What I Miss About CMx1

[Lanzfeld]

CMBN is a better game. No doubt. I know that it will improve as it grows. I also know that they did not start with the CMx1 engine and make it better. They started from scratch and could not include all the CMx1 stuff. These are just some of the things that I really miss the most from CMx1. No particular order.

1. GUN JAMS.

Remember when your vickers would jam up at that critical moment while covering another squad in CMBO? Can you imagine your MG-34 misfiring in CMBN? What a great and realistic aspect that would be! I miss it.

2. THICK FOG.

I remember a battle in CMBO where the visibility was only 40 meters or so. It was around Halt station I think in the bulge. It led to some great, explosive firefights and scary moments. I hope this makes a return.

3. FIRE.

Not just flamethrowers and flame tanks but building fires and wheat field fires when the ground was dry. Remember how your burning tank could start a brush fire? Remember how buildings would eventually collapse when they burned too long? I cant wait for this to come to CMBN and I hope they include all I have talked about. Maybe a chance your flamethrower guy bursts into flames if hit?

4. BUILDINGS.

I hate to admit it but I think I liked the buildings better in CMBO. I like how there was no fuss or infantry "S" turns when you entered or exited them. I liked stone vs wood structures. I dont like how it works in CMBN. The doors hardly ever match up with where your troops go into the buildings.

5. ASSAULTING BUILDINGS.

I recall how simple it was to have your troops run up to a structure and toss in grenades right before they entered and cleared. You did this with one simple move command (assault maybe?). I am not too fond of how it is handled now in CMBN by using fast, pause and area fire as it doesn't always guarantee your boys will even use grenades! That is the point! I want you to use grenades before you storm the structure. UGGGG.

6. FOG OF WAR.

Oh how I miss seeing that generic tank dance around to simulate my troops hearing a tank comming but not quite sure where it is. When they do see it....it's a TIGER!!!....until later it is really a markIV. Same with the MG sound contact comming from that village far away. Not sure which building or woods patch that MG fire is comming from. Also...not knowing what type of units they are and other details unless you get a close look at the dead ones (extreme FOW I think it was called) really just made the game great.

7. PRISONERS.

I know that CMBN is not a Shawshank simulator but I really enjoyed marching the captured enemy to a collection area guarded by my depleated troops and having the chance that unguarded prisoners could escape. The white flags is okay in CMBN but I really miss the fun of the old way.

8. HQ BONUSES.

Was it unrealistic? Yeah.....probably....but it was FUN! It added a little stratigic layer that I, in all honesty, miss nowadays in CMBN. Using the stealth bonus for my AT guns or the combat bonus to support my fellas while they rush and assault that house under fire. I don't know, it just was more fun with these.

9. ANTI AIRCRAFT ARTY.

What can I say? I loved to sit back and watch my guns track the inbound aircraft and let off a few bursts to try and make it abort it's run. Once they even knocked it out of the sky! I loved it! Dammit, I miss it.

10. FLAGS.

Not really flags themselves but it was cool to have a way for the AI to try and recapture an area that you took from them without scripting. It was a little dynamic this way. It led to counterattacks and such. Not perfect but it was not predictable either.

Thats all for now. I couldn't sleep so this stuff just came to mind. I got it down on paper. I feel better. I hope the Devs give us a few of these back in future releases.

[womble]

1. GUN JAMS.

I miss this, but not in a good way. It'd be okay to be reintroduced if it wasn't such a certainty as CMx1 made it. I remember finishing scenarios with 2/3 of my tripod-mounted weapons being perma-jammed.

2. THICK FOG.

At night! In the snow!

3. FIRE.

Goes without saying...

4. BUILDINGS.

I'd like to see infantry able to use windows to make entry to structures. It should take time, sure, but I doubt your average gropo thought twice (beyond "will this draw attention that will get me and my mates killed?") about forcing windows any more than kicking in a door.

5. ASSAULTING BUILDINGS.

I like the current system. It works just fine for me: they use grenades as I expect.

