com-intern
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Posts posted by com-intern
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I'd argue that from a realism stand point the usual culprit is too large a force on too small a map. Rather than vice versa. The pain in the ass that is scenario design makes it clear why we have that problem. I've done some personal editing of scenarios and increasing the size of the map and adding/moving some of the supporting troops out of the immediate combat zone has usually worked although for obvious reasons the new terrain isn't terribly detailed.
Which from a gameplay perspective I think works just fine because the player is never meant to walk over there.
@RepsolCBR
Just being able to have persistent map damage would be fantastic. Literally just exporting the map out as is would be nice. -
12 hours ago, RepsolCBR said:
The time it takes to manouver (dismounted) pixeltruppen over vast areas...both on the part of the player as well as the AI...
Most objectives at CM scale games shouldn't have you maneuvering over long distances. Essentially there are two parts to map size movement affect and fire affect. By giving the player reasonable setup zones you can largely negate the movement affect. You can presume that the player takes over well after the approach march and as men are preparing for H-Hour. However, the large map allows for fires to affect activities quite a bit away from them and this can change what tools or how players approach the attack.
This is easier to explain visually and this little snippet from Command Ops 2 does a good job.
The Combat Mission focus would be the battalion attack on Steinebrück with armor support from the hill just South of Steinebrück. However, if you enlarge the map to include a portion of Lommersweiler it adds context to the attack visually and makes the attack a bit more complicated. Rather than a 1-dimensional straight on assault the player must make the assault while contending with fires from Lommersweiler. At no point in the scenario would the player make an approach of the town but they would exchange fire with it.
Say its a morning scenario wit the first 25 minutes occurring before first light.
- Do you press hard earlier to get across the river before Germans in Lommersweiler can see you?
- Do you use your artillery to suppress the heights while your armor supports the assault?
- Do you attempt to shoot it out and gain fire superiority over Lommersweiler?
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On 7/24/2020 at 7:55 AM, SimpleSimon said:
Bingo. Map's too small for the given scenario and forces involved. The player doesn't really have many options and the one he has is very exposed to return fire.
I've been plying quite a bit of Command Ops 2 recently and at its Divison+ scale what you run into quite often are Companies/Battalions making attacks only to be receiving fire from some wooded terrain 1.000 to 3.000 meters away. When playing CM though most of the maps are pretty airtight.
I've toyed around the the idea of adding "generic terrain" to some existing maps just to see how it might change play. Part of the issue with CM is that map making takes a long time so to make reasonable sized maps takes quite a while. A detour around this would be to heavily detail the core area where the player is expected to partake in close combat and have a less detailed distance zone where the terrain largely exists for the placement of long range assets. Essentially in a 100 meter fight the exact layout of ditches and where windows are will matter. At 1.000 meters not so much. -
46 minutes ago, mjkerner said:
This would be an even more interesting thread if I knew what SBF stood for. Single Black Female? Small Block Ford? Stupid But Funny? Singapore Bowling Federation? I assume it means Support Base of Fire or some such, but you know what happens when a person assumes.....
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Depending on the situation is often hard - if not impossible to get the SBF into position safely. Largely because many maps force the SBF to be overly close to where you want fires to go.
If its a small map I usually just have the SBF shoot their way into their position. Depending on the terrain you can also do a LOS trick where you have your men crawl to a location where they do not have LOS to the target and keep the on HIDE until their weapons are deployed. Then un-HIDE them so that they kneel and gain LOS to the target. -
My suspicion is that many of these are just overlooked but a good SOP system rather than just blindly trusting the tacAI would do wonders for the game system.
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I've been playing around with doing some "deep" battles. Imagine a pretty standard COY scale battle except the map is more battalion size or more. Aircraft within these style maps seem to be much more effective since there is an actual rear area. Whereas what you normally get is a knife fight battle where the difference between the front and rear area is maybe 100 meters of wood or a knoll.
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What I wouldn't give for Panzerfausts/AT4s to have a half second delay on firing.
Here comes a light vehicle and there goes all of our AT. -
On 7/8/2020 at 10:28 PM, Erwin said:
It's probably not realistic re RL, but it's almost a game in itself to see how many weapons one can get a 4 or 5 man crew unit to accumulate.
During the fighting in Stalingrad at least one Tank Brigade was committed to fight as infantry and I recall reading that at some points during the fighting the 23rd Tank Corp had crew fighting as infantry as their number of armored vehicles evaporated. -
Odds are shadow do not play into spotting. Especially given that they will move with the sun. The cost of calculating their new position within the context of spotting would likely forbid it although Battlefront may be pulling some sort of trick that I am unaware of.
