HarryB

In general, yes, specifically, no. I think that there is no question that CM:BN is the best game of its type out there. In fact, there really isn't another game like it out there; that doesn't mean that it doesn't have warts, and I think we can all agree on that. In my opinion, the way the Hunt command is set up currently is one of those warts. When I make a complaint like this I am not trying to flame CM:BN. If I didn't care about the game I wouldn't be wasting my time checking the forum or making a post. The fact that I take the time to post on this forum shows that I care about the game. I am not a frequent poster on internet forums, in fact, there are only two games other than Combat Mission that I have ever bothered to make posts on, and the other two were actually mods that I found to be far superior to the original games. So, just to be clear, I'm a big fan of CM:BN, but when I like something a lot I'm going to give it some 'tough love', because I want it to be the best that it can be .

I am not saying that the people at BFC are stupid. Life has taught me though, that even the brightest people are sometimes idiots and everyone, even so called 'experts' make plenty of mistakes. Being fallible is part of being human. Making it so that units issued the Hunt command continue on their assigned path does not make the game more complex in any way that I can see. If someone at BFC would say why the Hunt command was altered from CMx1 to make units stop after they had spotted an enemy and not continue after contact was lost, that would put this discussion to rest. We could then debate the merits of why that decision was made, but we would at least know why.

Good game design...really? Do you really think it is a good decision to take the Hunt command and nerf it so that vehicles stop and don't move any further once they catch sight of any enemy troops, no matter how far away? I don't think so. Still, there must be a reason, and I would love to know what that reason was; unless it was "Oops, we messed up here, but it would be too much of a pain to correct our oversight now".

I haven't played CMx1 for a number of years so I don't recall how everything worked. I do seem to remember the tanks continuing on their path if they spotted something and then lost it. I wonder why BFC changed the order? There must be some reason, but it really seems to me that the current 'Hunt' command is far less useful than the old one, and can easily get you into trouble. It is definitely frustrating when your tank spots an infantryman who pokes his head out of cover for a second and then disappears. It messes up your entire order and can often leave your tank in a vulnerable position.

I had a tank going around a hedge to kill some infantry that was there. He spotted one of the soldiers and promptly lost sight of him. That didn’t prevent him from coming to a complete halt and just sitting there waiting to be killed by the infantry he had just spotted and lost; to him they didn’t exist, they just popped into reality and disappeared once he couldn’t see them anymore. I wish the ‘Hunt’ command would allow units to continue on the path you had set if they see an enemy and then lose sight of them. I don’t know how many times I have seen where a tank I have issued the ‘Hunt’ command to has seen an infantry soldier running between cover off in the distance and stopped and just sat there for the rest of the minute doing nothing.

Uh...it's right at the top of the list of German armor

Yeah, I had the same experience, I thought a flight of B-17's was unloading on me. :eek:

I'd like to make a request that Battlefront include nuclear weapons in the next module; I'd love to play a quick battle where my only forces are an FO and a nuke

I personally would not be for getting reinforcements based on taking a location; that would be very gamey and make me feel like I was playing 'Command & Conquer'. I never played 'Sudden Strike', but it's very much an RTS with a certain level of realism. It never claims to be a simulation in the way that CMBN is; they are just two different types of game. All I am looking for is a way to increase the variability and enjoyment of playing Quick Battles and I think the way I have outlined it, or something similar would do the trick. To get it done, the decision makers at Battlefront would have to decide that it was doable and worth the effort; I think it is on both counts. Would anyone at Battlefront care to comment? I'm not holding my breath, but I would be curious to hear what someone on the inside thinks of this.

