Leonidas

I would like a casualty notification - something that indicates that a squad or team has taken losses. Frequently I can hear a cry of pain while watching the movie, but then I have to wind back and forth to figure out who got hit.

I don't doubt that artillery was fairly accurate in that it could hit was it was aiming at. I just wonder how they knew where to aim. The tactical artillery in CM usually waits until the enemy reveals himself before calling down a strike on a fairly narrow area. If you call down arty before the enemy reveals himself, it seems to me you've got a good chance of bombarding empty ground. When I'm on attack, sometimes I will try to guess where the defender is, and call a strike on that area before I have any contact. Most of the time I guess wrong and the shells were wasted. What if there were an option to buy pre-battle strategic bombardment? You could buy two or three times as many shells for the same price, but they are fired blind and fall randomly before the battle starts.

Scipio, I agree that artillery is not very realistic in CM. Pausing fire is just one issue. You could also ask why the defender must pay for some firing reference points, when you would assume that the defender would spend some time chatting with the battery guys before the battle, pre-plotting some likely bombardment points. It isn't like that costs resources. The one that bothers me most is that each FO team is linked to only one battery, so if you lose those two men, you lose the use of the entire battery. Historically, I think that pretty much any FO team or HQ could talk to any battery, though that's a complex subject that differs by nation. The answer to all this is that artillery doesn't really operate on the scale of CM. Artillery is about hours-long bombardments, most of which are very inaccurate. So the current system is an attempt to bring artillery within the scope of CM, subject to some restrictions that are unrealistic but necessary for game balance. It isn't a perfect system, but I think it works pretty well.

I don't understand why you need AT rounds to kill pillboxes, if the only killing hits are firing slit hits. If the concrete is assumed to be impenetrable, but the slit is relatively open, then wouldn't a MG be the optimal weapon? (This assumes that the slit is completely open. I could be wrong about that.) But assuming the slit is open, I would think that a bunch of little MG bullets bouncing around in a pillbox would be much more dangerous than a single chunk of AP tungsten. If a tank fired at a pillbox, I would think that it would use HE, to cause an explosion inside. Pillboxes are currently modeled as stationary vehicles, but it seems that they would be better modeled as AT guns with really good cover. A separate point: Pillboxes and bunkers give rise to some silly tactics. For example, you can place it on the side of the map, so that you can put one side of its firing arc down the edge of the map and the other side of the arc across the middle of the battlfield. There is no effective way for infantry to get around the pillbox's arc of fire. It feels kinda strange to be able to carefully hand-place pillboxes. I assume they take days or weeks to construct. Placement would be based on assumptions about the direction of the enemy's approach. It seems to me that most of the time a permanent fortification like that would not be in the right place, or pointing in quite the right direction.

In terms of computer games, tactical games are those in which your initial resources are fixed. Strategy games are those that allow the players to gain additional resources during the game. Strategy games usually have tactical elements, but the overall game is usually won or lost on the basis of who was able to gain a significant resource advantage. This supply distinction is obvious if you compare a game like Myst to RTS games that involve building harvesting units. But I think it also holds true more subtly in more realistic and grognard-y strategy games like The Operational Art of War, where managing supply routes plays a big role. The problem is usually cast as how to get the supplies to the units at the front rather than how to generate the supplies, but the principles are the same. You've got a non-combat related task - supply line management - that determines the efficacy of your units in battle. We might see some strategy elements in future versions of CM, in operations. Suppose you had an operation in which you could gain particular reinforcements only if you manage to secure a particular objective. That sort of thing is quite common in TOAW. Then you start making a new kind of calculation - the comparison of the cost of attaining the objective versus the extra resources you will obtain.

Ok, guys, I give up. No more suggestions from me. After reading similar threads, I have yet to read a serious discussion on this forum about ways to dramatically improve CM. Even most suggestions for minor tweaks are shot down. My conclusion is that any suggestion on this forum on how CM could be improved will be interpreted as an attack on CM, and the loyalists will launch a counterattack. Satisfying as this must be for the loyalists, it does a disservice to CM's long term future. Ironically, I would bet that this same attitude was a major stumbling block to the development of CM: "What's that? A wargame without hexes?? Blasphemous! If you think eliminating hexes would improve wargames, then you obviously don't know much about wargames!"

