[Soviet Infantry Battalion Attack]

20 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

But that kind of very 'micro' technical topic is actually where "His JasonC" was at his weakest, and often made enemies here when challenged by insisting his Word be taken on faith, usually without troubling to cite sources.

He has a extraordinary macroeconomic mind (Chicago school, works in very big brain OR), and so he was at his best in macro 'rack and stack' types of evaluations of men against fire over time, IMHO. Hence, tactics, operations and strategy.  And at no time did I ever get a sense of him regurgitating Osprey books.

Some of the Osprey books have been written by Zaloga or Robert Forczyk. The trouble with those books is that their overall quality sort of runs the gamut and your mileage will vary considerably with a lot of them. I suspect JasonC had a trove of sources "in the man cave" etc many of which are out of print. Crucial thing to me is that he generally went beyond rote spouting of knowledge and would come to understandings of subjects. Hence the "macroeconomic mind" or abstract thinking. His posts are quality overall, thorny side notwithstanding. 

For those curious though Beevor, Glantz, Forczyk, Zaloga, Tooze, Shigeru Mizuki, and Lizzie Collingham are usually the authors "behind" my understanding of the history.

To a slightly lesser extent Norman Friedman (naval subjects not directly applicable to CM) William L Shirer (journalist who wrote a comprehensive but weakly researched single volume account of Nazi Germany's history) and Erwin Rommel (Lucid as an author but problematic as he likes to embellish his experiences a lot. Guderian's accounts have the same problem.). 

Ya know Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is an interesting book nowadays. It was written by a journalist not an academic, and as a result it's more like a novel or a drama than a history. It is rather comprehensive and Shirer lived in the time and sort of captures the "spirit" of the years in his work in a way a technocrat certainly won't or will even deliberately try to avoid. It's colorful and emotive ya know? Which is probably why it still finds circulation in spite of its bad research and questionable assertions. Some of Shirer's views on race and homophobia though are hmmm more than a little problematic.

 His second book Collapse of the Third Republic was actually way better though and Forczyk pointed out that prior to his own book it was the only English-text in the west that made any effort to present a narrative of the Battle of France after the Dunkerque evacuation. I found it's opening third summarizing the history of the Third Republic very important for contextualizing pre-war France in a way that changed my understanding of the whole country. It didn't go enough into the First World War, but that would've considerably widened the scope of that book and probably ended up being a big distraction. It's still a bit of a melodrama but zeitgeist is a thing easily lost to purely technical analysis of things like Army doctrine and Krupp Face-Hardened Armor ya know. Just...mind the homophobia. 

Hell...what was this topic about again? 

[For the CMFG (Combat Mission: Fulda Gap) proponents]

Its hilarious to read some of the comments in that thread. "ID ATTACK NORTH CUZ MAH INDUSTRY!" lmao capitalists thinking of their businesses first.  

The guy who knows is like "uh why would the Red Army care about Hamburg". The Red Army's intentions were never hard to telegraph, and watching guys overthink what they were up to on the Fulda gap is amusing. It was obviously Paris or bust. 

[Soviet Infantry Battalion Attack]

On 6/15/2020 at 10:07 PM, com-intern said:

Excepting that I did win it on my first go. It was years ago but I recall moving my entire force up a board edge for most of the playtime and then coming in on the objectives.

Bingo. Cheesing map edges enabled you to win in the first round. That's a way to play, but it's not doctrinal or in spirit of the game. If you had tried to play doctrinally as many would be inclined to the mission was going to be murderous and this is the first mission in the campaign. Can't ask the player to think out-of-the-box before they've had a chance to even see the box. Can't run before you walk, etc. Simpler explanation to me is just that the scenario designer just didn't know what he was doing, and based his scenario design on an ugly Cold War stereotype. 

You might be able to achieve victory in the scenario by pooling your machine guns and SU-76s together....but this force is extremely fragile and its fire supremacy could easily be lost to any single one of the threats it's facing on the map. You're virtually bound to lose half of the assault guns to bogging and mines they can't avoid. If you leave them behind to skirt the forests then they're out of play entirely. One of map's three entrenched Pak 40s could stop every one of them and the Pak40s can see most of the map. This attack is just insanely fragile to me that it's totally not doctrinal for the Red Army and completely out of character. If it's not a serious attack then you'd have far more modest objectives, and the engineers and assault guns wouldn't be present at all. They'd be supporting the main attack somewhere else. The briefing and objectives are clear that this is an assault and you are expected to achieve your assignment but you're given a fraction of the tools necessary to achieve this. Your force resembles a Task Force or a Combat Command not the Red Army. The attack just doesn't make sense to me, it looks like it was planned by...well...an American. 

I personally like modding the scenario with tons of artillery, more assault guns etc because that's me. I want to be the star of the show and I want my attack to be the real one. There's a credible way to mod this scenario without turning it into a major offensive that is completely doctrinal for the Red Army though. Make objective line 1, the line immediately across the river a Victory objective. All you're doing is pressuring the German defense then. Tying down 200 men with your 600 is not efficient but the Red Army has no shortage of men the Germans do so just by getting your force across the river intact you've achieved your objective. You're contributing a lot to the People's Victory by simply pressuring the German defense. Slap that cease fire and move on to the next scenario.