6. FOG OF WAR.

Uncertainty about markers and lack of info when you click on an icon would be great. As would the ability to add a note to a given icon. This sort of hidden information is the kind of "umpire replacement" that really lifts a game.

7. PRISONERS.

As JonS pointed out in another thread, the management of prisoners starts out as a tactical concern on the battlefield. I too would like to see it addressed in a bit more detail.

8. HQ BONUSES.

Any implementation of HQ or squad bonuses would necessarily be a different experience to CMx1, since you can't just reassign HQs will-ye nil-ye; that Infantry Plt HQ with the stealth bonus can't be put in charge of the AT section. Some variation between squads would be good though. Maybe based on experience level: a Veteran squad might have a chance of having more Gunners or Asst (etc) than would ordinarily be assigned; an Elite squad might have a chance of being a little more stealthy than your average Elite squad.

10. FLAGS.

I think what you're mostly after is an improved AI with more options for control than "Oh! Is that the time!". One with the ability to be given some awareness of higher level strategy.

[Childress]

FOG:

Apparently the kind of pea soup fog you seek wasn't common in the Normandy area. Hence the omission.

PRISONERS:

I found the routine of escorting prisoners off the map edge in CMx1 cheesy in the extreme. And a nuisance. So I prefer it the way it is now. Troops surrendering in larger groups would be great but the implementation likely poses hellish programming challenges.

FOG OF WAR:

Totally agree. The player is given excessive information when clicking on enemy icons. An enemy mortar ammo bearer, eh, thanks! And from section three, to boot. Cool! They really need to address this.

Mis-identification was neat in CMx1 though a bit overdone, imo. And the placement holders were butt ugly.

ANTI AIRCRAFT ARTY:

Sure, why not. What I miss more than anything are the airplane shadows. Essential fluff!

And one more

SOUND CONTACTS:

Are they in CMBN? Not sure.

[Placebo]

"1. GUN JAMS.

Remember when your vickers would jam up at that critical moment while covering another squad in CMBO? Can you imagine your MG-34 misfiring in CMBN? What a great and realistic aspect that would be! I miss it."

I had forgotten all about gun jams - and miss the feature now you have reminded me!!

Fire - absolutely

I did love the mis-identifying of tanks and sound contacts, it added a real twist to battles. However I think it has been confirmed this is not possible with the new game engine

Prisioners - have to say i prefer the system now, you still have to go and secure soldiers with their hands up, but it is much better that they dissappear and do not need escorting off the field.

[winkelried]

1. GUN JAMS.

Miss this too. Although I don't know if it was a bit too frequent in CMx1.

2. THICK FOG.

Not too much thick fog in June-August 44 in Normandy - if any. We'll probably see this later in the year and certainly in the Bulge.

3. FIRE.

+1 to this

4. BUILDINGS.

I don't watch that close, so I dont care :-) It's TacAI's job.

5. ASSAULTING BUILDINGS.

same as above.

6. FOG OF WAR.

I usually play elite and i got used to the icons etc. I think that the current implementation gives a good alternative to the Borg-view we had in CMx1 which was not satisfactory at all. You actually get icons when fired upon - just when own troops have identified the shooter's position (although it starts usually with a Q-mark).

7. PRISONERS.

Couldn't care less about those - i like the actual implementation. no fussing around with those.

8. HQ BONUSES.

This was nice - but i live happily without it.

9. ANTI AIRCRAFT ARTY.

+1 to this one - i miss the AA-Guns too. Also to handle infantry assaults

10. FLAGS.

This can be done by the scenario designer. just make the victory location small enough.

[winkelried]

Two additional ones

11. FLEXIBLE UNIT / VEHICLE LOADOUTS

There should be more flexibility for the scenario designer for the loadout of units and trucks (e.g. allocate ammo for mortars, 7.92k, demo charges to trucks).

12. FLEXIBLE ORDER OF BATTLE)

The C2 is a good model, but there should be the possibility to create task forces in the scenario editor to create a task force by adding whole units, not just individual teams and vehicles to e.g. a battalion and thus creating a full C2 for this task force.

