Hat Trick

Snipped: Exactly.

I think the main reason that the suicide bomber is despised is because of his (usual) choice targets, and only secondarily because of his methods. Deliberately targeting innocent civilians is abhorrent, and this is what makes suicide bombers so despicable. The fact that "those that he is going to kill have no idea when or where he will come" make him feared, but not necessarily despised. Japanese kamakazi pilots were not considered to be acting outside the rules of war, but they were greatly feared, and maybe even admired.

An alternate implementation would be for squads to slowly lose mobility as they take casualties, perhaps becoming completely immobile at, say, 70 percent casualties. The squad's ability to go on the offensive would diminish as the remaining unharmed solders cared for the wounded, hid, and so on, while their defensive capability would not suffer any additional penalty. I still need to think more about how this would fit in with the shaken/broken/routed model currently in the game.

Yahoo!

Much as I'd like to take the credit, it rightfully belongs to markshot.

There are two ways that bunkers can be considered to be too strong/powerful/effective, rather than undermodeled. The first is the issue line of sight. One of the reasons that large caliber high explosive rounds can be effective against bunkers is not the damage that they cause, but the amount of smoke and dirt that they throw up in front of the vision slit, temporarily "blinding" the occupants. The ability to see through a large artillery barrage, even if not directly on top of the bunker, is very limited in real life (so I’m told). I do not believe that this effect is modeled in the game. Additionally, concrete bunkers are invulnerable to damage from artillery, as best I can tell. I did a test some time ago in CMBO, and found that even 14-inch battleship guns didn't affect them. Multiple direct hits, not even a "pinned" reaction. While I believe that most indirect fire would cause little damage to (well designed) concrete fortifications, I doubt that any above ground structure would be able to withstand this type of blast.

Manhattan, New York

Schoernoer, you're showing your true colors again. As far as I know Israel is not involved in the attack, and if they do get involved, in all likelihood it will be because of an attack by Iraq. I'd ask why you think Israel is part of this war, but I'm pretty sure I know what you would answer.

One potential problem with this new feature -- if implemented -- is that it exacerbates the "God's eye" advantage that a player has. In real life, the forward observer may not know exactly how far behind the barn, hill or other obstruction the target is, or even if there is anyone there at all. Because the player can see what all of his units can see, he could retarget his FO's fire far more precisely than the FO could in real life. If this feature is implemented in the next engine, I would suggest that the retargting to areas out of the line of sight be limited to multiples of, say, 20 meters; e.g., 20 m behind the barn, 40 m behind the barn, 60 m behind the barn, and so on. This would prevent forward observers "zeroing in" on units that they cannot see. Alternatively, maybe FOs could have their fire directed from headquaters units that do have line of sight to the target, much as on map artillery can now.

mschlstrt-- Fair point. If the move and reverse orders give priority to moving, while the rotate and hunt orders give priority to firing, that's a reasonable design decision, and so be it. However, I was reacting (at least at the start of my post -- I probably got carried away) to the statement that "in reality your tank is completing a series of fast forward and backward movements in order to turn that would make it next to impossible to take aim and fire" when, in fact, we have examples where tanks do stop and fire under these circumstances.

Its an abstraction, but its becuase in reality your tank is completing a series of fast forward and backward movements in order to turn that would make it next to impossible to take aim and fire. Dan </font>

Has any thought gone into setting target reference points in real time in the game? It occurs to me that, in some games, I will order my forward observer to target an area where I expect the enemy to show up shortly (or where I expect more of the enemy to show up shortly), and when the spotting round lands (assuming that it is on or close to target) I will “adjust fire”, often repeatedly, to delay (most of) the actual fire for effect until needed. This behavior seems to me to be the equivalent “work around” of creating TRPs during a battle, albeit in an unreliable and inefficient manner. Would it be reasonable to include in the engine re-write a “targeting” order, wherein the FO calls for, and as necessary adjusts, spotting rounds, until the target is registered with the artillery battery. The newly registered TRP would then be available to that particular artillery battery, for use by the FO at his convenience later in the game. In other words, separate the spotting round / targeting role from the fire for effect role. Is this realistic, in the timeframe of most Combat Mission battles?

Yeah, I'm playing CMBO with some people, and that functionality would be great.

From Redwolf: From El Savior: Well, not having been a tank commander (and certainly not one in WWII), I can't be certain, but a few minutes seems like a long time to remain buttoned up if you haven't been recieving fire, given how limited a tank commander's situational awareness is when buttoned up. As a tank commander, I might be more worried about spotting other tanks or anti-tank guns than I would be about snipers. Of course, this still doesn't explain why tanks unbutton in the middle of an artilery barrage.

From El Savior Not sure this is gamey. I'm no grog, but weren't tank commanders key targets for snipers in WWII?

