womble

I'm certain suppression is tracked per soldier. Every soldier cowers on his own timetable! But there is also the "threshold" over which an entire element is "Pinned", which triggers a different set of restrictions: they'll drop their movement orders, and possibly set some self-preservation waypoint once the Pin passes, if their morale state dictates. I suspect that it takes a few more bullets directed at the intact squad, even if they're all directed at one team of that squad, separated spatially by an ongoing Assault order, for example, to trigger that phase change than it does a split team, but it doesn't take as many bullets to Pin an intact squad as it does to Pin two split teams.

As a result, an intact squad prosecuting an Assault order loses the support of its firebase element more readily than a squad split into teams and moving in approximately the same manner via alternating Quick orders and Pauses at waypoints. For my money, this, plus the additional advantages of specialisation (so your firebase element is best equipped for being in support at longer range, and your leading element has all the handgrenades and SMGs) makes splitting splittable squads preferable in most cases in the WW2 titles. I can't speak for the modern warfare, as I have only very limited experience with the SF demo.

Paint works just fine for cropping, and converting BMPs to JPGs (to reduce their size). No need to download any pesky Googleware.

Fortunately, it's not necessary to be 100.000% accurate with the timings in WeGo; a few seconds' overlap of the suppressing element's fire with the presence of the assaulting element won't cause significant harm*. Best to err on the side of caution, though: if you think 15s suppression is going to be enough, start the assaulting element's final approach after 15s, rather than trying to guess how long after they set out the support fires should begin, in order to achieve 15s fire on target before the assaulters get there. It's probably worth the assaulters taking a pause outside their objective too, so long as it's safe to do so, to contribute their own suppressive fire, and grenades. It's not as easy as using Pause in RealTime, but it doesn't take too much practice.
Edit:

* so long as it's small arms, not HE or larger calibre solid shot... Those would be messy.

Say you've set up a stretch of split-team fire-and-movement for a platoon or two of infantry, with pauses at waypoints, and Hunt sections to stop them if they get contact. Then you realise that the field your crossing is under the sights of an infantry gun or something. You don't want to delete that complicated-old set of waypoints, so you select the relevant units, give them an indefinite pause so they hold where they are until you can get some guns on the IG.

Similarly if something crops up in the middle of your movement, you can stop the movers right where they are to return fire if you want, using the indefinite pause button. Yes, you can do the same with the Pause order, but that takes 10 clicks rather than one.

Also, the indefinite pause button will cancel any "Pause" order that is at the current unit's location (which is how you set your "held" units back in motion), which again saves 9 clicks if you want the element to get on with things now rather than wait out the last 3 seconds of their counting-down pause. Saves you a click even if there's more than 90s left on the pause countdown. Definitely an interface convenience rather than a variant way of issuing orders like Evade is.

Well, you came to the wrong place for that. A discussion is almost inevitable on here.
Actually, the framework of the spotting system has been one of the aspects of the game's systems that Steve has taken some pains to explain, because it is such a core component of the game. So some of us have at least a foggy understanding of what's going on under the hood.  
RealTime play. That is calculated on-the-fly, and so all game subsystems have to be capable of keeping up. As the baseline rig that the game is meant to run on gets better, BFC will be able to tune the frequency of spotting calculations up, but they do tend to be conservative in their demands for the hardware you must have to play the game, so, as the lifetime of a tolerable gaming rig extends, the rate at which they can increase the frequency of spotting checks goes down.

You're totally welcome. Anytime.

Either. There have been two or three threads about it recently.

It's been discussed a few times, that I've seen: having Victory Conditions based on time, but in a soft/sliding scale way: you get a bonus for getting to the VL early, or a penalty for not getting there in time, type of idea. To date, it has, in the discussions I've seen, been considered a desirable tool to have in the scenario design kit, but not yet available.

I thought of a workaround today, which might come in handy for scenario designers interested in having this sort of victory condition.

It mostly only works for the AI; a human player could easily subvert it.

The initial idea was a "patrol vs patrol" scenario, where you were the hunter, and the AI was patrolling an area. Your level of victory would be determined by how many "checkpoints" the AI's patrol(s) managed to reach; your eventual discovery, and elimination, of the enemy was pretty much a foregone conclusion. So you have to efficiently search for the enemy element(s) in various sections of the map and neutralise them quickly for maximum victory level. You'd effectively have a fixed score ("Destroy all enemies") that would be mostly a "gimme", but your victory level would be determined by how many Touch victory locations the patrols you were hunting had managed to reach. The AI moves at a consistent rate, with consistent timing, so the designer would be able to effectively say "if it takes 30 minutes it's a draw; longer and it's a loss, less and it becomes a win" or whatever seems to make sense, by assigning values to the VLs to change the ratio of victory points between player and AI.