If you're really plucky and don't care much for the importance of following orders in the Red Army you can press onwards for that Total Victory you want by reaching the touch-lines on the rest of the map. This is risky, you're not following orders now and don't have a lot of support. If it was me i'd dispense with most of my force and concentrate on getting platoon size groups between weaker sections of the German defense. Unlike the original scenario you are penalized for losing the Motherland's valuable manpower resources however, so the risks are quite high and the overall reward is just a better victory endorsement ya know? You can do it but your superiors would be less pleased than you might think. If you get bitten next time trust the briefing, execute your tasks as assigned from now on Comrade. 

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I wonder if there's a way to contact JasonC? The way he talks sounds like he had a formal military education and had access to the documents we can't get on the internet. 

He was on odd guy. I don't think he was banned per se? He just sort of left. Everything he got sounds conspicuously to me like it came from Zaloga's Red Army Handbook which is available digitally on Amazon. Some other stuff came from the Osprey series books. He might have some texts or such in his man-cave that haven't been digitized or are out-of-print...but most of the best stuff on the Red Army is recent. Much of the 1970s texts and earlier are not usually in good faith, and frequently anchor their entire narrative on...German accounts.

One thing I agree with him about though? Commanders who justify attacks by excusing heavy casualties as "planned" are in fact excusing their own ineptitude. They wouldn't last long at the front. They'd be removed and given an administrative position before long...if they didn't mysteriously turn up dead in a ditch somewhere first. By 1945 the only men in the world who associated victory with lots of their own troops being dead were the Nazis and Japanese Empire. 

 

 

[Soviet Infantry Battalion Attack]

1 hour ago, Hardradi said:

I like playing war games and this is the best tactical 3D game I have found so far. Sure it has flaws like most things and sometimes it frustrates me.

But by your own admission you're not playing for these reasons. There's nothing tactical about the way the way you play thus the whole notion of it being a war game to you is inconsistent with you just saying you want to play it for the sake of playing it. Correct me? 

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I have reviewed my battle results screen. The odds are 3:1 (649men:200men) in this battle, in the attackers favour. Plus they have armour support.

Wow ya got me i'm off by 100 helmets. Never mind all the other points I tried to highlight here or you just flat out not reading my post about the SU-76's not being proper armor support. Christ sake there's more anti-tank mines and obstacles on the map than the player has SU-76s! Ain't even got to the 3 entrenched Pak 40s in mutually supporting positions yet. I'm surprised your tactical sensibility isn't picking up on the problem with all of this. 

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Your first paragraph above is not factually correct. This undermines your whole view. I can easily pick apart many of your other points from a GAME perspective but I will leave it there.

Well that's a shame because now i'll have to just expound on my own question without your input. Think i'd rather not have it you won't read any of my post though. Otherwise whats the point of "haha you see I could deconstruct your point line by line but...I shant!" lmao whatever. Calm down before posting in the future.  

Hammer's Flank cannot be won in a single save, first time playthrough. Want to play through it to play through it? Fine. I personally don't understand why you don't just go play Sudoku and save the money. It's been had out already that it's historic credibility is zero and the designer admitted that his research was inadequate. So if the only reasoning left to justify a play through is that Crossing the River is an attack gone bad and an example of an event beyond the player's control you can surely play it on those grounds but...why bother? 

But Crossing the River actually wants you to win. It wants you to achieve its extremely over ambitious victory condition or it viciously fails you. Which means the designer expects you to solve it and there's no way you can do so without cheating. It's badly designed. That it's "playable" is completely tangential. There will never be a scenario in any of the games that can't be won absolutely flawlessly with zero player casualties as long as the player is willing to discard every possible notion of realism or simulation. But a scenario designed around forcing you to do this is a waste of your time, or mischievous, and shouldn't be in a campaign. Yeah it's playable but...who wants to play this way? 

Some people say it's winnable in a single save first time playthrough and that they've done it. Also i'm a Scottish Lord.   

 

[Soviet Infantry Battalion Attack]

42 minutes ago, Hardradi said:

The campaign is playable. The enemy forces are not too strong.

The German defense headcount in Crossing the River is just under 300ish men to your 600. This is an immediate and open violation of the well understood precept of base 3:1 odds against a identical defender in the post Flanders world of modern war. 

Attack check either on the grounds of game of history should fail here, but ok let's be unreasonable and just say that we're going to force the attack because Stalin or because incompetence or because miscommunication etc.

The defenders are dug in, extensively. Most of their command staff and a good number of their troops are in bunkers with over-head cover immune to mortars and difficult for the SU-76s to see or hit beyond around 300 meters or so. The forests are extensively and comprehensively rigged with mines, bombs, barbed wire all of which is under the over watch of local German infantry who have snipers and machine guns able to cross-fire over these defenses. All told these features really abstract the defender to a 1:1 match against your force thanks to the enormous preparation of his untouched defense. 

