CorporalJohn

Hi! Long-time fan of the series, first time poster on this forum, and very excited to hear that a new Combat Mission is on the way! I love the game, and think that on the tactical level it is better than any I have ever played, so the below is not just whinging. HOWEVER there are a number of things I would love to be improved about the underlying game engine. Maybe a developer will see this, maybe not, but I’d love to discuss it anyway. Full disclosure –I have tried to be realistic, but I am no programmer, and accept that much of the below may simply be impossible. Also, I much prefer playing infantry (CM:Burma would be my dream), so nothing below on tanks! 1. Retreating when sensible. Say I have a team behind a hedge coming under heavy fire. It’s time to fall back through the gap in the second hedge behind them, just one square away, where they will be out of site and safe. As is, very often the team will cower behind the first hedge, even though if they retreated they would be safe! Units should be much more willing to move AWAY from threats. 2. NOT retreating when NOT sensible. How many times has this happened to you? Your infantry dashes from one building to another. A few metres from the door, a machine gun in another building opens up and kills half the squad. The remainder stall, hug the ground, and start crawling back across the killing zone, and soon your whole squad is gone. I am no soldier, but I would think that even a terrified rookie would know that he has a much better chance if he carries on forward. So I would hope that the AI could be improved to assess whether changing orders is appropriate when soldiers break. 3. Dynamic reactions. The mission that sums up my frustrations is ‘Kiwi Soldiers’ from CM:FI. Although you were aware of where the enemy was, there was no way to get your soldiers to approach them in a sensible manner. The enemy occupied a building with another building adjoining it: the commander would probably want his soldiers to hug its wall until the doorway, keeping out of the line of fire, before entering with weapons trained on the door to the enemy building. As it is, the soldiers move in the open outside the building, and then move towards the buildings centre, and usually get massacred. I’d love units to be able to mark an ‘area of interest’, which they would treat as occupied and act accordingly. 4. Formations. Infantry has a tendency to clump close together and move in long, vulnerable lines. I’d love some sort of formation system, so you could, for example, cross a field in a spread out line, just as a platoon would in real life. Maybe a ‘space out’ button would encourage soldiers to maintain distance between themselves and their comrades? 5. Grenades. Minor point – I’d love to be able to order soldiers to throw grenades at a nearby spot regardless of line of sight e.g. over walls or into buildings. This would make urban combat more manageable, especially in conjunction with the previous point. 6. Blasting. Minor point – please could engineers not automatically rush through the gaps they blast? Mine tend to get machine-gunned, so I’d love the option to stay in cover! 7. Direct linear fire. Minor point – I’d love HMGs and mortars, for example, to be able to do linear direct fire missions e.g. spreading their fire along a trench line or hedgerow. This would especially allow HMGs to be better at their real-life job of area suppression. So what do you think? What improvements to the tactical engine would you like to see?