The year to come - 2024 (Part 1)

[Bubba883XL]

On 1/8/2024 at 11:22 PM, JoMac said:

Ahh Yes, good Ole Talonsoft East & West Fronts from back in the late 90's...Good memories for sure 

can still visit those old titles under john tillers campaign series, great old skool games

[Bubba883XL]

On 1/8/2024 at 3:14 PM, Centurian52 said:

Why not both? I find the best learning comes from a variety of sources (in my case books, youtube, and simulations). The quality of the military history content on youtube has reached really spectacular levels. They usually have much higher research standards than traditional documentaries. Real Time History isn't even the best of it (as much as I enjoy their content, they tend to repeat common myths a bit more often than most of the other channels I go to, so their research standards seem to be a bit more on par with traditional documentaries). There is Eastory, Drachinifel, Military History Visualized, TIK, Military Aviation History, Usually Hapless, Battle Order, The Operations Room/Intel Report, Kings and Generals, Forgotten Weapons, The Chieftain, The Western Front Association, GI History Handbook, and so many more that I'm sure I'll remember in a few minutes.

No source is perfect, and I've caught all of these channels making the occasional mistake. There is just so much misinformation out there that it's impossible for even the best historian to filter out all of it. That goes for books as well. The format that the research is presented in has no effect on the quality of the research, so books will contain as many errors as videos. I was just reading James Holland's book on Normandy, in which he repeated the myth that the Bren was extremely accurate and the MG42 was extremely inaccurate (they actually seem to have roughly the same accuracy, about 4-5 MOA). I doubt anyone could say that James Holland isn't a good historian. There are simply so many myths out there that it's impossible for even the best historian to catch them all.

just gets expensive is all... try to limit my sources, on the whole there's so many subscription's that one can do it all just seems a vacum for ones money. even more so when one has two young kids, and a wife out of work.. lol.so its not that your wrong. its just unpractical.

On 1/8/2024 at 6:30 PM, Centurian52 said:

I'd definitely buy Combat Mission: Operation Unthinkable. Though, seeing as I've already affirmed that I'd buy any Combat Mission game, that may not count for much.

i'd buy anything combat mission related. even a mug for my coffee...and no, i'm not joking lmao

[BornGinger]

22 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

And options for setting up complicated scenarios seemed very limited

It seems that the Graviteam editor mostly is for people to practice and try out different things and learn the game before they decide to fight for real in the operations (campaigns). But it's still possible to make fun homemade skirmishes and battles in their editor although one doesn't have much to say about a bit more exact behaviour of the AI-troops.

Edited January 16 by BornGinger

[Vacillator]

20 hours ago, Bubba883XL said:

can still visit those old titles under john tillers campaign series, great old skool games

I have done, but oddly after playing a certain game called Combat Mission they seemed very old skool.

20 hours ago, Bubba883XL said:

i'd buy anything combat mission related. even a mug for my coffee...and no, i'm not joking lmao

Me too except only WW2 so far.  Controversial I know.

[Bubba883XL]

1 hour ago, Vacillator said:

I have done, but oddly after playing a certain game called Combat Mission they seemed very old skool.

Me too except only WW2 so far.  Controversial I know.

only ww2 eh? you scandral...lol and let me guess, a keen german player to eh? lol (me to) lol

[masc]

I don't know if this has been mentioned here, and even if it hasn't I assume it was thought of, but why not release the CMBS module with all proceeds going to a charity? Presumably a Ukrainian one but even something neutral like the Red Cross could be an option.

[Vacillator]

On 1/16/2024 at 11:52 PM, Bubba883XL said:

let me guess, a keen german player to eh?

Well in current or just finished PBEMs I'm playing Hot Time in Hatten as US, Monster Mash as Soviets and admittedly Boy's against men as Germans.  So I'm not really that bothered.  I'm not the 'Nazi in the village' if you read that somewhere else on this forum .

[JoMac]

On 1/16/2024 at 6:52 PM, Bubba883XL said:

only ww2 eh? you scandral...lol and let me guess, a keen german player to eh? lol (me to) lol

I'm with Vacillator...Only WWII Stuff, no Modern.

[Vacillator]

1 minute ago, JoMac said:

I'm with Vacillator...Only WWII Stuff, no Modern.

We might be tarred and feathered for it, but that's where I'm at so far.

[Simcoe]

53 minutes ago, Vacillator said:

We might be tarred and feathered for it, but that's where I'm at so far.