[BadgerDog]

Ahhh... nostalgia ...

I loved the 1960's as well... weed, free love and all that stuff we used to enjoy ...

However, I've learned that you can't live in the past and life is pretty damn good (and fun) with the current stuff ...

It depends upon whether you view the glass as half full, or half empty ...

..... grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Regards,

Doug

[winkelried]

Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.

Khalil Gibran

[Rokko]

Thick fog definately played a role during the Mortain counter-attack!!

Visibility was much lower than it is the case with the light fog setting.

IIRC dense morning fog is very common in the Mortain area because it's situated between two rivers.

[Mord]

3. FIRE.

Not just flamethrowers and flame tanks but building fires and wheat field fires when the ground was dry. Remember how your burning tank could start a brush fire? Remember how buildings would eventually collapse when they burned too long? I cant wait for this to come to CMBN and I hope they include all I have talked about. Maybe a chance your flamethrower guy bursts into flames if hit?

Yep! Definitely miss this! Steve always talks about people being gamey and deliberately setting things on fire...but that was never what I liked about it...it was the unexpected things, like once when I lit a house on fire from bazooka back blast and my guys had to high tail it outta there....right into enemy guns! Or a building catching fire after it was hit by a shell...or any of the myriad of situations that could spring up.

6. FOG OF WAR.

Oh how I miss seeing that generic tank dance around to simulate my troops hearing a tank comming but not quite sure where it is. When they do see it....it's a TIGER!!!....until later it is really a markIV. Same with the MG sound contact comming from that village far away. Not sure which building or woods patch that MG fire is comming from. Also...not knowing what type of units they are and other details unless you get a close look at the dead ones (extreme FOW I think it was called) really just made the game great.

I thought they said there was sound contact...but there's no way I can differentiate between any of the ?s...it'd be nice if the sound ones had an ear or something to distinguish them from sight and last known position. Maybe I just haven't played enough lately.

Yeah...it seems we traded Borg Spotting for Borg Identifying, unless again I haven't been paying close enough attention and something has changed since CMSF.

10. FLAGS.

Not really flags themselves but it was cool to have a way for the AI to try and recapture an area that you took from them without scripting. It was a little dynamic this way. It led to counterattacks and such. Not perfect but it was not predictable either.

This can be done by the scenario designer. just make the victory location small enough.

The AI will send units towards that spot regardless of having programmed a set of orders?

Mord.

[winkelried]

The AI will send units towards that spot regardless of having programmed a set of orders?

Nope. I think AI will do nothing without orders.

[Lanzfeld]

11. HQ SPOTTING FOR CLOSE MORTARS.

Now this was one thing that was more realistic in CMBO. No waiting 5 minutes to tell a bearing and range to the 60mm mortar setup 10 meters behind you. It should be 30 seconds for a spotting round and 60 seconds for FFE. I almost always use onboard mortars in CMBN in direct fire now to avoid the unrealistic delays.

[Mord]

Nope. I think AI will do nothing without orders.

Ah, but that was his point...you could drop some flags and the AI would respond to a flag being taken without having to program orders...Made unplanned counter attacks possible. Kinda like a trigger. I think the holy grail would be a mix of what we have now along with triggers.

Mord.

[Lanzfeld]

Ah, but that was his point...you could drop some flags and the AI would respond to a flag being taken without having to program orders...Made unplanned counter attacks possible. Kinda like a trigger. I think the holy grail would be a mix of what we have now along with triggers.

Mord.

Exactly what I meant.

[YankeeDog]

11. HQ SPOTTING FOR CLOSE MORTARS.

Now this was one thing that was more realistic in CMBO. No waiting 5 minutes to tell a bearing and range to the 60mm mortar setup 10 meters behind you. It should be 30 seconds for a spotting round and 60 seconds for FFE. I almost always use onboard mortars in CMBN in direct fire now to avoid the unrealistic delays.

