BletchleyGeek

Quickly picked up a little error before the edit deadline : Instead of crowning Charles IV in place of his discredited father Ferdinand VII Charles IV was Ferdinand's father and not the other way around. Also, no works of Charles Esdaile in the bibliography? His "Peninsular War" is considered almost definitive even by Spanish historiography, that remains divided interpreting this period to this day on pretty much everything else.

Noted and thanks @JonS as a relatively new arrival to these latitudes I am fascinated and saddened at an equal measure by the history of the formation of the modern nations here. Cheers!

This last article about the Maori - British wars is my current favourite of the series @JonS. Thanks and keep them coming

And I need to return you a turn soon @SLIM It is been an interesting name... @JoseyWales write up on the morale rules was helpful to manage the situation. If you need something from me to compose one of your lectures, feel free to ask @SLIM.

That was a great post @Schrullenhaft - very informative. Apple's move away from OpenGL is a big thing for CM.

Well, according to the department of Immigration here I am a "permanent resident". I am actually Spanish... or Catalan, I am not sure I take your comment as a signal that people here can understand me even with the occasional convoluted sentences I manage to come up with. Thanks for the overview you gave @Battlefront.com, as @slysniper I do too appreciate such posts very much.

I am ESL so I am the mercy of native speakers to judge the clarity of what was written.

Actually this has cropped several times over the years, the keywords "iron mode manual" will return a quite comprehensive list of threads about the lack of clarity in that section of the manual. My interpretation was this one by @poesel a few years back But now I am reading Steve and I wonder whether actually the manual was clear and the in game behaviour wasn't.

Well, that's probably the first step when one puts ideas forward for discussion. Stuff that sounds wonderful in your head may turn out to be less great when you say it aloud, put it on writing or budget its costs and plan its implementations. So I think it's something that applies to gamers, testers... and developers I don't find your style abrasive @Battlefront.com - people find me "abrasive" too in the real world. But sometimes I wish could take back something I said and use a gentler tone. Glad to read you discussing game stuff!

Simulating something like Scourge of War's HITS - where the camera is restricted and friendly FOW is quite a thing - is quite possible. I think the threads that @Machor linked discussed a similar concept, where you could only change orders for subordinates within C2 range. Bil proposed something similar too, coding a little "aide de camp" spreadsheet based app to help with the bookkeeping. Now for an entirely personal and subjective take: playing SoW HITS or in CM2 restraining my godly powers is something which I like doing occasionally, but not often or exclusively. As a concept I think it would work great playing in coop multi-player (as it does in SoW) as reviewing the replays with the rest of the players can be very fun. I am not sure though that BFC would recoup the invested resources within a reasonable timeline - this feature could be a selling point for games venturing into the operational "middle ground", not so much for a tactical game where so much revolves around implementing fire and maneuver, and positioning heavy weapons and afv's, effectively.

Fig is a genuinely something that "makes sense" economically - I have backed two games over there, Pillars of Eternity 2 and Julian Gollop's (XCOM) Phoenix Point. Indeed, if you don't feel the pinch for pennies, there's no point in getting "entagled" like that

Looking forward to those Brazil vs Germany matches Thanks for the update, very interesting. Whatever the kiwis have, the aussies want... just saying.

That was very interesting too, and yet another peek at what goes on behind the scenes. Thanks again for your time. If you were a Luddite, then you were a very naughty one

This is a very insightful comment, Steve. Thanks for sharing it. Crowdfunding isn't a money tree you walk up to, shake it a bit and walk back home. Those trees aren't trees, they are ents. Pissing off ents isn't a clever move, is it? More seriously, it has certainly lowered the barriers of entry into the business. That I think is a good thing. On the other hand, what were countless cancelled projects that nobody got to see (like Fallout Van Buren, Obsidians' Aliens RPG, etc), other than furtive glimpses due to occasional leaks by journos or former developers, are now what is called "crowdfunding failures" and happen in plain sight. The drama comes from the backers who, lacking the mechanisms for retribution that publishers have, turn out to other means to get back their due (morally, I supposed). It's not easy to make crowdfunding work. If the people in charge of the crowdfunding campaign and the engagement with those stakeholders are industry old hands with a track record of being professional, things are mostly kept in hand. Harebrained Schemes - the company - being probably the foremost example that comes to mind of people who know how to use this system of crowdfunded advances without it getting out of hand. Yes, that was apparent from seeing the figures on the Google Play store. I know you guys are Friends of the Apple, but truly it is a Poisoned one. Looking forward to the bone!

