Memories

[markshot]

Yes, I do remember consciously going through my staff and picking what roles various platoons would play based on leadership and also squad experience.  CRACK and ELITE were amazing, and CONSCRIPT was good for identifying enemy shooters.

Also, good leaders had longer in command ranges which made difference to resilience.

[Erwin]

6 minutes ago, markshot said:

I do remember consciously going through my staff and picking what roles various platoons would play based on leadership and also squad experience.  CRACK and ELITE were amazing, and CONSCRIPT was good for identifying enemy shooters.

Also, good leaders had longer in command ranges which made difference to resilience.

Totally remember all of that as well.  It was part of the CM1 fun as the CO to hand pick one's best squads for specific missions.   In CM2 one rarely can tell which (if any) are the outstanding squads or leaders to send on the most vital/dangerous missions like recon where on needs max stealth or assault requiring max leadership and morale.  When playing the CM2 game one doesn't see the same obvious effects of leadership as we did in CM1.  Have no idea whether this is more or less like RL.

And spreading fire was also fun and I thought realistic.

Edited October 6, 2020 by Erwin

[markshot]

Also, I might be mistaken, but I thought expertise and in/out command also impacted the delay system.

[Erwin]

2 minutes ago, markshot said:

Also, I might be mistaken, but I thought expertise and in/out command also impacted the delay system.

Yes, that is correct.  I never understood why the CM1 delay system was so detested by the decision-makers at BF.  It seemed to reflect the difference in training and leadership quite well.  The irony is how extreme people are going these days to create CM2 house rules to make the game more complex (and almost unplayable imo).

Edited October 6, 2020 by Erwin

[markshot]

7 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Totally remember all of that as well.  It was part of the CM1 fun as the CO to hand pick one's best squads for specific missions.   In CM2 one rarely can tell which (if any) are the outstanding squads or leaders to send on the most vital/dangerous missions like recon where on needs max stealth or assault requiring max leadership and morale.  When playing the CM2 game one doesn't see the same obvious effects of leadership as we did in CM1.  Have no idea whether this is more or less like RL.

I have two divergent thoughts on this:

* Perhaps things are overdone in games, since subtle nuance is not well conveyed by a one time battle as opposed to a year of command.

or

* I have been a manager in business, and I can really say that there is an order of magnitude difference between the best programmer and the worst.  Which actually made, the best highly cost effective ... only organizations stuck with HR and no vision determined pay by simply job titles or industry averages.  The best rarely even got double the pay of the worst.  Maybe 20-30% more.

Edited October 6, 2020 by markshot

[MOS:96B2P]

34 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Totally remember all of that as well.  It was part of the CM1 fun as the CO to hand pick one's best squads for specific missions.   

And spreading fire was also fun and I thought realistic.

 

33 minutes ago, markshot said:

Also, I might be mistaken, but I thought expertise and in/out command also impacted the delay system.

 

40 minutes ago, markshot said:

Yes, I do remember consciously going through my staff and picking what roles various platoons would play based on leadership and also squad experience.  CRACK and ELITE were amazing, and CONSCRIPT was good for identifying enemy shooters.  Also, good leaders had longer in command ranges which made difference to resilience.

 

All very interesting stuff.    

[Erwin]

1 hour ago, markshot said:

Perhaps things are overdone in games, since subtle nuance is not well conveyed by a one time battle as opposed to a year of command.

True...  But, there can be weeks or months (of other combat) between missions in the game and thus campaigns can depict many months (or in CM1's case the entire of WW2 from Barbarossa to the end). 

It would be a nice feature to have units gain experience and capability (even promotions of leaders) as such a campaign progressed.  CM3??

[Bulletpoint]

3 hours ago, markshot said:

I take that to mean that fires no longer spread?

Forget about spreading. It doesn't even start

 

[John1966]

On 10/6/2020 at 3:10 PM, Erwin said:

I never understood why the CM1 delay system was so detested by the decision-makers at BF.

I, too, loved the delay system. It was a legitimate consideration.

Well most of the time I loved it. The problem was when you got ridiculous delays with Russian conscripts.

Although maybe that was realistic.

There is something fundamentally wrong with pixeltruppen responding instantly. Especially if they're out of C2.

