Cpl Steiner
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Posts posted by Cpl Steiner
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My shot at an answer:
1) WWII is sufficiently recent and sufficiently important historically for even the layman to know quite a bit about it.
2) We can understand the tactics as they aren't that different to what we use today (Gulf War II is pretty much textbook blitzkrieg). Anything earlier like the Napoleonic period needs a bit of reading to understand.
3) It is morally unambiguous. The Allies pretty well had no choice but to fight. For instance, Chamberlain is regarded with disdain as the man who appeased Hitler, so it follows that history regards the war as just and necessary. In today's world, in which wars are often sources of great controversy, it's hard for even the most committed anti-war demonstrator to complain about a WWII film or wargame, because of the level of moral certainty we feel about it.
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Not such a crazy idea, IMHO. It all depends on how good the graphics are for CMx2. If they are at least on a par with the Time Commanders/Total War engine, I think it could work, at least on British TV, in which we have a tradition of "War Walk" and "Military History" programs. Can't speak for our friends across the pond though.
It would be nice to see teams try to recreate famous military endeavours in the gun-power age as opposed to the anchient/medieval age.
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I cannot understand why Battlefront are being so tight-lipped about the setting myself. From a "conspiracy theory" point of view, it would suggest they aren't doing WWII again, and are just too scared to say so until they are very close to releasing the product, for fear of alienating their fan base.Originally posted by zmoney:I thought the graphics were ok in cmbb. What I think their going to leave out is WW2. Or at least that is my worst fear. I certainly hope I'm wrong because they make great games with WW2 themes.
Then again, maybe I've just read too many books by Eric Von Daniken.
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I often use the Map Generator to come up with maps for a proper scenario, as I'm too lazy to make one from scratch. However, I usually have to click "Generate" a lot of times to get a map like I want, e.g. crossroads, hills left to right, small town, etc.
It would be nice if you could tell the random map generator roughly what you want, and let it generate the rest.
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Road from North to South.
Road from East to West.
Road from East to Middle (T-Junction).
Small Hill at point (x,y).
Medium Hill at point (x,y).
Large Hill at point (x,y).
Rural at point (x,y).
Urban level 1 at point (x,y).
Urban level 2 at point (x,y).
etc.
I suppose what I'm looking for is a map generator that takes parameters for specific zones rather than just the whole map.
I doubt it will happen, but does this interest anyone?
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Thanks for that, and I don't feel bad at all. The trouble I have, I think, is that my mental image of the game is probably way off target compared to what we will actually get. I imagine all these virtual soldiers, rendered in thousands of polygons like those in "Band of Brothers" or "Full Spectrum Warrior", and I start to imagine the game as some sort of interactive war movie like "Saving Private Ryan" or something. I will have to keep telling myself that CMx2 will still, at the end of the day, be a "game", with all of the compromises and short-cuts that implies.Originally posted by Battlefront.com:It's not a heated argument from my side. You just have to keep clear that new possibilities exist but so do limitations. Hardware, programming, art, other design issues, etc. all have to be taken into consideration. So in theory what you are picturing is possible, it just isn't practical. That's all. Tons of things are not practical though possible, and perhaps even desirable, so don't feel bad
And to make sure I was understood... the abstracted suggestion by Other Means is being considered. No telling what kinds of problems Charles will discover with it
Steve
I look forward to some screenshots, and then you can expect to hear from me again. Hopefully I won't have long to wait.
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I confess I may be letting my imagination run wild with the thoughts of what might be possible in CMx2. This is only because I have heard so many things about how the game is going to be much better than CMx1. I still think it will be good, but I must admit I am lowering my expectations a bit after some recent posts.
I will try my best to stop posting from now on until we get more hard facts about the game, as otherwise we seem to get into heated arguments about things that don't even exist yet. As soon as we have some screenshots or some more hard facts about the interface etc., I'm sure a lot of these wild imaginings will take back seat to reasonable expectation (hint hint).
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No, but neither do they just abandon their mates to certain death. I imagine they carry them a short distance out of direct line of sight of the enemy and slap a field dressing on them at the very least.1. Do units in real life carry their wounded around for the rest of the battle?
I would suggest that they let the other men in the unit deal with any targets. Whether or not they can also sling their weapon, I don't know, but at a guess I'd say yes.2. Do soldiers carrying wounded get to use their weapons, or do they drop the wounded each time they see a target?
If the wounded man stays with his unit, the player will have control over where he ultimately goes, because he controls the parent unit.3. Should a soldier carry a wounded comrade away from potential aid, or should he carry him to that aid?
The parent unit carries the casualty, under the player's control, and puts him down when it stops moving. A medic unit could then move to within a few metres of the parent unit and take over carrying the casualty, thus freeing up the unit to advance again.4. What if there is a medic unit, how should this play into things?
OK, say the unit is moving and takes a casualty. He drops to the ground in the middle of a street or something. It would be unrealistic to expect someone to stop and pick him up. In these circumstances I think it would be acceptable to say the guy is always KIA rather than wounded.5. What if the wounded guy is 10m back from the rest of the unit? Does someone go back for him?