Attack check should fail here. But let's keep being unreasonable and push ahead because we're really going for that Hero of the Soviet Union medal and are totally unscrupulous and ruthless in our desire to look nice in post-war photos in our Moscow flat.

The defenders have twice as much artillery support as you do by weight of fire alone, it's pre-sighted onto TRPs all of which totally cover the valid terrain movement tiles. You literally cannot move a Company, in open sprint, through these tiles ignoring counter fire from the defenders in time to avoid having them caught in a bombardment. Moving them through the forest causes them to leave behind the SU-76s, sacrificing the only tool of your heavy firepower other than than the 6 82mm mortars which are literally useless against the Germans in bunkers throughout the map. 

Attack check should again fail here. You're not scared of being assassinated by your men though because you're the player and you're an omniscient god playing a video game so who cares what SimpleSimon and countless others on the forum have advised about play  of this scenario doing nothing to obscure how openly ridiculous it is on grounds of game design. You want to play through it.

Many sections of the map are arbitrary non-movement areas. The game literally does not allow you to move men through them because screw it, forcing you to confront the defender-plan via a painstakingly slow surgical deconstruction that we can succeed at without save-scumming 100% of the time (just 93% of the time) thanks to other ways the game allows us to cheat via player super-awareness and omniscience and the TARGET HEAVY/LIGHT commands which take effect instantaneously and precisely.

By this point we're not playing for any kind of historic credibility here it's just solving the scenario for the sake of solving the scenario, completely gaming it, completely cheesing it right?  This is the point where if your perspective on the game is just different from mine that's totally valid you can play this way if you want.  But I just want to ask....

Why are you playing Combat Mission? 

[Soviet Infantry Battalion Attack]

On 6/10/2020 at 4:47 PM, Aured said:

I've read somewhere that Battalions would attack with two companies forward and one reserve. They would rush across the ground, shooting all the way, which assault guns sticking as close as possible to them. 

Understandings of the "Way of the Red Army" are clouded by decades of Cold War recalcitrance by the Russian Archives in sharing information and experience from the war and lack of English accounts in the west except those written by the Germans. German accounts have plenty of problems though racism being among them.

Two up and one back or its inverse of one up and two back is a US Army concept. That's how Regimental or Battalion Officers thought out attacks in the US Army. A typical attack by a Rifle Division troop or Guards Rifles would be straight on. All three Companies in line with each other pushing through the same narrow slice of map, ignoring the rest of the map and in doing so making the defense of those sections irrelevant. This is why Hammer's Flank is badly designed because the 2nd objective-line is an occupy line and it's a huge slice of the map you have to totally clean the Germans out of the objective area. In fact all 3 objective lines should be touch objectives, completed on reach. Red Army commanders don't care about the parts of the German defense not in their way.

Through this description it's also easy to misunderstand what actually happened in an attack. Nobody in the Red Army was honestly expected to just suicide rush an enemy defense, Penal Battalions maybe but they were convicts. It's a simple fire-and-advance maneuver mostly unlike western notions of fix-and-flank. You put the German defenders into a bind by forcing them to either open fire too soon or too late. This requires you to have more firepower than the Germans, not everywhere but definitely the slice of map you plan on advancing your force through. If the Germans try to shoot your men down as assault teams advance, they should face the wrath of God for doing so. You're doing well if your men can get within grenade range of the Germans without having suffered many casualties or much wear for it. 

The trouble with Hammer's Flank is that the base support you need to conduct the attack doesn't materialize. The defense has more firepower than you everywhere and they're too dense to simply penetrate at any point via maneuver. If the attack had been intended merely as a feint than the objectives should be changed entirely. 

[Soviet Infantry Battalion Attack]

On 6/10/2020 at 10:54 PM, General Liederkranz said:

There have been several good threads on this over the years; searching for the title of hte campaign and the scenario will turn them up. The premise of this scenario is that either the preliminary artillery was largely ineffective, or that you've been knocked off schedule so you're not following closely behind the barrage, which is why all you get is that one rocket mission. Some people have rejected that as unrealistic but it doesn't seem so to me--surely that kind of thing happened sometimes and the battalion commander had to make the best of it.

It's not really that's it's unrealistic, it's that it's a bad scenario. It's the player's first go with the Red Army in an assault and the scenario is designed to thwart you or make you play out of doctrine. It would've made sense for a final scenario or independent scenario but it's oddly placed in the intro of Hammer's Flank. 

The 3rd mission, the attack on Osintorf however, again depicts an attack on an unmolested German defense of the town which has every advantage over the player yet again. There is a dearth of suitable terrain to maneuver with and the SU-76s do not possess the firepower necessary to overpower any section of the defense on their own. Both scenarios place way too much reliance on the SU-76, which the designer seems to have thought of as a tank and a major advantage to the player somehow. It's neither under the circumstances. 

