Jabble

Indeed, now vinyl is for enthusiasts - electronic is so convenient for everyday use. I mostly bought my vinyls when CDs came in and everybody was selling off their "old tech" cheaply. Unfortunately I lost most of it when it "disappeared" during a flat move I'm still replacing parts of it on CD when I spot the bargains. OK if you own a warehouse! I still like to own the CDs (just in case!) but I rip everything to HDD to actually play them as it's more convenient and the only way to put them on a portable player. I miss the cover art from the vinyl days though.

That's the album, and there's a 2013 re-recording. I buy CDs as I'm old-school, though I do digitise them for convenience. OK, if I were really old-school I'd buy vinyl... http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=43652

You've put me in the mood - I'm aware there's a modern version of "Snow Goose" which I don't have, so time for some shopping!

I've never seen them live, but their live albums seem much more "enthusiastic" than the studio versions.

Ah but if they're covering a choke point, the targets only appear during that WEGO minute and it all happens very quickly. The moment they fire they give away their position, so survival becomes much less likely. By the time I get a chance to direct fire during the next command phase, they're already dead because they left the second tank alive.

And how could I forget Camel's "West Berlin"? Seems appropriate in this thread somehow.

Target arcs won't do it if the tanks appear in roughly the same place. ATGM teams are most useful when covering choke points, so it's not practical to divide them up into tiny arcs. It would require guessing precisely where each tank is by the time the trigger is pressed, so that each tank is in a separate arc. What would happen in real life? A commander would say "Team A take out the first tank, Team B the second". Hence I reckon that's what should happen in the game too.

The ability to coordinate ATGM launches. Problem: 2 ATGM teams are beside each other and in contact. 2 enemy tanks appear, one in front of the other, and both teams fire at the first tank almost simultaneously. The first missile kills it, so the second is wasted. The second tank kills both teams before they can reload. Solution: Allow an option that limits the number of teams engaging any one target. The game logic should 'know' how many ATGM teams are capable of engaging any one target, so it only allows the first to do so. The second is then free to engage any other target. It makes sense that this limitation only applies to teams in contact with each other or a common commander. If the target survives the first strike, then the next team becomes free to engage it if it's not already engaging a different one. If you've ever played Command: Modern Operations, there's a default option where only one aircraft will engage any one target at a time. If there are multiple targets, different aircraft will each pick a different one. Only if a missile fails to kill may another aircraft then engage that target, if it's best placed to do so. Something similar here would be useful.

What about checking one chosen leg (through a gap) by incrementally stepping through that internal "reality at the moment" path? If the game can do it at run time, why can't it do so on a limited scale at "verify" time? I get that it can't do it in the same way as the terrain cursor, as that simply looks up the value of the terrain map at one point. Lookup vs calculation.

I'll throw in one from the late, great Mark Hollis, 1984.

Even before that was the Battle of Lang Vei, where the NVA used PT-76s to overrun a special forces camp during the build up to the siege at nearby Khe Sanh. The defenders managed to knock out several with M72s, but had many misfires too.

Don't worry, we'll all get horribly confused when Engine 5 comes out!

I've just tested this in CMBS on Elite, using the Training Campaign. Sent two units down to meet the Bradleys, mounted up, and sent the wagons hunting to a point near the red team. I ordered the troops to dismount to a point near the end of that path. However the Bradleys stopped as soon as they saw some reds, far short of their destination, and the troops dismounted and walked the rest of the way.

True. But if they survive, I'd prefer them to act more like soldiers with a plan than tourists out for a sightseeing stroll I believe you're right that they won't dismount while the vehicle is engaging, but I've seen soldiers dismounting when the vehicle stops because it has signed an enemy it can't engage. I'd suggest that the correct response would be to stay inside so that the journey can be continued next turn. However there may be circumstances where the soldiers should dismount and engage, e.g. an AT team. If the response is configurable, maybe that could be be achieved.

At the very least there could be a 'verify' utility after a path has been plotted, alerting the player to anything that ends up different from intended. If this is a specific command then it won't affect the performance at path issuing time.

Maybe the hamster needs to be fed before using its treadmill to power the back-end payment system.

True. Plus, Steam takes their cut so BFC should get more if you buy directly. With direct purchases you can still get a Steam key via the Matrix/Slitherine store.

