shift8
-
Posts
274 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Posts posted by shift8
-
-
At 3:25 you can see a Sherman fire round after round crazy fast. You can also not how little smoke there is and how fast in disperses. Not that it matters since my example is about very close ranges anyhow. Im posting this only to demonstrate that the gun can be fired much faster than it happens in CM. Not that this rate of fire should be applicable to every tank fight (or even most). Just that it would apply to very close engagements. It doesnt even have to be this fast, just alot faster than they currently to it, which is unreasonably slow.
-
I get the issue in WEGO, I never play RT. So I think you might be right there.
The smoke should not be an issue here, as we are talking about extremely close ranges. Also smoke disperses quite quickly IRL, and is not a perfectly opaque thing either. I also see tanks fire second shots all the time, its just the speed at which they do it that seems off. It seems almost like they shoot at the same pace at 15m as the would something 1000m off. (for follow up).
I dont think it would be a factor of experience (or at least should not be). It does not require tons of training or combat time to know that a tank you just shot that is still trying to kill you will need to be shot again. You would have to have some serious mental disability to not immediately re-shoot. It seems like it takes them ages and ages (compared to what it should) at close range to fire a second or even third shot. Many times the third shot can take as long as the second to fire. When something is that close the rounds should be coming in very rapid succession: essentially as fast as the loader can ram in a new round and the gunner pull the trigger. In other words: like 3-4 seconds.
-
Excellent work!
-
I dont know if anyone else has noticed this, but I thought I should post on here about it to see if anyone else has this issue. Im trying to make a video of it to post on here but there are so many variables that I havent decided on the best way to present it yet. However, I describe the issue below. It seems like it would be an easy fix imho.
I have noticed that in CM tanks that have just shot another tank take far too long by any reasonable measure to follow up with a second shot. This seems to occur even a point blank range. For example, in a battle I played in SP, a M4 Sherman hiding behind a hedgerow ambushed a Panther as it passed by at a range of about 20 feet. The round struck, and penetrated. The panther stopped from the hit and almost immediately started traversing its turret to engage the Sherman. The sherman took so long to reload and fire again, that the Panther actually shot and killed the Sherman. The crew was regular, +1 leadership, and high mot. This seems to happen all the time. In fact, I dont think ive seen a tank a close range rapidly pump several rounds into another tanks. There are many historical accounts of this being done. I find this rather odd since tanks in CM do tend repeatedly shoot tanks that arent sure are dead, even when the player can see that they are.
Please note that I am talking about what is possible withing the constraints of the gun. I am not expecting some kind of full auto belt fed tank guns.
Anyone else seen this? Thoughts? Etc.
-
4 hours ago, weapon2010 said:
Just wondering if any WW2 Veterans have played or seen this game?did they or do they find it offensive that we would enjoy a game about their real war experiences and their sacrifices?
I dont really think that it would matter if it would, and it is unlikely they would all have the same opinion anyhow. My experience however, has been favorable. There is a ww2 pilot Ive had the pleasuring of flying with in aces high who flew wildcats in ww2 and actually engaged japanese fighters. He flys alot of F4F
-
47 minutes ago, Childress said:
So... you're asking BF for two different modes:
1- Traversing the gun to acquire a target
2- Re-orienting the facing of the gun to cover part of the map
Shirley, you can't be serious.
No I am not kidding. It seems like a bad system imo to lump the target acquisition period in with the AT guns general movement (outside the limits of its own traverse) because it creates a problem where the gun cannot be moved in a host of other circumstances because it has had this function linked to some other function that is not always relevant to the situation. I wouldn't describe this as two modes, since the mechanisms should have been separate in the first place. It seems to me that this is precisely what is being complained about.
-
40 minutes ago, Childress said:
Because BF hasn't bothered to visually desegregate the swiveling time and TA process- it's a unitary event. The gunner hasn't finished just by traversing the barrel in the direction of the target.
That seems like it would still create a problem though. Perhaps not when engaging a specific target, but how does that affect when rotating the gun when not in combat, or when simply wanting to change its sector of fire in a battle (again, without something to aim at.)
-
20 minutes ago, Childress said:
AT guns rotate too slowly in CM: an ancient bone of contention. The complainers, including JasonC, are wrong. They ignore that the game incorporates, by necessity, target acquisition, the kind of detail that Battlefront would not get wrong. That adds additional seconds to the process.
Im not sure I see how the target acquisition has anything to do with the gun rotation speed. He isnt refering to traverse rate, but the time it takes to swivel the gun to a place needed outside of original traverse. Then the gun in CM, once in place, has to aim etc. So what does this have to do with target acquisition?
-
6 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:
A scenario is a battle in a can. It is not reality. No matter how good of a simulation CM may be it is not the equivalent of reality. The means of dictating victory or defeat are entirely artificial. The scenario designer paints some victory locations on the map and assigns points for capturing them. The scenario designer may also allocate victory points for killing the enemy or keeping friendly casualties low. No matter how you slice it, the person who is designing the 'battle in a can' is the one who is dictating to the player what victory or defeat means.
