Do we really want them?

[Sublime]

yes, cause i just copied it and didn't remember who wrote it. Is it such a big problem? But I didn't call you a creep

No it's not a huge problem and I know you didn't call me a creep. But it's generally good to quote people if you use their exact words. If you had said I wasn't the first to say this, or someone else mentioned it that would be one thing, but to repeat what I said word for word is different. Of course this whole thing doesn't matter, and it's a silly example, but it's a bad habit that in more academic circles is tantamount to plagiarism. Of course the original post was a joke anyways, well the one referring to you quoting me. I'm fine with CM as it is, however I think it's amusing where everyone draws their own personal line. For example I'm pretty sure a lot of people against gore have used swastika mods in the past for realism. Of course if CM represented more gore and people writhing around, it wouldn't bother me either. It's what it really looked like, and I'm not amusing myself by torturing real people in strange 'Most Dangerous Game', I'm playing a video game.

[JonS]

I was also under the impression that the Germans used flame weapons quite a lot for routing out the paras from their well defended positions.

Quite possibly. And then there's all the other bazillion places where flamethrowers 'made an impact' between 6 June and 8 May - there's nothing special, from a flamethrower perspective, about Market-Garden.

[JonS]

Why are the American paratroopers talking funny?

They're Poles.

[para]

Quite possibly. And then there's all the other bazillion places where flamethrowers 'made an impact' between 6 June and 8 May - there's nothing special, from a flamethrower perspective, about Market-Garden.

If flame weapons were used in a bazillion other places and they are nothing special, then they should be in the game. Would you agree?

[Sublime]

They're Poles.

ahaha I was trying to get a rise making reference to the Brit paras. You know, Americans think we won WW2 singlehanded and all that. Funny I didn't think of the Poles. Remember the Polish voices in Close Combat 2? ugh.

[para]

ahaha I was trying to get a rise making reference to the Brit paras. You know, Americans think we won WW2 singlehanded and all that. Funny I didn't think of the Poles. Remember the Polish voices in Close Combat 2? ugh.

Didn't work Even Close Combat:ABTF had flame throwers with smoking charred remains

[JonS]

If flame weapons were used in a bazillion other places and they are nothing special, then they should be in the game. Would you agree?

"Should" be in the game? No, I don't agree.

It'd be nice, and I'll be happy when they do get included, but I'm not particularly concerned that they aren't there yet, and aren't pinning all my hopes and fears on their inclusion in any given module.

There's too much other stuff that's already in the game, most of which I've barely touched yet, to get wrapped around the axles over stuff that isn't.

[JonS]

ahaha I was trying to get a rise making reference to the Brit paras. You know, Americans think we won WW2 singlehanded and all that. Funny I didn't think of the Poles. Remember the Polish voices in Close Combat 2? ugh.

Rofl. It seems I scored an inadvertent 'gotcha!' :cool:

[Sublime]

ah yes you did. I concede this one..

[slysniper]

I see some of you have forgotten to take your medication again.

Really, take your pills and chill

[MikeyD]

This is funny. In all the discussions I've seen about flamethrowers over the years I can't recall anyone bringing up the topic of burning/dying soldier animations. That's so far outside of BFC's zeitgeist that nobody (that I know of) has even thought to bring up the topic. Buildings, trees, fields, vehicles. But I can't recall the subject of flaming soldiers ever being raised.

[hoolaman]

I'm all for fire in the game, but I'm indifferent to flamethrowers. I seem to recall that they were rarely used in western Europe.

Yeah I can do without flamethrower units if I had to, in my old time CM games they rarely closed to flame range except in some gratuitous mopping up or a rare ambush. Flame squads seemed to be the very highest priority target for the borg targeting AI.

Fire in a building OTOH can start from all sorts of HE hits, and creates interesting tactical problems.

[DasMorbo]

Interesting discussion.

