Is ASl all that relevant anymore as the legacy leading towards CM?

[sburke]

Figured I'd launch a discussion NOT about the upgrades, or MP lobby or the stupid friggin Vista patch.

In another thread WriterJWA had noted

I've talked to a few other CMBN players who lurk around the forums and a lot of them feel there is a general "ASL Good Ole Boy" or "Big Fish/Small Pond" veneer to a lot of the threads here.

I'm not suggesting ASL is a bad game, I've got the rulebook sitting on a book shelf and I sometime miss playing it, but it does seem to color the decisions of game development here. At least that is sometimes the impression being made. It definitely colors the tone of a lot of the threads, especially when younger players get on here to bring up more current gaming concepts (such as co-play).

I thought it an interesting topic (and not at all offensive). It actually got me thinking about how much of my gaming perspective for a tactical WW2 game is based originally on SL/ASL. The more I thought about that though I was wondering how much of that is still relevant.

CMx1 was certainly for me almost a direct leap. Even the 3 stooges running around looked like the 3 man squad counters versus the 2 man team counters etc. It was a very easy visual transition. The options seemed more streamlined, but the game engine handled all those ridiculous calculations if i wanted to use some option like dash across a street. And I didn't have to figure out who in my 20 mile radius might be interested and not have some bizarre blog that would make me totally uncomfortable. I'd already had that experience dealing with deadheads.

Moving to Cmx2 however feels to me like a different animal. It isn't just a visual thing, to me it feels (yes very subjective and totally vague, I know) very different. I also think I play the game different. I know the AS are still there but I do not play the game as if I am on a game board. (I do not use any grid mods, they ruin the immersion for me.)

For years folks have discussed the transition to 1:1 and relative spotting and I have been playing CMSF for quite a while. Perhaps though in the return to WW2 I now have a more familiar environment to compare. I think the new engine has gone beyond the obvious and created a really subtle far reaching difference that fundamentally has shifted the game. I realize I am not being very concrete here which is why I figured to open the thread. Am I the only person who feels like there is a significant break in CMx2 with it's past legacy? I am talking about beyond the obvious stuff.

Writer JMA I know you said these guys tend to just lurk around the forum, but I'd genuinely like to hear their perspective. I obviously have a very subjective sense about how I view the game and I do have a legacy going back to SL/ASL. Yet I also feel Cmx2 is moving beyond that. I don't think it is a question of MP lobbys and what not. I for one would welcome a multiplayer team game with FOW all the way around so you weren't sure even what the guy on your side was doing. Whether that is something BF prioritizes however is up to them. It's enough that they know there is interest. If they feel they can do it and it is appropriate given their other priorites cool. If not, I am still far too busy playing CM to worry about what it isn't.

[mjkerner]

Sburke, I took note of his comments as well. I never played CMx1, so for me a better comparison to ASL is the John Tiller series. Regardless, CMx2 is more than an electronic version of ASL. It is a serious computer representation of my 50 years of hearing first hand accounts, watching innumerable documentaries, war movies and TV shows, and thousands of books, magazines (for you young folks, they were like books but without the hard crust!), and even comic books.

ASL was a cardboard representation of that, but of course too unwieldy and labor intensive. It did keep my imagination working in order to visualize what was taking place on the game board, but with CMBN and beyond, I don't need my imagination to visualize things (albeit in a very sanitized way).

CMx2 does something else, which perhaps CMx1 did--I just don't know-- it has given me a better understanding of the "smallness" of WWII combat. What I mean is, I had always had a problem understanding when a veteran would say that they had no idea what, say, 1 squad was doing over there across the street while 2nd squad was getting hammered by a machine gun over here. Or better yet, how just 50 yards away, one squad is being blasted to hell while another is in relative peace and quiet. I just couldn't get it in my head (usually) around how that could be. I mean they are just 25 yds from each other according to this map I am looking at. Movies didn't help much at this, either, because ofcourse they will show you as much or as little of the movie set battlefield as theywant, and from the perspective they want you to see it.

