Centurian52
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Posts posted by Centurian52
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More 1940 goodness with a battalion scale clash with the British rearguard enroute to Dunkirk.
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Ok, well I'm proud to have kicked off such a heated discussion. I really like some of the points that have been raised so far.
Points I found convincing:
-It takes just a few moments to increase the time limit in the editor anyway.
-The time limit is necessary for scenario designers to employ the 'reinforcements that never arrive' trick in order to prevent the AI from surrendering before the designer intended.
Points I didn't find convincing:
-The time limit helps with balance. While this is true, I kindof feel like balance is overrated (a very fringe opinion, I know). I care far more about realism than I do about balance. And a time limit feels like a very artificial and gamey way of achieving balance.
-Real world orders almost always tell you to accomplish an objective within a certain amount of time. This is also true, but I tend to file this under 'one of the most common parts of the plan to fall apart on first contact with the enemy'. You usually won't give up trying to take an objective just because you didn't take it as quickly as you were supposed to. Engagements don't suddenly end just because they took longer than intended. It is reality, not command intentions, that I want my games to emulate as closely as possible.
Ok, I actually found that last point semi-convincing. The reason is because I like the idea of having some victory points being dependent on winning the battle within a certain time-frame. So while you can take as long as you want if you are content with a tactical victory, if you want a total victory you need to keep an eye on the time. 'You are ordered to accomplish the objective in a certain amount of time' isn't a good reason to have a firm time limit (in my opinion), but it is an excellent reason to tie some victory points to a soft time limit.
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23 minutes ago, Warts 'n' all said:
So is winning every battle I play. Doesn't mean that it is going to be top of BFC's "to do" list.
That's fair. And really that item is only a must if they ever make Combat Mission: Great War (a fantasy that I know will never come true, but that won't stop me from listing engine features that could make it viable), since the early war "squads" will be much larger than could ever fit on screen at one time.
edit for clarity: In 1914 the smallest maneuver element in a lot of armies was the company of 200+ men. You could never fit all of those soldiers on the UI at once, so a hypothetical CMGW would need the ability to scroll through them.
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34 minutes ago, Combatintman said:
Apart from pretty much every set of orders in a 34 year military career I've received or read having them ... you're probably right.
Your experience tempts me to walk back my statement. But it will take quite a lot of convincing to bring me around to the idea that so much of the military history I've learned over my life could be so wrong. From what I've heard and read it is pretty rare to accomplish something such as capturing a heavily defended city block inside a single hour of fighting (for example). While fighting over a single CM scale objective won't generally take multiple days (sometimes it will, but those can be pretty easily broken up into multiple scenarios) it is not uncommon for it to take several hours to decide a single engagement.
Some examples of real world CM scale engagements:
-The assault on Brecourt Manor took around 2-3 hours (Winters started his reconnaissance at 0830, I'm not sure exactly when the first shot was fired and the assault began, the force withdrew at around 1230, https://www.wwiidogtags.com/ww2-history/assault-on-brecourt-manor/ said 2-3 hours for the assault so I went with that).
-The capture of Carentan (just the town itself, since the whole battle of Carentan is a bit larger than you would expect to fit in a single CM scenario) took around an hour and a half (0600-0730) for the force attacking from the north and the force attacking from the south to meet in the middle.
-The Battle of Bloody Gulch (a large CM scenario, but definitely small enough to be a CM scenario) took about 7+ hours from the commencement of the German attack at 0700 to the arrival of tanks from 2nd Armored Division at around 1400 (I'm not sure exactly how long after the tanks arrived it took to actually drive the Germans off).
I chose those three examples because they were relatively easy to look up. I did my best to avoid cherry picking by choosing to include a particular engagement before looking up how long it took. While these examples represent a small sample size, I hope they are enough to illustrate that while it is not uncommon for CM sized engagements to take approximately a standard CM time limit amount of time to play out, it is no less common for them to take considerably longer.
I suppose as a nod to the fact that leadership really does have expectations for how long it should take to accomplish a given objective you could introduce time based objectives that give the player X points for defeating the enemy within a certain amount of time. But I suppose the main motivation for my statement "...there is really nothing realistic about time limits." is this: How common is it for a mission to be considered a failure because it wasn't accomplished within the expected amount of time? I haven't heard of many missions that were scrapped just because they took longer than they were supposed to.
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Oh, and one more thing comes to mind. The ability to disable time limits. I love Combat Mission for its unmatched realism. But there is really nothing realistic about time limits. Granted there may be rare instances where time limits are narratively important, such as if the next battle in a campaign is set an hour or two after the current battle, and in that case it would be weird if you kept fighting for over two hours. But the vast majority of the time time limits are unrealistic and unnecessary.
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I've finished uploading it to my dropbox. I'm fairly new to using dropbox so let me know if you have problems downloading it (also let me know if it works perfectly).
