Pelican Pal

I'll generally agree with Sedak that HT mounted infantry seem too vulnerable. MikeyD - I was under the impression that when a bullet penetrated the crew compartment there would be a "penetration message" popup. Or at least it appears that their should be because the game does track small arms hits on HTs. Fizou - I believe there is one, but it is nowhere near as effective as the normal cover dice throws. Then again even with a throwing save it would be better if the troops hunkered down in the tracks some. They will fail saves eventually and it would be much better if they were not hit at all.

So I'll agree that this isn't that big of deal. I would never made a thread about it, but now we have one and I find UIs interesting. I enjoy CM so I would like to talk about the UI/UX of CM. Even if none of these ever get implemented it isn't a big deal. I'll still enjoy CM. I'm sure new players will continue to come to CM, however I don't see why we can't discuss it. 76mm - Those were just some quick examples I wrote up in a space of a few minutes. The basic idea is that it doesn't matter what they actually mean. However they do keep with standard video game language in regards to difficulty and obviously make sense next to each other. All we need to know is that "hard" is harder than "normal, and so on. Frankly CM would probably be better off with language that gauged realism rather than difficulty. Because the game (barring basic) is essentially as difficult regardless of the difficulty setting. Michael Emrys - It isn't about new players being driven away. It is about the presentation of the game. Apple gets a lot of slag for having simple systems, but they do make some slick products and that isn't something you should discount. Often times the "feel" of a product can be as important as its functionality. LukeFF - That information could be easily included in the game and improve the player experience. Just because it is in the manual shouldn't mean it should be not in the game. And remember at this point most of us don't have nicely printed manuals nearby anymore. If I want to view the manual I need to alt-tab out of the game, go to the BFC website, find the manual link, load the PDF, then search through the PDF to find the info I want. Is it the worst? No, but it could definitely be better. In fact it would be better if most everything in the manual were in the game. Imagine if during the quick battle selection screen basic information about a unit was displayed. So I would know that the PSW 223 has an MG34 and radio on it, while the PSW222 has a 20mm auto cannon, or that a Sicherung squad has 7 riflemen and a SL with a MP40. I could finally know the differences between all those bloody Panzer IV models without having the manual open on a second screen and a written list of differences nearby. Or if I could click on a unit during a battle and see a little encyclopedia entry brought up. I see a rarely used Panzer Mark II and I'm interested in the tank. So i right click and select the option to open the encyclopedia page. I see pertinent information about the tank (armor, gun, etc...) and a short history of the vehicle. If anyone recalls doing this in the original Rome: Total War it was quite a bit of fun to be able to read up on the units you saw in battle. Now does anyone of this *need* to be in the game. No, of course not. We don't need BFC to drop everything and add any of this in. In fact they never have to, and I would still buy their games. But it would make the experience better.

Beginner normal hard Elite Iron <-- is a different color to denote that it is a little absurd. So the first three maintain the normal style of game difficulty. They are a clear progression from beginner up to hard. After hard the difficulty names don't matter as much because the differences are pretty small. Hard is roughly equivalent to Elite and Iron, but not quite. As for tool-tips: You could just make really big ones with the listing from the manual or just write a short blurb. Basic Training: Is for players who are new to Combat Mission and the wargame genre. Realism is significantly decreased. Veteran: Most people familiar with the Combat Mission game system will prefer this setting. It is a fair balance between realism and fun that does not burden the player with unnecessary details or long waiting times. Warrior: Warrior is similar to the Veteran setting but introduces more realistic time delays for a number of tasks and events. Hardcore players will favor this setting. Elite: Elite is identical to Warrior with only one difference: - Enemy infantry icons are always the plain “soldier” type, regardless of their armament or function Iron: Iron is an optional setting that goes even one step further than Elite, and introduces special restrictions on what the player can do and when. - Friendly units need to be spotted just like enemy units. And this took me all of three minutes to do. So with a little more time you could probably put out a very concise sentence or two explaining the difficulty levels. Is this needed. No, but it is one thing in the long list of UI fixes that would add some polish to the game.

Dude, calm down. We are talking about the text of menu options. We don't need people to "go find different games". I'm talking about an unhelpful user interface that does nothing to inform the user of what their choices mean. I mean what is the difference between warrior and veteran? Is one better than the other, is one more difficult? They are just two arbitrarily chosen words. They have no meaning. And these options could totally be condensed into tool-tips or maybe a text box displaying all the differences between the difficulty levels. Like we are literally talking about adding plain text popups. It isn't the end of the bloody world.

