The Nature of CM Battles is...

[shift8]

One thing I would like to see in CM is a option for the removal of time limits or for longer ones. I would rather see time limits as part of a series of missions or as a simple modifier of total score rather than the ridiculous manner people use them in CM scenario design. Giving someone an hour to take a town with a battalion of infantry in it and then declaring their mission a total defeat because they took 10min too long is something that really grinds my gears in CM. The time limit is used as a bludgeon by scenario designers to hurry the attacker into unrealistically hasty action in order to make the scenario harder. I see this in all kinds of scenario's, so if you make them dont take this personally, it isnt about anyone specific. 

Im sure someone can dredge up some off kilter example to contrary, but in real life war does not have a "time limit." Now before someone rips my head off, YES there are time sensitive things at the strategic or operational level. However, time tables for battles are rarely if ever kept, and units in the field generally take as long as they need to do complete and objective. After all, you cannot take town X if you are dead. Units do not generally come across a heavily defended positions and go "well crap! the colonel said we had to take this in 20min, so we had better just charge right in!" Slow is smooth and smooth is fast: Period. 

The worst bit though is that the time restrictions given in the game are completely silly most of the time. What macro level time concern's there are do not come down to 20min decisions. These are generally large time periods at those levels, and they are not on some kind of stopwatch. They are merely time "concerns" based on constantly fluctuating and often times estimated variables. 

 

[Michael Emrys]

49 minutes ago, shift8 said:

One thing I would like to see in CM is a option for the removal of time limits or for longer ones. I would rather see time limits as part of a series of missions or as a simple modifier of total score rather than the ridiculous manner people use them in CM scenario design. Giving someone an hour to take a town with a battalion of infantry in it and then declaring their mission a total defeat because they took 10min too long is something that really grinds my gears in CM. The time limit is used as a bludgeon by scenario designers to hurry the attacker into unrealistically hasty action in order to make the scenario harder. I see this in all kinds of scenario's, so if you make them dont take this personally, it isnt about anyone specific. 

Im sure someone can dredge up some off kilter example to contrary, but in real life war does not have a "time limit." Now before someone rips my head off, YES there are time sensitive things at the strategic or operational level. However, time tables for battles are rarely if ever kept, and units in the field generally take as long as they need to do complete and objective. After all, you cannot take town X if you are dead. Units do not generally come across a heavily defended positions and go "well crap! the colonel said we had to take this in 20min, so we had better just charge right in!" Slow is smooth and smooth is fast: Period. 

The worst bit though is that the time restrictions given in the game are completely silly most of the time. What macro level time concern's there are do not come down to 20min decisions. These are generally large time periods at those levels, and they are not on some kind of stopwatch. They are merely time "concerns" based on constantly fluctuating and often times estimated variables. 

 

I'm with you on this to an extent. It may be the case that the actions of a company or a battalion are strictly time limited because they are an integral part of a larger operation and need to be at least roughly synchronized to other formations and their ability to carry out their missions. But that is a different kind of animal than putting tight limits on a game to achieve "play balance" or to make a tense, "challenging" game.

What I usually do when I am setting up a QB to play is to set the length of play to an hour or up to an hour and a half even though I may expect to achieve a decision in a half hour or so. I still want the flow of combat to set its own rhythm and not be overly worried about a ticking clock. If I choose to let my scouts observe a suspected enemy location for five minutes before I send the rest of the company there, then so be it.

Michael

[womble]

On time:

First thing you have to remember before you complain about time is that CM time is very much compressed compared to RL operational time/tempo. Largely because the commander can smoothly coordinate widely separated actions, and there is not nearly so much "waiting around" to endure, but also because some mechanisms (specifically spotting) operate more quickly and easily than in real life.

Second, you have to recognise that you're playing a game. The designer has, presumably, had some playtest experience with the scenario. The AI is scripted according to time, and very limited outside those constraints. The vast majority of attack/assault scenarios are inevitable eventual victories for the attacker, so the only metrics upon which you can measure (since there seems to be some mandate to measure it) success or failure have to have the context of "time taken". Sure, IRL, if the attack on the town goes badly, you can hand over to another Bttn the next day and eventually wear the defenders down. But any game has artificial contexts, and time is one of them, even if you have a requirement to preserve ammo or use up the enemy's.

Take the first mission in the Courage Conquers campaign: if it had no time limit, or even 15 minutes longer, it'd be a certain win for me, but with 5 minutes "plus overtime" remaining, it's going to be nip and tuck whether I achieve the major objective.

Of course, a scenario that's not been playtested has a chance that the time allowed is unreasonably short, but that will apply however long the time limit is.

Third, gameplay expands to fill the time available. If you've got two hours, you'll spend the first hour futzing about and the second hour actually getting on with the game, and it might as well have been a 1 hour game. Expand pretty much ad infinitum.

 

[Michael Emrys]

2 hours ago, womble said:

Third, gameplay expands to fill the time available. If you've got two hours, you'll spend the first hour futzing about and the second hour actually getting on with the game, and it might as well have been a 1 hour game. Expand pretty much ad infinitum.

This is an instance where I have to say, "Speak for yourself, buddy." I find I am not patient enough to futz around very much; in fact, I have to keep a grip in myself not to do something reckless to get done with it.