On 6/11/2020 at 3:14 PM, DMS said:

Well, IRL Germans had solid trench line, occupied by minor forces. They tried to avoid massive artillery strike on their main forces and used to set them back. Soviets knew this and tried to assault 1-st trench line by surprise. In the game there is no solid trench line and player didn't get divisional artillery, looks like battle in the depth of defense. I would play like usual, slow advance, spot MG nests, call mortar fire on them. Attack on broad front, clear flanks, be aware of mines and AT guns. Assault guns should be 50m behind infantry line according to regulations.

This is out-of-doctrine play for the Red Army though, and it's too easily thwarted by the depth and headcounts of the German defense on their side of the river. The player only gets two batteries of mortars it's just completely inadequate. That some guys get lucky occasionally and solve Hammer's Flank without racking up a huge body count does nothing for me. 90% of the time you will not be able to achieve this without save scumming ie: cheating.

My advice on Hammer's Flank is that it's an unfortunate bad campaign that slid through the cracks of quality control and needs to be redesigned at numerous points. It should not be played base. Grab the campaign unpacker, lay out the scenarios in the editor and tailor them. 

[Tank Gun Damage]

Wasn't there some kind of problem with the mantlet on like the Jagdpanzer IV for a while where it wasn't considering angle-of-impact and just registering all hits on the mantlet as perfect 90 degree shots or something? 

[Tank Gun Damage]

Tanks are peer weapon systems to each other. I take this to mean that they're generally good at inflicting lots of casualties and mission-kills on each other even if they're a bit mismatched in tonnage, class, etc. I used to get a bit sassed by how often tanks seemed to de-gun or track each other in the games too but really that's just because tanks are really dangerous to each other. Sorry if this all seams a bit tangential but hang on. 

The Germans tried very hard to avoid matching the Panzer Divisions against opposing armor because there's very few circumstances that wouldn't turn into a bloodbath on both ends. The best outcome possible would still result in lots of mission kills and recoveries so just lots of overall wear-and-tear on the Division. In fact the most preferable section of the frontline anyone wanted to charge their Panzertruppen through would be the section of line held by no one and simply open all the way to Moscow but the Germans knew it wasn't 1760 anymore and Armies were big enough to put up some kind of resistance anywhere you went. So the new hack was to clad several thousand men in armor, get a set of tracks under them, and charge them through a section of the line held only by rifles and maybe some mortars which were about the only kind of weapon systems that you were sure to run into. 

Anti-tank guns change the dynamic quite a bit, but were relatively rare and probably far less frequent than infantry guns which usually lacked a good AP shot. The farther into the war you got encounters with anti-tank guns don't really change all that much because the newer, more powerful guns are offset by their own poor mobility leading them to be highly inflexible and usually limited to obvious road chokepoints. Infantry guns are mostly gone but now the infantry have things like the Bazooka, Panzerschreck making a simple overrun much harder to obtain. The biggest challenge facing you Herr General is that the Americans have enough armor to both set an entire Armored Division aside to match your own Panzer Division, and still have several full strength Armored Divisions in reserve to pounce on your troop even if they manage to easily defeat the Kentucky boys in a stunning upset. The American commander would much prefer to have those Armored Divisions ready for their upcoming offensive into the Rhine of course, but he'll settle for you. 

It's even worse on the Eastern Front, where the Soviet General literally desires to crash as many of his Tank Corps as he has into your Panzer Division. Burying your force under an avalanche of T-34s and IS-2s. You are the objective for his tanks and he has a lot of them. You could try to avoid this naturally but sooner or later the Red Army will launch a classic Deep Battle offensive that breaks through the line somewhere and puts hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable German Infantry in imminent danger of encirclement. We gotta plug the hole with something and it's your Panzers, try not to get trapped with the rest of our beleaguered Army or Goebbels will be left highlighting the heroism of your last stand as the grim silver lining of your "death by internal spalling". 

I get how it can be sort of annoying to see the "de-gunned" status a lot especially since it seems very abstract. I also think it seems like gun mantlets specifically are a bit too vulnerable. Like lots of hits failing to penetrate sections of the tank with weaker armor but the first hit de gunned my Panther???? Problematic but usually the bigger problem can be the scenario's overall difficulty which the designer didn't consider. Context is important and asking the player to charge through an entire Tank Corp with a pair of Panzer IV's is a thing that can happen and it's super frustrating when there's a whole campaign locked away behind this one scenario you can't get through. I suspect that's where a lot of the real frustration with the game's perceived realism problems comes from.  

[ZIS-3 Battery war movie (English subtitles)]

It's been blocked John. Which is a shame because I was going to agree totally. You can even point to instances where guys had to work without horses and seriously lug the guns around by foot and sweat. Even a horse could became a luxury but usually they ended up becoming food when supplies started getting short...

[Anthony Beevor reviews book on drug use by Hitler, Wehrmacht.]

