Real time is missing a few things

[AstroCat]

If i could keep track of everything going on on the battlefield i would love to go real-time. But it feels like i am missing half the action, so WEGO is the pause and rewind on the movie that allows you to enjoy the details you would otherwise miss.

Same here, I'm strictly a WEGO player with CM games. I get a ton of fun from rewinding and checking out the action for my turns, plus CM has always been a turn based game to me going all the way back to CMBO.

[Vinnart]

The Roster solves the situational awareness problem of missing things when the units are out of camera view.

Since Steve says he is a RT player I expect it will only get better with real time.

What I really do not understand is why there is NO support for game finding HvH real time. I know it is not as popular, but not having the support only diminishes the potential it has. Its absolute fullest potential in real time is with multi-multiplayer. I was big into that sort of play with the game “Sudden Strike”, which was hugely successful in the real time genre. The teamwork made it more fun, along with sharing the burden of controlling all the units by ones self. Perhaps someday CM will offer the experience.

[Vinnart]

I play CM mainly WEGO, but do play around with it from time to time RT. I would be more into RT for many of the reasons that have been stated on the thread by others and myself.

The key to enjoying RT is adapting the proper mindset. For me it is like flipping a switch. I enjoy WEGO because I can see all the details. I enjoy RT because I can enjoy not having to worry about every detail. That is the key to it. It is almost a bit liberating not worrying about each and every thing in micromanaging each unit rather just concentrating on the whole. Also, I must say that CM does not control the greatest in RT out of the box. I use a Nostromo keypad, and multi-button mouse, which makes all the difference for fast easy control, but good hotkey use for RT can be set up on the keyboard. If one does not have these I suggest using the top row of the keyboard starting at the letter “Q” for FAST then ‘W” for QUICK and so on left to right ending with SLOW. The next row starting with “A” set for COMBAT commands. The bottom row of keys leave for camera controls. Use the hotkeys as described for the most common commands, and use the SPACEBAR for less used commands. Setting up control like this keeps the eyes on the screen, while making it easier to control hotkeys with the left hand while the right operates the mouse. Controlling the game fluidly makes RT much more enjoyable, and really is essential to control with speed efficiently.

[Buzz]

"I enjoy RT because I can enjoy not having to worry about every detail. That is the key to it. It is almost a bit liberating not worrying about each and every thing in micromanaging each unit rather just concentrating on the whole."

Well said Vin. Didn't know Steve is a RT player. Should promise enhancements for the future of RT.

Good points about RT controls as well. "..keeps the eyes on the screen, while making it easier to control hotkeys with the left hand while the right operates the mouse. Controlling the game fluidly makes RT much more enjoyable, and really is essential to control with speed efficiently..."

[Blazing 88's]

...RT, not now, not ever...

This.......

[eniced73]

RT player here too. I also enjoy turn based equally as well.

I was an avid player of the Close Combat, Theatre of War and Achtung Panzer series. I also dabbled with Men at War and other RT games. I was a member at Tournament House back in the day and we had some nice RT tourney's over there with Close Combat. Hella fun. Games lasted one night - up to 60 minutes and were anything short of a good time. We mainly used Power Lobbies or Game Ranger to hook up and play. Not sure if BF would even be interested in GR but there are a slew of online games there.

Yeah, BF could make a couple tweaks to help out the RT players interface wise but the numbers are not there and the effort would not be worth it. If you could have a separate interface for RT that would be ideal. Something like Panzer Commands (google as image) where the bottom of the screen shows you a box with all your unit icons (sort of like Vin's but not as much info.). The Close Combat interface also worked well for that game but the amount of units used in a game were about half the normal CM game. This type of interface for CM would just not work. Unless it was condensed to a pretty small size.

Just some opinions and points even though them improving the RT is a pipe dream. Just too many of you old farts used to your 30 minute 1 minute turns sipping a cup of joe as you decide if it is tactically sound to send your units this way or that. Simmer down just a jab.

Anyhow I am down for anyone wanting to start up a little RT tourney or just playing some games. I am EST (PA). Usually online every night from 1100pm until 100 or 200.

[Destraex1]

The Roster solves the situational awareness problem of missing things when the units are out of camera view.

Since Steve says he is a RT player I expect it will only get better with real time.

What I really do not understand is why there is NO support for game finding HvH real time. I know it is not as popular, but not having the support only diminishes the potential it has. Its absolute fullest potential in real time is with multi-multiplayer. I was big into that sort of play with the game “Sudden Strike”, which was hugely successful in the real time genre. The teamwork made it more fun, along with sharing the burden of controlling all the units by ones self. Perhaps someday CM will offer the experience.

Thank you, this looks like it may help somewhat. But what happens when the roster is a large one, you would be scrolling like a demon to find out where the shots you just heard from the other side of the map were coming from?