Michael

[Erwin]

Re time limits, I'd like to see more penalties for high friendly casualties like we had in CMSF.  That should help decrease the number of "fight to the last man to win" type scenarios and encourage players to be more realistically careful with the lives of their electronic troops.  That would require more generous time limits, as just "winning regardless of cost" would no longer be as viable as it is now

Edited May 17, 2016 by Erwin

[Panzerpanic]

I agree 110% with you on that one. If onlt they could give the option of macking scenario, quick game without it. Im sure its not hard to remove and i can hardly see a counter-argument to give more option to players to customize their scenario/quick battle(really want that on quick battle mind you) as it is an option and those who really want to have time limit could keep it so everyone wins in the end!!

[shift8]

6 hours ago, womble said:

On time:

First thing you have to remember before you complain about time is that CM time is very much compressed compared to RL operational time/tempo. Largely because the commander can smoothly coordinate widely separated actions, and there is not nearly so much "waiting around" to endure, but also because some mechanisms (specifically spotting) operate more quickly and easily than in real life.

Second, you have to recognise that you're playing a game. The designer has, presumably, had some playtest experience with the scenario. The AI is scripted according to time, and very limited outside those constraints. The vast majority of attack/assault scenarios are inevitable eventual victories for the attacker, so the only metrics upon which you can measure (since there seems to be some mandate to measure it) success or failure have to have the context of "time taken". Sure, IRL, if the attack on the town goes badly, you can hand over to another Bttn the next day and eventually wear the defenders down. But any game has artificial contexts, and time is one of them, even if you have a requirement to preserve ammo or use up the enemy's.

Take the first mission in the Courage Conquers campaign: if it had no time limit, or even 15 minutes longer, it'd be a certain win for me, but with 5 minutes "plus overtime" remaining, it's going to be nip and tuck whether I achieve the major objective.

Of course, a scenario that's not been playtested has a chance that the time allowed is unreasonably short, but that will apply however long the time limit is.

Third, gameplay expands to fill the time available. If you've got two hours, you'll spend the first hour futzing about and the second hour actually getting on with the game, and it might as well have been a 1 hour game. Expand pretty much ad infinitum.

 

I understand that decision making and decisiveness in general in CM are faster, than that IRL people do a lot of sitting around between actions. However, this does not imo much effect the actual second by second results each engagment (say panther shoots sherman etc). Therefore, I dont really see it as a justification to also scale the time limit. While I may not have to wait around in CM for people to stop eating lunch or spend an hour deliberating on crossing a street: everything else is in real time, so a time limit still put strain on minute tactical things. I dont find this very realistic. I think it just better to acknowledge that in a game I will commit to decision faster than IRL etc. 

 

I completely and totally agree with you that most Attack defend scenarios are predestined regarding their results. However, I dont see a problem with this. This is just MHO, but I think that scenarios in CM should be played to experience the history of the scenario, not purely for competition. I will gladly play a scenario where I conduct as easy if drawn out attack with certain victory as much as I would be willing to play a certain defeat. For me it is just about the tactical realisim, and I dont really care for challenge per se. 

 

I am really enjoying courage conquers so far in CMFB, it being my favorite campaign. I wont lie though, there was one mission in that campaign that sort of set this off. Its not the first time limit to irritate me, but it is fresh in my memory. There is one mission where you have to seize a town defended by a regiment or something of paratroopers. The actual in game briefing states that IRL the Americans sat back in blated the town to hell with artillery, then sat back again and blasted it some more with a large block of tanks, then at long last sent in the infantry to mop up. It did these very tactics. Imagine my irritation when about 75% of the way through the town (with very few casualties at all....)it tells me I get a minor defeat because I didn't kill the last 3 german units within the 10min variable time limit (or whatever it was). Of course the battle is destined to go the Americans way given the forces involved, but I dont really mind that. If that is how it was in history, then thats how I want to play it. I dont want to be given a mere 1:30 to take a town just because it would be too easy otherwise. 

 

Just my two cents. 

[A Canadian Cat]

What @womble said

I'll just add you guys are totally seeing this from the attackers point of view.  As a frequent defender I love time limits.  Cut them down, damn it  There are too many missions where the time it to long   The defender's only hope is the clock.  Keep it tight.  Please scenario designers ignore these guys and in fact you have already listened to them too much cut those times back please.

[shift8]

2 minutes ago, IanL said:

What @womble said

I'll just add you guys are totally seeing this from the attackers point of view.  As a frequent defender I love time limits.  Cut them down, damn it  There are too many missions where the time it to long   The defender's only hope is the clock.  Keep it tight.  Please scenario designers ignore these guys and in fact you have already listened to them too much cut those times back please.

It seems to me that you are openly admitting that you want a tactical crutch to take precedence over realism. Perhaps if would be better for scenario designers to simply pick more even historical match ups. 

 

Also: I just discovered I can mod the time limits myself, so this conversation is now even more academic that it was before

[A Canadian Cat]

3 minutes ago, shift8 said:

It seems to me that you are openly admitting that you want a tactical crutch to take precedence over realism. Perhaps if would be better for scenario designers to simply pick more even historical match ups.

Hummm what to say about that.  Not sure. 

This is a great game and clearly more realistic than anything else out there but there are some issues.  One of which is we move to fast as commanders.  We leave wounded un attended, we push through dangerous areas, we just go faster because we have the player as god POV that allows better coordination than real life.  Most importantly we push on when real commanders would have backed off and waited for more support.  Bottom line we move to fast and push to hard.  I actually view the reduction of time as a way to compensate for that and give the defenders a fighting chance thus improving the realism of the game.