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"Germany maintained its lead over the world mainly because the country had so many well-educated chemists. One from the Bayer Company in 1897 synthesized aspirin from willow bark. Eleven days later, the same man, Felix Hoffmann, created diacetyl morphine, which was trademarked as Heroin. Bayer advertised and sold it as a cure for headaches, for cough relief, and to help babies sleep. Profits were enormous. Political and social upheaval only seemed to increase the market. Even in revolutionary Petrograd, the consumption of cocaine soared among young commissars and their mistresses from noble families, as memorably depicted in M. Ageyev’s Novel with Cocaine."

This bit about attitudes toward narcotics over time always makes me chuckle when I hear it. 

The increasingly complicated cocktail of drugs Hitler was taking most certainly played a major role in his physical degradation during the war. I wonder how much of it might've been psychological though. It's strange since in Mein Kampf Hitler makes many allusions to the achievement of a Gotterdammerung as the sort of Magnum Opus of his life. Yet once confronted with just that he seems to have proven rather overwhelmed by it. 

[AI plans and a more responsive AI]

1 hour ago, com-intern said:

Its not abstract thinking - you just consider it abstract thinking because @RepsolCBR described it using human language. You can achieve RepsolCBR's "abstract thinking" via logic gates. The scenario designer is doing this right now its just that the options are limited. Below for example is a series of options that can be done in-game currently. #5 could be construed by some people as abstract thinking but its really just a trigger.

That's fair enough. I just think it's worth asking how badly we need the tools capable of programming in more sophisticated AI routines when it seems that just featuring more of what we've got would suffice. Your own point seems to reinforce that as well unless i'm misunderstanding something. I certainly have nothing against better mechanisms for influencing the AI, I would just like to know what the expense of these features are and how that would fit into an overall development cycle. Workarounds are not ideal, but how inconvenient are they? 

1 hour ago, com-intern said:

But you do not need an AI capable of abstract thinking.

Which is exactly my point as well. Is it entirely necessary for CM to feature such sophistication? How much of how many scenarios are essentially "move here shoot that"? 

[AI plans and a more responsive AI]

8 hours ago, RepsolCBR said:

A few things that imo makes designing attacking AI difficult...

Number one ! The inability of the AI to reevaluate the situation. The AI will NEVER change its attackplan...ever. Not on its own atleast. It has one way forward and one way forward only regardless of how the player defences are set-up. A skilled designer may be able to design the AI plans in such a way that it seeems as if the AI is adjusting its original plan when running into strong resistance. To be able to do this the designer will pretty much have to 'guess' right though as to what the players defence set-up will look like. If he guess wrong the outcome will simply look wierd...if the AI abandons a succesful attack !

Number two...The limited number of AI groups. For a reinforced company sized attack 16 AI groups may well be enough but for a reinforced battalion it is a bit on the low side. Unfortunatelly...If the player commands something like a company sized force then the attacking AI will pretty much need atleast a battalion to provide much of a challange...unless the forces are very unballanced. I belive that one of the reasons for the AI attacks currently often looking like suiccidal human wawe attacks are indeed the lack of sufficient AI groups.

Number three...perhaps not so much of a problem...but to a degree atleast...the low tempo of an AI attack...atleast when conducted over somewhat larger distances. imo ones the AI units gets pinned down it can often take quite some time for them to recover and move forward again...Far longer then it would take a human player to get the same units moving again...They sort of 'get stuck' it seems...

number four...The limited ability of the AI to get HE and smoke on the right location at the right time...(has improved somewhat with the on-map mortar trick)

 

These are problems yes but can you name a game with AI that does any of these things? Everything listed here is an example of abstract thinking the sort of which no machine in existence is capable of doing yet or presumably the world would be a very different place right now. What you may think of as examples of games which can do the above concepts probably don't do anything like evaluation involving the sort of abstract thinking only a human mind can do. Any video game you've played that can do these things is in fact obscuring its inability to actually perform these concepts through the rest of the game's tools. 

Video game developers use all sorts of tricks to create compelling and intriguing challenges especially when the opponent is a human who possesses the insurmountable advantage of his human brain. For instance lots of games give the artificial intelligence huge stat buffs like a big health pool, damage buffs, borg communications, spawning enemies out of the player's line of sight, spawning enemies endlessly (ie: "clown car'ing"), granting them knowledge of player dispositions and stats, +2 on every dice roll etc. Basically the favorite method in many games is to build cheats into the AI. In Combat Mission this tends to lead to the infamous cases of overpacked maps with huge, in fact ridiculous defender headcounts vs the human attacker. While there is a time and a place for this and it's not necessarily a bad thing it is none the less a rather crude and inelegant solution to the AI's deficiencies. There are other ways to create challenge and intrigue.  

So no the AI cannot conduct self assessments, but you can use tools in the games to emulate that. You can restrict some plans to semi-completion, or have some other plans exist to implement what is describable as a "sub optimal" solution to the other side's plan. If you use the tools presented by the game successfully, it won't be necessary to think of such highly granular concepts like situational awareness or the limited AI plans available. Think of the game's many facets, like how the scenario is scored, how the terrain of the map influences each side's thinking, how the ToEs and tools available to each side can influence the computer's plan vs a player's plan. I'm not trying to suggest that there is any ideal or "right" way to go about designing scenarios but it's a bit much to expect BFC to make the Combat Mission games and also make us Skynet. 