Hey -- how do I edit a post? I know how to spell sophisticated, but I don't know how to fix it.

Introducing a new player to CMBO in a PBEM game, he mentioned how cool it was that he could hear his troops giving orders, and suggested that I check it out, even giving me the location. I replied that the game was so sophisticated that I couldn't hear his troops unless I had units nearby. He then proceeded to thank me for letting him know that I didn't have any troops in that area. Duh! Suckered by a noobie. [ February 25, 2003, 04:31 PM: Message edited by: Hat Trick ]

From Schoerner: Poland was threatening Germany? :eek: I've seen a lot of outrageous claims on this forum, but this has to take the cake for pure fantasy. I suggest that we all take a very big step back from Schoerer, and not try to engage him anymore. Not only are his ideas dangerous (see "the Jews in USA were already mobilizing", as others have pointed out), but he appears to have only a tenuous grasp of reality. His insistance that only "authentic" documents be used, as he defines them, indicates that he is unlikely to be pursuaded by any rational arguments or plausible evidence. Much as I hate to ostracize people (I believe that discussion is usually better), in this case I think that it is the best course.

Perhaps its not a sound contact, but an unidentified tank. If your troops are conscript, and you are using EFOW, maybe they can't identify the tank even when it is on top of them.

Perhaps a bit of a side note, but I don't quite understand the comments about some unit of the game (in this case "accurately" modelled Finnish artillery) being "unbalanced". It seems to me that especially effective units -- whether VT artillery, Finnish artillery, uber tanks, whatever -- can never lead to "unbalanced" quick battles, so long as they are priced right. A unit or feature should not be modelled incorrectly (ahistorically) for balance purposes, is should just have its price raised to put a quick battle game in balance. As for scenarios, the designer of the scenario should ensure balance, not the programmer by deliberately making the units ahistoric.

Check out the "How realistic is CMBO" thread in the CMBO forum and the "New Spotting Model" thread in the CMBB forum. While I like the idea of a model like this, I don't think that Battlefront or most players are too keen on it. Besides, if the next engine has a "multi-multi-player" option, with each player on a side only able to see what his units see, we'll be well on the way to a system like the one that you describe.

I've also thought about a proposal like this, and while I personally like it, I think that it would have to be implemented as an option that a player could turn on or off, separate from fog of war. Its just too big a change mix it up with fog of war. A few other thoughts: This change would work best in multiplay, where each side has multiple commanders at different levels. Delays to platoon commanders would be relatively short, while delays to battalion commanders would be longer. In fact, the game could be structured under this option so that, say, battalion commanders never get detailed info on enemy units that they cannot see personally, but rely on reports from lower level commanders. In single player per side games, the addition of user definable standard operating procedures for units (e.g., when vehicle X sees enemy vehicles of type Y, pop smoke and reverse) should help players feel more comfortable about what their units do when they engage the enemy on their own. Another minor tweek would be to add a delay to ordering units to fire. While not directly related to your proposed changes, it has always seemed odd to me that it takes time to get a message to my units to move, but not to fire. Finally, one of the reasons that I like this idea is that it gives the company and battalion commanders a role to play other than as spare headquarters units. I always find it annoying (i.e., gamey) when my opponent uses a battalion headquarters to lead a recon platoon or assault by a squad. The costs of losing your high level headquarters units in CM are just not that great.

Regarding walking artilery fire, so long as the new target line remains green (within about 50 meters of the original target) you will not suffer a time delay for the shifting fire. When the target line turns blue, you have cancelled the previous fire order and the artilery must targeting must start over again from scratch.

From Fionn: I wholeheartedly agree with the first paragraph, but not (necessarily) with its application in the second. Vadr moved his tanks on the last turn, which extended the game by three turns. His tanks survived for three turns, which provides some (but not total) justification for his move; i.e., his plan did "heed to the ability to continue keeping the enemy back after turn" 20, at least for three turns. Would they have had a good chance of survival for longer than that? Without seeing the battle I cannot say, and therefore am unsure about whether this was a gamey move. Of course, an even stricter interpretation is not "the ability to continue keeping the enemy back after turn X" but whether the commander would have made such an order in real life, regardless the ability of his units to hold the position. For example, in this case the question is "would Vadr have used this strategy in these circumstances in real life, even if his tanks could hold the victory location?" In other words, if there had been no time limit, would he have rushed the tanks to the victory location, or continued with a different kind of attack. If the latter option was clearly better (assuming no time limit), then rushing the tanks is a gamey move. The problem with this standard (i.e., what would one do in the absence of a time limit) is that it is highly subjective. Which is why I like to play games with many turns, even for small battles.

The only time that I have seen trucks in a game (recently, anyway), a single infantry squad of mine caused both to be abandoned from about 500 meters.