I used to be a big modern CM player but I'm firmly in the WW2 camp now. 

Modern games exacerbate all the weaknesses of the engine. I think most people will agree the biggest issues in the game are aircraft(control is very basic and you either shoot them down easily or it's an enemy that you have no control over and completely random), vehicle spotting (T-62's in Cold War especially are crewed by Stevie Wonder) and artillery interaction with tanks (there's a bug where subsystems can't be damaged on tanks.

Modern modules all have more airpower, more tanks and more subsystems. 

Until these issues are fixed (when hell freezes over) I'll stick to T-34's and Tigers.

[AtlasActual]

1 hour ago, Simcoe said:

I used to be a big modern CM player but I'm firmly in the WW2 camp now. 

Modern games exacerbate all the weaknesses of the engine. I think most people will agree the biggest issues in the game are aircraft(control is very basic and you either shoot them down easily or it's an enemy that you have no control over and completely random), vehicle spotting (T-62's in Cold War especially are crewed by Stevie Wonder) and artillery interaction with tanks (there's a bug where subsystems can't be damaged on tanks.

Modern modules all have more airpower, more tanks and more subsystems. 

Until these issues are fixed (when hell freezes over) I'll stick to T-34's and Tigers.

Not bugs, features!

[Halmbarte]

3 hours ago, Simcoe said:

I used to be a big modern CM player but I'm firmly in the WW2 camp now. 

Modern games exacerbate all the weaknesses of the engine. I think most people will agree the biggest issues in the game are aircraft(control is very basic and you either shoot them down easily or it's an enemy that you have no control over and completely random), vehicle spotting (T-62's in Cold War especially are crewed by Stevie Wonder) and artillery interaction with tanks (there's a bug where subsystems can't be damaged on tanks.

Modern modules all have more airpower, more tanks and more subsystems. 

Until these issues are fixed (when hell freezes over) I'll stick to T-34's and Tigers.

It seems like that sometimes. And sometimes you get this: 

T62 crossing open ground spotted the M150 launch, got off a shot and a  hit while the missile was still in flight. 

H

[Simcoe]

3 hours ago, AtlasActual said:

Not bugs, features!

Care to elaborate?

[Simcoe]

1 hour ago, Halmbarte said:

It seems like that sometimes. And sometimes you get this: 

T62 crossing open ground spotted the M150 launch, got off a shot and a  hit while the missile was still in flight. 

H

I could pull up a picture of someone winning the lottery and say the same thing.

[Brille]

7 hours ago, Simcoe said:

I used to be a big modern CM player but I'm firmly in the WW2 camp now. 

Modern games exacerbate all the weaknesses of the engine. I think most people will agree the biggest issues in the game are aircraft(control is very basic and you either shoot them down easily or it's an enemy that you have no control over and completely random), vehicle spotting (T-62's in Cold War especially are crewed by Stevie Wonder) and artillery interaction with tanks (there's a bug where subsystems can't be damaged on tanks.

Modern modules all have more airpower, more tanks and more subsystems. 

Until these issues are fixed (when hell freezes over) I'll stick to T-34's and Tigers.

Im not that long into the modern war titles as other folk but air power should be a threat If not opposed.

As it is now the effectiveness of choppers and planes is decided mainly on the purchase screen and not so much (If at all) by skill of the user.

Mainly the decisive factors are if the oponent cares to take (enough) anti air assets with him and if he has meaningful units worth shooting at.

The rest is timing and luck.

But what would you change if you could ?

In my book air assets should be powerful if not opposed by anyone or anything. And they come with a good price if you want them in a heavy AT configuration, considering that they maybe even get shot down before they could launch a thing.

Would be nice however if the tanks could actually use their AA MG at least for helicopters closing in.

Shooting them down should be rare but maybe at least throw them of target or let them think twice to come back...at least as a possibility.

@T62 bad eyesight:

In my experience all tanks without any thermal imagers are bad at spotting things (closed up), though soviet style stuff are just a tick more bad.

WW2 stuff in that case is the same to me only that the gap between each faction isnt that wide in terms of optics.

So are these bugs/wrong coding or just false expectations ? 

[Grey_Fox]

2 minutes ago, Brille said:

just false expectations

I think this is a major factor in a lot of the complaints about spotting being broken. 

[Sunbather]

On 1/13/2024 at 10:31 PM, Commanderski said:

No game is perfect and no game company has ever had a game where none of their customers ever had a complaint or didn't want any more improvements. Some people like CM, some like Graviteam, some any of the others of the myriad of WWII games. to each his own.

