slysniper

Oh one other thing I wanted to mention. I started the test with clear skies at noon, I switched it thinking maybe overcast skies might change spotting the tank in the woods, which is what you are seeing. It was not the point of my test, but if it was a factor, it appeared they were spotted quicker when it was overcast. but based on the number of runs I would say there was no real difference. or not enought that I can say the engine was impacting the sighting because of it.

I dont think anything they do with the new engine is going to solve the problems you guys have with the game. CMX2 engine is never going to work with the same aspects as the old game. If you cannot figure out how to get your troops to spot and fire as you would like, THE NEW LITTLE FIXES ARE NOT CHANGING THE BASIC WAY IT FUNCTIONS

Actually I think the concept has been around for a long while. There is a book from an samurai written like a 1000 years ago that talks about the elements of the earth and warfare and tactics. There are five areas. Famous book, I cannot remember the title right now. It is very symbolic and it is sold for business strategy

There is many aspects to think about, this is good. But while these units need to regroup, there should be more going on. Example. I attack with my units in depth. So a company might have one or two platoons forward. when the forward unit gets to the conditions mentioned here, then I pull the reseve platoon forward to keep constaint pressure on the enemy, they push the attack as I regroup the other units. Then you should think about this in larger levels also. So behind this company. i have another company. So as the battle progresses and I come to the end of the match. I can push a whole new fresh company to pick up where the old one is spent and needs to stop attacking. This is a fist. I can put constaint hard pressure in a localized area, if the enemy appears to break. i have troops ready to exploit that break. No time is given for the enemy to recover. YES , SCOUT, YES BE READY TO PROTECT MOVING UNITS, AND SO FORTH. BUT PUSH, AND WHEN YOU DO. take advantage of the enemy weaknesses. When they break, dont play to their strengths take the paths that are the easiest to your goals. I am playing a battle right now where the defender has two excellent flank positions that I have no interest in trying to take. He thinks he has me pinned on both ends. But I have found multible areas and paths not defended well in his middle and my troops are flowing into his center, I hope to find flanking positions to his strong points on the flanks and either get him in a cross fire or watch as he will need to retreat and give up them excellent flank positions because he has committed too many troops there. So eiher way I will get my goal because I found the weakness and will exploit it to gain the advantage I need for my goals. I need the flanking objectives. By why pay a heavy price if I need not. So I am preparing my flanking units to be the fist if the time arrises, so they are just holding the enemy in place until the firepower is to my advantage. It seems like water to me, find the path the seems the easiest and take it to your destination. If no path is there, then take enough water to force the path that is needed. A strong overflowing stream does much more damage than the same water spread out over a 100 meter path.

Ah, the future of warfare, a whole new doctrine of winning tactics. I better start writting now.

My comments were in fun, not a attack on a designer. I look at briefings for what they are, I will take what info I can from them and then do what I want. I pay little attention to what tactics they tell me to use. But again, who is to say what is a good tactic, maybe what is being suggested is good, for someone else, but maybe not me. All I know is there is plenty of times where I am glad I did not follow what the briefing was trying to lead me to do. But truthfully. maybe a majority of briefings are giving good advice, not like I am going to try to point out bad briefings. Truely the only bad briefing to me is one that does try to lead you down a poor path. But in general, if there is a briefing like that. normally there might not be a good path available.

