cool breeze

Wiggum:
 
1. Please don't derail this thread and cause the topic to be closed.
2. Just because something CAN be improved doesn't mean it NEEDS to be improved.
3. There is NO perfect game. Anywhere. Every single one can be improved.
4. Yes, I'd like a little better pathing/formation in CM...but it is so minor that it is only a tweak, not a "bug".
5. Things that I think are "tweaks" are not things I think "need(s) to be fixed."
 
My post was to point out the technical limitations of home computers and the ramification of a 16-fold increase in action spots. Also, if I had to place each man, the game would not be playable. It is a very well done balance of detail vs. playablility right now.

Maybe with the maturity of the automotive engine in question, it would be best to return to the horsedrawn carriage.
 
Sarcasm aside, perhaps there could be some system of terrain based formation changes, like if the terrain offers some small amount of cover and is fairly open, infantry would assume a wider spacing, while in urban or complex enviroments it would bunch up more.  
 
I'm loath to support squad formations as a button simply because it's getting a bit too into micro, I'd rather just have a slightly flawed, but mostly functional system that let me set my dudes on their way without too much baby sitting.  
 
Further maybe it'd be tied to movement speed/behavior.  Examples:
 
Move would be a column, with spacing maintained based on terrain (slightly abstracted, like it if entered a series of urban action squares it'd tighten up to maintain cohesion, while if it entered a light wood it'd spread out)
Tactical move (new command), walking pace, same as above with formation broadly flexing to orient on assumed or known infantry positions*
Quick: same as tactical move only at a fatiguing, but faster pace
Fast: Run.  No spacing or formation.  Basically reserved for getting troops through an area as fast as possible
Hunt: .75 tactical move speed, cohesion loose, formations on line/wedge oriented on line of travel**
Assault: less spread out than hunt, bounding by sections.  Sections basically run for short distances while the other fires.  Lays down suppressive fire automatically at known or suspected enemy (so both enemy icons, and ? icons) regardless of chance to hit.  Should exhaust troops and expend ammunition at a very high rate***
 
Just some thoughts.  Likely more complex than needed, but would be cool to give a command and have a certain kind of output vs giving a command, then a spacing, and a formation instruction too.  
 
*The difference between move and tactical move being that "move" would exist chiefly to get dismounted infantry from place to place without tiring them out, while tactical move would be used for long distance movements to contact, or where possibility of enemy contact cannot be ruled out.  
**Hunt would basically be used for moving infantry into combat against likely or known enemy positions.  They move in a deliberate, controlled manner, and have a narrower focus for spotting the enemy, but are much more likely to spot something in front of it.
***In contrast to hunt, assault is basically moving to finish an enemy that has been fixed in place.  You're accepting some vulnerability by keeping troops close in order to get the most number of soldiers and firepower on the objective.  Also as anyone who's done an attack in a STX type lane, you're going to be pretty spent, and 40-50% of your ammunition lighter after assaulting through the objective.  Again you're basically sacrificing ammo and soldier fatigue to improve your chances of taking the ground at the end of the assault movement.

I'm at home today. Tomorrow, I leave on a 6 day trip. My pool pump blew a 2" line, putting about 350 cubic feet of water into my shed/pool house. My 20 year old is almost done with his 3rd complete automobile rebuild, but wants some help wiring some O2 sensors. My neighbor invited me to a cookout. One of my gaming rigs has some leftover antivirus files and the antivirus gurus would like me to run some diagnostics and post them. A tree fell on my roof last week and there are some finishing touches needed to repair/replace the shingles and the drip-edge. Today is a weight-lifting day. My chainsaw carb is acting up and needs a bit of a tune. An outdoor power line has an intermittent hot-to-ground fault; I need to pull a new line (rodent damage inside the conduit?). I still need to clean two of my firearms after a fun day shooting yesterday (I -did- clean all the others). I need to run a backup to an external drive on one of my computers; routine, but can't get lazy. My generator was put away after a power outage without running the carb dry (wife and younger boy were at home); I need to run it dry so it won't gum up. My kids' computer is fairly screaming for a new cpu/mobo; I've got it picked out (i5/z97), and I just need to buy it on sale today. I've already gone to the outdoor big-box store to buy replacement soccer-mom chairs and re-up on some ammo. I need to fill up two of my 5-gallon gasoline containers. My wife wants to have a bottle of wine and watch a movie with me tonight. The belt tensioner bearing on the '03 Honda Pilot is squealing and needs to be replaced. There's a pbem waiting for my attention.
 