Let me ask you a question. When you play a scenario and there are victory conditions specified in terms of occupy or touch objectives and destruction of enemy soldiers and equipment do you view that as a valid means of determining victory or do you just decide on your own whether or not you have 'won'? I you just play something and decide on your own whether you won or not then discussing this topic with you is an entirely wasted effort because you are setting your own parameters for victory or defeat. If you accept the scenario designers definition of victory or defeat within the context of terrain and destroy objectives then why can't you accept the scenario designer's parameters for time and space? The one who tells the player whether he won or not is the scenario designer and the scenario designer tells you whether you won or not by virtue of setting victory objectives, map dimensions, and time requirements. If you don't capture the specified objectives within the time frame that the designer has dictated you lost the battle. There is no 'well if I had more time I would have captured X'. Part of the designer's parameters was 'capture X within time frame Y.' If you fail to do so then you lose.
What you apparently find impossible to understand is the fact that failure in a scenario due to time constraints means that you failed to capture the objective within the parameters that the designer specified. If you had more time could you capture the objective? Maybe, but that's irrelevant because you didn't accomplish the task in the specified time. It doesn't matter if the real battle continues on for the next three weeks. All that matters is that you, the gamer, failed to win the scenario within the parameters specified by the scenario designer. Making an argument that 'well real battles last until the objective is captured' is entirely irrelevant because that's not even part of the equation. The only thing that matters is what you, the gamer, managed to accomplish within the parameters specified by the scenario designer. Real life battle commanders don't gain 25 victory points for capturing Francois Farm. Real life battle commanders don't have a map edge. Real life battle commanders don't gain 100 points if he keeps his casualties below 10%. Real life battle commanders don't gain 200 points for totally destroying enemy unit X. The entire framework within which a CM battle is 'fought' is artificial and the parameters of that battle are set by the designer. One of the parameters that the designer sets is time. If you fail to meet the threshold for victory within the time specified then you lose. I don't know how to explain it any more simply than that.
@ASL Veteran and @Baneman:
I absolutely do understand that the time limit is the mission designers intent as a victory condition. And I also absolutely understand that the defender may not be able to win without it. BUT as I already stated earlier in this thread: I dont care. (reasons below)
I have no problems playing a scenario where one side is almost certain to win. This happens all the time in real life. I play battles for the historical or tactical experience, not necessarily for some kind of competition. In particular, the AI is ultra easy to defeat in general, so I get no enjoyment by "outsmarting them". I get enjoyment from scenarios by exploring the tactical possibilities presented by something that is supposed to be a moderate simulation of real events. In multiplayer I prefer no time limits as well. I dont mind losing if the tactical situation was impossible. Nor do I find it fun to win when my defense was only possible because some game-ism made it so that the attack had to stupid things that enhanced my chances. Id rather lose than win like that. If you dont find this fun that is fine. Im merely expressing my opinion on what I think makes a fun CM game. I like as few game-sims as possible. And I absolutely despise time-limits in particular.
I dont care much for what the scenario designers definition of victory is. I play the scenario by my own definitions of victory and defeat. IF someone else likes the AAR page, I dont mind. If you want to declare it a defeat because of some time limit, and I can even somewhat live with that. What I find MOST irritating is how the time limit STOPS the game. This is the biggest reason I dont like the limits. Which is why I dont see them as necessary regardless of how you want to play. I see no reason that time limit couldnt be indefinite and simply view the time limit as a modifier of your score. But his is not what happens. The game simply ends on some silly clock and you get a defeat.
-
6 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:
His conclusions were ridiculous.
"Well chaps, we couldn't take Caen in the time table, looks like the invasion was a failure. I say, back to England for tea and crumpets!"
The problem with Captain Miller's argument is that he equates losing a scenario due to time limits as being representative of a catastrophic defeat in the entire theater of operations. That is a ridiculous proposition if he is attempting to equate scenario time limits with reality. It simply is. I don't know what bur got under your saddle but I am attacking the substance of his argument such as it is. His argument is that scenario time limits are unrealistic because failure to meet a time limit with a platoon sized action in game is equivalent to an entire invasion force being defeated in reality. Based upon that reasoning he apparently feels that he made a compelling case that scenario time limits are unrealistic. If his argument is ridiculous then it deserves to be treated as such. There was nothing personal involved. Failure to achieve an objective within the time constraints of a scenario does not mean anything other than the player was unable to achieve the objective within the time constraints given and there is plenty of historical evidence that time limits are imposed in platoon, company, and battalion sized actions.
As I made clear in my post - I don't care how a player wants to play the game so your concerns about where I come down with regards to scenario time limits is misplaced. There may be two schools of thought as to whether or not someone wants a time limit in their scenario, but that's not the issue I was addressing because I don't care about that. However, Capt Miller's argument that time limits are unrealistic and that, in his view, commanders could lollygag around doing whatever they want for however long they want to is completely divorced from reality and ridiculous.
There is a bur under the saddle because the tone of your response was overly pointed. It came off as dismissive.