A little reflection on cultural settings. As mentioned, the russians have a much more 'matter-of-fact' view on the whole topic of war. I'm doing military scale modelling for close to 20 years now. One thing I have to say about western modellers is that most war scenes they create (about 95%) is pretentious kitsch. Completely sanitized stories of camping trips with tanks and friendship between men. Most people I talked to here in Germany, modellers or not, shy away from the realities of war.

Now comes your average russian or belorussian modeller and he shows all the dirt and grit and pain... And I think to my self: 'Hey that dude is far more in in connection with reality than we are.'

My opinion about this whole flamethrower-issue:

Let's have them.

I can fully understand the motivation to start this thread and the moral issues. I had these issues too. But I solved the moral problem in a way. Think of chinese philosophy here. They say everything is bipolar. I think they are right. I am for sure. I am a nice person most of the time, helpful and kind but I f**king love war games. I get an evil grin when the 5th and 6th Sherman falls to my Panthers or my arti really hits them in the guts. Or when I can take retaliatory measures for my fallen pixeltruppen. I'm enchanted by the fascination of war for 20 years now. I think this is the darker side of my personality.

If you ask me, all people are like that, but most aren't aware of it.

Hard to find a (male) person which doesn't play violent pc-games or likes violent movies.

Greetings

Olf

[Michael Emrys]

This is funny. In all the discussions I've seen about flamethrowers over the years I can't recall anyone bringing up the topic of burning/dying soldier animations. That's so far outside of BFC's zeitgeist that nobody (that I know of) has even thought to bring up the topic. Buildings, trees, fields, vehicles. But I can't recall the subject of flaming soldiers ever being raised.

About flamethrowers you may be right. But a lot of this discussion is just a rehash of ground that got tediously covered back even before Beyond Overlord was released. There was a small coterie even then demanding blood and gore and dismembered bodies all over the ground. When they didn't get their way, they went away mad. I don't think they ever got what CM is about.

Michael

[agusto]

I can fully understand the motivation to start this thread and the moral issues. I had these issues too. But I solved the moral problem in a way. Think of chinese philosophy here. They say everything is bipolar. I think they are right. I am for sure. I am a nice person most of the time, helpful and kind but I f**king love war games. I get an evil grin when the 5th and 6th Sherman falls to my Panthers or my arti really hits them in the guts. Or when I can take retaliatory measures for my fallen pixeltruppen. I'm enchanted by the fascination of war for 20 years now. I think this is the darker side of my personality.

If you ask me, all people are like that, but most aren't aware of it.

Hard to find a (male) person which doesn't play violent pc-games or likes violent movies.

But where is that fascination for war and violence coming from? I think it is all about excitement and power. When you kill someone, this is the most direct way one human beeing can exercise power over another one. There is also probably nothing more thrilling than risking you own life in the attempt to kill someone else. These two are the "positive" experiences one can make in combat. In reality, they acompanied by the tons of negative experiences one makes when partcipating in a war and probably no sane person would say "yeah, that was worth it!". In a computer game though, war is effectively reduced to these to: exercising power by killing others and the thrill of risking your own life.

[poesel]

It looks to me as we are discussing two things here and there is some confusion. If I understand it right then there are two issues:

1) do we want flamethrowers (and fire in general)

This I can assume is a near 100% 'yes' from everyone.

2) do we want a 'realistic' depiction (animation/graphics) of death by fire

This would be answered 'no' by most (I didn't count).

And to answer the argument from the 'realists' who in essence say: 'if you can't take the realities of war you shouldn't play a wargame' or 'if you want to play war you have to face the reality'.

No, I don't have to.

When I want to see the realities of war I can watch YouTube vids from Syria, footage from Vietnam or concentration camps. Those have their places and value but that is not what I want to spend my evening entertainment with.

One could argue that we are not killing real people - just some pixels on the screen. But videos are also only pixels on the screen. Going further - everything I see is just photons on my retina, so why bother with anything?

The difference is the emotional connection you make. As long as it is clearly just a game you feel with your troops but not too much. But there is a border where realism is getting too much. This is different for everyone of course. For me depicting soldiers burning in agony would be well beyond this border.