 
According to the Wiggum15 school of thought, I should just get it all done.
 
If I say today's a pretty damn good day and nothing on that list is =really= needed, I'm a fanboy.
 
 
Just sayin' that some things just can't be squeezed into a day. I think Wiggum would be surprised to know that BFC would probably LIKE to get everything on his list done, but they only have so many man-hours available.
 
As for me, well, I got the 2" line fixed already. Next, I'm going to crawl under a car and wire up some O2 sensors. ....After I return my pbem turn.  And I don't know what I'll do after that.

Oh, that BBQ is hard-coded for 4:30. Beer in hand not later than 4:31. Fireworks? I'm actually the neighborhood fireworks guy. My motto is "bigger is better" and, "if no one in the crowd screams and runs away, you're not doing it right". Despite that, the folks keep ignoring my "stay back" line (ooh, insert obama "red line" comment here!   ), and it can get exciting. A few years back, a big cluster pack blew out a side panel and directed the rest of the "katyusha" (1" mortars) right at the crowd. THAT was fun! I've been gradually weaning back, but everyone likes a bit of adrenaline on the 4th.
 
 
 
 
 
The water: you know, after the first 340 cubic feet, it's kind of hard to get the inside any wetter. 2" line and a 2 horsepower pump. (It's listed with the town's firefighters as an auxiliary firefighting pumping system for the neighborhood   ). Tell your state's Hollywood A-listers to bottle some up and ship it to hoi polloi.
 
I will, indeed, hoist one for your birthday. My congratulations to your mother for targeting today's date.
 
As for the point of my post...it seems to've missed it's target.
 
Shrug.

I find it mind boggling that this seems to escape people.  Or I guess the other interpretation is they like conflict and seek to cause it for their enjoyment.  That is pretty much the definition of trolling.
 
The crazy thing is it is so clear that some people are so far out in left field that they think their opinions are some how better than others and or refuse the listen to facts instead insisting on holding ludicrous positions while at the same time totally missing the criticism and requests for improvements that others have made staking out the silly claim that they are the one and true critic and others are just yes men. 
 
It really is simple. Read and understand before you open your mouths - that way you will see that many of the requests you have made are also being made by others - often the same ones you want to battle with.  When you do decide to make a suggestion make it respectfully instead of like a jerk.  Then you might get a discussion going instead of push back.  Make sure you keep in mind that you might actually be wrong about something - that way you can actually participate in the discussion instead of clinging to not quite right ideas.
 
Oh who am I kidding these guys are not going to be able to get past step one.  Actually @agusto is right we should probably stop now.  I'll stop reading this thread.  Even though the perpetrators are on my ignore list I still find enough wrong just reading the parts of their posts that others quote

What do you achieve here except mischief? None of us here can directly influence the development of CM, only Steve and other BFC employees can, so the rational thing to do would be to take your suggestions for improvement to them and not to us, who we here are condemmed to be nothing but mere observers of what BFC does or doesnt.
 
 
That does not necessarily mean that they havent read your messages or considered your suggestions. But their lack of repsonse to your suggestions could easily be interpreted as disinterest or disagreement with you, which would settle the case: the answear is "no". Be mature and accept that, it' s their company, their game and their financial risk if they pursue an economical strategy that will lead them nowhere as you say.

Maybe these are "unsupported proclamation"...as "unsupported" as your assumption that it was tons of work to include these "features".

Actually i like the game, but dont like the lack of progress and BFC's business model...ever considered that ?!
For you, everyone who does not love the game and says "WOW, GREAT" to everything BFC does and releases is a sad troll who does have no clue how much hard work (should we all pity BFC...) they put into these games.
Someone who loves a company and cheers everything they do is usually called a fanboy, now i dont say you are one but many here at the forum are very very close...

