DavidFields
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Posts posted by DavidFields
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[looks around]
Is this...this...a Peng forum.
Should be labeled!
Tweet!!! Penalty.
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I agree. As long as what happens in the game is approximately what you feel would have happened then that's good.
Mostly for fun, I will disagree.
The type that plays this simulation is likely very data oriented. CM bends realism, especially with the promptness orders are transmitted and understood. The armor stuff, understanding it in more detail, like CM1, may not be completely realistic, but I find it fun.
I like CM2--so not a major criticism, just an opinion.
Oh, but I do agree, altipueri, "feel" is important. And I think CM2 is getting progressively better with that.
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Muscle memory has almost nothing to do with WeGo play. Perhaps it's the prejudice against turnbased games that's helping people fail to get in touch with the game.
- One keypress per command. If you don't use "relative" keymappings, direct keymaps let you have a hotkey for most things you want to do frequently and no keymap for the things you don't want to do accidentally. More potential keymaps would be great, preferably customisable, but it's no less "efficient", given that the environment is more complex by a couple of orders of magnitude, than the keystroke assignments in RTSs like StarCraft (which, by the way, I've probably played as many hours of as CMx2).
- Command range is efficiently shown by simple icon colour changes, without cluttery lines.
- There are plenty of ways of grouping units for mass treatments. Yeah, the keybound groups have been buggy, and fail to persist, which has made them next to useless outside RT, but that's gotta be a bug and will eventually get stomped.
I play WEGO, and I understand the "muscle memory" part as being significant. I one is moving a company or two of infantry, even in WEGO, knowing what is where makes the process much more rapid--and bearable.
As far as the list, I don't even understand the first point above, because I prefer to use the mouse for everything--"relative" "direct" are unclear to me.
"Command range" is shown by icon change? I thought it just showed what are subordinate units. BTW, stumbling into even that was a marvelous revelation for me--as long as I did not double click on the HQ, then try to move it--forgetting that I am moving all its units--tell me you have not done that.
I have never used the "mass treatment" groupings--maybe I knew they existed, but, practically, that seems not very useful given the intense need to micromanage.
I am typing as a fan of CM2. Great to hear that Battlefront is doing so well. Fine. Continue.
And when are we getting to the Ost Front?
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Just as a convenience, this is nice for turn one artillery. Just pick any FO or HQ which has access to all the assets, and plot all the firing.
No delay (all turn 1, if desired)
Accurate (even if one puts the firing on delay).
I tend to use my highest level HQ, or an FO if I have it, for this. But that is just so I can quickly know where to review it later, if necessary.
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This will be very helpful to me.
Quit it in my first "blind" try.
In a 90 minute scenario, I thought I would have about 60 minutes to take the town, and then the counter-attack would occur. But, as you showed, the counter--attack starts at less than 30 minutes in. This makes sense, because, otherwise, one could just cease-fire and likely win before the attack occurred.
I swung a platoon around to the right, came in from behind the town, and was mauled by Shermans, none of which went down the road that your AT gun had under its sights.
I am willing to move forward with losses, and lost an MkIV in the first battle, but having a precious platoon be crippled in a campaign like this would likely doom me.
Indeed, I cease-fire in the PT designed campaigns at the first likely moment that I will get a narrow win. Usually that means only contesting a key "occupy" objective. After that, even taking out, say, 4 Shermans, and "only" losing 10 men is a long-run loss.
Up the middle with alacrity, use the 105 artillery about 30 minutes in, and then I will cease-fire as soon as I can at least contest the city objectives.
I see we also have a difference in style. I almost never need to resupply my troops. You blast objectives prior to attacking--then might find no one is there. That is likely entirely, militarily, correct. I find the AI poor in holding fire. So I lure a target building/objective to fire--if not, the place is likely empty. Gamey, is true.
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The real fun of this game is that it's Kriegspiel - you've got to extrapolate the enemies plans from what you can see, BUT you don't see much. So what the player does see, needs to be explained for the noobs - otherwise, they won't get it and will move on.