So, for me, CMBN really, really, reinforces the reality that a battle is made up of many little individual bits of combat, each little action being very personal to the small units...even to the point where one section or squad is terrorized by mortar fire, while their neighboring squad sits in relative piece.

[WriterJWA]

Where I personally see the direct line leading back to ASL (and other hex-based board wargames) is the turn-based, WeGo, style of play. BFC did a heck of a job revolutionizing turn-based tactical gaming with CMx1, but it pulls from the wargame/board-game market for the nucleus of that method. For those not savvy with basic Advanced Squad Leader rules, each turn was broken into phases, some of which allowed opposing players to react to players conducting turns (reaction firing during a movement phase, etc...).

WeGo simplified those opposing phases by dumping all unit reactions into the "center" of the turn, the one minute where the action happens. It's a great merge of board game-style of play and technology.

In ASL, there is a strong tendency to focus on the micromanagement of the individual unit ... simply because you have time to do so. Between slow planning, attention to detail given to your troops, and the calculations needed to compute ToHit numbers and other administrative details, fifteen minutes of scenario time could take hours of real time. In CMx1 and x2 WeGo, it doesn't take hours ... but there is still that micromanagement, that focus on the small unit details. The only difference is there are no computations to make. You're under no REAL rush of a clock ticking behind you ... just like in ASL.

Note: There is nothing wrong with playing this way! Don't start yelling! I'd argue, however, that the majority of the players use this method to play the game (perhaps a poll??). It's too strong a statement to suggest that RT feels like a throwaway game mode, but it does feel like a stepchild.

[Baneman]

Interesting points.

I came to CM1 from ASL too, but initially via Steel Panthers - which was the first ASL-to-PC wargame I feel ( even had the Hexes ).

So when I graduated to CM1, I was initially drawn in by the fact that it was "3D" and of course, the WeGo avoided all the pitfalls and/or gamey aspects of YGIG. In that respect, I felt that ASL had already long been left behind ( apart from, probably, the desire to have the wargame "as realistic as possible" ). In addition, the fact that the TacAI was doing all the "stuff" and I was giving the orders ( which might not be followed ) made it substantially different.

So to me, ASL lives very far in the past and even CM1, I feel, was a very different animal - the only connection IMO, is that ASL and CM1 were probably played by the very same (kind of) gamers.

CM2 ( I was never into moderns, so never got into CMSF - tried the demo when CMBN was due and still never got further than a few turns ) is again, to me, quite different to CM1 and that certainly took some "paradigm-shift" on my part.

The common thread between all three games is the attempt to make a realistic wargame with the best tools available, but I think each stands alone in its particular timeframe.

... my conclusion is weak, but my points, I believe, are sound

[mjkerner]

Oh, another thing. Since I first started playing war games (and actually before that after reading "Education Before Verdun" as a teenager--older brother had a lot of war books!) I have a tendency when driving through the country side, or hiking it for that matter, to constantly be looking at terrain for good defensive positions and offensive avenues of attack relative to some piece of terrain, or the road itself. It's just sort of a game with me, but I know some combat veterans often do that, my brother for one (the protagonist in E B V does so at the end of the book after the war while out on a picnic with his sweetheart--IIRC he was a machine gunner in the Kaiser's army, and was constantly checking fields of fire in his everyday postwar world). Anyway, I don't do it as much anymore now that I can do so in a game, and at least with some purpose!

[mjkerner]

Where I personally see the direct line leading back to ASL (and other hex-based board wargames) is the turn-based, WeGo, style of play. BFC did a heck of a job revolutionizing turn-based tactical gaming with CMx1, but it pulls from the wargame/board-game market for the nucleus of that method. For those not savvy with basic Advanced Squad Leader rules, each turn was broken into phases, some of which allowed opposing players to react to players conducting turns (reaction firing during a movement phase, etc...).

WeGo simplified those opposing phases by dumping all unit reactions into the "center" of the turn, the one minute where the action happens. It's a great merge of board game-style of play and technology.