I most likely will buy the Bulge game anyway...why you ask ?
Because i dont have to care about 55$, simple as that.
If they would release a massive improved CMx3 engine i would pay 150$ for it !
I want BFC to move forward, you want them to sit in a corner selling the same game with a new varnishing forever.

Iam ranting about CMx2 since 2007 and i will carry on because to improve they need guys like me who DONT cheer them like 14 year old cheerleaders.
Oh, and i know they dont care about the forum "troll" with his "rants"...but they are ignoring their cheerleaders too so i can live with that.

Ohh, Battlefronts business model! We havent discussed that for at least a month or so. This just never gets boring it seems.

Wiggum15,
 
I certainly appreciate that your intentions are good; that your heart's in the right place, but you seem to be iterating comparing kumquats with jackfruit! A key part of your argument appears to be based on the acutely flawed premise that your ability to run a super demanding FPS on your rig shows CM, which you perceive as far less of a load on the computer, it isn't--think of all the moving parts and vast numbers of computations, ought to be able to perform like that. But you left out something very important, Your shooters are undoubtedly running multi-core, whereas CM, no matter how stellar your rig, runs single core only. Steve is well aware of this problem but has said it's going to be a time consuming and expensive matter to address. From the very beginning with CMBO, CM has always been designed to run, not on computers with warp drive and direct neural interfaces, but on the typical PC or Mac when the game was created. If CM will run on the computer already on hand, this greatly increases the likelihood of a sale, since buying the game doesn't automatically require a new computer in order to play it. When CMBO was designed, BTS (now BFC) achieved the incredible technical feat of putting a revolutionary 3-D game out that ran on a 200 MHz PC with no graphic card at all. Obviously the goalpost has been moved a bunch of times since. This is but one of many issues which I believe should inform your arguments regarding what you want from CM. Meanwhile, if you can do it without wrecking your computer, try playing Ryse: Son of Rome using only one core!
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

Once again you don't seem to understand what you are asking for or where the issues for CM lie in your requests. I am doing my best to give you civil replies and I realize I fail at times, but your questions and your suggestions reveal a fairly profound ignorance as to what CM is up against to accomplish what you want.

Why should you finance BF? Simple you are asking they halt their revenue stream to basically completely rewrite the code which assuming it even could be done is going to mean the company faces bankruptcy. As you noted they are profit based. They are currently turning a profit with a very solid game. Maybe not what you want it to be but frankly there isn't anything even close in the genre. So yes if you want a revamped game, then you need to figure out how to finance it because BF is not a Wiggun charity.

BF is not a graphics intensive game, it is a CPU intensive game. A critical point in understanding first of all what is possible and second of all impact.

Reducing the action squares is a geometric increase on CPU computing load. Your vaunted computer would fry or more likely just simply hang.

AI again is an intensive CPU load. Before you even get to CPU though you have to understand what it takes to write an AI to do what you think you want. Phil knows a helluva lot more about what the state of AI programming is and what is feasible than you or I. If he is saying that the general state ANYWHERE on AI programming is such that it isn't going to get better for quite some time (based on first of all being able to write the appropriate AI and second having the system resources to handle it) I take him at his word. That you don't is again just pointless. Neither you nor I are qualified to challenge Phil.

Look around at the gaming world in general and tell me a good comparable example for AI coding. The closest is probably Command Ops, but it doesn't have to figure out what an individual pixeltruppen is going to do when a tank and an enemy infantry unit come into view during an artillery barrage. The TAC AI in CM is far from perfect, but it is amazingly good and the behavior is constantly getting tweaked.

So the point myself and others are trying to make with you is yes we all want to see CM improve. Those improvements have to have context though. What is BF capable of doing - ie what is the state of computer processing and AI code that are requirements to adding any AI additions to the game. What would it demand of BF in terms of resources and finances that would affect the companies survival. Even you have to admit, if BF attempts to rewrite the AI code and the result was the company went bankrupt, none of us would be particularly happy. Steve is a major proponent of updating the UI, but he has clearly stated on these board that it is a major effort that would require a lot of their time and would likely be part of a major revision, say something like CM 4. In and of itself there is not money for it. As much as folks say they want it, if BF did a version 4 update that was just UI, there would be howls from the community yourself included that you are just paying for a UI mod.