The difficulty information should be included in the game. The current difficulty naming scheme doesn't clearly convey information and you cannot at a glance decide what difficulty is best for you.

Well there are 4, maybe 5? difficulty levels. No tool-tip or way to see what they do. That part of the UI is sorely lacking. I mean what is the difference between Elite and Iron? I don't know for sure. I do know that Iron guts a bunch of useful UI. I could reasonably see three difficulty levels being implemented. On the other hand in game info would also be great.

There are few important differences between spotting in CMx1 and CMx2 that might be causing you some headaches if you are new to the CMX2 games. Primary differences: Individual Spotting: In CMx1 games spotting was done by the whole team. So if a single squad saw a tank then every single unit on your team would have knowledge of that tank's position. This isn't true in CMx2. Every unit has its own personal view of the battlefield that isn't instantly shared with every other unit. So a squad of guys might see a tank, but the rest of the platoon won't know about it. That squad can disseminate their sighting information to nearby units over time, but it is no longer instant. This can make weapons like AT guns much more dangerous. If a platoon of tanks stumble upon an AT gun it is very possible for only a single tank in that platoon to see the gun. No one else will know about it, and if the tank that sees the gun is destroyed before the crew can tell anyone else then you have the remaining platoon left with no knowledge of what is happening. No Terrain Tiles: In CMx1 terrain was done in 20M tiles. This tile is heavy woods, and the tile right next to it is light. You can see 10M into a heavily wooded tile regardless of which one you are talking about. They all of the same attributes and you could have a list of tiles and their effects upon units and LOS. In CMx2 this is not true. In this woods tile there might be a small sapling that makes it different than the tile of woods next to it. That tile has 3 big trees while this next one has a collection of small bushes and a single large tree. So what your men can or cannot see is a lot hazier. A difference of a single tree can mean the difference between spotting or not. Recommendations: split squads into smaller teams and make sure you recon a lot more than you would in CMx1. Give your men a few minutes to scope out terrain and have multiple teams doing it. Send a forward team into positions that are wooded so if something nasty is hiding there you don't lose a lot of men and material. It is important to understand that a densely wooded area could easily hide a platoon of men or more and you would have no idea until you walked almost literally on top of their position.

Are you really arguing this? In what world could I have been said to have failed to occupy a position when I have a company+ of men on it and there exists a single, broken, lightly wounded, ammo-less, conscripted, crewmen hiding in a bush somewhere? Should I also be required to execute the wounded to be sure they don't "contest the position"? The occupy that we have isn't the worst thing in existence, but don't try to argue that it is good design. There are far too many problems with it to be called that. Edit: "That soldier would put the VL into contention if, at the time of assessment, even if they were also surrendering, I believe. Opposition have to be down and out not to count." JonS, is this a good design decision?

I was messing around with a Tiger I platoon versus a T-34 76 company. AP shells definitely fully penetrated a T-34 and were then able to go on to hit and knock or damage tanks behind them.

Killkess, I don;t think that is true. If you want your tank to do a short halt you give it a pause command. Otherwise it is firing on the move.

Womble, what are you on about? A bashing agenda? The occupy VL has long been a problem. The current setup is poorly designed and rarely reflective of the mission the player is actually tasked with. It really is a primitive system and an especially poor design choice given the context of the game and the times in which they are used. Now it isn't game breaking by any means. I mean we've lived with it since CM:SF, but it definitely isn't the occupy that this game really needs. I mean look at the campaigns. A number of missions in the Soviet campaign consist of a battalion supported by attached armor attacking occupy objectives. I think it is pretty clear that a broken crewmen with a pistol hiding in a house wouldn't deny that objective to those men. And the German campaign has missions where you are commanding 250+ men and 20+ tanks. These are not situations where having a single man, regardless of his morale status, in the VL should deny the objective to the attacking force. These also happen to be the vast majority of the missions in the CM games. Now at platoon sized mission or counter-insurgency Op like those we saw in CM:SF might justify a clear objective but most CM missions do not.

I've played CM:BN and CM:RT. Personally I greatly prefer CM:RT. The maps seem of higher quality and the introduction of triggers and other game/AI improvements make it the definitive choice for me. Of course CM:BN and CM:FI will eventually be getting the technical updates, but currently CM:RT is the most advanced game in the series.

