Tarkus

I concur. I was thinking about the same book. Time and again tankers were rather anxious to keep a low profile. Often they would simply stay behind and refuse to expose their vehicles. In CMx2 terms, it's not exaclty the reassignment that was evoked earlier. Rather a reluctance to advance. This get us back to C&C concerns.

D/L and installed. Looks brilliant from here. I really hope scenario designer will use this mod set feature. Looks like it's simple, easy to use, and well, it opens all kinds of nice possibilities. Kudos GaJ. Nice work.

I agree. Steve did hint about possible removal of points altogether, but I think what you suggest would be an interesting option. Panzerman did something like this in his excellent CSDT-Hilly Graveyard, where you must keep casualties below 10%. Maybe not the crazyest feature of all, but a smart addition IMO. Cheers

Count me in too. Everything that gives designers more flexibility is a welcome addition. Sure these features will be abused, sure a well balanced scenario may be harder to achieve, but that's what playtesting is for anyway. Now I'm not sure if suggestions are called for at this point, but if I may add, FWIW: - Ingame messages asking reassignements for specifics [on-map] units and ordering you to release them could be all it takes to make this work. You could decide to override that order, and the designer could decide in advance what would happen in that case, up to demotion . Artillery, I suppose, will simply stop firing anyway. - Reassigned units could perhaps have some sort of "availability status", anything from "under command" to "reassigned, should exit for points". Even though it was said that the point system might get out altogether...

Do you plan for the scenario designer to have control on how reinforcments appears on the battlemap ? Also, how about allowing organic units to be split through various reinforcements? Handy if you plan to get into campaign oriented scenarios. Cheers

Interesting. Since 1:1 control is out, this could be depicted by formations and splitable squads according to factors as experience, doctrine and leader abilities as you suggest. Some leaders could allow you to split their squads according to circumstances while others would be stuck to purely doctrinal combat drills, a bit as the current "assault" order in CMx1. BTW What about leaders abilities ? Haven't seen anything that, but many ideas. Can we expect new stuff over there as well ?

Have a look there. Cheers

Could you expand on that ? I'm curious to see how this flexibility applied on the battlefield. Somehow related to 1:1 control. Cheers.

How 'bout some zombie busting rampage ? Grinding 'em under the track of your tank could be fun. Messy, but fun.

Quite interesting idea here. It opens up all kinds of balance problems, but IMO it really is more in line with warfare as you say. Isn't part of this idea in current CMx1 operation already ? Of course, these additional ressources can or cannot be available, which would in turn affect the context quite nicely. I guess the hardest part is to make this feature work in a way that would be simple too use and would still keep things roughly balanced. Could be by making it very costly in terms of points to use reserve assets (as opposed to intended reinforcements, two separate things). Anyway, I think one would get the distinct impression of being part of a greater organization and/or being the last obstacle before the tide. Very interesting I say. Cheers

Has Steve? </font>

Re: supply lines Lots of interesting ideas here, but I submit to you the following observation: Even though WEGO is in, there is no indications about the average time-per-battle and, more importandly, there is no certainty that a battle will be just that, a battle. Perhaps the engine will allow a certain "battle context" with objectives, parameters (including supply) and some duration agree upon by the players, with agreed lull in the fighting for reorg. That would mean various phases in this "battle context" where supply would be taken care of, as would be consolidation, counterattack, patrol and such. The effect would be a time period with moments depicted in the game, and the player would be forced to think about more than just slugging it out until all cartidges are spent, all the bad guys are dead, and all the map is occupied. Say a battle last 30 turns. Now, it last 30 turns right ? More or less. But still, no one cares about what happen next. But what if the game last 30 turns, and you get the chance to continue, attack again, defend yourself at a later time ? Then you would think again before sending your last fresh platoon in an all out assault, no ? You'd also look at the ammo level and headcount to see if this particular unit would be worth anything in further action. What I'm saying is one of the thing that would be a very worthy addition to the game scope and context, as I think others are implying with discussion about supply, is that without enlarging the scope to larger unit, finding a way to expand on the time frame for these front line small unit would be very interesting. Nothing would prevent action-oriented player to stick to QBs and scenarios, but longer engagements with lull in the fighting and reorgs would be completely out of this world. We would really make history in a sense. Taking a company into combat would be something else, to say the least. An example, from the top of my head, would be the Battle of the Bulge. I recall playing ops in this context and saying to myself that so much of the whole experience (as I envision it from readings) was not in the game but would be tremendeoulsy interesting to look at and control. I'm not saying to start plotting the exact path of the field telephone here. I don't want to have to take care of the chow either. But you see my point. And we haven't even talked about more flexible, different victory conditions/objectives. Cheers [ February 15, 2005, 07:46 PM: Message edited by: Tarkus ]

