dan/california

Elvis, you have mentioned a number of time that the troops on hill 154 were difficult to rally because they were out of command. What caused this? Did some of your HQs get blitzed, or did you get the troops to far from their commanders when everyone got pinned.

I expect CMBN to fully reflect the difficulty of staying in touch without all of that kit.

CMX2 uses a far more sophisticated C2 model, different forms of communication are directly simulated. Can they hear see their commander, can they hear, do they have a working radio. So there are lot of subtle things going on. It may be possible for a unit to be in command, on some level, one turn and out the next due to smoke for instance. CMSF glosses over some of this, especially playing blue, since it simulates the trillion dollars worth of equipment the U.S. and NATO have bought in the last thirty years to keep troops in communication. If a late model Abrams has no C2 links left its probably so beat up as to be combat ineffective anyway, with half the equipment showing red.

Is that why he's been so quiet? You guys finally issued him a secret pass key?

I think I would carry a couple of cases of VERY good beer and a small white flag. No one shoots the guy with the beer.

Great Comic, I just favorited it.

Body, what body? We can barely find the smear.

Ooooh, so its Canadian Bacon and all the fixins, outstanding!

John, you separated your to tank destroyers to increase your coverage and flexibility. In the end you lost one of them for relatively little return, and the other one that littered the field with burning Shermans before it took once shell too many. Do you think if you had kept them together, there would have been an opportunity to achieve true fire superiority and reduce the amount of return fire they had to deal with.

It is worth pointing out that JasonC is attacking the morale model based on insufficient information. Getting the behavior he wants might be as simple as setting initial troop morale and motivation to very low levels. It is far to soon to judge. His larger argument about Design for effect vs engineered simulations amounts to requesting a whole new game. Which is less likely than my fat rear end winning the next Tour de France. I am at greater risk of winning the lottery, literally.

The difficulty, from a practical standpoint, is that one squad or platoon should only respond to another's losses if they are aware of them. So if the squad that gets blitzed is out of C2 how would the other squad know? Probably doable,but non-trivial programming.

Isn't that a felony in most places, and somewhat gross to boot. I mean eeww.

Despite the wishes expressed above, the answer is yes, Mac will play. He's odd that way.

Mac has politely requested you leave his unmentionables alone!

I think some of us are responding to all of his commentary, instead of the specifics of his last post. There is a very fundamental issue about the game engine design philosophy that has been kicking back and forth.

This crowd would debate the rendering of an overcast sky, and not very politely either. Its what gives the place charm.

Tongue firmly in cheek Major,firmly.

Get this thing out the door so we can argue about what you did do, instead of what you didn't.

Yes, and all you have to do is come up with five to ten man years worth of first class coding effort to give us your take on how it ought to be. Until then you are trying to beat something with nothing.

This is a blatant attempt to hijack this thread with a tripod stalking horse.

But if thet were under merciless mortar fire, but not in close proximity to any enemy soldiers, that had brought them to the same state in terms of morale failure what would they have done?

Do troops still rout as well, or has surrender essentially replaced that functionality? As structured it really seems like a last ditch warning to the player that a given unit has been used up. You can get them somewhere safe or they will decide to take the POW camp instead.

In the looking I have done recently Wikipedia has been truly comprehensive. I mean chapter, verse, and serial numbers. The info is there for minimal looking.

Jason C, the higher level morale idea you bring up is not without interest, But CMX2 already has the means to set any casualty limit you wish. You can tack on such a large point penalty for any loss percentage you care to specify that it will make victory unachievable for that side. You can set that for 5% losses and, to use the extant example, give the American player 4 hours just to take hill 154. It would probably be more realistic. But you are conflating scenario design with engine flaws, they are not the same thing. And the purpose of an AAR like this one is not to produce a perfectly historical overall result, but to illustrate as many specific game mechanics as reasonably possible, and be entertaining to read.

Boeing's customers for the 787 are not exactly jumping for joy either. But it comes down to the same answer. It will be done when its done, and then we will start on your list of complaints, maybe, you hope, some day, if your nice. Everything more complicated than cooking dinner takes longer and cost more than it was supposed to. Its nearly as consistent as the second law of thermodynamics.