Chelco

I'll quote someone else. "So if a player's idea of fun is to use "gamey" tactics to beat the other guy, I guess we did "remove" some of the "fun" in CMBO. But in doing so we made CMBB more of what CMBO was always, ALWAYS, supposed to be. And the next game will continue that trend of improvement towards the unobtainable goal of perfect simulation of tactical warfare. And in our opinions, perfect means most realistic." -Steve of BFC Nov 1 2002 </font>

Thanks flamingknives for your feedback. Regarding that we are supposed to make mistakes, I wish they wouldn't be related to missjudging the terrain and they would be all related to improper tactical use of my forces.

Gee Mr. Tittles! Translation: You surprise me with your ultra-realism passion. Good for you, surprising for me. That's it, nothing else or offensive. Your statements about gamey attitudes in CM strongly suggest that CM is actually a game(y)! Translation: a funny (well, not very funny) way to say that CM was designed as a game and is a game. How do you envision the perfect CM? How do you play it as it is now? You don't fly around the map? You stay in the HQs unit shoulders all the time? Translation: These are honest un-answered questions, not aggressions. The only thing I ask for is for 3-D shading the elevations in CM. This conversation is going off target by ultra-realism fundamentalists. Very similar to what happens when flight simulators enthusiasts discuss if the padlock view is realistic or not (even when real-life pilots clearly stated that the computer monitor imposes critical problems to perceive your enemies). Translation: No guys, don't stop posting your opinions. I am not, repeat, I am not a forum administrator. So, when I say that the thread is off-target, it doesn't mean I am next to close it. At ease with your opinions then. The starter of the thread wanted an aid to understand and use better the terrain elevations. I second him. Translation: This is an opinion. It's resemblence with an statement like "I order you to keep on the starter's path" is unfortunate. Question to myself: How much of a jerk you have to be to quote yourself?

Well, I admit my passion about ideas could be often offensive. If so, I apologize. However, I am not a forum administrator or nothing or the sorts, so I don't see why you would feel so compelled to interpret my comments as threatening your point of view. Regarding the Nazi thing, that was disgusting. The never found bones of my grandmother and her sister (killed somewhere in Poland during 1942, we believe) must be shuddering in joice now that Nazi is such a cool name to call people you don't like in the internet. Use it with caution, we really don't know a thing about Nazis. Cheers, [ May 05, 2004, 11:21 AM: Message edited by: Chelco ]

Hi flamingknives! At the first sight, I thought your sentence was stating something totally wrong. However, now I am confused by my own thoughts. Imaginary CM story: You send a platoon of infantry into position A, which is a wood terrain your troops hold. The path you select for this is open terrain and it has woods on both sides (which you had cleared). Surprisingly, at the middle of the turn, your troops became pinned by frontal heavy MG gun fire coming from like 200 meters. You replay the turn and discover that actually the path you chose was accross an unperceivable tiny hill that exposes your troops to fire from other unperceivable hill 200 meters away. Questions and possible answers: -If you were walking along the real life path to A, would you realize about this hill and its exposure to the other hill? Absolutely yes, even from certain distance. -Would a real life squad in a real life scenario use the path to A? I don't know how much initiative and flexibility squad leaders were given in real life. If I would be a squad leader, I wouldn't put my guys in open terrain overlooking enemy positions. -Why the squad in CM was so stupid and used the path anyway? The player (commander) told them to do so. -Would that tiny hill be ploted accurately in WWII map and would a commander realize from it that the path is exposed to enemy fire? I am not sure but I don't think so. At this point I am so hopelessly confused! However, something is granted: the game designers provided us a way to avoid the previous mistake. They gave us the flexibility to fly around the battlefield at low levels to discover its topological intrincancies. That's how they envisioned the game to be played. What we are asking for is just something to make this process a bit less time consuming. Cheers,

LOL At least one person is happy!

Gee Mr. Tittles! Your statements about gamey attitudes in CM strongly suggest that CM is actually a game(y)! How do you envision the perfect CM? How do you play it as it is now? You don't fly around the map? You stay in the HQs unit shoulders all the time? The only thing I ask for is for 3-D shading the elevations in CM. This conversation is going off target by ultra-realism fundamentalists. Very similar to what happens when flight simulators enthusiasts discuss if the padlock view is realistic or not (even when real-life pilots clearly stated that the computer monitor imposes critical problems to perceive your enemies). The starter of the thread wanted an aid to understand and use better the terrain elevations. I second him.

Ah, I see. You mean shading the LOS of a selected unit. Well, that's debatable. Cheers,

Hi Mr. Tittles, I am not sure that I understand what you say. I cannot understand how giving the battlefield a more realistic look would result in gamey attitudes. Shading could help you to perceive better the terrain even in birdseye views. In real life, I look at a countryside and I clearly perceive a ditch which is 0.5 meters in depth and is 30 meters away from me. In CM, I have to put the camera at "soldier's shoulder level" and advance the cursor in order to have a similar perception of the same ditch. How do you survey the battlefield? Can you elaborate more on this? Dunes change or shift in CM? [ May 04, 2004, 01:51 PM: Message edited by: Chelco ]

When creating desert maps, I partially alleviate the lack of cues for the slopes by surrounding them with different terrain. I mean that if the slope is sand, I place at the begining and at the end of the slope a line of bushes. I try to not use bushes in other way (i.e. not in plain surfaces which are far from slopes).

Hi JasonC! I think shading can help. Cheers,

I second your opinion. Shading with the light source at an adequate angle would help me a lot. It would make the game look even better.