There that works more or less.

[shift8]

23 minutes ago, IanL said:

Hummm what to say about that.  Not sure. 

This is a great game and clearly more realistic than anything else out there but there are some issues.  One of which is we move to fast as commanders.  We leave wounded un attended, we push through dangerous areas, we just go faster because we have the player as god POV that allows better coordination than real life.  Most importantly we push on when real commanders would have backed off and waited for more support.  Bottom line we move to fast and push to hard.  I actually view the reduction of time as a way to compensate for that and give the defenders a fighting chance thus improving the realism of the game.

There that works more or less.

You misunderstand how those things affect real life. Most of the time discrepancy has absolutely nothing to do with what the end result is. In real life I might take 40min instead of 5 to decide if I want to cross a road because real people will die. Does not change the result of cross the road. Yes, I am more efficient because of my view of the battlefield, but this is completely canceled out because the enemy can do the same. Ergo: it makes no proportional difference. Doing things faster does not mean it would have gone any differently. Arbitrarily forcing non-organically determined time limits does produce tactically unrealistic results. The game should not about about "boosting" the chances of winning on the defense. 

This entire view (not yours but by gamer in general) misses the point that in reality everything is fundamentally binary. Every scenario is technically an inevitable victory or defeat for one side or the other if both sides do every action right. IMHO, people need to realize this and play simulators for what they are. If you are on the losing side then simply enjoy the experience of losing. Or have fun on the overpowered side experience what its like to have and abundance of firepower etc. If you want true balance, play on some fantasy map with mirrored terrain and identical forces.....

 

In addition:

-IRL you do not attend to wounded in the middle of a fight. This is Army CLS 101. 

-Pushing through danger zone unrealistically is the result you get when you add time limits that force a player to do something stupid to avoid a arbitrary time crunch

-Your god view is canceled by the other players. Ergo: proportional etc. 

-You keep speaking of pushing fast and hard.....I am specifically complaining that the time limits make me do this too much....so how does this benefit your argument exactly?

-About pushing vs waiting for support. Has nothing to do with time "limits". In fact, once again this is just another argument that IRL people will take all the time they need to execute a mission properly. Clearly the time limit induced "bum rush" is not realistic. 

Edited May 17, 2016 by shift8

[womble]

1 hour ago, shift8 said:

I understand that decision making and decisiveness in general in CM are faster, than that IRL people do a lot of sitting around between actions. However, this does not imo much effect the actual second by second results each engagment (say panther shoots sherman etc). Therefore, I dont really see it as a justification to also scale the time limit. While I may not have to wait around in CM for people to stop eating lunch or spend an hour deliberating on crossing a street: everything else is in real time, so a time limit still put strain on minute tactical things. I dont find this very realistic. I think it just better to acknowledge that in a game I will commit to decision faster than IRL etc.

This is a farcical attitude to take. The reason a battle (attacking a village, say) takes less time to execute in CM isn't because it speeds up the bullet flight time (as you say), it's because you don't have to wait 5 minutes for the message to go up and down the C2 chains, or a for a runner to reach the tank (dodging bullets the whole way), get the attention of its TC, and have the AFV move to where it's needed, identify the hard target the infantry need reducing and proceed, one result-assessed shell at a time, to conduct the reduction. As soon as your troops identify a hard target you can have the armour roll out of its overwatch or reserve position and start flinging HE. And yet you ignore that immense tempo-increaser as irrelevant? And once you acknowledge that you'll commit to the decision (as well as being able to act upon that commitment) faster in the game, you don't think it's any reason to recognise that the consequence of this is that an action that took all day (for one result or another) IRL can be completed to the same stage in a couple of hours of CM-time? It's a self-contradictory stance.

 

1 hour ago, shift8 said:

I completely and totally agree with you that most Attack defend scenarios are predestined regarding their results. However, I dont see a problem with this. This is just MHO, but I think that scenarios in CM should be played to experience the history of the scenario, not purely for competition. I will gladly play a scenario where I conduct as easy if drawn out attack with certain victory as much as I would be willing to play a certain defeat. For me it is just about the tactical realisim, and I dont really care for challenge per se. 

At which point the "challenge" of VPs etc is entirely irrelevant to you. But the design constraints of the scenario remain. The best example is the attempted fighting retreat, where timed moves by the AI based upon the designer's assessment of the attacker's tempo in the context of the time limit imposed would simply result, if the time limit were simply dropped, in you attacking the AI in their final positions. Bit of a waste of effort, no? As well as being a boring snoozefest as you scout and find empty a succession of good defensive positions because the AI decamped 20 minutes ahead of your cautious arrival. And the VPs etc are significantly not irrelevant to a large chunk of the playerbase.

You are entirely at liberty to open all the games and shove the time limit out to 4 hours (or are you saying there should be no practical end limit?) but you have to recognise that the scenarios as written will probably be less interesting.

1 hour ago, shift8 said:

 

I am really enjoying courage conquers so far in CMFB, it being my favorite campaign. I wont lie though, there was one mission in that campaign that sort of set this off. Its not the first time limit to irritate me, but it is fresh in my memory. There is one mission where you have to seize a town defended by a regiment or something of paratroopers. The actual in game briefing states that IRL the Americans sat back in blated the town to hell with artillery, then sat back again and blasted it some more with a large block of tanks, then at long last sent in the infantry to mop up. It did these very tactics. Imagine my irritation when about 75% of the way through the town (with very few casualties at all....)it tells me I get a minor defeat because I didn't kill the last 3 german units within the 10min variable time limit (or whatever it was). Of course the battle is destined to go the Americans way given the forces involved, but I dont really mind that. If that is how it was in history, then thats how I want to play it. I dont want to be given a mere 1:30 to take a town just because it would be too easy otherwise. 