I wonder how difficult it would be for BTS to make an open architecture quick battle generator, so that someone like BlackVoid could write a set of specific battle generation rules along the lines of these rules. Let the computer figure out these rules instead of the players. A big weakness of generated battles is that each side has to know what the parameters are before they agree to the battle. Consequently, each side can slant its purchasing toward the expected battle. Example: If you know you're attacking an entrenched infantry position, forget the tank killers and buy extra self-propelled artillery. An automatic generator would be particularly fun because - if the underlying rules are well written - it would guarantee a good battle without each side knowing exactly what the parameters are. Depending on the underlying rules, maybe each side receives only a vague intelligence briefing, kinda like the first time you play a scenario. As it is, the only way to get this kind of satisfying quick battle is to have a trusted third party who will set everything up ahead of time.

I find the Ambush command to be nearly worthless, because of its limitations. I want my HQ behind the men where it will be safe, which usually means it doesn't have LOS to the ambush point. The real ambush command in CM is Hide. Set your zooks/shrecks to Hide, and they will conveniently come out of Hiding at the range where they have a good chance of killing. Infantry work well that way, too. In fact, I routinely Hide nearly every unit when I defend, because otherwise they open fire and give away their position at ridiculously long ranges. I suggested an improvement along these lines in another thread, proposing an Aggression Setting that would work something like the engagement range setting in Steel Panthers. My proposal was roundly criticized on the theory that any extra command options added to CM would give the player too much control over the units. Of course, giving the player extra commands has nothing to do with whether the soliders will follow those commands, but no one responding to my thread seemed to understand that. Maybe more people would have liked it if I had called it SOP instead of Aggression Level.

I have noticed that sometimes units will react to information that is not yet available to me. I had one PBEM game in which I was laying in wait with AT guns, and the enemy was probing with halftracks. A Halftrack unexpectedly began backing up and hiding behind a building, even though the enemy told me that he couldn't see the gun. But the skittish halftrack was enough to convince him that something was there, so he started hiding his armor.

The main argument against the Assault command seems to be that it could be used to do something stupid. I don't see how that's much of an argument. Any command could be used stupidly. As for programming difficulty, a follow command is already present in CM. It's called Embark. To do an Assault, BTS can use the Embark code when an infantry unit moves onto an enemy unit. It looks like units calculate their paths several times per turn already, to account for obstructions that appear. Given the current level of path recalculation, I don't see how a moving target point would be terribly complicated. As for its usefulness, I can think of many places where it would be handy. Suppose that my men are out of ammo, and the enemy is panicked and fleeing. Or suppose that I have a squad out of ammo, and I see a vulnerable HQ. Or suppose an armored car or halftrack is probing the village or forest I'm defending, and I want to take it out with infantry. In crowded conditions, the armored car might have a tough time getting away. I also like the idea of using a similar command to have vehicles on a road follow each other politely instead of snarling up and trying to pass each other. In terms of interface, this command could work just like Embark: You just aim the end of your Run or Move command on the unit to be followed. The only tricky part would be distinguishing between an order to follow the unit that is currently in the foxhole, versus an order to get into the foxhole and stay there.

I agree that experience has a great deal to do with whether infantry is willing to hold its fire until the enemy is at close range. But there are a few situations in which long range fire is appropriate, such as providing suppression fire in an overwatch, or firing at retreating enemy squads at the end of a battle. Will Crack or Elite troops automatically hold their fire, even if they aren't told to Hide or given an Ambush? I assume that they will fire at extreme range unless you stop them, but I hadn't experimented with that. Maybe 'Aggression' isn't the best term. I was just looking for a single concept that could be applied in different ways across a range of units and situations, to give players a broader range of commands without cluttering the interface. I wanted to address a number of CM deficiencies in a single control: Tanks and other vehicles should know whether to expect enemy armor, infantry AT defenses, or no AT defenses. A real WWII vehicle with a working radio would have that information. Defending infantry that is under fire should be able to attempt holding fire and hiding, so that the attacker does not know whether the infantry has retreated. Machine guns should be able to move without firing at any visible target. Units generally should have the option of increasing the rate of fire and ammo consumption at the cost of accuracy, or firing more slowly, conserving ammo, and doing more damage per shot. I think that giving the player more options - not necessarily more control - would make CM an even deeper game.