What Miller said about objectives and time is not ridiculous at all. The confusion here is that one side thinks are they implementing some kind of omage to the operational level with time limits when they are not. Time limits are an obtuse method of inferring this. If you want to talk about reality, the tactical situation dictates how long something takes. Some declaration of operational intent is a fantasy compared to the reality of how long an attack will really take. If the operational time requirement is too short, then it because the operation was not planned properly in the first place. IE: unrealistic expectations. The Caen example is a good one. As I recall Caen was a D-Day objective and didnt get taken till august like Miller pointed out. This is because the original plan was not realistic. Turn out the enemy does things you cannot plan for. When one units comes up against another unit in the field, it really does not matter at that level how fast command wants you to go. You can only go as fast as the tactical geometry allows for. Hurling yourself at the enemy to try to go faster will most likely result in failure that wastes even more time because you have to do it again and again. OR, you take so many casualties that while you may get somewhere as determined by some arbitrary schedule, you wont be worth anything.
Fundamentally here there is a disconnect about how time works in real life. The actual physical geometry of combat dictates how long things take. Human schedules are meaningless in this regard. They serve only as a planning tool to construct a generalization of how things could go. Hence why virtually no major military operations follow their time tables even remotely. Human fantasy meets battlefield reality.
-
9 hours ago, womble said:
No, you didn't. What you did say, effectively, was that because the bullets (and tanks and such) don't move any faster, the combat tempo isn't increased at all. Which is arrant nonsense.
What are you defining as a tempo-increaser? The tighter decision-action loop? Or the shorter time scales? Because the thing that increases the tempo is the former, and doesn't force you to do anything. You could, if you like, wait however long you wish before starting the assault gun on its way to flatten the strongpoint, and jigger with waypoints so that the system, once on-station, shoots only one round per order phase, or at pretty much whatever rate you like to simulate deliberate, observed fire. You'd be there all day, of course, and there wouldn't be much action in that sector of the battlefield, or on any other sector that's dependent on that one being advanced.
What does this even mean? From my perspective the tighter integratio between armour and infantry, and within those arms, permitted by the God-View of the player makes the behaviour of a CM force more organic and being able to react more quickly and accurately than IRL makes my pTruppe colonels and captains tactical geniuses by comparison with their historical counterparts. Which is part of the disconnect you have to make when you play a game no matter how close a simulation it istrying to be to RL, it is, in the end nothing like the actuality.
Again: nonsense. Just because something doesn't affect every aspect of every second of the game doesn't mean it doesn't have a general and widespread effect on the progress of an engagement as a whole.
Completely? Hardly, when a defender has less with which to react. And not at all against an AI which makes not decisions, and reacts in only the most cumbersome and crude fashion in the first place.
Actually, you're disparaging the "official" scenario designers there. They don't lust lick a finger, hold it up to the wind and say "Oh... about 2 hours". They playtest the thing at least a few times with a number of participants to see whether what they are asking, and their scoring schema, is at least reasonably possible (under the engine at the point the scenario will hit the wild, at least; there's no accounting for later engine changes, as some scenarios demonstrate). So you're only, if they get it right, and IME, they generally do, being required to "barge in" by two factors: the narrative the designer wishes for the scenario; your own dilatory preparations.
The "problem" isn't that it's a computer, but that it is a game. All games have limits and that requires that anything outside that limit be provided or assumed as context. Since space really is time, your argument about time extension applies to the game map too. For it to be "realistic", every scenario would have to take place on a complete max-size map. Limits are an inherent part of a game. They can't be made to go away by some wishful thinking.
Your viewpoint is incomprehensible. How is a simple frontal assault against one position (after potentially hours of fruitless noodling about where the enemy were but are no longer) as interesting as a progression of actions through a deep enemy position? Especially when the single final position wasn't intended to hold the entirety of the defending force, but one attrited by a fighting retreat?
And no, you don't "have" to realise anything. But until you do, you'll be raging against something that's there for good and generally immovable (without reducing the fidelity of the "simulation") reasons.
That you thought they were few, and are a C21st chap is a pretty sure indicator that they were less than the assaulting force took in WW2. And because the game is a game and not a perfect simulation, you have to interpret the casualties as corresponding in some way to real life. That's the whole point. You want historicality: you won't get that by extending the time limits because it's a game. It's that simple.
Now, this is a point that's worth building on. I've not played the scenario in question, but it sounds like there was one large, vital, high value, urbanised, terrain VL that you have to "Occupy". There's the design weakness in the scenario. If that massive block of built-on VL was split up into 4 or 8 (or more) chunks each worth the appropriate fraction of the total VP assigned to the large blob, you'd've held at least some of it, from the sounds of it, with maybe one or two having cowering Germans contesting them, and maybe one or two having no one in. Large (especially urban) high value Occupy VLs are, collectively, a perennial bugbear that pops its head up occasionally. So if you'd gotten half the VPs of that VL, you'd probably have gotten some sort of victory rather than a defeat. And the time limit would have been "just right" for avoiding a tedious house-to-house mopping up exercise.