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I've brought this up before but Rome to Victory was apparently a slog but at a basic level if Battlefront had to go through an absurd amount of work to make sure the OOB/TO&E was accurate players will also have to go through the selfsame effort to verify it. And I'm honestly not sure of the value of just taking accuracy at face value or having it without the context of the why and how. Like if someone tells you this list of equipment is correct, is there value-add for the consumer there?
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Huh, I wonder if they do it for camo? The logs would naturally weather out in the field and as a result be more subdued but also not literal steel. Maybe some effect on FLIR systems?
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2 hours ago, Thewood1 said:
But are the JTS mods just graphical? And btw, The Heaven and Earth mod is only graphical, right?
heaven and Earth mod are only graphical but visuals carry a lot of weight with people.
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I did some digging in the game files a while back and as far as I can tell essentially evrything is in a table (series of tables) and pulled from there. I suspect its part of the reason why loading takes so damn long because R isn't made for game usage but its being used in a game here. In this case the tall hedges are turned off in the editor but they still maintain the same ID so when you transfer them from CMBN they work fine. The reason that you've seen an official map with them is likely because BFC has some internal tool to transfer the maps within their development process.
Essentially all the games are the same game but you just have different databases attached. -
16 hours ago, Thewood1 said:
But part of the question has to be...how much extra money did the devs make off of that longevity?
At this point none because their gone. After the minor disaster that was Cliffs of Dover the series died for quite some time. But I recently bought two copies of IL-2 1946 off of GoG a few weeks ago. Jagged Alliance 2 also.
Some devs do release historical data and the tail tends to be pretty long and pretty strong. Especially on Steam since you can gain a sort of steamroll effect. -
Was Harpoon a multiplayer game? I tried some searching but can literally find no information about it except a pretty dead Matrix forum.
IMO these worries about the games "integrity" are misplaced. I couldn't fathom a situation where that would occur and generally suspect that people just don't like people playing outside of their preferred style. It doesn't help that I cannot find a game where modding has damaged the game but can off the top of my head name several where mods breath consistent fresh life into the game. -
IIRC Graviteam is likely advantaged here as it started life as a tank-sim and expanded into a tactical game.
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Yea Graviteam tactics series hands down beats CM here with its quite nice in-game dictionary.
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1 hour ago, Vacilllator said:
In 1 and 3 I was playing as cautiously as the circumstances allowed, not sticking my neck out asking for a slug-fest. So my overall feeling is that either I'm unlucky with large German tanks or they *may* be more susceptible to gun damage for whatever reason. But yes, it's just a feeling and it's not going to stop me playing.
If you go over to the tank targeting accuracy thread you can see clearly that being in a hull down position will have a significant increase in the chance for gun damage results. With heavy armor that is likely proof to enemy return fire I would recommend fighting from the open rather than hull ground.
On 7/8/2020 at 3:18 PM, RobZ said:Test results
Tests done in a more "natural" map instead of flat ground. Shermans are at 900,1030 and 1050m. All shermans are placed in light forest with trees. Shermans are of variant M4A3(76)W. Panther is of variant Panther G mid.
20 tests done with panther hull down, 20 tests with panther open ground. At test start the panther will drive to its correct position so it is not exposed at the start, all shermans stationary. Disregard the forward observers, they are behind terrain and does not see anything. At this range and angle the shermans can penetrate the lower glacis and the front turret, only the upper hull plate is immune.
Skill: regular, normal, 0 for all tanks
The map.
Panther hull down/open from sherman's perspective (one of them).
Panthers perspective.
Results:
Panther in hull down position:
4/20 times success; 20% win rate
failures:
12 times by main gun destroyed: 4 times muzzle hit, 2 times barrel hit, rest are mantlet/weapon mount hits. Rest of failures is crew dismount and tank destroyed.
Panther on open ground:
11/20 times success; 55% win rate
1 success had the panther immobilized by lower glacis penetration, engine destroyed
failures:
4 times by main gun destroyed: 1 time muzzle hit, rest mantlet/weapon mount.
1 time destroyed after +50 hits, crew panicked earlier, but the tank was still operational
rest is lower glacis or weapon mount tank destroyed
So after all that i did another 10 tests in each position with shermans all beeing elite crew to see what happend
Panther in hull down position vs 3 elite shermans: 0% win rate
Panther on open ground vs 3 elite shermans: 40% win rate
I got many pictures from the different successes and failures, but i dont want to clutter the post, but in general this is why the panther wins open ground scenarios:
The AI will always aim for the upper hull plate, which is the only place they can't penetrate. This is the aiming issue im talking about, the AI aims for the exact same location every single shot and will never deviate at all unless terrain forces them to. Once they are zeroed in, there is almost no hits to the turret or lower glacis at all, these lower glacis hits was two of the first shots fired. The panther won in the scenario that picture is taken from.