Until a perfect game comes up we should be happy that the companies we support continue to make improvements and additions to our games.

 

I think this is what I was ranting about. I love Combat Mission, still my most played wargame when you take all the different iterations into account. But it's not perfect and there won't ever be a perfect game for the simple reason that sometimes you're just in the mood for something else, maybe 2D instead of 3D, maybe obscure African conflicts instead of WW2 Normandy, maybe Cold War 1989 instead of 1979 or maybe even Cold War 1971. Maybe you get frustrated with the micromanaging or spotting in Combat Mission and for that reason you go to Graviteam. Then you find flaws in that game or something that just doesn't speak to your mood because maybe you're in the mood for some micromanaging.

At the end of the day, I am just glad that the wargame genre is so thriving (as is the RPG genre) and I am in no shortage of "complex" games that had a lot of "labour" put into them (yes, I am still irked about that quote, haha). That being said, Combat Mission Yom Kippir when?!

[Sunbather]

On 1/15/2024 at 1:39 PM, Centurian52 said:

Graviteam has amazing physical detail. But I didn't see much effort put into things like accurate TO&E. And options for setting up complicated scenarios seemed very limited. I was in awe of the physics, but they seem to have forgotten everything else.

What makes you think that? I don't want to trigger yet another discussion about how good game X is compared to game Y but Graviteam has insane TO&E and OOB, at least for those operations I could verifiy it for. Some other battles and operations are so obscure that there aren't any published sources in English for it. Look at e.g. the "Bird Grove" DLC where a user has compiled a +100 pages book with English translations of the original Russian and German war diaries, including 'exact' notes on what equipment was used, lost, destroyed etc.

In fact, I would say that Graviteam Tactics doesn't really look like a correct TO&E and OOB because there hardly ever was a thing like that in real life, especially from 1942 onwards: so many cobbled together Kampfgruppen and ill equipped 'divisions'. Combat Mission does the same, of course.

[markus544]

Yom kippur war, valley of tears battle, I'm up for that as well as the Sinai when Mr. sagger meets M-48. Ouch.

[Anthony P.]

20 hours ago, masc said:

I don't know if this has been mentioned here, and even if it hasn't I assume it was thought of, but why not release the CMBS module with all proceeds going to a charity? Presumably a Ukrainian one but even something neutral like the Red Cross could be an option.

Commendable notion, but I don't think making large investments and incurring nothing but further expenses by releasing and maintaining the product is a sensible business practice.

[Simcoe]

14 hours ago, Brille said:

Im not that long into the modern war titles as other folk but air power should be a threat If not opposed.

As it is now the effectiveness of choppers and planes is decided mainly on the purchase screen and not so much (If at all) by skill of the user.

Mainly the decisive factors are if the oponent cares to take (enough) anti air assets with him and if he has meaningful units worth shooting at.

The rest is timing and luck.

But what would you change if you could ?

In my book air assets should be powerful if not opposed by anyone or anything. And they come with a good price if you want them in a heavy AT configuration, considering that they maybe even get shot down before they could launch a thing.

Would be nice however if the tanks could actually use their AA MG at least for helicopters closing in.

Shooting them down should be rare but maybe at least throw them of target or let them think twice to come back...at least as a possibility.

@T62 bad eyesight:

In my experience all tanks without any thermal imagers are bad at spotting things (closed up), though soviet style stuff are just a tick more bad.

WW2 stuff in that case is the same to me only that the gap between each faction isnt that wide in terms of optics.

So are these bugs/wrong coding or just false expectations ? 

Thank you for the well thought out reply. 

I really don't have any good ideas on how to fix air support other than quality of life features like allowing the player to zone off larger portions of the map as open for air strikes.

Air support is just frustrating to deal with on both sides.

The side calling it has no way to influence the air strike. The enemy team will hide their AA assets and aside from a lucky artillery strike there's no way you can take them out against a competent opponent. 

The team receiving the air strike either has AA units and can destroy any air support no matter their position or they don't have any AA and you are at the mercy of a completely random mechanic. Sometimes you lose an infantry squad, sometimes you lose your only artillery observer. 

At least in WW2 games it's a limited mechanic used in a small number of scenarios.

As for tank spotting:

I have no issue with tanks not spotting every target I can see. I've gone out hunting in the real world and glassed an area for an hour before noticing another hunter in a bright orange. I have an issue when the randomized spotting mechanics lead to losing an entire company of tanks in a turn. 