I posted this on another thread in CMBN, but I think it applies to the spotting issues and what might be the area that needs tweeked. It basically shows to me that the area that might need testing is that of how fast should a unit be able to spot a enemy unit if it is moving and the enemy is not firing and motionless. Most of the time if you think about it. this is where the issue lies. As for this thread and the sniper being spotted. In general, if he is shooting. he has about twice as long as it is taking him to spot your open units moving in the field. So not long to get identified. But what I am saying, that this is how all units are working in the game maybe. Here is the other post Ok, I finally sat down and did a little bit of testing last night to see what I would discover under the latest version of the game. I saw some good and some not so good things. And by far, this is not enough testing to mean anything. But it was enough to get me a feel for what is going on and now I can try some other set ups to see how it impacts things. But as of yet, I do not have anything worth running a large number on that would show some issues. The setup is this. I have a moving Sherman M4A1’s in the open, moving from cover to cover at 800 meters away from an enemy Sherman in tall grass under trees with heavy cover and trees behind it. (This might not be considered to be much concealment in the game-I need to test other types of hexes) but it is what I went with to see if it impacts play. Which I have not tested yet. The crews were Vets. With no mods and all units. What I found the game does well is, Moving target in open are sighted very quickly. I saw no problems there. Within 13-15 seconds from the start of the game I always had sight of the moving Tank. I saw nothing in the test to think anything needs changed here. Now the fun stuff. At first I tested the moving Sherman with a hunt order and let both tanks fire at will. The results were the tank in the woods managed to shoot first every time. Spotting in 15 seconds and firing a few seconds later. With the enemy shooting at them the moving Sherman adv. spotting time were 28 seconds and then stopping and returning fire. So in general, not bad. Except for one thing, I had a battle where both tanks almost spotted each other at the same time. So I adjusted the test so no firing would take place. Then I set the moving tank to not move to cover, but to zig zag moving towards the enemy. Let’s see what happens running at different speeds and see how long it takes the moving tank to spot the motionless tank in some concealment. The motionless tank did fine with an adv. of 13 seconds to spot the enemy, nothing longer than 19 seconds. But it is the moving tank that might have issues. Here is what I saw. On the adv. It normally was taking twice as long for the moving tank to spot the motionless, tank. With 50% of the test taking over a minute for it to spot the tank. But that was the adv. Where I see a possible flaw is that 25% of my test had the moving tank spotting the enemy tank in 20 seconds or less. With two tests actually having both tanks spot each other at the same time. This is not good. Now I understand, that I should think of a tank in hunt mode as stopping at times and looking for the enemy. So I ran some test at quick and fast to see if I could get similar results (there does appear to be added penalties). But I did get results of fast moving tanks still spotting the enemy tank twice in less than 23 seconds. (Now that is really bad- no fast moving tank should be seeing things all that well). So In general, the moving tanks in the game adv. twice as long to spot something with a little variance for speed - not bad, at least there is a good difference (but similar results as if the enemy was firing, there should be much more of a difference). They have the ability to spot way to fast. Non motion targets at times. So I think a detailed test focused on this one issue might be what is needed. So I was glad to see in principle it works, it just comes down to how often should a moving tank get eagle eye abilities where nothing is preventing it from seeing the enemy. (It is almost like it was sitting still and the enemy is not in any concealment either. this shot shows what the moving sherman is trying to see note: even if using Binos, this would not be easy to pick up quickly Where as, even not in motion, it is pretty clear that we have a enemy tank out there I do not expect the game to be totally realistic, but Some additional tweeking could be done to prevent moving units from picking up non firing units so quickly at times