That made me think: you could have an "artificial" AI victory point accumulator, somewhere obscure and out of sight at the back, possibly surrounded by impassable terrain, with a series of small, adjacent "Touch" VLs, and a single unit assigned to its own AI group with orders to move from one to the next at specified time periods by the AI plan. So you could give the AI a bonus to its victory points for the player taking "too long". Obviously there are ways to subvert this, as the player, if you know the timer mechanism is invoked, but some of those can be mitigated. Don't give 'em any TRPs so they can't indirect fire onto this out-of-the-way, out-of-LOS VP track; put concrete bunkers there for the "timekeeper" unit to shelter in if there's any chance of nearby collateral damage (air strikes or what-not). The impassable terrain would mean that routing troops wouldn't accidentally trigger the "Touch" VLs.

You could do the same with units that are associated with "Exit" VCs; have them lined up near an exit-permeable map-edge. You'd need one AI group per "timetick" for that way of doing it though.

Has this been done before? Is it any use to anyone?

Just to be quite clear, I wouldn't use Slow (most of the time). I'd use Fast. Then Reverse.

Look at the sizes of the turns. Multiply the number of turn files by the number of turns. 13MB/turn ish. *60 turns for an hour. 780MB per hour. It's about the size of an actual movie. Now, that's okay if you just want to stream it, but if you want to load it into a program that can change your viewpoint, you're looking at quite the memory hog, given that a 13MB turn expands to 20 times that size when opened in the game client. There's probably a way of doing it that doesn't involve loading a 30Gig file for a 2 hour game, but it isn't "just lowd orl the turnz". Also, given that it can take more than a minute to load a single turn, you'd be doing a mite of hangin' about if it was "just lowd the turnz wun at uh tym". It probably isn't beyond Charles and Phil's skills, but is it worth the time to write a specialist "CM cinema" application?
It might be different, if the game file architecture wasn't so determinedly "this stands alone", but it is: turn files are the whole scenario at the point of the save, not just the differences between the start and now, or a record of orders that gets processed up each time using the recorded results of randomisers. It's all precalcultated and the results in terms of pixels moving and variables changing is recorded, and that's what's rendered when you replay a turn. Regardless of the pros and cons of that approach, that's the approach that everything else has to derive from.

It's inherently a "convenience" command, since its function isn't as refined as microing the split squad, so it's certainly a lot easier to use in RealTime than split squads. It also works on "squads" that aren't splittable, like Italian formations, giving them additional, plausible tactical options without the carte blanche freedom to separate that more finely-grained formations get.

No, I don't often use Slow for straight moves; it's for helping the poor ickle AI's brain cope with twisty-turny roads and streets. I'd use Fast out to the firing spot, to get there ASAP, and minimise the time I spend out of defilade. If I've judged it wrong, and don't go far enough, then that's fine, cos I've not exposed my armour to the enemy. Even at Slow, wasting your first shot by shooting on the move isn't, I feel, a good plan, even if you get it away half a second earlier; you're still going to crawl "all the way" to the waypoint that you estimated was "just far enough", and any unanticipated threats have longer to engage you, even if your moving shot was a fortunate one. Also, I don't use popup attacks often when I'm not sure of the threat environment. Certainly, there are exceptions, but those tend to be "Oh well, time to spend a tank to get some info," moments, and pretty rare, and while it's nice for the tank to survive, it might not even be a pop-up shot.
Most of the time, if you've got a good idea where the target is, you can have a pretty good idea of where you've got to get to in order to shoot at it, and Fast gets you from "unseen" to that place quicker than Slow, and gives your trigger-happy gunners less chance of taking a dippy first shot... Unless they fire just as you halt, and the tank is "rocking" forward on its gas-lift, and the round hits the dirt 16m ahead of your vehicle... :-/

Look at the sizes of the turns. Multiply the number of turn files by the number of turns. 13MB/turn ish. *60 turns for an hour. 780MB per hour. It's about the size of an actual movie. Now, that's okay if you just want to stream it, but if you want to load it into a program that can change your viewpoint, you're looking at quite the memory hog, given that a 13MB turn expands to 20 times that size when opened in the game client. There's probably a way of doing it that doesn't involve loading a 30Gig file for a 2 hour game, but it isn't "just lowd orl the turnz". Also, given that it can take more than a minute to load a single turn, you'd be doing a mite of hangin' about if it was "just lowd the turnz wun at uh tym". It probably isn't beyond Charles and Phil's skills, but is it worth the time to write a specialist "CM cinema" application?
It might be different, if the game file architecture wasn't so determinedly "this stands alone", but it is: turn files are the whole scenario at the point of the save, not just the differences between the start and now, or a record of orders that gets processed up each time using the recorded results of randomisers. It's all precalcultated and the results in terms of pixels moving and variables changing is recorded, and that's what's rendered when you replay a turn. Regardless of the pros and cons of that approach, that's the approach that everything else has to derive from.

