CM: Future war/scifi

[Maquisard manqué]

Hello, this is probably not the best way to start off in a forum/community and at the risk of upsetting the more grog minded, I wondered if a sci-fi or future war type setting had ever been considered for CM games?

I can answer the question myself in that the CM USP is about simulation/realism, anathema to fictional settings. Lots of the player base (like me!) are presumably drawn to the vicarious fantasy of historical armchair generaldom.

On the other hand, I've been playing a mod of Hearts of Iron 4 set in the Fallout universe (Old World Blues) and I've been having a blast with the combination of setting, mechanics and a mix of familiar and unfamiliar technologies. It got me thinking how a CM game would play in the Fallout universe, power armour platoons mixed with robots, regular infantry, irregulars and AFVs. Also, the notion of walkers etc like AT-ATs (for want of a better example) or others (and setting aside how silly they might be e.g. does this thing have a hull down mode?).

Anyway, I'm sure its more likely the realm of a mod given possible licensing restrictions and I totally see it as a different direction for the CM brand, so most unlikely. Nonetheless, I'd be interested in the challenge of a more fictional setting with wilder units. Any thoughts?

[ratdeath]

With some luck maybe they will release Combat Mission Space Lobster before retirement and/or when Steve finds a magic wand! :)

"When I have enough spare time for reading... it's off to Sci-Fi I go. So yeah, if I had a magic wand I would create another development team and we would all be kicking some Space Lobster butts by next summer. But said magic wand has not fallen into my possession, therefore I don't see it happening any time soon." // Steve (July 25, 2012)

But miracles do happen, 5 months ago no one on this forum* would have thought that we would be playing Combat Mission Cold War now!!

*Except for a selected few with signed NDA's!

[JoMac]

Don't worry...Hope BF comes out with a 'Star Trek' Combat Simulator to entertain us Trekkies/Sci-Fans :-)

[Vacillator]

I've given you a like, because while it may not happen, there's nothing wrong with the idea.  We could also have dragons...

Anyway, a big welcome to the forum!

[Sequoia]

IMHO most sci fi movies and TV shows use infantry weapons that are in effect inferior to the WWII era.

[Maquisard manqué]

54 minutes ago, Vacilllator said:

I've given you a like, because while it may not happen, there's nothing wrong with the idea.  We could also have dragons...

Anyway, a big welcome to the forum!

Thanks!

I still have to figure out how to use aerial assets properly in CM...

[Vacillator]

21 minutes ago, Maquisard manqué said:

I still have to figure out how to use aerial assets properly in CM...

You and me both .  I haven't seen much of them, but when I did they tended to take an equal toll of me and my enemy.

[JoMac]

1 hour ago, Vacilllator said:

I've given you a like, because while it may not happen, there's nothing wrong with the idea.  We could also have dragons...

Anyway, a big welcome to the forum!

Sorry, but no D&D...However, Middle Earth, and Space Marines 40k games would be interesting :-)

Edited May 5, 2021 by JoMac

[mjkerner]

Picture me on my knees, arms raised, looking up toward the heavens.

Got the image? Okay...

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Welcome anyway, MM.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

26 minutes ago, mjkerner said:

Picture me on my knees, arms raised, looking up toward the heavens.

Got the image? Okay...

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Welcome anyway, MM.

[JM Stuff]

sry wrong place !

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by JM Stuff

[mjkerner]

But then again....

[Holman]

Not to rain on the parade, but it's worth remembering that BTS has indicated that they're not even interested in the WW2 Pacific theater, let alone Mars.

But more seriously...

The CMx2 engine is perfect for ground combat at the scale where mid-20th to early-21st century dispersed mechanized units, leg infantry, and their support assets come into contact in open, broken, and urban environments at plus-or-minus battalion level. Change any of those variables, and the engine probably shows limitations.

Vietnam jungle would be very frustrating in the CMx2 engine, as would WW1 trench raids. The player's control would be much more limited. Terrain and surprise would dictate the result far more than player input would.

Likewise, imagined Sci-Fi conflicts would require a different scale and different design assumptions. If every armored soldier is a tank (Heinlein-style), you'd want a game with more intimate choices (individual troopers' weapons, sensors, and systems), and the tech would probably mean that engagements occur at thousands of meters rather than hundreds or dozens. On the other hand, the most interesting engagements would be inside structures or spaceships, and that's not at all suited to CMx2's squad-level and 10-meter square baseline.

[Mord]

There is one setting where this would actually work and BF would only have to design half the units.

 

 

Lizards instead of Lobsters...unless there's a crustacean dlc!

 

As for my vote, offhand I can think of at least four historical eras that I'd rather see. *AHEM* Nam, Nam, Nam, and Nam.

 

Mord.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Mord

[HUSKER2142]

First contact. 

Edited May 6, 2021 by HUSKER2142

[Sequoia]

Mord, I take it you read that trilogy. How did you like it? I've not read it myself.

[Mord]

8 minutes ago, Sequoia said:

Mord, I take it you read that trilogy. How did you like it? I've not read it myself.

I only read the first book. It was ok. I vaguely remember wanting to get the others but never did, so it must not of overly impressed me. But like anything, opinions very, so you might love it.

 

Mord.

[Mord]

^vary

[Maquisard manqué]

13 hours ago, Holman said:

Not to rain on the parade, but it's worth remembering that BTS has indicated that they're not even interested in the WW2 Pacific theater, let alone Mars.

But more seriously...

The CMx2 engine is perfect for ground combat at the scale where mid-20th to early-21st century dispersed mechanized units, leg infantry, and their support assets come into contact in open, broken, and urban environments at plus-or-minus battalion level. Change any of those variables, and the engine probably shows limitations.