In ASL, there is a strong tendency to focus on the micromanagement of the individual unit ... simply because you have time to do so. Between slow planning, attention to detail given to your troops, and the calculations needed to compute ToHit numbers and other administrative details, fifteen minutes of scenario time could take hours of real time. In CMx1 and x2 WeGo, it doesn't take hours ... but there is still that micromanagement, that focus on the small unit details. The only difference is there are no computations to make. You're under no REAL rush of a clock ticking behind you ... just like in ASL.

Note: There is nothing wrong with playing this way! Don't start yelling! I'd argue, however, that the majority of the players use this method to play the game (perhaps a poll??). It's too strong a statement to suggest that RT feels like a throwaway game mode, but it does feel like a stepchild.

Good points! I started with CMSF and always played RT, because the stop-start method drove me nuts, even though I missed the ability to go back and watch my own, homemade war movie.

With CMBN, after a few RT games, I went to WEGO and never looked back...mostly for the reasons you state, WriterJWA. But the reason I do that is at least two-fold: 1) I really do like to watch what amounts to mini homemade war movies, and 2) for the reasons I tried to get at in my earlier post, which is that studying the ground and being involved in the minutae of combat at the pointy end has fascinated me all my life, and anything I can do to better understand that is a good thing, since many loved ones and millions and millions of others had to had to actually do the real thing and not in the comfort of their mancave.

[sburke]

The only difference is there are no computations to make. You're under no REAL rush of a clock ticking behind you ... just like in ASL.

Note: There is nothing wrong with playing this way! Don't start yelling! I'd argue, however, that the majority of the players use this method to play the game (perhaps a poll??). It's too strong a statement to suggest that RT feels like a throwaway game mode, but it does feel like a stepchild.

LOL yes please. All around we have had a couple of threads now where we all got to vent our spleen. There is no right way vs wrong way here.

I totally agree there is no clock to play against, but I don't think that is truly a WeGo versus RTS thing. RT is going to get pauses as well. What Wego does for me is stop me from realizing after moving one unit that there is now an MG nest facing the rest of my force and stopping all their movement. I have to make a full 60 second plan and then pay for my mistakes etc.

I don't honestly know whether more players use RT vs WeGo. It seems a number of folks at BF play RT which I think undermines some of the expression of it as the stepchild, however not being an RTS player my position on that is probably poorly informed and skewed.

Interesting though that you would feel WeGo is more the direct desendant to ASL. I would actually feel WeGo moves away from the ASL model again because in ASL as in RT, you can have your other units react immediately to what one unit discovers, in WeGo you can not. The net effect to me is it would seem WeGo forces you to slow down. Your action decision/cycle is based on 60 second intervals not an immediate RT feed.

However that wasn't quite where I was going. (or maybe it was considering how vague I have been trying to formulate my subjective reactions to CMx2).

I think there is something in the 1:1 representation that goes beyond the counter feel of CMx1. It isn't just that now individual soldiers react, spot and fire on targets separately. Somehow in doing so I am losing control over pieces of the battle and I have to take that into account when issuing orders. Prior I told a squad what to shoot at and the whole squad did so. Now that may not be the case. The TAC AI takes over a significant portion of what I used to have absolute control over. In a sense I feel like a squad commander. I tell the squad, "MG over there, suppressive fire!!!" In Cmx1 they did what they were told (assuming they weren't cowering etc). In CMx2 I feel like I get a range of reactions from "Yes Sarge, but I need to reload" to "where? I don't see nothin" and sometimes - "screw that there is a guy with an MP 50 feet away!!!"

I think perhaps it is the loss of absolute control that has changed the game for me.

[Broadsword56]

You nailed it: "Control" seems to come up time and again as the aspect that leads some players to have issues with the game, or not.

I started out as a board wargamer since 1970 and the AH "classics," and then PanzerBlitz blew everything away and made me like the tactical level best of all. Yet I never got into SL or ASL, ever, and I think it's because I perceived a paradox in boardgaming: The more realistic and detailed a tactical boardgame tried to be, the slower and duller and more removed and LESS realistic it seemed to get in regard to the visceral phenomenon of combat.

