I would like to say now, is that WEGO requires conviction by the >>> developers <<<. With RTS, there is so much going on that is virtually impossible to see all or even 90%. This is not at true with WEGO. I know many people here scrutinize every movie which might represent a departure from the real universe in which we live. If I was programming this stuff, I would say that there is much more pressure for CM than GTMF. A buglet is easily missed in GTMF until the community decides there is one and starts hunting it. Where as in CM not a single frame of the game is ignored. There is always someone who is educated and very sharp watching very carefully. I only knew "Martin" (who is gone), but I believe Steve programs this stuff. Well, a tip of my hat, to know that every line of code will be examined by someone. Granted I have seen many comments, but given the forensic analysis this game receives ... it surprising that there is so little to criticize. Well done! (from one software engineer to another)

I play WEGO. How do any of you play anything beyond TINY in RTS mode? (It would be like Blitz Chess for me.) Thanks.

I play WEGO. On the average for medium battles, how many times to view the movie. Why? For myself, I would say 3-7. Required for situational awareness. Of course, I enjoy watching as well. Thanks.

It seems that CM tends to drop the spot on units when they go to ground. Perhaps that is too easy unless behind a wall. Also, if a mortar, HMG, ATG ... the former are going to take a minute to be ready to displace, and the latter ... well it ain't going anywhere. Also, I remember that CMAK introduced dust which was very nice. But the AI did not understand what a column of dust meant. Does CMx2v4 now understand what a column of dust implies or is the AI still dust blind? Thanks. --- We are talking about spotting and GTMF and CMx2. In GTMF, you can hear enemy equipment which has yet to be spotted by virtue of moving the camera. I think this is bad. The volume and direction is pretty accurate. In worst case situation, troops are at a FUP and you cannot see them, but you have registered arty upon the location (like a CM TRP, but in GTMF a minimal number of rounds are sent down range to complete the process). So, you could slaughter an entire company not based on recon, but on sounds from invisible troops. In general, sound handling is pretty good. Arty flashes before the rumble reaches the observer. Certain shells come down without that railroad train loud roar. But I don't like this acoustic recon by the player. For a game that prides itself on realism, this is a red flag.

In a number of ways, GTOS allowed more control. Like you can lock the position of deployed units. You cannot imagine what a convenience that is. I simply cannot comprehend why Andrey removed that. You could also deploy elevated or depressed. Now I can understand why that was removed. In theory it sounds good, but in practice while checking with the LOS tool, it rarely ever achieved what you want. As such it was more misleading than useful.

Thanks. That is good to know. Do they recover quicker if pulled out of the line?

That depends on fitness and environmental conditions. I only fast most if they are going to hold and wait. If they must keep moving, then I move or quick step. In former game, they recovered quicker if they were HIDE, but I don't know about this game.

I both like and dislike the UI with floating windows and multi-monitor support; more info can be displayed, but it wasn't really hashed out. I have a 30" TV 1080p mainly for games and and 21" LCD (1600x1200) mainly use for work and old 4:3 games. BFTB has a very crisp interface. I have not played for a long time, I just don't have 1/2 to a day planning a battle.

Harry, Your issue with BTFB is something we well knew in the Beta Team. As the system had no scripting, you could place historical units in historical positions, but the AI would work out the best plan of defense and attack, and go for it. Thus, it was hard to get a historical start in a static defense situation. And so, most scenarios gave both side objectives with forces in motion. You have hit upon a known weakness.

In CM one 88 can be invincible at a distance. In GTOS/GTMF, you will get your kill, but be prepared for the wrath of the Red Army.

Personally, I always thought fast moves were better put on women.

The best order delay system was found in Panther Game products. It considered many cost and load factors. It made time a dimension and getting inside the OPFOR's command loop (OODA) a big plus. You had to observe and know when to call off an attack and consolidate or stage the next as things could take one hour to 10 hours. So, you could micro manage anything, but in practice you wanted to play the BIG game. Also, this made it more scalable than any game on the market. Battles scaled by two orders of magnitude while player workload perhaps only scaled by 2-4X. (I only micro-managed arty as it was the most valuable resource on the battlefield.) But there is another side to Panther Games' and Graviteam's delay systems. It is a must have for making a high level simulation that leaves micro management on the table. Why? Because your skilled BG and spreadsheet gamer will always win by expert micro-management. Thus, the gaming system must make that counter productive. What Andrey is doing is forcing you to play the game he designed and not reintroduce CM play style to his system. If you own GTOS and GTMF, you can see where Andey is going. He is moving combat up as opposed to down. Some examples: * GTOS had keys for deploy in high ground, deploy in low ground (dead space), deploy in something I forget ... not in GTMF. * GTOS has platoons and lots. GTMF has both Battle Groups and Platoons, but I think this is transitional, and Battle Groups will replace platoons. * GTOS had only TBS operations with multiple battles where the sequence can be cherry picked by the player. The GTMF style is now WEGO and even if you TBS, the system picks your next battle, not the player. * In GTMF many fine grained features have been consolidated into smaller set of choices. You can see this in game style play options. I don't think this was a UI simplification choice, but again the move towards a higher level conceptualization of the system. I have also scanned the forums ... he answers questions ... but has never responded to this. Steve joins the discussion when something is dear to his heart. Andrey will not discuss something when it is dear to his heart. But what he won't discuss tells you what is absolute for the engine's evolution. I think this is a smart move: * There are a ton of 3D battle field games. But GTMF is unique for its scope, with 3D representation. * I spent about 15 years with Panther Games; the best AI and operational system on the market. But you played it on a 2D map with variable time speed and counters. One of the most often requested features was for a 3D representation of the action. People wanted to see the carnage. I think this is part of the reason that the game never broke out from its niche within a niche market. I think Andrey has already broken out of the most narrow niche (because he has a 3D) ... I don't think he is going to rival the TW franchise (ever), but I think there is still much more market share to pick up.