I agree with the general point that units spotting for mortars in close proximity should be able to call in fire a little faster; I've been advocating for this since the CMBN demo came out. But 30 seconds to spotting round, 60 seconds FFE is way too fast. The mortar team still has to establish their frame of reference relative to where the spotter is, do some quick mental math to figure out the bearing, elevation, and charge settings to the target, dial the range and bearing in to the weapon, possibly attach additional charge(s) onto the shell, drop the shell down the tube, wait as long as 30 seconds for the spotting round to drop, get the correction from the spotter, calculate and make the corrections on the mortar, and then finally drop the first FFE round, which will again take as long as 30 seconds to actually fall on the target.

Currently, call time for an on-map 60mm company mortar is something like 4 minutes under average conditions. As a SWAG I'd say that maybe the time should get shortened to 2-3 minutes if the spotting unit is within voice comm distance of the mortar team.

[Baneman]

...

FOG OF WAR:

Totally agree. The player is given excessive information when clicking on enemy icons. An enemy mortar ammo bearer, eh, thanks! And from section three, to boot. Cool! They really need to address this.

...

I still don't understand why this one is so difficult for BFC to change - surely the information has to be placed on the GUI for us to see ?

So why can't they simply replace all the information with the word "Infantry" ?

No algorithms required. Maybe an If-Then statement to leave the info for lower difficulty levels.

[Lanzfeld]

Well I am talking about when the spotteer and HQ are within 20 meters or so. Then the spotter can just give his own bearing and distance and it would only take one or two rounds to correct instead of trying to do all the mental math in his head.

The numbers I gave are from a guy who was actually a 60mm mortar guy in WWII. He said 30 seconds for the spotting round and 60 seconds for FFE. Anything longer and you were not trained correctly.

[Childress]

BUILDINGS:

Troops in CMx1 had the sense to skedaddle when a structure they were occupying was on the verge of collapsing. Stars on the map indicated when this was imminent. Haven't observed this in CM2. Also, a building's defensive properties have been left somewhat vague and discovering them requires trial and error. For example, the fact that a Barn is 360 degrees porous to fire wasn't mentioned in the manual.

[womble]

I still don't understand why this one is so difficult for BFC to change - surely the information has to be placed on the GUI for us to see ?

So why can't they simply replace all the information with the word "Infantry" ?

No algorithms required. Maybe an If-Then statement to leave the info for lower difficulty levels.

There would need to be at least some logic. There could be levels of information when you could tell the difference between ATG ammo bearers and an ordinary fire team, or a crew from an infantry team, but at a lower level of spotting, they'd all show as "infantry" (or "Elite SS mayhem merchants - run away!!!" to lower grades/conditions of troops). At the moment there is only "?" and "fully identified", and "fully identified" filters the info on the icon and info panel according to "difficulty" level.

[Childress]

There would need to be at least some logic. There could be levels of information when you could tell the difference between ATG ammo bearers and an ordinary fire team, or a crew from an infantry team, but at a lower level of spotting, they'd all show as "infantry" (or "Elite SS mayhem merchants - run away!!!" to lower grades/conditions of troops). At the moment there is only "?" and "fully identified", and "fully identified" filters the info on the icon and info panel according to "difficulty" level.

+1. But remember, this enhancement would seriously skew existing scenarios in favor of the defender. As would, in a similar way, increasing the lethality of MGs.

[YankeeDog]

Well I am talking about when the spotteer and HQ are within 20 meters or so. Then the spotter can just give his own bearing and distance and it would only take one or two rounds to correct instead of trying to do all the mental math in his head.

The numbers I gave are from a guy who was actually a 60mm mortar guy in WWII. He said 30 seconds for the spotting round and 60 seconds for FFE. Anything longer and you were not trained correctly.

So now the game has to know when the spotter and the mortar are on the same bearing to the target, and when they're not? Sounds complicated. And certainly not something CMx1 took into account.

