Pelican Pal

Because CM has gone increasingly 1:1 there would be more situations than you might think. A squad in a building giving a facing order will all look that way. So it would be entirely possible for 9 men to be looking East, know that enemies (I.E. spot them) are coming from the North, but be unable to engage because of the given facing order. You could write this off as a player failure, but any squad leader with half a brain could reorient his men within the same floor of a building. Essentially I think you would quickly run into a huge number of problems because CM's scale is such that what window is being used can change the outcome of a fight. Something like Armored Brigade where the scale is slightly higher (or even CMx1) would be much better fit for having larger time lapses.

Yea, this is one of the recurring problems with TacAI that we have. It has no context for the actions that it takes - creating situations where a lazed vehicle will reverse itself into certain death. High on my CMx3 wishlist is an honest to god SOP system so we can edit orders to fit the context a unit is in. IIRC, a vehicle will ignore a laze warning if you give it a pause command. Although it has a been a while since .I played through CM:BS.

Adding additional turn length only really works if you "game it". Perhaps by writing out intentions that you then carry out until you are able to write a new intention for a given platoon. So you are indeed locked into attacking a village for ~5 minutes before being able to do something else. The player needs to be able to act as platoon or even squad leader, because the TacAI is purely reactionary and has no sense of context or positively taking action. An AT team, for example, could reliably be expected to fire their bazooka and then fallback to a safer location on their own initiative. However, without player input they cannot do this.

Yea you can still post there, but its effectively just one dude left. I used to frequent GS quite a bit circa CM:SF and CM:BN and enjoyed the conversations there quite a bit. A few people who were active there are active here. IIRC thewood and elvis, but most others have dropped off.

I'm still on an old version of CM:BN to avoid this issue so I can' test this myself. But what happens if you delete the bocage - save - and then place the bocage again?

Gamesquad has been effectively dead since ~2015 if not longer.

On slightly broader wargaming communities and various articles written about the series. Tim Stone comes to mind. Usually it goes like this "Positive thing about the game, negative thing about BFC business practices or the pain to get the game running".

I reread his book recently and as often as he describes combat in great detail he describes more in very vague terms. I'd also assume he would make a point of recounting the battles he remembered well. Re: Anti-tank MG. Sajer mentions this weapon multiple times and my suspicion is that he is talking about either the Sd.Kfz. 251/10 w. Pak 36 or Sd.Kfz. 251/17 w. 20mm cannon. My bet is for the latter. While it obviously isn't an anti-tank MG - for a riflemen who fought as assistant MG operator and later with an STG-44 it would be an obvious mistake to make.

Regardless you managed to fill what was an interesting thread with chaff. Personally I'm thankful we have this one currently active to draw in all that waste.

Yea, it would be. Like I said earlier I kinda wonder if the research that BF is doing for these games is actually worth it in the sense that it doesn't actually trickle down to the players. You have to have the knowledge beforehand, and by the description of the "research pain" it seems unlikely if any players actually do. Taking the old info from CM:BB or CM:AK would be sufficient. Like if you aren't making the player a stakeholder in your level of detail what is the point of it? I can't easily confirm anything BF is doing is correct, I can't easily figure out what the differences are between June '44 and December '44. That should be a huge selling point, but they don't take advantage of it. Yea, I recall Warts 'n All jumping down some dudes throat in a discussion about captured equipment because he made a youtube video he didn't like? SOmething like that, I don't tend to follow Combat Mission's social media scene. And unlike this current thread it was a pretty interesting topic until it got derailed.

I'm not super surprised. The forums and non-BFC boards have been declining in activity for years. I think gamesquad is just Nuttername talking to himself at this point. It used to be that you could find pretty in-depth discussion of CM elsewhere but now its maybe happening here, but even then at a reduced rate. Generally when I mention CM elsewhere the reception is a bit of a shoulder-shrug. Although I will say it does seem like CMx2 finally found its multiplayer feet. I do wish BFC would publish more concrete information about what was different between different regions and games. Having been messing with CM for a better part of a decade now it feels like the games themselves aren't actually that different. I recall when CM:BN came out replicating a favorite scenario from CM:BB and once I stopped making a map that felt like Normandy I could have been fighting with lend-lease equipment on the Steppes. To put it differently. I'm like 99% certain that the modular buildings in CM all share the same attributes. A 2x2 building in Shock Force, Normandy, Fortress Italy, and so on all provide the same attributes just with different textures. I don't have to think that "this is the Middle-East and we've got some mud brick buildings that MMGs won't penetrate" or "That we're in Normandy and those stone houses are going to be better protection than a newer wood frame home". Combat Mission, bringing you new and inventive ways to get everyone killed!