I am assuming if I double click on any of those roster units it takes me to them?

I am certainly not suggesting combat mission upset it's core fan base by moving away from WEGO.

[eniced73]

Vin's got a great start there but for RT and a larger number of units it would just not work. Overkill on the information department. The more units the more you have to keep it simple.

[tdogg]

I'm an RT player as well.

Why not find a middle ground between the two and allow the player to switch from RT to Wego in game when needed and also have player adjusted turn lengths in game. When the action gets heavy or your trying to support a multi pronged attack, you could switch to wego at 10 second turns. Then switch to RT when the action slows down to speed up the game play.

I would love to see more UI support for managing large senarios in RT. Unit formations and on screen messages about events would really help.

MP Coop would really rock in this game, just think of how cool it would be if you could play a 2 battalion vs 2 battalion battle with 4 players vs 4 players. It worked great for Wargame Air Land Battle, why not CM. I know....I know.....the same response, we are small indie team and don't have the resources to implement every wild idea about features to improve game play. We will play it safe and just keep pumping out cookie cutter modules that generate revenue with low risk.

It's the evolution of the engine I want to see not more modules, here's to CMx2 3.0 and 4.0 and beyond.

[Paper Tiger]

I don't think a whole new user interface is necessary to provide the RT (or WEGO for that matter) player with more information while playing. IMO, the floating icons are hugely underused and could communicate far more information than they currently do. For example, just look at how much we benefited from having the icon flash when its unit took casualties. That really grabs my attention when I'm playing. You could have them display different types of information about the unit's status depending on which mode was currently active. Ammo, morale, strength reduction etc.

[Los]

I can draw to similar experiences from our Gettysburg Scourge of War games That are played Withnthe kriegspeil crowd. These can take place within the context of a campaign and theres almost a nihtly event going on. Even though one can command an entire multi corp army in SOW, during the nightly multiplayer coop and head to head battles (sometimes you have up to 20 players on a side) players are perfectly content to each handle a brigade or two which equates to about 4-5 units you have to manage per brigade.

There is so much going on in these battles that handling smaller forces does not create a feeling of lessor action. So if you have a coop op battle with say 4-5 players on a side it each managing a platoon with maybe a few assets, this is basically dealing within 7-8 units per player ( before splitting them up). That's hardly an imposition in real time. ESP since you can make the games longer so there isn't some artificial rush.

The coordination between forces would make up for any perceived feeling of not controlling larger forces. In fact in out SOW battles often they are played with a setting called HITS ( headquarters in the saddle) where you can only see from the viewpoint of the commander on his horse, none of this 500 yards in the sky view. This limited intelligence option can make things that much better.

In coop mode it would be good for the overall commander to be able to view. A larger map perhaps with a grid marking system superimposed on it. This way artillery requests and contacts could be called in without all this all knowing intel.

Los

[Destraex1]

I just noticed another concerning thing playing a missing where a group of paras and luftwaffe defend a town against an american infantry attack.

Real Time of course but what was affecting my command and control was that on my beast of a machine the game got down to 12FPS. Almost unplayable.

I imagine this is my graphics settings (assume best) and the fact that I also imagine the game is only taking advantage of one core.

I will have to check my CPU utilisation next time this happens.

As per above I have a gen3 CPU with 16gig ram and a gtx670 GPU, an SSD in cache mode. Some serious horse power here which plays flight sims and arma3 like a dream.

[Vinnart]

Vin's got a great start there but for RT and a larger number of units it would just not work. Overkill on the information department. The more units the more you have to keep it simple.

I disagree. You really have to read the thread describing how it works and its features, as there is much more to it than just the screen of the actual roster tool I posted here.

http://www.battlefront.com/community...ghlight=roster

The reason it works is that one can get much info by just glancing at it. The key in being able to process more info easily is in being graphic based rather than text base. You don’t read it, you see it.

[Sulman]

Situational awareness.

I've said before that one crucial difference with WeGo is that the human player can basically 'Max Payne' it - you can slow down time! Against the AI, this hands you a huge advantage. I'm not the world's best CMx player, but my success rate vs AI in WeGo is much higher than it is in R/T, simply because I have all the time in the world to plan even small moves. In R/T, you can get disorganised real quick unless you're practiced at it; part of enjoying it is learning to give orders very quickly and effectively. WeGo gives you absolute situational awareness of every single unit you have, and fine control of their movement.

Certain scenarios (even the original US Army ones, out of the box) are absolutely thrilling in real time, when they can be a bit snoozy in WeGo.

The truth is (for me, at least), it is perfectly manageable; you have a God's eye view of the Battlefield, and while TacAI is stupid at times, you have a 'big picture' that any commander on the ground would kill for. Any seasoned RTS player would not struggle with the workload; learning this is part of the skill set required of those games.