But CM changed all that. Now a wargame can be massively complex, far more than any boardgame, yet because it's on a computer that can all happen "under the hood" and I can enjoy a simpler, yet more visceral 3D experience of combat simulation -- the "personal war movie" that mjkerner referred to.

To me, this is great because I can have my cake and eat it too. But I think maybe some wargaming hobbyists who started with and really enjoyed the micromanagement of ASL type games may find it harder to "let go" and just enjoy the ride -- also, people with a more mathematical/technical/scientific bent and training may feel compelled to "look under the hood" and can't really enjoy a game as much unless/until they know how those armor hits are calculated, whether they got the ROF right on a particular weapon, etc.

I'm not dissing these folks, and frankly I value their presence because they push CM to become a better and better game. For me, the real draw is the history and the chance to feel as if I'm in a time machine. The more the game feels real in that way, the better I like it. And one of the things I see over and over again in historical accounts is how much chaos and lack of control have affected warfare.

I'm so extreme in this regard that I find myself accepting even some known bugs or limitations of CMBN and say to myself, "well, the runner must have gotten shot or the phone wires got cut..." etc., as a way of explaining the failure and just chalking it up to the "friction" of combat. I don't like flaws or bugs in any game, but it's my way of trying to keep things in perspective.

In the battle sburke and I have been playing now (which has crashed due to a bug that BFC is tracking down), we've seen at least two instances where a single US soldier has left his unit, disobeying the unit's movement orders, and sprinted at full speed down a road toward the GERMAN map edge. Once guy got gunned down just as he nearly reached German lines, and the other one actually made it, I think. Anyway -- as annoying as this has been, it also hasn't bothered me that much because I recall reading so many times about how every GI had a personal breaking point -- and that it was common at various times for some soldiers to simply break down and reach their limit. Do I want to know the technical reasons for this phenomenon and see it fixed? Hell yes. But does it break the game for me or bug me to the point that I enjoy CM any less? Hell no.

[WriterJWA]

Interesting though that you would feel WeGo is more the direct desendant to ASL. I would actually feel WeGo moves away from the ASL model again because in ASL as in RT, you can have your other units react immediately to what one unit discovers, in WeGo you can not. The net effect to me is it would seem WeGo forces you to slow down. Your action decision/cycle is based on 60 second intervals not an immediate RT feed.

Good point! In ASL, the player has the option to react, whereas in CMx1 and even moreso x2, they may not. The 1:1 aspect also creates a wide space between the mechanics of ASL and CMx2, but I also think that is in part an extension of technology just adding in what we really wanted on the game board, but couldn't have at the time.

There is definitely an "unforgiving minute" feeling in WeGo. I think mid-scenario savable TCP/IP WeGo is a must.

With CMBN, after a few RT games, I went to WEGO and never looked back...mostly for the reasons you state, WriterJWA. But the reason I do that is at least two-fold: 1) I really do like to watch what amounts to mini homemade war movies, and 2) for the reasons I tried to get at in my earlier post, which is that studying the ground and being involved in the minutae of combat at the pointy end has fascinated me all my life, and anything I can do to better understand that is a good thing, since many loved ones and millions and millions of others had to had to actually do the real thing and not in the comfort of their mancave.

That is a definite bonus of WeGO, one I often forget about in during gameplay. I usually wind up anxious to see what happens next. Plus ... I've played RT for so long that I've gotten used to not having that function. I've been playing WeGo more often lately, though, just so I get re-educated in what that type of gameplay is like. Timing is a huge thing ... much larger than in RT.

When I seek out and play games like these, I usually come at it with the question — "Will I be able to experience the same tactical problems as the field commander on the ground?" In CM I like playing at the rifle company/team level, so I'm essentially the company commander. The little details about a particular squad's disposition I sometimes overlook because I'm more focused on what my whole platoons are doing. I sometimes tire of the constant micromanagement, but that's more of a TacAI/C2 problem and CERTAINLY NOT limited to any Combat Mission game.