With the ability to pause (which I like), attacks are a little too easy to coordinate. We should be at home to Mr Cock-up more often. That's realism.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

45 minutes ago, John1966 said:

We should be at home to Mr Cock-up more often. That's realism.

Don't worry, he always turns up eventually! 

[chi-chi]

On 10/6/2020 at 9:10 AM, Erwin said:

Yes, that is correct.  I never understood why the CM1 delay system was so detested by the decision-makers at BF.  It seemed to reflect the difference in training and leadership quite well.  The irony is how extreme people are going these days to create CM2 house rules to make the game more complex (and almost unplayable imo).

I do believe there becomes a realism issue with delays as you increase how granular the game is. In CM1 there was certainly some give and take but the AS was 20 meters and the game was fairly abstract. CM2 has reduced the AS to 8 meters and is far more granular - the point that which window a man is looking out of can be critical.

So how do you differentiate between realistic delays and unrealistic ones? Because at some point during any scenario it is very likely we are giving orders that the "boots on the ground" should be naturally making. For example, a ditch is one action-square away -- it shouldn't take a 30 second orders delay to move from the open into the ditch when its that close as most anyone would be able to recognize that the ditch is superior to open ground.

 

[markshot]

What I learned from Panther Games is time it the 4th dimension of the battle space.  Very well modeled in that game.

Now, CMx1 enhanced the time importance of command and experience with delays.

It does seem logical that a Soviet tank out of command is going to take a while to get rolling with the plan.

Personally, I think we lost them because they do not fit at all with RTS play.  RTS is immediate response to orders.  (Panther isn't 1:1 RTS, but the way it works is that you order through subordinate commanders.  So, many factors figure into your decisions.  Like should I get a 2 Bde coordinated attack in 4 hours.  Or would 2 Bde attack uncoordinated catch the enemy before he digs in.)

That is another think I like about WEGO, the need to commit.

It does feel like that game is missing something with all the realism with immediate orders.  But the game already goes far beyond CMx1.  I worry at some point, the game will be ultra-realistic and a complete pain to play.  So rather than modeling everything, the developers need to determine what really changes the entire simulation and what is busy work.

It is clear that CMx2 was not just incremental changes to CMx1.  I once read something they wrote and they went from statistical modeling to object modeling.  This meant that they started the new engine from scratch and the only thing that got carried over was experience they had.  Rewriting any complex system from scratch is very tall order.

In the world of commercial programming system maintenance (adding on or changing code) is much more common than new development.  Why?  Few managers every get fired for maintenance efforts, new development often fails and results in entire efforts being junked and people losing this jobs.  So given when I know about complex systems, it took real guts for BFC to re-envision the product from scratch.

We also say in software you never to do it right on your first attempt.  I have no doubt, if they do a CMx3, it will reflect 20 years of combat modeling and much for clarity and focus than CMBO did when they started it.

I looked at the old CMBB a few days ago.  I have many fond memories, but I suspect my memories are better than the actual game play is compared to what we have now.

I immediately noticed that the feeling of the battle field was so much enhanced by individual animated soldiers versus just the abstract squad.

[Erwin]

20 hours ago, chi-chi said:

...it shouldn't take a 30 second orders delay to move from the open into the ditch when its that close as most anyone would be able to recognize that the ditch is superior to open ground.

In CM1 the way delays worked is that the more you added the more time it took for the unit to start moving - and it was an exponential time delay, not simple addition.  So, for a one waypoint move, it might take an Elite a couple of seconds and a Green maybe 5 seconds to start moving.  However, if you had a "5 waypoint move" plotted, the Elite would take maybe 7 seconds, and the Green unit 20+ seconds.

So, I thought that delays were an xnt way of showing training and experience effects.   One can only speculate why delays were so hated by the BF decision-makers.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

12 minutes ago, Erwin said:

In CM1 the way delays worked is that the more you added the more time it took for the unit to start moving - and it was an exponential time delay, not simple addition.

I always imagined it as the officer patiently trying to explain what exactly the units were supposed to do, often to a bunch of semi-intoxicated illiterates! 

 

[Erwin]

That's what I thought as well.  A brilliant feature.  Miss it.