And you didn't completely fail. Complete failure is Total Defeat. You partially failed. And that was probably down to the VL being poorly thought-out (though there might have been a specific reason that total control of one contiguous area was required), rather than the time limit. But you're so fixated on time limits you didn't think about that.
1) It is not "nonsense." It is a absolute fact that since the combat in CM is in real time, the tactical aspects of it are valid. The fact that gameness causes forces to commit more completely resulting in faster conclusions is irrelevant.
2)Tactics should evolve organically based on the enemy Im facing and what I have at my disposal. Not, OMG I only have 1 hour to do this, so I have to releive myself of good sense and take stupid and unrealistic risks.
3)The defender would have less to react with anyhow....so again moot. And the AI being less-than-intelligent is not and excuse to add an artifice to the game. This is just more crap heaped on top of crap. (Not that I think BF did a bad job on the ai, but this is just the nature of ai in general)
4)I am not "disparaging" anyone. The fact you chose to word it that way says alot about how sensitive you are to any accusation of a bad scenario design. I find ANY time limit arbitrary. It is not because I think they just picked a time. Further, play testing a time limit only validates a time limit for one persons concept of acceptable losses or tactics etc. Which to some extent shoehorns me into that. It also means that the time limit in that case is NOT based on some omage to operational concerns at all, but rather simply if someone deemed that time "playable".
5) I find your viewpoint incomprehensible......And who said anything about noodling about? There are plenty of other reasons an attack (properly conducted) may take longer than some silly time limit insists on.
6) Please do not presume how I think based on the century you think I was born in. For that matter, I wasnt born in the 21st century. I dont know when you were born, nor do I give a hoot in the context of judging your arguments.
"time limits" in real life evolve organically are only exist as a function of space and enemy forces and terrain. This is why historically the wishful thinking of commanders with regards to operations time tables almost never matched up with tactical realities. Tactically, a fight takes as long as it takes, period. Full stop. Rushing things to try to move faster will usually result in things taking longer when you fail repeatedly. You cannot force a timetable. The battlefield makes the time table for you. It doesnt matter how fast I move through an objective if my force loses tons of men in the process. Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast. Do it right the first time or dont do it at all etc.
It would be much better if there was simply a time "intent" that you tried to meet, and that no meeting it may or may not affect the forces or terrain in later missions in the campaign. Not this rubbish where a battle just careens to a halt when the meter runs out. At the very least, I should be allowed to fight it out with the ai after the mission ends.
-
18 minutes ago, MikeyD said:
I've said this before. There are several fundamentally opposed philosophies of gameplay among players.
First there's the 'win at all cost' player who will bend any rule, take advantage of any game engine anomaly to WIN-WIN-WIN!
Second there's the 'war movie' player whose in it for the perfect glorious action scene at the perfect camera angle, and if they happen to win so much the better.
There's a third type, the 'historical fidelity' grog who counts the rivets on the wheels and inspects the gear being carried on infantry web belts. He often wants to see a 'typical' battle fought with the 'usual' methods, resulting in the 'expected' outcomes.
Oh, and let's also remember to tip our hats in the direction of the precisely-balanced-gameplay fetishists.
None of these is "The wrong way to play" but they create a big dilemma for scenario designers. You lean too much in one direction to please one faction and you turn off the others. There's no pleasing everybody. That's why the game comes with an scenario editor. For a community as zealous as the CM community, I'm perplexed why there aren't more 3rd party CMFB scenarios uploaded to Scenario Depot by now.
+1
-
23 minutes ago, womble said:
This is a attitude to take. The reason a battle (attacking a village, say) takes less time to execute in CM isn't because it speeds up the bullet flight time (as you say), it's because you don't have to wait 5 minutes for the message to go up and down the C2 chains, or a for a runner to reach the tank (dodging bullets the whole way), get the attention of its TC, and have the AFV move to where it's needed, identify the hard target the infantry need reducing and proceed, one result-assessed shell at a time, to conduct the reduction. As soon as your troops identify a hard target you can have the armour roll out of its overwatch or reserve position and start flinging HE. And yet you ignore that immense tempo-increaser as irrelevant? And once you acknowledge that you'll commit to the decision (as well as being able to act upon that commitment) faster in the game, you don't think it's any reason to recognise that the consequence of this is that an action that took all day (for one result or another) IRL can be completed to the same stage in a couple of hours of CM-time? It's a self-contradictory stance.
At which point the "challenge" of VPs etc is entirely irrelevant to you. But the design constraints of the scenario remain. The best example is the attempted fighting retreat, where timed moves by the AI based upon the designer's assessment of the attacker's tempo in the context of the time limit imposed would simply result, if the time limit were simply dropped, in you attacking the AI in their final positions. Bit of a waste of effort, no? As well as being a boring snoozefest as you scout and find empty a succession of good defensive positions because the AI decamped 20 minutes ahead of your cautious arrival. And the VPs etc are significantly not irrelevant to a large chunk of the playerbase.
You are entirely at liberty to open all the games and shove the time limit out to 4 hours (or are you saying there should be no practical end limit?) but you have to recognise that the scenarios as written will probably be less interesting.
