mbtanker

{{{Well you can always play WeGo until you are comfortable with RealTime. [smile] and you can always just play smallish little scenario's in RealTime until you get good at it.}}} Player ability really has nothing to do with it. I play RTS games all the time and like them. They are not wargames. I play CM for a very different reason and expect a very different type of play from it. No matter how good the interface and no matter how good of a player you are you simply cannot deal with two simultaneous engagements in any quality way. How many times have you played CM and one ten second period in a turn had action going on all over the place? Taking away the ability to see or react to that entire ten seconds fundamentally changes the game and the experience. It doesn't make it more realistic either. No a real commander would not have 30 minutes to ponder everything but a real commander also wouldn't be expected to do or make half of the decisions a player of CM makes. But making those decisions and seeing what is going on is what makes it a fun game. My point is simply that without a way to rewind and intervene in events, RealTime CM would be a fundamentally very different experience and a very different type of game. It would not be better or more realistic; it would just be different. I've blathered enough on this topic and will try and refrain from boring folks anymore. Just put me down for keeping WeGo as an option. [ November 08, 2005, 05:12 PM: Message edited by: mbtanker ]

{{{But it'd be nice if you could concentrate on the action, secure in the knowledge that if something comes up the TacAI will let you know there's now something to see elsewhere.}}} But what do you do if two or three things come up? You have to ignore all but one because you cannot be in more than one place at a time. I don't see how any level of alerting helps. Yes, maybe the TacAI will handle the other situation just fine but is that fun? Part of the reason to play the game is to play the game. I admit realtime adds urgency and excitement all its own but I think it is misplaced in a detailed wargame. I also think it would be fun on occasion to say 'Ok I'm now the company commander and I'm going to let the TacAI make the platoon decisions for me good or bad.' But I wouldn't want to be essentially forced into that situation all the time just because realtime is forcing me to move on.

{{{Well, then, the player has all the time in the world to redo his entire plan, including orders to dozens of units, to accomodate whatever little ripple caused the player to change his mind. The result is a planning and execution process that might happen ONCE a day in the real world happening (possilby) many times every 60 seconds of simulated real world time in the game setting. In RealTime there will be none of this because the time won't be available.}}} True but don't fall into the trap of thinking that is more realistic or better. First off many players LIKE having lots of control. It is a game afterall. Secondly, and more important, because a player is forced to take on so many different roles realtime forces artificial limitations. As a real company commander I don't have the direct control of units that I do in the game but I also don't need to make a lot of the decisions I need to make in the game. Not to mention jumping roles is part of the fun of the game. Until AI is as good as a human it is going to do dumb things. That gets very frustrating in a game. Realtime only exacerbates those issues.

Which is where the TacAI comes into play. Without it even WeGo would be unplayable. </font>

Bing West's book 'No True Glory' has some great accounts of UAVs in the battle for Fallujah. At the simplist level guys are flying these things around and either calling in their own strikes or getting on the radio to a particular unit and saying 'Hey you got X 400m north of your pos.' UAVs should be modeled at least as some sort of sighting as one fellow mention. Although simply having pre-game sightings could be ok as well depending on what the total time a scenario represents turns out to be.

As long as realtime is only an option and WeGo is fully available I am happy. Let me explain why realtime (RT) is not a great thing. If we weren't simulating multiple command levels and/or having to handle details unrelated to command levels outside of a paticular selected level then RT would be ok. But the reality is we are acting as company commander (if not battalion), platoon leader, squad leader, and maybe even fireteam leader/tank commander. Doing this in realtime is not only UNrealistic it is impossible. As one thing happens at the 'top' of the map something else is happening at the 'bottom'. It is simply impossible to be in two places at the same time to command OR observe. Think of two tank fires happening at the same time at the top and bottom of the map. You simply can't be in both places at once to see a tank pop into view, kill your tank, and pop out. Pausing can make it a bit more workable but you may still miss out on critical actions and not even know it (again if you're watching action at spot A you can't be doing ANYthing at spot . This situation can be helped (but not remedied) with a 'rewind' feature but BF has stated this will not be there. Pausing realtime is simply not good enough; a player will miss out on a lot of action especially as things get exciting in one particular spot. With the current CM games I find myself rewinding four or five times a turn on certain critical turns to absorb all the action that happened in one minute. What killed my tank? Where did that unit go? Where did that come from? How did he end up there?! I have 'Highway to the Reich' and like it a lot but my biggest quibble is that while I am messing with a battle up in Arnhem my attack down in Grave gets clobbered and I have no idea what happened; and that game at least gives a small 'log' of what happens to each unit. If you could 'rewind' realtime and react somehow that would be great but how? At the top of the map X happens and at the bottom Y happens. You rewind to see what and decide to change an order at Y to respond. You've now just 'changed time' and what is the impact on X? Furthermore now you possibly already know something you would not have known if you didn't rewind. Thus your Sherman moves up and gets killed by a Tiger so you rewind and stop the Sherman before it crests the hill. Well that's not right. So, for me, realtime without a rewind is a no-go except for maybe the smallest scenarios. WeGo is the only answer unless you want to lock yourself to a particular portion of the battle or simply don't mind missing out on half of the fun. Some folks might not mind missing out on half of the action but I hope the game never makes that mandatory.