Hapless

I used my Matrix account details.
This being the account I apparently made 6 years ago and completely forgotten about.

Ok, first I have heard of "7 seconds" but it is clearly not true when I see an M60A3 spotting and shooting in less time than that.  So not sure where this is coming from.  As to zombie shooter realism...again really not clear on this but it highlights the counter point we hear far more often "my troops are cowards and won't get up!!"
O...K.  So I am going to go with language barrier here.  I think "it" is a test, the problem is that I am not sure "of what" exactly.  I think you are arguing that casualties are too high because the troops march to happily toward death?  
So my first question on your results is: how many casualties occurred on troops that were on the ground?  If you are seeing behaviour where that company keeps marching while all that firepower opens up at really close range then we have an issue.  Troops that die while hugging the ground in this situation are not "zombies" they are fully suppressed and being butchered because their commander has no idea what he is doing.
[aside: that is a LOT of firepower.  You basically have a reinforced platoon with artillery support.  Hammering a rifle company at 300m, which means someone did not do their job because that is ambush range.  Woods may provide cover from being spotted but they do not do much with 3 HMGs(!)  in fact wood fragments probably make the problem worse, let alone artillery.  This company barely has enough combat power to take this on as a hasty attack, particularly if they are unsupported]
Uh, ok, let's change the subject. I am not sure how exact a science you think artillery is but once a fire mission is called, short of friendly troops getting caught up in it (and history shows even then stopping the guns is difficult).  Once a fire mission goes in, the rounds are coming.  Adjustments all take time (varying, based on the period). Not sure what you are looing for, some sort of instant 1-800-arty correction?  I am sure we could work on TACAI and arty (some features I would like to see there) but I am really not sure what you are proposing.
Ok, and we are back to this.  I am going to try and translate this as "TAC AI could be better" and to this I wholeheartedly agree, all TAC AI can be better...it is why we call it artificial intelligence.  But we also do not want some sort of bizarre version of warfare either.
Gotta be honest this conversation feels like playing tic-tac-toe with a chicken...interestingly random.  I am going to go with "Hiding works but I have had some issues with Cover Arc.  TAC AI does not weigh the value of the targets before firing resulting in giving away a position for very little gain."   
Well ok, and here we are back to "realism".  Fire control in the real world is incredibly difficult.  It may surprise you but heavily armed teenagers scared/excited out of their minds tend to take initiative in whether to fire or not.  Worse this initiative effect is dynamic based on a whole lot of factors - experience, leadership, recent events, time of day and fatigue.  Regardless, duly noted but I suspect CM is far more realistic than you are comfortable with in many aspect but we can always improve.

CMFI, but Norway. Commando raid spread over 4 short, platoon-company sized fights. Another bit of a failing-forward test-bed, so rough around some edges.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/18nuw8jj8arwxe3/Raiding Party V0.2.cam?dl=0

Well, if we're doing things we have up our sleeves I have a CMSF2 scenario kicking around from when I was trying to get my head around AI plans.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vtjh74osfgj6obt/02 Where Angels Fear to Tread.btt?dl=0

Interesting question.  Well first off no RL battle is reproducible either in simulation or RL, too many variables and chaos to really try and recreate in hi resolution.  As has been well said, CM is a game with a lot of simulation elements.  CM Pro, is obviously pushing towards simulation, that is why MOD and other defence is interested.  But the needs of defence and a gamer are very different, if overlapping.  Defence want to either train, in which CM is really the "last hour" of an entire process or they want to experiment (e.g. introducing new equipment). Either way, CM (or any simulation) is one tool in a pretty long chain to make troops as ready as they can, and still then there is a steep learning curve when they "get there".
Gamers want to be entertained, and maybe learn a little something...for the most part.  Some gamers think they want to re-create and re-experience warfare but they really do not.  If we made CM more realistic we would take the UI away, or stream it down to something most would find extremely frustrating.  You could give initial orders and then very few after that, once the dogs are off the leash your control of them gets much harder at the level of CM.  The add real friction of war and you have what most would find to be a chaotic mess.  Players want to be the god of war flying over the battlefield, able to tell that 3rd jeep to go 10 feet left and then complain loudly when the jeep takes a 5 second pause or goes around the tree "wrong".
But...
We do try and get CM as close as we can.  So scenario designers use real world maps and organizations.  They build in to reflect doctrine and military after actions.  They work to put a lot of detail in the initial setup so at least the start line is pretty much where it was (or in the fictional titles where it "would be").  However, we all realize that once that first "GO" button is pushed the whole thing becomes a custom experience for the player.  If we do it well, they get all those micro-dramas that occur and spontaneous actions.  They get excited and feel like they have accomplished solving a realistic military problem and that is really positive.
Wars are about being really crappy to people, games, even wargames, are about having fun...I prefer the latter.  