 

Just my two cents. 

Hey, you failed at the scenario, because you didn't adopt a historical tolerance for casualties. You could have advanced faster and won with a few more losses, but you chose to play with a modern commander's sensibilities and lost. Sounds like the scenario is perfectly balanced for historical play as is to me.

[shift8]

23 minutes ago, womble said:

This is a attitude to take. The reason a battle (attacking a village, say) takes less time to execute in CM isn't because it speeds up the bullet flight time (as you say), it's because you don't have to wait 5 minutes for the message to go up and down the C2 chains, or a for a runner to reach the tank (dodging bullets the whole way), get the attention of its TC, and have the AFV move to where it's needed, identify the hard target the infantry need reducing and proceed, one result-assessed shell at a time, to conduct the reduction. As soon as your troops identify a hard target you can have the armour roll out of its overwatch or reserve position and start flinging HE. And yet you ignore that immense tempo-increaser as irrelevant? And once you acknowledge that you'll commit to the decision (as well as being able to act upon that commitment) faster in the game, you don't think it's any reason to recognise that the consequence of this is that an action that took all day (for one result or another) IRL can be completed to the same stage in a couple of hours of CM-time? It's a self-contradictory stance.

 

At which point the "challenge" of VPs etc is entirely irrelevant to you. But the design constraints of the scenario remain. The best example is the attempted fighting retreat, where timed moves by the AI based upon the designer's assessment of the attacker's tempo in the context of the time limit imposed would simply result, if the time limit were simply dropped, in you attacking the AI in their final positions. Bit of a waste of effort, no? As well as being a boring snoozefest as you scout and find empty a succession of good defensive positions because the AI decamped 20 minutes ahead of your cautious arrival. And the VPs etc are significantly not irrelevant to a large chunk of the playerbase.

You are entirely at liberty to open all the games and shove the time limit out to 4 hours (or are you saying there should be no practical end limit?) but you have to recognise that the scenarios as written will probably be less interesting.

Hey, you failed at the scenario, because you didn't adopt a historical tolerance for casualties. You could have advanced faster and won with a few more losses, but you chose to play with a modern commander's sensibilities and lost. Sounds like the scenario is perfectly balanced for historical play as is to me.

I never said bullets moved faster. I thought that you might be and was attempting to clarify that was not the case. The temo-increaser forces a player to behave in a inorganic and stupid manner. It is irrelevant because it 1) does not apply evenly to things 2) it completely mitigated by the fact that the defender can also do things more decisively and more quickly etc. I may be able to adjust fire faster, or move troops up faster etc, but the defender can perform the counters to these things just a quickly. It is therefore for all intensive purposes moot. However a time limit is a disproportionate and arbitrary addition that does not behave in a organic manner. So instead of performing a correct assault with proper support by fire, the attacker is forced to just barge in. This in turn allows the defender to aport tactics or deployments that are equally silly or not life like. Essentially, you are trying to solve a "problem" that is related to this being a game on a computer by adding additional artifice to the game; something that can only result in a cascading effect of continuously more unrealistic counters. 

 

Obviously the challenge is respective to me. This argument is about what different individuals think a scenario should be, so pointing out "its my opinion" is completely moot. And where are you getting the idea that the VP's should be dropped? Rather I argued that the VP's should not be controlled so narrowly by the time limit. 

I dont have to realize anything. I dont find them less interesting that way. If you do, go right ahead. But please dont tell me what I find less interesting.

Except that the scenario states the units IRL used the same tactics. I never listed how many men I lost, just that they were few in # by my standards. You simply cannot magically interpret the casualties for a time limits as somehow corresponding to real life. For all you know, my approach was closer to the real thing. And more to the point, it is the time limit induced assertion that I completely failed over some failure to kill the last German in some asinine and unrealistic time frame that is annoying here. Not that the time it takes should have no effect what-so-ever. 

Edited May 17, 2016 by shift8

[Erwin]

IIRC in WW2 it took approx. 25,000 of small arms bullets to kill one guy.  Add up all the small arms ammo available in a CM game and count how many are killed at scenario end.  The casualty level is usually way out of line.  That high level is usually caused by time limits forcing the player to take non-realistic high risk actions.  Many of us like to use good tactics and enjoy that application more than just winning regardless of costs (and hence why imo campaigns are "better").  Of course this is primarily applicable to playing vs the AI (hence the attraction of campaigns).  Playing head to head I can understand why battles degrade to "fight to last man" endings. 

[MikeyD]

I've said this before. There are several fundamentally opposed philosophies of gameplay among players.
First there's the 'win at all cost' player who will bend any rule, take advantage of any game engine anomaly to WIN-WIN-WIN!
Second there's the 'war movie' player whose in it for the perfect glorious action scene at the perfect camera angle, and if they happen to win so much the better.
There's a third type, the 'historical fidelity' grog who counts the rivets on the wheels and inspects the gear being carried on infantry web belts. He often wants to see a 'typical' battle fought with the 'usual' methods, resulting in the 'expected' outcomes.
 Oh, and let's also remember to tip our hats in the direction of the precisely-balanced-gameplay fetishists.