We should expose, or abstract and expose, the underlying information that's powering the simulation, mostly by pop-up info under the cursor or by some kind of representative, attached icon. Stuff like:
- the firepower of the infantry formation selected
- the exposure of your men vs. enemies they can see
- the current morale state
- range of weapons - just the targeting line fading out is simple and gets the info over - a line from every man rather than the current composite one maybe?
- the penetration chance of a gun selected vs. armour under the mouse cursor
- the type of terrain going in to
- the path a unit is going to take - why can't we set a waypoint and have the suggested path drawn in real-time?
- the distance from, direction to and strength of command (command lines were brilliant for this)
- contextual spotting - "Tank Sargent!", "Enemy at 2 o'clock!"
- much, much more.
An awful lot of this stuff isn't present - it results from the physics in the engine. It was in CM1, the sim was powered from it, for CM2 (now) it's not there but for new users to understand how interesting it is, it will need to be approximated.
Absolutely. I'm not talking about being able to pay well with this info, I'm talking about the user seeing that this stuff matters and that's what they're playing, not the muddy field with a few grey sound contacts that's in front of them, but a rich tactical layer that currently we know because we've played it enough to fill in the blanks.
That's what will give them the incentive to get better - because without knowing about this stuff it looks like a bad RTS game.
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In addition to this, the game wrapper - menus, interface, etc. need some love. I'm picking stuff in a QB and even I know nowt about it. Again, the info is there but it has been low on the priority list for ever - so now we have to fight it to get to the game, again.
Whether one agrees with this or not, it is, in my opinion a very intelligent critique.
I buy every module. Personally, the price is a non-issue to me. We are talking about pennies per hour of enjoyment.
The question is, how do we get the Assault Wave people into CM2?
Or not?
That game looks so ludicrous to me that maybe there is no bridging the gap. In which case, bravo for Battlefront reaching out to a demographic which can support the company.
The issue I have is that I think the gap could be bridged, but I don't see much effort to bridge it. But, willing to be shown wrong, show me wrong.
Is BFC, with CM2/3 going to target a certain demographic--former AH players, CM1 fans, and former military--and will that be enough (to get us to 1941 Russia
) ?(I realize that "firepower" is not easy to calculate in CM1 terms, but there could be an approximation. And I really miss the armor penetration information. Will a 37.5mm gun on a certain Allied armor car probably penetrate the side of a PzIV, with the understanding that angle matters? -- important stuff, that the troops on the field likely knew.)
Perhaps there is a fee to be on Steam, which is too much for such a small game?
- the firepower of the infantry formation selected
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I actually like the paint job of the CM2 King Tiger better than the RL one. And closer to what I used to do on my 1/35 models--the later ones, because one really needed a fine spray paint tool to get the best looks.
And James Crowley, I guess we need to look for the partridge where there are two trees next to one another, and not in the pear trees.
[MickeyD--you all do great stuff.]
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I agree it'd be different, but 'different' is not synonymous with 'better'.
At the moment, players have to make a deliberate choice - whether they realise it or not - as to whether smoke or HE would better help them in their particular circumstances. That is they have to make a definite cost/benefit decision.
If the arty system and UI were changed to include a dedicated bucket of smoke rounds, then the choice required changes from 'what's my plan and what resources do I need to carry it out?' to 'how do I smash this square peg into that round hole?'
I am going to disagree with you, JonS, hopefully in a friendly way. I am going to argue that there are mechanistic issues with the current system that do not allow the player the "deliberate [interesting] choice".
Let's say I have an artillery asset, with 45 shells, 12 smoke.
If I fire the smoke first, then the HE, there is no problem.
But if I fire the HE first, then I have to guess/estimate the number of rounds that will be delivered. I might try not to cut it too close, but if I were off even 4-6 rounds too much HE, I might then have too little smoke to be effective.
