markshot

Well, time ain't the problem for me in this one. But timing may be. In the sense that the Germans counter-attack. I think I need to get deployed into good positions to take them out as they rush to counter-attack. The other part of it is I am unsure what event in the scenario triggers their counter-attack, Killing a pillbox? Taking out an AA gun? Stepping on certain area of ground? I was actually moving slowly and carefully as I have 170min for a scenario (small) which really is a lot of time, but I think only greater speed on my part will jam up their counter attack. --- Well, we will find out.

That was 40 years ago? No, I don't reload from saves. I play until, I have lost too many of men to achieve my objectives. At which case, I record a loss my log. I will replay, unless I feel the designer was making absurd demands of the player. And so, replay starting with a reload and deployment. So, I don't know, but like I said might be nice the AAR screen to see: Plan 3 of 5 ... give you some idea if replay is worthwhile (even if you won) --- I used to play Sub Command and Dangerous Waters. They both have very powerful scenario designers and all types of levels of randomness possible. Also, truly the scripting language was very close to a general purpose programming language. But this resulted in two problems with player written scenarios: (1) Not knowing what the real victory conditions are. They is something to be said for the simplicity of kill ratio or flags. Sometimes, it got so bad, you would have read to script to find out what was expected of you. (2) Given the great deal of functionality, quite a few of the scenarios had logic bugs in them. No you could not crash the game. But you could easily create a scenario where if the play arrived 5 minutes late nothing would ever happen ... and player could patrol 1/2 day waiting for the action. So, for player use, I am not in favor of very complex scenario editors. I think BFC has reached the bounds of both map and scenario design where an ordinary Joe can build something worth while. Take Graviteam's quick scenario designer. It is easy, graphic, and very intuitive. Anyone who plays can set up something interesting in 30 minutes. (But you cannot go beyond.) I think the the optimal approach for companies that want something powerful would be a two level approach. Something with intuitive and easy defaults, but permits very detailed elaboration for your hardcore designers. Effectively Graviteam Quick Mission Editor with BFCs elaborations (or SubComand and/or Dangerous Waters trigger language). PS: Does anyone know that BFC was actually the first publisher of Dangerous Waters? That's right; a sub sim!

I have to admit I am very stubborn. It is very hard for me to just move on. Easier if it is a player created scenario. When I was starting my career, one of my managers wrote on my annual performance review, 'Mark does not tolerate short comings in others easily.' She meant this as a negative in regards to my team interactions. I wrote in the box next to it for my comments. 'Thank you. Few really understand the value excellence. I will NOT slack off.' So, it is very hard me to just write in my scenario log I keep "detour".

Now, with AI plans, I am not even sure did I figure it or was I fighting against a different plan. It might be nice if the AAR indicated what plan you did battle with.

That is a good point. I have been on "Warrior" as I found seeing my own forces was a pain, but I guess "Iron" means you can determine more easily who knows what without reverse checking off of clicking on enemy units? If your forces are in touch, then broadly speaking they have a similar picture?

Are you guys saying that I could finally win a scenario? I thought I needed to be, at least, as smart as a lab rat. THIS IS GREAT NEWS! AI - LOOKOUT - I AM COMING FOR YOU!

The game has no natural breaks. You are look moments when situation changes. It is at these junctures. You will change your plan and issue new orders. you have different speeds. Also you have run form X time. So, if you want conduct a review every hour; easy to do.

I should note this is an planners; even more than CM. Given multiple days mutlple objectives multiple reinforcements complex OOB large map you expect to spend some time studying the situation. Also. Usually there is some reduction in order delays for gout #1. This the assumption of an initial plan. This time is pure gold. Don’t waste it.

I will give you your first 4. Tips. 1 bridge garrisons usually entrench. They will never move. Get screen shot before contacts age away. You wii want to know if you want the bridge intact. 2 if you call your own fire missions put the filter on current. Don’t waste shells on old contacts 3 if you come across an HQ unit call in some fire. If it routes, it cannot give orders. It’s company’s will be dead meat staring at their boots. 4 except for arty all other units you should leave to the AI. Arty may be as much 50% of you fire power. I include mortars in arty, but for scenarios with many units. Leave them organic.

Steam guided looks quite good. Whatch Dave’s video and read manual at your leasure.

Sorry I have not looked. I an iPad. I will check tomorrow.

My suggestion if you never played before. Get the free base. Understand the counter and F keys. Turn off order delays. Don’t worry winning. Just issues command to forces and watch the AI giving realistic orders on your behalf. Turn on realistic order delays and see orders propagate thru the chain of command. Why do this? 1/3 what you are buying is the experience of real operational command. If it doesn’t feel totally new and refreshing to you, then it may not be worth investing. if on the other hand if you like to be a general without micro-management, then it will suit you fine.