None of these is "The wrong way to play" but they create a big dilemma for scenario designers. You lean too much in one direction to please one faction and you turn off the others. There's no pleasing everybody. That's why the game comes with an scenario editor. For a community as zealous as the  CM community, I'm perplexed why there aren't more 3rd party CMFB scenarios uploaded to Scenario Depot by now.

[shift8]

18 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

I've said this before. There are several fundamentally opposed philosophies of gameplay among players.
First there's the 'win at all cost' player who will bend any rule, take advantage of any game engine anomaly to WIN-WIN-WIN!
Second there's the 'war movie' player whose in it for the perfect glorious action scene at the perfect camera angle, and if they happen to win so much the better.
There's a third type, the 'historical fidelity' grog who counts the rivets on the wheels and inspects the gear being carried on infantry web belts. He often wants to see a 'typical' battle fought with the 'usual' methods, resulting in the 'expected' outcomes.
 Oh, and let's also remember to tip our hats in the direction of the precisely-balanced-gameplay fetishists.

None of these is "The wrong way to play" but they create a big dilemma for scenario designers. You lean too much in one direction to please one faction and you turn off the others. There's no pleasing everybody. That's why the game comes with an scenario editor. For a community as zealous as the  CM community, I'm perplexed why there aren't more 3rd party CMFB scenarios uploaded to Scenario Depot by now.

+1

[Childress]

On 5/4/2016 at 8:49 AM, Sgt Joch said:

17 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

 Oh, and let's also remember to tip our hats in the direction of the precisely-balanced-gameplay fetishists. 

 

Now, who would that be?

[Michael Emrys]

2 hours ago, IanL said:

What @womble said

I'll just add you guys are totally seeing this from the attackers point of view.  As a frequent defender I love time limits.  Cut them down, damn it  There are too many missions where the time it to long   The defender's only hope is the clock.  Keep it tight.  Please scenario designers ignore these guys and in fact you have already listened to them too much cut those times back please.

No, no, that would be entirely the wrong way to go about it. Extend the time limits, but enable the defender to accrue points by delaying the attacker, inflicting casualties on him, and withdrawing off the map in good order. Merely hanging on to geographical objectives was only part of a defender's goal. Setting the attacker up for a devastating counter-attack could be where the real win lay.

Michael

[A Canadian Cat]

4 hours ago, MikeyD said:

None of these is "The wrong way to play" but they create a big dilemma for scenario designers. You lean too much in one direction to please one faction and you turn off the others. There's no pleasing everybody. 

Which was my actual point. If we only hear the "make the time limits longer" voices it might influence designers . We need a little push back so no one go es crazy tryjng to remove time pressures just because some voices have requested that.

 

3 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

No, no, that would be entirely the wrong way to go about it. Extend the time limits, but enable the defender to accrue points by delaying the attacker, inflicting casualties on him, and withdrawing off the map in good order.

Well I would argue your time ran out so the defender did a good job of delaying you, they win.

 

3 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

Merely hanging on to geographical objectives was only part of a defender's goal. Setting the attacker up for a devastating counter-attack could be where the real win lay.

Touche!

[noob]

It would be nice if some clever person could come up with a handicap system that would factor in all the advantages / disadvantages of each side in a given scenario, then cross reference those parameters with the actual result, to come up with a new result.

That way, one could "lose" a scenario, but still win if the "loss" wasn't as bad as it should of been.

For example, I played a scenario that was so Pro Allies that one was left with the feeling that it was impossible for the Axis to win, yet it was classed as a H2H game.

So one could have argued that if the Allies did not achieve a Total Victory, they lose.

This would dumb down the scoring system to a simple win / lose / draw factor, and that might not be to some peoples tastes, and it would certainly disqualify the games from traditional ladders. In fact, one would probably have to create a new ladder to integrate the system, a bit like a football league table, where there are only three results available.

However, I think the simplifying of the results would be worth the ability to play "any" scenario as balanced though.

How about it guys, a CM Premiere League
 

[womble]

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

I never said bullets moved faster. I thought that you might be and was attempting to clarify that was not the case.

No, you didn't. What you did say, effectively, was that because the bullets (and tanks and such) don't move any faster, the combat tempo isn't increased at all. Which is arrant nonsense.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

The temo-increaser forces a player to behave...

What are you defining as a tempo-increaser? The tighter decision-action loop? Or the shorter time scales? Because the thing that increases the tempo is the former, and doesn't force you to do anything. You could, if you like, wait however long you wish before starting the assault gun on its way to flatten the strongpoint, and jigger with waypoints so that the system, once on-station, shoots only one round per order phase, or at pretty much whatever rate you like to simulate deliberate, observed fire. You'd be there all day, of course, and there wouldn't be much action in that sector of the battlefield, or on any other sector that's dependent on that one being advanced.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

...in a inorganic and stupid manner.

What does this even mean? From my perspective the tighter integratio between armour and infantry, and within those arms, permitted by the God-View of the player makes the behaviour of a CM force more organic and being able to react more quickly and accurately than IRL makes my pTruppe colonels and captains tactical geniuses by comparison with their historical counterparts. Which is part of the disconnect you have to make when you play a game no matter how close a simulation it istrying to be to RL, it is, in the end nothing like the actuality.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

It is irrelevant because it 1) does not apply evenly to things

Again: nonsense. Just because something doesn't affect every aspect of every second of the game doesn't mean it doesn't have a general and widespread effect on the progress of an engagement as a whole.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

2) it completely mitigated by the fact that the defender can also do things more decisively and more quickly etc.