Ok, I finally sat down and did a little bit of testing last night to see what I would discover under the latest version of the game. I saw some good and some not so good things. And by far, this is not enough testing to mean anything. But it was enough to get me a feel for what is going on and now I can try some other set ups to see how it impacts things. But as of yet, I do not have anything worth running a large number on that would show some issues. The setup is this. I have a moving Sherman M4A1’s in the open, moving from cover to cover at 800 meters away from an enemy Sherman in tall grass under trees with heavy cover and trees behind it. (This might not be considered to be much concealment in the game-I need to test other types of hexes) but it is what I went with to see if it impacts play. Which I have not tested yet. The crews were Vets. With no mods and all units. What I found the game does well is, Moving target in open are sighted very quickly. I saw no problems there. Within 13-15 seconds from the start of the game I always had sight of the moving Tank. I saw nothing in the test to think anything needs changed here. Now the fun stuff. At first I tested the moving Sherman with a hunt order and let both tanks fire at will. The results were the tank in the woods managed to shoot first every time. Spotting in 15 seconds and firing a few seconds later. With the enemy shooting at them the moving Sherman adv. spotting time were 28 seconds and then stopping and returning fire. So in general, not bad. Except for one thing, I had a battle where both tanks almost spotted each other at the same time. So I adjusted the test so no firing would take place. Then I set the moving tank to not move to cover, but to zig zag moving towards the enemy. Let’s see what happens running at different speeds and see how long it takes the moving tank to spot the motionless tank in some concealment. The motionless tank did fine with an adv. of 13 seconds to spot the enemy, nothing longer than 19 seconds. But it is the moving tank that might have issues. Here is what I saw. On the adv. It normally was taking twice as long for the moving tank to spot the motionless, tank. With 50% of the test taking over a minute for it to spot the tank. But that was the adv. Where I see a possible flaw is that 25% of my test had the moving tank spotting the enemy tank in 20 seconds or less. With two tests actually having both tanks spot each other at the same time. This is not good. Now I understand, that I should think of a tank in hunt mode as stopping at times and looking for the enemy. So I ran some test at quick and fast to see if I could get similar results (there does appear to be added penalties). But I did get results of fast moving tanks still spotting the enemy tank twice in less than 23 seconds. (Now that is really bad- no fast moving tank should be seeing things all that well). So In general, the moving tanks in the game adv. twice as long to spot something with a little variance for speed - not bad, at least there is a good difference (but similar results as if the enemy was firing, there should be much more of a difference). They have the ability to spot way to fast. Non motion targets at times. So I think a detailed test focused on this one issue might be what is needed. So I was glad to see in principle it works, it just comes down to how often should a moving tank get eagle eye abilities where nothing is preventing it from seeing the enemy. (It is almost like it was sitting still and the enemy is not in any concealment either. this shot shows what the moving sherman is trying to see note: even if using Binos, this would not be easy to pick up quickly Where as, even not in motion, it is pretty clear that we have a enemy tank out there I do not expect the game to be totally realistic, but Some additional tweeking could be done to prevent moving units from picking up non firing units so quickly at times

As for speed of play. When playing, I try to push the battle as fast as I can when on offense, it is part of gaining and keeping the advantage. The trick is doing it at a pace where you do not lead your forward units into trouble without proper support or pushing a section of area too quickly without protecting your flanks. No easy way to explain that. That is part of the art of war. Many things will be factors as to how and when you do certain things. But I find many players play way to slow in HtoH. Time and time again when I am on defence. I see someone break my front lines but are so scared to risk commiting some units to see what they have done that by the time they have gained any ground I have regrouped my units and brought up reserves to give them more hell on the battlefield, which could have been theirs for the taking if they play a little more aggressive. But charging head first into the enemy is not the method either. I think of it as water flowing. push against the enemy lines find the weaknesses and find the easiest path that leads to your objectives. If there is no weakness, then group your forces into a fist and punch a area until it is a weakness and exploit it.

What did you say. A briefing that if you follow its instructions, it actually works. Wow, that is a new one. Give the designer a "ata boy" for that. seldom do we find a briefing that if not full of lies to try and get you to do what the designer wants, which is normally bad.

all sizes have their place. But I do agree that there is not enough smaller battles being created. I always feel like the smaller battles are the most exciting. because losing one key piece or unit might swing the whole battle. The bigger the battle gets the less value each unit has in the total objective. you get to a point where losing a platoon of tanks is ok. as long as they bought time for your other three platoons to make the flanking move you wanted. It really does change the thought process you have. For some players, they cannot change the value of their units with how they play the game. So they only like one style.