The text currently isn't very readable and does a great job of confusing that part of the menu. It essentially works because the only text that shows up means someone is dead so you can just look for a horrid white mess over a guy to see who is dead. If you wanted the words overlayed on a soldier to mean something you would have to find a way to make them more readable than they are now.

Whatever happens they need to stay away from adding more text. As it is "casualty" isn't super readable and the addition of different text as indicators of status would only make things more confusing.

The idea behind it is good. Implementation is a little lacking. Personally it would make more sense to me to have the soldiers state reflected via colors without text. Green: good to go. Yellow: Lightly wounded. Red: Heavily wounded/out of action. Dark Red: Dead. It keeps it consistent with the visuals on the map and you don't have a word blazoned across the soldier to clutter up the UI.

I don't think he ever said the game is broken without PPSHs. Having more weapons available is something I would like. Regardless of how much it would actually matter in a company+ sized engagement. It adds a bit more immersion and that weapon can have an important effect on the smaller tactical engagements. I mean it would be cool to have a random SL carrying a PPSH into combat. I would be really surprised if this were the case. The precedent is already there for having squads get weapons at random. Occasionally a German squad will have 2 G43s, sometimes the assistant will have scoped K98, sometimes a squad will have MG34s instead of 42s. It isn't a leap to say sometimes a soldier will have a PPSH.

Part of the issue is that this isn't *just* an animations issue. It is also an AI issue. A very complex one that probably won't be solved. So is the AI smart enough to know that it can't hit the target where it is laying, but if it rested the PTRD on the tree 2M to the left it could. Is the AI smart enough to have their buddy act as a firing platform. Is the AI smart enough to use that parked Halftrack as a rest for the weapon. Off-topic but are there Bren Carriers in the game?

Peregrine: The morale boost was a feature of the assault command in the CMX1 games. While I agree that the success of a close assault depends more heavily on the degree of suppression on the assaulted enemy than the movement type. A specific close assault movement would help alleviate some problems that occur because of the use of QUICK. It isn't going to single handedly do an assault for you, but it would be nice if assaulting squads were more likely to fire on spotted enemies and go to ground rather than run FAST at the enemy if they take heavy fire. Peregrine: Which is why I think a close assault movement command would be beneficial. Close combat is easily one of the weakest parts of the game, and if anything deserves its own movement type I think it does. Also the static element being panicked by things happening to the maneuver element doesn't seem to be a result of any actual combat feedback. I've seen the static element panic when the maneuver element was wiped out to a man. Importantly the maneuver element was totally out of LOS of the static element, and the static element had not had a single bullet fly by them. JonS: And the appropriate action for the static element is to consistently panic and cower while the maneuver element is torn to shreds? I could understand if it was a green squad but this happens to regular and veteran troops, and in the exact same situation but with split squads this behavior does not occur.

So it'd be great if folks could talk this over without getting super defensive and catty. Just because your "offended" doesn't mean y'all should try to scare folks off the forums. Anyway chances are this was just a one off event. We can't really say for sure without a bunch of tests being run. Unbuttoned Stug commanders tend to keep pretty low in the hatch so it isn't the silliest thing for him to have survived. The damage to the track is a bit iffier, and I'm not really sure how those damage calculations work. It could be that the percussive effect of the explosion randomly caused some damage, but we can't know for sure. The results seem unusual, but unusual things do happen on occasion. I know I've seen plenty of guys survive a near direct hit from an HE round only for another guy 30M away to get killed by shrapnel.

JonS: So I should expect men who have been specifically earmarked to cover the maneuver element of their own squad to suddenly begin cowering and become completely useless when that maneuver element comes under fire? Furthermore, this reaction should only occur when the player has not specifically split the squad? What? Lt. Belenko: Personally I would prefer that a separate assault command that did not come paired with bounding overwatch be created. The overwatch team is usually a waste of men and it means that a split off section can't assault. Michael Emrys: Yea, smart use of QUICK, pauses, and supporting fires usually works pretty well. However, urban and forest combat starts to show the weakness of this system. Especially urban as it is harder to avoid accidentally finding enemy troops right on top of your men.