Well, if we're doing things we have up our sleeves I have a CMSF2 scenario kicking around from when I was trying to get my head around AI plans.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vtjh74osfgj6obt/02 Where Angels Fear to Tread.btt?dl=0

Well, if we're doing things we have up our sleeves I have a CMSF2 scenario kicking around from when I was trying to get my head around AI plans.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vtjh74osfgj6obt/02 Where Angels Fear to Tread.btt?dl=0

sure, whatever you can share. Why not? 🙂
 

The advantage the German AFVs have over budget Shermans is significant, but it's an advantage that mainly exists at longer ranges, which are more typical of tank engagements.
If you're unhappy with the balance of your QBs, perhaps you should choose more appropriate maps for your tank battles.

Tank platoons in MRRs - 4 tanks. In TRs - 3 tanks:

Now why they did this is a good question that someone explained to me a long time ago but I cannot recall.  so for now:
"However, there was a distinction made between Tank Companies/Tank Battalions in the Motorized Rifle Regiments and those in Tank Regiments. Companies in the Tank Regiments fielded platoons of 3 tanks for a total of 10 tanks per company. Each company was typically supported by a platoon of Motorized Rifles from the Regiment-level. They were also the battalions to field the newer T-80/T-72/T-64 tanks (featuring 3-man crews), although the older T-62/T-55/T-54 were collectively more common. This was especially true for low-readiness units and units in military districts that didn't border NATO. Meanwhile, companies in Motorized Rifle Regiments fielded platoons of 4 tanks each for a total of 13 tanks per company, and also more commonly fielded the older T-62/T-55/T-54 tanks (featuring 4-man crews due to the lack of an autoloader). They differed from the Tank Regiments, in that these Tank Companies would be attached to Motorized Rifle Battalions rather than the other way around in support of the infantry.
 
This is likely part of the reason why these Tank Companies had 4 tanks, as 4 tanks can be more readily split into 2 even sections of 2 tanks each when deployed with infantry. Meanwhile, 3-tank platoons (and odd-numbered platoons in general) were more suitable for tank combat and mutual support, as well as allowing for the mobilization of more battalions by reducing the total number of tanks required."
https://www.battleorder.org/ussr-tanks-1980s
From memory it had to do with supported vs supporting roles and old doctrine on tank types.
 

Ah, ok I think I recall it now (a zipperhead is welcome to come in and correct)
TB platoons were designed to fight within the company so internal fire and movement would be coordinated between platoons, by design.  In short in the TRs and TBs these tanks were never designed to fight apart (i.e. Supported).
In the MRRs, the TB there would be broken up to support Infantry Bns and as such had to fight more distributed.  So the logic of the 4 tank platoon was to give the platoon and integral ability to do fire and movement on its own, which it would be expecting as there would be a company spread out across an entire MRB (i.e. Supporting).

I can't edit the first post anymore but 
ANY SIZE!
ANY DURATION!
ALL DISCUSSION OF the 208x208 10 minute was just to try and shrink the size of the monster to first timers.
"I think the enemy of scenario completion is a person's natural urge to make it more grand and bigger, better and bouncier"
                                                                                                                                                          kohlenklau, 11/05/2021
 
 

Alright, 50 days until X-mas. The gauntlet is down for you guys, especially you "cherries", to make a scenario, your first scenario...?, before Christmas. Let us swamp the community with some scenarios. Use or modify an existing map if you need to (and give polite credit in your briefing or designers notes to prevent accusations of being a dreaded parasite!). Make your own simple map! No Rembrandts are required! Dial it down to 208 x 208, the teeniest tiniest map you can make. Playable from only one side is AOK. Just make sure to say that guidance in the main cover description. Use just a tiny force. Put the AI on defence and the AI plan is very rudy..rudo..ruddimuntary..it is EASIER! Use just a small timeframe of 10 minutes!  I (and a butt ton of others) am here to lend a hand to answer questions or go and have Turkey in a few weeks and read the famous JonS scenario guide pdf in your main install folder. All these different titles can use some new juices.
 