[sburke]

When I seek out and play games like these, I usually come at it with the question — "Will I be able to experience the same tactical problems as the field commander on the ground?" In CM I like playing at the rifle company/team level, so I'm essentially the company commander.

Exactly However one aspect I am always interested in is how much one soldier, or that one MG etc can affect the course of a battle so I definitely don't want to give up semi control over those units.

The little details about a particular squad's disposition I sometimes overlook because I'm more focused on what my whole platoons are doing. I sometimes tire of the constant micromanagement, but that's more of a TacAI/C2 problem and CERTAINLY NOT limited to any Combat Mission game.

If you checked out Broadsword and my AAR I tended to do the same. I focused on the positions and state of individual platoons as the basic maneuver element. I think this is essential in CM to get you in the habit of taking care of your units C2 at the base level. If you fail there, you are likely failing all the way up the chain.

[mjkerner]

You nailed it: "Control" seems to come up time and again as the aspect that leads some players to have issues with the game, or not.

Yes, he did exactly nail it.

I'm so extreme in this regard that I find myself accepting even some known bugs or limitations of CMBN and say to myself, "well, the runner must have gotten shot or the phone wires got cut..." etc., as a way of explaining the failure and just chalking it up to the "friction" of combat. I don't like flaws or bugs in any game, but it's my way of trying to keep things in perspective.

That's how I've always dealt with the games various problems and shortcomings. I refuse to let them destroy the overall enjoyment this simulation brings me. Bad things are simply c'est la guerre!

And, BFC will, in fact, eventually take care of most issues.

[womble]

Interesting discussion.

I never played ASL, coming from a figures background for the WW2 fix, but I've played a lot of other boardgames, and I think there's, in addition to the very valid points about control and indeterminacy that have been made, a point at which, when it becomes fine enough, the "grid" begins to fade, and the experience starts to feel more analog, like a figures tabletop and less digital like a hex-based game. CMx1 started that movement, and CMx2, with its finer granularity and 1:1 modelling continues it. And the real world that we live in and soldiers really fight in is much more nearly analog on the human scale than it is digital.

[Sergei]

You guys are talking about age/sex/location, right?

[sburke]

You guys are talking about age/sex/location, right?

Of course, what did YOU think we meant? Advanced Senile Laggards?

[Battlefront.com]

Fun discussion. To weigh in...

CMx1 had nothing to do with ASL, so any comparisons to it are simply coincidental. Having said that, since they both try to emulate the same subject matter, of course there are similarities. And true enough that CMx1 benefitted from board and computer game conventions which were developed in the 30 years prior. So more similarities there.

CMx2 is a little different. It's primary influence is, obviously, CMx1. There's tons of direct similarities between the two because we made both. But we also started borrowing ideas from other games which might not even be called wargames. RTS and FPS both were definitely in mind when making CMx2, and they continue to be. Innovation is very often taking a bit of new ideas and mixing them with ideas outside of the norm for whatever is being developed.

Unfortunately we have to tread very carefully. If we try to chase the mass market we will likely fail if we also try to keep CM a "serious" wargame. No wargame company has ever successfully hit the broader market with a "serious" wargame. The closest to make it was Close Combat 2, but that was partly because Microsoft was behind it. And they still didn't really get there, hence Microsoft dropping them.

This means when we look at our limited resources we need to make sure the core audience is adequately catered to. Online multiplayer, unfortunately, isn't a top priority for the majority of our customers. The bulk that want to play multiplayer are probably content with PBEM.

This isn't to say there is no room for moving the game forward into other areas. Uh... hello... RealTime? How many of our hardcore customers have any interest in it? But it was something we could do that didn't take away from the hardcore and did offer us a better overall game (even the WeGo game is made better because of it). That's the sort of features that we don't hesitate to put in. An online multiplayer lobby, sad to say, isn't one of them.

We will continue to evolve and improve CM over time. Fortunately the core customers are pretty well taken care of now and many multiplayer requests are good for WeGoers as well. Version 2 has some nice stuff for everybody, Version 3 will have more.

Steve

[sburke]

Fun discussion. To weigh in...

