Real time is missing a few things

[Los]

There is nothing about RT that is mutually exclusive to realism,providing you don't try and run hundreds of troops at the same time. Its not like time is accelerated in realtime as it is in actual RTS games. This is becoming a circular argument it seems. Give each guy 4 to six units. Many people play RT and have a perfectly fine time with it, many people don't, to each their own. For many feature that have been implemented in CM these types of discussions have been hashed out. But new features is how CM has moved forward and remained an excellent game for the past decade.

For WEGO Coop there still needs to be some kind of time limit, like you have X time to give orders. This way you don't have one anal retentive guy taking 40 minutes to decide what his company is going to do,or his wife orders him to take out the garbage and he ends up chatting w the neighbor.

Perhaps in wego coop a host set up option is X planning time per turn. This could allow the flexibility to have players manage larger forces. Either it's a setting or its worked out ahead of time that each unit control equates to x amount of time in the bank. Example: a 5 unit platoon would give one say 2 minutes of planning time. (Everyone would have to share this same time limit. It could also be done by voting but someones needs the ability to override and get the turn going if the game lags.

I was thinking that in a pbem coop game (here's where guys that like to take for ever can come into their own) would there be any reason why the host could not send out an update to each player at once so they could all be doing their orders at the same time? That could help move things along.

Los

[Ultradave]

Real time with the scenario I chose seemed still to be within the realm of realism. The original plt that arrives I micromanaged until the reinforcements arrived. After that the original plt was pretty much on it's own (because of the situation this worked ok), and I took over as Company Commander with the other two platoons and support. Those all stayed close enough that the company cdr could reasonably direct traffic on the fly.

A single inf co. or something roughly that size would be a great size for real time.

[Buzz]

...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.

Good description of RT. For me MG Out on a Limb in real time is about a perfect size to manage all the elements.

[Blazing 88's]

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.

[lordhedgwich]

Coop would be bad ass. Wego for me is not fun. Its so helpless to watch a bad order play out. When in real time you can pause and cancel it and save your mens lives. I have nothing against wego Its just takes me out of the immersion.

^^ above post when i play real time i pause and give my orders so i really dont miss out on the amazing details this game has =D

[nachinus]

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.

Well, you hover god-like equaly in both game modes, and you get the same info, only that in WeGo you can travel back in time as many times as you want and gather any tiny bit of info. I want some of that info available and not easily missable for RT lads too

[Amizaur]

For me, the RT mode is missing one very important feature - on-screen txt alerts that would tell me, that some of my troops spotted an enemy and that some of my troops are taking fire or even taking casualties. Especially for those of my troops that are not visible at the screen.

When I'm focused on some part of map where some action is taking place, I have no idea that on other part of map my tropps spotted an enemy or maybe are just dying. When I take a look there, they may be all dead and I even have no idea where the fire came from. I'd like some txt messages somewhere on the screen telling me that my unit xxx had spoted an enemy or that unit yyyy is taking fire.

Even better would be a swichable/configurable automatic pause triggered by some events like spotting, taking fire, taking casualties.

[Marc Anton]

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.

I play Sudden Strike (Real Warfare Mod) since 10 years and we never use the pause button during the games to give commands before the big attack, during enemy attacks or to warn buddies of incoming air-attacks.

Its a multiplayer rule since ever.

[Childress]

Well, you hover god-like equaly in both game modes, and you get the same info, only that in WeGo you can travel back in time as many times as you want and gather any tiny bit of info. I want some of that info available and not easily missable for RT lads too

Some aspects of WEGO are more realistic, methinks. Namely the 60 second loss of player control... sometimes. But in RT one can order friendly units to bug out pronto when a spotting round lands nearby. That's nice too.

[Vinnart]

It is nice to see there are other “Sudden Strike” players here. That entire player base would definitely be into CM multi HvH play. Being that they sold 2 million copies that is a lot of potential players! It is too bad the developers, Fireglow, dropped the ball with “Sudden Strike 3”. It really is a good case study of how not having good game finding can kill a game especially if it greatest attraction was team play.

As far as communication between team mates goes, if such a mode were to ever come into existence, I agree with Los that a grid can be useful as a permanent fixture for describing areas of the map to each other. “Sudden Strike” did not have that, but the clan I played with came up with a type of our own, however it really was only useful at times. For the most part the system Sudden Strike had built into the game was easier, and more versatile to describe areas of the map to each other so we mainly used that. It was a very good, user friendly system that if adapted to CM multi HvH would work just as well. In Sudden Strike players can hold a hotkey while clicking on the mini map that would leave a small orange marker on the map for a couple of seconds then it would disappear. In this way players could put a few markers in a row to “draw” lines, curves, or pinpoint a single spot. CM does not have a mini map, nor does it need one (just press 8, or 9 camera level), so the marker would appear on the regular map. For CM I could see holding the alt key + another key on the map to create a marker that appears for a few seconds then disappears. Perhaps it could be a colored smoke ploom that shoots up and disappears in a few seconds, or a vertical arrow graphic that appears for a few seconds then disappears. All the team would be able to see the markers even though they may have unit FoW. The system simulates sharing grid coordinates in a very easy, precise way.

Another big advantage to multi HvH play is that set up would be much, much faster. If each player has only a platoon of the company to set up then games will get started very quickly vs a single person doing all the set up themsleves.

[Vinnart]

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?

Read through the concept thread to see all the features.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=104982&highlight=roster

The Roster auto scrolls to recent most critical events only, but one can manual scroll too. Clicking on a unit icon selects that unit. Double clicking on it centers the camera on the selected unit. With it one can “see” all around even if the camera is zoomed in, or on camera level 1. The Roster shows all of the important unit info one can only get now by selecting each unit individually. One can glance at it, and decipher the information quickly, and easily because it is graphics based. To test, glance at the graphic and see how quickly you can tell which units are currently out of C2. The concept is sort of like a visual radio that provides C2 from the units to the player.

To read a coop multiplayer concept check this thread out:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=109832

[Destraex1]

I will have a read thanks.

Last night I was testing on a smaller scenario and a lot of the time was hovering at 17fps in real time.

I might just play the modules I have until I see improvements by battlefront. I know they have a lot of modules to come still. But I cannot justify it anymore.

I want to like it so much. But it falls short and anything real time related gets shot down by the community as some sort of enemy.

Thank you to everybody who contributed to this thread.