I have a quite different take on that @Bud Backer As you say, this happens often, but I do see a clear pattern: 1) the roadmap presented to the users is the optimistic one, which is predicated on the assumption that every task is completed precisely according to plan and 2) rather than showing the outputs that follow from achieving milestones in the project plan, snippets of stuff in the process of getting there is shown instead. Getting the skills for communicating development processes right isn't an innate skill, but rather learned. Usually, the hard way. Case in point, go through the dev diaries of the new IL-2. Also, falling into the trap in 1) follows from the pursuit of funding via crowdfunding or pre-orders of stuff that may not happen. Star Citizen is probably the prototypical example for this. And of course, similar challenges exist on other industries, just without anybody taking the equivalent of electronic dumps on social media feeds. Let's remember that the wrecking of communication channels should not be tolerated by the community: allowing wrecking to go on a rampage unchecked reflects very poorly on that community, and it is indeed a digital tragedy of the commons. Exactly! And what Battlefront evaluates and the conclusions it takes from it is likely very different than another games company. I firmly believe that the reason why niche products fail is not because there isn't a sufficient sized audience, it's because someone mismatched the economics. For example, last night my wife and I finished rewatching one of our favorite TV comedies. It made it 2 seasons. Why? Because the network they were on had higher expectations for audience size than the show was able to gather. One can blame the network or the show's creative team, but in the end the network didn't have what they needed for their economic model and the show's creative team didn't have an outlet that allowed their creativity to be expressed. It does not mean the network is stupid or the show was canceled because it sucked. The network expected a bigger audience and the show wasn't aimed for it. Using this TV show thing as an analogy, Battlefront (network) is scaled to support Combat Mission (TV show), not the other way around. Therefore, Battlefront behaves differently than a network that is geared for making money as its first priority. And that's a good thing for you guys Well, that's why I made my question regarding playing back the "Tape of Life". Any business decision involves risks, some of them can be predicted, some just cannot be. Creative industries (and research which is mine, is one which lies somewhere halfway between artistic endeavours like yours and more utilitarian ones) come with their own peculiarities (personalities, cultural issues like the disregard of baselines, etc.), but they're still bound by the limitations imposed upon us by the laws of physics that prevent us to simulate precisely the outcomes of our decisions by doing crazy stuff and travelling back in time if we don't like the results. Sometimes, as you said Steve, it is because sensible precautions aren't taken or reality checks performed, that is, past experience is swept aside due to whatever reason. That usually happens when senior staff departs or is sidetracked. Sometimes too, we end up eating our own astroturf, so to speak, or worse, we sell the astroturf too well. Often there's stuff that happens due to sheer chance. What if that creative team had been contacted first by a network that actually had realistic economic expectations, but didn't because somebody broke a leg and couldn't go to work for a couple fortnights. Those things happen. And last, some risks cannot be fathomed until you dip into the water. Case in point, your little foray into mobile gaming. Am I wrong guessing that the economics of the Android (or worse even, Apple) app stores weren't awesome? Shenandoah Studios unluckily got on that horse all the way and cheered by a number of fawning commentators, and went down the drain, being bought wholesale by Slitherine. What I mean is that without your tenure in Impressions, and your careful observation of others' failures, Battlefront wouldn't be where it is now. Probably because you would have to get these outcomes yourself directly in order to acquire that knowledge, and as you say, second chances are rare (not in my field, since sh*t doesn't stick). Note that I am not demeaning your achievements, or those of Charles and the rest of individuals who have been part of your crew over the years: those shipwrecks we were reminiscing were public and well mapped, it's down to the intelligence and prudence of the navigators to sail around those known hazards. What all this discussion makes evident is that with the departure of Chris, the community has lost a hotline with the development process, and I would hope someone, or a group of someones, rise up to the challenge to take up that aspect of Chris' work. Expecting Steve to cover all the bases (web site maintenance, forum moderation, community engagement, data curator, accountant?, and who knows what else) isn't reasonable.

Before anybody beats me to it Live forever... that's why we have children right? Thanks for the answers and long and prosper!

Slitherine bought out Matrix but preserved the brand.

