Paper Tiger
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Posts posted by Paper Tiger
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Quote <Hoping BFC will give us the latest Russian toys, from the late ‘90s, so we can build battles with more of a OPFORs feel to them.
Once again enjoy watching armour clash [smile] .>
I get the feeling that it would be a VERY short clash. But fun. I've suggested this too and been told that this has been discussed before. But the threads are VERY long and long-winded and I don't have the time to read them. I get the impression that if the Syrians don't have them, we can't have them.
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Hi
Ribster: seen the flying troops too. In the Ambush Tutorial scenario IIRC.
Xanthos 581: I've also seen the invisible troops (contradiction aside). I see their movement line and I can give them orders but they don't follow them. They don't fire and they just wander around until the situation ends.
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Being an old ASL grog, I was very happy when I found CMBO and played it to death until CMBB came out. Loved the Russian ToW and really enjoyed playing as the Finns. I never really got into CMAK for some reason and only bought it earlier this year but I have hardly ever played it. CMBB was my favourite. My prefered play option was Quick Battle because I enjoyed the total Fog of war, not really knowing what I was going to be up against when I selected my forces. Since CMSF was released I have played a few of the scenarios that came with the game but I have spent most of my time playing around with Quick Battles. With a bit of work from the player the CMSF QB experience is a considerable improvement over the CMx1 experience. With a bit more work from the developers in the future, the Quick Battle option can be considerably improved.
Here are a few of the problems I have noticed. Yes, most of them have been metioned before but I’m writing a summary of the problems and a possible workaround as well as adding a couple of my own ideas.
A At present, you can’t select a map that is an AI attack map. You either get a Blue Attack map or a Red Attack map but if you want to play Blue force defending against an AI Red Attack, the system can’t discriminate and just picks a ‘terrain type’ attack map from your QB Map folder.
One workaround for this is to select a Meeting map and alter the balance of forces if desired. Meeting QBs give roughly equal forces to each side so the defender needs to be handicapped.
B You can’t select a specific map from a menu. Instead, the computer randomly picks from one of the available maps depending on Terrain Type and Engagement Type and then size.
The only way to get the map that you want is to move all the unwanted maps from your QB Map folder before pressing select. This works but it’s definitely preferable for the player to select his map from a menu in the QB set up menu.
C A big problem for me is that the AI forces always set up dismounted once selected and this means that infantry will footslog its way across a large map. It would be nice to be able to select AI Mounted or Dismounted from the available options. But that might never happen so it’s important to bear this fact in mind when selecting your battle size. With small maps or in cities, this isn’t really an issue but, more about this later.
D I have also noticed that the AI tends to bunch all it’s forces into one group even where there are plans for two or more groups in the AI plan. I have seen two groups once or twice in a large number of playtests but it is a very rare occurrence.
However, one possible side benefit of this is that you get more variety of attack plans for the AI. Most of the time though, they appear to go into Group 1 by default but I’m sure I’ve seen a Group 2 plan being used once. I’d like to hear some other peoples experience with this.
E There is, of course, no ablility for the player to select his own forces. This has already been done to death so I won’t dwell on it but, in spite of the developers intention being to maintain realistic forces, I have been given, or fought against, wildly unrealistic forces. A couple of days ago, I played a QB as Red Uncon defending a village against a Blue attack and their entire force consisted of four Striker Gun vehicles. Ho hum.
F And finally, the biggest problem of them all, a QB AI attack consists of an attacking front of vehicles with the infantry moving along behind. After a couple of rounds of fire sent the infantry’s way they’re all doing the Crawl of Death until they reach their next waypoint. On a large map, the waypoints might be very far apart, 500m+. Result, a very slow and vulnerable AI attack. I haven’t yet managed to keep the AI forces moving when under fire as they always hit the dirt and crawl. I’ve tried different settings, Cautious, Normal and Active with Dash, Quick, Assault etc, but the result is always the same, Crawl of Death. When I’m controlling the Blue Force, I find ‘Assault ‘a very good way to move Infantry around in the face of enemy fire. I never use Slow except when moving between two close points and I want to try and keep my movement hidden. It would be nice if the AI could use Assault movement when Assault is selected for the AI plan.
Problems C, D and E might require considerable development time but I’d be VERY happy if F alone was sorted. To give this game some legs, the Tac AI and the Operational AI needs to be improved to prevent the Crawl of Death. It really is a game killer.
After all is said and done, the best way to play QB is player attacking the AI. The AI scripting works best in QB for the defender with varied defensive set-ups and unknown force composition. In scenarios, the AI scripting is much better because the designer can set up the groups and their at-start dispositions, ie mounted or dismounted, with Javelins already equipped atc. With QBs, this is not possible but I can live with these limitations if Crawl of Death is fixed.