Its clear that the animations (well base sitting stance) is getting men who would otherwise not be hit killed. Half-track passengers will get repeatedly head shot by rounds that are bouncing off the vehicles armor solely because they sit in the vehicle as if they were on parade. In historic photos you do not see men sitting in half-tracks they way they sit in them in CM and there is good reason for that. Animations can have a pretty dramatic effect on the actual combat outcome of any given fight. Which is why I mentioned them in the first place. That is essentially what I'm talking about. A lot of the basic animations in CM are not making men small targets so you have lackluster fortifications, well decent "hasty" fortifications and then you have men who aren't firing over the lip of the trench/foxhole and often expose a significant portion of their upper chest. I ran some quick tests this afternoon in an old version of Red Thunder and HMGs were picking up kills at 800 meters and downright deadly at 200 meters. LMGs on the otherhand were not getting kills against running infantry at both 800 meters and 200 meters. They seemed to consistently shoot high or low and there wasn't a lot of fire inline with the target. Whereas HMGs were often off on the horizontal but vertically had good aim. I wonder if LMGs get a negative for being fried from the standing or kneeling position as that might be a factor? Its often hard to test accuracy as we don't have good information on what positively and negatively effects it. As far as I can tell CM doesn't do any modelling of weapon stabilization on miscellaneous items (trees, window, furniture, fence line, etc..) But I'm not entirely sure.

Re: Tank MGs are too accurate I suspect part of the "problem" is that the game does a "hit calculation" by the shooter and change the point of aim for the gun depending on whether the shooter hits/misses. On a miss the point of aim is going to be off of the target by a certain distance. Vehicle mounted MGs, when they miss, don't miss by nearly as much as tripod mounted MGs. So the chance for collateral damage is much higher. Whereas tripod mounted MGs will "miss" and just go totally wide of the entire element its firing at. This isn't necessarily a bad interaction, but it is visually very weird because it feels like the gunner is intentionally throwing his aim to meet the calculation the game is doing. Whether its correct or not you'd have to do a fair amount of testing for. But visually it feels off which, imo, isn't something that can't be totally discarded since the game has gone 1:1. The results need to be right, but it also needs to visually look correct too. As an aside I would really love to see MGs traverse their fire more often. They don't really seem to do it at all. Re: Fortifications One of the key problems I run into, and this shows up elsewhere, is that the exposure of the man really determines how survivable he is. Essentially not being hit is better than being hit with a good saving throw. Fortifications tend to increase the amount of visual exposure in most cases. Meaning that even though the men are getting good saving throws they are also taking more hits than they would be if they were just prone. The most obvious example of animation/exposure causing deaths is with half-tracks. Where the men are sitting bolt upright and take far more hits than if they were hunched over in the track. Similarly men don't fire over the lip of a fortification, but do so at a full kneeling position. Often leaving much of their upper torso exposed. Its been a problem in CMx2 as far back as CM:SF where there was a store window option for buildings. Resulting into entire squads essentially lining up to be killed at the window. If there is one improvement I would like to see in CM is an increased number of positions/animations since they track so closely with lethality.

It was less intentional and more of a slow realization that I hadn't played CM:BN in a few years. I went through the install process and found it at engine 1 and at that point I just lost any sort of enthusiasm I had for it. Shrugged my shoulders and went back to the occasional CM:RT QB. Re: Arthritis. I've heard some decent things about the Steam controller working well for folks. I imagine it could also work with CM given the general mouse-driven system. Although since Combat Mission isn't available on Steam I'm not sure how well the configuration system would work.

There are definitely game solutions the the problem. The "super hardcore mode", which I forget the name of, could provide some opportunity. Namely removing 3d models for enemy troops in most situations and replacing them with a confirmed contact marker that is placed in some 20 to 30 meter radius of their actual position. Perhaps actually using 3d models only when the contact is sent up to through the Comms chain to the highest level on the map.

Most people aren't very interested in the topic. Many people who are interested in the topic are essentially dilettantes and don't dig deeper than the major battles that they hear about. Its like a three layer cake. Most people stop at the 1st (basic if any knowledge), the majority with any interest stop at the 2nd (Battles and W A R !), and then a minority actually make it to the third layer (Hey ho off to production figures I go). Essentially most people get stuck at: Tigers are ****ing sweet.