So true. I always wondered about the "evil Gurkas" during the Malvinas/Falklands War. I clearly recall being a kid back in Argentina and listening the Government run-news media telling us that the Gurkas wouldn't take prisoners and were cuting the throats of surrendered Argentinean conscripts. When the war ended and two of my friends came back from their POW place I asked them about it. They looked to each other and one answered: "Weren't those the guys who gave us the hot meal?". Indeed they had their first hot meal in a month after surrendering . I don't know the abolute truth, that's for sure. But terrible stories about a foe spread fast.

Thanks for the feedback! In this book there is also an account on how rapidly were spread among the Germans the versions of mine carrying-dogs supposedly trained by the Russians to run under the Panzers. The author rapidly claims that he never seen something like that and that surely never happened. Though, Panzer crews were told to fire on approaching dogs on the meantime. [ April 23, 2004, 11:46 AM: Message edited by: Chelco ]

And when I play CMBB as the Russians I try to keep casualties at a minimum. Historically inacurate approach I'm using I guess.

Hello, I am reading this book Fighting in Hell: The German Ordeal on the Eastern Front -- by Peter G. Tsouras A German general mentions there that the Russians have been seen clearing minefields using unarmed soldiers walking side by side and being killed by the mines or the German defensive fire. I know that this book shows only the German perspective of the Eastern front and that the accounts writen in it have been indicated as inaccurate in some of the book's reviews. However... Man, it seems like the poor Russian infantry man had two enemys during WWII: the Germans and it's own commanders. Your feedback on this topic is appreciated.

What about "Windtalkers"? Nah, kidding. "Windtalkers" is a joke. BTW I realized that Ramelle-Saving Private Ryan scenario was in my special edition CMBO. I played it and I suffered a terrible defeat. Also, honorary mention to the tactical AI of this game: the AI germans avoided the main street that leads to the bridge. Ocassionally some squads rushed across the main street from house to house. What a fight! When like 3 houses of the main street were secured by German troops, the AI sended a Tiger along the main street. This tank kept going back and forward, like fearing Sgt Horvach's bazooka. The only flaw I noticed was that the AI sended it's Marder along the main street at very early times. Soon, it realized that it was stupid and pulled it back into a safe location. I know, I know: if you are really up to a challenge, you should go PBEM! But for tactically challenged guys like me, the AI of this game is the best I've ever seen.

I applaud the clarity of your thoughts and I totally agree with you. Even when it may hurt or infuriate some egos around here, the majority of people here are not historians. There is some people like M. Dorosh, who made excellent research on the subject of Canadian uniforms during WWII (he accessed original sources for this) and I personally consider him an historian just because of this. You may read a lot, you may research a lot, you may know why some Tiger tanks had a 13 labelled in their upper hatch, but still you are not an historian. Not if you learned all your stuff in books from Barnes and Noble. I consider myself an avid reader of history. Nothing more, nothing less.

A little bit OT, but anyway. My other passion are flight simulators. One of them is one of the most realistic fighter jet simulation up to date: Falcon 4.0. A guy (callsing "BeachAV8R", check it out at simhq.com) has writen a bunch of mission reports from the simulator. When you read them, is almost like they came from real life. In fact I have a book by a real F-16 pilot, and many times BeachAV8R reports are very similar (button switching, systems checking, tactics, etc) to the descriptions in the book. The conclusion is that Falcon 4.0 is very realistic. I think that the situation with CM is quite similar. An AAR of CM describing how you attacked/defended (use of terrain, deception, flanking, etc) could be undinstinguishable from a real life AAR. That's why I am a big fan of CM.

I totally agree with you. A software can be a game and a sim at the same time.

What a wonderful thread! Being a newbie, I truly enjoy reading the thoughts of the "grogs" around here. I would like to add my humble contribution. 1) "Fun" in military-themed games/sims is a subjective thing. Some people cannot have fun if the side armor of the Tiger is not this or that value. Some people will only have fun if the graphics are top-notch, even when soldiers can demolish a three story buidling with 2 granades. The spectrum in between is big enough to represent a challenge to developers. For me, fun is to employ real life tactics against an oponnent that is doing the same thing in a combat which outcome is plausible or believable. To my most deep delight, when I started using CM, I discovered the certain things you find in the books like recon pulls and command pulls actually work in this game/sim. This is a lot of fun for me. I feel compelled to represent the scenarios discussed in the books into the CM engine to see what I get. 2) Simulations have to make compromises. It is imposible to compute every variable that influences tactical combat. It is in the quality of the compromises and how it does them, where the CM excellence lies. 3) Granularity, or how to look at things at the level they were meant to be seen at. I remember myself months ago running CMBB demo in my computer and seeing my squad a few meters away from another squad, firing to each other without casualties during a whole turn. I thought that CM was crap because of this. Why this soldier didn't die when I saw a bullet to struk him? Later on I learned about the abstractions made of infantry teams. And then I grew up to understand that the real question is not about individual soldiers and individual bullets. It's more about if an attack with an infantry squad against that position would work before my team breaks in panic! This comes into the realism question. I agree with the posters here that total realism is impossible and probably not fun. The way you see all the details of the battlefield, the way that you can think a lot before instructing orders to EVERY sinle unit are not realistic. But that's just not the point, the point is if, given the orders you gave to your troops, the outcome of the battle is believable or plausible. I think that CM is realistic at that level of "granularity". Just an opinion.

Got my copy! Now I need an excuse to leave early from my job...

@MickeyD: "Almost" I trash the boxes right away. My apartment is small and when my wife sees them starts asking questions. :eek: Jewel cases are less noticeable. My order has been shipped today.

Well, if they sent you an e-mail telling you it shipped, I think they did. If today is the shipping day to the stores, we should be seeing it by Thr or Fri on the shelves. I will post too when I get it. Cheers,

Hello Jack, Lucky you man! I ordered mine yesterday, from EBgames too. Still not an e-mail from them ... To make thinks worse, their website is now taking pre-orders. :confused: Maybe they ran out of it.