IMO the way BFC depicts death now is just right and I hope it stays this way.

[Sublime]

The pixels on a screen of real footage were real people though. The PixtelTruppen will never be real. And people don't really forge any real emotional bond with their soldiers at all. There's probably only a handful of people who can remember any specific unit and thats only because they killed a lot of the enemy, not for 'emotional' reasons like they got along or were funny. If people were so emotionally attached to their troops they'd be shooting themselves after getting their ass kicked by me in a pbem

[Waffen_PL]

That's true. It's huge difference between game and real footage. Just like difference between movie and archive film. I think that every war movie and game about war should not try to be powder it because its bad and its only garbling and distorting the true image of war by making it more innocent, fun and pleasurable. But yes different movies or games got different scope of war and shows different aspects of it. So it's probably unnecessary in Combat Mission to show man dying in convulsions (although if it would be technically possible I don't think it would be bad, but it's rather unnecessary. But in game like ARMA i think that such things should be there).

But we were talking about different thing not such extreme horribleness. The scope of CM is tactical battle. Different kinds of weapons should be modeled in realistic way just like their impact on surroundings and man. As I said in this case it's definitely unnecessary to show every detail of agony but it should look realistic. Because this is how war look like.

Now I still don't understand what is the point of this discussion. You don't have moral objections to kill virtual soldiers with mortar or guns and that's ok. Why? Because this is game, they don't exist. I don't feel any emotional connections with pixels generated by my computer.

I think most of CM players have installed mods improving the quality of fire and explosions cause it's nice when this burning Sherman look like real burning Sherman. Have you ever before thought about poor burned tank crew. Probably no. You were happy to have a real-looking flames. So why there is now such a big problem?

I will ask once more. Do you think that Achtung Panzer has crossed some thin red line?

And btw adding flamethrowers but without animated impact on soldiers will look stupid.

And one more think. I saw here several times such statement: Western view of WWII is different from Russian view and their experience. Such simplification is not good and a little bit harming. First of all Soviet Union was not only Russians. There were many Eastern European and Asian nations forming it not only Russians. Second, between this "Russia" and Germany there were several countries that originally did not belong to Soviet Union and they all share what someone called "Russian" view of WWII. It's probably better to say Western Europe(and US) view of war and Eastern Europe. Or Western Front experiences and Eastern Front or something like that. Maybe this is not obvious for many "normal" western people but I thought that on such forum should be well known.

They're Poles.

Gene Hackman speaking Polish is very funny but he was trying

It's my favorite movie and I miss such movies. Yest it's got old but I love this operational scope, but today the fashion is to make "FPP" movies and I bored of them, they all look the same only blood and guts and if this is an american movie- specific unhealthy pathos

[Sgt Joch]

1) do we want flamethrowers (and fire in general)

This I can assume is a near 100% 'yes' from everyone.

agreed.

2) do we want a 'realistic' depiction (animation/graphics) of death by fire

This would be answered 'no' by most (I didn't count).

I personally would have no issue with a more realistic depiction of carnage, since I am of the school that war is horrible and if you sanitize it, you just end up glorifying it.

my issue is more practical, namely how far do you push it and how much do we want BFC to spend resources on it? More realism would mean soldiers being maimed, blown apart, screaming in agony on the battlefield. What about civilians? Do we want dead/wounded men, women and children strewn about? Once we have more realisitic depiction of casualties, will we be happy with the simple "medic" animation or should we have a more detailed scheme with stretcher bearers?

[agusto]

And one more think. I saw here several times such statement: Western view of WWII is different from Russian view and their experience. Such simplification is not good and a little bit harming. First of all Soviet Union was not only Russians. There were many Eastern European and Asian nations forming it not only Russians. Second, between this "Russia" and Germany their were several countries that originally did not belong to Soviet Union and they all share what someone called "Russian" view of WWII. It's probably better to say Western Europe(and US) view of war and Eastern Europe. Or Western Front experiences and Eastern Front or something like that. Maybe this is not obvious for many "normal" western people but I thought that on such forum should be well known.