Always great to read you @Battlefront.com.You forgot Talonsoft on that list :-) John Tiller (barely anymore that's true), Joel Billings and Gary Grigsby are still around too. I am going to make you two questions. Question #1 paraphrases one by Stephen Jay Gould. If the history of those companies was a magnetic tape and we could rewind it and play it back, would the life cycle of those companies play in the same way? And I don't want to sound gloomy, but it is an obvious fact that all living things grow old and die, and companies are living things of a certain sort. You're very right that overreaching and overextending are a typical "evolutionary trap". People like Jim Rose are no longer around... when I hear someone who isn't backed by Goldman Sachs say "go big or go bust" I can't help smirking. Nowadays we have seen an explosion of cottage game development... seeing people pursuing pet projects from their bedrooms (and surprisingly, sometimes people well into their 40s and 50s) and making quite ambitious games has become relatively common. I don't need to see you working from your bedroom with a cot and a nappy change table in the background in order to think that you believe in what you're doing, don't worry Question #2 is: how many of those one, two or three amigos outfits will get to develop more than one or two games and grow up to become the "Battlefront" of the niche of their choice?

Even if @kraze is missing the mark about tank riders, the question of what is different between CMx2 and other war game engines out there is valid and interesting. Regarding tank riders and CMBN/CMFI a call was made about whether or not to adapt the animation work for CMRT and review every AFV to determine if it was 1) suitable to carry troops and 2) then "rig" the 3D model so the engine new how to apply the animation to the geometry of the tank. A cost-benefit analysis by @Battlefront.com determined this wasn't economically viable and not strictly necessary for at least 50% of the timeline covered. With the release of a new full game, CMFB, the factors in this equation changed and we got tank riders. We can agree or disagree with those decisions, people can decide it's no biggie, or a deal breaker and walk away. I kind of agree with @Thewood1 that there are signs of attrition amongst the player base. Or maybe we've got used to open tickets on the help desk, rather to come to the forums to ask for opinions about a certain event being a bug, wad or a who knows what. Perhaps most of the details of this engine have been mapped in detail, and how many times can the same question be made rather than using the forums search function? Or there is perhaps less people coming over here to make questions, discuss history or tactics. Certainly the frequency I see that posts haven't been made in days on the WW2 forums has increased. The last time in over three months I have learnt something from a post here was @Josey Wales thread on morale mechanics. Graviteam has split their "Tactics" game into two strands too, one being the original Mius Front, the other covering the Tunisian campaign. Looking through the Steam discussion forums of their games, this decision made some long time beli3v3rs of the series to abjure on their previous fandom and start trolling them in a rather vile fashion. On the other hand, it is fact that Graviteam has a workflow implemented that allows for a more constant and rapid stream of bug fixes and patches than Battlefront. I am sorry Steve, the only criticism of mine on this post: if it is so painful you're approaching the problem of patching from the wrong flank. The question of Steam or itch.io or whatever digital platform was answered as well, with a similar answer to that of the tank riders. Nothing is actually free in the Internet anymore: somebody pays for the bandwidth at the end of the day, knowingly or not. Distributing with Steam means a 30% of revenue is lost to the cut of Valve, which is the publisher and the retailer. You don't need to write down a linear program to see that if sales aren't increased by a 30% you don't break even, unless the cost of distributing the stuff yourself is... about a 30% of revenue anyways. Then you would be freeing up time if you drop the old distribution channel.Which probably would prove divisive. Adding a markup to cover any overheads would prove divisive too. If that sounds complicated... well, it is because it is complicated. Having said that, the world keeps rolling on its axis...so eventually the factors of this equation will change, and Battlefront strategy will change accordingly. Steve was extremely candid discussing the issues delaying v4 for CMFI. I almost fell out of the chair reading it, as I think was one of those rare moments we have seen how actually the games are made. I discussed back in the day the issue to some extent with Steve over email, and as former dev for Command Ops and beta tester for War in the West and War in the East 2, I don't see how Steve could have done better given the circumstances of his games. So hindsight is 20/20 and context is for kings. Neither are very helpful observations to make, I know. Data integrity is a huge issue for war games and constructive military sims like the ones I have been working on recently. You get an entry garbled on a table which is defining piece wise a complicated function, like the rate of infrared radiation emitted per second by a vehicle, and the bug may go unnoticed for years (or not, with all those gamers that review every death and kill in their games with steely eyes). Battlefront has a radical policy curating data, that has produced an incredibly detailed and I think, mostly accurate, simulation at a level than pro Sims don't bother in some aspects. Thanks for the games guys and I hope this is too a lull before the storm. And @kohlenklau has indeed started a meme!

Thanks for your patience @Josey Wales , I had read you with more attention that I had devoted to the video. Certainly, units that panic can get back to a functional state morale. And yes, I do agree that you have isolated well the mechanism. Somewhat unrelated, another event I have sometimes observed is that the morale status of a multi team unit i. e. a squad, shown is the worst amongst the morale states of its components. By breaking down units, you end up sometimes with one or more detachments having a better morale state than the whole. Have you observed this too?