I'm not saying RT is fundamentally better, but it's an entirely different, and interesting challenge that any player should try, especially if you play vs. the computer. It'll frustrate you when you first try, because you need to learn to be quick, and be okay with missing stuff, because you will, but this is okay, it's all part of the experience. but this in itself adds a totally different challenge to the game; the fog of war becomes an absolute swine.

The other thing is the passsage of time; when one plays a scenario in R/T, you find an hour isn't long at all. Scarily so. Play the same scenario in WeGo, and you'll be amazed how far your forces can advance because you get so much more efficient at movement.

Edit: I too pause for artillery/airstrikes, and covering arcs, because I find those two things rather fiddly. If I find myself overwhelmed, I normally just play the scenario in WeGo. It is better for some cases, for sure.

[altipueri]

RT is for the quick fingered.

WEGO is more balanced to the extent that you and I can take one, five, or fifty minutes to plan our moves - press the button and Fate takes over.

Youth and energy versus age and guile.

If I want a WW2 RT blast I play Sudden Strike.

[AstroCat]

Yeah RT for CM, especially anything above a tiny or small battle just kind of ruins it for me. There is so much detail and angles to every turn I am 100% absolutely not ok with "missing stuff" in CM. I can handle RT, I've played tons of RTS through my years, but I don't want CM to be a twitchy play from 1000000 feet up, miss the details type game. Heck most RTS you never zoom in, you are often basically playing click and point icons with health bars.

For CM I see a tank blow up, I rewind and check it out. My troops running across a field and get shot at, I want to be able to see it. Also I don't want to move super fast on my orders, it's fun to check out the scene, think about what I'm gonna do, check out the unit stats, look for cool angles, etc... with RT (without a ton of pausing) this just can't happen. I say that a lot of the "charm" of CM is lost for me when I play RT.

So for me it's not that I can't handle CM RTS its that it ruins a lot of the fun and immersion so I just don't really see ever getting into CM RTS style. If playing CM RTS style is awesome for others then have a blast at it, that's totally cool, it's just really not for me. I think WEGO is a great system for a game like CM. Now for games like the Total War series which I also really enjoy, paused RT makes all the sense in the world.

[Sulman]

RT is for the quick fingered.

WEGO is more balanced to the extent that you and I can take one, five, or fifty minutes to plan our moves - press the button and Fate takes over.

Youth and energy versus age and guile.

If I want a WW2 RT blast I play Sudden Strike.

It's true, there's a couple of things that I really like about R/T though, and one of them is the ability to shift support area fire almost instantly. That really changes the tempo of some assaults, as you can 'rescue' a bad situation with reasonable reactions. Nothing puckers me up more in the CM games than an assault that has gone wrong in WeGo and you're waiting for the timer to run down with your head in your hands...

How nice we have the choice, though!

[Ultradave]

I almost always play a minute at a time, but after reading this discussion I just played MG Out on a Limb in real time. It was a blast (no pun intended). With just a company of 82d Airborne to control, it was very manageable. And being able to quickly halt a squad or team when something unexpected happens was nice, rather than (sometimes) having them continue along a path that is now no longer a banner idea.

I did pause a few times, mostly when reinforcements arrived, or I was looking for a good spot to place a mortar team. But other than that I just kept playing. I managed to win too, after almost blundering into disaster and quickly recovering to regroup.

(I'm purposely being very vague since it's new and many probably have not played most of the scenarios).

Anyway, I'm a convert at least for small actions. I'll have to see what I think for a larger scenario and map.

Dave

[Sulman]

I almost always play a minute at a time, but after reading this discussion I just played MG Out on a Limb in real time. It was a blast (no pun intended). With just a company of 82d Airborne to control, it was very manageable. And being able to quickly halt a squad or team when something unexpected happens was nice, rather than (sometimes) having them continue along a path that is now no longer a banner idea.

I did pause a few times, mostly when reinforcements arrived, or I was looking for a good spot to place a mortar team. But other than that I just kept playing. I managed to win too, after almost blundering into disaster and quickly recovering to regroup.

(I'm purposely being very vague since it's new and many probably have not played most of the scenarios).

Anyway, I'm a convert at least for small actions. I'll have to see what I think for a larger scenario and map.

Dave

This puts better what I was getting at - the flow of battle is totally different when you can change things in the space of a few seconds. It's a new game. Got to have the right scenarios, though.

[Los]

Exactly,

Basically RT is just different, you trade the ability to rewind and enjoy everything in minute detail for the experience of having to think more on your feet and make decisions outside of you comfort zone (friction and not marching to your own comfortable time frames). RT works well in smaller battles. I play both modes and they're both enjoyable.

We can have a huge battle in RT...but with multiple players controlling smaller forces. It would be a new, different and for (hopefully) many, a fun experience. We had the same flak thrown up in the GB:SOW forums, but now that it was sensibly implemented, it's really one of the best ways to experience the game.

