Engine 5 Wishlist

[RMM]

4 hours ago, Redwolf said:

Ideally the entire "combat" panel needs to be copied for each weapon the unit has. One copy (with target, target arc, armor target arc) each for main gun, TOW, MG respectively one each for smallarms, dragon, LAW etc.

Nah, not really. It's not really all that absurd to suggest that a set of weapons be singled out given how they are/were most certainly operated accordingly in RL.

[RMM]

4 hours ago, LutzP said:

Good point. I'd like to see a similar choice of targets/rules of engagement for the snipers … but maybe they have more intelligence built-in than I give them credit for. But it would be nice to be able to tell them, for example, "go for tank crews only".

I would think some specific AI has been worked in for such units given the specific nature of the mission, and at least their weapon loadout is not at odds with itself which LATW units tend to be, being both anti-personnel and AT

[Wodin]

Infantry animation overhaul please.

[chuckdyke]

An intelligent cover arc. Example: when you position an HMG and deploy it the cover arc will suggest the beaten zone for this weapon. Now you have to fiddle with the LOS tool which works only where you will strike the tiles not where you hit an advancing enemy unit. 

[Probus]

I have a simple feature request. Can we get a slider bar on the volume?  So I can set the sound level relative to other programs (such as Audible or YouTube). 

[JM Stuff]

-group isolated soldiers  who have lost their headquarters and be integrated into another squad regardless of their category (one helping each others).

-allow any soldier to use weapons or vehicles with by exemple a penalty in time if this one is infantry (those who must learn the manipulations on the spot) but are able to use it after a certain time (suspense for the player to see if or when and how the soldier with be able to use it).

-different colours to recognize squads.

[Artkin]

19 hours ago, Probus said:

I have a simple feature request. Can we get a slider bar on the volume?  So I can set the sound level relative to other programs (such as Audible or YouTube). 

You can do this in Windows Mixer, found by right clicking your sound icon in your desktop tray (Bottom right corner)

[A Canadian Cat]

On 6/20/2021 at 4:20 PM, Probus said:

I have a simple feature request. Can we get a slider bar on the volume?  So I can set the sound level relative to other programs (such as Audible or YouTube). 

Agreed in game controls would be nice. Just in case you don't already know you can use the built in Volume mixer app on windows.

[Redwolf]

On 6/21/2021 at 11:51 AM, Artkin said:

You can do this in Windows Mixer, found by right clicking your sound icon in your desktop tray (Bottom right corner)

That doesn't work on the Mac, though, and even on Windows it forces you to leave the 3D screen.

[laurent 22]

- Animation and texture for shells falling in water (no dust)

- Snow cloud when shells fall in snow, especially on deep snow map (like dust cloud on dry ground, it could look like smoke bombs)

- Tracks of tracks/wheels, vehicles in snow and fields.

- Textures for vehicles and armored vehicles in flames or having exploded. Vehicle models destroyed.

- Sidewalks and stairs for cities.  Representation of emblematic monuments of Paris, Berlin, Rome. A more detailed representation of factory interiors such as in Stalingrad etc.

- Sound opening / closing tank hatches (as in CMX1). Sound rotation of the tank turret, possibly sound reloading of the shell.

- Animation of armor shell firing: in CM the tank locates a target but during the time taken by the shooter to calculate the distance and lock the target the gun remains in its initial position, then lines up and fires immediately (this is may be realistic in CMSF, certainly not for WWII tanks). The gun should line up as soon as the target is acquired, but the gunshot should not be fired immediately to better represent the reaction / action time which varies with the skill level and condition of the crew.

- Correct  bugs in the excellent campaign "Amiens tonight" of the battle pack CMBN (Amiens not Ameins, "Jellalabad road" on map !! It is not Iraq. In the third scenario absence of units, no officers or flamethrower team without flamethrower, cause: number of trucks problem).

- CMSF2 : ability to order the Bradley to execute a short shot at a building without using their TOWs.

