SlowMotion

"lets leave it be and SEE how it works in the game FIRST before we all try to "mod" it to what we think we want." Yes, there are so many new things coming that it's better to wait for the first game. The original desciption is a good addition to the scenario designer's toolkit and hopefully one of the new features that will see further development. Lots of possibilities in this area.

I'll just add one more thing to this Intelligence Position idea, which would mean that there wouldn't have to be an extra phase before the setup. Could it be doable if those IPs worked the same way as pre-barrage arty: the IPs would be positioned during the normal setup, BUT intelligence results were shown to the player after some delay (maybe a settable parameter)? It could work like the reinforcements message "Intelligence report has arrived." Then the player would check the map and possibly see new units. If different IPs had different delays (maybe some randomness like in reinforcements), they might have different prices. And if an IP position could be locked and hidden from the player by the scenario designer, it could be used as a way of giving the player some new info during the scenario, instead of all at once in the briefing. If the briefing mentioned that there should be an intelligence report within the first 5 minutes, the player would have to decide how to act on this. Does he want to wait for the report before for example moving some tanks forward or not? Sonar: IMO briefing only intelligence works fine for units with fixed positions. But if the opponent can choose positions, briefing's intelligence may be totally misleading. At least the unit position part. [ August 27, 2005, 05:53 AM: Message edited by: SlowMotion ]

About tactical aerial intelligence height: I suppose so. They had to fly lower (the example I found from 1944 was at 600m) in order to see more details. I guess higher level flights were used with targets heavily defended with AAA or fighter defenses, such as important harbours. The previous post mentioning "well documented entrenchments" makes me think about how reliable those documentations really were - in WW2 and even today. Can we buy things like fake tanks to mislead enemy spotting?

"Intel positions was thought of before, but tossed out. Definitely won't work for QBs because in order to place you need to see the map. ... And no, we are not going to put in a special Phase just for intel gathering," Too bad. I think that the initial intelligence phase would have been pretty interesting. First buying a number of IPs, positioning them and then after pressing a button, discovering if anything was found. A bit like pulling up a fish net. Maybe once all possible features have been added and you can't think of any new features, you'll remember this phase thing and decide to toss it in. Like in Game_#2? Another idea I had was that you could buy aerial intelligence. It would work like a plane flying over the map at high altitude. Because of this it would have higher probability to locate big objects like bunkers, trenches or tanks. Infantry positions wouldn't be affected nearly as much. And one more comment to what Jim Crowley wrote about: could spotting also work so that units closer to "front line" would have higher chance to be spotted?

In the first post "Scenario designer selects unit and toggles it to Spotted (probably different degrees of certainty)" I hope this means that it will be possible to set a unit spotting level as "sound contact". Then a player could know that tanks have been spotted in some area, but not necessarily their exact position or type. The intelligence might have been nothing more than that: a sound contact. Then the suggestion about purchasable "intel circles": another idea could be that you could buy "intel positions". Instead of knowing what is inside some area, you would get to know what can be seen from some point on the map. This would simulate an infantry recon unit having visited that place. To make the idea work better, these "intel positions" could be bought from inside a spotting zone that would start from the front line of your setup zone. How many meters towards the enemy this zone would go, would be a parameter settable by the scenario designer (a bit like no-man's area in operations).

One purchasing option could also be if players could limit which units are available for purchasing. Then one could guarantee that for example tanks will be chosen from Pz4 models and the other side could only choose Shermans. Or in an attack battle the attacker couldn't buy arty beyond some caliber while the defender wouldn't be able to buy mines or any armour.

I think if you let the computer generate the QB map, you can't load it into Scenario Editor. You can import that kind of map and troops into next QB, but you can't edit setup zones between battles. If you want a computer generated map and make the setup zones so that they work in 2 battles in row, I think you should go to Scenario Editor, choose the map size you want and press Generate Random Map button. Then without previewing the map, edit setup zones and save the map. Use this map in your quick battles.

The last time phase, #3 is from Feb 43 to Sept 43. What about the time after that? Will there be later phases?

If you want to try this kind of game play now without any changes to the game engine, one way to do it could be making one big map and extract smaller quick battle maps from that. The difficult/tedious part would be adding units from a battle to another.

If they are fixing this to 1.03, what about a similar situation that occurs at least in 1.02? You have mortars that don't have line of sight to a place where you want area fire. Mortars are controlled by a HQ unit that can see the target area, thus mortars can fire. Movie begins: Mortars start area firing. Then another HQ unit that can't see the target area walks near the mortars, takes control and immediatelly area firing stops. I think it would be much better if control wouldn't change from a HQ unit to another if those mortars are "executing orders" from the first HQ unit.

Haven't used 1.03 patch, but this was in 1.02: Enemy has captured some infantry units of yours and is approaching your infantry through woods. First your units don't have any contact with enemy. Then during the movie 'Infantry sounds?' unit appears. When you select this unit, it shows 'captured'. Also shows fields 'rested', 'fit' and 'ok'. I don't know if all the shown data can be known before visual contact, but I'd assume at least this captured is not supposed to be shown?

