BletchleyGeek

Thanks very much for your answer @Josey Wales. What you describe contradicts previous observations of mine in a small test scenario I made for CMFI 3.0 to compare the TACAI behaviour with that of CMBN 4.0. I haven't tested in 4.0 and neither I am sure that the "lateral" morale impacts you describe were applicable.

I was a fan of your documentaries, and now I am a fan too of your essays Just a note for the opening, which I find a bit ambiguous. Units can gravitate back from rattled as time goes by, provided they haven't panicked (as in entering the Panic status leaving a red frame around the morale status box). Going from rattled to nervous takes substantial time (measured in tens of minutes), which usually writes off such units in scenarios depicting firefights and set piece attacks (20 to 45 minutes).

The term Rothen refers to a species of aliens in David Brin's space opera Uplift universe, where Humanity struggles to find its place amongst an ancient and complex multi-galaxy spanning confederation (of sorts) where "elder" species uplift "younger" ones by means of genetic and cultural manipulation. The Human species is considered a "wolfling" civilisation, one whose "elders" are not known (and rumoured to be the fabled and mysterious Progenitor master race, the first "elder" species). This causes all kinds of troubles for Earthlings and as you may surmise, it is one of engines of the plot. Going back to the Rothens... in Brin's books a major plotline has to do with this species infiltrating human society (since circa the 1950s) and stirring an underground movement/cult - the so-called danikians - that believe that humanity elder race were actually the Rothen. The reasons why the Rothen are so interested in influencing humanity are not made very evident in the books, though, but I have always found the whole plotline highly amusing. ------- Interesting re: your dad's research. Cathedral construction is a fascinating topic.

I didn't imply you were a Rothen agent @Sgt.Squarehead either, you actually made a good question which warranted a positive answer. The reference to "artefacts" was curious, though. PS: Bonus points if you get the reference without googling

Interesting and eclectic selection of topics @JonS In a very specific sense my answer to @Sgt.Squarehead question is yes to "older texts". Columbus was a man of his times, the Renaissance, when the scientific and mathematical literature of the Greek and Roman tradition started to disseminate throughout Western Europe beyond the vaults of monastic orders, which very often in turn acquired formerly lost pieces by way of its curation through the ages by Muslim and Jewish scholars based on the Middle East, North Africa and Spain. The Spanish entry for Christopher Columbus - https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristóbal_Colón - has a very good discussion on this specific topic: which translated into English by yours truly reads: So no mysterious hermetic or atlantean - as invented by Von Daniken 1970s acolytes, see We Are Not The First and other books of the same ilk - knowledge preserved by warrior monks - but actually wishful thinking (Marco Polo's Travels) riding on the back of unsound mathematical calculations (those of Posidonius) which had been preserved verbatim for over 1500 years, and dumb luck. See the path of the first of Columbus travels Columbus pretty much sailed (left Palos in Huelva in 3 August 1492) on the wake of the easterlies that push the hurricanes along the Caribbean archipelagos island chains right into Florida... and came back on the westerlies.... following pretty much the same route that Spanish galleons hauling bullion out of Mexico and Peru followed for the next 250 years. Columbus wanted to set sail much earlier... probably finding himself right in the middle of hurricane season. He was actually lucky that the trading families his ships were confiscated from by order of the King and Queen of Spain, retaliated by blackballing him. That prevented Columbus from gathering supplies as quickly as he wanted. Also, the whole notion of the travel sounded crazy to most captains and sailors in the area, delaying the trip for two months as no sailors or senior experienced seamen were coming forward to man the ships...

Very good exposition @JonS - that's not to say that rocket artillery is useless.. It just serves a different purpose.

I follow your blog religiously for several years now, mate, great to see you posting over here. Ticks next to scenario entries? That's SO 1999... what we need are Steam Achievements that we can showcase to our "friends".... Failing that, having something like a "records" section where you can find, for every scenario - campaign based or stand alone - where you can see how many times you played it, the results obtained, etc. Taking screenshots and looking at some little thumbnails on the Windows File Explorer is not quite the same thing. PS: It's been a few months since your last post on Ancient Armies - guess you've been busy with contract work.

Thanks for satisfying my curiosity, btw.

Yes - here I was mixing up CMBS with CMFB with CMRT...

Well, there was a shorter path - as one counts action spots - between the square under the heel of the boot they found themselves once they left the tree patch, and the destination square. Why did not choose the path going along the "back of the boot" which was 4 action squares "long", and went through the 6 action squares "long" one? It wasn't so much mere "presence" what I was wondering about, but rather the "weight of fire" or "firepower" the pixeltruppen little minds were estimating they had to walk through. In any case, moving out of cover like you described, when movement between covered tiles was possible totally seems to me like a boundary condition (a case which is not being handled properly) of the heuristics Charles probably has programmed in there to decide the contribution possible factors - mobility, exposure to enemy fires, expected intensity of enemy fires, etc. - make towards the path planner consider one route to be worse than another.