They have plenty of use in WeGo. Not, perhaps, as tactically vital in some cases, but they at least provide useful UI shortcuts.

Halt is a quick way of deleting all of a unit's waypoints. Either because you decide to do something different with them in the order phase when you issued them, or later, once they've set out on their journey.

Pause is a quick way of clearing an existing Pause (rather than having to press Pause upmteen times to cycle back to "none"), or putting an "indefinite" pause on a unit that you don't want to continue on its way just yet, either at its current location, or at a future waypoint.

Evade is useful because it forces even pinned troops to haul ass, and they do it with some urgency. It's particularly useful since v2 came out, as you can now move the waypoint that the TacAI assigns so that your troops go the way you want them to, rather than the way the TacAI thought they should. There's a persistent suggestion that Evade applies a "morale hit", but it doesn't seem to be very much of one, if it's there at all, and if you're needing to use Evade, it's probably worth it to have slightly grumpy pTruppen rather than slightly dead ones.

The human-mediated system of multiplayer at its most bascic involves the players on each side passing a save of the replay phase from last turn and another save of the uncompleted current orders phase between themselves and having an agreement on which elements they're allowed to tinker with. The last person on a given side hits the red button and sends the resultant turn file to the first person on the opponent's team, and a save of the replay to their own team members.

No, I don't often use Slow for straight moves; it's for helping the poor ickle AI's brain cope with twisty-turny roads and streets. I'd use Fast out to the firing spot, to get there ASAP, and minimise the time I spend out of defilade. If I've judged it wrong, and don't go far enough, then that's fine, cos I've not exposed my armour to the enemy. Even at Slow, wasting your first shot by shooting on the move isn't, I feel, a good plan, even if you get it away half a second earlier; you're still going to crawl "all the way" to the waypoint that you estimated was "just far enough", and any unanticipated threats have longer to engage you, even if your moving shot was a fortunate one. Also, I don't use popup attacks often when I'm not sure of the threat environment. Certainly, there are exceptions, but those tend to be "Oh well, time to spend a tank to get some info," moments, and pretty rare, and while it's nice for the tank to survive, it might not even be a pop-up shot.
Most of the time, if you've got a good idea where the target is, you can have a pretty good idea of where you've got to get to in order to shoot at it, and Fast gets you from "unseen" to that place quicker than Slow, and gives your trigger-happy gunners less chance of taking a dippy first shot... Unless they fire just as you halt, and the tank is "rocking" forward on its gas-lift, and the round hits the dirt 16m ahead of your vehicle... :-/

Not really a surprise you beat the AI on the defense. When the AI attack is as canalised as a river crossing has to be, it really doesn't stand much chance, against forces that give the AI a chance of defending successfully, when those forces are being marshalled by a human intellect.

Look at the sizes of the turns. Multiply the number of turn files by the number of turns. 13MB/turn ish. *60 turns for an hour. 780MB per hour. It's about the size of an actual movie. Now, that's okay if you just want to stream it, but if you want to load it into a program that can change your viewpoint, you're looking at quite the memory hog, given that a 13MB turn expands to 20 times that size when opened in the game client. There's probably a way of doing it that doesn't involve loading a 30Gig file for a 2 hour game, but it isn't "just lowd orl the turnz". Also, given that it can take more than a minute to load a single turn, you'd be doing a mite of hangin' about if it was "just lowd the turnz wun at uh tym". It probably isn't beyond Charles and Phil's skills, but is it worth the time to write a specialist "CM cinema" application?
It might be different, if the game file architecture wasn't so determinedly "this stands alone", but it is: turn files are the whole scenario at the point of the save, not just the differences between the start and now, or a record of orders that gets processed up each time using the recorded results of randomisers. It's all precalcultated and the results in terms of pixels moving and variables changing is recorded, and that's what's rendered when you replay a turn. Regardless of the pros and cons of that approach, that's the approach that everything else has to derive from.