CMx1 had nothing to do with ASL, so any comparisons to it are simply coincidental. Having said that, since they both try to emulate the same subject matter, of course there are similarities. And true enough that CMx1 benefitted from board and computer game conventions which were developed in the 30 years prior. So more similarities there.

Steve

Saw your post on the other thread as well. Funny cause if I had to have bet my house I would have been sure you guys had tried ASL and said -"what a pain in the friggin a**, can't a computer do all this for me?".

Now it's clear, you never played ASL so you really don't know anything about wargames

But getting back to the core point, this isn't about MP and Lobbys etc. No offense to the guys that are interested in that. Fundamentally I started the thread as I think the way you guys put together CMx2 and particularly the TAC AI has for me made CM even more unique in the genre than CMx1 if that is possible. More than anything else I think that is why for me the CMx1 discs have become collectible coasters. (no offense intended)

[Sequoia]

Yeah I could have swore I read way back before Hasbro bought Avalon Hill it was you guys who got approached to make Squad Leader the computer game and you took one look at the ASL rule book and said "Forget it, We'll do it our way".

[WriterJWA]

This isn't to say there is no room for moving the game forward into other areas. Uh... hello... RealTime? How many of our hardcore customers have any interest in it? But it was something we could do that didn't take away from the hardcore and did offer us a better overall game (even the WeGo game is made better because of it). That's the sort of features that we don't hesitate to put in. An online multiplayer lobby, sad to say, isn't one of them.

I see where you're at here.... if you've got your market cornered, then you've got it made, so to speak.

Has there been any thought of a potential military market? Let me describe what I mean...

U.S. Navy War College and the U.S. Army Command & General Staff School use tactical decision games to teach officers C3I skills (command, control, communication, and intelligence). One game, Scourge of War: Gettysburg, which is basically a Civil War equivalent of CMx2 (though not nearly as expansive or clean) and built by a small indie company, offers players the ability to control brigades and divisions on the same team and either fight (a weak) AI, or against other human players. The Army has licensed this game ... a game depicting 150 year old combat ... to teach officers command coordination in a real time environment.

When I think of things like CoPlay ... this is what I think of: three or four guys playing the role of platoon and company commanders and working together (or not, depending on personalities ... which is the beauty of it) to accomplish a mission. Scenarios like "Purple Heart Draw," and others would be perfect for this. The added human command and control element could, potentially, make the game lucrative to services looking to train officers in coordination. Think about when CMSF2 hits the streets....

BUT! I don't want to dive down the rabbit hole of CoPlay ... it's been beat to death. I just wanted to show where that feature could possibly pay dividends.

Moving on....

When I seek out and play games like these, I usually come at it with the question — "Will I be able to experience the same tactical problems as the field commander on the ground?" In CM I like playing at the rifle company/team level, so I'm essentially the company commander. The little details about a particular squad's disposition I sometimes overlook because I'm more focused on what my whole platoons are doing. I sometimes tire of the constant micromanagement, but that's more of a TacAI/C2 problem and CERTAINLY NOT limited to any Combat Mission game.

When I said this, one point I meant to make, but didn't (thanks work!!), is that playing the company commander in real time has one chief realism aspect to it that WeGo could never have. It forces you to make split second decisions and presses on you the need to work faster than the enemy, which is something combat commanders have to deal with in the chaos of combat. It makes you work to get inside the enemy's decision loop and gain the initiative, or die trying. That is a crucial factor of real time.

[WriterJWA]

Yeah I could have swore I read way back before Hasbro bought Avalon Hill it was you guys who got approached to make Squad Leader the computer game and you took one look at the ASL rule book and said "Forget it, We'll do it our way".

I read this somewhere, too, actually....

[Sergei]

Yeah I could have swore I read way back before Hasbro bought Avalon Hill it was you guys who got approached to make Squad Leader the computer game and you took one look at the ASL rule book and said "Forget it, We'll do it our way".