Clubfoot I'm guessing that you're a fan of the Close Combat series. I played the first Close Combat a little and couldn't stand it, because it gave so little control over my units. It didn't feel like a game. I gave a few orders, and as soon as the shooting started my men did whatever they wanted, which was mostly cowering. It may have been accurate, but it wasn't fun. It was more like watching a randomly generated WWII tactical movie than playing a game. To me, games are about choices. It may be historically accurate to show that any particular commander in WWII had only a little control over only a few things. But that doesn't mean that giving the player only a little control over a few things will make for a good game. I'll take a good game over a good simulation any day. CM is both a game and simulation. It seems to me that CM would be a better game without being any less of a simulation if the player could convey to the troops exactly the kind of information that real troops receive. I'm not suggesting this as a patch - I'm suggesting it as a feature for CM2. But if the response I've garnered on this forum is representative of the developers' thinking, it sounds like CM2 will be more of a WWII movie generator than a game.

Terence, You can somewhat do what I want with Hide and Target, except: 1) You can't make men Hide (and stop wasting ammo) if someone is firing at them, even if the fire is ineffectual. 2) You can't Hide MGs, which makes it very dangerous to move them when they are concealed, as they will fire at anything in sight. 3) You can't override the 'smoke and reverse' syndrome so common to American tanks, even when you set up a perfect shot for them. And isn't it kinda silly to have to use the Hide command when what you really mean is 'Don't waste your ammo and give away your position until you get a good shot'? Clubfoot, I'm new to this forum, so I don't know what others have said, but I don't think I'm getting my point across. Aggression is not morale. Sometimes soldiers are ordered to be aggressive, and other times they are ordered to be passive. Whether they actually follow those orders is totally separate, and CM already models that very well. Sometimes you order troops to stay hidden, and they get up and fire at long range anyway. Sometimes you order men to charge, and they decide they would rather stay in their foxhole. All I'm saying is that I would like the chance to give that order more precisely than Hide and Ambush, which are imperfect workarounds. I also disagree about taking AI errors and pretending that the program is modeling acts of individual stupidity. If CM is supposed to have a random 'individual stupidity' factor that causes units to run amok, that's fine. But systematic AI weaknesses are not modeling that. It's just that AI is very hard stuff to write, and it invariably makes mistakes. Can we at least agree that it's a worthy goal to try to eliminate those mistakes, instead of papering them over by calling them realism?

I prefer Hide in that situation, just because it's more flexible than Ambush. This is exactly the kind of situation I adressed in the Aggression Setting thread. There ought to be a direct way to tell your troops when to fire at long range and when not to fire.

I'm not suggesting that anything be changed about whether your troops follow orders. That's a separate issue. I'm just saying that your troops need to know whether they should be attacking vigorously, or hunkering down, hiding, and saving ammo. That's information real troops would have.

I also find it strange that engineers can't cut barbed wire. I don't think they can clear roadblocks, either. And they don't seem very good at assaulting tanks. I'm not sure what they're good for, unless you really need to clear a minefield instead of going around it.