If I could "put aside" 12 rounds for smoke, that would be a deliberate choice, and I would welcome that. I could choose to have less HE.
The issue is exacerbated by that important first turn barrage.
[Kudos!, BTW, with the new module, your post turn 1 delays are now shown on turn 1--not just < 1 minute for each asset--another number in parentheses follows]
If one wants to use smoke and HE on an asset, it does not make sense to fire smoke on turn 1, then wait for the delay in calling the HE--the smoke will be gone. It only works to use HE initially, then target the smoke with the delay to blind the target. Again, I think I would use smoke on turn 1 more (or, for the first time), if I could designate some of the rounds smoke.
This will get solved, I think. Given the changes, such as the one I have mentioned above, somewhere along the line I think we are going to get a # of tubes, intensity, duration, --total # of rounds (even if approximate)--. Unless I am missing something (and it would be about game-play or coding, not about realism, because this artillery stuff is highly abstracted), this just seems to make sense.
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I'd like a cite for that. It's the complete opposite of what I've read to this point.
To respond more generally to the OP, you got some good answers here. Smoke was used and sometimes in great quantity. The Allied seem to have mainly used massed smoke generators for river crossings. The Germans and Soviets used artillery delivered smoke shells. But I would agree with you that its use was not more common than it was. One can think of literally millions of tactical situations where it would have been useful, even decisive, but was not employed. Weather conditions as mentioned may at times have been a factor, but not the whole explanation. I think the main thing may have been a combination of availability and habit. Everything has to be moved to the front through a pipeline that was never as big as one would like, so ammo types had to be prioritized. Between supplying smoke and supplying HE that can actually blow things up, to the officers in charge it was kind of a no-brainer. With hindsight, that might have been overdone. With a good doctrine and practice in it, a little more smoke might have been worth more to the troops in the line than the HE it was replacing. But it was just one of many things that got neglected in the war.
Michael
I agree.
I have mentioned this before. I keep wanting to use smoke, but keep finding that using HE is usually easier.
Then there is the odd issue that you get a number of rounds for an asset, and if you use them for HE, then you don't have the smoke rounds. If there were dedicated smoke rounds, the situation, I think, would be completely different.
This is less of an issue for AFVs, in my experience, because one does not usually use all of one's ammo. But again, when my choices with a MkIV or Sherman are between screening an enemy unit with smoke, or putting a few HE round into a position, I, reluctantly at times, keep finding that the HE rounds seem like a better idea.
I keep looking for the exception, and would jump on it if I found it, but, practically, I don't use smoke much.
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Even better is this:
After downloading the CMMG module, I started playing (for the first time) Kampgruppe Engel campaign. Not only are we getting new content, but the older content is enhanced. Quite the bargain.
I love the new FOW changes (on Warrior). And the "feel" just gets better and better. As an outspoken critic when CMBN first came out (which is why, frankly, I am just now playing the initial CMBN content), but patient for the tremendous improvements, it has been a spectacular joy for me Battlefront manage this series, which must be incredibly complicated under the programming hood, and not get off track.
[i compare that to another company I like, also responsive to change, who is having trouble *cough--Universalis trouble--dealing with how changes in coding can have unexpected problems when the interlocking systems are so complex.]
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I had mostly been playing heavy infantry campaigns. Hunt seems to be very tiring for infantry, and I tended to only use it for the last few meters of a move, into bocage--for example.
But now that I am using a campaign with AFVs, the hunt command, before enemy contact, almost seems like the old "move to contact" CM1 command.
Once the enemy is engaged, the hunt command then again becomes of less use--because the AFV will stop at the sight of any target, no matter how trivial.
Is that others' experience?
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It is rather a job, isn't it?
Michael
But, I should not be other than anything grateful about the time put in to make the campaign--particularly the maps. So I will mention that on the CMBN site.
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I am on the 14th mission, Eccosseville (?sp), and I just want to express appreciation for the sophistication of the maps.
