Ithikial_AU

I'd have no problem with that proposition what sover in the vast majority of circumstances. Combat Mission is a complex wargame, not an bog standard RTS like StarCraft where the objective for determining victory are pretty dry cut. There maybe the odd case where a narrative is laid out in a CM scenario where the objectives must be taken no matter the cost but it would be the exception rather than the rule. Receiving a Total Victory would suggest your forces are ready to carry on with further operations. If you take all your objectives but ruin your forces in the process the degree of victory should ideally probably reflect that. I've certainly had cases where it's gone the other way at times when I've fought the long hard slog, struggled to reach my objectives and my forces have taken a battering, only to be rewarded with an AAR saying 'Total Victory.' The first reaction I have is that "It certainly didn't feel like it!" There's probably a few cases where that's happened where I've been recording you TouTube. Actually.... (sorry putting the economist/analyst hat on now), we can probably measure this if there's a decent number of people out there using my little Excel data tool. That records casualties/casulty rates agaist the degree of victory. I just know from my own results that the number of times I've received a "Total Victory" is my greatest number of results, even though I know in quite a number of those it's been a virtual bloodbath on my side. IIRC thats effectively what was done with the original CMSF Blue Force campaigns and scenarios. They all had very harsh penalities on losing more than 10 - 20% of your forces if I remember correctly. This type of victory condition was sort of required to actually balance out the scenarios where only one side receives all the 'toys.' If you didn't force the Blue Force player to slow down in some what they could steam roll most Syrian opponents. Are you aware of this little tool I created years ago to test out combinations of victory point allocations? Pretty much allows you to test out what you proposing... just without the many hours of work within the game itself. http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=4236 As flagged previously, in my opinion at least, I think these are the better CM scenarios and helps reflect a better wargame experience that wargamers are after. CM has always been about realism (I'm sure there's a post or two floating around here from Steve on that point). This is particularly the case for larger maps that give players a lot more options to consider in how to tackle the problems in front of them. Having every unit modelled in detail to simulate a WW2 or modern era engagement can be let down if there's mission design that allows for, or worse, forces players to fight the engagement in a very unrealistic matter (such as with very restrictive time limts preventing proper recon etc). But yes at times we just want to jump into the editor, line up some King Tigers and IS-2's, and grab the popcorn. You didn't accidently let a cat out of the bag there did you? Or is this just a side passion project inside CMFI? (Sorry I'm a part of that CM: North Africa fan club).

My point is the game shouldn't be encouraging that type of behaiviour (QB's aside I guess...) particularly in scenarios which are trying to recreate historical or 'realistic' fictional scenarios. The "I won! See I took all the objectives... just don't mind the fact I've only got 20 guys left out of the 100 I started with." Sorting out VP's based on terrain but also unit based objectives can handle part of this, however the time parameters placed on the players also preconditions how a player approaches a CM scenario. If I've only got 45 minutes to find a victory I'm likely forced to push everything forward since I'll have no time on most maps to undertake recon and plan accordingly. This goes back to the OP's funny meme. The creation of a time based victory condition would allow designers to factor in more time and reward players who achieve their objectives quickly if their intial plans worked as intended or they got around their opponents skillfully enough. I think @Hemostat summed it up best further on with his post around CM having a tendancy for high casulty rates and players being risk averse. (Well some of us...) Players want to have time to spot the enemy, set up a strategy to engage and have enough time to reassess and re-engage as required. You can't do that in a scenario that lasts under an hour in most cases - and considering the maps seem to have been getting bigger with later releases. One rule I took into 'Lions of Carpiquet' was looking at the historical time it took for the Canadians to clear out Carpiquet and the airfield. Take the northern approach, they launched the attack at 0630 hours and were still fighting for control of the village and airfield at around 1100 hours. This is an area of less than 4 square kilometers. If it was a stock scenario I'd be surprised if the player would have been given more than two hours to dig out an entrenched enemy. I ended up breaking it in two with a 'second attempt' possible later in the day which lined up closely with the arrival of 79th Armoured 'funnies.' However both scenarios, particuarly the first had a huge time allowance so the player was never felt rushed. Historically the engagement wasn't rushed, in no way should the player feel the same. When I design scenarios I want them to be a challenge but the player should always feel they have a chance as they play through it. I don't mind players beating my scenarios. By the way no foul with all this. You know I love ya work @IanL.

