Vark
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Posts posted by Vark
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Thought those were SAA troops, why would they have to worry about secret police?
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I think Bil. as the attacker, had the greater pressure, he was expected to win. GaJ though has obviously read Kipling's 'If' especially treating 'Triumph and Disaster' like imposters.
Michael, surely a type A personality would shy away from a game like C2? Too much unpredictability, too little manipulation, no opportunity to cheat etc.
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More like, 'that's Feydor from St Petersburg! WTF is he doing in Syria he's meant to be in Kublakicenestahn!
I don't think they are staged, I just think, after the, hey wow, a T-72, you are just left with the mundane nature of war, oft reported by veterans. 10 minutes of running, peering, exchanging nervous glances and then sporadic firing from somewhere. Even death has a shockingly banality, one moment alive the other dead, no music, just lying in a heap.
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Ah Crete, apart from the a-historically lethal Bofors guns, that was an excellent operation. You really felt the progress as you slowly captured key positions and rallied your scattered forces. I spent most of the first game rounding up stragglers, putting them under a Co HQ and assaulting Allied positions.
I too am trying to put my finger on my feelings for CM2, I think partly its discordance between, feeling closer to your troops because it's 1:1, but having a game system that is remote and hidden. This is especially true with spotting, which at times is both counter-intuitive and undecipherable. The game still rightly punished poor tactics, but now seems to punish anything but a mathematical, almost sterile approach. In this it seems to follow other games, where the quest for greater realism means something gets lost on the way. I played far more Civ II than Civ IV, and hours more original SP than WinspWWII, my brother loved Sim City, but hardly played later versions.
It's like a juicy burger, laden with fatty toppings and a healthier meal. I know I should eat the later, it's far better for me, and I will enjoy it (probably more when I tuck in) but boy oh boy, that burger has got an attraction that belies all its faults!
How many times have you had an hour to kill and thought about firing up CM2 and then though, nah, when, with CM1, you use to say, nah, I'll just play one, or maybe two more turns and then, work/talk to family/go to sleep/eat, all of the above?
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Spot on Zebulon, spot on. Don't forget, he who lives by the IED, dies, or is horribly mutilated, by the IED. Hezbollah have made a strategic error entering the war now, to little too late, and just when the SAA are making serious inroads.
If I were the IDF I would be covertly passing serious intel on Hezbollah's positions, just to make sure the artillery barrages, cluster bombs, napalm and high altitude CEP 500m bombing gets a little closer to its target. Tactics, by the way, that if used by Israel, would cause liberals to scream so loudly they'd be classified as sonic weapons.
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Probably because
a) Attacking a prepared defence would be a series of slow slogs, as in real life, most players would balk at that. The attacker because it would be just a slog, the defender because they'd be little more to do than shoot, and move a few reserves.
Assault engineering, or pioneer operations are not modelled in much detail, especially obstacle and mine removal.c) I used to construct maps with detailed Russian style defences, trench systems, backed up by belts of mines and wire all TRP'd. They were not fun or enjoyable games. I do wonder how the EF will be handled, especially Kursk, given the nature of the fighting in the Northern front.
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Hit the nail on the head. I don't think the spotting is broken, but at the moment it leaves players with a nagging uncertainty that basic tactics will fail to work. This uncertainty, 'what am, I doing wrong', is bound to impact on the enjoyment the games undoubtedly give.
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Hezbollah lost 400 out of thousand men deployed, in a matter of weeks, as they face an enemy not constrained by the usual niceties of 'civilised' warfare. Assad is now fighting a typical tribal conflict, where defeat means fleeing your homeland, humiliating servitude or a horrible death. So the wind is at his back, he's weathered the storm, the SAA are getting more supplies and his opponents are reduced to using more and more foreign fighters, just to stabilise the situation.
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They're not, they are being slowly taken apart, look at the latest news and Assad's new confidence. Question, how many members of the regime have recently defected?
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That is of course if your perfectly sited MG can spot its target, it's this level of uncertainty that causes the problem. I've had textbook combined assaults, with supporting assets, breakdown because of repeated spotting irregularities.
I have no problem with BF simulating the occasional glitch, but the frequency of spotting problems is now becoming, for me, annoying. I agree GaJ's approach has been spotty at best, but Bil has had too many let offs. The recent myopic bunker and faulty deployment of a critical asset the latest.
Personally, I loved CM1, was wary about CM2, but have grown to love its greater flexibility and be annoyed by the seemingly random spotting, in equal measure. I get the feeling though, that the increasingly hostile response to any suggestion of inherent game issues, is not a good omen.
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Because the pixel troopers know they pop back to life after the game is over, unlike those guys. My big problem with CM is the theoretical approach they take, especially with support weapons, if a human feels under threat it's amazing what they can do, and how fast they can do it, manuals be damned. For example German SFMG crews were reported to carry the gun, deployed on tripod, forward, not faff around dismounting and remounting it.
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I think he's overslept, what with taking the whiskey bottle to bed and crying himself to sleep.
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As I said in the a previous post, the episode where the Tiger commander was seated backwards worried me, it seemed a too literal an interpretation for spotting calculations.
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Chance of being strafed and being KO'd quite low, chance of engine overheating after the air intakes partially blocked by armour quite high!
Obviously the Pz IV's kept the skirts because it made them more likely to be mistaken for a Tiger!!
