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We-Go ?


ColSaid

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Yes, I'm new to CM gaming. RT (red Thunder) is my 1st, so I've been read in RT forums when time permits. I was reading one thread started by "LukeFF" dated yesterday I think, an there was talk about game play, (turn base, ect. ect) an someone was saying that they liked playing in "We-Go". I've just reread "Gameplay Styles" in the Game Engine Manual v 3.00 an it is not mentioned. Is this a play style in CM's other games ?

Thanks ColSaid

Oh! LukeFF thread titled "Rewind for real-time gameplay", dated yesterday.

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I see. Could you be just a little more arrr precise ?

Fire up a scenario in hot seat mode turn based. Then play through a couple turns with just a couple basic move commands for both sides. You will get a very graphic view of what wego means better than any verbal explanation.

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I see. Could you be just a little more arrr precise ?

You make your commands, your opponent makes his commands (can be the AI), then one minute of action unfolds where you can make no alterations (you can rewind and fast forward to see the action from any direction as many times you want). After that minutes its time for both sides to issue commands again. Then another minute of action.

Its the way CM is meant to be played if you ask me. It should not be a click fest and being able to watch all the cool action in detail is just must for me.

Edit: Ninjad by oddball

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I thank everyone, I'll have to take a closer look, based on the Senior response, (I'm a big fan of the pause button, (and save before I makes a risky move).

Then you should love WeGo.

Keep in mind tho, that no matter what others say about WeGo being "the way CM is supposed to play" I know that at least one of the original developers (I want to say Steve here) actually prefers realtime.

So to claim that realtime isn't the way to play CM is pretty biased.

(this coming from someone who loathes realtime and loves WeGo).

Ps. One of the greatest lessons I've learned from CM is just how much can happen in one measly minute. Me and my friend always look at eachother with a certain look of "oh, if only you knew" when someone says "a minute is so short, you can't do anything in a minute" in normal conversations.

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Ps. One of the greatest lessons I've learned from CM is just how much can happen in one measly minute. Me and my friend always look at eachother with a certain look of "oh, if only you knew" when someone says "a minute is so short, you can't do anything in a minute" in normal conversations.

That's the problem, to much is allowed to happen in CM in "a short minute"...even small Platoon level engagements need alittle more time to develope, let alone anything bigger.

Joe

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I thank everyone, I'll have to take a closer look, based on the Senior response, (I'm a big fan of the pause button, (and save before I makes a risky move).

So, the question is; Your a big fan of the pause button...Because ?

You want to pause and view the action at different times and angles during a turn.

-Or- is it, because you want to pause action mid-game and change orders at anytime you see fit.

Now, what's in your wallet :-/

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To put things in a slightly different way, WEGO got it's name as a counterpoint to IGO-UGO, which was the way wargames were generally played since forever.

I-GO means I have a turn. I move my units, I make my attakcs, and you do nothing. Just sit there and watch me attempt to dismantle your forces. Then ...

YOU-GO means you have a turn. You move your units, you make your attakcs, and I do nothing. Just sit there and watch you attempt to dismantle my forces.

Kind of like Chess. Exactly like Chess. Most boardgames and tabletop rules still work on IGO-UGO. And that's kind-of (sort-of) ok for grand strategic games, but tactical battles really don't work that way - they're a constant interplay of the two opposing commanders and opposing forces making plans and attempting to execute them in the face of an enemy who constantly moves and reacts.

WEGO exploits the abilities of computers to 'remember' what I want to do, and what you want to do, and run those plans directly at each other to see what happens. As far as I know the excellent V for Victory and World At War series of grand-tactical and operational PC games from the early- and mid-90s were the first to really explore the possibilities of WEGO. Sadly, they died with Atomic Games, and in their place we got the lamentable Panzer Campaigns series, which took a distinct step backwards in terms of harnessing the power of computers, and hasn't really advanced at all in 15-odd years, despite there now being upwards of 30 games in the series or one of it's close relatives, and another one being released every 6-12 months or so.