Things I had not mentioned yesterday. There is FOW with a scenario starting maybe with some known contacts, and then contact fade with time. Objectives are not generally symmetric. There is a realtime WIN/LOSS meter, but it is kind of rough as certain elements done get added in to the end. There is differential LOS. So, tanks on the move a for likely to generate a contact for infantry dug into a wooded hill while the tanks simply cannot see the unit which is calling in arty on them. Perhaps your very shortest scenario will be 12 hours and longest like a couple of weeks. Least units on your side maybe 20 and most maybe 400-500. There is a filterable message log of events of different precedence. Also, every unit has its own log that you can take a look at. Besides overview overlays that alter counters so that you can get the big picture, you can unit and force info down to weapon counts and ammunition counts. Unlike those who played the earlier games, you could not get the stats on every system in the game; you now can along with a little snapshot. (gotta run)

From the start there was realtime, head to head. I don't know if coop was added. It would be kind of odd, since unlike other games, PLAYER is always the senior commander. So, as reinforcements arrive, you may actually find that your command changes. We had discussed PBEM many times, but the problem was always how to do it fairly? It is very much an OODA loop simulation. So, if you are analyzing and ordering faster than the OPFOR, you are inside his OODA loop. It means you got him dancing to your tune. But now you break at arbitrary point for PBEM to allow updated commands, depending on where orders are in their execution, it could be quite unfair to one player or the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

Perhaps the single most complex order is ATTACK. When I say complex I don't mean what you do (but you have options), but what the AI does for you. You'll begin with a move (probably road march), but with proper security of lead guard, trailing guard, side guards ... etc ... Despite, personally, I would say you should not be sending a brigade on an attack that you did not recon first. They will reach the FUP (form up point). The developers are Australian, I think we would say rally point. There they will shake out into formation. You can watch orders propagating through the chain of command. You will see armor do this quite a bit faster than infantry ... the best armor will almost do this on the fly. You can specify an H-hour for coordinating or if you want to cover open ground before the sky begins to lighten; and be in small arms range at dawn. Attack begins ... and they advance. Indirect fire art is going to pull away, but in range to provide fire support. You will see mortars and other heavy weapons drop off and deploy once contact is made. Troops will continue forwards and close. The counters have different overlay modes so you can know what is going on. Is my command doing a replan as the resistance is more than expected? Is the enemy fortified or is he bugging out? Is the enemy suppressed? Are my troops exhausted? Well, if you misplanned their commanders will pull back and try it again. How much they put into depends on what you set for aggression, rate of fire, etc ... This is the main difference with PROBE. It has all the parameters of ATTACK, but semantically when they meet enough resistance, they will throw in the towel. ATTACKs don't quit easy. Let's suppose it is going well. They will actually exploit beyond the attack point; then reorg; finally pull back and set up a defense. It is all amazing as new player watching all this AI. Now, you as the player may not want to wait for the complete evolution. Why? Well, it could be 4 hours until your orders get circulated and plans made. So waiting until everything it picture perfect might be a mistake. When you sense the enemy has broken, you might want to start you next chain of orders to save time. Remember OODA loop. You need to have a good sense of flow, because the absolutely worst mistake you can do is issue new orders in the middle of an ongoing attack; many will die due to your incompetence. I think you will like the game. It's not the ACW ... I mean there are para and glider drops ... but it has its own charm.

Maps are much bigger. Check the forum for actual sizes. There is an explicit PROBE order which has somewhat different behavior to ATTACK. It is the type of thing you will want to use to feint and hide your schwerpunkt. Like CM, the designer has a good deal of flexibility. There are objectives which reward for how long you hold something or just having it at the write time. There are objectives about force destruction/preservation. There are exit objectives. There are bridge objectives. Bridges can blow. Also, unlike CM, objectives are not necessarily live the entire scenario. So, your exit objective, may only come alive on the final day. Maybe the intent is to keep the highway open so Patton can bring up the tanks in relief, before he exits. So, much depends on the designers. Some people almost give you the plan in terms of timing and sequencing. Others just throw you in the deep end; Dave has mainly handled coding and some OOB; not scenarios. (If you are going over to LnL and want to talk scenarios, the guy you are looking for is Richard Somivich.) Some are very sparse in terms of units. I had done an analysis on the individual titles. If I recall on average COTA was generally the sparsest and BFTB the most dense in terms of units. You are not playing a realtime clock, but simulation speed ultimately depends on unit count. You never experience lag. Unlike most games, the map rendering and scrolling runs in its own thread. Even if the game slows, viewing the battle will be silky smooth. And they came up with this architecture 20 years ago. I was a software engineer previously. It is quite impressive.

