Engine 5 Wishlist

[Combatintman]

Not sure about 22.  Certainly not the drills I was taught.  If you're withdrawing then you wait until the other guy in your pair starts putting rounds downrange and says 'move now' and preferably after you've chucked a smoke grenade to screen you.  You then make like a human swastika (run quickly) back to the next tactical bound, turn and face the enemy, blat a couple of aimed shots downrange and tell the other guy in the pair to 'move now.'  You retreat by bounds in pairs.  I appreciate that you can't simulate this in the current engine because the lowest level you can go to is splitting squads rather than down to the pairs level.  On a practical level, walking backwards always carries the risk of falling over and - granted the enemy might laugh so much that you'd get away - but unlikely and of course you are not going to be putting aimed shots back at the enemy.

[Simcoe]

Huge fan of all the submissions so far. Hoping they squeeze a few more tweaks into this engine before the next generation.

Not sure if anyone has posted this. I looked around and couldn't find anything.

How hard would it be to area fire different floors of a multi story building?

Let's say you know there are infantry on the first floor of a two story house. Right now you would select area fire and the AI would usually aim at the the 2nd story in my experience. It would be great to select the first story so your fire is more accurate. This is also frustrating when a unit can't area fire because the middle of the building is blocked but you can clearly see the top story.

 

[womble]

40 minutes ago, Simcoe said:

How hard would it be to area fire different floors of a multi story building?

Let's say you know there are infantry on the first floor of a two story house. Right now you would select area fire and the AI would usually aim...

Just be precise with your click. You can explicitly target any specific floor of any structure that's in LOS/LOF of the shooting unit. Want the ground floor taking out? Make sure you click the ground floor face of the wall you want dropping when you set the area target...

[chuckdyke]

3 hours ago, womble said:

Make sure you click the ground floor face of the wall you want dropping when you set the area target...

You can actually go inside the building and plot your LOF there.

[Simcoe]

Wow thanks! 

[Artkin]

Wow, just saw what Steel Division 2 is doing. Come on, this is really cool, and should have been in CM first.

[Redwolf]

Great lists, BornGinger.

[Dr.Fusselpulli]

On 9/14/2021 at 2:29 PM, Lethaface said:

The 30sec is already possible. Just give m a waypoint where you want them to fire (and optionally a facing or arc), reverse after.

That's only possible with tanks who fire a cannon, machinegun or autocannon right now. Not with ATGMs, as ATGMs will only be fired, if no waypoints orders are left for the vehicle. If waypoints are given, vehicles will not fire. So if you give a reverse order, this will not happen.

[Lethaface]

1 hour ago, Dr.Fusselpulli said:

That's only possible with tanks who fire a cannon, machinegun or autocannon right now. Not with ATGMs, as ATGMs will only be fired, if no waypoints orders are left for the vehicle. If waypoints are given, vehicles will not fire. So if you give a reverse order, this will not happen.

fair point, is that always true for all ATGM vehicles? 
Perhaps that could be changed as well; with 'guiding' taking precedence over the move order. A bit like how embarking works; if you pause a vehicle and order a squad to embark the vehicle will remain stationary until the unit has embarked even if the pause expired.

[Dr.Fusselpulli]

Yes, it is true for all ATGM vehicles. My suggestion would to bind it to the "Driver is driving" variable instead. It's not a huge thing, but at Cold War, it is weakpoint.

[Artkin]

Fix this!!!

OMG!

Edited October 1, 2021 by Artkin

[BornGinger]

What happened in those three pictures? One wanted to jump over a wall and two were waiting. When the one who wanted to jump over the wall had done it, the two other ones hit the ground to play hide and seek?

[chuckdyke]

15 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

What happened in those three pictures?

You didn't let us see what happened. The unit was not selected and we can't see the stress levels. The unit which jumped over the wall got hit. Possibly the stress level went up to rattled or even panic understandably they seek cover. 

[BornGinger]

10 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

You didn't let us see what happened.

It was @Artkinwho uploaded the pictures, not me.

[Artkin]

48 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

What happened in those three pictures? One wanted to jump over a wall and two were waiting. When the one who wanted to jump over the wall had done it, the two other ones hit the ground to play hide and seek?

It's hard to see by the first two pictures but evident in the third:

The trooper jumped over a high wall and then got blasted by either some infantry or that bdrm. I had them coming toward the camera and he glitched out at that junction. Lmao!

Now, if infantry could do this that would be kinda cool, a mechanic that should take time to do and should be next to impossible in the modern CM...

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Just out of interest, what was the experience levels etc. of the troops involved? 

I kind of expect this sort of dumbassery from my pixeltruppen if they're Green, -1, or below (I honestly have no idea if the game factors this in, but it sometimes feels like it does).

Edited October 13, 2021 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Codreanu]

Better post-battle analysis. When I click on a unit I want to be able to see what specific unit or even individual soldier on the other side killed them and with what exactly. Also the ability to click on a vehicle and see every round that hit it and where and what effect it had on it ala Graviteam Tactics. An in game accessible encyclopedia that listed the TO&E for every formation in the game would be handy too, and an armor viewer for vehicles and penetration tables for rounds.

A target light briefly command would be great too...

Edited October 18, 2021 by Codreanu

[chuckdyke]

1 hour ago, Codreanu said:

A target light briefly command would be great too...

The only thing a can reluctantly agree with, there is a way around this. If you have a Windows PC the Xbox Game Bar has all the tools you just mentioned. The reason I play on WeGo you can video record every turn or take screenshots. 

[Erwin]

11 hours ago, Codreanu said:

an armor viewer for vehicles and penetration tables for rounds.