Kip, there was a game based on the same principle as you suggest, a dual-level game, but I'll refrain from naming it as it was sooooo badly implemented. The main problem was that this game had nothing even remotely as interesting or efficient as a CM engine and getting down to tactical combat was mostly an erratic click fest. Since BFC, on the other hand, have this part all figured out, maybe they could code two games, one operationnal and one tactical, and you could merge the two and exchange files to feed one another. Say you'd command a division, a brigade group or a combat command and export various tactical problems as they happens to play them in CMx2. That could be interesting for metacampaign, among other things. Sort of a wargame chest in a vertical perspective. Sorry, I'm getting OT here. Nonetheless, I wonder if the new engine will be usable for larger engagements up to operationnal level. Cheers.

To put all this in perspective... Steve did say time and again that it was way too early to establish a firm dialog about the game, since its coding hasn't started yet. It's a bit beside the point of discussing fundamentals, but still, part of the fussle come from our eager expectation for each and every bone thrown at us... I wouldn't be surprise to hear that the initial bone throwing came initially from the good and simple intention of giving us something to think and talk about but quite rapidly degenerated into hot debate over unclear features. Cheers

Boy, you just ignited one of those downloading frenzy. Aaaahh. That was good indeed. Keep 'em coming. Exquisite work as usual. Just like a Buddy Rich solo, so good you get use to it. Cheers

Just for openning this to debate, but could restricting this camera all-over floating ability along certain rules (as an option) not be interesting ? I don't know, perhaps only from the player side, up to controlled zones, or tied to aerial reconnaissance/prior intelligence or the results of earlier ground reconnaissance ? Just an idea to be sure, but still...

Just for openning this to debate, but could restricting this camera all-over floating ability along certain rules (as an option) not be interesting ? I don't know, perhaps only from the player side, up to controlled zones, or tied to aerial reconnaissance/prior intelligence or the results of earlier ground reconnaissance ? Just an idea to be sure, but still...

Right. Even after 20 minutes (or 20 hours) at the same spot, I would assume each member of a squad get to the best possible position, thus a squad would be better placed after staying longer on a position. Better field of fire, better line of sight, better concealment. Making those things dynamic would really be nice. Another way to see it is applying this talking to a squad in a building. After 30 seconds it has the building shape figured out, but a thoughtful, deliberate and careful distribution of firepower to suit the tactical requirement at hand require more time. I'm not saying it should be left to the player to set each and every rifle position, but it would make sense to consider it in an abstracted way. I seem to recall that Panzer General had an abstracted feature about that, like when you'd leave a unit in position, its "entrenchment" factor would rise up. Of course there is a slight difference between a single infantryman and a division, but the principle applies to both. Also, a platoon leader at the front in a defensive position gives his men a rest. He might even not be around when an attack begins. In current CM, the main line of resistances is always assumed to be fully manned. No tactical or operationnal surprise whatsoever. But modelling an alert level within a defensive line could be interesting. Like your forces would be on a 50% alert level, with the correspondent amount of troops being off the line and a delay for manning the position fully. It would pay off to attack swiftly, and it would be worthy to cut small units off. Cheers

Right. Even after 20 minutes (or 20 hours) at the same spot, I would assume each member of a squad get to the best possible position, thus a squad would be better placed after staying longer on a position. Better field of fire, better line of sight, better concealment. Making those things dynamic would really be nice. Another way to see it is applying this talking to a squad in a building. After 30 seconds it has the building shape figured out, but a thoughtful, deliberate and careful distribution of firepower to suit the tactical requirement at hand require more time. I'm not saying it should be left to the player to set each and every rifle position, but it would make sense to consider it in an abstracted way. I seem to recall that Panzer General had an abstracted feature about that, like when you'd leave a unit in position, its "entrenchment" factor would rise up. Of course there is a slight difference between a single infantryman and a division, but the principle applies to both. Also, a platoon leader at the front in a defensive position gives his men a rest. He might even not be around when an attack begins. In current CM, the main line of resistances is always assumed to be fully manned. No tactical or operationnal surprise whatsoever. But modelling an alert level within a defensive line could be interesting. Like your forces would be on a 50% alert level, with the correspondent amount of troops being off the line and a delay for manning the position fully. It would pay off to attack swiftly, and it would be worthy to cut small units off. Cheers