[AI plans and a more responsive AI]

2 hours ago, MikeyD said:

It seems players will most often chose the attacking side when paying against the AI. As a result they only see the AI at its most basic. You need to play defender to watch the attacking AI trying hard to achieve the objective. Its the attacker that get's the intricate precisely timed AI orders for the smallest units. The defender might get a retreat or attack order on a tripped trigger. I had joked on the Beta board that its a shame we put the most effort into the stuff that the player is least likely to see.

One issue players seem to bring up a lot is that the AI seems to be prepared to conduct excessively bloody attacks to the last man. Like the AI doesn't conduct any kind of active threat assessment. Actually it does, but again here designers don't seem to be thinking about context and/or using the tools available to their fullest. 

If you tell the AI to advance through a sector and use modifiers on the designated units like "fanatic" and "elite" then yeah you're going to get an attack that seems pretty pushy. Fanatically so in the sort of Light-Brigade sense. I've gotten pretty used to designing my own scenarios low balling troop skill and motivation way more than I think most guys are used to and that tends to produce far better results than making everyone crack Airborne/Shock Troops. The AI doesn't make high level decisions like the player does...but high-level thinking isn't always necessary either. Remember we as the player are omniscient gods presiding over the battlefield with our instant and precise awareness of encounters and our assurance that the only enemies we will ever encounter will be in the highly predictable slice of map we are fighting on. (Just one of the issues with games using play areas of hard-definition. EG: Map borders clearly defining where the player does not need to expect enemies to attack him from.) 

You can delegate basic self-preservation to troops easily enough by just setting their motivation and morale values much lower. I experimented with this on a modification of the Troina campaign in Fortress Italy. I set the morale and motivation modifiers of a platoon of German troops so low that my opening bombardment on a sector of map nowhere near them caused them break and flee back to the Battalion leader's HQ elsewhere on the map. This is not very precise threat assessment, but it's an example none the less.

Most guys would prefer awry attacks were simply cancelled I think, but given the scale available to the AI through its morale/motivation selectors I don't see how the leader AI couldn't be expected to self assess that well enough. Again here scenario designers need to be fair and remember that real life commanders were often afflicted by confusion themselves and could be unaware of just how badly their attack had failed, even from within that very attack, until very late. 

Edit: Also Squarehead's point that more maps need to feature mixtures of static and mobilized troops is a good point too. I designed one scenario with a pair of companies attacking from the edge of a forest one time. Company A was dug-in at the forest edge and Company B advanced from behind them toward a phase-line. Crucially I allowed both Companies to use the same deploy area, leaving the decision to deploy both Companies in line or both in attack up to the player. I used the entrenchments to suggest that at least one of the Companies be used as a base of fire, and in the briefing I allude to their positioning being necessary due to resistance from the opposing forest. Since the defense plan could include a counter attack, or perhaps nothing more than snipers there's context here for making use of defense while conducting what is, overall, an attack. 

[AI plans and a more responsive AI]

Totally agree that the tactical AI is often sold short. A lot comes from the sort of vague feedback the AI gives scenario designers about its intent on plan execution which can lead to wildly unintended outcomes. On the other hand a lot of people expect an enormous amount of granularity in plan execution on the AI's part which is mostly unnecessary. "Force A moves to point B and shoots whatever it sees" is seriously 90% of Combat Mission and the AI just so happens to be able to execute movement and fire plans...so what more do you need? Certainly some stuff like the AI re-engaging historic contacts would be nice and a way to see AI movement paths in the scenario editor would be a great time saver for testing plans. Overall the biggest problem with the AI is the enormous amount of work involved in making plans for it because of the User-Interface feedback issues mentioned. This leads scenario designers naturally down the path of making simplistic and repetitive AI plans which then leads players to believe "the AI is bad" when it isn't really.

A lot of what Freyburg is saying here is really important for scenario designers. In order to fully wield the AI you have to use multiple plans, and think very abstractly about what the AI can do to upset the player's movements and pose a challenge. For instance in literally every scenario i've designed for myself... i've always set up at least one attack plan for the AI that is very, almost recklessly aggressive. The likelihood of this plan's execution is dependent upon many factors (I increase the likelihood if the AI is Waffen SS for instance) but I always feature it because if the player never has to expect spoiling attacks of any kind, he's not really under any pressure except for that given by the scenario's time limits. Time limits are a good way to make scenarios tense but you don't want to become over-reliant upon the scenario timer either because it can unfairly handicap the player by restricting his movements to only sections of the map his force can realistically reach in the time allotted. Easy solution? The potential, not the guarantee, the potential of an active defense instead of a passive one regardless of how illogical or irrational it may seem. 

