Dadekster

Yeahhhh, probably shouldn't have added that last bit to the last sentence. We have wandered a bit from the things in the OT though.

Some really good stuff in this thread but enough about tank optics. What I want to see discussed next blow by blow is what every TC had around his neck when his head was out of the track Really though...is that modeled at all? :confused: I've honestly never really looked into that much but when I think about it they are used A LOT.

These tests reinforce my belief that anytime when I need to move and I have more than one AFV that at least one other should be on overwatch preferably with the AC on.

Maybe we should steer this back to the OT? Audio effects probably deserves its own thread unless it happens to involve finding AT guns.

Well I can attest to that the sound of approaching armor even in the relative open can be hard to pinpoint sometimes and that's before you start second guessing yourself. I guess part of the problem is this whole satellite view of the battlefield. Would love to see wind effect the chance of judging how close or how far away the sound is.

Well I've taken to rubbing my CMBB box as a good luck charm before visiting this site. It's getting to the point where I am having problems seeing the lettering on it now and I can sometimes smell smoke.

For some reason I thought that was already in the game? Thought all sounds contacts were approximations? Sounds can be a tricky thing, especially in an urban setting.

Shouldn't that be 'soon®'?

Well I am out of ammo then. I guess the only thing to discuss now is when does it come out? I guess on a more serious note. Are there any plans to reign in how liberal you can be with squad/platoon as in where they are in relation to each other effecting command control capability? I'd love to see the concept you discussed earlier but as you mentioned that ain't happening. Could you tell us if you guys have something else up your sleeve or are we just staying status quo?

Or make vehicles an exemption to this to simulate that they are more mobile? Besides how fast do you expect a deuce and a half to go careening down a twisty road anyways? Actually I retract that statement, it's probably being driven by an 18 year old Really though I can see giving vehicles more waypoints than say a squad of men. Not to much 'cohesion' required for one guy to drive a truck versus getting 9 guys to move in same direction if you follow me.

I agree with sburke on this one. I envision that you still get to select what each unit does except that the orders are curtailed more to something that only squad leaders would do in their position and then only if they are in communication. Maybe restrict the assault option and the distance a unit can move? Generally a squad leader alone does not decide when to attack an objective and in what manner and the orders menu and more importantly the amount of time to get this done should reflect that. If he is within comms of the LT then he and other squads in the platoon can all receive appropriate orders relatively quickly. If you sent 4th squad to the other side of the map because it was the only unit with a faust/zook at the time when that tank showed up...well you're SOL. It's not going to receive orders any time soon from the LT. Will the squad make it back to the platoon? Of course...the squad leader will eventually come up with a plan and get it done but he'd have done it a lot quicker had the LT told him too. This does not mean I support the squad sitting there for 10 minutes with its thumb up its collective rear end btw. The amount of time this squad would be moving again would be subjective to all the usual stuff. Training, experience, morale etc etc. It'll still react if shot at and seek better cover and you could tell it to hide or set a targeting arc yourself as well to reflect what the squad leader would do. But getting it to move halfway back across the map might take a bit longer. Right now we are godlike and know where everything is at any moment to include what the status is of every squad and vehicle in game. We know what is going on in every commanders head from the colonel to every staff sergeant on the battlefield. It's no wonder the AI is a pushover...no disrespect to BF (they do mention this in their manual though). I find that we are entirely too efficient at running a battlefield and personally I have no issue with throwing a bit of sand into the gears to level out the field of battle. To counteract this I'd say do the same with this as it exists with thing like medical aid, info sharing etc. Novice would be as it is now. Ironman would as real as it can be made. Bottom line I guess is that units that are out of their CoC should appear sluggish. Right now they zip along as if they have the battalion CO on speed dial. :eek: *** Ninja'd in slow-mo...

On a somewhat related note I can't help but chuckle when I think of BF going through this and seeing 'suggestions' and they just roll their eyes and wonder if we have any concept of what it would take to code/implement this stuff. For that I apologize.

Yes, thank you! A moving AT/INF gun is not a tank but they did move. As of right now this is about impossible to achieve which sucks because smaller guns were capable of being moved around more than in game. Same case for crew being able to move around it. Now we will always find outliers to throw at one another but what Archijerej posted in points 1-3 is what the game tactics are all about regarding AT guns imho. For as much as they seemed to be used I find them very ineffective in game most of the time ime and this will only be magnified come Eastfront.