Completely? Hardly, when a defender has less with which to react. And not at all against an AI which makes not decisions, and reacts in only the most cumbersome and crude fashion in the first place.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

However a time limit is a disproportionate and arbitrary addition that does not behave in a organic manner. So instead of performing a correct assault with proper support by fire, the attacker is forced to just barge in.

Actually, you're disparaging the "official" scenario designers there. They don't lust lick a finger, hold it up to the wind and say "Oh... about 2 hours". They playtest the thing at least a few times with a number of participants to see whether what they are asking, and their scoring schema, is at least reasonably possible (under the engine at the point the scenario will hit the wild, at least; there's no accounting for later engine changes, as some scenarios demonstrate). So you're only, if they get it right, and IME, they generally do, being required to "barge in" by two factors: the narrative the designer wishes for the scenario; your own dilatory preparations.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

Essentially, you are trying to solve a "problem" that is related to this being a game on a computer by adding additional artifice to the game; something that can only result in a cascading effect of continuously more unrealistic counters. 

The "problem" isn't that it's a computer, but that it is a game. All games have limits and that requires that anything outside that limit be provided or assumed as context. Since space really is time, your argument about time extension applies to the game map too. For it to be "realistic", every scenario would have to take place on a complete max-size map. Limits are an inherent part of a game. They can't be made to go away by some wishful thinking.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

 And where are you getting the idea that the VP's should be dropped? Rather I argued that the VP's should not be controlled so narrowly by the time limit. 

 

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

I dont have to realize anything. I dont find them less interesting that way. If you do, go right ahead. But please dont tell me what I find less interesting.

Your viewpoint is incomprehensible. How is a simple frontal assault against one position (after potentially hours of fruitless noodling about where the enemy were but are no longer) as interesting as a progression of actions through a deep enemy position? Especially when the single final position wasn't intended to hold the entirety of the defending force, but one attrited by a fighting retreat?

And no, you don't "have" to realise anything. But until you do, you'll be raging against something that's there for good and generally immovable (without reducing the fidelity of the "simulation") reasons.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

Except that the scenario states the units IRL used the same tactics. I never listed how many men I lost, just that they were few in # by my standards. You simply cannot magically interpret the casualties for a time limits as somehow corresponding to real life.

That you thought they were few, and are a C21st chap is a pretty sure indicator that they were less than the assaulting force took in WW2. And because the game is a game and not a perfect simulation, you have to interpret the casualties as corresponding in some way to real life. That's the whole point. You want historicality: you won't get that by extending the time limits because it's a game. It's that simple.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

For all you know, my approach was closer to the real thing. And more to the point, it is the time limit induced assertion that I completely failed over some failure to kill the last German in some asinine and unrealistic time frame that is annoying here. Not that the time it takes should have no effect what-so-ever. 

Now, this is a point that's worth building on. I've not played the scenario in question, but it sounds like there was one large, vital, high value, urbanised, terrain VL that you have to "Occupy". There's the design weakness in the scenario. If that massive block of built-on VL was split up into 4 or 8 (or more) chunks each worth the appropriate fraction of the total VP assigned to the large blob, you'd've held at least some of it, from the sounds of it, with maybe one or two having cowering Germans contesting them, and maybe one or two having no one in. Large (especially urban) high value Occupy VLs are, collectively, a perennial bugbear that pops its head up occasionally. So if you'd gotten half the VPs of that VL, you'd probably have gotten some sort of victory rather than a defeat. And the time limit would have been "just right" for avoiding a tedious house-to-house mopping up exercise.

And you didn't completely fail. Complete failure is Total Defeat. You partially failed. And that was probably down to the VL being poorly thought-out (though there might have been a specific reason that total control of one contiguous area was required), rather than the time limit. But you're so fixated on time limits you didn't think about that.

[womble]

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

I never said bullets moved faster. I thought that you might be and was attempting to clarify that was not the case.

No, you didn't. What you did say, effectively, was that because the bullets (and tanks and such) don't move any faster, the combat tempo isn't increased at all. Which is arrant nonsense.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

The temo-increaser forces a player to behave...

What are you defining as a tempo-increaser? The tighter decision-action loop? Or the shorter time scales? Because the thing that increases the tempo is the former, and doesn't force you to do anything. You could, if you like, wait however long you wish before starting the assault gun on its way to flatten the strongpoint, and jigger with waypoints so that the system, once on-station, shoots only one round per order phase, or at pretty much whatever rate you like to simulate deliberate, observed fire. You'd be there all day, of course, and there wouldn't be much action in that sector of the battlefield, or on any other sector that's dependent on that one being advanced.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

...in a inorganic and stupid manner.

What does this even mean? From my perspective the tighter integratio between armour and infantry, and within those arms, permitted by the God-View of the player makes the behaviour of a CM force more organic and being able to react more quickly and accurately than IRL makes my pTruppe colonels and captains tactical geniuses by comparison with their historical counterparts. Which is part of the disconnect you have to make when you play a game no matter how close a simulation it istrying to be to RL, it is, in the end nothing like the actuality.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

It is irrelevant because it 1) does not apply evenly to things

Again: nonsense. Just because something doesn't affect every aspect of every second of the game doesn't mean it doesn't have a general and widespread effect on the progress of an engagement as a whole.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

2) it completely mitigated by the fact that the defender can also do things more decisively and more quickly etc.

