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Kineas

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Posts posted by Kineas

    Borg Spotting

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Originally posted by Vergeltungswaffe:

    The grids are a very elegant solution to avoid having to check LOS between every unit on the map constantly.

    Well, I strongly disagree, if the LOS checks really abstracted out to a grid. A unit behind a wall sees what his squadmate in front of the wall? I probably just don't get it right
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    Grenade and small HE effectiveness

    in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps

    Posted

    Okay, I don't have any concussion experience whatsoever (except when I was drunk and fell from a stage), but I simply don't believe that a - let's say - 76mm HE grenade going off 5meters from your head doesn't at least stun you for a while.

    And a trench is definitely not open air, the blast wave can bounce back/between the trench walls.

    Maybe someone with battle experience could enlighten us...?

    Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

    Concussion has almost no effect in open air - which is essentially what a trench is.

    Only a small fraction of the fragments will pass along a trench (asopposed to into the walls), and the first person they encounter will likely stop all of them - so there's a practical limit of 2 casualties to a grenade in a trench unless there are people close packed around it's landing point.

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    Grenade and small HE effectiveness

    in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps

    Posted

    I meant that an explosion in a trench is not a close explosion (like in tow), but an "abstract" explosion like what you can suffer in a scattered trees tile.

    The ToW trenches are realistic. But, if a grenade find its way and explodes on the back wall of a trench, then every infantry unit must be 'knocked out' within a 5 meter radius, the concussion enough should be enough for this.

    In a recent game I fired at a single trench with 5-6 T34s for at least 5 minutes continouosly (~800m, that's 150 grenade minimum, though not every one exploded in the trench), and the +2 morale Battalion HQ and another HQ unit still popped up their head.

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    Looking for a real life platoon sized AAR for a CM experiment

    in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps

    Posted

    Jason, you are right, a game can't be designed bottom up from the damage system, unless it's a damage system simulator. Nevertheless special engagements like that LMG example can be used for later validation tests.

    I think it's possible to come up with a ruleset which covers everything. Abstract systems will perform poorly at the micro, 1:1 simulators will perform poorly at the macro level. Simulators can't start from the desired outcome, they have to produce it. In this case you have to simulate humans with automatons. Besides the normal weapon physics you need reflexes, skills etc. but I don't go into that because it's not ontopic.

    I think getting the correct results on every scale can be achieved in an 'abstract'(board) game. If you have the data, you only have to cover it with some dice produced probability distribution. You just need enough branches. I guess 30 years ago this was not important, there were no FPS games around to compare, and they had to keep the rules under control.

    I don't know what is a typical course of a platoon sized engagement, I ought to read some AARs now. But I don't think they were ducking eachother for hours long, I guess the attacker had to perform, and the defenders tried to keep them away.

    But realistic combat is not a game, more like a job I guess, whereas gamers always pursue fun and action. FPS players always rush into the biggest action (you hardly see any defenders on public servers), and wargamers too want to simulate action heavy firefights, not logistic details of a supply system. This is fact, and it's a good question how much it is reflected in the present rules/game models.

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    Grenade and small HE effectiveness

    in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps

    Posted

    Trenches work in a strange way in CM. They are a narrow patch - to enter. Once a unit is in a trench, he has the same protection as if it was in a 20x20m trench-tile. So your trench become 2 dimensional.

    So if a grenade finds its way into a trench and explodes, that doesn't mean half of the trench is cleared. The target unit has a lot better chance than in a woods tile.

    (Though the nearness of the explosion indicates better hits in a wood tile, I don't know if this still applies to trenches)

    You can check the trench vs HE effectiveness in the TOW demo. (Let's assume it is more realistic)

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    Looking for a real life platoon sized AAR for a CM experiment

    in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps

    Posted

    Thanks. This topic is one of my favourites. So let me add a couple of comments quickly, though I'm definitely not an expert.

    Launch a game which uses the realtime-pausable engine of "Airborne Assault", e.g. Highway to the Reich, set it up to maximum speed and do not interact. You'll see the bigger events unfold. Armies moves on the ground like amoeba, the forward tentacles being continuously pounded by artillery. If you imagine a complete scenario fastforwarded this way in another games, you get more hindsight about the realism factor of the genres.

    IGOUGO: the alternating-oscillating nature is so strong, there is no point in searching realism after a certain level. E.g. the guys on the ASL forum, who love their game, try to explain why skulking can be realistic, because it means the defender hides better etc. But it can't be explained. Nor can the opfire-depleting tricks be explained what you can use in the Steel Panthers series. Beyond this point the only common thing with realistic warfare is that both the virtual and the real commander tries to get the best out of his system, competing with not nature but another human being.

    WEGO: though CM don't has the feature, but imagine again a 30 turn game replayed in 2 minutes. You would still get a highly oscillating picture, because the intelligence is injected into the system at every 60 seconds, from that point on the tacai manages the things, and slowly deteriorates till the next heartbeat.

    REALTIME(pausable): like the HTTR mentioned above. It's (in my opinion) the most realistic, but still has the borg-spotting effect. I don't mean it in the CMx1 sense. You, the player are the borg. If you see a lone scout in the flank of your army, you change your plan immediately, even if you can't communicate it to your subordinate units. With a CMx2 example, your forward scout sees an ATGM launch. It won't be hard to figure out that the target is your only tank 3000 meters away in the city. So in the next moment you will quick-reverse the tank behind a building. Realistic - not really. Can this be modeled? Yes,

    but complicated, evasive actions should require some observations by the crew, and still, a non-evasive reversing could be enough. I guess this is where chasing realism ends...

    I recently came across ASL, and realized that this is the mother of everything, really everything. All the odd things I experienced with the Steel Panthers series suddenly were grasped and understood. I think its effect was tremendous to every tactical wargame I've seen, CM very much included.

    If you take a fire action in CM, basically it's resolved against an internal IFT. That's why we end up a so suppression-oriented system. The next breakthrough towards realism will be the 1:1 infantry representation and real bullet trajectories by CMx2. I'm interested how much the fire effects will differ in the new model. You can try it in Armed Assault (realistic FPS). If you are an LMG crew, and you catch someone in the open, 200m in front of you, then he is dead within 15 secs, he doesn't really have the time to suppress himself.

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    Looking for a real life platoon sized AAR for a CM experiment

    in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps

    Posted

    Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

    I'd like to find a real-life account of a battle to use as a "control" with which to compare and contrast various tactical game systems, both board and computer (the idea being to develop small scenarios for various systems using the same topic and see how the different systems treat the material).

    That sounds very interesting. Using a well documented event as a testbed for game mechanics comparison. Could you tell us more about the purpose? Do you want to compare different game genres, or to assess how much they approximate "reality"?
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    4 new videos

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    I almost posted the same question.

    I guess it's not a 30mmHE cause it would have

    had a bigger explosion. .50 fire maybe? HEAT ammo?

    Originally posted by Klavan:

    Nice videos. Just one thing: in the ATGM video (during and after the second missile launch) the sirian team is targeted by hostile fire and by looking at the size of the explosions seems like they're fired upon by a 30mm Bradley's gun. Despite one of the bullets had hit the ground few centimeters in front of the man on the left they doesn't seems to be affected by any kind of suppression/shraphnel effect.

    BTW very nice videos. I'm looking forward to CM:SF.

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