Thank you to those who complimented my earlier somewhat lengthy post. I am not good at doing the multiple quotes thing in a reply so apologies about that. I'd like to preface this post by saying ahead of time that there is no perfect solution and I think we all understand that being adults. There will always be a tradeoff between fun gameplay and hardcore realism. On top of that this game also means different things for different people. Some play it as a competitive thing and enjoy the challenge of outplaying either a human or AI opponent. Some may play it because they simply enjoy the sight of military might rolling across the landscape. Some play to see if they can do a better job then what happened in history. To each of these people command delays means something different....which is why we are having this debate. I play this game because I was always interested in WW2 from an early age. Combine that with my time at the NTC when we were still bad ass OPFOR Russians flying around the desert fighting in mock MILES battles at the regimental and battalion level and you have a game that appeals to me. I have a closer affinity to this then say WitP:AE which although is also WW2, doesn't involve me being on a floating target or wading ashore somewhere humid. Much respect to those that served doing that or are currently btw. I like this game because to me it strikes a good balance between playability and realism. Part of the realism I desire for me is that if I am going to be the commander at all levels in the game then I should face some of those same issues they did. One of those being was that your troopers did not react like robots the second an order went out. Knowing and accounting for this delay is a very important detail to combat operations. It's the price you pay for giving an order and then being forced to wait for the result and not being able to do a darn thing about it. This is simulated rather well by the WeGo system in that you have no control for a minute as units carry out orders. Problem with that is once again that if an unforeseen event occurs early on you truly are screwed perhaps. If it happens in that last five seconds...fortunes of war? I will for the moment just blissfully ignore the real time mode for now. Combined with existing TacAI I'd love to see a system that allows lower level units commands that could be executed immediately as a result of them being issued at the squad/vehicle level with others not being available as these require input from higher up. These units would be eligible to receive more complicated orders; however, this would be based on what the LT's stats for lack of a better word would be. Maybe this LT can run his whole platoon at the same time giving complex orders to squared away squad leaders making it look like the whole platoon moves as one...or maybe he's F'd up and it takes him two minutes to get one squad orders and moving them in any direction. These 'stats' would be modified by things like experience, morale, equipment, training, and whether say the LT is being shot at himself or if Battalion is currently experiencing strafing runs. I have heard the last two do impact command efficiency. As we go up the CoC it continues. Company commander with lots of experience can issue complex orders at a rapid pace to his LT's. What that translates into is open for discussion. Maybe you can only order a unit to move so far or so many actions in a single command sequence? This would allow freedom for squad leaders to do what they need to do without them being able to charge all around the map like a mini Patton. Not sure what to do about RT other than maybe not worry about command delays as if you are playing RT command delays are probably not your cup of tea? With something like this in place though I can see people not so eager to throw their platoon/company HQ into the fray so readily perhaps since doing so takes away combat capability...and rightly so imo. Ok, so there was a proposal. Not sure I really wanted to go this route when I first started typing but there you have it. Trash it if you want but remember I bruise easily