I realize they were built to real life--itself quite an accomplishment. But there are so many subtle detailed decisions that were made......that is incredibly evident.
Especially on a bocage map, when the Allies have no bocage breaching ability, the positioning of bocage, and the holes in it, take thought--to make the battle both doable and interesting.
Especially since, when setting AI dispositions, lines of sight, and non-sight, are critical with non-reacting units.
I look at this map, and figure it must have taken PT hours to get it the way he wanted. Indeed, this whole campaign is a chess match of subtle terrain and AI unit placement. I can think about the initial strategy on any battle for hours before making the first move.
[Put this in the wish-list thread: the packaged campaigns also have each map as a separate battle. I like campaigns--one battle affecting another so that that units are precious, the story (!). But not everyone's taste is for so many days/weeks of work/play--let them see the maps/battles more easily! Let the hard work be seen!]
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Interesting. (Maybe it's reflecting off the glass in that window?
)I'll check my build in a bit.
As for direction of the sun, in the summer, northern latitudes, the tilt of the earth changes the relative location of sunrise and sunset compared to in winter. (Obviously this occurs in southern latitudes as well.) If you've got concerns with regards to the direction of the sun, remember that the compass-like thing in the upper right corner of the game most definitely is NOT a compass. I can't count the number of times I reversed my directions when I looked at that thing. Yes, I've placed many a smoke screen downwind of my desired target. Sigh.
Right, but the sun is always in the SE, S, or SW in the northern hemisphere--never NE or NW. (the reverse, of course, in the southern hemisphere)
I don't rule out the possibility that I misread the thingy at the upper right. As a practical matter, the sun direction is not, I don't think, an issue.
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Heh. That is a big part of the reason why I never, ever, play campaigns. I cannot bear the thought of putting in possibly hundreds of hours only to discover halfway through that I have screwed something up to the point that the campaign is now unwinnable. For those who do not have this problem, I say more power to you, but "I yam what I yam" in the immortal words of a certain sailor.
Michael
Is this when I pop open a can of spinach and eat it, look at OliveOil, and then ask the other guy for a hamburger, which I will pay back next week?
I am RtoM number 14--great, but it has also seemed like I should get paid to do this.
I did Platoon Platrol [spelling is wrong] I was able...not quite, because of some thinking, to keep up almost 10 turns per hour--that would be 4 hours, on what seems like one the simplest scenarios, and I played the last 10 minutes several times.
Ludicrous--and I am such a fan of this series.
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OK, this is not a big issue.
But I have noticed this before: The sun is in the NW or NE in scenarios.
Nice to be in Brazil--but it happens to be that he battles depicted are in Europe.
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Ah, and one feature which I am surprised no one mentioned--and more in line with the usual suggestions elicited by the OP.
****Give an indication, when ordering an artillery mission, of how many shells will be expended.
I have a cheat-sheet by my computer, which is a post from Martin Krejcirik about the shell usage for some of the US guns.
But why do I need this, or need to guess? And, again, I am always thinking of the difficulty a newbie has with CM2.
Just before the confirm, there "should" be an indication such as: "your orders will cause X shells to be used". Alternatively, one could be able to just type in how many shells, rather than the "quick, short, medium...etc".
The number of shells one is given is, appropriately, a play-balance issue. But I don't see what is gained, or interestingly gained, when one has 50 shells for an asset (and the smoke shells, gone if you use all the shells on HE is also a confusing issue) and you have to guess what your "Medium, Medium" is going to consume.
[With regard to my previous post--and I am not complaining, because that would be like a heroin addict complaining he is getting too much methadone--I am starting RtoM 13 mission today. It is 80 minutes. That is 30 hours, if I can move two companies in 15 minutes every WEGO turn--which I can't. Just thinking about the start has consumed hours of my time. Heaven help me if I find, after 40 minutes, I found I did something entirely wrong with my artillery at turn 1--and this is a must win mission. I spent 30+ hours on Hell in the Hedgerow before giving up--I can see it is winnable, but I wanted to move on. Not everyone will find this is fun. The young need a gateway drug into this series.]