Hey, you failed at the scenario, because you didn't adopt a historical tolerance for casualties. You could have advanced faster and won with a few more losses, but you chose to play with a modern commander's sensibilities and lost. Sounds like the scenario is perfectly balanced for historical play as is to me.
I never said bullets moved faster. I thought that you might be and was attempting to clarify that was not the case. The temo-increaser forces a player to behave in a inorganic and stupid manner. It is irrelevant because it 1) does not apply evenly to things 2) it completely mitigated by the fact that the defender can also do things more decisively and more quickly etc. I may be able to adjust fire faster, or move troops up faster etc, but the defender can perform the counters to these things just a quickly. It is therefore for all intensive purposes moot. However a time limit is a disproportionate and arbitrary addition that does not behave in a organic manner. So instead of performing a correct assault with proper support by fire, the attacker is forced to just barge in. This in turn allows the defender to aport tactics or deployments that are equally silly or not life like. Essentially, you are trying to solve a "problem" that is related to this being a game on a computer by adding additional artifice to the game; something that can only result in a cascading effect of continuously more unrealistic counters.
Obviously the challenge is respective to me. This argument is about what different individuals think a scenario should be, so pointing out "its my opinion" is completely moot. And where are you getting the idea that the VP's should be dropped? Rather I argued that the VP's should not be controlled so narrowly by the time limit.
I dont have to realize anything. I dont find them less interesting that way. If you do, go right ahead. But please dont tell me what I find less interesting.
Except that the scenario states the units IRL used the same tactics. I never listed how many men I lost, just that they were few in # by my standards. You simply cannot magically interpret the casualties for a time limits as somehow corresponding to real life. For all you know, my approach was closer to the real thing. And more to the point, it is the time limit induced assertion that I completely failed over some failure to kill the last German in some asinine and unrealistic time frame that is annoying here. Not that the time it takes should have no effect what-so-ever.
-
23 minutes ago, IanL said:
Hummm what to say about that. Not sure.
This is a great game and clearly more realistic than anything else out there but there are some issues. One of which is we move to fast as commanders. We leave wounded un attended, we push through dangerous areas, we just go faster because we have the player as god POV that allows better coordination than real life. Most importantly we push on when real commanders would have backed off and waited for more support. Bottom line we move to fast and push to hard. I actually view the reduction of time as a way to compensate for that and give the defenders a fighting chance thus improving the realism of the game.
There that works more or less.
You misunderstand how those things affect real life. Most of the time discrepancy has absolutely nothing to do with what the end result is. In real life I might take 40min instead of 5 to decide if I want to cross a road because real people will die. Does not change the result of cross the road. Yes, I am more efficient because of my view of the battlefield, but this is completely canceled out because the enemy can do the same. Ergo: it makes no proportional difference. Doing things faster does not mean it would have gone any differently. Arbitrarily forcing non-organically determined time limits does produce tactically unrealistic results. The game should not about about "boosting" the chances of winning on the defense.
This entire view (not yours but by gamer in general) misses the point that in reality everything is fundamentally binary. Every scenario is technically an inevitable victory or defeat for one side or the other if both sides do every action right. IMHO, people need to realize this and play simulators for what they are. If you are on the losing side then simply enjoy the experience of losing. Or have fun on the overpowered side experience what its like to have and abundance of firepower etc. If you want true balance, play on some fantasy map with mirrored terrain and identical forces.....
In addition:
-IRL you do not attend to wounded in the middle of a fight. This is Army CLS 101.
-Pushing through danger zone unrealistically is the result you get when you add time limits that force a player to do something stupid to avoid a arbitrary time crunch
-Your god view is canceled by the other players. Ergo: proportional etc.
-You keep speaking of pushing fast and hard.....I am specifically complaining that the time limits make me do this too much....so how does this benefit your argument exactly?
-About pushing vs waiting for support. Has nothing to do with time "limits". In fact, once again this is just another argument that IRL people will take all the time they need to execute a mission properly. Clearly the time limit induced "bum rush" is not realistic.
-
2 minutes ago, IanL said:
What @womble said
I'll just add you guys are totally seeing this from the attackers point of view. As a frequent defender I love time limits. Cut them down, damn it There are too many missions where the time it to long
The defender's only hope is the clock. Keep it tight. Please scenario designers ignore these guys and in fact you have already listened to them too much cut those times back please. 
It seems to me that you are openly admitting that you want a tactical crutch to take precedence over realism. Perhaps if would be better for scenario designers to simply pick more even historical match ups.
Also: I just discovered I can mod the time limits myself, so this conversation is now even more academic that it was before
-
6 hours ago, womble said:
On time:
First thing you have to remember before you complain about time is that CM time is very much compressed compared to RL operational time/tempo. Largely because the commander can smoothly coordinate widely separated actions, and there is not nearly so much "waiting around" to endure, but also because some mechanisms (specifically spotting) operate more quickly and easily than in real life.