The other basic item is randomized deployment rights for the AI when it's both attacking or defending. You can abstract the quantity of the AI's deployment "rights" by considering (or featuring on map even) your own side's reconnaissance quality vs the enemy's. You shouldn't be too perturbed by sort of baffling or seemingly illogical deployments either because tbh a lot of that is a perspective thing and scenario designers often make their scenarios less interesting by trying to police the AI down to every individual square it can use on deployment because "that's not what I would do this is what I would do if I was running this show!" - The confusion here extends from an unclear objective on the scenario designer's part leading to an imbalance in the pursuit of challenge and intrigue. You should consider both of those things when making a scenario.

A company of Panzer Grenadiers deploying in the middle of a forest hex around zero objectives doesn't make much sense no but that's only if the scenario designer is thinking about that in terms of a linear script. What if you open enough of the map up the player could potentially maneuver through that forest? What if they don't deploy there every time? What if you substitute a minefield instead sometimes? Every square on your map needs the potential for context. It doesn't necessarily need to be held or be dead, it just needs to be potentially something. 

Crucially when the AI is attacking its own fire support is going to be the biggest source of the scenario's ability to generate random outcomes. Lots of the scenario designers seem to avoid use of the AI fire support plans though, or make them too restrictive by using only one plan. One thing I always do with AI fire plans is include a heavy "rear area" bombardment to discourage the player from just pooling his force is a small area near the objectives. Remember that artillery was the solution to heavy force density and if the player can reliably concentrate his forces on areas of the map he expects to be safe the AI attacker's job will be predictably harder every time. I redesigned Hot Mustard in CMFI with a squadron of FW-190s in ground support and split their "missions" between attacks on my frontline or bomb runs on the train station the American commander is using as his HQ. If this squadron had existed at the battle it would've been perfectly reasonable to expect them to bomb and strafe the train station as a suspected HQ even if their mission had called for direct support of the German's attack. Usually they will not do this, but it could happen. So maybe pooling your whole Battalion for a dense and interlocking defense at the train station would not be the path to victory or an optimal defense every time hmm? What if there's a plan for a cancelled attack? Seriously what if you just put a plan in there where the AI executes a completely different set of objectives from what the player sees wherein just capturing the front half of the map was "good enough" for them in an "own objective" sort of way? 

It's important not to cripple the player I think, and give them enough assets to face setbacks and still reasonably be able to affect the scenario's outcome. Most of the scenario designers are thinking too much in terms of scripting though, and this makes their AI plans very limited or simplistic. Defense is easy enough, and randomized deployment is very basic. You've really made it though when you can construct compelling offense from the AI that doesn't rely excessively on any single constraint upon the player. 

[Infantry vs Tanks]

No joke tanks destroyed weapons and equipment a lot by just running them over. The Germans noted that Matilda tanks seemed recklessly prone to trying to flatten Pak 36 crews in Belgium but probably thats what it'd come down to if the tank was out of ammo and running stuff over is a good way of making sure it can't be recaptured. It's amusing to imagine that tanks did indeed conduct a very abstract form of melee combat with like...their enormous mass and tracks. 

 

[Infantry vs Tanks]

3 hours ago, DerKommissar said:

That's a job for the T-70! Maybe, the BA-10/11 armoured cars, as they packed a 45mm AT, too. They got rarer as the war went on, but were still in service until the end. So, as much as I'd like to see them -- I doubt they'd be added in the new module. Recon units were often equipped with lend-lease goodies like the M3 Stuarts and Valentines -- and those we may still see.

I think the trouble with the Soviet early war armored cars was that they just didn't quite fit into the sort of All-or-Nothing thinking that permeated the Red Army and its procurement. The BA-10/11 might well be a great armored car but comrade we can only afford to have a few chassis taking up production lines at a time. It was probably seen as neither light enough or subtle enough to make a good scout but also insufficiently protected and armed to make a good tank either. "Any job we'd use the BA-10 for we'd prefer to use either a BA-64 or a Valentine." 

The chassis it was based on was a modified version of the GAZ-AAA's chassis...which means it probably wasn't standard with that truck anymore and the Soviets would've axed its production in 1941 on those grounds. Can't show that this is what happened for sure, just that it's a theory. As usual any that happened to survive on the front were welcome to stay in service for as long as they survived and the vehicle probably wasn't so different from the GAZ-AAA that it couldn't share some parts with it. 

Also I think it weighed quite a bit for a wheeled vehicle and that was never good when conducting operations in Russia the Land of the Mud Rivers. 

[Infantry vs Tanks]

Doesn't seem like it was a bad place to have directed them either. The Germans had some of the most heavily armed and armored reconnaissance formations in the world. Some of those Panzer Aufklarungs were organized like mini Panzer Divisions. Being in a Soviet reconnaissance unit probably meant you were likely to to run into an Sdk 234 or Luchs at some point and you weren't going to sick the BA-64 on those. 

[Infantry vs Tanks]

It's unclear what the Russians seem to have done with the bazookas they received in Lend Lease. Panzerfausts and Schrecks were usually just put right back into service by the same frontline troops who had captured them. The bazooka seems to have had very little presence at the front though. I've heard that they were issued to reconnaissance teams but i'm willing to bet quite a few of them ended up at HQs. 