Something a bit like what Othermeans suggested: Enforceable *unit buying* rule sets for Quick Battles. It would be cool if one could restrict the maximum number of some unit a player can buy in a game. For example, if one would like to create a game where tank buying is restricted so that you can only buy one Tiger and no King Tigers. In maybe scenario editor one could select the axis tank list and set max numbers 1 and 0 for those units and then save a restriction list. Later on when making a QB, this restriction list file could be selected as parameter, like map is now. Buying restriction would affect both player and computer purchased troops. This way one could create battles using rarely used units. Also if one knows some units were used in some battle, then using this kind of restriction list one could guarantee only these units will be bought. Would also work well in restricting arty to some caliber and so on.

Wolfe had many ideas about reinforcements. Here are some more: Ability to use reinforcements in Quick Battles. One could use the reinforcements defined in the quick battle map, just like it is now possible to use troops of the map. Even better would be if one could also specify player or computer purchased troops. When setting reinforcement arrival time, a new parameter "Battle" could be used to specify that reinforcements arrive for example in turn 10 of Battle 3. This would be useful when playing several games using the same map and troops of earlier battle are imported to new battle. Then one could have new troops starting from different places in each battle, instead of always using the same setup area.

I would like this too. Especially when buying units. One could let the computer buy units, but out of the ones that you have selected. If both sides used computer buys, one could have say, various T34 tanks on one side and different PzIV models on the other. Or if you wanted to make sure only light arty spotters can be used, this would do it.

You mean how to play a quick battle using a predesigned map? Just start a quick battle, on the last page select Load From File and select the map you want to use. Then it asks "Import troops also?", answer no.

Did you find that trick from some Strategy Guide??? Maybe I should get it too!

Do you mean that scenario designers could set (not only suggest in some text file) the number of points for purchasing and also restrict what kind of units can be purchased (Mechanized, Armor and so on)? Xerxes wrote: "On my wish list for CM is the ability to make a scenario (that loads like a scenario) in which you can mix preselected and player pick forces. I had to have a separate text file that goes with the map that has the settings, etc. that you need to use." Yes, and if we could also specify reinforcements something like this: reinforcement1: some designer picked units, say a platoon of T34 tanks reinforcement2: player buys 400 points worth of infantry reinforcement3: computer buys 600 points worth of Mechanized troops

I also made such fictional map for ME QBs where both sides of the map are almost the same. I also included two T34 tanks on both sides that can be imported with the map (captured units are perfect for mirrored games). My map can be found from Scenario Depot under CMBB maps. http://ns9.super-hosts.com/~dragonlair.net/combatmission/ It's called Crossroad Clash.

My 2 wishes: 1) In 1.01 the highest possible quick battle turn count was increased to 120. Could it be possible to reduce the lower limit from current 20 to 10 or at least to 15? This would be very useful if you want to play quick battles as if there were reinforcements: several short battles in a row, using the same map and troops from the previous end-of-battle save file. Ie. instead of one QB of 30 turns, you could play 2 x 15 turns. 2) Could the ShowCoveredArcs (SHIFT-X) setting remembered between games, like TreeCoverage (SHIFT-T) setting works now?

My 2 wishes: 1) In 1.01 the highest possible quick battle turn count was increased to 120. Could it be possible to reduce the lower limit from current 20 to 10 or at least to 15? This would be very useful if you want to play quick battles as if there were reinforcements: several short battles in a row, using the same map and troops from the previous end-of-battle save file. Ie. instead of one QB of 30 turns, you could play 2 x 15 turns. 2) Could the ShowCoveredArcs (SHIFT-X) setting remembered between games, like TreeCoverage (SHIFT-T) setting works now?

It is sort of possible already. The designer can include briefings like in any scenario. You just have to play the map as scenario to see the briefing.

The problem with that at the moment is using randomness when setting reinforcement arrival turn. If you break a big group of units into smaller ones, at the moment you can't say "Bring the first platoon at turn10 + 30% probability, then second platoon one turn after first platoon" Ie. arrival turns can't depend on arrival of some other reinforcement.

I also get unhandled exception while playing a QB. The game crashes while thinking its next move after I press Go. Exception: C000 0005 address: 482 51E I have a save file in case this hasn't been fixed already.

This is possible already by designing a scenario map and placing the units that must be included. Save the scenario. Then start a QB, say 1000 points. On the screen where you can choose the map, pick your scenario and include units. Now both sides have the required units plus they can purchase some or let the computer randomly purchase some. This is a *very* cool new feature! One of the great things about this is that it allows a new kind of game: in PBEM, both sides can go and study the map and the included units in advance. This doesn't spoil the scenario because some will be purchased. It is easy to make variants by changing the number of points people can use for buying and also all the other QB parameters.

here's another one: Normally during a battle, when planning movements you can select units by selecting a map area with mouse (click - drag). Units inside the selected rectangle should become selected. If you hide vehicles with SHIFT-V and try to select vehicle passengers this way, it only seems to work if those passenger units have movement orders. If a unit is just sitting in a halftrack for example, the area selection does not select this unit. You have to click the unit. Isn't this is a bug?