I really didn't think about how to implement it for attack/defense scenarios, since most of the games I play are going to be meeting engagements. The way I pictured it was that on the initial setup screen there would be reinforcement A, B and C, and for each of them the guy setting up the game would select the percentage of the forces for each and the range of turns that they would randomly appear in. These settings would apply to both players, but the arrival would be calculated separately for both players. So, let's say you have Reinforcement A set at 15% of the total force points, with potential arrival between turns 10 and 40. When the initial pbem file is generated, the game would decide randomly for each player when Reinforcement A would arrive. The Americans might get it on turn 17 and the Germans on turn 25. Reinforcement B could be set at 20% or whatever and arriving between turns 15 and 50, etc. Whatever the guy doing the setup wants. When each player goes into the unit purchasing screen there could be some sort of drop down menu for doing the purchasing for the initial on map force and for each reinforcement group, with the points available calculated based on the percentage set in the initial setup screen.

I only play pbem games against a human opponent, and if we were going to play a canned scenario I'd want to look at it first to see if it was something I would be interested in. If one guy picks out the scenario to play, he would either have to do it blind, or he has to look at it. If one guy looks at it, the other player has to as well. The only other way is to have a third party create or suggest the scenario, and both of us would have to trust his judgement. No, you'd want to have reinforcements for the defender as well. Remember, in 'Valley of Trouble' for CMBO when the Panther showed up on the hill...

I don't think it would be too hard to have the game deploy reinforcements into 'reinforcement zones', set up when the map is created. Given that the maps are all user created, all the creator would need to do is designate areas where reinforcements could deploy and let the game plop them in. The 'gameyness' would have to be taken out by the map designer. I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to use the initial setup zones for reinforcements, at least for meeting engagements; for attack/defense games it would be a bit trickier, especially for the defender, he would need to have specific reinforcement zones set up.

I would really like to see some additional options available when setting up a Quick Battle, specifically relating to the ability to have reinforcements. Something like Reinforcement A, B and C with the ability to set the percentage of your forces that would be in each group and a range of turns they could show up on. The thing I like about Quick Battles as opposed to canned scenarios is the fog of war. In a QB, you don't know exactly what you will be facing, whereas in a canned scenario you know exactly what equipment your opponent will have. The ability to have reinforcements in Quick Battles would add more variety and unpredictability to those games. Overall I enjoy playing QB Meeting Engagements the most, but the structure is somewhat predictable; all forces are on the map from the beginning and it's a bum rush for the victory locations. If you only had a certain percentage of your forces available at the beginning it would change the way the battle would play out because you wouldn't be able to make a coordinated assault from turn one. Instead, you would have to work things out on the fly as additional assets became available. I think this additional unpredictability could make the games more interesting and fun.

Basically, in a standoff battle at long range with both tanks facing each other you are setting it up so that the Panther has all the advantage. The Panther's gun has better armor penetration and it's front armor is harder to penetrate than the Tiger's. The Panther's weakness is from the side and rear; I've killed one with a Stewart from the side. The Tiger's armor protection from the side and rear is far superior to the Panther's, and as has been said earlier, it's gun does greater High Explosive damage.

Until a tank or other vehicle is properly identified they could just use a common vehicle model to represent the not fully identified vehicle, such as a PzIV for the Germans and in the description you would just see something like 'unidentified tank'. Exact identification that comes too easy just gives you too much information. You obviously will respond differently if the tank you are facing is a Tiger as opposed to a PzIV. To a lesser extent that also applies to infantry. If you see that a soldier is a fusilier you will know that his unit doesn't come with panzerschreck teams. Granted, they can be purchased separately, but the likelyhood of facing them is less with fusiliers than it is with grenadiers.

This was originally posted in another thread, but that thread concerned multiple issues and the spotting issue never really got addressed. I wanted to start a new thread specifically about this issue because I think we get too much information about units when they are spotted in game. The fact that once a vehicle is spotted you know exactly what it is just isn't realistic. If you listen to some of the old veterans talk, they seem to think every German tank is a Tiger. I think it would be great if there were different levels of awareness about what kind of vehicle you were facing; starting with a generic 'vehicle', proceeding to 'halftrack', 'armored car', 'assault gun' or 'tank', and then on to the exact type of vehicle. I would think this could be based on how long the vehicle is in the line of sight as well as how many men can see it. This could be modified by the experience level of the men seeing the vehicle as well as a certain level of randomness to factor in knowledge differences between individual soldiers. I'm also a little surprised that you get to see exactly what type of infantry you are facing. Do you really think our soldiers would be able to tell the difference between a fusilier and a panzergrenadier? I don't think so. I play on the Iron setting and still get the full level of information. I think it would be more realistic if you would just get a generic 'infantry' indicator, and if your troops get a good look, possibly what type of weapon he is carrying. Obviously, if he fires you should be able to tell if he has a rifle, a machine pistol, an mg42 or a panzerschreck, etc.