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Not that this is needed for the people who post on this board, but I think CM2 needs this for getting people into the franchise:
Super small scenarios, with a story to follow, with a campaign which builds up to larger units and actions. Shipped with the base game--not something that has to be downloaded.
When I started CMBN, I was amazed at how many units were in the tutorial, and the degree of knowledge they assumed.
Even the "tiny" scenarios--and I don't think I have played anything scenarios other than that size (I generally play the massive campaigns) are generally 30 minutes.
At 15 minutes a WEGO turn, that can be 7 1/2 hours. And a platoon, if split in all its pieces, which I increasingly find necessary, can 15 or so pieces to contend with.
How about 1 squad, 10 minute scenarios? Bunches of them. Campaigns of them.
Put a German general, for example in a house with a few guards, and have a "special forces" type action with a squad or two to "take him out".
This would seem to be such an obvious marketing move, to start people small (from StarCraft, to, really, most other games--whether Civ, or EU, or TW, where one inherently starts small and works up to complexity) that I must be missing some clear reason this was not done.
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The Labrynth: the seventh battle of the Road to Montebourg campaign. Great for us who mostly play the AI.
Interesting/complex/subtle map.
Interesting forces on both sides.
Interesting objective.
Just the right amount of time--I went to the last minute.
BTW: I don't know how it played in 1.0, but with the 2.1 engine version everything feels "right"--the MGs, the mortars, and the off-board artillery. I think it is very impressive when a scenario/campaign is excellent even with engine changes--it shows that the fundamental ideas of the scenario/campaign are valid.
BTW2: at 15 minutes a WEGO turn (which is generally faster than I can usually move--I will sometimes take hours/days on the first move, or in critical situations), a back of the envelope calculation would be that this campaign will take about 300 hours--this is very cheap entertainment.
Thank you PT/Battlefront.
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I think of the Mk IV, my favorite AFV, as the quintessential infantry support tank. By this "late date", I try to keep them out of tank vs tank combat. At the close ranges seen in the usual current scenarios, I am almost tearful at how, as usual vulnerable as a German tank from the side and rear, to see them so easily shredded from almost anything from almost everywhere.
They are 1941 tanks in a 1944 war. It is incredible that they were still important.
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Can you be more specific what you think improved, and when?
Onboard mortars/artillery or off-map?
So, Redwolf, in general, there are three types of people on this forum.
1. grogs--history/technical types
2. military type people
3. and gamers--that would be someone like me.
When CMBN came out, one could (even more than now) DIRECT FIRE an on-board mortar with amazing accuracy. It was better than MG fire, because of its HE effect, and one could essentially eliminate a target every turn. Put a few shells on target, directly, on the right, then the next minute switch and pin-point a few to a target to the left, for example.
Now, after some patches and engine upgrades, the mortar fire is less accurate, the MG fire is modeled to be more effective--and my sense is that mortar teams are spotted more easily when firing directly.
The grogs can debate some of the details, and the military types can give accounts of their experience--though I am going to go out on a limb and suggest there are no WW2 vets on this forum (I took care of them--literally a dying breed)--but the "feel" is certainly much better for a gamer like me.
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The context of the question - information for scenario design - was blindingly obvious, yet you chose to misinform.
Using features of the game to produce the effects they're intended to produce is in NO way a "work around"
I must be missing something, because I don't understand the tone of this reply.
From what I understand of what JasonC wrote, his two statements do not seem to be inconsistent:
1. A certain unit that someone asked about might indeed be have a percentage of experienced soldiers on a particular day.