CM, obviously, uses WEGO. H2H-turn-based play clearly does, and so too does the RT version of the game.

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That's the problem, to much is allowed to happen in CM in "a short minute"...even small Platoon level engagements need alittle more time to develope, let alone anything bigger.

Joe

But it does simulate the delay of orders pretty well.

It's quite unrealistic for a force commander to be able to give his forces new and complicated orders instantly without delay.

In realtime you can just pause and give your entire force new orders without any sort of delay, allowing you to react instantly to any threat or altered situation.

In real life that would take some time.

WeGo simulates that pretty well if you ask me.

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But it does simulate the delay of orders pretty well.

It's quite unrealistic for a force commander to be able to give his forces new and complicated orders instantly without delay.

In realtime you can just pause and give your entire force new orders without any sort of delay, allowing you to react instantly to any threat or altered situation.

In real life that would take some time.

WeGo simulates that pretty well if you ask me.

On the otherhand RT lets the player essentially give squads SOPs. Which makes small scale actions much more realistic.

In either mode you are making a tradeoff. WeGo favors more realism at the macro level while RT favors the realism at the micro level.

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But it does simulate the delay of orders pretty well.

It's quite unrealistic for a force commander to be able to give his forces new and complicated orders instantly without delay.

In realtime you can just pause and give your entire force new orders without any sort of delay, allowing you to react instantly to any threat or altered situation.

In real life that would take some time.

WeGo simulates that pretty well if you ask me.

Exactly, and which is why I still think WEGO ( let alone RT ) needs to have some sort of delays for units to impliment new orders...Similar to that of CMx1.

I know when playing against the Computer AI, I generally wait till my Troops have reached their last waypoint, then wait there for a full turn before new waypoints are issued. Also, if units are Fatigured or worse, I won't issue new waypoints until atleast Tiring status.

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I thank everyone, I'll have to take a closer look, based on the Senior response, (I'm a big fan of the pause button, (and save before I makes a risky move).

Yeah you'll definitely love we-go then. !!

Only point of critique, and this is after many a battle... You find that you can lose the sense of immersion or even just forget how hectic the game can be when you strictly play We-Go. Mix in a Real Time game every now and then just to remind you that you aren't all that cool under fire! :D

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The current no delay system is probably better than a poorly implemented delay system. CM is a very dynamic game and that makes it hard for a delay system to work. Especially with the almost totally reactive tactical AI we have now.

IN a single turn you are giving orders as if you are the Company Commander, 3-4 Platoon Commanders, 9-12 Squad Leaders and possibly even more Fireteam Leaders. That is just in a company sized game.

So while an order coming down from the COY CO would probably have a delay at some point along the line a order from your fireteam leader would have almost none.

Until the game can distinguish between the two it would be difficult to implement well.

On the otherhand I think there could be some interesting work dealing with turn times and C2 status. An initiative system that would have each unit have a certain time between turns with a maximum of a minute or maybe two. So in a platoon sized battle the platoon leader would always have the shortest turns. while the other units have turn lengths depending on their order and C2 link with their commanding unit.

PLatoon Leader 10 second turns

1st squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns

2nd squad: poor order and good C2 25 second turns

3rd squad: good order and no C2 35 second turns

4th Squad: Poor order and no C2 60 second turns

So instead of causing a delay the frequency of player orders gets toned down or increased depending on C2 link and the order of the unit in question. It is less random because the length of time between orders is known so a out of command squad will be able to do less than a in command squad. However, it is entirely in the players control. So if the player wants to try to plan out a full minute of action for the out of command squad they could. However, if things go bad they have less of a chance to adapt to the changing situation than a squad in C2.

Since the delay is based on an individual units C2 and order status a platoon that is in not in C2 with their COY CO would still be able to act effectively up to the Platoon leader level.

Company Commander 10 second turns

PLatoon Leader: good order and no C2 40 second turns

1st squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns

2nd squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns

3rd squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns

So in this example each squad is in C2 with their platoon leader. So they can act effectively in their local tactical area. However, the PL isn't in C2 with the company commander. So it limits the maneuver ability of the platoon strategically because the squads have to wait for the PL to catch up with complex movements or risk being out of C2 themselves.