TREES ARE NOT THE IMPORTANT PART OF WHAT IS NEEDED, MAKE SURE YOU SELECT THE CORRECT GROUND TILE, GET THE THICK BRUSH. But I have to agree with others in that in general I am not having problems with infantry poping up unless they are firing lately. (which should get them revealed) So what you are discribing does sound interesting compared to what I have been seeing. Without images, it is normally hard for others to help figure out what might be going on.

but beleive me I agree with you that spotting does not make sence at times in the game. but I dont expext perfection either, I am sure it is very limited as to what they have programmed to get it to work. compared to all the factors that are involved in real life as to why we see or do not see things that are out there.

I am wondering if he should test them at the same location with a new terrain text. maybe rocky is not concidered good concealment in the game. It would be interesting to see how these numbers compare to if the sniper is in short grass or a tall wheat field. Just saying, the game might not be giving them concealment in their present situation

I am noticing the same thing, because of how they play, I expect to take losses. no big deal. That is not a problem as long as you have enough of them to do that. Not so good if you do not outnumber the enemy by a good percentage.

I will admit that now looking at the discussion and all the insight given on the two threads about Italian squads, their organization and tactics. That I should have held my thoughts, since I was not knowledgeable about the Italians. So I did want it explained to me as to why and it surely has been. As for how these things relate to the game play, I can also accept that. From the sounds of it, maybe they have too much flexibility at the moment, per some views given. As for how action spots work when the game provides multiple adjacent spots for a unit, I will just hope someday you get to that task where we have some flexibility as to what players might be able to select. (Which really has nothing to do with the Italians) As to pointing out that bunching up occurs in real life, that this is not just a game situation. That was insightful also. All that training in the service will teach you to avoid it, but as you point out, when the bullets fly; it is amazing how much of that is ignored. And instincts take over which leads us to the opposite end. I appreciate the fact that not only do we have this forum to be able to discuss these things, but that you, the designer will at times come and give us input as to some of the decisions that are being made and as to why the game is presently as it is. As to how I addressed the comment originally. You are correct in that my approach as not worded in a manner that showed proper restraint. So my apologies. (But it did get a response, but I still should not have done it in such a tone) .

Not sure where you get all that bull****, but whatever you say is always correct. No, I did not make you statements at all. But I do feel a commander should at least be able to order his men to take certain areas of cover, which are within yelling distance and sight. where as not having some flexability there does lead to some issues. In the game I was playing, the units were giving me 2 or 3 action spots. but only one action spot would be on the ridge line where I would have some cover and be able to see the enemy infantry below. So it brought up questions as to why we have no flexability there. Steve has answered them and as I figured. there is only so much you can do with the game, he mentions it is not perfect. but for now it is the best path for the situation of what should and should not be done. I started another game today, playing Italions and have not noticed any issues. First, I am the fools in the valley, so they have no issues finding action spots showing cover and facing right. second, these units have built in 3 men scout units, plus the leader and MG in a seperate split unit from part of its squad. So it is already giving me all the flexabily that I wanted in the other game and that anyone could expect. So these must be better troops than the other battle. so excuse me for jumping to some questions as to the logic in the game, since it was not giving realistic command control to the units. But my suggestions were no where along the lines of your comments. But why would I be suprised by your post. About the same tone as 5000 others.

Good points as always Steve. And I understand, you most definitely understand the game you have designed better than I could ever. So thanks for the text and explanations. As for beating me in a real time game, I am sure you would. Since I am at the point in life where real Time is just a area of stress that I do not enjoy. I only play that format if I am playing the machine. then I can pause when I want and give out turns to many units just like I was playing Wego. Plus solves my two left hands on the computer keys also:)

Something like this would be good for all units, just not the Italions. I think having to play with them has just drawn my focus to the fact that I have never liked how the game allows you to select the multi square locations. Steve plays without splitting squads. I always am splitting squads. Not that I dont want to keep them together. But for the fact that I find it is the only way to get all my unit in position to see the enemy. And face command does not solve the problem.