WriterJWA just beat me to the punch. I disagree that time is the primary thing that defenders have on their side. In terms of when reinforcements are coming over the horizon yes, but the attacker does't stop an assualt once the clock strikes 4.00 pm. The attacker will stop an attack when they think they can no longer effectively push to achieve their objectives. Encouraging players to play to the clock is the problem that has been raised here. A defenders need to deny ground to the enemy and this is generally done by dismantling the attacking force to the point it no longer becomes operationally viable to continue. Most scenarios I've played (and can remember :P) achieve this by assigning VP's to destroying the attacking force. This makes sense. The Time VP idea of mine was for allowing delaying action type situation on the defence where you simply know you won't be able to hold out forever. There are certainly cases where the clock is paramount in an operation but rarely should the clock be such a binary situation for determining victory on the battlefield. I think the point of contention here is that it's viewed by some (incorrectly or not) as being too much of a crux that designers rely upon for either upping difficulty or dictating the way a player approaches an engagement. Agreed and that makes sense for the Combat Mission scaled engagement in my mind. The commander you are playing as may have orders to 'clear that village' by no later than 0900 hours to allow for follow on operations. Now with CM's focus on realism, I doubt that orders comes with the clause to do it no matter the cost in pixeltruppen lives. Well let's not count the Soviets just for a minute. For this example if you only manage to clear it by 0930 hours, yeah it's not a 'Total Victory' level of success as desired but would likely be considered a 'Tactical Victory' since you achieved the tactical objectives of this engagement however your delay impacted on the ability to carry out the wider operation.

For purposes of my argument below I'm defining the following terms as: Tools - Units given the player to fight the engagement. Parameters - Map size, time limits, objectives etc, the variables that can be adjusted by the designer to promote a certain type of play. Purely my opinion but the best scenarios in CM are the ones where the designers give the player a clear objective (and secondaries if applicable), a set of tools to use and then let them loose to solve the problem in any way they see fit. When designers start reducing parameters like time allocation and map sizes/design in certain ways they are promoting a certain type of play. This usually means designers are restricting the player to follow a linear path to completing the objectives. Inappropiate map sizes for the forces provided to both sides and restrictive time limits are the usual things I've noticed that designers turn to increase difficulty or try to push the player to follow a historical pathway. Even with some of the stock scenarios I've played, I've come away thinking did they just reduce 30mins from the time allocation to up the difficulty? That's not to say time shouldn't be a factor for scenarios and racing the clock is certainly viable in some situations, however design and narratively speaking it has to make sense. If you are assualting an entrenched enemy position and you as the player are told you are commanding the main effort, your superior officer is not going to care if it takes you an extra 30 minutes to take that final position. This is where my victory points allocated by time taken comes into play and frees up designers to be more flexible when setting a scenarios parameters. If you take that final objective but you required those extra 30 minutes you won't get the additional victory points that would of made it a total victory... but please keep fighting the battle until you complete it. Oh and if you are designing a campaign and force me to rush a large map within an hour and then expect the same force to do it all over again with no replacements... @George MC is still the master of getting the balance between tools and parameters right in my opinion. If you haven't played this one yet, you've been missing out... http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-red-thunder/cm-red-thunder-add-ons-scenarios/der-ring-der-5-panzer-division/ My thoughts above also do not mean all battles need to be battalion(+) affairs to give the player variety, however the time allocation and map size should be adjusted based on amount of and the type of forces involved in the battle.

This is why my wishlist for CM is for the ability for designers to include victory points based time taken. Example 1 - On the Attack Complete 'Terrain Objective 1' receive Z victory points. However take it before X minutes then you will receive an additional Y victory points. This would allow designers to break up the degrees of victory based on how competent the player is at acheiving the scenario objectives rather than it being a black and white yes/no proposition. It would be very handy in campaigns. Dramatically frees up designers to be a bit more liberal in time allocation. In reality a whole operation is not going to be called off because B Company was half an hour late clearing that village. The company commander may get his a bit of a talking to however. Example 2 - On Defence If you can hold Terrain Objective for X minutes you get Y victory points. This allows for the modelling of delaying action scenarios by designers, making the prospect of fighting a defence scenario a bit more appealing especially against the AI.

I understand what the original poster is talking about as players with half decent graphics cards still tend to see the where the game switches over the max resolution textures to min resolution textures at a pretty close distance to the camera. It's quite jarring when you are zoomed out even by only a little bit as see this hard line where the textures switch to a low resoltuion mess. Given the improved GPU power and VRAM of cards these days compared to CM2's release, you'd think the cards could handle more. Maybe bump this setting up a bit or alternatively give players a bit more control over how much of the map they want to see drawn with the max resolution textures/models? Let them test it on their side to find the balance they like and what their PC's can handle comfortably. A sliding scale in the options for draw/view distance like ARMA has would be ideal. My two cents plus sales tax.