2. But if CMBN systematically underrepresents the fear and panic at all experience levels (perhaps intentionally), than one to compensate would be to play with all green troops (or, green for veteran, and conscript for green troops--if conscript exists)
1--involves an objective knowledge of the service history of the soldiers in a particular unit at a particular time (which I think JasonC is probably a good source for), combined with a subjective judgment about how service experience maps to CMBN experience levels, an opinion about whether experience helps or hurts "the nerves" (someone here could argue that service experience "wears people out" psychologically and would make them more brittle. As a game system choice, Battlefront has chosen "veteran" to mean less emotionally brittle).
2--the OP generated discussion where the consensus (which may or may not be true) that casualties are higher in CMBN than in real life, combined with an objective (and true) statement that putting troops to green would make them more brittle, with a debatable contention that having everyone green would lower casualties (if the defense is also all green, might that increase casualties? An attack that maintains cohesion and gets to a successful end quickly might lower casualties overall? I don't know), combined with a judgment that having all green troops would be more realistic, and, perhaps, also combined with a bit of subjective judgment that this would be more realistic. And a tiny bit, perhaps, of chiding of scenario designers (is this the problem? it seemed mild--hey, this is JasonC).
Again, much to debate, but I don't see incompatible sentiments by JasonC on this one. On the other hand, other than the "rollseyes", I am not sure I understand the last sentence, so I may be, as I said, missing something.
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The context of the question - information for scenario design - was blindingly obvious, yet you chose to misinform.
Using features of the game to produce the effects they're intended to produce is in NO way a "work around"
I must be missing something, because I don't understand the tone of this reply.
From what I understand of what JasonC wrote, his two statements do not seem to be inconsistent:
1. A certain unit that someone asked about might indeed be have a percentage of experienced soldiers on a particular day.
2. But if CMBN systematically underrepresents the fear and panic at all experience levels (perhaps intentionally), than one to compensate would be to play with all green troops (or, green for veteran, and conscript for green troops--if conscript exists)
1--involves an objective knowledge of the service history of the soldiers in a particular unit at a particular time (which I think JasonC is probably a good source for), combined with a subjective judgment about how service experience maps to CMBN experience levels, an opinion about whether experience helps or hurts "the nerves" (someone here could argue that service experience "wears people out" psychologically and would make them more brittle. As a game system choice, Battlefront has chosen "veteran" to mean less emotionally brittle).
2--the OP generated discussion where the consensus (which may or may not be true) that casualties are higher in CMBN than in real life, combined with an objective (and true) statement that putting troops to green would make them more brittle, with a debatable contention that having everyone green would lower casualties (if the defense is also all green, might that increase casualties? An attack that maintains cohesion and gets to a successful end quickly might lower casualties overall? I don't know), combined with a judgment that having all green troops would be more realistic, and, perhaps, also combined with a bit of subjective judgment that this would be more realistic. And a tiny bit, perhaps, of chiding of scenario designers (is this the problem? it seemed mild--hey, this is JasonC).
Again, much to debate, but I don't see incompatible sentiments by JasonC on this one. On the other hand, other than the "rollseyes", I am not sure I understand the last sentence, so I may be, as I said, missing something.
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Great AAR.
Looking at the other side:
Should he have shifted his tank positions more after the initial battles?
And was the counterattack not an optimal choice?
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First impression
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
I am stuck in between.
I can't go back to CM1, but when it is 8pm after a hard days work, and I am looking for something to play, I tend to go....nah....not CMBN tonight.
I bought both all the base games and modules. The game is great, and continues to improve mightily.
But...as a practical matter, I am likely to play something more mindless (like SimCity).
I am having the same issue with EU4--again, spectacular games in their genre, with great, supportive companies. But I find I support them more than, currently, I am playing their products.
But I am also not an Assault Wave type.
But go back to CM1? That would almost be like, in a very real comparison, going back to the television and computer screens of 15 years ago.
I suggest you start with the "tiny" scenarios.
[i agree with Michael Emrys about being interested to see what comes next.--BFC will eventually come out "fun pack" of silly/crazy/odd tiny battles, I would guess, or something like that.]