It made a lot of sense @Bulletpoint. Just out of curiosity, which side of the "boot" were the enemy units? Had the AT crew any hostile contacts?

That's them being aware of each other's whereabouts thanks to having radios mounted and the crew using them. What you call "sound" contacts are just an abstract graphical representation of the fact the crew has a general idea of the location of the other tanks, but don't know the vehicle facing, whether it is moving or not, whether is buttoned, where is the turret pointing, etc.

You're totally right - I must have dreamt of seeing the "Personnel" option for arty missions on WW2 titles. Or perhaps is it available in CMFB for the US?

I know you'd find it a bit abstract. It is computer Kriegsspiel after all, we could play having potatoes, corn cobs and tomatoes to do the part of battalions, squadrons and batteries over the kitchen table, really - so the focus is on command, control and friction. That's rarely explored in computer wargames, hence why I thought you should love it. The designer does know what he talks about and his industry/research track record is pretty solid. I wasn't lucky enough to have a Commodore Amiga, so I have no idea how his games actually played out. I would be surprised if they sell more than 1,000 copies, but I do certainly like the concept.

And that statement is based in what exactly? If you're still looking forward to dinner, gut feelings may not be that reliable

@Bil Hardenberger should love this game very much.

This is quite awesome. I am not sure what is the resolution of the underlying grid - being a Bn level late horse and musket game probably like 100 meters - but this is pretty great and I find it quite inspiring. Just being able to trace roads and water courses like that would be a pretty awesome step forward in facilitating the creation of scenarios for CM. General Staff is a new war game which is being developed by an old timer of computer wargames (maybe somebody remembers their Universal Wargame Systems), which back in the day had a very different vibe from the games created by designers like Norm Koger, John Tiller or Gary Grigsby. http://general-staff.com/how-to-import-scanned-maps-into-the-general-staff-wargaming-system-video-tutorial

Perhaps the fire mission setting "Personnel" in CMx2 WW2 German mortars tries to approximate the effect of those munitions. Interesting posts guys, thanks for sharing.

That is interesting. It will be as long as it takes to satiate the OP curiosity. A visual demonstration of more robust tactics - like the Richtig or Else vignettes - of close combat for infantry against AFVs - within CMx2 constraints - would be helpful, if purely textual comments and explanations do not suffice.

Engaging the AFV from another direction would greatly enhance the chances of success. Having a unit capable of creating that "distraction" can be problematic as you can't have infantry engage with small arms fire a buttoned vehicle - target command has no effect. AFV vs anything engagements end up quite quickly with the demise of one of the participants. So timing is important, otherwise the goat dies for nothing. Soviet AT rifles and the heavier MG's are good goats, they are very mobile and their loss rarely cripples you. Without a goat or suppression, chances of success are quite low. Whether they are reasonably low or not, I can't say.

Happy to read you got the pun re: plans etc. @IanL That quality and deadlines can be difficult to reconcile is something nobody will "call bs" on. Perhaps, I have seen crazier things written on these forums. We saw some of BFC internal processes recently with the following command. As @Battlefront.com very clearly explained to us, the quality of the feature wasn't deemed good enough, and polishing it would push timelines for release towards... and indeterminate future? So it got cut out, and kudos for that. That was a brave thing to do. I used to fret when there was a paucity of news over here... but not anymore. I guess I am too busy or distracted or tired or I am just looking for "lighter" entertainment. There have been a couple weeks that the only stahlhelms I have seen are those child size ones that the baddies of Wolfenstein: The New Order drop from time to time. My post was actually motivated because you usually make a lot of sense @IanL - that reply of yours was a bit of an anomaly. I find hard to find anything worth discussing on these forums, to be honest Other than Bil's new iteration of his ruleset for a more satisfying Command and Control, of course.

Who's that directed at? And nobody is saying so @MikeyD. We were referring to games, not upgrades, scenario packs or expansions. I do think that people posting here know how CM is priced. I used to think that people that post here read other people posts carefully.