Sorry to hear. I'd be interested in carrying on with your snow dusting line of mods for vehicles and uniforms. If you don't mind sharing your psd files feel free to get in contact. All the best.

I was thinking BF could 'cheat' and replace the building and the surrounding action squars with 'new' indistructable buildings of rubble of X number of stories. No entry points, no windows but infantry could climber over and into neighbouring buildings. Again all hypothetical from someone who isn't a programmer or knows how the guts of CM engine works.

A 'simple' solution assuming it can be programmed in easily enough. Gets my thumbs up but that doesn't count for much. The other issue I've had with collapsing buildings, especially taller ones, is that when they collapse the rubble pile is as flat as a pancake. There's no difference after a 1 story or 14 story building collapse. I'm no building demolitions grog but all that destroyed rubble has to go somewhere. If a simple formula was created, say for every 3 stories that collapse it is replaced by 1 'story' of rubble, I think this would go somewhat towards creating more believable destroyed towns and cities in game. Not to mention the tactical problems of having sudden building entry points into upper levels, and troops possibly becoming trapped in lower levels. The rubble mound would also have to create a sloped mound over neighbouring action squares to allow troops to traverse etc. This may also add to the tactical problems the player has to face, particularly vehicle movement in tight areas. I've noticed with some maps made for official releases and what I ended up doing with my own 'Lions of Carpiquet' campaign was to go in and manually create 'hills' where a ruined structure would be. Doesn't help for buildings that collapse in game but helps make a destroyed map look a bit more belivable at deployment. Sadly it's also an incredible time sink for a map maker. My two cents plus sales tax.

Not exactly a screenshot but a bit of a 'curve ball.' (For an Aussie I think I've got my baseball terminology right).

That's some gorgeous pics @MOS:96B2P. Almost makes you want the CMRT module before CMSF2... almost.

For what it's worth I'd rather they decided to stick with the CM2 engine if it meant they can focus on content that pushes the games back into mid and early war. Every few months I read something and go "ooh that would be fun in Combat Mission" and then realise it's from 1941. Early and mid war is far more appealing than 'starting again' especially if it means we're heading back to Normandy. If the shift to CM3 was designed around porting over existing games' content from already released titles that would probably be a big help but it's probably a pipe dream. Especially considering what's been going on with CMSF2 and that's the same engine.

And yes sorry no M8 HMC's in the QB selection for Cavalry Troops. They do exist under the scenario editor though which was what I was thinking. (Sorry don't play a lot of QB). I was under the impression M8's were organically attached to the Cavalry Squadrons. The game assigns them two per troop however if they actually operated exclusively like this in the field or not I would question. The Luneville scenario I mentioned, my research suggests all M8 HMC's were working together against the advancing Panthers, rather than running with the Greyhounds and jeeps of the cavalry troops.

If you are overly bored or need a cure for insomnia take a look at this link. One of the RL work reasons I started losing free time. Well at least around the time I made to call to end the channel. One powerball. https://www.stb.wa.gov.au/sites/default/files/stb-2018-2021-background-paper.pdf PM sent.

Sorry I'm only thinking of scenarios here and not QB's. Typing this from the office at work and funnily enough I'm not allowed to install CM onto these computers. Need to relook at this when I get home.

Confused. It's there at least in CMBN - September 1944. I was building a scenario with them at the start of the year relating to the Panzer Bridage attack against Luneville. Yeah need to get back to that project.

Late to the party but just finished my run through of this one. What a fight at the end. Tactical defeat and not much left of the KG. But there was one heroic StuG that took down 8 T34's. Thanks George.

What settings/tweaks are you making to see shaows that crisp in a CM title?

Very quick look last night. One thing I saw in the British scenario - When the Challenger 2 is selected, it's icon flashes from it's MBT icon to the IFV icon (when orange) and back again. The icon's do look a little different honestly. Something changed on this front? Also the shadows over the building rooftops have lines/streaks running through them but that could just be my PC.

So I'm guessing that community idea of merging all the campaigns into a single giant one so players can play all the engagements in chronological order is not on the cards then? Good luck with the release.

I live in Australia. The point is mute. IIRC, isn't that the sort of what you did for the Market Garden module?

