Combat Mission is so addictive!

[PEB14]

1 hour ago, Blazing 88's said:

Steel Panthers, a game. Here is a link to a WW2 version: https://www.shrapnelgames.com/Camo_Workshop/WW2/WW2_page.html

Woops… Sorry…

[MustyFerret]

As a new player when did Combat Mission Vets here first dip their toes in PBEM?

I played the Lanzerath ridge combat mission on FB last night and won as the attacker (BASIC TRAINING MODE :))

I watched the Germans as the AI when I played as assault over an open field. When I played as Germans I spread my forces out and wore down the US, just some common sense.

Although, I would rather not get my rear kicked non-stop by Human players until I get a decent level of competency! 

[Centurian52]

On 5/19/2023 at 2:54 AM, MustyFerret said:

I have been playing Tiny/Small Maps in real time.

Is WEGO a must for larger maps and campaigns once I get better at the game? 

WEGO is not a must. The game is well designed to work well in either WEGO or real time. Anyone who says that WEGO is the only "correct" way to play the game is much too elitist for my taste. I played pretty much only real time all the time for years, and that worked very well for me. I think there are trade-offs between the two game modes though.

You have more precise control over your troops in real time. You can cancel orders that you've realized are suicidal, whereas in WEGO you just have to sit there and watch your troops mindlessly carry them out. Bounding is easier to manage (requires more use of pause orders and guestimating travel times in WEGO). It's easier to coordinate actions a little more tightly (you can order troops to charge a position the instant that a barrage lifts in real time, where that requires some more estimation in WEGO). The drawbacks are that it gets harder and harder to manage your forces in real time as the battles get larger, and it gets easier and easier to miss stuff.

In WEGO you need not miss any of the action happening anywhere on the battlefield, since you can rewind as many times as you want and watch each action from as many angles as you want. I find it is a lot easier to coordinate very large forces in WEGO (in large part because it is so much easier to pay equal attention to every part of the battlefield). And for that reason I find that I play far more consistently between small battles and large battles in WEGO. And game performance can be a lot better in WEGO.

The main thing that finally won be over to WEGO though, is that it is so much more cinematic. In real time you mostly need to stay zoomed out so that you can keep an eye on the big picture. In WEGO you can watch the turn once zoomed out, so that you get the big picture details of what happened, and then watch it again and again zoomed in on each individual action and catch all of the interesting little stories that play out for your soldiers. It's like making your own war movie (only better than most war movies).

[MOS:96B2P]

 

On 5/19/2023 at 4:54 AM, MustyFerret said:

I have been playing Tiny/Small Maps in real time.  Is WEGO a must for larger maps and campaigns once I get better at the game? 

 

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

In WEGO you need not miss any of the action happening anywhere on the battlefield, since you can rewind as many times as you want and watch each action from as many angles as you want. 

The main thing that finally won be over to WEGO though, is that it is so much more cinematic. In real time you mostly need to stay zoomed out so that you can keep an eye on the big picture. In WEGO you can watch the turn once zoomed out, so that you get the big picture details of what happened, and then watch it again and again zoomed in on each individual action and catch all of the interesting little stories that play out for your soldiers. It's like making your own war movie (only better than most war movies).

What Centurian52 said. 

WEGO also facilitates the learning process.  In real time you will often miss something that happened on the map.  2nd Platoon lost two tanks while you were concentrating on 3rd Platoon.  With WEGO you can rewind and observe every platoon for their minute of action. The turn can be replayed until you hopefully understand why/how those two tanks were destroyed. Then with that lesson learned you adjust your tactics and play on. 

Also replay facilitates screenshots. Replay, change the angle, zoom in until you get a cool screenshot of the action. 

A screenshot from each game since, as a CM addict, your going to eventually get them all..... 

CM Battle for Normandy

CM Red Thunder

CM Afghanistan 

CM Shock Force 2

 

CM Fortress Italy

 CM Final Blitzkrieg 

CM Cold War

CM Black Sea

 

Goood luck!  