You could try getting the CM1 series as the CM1 games did feature exactly that sort of info and they may still be relatively useful for CM2. 

There is also an xnt mod by Marco Bergman that provide weapon silhouettes for the earlier CM2 games that have caliber, range, armor and penetration factors written in either in text or graphically.  

[Redwolf]

12 hours ago, Codreanu said:

[...] and an armor viewer for vehicles and penetration tables for rounds.

Obviously this is something BFC decided is tune down in CM2, and it isn't coming back.

I do think that the restrictions on information went a tad overboard, though. What bothers me the most is that the amor thickness display ("defenses" tab) does not differentiate between front lower, upper hull and turret. A single value for this is OK for modern vehicles, but in WW2 it is too simplistic.

I also loved CMx1's display of hit chance and kill chance in the "target" tool when playing. I think bringing this back wouldn't disclose too much internal game information, and it would be very informative for the exploring player.

[Redwolf]

12 hours ago, Codreanu said:

Better post-battle analysis.

A logfile with a shot-by-shot log would be awesome.

[Centurian52]

More of a pipedream for CMx3 than a real CMx2 Engine 5 item (for Engine 5 just focus on the promised performance improvements). But the perfect war sim to me would combine the exquisite tactical detail of Combat Mission with the attempts to simulate realistic command and control difficulties made by Command Ops 2 and Scourge of War. In other words, introduce orders delay. "You" are one of the officers on the field (presumably the top officer), and all orders to any unit need to travel from you to that unit through some sort of medium (voice, runner, hand signal, radio net, etc...). Because I'm a glutton for punishment I would also like to add information delay, meaning that all information about both enemy and friendly positions (that can't be observed directly by the commander) have to reach the commander through those same communications channels before the player can see those positions. Basically I want to get as close as possible to having all of the difficulties and considerations of a real world commander, while still being able to do it all from the comfort of my own desk with only digital lives lost.

This is never going to happen of course. There are all sorts of considerations that would make it impractical to implement into the Combat Mission engine. For one the AI would need a complete overhaul. Orders delay just can't work unless you have competent subordinate platoon and squad AI commanders (and company AI commanders if you are commanding at the battalion level) that can do a reasonable job of reacting to their own local situation without orders from the player while they are waiting for new orders from the player to arrive. CO2 and SoW manage it, but the level of abstraction in those games is much greater than in CM, greatly simplifying the problem. It is a dream of mine to create a competent command AI for wargames as detailed or more than CM. But alas, I'm not a good enough programmer yet.

[MOS:96B2P]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

More of a pipedream for CMx3 than a real CMx2 Engine 5 item (for Engine 5 just focus on the promised performance improvements). But the perfect war sim to me would combine the exquisite tactical detail of Combat Mission with the attempts to simulate realistic command and control difficulties made by Command Ops 2 and Scourge of War. In other words, introduce orders delay. "You" are one of the officers on the field (presumably the top officer), and all orders to any unit need to travel from you to that unit through some sort of medium (voice, runner, hand signal, radio net, etc...). Because I'm a glutton for punishment I would also like to add information delay, meaning that all information about both enemy and friendly positions (that can't be observed directly by the commander) have to reach the commander through those same communications channels before the player can see those positions. Basically I want to get as close as possible to having all of the difficulties and considerations of a real world commander, while still being able to do it all from the comfort of my own desk with only digital lives lost.

This is never going to happen of course. There are all sorts of considerations that would make it impractical to implement into the Combat Mission engine. For one the AI would need a complete overhaul. Orders delay just can't work unless you have competent subordinate platoon and squad AI commanders (and company AI commanders if you are commanding at the battalion level) that can do a reasonable job of reacting to their own local situation without orders from the player while they are waiting for new orders from the player to arrive. CO2 and SoW manage it, but the level of abstraction in those games is much greater than in CM, greatly simplifying the problem. It is a dream of mine to create a competent command AI for wargames as detailed or more than CM. But alas, I'm not a good enough programmer yet.

Battlefront did have some type of command delay in CMx1.  That was before my time here so I don't know much about the details of it.  @Erwin is one of the ancient ones, so he probably knows.  I've been tempted to but SOW just to try out the command delays but I don't really have time for another game.  Maybe an optional type of delay for CMx3?  The command delays are an interesting idea IMO. 

[Redwolf]

21 minutes ago, MOS:96B2P said:

Battlefront did have some type of command delay in CMx1.  That was before my time here so I don't know much about the details of it.  @Erwin is one of the ancient ones, so he probably knows.  I've been tempted to but SOW just to try out the command delays but I don't really have time for another game.  Maybe an optional type of delay for CMx3?  The command delays are an interesting idea IMO. 

The implementation in CMx1 was underengineered and BFC obviously decided that going without any is better than making it much more complicated.

Among the worst issues:

- curves drawn in movement paths add delay, even if the resulting path just does along a (curving) road

- too much of a minigame about retaining the existing movement points (no delay) or plotting new ones (getting a delay). Since canceling the existing movement was instant that also put a hole into the realism of the delay mechanism

 

Edited October 18, 2021 by Redwolf

[MOS:96B2P]

11 minutes ago, Redwolf said:

The implementation in CMx1 was underengineered and BFC did obviously decided that going without any is better than making it much more complicated.

Among the worst issues:

- curves drawn in movement paths add delay, even if the resulting path just does along a (curving) road

- too much of a minigame about retaining the existing movement points (no delay) or plotting new ones (getting a delay). Since canceling the existing movement was instant that also put a hole into the realism of the delay mechanism

 

Interesting.  Thanks.