Bulletpoint

double post

Odd thing in CM: when you look at shell craters, it seems all shells are delay fuzed, because those craters appear when shells are allowed to dig into the ground before exploding. But when shells hit buildings, they burst immediately upon contact, instead of penetrating. So buildings give quite a lot of cover, even against direct hits, which burst harmlessly on the roof.

Finally found it.

CMBN. The bocage in Normandy means battles are usually small and very infantry-focused. Taking 500m of heavy hedgerows can take a long time and a lot of casualties.

Decisions that affect what happens in the game. That seems to be the fundamental thing about whether a game is fun. It's another question whether the game is easy or hard.

No, I don't think he ever made any formal bug report. That's why I thought of doing it now. But can't seem to find the old posts - they were in some side branch of another topic. But I can confirm it's still there in the latest patch of CMFB. Haven't tested out all guns, but 7.5 cm LeiG and 150mm Grille at least.

Well in the dude game, I guess the decisions would be about what kind of voice and attitude to use. But most of the fun would come from being drunk and silly - and doing something a bit embarassing. Arguing about fun, I think part of it is semantics. In my language, we only really use our word for fun about activities or events that are "ha ha funny". Watching a comedy show is fun. Going fishing usually isn't. But in English, 'fun' is more of a broad term for enjoyable activities.

There are actually people who have tried to come up with a theory of what makes a game fun. https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1449363210 Long story short, their idea is that all games are about presenting the player with a series of meaningful decisions. If the decisions are not meaningful - important to success or failure - the game is not fun. In a racing game, decisions will be to turn left or right, and how much to accelerate or brake. In Combat Mission, it might be how to assault a hedgerow position or a village - a decision that is in itself broken down into more and more subdecisions. One of the reasons CM is so fun (for a certain type of people like myself) is that it forces me to make a myriad of decisions, and that it punishes me really hard if I overlook something important. The tactical decisions are meaningful.

Also, I find that artillery (and big HE in general) causes much too little physical damage to walls, hedges, etc. Bocage should be quite tough, but not indestructible. Leaving it hanging like a rope bridge across the crater of an airplane bomb is just plain silly.

This bug has been hanging around for a long time - has it been logged? Conducting indirect fire missions from on-map assets (only guns of various sizes, not mortars), rate of fire is extremely slow, but accuracy is extremely high. All weapons fire with the same slow speed and high accuracy, from 75mm German guns to big 150mm howitzers. I know @RockinHarry also noticed this issue previously.

Yes, I've also noticed that artillery is very weak in these games as compared to reality. In CMBN I've seen 150mm airburst just above a scout team of two guys. One got "yellow wounded".

I wish this were better modelled in the game. Even when using HUNT orders, it often takes a very long time for infantry to go prone when fired upon.

400m could also be the stated safety range. In wartime, such things are often taken less seriously, depending on the situation.

Even if you mod it, it will still keep going nearly straight up in the air unless the wind is very strong. I'd like to see more smoke linger more around the ground and affect spotting.

Tank commanders is a separate issue though, and I think they behave so much better now though, compared to some years ago. They duck down much faster when taking close small arms fire. Most if not all tank commanders are now placed so that only the head pokes out of the turret. However, the same cannot be said about many halftracks and other more open vehicles. Here's an example. Notice the small black tube close to his elbow. That's the gun sights. His eye should be looking into that.

Funny thing is that they used to be placed even higher. They lowered him a bit in one of the patches or engine updates, I forget which one. Yes, I recall that. But they are still too high when you look at where their eye level is compared to the weapon sights. Same problem is seen with the gunners of many other vehicles. I've logged some bug reports about some of them but it doesn't seem like it's high on their list to fix. Also when you look at deployed HMGs etc. The weapon is too low compared to the guy firing it. So you get a guy too exposed and a gun maybe too low to get LOF.

I'm just tried the same. They also retreat here. I just never saw that happen, since apparently I have been playing in a less careful way and destroyed them before they could get away. Mystery solved

That's puzzling to me The guy in the video had the same experience as I had - the US staying and fighting. Maybe the random AI plan selection is not... random ?

It's this mission, right? (not my video)

Hmmm this actually came up before on these forums... that the enemy in that mission are supposed to be withdrawing. I've completed the Peiper campaign twice, and with several goes at the first mission in order to try different approaches etc. and I've never seen the US forces withdraw or even move in that scenario. Also, I don't remember the time scale as tight. Maybe I was just lucky to get the same AI plan each time? Or am I confusing the campaigns?

Yes, the option is there. I'd just like to be able to lock it for a QB. Just like you can lock players into only buying infantry - even though you could just agree with your opponent to not buy any vehicles. Trust is good, control is better.

I'm not saying halftracks are useless. I'm saying they are much less useful in the game than they would have been in the real war. In CM, just like WW2, mortars are one of the biggest threats to infantry. And WW2 AT weapons were nowhere near as deadly as modern ones. Does that mean WW2 halftracks were wonder weapons? Of course not

Mike, it's now the year 2020...

I'd like to see an option for troop quality to be "built in" to troops when purchasing them for quick battles. So the game would randomly assign typical values, depending on year, month, faction, location, etc. If you wanted crack troops, you'd need to buy formations that were actually high quality in the real war. And even then, you'd get some random values so not everybody was a super soldier. That would also give some more character to the various units. Taking a building and finding the occupants are wearing paratrooper uniforms would give you a clue you're up against serious opposition. And that probably there won't be that many of them. Currently, the whole map could be swarming with conscript paras for all you know. Which would be silly, but the graphics are just graphics - and of course a slightly different weapon loadout.

While generally realistic, in CM there are some limits to what tactics you can use, and how much you can use various weapon systems like in reality. I believe you cannot really use German halftracks in the agile way they were meant to. Just off the top of my head: 1: The pixeltruppen don't take cover inside the halftracks properly. 2: They are obviously not that smart or situational aware. You have to babysit them. 3: The WeGo system makes it difficult to be tactically flexible - often, the first incoming shell will miss the halftrack, but you have to wait up to a minute to back down behind a hill to safety. 4: The MG gunner is placed too high and doesn't benefit fully from the gun shield. 5: It takes way more bullets to suppress a target in CM than in real life. Like half a minute of MG fire on a building before the defenders start to duck down. 6: In the game, you can't use one MG to suppress several locations at the same time. In real life, you'd be able to tell the gunner to suppress a couple of close buildings at least. 7: There are some targeting limitations that make it difficult to put suppressive fire on target. This affects both the MG halftracks and the ones that fire HE.