Pelican Pal

I believe there is a hotkey that disables smoke visuals. You may have accidentally triggered it.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious... I guess. SgtHatred While the current DRM scheme is a bummer it isn't that big of a deal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa#mediaviewer/File:Mona_Lisa,_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci,_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg Correct, you've physically not taken anything. The artist still has the object. Also true. As a consumer who purchases my products I do not like DRM. Does any consumer like DRM? Do you see that a game comes with Securom and think "ooh boy, look at that added value!"? No, I never said that. It can't be stolen in the traditional sense because it still exists. There are an infinite number of copies of the item in question. However, it is not necessarily a victimless act. You have an apple you are going to sell. I steal that apple. You now have nothing to sell. However, if you were going to sell pictures of that apple online and I take a picture of it and post it online you still have the opportunity to sell that picture. (lets ignore the absurdity of charging for pictures of apples). What you've lost the is the possibility of a certain number of sales, but we don't know how many that is and at what price point. If 100 people download my free apple picture you potentially lost out on 100 sales, but you also definitely didn't. Those 100 people would not all have paid money for your picture. So you lost somewhere between 0 and 100 potential sales, but as you get closer to 100 the actual chance of it being a lost sale decreases. Oddly enough you might have actually made more money due to the piracy, although this is not necessarily true. If 100 people download that picture but never had an intention to buy it, and then tell 100 people about it who do buy it, who would not have heard of it otherwise, then you've made more money. The important point here is that a digital download does not equal a lost sale. It is the potential loss of a potential sale.

Yea, it is a bit of a bummer. There are a lot of cool things you could do without the DRM. Like install CM to an appropriately sized flashdrive and tote it around with you everywhere. The actual key system isn't actually that intrusive and they, as far as I've heard, are very responsive about fixing issues people have.

What am I justifying? I don't pirate games. Like y'all like to point out I have 400+ games on Steam. I bought those. At this point we are talking past each other. Lee, all copies regardless of their location of purchase contain the same DRM scheme. Edit: You seem to think that I am saying piracy is okay. When I've actually been taking pains to avoid stating my opinion on the situation. But hey if you don;t want to engage in a conversation that is your choice. PAK40 I read the article and while interesting I don't see it as actually having much merit. Especially now. There is simply too much guess work happening, general lack of data, and claims of a dire PC gaming future which obviously have no come to pass for me to take it seriously. For example, he writes about possible alternative business models and cites subscription and episodic content as viable alternatives. Episodic games never really took off and although a few companies produce them they are a rarity, and subscription based games is an elephant graveyard.

Well there are two actual arguments that are going on here. The moral one and the actual physical results of doing what some consider morally wrong. Is piracy theft in the moral sense? For many people it is equivalent. You are one of those people. However, it isn't equivalent in a very physical sense. Digital goods are in many ways a new frontier. If I copy a digital file you still have it. If I take your apple you do not. These are no longer equivalent physical acts. It does very much. Because suddenly you have a literal infinite amount of a good. Our societies entire concept, both moral and legal, of theft (and much more), is based on things being finite. One of the areas that isn't true is copyright law. That is the question. A company chargers what they consider a fair price. Would they want to charge someone an unfair price for their good due to the vagaries of the international economy? Would they actually want to charge 6 months wages for their product? Is it actually harmful to the company if that person who would never every buy it then pirated the application? This is all a very morally and economically gray area. Is it morally wrong to copy an infinite digital file if your legal access to it is so limited as to be essentially impossible? Mord Here is where the difference between physical and digital goods is very important. If I take someone's boat they no longer have one. However, if I copy an infinitely copyable digital file they still have that file. Now that leads us to the question of: Is that a lost sale? Which is really the important part when speaking of an infinite resource. Not whether you still have it, because of course you have it, but whether you were cheated of (what you consider) fair compensation for it. Now if there was never an intention on the person who copied the file to pay you for it then did you actually lose anything? Might you have actually gain something?

: I wouldn't straight up call piracy a only wrong choice. The world is a grey place and piracy falls into that. Is piracy wrong if the conversion from your local currency to the currency for the purchase of the game equivalent to 6 months pay?

I can show you a lot, but most of this is down to semantics now. I would call the AI in the total war games, paradox games, and many others as "independently intelligent". This is, generally speaking, hard coded AI that an individual user doesn't have to mess with. My definition is pretty much based on who programs the AI. The tactical AI is good. It could be better, and I will not call it excellent because I judge AI based on how a player handles it. Not relative to other AI. There *are* very few ai's that are comparable to the CM AI. It is very impressive. We have been arguing semantics this whole thread.