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IN a single turn you are giving orders as if you are the Company Commander, 3-4 Platoon Commanders, 9-12 Squad Leaders and possibly even more Fireteam Leaders. That is just in a company sized game.

So while an order coming down from the COY CO would probably have a delay at some point along the line a order from your fireteam leader would have almost none.

Until the game can distinguish between the two it would be difficult to implement well.

Spot on. I for one am happy not having time delays. The number of times the close in details of an encounter were messed up by those delays we had in CM1 far out weighed any benefit in delays of company and battalion maneuvering.

So in a platoon sized battle the platoon leader would always have the shortest turns. while the other units have turn lengths depending on their order and C2 link with their commanding unit.

PLatoon Leader 10 second turns

1st squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns

2nd squad: poor order and good C2 25 second turns

3rd squad: good order and no C2 35 second turns

4th Squad: Poor order and no C2 60 second turns

Yikes, am I reading this right you are suggesting 10s turns? Even 20s turns would short. I see what you are getting at but I don't think that would work very well.

Kudos for looking for a way to implement command delays though - the topic of command delays has come up a few times on these boards and this is a unique idea.

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Kinda, instead of the game having a single turn length each unit would have a turn length.

So in a single game you might have 8 units that you can order every 20 seconds, 10 you can order every 35 seconds, 20 you can order every 40 seconds and 7 units you can give orders to every minute.

It would of course be WeGo, but also have a mix of that IgoYougo initiative stuff that you might remember from the old Heroes of Might and Magic games.

The actual length of the game would remain the same since it is done not by # of turns, but by # of minutes.

Most likely you would have a lot of very short turns that would have the player doing nothing, but it would give a direct benefit to the player for maintaining C2 by being able to give more reactive commands in the close situations. This of course would make play-by-email a complete and utter mess.

But yea, no delay is probably the best system for the scale that CM is played at.

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The current no delay system is probably better than a poorly implemented delay system. CM is a very dynamic game and that makes it hard for a delay system to work. Especially with the almost totally reactive tactical AI we have now.

IN a single turn you are giving orders as if you are the Company Commander, 3-4 Platoon Commanders, 9-12 Squad Leaders and possibly even more Fireteam Leaders. That is just in a company sized game.

So while an order coming down from the COY CO would probably have a delay at some point along the line a order from your fireteam leader would have almost none.

Until the game can distinguish between the two it would be difficult to implement well.

On the otherhand I think there could be some interesting work dealing with turn times and C2 status. An initiative system that would have each unit have a certain time between turns with a maximum of a minute or maybe two. So in a platoon sized battle the platoon leader would always have the shortest turns. while the other units have turn lengths depending on their order and C2 link with their commanding unit.

PLatoon Leader 10 second turns

1st squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns

2nd squad: poor order and good C2 25 second turns

3rd squad: good order and no C2 35 second turns

4th Squad: Poor order and no C2 60 second turns

So instead of causing a delay the frequency of player orders gets toned down or increased depending on C2 link and the order of the unit in question. It is less random because the length of time between orders is known so a out of command squad will be able to do less than a in command squad. However, it is entirely in the players control. So if the player wants to try to plan out a full minute of action for the out of command squad they could. However, if things go bad they have less of a chance to adapt to the changing situation than a squad in C2.

Since the delay is based on an individual units C2 and order status a platoon that is in not in C2 with their COY CO would still be able to act effectively up to the Platoon leader level.

Company Commander 10 second turns

PLatoon Leader: good order and no C2 40 second turns

1st squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns

2nd squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns

3rd squad: good order and good C2 20 second turns

So in this example each squad is in C2 with their platoon leader. So they can act effectively in their local tactical area. However, the PL isn't in C2 with the company commander. So it limits the maneuver ability of the platoon strategically because the squads have to wait for the PL to catch up with complex movements or risk being out of C2 themselves.

I think there is a really nice idea in here.

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