WriterJWA
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Posts posted by WriterJWA
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I didn't really agree with the OP overall... but this quote:
So basically what i gathered from that the game is meant to be like a live ASL or any other Avalon Hill game my dads got collecting dust in the basement ( though he does play them still). And single player is what this games main focus.... hits a nail on a head. I've talked to a few other CMBN players who lurk around the forums and a lot of them feel there is a general "ASL Good Ole Boy" or "Big Fish/Small Pond" veneer to a lot of the threads here.
I'm not suggesting ASL is a bad game, I've got the rulebook sitting on a book shelf and I sometime miss playing it, but it does seem to color the decisions of game development here. At least that is sometimes the impression being made. It definitely colors the tone of a lot of the threads, especially when younger players get on here to bring up more current gaming concepts (such as co-play).
The old man "get off my lawn" attitude gets a little windy, sometimes.
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I do not agree, that reassigning units to other HQs before a battle is a good idea.
1. Scenario designers invest great amount of time to make the battles how they are. If you receive an organization that doesn't fit your wish, learn to life with it and make the best from it. This leads directly to
2. Making everything fit perfectly to the players tactical wishes is no good idea at all. A good part of the fascination of CM is a result of forced compromises and that things are NOT available as someone wishes. Learn to make the best from what you've got. Perfectly streamlined C2s would take away a very nice and important aspect of the game.
I see and respect where you're coming from there.... but it doesn't fit with battlefield realities at all. Tactical commanders constantly shift and move supporting assets where needed and place them under the command of subordinate officers and NCO's. In fact, that's practically a staple of modern maneuver warfare (which WWII combat fits within). Machine gun sections don't operate as a completely separate maneuver element within a rifle company, but they are administratively linked together. The machine gun teams are parceled out to the platoons and placed under the temporary command of a platoon leader. (Heavy weapons companies are exceptions to this rule.)
I could definitely see this coming in handy in the event of a leader casualty. If I lose a leader unit, then it would be nice to place operation control of those units under another leader, or have a leader rise up from the squads (the senior sergeant, that sort of thing). At the end of the day, though ... it isn't a game-stopper not having it.
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Hello.
Maybe this has already been mentioned but one thing i would like to see
would be the ability to reassign units to specific HQs in scenarios to like you can do in quick battles...
+1
This is a great idea, especially if we could do it on the fly, or during setup! I like to take apart my company weapons platoon and spread out the machineguns to the rifle platoons, sometimes even mortars. Probably a ways off as a dedicated feature in-scenario, though.
Is there any way to see casualties caused by off-map artillery? The spotter team doesn't show it atleast. If you use several different batteries it's really hard to tell who hit what especially since the casualties will most likely be removed by buddy aid.+1 this as well!
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I can understand not putting the newer titles on Steam due to a loss of revenue from the core player base, but what about Shock Force and Afghanistan? Those games have pretty much been put to bed at this point. Why not just stick them on there and let a few million gamers know that the Combat Mission series is a thing that exists? Even *gasp* let them go on sale every once in awhile.
I think I've referenced him here before, but a great example is Jeff Vogel from Spiderweb Software. He makes old school RPGs and charged premium prices for them. For years he mostly sold to a hardcore fanbase and was adamantly against Steam (sound familiar?). Then one day he broke down and released his newest game on it, at a much cheaper price, and to much wailing on the forums. In his own words it entirely changed his business for the better, not just from profits but from greater exposure. Now all of his games come out on Steam and he also still sells from his website at higher prices.
+1
Better be quite, though .... the ASL crowd will come haul you off to the nearest glue factory.
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Just my humble opinion ... but RT multiplayer is, in large part, what sells modern games. The bigger and better the multiplayer functionality is, the broader the sales. I would think things like having a lobby (even if outside the game through community chat systems like TeamSpeak and such) and CoPlay practically pay for the coding and development time necessary to make them.
The PBEM WeGo system is awesome and genuinely revolutionary (I would love to see live WeGo MP) ... but reading this forum I sometimes get the feeling it's also keeping the game out of reach of the interests of many current wargamers, almost as if it's written to keep the old ASL crowd happy.
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TURN 16
Excellent screenshot!
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Where was the NCO at kicking them in the rear yelling, "Spread out! One grenade will get you all!"
I don't think that was coded in....... hmmmm.