Vietnam jungle would be very frustrating in the CMx2 engine, as would WW1 trench raids. The player's control would be much more limited. Terrain and surprise would dictate the result far more than player input would.

Likewise, imagined Sci-Fi conflicts would require a different scale and different design assumptions. If every armored soldier is a tank (Heinlein-style), you'd want a game with more intimate choices (individual troopers' weapons, sensors, and systems), and the tech would probably mean that engagements occur at thousands of meters rather than hundreds or dozens. On the other hand, the most interesting engagements would be inside structures or spaceships, and that's not at all suited to CMx2's squad-level and 10-meter square baseline.

Yes, CM's engine is best suited to war of maneuvre fighting - but that's ok, you can engineer the fictional setting to that. Surely the CM games already do that too through a selective bias to certain encounters/battle types? e.g. I feel that the WW2 CM titles focus on rural combat more than urban, perhaps in a disproportionate way (Leningrad, Stalingrad don't feature heavily, but i don't mind).

Then again, the CM engine arguably could model jungle and trench warfare already but the result would be quite frustrating (perhaps almost as much as it was for the belligerents in WW1, WW2 Burma and Vietnam?). I don't know what i'm talking about (!) but ambush warfare has got to be pretty nerve jangling even without the leeches, rain and poor supply. Oh and the drugs, although they were a coping strategy for most I think I heard...

My understanding of the WW1 western front is that (to win in the attack) you'd focus much more on the terrain micro gradient, as well as suppressing fire - honestly in a way that CMAK and SF2's open and denuded landscapes forced me to anyway, having come from vegetation heavy Bocage in CMBO and BN. So maybe not so much of a stretch actually - just perhaps a bit grindlingly repetitive and frustrating? But, given the parlous state of C2 in WW1 on the western front (tank/infantry coordination, to name but one example) it would be pretty unbelieveable for current "perfect control" CM engine modeling. Then again, WW1 was much more than the trenches of France/Flandres - I was just reading Romel's Infantry Attacks and he had plenty of time in maneuvre type warfare in the Balkans and Alps (or at least when he used maneuvre to assault fixed positions). MGs and rifle infantry were what he had at his disposal 90% of the time, which lessens the grog/tank porn appeal I guess.

14 hours ago, mjkerner said:

Picture me on my knees, arms raised, looking up toward the heavens.

Got the image? Okay...

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Welcome anyway, MM.

Thanks! And as an alternative to what @Vergeltungswaffe posted, this - where Lady Liberty is the CM franchise?

Edited May 6, 2021 by Maquisard manqué
Grammer and Sp3ll1ngg

[Freyberg]

Much as I love Sci Fi, I'm not interested in CM becoming a Sci Fi game. I think it defeats the purpose of a highly realistic simulation to make it simulate something completely unreal.

Having said that though, Shock Force, Black Sea and Cold War are all hypothetical conflicts, and I like this - I could imagine other hypothetical settings, either historical or near future, that would be pretty interesting - although in all honesty, I'd much rather BF fleshed out the existing titles or pursued a few more WWII settings first.

[chuckdyke]

1 minute ago, Freyberg said:

a few more WWII settings first.

Yes, I don't play Shock Force too much either. F& R just hit the sweet spot. I play mostly as Soviet now to set up the C2 is doing it. In SF2 anybody can call in anything. With Sci Fi after 5 years in the future nobody knows what the conflict will be like. 

[Maquisard manqué]

19 minutes ago, Freyberg said:

Much as I love Sci Fi, I'm not interested in CM becoming a Sci Fi game. I think it defeats the purpose of a highly realistic simulation to make it simulate something completely unreal.

Yeah, true - that kind of fidelity could feel almost spurious.

I guess the bee in my bonnet is the Fallout universe where there's a combination of fictional/futuristic stuff with scavenged realistic equipment (where existing CM assets could even be used) and fictional improvised stuff too. Arguably a bit like in the ficitonal worlds of The Postman by David Brin or A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. It feels like it wouldn't be pushing the CM enveloppe too much further than SF2 or BS have relative to the WW2 titles.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

I wouldn't want it to interfere with the normal development of CM, but I'd pay a lot, and I mean a lot, for CM:Battletech.

[Erwin]

Ditto for CM Afrika Korps and Early War of course.

[Bozowans]

I always thought Star Trek ground combat would be interesting in the CM engine. People think of space battles when they think of Star Trek, but Deep Space 9 in particular had a lot of ground combat. The show's combat scenes were usually kinda slow paced, with soldiers hiding behind cover, exchanging phaser fire back and forth, ducking down and cowering when they get suppressed and so on. There is even a scene with characters running from mortar fire.

The shows budget would prevent them from ever showing anything on a large scale, but they would allude to things like planetary invasions and ground combat on a huge scale.

A significant part of the shows plot was also about the Cardassians' Nazi-style occupation of Bajor, and the Bajoran resistance fighters that fought against them for decades out in the mountains and countryside.

So it would be interesting to see what something like that would look like simulated up to platoon, company or battalion level, and what tactical possibilities that would bring. One problem though would be a lack of vehicles or tanks. Star Trek is always light infantry focused, but perhaps you could have things like FO teams calling in precision orbital strikes or something, as well as electronic warfare jamming enemy weapon systems and communications. Or you could have reinforcements beam directly down to the front lines or even into flanking positions.

That would be cool but I dont expect to ever see any game like that ever actually made, though maybe one day a game can be modded enough to look like that.