salwon

Steve has said that they have no plans at all to bring back CMx1 type Operations. Sorry.

In one of the 1000 Normandy threads, I posted the following: and got the reply: Now, I certainly agree that this could be opening a huge can of worms in what the unit "gains" from one battle to the next. But my basic idea is this: 1)Model experience at the individual level, as opposed to the unit. 2)Allow a unit to gain experience, assuming it survives and makes it to the next battle in a campaign. This way you could have a veteran unit on June 6th, say a squad from 16th RCT, become a mostly green unit on June 8th as untested replacements came onto the line. But by the 9th, maybe the squad is down to 6 men, but all 6 of those men are ready and willing to fight. But that would assume that there's going to be some replacement system in the game in the first place. I could see it working like a resupply-type system from battle to battle, but is that realistic? How regularly did line units receive replacements - would it even make sense on the scale of a CM campaign? And is individual experience modelling even possible in the game? It seems so easy - just add a variable for each soldier! But then, how would a half-veteran-half-replacement squad behave in the game? I hope some of that makes sense. It would be awesome to have something like that modeled, but I can easily see it as a "more trouble than it's worth" situation

Think of it like this: you're in charge of the company. Your lieutenants are idiots, but you can trust your sergeants. The platoons will need to be hand held to their objectives, but you don't need to worry about any individual squad trying to either play Rambo or forget what their rifles are for. Set out the plan for the platoons, and let the squad leaders take care of keeping their men alive and taking out the enemy. In game terms, what this means is this: 1) Set up your overwatch carefully. Use MGs and Strykers (don't try to advance the Strykers closer than 300-400m or so, or one RPG will ruin your day), and give them cover arcs over suspected positions. If you have snipers, keep them elevated, give them a facing command and let them go wild. Don't try to give anyone too many targets yourself, they can find things to shoot at on their own. 2) Advance squads long distance in HUNT until contact is made. This stops the unit, but it effectively means that anyone who dares take a popshot at your men will be answered with an insane volume of fire, from them and the overwatch. If you think you're facing a concentrated position (say, a whole platoon in one building), send one team out 50m ahead of the rest, make contact, and drop the building. Don't get your men killed over an apartment complex - you can always build another one. 3) Once you make contact, use QUICK to go from cover to cover until you make the objective. Go one squad at a time in short bursts. You should have enough firepower to overwhelm anyone you see, and if not, drop some arty on them first. Basic stuff, but the Hunt+Quick combo seems to be the best for RT. You need to watch your squads to make sure they didn't walk into an ambush, but you don't need to pause immediately every single time contact is made. Don't be afraid to let your squads sit and shoot for a little while - trust your sergeants (the TacAI), they can find targets when they're available, and they can find cover when they need to. You can handle a company nicely with this technique, and you should only have to pause once all of your platoons have had their Hunt orders canceled. Then pause, give them bounding quick orders (have the overwatch squads pause while the maneuver team is getting into position), and let them get back to work. As far as managing all this, the only management necessary is making sure you don't run into anything too big. Play zoomed out so you can see everything, and get used to ctrl-clicking the ground to jump around the map. Don't be afraid to pause, but remember if you set up your movements correctly, with plenty of overwatch, you don't need to pause every time a new enemy pops up. Oh, and you're going to get slaughtered the first few times out. Remember, they're not real men Edit: A few folks up there got there before me, and got to the main point quicker than I - don't panic.

I use move when I need to go through an area I know is clear and time isn't really an issue (often while waiting for a barrage or something). I like the OP's idea of Hunt being more like the CMx1 Hunt - stop and engage until the problem goes away, then continue. I believe that was a vehicle command though, I don't remember ever using it with inf. Something like the old "advance" would be nice, except with 1.10 Quick does more or less the same thing (return fire and keep moving). I play in RT, so it's easy enough to just give the Hunt order back, just slightly tedious. JonS is right I think, there would be too many variables if you want to get your units to do "something" when they make contact. The easiest way to define something is "wait for further instructions" which works fine for now. Think of it like this (CMx1 -> CMx2): Advance -> Quick Move To Contact -> Hunt Hunt -> sorry, out of luck. Micromanagement works in a pinch

Ah, canister - turning a cannon into a shotgun works just as well in 2008 as in 1862

What about troops that start off green, but gain experience through a campaign? You know, the old "if you're here tomorrow you'll be a veteran." Or would a scenario designer have to hard-code that in?

I think of RT play as WEGO where I get to decide the turn lengths by pausing. Sometimes a turn is 5 minutes, sometimes it's 5 seconds. Either way no "twitching" is necessary

Are the longer wait times (10 minutes v 2 for a fire mission) more realistic, or was that a gameplay decision? I do notice that spotting rounds come in well before the estimated time, so maybe that time is more of a "Time till FFE," or time to completion sort of estimate. Anyone with real-world experience have insight here?

I'm going to make the (possibly controversial) claim that CMSF was not truly released until 1.10 - and we even got the first module at the same time! So really, they're 6 months ahead of the game Or hell, we can even say 1.08 was the true release date (April), and 6 months after we got the first module, so we're right on schedule. And this way we get Normandy and Brits at the same time, so everyone has the Sophie's Choice of where their time goes.