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Yeah ... it's definitely an OCCASIONAL thing ... not a ROUTINE one. A time-definable autosave would be a great feature on all fronts, though! Especially for RT. Right now, re-doing a turn is re-doing a whole scenario.
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Actually, I'm beginning to think that via some code wrinkle, the moving unit gets the first spotting cycle ...
Yes, I've just lost another stationary ( laughably called the "ambusher" ) tank to an enemy that moved into view, went "aha!", and killed me before I saw him.
Veteran +1 crew, unbuttoned, no suppression, pointed directly at the right spot ( 'cos I knew he was coming ).
This causes more screen-screaming and hair-pulling than any other "feature" in the game.
I could live with my shot missing or not KOing the enemy, but when the ambushee gets the first shot ... grrrrrrrr
YES! I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion -- with infantry, also. It's like "what's the point?" ;-) I've (ashamedly) broken mouses because of stuff like this.
I don't want to see this turn into a "dump on CM" thread, I love the game, but I've noticed that the closer in proximity that opposing forces get to each other, the .. ahem ... "gamier" the results. Not all the time, of course, but there are some cases where I'm admittedly stupefied by the decisions made by the TacAI. Some examples I've seen include:
1. Troops who break and crawl/run OUT of cover into the open.
2. Troops who come under close range fire in the open and just go prone instead of sprinting to nearby cover (< 10 meters away). This is especially maddening when watching troops do this when they can practically reach out and touch the door to an unoccupied building.
Here's a situation I had a few weeks ago that almost had me melting down my computer:
I was playing the first scenario of the Blue and the Gray/29th ID campaign, landing on Dog Green/Omaha Beach. It was toward the end of the scenario and I had cleared the trenches. One bunker remained right near the draw. I had two formations of troops (calling them squads would be a stretch at this point) ready to go to work on this last bunker. I left one team up top, and then sent the other one down the bluff to the rear of the bunker. When they were within 20 meters or so, the team below put a bazooka round into the rear door and threw a few grenades. After a few seconds, whats left of the German MG team comes out like Rambo (completely shell-shocked and with blown ear drums from the concussion), spraying from the hip, and manages to kill or wound everyone in that team. The team above could see the bunker, but couldn't get an aim point on it for whatever reason, this the boss MG team simply sets up their MG again just outside the bunker, and continues it's harassing fire at broken troops on the beach. Meanwhile, I'm breaking furniture in my house screaming at the second team, "throw grenades down the !@#$in bluff! Seriously!" :-P
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The reason I posed those questions is that, to the best of my knowledge, CM is unlike the extant games that use SOPs. TacOps and the Panther Games use 'counters' and very coarse grained maps. They lack the granularity characteristic of CM terrain and the 1:1 format. Instructing, for example, a unit to 'retreat' in CM requires greater specificity than in those two sims; there's much less abstraction. You'd need another level of instructions. So the implementation of SOP routines would pose more of a challenge, requiring a lot of additional coding and a comprehensive UI re-design.
I disagree. No matter whether the games are abstract or represent a 1:1 scale, each game is doing the same basic thing and has to make similar decisions. Any order given to a unit/squad/vehicle wouldn't be outside of the normal set of orders given to a unit by a player (pop smoke, reverse, unload, etc...), it would just be done automatically, and in a sequence. Even now, there is a slight SOP in effect. Think of AFVs that sometimes automatically pop smoke and reverse when hit by small arms or AT weapon. That is, in essence, a loose procedure conducted by the crew without input from the player.
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It's not my idea. It is a well-proven concept, and much older than any of the CMx1 games.
Maybe the story is true that Steve didn't like it when playing TacOps. But Steve and Charles have piled all that nonsense that SOPs could do in a simple manner into more and more complex TacAI and more and more slightly different user-visible commands. Maybe it's time to re-evaluate the value of these things.
And as I said, not only does it make WEGO more realistic, it is a great help for real-time play.
LOL. I know.
I'm an old school TacOps player, too. I like the idea of being able to define engage distances and other factors pertinent to combat operations ... nevermind the fact that it is consistent with actual practices in combat. It would also take some of the micromanagement out of RT. Another game that really took advantage of SOP's is Flashpoint Germany, a game similar to TacOps.
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And TacOps was a smash hit? Have you ever tried to interest a friend in CM? Even a friend with some WW2 knowledge? I have. We're accustomed to the density; for an outsider it can be damn intimidating. Even CM1x. So I question the wisdom of adding another layer of user options on to an already complex game however useful they seem.