Second, you have to recognise that you're playing a game. The designer has, presumably, had some playtest experience with the scenario. The AI is scripted according to time, and very limited outside those constraints. The vast majority of attack/assault scenarios are inevitable eventual victories for the attacker, so the only metrics upon which you can measure (since there seems to be some mandate to measure it) success or failure have to have the context of "time taken". Sure, IRL, if the attack on the town goes badly, you can hand over to another Bttn the next day and eventually wear the defenders down. But any game has artificial contexts, and time is one of them, even if you have a requirement to preserve ammo or use up the enemy's.
Take the first mission in the Courage Conquers campaign: if it had no time limit, or even 15 minutes longer, it'd be a certain win for me, but with 5 minutes "plus overtime" remaining, it's going to be nip and tuck whether I achieve the major objective.
Of course, a scenario that's not been playtested has a chance that the time allowed is unreasonably short, but that will apply however long the time limit is.
Third, gameplay expands to fill the time available. If you've got two hours, you'll spend the first hour futzing about and the second hour actually getting on with the game, and it might as well have been a 1 hour game. Expand pretty much ad infinitum.
I understand that decision making and decisiveness in general in CM are faster, than that IRL people do a lot of sitting around between actions. However, this does not imo much effect the actual second by second results each engagment (say panther shoots sherman etc). Therefore, I dont really see it as a justification to also scale the time limit. While I may not have to wait around in CM for people to stop eating lunch or spend an hour deliberating on crossing a street: everything else is in real time, so a time limit still put strain on minute tactical things. I dont find this very realistic. I think it just better to acknowledge that in a game I will commit to decision faster than IRL etc.
I completely and totally agree with you that most Attack defend scenarios are predestined regarding their results. However, I dont see a problem with this. This is just MHO, but I think that scenarios in CM should be played to experience the history of the scenario, not purely for competition. I will gladly play a scenario where I conduct as easy if drawn out attack with certain victory as much as I would be willing to play a certain defeat. For me it is just about the tactical realisim, and I dont really care for challenge per se.
I am really enjoying courage conquers so far in CMFB, it being my favorite campaign. I wont lie though, there was one mission in that campaign that sort of set this off. Its not the first time limit to irritate me, but it is fresh in my memory. There is one mission where you have to seize a town defended by a regiment or something of paratroopers. The actual in game briefing states that IRL the Americans sat back in blated the town to hell with artillery, then sat back again and blasted it some more with a large block of tanks, then at long last sent in the infantry to mop up. It did these very tactics. Imagine my irritation when about 75% of the way through the town (with very few casualties at all....)it tells me I get a minor defeat because I didn't kill the last 3 german units within the 10min variable time limit (or whatever it was). Of course the battle is destined to go the Americans way given the forces involved, but I dont really mind that. If that is how it was in history, then thats how I want to play it. I dont want to be given a mere 1:30 to take a town just because it would be too easy otherwise.
Just my two cents.
-
One thing I would like to see in CM is a option for the removal of time limits or for longer ones. I would rather see time limits as part of a series of missions or as a simple modifier of total score rather than the ridiculous manner people use them in CM scenario design. Giving someone an hour to take a town with a battalion of infantry in it and then declaring their mission a total defeat because they took 10min too long is something that really grinds my gears in CM. The time limit is used as a bludgeon by scenario designers to hurry the attacker into unrealistically hasty action in order to make the scenario harder. I see this in all kinds of scenario's, so if you make them dont take this personally, it isnt about anyone specific.
Im sure someone can dredge up some off kilter example to contrary, but in real life war does not have a "time limit." Now before someone rips my head off, YES there are time sensitive things at the strategic or operational level. However, time tables for battles are rarely if ever kept, and units in the field generally take as long as they need to do complete and objective. After all, you cannot take town X if you are dead. Units do not generally come across a heavily defended positions and go "well crap! the colonel said we had to take this in 20min, so we had better just charge right in!" Slow is smooth and smooth is fast: Period.
The worst bit though is that the time restrictions given in the game are completely silly most of the time. What macro level time concern's there are do not come down to 20min decisions. These are generally large time periods at those levels, and they are not on some kind of stopwatch. They are merely time "concerns" based on constantly fluctuating and often times estimated variables.
-
Personally I think what really matters is the agreement you come to with the player you are facing. As we mentioned before with people not reading briefings, if a person makes assumptions about how a QB should be fought, then they are just as at fault. All of this discussion about victory conditions and which type of battle are better is all well and good, but I find that in games where controversy comes up it generally is the result of both players making alot of assumptions about what "fair" is and never actually discussing this with the other side in detail.
I think just about any combination of conditions, units, or scenario type can be fun if both players simply acknowledge what they are getting into before hand. Using myself as an example, I am pretty much ok with anything so long as I know what to expect. I am totally fine with playing a scenario on a side that is virtually doomed to lose so long as I know that is what I am getting into. From discussions on these forums, I have seen that some players readily dismiss even single players scenarios that are no balanced and I dont really see the logic in that. This game is supposed to be a sim, and war is almost never fair. I personally play alot of scenarios both single and multiplayer just to explore the battle and get and impression of something. Essentially, for the experience. I think that in something like combat mission, this is part of the fun.