[sburke]

4 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

The main thing that finally won be over to WEGO though, is that it is so much more cinematic. In real time you mostly need to stay zoomed out so that you can keep an eye on the big picture. In WEGO you can watch the turn once zoomed out, so that you get the big picture details of what happened, and then watch it again and again zoomed in on each individual action and catch all of the interesting little stories that play out for your soldiers. It's like making your own war movie (only better than most war movies).

THIS!

This link is to a scene from an email game I played with a good friend. The battle lasted well over an hour, but this post was for one small action occurring between like 3 pixeltruppen on each side.  If not in Wego I'd have missed it. Hit the arrow in top right corner or it will take you to the first page of thread.  The post itself is from page 5.  This action was just over 11 years ago (yikes) but i still very much remember this moment.

 

[PEB14]

7 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

A screenshot from each game since, as a CM addict, your going to eventually get them all.....

You must be secretely working for BFC… Your screenshots are so good that anybody healthy should be getting his credit card out of its wallet upon seeing them! 

[Centurian52]

18 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

WEGO also facilitates the learning process

Oh yeah, that's not an insignificant point. If there is anything that I feel is at the heart of what Combat Mission is all about, it's learning. There is no better way to learn about warfare than to experiment with it and see what works and what doesn't work (in an environment where doing what doesn't work doesn't get real people killed). In fact I believe the experimentation angle is one of the key selling points for Combat Mission: Professional for real world militaries.

[PEB14]

On 5/20/2023 at 12:03 PM, MustyFerret said:

Although, I would rather not get my rear kicked non-stop by Human players until I get a decent level of competency! 

Neither would I… But this would probably forbid me to play against a human opponent forever, as I don't think I'll ever be a good player…

 

On 5/20/2023 at 12:03 PM, MustyFerret said:

As a new player when did Combat Mission Vets here first dip their toes in PBEM?

I'm playing since 5 monthes and I haven't tried PBEM yet. I might start soon though, despite the above statement…

[Monty's Mighty Moustache]

On 5/20/2023 at 11:03 AM, MustyFerret said:

Although, I would rather not get my rear kicked non-stop by Human players until I get a decent level of competency! 

I would say do it straight away, you’ll quickly find the limitations of the AI frustrating. It can make for a good fight if they scenario designer is really good but even then it can only react so much to trigger points.

Playing against a human you will learn very quickly, and if you ask around you will find there are folk who will gladly hold your hand through it and provide feedback on what you’re doing as you play. Have a look around the Discord servers and the Few Good Men website and you’ll find plenty of people to play with. 

[Centurian52]

I will admit that, while I have been fully won over to WEGO for most titles, I still play CMA in real time. I only switched over to WEGO after the engine had been given more or less all of its current features. I just don't know how to WEGO without my 'target briefly' command. I like to make heavy use of speculative and suppressive fire, but I don't want to waste ammunition by area firing for a full turn. But I've got some ideas for fudging a target briefly command on my next playthrough, mostly involving chaining up pauses, moves, and target arcs (or maybe I'll learn to get by without area fire). So I'll be trying out CMA in WEGO after I'm done with my current CMBS playthrough (I've got all the 2022 mods loaded up to model current events).

Then once I've finished up another run through all of my CMA scenarios, I'm going to do a full playthrough of every campaign and scenario I have for CMCW. And I'll be starting with the legendarily difficult Soviet campaign. I'll be hot off of playing Soviet/post-Soviet forces for a couple games straight at that point, so I figure that's my best chance (don't want to get used to US forces and then have to re-adapt to Soviet forces). That will be my first playthrough of the Soviet campaign. I've been saving it for when I'm ready, since I believe there are some bragging rights associated with doing well on the first run of that campaign. If my timing is perfect I'll finish up the last scenario I have for CMCW which pits US forces against the Soviets the day before we have British and Canadian forces to send against the Soviets.

Then it will be back to where I left off in early WW2 with CMAK (which I temporarily put on hold to scratch my modern war itch).

[BFCElvis]

On 5/20/2023 at 6:03 AM, MustyFerret said:

As a new player when did Combat Mission Vets here first dip their toes in PBEM?