In WW2 you at least have time to respond because tanks miss and shots bounce.

 

[luigim]

 

I bought everything Battlefront.

In my opinion, if you cancel the BS module, you should give us something modern and do two things:

1. Expand CW forward (1989) and backwards (1973)

2. Some kind of East Asia module, either China vs US/Taiwan or NK/China vs US/SK/Japan which would be more interesting

[Brille]

On 1/20/2024 at 12:56 AM, Simcoe said:

The side calling it has no way to influence the air strike. The enemy team will hide their AA assets and aside from a lucky artillery strike there's no way you can take them out against a competent opponent. 

The team receiving the air strike either has AA units and can destroy any air support no matter their position or they don't have any AA and you are at the mercy of a completely random mechanic. Sometimes you lose an infantry squad, sometimes you lose your only artillery observer. 

Well but isn´t that exactly what happens in real wars ? If you have AA assets like manportable rocketlaunchers, you surely can end the threat often before it even begins. We can see it in the actual ukraine war: Where anti air units are fielded the losses in aircrafts of all sorts rise rapidly to the point of one faction keeping the usage of them to a minimum or very cautiously deployment.

I understand that there maybe should be some tweaks here and there but in general it would not change the outcome that much. For example I have the feeling that MANPADS have a to quick reaction time when an aircraft passes. I would guess in a combat zone as CMBS where each faction knows that the oponent has anti air assets, proper flight tactics would also be used (low and fast). Plus the MANPADS rely heavily on eyesight and are mostly not radar assisted. At least not in the actual spotting/identifying of an aircraft.

So I would guess that they would take a bit longer to actually take a shot, unlike AA vehicles like the Tunguska for example. Sure those are bukier weapon systems but they have radar and probably would have got a small blip on their screen beforehand to know that aircrafts are around. Plus they know directly if that aircraft is either friend or foe.

All in all however aircrafts feel like they should, at least by the scale that combat mission depicts.

Maybe BFC could add jetfighters into the mix to hunt down enemy CAS or to limit their effectiveness (aircrafts can not stay in the area for to long - reduced gunruns). But that would also lead to more randomness (which is not a bad thing entirely).

Other than that is just to communicate with your opponent to not use air assets at all. For the new PBEM++ system however it would be really nice to maybe introduce a check list of options of what you want to have in your game, as you have no way to communicate there.

But well that is more likely to come with CMx3....

 

On 1/20/2024 at 12:56 AM, Simcoe said:

As for tank spotting:

I have no issue with tanks not spotting every target I can see. I've gone out hunting in the real world and glassed an area for an hour before noticing another hunter in a bright orange. I have an issue when the randomized spotting mechanics lead to losing an entire company of tanks in a turn. 

As I agree that the spotting in CM is sometimes a bit too random (especially talking about forests), I find it to be working most of the time.

No offense here but if you loose an entire company of tanks in a turn without gaining anything, you either had bad tanks and/or low quality crews (compared to your opponent), bad tactics or you must have been very very unlucky.

If you have fielded T62 tanks against more modern ones (for example) you either start digging their graves already or you bring a huge bunch of them with you and even then you probably get beaten up pretty bad.

They are not that much more better than a WW2 tank after all so that seems about right. In CMCW they surely can compete with M60s until they get their TTS upgrade but that´s mostly the end of it. Random spotting has not much to do with that.

Fielding them with more experienced crews and keeping the commanders out for observation (against doctrine) helps a lot though.

 

And I also lost a full company of them once in 1-2 turns in CMSF2. But that came down to the lack of knowledge I had at that time and because it is an outdated tank even when upgraded.

I got to know the hard way that their smokebombs don´t block IR imagers. Oh what a fine turkey shooting my oponent had.

[Anthony P.]

4 hours ago, Brille said:

Well but isn´t that exactly what happens in real wars ? If you have AA assets like manportable rocketlaunchers, you surely can end the threat often before it even begins. We can see it in the actual ukraine war: Where anti air units are fielded the losses in aircrafts of all sorts rise rapidly to the point of one faction keeping the usage of them to a minimum or very cautiously deployment.

MANPADS are, provided you're somewhat on top of what you're doing, not a serious threat. Or rather, they shouldn't be, not for a capable military like the American one at least. Russia did seem to have gone into the war with the aim of sufficiently blunting the Ukrainian IADS that they should be able to fly high level precision missions, and low level within actual visual range of their objectives as opposed to just lobbing rockets all over a few square kilometers. Ukraine never had a hope of blunting the Russian IADS to that degree, and in the end the Russians couldn't pull it off against the Ukrainians either, hence the mess/suppressed air ops of both sides.