That being said, I am totally fine with games made fair for competition as well. The only caveat I put on this is that in order to actually make a game fair, you have to have alot of agreed on rules. We are playing a game with inherently unbalanced units, unbalanced nations, etc. In the long run, almost no combination of rules will ever be truly 100% even. And since part of the competition is the choosing of forces with as much judiciousness as possible.....
So given all that, I think that when we as CM players find ourselves in tough situations in game the best thing to do is simply set your own goals. If for some reason a scenario gives you 1 greyhound and the other dude a platoon of Panthers, expectations should be lowered. Having fun is all about what you expect from something.
-
On 5/1/2016 at 5:38 AM, Odin said:
I don't know on what basis you can make that assertion of accuracy, and it doesn't seem to based on any evidence other than your opinion.
One thing that the WO results do show is that when a Bren fires a burst at 25 yards, from a rested position, it had a wider cluster (4 inches) than the rifle's cluster (3.1 inches) which was fired from an unrested position. When the Bren fires a single shot from a rested position, its cluster is almost identical to the rifle's - which was at the disadvantage of being from an unrested position. In CM LMG's fire in short bursts rather than single shots, so why is it that Migo's CM test show LMGs to be twice as likely at scoring a hit, per shot, than a rifle should at 300m range?
Why do the bolt action rifle effectiveness results dramatically tail off in CM at ranges over 220m, no other weapons hit rate drops off like that?
This seems to confirm that the SMG accuracy results in the WO tests quoted by CMFDR are flawed.
Yes I agree the WO test results for burst fire do not indicate per shot accuracy and I said as much. As I mentioned in my earlier reply, the WO test was actually carried out on a 30 yard range with the 200 yard results just abstracted from firing the guns at 30 yards. That is a fundamentally flawed way of test the effectiveness of any weapon, as it doesn't take into account the variables that occur when the weapon is actually fired at 200 yards. Everything I've read about the sten suggests it was relatively poor when firing at such ranges: It seems to be supported by this vet who says it was good at close quarters but was ineffective at 100 and 200 yards:
Shift8's experience firing an AK, which also has none adjustable front sights, seems to support this view. The WO test results seem to be seriously flawed when it tries to abstract 200 yard range effectiveness from a 30 yard firing range test.
That is assertion about accuracy isn't really my opinion. Muti-shot weapons have a objective advantage against moving targets due to follow up.
The LMG's have higher accuracy because firing bursts means a higher potential for casualties to be caused. This would compensate for the number of rounds used overall in most situations. Simply put if I fire 2 3 round burts and my point of impact for round 1 is off, rounds 2-3 might hit, meaning 3 shots per kill. But if I have a rifle and my point of impact is off, it is simply off. I have to try again with the same chance of missing as the first shot. Meaning in the long run it will take more trigger pulls.
Migo's tests do not show per-shot accuracy as you state. They only shoe kills per rounds fired. This does not auto-translate into a measure of the MOA accuracy of the weapons system.
My AK was semi-auto, and my point was to demonstrate that without a zero firing single shots caused high rates of missing.
-
IMHO there really isn't a discussion of realism to be had here.
If correctly done, a scenario is a set piece of a actual engagement that took place historically. Or it is a set piece of some fantasy battle the author thought would be fun.
A QB meeting engagement isn't any more unrealistic than any other battle we fight in this game. There is no law of physics that says two equivalent forces could not meet in battle. As has already been mentioned, this happened IRL. Whether or not these forces statistically shared the same combat values on average doesn't really matter. It could happen, and it isnt somehow less tactically important just because the majority of engagements would not be like that. Nor imo does it matter if both forces know the attack values are precisely identical. If you want to start nitpicking down that route, we are in for a real rabbit hole.
@Childress I think that you mentioned these are the most competitive players is important. Players who have a good grasp of what works and what doesn't will not accept matches (when for competition) if the scales are unbalanced. Therefore, it makes sense to insist on a meeting engagement because in actual war (and cm) anything else is far too evidently zero-sum. This is one of the biggest differences between real life in games. In games, players can afford to fight so many battles that they know to a extreme degree what does and does not work. Real battles are a giant mess of humans making stupid tactical decisions with macro-factors generally deciding the outcome. So in other words, CM battles are not less realistic, they are just the product of closer analysis or real concepts and tactics.
-
On 4/25/2016 at 3:27 PM, Raptorx7 said:
I decided to put this topic here but it would obviously work in any of the other CM game forums.
Ive started to use slow quite a bit more as I become better and more patient with the game, the problem is most troops "tire out" after moving only two action squares, its a bit annoying and I am wondering if anyone feels the same way. Does CM model units carrying lighter weapons or less ammo tiring out slower when crawling?
Of course anyone can jump in with real world experience and prove me completely wrong here!
There is nothing wrong with the speed at which the tire. Try doing a low crawl, even with no gear, and you will tire VERY fast.