From the manual: Typical Setting - For all of the above settings except Vehicle Status, the option “Typical” is also available. This choice randomly sets the value to be a typical (historical) value for the selected formation and the selected timeframe. Typical is the default setting for all options and is a good way for the scenario designer to get some variety for his scenario without having to adjust each and every unit individually. As for leadership soft factor for the leaders, my understanding was the speed of the information transfer was still affected?

One more 'wish list' topic. Oh why not. As per usual, it's a wishlist with no appreciation or knowledge of the required time and effort it would take to program it in. I should probably make a video of my long list and just link to that each time a thread like this starts up. Editor - Ability to import map states from saved games. Ability for map states to carry over to the next battle in the same campaign. - An 'undo' button. - Scroll wheels for force selection. - Better interface for flavour objects etc. (Maybe there is just too much junk in my head because of work, but I can't remember all the different numbers to flavour objects under each category ). - Increased use of the 2D Editor to 'add additional layers' to action squares. Why can't we plot out minefields/foxholes/barbed wire etc like we do with fences/walls/trees in the 2D editor? - Ability to lay out AI plans in the 3D Preview space. Essentially a designer has the option to plot out an extended set of orders like playing a game against an imaginary opponent. Existing AI group system would still be required for QB's etc. - A script (or something) that allows a map designer to quickly create a ruined version his map. A brush tool that randomly assignes craters and damages buildings it goes over? We fight over a lot of pristine landscapes for warzones. - Reserves arrive on map when position on map is reached. Opens up possibilities for designers both in terms of when friendly/enemy units arrive but also narratively like position reached = prisoners located. - New Victory Condition - Objective Held/Taken within 'X' period of time. Allows for designers to be a bit more liberal with their scenario time allocation. If the player can take their objective within 45 mins they get 500 VP's which maybe enough to make it a total victory rather than only a Minor Victory. Alternatively it allows the creation of new scenarios design opportunities for defenders. eg. Hold out for 50 mins get X points. Hold out for 90 mins get Y points. In Game - Dynamic weather that can change during the course of a battle. (Pre-set by Scenario Designer). Wind direction, speed, precipitation etc doesn't stay fixed for 2 hours at a time. - Fire. Understand some earlier statements from BF around the fear of it being abused by players (area denial) but it's still a tactical problem on battlefields. - High chainlink fence. A fence you can see and shoot through but infanry can not climb over/move through. - Greater variety of fortifications. (Though appreciate it's more likely more a pack than an upgrade issue). - Ability to sync up commands between units. For example - Unit Y does not try to complete waypoint A, until Unit Z reaches waypoint B. This would give the player much more control in tight situations like building clearing or bounding overwatch over fields. Can control this by only allowing it between units that are within command and control and/or have experience levels that are commensurate with some level of training. - TacAI - Units on the move appreciate what terrain they currently occupy and what terrain is in their immediate vicinity when they come under fire and deciding how to react. Sorry a huge pet hate of mine if you've watched any of my old YouTube vids. Infantry running across a street are almost at their planned location behind hard cover/in a house and come under fire. Rather than rushing into the building after taking a casualty they turn around and run directly back across the street from which they came and back through the enemy LOF. - Tooltip - Ground type is displayed alongside mouse pointer when plotting movement/fire orders. - Off map support - "Repeat last mission" option for off map artillery and mortars. Understandable for restrictions in place to avoid abuse such as must be ordered within X minutes of mission finishing. - Aircraft shadow flying over the battlefield. It's a nice cosmetic touch and would complement the AA fire racing up into the heavens.

Oooh nice. That's actually the historical track you're on then. 'Digging them out' is what I'd focus on if I were to make this into one semi-historical scenario. The Allied Player has 'all the toys' so to speak. Don't be upset about what happened in the 'No F.... tanks' engagement. Pretty much the historical outcome. It was only when I was designing the map after reading some accounts from this infantry battalion that I realised the sheer stupidity of this approach. With most of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division staff already planning for the larger Charnwood operation, most of Windsor's planning was done at the Brigade level. Maybe this is partly the blame for the bad approach direction. There wasn't much oversight from Division or anyone else with Windsors planning. Missing that extra pair (or multiple sets) of fresh eyes to look over the plans and point out problems. Sorry to hear about your health, trust everything is well.

I must admit that sounds tempting. Did you be chance keep a record of the chronological order of the scenarios? Wonder if anyone is game to try and marry up all the Blue Force campaigns into chronological order. It would be a nightmare for unit assignment and AI plans in the editor. You'd probably run out of unit goups to assign.