Common sense would dictate that he cannot. No problem, just have the guy acquire fatigue at a higher than normal rate. He will eventually tire and have to put the caualty down. Similar to becoming "exhausted" in CMx1. If he collapses under the weight whilst traversing open enemy observed terrain, that's the player's fault for not watching his fatigue.6. Can anybody cite some sorce that shows that a single soldier can carry another soldier for any significant length of time on his own?
It might not be safer to leave him where he is. The fact that he got injured there would suggest that it is not a safe place to be. If the unit just drops a marker or something, will the game consider what happens to the man if the area comes under fire again? I would say casualties can receive extra damage, which can result in them becoming KIA. This might be a blessing in disguise if it means the unit can move faster.7. What do you do if the unit comes under fire? Do you see if the wounded guy takes additional hits? If so, then wouldn't it have been better for the unit to have left the wounded guy behind where it was probably safer?P.S. I present these answers only because you asked for them. I know and expect you to do what you feel is right for the game regardless. I will be buying it anyway, and am eager to see how you have tackled all these issues, even if in the majority of cases it is through abstraction and simplification.
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OK, so the idea of men carrying wounded doesn't seem to appeal to many. However, what I said earlier about weapon crews raises some interesting questions. Take a HMG team of 6 men. How will they be portrayed with 1:1 representatin. Will we see groups of men assembling and disassembling the weapon every time the team moves? Will the others be shown carrying ammo cases etc. The same goes for other multi-part weapons such as mortars. Just having one guy carry the whole weapon, as portrayed by CMx1 graphics, would not seem to cut it once we move to CMx2.
My point about the above was, if you have to do animations and other stuff to show men carrying equipment, is it that hard to also have them carry wounded men over their shoulder, staying with their unit if necessary so as to not confuse matters.
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Michael,Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:But Steiner, carry him where? Who would decide where he is carried, would the AI do it or the player, and what incentive would the player have for moving wounded away from the shooting? Would it have to be to an aid station? Would dragging him to cover suffice? What if you didn't drag him to cover, would you lose victory points? Will CMX2 even have "victory points" as we know them? Will we be required to set up Regimental Aid Posts on every map?
What about encirclement battles, breakouts (Velikye Luki, you SL vets?), commando raids, or last stands where historically there were no medical facilities per se available?
I am actually trying to accomodate the very concerns you voiced. In my original post I said that the wounded would stay with the unit. I subsequently posted again to say the player should have the option to remove the wounded in the orders phase, but would pay a penalty by losing some healthy men as well.
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And now for the simplest solution of all,
Wounded guys don't get carried, they just become disarmed and slow the unit down, as they are shown hobbling or staggering rather than moving more quickly. The other men in the unit have to walk so the wounded guy can keep up.
In the orders phase, rather like when you do "Split Squad" now, you can remove the wounded. A random number of healthy men are also removed when this is done, and this is out of the player's control. The removed men just disappear, which won't look as bad as it sounds as it is when the game is paused.
The advantage of removing the wounded is greater mobility. The disadvantage is that some healthy men are also removed, and you don't get to pick which ones. Undo and Redo of this command just picks the same guys every time, determined at random for that orders phase.
Any takers?
P.S. - apologies for "string" posting like this, but I kept thinking of problems with my original idea, and possible solutions.
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Further to my last post,
Why not allow transfers between adjacent units. If two teams are slowed down by wounded, all the wounded could be placed in one team, which would provide replacement fresh men for the other. The team with all the wounded would now be immobile, but the other team would be at close to full strength and mobility.
This would drain manpower over the cause of a battle, but isn't that simulating reality? CMx1 already has the concept of reinforcements, which must affect the CPU to a certain degree, so I don't see why CMx2 couldn't have some fresh squads follow the main attack in to make up for all the combat ineffective ones.
You could even have an "Abandon Wounded" order to prune squads of their wounded and associated porters. As this would be in the orders phase, the abandoned men could legitimately just fade out of existence, representing the men being left to their own fate, which would be decided by the AAR.
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Steve has said he doesn't see it possible to have units of wounded and first aiders "spawn" mid-game from other units, for obvious reasons. However, as we have 1:1 representation, it should be no big drain on the CPU if some men in a unit become "porters" for the wounded in the unit.
I imagine things like HMGs will require animation of the crew picking up and carrying the weapon. Maybe some crewmen are even shown carrying ammo boxes etc. What if a wounded man was treated like a piece of equipment like an HMG and one or more men in the squad were designated as "crew" for this wounded man?
Once assigned as crew/porter to the casualty, they always pick the guy up, carry him, and set him down at the end of their movement (requiring a delay like the setup time of an HMG whilst they make sure he's OK). The animation for this has been done in other games, for instance "Full Spectrum Warrior", so it is definitely possible.
The wounded man stays with the unit, so we don't have to worry about the CPU being hit due to units splitting up. The only game effect would be a bit of extra animation, and a slowing down of the squad due to the presense of the man being carried. For instance, maybe the whole unit is now only allowed to walk or jog rather than run flat out, just like a HMG team.