There is a supply system which includes: depots and simulated convoys. I think regular supply happens every 12 hours, but 6 hour emergency requests can be made. Supply is more abstract than most of the game. Like every round is simulated, but the status of roads are not checked every minute due to performance reasons. It is checked often enough, though. There are different types of objectives and different ways to construct a scenario. A common approach is obviously advancing or falling back victory points. A scenario designer won't explicitly create supply objectives. Instead the designer will use a trail of breadcrumbs approach along highway of relatively low value objectives to be held. The main reason is not so much for points, but supply. Also, supply is one of the parameters you as the player can vary for difficulty (reserves, weather). I recall supply was divided into I believe ammo, basics (food/water), and fuel. Running out of supply is kind of bad news, and of course you cut the enemy's supply. The things which you are most likely to burn thru is arty ammo. You really need to meter your personal (ordered) fire missions or if you are doing on arty autopilot, then give them a rest (stand down order). Auto-pilot is useful, since it will do better than you tracking targets on move. But you may want to micro. Why? Suppose you want to take a bridge and make sure it is not blown. Suppress the garrison with arty and assault it. They are more likely to blow it if you just show up for a fire fight.

I had about produced over 200 pages of PDF featuring tutorial style play. No, YouTube. I went to school when the slide rule was still used in physics class. I have spoken David O'Connor (owner of Panther Games) and David Heath (owner of LnL), but the materials I produced are the IP of Slitherine now and I cannot make it available for download. Feel free to ask questions. Note, I am no longer active team member and just alumni. I am not up date the latest change list.

There is no way to interface it and CM. Back in 2000, BFC introduced the first title RDOA (Red Devils over Arnhem), but later we moved to Matrix. Matrix got sold to Slitherine and we moved to Lock and Load which is actually David Heath who was the owner of Matrix. (So, in a way, not so much a move.) I was on the team including Bil who is well known here. The game is brilliant. Why? * You are really commanding. AI agents carry out your orders which can be very detailed. Carry them out competently ... its been under development for 20 years now. It is the most scalable war game you are ever going to meet. You can command just 20 units or 500. How much you micro is up to you. * The game simulates the 4th. dimension of war - TIME, better than anything on the market. It was built with the OODA loop in mind. Do you make 3 uncoordinated attacks in the next 4 hours and take advantage of the enemy's confusion? or Do you make 1 coordinated attack in the next 12 hours, but risk that the enemy has dug in? --- The closest analog to style of play is the Take Command series. Key differences: * Far superior AI without scripting. * You cannot be a cog on the wheel. You are always the senior commander on the field. * Counters with pseudo-topo style; no 3D. This is for real officers; TW players need not apply. --- One of the key changes from: RDOA/HTTR/COTA/BFTB is that CO2 is free floating windows that are no children of the main window. I personally have mixed feeling. For the player with a single display, the fixed windows of the early series was tighter. For the player with multiple displays, you get more information and flexibility. And if you can afford 4 video cards and 8 displays, well you got the War Room. Something no WWII commander never had. --- For those who complain about no documentation, there is about a 500 page detailed manual. There is a tutorial. Now, you don't need to understand every nuance. It follows the old systems 80/20 rule. You use 20% of the commands 80% of the time. Also, a good plan and being able to determine the ebb and flow of battle is far better than a perfect plan that is always behind the clock. You can accomplish a great deal with just basic ATTACK, DEFEND, and MOVE. The game does not play itself, but it is not a clickfest, and you are going to spend time analyzing what is going on and when to alter your plans. I hope that helps.

I am kind of stuck, but even stuck admitting I am stuck. Generally, I assume all BFC included scenarios can be won; unless an engine has skewed the difficulty. I used to beta, and I know we we did not do regression testing on everything.

Thanks Ian! This looks like some great reading. I once had such a list for the CMx1 games which was very comprehensive which I shared. I want to say, I had personally contributed no knowledge, but I did identify the links and collect and organize. But then one day, the forums were ported or reorganized and the thread addresses changed. And it was all lost to humanity. I am sure someday, 3,000 years from now the technology will exist to recreate my CMx1 FAQ. Until then!

This text you added yourself? (That's not the game.)

Do you limit your situational awareness to only the 1 and 2 keys? (myself, I play on warrior) If I spot an enemy unit unlikely to move like HMG, ATG, ... Since I have no map to mark it, I will just take screenshot of the spotting. Maybe later hit it with some HE whether I have a contact or not.

Yes, I find that so many battles evolve into connected, but separate stories.

Myself I only play WEGO, and could only see RTS for tiny scenarios. I believe the designers are designing for WEGO, and you will be torn to piece if you try something sizeable as RTS. Thanks.