Yep, I understand that. That I misunderstood: I was left with a bit ? hovering over my head after reading the conclusions you drew at the end of your answer to my first query. In the movie I posted, we have unit that, according to your definition, accrues Combat Stress, as it has taken 1 casualty. So, still under your definition, if I am not missing anything which is entirely possible, whenever the unit becomes Shaken (it did) it will stay Rattled, that is, it won't get out of that Morale state. That's one of the things I understood you were stating, and certainly that is not the case on the movie I posted. The detachment suffered casualties yet still got out of the Rattled state. Is that an outlier for your "model" of the CMx2 simulation algorithms? I think so. From your observations and mine there seems to be a "point of no return" when accruing Combat Stress. Which we cannot observe because the user interface doesn't show us. I also think that the discussion about the nature of this "point of no return" is something which is worth to talk (and write) about. As it can be observed on the movie (and in the saved game provided if you let the game run) the unit is actually hovering between Cautious and Nervous in quick succession. That flip-flop behaviour seems to be the way CMx2 portrays "jumpy" men. I do think you're right into the money that there are two different processes (?) in play here: which you aptly call Combat Shock and Stress. You have drawn a dychotomy between the two beyond using different names: in the former, morale states are transient in either direction of the morale "scale", in the latter, morale states are persistent in their "negativity". They may change for the worse (Broken into Panic) but you will not get out of Broken. But the twilight zone between either zone of the morale scale does not seem to be a stark contrast, but actually rather blurry. The confusing bit is that there is some overlap in how the UI lets us know about what is going on. As you say, we have on one side OK, Cautious, Nervous, on the other side, Broken, Panic. Rattled and Shaken seem to be on the middle, and always short term states, where it is decided whether the unit has fallen on one side of the balance or the other. Cheers And yes, any morale status resulting from this thread are entirely temporary!

Ha! Nice one @Bozilas I am not "Rattled" either... just "Perplexed". Maybe we need another morale state in the game, what do you reckon @Battlefront.com?

Why the initial contradiction to my first comment then?

Probably yes, another casualty in the same squad or platoon may tip this unit into a persistent Rattled state. That doesn't change that your theory and previous explicit statements are still not consistent with this counterexample. I have made my point, and so it is recorded in this thread. If the idea behind this thread was to increase the understanding of the community, I think we have made progress.

Hi @Josey Wales, I have found a counterexample for the statement above. Morale states can revert from Rattled to Nervous. The time scale involved is - to my surprise - way quicker than I remembered. On this https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tbpjfrvj3i01rub/AACogpI-g3Qg9YQGF43okxHga?dl=0 Dropbox Folder you will find A small scenario depicting a platoon attack on a fortified position. It is inspired on Plate E, page 37 of Osprey's World War II Infantry Tactics: Squad and Platoon. I enlarged the scope of the action depicted there to encompass a whole British platoon, and I have used for years now as a baseline to see the impact of changes in the engine to implement fire and maneuver. (Couldn't find my little CMFI scenario after all, this makes the point nicely too). A sequence of saves (Elite, Real Time, CMBN complete with v4.0 patch on top), covering initial orders and specific points in time where some unit morale state changed into Rattled, and Back to. The counterexample can be found between the saves labelled as "20 46" and "19 57". The unit that displays the ability to change its morale state back from Rattled is the A Detachment of 2nd Section (which can be found more or less in the middle of the map). This video covers one of several runs I did of the game between the time marks 20:46 and 19:57. In three out of three runs, the game (I like to think it better of a simulation, though) played out like this The detachment morale state changes from Rattled, directly, to Cautious and then, back down to Nervous out between 0:25 and 0:36 in the video. Some interpretations, one made jokingly, the rest more seriously: The British pixeltruppen are made of sterner bits than the GI pixeltruppen Your conclusion is not consistent with some of the artificial facts the engine, under version 4.0, can generate under repeatable and documented conditions. What you rightly call combat stress comes in degrees, leadership and unit experience do not translate into resilience in a direct, intuitive manner units reactions to morale states may be impacted by environmental effects such as units feeling "protected" (as long as they don't try to jump over any fences) from known positions of enemy units (in the cover image we can see these three simulated soldiers to be behind a reassuring reverse slope, out of sight of the known enemy contacts beyond) direct contact with senior officers may be the element with the stronger effect, amongst all the other factors that seem to us intuitively relevant Still a great post, @Josey Wales - I don't post on these forums often because there's not much of interest to discuss. You made it interesting