Regardless of what your 60mm mortar guy said, the time of flight simply makes response time that rapid impossible at likely combat ranges. For example, time of flight of a 60mm mortar round to 300 yds at charge 1 (most accurate charge setting for this range) is just over 17 seconds. So unless you think everything else necessary to get FFE rounds on target could be done in 26 seconds, there's no way rounds are dropping on target in 1 minute.

But I'm not accusing your WWII mortarman of lying. Rather, I suspect that the times he's citing don't take into account the entire procedure, but instead just the actions of the mortar team itself, which are only part of the picture. There may also be some distortion as a result of looking through the rose-colored glass of memories. Tank commanders all think they took out far more enemy tanks than they possibly could have. AA gunners think they shot down more enemy planes than the actual loss records indicate is possible. And mortar teams probably think they could put rounds on target under combat conditions faster than they really could -- not like anyone was sitting there with a stopwatch recording times during the real thing (as opposed to on the firing range).

I can definitely believe that a mortar team, if set up and ready to go with the tube already pointing in more or less the right direction to the target (so the baseplate doesn't need to be adjusted), could get the first spotting round in the air within 30 seconds of receiving the order for fire from a spotting unit in direct voice comm distance. But the spotting round doesn't actually hit the ground until 10-30 seconds after leaving the tube. One you allow time for the spotter to observe and calculate the corrections, relay this info to the mortar, the mortar team to make adjustments to the range and bearing, etc. MAYBE at very short range where the flight time is only about 10 seconds, and if the mortar team and spotter are close enough that they can whisper to each other (which means much closer than 20m...), and it's very easy to judge the range and bearing to the target, the first FFE round is in the air by 60 seconds after the mortar team receives the initial communication from the spotter. I definitely wouldn't call this a "typical" mission, though.

All sorts of things could make the time to FFE substantially longer --flight times for spotting rounds at longer ranges can be as long as 30 seconds. At times, a second spotting round might be necessary. Depending on terrain and other conditions, it might be difficult to judge how close the spotting round was to the target, requiring more observation time (especially wrt range). Depending on combat conditions, the spotter might have to shout targeting info over gun and shell fire, or, in a close ambush situation, stay silent and communicate entirely by hand signal.

Considering all this, for CM purposes, with all due respect to your WWII vet contact, I don't think 1 minute to FFE is realistic as an average time at all. Maybe as an outlier under ideal conditions, but not typically.

[Lanzfeld]

Okay....well said. So we agree to disagree...or not.

But at least we can agree on SOMETHING less than 5 minutes. Like you said before, 2 to 3 minutes until FFE?

[YankeeDog]

Okay....well said. So we agree to disagree...or not.

But at least we can agree on SOMETHING less than 5 minutes. Like you said before, 2 to 3 minutes until FFE?

Absolutely; calling in fire when the spotter is physically close to the tube should be much faster than when the spotter is hundreds of meters away and communicating via a WWII-era vacuum-tube radio set. We can argue about the details of just how much quicker, but I'd say 40-50% faster is in the right ballpark.

I'll even give you the 1 minute FFE time as an occasional lucky quick response IF the range is short (so the spotting round flight time is <15 seconds) AND the first spotting round lands pretty much on target, meaning little or no adjustment is needed.

EDIT to add: And on a related note, despite changes in 1.10, I still think mortar crews firing in direct lay aren't vulnerable enough - basically, I think mortar crews firing in direct LOS of the enemy should be bullet magnets. Basically, this is the trade-off I'd like to see for mortars: I'm fine with mortars firing in direct lay being as deadly as it is now, but I think doing so should be very risky to the mortar crew unless any enemy in LOS is already suppressed. But I think firing mortars indirect lay with a nearby observer in voice comms should be easier. Or, faster, at least.

[Agua]

.

2. THICK FOG.

3. FIRE.

6. FOG OF WAR. (graphic representation).

9. ANTI AIRCRAFT ARTY.

Yeah, I miss these as well.

[altipueri]

All in all CMBO more fun than CMBN and it plays on my laptop and notebook.