Movement to Contact

[Simcoe]

 In many strategy games there is an order to attack an area. The units will engage any enemies it sees and if it loses contact it will continue to move forward until it regains contact.

In Combat Mission we only have the hunt command. If the unit spots an enemy and loses contact the unit will stay out until next turn.

Has there ever been a discussion to implement an attack order? Is it something that is not feasible on the game right now or was it decided that CM is better without it?

[Dar7k]

In my understanding, "attack" is a strong simplification. In reality "attack" is an composition of fire and movement which involves all possible sort of movement like crawling, sneaking or sprinting. In CM the player is in charge to choose the way of movement he thinks best suits the current situation on the battlefield.

[Vinnart]

Yes, this was something lost in Cmx2 from Cmx1 so it was a step backwards. The decision i believe was because they wanted to try to streamline the UI as much as possible at the cost of losing one of the two original Cmx1 orders which were "Move to Contact" (Current Hunt behavior), and "Hunt" (The original Hunt command acted as you described where they would continue to move forward). Hopefully, someday the two separate commands will one day return.

[domfluff]

I'm always curious, what do you want a "move to contact" to actually do?

 

[Simcoe]

36 minutes ago, domfluff said:

I'm always curious, what do you want a "move to contact" to actually do?

 

A better term would be an attack order. Imagine a hunt order but the unit:

1. Spots the target
2. Engages
3. Loses the spot
4. Continues moving toward the location you set
5. Repeat steps 1-4 until the unit is either pinned or reaches the end of the attack order

[Simcoe]

52 minutes ago, Vinnart said:

Yes, this was something lost in Cmx2 from Cmx1 so it was a step backwards. The decision i believe was because they wanted to try to streamline the UI as much as possible at the cost of losing one of the two original Cmx1 orders which were "Move to Contact" (Current Hunt behavior), and "Hunt" (The original Hunt command acted as you described where they would continue to move forward). Hopefully, someday the two separate commands will one day return.

Totally agree. Imagine if you could "Attack" with with different speeds. You could do a slow "hunt" style attack or an assault with using the "quick speed.

[Redwolf]

[Simcoe]

2 hours ago, Redwolf said:

That would be cool. What game is that from?

[Halmbarte]

2 minutes ago, Simcoe said:

That would be cool. What game is that from?

Tacops. Great tactical game that had very good AI for the enemy. 

H

[Simcoe]

3 hours ago, Halmbarte said:

Tacops. Great tactical game that had very good AI for the enemy. 

H

Damn that game is ancient. Pretty cool that it’s free though.

[Thewood1]

Steel Beasts also has that capability.  You can set a retreat path if spotting an enemy or taking fire.  You can also differentiate the action based on the type of fire.  It really increases the ability for the AI to scout without micromanagement.  You can also set alternate paths forward based on contact.

I really liked and used the different Hunt and Move to Contact orders in CM1.  We gained a lot in CM2, had a lot of CM1 stuff added back into CM2 over the years, and we had stuff like this that never made it back.

[landser]

14 hours ago, Simcoe said:

A better term would be an attack order. Imagine a hunt order but the unit:

1. Spots the target
2. Engages
3. Loses the spot
4. Continues moving toward the location you set
5. Repeat steps 1-4 until the unit is either pinned or reaches the end of the attack order

 

This. Hunt is more like seek. Getting a spot stops it. It should instead continue when the spot is lost for any cause.

Hunt should be persistent, only broken by orders, impassable terrain or disablement.

[landser]

14 hours ago, domfluff said:

I'm always curious, what do you want a "move to contact" to actually do?

 

Keep moving to contact.

[womble]

Perhaps it doesn't help, but in CMx2 (I barely played CMx1), my advance to contact "drill" is short (2-3AP) legs of Quick. Troops on Quick will keep advancing and exchanging fire with targets of opportunity, especially while they're "rallying" at their waypoints, but will also take self-protective action if that turns out to be necessary. More cautious advance to contact involves explicit Pauses at some or all waypoints. It is a lot of micro, though.

[Simcoe]

1 hour ago, womble said:

Perhaps it doesn't help, but in CMx2 (I barely played CMx1), my advance to contact "drill" is short (2-3AP) legs of Quick. Troops on Quick will keep advancing and exchanging fire with targets of opportunity, especially while they're "rallying" at their waypoints, but will also take self-protective action if that turns out to be necessary. More cautious advance to contact involves explicit Pauses at some or all waypoints. It is a lot of micro, though.

Your last sentence gets to the heart of it. All these alternatives and work arounds are tedious as hell.

that’s why I was curious if this is a design decision or engine limitation. 
 

An “attack” button is my only real wish for the game. Everything else is fine.

[Simcoe]

2 hours ago, landser said:

 

This. Hunt is more like seek. Getting a spot stops it. It should instead continue when the spot is lost for any cause.

Hunt should be persistent, only broken by orders, impassable terrain or disablement.

Yes! How many times have you ordered a platoon of tanks to hunt on line and one of them spots an enemy for a second and stops? The others keep going while the first one uselessly stays there for the rest of the turn.

[womble]

15 minutes ago, Simcoe said:

that’s why I was curious if this is a design decision or engine limitation. 

The setting of close-together-waypoints isn't too onerous; you just draw their path and click more often  It's adding Pauses to get it closer to bounding overwatch* that's the real genital-buster.

My guess is it's a design decision. They've baked some of the Advance to Contact behaviour (as I've seen it described) from CMx1 into the "Quick" command's default TacAI settings, and what we see is what BFC think is "good enough", in that tuning it so Quick stops more frequently and for longer would aggravate as many people as it pleases. 

* Yes, I'm aware of the Assault command, but that doesn't do what I want with parallel axes of movement more widely separated, and the support elements only coming level with where the assaulting elements have paused; it splits squads "wrong" for the way I want to fight

[Bulletpoint]

On 8/20/2022 at 6:55 PM, womble said:

The setting of close-together-waypoints isn't too onerous; you just draw their path and click more often  It's adding Pauses to get it closer to bounding overwatch* that's the real genital-buster.

Probably I'm just being dense, but I don't see why you'd plot in a long string of movement legs and pre-plan pauses, since in any given 60-second turn, there's only time to move a couple of squares and then sit for some time to spot and do overwatch anyway.

And the tactical situation often changes, causing you to have to scrap your whole carefully laid out order chain.