Here's my tuppence-n-quarter-farthing worth: 1) A linear LoS tool. Should be easy to use frequently, e.g. click on a point of ground, then on another; it should tell if there's LoS between the two. An enhancement would be allowing for height, e.g. 2m above first point to 3m above second point. 2) A React posture for use within the WEGO minute. Problem: some encounters within the minute result in unrealistic responses, e.g. a hunting scout encountering a tank just stops and stays in the danger zone, or a static ATGM unit stays put after firing. Dismounts from a stopped hunting vehicle continue on foot to their original destination. Solution: create a React posture that determines how a unit will react to different levels of threat. For example a scout encountering a low threat will just continue on its route, or a stationary ATGM team spotting armour will fire then immediately relocate along a predetermined path. There would need to be a relative threat level applied to each encounter, taking into account attack & defence capabilities. Hence an infantry unit would not see an ATGM team as a major threat, whereas a tank would. Proximity would be a factor too. A scout hunting along a path could see a far-off infantry or tank unit and ignore it, continuing its hunt. Conversely if it encounters a closer threat it could retreat along a predefined path. An infantry unit hunting through forest encounters an enemy infantry unit, so it stops and fights. Reactions wouldn't be limited to the Hunt command, they'd apply to any movement or to a stationary unit. Hunt should be considered a careful, eyes-peeled move, so any reaction could have bonuses applied. Hence a hunting unit encountering a normally moving unit should have the advantage of surprise. I'd suggest four main responses: Continue (ignore) Stop and fight Stop (if moving), fire once, then relocate Relocate immediately (retreat) Any relocate path would need to be programmed into a waypoint to be available; like arcs they could be inherited along the sequence until instructed otherwise. Similarly it could be programmed into a stationary unit, such as an ATGM team's getaway route after firing. These are all actions within the current engine - this proposal would just add them as conditional to events during WEGO play.

Yep we'd definitely want that result facilitated, it's just establishing the best way to do it. What would happen IRL if a unit encountered an enemy? Why would they continue to the intended destination? I reckon that would only happen if the encounter was worth ignoring, i.e. it's not a high threat. In the game that reaction could potentially be configured, so it would just continue as intended with a new red icon now visible. But a configurable reaction could also take into account a non-ignorable contact, similarly reflecting a real-life response of fight or flight.

Indeed so, but usually you plan your dismounts to leap off at the end of the journey and go to a nearby advantageous position. If the vehicle is halted some way before that then the dismounts have a long walk, quite likely over dangerous ground. Whereas if you prepared them to react to an early halt, they could move to some contingency cover position or maybe just hit the dirt and fight back, rather than wander nicely in front of the enemies' gunsights to their original destination.

Here ya go: OK, pause and edit might be made to be quite easy, but it would break up the whole idea of a commander biting his nails during that WEGO minute where he's just an observer. Plus, the devs would have to develop such an edit method, which I'd guess isn't trivial. The idea of WEGO is to break up the battle into useful chunks to balance commanding and action playing out, to best simulate real life combat; mostly that works well. This is just one of those situations where it results in unrealistic behaviour - temporary paralysis when a reaction would happen IRL - so it would be good to come up with solutions that still fit within that WEGO time chunk approach.

Agreed. I suppose I think of hunt as 'move but keep your eyes peeled and be careful'. Adding sensible reactions would surely improve the behaviour of encounters during any type of move, but if it's during a hunt the unit should be in a better position to carry out its consequent actions as it's not being caught by surprise. All sorts of modifiers could apply.

There's a request thread for the next version of the engine, so you never know. Before throwing in some ideas I thought it might be worth fleshing them out here a little. That pause & edit is interesting, but it might become too laborious or distracting if it happens a lot, whereas if some things can be abstracted and automated it would preserve the free-flowing WEGO mechanism. I don't play RTS so not sure of implications there, though. I don't see that reaction should be limited to hunt, e.g. that case of the stationary ATGM team waiting patiently. IRL units moving normally would still react to encounters too. Hunt should give some real advantages though, such as faster detection of enemies and reaction time, something that could make all the difference in some cases.

The more I think about it, I reckon it should be a new posture rather than a command, though it would have response-based commands/instructions associated with it. An example: say we decide on 3 threat levels for any one unit - low, med & high. A scout unit is hunting along a track, the last waypoint (and hence current leg) has posture defined as "Ignore low threat", "Stop and fight med threat", "Relocate from high threat". A relocate path/destination has been set, associated with that waypoint. So, it first spots an enemy scout unit some way off- low threat, so carries on. Next it spots an infantry unit a bit closer - that's a medium threat so he stops moving and starts shooting. Then a tank appears, triggering the scout to relocate along that predefined path. Another example: an ATGM team is stationary at a location. It has posture "Ignore low threat", "Relocate on med threat", "Fire and relocate on high threat". It sees enemy scouts, so ignores. It then sees an enemy tank appear within range, so it fires an ATGM and immediately relocates along its predefined path. If such threat levels can be established then one of several responses could be pre-assigned to each of them, associated with a waypoint or current location. Hence it wouldn't be limited to any one type of movement, rather like how arcs are used at the moment. Hunting would just become a 'careful' movement with quicker awareness/response to threats than other types. It'll be a little more complex with respect to primary weapon & target types, in that an ATGM team would only shoot-n-scoot on armour, whereas it may run away from approaching infantry without firing.

A 'react' command should be configurable, so if a Hunting team spot something that's not an immediate threat they could just continue. It's only if a 'withdraw' reaction is triggered that they'd relocate, presumably because they encountered a significant threat. The trick will be how to add such configurability to decide that reaction. I suspect that once a withdrawal has occurred, it's less likely that the player would want to continue the original route & postures. In which case it wouldn't be worth the devs' efforts to implement preserving that, especially if they could be working on something else we value more.