- Sound artillery call for the Syrians.

- French army

 

[RMM]

- Speaking of OBA, when there's the ability to have 'pre-arranged' fire in the setup phase: the ability to create a rolling barrage?

[SlowMotion]

Very simple request: allow players to use bigger font in briefings. Current font is way too small.

[Erwin]

1 hour ago, SlowMotion said:

Very simple request: allow players to use bigger font in briefings. Current font is way too small.

Yeah.   Been requested since 2007.  Hope that will be a feature of CM3.

[Centurian52]

I know I would very much like to see a Combat Mission: Great War one of these days. To which end we may need some additional engine features in order to give the best simulation of the period.

-the addition of horses may be useful (I think I saw this suggestion somewhere on the first couple of pages)

-some representation of bayonet/melee combat would be nice.

-a field telephone fortification type which permits calling in or adjusting off-map fire missions to a spotter in the same action square.

-more options for detailed preplanned artillery, on the assumption that you will not be able to adjust any fire missions or call in any new ones for the entirety of the scenario due to a lack of radios, unless you have a spotter in direct voice communication with a mortar team or intact field telephone. As a specific example I imagine calling in a creeping barrage in the following manner: Select creeping barrage, select a linear target, set the 5-15 minute delay time (possibly go up to 5-30 minutes, since you are now planning your barrages for the entire scenario), select a second linear target, set a second 5-15 minute (5-30 minute) time for how long it will take the barrage to creep from the first target to the second target.

-The ability to scroll up and down the UI list of soldiers in a selected squad is a must, since early war "squads" may be company sized elements up to ~250 men spread across a few dozen action squares

-Better trenches would be nice, but I don't really have any suggestions for exactly how to do that. This may be a CMx3 issue rather than a CMx2 Engine 5 issue. Perhaps some dugout fortification type (basically a bunker, but with no fire opening) to allow soldiers to hunker down during barrages, although I'm not sure how you'd get the AI to use them properly.

[Centurian52]

Oh, and one more thing comes to mind. The ability to disable time limits. I love Combat Mission for its unmatched realism. But there is really nothing realistic about time limits. Granted there may be rare instances where time limits are narratively important, such as if the next battle in a campaign is set an hour or two after the current battle, and in that case it would be weird if you kept fighting for over two hours. But the vast majority of the time time limits are unrealistic and unnecessary.

[Combatintman]

28 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

Oh, and one more thing comes to mind. The ability to disable time limits. I love Combat Mission for its unmatched realism. But there is really nothing realistic about time limits. Granted there may be rare instances where time limits are narratively important, such as if the next battle in a campaign is set an hour or two after the current battle, and in that case it would be weird if you kept fighting for over two hours. But the vast majority of the time time limits are unrealistic and unnecessary.

Apart from pretty much every set of orders in a 34 year military career I've received or read having them ... you're probably right.

[Warts 'n' all]

On 7/14/2021 at 9:09 PM, Centurian52 said:

 is a must, 

So is winning every battle I play. Doesn't mean that it is going to be top of BFC's "to do" list.

[Centurian52]

34 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

Apart from pretty much every set of orders in a 34 year military career I've received or read having them ... you're probably right.

Your experience tempts me to walk back my statement. But it will take quite a lot of convincing to bring me around to the idea that so much of the military history I've learned over my life could be so wrong. From what I've heard and read it is pretty rare to accomplish something such as capturing a heavily defended city block inside a single hour of fighting (for example). While fighting over a single CM scale objective won't generally take multiple days (sometimes it will, but those can be pretty easily broken up into multiple scenarios) it is not uncommon for it to take several hours to decide a single engagement. 

Some examples of real world CM scale engagements:

-The assault on Brecourt Manor took around 2-3 hours (Winters started his reconnaissance at 0830, I'm not sure exactly when the first shot was fired and the assault began, the force withdrew at around 1230, https://www.wwiidogtags.com/ww2-history/assault-on-brecourt-manor/ said 2-3 hours for the assault so I went with that).