Completely? Hardly, when a defender has less with which to react. And not at all against an AI which makes not decisions, and reacts in only the most cumbersome and crude fashion in the first place.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

However a time limit is a disproportionate and arbitrary addition that does not behave in a organic manner. So instead of performing a correct assault with proper support by fire, the attacker is forced to just barge in.

Actually, you're disparaging the "official" scenario designers there. They don't lust lick a finger, hold it up to the wind and say "Oh... about 2 hours". They playtest the thing at least a few times with a number of participants to see whether what they are asking, and their scoring schema, is at least reasonably possible (under the engine at the point the scenario will hit the wild, at least; there's no accounting for later engine changes, as some scenarios demonstrate). So you're only, if they get it right, and IME, they generally do, being required to "barge in" by two factors: the narrative the designer wishes for the scenario; your own dilatory preparations.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

Essentially, you are trying to solve a "problem" that is related to this being a game on a computer by adding additional artifice to the game; something that can only result in a cascading effect of continuously more unrealistic counters. 

The "problem" isn't that it's a computer, but that it is a game. All games have limits and that requires that anything outside that limit be provided or assumed as context. Since space really is time, your argument about time extension applies to the game map too. For it to be "realistic", every scenario would have to take place on a complete max-size map. Limits are an inherent part of a game. They can't be made to go away by some wishful thinking.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

 And where are you getting the idea that the VP's should be dropped? Rather I argued that the VP's should not be controlled so narrowly by the time limit. 

 

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

I dont have to realize anything. I dont find them less interesting that way. If you do, go right ahead. But please dont tell me what I find less interesting.

Your viewpoint is incomprehensible. How is a simple frontal assault against one position (after potentially hours of fruitless noodling about where the enemy were but are no longer) as interesting as a progression of actions through a deep enemy position? Especially when the single final position wasn't intended to hold the entirety of the defending force, but one attrited by a fighting retreat?

And no, you don't "have" to realise anything. But until you do, you'll be raging against something that's there for good and generally immovable (without reducing the fidelity of the "simulation") reasons.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

Except that the scenario states the units IRL used the same tactics. I never listed how many men I lost, just that they were few in # by my standards. You simply cannot magically interpret the casualties for a time limits as somehow corresponding to real life.

That you thought they were few, and are a C21st chap is a pretty sure indicator that they were less than the assaulting force took in WW2. And because the game is a game and not a perfect simulation, you have to interpret the casualties as corresponding in some way to real life. That's the whole point. You want historicality: you won't get that by extending the time limits because it's a game. It's that simple.

11 hours ago, shift8 said:

For all you know, my approach was closer to the real thing. And more to the point, it is the time limit induced assertion that I completely failed over some failure to kill the last German in some asinine and unrealistic time frame that is annoying here. Not that the time it takes should have no effect what-so-ever. 

Now, this is a point that's worth building on. I've not played the scenario in question, but it sounds like there was one large, vital, high value, urbanised, terrain VL that you have to "Occupy". There's the design weakness in the scenario. If that massive block of built-on VL was split up into 4 or 8 (or more) chunks each worth the appropriate fraction of the total VP assigned to the large blob, you'd've held at least some of it, from the sounds of it, with maybe one or two having cowering Germans contesting them, and maybe one or two having no one in. Large (especially urban) high value Occupy VLs are, collectively, a perennial bugbear that pops its head up occasionally. So if you'd gotten half the VPs of that VL, you'd probably have gotten some sort of victory rather than a defeat. And the time limit would have been "just right" for avoiding a tedious house-to-house mopping up exercise.

And you didn't completely fail. Complete failure is Total Defeat. You partially failed. And that was probably down to the VL being poorly thought-out (though there might have been a specific reason that total control of one contiguous area was required), rather than the time limit. But you're so fixated on time limits you didn't think about that.

[shift8]

9 hours ago, womble said:

No, you didn't. What you did say, effectively, was that because the bullets (and tanks and such) don't move any faster, the combat tempo isn't increased at all. Which is arrant nonsense.

What are you defining as a tempo-increaser? The tighter decision-action loop? Or the shorter time scales? Because the thing that increases the tempo is the former, and doesn't force you to do anything. You could, if you like, wait however long you wish before starting the assault gun on its way to flatten the strongpoint, and jigger with waypoints so that the system, once on-station, shoots only one round per order phase, or at pretty much whatever rate you like to simulate deliberate, observed fire. You'd be there all day, of course, and there wouldn't be much action in that sector of the battlefield, or on any other sector that's dependent on that one being advanced.

What does this even mean? From my perspective the tighter integratio between armour and infantry, and within those arms, permitted by the God-View of the player makes the behaviour of a CM force more organic and being able to react more quickly and accurately than IRL makes my pTruppe colonels and captains tactical geniuses by comparison with their historical counterparts. Which is part of the disconnect you have to make when you play a game no matter how close a simulation it istrying to be to RL, it is, in the end nothing like the actuality.

Again: nonsense. Just because something doesn't affect every aspect of every second of the game doesn't mean it doesn't have a general and widespread effect on the progress of an engagement as a whole.

Completely? Hardly, when a defender has less with which to react. And not at all against an AI which makes not decisions, and reacts in only the most cumbersome and crude fashion in the first place.

