LJFHutch

So, I just played Bier and Brezel (actually my second attempt) and after an hour I became quite fed up with watching my troops be vaporized by seemingly far better trained and equipped Syrian forces. After an hour I had destroyed roughly 5-8 enemy vehicles (mostly APCs) and lost ~70% of my forces and expended all artillery. It got me thinking, so, a few questions for anyone knowledgeable on the subject. 1. Are there any proper reinforcements in the mission or is the German command going to send more poorly equipped infantry to be massacred? 2. Is the German infantry really that poorly equipped and trained to deal with armour? 3. Why would they not have any tanks at all when the German mechanized infantry is apparently so poorly equipped to deal with anything which can stop 5.56? Even the older 2A4s are more than capable of decimating the most advanced Syrian tanks. 4. What is the best defense you have put up on that mission and how on earth did you do it? 5. What is the role of the Wiesel? I knocked out a BMP-2 with a lucky ATGM shot but other than that every one of them were quickly destroyed and often spotted by the larger BMPs first.

I always played (and play) Iron because I wanted the most realistic experience possible without having to figure out what all the different difficulty levels meant. What I would like to see are difficulty names that represent what they do. Maybe something like this? "Scenario Author Test - fully realistic mechanics, full visibility Beginner - simplified mechanics Intermediate - slightly simplified mechanics Simulation - fully realistic mechanics Simulation Iron - fully realistic mechanics, difficult UI"

Gentleman makes a good point, +1 for tropical cap

Is there any way of getting the shader working on the terrain? I feel that's where it would be most effective (the ground really does look flat without bump mapping imo)?

Seems like somewhat of an arbitrary enforcement to me, balanced forces are by far the most effective; choosing any of the setups you describe would be utterly suicidal. To me it seems you would be better off choosing random-mixed if you want to impose a restriction. A hint system in the force selection screen would be the best solution to unrealistic force compositions (I have yet to encounter even a single "unbalanced" force in multiplayer though), I doubt anyone would select such a force on purpose if they knew how ineffective they are.

That was the most unexpected and random comment I've read all day. Trying to stay on topic but I'm not entirely sure what the topic is, "mods are good"? If so, I agree

Gimp works perfectly well, it costs $600 less than that. $1200 less if you live here in Australia.

Send an infantry squad into a town in CMBN, now send an infantry squad into a town in WEE. There's your answer But yeah, one of the main things as said is optimization, WEE is very nicely optimized.

It's especially annoying when you have a tiger or something like that and it's being engaged by two targets at different angles. Ideally you'd face at the point between them. Instead, the AI faces one while the other merrily shreds your flank.

Two things came to mind when reading this: 1. Although quite true that it would be a little unreasonable to expect a single man to continue fighting after his team was just killed, he was "crack" and technically he was still very much in the fight in the game anyway. If it's unreasonable for him to be firing the gun it should be even more unreasonable for him to be still functioning on the battlefield as well. 2. If there is still a man trained to operate the gun remaining he could theoretically orchestrate an untrained crew to use the gun - at a much lower efficiency of course.

World of Tanks? I never really considered that a wargame ...

I'd say that is almost certainly due to low morale and not to do with depriving the player of information. I did a test a while ago: a single team 4km out of contact with no radio spotted enemy units and I was given the icon/info immediately.

The problem is then it wouldn't be compatible. The only thing you can mod now are missions and things which in no way affect the gameplay. If you've played (tried to) ArmA2 online it's an absolute nightmare. There are literally thousands of mods, and you need exactly the combination the server has in order to play, not to mention that at least with a server you play on regularly you can have a startup profile for it. I was really disappointed with the lack of mod support at first but the more I think about it the more I believe BF made the right decision.

Mods for OFP/ArmA were great, but they were also what killed the multiplayer.

I love the fact that an equal game can swing wildly to either side depending on player skill and it doesn't always end with each side grinding each other down to the last man. When in other games you lose a quarter of your army in a single battle and it's called a "heroic victory" ... well, you fire up CMBN

I guess I just don't see a need for it. How many [mp] battles have you had where you thought "that's ridiculous" and on top of that how many of those didn't go horribly wrong for the guy doing it? I haven't played a lot of multiplayer but I haven't ever seen anything like you describe.

Isn't that a bit restrictive? That sounds very similar to TOW2, in which I felt I may as well just press the "randomize" button instead of picking since it gave me almost exactly the same units every time anyway. The thing is nobody [human] will pick 5 tanks, 2 LMGs and an FO, if they did they would be annihilated [provided it wasn't a flat plain]. Well rounded, balanced forces are the most effective - as they should be. OP was referring to AI selected forces, not human ones, which is where the problem is. These kind of systems always feel very unnatural and gamey to me, funneling both players into a kind of "tournament" play reminiscent of Starcraft or Supreme Commander.

I don't think you need a combined arms setting, choosing balanced forces is the most effective way to play, it's just that the auto-picker isn't very good at it. "Mix" is combined arms, what do you have in mind when you say "combined arms" by the way?

So long as it's not implemented in a gamey way I'm all for it. I can see many situations where it would feel quite gamey though

Actually, TS is a fantastic idea for arranging (and playing) MP games, what's the address?

Yeah I would say that a real-time opponent finder is essential for real-time multiplayer.

Oh yes, there is a delay to the units themselves, but I'm pretty sure Moon was referring to the player independent of the units. The reason units will fire at things you can't see is not because [from my experience anyway] info hasn't passed to the player, but because info hasn't passed to that unit. As stated: the TacAI will act independently and on it's own information, not necessarily the same information the player has access to.

You sure? I just did a test using a battalion of conscript americans with low fitness, ammo etc, the lot, poorest soldiers I could find. I then picked the lowest of the chain of command, a single team (AT team) from one of the infantry companies. This team was separated by about 3.5km and two large mountains from other units and had no radio. The battalion HQ was isolated as well: shunned and sitting in the grass a few hundred meters from the rest. I then placed an entire panzer battalion facing away (opposite end of the map) and the single AT team mentioned previously behind them hiding in the grass (~100m) and then again right behind them (10-20m). Played on Iron of course. Two things happened: At 100m almost immediately they called out (audio) that they had spotted the enemy units and the enemy units appeared on screen at the exact same time. No info delay. At 10-20m they were spotted by the guys in the halftracks (HTs were facing away remember) and fired upon almost immediately. My guys didn't spot anything for a good 3-5 seconds or so, just before they were mercilessly gunned down. They all died so fast I couldn't tell. It seems odd that there would be an information delay to the player. Why would there not be a command delay as well? And that begs the question, who am I? Am I the battalion commander or am I the spirit of the army? If I'm the btn commander why am I sitting in the clouds and if I'm the spirit of the army why do I have to wait for information that I should already know? To be totally honest I prefer the "spirit of the army" approach far more. To remain "CM" the btn commander approach requires serious realism cherry-picking. So, the game would make me wait for information to flow up and down the chain of command but wouldn't take issue with me flying around the battlefield like some wargamer-deity and micromanaging my forces down to the level of the individual team? If you're trying to simulate being a battalion commander that seems like a far greater hurdle to both immersion and realism and much of the problem such a delay was meant to fix remains anyway.

I agree, though wow that would be a long game

Sorry I had to take issue with this, as I understand it the reason there is no command delay is that you are every - it's in my sig - single unit. You are not the company or battalion commander, you are the company or the battalion. It would be like playing a first person shooter with a command delay. I agree with many of your other points (although as stated, not the tone in which they were made), but they hardly "ruin" the game.