Gene Hackman speaking Polish is very funny but he was trying

It's my favorite movie and I miss such movies. Yest it's got old but I love this operational scope, but today the fashion is to make "FPP" movies and I bored of them, they all look the same only blood and guts and if this is an american movie- specific unhealthy pathos

I cant agree to that statement of yours that all western media in general depict world war 2 completely free of all atrocities. Watch the german movie Stalingrad, for example. You constantly have body party flying around there, people dieing in agony (including all 5 german main characters along with all ~78 german side characters - in the end they are all dead), people freeze to death, people starve, civilians are executed. That was probably one of the most authentic war movies i ever saw (i have to admit though

that i didnt see many).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWFvGIJmKac

[Waffen_PL]

No it wasn't my statement. I was only referring to someone who said that there is Western View of WWII and "Russian" view. I wasn't agreeing with word "russian" view.

But if we are talking about this there are some important differences between Western and Eastern view of the War. From western movies and documents I see that in west people think about WWII in more exalted way. They see it like a great crusade against evil. They like to watch in movies the brotherhood between soldiers their higher goals and patriotism. Of course there is violence but it's a little bit in a background(I don't have better word for this) It's western school of WWII movies. In eastern portraits of war there are much more shades, and there is bigger accent on senselessness of war and it's violence etc. It reminds me an american view of Vietnam war. Much less exalted. That's probably because we had much different experiences during WWII

About "Stalingrad "It's very good movie but "FPP Style too" and I'm bored of them . But this is german movie and Germans were in center of WWII. They have experienced western front realities just like eastern front barbarism.

[slysniper]

since I am of the school that war is horrible and if you sanitize it, you just end up glorifying it.

Well, true

But playing it as a form of entertainment is also glorifying it, so we all have some form of looking at War in a Glorified way we likely should not. So if we want to keep the battlefield a little sanitized so that its enjoyable to view, where is the suprize of that.

[Michael Emrys]

The PixtelTruppen will never be real. And people don't really forge any real emotional bond with their soldiers at all.

Speak for yourself. Every single one of my pixeltruppen carries a picture of his wife or sweetheart in his wallet and has a tattoo that reads "Mother".

Michael

[Agua]

There's always "my pretty pony" if wargames offend one's sensibilities.

Here, let me point you in the right direction: http://www.hasbro.com/mylittlepony/en_us/

[MengJiaoRedux]

I want to see them plummeting from an eight story church tower.

Into a burning ring of writhing Johnny-Cash-like figures?

On the other hand:

1) I'm not that interested in flame-throwers, particularly if they require special writhing animations.

2) I do however like all the (slightly surreal maybe?) aspects of representing warfare as extremely violent (or what is the point? you might as well play one of those games you can find on Steam where the soldiers are "toys" and the whole thing has an extra layer of "comedy")

3) I've just been re-reading Robert Graves' Good-bye to all That. He repeatedly suggests the monstrous comedy of warfare and then exhibits horrific incidents that he witnessed in WWI as grotesquely comic.

4) So in general Combat Mission (with or without flame-throwers) seems to be valuable as a representation of war as well as a simulation and a game

5) But still, I'm not that interested in flame-throwers (unless CM does WWI and we get poison gas writhing as well)

Oh...After reading Gromit's post...even more serious:

I have some things I can say in defense of playing war games (and in many ways CM is the most virtuous of the games I play in that it is as strictly realistic as it can be and still be playable):

1) I'm a trained historian and archaeologist -- I've seen plenty of skeletons and interpreted their lives and deaths -- pretty and not-so-pretty

2) I've always been intrigued by the technical side of war -- I was a professional analyst of it for a bit even

3) I've always been thankful not to have been in a war

4) but a bit guilty too since the world is a dangerous place and has been for a long time (and I've been very lucky)

5) and yet in some ways I've pretty innocently played war game since I was very young

6) I'm sure there is a Freudian-aggression-self-defense-sublimation dimension -- but as Freud also says "All true pleasures are infantile."