I believe this is incorrect - Charles (Big Time Software) was making games for Avalon Hill first and Computer Squad Leader was to be one of those, but in the end Combat Mission was to be a beast of its own:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/computer-squad-leader-rip-again-2464372

According to Moylan, Computer Squad Leader was "originally intended to be a combination of the Advanced Squad Leader board game and new material." Now free of Avalon Hill, Combat Mission will contain none of the material from Advanced Squad Leader and won't have to live under that heavy moniker. Moylan will not publicly state why he broke away from Avalon Hill except to say that one reason was "strategic differences."

Combat Mission will use "state-of-the-art 3D graphics and 3D sound," stated Moylan. "The overall look is a bit like Myth, but unlike that game, Combat Mission is turn-based and fully three-dimensional.... Combat Mission is much like playing with World War Two miniatures, except these miniatures come to life and fight it out in a totally immersive, adrenaline-pumping combat experience."

I do love the Myth comparison oh god computer games have changed so much...

There's also this gem:

Avalon Hill's previous attempt to create a computerized version of Advanced Squad Leader turned out to be Atomic Games' Beyond Squad Leader. Disagreements over the role of that game led towards Atomic's split with Avalon Hill, and the game subsequently became Close Combat, published by Microsoft. CSL has been in development since the middle of 1997.

[Broadsword56]

When I said this, one point I meant to make, but didn't (thanks work!!), is that playing the company commander in real time has one chief realism aspect to it that WeGo could never have. It forces you to make split second decisions and presses on you the need to work faster than the enemy, which is something combat commanders have to deal with in the chaos of combat. It makes you work to get inside the enemy's decision loop and gain the initiative, or die trying. That is a crucial factor of real time.

I agree that you get a more adrenaline-filled time-pressured experience of the game in RT that more closely resembles that physical/mental/time stress aspect of trying not to let the enemy get inside your decision cycle.

But...The challenge of getting inside the enemy's OODA loop and preventing him from getting inside yours exists in the game every bit as much in WeGo. The only difference is that you, the player, get to relax and think about your decisions and don't have to experience the physical dimension of sweat, info overload, nerves, reflexes, etc. But we've all seen that initiative is very real in CMBN WeGo, and losing it can have devastating consequences. If I calmly throw more problems at my opponent in a given number of turns than he can deal with, and he starts reacting to my moves instead of making me react to his, then I'm inside his OODA loop, the same as in RT play -- it's just experienced differently in the mind/body of the player.

People who say RT is more realistic often overlook that while they're busy twitching and zooming and mimicking a more realistic subjective experience of the commander, they're making their individual squads and teams behave less intelligently -- hence less realistically -- because the player in his haste is missing information that IRL the squad or team leader on the ground would know and be reacting to.

[Baneman]

I agree that you get a more adrenaline-filled time-pressured experience of the game in RT that more closely resembles that physical/mental/time stress aspect of trying not to let the enemy get inside your decision cycle.

But...The challenge of getting inside the enemy's OODA loop and preventing him from getting inside yours exists in the game every bit as much in WeGo. The only difference is that you, the player, get to relax and think about your decisions and don't have to experience the physical dimension of sweat, info overload, nerves, reflexes, etc. But we've all seen that initiative is very real in CMBN WeGo, and losing it can have devastating consequences. If I calmly throw more problems at my opponent in a given number of turns than he can deal with, and he starts reacting to my moves instead of making me react to his, then I'm inside his OODA loop, the same as in RT play -- it's just experienced differently in the mind/body of the player.

People who say RT is more realistic often overlook that while they're busy twitching and zooming and mimicking a more realistic subjective experience of the commander, they're making their individual squads and teams behave less intelligently -- hence less realistically -- because the player in his haste is missing information that IRL the squad or team leader on the ground would know and be reacting to.

This expresses perfectly my opinion as well. Cogently put, Broadsword56.

[sburke]

I agree that you get a more adrenaline-filled time-pressured experience of the game in RT that more closely resembles that physical/mental/time stress aspect of trying not to let the enemy get inside your decision cycle.