To make this clear: in Army basic training drill instructors use the low crawl as punishment on occasion. In addition, during the last phase of basic you have to do a relatively long low crawl under wire with live ammunition being fired overhead and it can be very tiring.
-
42 minutes ago, Odin said:
@CMFDRgood to see some WWII War Office stats. They roughly seem to match the comparative weapon effectiveness illustrated by Migo's test results at 200 yard ranges. A few points though. Firstly, the bolt action results in Migo's test dramatically drop off after 220 yards. Unfortunately, the WO stats quoted do not contain data to compare like for like at longer (200 yard+) ranges so it's difficult to quantify Migo's longer range results next to the WO's; and it is at longer ranges where my issue is, as I don't know why in CM the per shot accuracy fired from a bolt action rifle should be dramatically less accurate than the average per shot accuracy of an LMG at the 300 yard mark. This is not to say that the LMG is a less effective weapon at the 300 yard range I've focused on, as I agree LMG rates of fire make it a more deadly weapon. My point is that iron sight bolt action rifles in CM seem to be next to worthless at the 300 yard mark, which I don't think matches RL accuracy levels; and while the other weapons show a relatively steady curve of decliningg accuracy, the iron sight bolt actions drop off a cliff edge after 240 yards.
A couple more points. Firstly, you highlight the sentence in the WO report which concludes that the Sten is more efficient at 200 yards than the rifle. Again, due to its rate of fire I don't completely discount this. However, there are two major caveats to consider. Firstly, the Sten's advantage seems to come from its 4 round burst, rather than the accuracy of each shot fired. Single shot accuracy in the WO's test shows that the rifle is almost twice as accurate as the Sten in the when both weapons fire single shots from 'unrested' positions. The WO's stats do not contain 'rested' firing position results for the rifle, if they did we can only presume its accuracy level would increase. Another major factor is that the report mentions that the '200 yard' test was infact carried out on a 30 yard range, which means that they just shrunk the size of the target to represent a man standing 200 yards away. This is a poor way of testing the sten's accuracy as it has a much lower velocity than rifle which would be more adversely affected by range. Due to the test being carried out on a 30 yard range, the report would have failed to take account of this critical element and, therefore, its estimates of accuracy at 200 yard are spurious to say the least.
@shift8 The abstraction you mention should apply to all small arms fire, so I'm don't think it should sway results in favour of one type of gun over another.
It would in the scenario I was quoting, since the other weapons were either more accurate or could take advantage of opportunities better. This would in general be the case in more realistic scenarios, not necessarily on ranges.
Also keep in mind that Migo's tests, despite what controls he added, are not really accuracy tests. They only reflect casualties per shots fired in a specific scenario. I also noted that at the ranges he tested, the accuracy of those weapons is more or less the same. Particularly the LMG's. I dont understand where you guys are getting this idea that LMG's are some how less accurate per shot than a bolt rifle. In practical terms, it is simply not the case. The SMG's are a different matter, but again, automatic fire etc. And Migo's tests at no point demonstrated single shot accuracy for those weapons.
I own a number of weapons, but in particular I have AKM that used to have a issue where the front sight post didn't adjust. This made it extremely difficult to hit any target over 75m if there wasn't some kind of backdrop to see the deviance from. So difficult in fact, that you could go 10 rounds or so without hitting a man sized target at 150-200m.
-
On 4/24/2016 at 6:16 AM, Erwin.Rommel said:
I just test the M36 vs panther and Kingtiger, used the same test map, when I set the time in Oct, In about 200m,Every AP that hit the upper hull front achieved the penetration, when vs Kingtiger, the AP penetrated the lower front hull at about 600m. However, the I set the time to Nov, Dec, Jan, The AP rounds can not achieved any penetration in the same place of armor.
I also oberseved that the ricochet AP rounds of Oct will not exploded when hit the ground, but the AP rounds of Nov Dec Jan exploded in the same situation.
So I guess the M36 used M77 AP rounds in Oct, and used M82 APCBC in Nov Dec and Jan, because compared to the M82, the solid M77 AP can better deal with the slope armor plate.
Am I right,BFC?
Nope. Although I am not BFC
Being solid shot, M77 AP would perform the worst against the Panther. AP projectile suffer greatly from slope effects. M82 also cannot penetrate due to other reasons. Only HVAP at 400m, and T-33 APBC @1000m could pen the panther glacis reliably.
-
T-33 should only be available in numbers in extremely late 44 or early 45
Follow up shot with Tanks
in Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg
Posted
I dont think there is edit there at all, the smoke is still handing in the air when it fires the second round....it is just old footage.
Second, Im not asking the gun to first quite the fast. Just the the follow ups at close range should be very fast, generally faster than the average RoF.
Yes, 12-15 rounds a minute is typical of 120mm cannon. Or Panther 75mm cannon. But the 6pdr and M3 75mm fire much smaller shells, and should be capable of a bit more for short durations. More to the point, the guns in game generally dont follow up in 4 seconds. Like I said, the tank in question had time to rotate around its turret and shoot the other tank before it could fire a second shot. Clearly not fast enough imo.