After considering all the possiblities that a new, more accurate terrain engine offers, I don't think that the theater is such an issue. Even though I would personnaly prefer conventionnal, WWII battles as suggested above, there are many things that could make me really dig the game on a grand scale while it being on another era. The first thing I'd consider is scope. Not theater or era, but scope. CMx1 was about company up to reinforced battalion size battles, but still, small unit actions occuring on the frontline. I think the game could go way further dealing with this particular scope by adding part of the reality that's inherent to it. There are many example of this. For example, an infantry unit may - or may not- have to stay at a certain spot for quite an extended period of time. This has more implication than just staying there. Troops get familiar with the surrounding ground, they dig slit trenches, foxholes, they register field of fires, place field telephone wire about, place mines, etc. This could translate into many more details for the players, with many more (IMO interesting) tasks. Preparing a good defensive position would be a very interesting process as far as I am concerned. And this could start right in the middle of a battle: you could order troops to dig in and the map would be slowly modified by this action: later import of the map would still carry these works and then, why not allow the player to actually spend points completing them ? Troops being at one place for a long period of time couldbenefit from knowing the ground; Along the same line, one of the first thing a platoon does settling down somewhere is to setup a track discipline. The same line of thinking brings me back to earlier posts about patrols and recons. Don't you think it could be pretty exciting to try to infiltrate an ennemy position in order to gather intelligence about it, later to be followed by an attack ? I think the player trying to prevent such an agenda by patrols, traps, ambushes and so on would also be in for an interesting time. And these things would be quite interesting in any era. Vietnam, for example, would be a big thrill. Cheers

After considering all the possiblities that a new, more accurate terrain engine offers, I don't think that the theater is such an issue. Even though I would personnaly prefer conventionnal, WWII battles as suggested above, there are many things that could make me really dig the game on a grand scale while it being on another era. The first thing I'd consider is scope. Not theater or era, but scope. CMx1 was about company up to reinforced battalion size battles, but still, small unit actions occuring on the frontline. I think the game could go way further dealing with this particular scope by adding part of the reality that's inherent to it. There are many example of this. For example, an infantry unit may - or may not- have to stay at a certain spot for quite an extended period of time. This has more implication than just staying there. Troops get familiar with the surrounding ground, they dig slit trenches, foxholes, they register field of fires, place field telephone wire about, place mines, etc. This could translate into many more details for the players, with many more (IMO interesting) tasks. Preparing a good defensive position would be a very interesting process as far as I am concerned. And this could start right in the middle of a battle: you could order troops to dig in and the map would be slowly modified by this action: later import of the map would still carry these works and then, why not allow the player to actually spend points completing them ? Troops being at one place for a long period of time couldbenefit from knowing the ground; Along the same line, one of the first thing a platoon does settling down somewhere is to setup a track discipline. The same line of thinking brings me back to earlier posts about patrols and recons. Don't you think it could be pretty exciting to try to infiltrate an ennemy position in order to gather intelligence about it, later to be followed by an attack ? I think the player trying to prevent such an agenda by patrols, traps, ambushes and so on would also be in for an interesting time. And these things would be quite interesting in any era. Vietnam, for example, would be a big thrill. Cheers

Ok, to me these last piece of explanation is perfectly clear. I therefore stand by my earlier view on this. We suggest and think about how this game could look like/be better/explore new horizons, and we do so in many directions, thinking about just as much important principles as we can, and if this sparks something up in BFC mind, all the better. These ideas can be, in fact most of them probably are, silly, but they can keep the debate going. And for the complaining part, my mind is at ease on this count: I simply cannot pretend to sustain any argument with someone who earns a living creating games while I don't. The fact that I play them so much entitles me with some credibility as to what may be worth considering from a design standpoint. Fair enough. That being said, I'll retire and go see some other CMx2 thread where I belong and suggest those of you who harbor the next big idea about game design to do the same. Otherwise your ideas might get lost in all the noise. Cheers.

Well, Wilhelm, you are very welcome. I hope CMx2 interface will be moddable as well. (EDIT: I'm not sure my girlfriend would say the same though ) Cheer and thanks for these kind words. I would add that many people here deserve such kudos. MikeyD, Aris, Dey, COG, Gordon, Juju, Thanks a Lot, Bergman and all those I forget... all these guys that make it happens and inspire us. I hope they keep forking the mods out, it's always cool to get some. Tarkus [ February 13, 2005, 04:38 PM: Message edited by: Tarkus ]

Wow, thanks Other Means, that's very nice of you. I appreciate it. Cheers

Gosh I hope not. But my package is big indeed (around 7.3 mb). I really hope all is well on his part.