For all it's faults and it does have many, CM is an extremely solid game that continues to develop. Your proposals all inherently throw that out as if it has no value. That from my viewpoint at least is the flaw in your argument. You risk the health of the company and the continued development of new CM games and modules for something that inherently is not likely to happen.

 

Agusto regarding CMRT, the coding that went into making tank riders? Flamethrowers? AA fire? BF is pretty smart at figuring out how to produce the game within a target range the market will support. $55 looks to be about what is expected. So to fit within that target and get the additional features they want, do the TOE work, add the models that are new etc means anything they don't have to redo again they won't.  The prices I believe ARE representative.  It is simply that folks don't look at the whole picture.  They look at one piece and decide Aha!  See it could have been cheaper!  What they miss is the fact that a host of other work is also being done.  Every game title has had new stuff that takes time and labor.  BF's pricing model allows a slow but sure incremental advance, keeps the company stable and doesn't risk losing the whole thing because this is it guys.  If BF goes under who is going to step in and keep making this game? 
 
The proposals Wiggun keeps tossing out completely ignore first of all whether they are even possible and second of all the financial risk.  Do you take financial advice from the kid down the street running a lemonade stand about what kind of retirement investments you should make?  Then why listen to Wiggun's proposals as they have just about the same level of validity.

Currently  air support and artillery units that are available to player during battle
are shown so that if there are many units you have to scroll the list horizontally.
 
My request is: would it be possible to display these support units so that destroyed units (like a helicopter that has been shot down) would be shown at right?
This way the still active units would be shown at left and player wouldn't need to scroll as much as now.
 

Decent suggestion. To add to "Have the currently-called assets shown on the left so you don't have to scroll through all the little stuff that's not going to be used for support missions to see how long remains before/on your big fire missions."

Never stay in one place for very long.

The M1A2 and most modern MBTs are basically this.

Again, we absolutely do not need a military confrontation to threaten Chinese energy shipments. Imagine a scenario where we decide (for right or wrong) to restrain China and low and behold - most of Chinese neighbors (not without our wise leadership of course) suddenly decide to close their maritime borders to cargo ships headed for China because… oh I don’t know... they execute dissidents, or torture pandas, or occupy Tibet, or through their weight around in South China sea… or eat cats… Sounds farfetched? Think again… Of course we would never do such a thing and China has nothing to fear; they can always take our word for it – that has always worked out well in global politics…
 
Stalled is definitely an overstatement. It has been in negotiations for 15 years and the breakthrough was achieved when China threw Russia a huge bone by agreeing to their requested rate of $350-$400 per 1000 cubic meters of gas right after the South Stream was sabotaged by European Energy Commission. There are actually several other deals that have been signed since then. And they will certainly take many years and many trials to implement. But the official strategy by both governments is very much geared to push through these pipelines. This was most vividly reiterated by Mr. Xi Jiping last month on May 8th.
Now I can find you dozens articles (almost all in English) telling us how it would never work, and of course they are all written by unscrupulous analysts that have nothing to do with our LNG companies that would take a massive hit if and when such pipelines are built.. We all know how unbiased our business (and not only business) media is.
 
Again, I personally don’t care to discuss Armata till it materializes in a real combat-ready vehicle; maybe it is over-priced, or perhaps it is worth every penny… Only time will tell and for now I simply don’t know enough to care one way or another.
Again, I simply don’t care to make any predictions about Armata right now, but if it is worth its price it would sell fine just like other Russian weapon platforms. If it is overpriced, or offers very few improvements over older models (like T-90) it would not sell well. Same logic works for all other weapon systems (politics aside); I don’t understand why you think that some unique rules apply to tanks.
 
Lol, would you care to give me an extensive list of M1A1/2 buyers that have a real appreciation for force multipliers? Who could challenge the military organization and might of such powerhouses as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq? Perhaps weapon purchases follow a bit more complicated model than what you outlay above?
 