CM is a fine game, but there is plenty of room for improvement. It's easy to pick on little things, but I suggest that we, the players, focus on suggestions that offer the most improvement to the game for the least amount of work for the developer. I think that the developer has taken on too large of a task in trying to write AI that can distinguish various situations and come up with appropriate behavior every time. This is most glaring with tank AI, but it comes up some with other units as well. The more control the players have, the less work the AI has to do and the happier the players are because they feel closer to the battle. Balanced against that, however, is the need for an elegant interface that newbies can understand and use without spending an hour reading the manual. CM does a fine job in making the game accessible to newcomers, and I'm sure they plan to keep it that way. My suggestion is to add an aggression setting for each unit on a five point scale. This setting tells the unit how it should be balancing its need to stay alive with its need to attack the enemy. Sometimes you want a unit to keep its head down and try to stay alive until help arrives. Other times you want units to charge forward fanatically, spraying ammo at anything that moves. The aggression setting is the player's oppotunity to tell the unit what his role is for the coming turn. Like most variables in CM, aggression would be introduced in various subtle ways, and the precise effect would vary with each unit. Overall, aggressive units fire at longer ranges, make less use of concealment and cover, and are more willing to burn up ammo on shots that will do little damage. Low Aggression units fire only at close range, make more use of concealment and cover, and fire only when their use of precious ammo is justified. For infantry, high aggression would mean that the men fire more often, and a little less accurately, and they gain less defense when in cover. Low aggression means that the men are conserving ammo and trying to stay out of sight. The Hide command works as something of a low aggression setting for infantry, but you can't order troops to Hide when they are being fired on. For tanks, low aggression means that the tank is ignoring targets of opportunity and looking only for units that can directly damage it. High aggression means that the tank will fire at whatever units present themselves. For artillery, the aggression setting would determine the radius at which the spotter will stop the battery because of a chance of hitting friendlies. I don't know how historical it would be, but it would be interesting to have aggressive spotters be less accurate, but they get their orders through faster. Cautious spotters could take longer to start shelling and might interrupt firing to refine the aim, but they could be capable of more precise fire and efficient use of ammo. Aggressive machine guns, fixed guns, infantry, and antitank teams will fire at anything they see. Low aggression units will hold their fire until they get a good shot against a valuable target. It's tempting to try to link aggression settings with movement speed, such as making the Run command be Move plus High Aggression. That would simplify the interface somewhat, but it would also take some options away from the player. It's a balancing issue for the developer, but I favor player control. I can think of many situations in which I would want my infantry to run into a building or woods through enemy fire, but then hide themselves and go passive once they get there. To me, this would take a big step toward making CM a more enjoyable game, and would reduce frustration with AI errors. I'm curious what others think.

I think everyone who posts on this board loves CM and agrees that it is the best game of its genre, and possibly the start of a new genre. So let's make sure that nobody takes any suggestions for future improvements personally. I think that the global problem with tank AI is that so much difficult decisionmaking has been withheld from the player and put on the AI. Rather than write a brilliant tank AI that will react correctly to a variety of circumstances, I suggest that BTS give the players more options in commanding tanks. Then the players will be responsible for their own mistakes. An example: In another thread I discussed the difficulties that CM tanks have in defending among buildings. The real trouble is that I have no way to tell the tank commander that he is executing an ambush. Perhaps a Tank Ambush AI routine could be triggered by a matching command. You tell a tank to ambush and lay a marker, maybe even indicating the direction from which you anticipate the enemy will come. Armed with this information, the Tank Ambush AI tries to find the best nearby cover/hull down position while maintaining sight of the ambush marker. In a city, the tank would scoot up next to the nearest building, trying to stay out of sight of the approach vector while maintaining sight of the marker. While under Ambush orders, the tank would not fire smoke or back up, but would stand its ground and fire as targets moved into sight. Another command that I think would solve a lot of tank AI headaches would be an aggression setting. Sometimes you are nervous about enemy armor ahead, and you want your tanks ignoring enemy squads and halftracks. Sometimes you are confident that there are no long range threats to your armor, and you want to mop up the infantry. The AI has a hard time knowing which is the case. An agression setting would let you tell the tank to 1) only fire at threats, 2) fire at any vehicle, 3) fire at anything. Of course, the existing target prioritization would still apply. BTS did something like this with the patch that kept tanks from wasting ammo and turret rotation firing at crews when enemy armor had been recently sighted. But I say delegate! There is no reason to put so much stress on the AI when that job can be passed to the player. Actually, I would suggest an aggression setting for all units, but I will start a new thread for that.