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Yep. Being able to select a predesignated Red Attack map or a Blue Attack map would be nice and we might get it later. There are a lot of people asking for some improvements to the QB option and I'd be surprised if they don't make some changes further down the road. Maybe as part of an expansion module, not a patch.
For a Red Attack just now, I use a Meeting Map and handicap the Blue force -30%+. That works well because there are attack plans for both sides.
BTW, I have removed all the stock QB maps from my QB map folder and have been slowly creating my own maps for use. I have one Blue Attack Open, one Meeting Open and one Blue Attack Village map. Whan I'm creating a new map, it goes into the QB folder with an unused designation, say 'hilly' and a simple AI plan and I playtest it like that. Then expand it a bit etc...
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Cheers
Thanks for that.
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Hi all
I have a couple of QB maps that are nearly ready to be shared and I'm wondering where is a good place to put them?
Also, how do you get screenshots from a game? I've tried the Prt Scr key which usually does this sort of thing but I get nothing when I try it with this game.
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Not an expert on the subject but I have read here among numerous threads that the ultimate plan is to add three modules to the game.
First, the Marines.
Secondly, the Brits (Hurrah!)
and lastly, some other countries, possibly the Germans.
After that, it's CMx2 WW2. I'm pretty sure someone will post here to correct me if I'm wrong
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Hi
I think this might be your problem. The maps in the QM map file have a set-up, Village Attack, Village Meeting, Village Probe etc, same for open, wooded, hilly blah blah.
You want to play US defence against a Syrian attack and as you noted, there is an attack plan in your map for blue. But there is none for the red side as the map is really a BLUE attack map. Therefore, the Red side will just defend.
If you want the Red side to attack, you'll have to make a plan for the Red force. Whew. It's a lot of work but once you get the hang of scripting the AI, it can be a lot of fun.
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Eh? What's this? I downloaded it on Wednesday morning from www.gamersgate.com and it seems to be working fine.
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I like to think of a hot start as the Friendly Force has already sprung the trap and it's mission is to survive the trap and hopefully, reverse the situation. This is a reasonable military occurrance; no matter how good your intelligence/equipment is, the enemy catches you unawares.
Calling a mission 'Ambush at Dawn' without a hot start gives the human player a chance to avoid the trap because he already is already alerted to the ambush.
I would imagine that a hot start really sucks big time if you're playing another human opponent but against the AI, all's fair in love and war.
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Yeah, come on. Give us the up-to-date Russian equipment. Some scenario designers are creating fictional/fantasy scenarios in the former SU. Give us the tools and we'll do the job...
I'm hoping the CM:Shock Force will become a modern warfare simulator and not a Syrian warfare game. I have no issue with the Syrian setting, I'm enjoying it immensely but I hope the game's development isn't going to be straight-jacketed by a determination to keep it Real-Syrian only.
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Yeah, no doubt that's true but I thought I'd read somewhere that the Germans might be included further down the line. In the hypothetical CMSF scenario, perhaps Berlin was one of the targets of the dirty bombs. Don't know because I didn't read it and I don't care about it either. I just like the game and want some more Red Force options.
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The new modules should come with new campaigns, probably only playable as the Marines and the Brits. However, Syrian campaigns will have to be designed by the community and that's going to take a LONG time. Designing a single scenario takes ages as it is.
I agree, I'd like to play as the Syrians too. The C2 challenges they face make them a difficult choice for playing. But they just don't have the staying power. It's hard to imagine a Syrian formation surviving contact with a US formation. They will just die, very quickly.
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Apologies if this has come up in another thred but there's just too darn many of them to keep up with and play the game too... so little time.
Anyway, I know we'll be getting Marines and Brits in later modules but what about the Red Force? I don't mean a dedicated Red Force module 'cos I don't think that will happen. But will there be some additional Red Force equipment included with these other modules?
It just seems that it's all Blue Force oriented at the moment. Marines, Brits and Germans will all expand our Blue forces but they'll still be fighting the Syrians
. NO complaints 'cos that's what the punters will pay for, but I'm pretty sure all of us would like to see the Red arsenal expanded to include new equipment. -
Calvin: LOL. Just think of all the fun you're going to have learning to beat the AI in the months to come though.
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Jomni:
yes, I'm getting very good results with the variable staging areas for each attack plan. It makes defending an objective a lot more difficult. Look forward to seeing your map sometime. I will upload my map sometime later this week after I've tweaked the AI.
After that, I'll probably make a scenario out of the situation because the map is quite nice, even if it was really easy to make. Just have to figure out a good balance of forces to make it interesting.
I want it to be a Blue Attack, best played by the Red side because Red's CC is much poorer than Blue's and can be quite challenging for the player.
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Just got round to playing this one this morning and had a blast. I rememebre reading your original comments on the Red AI scripting " best the AI could do was get completely and utterly slaughtered." Hmm, same as me.