Unfotunately for us, it seems that BFC's experience is that content sells titles, not features. I'd pay twice the price of a normal engine upgrade, per title I have (2), for a pure AI-boost, for example, or a full game price for a boost to all the titles, but apparently I'm too small a minority to make that kind of product economical.
I suspect that some of the things like co-op games that people want are extremely difficult to arrange in the current architecture. Sadly, BFC don't seem to want to maintain a single repository where people can see ideas that have been suggested before and express their support for one or more of the features, and where BFC can categorically tell us "No! We are never doing that!" for others.

The human-mediated system of multiplayer at its most bascic involves the players on each side passing a save of the replay phase from last turn and another save of the uncompleted current orders phase between themselves and having an agreement on which elements they're allowed to tinker with. The last person on a given side hits the red button and sends the resultant turn file to the first person on the opponent's team, and a save of the replay to their own team members.

After this I'm done with you. The language barrier is obviously beyond us. Anytime you "stop to plan" it stops being tactical. Tactics is where the plan meets the enemies (time, ground and opposition). Can you imagine how boring it would be to have to drive your recon elements around for hours before you even know there's an enemy on the map? That's why the operational recon (find out if the enemy is even there) isn't part of a battle. What you're describing is tactical scenarios with an operational framework knitting them together.
You wanted to know what CM can do. I told you. I didn't dissect your post because most of what you wrote was nit-picking troll-bait, as far as I'm concerned. But that's probably just the language barrier. What you call a "whole battle" can certinly be done. The maps are big enough, and 4 hours is entirely long enough, at "CM pace"* to conduct a full day's operation by a couple of Battalions-plus. Recon, development, conclusion. Your demands for what you think it ought to be able to automatically do are unreasonable, since you don't have a foggy clue what the game actually does do. Download the demos for RT, BN and FI (even if they're all at different engine levels) and you'll have a perfect view of what the game is designed to do.

Perhaps someone else would like to unpick your definitions.

* Because of the nature of the game (your god's eye view and perfect coordination), you can do far more in an hour of CMx2 than could routinely be achieved by a real life army with Clauswitzian friction at real world levels in the same time with the same forces. You can also get far more pTruppen killed and expend far more ammo than would be the norm in an hour of intense combat.

...cont.



Who were you up against? If they had IR and you were trying to sneak through foliage, you were probably standing out like a sore thumb.
I believe you are mistaken, and should have been using Slow to get from "can't see the target" to "can just see the target" in concealing terrain. At the very least, Slow moving means your troops are making the best use of any undulations in the terrain and any higher vegetation. However careful you are while "Hunt"ing, you're still upright, and presenting a larger area to the observing eye.
And now you've had bad experiences using Hunt. It probably depends on exactly what you're trying to do and the precise circumstances in which you're trying to do it which is the most appropriate movement mode. There is no "one size fits all".
If they'd been Slow moving, IME they would have fired back once taking fire, if they could spot their tormentors.
Sometimes, the battlefield sucks.
It'd help if you said exactly what you wanted your troops to do of their own initiative? Do you want them to open fire at the apparent source of incoming fire? Assuming they could even get a Target line to it. Or do you want them to displace so they can get a target line to where they think the rounds are coming from, and then bring that location under fire? Getting the TacAI to even use area fire in a sane and rational manner that doesn't leave us tearing our hair out at the foolish overexposure and waste of ammo by our own troops, and smirking at the very same from the opposition AI (which would have to be taught the proper use of Target Arcs to mitigate its hair trigger, and that's a learning point that appears to be beyond some human players) is going to be close to impossible. Adding judicious offensive repositioning would just have people ragequitting at their overaggressive pTruppen's reckless behaviour. At least if the pTruppen are natively cautious, we can learn to work within those constraints, and the AI doesn't just throw its troops away trying to sneak into places it really shouldn't.
Yes, it's really complicated. Really, really complicated. Given that the game is currently CPU-bound and single-core, I don't think there are the processor cycles available to deal with that sort of calculation realtime, even if the algorithms could be implemented in a reasonable manner. Maybe after an architecture change. "CMx3" or "CMx4", perhaps. Don't expect it in CMx2 v4, though. It's worth noting that BFC have said that AI improvements will tend to be secondary to other engine improvements and new content, because they provide inadequate return in terms of dollars players are prepared to pay per programmer-hour spent wrangling with AI.

Yeah, cos picking up someone's markup typos makes you such a great arguer. I couldn't possibly compete. Welcome to my very small... ignore list.

That was well done! Thanks for the laugh. Now, because of your post, I will send a battalion across an enemy controlled bridge.

Well I was quick enough to copy the message before Ken deleted it - it's not pretty reading I'm afraid.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Pitiful if you ask me.
 
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