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a2zqb5mba8cglbc/AACJWMgRr5xdDKSezN8-qJVta?dl=0
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I have gotten the following files courtesy of @Erwin. They will retexture CMAK soldiers, vehicles, and terrain to be appropriate to western European.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/v682ismti6qdb7x/CMAK France 1940-Sealion mod.zip?dl=0
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I know I would very much like to see a Combat Mission: Great War one of these days. To which end we may need some additional engine features in order to give the best simulation of the period.
-the addition of horses may be useful (I think I saw this suggestion somewhere on the first couple of pages)
-some representation of bayonet/melee combat would be nice.
-a field telephone fortification type which permits calling in or adjusting off-map fire missions to a spotter in the same action square.
-more options for detailed preplanned artillery, on the assumption that you will not be able to adjust any fire missions or call in any new ones for the entirety of the scenario due to a lack of radios, unless you have a spotter in direct voice communication with a mortar team or intact field telephone. As a specific example I imagine calling in a creeping barrage in the following manner: Select creeping barrage, select a linear target, set the 5-15 minute delay time (possibly go up to 5-30 minutes, since you are now planning your barrages for the entire scenario), select a second linear target, set a second 5-15 minute (5-30 minute) time for how long it will take the barrage to creep from the first target to the second target.
-The ability to scroll up and down the UI list of soldiers in a selected squad is a must, since early war "squads" may be company sized elements up to ~250 men spread across a few dozen action squares
-Better trenches would be nice, but I don't really have any suggestions for exactly how to do that. This may be a CMx3 issue rather than a CMx2 Engine 5 issue. Perhaps some dugout fortification type (basically a bunker, but with no fire opening) to allow soldiers to hunker down during barrages, although I'm not sure how you'd get the AI to use them properly.
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6 minutes ago, Erwin said:
Glad you got all the folders!
Enjoy...
Thanks again! My next video in this series will have every vehicle and soldier in proper European theme. And since you asked me to I'll post a fresh thread on the forum with a download link just as soon as I can figure out how that feature of Dropbox works so that other people can download it as well.
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I have a dropbox, although I am fairly new to using it (should I leave a link here or should I PM you?). I'm not sure if you can upload a folder or not, but you should be able to upload a .rar or .zip file which you can get by right clicking on any folder and selecting Add to "****.rar"
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That sounds like just the thing I need. I'm currently using what mods I could find, mostly grey textures meant for mid war vehicles and late war troops that I used to replace some early war textures. But there are an unfortunate number of vehicles left unaffected and still in desert tan. Do you have a download link that still works?
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Just played a rather bitter tank battle. Nothing fancy here as far as tactics. The rain and mud kept me pretty restricted to the roads, so it's a nice simple head-on engagement.
Mostly just briefing an initial moves in part 1
The action really starts to pick up in part 2
And remains pretty nonstop right through part 3
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3 hours ago, dbsapp said:
The major reason was that BMP\BTR unfortunately not only proved to be extremly unreliable in terms of mines protection ( and they caused severe casualties in Afghanistan and Chechnya) but also were insufficiently protected against light machine gun fire.
BTRs against heavy machinegun fire sure. BMPs aren't 100% proof against heavy machineguns, but you are still definitely safer riding inside the armor than outside of it if you are getting shot at by an HMG. Neither BMPs nor BTRs would be terribly concerned about light machinegun fire.
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I started playing Combat Mission in 2009, a couple years after Shock Force dropped. Prior to that the most realistic game I had ever played was Rome Total War, and the most realistic modern war game I had played was World in Conflict. So to go from that straight to CMSF absolutely blew my mind at the time. I've been an avid consumer of every new Combat Mission game that has dropped since then (and I've even gone back to the first gen games and am currently playing through CMAK).
But I've always had a nostalgic place in my heart for World in Conflict (which only intensified when I discovered Operation Flashpoint), and for over a decade now I have been craving a game that could bring the incredible realism of Combat Mission to the fascinating Cold War setting of World in Conflict. So when I first saw the announcement video for CMCW back in February I just about exploded with excitement (I was actually screaming with glee). CMCW is the most satisfying scratch to the longest itch that I've ever had. It is literally a dream come true for me.
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This is how misunderstandings escalate into full blown fights. It starts with an innocent criticism or disagreement:
2 hours ago, dbsapp said:Apparently, not everybody, but some people do:
which then gets interpreted as hostile:
1 hour ago, Artkin said:Hey man, just be nice.
and then actual insults start getting thrown:
27 minutes ago, dbsapp said:Don't be a crybaby.
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other. Healthy human discourse requires disagreement and argument. But you can't let it antagonize you or make you defensive. If you feel attacked by a certain statement stop and reread it a few times until you can find a non-hostile way of interpreting it. If there is no non-hostile way of interpreting a statement then just ignore it. It probably wasn't relevant to the topic of the argument anyway. Above all, never insult or attack the character of your opponent. Personal attacks and hostility are the fastest way to derail what could have potentially been a perfectly rational argument and cause it to devolve into a fight.
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4 hours ago, Erwin said:
That certainly was the "big" picture. The caveat is that a whole lot of those crews were killed. So are those really the tanks you personally would want to be in?