 

This seems like a fun rabbit hole.
is not compatible with
Pick one or the other, you can't have both. I, for one, would love to have more historically accurate battles where the Germans had no tanks at all, could only have green/conscript troops while I had a gratuitous amount of artillery along with swarms of angry Typhoons and P-47s.

In addition, we don't know how Battlefront calculates QB points: there could be plenty of other factors at play which push the values in one direction or the other.

I appreciate the intent- but I would think it is best achieved via house rules rather than inflicting one opinion on everyone else. Playing with 0 rarity (ie. neither player can bring *any* unit with a rarity cost) is a good one, really mixes things up.

Have been avoiding this thread, but some points of order:


1) Points values are derived from a formula (allegedly), and we do not know what this formula is.

2) Rarity points are an abstract, descriptive label, which applies a multiplication of those points.

Under Loose rarity:

"Standard" and "Common" are 0,
"Uncommon" and "Limited" are x 1
"Rare" are x 2

Under Standard rarity:

"Standard" is 0
"Common" is x 1
"Uncommon" is x 3
"Limited" is x 5
"Rare" is x 8

Under Strict rarity:

"Standard" is 0
"Common" is x 1
"Uncommon" is x 3
"Limited" is x 7
"Rare" is x 16

(There is a "hypothetical" rarity as well, but that's unusual enough not to bother with here).

So a tank costing 302 points, which is labelled as "Uncommon" will cost 302/906, if playing on Strict.

3) Points-buy is a terrible system which is always wrong, in any use-case ever. It's also usually the least-worst option available.

The typical problem is that it has no knowledge of context. Saying "these things are equivalent if hull down" is completely backwards, since that's not how the CM points system works at all - it's devoid of this kind of context, and relies on the model (as far as we know). Likewise "these things are functionally equivalent and should be the same price" isn't any more true.
 
Now, to engage with the point of the thread (aside from chuckling mildly about a thread about Quick Battles in Normandy being put in the General section of the site):

4) There are some good fundamental points made in this thread, but I do think the way in which they have been made is pretty poor, and really detracts from any case you'd like to make.

I do agree that the Stug III seems overpriced, and I have a suspicion about why this is.

We don't know the formula for deriving these prices, and I suspect it's actually very complex. I suspect it might, for example, take each and every armour facing, and applies a weighting to them (so a thick rear armour would be worth less than a thick frontal armour). We know that in CMx1, turrets came at a high premium, so I suspect the turret tax was lowered for CMBN.

The combination of those two speculations might explain the Stug III pricing. The Stug III has relatively thick frontal armour, and (due to the lack of turret), fewer armour plates to average out. That will mean that the frontal armour might well take up a disproportionate amount of pricing here. Further, the lack of a crippling turret tax would further separate the values of this compared to a Panzer IV or Sherman.

Now, whilst I agree that the Stug III seems overpriced (and many of the linked discussions about this contain some pretty poor arguments for this), I'm not sure I agree with the Panzer IV comments to the same extent. Further, even if this was "fixed", this would mostly have the effect of pushing the issues somewhere else - points-buy is always, always wrong, it's just a question of where and how much.

Quick Battles in general seem to have a lower priority for BF. The AI system isn't designed for them, the auto-selection weighting system is nonsensical, and given how CMRT, CMBS and CMCW all share the same pool of QB maps for the most part, it doesn't seem to be something that particularly matters.

There are some alternatives, but most of them would require some major design work to implement in a meaningful way, and I suspect that's not really worth the (considerable) effort, rather than this, presumably mostly-automated process.

As an example, a formation-based approach could work - pitting reasonable/plausible formations against each other (a Soviet FSE vs a screening US Cavalry platoon would be a simple example). The Quick Battle TO&E situation is baffling in the first place - I don't really know why certain things are removed (like the higher level artillery that would typically be in place). Equally why there isn't a "custom" TO&E option for points. AI auto-selection would best be improved by zeroing out a lot of the weightings, or providing set templates to work from, to at least give the impression of some logic.

Still, all of that is heavy design work, and is neither quick nor cheap. For something (multiplayer in general and quick battle in particular) which is apparently a low priority for Battlefront, it certainly doesn't surprise me that there are some vehicles in some of the titles which cost a bit more than they should.
 