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This reminds me when CM:SF had colored bars for ammo load.
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On 7/9/2020 at 9:44 PM, MikeyD said:
m reminded of 17 pounder and 6 pounder APDS rounds. In the real world either the round was accurate or it REALLY wasn't, all having to do with how the core and sabot separated. Ideally, in CM titles the occasional round would just go crazy, fly off at an odd angle. But I suspect players would REALLY REALLY hate that happening
Really the big trick Battlefront is missing is that these games are packed with detail but essentially none of it is explained. If the game explained why something happened or changed it'd go a long way to improving player interaction because right now you practically need your own military library to get much depth out of the series. And while I'm okay spending $80 for Bloody Streets most people aren't so the fact that the game is detailed doesn't really matter.
On 7/10/2020 at 12:51 PM, Bulletpoint said:Honest question: What is it about the early war that makes it more epic or interesting than the late war?
There are a ton of little factors but to engage it in the broadest terms the farther back you go in time the less deadly being spotted is. Essentially combat is a SEE -> SHOOT -> KILL loop but the efficiency of that loop changes.- Black Sea to Shock Force sees a reduction in that efficiency.
- Shock Force to the WW2 games sees a reduction.
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'44/'45 to '41/'42 sees a reduction.
To put it in the simplest in 1941 fighting is quaint. You've got nearly all bolt-actions, the scary 37mm gun, what is a shaped charge? jump ahead to '45 and its MORE DAKKA. More automatics, more semi-autos, more shaped charges, larger caliber guns , etc....
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3 hours ago, Howler said:
No, no, and no! I don't want my gunners to randomly hit around center of mass. It's hard enough scoring a KO against a Tiger without throwing this into the mix. The randomness you are advocating for already exists in the game when you are actually playing rather than running tests on a target range which is what you all have been observing.
1. It'd be more realistic
I've brought this up before but firing at center of mass assumes that you know the center of mass. You obviously would not always be able to ID center of mass. Its a lived experience anyone has had so I think this would be obvious.
2. I've had in-game occasions where a gun opens up on a target in the first few seconds of a turn and continues to fire for the remaining minute (or until they die) doing no appreciable damage.
Recently I had a Soviet 37mm AA gun fire at a Panzer IV for two full turns before the Panzer IV reversed over the hillside. Luckily the fire-rate was high enough that the constant smoke blinded the crew - but if the gun had put all those rounds into/around the turret it would have likely knocked the tank out. -
2 hours ago, Lethaface said:
I think this is were the misunderstanding is focused. It's 'parameter X has too much influence on outcomes in situation A' vs 'situation A is not, or should not, be a desirable situation whatever parameter X is'.
I generally agree with your take except for this caveat.
1. CM relies heavily on user made content in the form of QBs and scenarios. A number of these present you with challenges that are decidedly unrealistic. Even some official scenarios and campaign missions do this. When that happens the more edge case issues that CM has have a tendency of showing up. So even while you really shouldn't be getting into the situation the realities of map design and scenario design can force your hand.
Essentially I don't think its quite as rare as people think depending on the scenarios and QBs you play.
2 hours ago, Lethaface said:Personally I am happy that CM doesn't artificially reward a 'hull down' position
IMO your take here is backwards. CM is artificially rewarding open ground positions. Hull down positions are effectivally operating as they should while open ground positions are given a bonus to survivability for certain armor.
Take this test result22 hours ago, RobZ said:So after all that i did another 10 tests in each position with shermans all beeing elite crew to see what happend
Panther in hull down position vs 3 elite shermans: 0% win rate
Panther on open ground vs 3 elite shermans: 40% win rate
In what world do three elite crews sit back and ram home round after round into the upper glacis of a Panther with no effect? To me it seems rather obvious that a gunner would eventually realize they are having no effect and at minimum begin walking rounds elsewhere on the target. Essentially if I had a magic wand I'd have gunners choose a semi-randomized area around the center mass and then change that every ~10 rounds.
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Just to be clear I don't have a huge issue with how the system works as it stands as I think it does operate well enough. -
6 hours ago, Rinaldi said:
I can only imagine the cancer that would result from being able to mod under the hood things. Hard pass.
I dunno. Most players are playing CM single player. So I don't see the harm - who cares if you mode in lobsters.
Really though I would love to see the AI and animations opened up to modding as we could see real gains there in the quality of the sim. The animation mod gives you a taste of the improvements we could see.
[bug] people get stuck
in Combat Mission - General Discussion
Posted
iirc this issue predates any of the more recent bugs. I recall running into this way back in 2011.