The Fall of 1999. I'm not sure how much of CM history you know but, in the Fall of '99 Battlefront released a public beta demo for CM Beyond Overlord with the original CM1 game engine. The game itself didn't come out until June 2000. Between the Fall of '99 and then all we had to play were, initially, 2 scenarios, with a 3rd added around Christmas. The PBEM feature was included in the demo and many of us old timers played countless PBEM games in those months. Countless. And using only 3 scenarios. That is where I truly learned to suck at Combat Mission. I've continued that sucking through today. 

Start playing PBEM today. Don't worry about winning or losing. You'll have a lot of fun and learn what to do and not do in the game more quickly playing against a human.

[MarkEzra]

Yep... the fall of 1999 and the fabulous three stooges! Never looked back. Truly addictive and there is no cure but more CM!

 

Just looked up my first post: 

"One or two moves a day...more on the weekends and I try to keep four games going at a time....I have suffered only minor withdrawl symptoms at that rate.

 

All Hail Marx & Lennon

Forum Member #347"

Edited May 22, 2023 by MarkEzra
added my first post

[Heirloom_Tomato]

On 5/19/2023 at 11:40 AM, warrenpeace said:

I totally agree.  Last night I loved watching the reply of the German Infantry man get shot just as he was about to throw his hand grenade.  The grenade falls of tile behind him and explodes as he falls to the ground.  Sounds a bit gruesome as I write this, but it was so real.

This but more. I was playing a massive PBEM many years ago and noticed I had a whole platoon routed and couldn't figure out why. I loaded up the last few turns and watched just that platoon until I could see what happened. 

I had smashed one of my opponents units and then sent in a whole platoon to go clear them out. Rookie mistake but I sent them all to move at once figuring they would cover each as they ran, no need to area fire to keep the fleeing enemy fleeing. As my platoon was filtering into his postions, the squads got a bit bunched up. One enemy stopped fleeing turned and fired a single shot. It hit one of my guys who was about to throw a grenade. He falls, the grenade bounces into the pile of friendlies. It goes off and down go a bunch of my men, including two others who were also just about to throw grenades. As they fall, their grenades also land at the feet of their comrades and a bunch more guys drop. One single bullet and he took out half a platoon.

I watched that single turn so many times because I just could not believe what I was seeing. Had we been playing real-time I would have missed it but instead I was able to go back a few turns and see what I had missed. WEGO only ever since.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

2000 for me and woohoo a @MarkEzra sighting!

[Sakai007]

Somewhere between 07 & 08 I started playing the original CMSF that i bought at an actual store, electronics boutique iirc. It was from that a different publisher then the current setup. If I remember correctly there was a special patch just for that version of the game. I had purchased the cmx1 series but never played it because I didn't know what I had, and i was a lot younger than and have other things to do. But I really started leaning into it when cmbn was released in 2010. Haven't looked back. 

[Brille]

On 5/20/2023 at 12:03 PM, MustyFerret said:

As a new player when did Combat Mission Vets here first dip their toes in PBEM?

Almost right from the get go to be honest. 

But I started with the old Cmx1 games back then.

I first read about some After action reports and was hyped up for pbem (back then it was in the german CDV Community) and bought the games as an Anthology (cmbo, CMBB, CMAK combined) 

I rarely played against the ai because it was cheating to a certain degree and that turned me off. 

I started to play against one constant player and got constantly beaten too.

 

It took some time till I could lay some hurting on to him but victory was still far away. 

But I got to know more and more players and got better. 

I somewhat hated bfc a bit for getting the new series started with a modern battlefield: Shock Force. 

I was more of a ww 2 type so I could not understand why they would not adept to my desires.

Regardless of that because of the lack of money and lack of time I started very.... Very.... Very late into the Cmx2 era. But I monitored every little step Cmx2 has done till then, like a little stalker in the bushes.

Then when money was flowing and gaming time ramped up again I collected every title one by one, even the modern titles. But now I quite like them. 

I may take some breaks from time to time but I somehow always come back to combat mission. And looking back on my gaming career it would be my most played series I guess.