As far as unit spotting goes I agree that it could be better. The fact that once a vehicle is spotted you know exactly what it is just isn't realistic. If you listen to some of the old veterans talk, they seem to think every German tank is a Tiger. I think it would be great if there were different levels of awareness about what kind of vehicle you were facing; starting with a generic 'vehicle', proceeding to 'halftrack', 'armored car', 'assault gun' or 'tank', and then on to the exact type of vehicle. I would think this could be based on how long the vehicle is in the line of sight as well as how many men can see it. This could be modified by the experience level of the men seeing the vehicle as well as a certain level of randomness to factor in knowledge differences between individual soldiers. I'm also a little surprised that you get to see exactly what type of infantry you are facing. Do you really think our soldiers would be able to tell the difference between a fusilier and a panzergrenadier? I don't think so. I play on the Iron setting and still get the full level of information. I think it would be more realistic if you would just get a generic 'infantry' indicator, and if your troops get a good look, possibly what type of weapon he is carrying. Obviously, if he fires you should be able to tell if he has a rifle, a machine pistol, an mg42 or a panzerschreck, etc.

Just wondering. I would really like to see the M18 Hellcat. I know that it did take part in the fighting in France following the Normandy breakout so I think it would be a worthy addition.

This isn't Command & Conquer. I play PBEM almost exclusively; for someone who has a busy life and other interests it is by far the best way to play. You get the challenge of playing against a human opponent and you don't have to set time aside to get together with someone to play; you just plot your turn when you feel like it and send off your file. Although, with the larger file sizes of CMBN vs. CMBO, it isn't really PBEM anymore, it's Play By Dropbox, because I like to play Huge or Large QB's and the file size can get over 50 megs for some of the larger engagements. If you are someone who hasn't tried PBEM and just goes against the AI, I would heartily recommend that you give it a try. Just find an opponent who likes the same type of games you do. Playing against a human is far more interesting and enjoyable because you never know what they will do.

I was surprised to see the King Tiger on the list of German vehicles. It was my understanding that it made its debut at the Battle of the Bulge and would have expected to see it when the Bulge module came out. Is it being included purely because it is a popular tank? I would really like to see the Brummbar included with this module; it fought in Normandy and I think it has more place here than the King Tiger.

So, when womble talks about a To Do List, is he just talking out of his rear end? Womble, you mentioned the list, if you could point me to it I would be grateful. Back to the original topic of the post. I am very curious as to what the discussion was when the game was being created that lead to the decision not to include unit point values in the scenario editor. Was the editor created as a project by one of the programmers who didn't see the importance of including point values in the program? That's kind of how it looks to me; one person can get a kind of tunnel vision and lose sight of things that are important if he doesn't have input from an adequate number of testers.

Maybe it's a to do list that womble has exclusive access to I think it would be great to see an actual To Do List from Battlefront put up as a sticky to let us players know what is being worked on. That way we don't have to waste our time creating posts about needed features that they are already working on.

Where is this To Do List posted?

I'm surprised this hasn't been discussed more because I think it's a pretty big issue.

Is there any reason why this is so? I can see if you were creating a historical scenario that the point values might not be needed, but I'm sure most scenarios will not be 'historical'. Having the point values displayed would greatly assist in creating a scenario that is balanced. Without them, the scenario creator is forced to guess. I just created a meeting engagement scenario and to see that the forces were roughly balanced I used the Quick Battle generator to purchase the troops and compare the point values, wrote down what I had purchased and then went into the scenario editor and purchased the units. This is very cumbersome and will not be exact due to the variable quality of the units in the formation. Can this be changed in a patch?