This seems like a fun rabbit hole.
is not compatible with
Pick one or the other, you can't have both. I, for one, would love to have more historically accurate battles where the Germans had no tanks at all, could only have green/conscript troops while I had a gratuitous amount of artillery along with swarms of angry Typhoons and P-47s.

In addition, we don't know how Battlefront calculates QB points: there could be plenty of other factors at play which push the values in one direction or the other.

I appreciate the intent- but I would think it is best achieved via house rules rather than inflicting one opinion on everyone else. Playing with 0 rarity (ie. neither player can bring *any* unit with a rarity cost) is a good one, really mixes things up.

This seems like a fun rabbit hole.
is not compatible with
Pick one or the other, you can't have both. I, for one, would love to have more historically accurate battles where the Germans had no tanks at all, could only have green/conscript troops while I had a gratuitous amount of artillery along with swarms of angry Typhoons and P-47s.

In addition, we don't know how Battlefront calculates QB points: there could be plenty of other factors at play which push the values in one direction or the other.

I appreciate the intent- but I would think it is best achieved via house rules rather than inflicting one opinion on everyone else. Playing with 0 rarity (ie. neither player can bring *any* unit with a rarity cost) is a good one, really mixes things up.

This seems like a fun rabbit hole.
is not compatible with
Pick one or the other, you can't have both. I, for one, would love to have more historically accurate battles where the Germans had no tanks at all, could only have green/conscript troops while I had a gratuitous amount of artillery along with swarms of angry Typhoons and P-47s.

In addition, we don't know how Battlefront calculates QB points: there could be plenty of other factors at play which push the values in one direction or the other.

I appreciate the intent- but I would think it is best achieved via house rules rather than inflicting one opinion on everyone else. Playing with 0 rarity (ie. neither player can bring *any* unit with a rarity cost) is a good one, really mixes things up.

This seems like a fun rabbit hole.
is not compatible with
Pick one or the other, you can't have both. I, for one, would love to have more historically accurate battles where the Germans had no tanks at all, could only have green/conscript troops while I had a gratuitous amount of artillery along with swarms of angry Typhoons and P-47s.

In addition, we don't know how Battlefront calculates QB points: there could be plenty of other factors at play which push the values in one direction or the other.

I appreciate the intent- but I would think it is best achieved via house rules rather than inflicting one opinion on everyone else. Playing with 0 rarity (ie. neither player can bring *any* unit with a rarity cost) is a good one, really mixes things up.

This seems like a fundamentally flawed argument to me. Surely the question should be "does Battlefronts points formula accurately reflect how useful certain vehicles are" rather than arbitrarily making three different vehicles the same price.

Good luck figuring out if that's an enemy tank. Remember, you've got to decide RIGHT NOW and if you get it wrong you'll either DIE or KILL YOUR FRIENDS. No pressure.

The inconsistency is mainly a function of the high variance. At 2000 meters tanks can spot each other in 5 seconds or 5 minutes. The average may be realistic but when a player rolls snake eyes on the spotting dice they think something is broken, especially if they are testing on a "firing range" which is not the environment the spotting model assumes. The other issue is that because spotting checks are by far the most CPU intensive task in CM they are every 7 seconds rather than continuous.* This means fast moving units can occasionally move over open ground without being seen for several seconds or even longer if first spotting check is snake eyes.
*There are exceptions to this, I think mostly when units are firing.

The TC might be

But yeah, you have an indeterminate amount of time.

Good luck figuring out if that's an enemy tank. Remember, you've got to decide RIGHT NOW and if you get it wrong you'll either DIE or KILL YOUR FRIENDS. No pressure.

First I say hello all,
I have recently returned to CM after a long hiatus and have much enjoyed Cold War. Hats off to Battlefront for the development completion.
Hapless, I believe this will be determined by tactical situation. In CM terms friendly and enemy board side and mission type. Hence that a Soviet assault you would clearly engage the target 🎯!
 
@dbsappDBSapp, I appreciate your commitment to the game in testing things. Individuals who do test are invaluable to the community. But I have a thought about your test. As the ardent CM knights have mentioned the game  is not a shooting range design. I have a strong faith that the game does not work correctly when units are spawned “in vision” of each other. Since the game designer (Charles) would assume that one force would move into view. Real combat has no teleportation unlike CM can. So perhaps test with M60 moving rather than not moving.
 
CM knights, I will say that you are first to bring up the phrase “broken”.
 
Have a good morning.