This one has replayability so I'll try it again later this week. Good job.
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HI frog7
Quick Battles require a little work to get them working. At first, I played with the maps that came with the game and it was like you said. Not very satisfying.
However, after playing around with the scenario editor I have started creating my own QB maps. As long as you put some thought into your AI plams, you can have them do pretty much anything that enemy units in a scenario will do.
Like you, I bought from Paradox and am waiting for the patch before playing the scenarios so instead, I'm spending most of my time drawing maps for QBs. I am currently working on an Open Terrain meeting QB which is best played as Red side and I've written 5 AI plans, three general with different objectives in mind, one hugely aggressive attack and one passive one. It still requires a bit of work but playtesting it is a lot of fun. I can tell you that it is WAY better than the QB in CMx1 games.
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While this is always going to be a question of taste, I can sympathise with you. I enjoy a HOT start from time to time as long as it's not over the top. Sometimes, the first sign of trouble that you get is a volley of fire or an explosion. Give the player an extra turn at the start and he can avoid the trap. I really enjoyed playing 'Village of Trouble' which has a very hot start!
Designers should declare that their situation has a HOT start. That way, those who enjoy them can play them and those who don't, won't.
Agree with you about the impossible, unrealistic 'Take those eight fortified buildings with your platoon. Oh, er, and you have 20 minutes. Good luck Lieutenant" situations.
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Cpl Steiner: yes, I was doing some more work with that last night and you're right. The Battle type and Environment settings of the map determine when it can be used. So if you want to play an Attack Village situation, you must have an Attack Village QB map in the folder. Also this should have been obvious to me, but you can only use very small maps with tiny battles. You just go back to the menu if your battle map is too small for the action so bigger is better.
KNac: It certainly seems to be that way, yes. Without Strat AI, the operational AI has nothing to work with. Yes, it's a lot of work but so far, I am finding it fun. Testing my own plans is giving me some REAL old time QB fun, and when the plan works, it's WAY better than playing a CMx1 QB. Design a map, draw up a couple of quick plans, save in the QB folder and I'm having a blast.
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Presently, you can't select the map that you want to play on so, for the time being, when I'm creating a new map, I set it up in the Description option as a Rough terrain map regardless of what it is. That way, I get it most of the time.
However, the easiest method would certainly be to temporarily transfer all the maps you don't want to use from the QB folder to another folder leaving only your map in there.
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Replying to my own post... how narcisstic is that
While I'm waiting for the patch to get to Paradox I've been doing some more work with the Editor and the AI.
The manual says that there are three levels of AI: Strat, Operational and the Tactical and some people seem to be saying that the the operational is broken/missing. But the manual says that the operational AI co-ordinates and implements the Strat commands among the units within each group so that the player programmed Strat intentions are carried out. So, it's not broken or missing, it's doing exactly what the manual says it does.
I remember a saying "timed like a military operation" to say that a plan went well and efficiently. I think that timing based is the BEST option for WW2 as there wasn't the CC available to do anything else. I don't see any reason to believe that it's that much different today. However, with the technology that is available to modern armies today there is considerably more flexibility available, especially for the Blue team.
Without the 'issue orders while paused' in Elite (no patch yet), a half decently scripted AI can hand a RT Elite player his ass. (ie, this RT player)
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Yup, you need to place them in the Quick Battle folder.
Size of map? Not that I'd noticed. It might be better to err in favour of bigger rather than smaller. Open up some of the stock maps with the Editor and you'll see the size.
Set up areas are vital. AI is good to have because if there isn't any, the AI will do squat! If you are only going to be playing Blue Force, you might be able to get away with Red Force only. But it's easy to stick in a brain dead, bog standard AI option for the Blue side if your play that side.
. NO complaints 'cos that's what the punters will pay for, but I'm pretty sure all of us would like to see the Red arsenal expanded to include new equipment.
Hope for better TacAI in QB
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
With respect to the CMx1 Tac AI looking after it's own units, the new system isn't quite there yet. But it will be in the future. When, and to what extent, only Battlefront can tell you.
However, the old CMx1 strategic AI was very simple. Move towards the nearest VP flag or exit the board edge. Sometimes, this was enough, and it seems to have given people the idea that the AI was better than CMx2. When creating a player attack, AI defend situation with two or more AI controlled VP locations, capture one and the remaining AI forces counter-attacked, often suicidally. It also worked very well with Meeting engagemants.
But it was an extremely limited system. I much prefer the new AI scripting system. With a decent AI script, it's already a lot better than CMx1 could ever hope to be. Although it might be a while before it's all working properly, it's got fantastic potential.
Just wait a month or so and some members of the community will be uploading QB maps where you won't know what plan the AI is going to use when attacking.