Broadly I agree with Kaunitz but would take a slightly different tack. Tanks themselves are not overpowered, but Combat Mission does a poor job at simulating their weaknesses for a variety of reasons. CM does a honestly very poor job with fortifications. Infantry lack a good ability to safely move from point-to-point in a trenchline Firing steps or even basic keyholing isn't done Buildings cannot be fortified or made part of an overall plan No overhead cover etc.... This just means that defensive positions are much weaker to fire and destruction that they generally were. It becomes an increasingly large problem as your opponent gains more firepower (e.g. tanks), The other primary reason is player related, players have too much control. Largely nullifying the negatives of armored vehicles. Armor always has infantry support I can't really recall the last time I had my armor advance without an infantry screen or recon element. Yet when you read histories you find tons of situations where armor advances without infantry. Its almost a trope. Armor advances with infantry, infantry is pinned down, armor continues to advance into enemy lines, realize the infantry isn't with them, turn around and drive back. Essentially though communication and combat friction armor should be alone far more often than a player will let it be. Which leads into the next point Player can borg spot for their armor The player always has a full intel picture and can inform everyone's moves based off of that. Wherein reality your tanks might not know where the forward defenses are because they aren't being shot at by them. They might drive straight through a strong position that is solely engaging infantry, for example. An example from a large scale 100 player shooter I play called Hell Let Loose. I was the gunner of a Sherman and we advanced forward towards the objective and found a large amount of German infantry to our front. We stopped and began to engage them (range of maybe 125 meters) and after sometime engaged and destroyed a Panther. This whole time we were wondering why our infantry wasn't also advancing up to us? Finally we noticed that next to our tank (maybe 20 meters away in some fortifications) was a number of heavily armed German infantry. They had no weaponry to destroy our tank, and being focused on the enemy to our front we did not notice them. They were able to keep our infantry pinned far behind us for several minutes until we finally pivoted and engaged them. Essentially a key weakness of armor is its ability to incorrectly interpret what is happening and where it is at. In CM the player largely nullifies that weakness. As an aside this is one of the reasons I believe its beneficial for players to also try out relatively "arcade" first person shooter titles. All games do a lot to remove friction, but there is still more of it in a multiplayer game than a single-player game like CM. In my above example, from Hell Let Loose, we actually had an infantry leader on the "radio" telling us that they couldn't come up because there were Germans to their front. We misinterpreted that to mean that the Germans to OUR front were somehow still engaging the infantry.

I used to play a broader swath, but overtime having multiple games installed and switching between them (not to mention dealing with engine updates) became a pain. I would likely play a greater variety if I didn't have to have ~4 games installed with varying levels of engine updates (because paying $40 for them all to upgrade really isn't something I want to do). If Battlefront had gone with a DCS style parent and children setup I would probably own more of their content and play more of it. But as it is I realized I wasn't actually playing all that much of it and therefore own less.

Just a warning when using the assault command. The AI will allow the teams within the squad to move independently of each other. However, because they are still part of a single squad they share state. This means that the moving element, if pinned, can then cause the static element (who should be engaging the enemy) to become pinned. It makes assault pretty useless when you really want it to work as suddenly the ~five guys you expect to cover the maneuver element decide that they too are taking fire. Splitting teams splits the state of each team. Meaning that your overwatch element will not become pinned by the maneuver element being fired on.

I pause quite often and take stock of what is happening. I also try to keep a mental map of "main efforts". The Abrams is engaging enemy armor, 1st and 2nd platoon are clearing a housing block, and 3rd platoon is covering the open ground. I'll periodically check all of these to see if anything needs changed.

In the WW2 games I generally play WeGo and in the modern games real-time. Modern is problematic for WeGo for a few reasons: 1. Being seen = being killed To an extant that is true in WW2 as well, but its a more prevalent problem in modern. The 60 second turns, lack of SOPs, and the TacAI being trash at anything other than being reactive makes WeGo into a micro mess. 2. Loss averse mission design Generally you aren't fighting a battle where you expect large losses. This means that each individual loss is much more painful. Any "weird result" from the tacAI can completely ruin a scenario. 3. Prevalence of MOUT Urban combat/close range combat happens much more often and each soldier is better armed. Relatively minor issues can turn a safe walk into a massacre. Three examples. A squad decided to exit a building that was under fire towards the enemy. Any rational group of men would remember that they'd spent the last half-hour clearing the area to their rear and that there was an entire platoon of friendlies in that direction. Instead they ran forward into the line of fire of a 20mm gun and were quickly vaporized. A T-72 attempted to shoot and scoot. Appearing on the hill it quickly fired on and destroyed a Stryker, The vehicle proceeded to wait an additional ~6 seconds before retreating and was promptly killed by a Javelin. A squad advancing down an alley had the first man killed as he entered a crossing. The rest of the squad proceeded to run forward at even greater speed into the selfsame kill zone. Turning the bad luck of one man into a slaughter. Generally you can get around these with copious micro, but its easier and more reliable to just play real-time.

I'm not really sure WP actually does any damage. IIRC the damage from smoke shells are actually from the shells themselves throwing shrapnel.

IIRC you can just switch "side" in the scenario editor and give the Syrian's access to U.S. artillery.

Why is this astonishing to you? Basic operating procedure commands exist in a variety of games and they are great for turning a relatively static command into a dynamic one that can work in many situations. If you are confused by the usefulness of SOPs well.... - Hunt (triggers on spotting an enemy) - SOP upon trigger *Fallback* - Movement type *slow* And suddenly a movement type that will see men lay in an open field for ~45 seconds waiting to be killed turns into a command that sees them returning to cover. All without cluttering up the action selection menu. I'm actually flabbergasted that you can't see the benefits of SOPs in a 1:1 tactical game. Yea for sure. I think the best solution is to just buy a second weaker gun that has an extended firing arc to nail trash vehicles and then a real AT gun with a closer in arc for armor. But that can be expensive and difficult in many situations. Part of the overall issue is that we have a set group of commands and then rely on the tacai throughout the action minute to handle things. Yet the tacai is completely incapable of understanding context and acts passively. Which given the dynamic nature of the battlefield isn't great.

Did they fix that in CMx2? I recall an issue with CM:BN(?) where MG positions could be reliably taken by frontal assault.