Guess what Steve - they had tried just that (with extensive support and oversight from us) throughout the 90s, and we all know how it went. Wonna tell them to do it all over again? You are going to learn a lot of interesting words in Russian very quickly.
On a side note Steve, I have studied Russian foreign and military affairs for many years in my prior life, traveled to the region over a dozen times, and still keep in touch with a couple of what you would call “power elites” there. There are plenty of things to critizes Russia for; and they are also plenty to praise them for as well. But reciting our media coverage of Russia (which is at least 90% fugazi) and then drawing conclusions that match this garbage word for word makes for a very lazy argument which, if I may say so - is below you. I would challenge you to try seeing things from a Russian perspective (amongst others), if you really want to get the full and objective picture. I am not saying that you should embrace their mentality (I personally don’t), but they do know what they want and where they are going; and that in itself is well worth trying to understand, because you will more than likely learn new things about our government and political establishment when you look at it through somebody else's prizm..

No, but while we wait there is this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrHmcpRAZNs

Well, I'm... hm... consultant for UKR part of this game... So, I now have a reason to propose include T-80 in next module for Ukraine for airmobile units. If BFC will agree, you will see it   

You can also run enough guys over it that you detonate all the mines.

Re: Saddam's army

Here's more or less how the cycle went:

US military plans on having Iraqi army and police intact to help maintain security.

Bremmer half reads a book on occupying Germany. Decides zero baathists are to be in new government, and being baathist is pretty much something that happened if you bought a pack of gum this is bad.

All the people with guns and idea how to use them and a mild antipathy to Shi'a and US are now unemployed. Results predictable.

Actual sunni militants show up. Start killing lots of everyone. Former saddam era police and military have second thoughts. Start killing sunni militants.

US military starts finding dead terrorists. Puts two and two together. Offers to pay these former sunni terrorists to kill present terrorists. Results are actually pretty great. Goodwill between former terrorists and US restored.

US gets ready to leave. Offers to continue paying former terrorists but through Iraqi government. Hashes out deal to find employment or job training for former terrorists.

Iraqi government pockets the money. Arrests former terrorists more or less at random. Won't hire the ones it was supposed to.

Sunnis become re alienated and turn to anyone who offers to put shia heads on pikes. Enter ISIS.

Basically these former Saddam guys were more or less bought off. Basically tigers in a zoo, dangerous, but not so much as long as you fed them and kept the gates closed. Iraqi shia government ate the tiger food and sold the gate in turkey to pay for gay porn. Results predictable.

Ref: COL Reese

I was on the ground when he wrote that. His status reports were all like that just most of them didn't have distro off of SIPR. we used to read the really funny ones out loud.

Hes totally right top to bottom left to right. But even as broken as the Iraqi army was in 2010, if it just kept being that level of broken in 2014 it'd have been okay.

But yeah. Iraqis are the sorts to prove that you were wrong about having hit rock bottom.

Because it's not fitted with that sort of capability, as you already found out.

Ok my title made it sound like there are just 2 parts but really its 3. 
 
I was just playing a quick battle vs the AI yesterday, on the super long skinny valley map (Edit to add :  Huge Novohurivka -Open).  US attacking AI heavy mech forces are generally able to beat me as the defending Russians on this map, but I try it sometimes when I feel like trying to handle the Ami sensor advantage head on.  This last play through brought up 3 things I wanted to post about.
 
Firstly, this is a really nice map but I rally wish it was slightly extended on the defenders side.  I don't like how the attacker gets loads of hulldown, high ground,  treeline positions to roll up into yet the defender has to start either hull up or in a lower and somewhat awkward places.  It seems like the map might have been snipped from a bigger map, if that's the case I would love for their to be released a version that just included a little more area in the back.  I understand if the desire was to make it so the attacker only has to attack through one reverse slope position, instead of one and then a little baby and kind of gameyly incomplete second one.  but it doesn't have to be a actual down again thing after the defenders peak, it could just be a little low area on the high area to be hull down in.   I imagine it being an often picked map since it has the really long dimension for some long range battling, and I think people would get a lot of enjoyment out of a better long range initial showdown. 
 