Yep, I have been working through that vague confusing stuff all day. I have been depending on YouTube videos to teach me, but despite all the work put into their production, there are errors ... or GT modified things. Examples: YouTube: Observed on map arty does not need a link; only AI auto fire. Not true. YouTube: A mortar platoon with 6 tubes; 1 officer/2 tube; and a battery commander. It is the firing officers who spot, and the battery commander who supervises the mortar crews. It is actually the other way around. I spent a great deal of time on the mission editor as it is only slightly documented. Button says "trigger" ... rollover says "trigger". 1.5 hours of digging produces another player who knows the answer. Things that only make sense to Russian programmers: The Master Volume does not control SFX or Voice volumes??? Choosing a name for your mission save filename causes it not to be saved. Eventually, I will understand well enough to play, but be missing quite a bit of nuance. But I want to say this not to just GraviTeam but much larger companies like Paradox ... it is a lack of engineering professionalism to produce complex software with woefully inadequate documentation. In this regards, BTS/BFC has always done very well. The manuals are comprehensive. A player with some combat and game concepts could learn to play just from the manual alone. The tutorials rather than frustrating the player really does help one get up to speed. When evaluating a game ... just like support ... professionally produced manuals/tutorials are very much part of the value proposition. It easier to excuse a small indie company that charges a fair price for their product than Paradox which can run you upto $500 USD for a complete game without a manual. With all that said GTMF/GTOS are truly one of the kind gems.

I want to correct another incorrect statement which I made. SABOW was a 1st/3rd person tank simulator built with the GTOS engine like Steel Beasts. Tank Warfare Tunisia 1943 is not analogous to the above. It is just the GTMF engine set in that theater ... like there a 4 WWII games using the CMx2 engine. Mechanics are the same, but content is different.

I have noticed that you get sort of a lateral rolling barrage with a single tube and a linear fire mission. It tends to start at one end and walk across. Of course, if you knew the timing, and which end was which, you sort of have a rolling barrage.

Best to recon the path before the sprint unless you know the enemy is falling back in disarray. The OPFOR AI is brutal if it is set up already. I have lost 2/3s like that. Also, the worst is when they get pinned midway and continue to bleed for another 4-5 more minutes. (Unlike a human, the AI not smart enough to let a small force pass and wait for the main body before opening up.)

Yes, it could be exacerbated by sound mods. I did consider that. I did as all suggested, turned down overall volume. But I am sure I had seen peak limiting in SB Creative cards in the past for gaming.

Harry, I recently read that the AI plays very differently based on time given. Thus, for a 2 hour fight, you will see a lot more probing/recon than one hour fight.

It is important to keep in mind that Harry is really reviewing GTOS. Most of the community is not playing that, but GTMF (aka Mius). GTMF was released in 2016. Originally, the two were quite a bit closer than today. I am no expert, but some obvious differences are: * A better UI * Improved mechanics * Improved performance (see below) * Improved orders simulation * WEGO for the campaign map or the older TBS (but still less gamey). * More statistics * Battle groups (although in most cases; most content has a BG version and a platoon version). BGs reduce micro-management. * Improved mission builder (no map editor; no campaign editor) Harry does mention this above, but it important to note that most of the community has moved on to GTMF and if you were buying, you would buy GTMF and not GTOS. What are SABOW and TUNISIA? They are 1st/3rd person tank simulations using the GTOS and GTMF engines respectively. * So, buying GTOS is like buying CMBO/CMBB/CMAK ... for sure great games. * Most would buy CMBN/CNFI/CMRT/CMFB these days ... or correspondingly GTMF. Finally, if you would buy/play CM than you would buy/play GTOS or GTMF. If you would buy play Steel Beasts, then you would buy/play SABOW/TUNISIA. NOTE: I am very impressed by the programming (as a software engineer) of these games. They do a lot work and display beautiful graphics - VERY SMOOTHLY. Over the last 40 years, the art of performance programming has been lost. Why? Hardware became cheap and people expensive. But clearly whoever does the coding is "old school". So, how can the newer program run better? GTOS is 32 bit, and GTMF is 64 bit. For a game, this means much more of the textures and models can be loaded and decompressed before launch. I believe the program uses multiple cores, but nothing like a chess engine which scales linearly based on cores. The games are not CM competitors and the style and feature sets are not subset/superset and only minimally overlap. It is mainly about you personally and how you like to game. Although I will say that the CM UI is more intuitive, much better documented, and there is a larger community of English speakers to help. However, given the current size of the English speaking GTMF community and some excellent YouTube materials, both games are NOW much more approachable than say in 2014 (GTOS).