As for the game and feel, last night was my first attempt with the italions and I liked the challenge. manage to win the scenario "avanti". really did not mind the squads having to stay together, since they have no firepower. So it was a good feel to the challenge of a nation that was not to the same level of warfare as other nations at the time. But it was a good thing I had plenty of infantry, because it was hard to get their firepower to bear on targets, so without have the numbers in my favor, the battle would have been hard to win otherwise. The weapon firepower always reflect well to the real thing, so I love having a new nation to play with. with mostly it challenges as to how to get some good out of their weaker stuff, I do hope some adjustments can be done to working with the squads, still seems too restrictive to me. Restictions are in order, it comes down to what extent is realistic.

Thanks for the reply. Not that I disagree with you. Having limits is fine. But even adding a few adjustments could make a big difference. I like your thought about squads spreading out in a building without us having to give them commands. But it could also lead to problems, maybe I know the enemy is on the second floor, so I dont want guys moving to go up there until I order them to. never easy answers. I did make two suggestions on the other thread as to what might be realistic changes. As for my squad clumping into one action spot. maybe it was only seven. but I cannot verify it. I ordered a unit to the outside of a building side wall and I watched in amazement as the whole unit went to that one action spot and laid down along the wall on top of each other. As for the game never leaving more than 7 in a action spot, I know you understand your game better than I. But I also know I have seen all the men rush to one action square, then watch part break off and move to their square and spread out. Now if by chance, something like incomming fire happens at that moment, I think I have seen men get pinned and have more than 7 in one area for a short period until they crawl when able to a second action spot. But again unless i have proof shown here, it never happens, I know.

I was not saying it is wrong in concept, but can there be some flexability as to how they work in the game. Still restricting them but able to work with the game system better. Maybe, like a feature to at least pick the 2 or 3 action points that are touching each other so at least you can try to position the whole squad to be able to maybe see desired point. like lining up along a ridge line. (right now it is shear luck if you can find the machine giving you the correct multi action point locations.) Or maybe a feature, that allows limited splitting but prevents the squad from willing leaving each others sight, they are required to stay within verbal command or something like that. Having some different restrictions are not a issue. But it should be fair to what they were able to preform. (Now you cannot tell me they fought in R.L., by requiring the whole squad to storm and assault the building at once).

I started another thread on this, but this is my first impressions as to playing the Italians, I think that it is not a good way of depicting them because of game mechanics. What is the logic in not letting Italian squads split. I can see it as to poor training maybe. but it is not working well in the game. The units are so big, they are not working well with your action spots. Examples. Assault is only allowed to one action square, 12 men in one square is not very good tactics basically, ties the italians hands as to no scouting units. scoting with a squad is not very stealty. To keep my men spread out, I need them to move to a 2 or 3 action spot location. problem is, since the game selects them spots, many times only 1 of the 3 action spots will have troops with the line of sight I need. when inside bldgs, since I cannot split the squad and spread them out on floor levels, the old problem of too many men at one window is showing up. So what is the logic again, because they are already at a great disadvantage without you doing that to them. With their large squad size, they should at least be able to split into 2 units or something. I am just glad I am not italian or I would consider it a insult as to how they allow them to play.

What is the logic in not letting Italian squads split. I can see it as to poor training maybe. but it is not working well in the game. The units are so big, they are not working well with your action spots. Examples. Assault is only allowed to one action square, 12 men in one square is not very good tactics basically, ties the italians hands as to no scouting units. scoting with a squad is not very stealty. To keep my men spread out, I need them to move to a 2 or 3 action spot location. problem is, since the game selects them spots, many times only 1 of the 3 action spots will have troops with the line of sight I need. when inside bldgs, since I cannot split the squad and spread them out on floor levels, the old problem of too many men at one window is showing up. So what is the logic again, because they are already at a great disadvantage without you doing that to them. With their large squad size, they should at least be able to split into 2 units or something.

it is seldom you see a tank overrun successfully within the game, great post. To bad it was against you instead of for you. edit: If someone can tell me how to use the spoiler tag on BFC I'd appreciate it.