Secondly, BMP2M.  One of the coolest vehicles in the game... except it seems kind of messed up now.  Other people have pointed out the draw line stuff but that's a pretty big deal I wanted to bring it up again.  The BMP2 is ugly and not cool, I don't like my BMP2M looking like BMP2.   But that's not why I'm posting about them, I'm posting about them because they failed my plan.   lol  (like most complaints).    I bought a whole company of them, and their main job was to be hanging out slightly more exposed than my krysanthema to provide IR blocking smoke when they get lazed.  But apparently they don't have a laser warning receiver.  I managed to manually pop smoke with 2 of them.... so not a total waste but not quite a full company of mech infantry worth of utility (mostly my fault, I didn't even dismount hardly any of them... wasn't a serious game I just like playing with those kysanthema sometimes).
 
Thirdly ,  OMG did Krysanthma get changed over patch 1.03 to have its mast mounted missile system work exactly how you would expect?  My most successful one was simply hulldown in the grass at not very long range.  It destroyed 2 Abrams and 3 Bradleys and shot all its missiles, I'm not sure it was ever spotted.  Shortly after that I send him back to hide(since hes out of ammo) and his platoon mate near by engages some tanks and brads nearby from another hulldown open ground position.  After some shots he gets spotted and engaged by the brad, but the brad can only see the missile mast, and engages that.  This was at around minimum range for the Krysanthema maybe even less, so around 700 meters.  So although most of the 25mm missed some hit and it wasn't long until both launch tubes were knocked out sequentially, but the hull was never even hit.. Anyway this platoon managed to shoot over 20 missiles from short range and in the open, and the whole thing made feel like the game was handling the missile mast and radar mast thing better than before.  I imagine that if there was a little ridge to be hulldown behind at the back of the map,  the krysanthma would really dominate that initial long range confrontation.  As the map is now, the whole Krys battery I had hiding in the trees at the back did less than the platoon in the open at short range but hull down.  They shot some missiles but mostly just got blown up, didn't manage to pop any smoke back their.  And in case anyone is thinking the platoon that did so great did it because they were in the smoke, not because of the hulldown;  I don't think that's the case.  I did use smoke and it did help but I didn't notice em shooting thought it at all, I think it just kept me less outnumbered in the engagement.

it is really amusing to read this discussion. west vs east accusing for wrongdoings... all it really shows is how we are influenced by propaganda. 
 
no way of denying russia, or USSR for that matter, is an imperialistic power wanting to force its interests as soon as it was able to. the track record is just too long to be a coincidence. czechoslovakia, hungary, poland, afghanistan, cuba, korea... the list goes on... funny enough, the only guy who was able to push off the superpower (at least that i can recall atm) was Tito and Yugoslavia that refused to bend to Stalin's USSR and went on to develop it's own way of socialism. Sadly we know how that went in the end, or do we?
 
the same goes for USA. Whole latin america, middle east, asia... there really is no difference between the two. and if you go and zoom in into the regions and regional powers you will see the same pattern of behaviour wherever you go. everyone trying to push their interests. usually just by diplomatic or economic pressure and ultimately force. only difference is that as you go to bigger scale reaching the global superpowers you will see the trail of armed conflicts longer and blodier simply because superpowers are able to do it more often without being held accounted. but make no mistake just any country would do it if given opportunity. 
 
that is just the nature of politics and power struggle from the dawn of men. what is perhaps worst is how we stick behind our countries and rally at the flag for "our cause" whole time being perfectly aware what it means but still finding excuses. 

Really,
 
Not even funny. My grandma, 6'2" dutch woman could kick your lily white puny ass.

she should go back to the kitchen

katushagirlsoldier,
 
Welcome aboard! Terrific trailer! Really gripping stuff, and "Katyusha" has got to be one of the catchiest songs ever written. I have a nephew who's very big on graphic novels, and I'll definitely let him know about these. Paeans for the wonderful books aside, are you a wargamer, and if not, how did you find us? 
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

Isnt your katushagirlsoldier.com link also just some quickly googeled semi-offtopic stuff and just slapped here without any context or information ?