I could think of another half dozen movement commands for that matter. And they'd be practical. Or formations. Doubtlessly so has BF. Doesn't make them desirable.
Nice way to take a !!!! on someone's idea.... LOL ;-)
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Despite the weird balls comments and whatnot .... Command Ops vs. Commonwealth is a weird pair to choose from. Command Ops is an entirely different game, different scale, different replayability, etc. I'm not suggesting it's a bad game, I own it, but it's just an odd comparison. Even the price is vastly different.
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3) Network multiplayer over IPv6
This +1000
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It just isn't a "one size fits all" situation. Like many other things the proper way to solve this is through SOPs where the player can say in advance what happens when a certain event comes true. In the case of ambush versus covered arc there should be a SOP "free fire after firing" which would release the cover arc once triggered if the player said so.
SOPs of that kind are becoming more and more important as real-time play becomes more popular and as (hopefully) there will be more flexibility in how long a turn is.
I can repeat the TacOps screenshot if somebody is fuzzy on the subject.
I'd love to have definable SOP's!!
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I'd like to see the number of casualties caused by the various types of off-map support. Right now, we can see it for on-map units, but not off-map.
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AHHH! Motorcycles. Now THAT would be pretty slick ... especially for fast reconnaissance.
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Can I veer the already off-topic thread just a little further and ask exactly what is M2-ball ?
Since it's rifle/Mg ammo, it obviously isn't actually a ball, so what is the difference to AP ( presumably a full-jacketed round ) ?
Thanks grogs
General-purpose standard service ammunition with a solid core bullet.
And yes.... we've gone into uber-grog land with this thread..... :cool:
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No plans for a Logistics Module and mule skinning mini-game at this time, AFAIK.
Dammit! I want my CM: Red Ball Express w/ Repple Depple module!
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My wish for the CMFI family:
Mules!
Read about the campaign and you'll learn how vital they were to logistics. Vehicles had no hope of getting up those mountains.
Another cool thing, but for early war, would be bicycles. I could imagine a single vehicle unit that actually appears as 12 bikes. When dismounted the appear lying on their sidees. When mounted by a squad, the troops appear on them and are pedaling when they move...LOL, I can just imagine the endless animation and coding work something like this would take...
I like how you're thinking ... especially regarding the mules, but I don't know how's they fit into tactical combat. They were excellent for logistics, though! They're still used today, in fact.
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Here's one:
The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson
http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-Battle-1943-1944-Liberation/dp/080508861X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
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I sort of agree with that. Problem is, realistically, unless troops were very well trained/experienced and disciplined, they tended to bunch up just as the game depicts them. Or maybe even worse. Under stress, humans seek each other's company and that's a hard instinct to overcome. It can be done, but like I say, it takes hard training or hard experience for the lessons to truly sink in.
Michael
Absolutely! I suspect it could be bunching could be mitigated based on the quality of the troops and the rating of the leader. That's what NCO's are for. If the NCO is weak (like a -2 or -1), then the troops aren't as organized, or don't use their training as well. If the NCO is better, then the troops are more dispersed, and operate better.
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Me too! I'd be up for the challenge!
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I'd like to see a more true-to-life advance and assault commands for infantry.
Instead of the current assault command breaking a squad down into teams and advancing by rushes, the assault command should be where the entire squad gets up and advances quickly while firing on the move, used within the last 10 or 15 meters to the objective (this is called "assaulting through the objective" in infantry terms)
An advance command could be used as the squad fire-and-movement command. The only difference I'd make across the board is that the teams and men need to be more spread out. A rifle squad on line advancing by team has a (ballparked) width of about 50 or more meters. Even when resting, or lying against a hedge or bocage, it feels like the men are too bunched together. Sometimes the game gives new meaning to "one grenade will get you all!"
I'm an old school TacOps player, too. I like the idea of being able to define engage distances and other factors pertinent to combat operations ... nevermind the fact that it is consistent with actual practices in combat. It would also take some of the micromanagement out of RT.
Operation Deadstick: Benouville map sneak preview
in CM Normandy Maps and Mods
Posted
This is a cool campaign! Really action packed! Great job!
Quick question ... I played this recently as the British and I scored major victories in all but the last one, which was a minor victory, and at the end of the end of the campaign was told I lost. Is the campaign that stringent by design, or am I missing something?