There are a lot of poor assumptions that are being made. We don't have a firm hand on the rate of piracy for any given game. Furthermore, we don't know what that means for sales. You also cannot fully equate digital piracy with physical theft. If you have one apple and I take it you are out an apple. However if you have a picture of an apple and I copy that picture you still have a picture. You lost nothing by my action. To copy a digital file is free. So at a base level piracy costs the original file owner nothing. Now a second important point. Pirating a game does not mean that I would have purchased it. So the actual effect of piracy on any given game's income is an unknown. Whether the effect is negative or positive is also an unknown. It is quite possible that piracy could increase the overall income a game earns. Whether DRM is even required isn't even a sure thing.

Yes, that is also true. They mean the same thing. More importantly what that represents monetarily is an unknown.

If that product was equivalently as easy to get as the store bought version, morally okay with them, and as up to date as the purchased game. There currently are bootleg copies but they are none of these things.

Generally speaking it is incredibly hard to pin down what pirating actually does to sales for PC games. Although it does make a good scapegoat. We do know that the more a game is pirated the more successful it is. We also know that giving users value added experience is a way to avoid piracy. Steam doesn't do so well because of its DRM, but because it adds value and ease of use to the buying experience. Steam DRM is can be cracked just like everything else that the industry tried. The difference is Steam adds value and makes the purchasing experience simple.

I'm not sure where I am trying to nerf Russian infantry or where I am trying to write stupidity into the game system. From my understanding a basic Russian platoon would not act like a German or W. Ally platoon. Generally they would use a platoon to do what someone else might have a squad do. Is this not correct? It has been said repeatedly on this forum by forum members and BFC. In fact the CM:RT manual actually states something to that effect. In which case it would be ahistorical to send a squad off to act independently of the platoon. Am I wrong? I also would like to point out that I am only speaking of the average rifle platoon. Not any specialized scout formation.

DRM isn't supposed to stop all piracy. It is there to stop casual stuff done by casual users. Much like the locked door analogy someone mentioned earlier. If someone really wanted to break in they could, but the locked door will stop any criminal who isn't very determined. Now whether BFC actually needs the DRM is another question. Right now I suspect that the games are not popular enough to support any sort of widespread piracy and that the DRM actually is just annoying for customers. If we go back to the door analogy. You don't need a lock if no one lives withing 100 miles of your home that is nestled deep in the mountains. Actually this conversation came up a while ago and I decided to do some exploring on some torrents. There was a copy of CM:SF from Paradox and CM:BN 1. some version listed. This was well after Market Garden was released. CM:BN had a handful of seeders and if I wanted to wait 2 months to download a game that "might" work I would have been able to get a free version of the unupdated CM:BN.

Kinda, instead of the game having a single turn length each unit would have a turn length. So in a single game you might have 8 units that you can order every 20 seconds, 10 you can order every 35 seconds, 20 you can order every 40 seconds and 7 units you can give orders to every minute. It would of course be WeGo, but also have a mix of that IgoYougo initiative stuff that you might remember from the old Heroes of Might and Magic games. The actual length of the game would remain the same since it is done not by # of turns, but by # of minutes. Most likely you would have a lot of very short turns that would have the player doing nothing, but it would give a direct benefit to the player for maintaining C2 by being able to give more reactive commands in the close situations. This of course would make play-by-email a complete and utter mess. But yea, no delay is probably the best system for the scale that CM is played at.

Although CM is not well known enough to actual support any support of presence on bit torrent sites so I do question the actual utility of the DRM. I guess you can stop more than a couple friends from sharing the game.

The entire price argument to me is just interesting within itself and partially because I feel that some people here have an odd view of market dynamics (higher price = more money right?). I never expected any change to occur and I'm not trying to get BFC to change their prices. I just find it interesting to talk about how BFC prices their stuff and how that relates to the wider video game industry. I also have never started a thread regarding pricing or complaining about the content of any BFC stuff. If someone is talking about it though I will join the discussion because I think it is interesting. (Although I guess I did start one thread because I was wondering if there was a way to buy 3.0 with a module/base game.) So if no one else talked about it I wouldn't talk about it, but people are, so I do. Slysniper, I am really enjoying CM:RT and have been playing that and DOTA 2 when I do play video games for the past while now. I am also very interested in Black Sea and would like to see how I could finaggle developing scenarios based on the current conflict using what we have in CM:BS. Although if you want to take bets I'll let you all know when I reach 450 and then 500.

My view of how to run a Russian platoon is kind of a compromise between the limits of the CM game engine and the actual historical facts as I know them. I don;t think it is too far fetched to assume that a Russian 10 man squad could cover 50 meters of ground (5 meters between each man). Nor do I think it would be entirely unheard of for the SL to tell Vasily to check out that farmhouse sitting ominously quiet at the edge of the woods. Now take that idea of how a squad works and put it together with how CM forces unrealistic unit densities constantly and I've created a compromise. Russian squads can be split to cover additional ground, however they should maintain C2 to their parent formation as much as possible. So while I split Russian squads I keep their tactical movement together as if they were still one squad. I also increase the basic maneuver unit I would use for anything. So if I would use a German fireteam I use a Russian squad. If I were to use a German Squad I will use a Russian platoon and so on. I believe it keeps them sufficiently rigid while ironing out some of the infantry simulation problems that CM has.