I have refrained myself from barging in on this thread... But I do agree to a great extent with @vonmanstein1944. GT to some extent feel a lot like Command Ops but replacing the counters with a 1:1 3D representation of the men in units etc. It is also better - after the latest iteration - at conveying what units are doing and why - LOS & LOF displays are incredibly informative and high fidelity. AFV combat is top notch - the origins of the engine as a tank sim attest to that - and far more convincing that in CMx2. You can even see diagrams - displayed on real time - showing what the crew of the tank can see... For instance, AFVs do actually stop to fire, the effects of partial penetrations or armor spalling become more evident (instead of text, you get to see melted bits of armor flying around). Command & Control is cheesy and gamey, but does limit the rate at which one can pump orders to the units (which is actually the point of any C&C simulation at its core). The 2D tactical map view was better in previous iterations, imo, but helps immensely to get a grasp on the tactical situation at a glance. You have flares and comms are modelled to a great extent. Also, the maps fidelity blows CMx2 out of the water by a wide margin. Those are facts, rather than some of the half truths and literature - some very talented writing though - some of the testimonials on this thread have put forward. Regarding limitations, all the glitz of the stuff above has its limits. For instance, cover is greatly abstracted and you won't find any linear obstacles other than fortifications in the games. People here have pulled their hair out because of CMx2 infantry Tac AI not taking advantage of terrain... I invite them to send a platoon on a linear formation along a road or a crest in GT. Good luck with that! GT AI task planning (e.g. attack/assault) is somewhat formulaic, probably because infantry and its interaction with the environment being abstracted. In any case, if you want to do something fancier than a frontal attack, you have to micromanage. Basic stuff like using a fire element to pin down the enemy, and having a maneuver element to actually maneuver into position feels a bit like fighting the UI (which is totally geared towards you focusing at the platoon level). To be fair, steady improvements have been made on infantry combat, but I still find CMx2 to be far superior as a "study sim" in that regard. Also as I interpret what @vonmanstein1944 says, the op layer is basically a quick battle generator... and it gets very whacky, as the match ups are most of the time fairly ridiculous since the op level map is actually "discretised" into "action points", of which I have always thought there were an insufficient number so as to accommodate forces with meaningful densities. Indeed, as some have indicated above, one can increase the "radius" at which the OP layers trawls units to setup the battle... but since most of your actual force is off map (since it does not fit into the action spot grid, and you have to "rotate" units) you end up more often than not with your platoon of AT guns being supported by the Bn mortar platoon or the supply platoon of the adjacent Tank Brigade (helpful!). If you want a proper Bn level engagement, then you have to design your own battle. The Op layer won't generate easily anything like that. Also, the other big issue with big battles - that is, like when you have an actual Bn, with its three companies and supporting armour on the map - is that the game stops to a crawl on top of the line rigs (I just did a upgrade to a 16 core i7 with 32 GB Ram and a GTX 1080...) so you can't use time acceleration as things get really, really choppy. I can't sit through a 2 hour battle running at 1:1... I can't hardly muster about 1 hour of spare time a day, let alone 2! That is basically because you need to go for a humongous map area so it has enough action spots you can accommodate the Bn subunits, and then LOS/LOF calculations slow things down - that's my educated guess at where the CPU time is going. GT games are interesting, and I play them often... to find myself inspired to make a small scenario for myself or tweak one of the ones supplied with CMx2... until I get frustrated again with CMx2 and then I go to GT, and back and so on. Probably we're lucky than we can change horses like that when feel like it.

That last sentence is quite a non-sequitur @IanL - I am not sure I follow what you're trying to say. The reason for that, as @Battlefront.com has stated himself, is that the numbers don't add up for them. That's not to say that the UI/UX aspect of the games has only had improvements in homeopathic quantities since 2011. Other aspects of the game are also sorely underdeveloped, like fortifications - which felt a bit like a hack back in 2011 and still do - or Command & Control - we have an Iron mode whose only reason of existence is that we get to see what our units actually see individually... All these things have been discussed over and over and over and over for the best part of half a decade... and some even for a decade, since CMSF release. To be honest, I must say that I remain unconvinced that addressing any of the above would somehow magically increase the appeal of the games and make them, say, reach the same audience that some recently - or not so recently - released "thinking man RTSes" do reach. On the other hand, you're right the price isn't the issue. There's a sim out there where simulations of single planes and helicopters are sold at 60$ a pop... which are to be flown on anachronistic maps (until recently). Civ VI - a game with a similar replay value as CMx2 - price point is 70$ and they sell millions of copies. Games with little replay value - take some of the last gen FPSes like The Surge or Prey sell between 50$ and 70$.... while your average indie game needs to be priced somewhere between 19.99$ or 39.99$, otherwise you have a bunch of dudes coming out of the digital woodwork moaning that they can't afford all the games they desire because of reasons (probably because they're buying the AAA stuff at 70$). Video game pricing points need to cover the developers' expenses and provide a salary... if those pricing points don't meet those requirements... well, then there's no games Yet nothing of the above has anything to do with the question that @Apocal made. @IanL says that there's a plan - you sound a bit like the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica and their so-called "plan" - but the thing is that what has been presented publicly are actually a list of goals or milestones and some flexible timetables... Plans not just require to state the milestones, but also to break down those milestones into tasks, which then need to ordered in a logical way. I would suggest @Apocal or anyone with similar questions to write to Steve an e-mail... he may even answer!

Great catch @slysniper