The moral: tanks should crest as one

I think they've said Bagration will be the third WWII game, though where CMSF2 falls is probably TBD. What about modelling artillery duds? That would be a great bit of realism, seeing unexploded rounds surrounding your foxholes. Though it'd probably be a lot less fun from the German side!

The idea of "Danger close" seems to be much more of a reality here - the first few rounds seem to drop much farther from the target than the spotting rounds in <1.10. I also like how spotting is dynamic, and you can now see the rounds zeroing in before the FFE. Definitely an improvement!

I think terrain is more the issue with late war - winter specifically. As to what modules, who knows, especially since the units will already be in the modules for the first title.

That sounds like a really fun challenge, actually. But think: how many CPU cycles do you want to devote to roof shapes? :-)

I dont really dig the way that double clicking a unit selects the platoon that it belongs to because I tend to not care too much about the platoons. This seems fundamentally wrong to me, but I'll let an expert explain why

I personally think people here are too hard on CoH and WiC. They're both great games in their own right, and just because they have AAA budgets doesn't mean they weren't designed with as much love as Battlefront or Shrapnel puts into their games. CoH is a great way to introduce basic WWII tactics and has several very well written campaigns, and WiC is completely unique - although admittedly, if CM ever gets team-based coop, it'll be hard to go back to WiC. Sure, the tactics are just fix 'n flank, but it's nice to not have to think too much sometimes. Also, playing Shock Force for long enough makes you REALLY good at WiC. Trust me But yeah, don't trust user reviews (OMG THIS ISN'T WWII!!!! F-----!)

it would involve a dedicated "recording" PC and quite a bit of work on our end. This is one of those features that would be so unbelievably awesome, but is completely impractical on a modern PC. Maybe when quad core becomes standard...

Why not cherry picking of actual forces instead of "Let's see... I'l take 2x M10s, 2x platoons of Infantry, uhhmmm... OH! And some more mortars and MGs, that would be good too. Let's see what is in Isle 5 that I might need"? I think we can all agree that that makes no sense at all (at least, I hope we can agree on that!), but why can't I set the force size and decide from there? You shouldn't be able to pick anything in less than platoon strength, except MAYBE in the case of individual vehicles in the smallest size battle. But if I choose a medium size, then I can get a full Stryker company and one attached unit - do I choose an Abrams platoon or some heavy artillery and air support? Or go the other way - if I want to play with armor, I'll get an armored company but with a Bradley platoon for recce duty. There's no way to split the difference and get one extra mortar and one tank or something ridiculous like that, but this way you get control over what forces you have. Something like this would work in very nicely with the photoshop from the first page. Summary - Cherry picking of platoon level and higher only. Oh, and also, map size and force size need to be independent. And time limits need to be changeable, including no limit. I'm done here

I read this thread a while ago but never noticed this: I've been driving my Strykers up to the doors - how far back from a building would a "realistic" dismount be? Do you simply use the vehicles as overwatch and let the squads advance under their cover?

Does anyone want to get those old tactics threads saved now? Anyone other than me, of course

From the US Army's "INFANTRY PLATOON OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS" manual: It seems like assault as it is now implemented just goes for the 5-second rule. Would it be possible to implement the order so that the maneuver element rushes to cover, instead of just advancing for X amount of time? Of course, such an order is only necessary when advancing a single squad, and the argument in this case could be made for just splitting the squads and managing their movements yourself. But still, a PL shouldn't HAVE to tell Sgt Johnson to run for the trees, and not to just lie down in the field...

This mission is punishing. Trust me, move fast!

The Battlefront crowd and the Penny Arcade crowd probably don't intersect too much, but I at least like them both, so here it goes anyway. They recently teamed up with an indie developer to create an adventure game. Nothing serious or hardcore, just a fun little romp that'll be fun for the people who read the comic. Anyway, they decided to go the Battlefront route and opened their own distribution house for internet sales of the game. When they talked to *INSERT LARGE VIDEO GAME RETAILER* about releasing the game in the store in a few months, they said they would do it...but only if they got a cut of the internet sales. The internet sales that they had absolutely nothing to do with. Somehow they felt like they deserved a cut of that. I don't even know how that's supposed to work. With places like Battlefront and Matrix Games, who needs retail? Of course, getting people to go to a web site is a little harder than getting them to go to a mall, but still

What about things like moddable TOEs and the like? Where we can't necessarily have a Garand that fires ATGM rounds, but where we can customize the makeup of the units? This would be more in line with what Luderbamsen was talking about without running the risks of alienating large groups (100% accuracy from my mortars!!!) I like the idea of a fully moddable game (much like the Take Command series - you can literally change anything you want) but it does make sense from a business standpoint why they wouldn't go this route.

I think it would be possible to run some tests on something like this - flat ground, perfect visibility, etc. It would require two people of course: no REAL Bradley commander is going to sit tight to see what a T72 does to his side armor! But I don't see why we can't get a statistical analysis done, it would just take some time.