As someone who went through the Turning Blue ceremony that little phrase means more than some may think. All earlier flippant remarks aside when it comes to this game I'll share what the whole "command delays" means to me. Usually I enjoy coming here and reading the spirited discussions that go on but I find this a rather important personal topic for a guy that was at the bottom of the CoC much of the time. Also I realize the vast majority of people on these boards understand most of what I am about to type but it seems some are losing sight of the forest when discussing the trees. Command delays to me should basically reflect the time lag between what highest level HQ in game decides what they want to do and the time this filters down to the squad leader or whoever is in charge of that particular element you are clicking on. It should reflect how squared away your leaders are from top to bottom. If they are green they are going to be probably holding the map upside down assuming it is the right map in the first place. Veteran leaders are efficient seeing the battle develop ahead of events and not second guessing themselves or at the appropriate level at least not in front of their men. A year of seasoning made for a MASSIVE difference for butterbars at least at the NTC when I was there. Knowing what needs to done after experiencing it multiple times is a big difference between having just read about it. On a related note, I find the TacAI in this game plenty fine. Soldiers hide when they should be hiding, scanning when they should be scanning and returning fire when they can etc etc. Command delays should have nothing to do with that. There should be no command delays at the start of the game either since most of the time everyone is on the jump off point or there generally is a set of actions taken on point of contact in something like a meeting engagement no matter the army. Whether that happens or not comes down to training and experience of course but I find the experience ranks given to units handles this rather well imo with how long it takes them to react. Please note I am not implying all of it is perfect as some of the discussion in other threads are evidence of that I think. So making everything equal regarding experience what you have left with is scope. If you are playing one squad then I'd say it is safe to say there should be zero delay between what the squad leader says and what your guys do. You see all and control all to a degree. Now you are in control of a platoon you have several squads being the LT and have to relay orders to squad leaders. For the most part I'd say stuff still gets done pretty quick at this level assuming all are within visual sight. At the company level...well now it gets tricky. Many times you will not have visual sight of all platoons. To me this is where command delays start to make a big difference in this game. LT's are very important here. These are the guys where the rubber meets the asphalt. Personally I always thought the Shock Force series represented command delays very well between verbal, sight only, etc. It's been a while since playing those tbh but iirc units reacted quicker the more in comms you were with them. Prone to believe it wasn't much different in WW2 no matter what branch at this level, especially since our digital troops don't display higher level initiative themselves. You kinda have to do that for them whether they are German or Russian. I feel much of this is about scope. Once you hit company level op's this is where you start getting into delays as your LT's attempt to carry out your directions. Things get more complicated. A CPT may tell Platoon A to take Hill X while Platoon B provides cover but the LT of Platoon A is going to have to tell his platoon how to do this. That itself takes time. This is the time going by that you see as a CPT after you tell Platoon A to take Hill X and they are just sitting there. Hopefully LT of Platoon X is looking at the correct map or has a SGT to steer him straight before they charge up Hill Z. Higher up then that and it just starts to multiply the higher you go. Command staff starts to make difference. But back to the CPT who now has to formulate the best way to do what Battalion just told him within his scope and explain this to his LT's. Everything is fine until you have to change your plan and start issuing orders on the fly creating command delays which as far as I am concerned should probably just be called communication delays hence the KISS principle. The more moving parts the longer big plans take to carry out. This game however is limited in that scope. We aren't concerned in how to encircle an army group just in how to take that crossroad in that village. Call me crazy but I thought how CM1 handled command delays was pretty well done for the time. Every time you added an additional command the time it took to carry this out increased. Pretty common sense to me especially when it took into account the training and experience of the unit in how quick said order was carried out. The biggest drawback in it again was of course scope. If you are getting your rear end handed to you most units are not going to wait for a battalion level order to pull back to a more defensible position fifty feet behind you. In my opinion I think the current TacAI handles this well for the most part or at least I am willing to trust them on it via abstraction. If they run out into the open and get mowed down I look at it from the perspective of that they must have thought where they were coming from must have been even worse. Usually if they are in a crappy spot they hump dirt and try to get somewhere deeper. I also can justify it in that the squad leader is ordering the unit in the heat of battle and as a result carried out ASAP. What is harder to justify is the Battalion commander recognizing a new threat on an unexpected axis and getting one of his companies to start pivoting within 3 seconds like its on a parade ground the moment he recognizes said threat all ESP like. Sure you may have to wait that 60 seconds but what if it happens in the last 10 seconds or you play RT? Yeah, I call BS on that as every single squad executes this order immediately. To me this is the biggest reason for implementing a command delay. Sure the platoon commander or even the company commander may see this threat and react to it but even then there will be delay. It is reasons like that why many people I think elect not to have screening forces or even proper reserves tbh but that is pure speculation. I still have vivid memories of watching BluFor lunchlights going off and the pure confusion of the involved units as they maneuvered around after being flanked. I can tell you that they DID not ESP. I'll end it for now on that and thanks for making it this far if you have...quite the wall of text I think but some of you are both prolific readers and writers it seems. :cool:

Yes, once again...so crazy it may just work. I'll skip the sarcastic 'nuke from orbit' internet reference since it seemed to confuse someone earlier.

That's so crazy...it just might work!! Nawww....nuke the entire site from orbit--it’s the only way to be sure.

I think BF was a bit too conservative in modeling how mobile some of these guns could really be. I'd like to see them manhandled by a motived crew a bit quicker on shorter distances after which a certain distance fatigue sets in and they move much slower. Moving one of these things across asphalt is a bit different than up a slight incline in a forest so imo fatigue should play a factor. For all I know maybe they just averaged it across the board and called it good instead of getting too specific on certain guns on certain ground with certain crews etc etc and that is why we have what we have. I honestly have no idea where they came up with some of the numbers but it does seem to take too long to replicate tactical choices that should be available with some of these AT guns. I mean a target shows up behind you I'd be pretty motivated to get my gun pointed in the correct direction. Fear of dying is a great multiplier for getting it done.

FINALLY!!!! I've been waiting for this a loooong time so very happy to see the announcement made. The bigger maps, AA addition, increased logistics flexibility and tank riding will make for a great East Front game imo. Very curious to see what else they have up their sleeves. 2014 should be good!

I actually felt a bit ill watching those guys getting mowed down like so much wheat even if just to showcase some stuff. I am happy to see it included though, adds so much more to the tactical side imo.

I might have to fire this up again as it has been a while. Got to admit that before I felt moving around MG's was a bit too easy, so curious to see how much this has changed. I'm also wondering how less effective pistol wielding AFV crew members will be as well after bailing out. Drove me bonkers when they'd come piling out of their smoking iron horses and then nail some poor guy on the AT team with uncanny pistol accuracy.