NightGauntt

whenever an enemy unit right in front of you is spotted 1 second into the turn instead of at the end of the last turn.

before this gets locked: MrSpkr: thanks for ruining a perfectly good thread with your preachy sermon attitude. Soddball: "fundamentalist" you hit the nail on the head. Sergie: I didn't know you could start an inquisition?!?! this starting your own religion has some merit after all Scipio: 1."God is almighty - he can come in every form he want to!" good point "if god is almighty, is he able to create a stone that is so heavy that he can't lift it anymore" that would keep true religious scholars up all night thinking about it, but zeolots on the other hand would choose to ignore the question. My point to all this. This is a forum about a game, lets try to keep a little seperation between church and game shall we. If I wanted to hear a real sermon about actual religion, I would go to some random church of some random religion. If I want to JOKE about religion, thats a whole different thing, I would listen to Ashcroft. edited for bad spelling. As my education gets farther and farther in the past, my spelling gets farther and farther down the road to pathetic. [ August 23, 2002, 04:40 PM: Message edited by: NightGauntt ]

ah that post brings back memories. how was it for all of you? the first time i mean... i remember seeing an add in ign.com about some game called CM. hmm, combined turns, realistic modeling...decent graphics. I guess I'll give it a go. download on a 56k modem...................(remember those days)........................ ok, lets see, i'll pick the meeting engagement. hmmm, this looks neat. lets see plot moves like so press go. OMG!!!! this game ROCKS!!! dial dial dial xxxxx get your a** over here and check this game out. repeat above line mult times... etc etc etc.... to quote someone somewhere best.....game.....ever and so the addiction began.

]I'm confused, do you play with a time limit or not? NO, nope, none, no SET time limit. What I do do is play against players who don't take unreasonable amount of time. 15 minutes a turn for a pretty big battle (1+ BN/side)is a pretty efficient time. Now if you are spending 15 minutes in a 900pt battle on defense, thats a different story. It is a relative term. The key to my whole statement is a reasonable amount of time. I know plenty of people who take much longer/turn especially in a pbem. And many people on this thread would probably say that they regularly take long amounts of time to do a turn.

somewhat true, however, sometimes i don't watch the movie at all. Its all about where you get your fun from. For me it is the competion. Usually I only watch the movie once skipping forward and occasionally rewind to look for specific things. And then there are the times when a real kick ass turn happens and you have to watch it 5 or 6 times and in case your other post was for me: I don't think games where time is a factor make better players I think they are playing a more difficult game. I do think it is a more realistic simulation, because time as I define it in the posts on this thread is a very real factor in combat. [ August 13, 2002, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: NightGauntt ]

"In CM you can only issue orders at the end of a turn (up to one minute delay) further there is an order delay depending on command etc. This simulates imperfect communication, you don't need to simulate it again (if you think the order delay needs to be extended that is another issue)." Ah but this delay is really only between the local platoon CO and his troops. Not another level up which is what would be required at LEAST to communicate between a tank and a squad of inf. "Furthermore a RL tank commander is intelligent enough to know where a threat is likely to come from and will act accordingly without the OIC doing ANYTHING." only if he knew the tank was there. I am saying he would not. "And also if you find while playing your IP game that your infantry have spotted a tank do you ignore that information for units on the other side of the map?" yes i do. What i don't do is spend extravegant amounts of time contemplating possible moves in a turn. THAT is the difference that having some sort of TIME is all about. Limiting how long you can sit around and THINK about possible solutions. It is a very real difference that no one can deny, if you only have limited amounts of time, you cannot sit around and think of unlimited possible solutions and then weigh those solutions for another unlimited amount of time until you finally make your decision. If you can do that, then you are playing a MUCH easier game.

btw i think i said it before, but to re itterate. I don't think that players playing with some sort of time are better. i think they are playing a more difficult game

to McAuliffe "You make sound it like the player, that is faster with the mouse, is a better CM player, while I guess it was just the goal of CM to avoid that click skills decide on winning or losing." huh?? I make no such statements. Click skills have nothing to do with CM. If you read all 3 of my posts, I have made my opinion very clear that TIME is an important factor in THINKING ability of a player. If you have all day to get a cup of coffee, eat a bagel, etc, you will probably be able to figure out a lot of possible solutions to a problem. If you are playing without that unlimited time ability, you are playing a MUCH MORE DIFFICULT game. As I also stated, I don't play with time limits set, I know the players I play against play realistically, not analyzing each turn for hours. Therefore, I know if I try to affect their decision making abilities by forcing issues in a game I am playing a possibly effective strategy; vs playing some one who will take an un realistic amount of time to do a turn which in turn limits realistic strategies. To Grisha: in your example, if you want to play realistically, DON'T react to any new intel you receive for 3-6 turns. That would be at least some amount of time that units not in direct contact could possibly learn about a new enemy unit in the area. Because CM is "real time" in other words, you play each real second; you would NOT know information for 3+ turns minimum unless you were in direct contact. And that is being generous. Consider that a coy of infantry would probably have maybe 3 radios total? Its very simple: The ability to sit and look at a situation for long amounts of time gives you a lot more options. For someone pushing the pace of combat, trying to force the opponent to make decisions and hopefully make a mistake, the ability for that opponent to spend unrealistic amounts of time looking at the battle removes a realistic tactc. "If a platoon under my command sees an enemy position, the rest of the command will be aware of it in time. Certainly not to the degree as it exists in CM now, but it is inevitable. " EXACTLY Those 3+ minutes are HUGE because: 1. It takes time to react 2. I now have the initiative because you are reatcting 3. I will have moved and you intel will be false. That little space in between local knowledge and global knowledge is where the battle can be decided. its kind of off topic, but intelligence is where the battle is usually won/lost. The longer you can look at a map, the more intel you will gather.