The current no delay system is probably better than a poorly implemented delay system. CM is a very dynamic game and that makes it hard for a delay system to work. Especially with the almost totally reactive tactical AI we have now. IN a single turn you are giving orders as if you are the Company Commander, 3-4 Platoon Commanders, 9-12 Squad Leaders and possibly even more Fireteam Leaders. That is just in a company sized game. So while an order coming down from the COY CO would probably have a delay at some point along the line a order from your fireteam leader would have almost none. Until the game can distinguish between the two it would be difficult to implement well. On the otherhand I think there could be some interesting work dealing with turn times and C2 status. An initiative system that would have each unit have a certain time between turns with a maximum of a minute or maybe two. So in a platoon sized battle the platoon leader would always have the shortest turns. while the other units have turn lengths depending on their order and C2 link with their commanding unit. PLatoon Leader 10 second turns 1st squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns 2nd squad: poor order and good C2 25 second turns 3rd squad: good order and no C2 35 second turns 4th Squad: Poor order and no C2 60 second turns So instead of causing a delay the frequency of player orders gets toned down or increased depending on C2 link and the order of the unit in question. It is less random because the length of time between orders is known so a out of command squad will be able to do less than a in command squad. However, it is entirely in the players control. So if the player wants to try to plan out a full minute of action for the out of command squad they could. However, if things go bad they have less of a chance to adapt to the changing situation than a squad in C2. Since the delay is based on an individual units C2 and order status a platoon that is in not in C2 with their COY CO would still be able to act effectively up to the Platoon leader level. Company Commander 10 second turns PLatoon Leader: good order and no C2 40 second turns 1st squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns 2nd squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns 3rd squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns So in this example each squad is in C2 with their platoon leader. So they can act effectively in their local tactical area. However, the PL isn't in C2 with the company commander. So it limits the maneuver ability of the platoon strategically because the squads have to wait for the PL to catch up with complex movements or risk being out of C2 themselves.

On the otherhand RT lets the player essentially give squads SOPs. Which makes small scale actions much more realistic. In either mode you are making a tradeoff. WeGo favors more realism at the macro level while RT favors the realism at the micro level.

I totally agree that the scripted start AI is probay the best thing for a designer. I'm not asking for anything else. However, I wouldn't describe the AI in the same terms that I might describe a independent AI. It is very much scripted and how good the strategic AI is will be super dependent on how good the scenario designer is. Largely I was just commenting on Womble's characterization of the strategic AI as independently intelligent. It's not and requires a good hand from the designer to get the AI into a place where the tactical AI can do some damage. Overall I would describe the AI in CM as pretty solid. However, I tend to describe AI in terms of how it stacks up to a player. Which is why I sound pretty harsh.

I've designed, but not released, quite a few scenarios right now. I'm familiar with the stratAI. Which, as you said, is a scenario designer thing. It isn't independently intelligent. Which is more of my point. Edit: I agree that Arma AI is also passable. it doesn't mean that it is bad, just that it isn't at human levels and against a human opponent you will almost certainly need to design in some balance that wouldn't normally be required against a human.

It depends on the scenario and to an extent map design. If the longest sight line is 500M then rear area is much closer than if the average range is 2KM. Sburke, I'm not here saying we need them. I don't care and think that ignoring them would be okay. However, the maps are getting large enough to deal with things that are exclusively the pointy bit of the spear. I think that they do represent a unique movement style for heavy weapons largely on the basis that the horses have stamina and lower speeds. Unlike trucks. And we can have a large map, but we can't have a large map with initial super high unit densities.

I'm not trying to get BFC to discount stuff. Some folks will say repeatedly that they want BFC to charge more money. So if the opportunity presents itself to give BFC a $100 for something they should, right?

I would say that it is always appropriate to handle Soviet troops similarly to Germans or Western Allies. The basic idea of how the Soviets did things was essentially a level up from everyone else. So a squad does the job of a fireteam, platoon does the job of a squad, company of a platoon. So you handle them the same, but you use a larger force. That, unless I am mistaken, is kinda the basis of the Soviet steamroller/poor low level command. What that doesn't mean is that they are all entirely stupid and have to keep a 10 man squad in a 8X8 meter square. So split squads, but keep them closeish to each other. A squad covering 40 meters of ground isn't unsoviet. A platoon being split into fireteams and the covering 100-150 meters of ground isn't unsoviet. Breaking off a scout squad to walk 50 M in front isn't unsoviet. I think it would be reasonable for a SL to tell Boris and Andrei to walk a fair distance forward of a squad or say "go check out that farmhouse". It is important to remember that in CM troops are unrealistic close to each other. Edit: I guess there is a question of what you mean by "handle like western troops". Generally I think of it as a lot of low level independent movement.