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Trouble with that data is all causes are covered including a variety of weapons and calibres. The 88mm L43, on the other hand, has phenomenal velocity (often tanks struck by it had entrance and exit holes) so most of the kinetic energy was lost.
A solution might be to look at casualties caused by such weapons, but this would include such factors as ammo and fuel explosions. I do agree with Michael, the sound, and pressure wave, of the impact alone should be enough to render most soldiers unable to fight effectively.
Lethaface, just had a unit spot a Syrian HQ unit, in the open, but the unit next to it, with sniper rifle, failed to spot it, the whole engagement. In desperation it fired area fire, but again annoying given the number of techniques used to pass on target information, used in real life.
(8:30 onwards) -
Surely Kursk has specific TOE's, terrain and availability of equipment that is rarely replicated anywhere else in the suggested time period.
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The Achilles heel of computer games alas, a set of written rules can always be amended by the gamer, as the calculations are transparent. With CM, and similar games, if a bug has crept in, or a calculation that generates ahistorical results has been used, the gamer is none the wiser and hopes a patch will sort out the problem.
Although it was touted as a celebration of the fidelity of the CM2 model, the reversed Tiger Commander problem worried me. What other LOS errors, inevitable with such a literal representation still lurked. The relative spotting also seems to be a problem with highly random results generated, certainly repositioning units closer to those who have spotted something is no guarantee they will pick it up quicker than a unit left to spot by itself. A somewhat frustrating experience.
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Just had a hull down Chally II only spot a T-72, moving across its front, after said T-72 fired at it, minutes before a sniper team failed to spot an RPG team, that a unit close by had already pinged. Worse, a textbook advance, overwatched by Chally II's, became a shambles as both tanks failed to spot three Saggers fired at the advancing mech infantry. The IDF reckoned they could spot such missiles 6-70% of the time, with 60's optics.
As I said previously, I understand, due to a myriad of real-world reasons, that spotting is not a given, but the frequency of, WTF, moments is starting to undermine the central premise of the game system.
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Thanks, forgot the yellow weapon, duh! Brain not working.
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Surprised that a 10 kg projectile, probably with burster charge, hitting the back wall of an enclosed bunker, at a shade under 1000m a second, only caused one casualty. I'd have though the explosion and secondary fragments would have made it highly likely that anyone in the bunker would have suffered some sort of injury.
Maybe BF only model serious injuries, that permanently remove the pixel trooper from the battle, so shallow lacerations, deafness (permanent/temporary) are factored into a unit being shocked. Plenty of accounts about soldiers fighting on with quite severe injuries. Might be interesting to find out what injuries are represented by that prone pixel troopers and which ones are factored in to the units current state.
Just read your post DT, so embrasure hit means, in close proximity to said embrasure, not a clean penetration. The spotting system seems to be a weak point of CM2, just had a veteran British sniper fail to locate an RPG team, even though it repositioned next to a regular recce unit, who had eyes on. In the same game, a hull down Challenger II only spotted a moving T-72 at 1000m, after the T-72 shot at it! I don't know what the problem is, but it fails the smell test. I'm sure there are instances of this lack of observation happening, I just question the frequency of it happening.
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So would their be a Citadel module for base game 2 and a Stalingrad one for base game 3?
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Ok, sweepstake, the big, heavy, tank destroyers gun is about to sing, question is when? How many turns before the inevitable concession by GaJ? Bil's next assault will smash through GaJ's rear defences and even if, miracle of miracles, his surviving M-10's kill a tank a piece, so what.
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Would you logically backtrack (Korsun) or go forward (Prussia, Berlin)? Just for interest Steve, as God, in the BF universe (ok, one of a pantheon) what displeases you about your creation? What would you like to fix straightaway using angelic minions? And, as I ask my students, could you possibly rank them in descending order of importance of fixing/tweaking/throwing out and rebuilding again-ness?
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You can't just dive in and play like CM1, errors were punished then, but the situation was recoverable, now you can get crucified and have you plan so dislocated you struggle to recover. More effort is needed simply because there are more options, and the timing is far more important. Terrain has to be studied in far greater depth, especially with the 1:1 representation. Resupply adds another area CM 1 ignored, but it means a another task to consider as does indirect fire, with its area, linear, point options and intensity and duration of fire. And for me the real turn off, the searching around to find units and see if they are in command control.
As for the soulless suggestion, that came from umlauts excellent translation of a Danish gaming magazines review, they thought the game was becoming perhaps more clinical. ' The design gets more and more technical, more realistic, more engineer-ish and thus - perhaps - a little more soulless.' Anyway, take it up with them, though I do know other games that sought greater and greater 'realism' lost something intangible, but important nevertheless. I find I'm playing far less CM2 than CM1, due to time constraints but also the effort needed to have fun with the engine. CM was not beer and pretzels, that goes to SP and similar games, but it was more engaging, CM2 does feel more remote IMHO.
Assault engineering, or pioneer operations are not modelled in much detail, especially obstacle and mine removal.
Advances in Spotting
in Combat Mission Fortress Italy
Posted
Don't forget the ever present drones and networking, what you see can be relayed to vastly more units than WWII.
I also think that basic techniques of observation and relaying it are far more standardised now. Reading some accounts of WWII, compared with today, you are struck by how ad-hoc and 'unprofessional' the approaches were, not surprising given the largely conscript nature of the soldiers involved.