I rarely use flamethrowers, either infantry or vehicle, because they are so much less effective than the alternatives. Why buy a Crocodile and risk 'shreck fire to burn down buildings, when you can get a Priest for lower cost and flatten buildings from a safer range? I don't contest the historical effectiveness, range, etc. of a flamethrower unit. I just think they have problems within CM as a game. I can't think of a use for FTs that isn't better met by self-propelled artillery.

I agree that many aspects of artillery must be abstracted to fit within CM. Real artillery barrages, as I understand them, take place over hours instead of minutes. Perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of CM artillery is the notion that each battery is tied to a single 2-man spotting team, so if those two men die, the battery is taken out of action for the rest of the battle, or operation. But I accept that as a way to balance the equally unrealistic speed with which the shells can be called down. The aspect of CM that rankles, me, though, is that you can't delay fire. Sometimes you want precise control over when your fire starts, especially on defense when you expent attacking infantry to pass over a given spot. For some reason, your arty spotter can give coordinates just fine to the battery, but he can't say, "Hold fire for my signal." Once the battery is aimed, it cannot be restrained. Instead, I end up using the alter fire command as a way to artificially increase the artillery arrival time by 20 seconds or so, because the enemy didn't advance as quickly as I anticipated when I issued the order.

It would also be nice if you could order the men to run up to the tank even if the tank moves, like the embark command. I have had situations where an armored car is scouting for a tank force and gets too far ahead. But if I rush the car with a squad or two, I run the risk that the car will move, and my men will just sit out in the open for the rest of the turn.

Even though a tank can theoretically shoot through a light building, that should still seriously reduce the accuracy and power of the shot. I think the tank AI is the weakest part of CM, which is ironic considering all the work that went into shell vs. armor interactions. The current tank AI and other features of CM envision very fluid tank combat, with lots of cover smoke and backing up. But on defense your tanks sometimes do much better as armored AT guns. You want to be able to park them behind a building and take a surprise side shot as the enemy comes into view. But the tank AI doesn't like for tanks to sit still. American tanks in particular may take one shot, and then go into the backing up w/ smoke routine, even though they have time for several more shots against side armor before the slow German turret can bear on them. I hope that future patches or versions of CM will have many more options for controlling tanks. I usually do combined arms battles. Team DeSobry was my first armor-heavy engagement. I was disappointed at how difficult it was to defend with tanks in a town. I kept trying to hide my tanks behind buildings, thinking that my immobile half-hidden tanks should win gunfights against the attacker's moving and unhidden tanks. But I never seemed to get any protection from the buildings. Is this just my bad orders, or is CM not yet equipped to handle tank-building interactions?

Yes, the unit scale was realistic.

I've had something similar happen - the enemy tank is firing at your tank, but your tank never gets a return firing line. It just sits there and blows up. The target spotting system is probabilistic. I think that each second each unit has a chance to spot an enemy, based on various factors. Maybe the other tank just got lucky, or yours was unlucky. Though this can be frustrating, I think it's realistic. Your tank may have had a higher silhouette value, which would give the enemy a higher chance to spot you than you to spot them. Your tank may have been moving, which would make it easier to spot than a non-moving enemy. In my case, the reverse was true. My tank was stationary, but still couldn't spot the enemy as he approached. These are just theories, but they don't change the fact that it's maddening to see your tank blown up by a unit that other units can see, but your tank won't target.

I sounds like a software problem rather than a hardware problem. Here are my suggestions: Look at your motherboard drivers. I had similar frustration with Thief2 before I learned that my Via motherboard was shipped with drivers that couldn't properly deal with a video card in the AGP slot. Look at your DirectX. There's a new version out. Give it a try. It sounds like you're running CM in software mode, not getting any use out of your video card. Make sure that CM is recognizing your video card, and that CM is set to run under the primary display adapter. I don't have a copy of CM in front of me to look at, but could someone find that configuration menu and post exactly how the options read? I had that trouble with Shogun - I was running in software mode because the video configuration menu was ambiguous.