[nachinus]

I don't think a whole new user interface is necessary to provide the RT (or WEGO for that matter) player with more information while playing. IMO, the floating icons are hugely underused and could communicate far more information than they currently do. For example, just look at how much we benefited from having the icon flash when its unit took casualties. That really grabs my attention when I'm playing. You could have them display different types of information about the unit's status depending on which mode was currently active. Ammo, morale, strength reduction etc.

This!

Though I like the roster idea because it worked great in Close Combat, it can get clumsy with batallion sized scenarios. Some good UI ideas and work would be needed to make that work.

More informative icons is a real good compromise and should help a lot.

One thing that I'd love is to be able to get some info on where an vehicle is being hit (in order to asses where the threat is coming from). Current text mesages dissapear very quickly (and that's probably ok, otherwise it'll bee too much text on the screen), and some info could be added to the unit UI so the RT player can easily click on that unit and see where the danger is coming from. Currently I have this automatic pause reaction everytime I hear a loud *clang*.

PS: I'm ashamed to admit that I play RT and pause *a lot*.

[Los]

(Getting beyond this RT vs 1 minute at a time thing for the moment, heck allow both options with coop if its not a hassle)

The interesting facet of this is how command and control would be implemented in a coop game, if no other enhancement was implemented other than multiple player coop mode. BTW there should be the ability for multiple players on both sides so it can be force on force.

If I was running a Lan say with 7 players on the same side and no other enhancements I would start with a teamspeak server broken into different channels.Say you have two companies each w three players and a commander. I'd publish a map of the area with grid squares and a grid marking system so players have a way to communicate locations.

You'd want to have it so friendly borg spotting is not in effect.

The commander could control the FOs with one going with each company HQ. Players could report intel and request fire support that the commander could call in. (That way apart from commanding he has something to do.)

And for enhancements...

Thinking about this, It would be neat to have the ability to hand off control of forces between players. Not only would this solve issues of player dumps or having to leave the game, (control of forces reverts to the overall player commander), but more importantly the commander could parcel our reserves as he sees fit. (Steel Beasts does this).

Another enhancement would be to pass messages around to include waypoints spot reports, fire request so player can see them. And if the radioman is dead or otherwise comms suck, you have to send a runner to the recipient.

Los

[altipueri]

Who wrote these words:

"Combat Mission is not a video game. It requires thoughtful strategy and tactical skill to overcome the enemy while preserving one's own forces and achieving the mission objectives."

""It is our opinion that pure "real time" works only at a very small scale, where there are perhaps just a few soldiers under a player's command. It does not work well at the scale of a full company or battalion, which is the level simulated by Combat Mission."

Hint: CMBO manual page 16.

I think one of the consequences of the CMx2 attempt to have both WEGO and RT in one game is that battlefields are smaller and the number of units involved is limited.

Maybe there has to be a divorce - some scenarios WEGO only others RT only, or if not only but "best played as RT (or WEGO)"

I just loaded up a CMBB scenario "Approach to Sevastopol" - the battlefield is some 2500 yards long and there are 30 vehicles - half tracks and Stugs at the start line.

Anyway, OT, one effect of this thread is that I popped into my local game shop to see what was in and came away with a secondhand copy of Sudden Strike for 50p (you never know when that CD is going to get corrupted) and a brand new - still in its cellophane wrapper Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 for £3.50. This comes with 200 page printed manual "Yay" but also is of interest because it is the last version of flight simulator in which you can fly between the Twin Towers because it came out before 9/11. Time for tea.

[Childress]

One thing that I'd love is to be able to get some info on where an vehicle is being hit (in order to asses where the threat is coming from). Current text mesages dissapear very quickly (and that's probably ok, otherwise it'll bee too much text on the screen), and some info could be added to the unit UI so the RT player can easily click on that unit and see where the danger is coming from. Currently I have this automatic pause reaction everytime I hear a loud *clang*.

.

This is where RT drifts into non-realism. You would get instantaneous feedback as you hover god-like over the battlefield. Commanders can only dream of such omniscience. Sometimes in actual combat bad choices get played out to the bitter end. Sometimes not.

Another factor to consider if co-op becomes a reality is the allotment of pausable time distributed to each side. Theoretically this negotiation takes place in the pre-battle segment. It's adjustable and and functions like a chess clock. Doable, but requiring significant new coding. Also an MP lobby.

[Sulman]

There is some argument that WeGo is a good substitute for the real planning an actual commander would be required to do, but which nobody really has time for. I.e. it allows for terrain analysis and movement planning (what-if's) that would actually have been thrashed out in detail before the fight.

I think the God-like view and intervention afforded to real time goes some way to compensating for the slightly irrational tendencies of TacAI...