I can't speak for the T-34, but Sherman crews actually had very good survivability in terms of crew casualties per Sherman knocked out (everyone can get out quickly because almost everyone has their own easy to reach hatch). Not to mention that if you are in a German tank the odds of your tank getting knocked out are actually much higher since there are far fewer German tanks around.
Yeah if I happen to be in a one on one engagement between a Sherman and a Panther I would much rather be in the Panther. But how likely is that to happen anyway? On the rare occasions where a Tiger or Panther are encountered it will be a full platoon vs 1 cat. If you are in the cat your odds of being knocked out are almost 100%, but if you are in one of the Shermans then the odds of your tank getting knocked out might be closer to 40% or 60%.
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Sherman for medium. Not the heaviest armor, but still pretty good frontal armor. Good optics for the time, good attention paid to ergonomics. And of course the crew survivability is outstanding for the time, what with there being a hatch for every crewman making it easy to escape quickly. And even the 75mm gun performance is more than adequate against most enemy armor, only really struggling against the heavier Tigers and Panthers. Plus going for an Allied tank greatly increases my overall survivability simply on the grounds that the Germans are getting pretty heavily mauled by the timeframe of most of the current Combat Mission games (less likely to die in an off-map air attack, more friendly tanks around to take the hits (if I was in a German tank I might be the only tank on the map), etc...).
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16 hours ago, dbsapp said:
That should make you wonder if everything is alright with the game that has been released 2 month ago.
That reminds me, is the game doing alright financially? I've been trying to promote it as much as possible among my friends, but I don't know many wargamers in my day to day life. I just really hope it does well enough to eventually get us a Bundeswehr/NVA module and/or British module.
Anyway, to keep this comment more or less on the topic of the thread, as I recall tank riding in the Red Army emerged in WW2 as a way to allow supporting infantry to keep up with the tanks despite lacking sufficient motorization to create actual motorized infantry units (one of the things that went wrong at the battle of Dubno apparently was that they didn't have enough trucks for the infantry to keep up with the tanks, so the tanks went forward without the infantry). After the war the Soviet Army (now officially rebranded from the Red Army) invested heavily in mechanization. Once that investment paid off and their infantry were almost universally mounted in APCs tank riding became a pretty moot concept. But of course it would take a minute for that investment to pay off, so it makes sense that the T-55 and T-62 would be designed with rails for riders.
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A Germany module seems the most important to me. The West Germans would have been the most numerous NATO force on the ground at the start of the war and would have carried the majority of the early fighting. So we desperately need to have them represented. Next most urgent after that is British forces. I've just got to take that Chieftain out for a spin.
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This has all been very helpful. I am just getting into the 1st generation Combat Mission games (they are the only ones with any early-war content) and figuring out how arty works in this engine has been one of the learning hurdles.
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Graphics have never been a priority for me. The classic Combat Mission games may not look as nice as the newer ones, but they are still among the best tactical wargames around (probably second only to the the newer Combat Mission games). And besides, if you want to play any early-mid WW2 content (1940-1943) then you pretty much have to go back to the older games. The CMx2 games simply haven't released any content for those years, with the absolute earliest setting so far being July 1943 for the invasion of Sicily in CMFI.
And unfortunately even the older games haven't gone as far back as September 1939 or May/June 1940. To get those campaigns I had to turn to Theatre of War which, although it is also among the best tactical wargames around, is still not as good as the early Combat Mission games. I am doing some May/June 1940 gameplay in CMAK, but since there are no French tanks in CMAK (since the game is supposed to be set in North Africa) I have to turn to Theatre of War to get some scenarios with French armor. So a full WW2 run from beginning to end requires a combination of Theatre of War, CMx1, and CMx2.
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Good graphics are nice to have, but they have never been a priority for me. I am finding that the classic Combat Mission games to be a lot of fun.
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I am currently playing through all of my realistic tactical and operational games in chronological order(so mostly Combat Mission and Command Ops). I'm not entirely sure how many scenarios and Campaigns I have since I did bulk downloads of custom scenarios/campaigns/operations so I have a lot of duplicates and H2H only scenarios. But it is somewhere north of 2,000 total scenarios between CMAK, CMBB, CMFI, CMBN, CMRT, CMCW, CMA, CMSF, & CMBS. I have spent the last couple years just sorting all of them (renaming each with the date at the front of the filename in YYYY-MM-DD format so that they order themselves in chronological order when sorted alphabetically) and haven't actually been playing them during that time (to minimize spoilers) so I am very rusty now. But at long last sorting is finished, and playing has now commenced.
I have just finished uploading the first CMAK scenario of the playthrough, this one set in France in 1940, to youtube and I thought I might share it here in case anyone is interested.
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Well, I still haven't figured out the unreadable text issue with the Battlefront version (which is the latest version, 1.04). But I managed to get the GOG version working fine by setting my display resolution to match the best resolution offered by the game (2048 x 1536). Which with the benefit of hindsight probably should have been the first thing I tried.
Playing through all of my Combat Mission scenarios in chronological order, starting with CMAK
in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps
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Noted, I'll try to get some closer shots in the next scenario