So for CMBS, sure, Russian and Ukrainian CAS can be argued to be reasonable, but American CAS is just so off that it fails to bear serious resemblance to reality (it doesn't even have a number of capabilites which the CMBS manual itself grants that they have IRL).

That's what's lacking with Western CAS in CMBS and CMSF. It is dumbed down to low tech standards which do not align with reality. AH-64Es, which for one should bring serious spotting abilities to the table in the shape of an FCR and its own drone, do not but are entirely dependent on spotting made by player controlled ground units and drones, and secondly, though it should be able to sit at a safe distance, well outside the range of the best Russian air defences on the map in CMBS (either lobbing laser guided missiles at targets painted by drones or ground forces or firing radar guided missiles at targets it's spotted by simply unmasking its small mast mounted FCR) they instead come flying in lasing their targets themselves and holding fire until within range of enemy air defences, even when being aware of them and actually targeting them.

 

That's one of the more egregious examples, but the overall point is that Western CAS in the modern titles (BS and SF) is horribly dumbed down to very unrealistic standards for simple gameplay balancing. Sorry, but an Apache or a Strike Eagle in SF going up against even the worst threats it could face should be even less vulnerable than an Abrams facing off against a T-55 in a plain desert at night time. Instead a single MANPADS is a very serious threat to both of them simply for balancing. CAS works well in the WW2 titles (because it works horribly and is almost as dangerous to your own side, which is realistic) and in CMCW (because that was prior to the Soviet systems being badly outpaced by Western tech and it was a scenario in which heavy air losses was something foreseen as inevitable), but in later games it becomes so poorly implemented that it's not much fun as an asset.

Edited January 21 by Anthony P.

[Simcoe]

6 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

MANPADS are, provided you're somewhat on top of what you're doing, not a serious threat. Or rather, they shouldn't be, not for a capable military like the American one at least. Russia did seem to have gone into the war with the aim of sufficiently blunting the Ukrainian IADS that they should be able to fly high level precision missions, and low level within actual visual range of their objectives as opposed to just lobbing rockets all over a few square kilometers. Ukraine never had a hope of blunting the Russian IADS to that degree, and in the end the Russians couldn't pull it off against the Ukrainians either, hence the mess/suppressed air ops of both sides.

So for CMBS, sure, Russian and Ukrainian CAS can be argued to be reasonable, but American CAS is just so off that it fails to bear serious resemblance to reality (it doesn't even have a number of capabilites which the CMBS manual itself grants that they have IRL).

That's what's lacking with Western CAS in CMBS and CMSF. It is dumbed down to low tech standards which do not align with reality. AH-64Es, which for one should bring serious spotting abilities to the table in the shape of an FCR and its own drone, do not but are entirely dependent on spotting made by player controlled ground units and drones, and secondly, though it should be able to sit at a safe distance, well outside the range of the best Russian air defences on the map in CMBS (either lobbing laser guided missiles at targets painted by drones or ground forces or firing radar guided missiles at targets it's spotted by simply unmasking its small mast mounted FCR) they instead come flying in lasing their targets themselves and holding fire until within range of enemy air defences, even when being aware of them and actually targeting them.

 

That's one of the more egregious examples, but the overall point is that Western CAS in the modern titles (BS and SF) is horribly dumbed down to very unrealistic standards for simple gameplay balancing. Sorry, but an Apache or a Strike Eagle in SF going up against even the worst threats it could face should be even less vulnerable than an Abrams facing off against a T-55 in a plain desert at night time. Instead a single MANPADS is a very serious threat to both of them simply for balancing. CAS works well in the WW2 titles (because it works horribly and is almost as dangerous to your own side, which is realistic) and in CMCW (because that was prior to the Soviet systems being badly outpaced by Western tech and it was a scenario in which heavy air losses was something foreseen as inevitable), but in later games it becomes so poorly implemented that it's not much fun as an asset.

Great point. WW2 mechanics have been bolted onto a 21st century conflict. 

It would be great if you had more control over CAS. For example, on the Russian side you could use the safe option of unguided rockets with a low chance of intercept but low impact or a full on bombing run that would have major impact but high risk of intercept. 

Until then I'd rather stick with the age the mechanics were made for.