-The capture of Carentan (just the town itself, since the whole battle of Carentan is a bit larger than you would expect to fit in a single CM scenario) took around an hour and a half (0600-0730) for the force attacking from the north and the force attacking from the south to meet in the middle.

-The Battle of Bloody Gulch (a large CM scenario, but definitely small enough to be a CM scenario) took about 7+ hours from the commencement of the German attack at 0700 to the arrival of tanks from 2nd Armored Division at around 1400 (I'm not sure exactly how long after the tanks arrived it took to actually drive the Germans off).

I chose those three examples because they were relatively easy to look up. I did my best to avoid cherry picking by choosing to include a particular engagement before looking up how long it took. While these examples represent a small sample size, I hope they are enough to illustrate that while it is not uncommon for CM sized engagements to take approximately a standard CM time limit amount of time to play out, it is no less common for them to take considerably longer.

I suppose as a nod to the fact that leadership really does have expectations for how long it should take to accomplish a given objective you could introduce time based objectives that give the player X points for defeating the enemy within a certain amount of time. But I suppose the main motivation for my statement "...there is really nothing realistic about time limits." is this: How common is it for a mission to be considered a failure because it wasn't accomplished within the expected amount of time? I haven't heard of many missions that were scrapped just because they took longer than they were supposed to.

[Centurian52]

23 minutes ago, Warts 'n' all said:

So is winning every battle I play. Doesn't mean that it is going to be top of BFC's "to do" list.

That's fair. And really that item is only a must if they ever make Combat Mission: Great War (a fantasy that I know will never come true, but that won't stop me from listing engine features that could make it viable), since the early war "squads" will be much larger than could ever fit on screen at one time.

edit for clarity: In 1914 the smallest maneuver element in a lot of armies was the company of 200+ men. You could never fit all of those soldiers on the UI at once, so a hypothetical CMGW would need the ability to scroll through them.

Edited July 17, 2021 by Centurian52

[LutzP]

8 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

… the ability to disable time limits …

I would like to see this as an option, but mainly as a part of an extended sandbox mode - free play without limitations, with access to all kinds of reinforcements during play, as a training environment for newbies - just to try out things.

[chuckdyke]

2 hours ago, LutzP said:

the ability to disable time limits …

Time limits should be a recommendation to be able to score a total victory. Also, that the player has his available units of map so that he can deploy his troops at the time of his choosing. 

[dbsapp]

41 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Time limits should be a recommendation to be able to score a total victory. Also, that the player has his available units of map so that he can deploy his troops at the time of his choosing. 

Agree. It would be nice to have al least as an option the ability to turn time limits off.

But as a general rule it makes game...more spicy.

[chuckdyke]

1 hour ago, dbsapp said:

But as a general rule it makes game...more spicy.

Also, it depends on the editor. They made the recent campaign game in RT some 30 minutes or 40 minutes longer which made it a lot less challenging. 

[Erwin]

The problem with increasing the time-limit when playing vs the AI is that the designer's AI plan will have ended leaving the enemy rather dumb. 

On the other hand it is frustrating to have a brilliant plan that is unfolding beautifully and and wants the orgasmic satisfaction of seeing one's brilliant plan come to its happy end.

At least designers now know to have reinforcements arriving after the time limit of a scenario so that the AI doesn't surrender prematurely.  

A simple option button to give one an extra 5-10 minutes is probably all that is required.  Ideally, a designer would design for the longer length of time, but in the scenario itself cut 5-10 minutes off the time limit to give the same effect.  If a player wants 20-30+mins extra, that's a different issue as the AI plan would have ended.

[mjkerner]

You guys have heard of the editor, right? Best sandbox out there.  If you can’t change the game’s length in less than 30 seconds, you probably shouldn’t own a computer, lol!  But beware, cuz Erwin is spot on regarding time limits.