But...The challenge of getting inside the enemy's OODA loop and preventing him from getting inside yours exists in the game every bit as much in WeGo. The only difference is that you, the player, get to relax and think about your decisions and don't have to experience the physical dimension of sweat, info overload, nerves, reflexes, etc. But we've all seen that initiative is very real in CMBN WeGo, and losing it can have devastating consequences. If I calmly throw more problems at my opponent in a given number of turns than he can deal with, and he starts reacting to my moves instead of making me react to his, then I'm inside his OODA loop, the same as in RT play -- it's just experienced differently in the mind/body of the player.

People who say RT is more realistic often overlook that while they're busy twitching and zooming and mimicking a more realistic subjective experience of the commander, they're making their individual squads and teams behave less intelligently -- hence less realistically -- because the player in his haste is missing information that IRL the squad or team leader on the ground would know and be reacting to.

LOL I agree. I understand WriterJWA's point, but it gets split into the mental and the physical reaction. I am never going to get inside anyone's decision cycle in CM in RT. I am a 2 finger typist for crying out loud.

I think both styles have their own way of doing that, WeGo just allows us not so fast on the keyboard to also participate.

[Battlefront.com]

I see where you're at here.... if you've got your market cornered, then you've got it made, so to speak.

Provided the market is sufficient enough to cover the costs of catering to them, yes. This is the fortunate position we find ourselves in. We're not getting rich by even modest standards, but we are able to take care of business needs and not feel like we should quit and do something else.

Has there been any thought of a potential military market? Let me describe what I mean...

Yes, and we actively tried to secure a contract. Came close a couple of times, but the deck is stacked against anything that doesn't fit existing specifications. It's one trick the bigger companies use to make sure competition is suppressed. And the officers who championed us found that out.

Combat Mission is designed to be a consumer entertainment product, not a training tool. Especially since their definition of what a training tool is can be dated back to the Stone Age Which means "as is" Combat Mission has a limited potential within militaries.

To make CM attractive to the military is easy. We just need to take about a year off from commercial work and implement the features they have repeatedly asked for since our first meeting in 2000 (got to see a T-72 blow up... that was worth the trip!). Because the military definitely has a "build it and we might buy it" attitude. The latter part is the aspect we find troubling.

Now, if some military out there was smart... they'd float us a tiny fraction of the cash they shovel into things like VBS2 and we could give them exactly what their mid level officers keep saying they need. And we could do it fairly quickly, too, since we'd take that money and hire out the people. Maybe 1 year. Not bad, but not their way of thinking.

Steve

[JonS]

When I said this, one point I meant to make, but didn't (thanks work!!), is that playing the company commander in real time has one chief realism aspect to it that WeGo could never have. It forces you to make split second decisions and presses on you the need to work faster than the enemy, which is something combat commanders have to deal with in the chaos of combat. It makes you work to get inside the enemy's decision loop and gain the initiative, or die trying. That is a crucial factor of real time.

I don't mean to pile on here, but the highlighted bit betrays a parochial perspective.

You don't have to work faster than the enemy. You have to use the time available to you better than the enemy. It's a subtle but distinct difference, and it applies equally as well to RT as it does to WEGO. Quite how you use the time plays out a little differently in the two styles, and in RT it might seem like just working faster than the enemy is the key. But it isn't, really. Generating more clicks-per-second isn't going to help you much if you just keep mashing your troops forward across an open field in the face of heavy HMG fire.

In an ongoing custom-QB PBEM I've just had an interesting and humbling experience. In the first few turns I was caught off guard by the enemy's forward deployment but with a bit of force-concentration ad some luck I was able to seize the initiative, get well inside my opponent's OODA loop and absolutely hammered him while suffering negligible losses. But I pressed my advantage too hard and too far, made worse by having my advance diverge on at least three separate axes. Like all attacks, it reached a culminating point, and now I've lost the initiative, my forces are scattered and individually weak, and my losses are climbing exponentially. He's going to be inside my OODA loop for quite a while now, as I scramble to consolidate and sort myself out. How well I can do that will determine how the next phase of this battle goes.

Oh, and we're not-quite 30 minutes into a 2hr game.