Actually, you're disparaging the "official" scenario designers there. They don't lust lick a finger, hold it up to the wind and say "Oh... about 2 hours". They playtest the thing at least a few times with a number of participants to see whether what they are asking, and their scoring schema, is at least reasonably possible (under the engine at the point the scenario will hit the wild, at least; there's no accounting for later engine changes, as some scenarios demonstrate). So you're only, if they get it right, and IME, they generally do, being required to "barge in" by two factors: the narrative the designer wishes for the scenario; your own dilatory preparations.

The "problem" isn't that it's a computer, but that it is a game. All games have limits and that requires that anything outside that limit be provided or assumed as context. Since space really is time, your argument about time extension applies to the game map too. For it to be "realistic", every scenario would have to take place on a complete max-size map. Limits are an inherent part of a game. They can't be made to go away by some wishful thinking.

 

Your viewpoint is incomprehensible. How is a simple frontal assault against one position (after potentially hours of fruitless noodling about where the enemy were but are no longer) as interesting as a progression of actions through a deep enemy position? Especially when the single final position wasn't intended to hold the entirety of the defending force, but one attrited by a fighting retreat?

And no, you don't "have" to realise anything. But until you do, you'll be raging against something that's there for good and generally immovable (without reducing the fidelity of the "simulation") reasons.

That you thought they were few, and are a C21st chap is a pretty sure indicator that they were less than the assaulting force took in WW2. And because the game is a game and not a perfect simulation, you have to interpret the casualties as corresponding in some way to real life. That's the whole point. You want historicality: you won't get that by extending the time limits because it's a game. It's that simple.

Now, this is a point that's worth building on. I've not played the scenario in question, but it sounds like there was one large, vital, high value, urbanised, terrain VL that you have to "Occupy". There's the design weakness in the scenario. If that massive block of built-on VL was split up into 4 or 8 (or more) chunks each worth the appropriate fraction of the total VP assigned to the large blob, you'd've held at least some of it, from the sounds of it, with maybe one or two having cowering Germans contesting them, and maybe one or two having no one in. Large (especially urban) high value Occupy VLs are, collectively, a perennial bugbear that pops its head up occasionally. So if you'd gotten half the VPs of that VL, you'd probably have gotten some sort of victory rather than a defeat. And the time limit would have been "just right" for avoiding a tedious house-to-house mopping up exercise.

And you didn't completely fail. Complete failure is Total Defeat. You partially failed. And that was probably down to the VL being poorly thought-out (though there might have been a specific reason that total control of one contiguous area was required), rather than the time limit. But you're so fixated on time limits you didn't think about that.

1) It is not "nonsense." It is a absolute fact that since the combat in CM is in real time, the tactical aspects of it are valid. The fact that gameness causes forces to commit more completely resulting in faster conclusions is irrelevant. 

2)Tactics should evolve organically based on the enemy Im facing and what I have at my disposal. Not, OMG I only have 1 hour to do this, so I have to releive myself of good sense and take stupid and unrealistic risks. 

3)The defender would have less to react with anyhow....so again moot. And the AI being less-than-intelligent is not and excuse to add an artifice to the game. This is just more crap heaped on top of crap. (Not that I think BF did a bad job on the ai, but this is just the nature of ai in general)

4)I am not "disparaging" anyone. The fact you chose to word it that way says alot about how sensitive you are to any accusation of a bad scenario design. I find ANY time limit arbitrary. It is not because I think they just picked a time. Further, play testing a time limit only validates a time limit for one persons concept of acceptable losses or tactics etc. Which to some extent shoehorns me into that. It also means that the time limit in that case is NOT based on some omage to operational concerns at all, but rather simply if someone deemed that time "playable". 

5) I find your viewpoint incomprehensible......And who said anything about noodling about? There are plenty of other reasons an attack (properly conducted) may take longer than some silly time limit insists on. 

6) Please do not presume how I think based on the century you think I was born in. For that matter, I wasnt born in the 21st century. I dont know when you were born, nor do I give a hoot in the context of judging your arguments. 

 

"time limits" in real life evolve organically are only exist as a function of space and enemy forces and terrain. This is why historically the wishful thinking of commanders with regards to operations time tables almost never matched up with tactical realities. Tactically, a fight takes as long as it takes, period. Full stop. Rushing things to try to move faster will usually result in things taking longer when you fail repeatedly. You cannot force a timetable. The battlefield makes the time table for you. It doesnt matter how fast I move through an objective if my force loses tons of men in the process. Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast. Do it right the first time or dont do it at all etc. 

 It would be much better if there was simply a time "intent" that you tried to meet, and that no meeting it may or may not affect the forces or terrain in later missions in the campaign. Not this rubbish where a battle just careens to a halt when the meter runs out. At the very least, I should be allowed to fight it out with the ai after the mission ends. 

[AttorneyAtWar]

This is a good idea for a feature, along with selecting difficulty and Wego or real time allow players to artificially add time to a campaign scenario or a standalone scenario if they want it.

Edited May 18, 2016 by Raptorx7

[Michael Emrys]

3 hours ago, shift8 said:

At the very least, I should be allowed to fight it out with the ai after the mission ends. 

I've wondered about this too in the past. I noticed a long time ago that Civilization has a feature that allows the player to continue playing even after the victory conditions have been met. I have occasionally wished for something like this in CM that would, for instance, allow me to pursue a broken enemy.

Michael