[Starshells and Flares]

Cool to see it one day, otherwise abstracted easily enough by present mechanics. 

[M2 Canister Round--Shot Impact Zone]

Whatsa matta you don't like the Nagant EBR?? The helpful thing that can be said about a polymer stock is that at least it won't catch fire rapid firing the gun the way the wooden stock of the Czar's finest rifles would. If you can rapid fire it that is. I'm not sure how guys managed to work the bolt on the M1938 that fast because no matter what condition the gun is in you either need some seriously strong hands or a crowbar to work that damn handle. 

They did get around to fixing the sight issue with the M1C and just redesignated the rifle the M1D. Course I think the even more ridiculous case of defective American WW2 small arms was the M1903A4. The US Army somehow managed to break a perfectly fine bolt action rifle just by removing a single groove in the rifling to produce a "sniper" rifle that was despised by snipers and marksmen alike. The Marines of course, never ones to go home when they can go big, stuck with their own M1903A3 sniper mods that all came with an attached Hubble Space Telescope for shooting the Captain off a moving Japanese Destroyer cruising through Iron Bottom Sound...from Oahu.  

[Why did I have to cease fire?]

2 hours ago, Erwin said:

The technique of having reinforcements that may even arrive after the scenario time limit is reached is a way to stop the AI surrendering "prematurely". 

The AI has a pretty good sense of self evaluation I think. Usually by the time the AI offers me a surrender I tend to examine its remaining assets and manpower and really most of the time I feel that it made the call at the right time. Usually but not always it seems to favor the presence of at least one unbroken formation of troops with a functional command link running up to the Company/Battalion commander, whoever is present. Usually when scenarios seem to be going on too long it has more to do with the lack of tools on the player's end than what the AI has. Just what I see. 

2 hours ago, Erwin said:

Players used to complain that the game would end abruptly just as they were about to execute their wonderful final assault plan and it was a let down - like coitus interruptus.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

[Soviet Antitank Rifle Tactics]

The whole reason the Germans broke out those shurzen armor plate kits for their tanks wasn't because of the bazooka as the Americans believed, but because the PTRD and PTRS were inflicting casualties on tank crews. Trouble is plates of spaced armor added yet more weight to the badly over-burdened Panzer IV chassis. The H model was actually slower than the Tiger in a road cruise and probably many maintenance failures from burnt out transmissions and sheared track pins caused vehicles to miss those important curtain calls that could affect whole battles. That's the sort of circumstantial history that western historians laughing off the Boys Rifle would miss about the PTRD/RS. 

[Trees. I hate them.]

I agree with Mikey and would like to add a corollary to it, I seriously dislike it when scenario designers make terrain restrictive or unpassable to infantry when really infantry did almost all of their fighting in the places where vehicles couldn't follow them. If im designing a map, I liberally feature foot bridges, terrain folds, unguarded hamlets, and forests going up to the edges of local high ground or the objective area etc to facilitate infantry's maneuver. Tiny impassable streams never make sense to me, it's one thing if it's the Rhine but lots of times I see what are basically creeks in the game give infantry a No-Movement and if I see that im cracking open the editor...

[Distant Guns and Jutland naval simulation videos]

On 5/9/2020 at 5:22 PM, General Jack Ripper said:

naval engagement, and YOU are the one who decided the acid test was a "World of Warships style one-on-one match".

Who's arguing? You this whole time about nothing.

The best part of it is that nominally I don't even disagree with you, I'm just trying to add a bit of context here to the claim that Dreadnought was "revolutionary". It was, but as anyone can see doing a simple side by side match up of stats it was more than a little overrated.  The myth that HMS Dreadnought sparked an arms race is squashed by the fact that the Germans had already gone through with the Fleet Acts in 1898 years before the ship was launched embarking on the nation's biggest naval armaments program ever. The Germans didn't even know HMS Dreadnought existed when they finished designing the Nassau class of dreadnoughts. All the British did, literally, was beat them to the christening ceremony. 

Sorry about the whole World of Warships goalpost move but hey, you continued down that path. 

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and the speed, fire control, sea-keeping, communication, turret arrangement, engagement range, etc. You're the one hung up on gun caliber as the single deciding factor of a naval engagement, and YOU are the one who decided the acid test was a "World of Warships style one-on-one match".

That you explain none of these quantities but constantly expect me to quantify every sentence of my own reasoning is exasperating.

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Don't get mad because you set the terms of argument and they didn't work in your favor.

U mad bro isn't really an answer man. Pretty sure that even if you are arguing it's in bad faith anyway so I wouldn't make the mistake of engaging in one with you. It turns out even discussing things with you isn't feasible. 

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If you're going to have an argument, you should seek to read and understand your opponent's point of view, rather than relying on ad-nauseam re-iteration of your own.

Now I'm going to place you on my ignore list, you are the only such forum member to be so recognized.

Congratulations.

 

You're very odd.