To CM player: "People who say TCP is more realistic because you don't have much time in real warfare don't understand what they are talking about....." wrong. Micromanaging ends up exploiting the biggest (but understandably unavoidable) flaw in the game. Universal spotting. If your infantry spot a tank, your tank 1 km away would NOT know about it. Therefore, when you move your tank to take advantage of that situation, you are exploiting a flaw. By spending unlimited amounts of time on a turn, you exploit the flaw even more because you can continually look around and figure out possibilities well above and beyond what the individual commanders on scene could know. Time limits help to minimize this, not a perfect solution, but at least it helps a bit. It also removes a very very powerful tool from commanders that use it namely: trying to force a player to do something. When a player is trying to force decisions to be made by his opponent, the longer the opponent has to react, usually the better the opponent will react because he has TIME to think about different possible solutions. In a timed game you get: SH**! i didn't think he was going to do that, how to react how to react. In a non-timed game you get: interesting, hmmm. I think I'll go eat a bagel and think about this one for a while. VERY big difference. To Grisha (If you were talking to me, otherwise ignore): 1. There is only 1 tactical RTS to my knowledge Sid Meier's Gettysburg. 2. I don't play any other RTS games (i did play starcraft, it was a guilty pleasure ) 3. I am a hc table top player, whether it is squad leader, harpoon, A&A, Europe Aflame, Diplomacy, and a whole bunch of others i'm going to remember as soon as i post this One of the advantages of computer games is that they CAN include time in them. And in a game that is based on actual time, IE CM vs Strategic command (which is based on elapsed time of months), time is a major factor.

to answer bruce: the reason is it is more realistic is because commanders DO NOT get all the information immediatly. Their troops may see it, but the COs that make the decisions don't. Just because your infantry see the tank, your tank 2 kms away doesn't immediatly know its there and turn to get that perfect hull down position on where the enemy tank is heading to. You have hundreds of soldiers to see things, but this is WW2, you have maybe 4 soldiers in a coy that can communicate anything. And out of those 4, maybe 1 can communicate with the person you need a minute or 2 after you spot something. Not immediatly. Time pressure is an important factor in a more realistic game. No matter what the outcome, a time included game is more realistically PLAYED than one without time. to ron: "Battles in RL as depicted in CM didn't last 10-20-30 minutes, they lasted for hours" that is a player problem; not a game problem. I rarely play games with less 90 turns. Considering battle tempo is set by how players play, battles can last hours. 'That alone makes the time pressure argument an a" artificial one." not true. Yes they had help, but what they didn't have is the ability to sit at the edge of a battle field and wait for 2 hours until every single piece of information had been thouroughly disected. They went with what was known at the time. expirience makes you better, no doubt, and I play plenty of pbem games. What am am stating is timed constrained games, are a more complete experience because time is both a realistic and very difficult factor.. Another thing I should like to state. "Timed" doesn't even mean a set time like 10 minute turns. In fact I have never set a time limit on any game I ever played. Never played a ladder game. Timed means doing your turn without taking advantage of the ability to look over everything for an extended amount of time. Not that you get cut off doing a move because of a time clock. What does that mean, is it is up to the player not to take advantage, I trust my opponents don't do it (i'm picky with my opponents).

I've said it time and again, Time is a HUGE factor in measuring someone's ability in CM. playing pbem games are interesting, but without a factor of time, you really don't know if your opponent is really good or just average with time on his hands. I like to state that taking time is the most abused gamey tactic there is. It exploits the uber sight problem, which i think most agree is a big problem that unfortunatly can't be solved. I know players that spend an hour just watching the replay for any tell tale signs ie arty spotting shell, listening for missed audio queues, etc. What i find, is people who do not play with time limits MISS things, like the above noted examples. Players also do not have time to get into the picture perfect hull down position with every tank, have every infantry unit just perfect inside the woodline, etc etc etc. In other words, the games are a bit more realistic because everything is not perfect. Which is what seems to be the goal in pbem games sometimes. people under pressure make mistakes, they miss sounds, don't notice units, forget to move units, etc etc etc time is pressure. Your ability to deal with pressure is an important factor to how good you are.

OMG!!!! I am feeling a bit light-headed. I would offically like to be put in the "i will marry MadMatt and all" behind the rest of the would be suitors.

changed my mind not worth discussing

[ June 19, 2002, 10:18 PM: Message edited by: NightGauntt ]