I fail to see how this is a feature. The end result is that you have experienced soldiers from an overwatch element cowering because the maneuver element is taken under fire. Which is just absurd. I totally agree with this. I've been playing since CM:SF and have a lot of experience doing those things. Its standard if you want your succeed in your goals. I don't mean to make the men robots. In CM games the player is wearing a number of hats. In a single game it is entirely possible for the player to be the Regimental Commander and then take over the role of Squad Leader of the very lead element in the attack. I would like an order that represented the SL telling his men that they are going to enter and clear a building that might contain enemy soldiers. The men are then going to act differently than if they are jogging up to the front from a secondary line. Currently QUICK is used for both of these orders. Now through proper use of pause and supporting fire you can make the assault move pretty safe. However, the TacAI can't know the difference between a QUICK jog up the road or a QUICK jog into a house that contains pinned enemy troopers. The men would definitely act differently under both circumstances, but there exist no order and the TACAI can't understand the difference. Edit for Augusto, Usually QUICK works. Especially with intelligent use of suppressing fire. However, there are some weaknesses. Men don't consistently stop to engage nearby enemy troops and if the QUICK unit takes fire they switch to FAST. Of the two switching to FAST often results in tragedy as the squad barrels headlong into enemy fire. An order that is slightly slower than quick with a higher propensity for firing and going to ground rather than FAST when taking fire would help fill a gap in squad capabilities that currently exist.

Which would be what this order would be. An order that moved your men but expected combat. Instead of an order that expects sporadic fire as your men move to a previously cleared position. It often isn't but then again it is also sometimes required. Nothing that we are saying here is a trueism. CM is a very broad game and while in one scenario you may have the luxury of overwhelming firepower in another it might be up to 10 men in two sections. The fact is we don't have the ability to set SOPs, and we don't have a premade movement that has a close combat SOP. Having a movement command that expects close combat would be beneficial.

Womble, I am not expecting this command to be a cure all for close assaulting a position. It clearly isn't and wasn't ever supposed to be. Of course you need to get your men close and you need to have the position adequately suppressed. Those are things that we can do currently. It is what you have to do if you don't want your men all killed. I do not expect this order to magically allow the attacking troops to run 20m killing everyone in front of them and taking no damage. Which is currently possible with split sections and smart planning on the players part. This isn't part of the problem. The player is responsible for getting his men into position and we can currently do that. It does work but there are some glaring problems with it. HUNT: Chances are your men will not advance at all. They will pick up a sound contact and immediately stop advancing. You've gained no ground and wasted ammo and time to suppress a target that has no one maneuvering on it. FAST: Lets run quickly to the position ignoring practically everything! Your men won't stop to engage targets and will quite often run past cowering enemy troops only to be shot in the back a short time later, and if there is an enemy soldier who isn't cowering your men will quite happily run into his fire one after another. This is not a command to be used when moving into a position that may have enemies in it. Such as a house, wooded area, or entrenchment. QUICK: This is the only command that really gets anywhere close to an assault command. However, your men will often ignore spotted enemies resulting in many of the issues seen with FAST. Furthermore, if the squad takes casualties they will switch to a FAST movement order. They do this because QUICK is a movement order not an assault order. And now you have a section running blindly into an enemy position that is firing on them. Not good. No matter how well suppressed or supported an attack is a squad or section will have to go into the position to make sure that there are no more enemy occupying it. Now if they are lucky the enemy will have fled or been killed by fire. However, it isn't unusual to find enemy troops still alive in the position. If there existed an order that kept the movement speed of quick, but prioritized engaging the enemy and taking cover when under heavy fire. Closing with these positions would be much safer for the men. The fact is Combat Mission doesn't have SOPs. This means that movement orders have to have their own built in SOPs. A movement order in CM cannot just tell the men how fast to move. It also has to tell them what to do when they see an enemy, when they are taking fire, when they are taking casualties, etc.. We currently don't have an order that says "move up, but be prepared for close combat with the enemy". We have "Run really fast and ignore everything", "Jog to the position and if you take fire run really quickly", and "Move up until you think you hear an enemy". We have no order with a built in SOP that tells the men "when you open that door there might be German with an MP40."

If the assault command is useful to real-time players I think the creation of a new "aggressive movement" command would be beneficial. We currently have no option for our troops that tells them "there are Russians in that trench 20M to your front. Get in there and kill them.", which is a pretty big oversight.

I agree with his overall technique. It is what I do. Using the actual assault command will almost certainly result in ruin, and the suppressing fire provided by both sections should allow the attacking section to clear the objective. However, this type of movement requires that the assaulting section use the QUICK command. Which isn't really suited to what the men are doing. The men are not super likely to engage enemy targets as they appear, and should the attacking section take fire they are very likely to run blindly into the enemy position. Very often running past enemies only to be shot in the back moments later. If the assaulting team had an order that prioritized killing the enemy and going to ground when under heavy fire it would work much better than using QUICK.