If a unit had greater than half its men in a wounded state, it would become immobile, because there would be insufficient "porters" for the wounded. Of course, you could get round this by cheating and saying that a wound is upgraded to a KIA if there are insufficient healthy guys left to carry all the wounded.
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In CMx1, squads can become AI controlled if they panic or become broken. This sort of effect could be used in CMx2 for the handling of wounded. It would allow the AI to do some sort of standard wounded SOP for the squad (pick up wounded, carry to cover, kneel over wounded and apply first aid). Once the wounded SOP had been done, the squad would become player controlled again. The casualty could fade out or just lie there after that.
I'm not saying this would be easy to do, but it would get around some of Steve's complaints about the player wanting to do something with the wounded if they aren't abstracted.
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Steve, thanks for your detailed analysis.
I would like to add that in the Mogadishu battle, US doctrine on casualties reached such importance that it effectively superceded the original mission objectives. A mission to capture some middle ranking enemy VIPs ended up as a mission to extract some downed helicopter crewmen. I would go as far as to say that the enemy the US was up against deliberately exploited US doctrine on casualties to cause this mission creep and ultimately suck in as many US soldiers as possible into an unwinnable battle.
It would be neat if this sort of thing could be simulated in CMx2, i.e. mission objectives and priorities changing mid battle due to doctrines such as casualty extraction. I realise the first release has to be pretty basic, but maybe in future releases we can see this sort of feature.
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Have you read the book? The book is based upon first-hand accounts, and in my opinion for a Hollywood film it follows the book quite faithfully. </font>Originally posted by vincere:Cpl Steiner </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> It's only a movie, but it makes a valid point. In some situations, abandoning the wounded is not an option.
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I know this has been discussed at length before but I think the more we see the effects of casualties, the more immersive the game will be. There is obviously a "diminishing returns" factor here, so we don't want to go mad, but I would welcome anything that showed how casualties can hinder the company commander's plans. In the film "Black Hawk Down", there is a scene in which the commander tells an officer to get his men to the crash site, and is told that they can't move because they have too many casualties. It's only a movie, but it makes a valid point. In some situations, abandoning the wounded is not an option.
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I think I saw a documentary on TV about D-Day that said the first wave were all green troops as these were believed to be more likely to storm up the beaches than veterans. The veterans would probably have refused to get in the boats!
This could make for some interesting force selection decisions before a Quick Battle. Veterans are better fighters, but an assault in which heavy casualties are expected would be better made by less experienced troops who are more likely to obey orders and advance.
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"Fulda Gap" board game (SPI), circa 1970s or 1980s, had "Untried" units. When they were in combat for the first time you had to roll to see how good they were.
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I did a quick search on the web for info on collision detection and came up with the following article, which seems to be a very good summary of the problem and confirms lots of what has already been said on the matter, if anyone's interested.
http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=983/ddj9513a/
My only proviso would be that CM doesn't have to do it's collision detection in real time. In theory it could take a bit longer when it generates the action phase, but even then I concede that there are limits on how long the player can reasonably be expected to wait.
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I think LOS being more difficult than LOF is a real problem, but forgive me if I remain a little unconvinced on the LOF issue. Surely, if you create a 3D object that is a shell of one type or another, it isn't that hard to check whether or not it's coordinates intersect with any of the other 3D objects in the game?
I mean, this sort of thing happens every fraction of a second in a FPS. You just have to check each object against every other in the game to see if they intersect. I appreciate that in CMx2 there will be quite a lot of "objects" but the principle remains the same. If anyone remembers the space combat game "Homeworld", they will appreciate that the game could detect intersecting objects when several dozen objects were in play at any one time.
Please accept this comment in the way it was intended, i.e. to query design decisions in a constructive way so that we all get to enjoy a game that is the best it can possibly be when CMx2 comes out.
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Now it all makes sense. Thanks for the clarrification.
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I think this rules out tanks that only have room for a team on top. They aren't dedicated to the transport of specialist teams. They just carry what they can. Panzer II for instance.Cpl Steiner, in a sense this is gamey. Small capacity vehicles are not meant to carry Squads, but small Teams. Taking a 12 man Rifle Squad and splitting it up into 4 pieces so it can fit in 4 Jeeps is in theoretically possible in the real world, but how many times in a CM style battle would you expect to see something like that?Steve
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I've read all the above and am a bit surprised that no-one has mentioned the problem of small vehicles carrying passengers. I routinely split squads in order to fit them on vehicles that can only carry a team.
Is this considered gamey too?
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Never used it myself, but I know there are utilities for converting HTML to XML, so it will probably supercede HTML eventually. I think the main difference is HTML just describes how info should be presented on a page, whereas XML also describes what the data is.Originally posted by flamingknives:What's XML and what does it offer that HTML doesn't?
I'd prefer HTML, primarily because I can code that.
Place your bets on the Front
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
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I haven't read this entire thread, so forgive me if this is old news, but I spotted this quote from Battlefront in an interview with "www.the wargamer.com" about the then upcoming CMAK dated 09/12/2003: -
I can't believe I've missed this. They told us it would be Western Europe for release 1 and Eastern Europe for release 2 back in 2003!I rest my case.