Confusion over infantry movement

[Jeff Heidman]

There has been quite a bit of confusion over the movement types for infantry in CM. A very common group of questions deals with the issue of how do you get your infantry to go from here to there in some certain fashion.

IMNSHO, CM could use a little work on the infantry movement orders. Currently there is no clear way in which to get your infantry to move in the manner many of us who were in the infantry were actually taught to move in a combat situation.

So this is my proposal for available movement commands for CM2. I tried to think up all the various ways I was taught to move in Basic, and come up with a command for each, within reason.

This is a repost of a message in another thread.

Fast - Get from here to there, do not stop for any reason. Fire if a target presents itself, if you can fire while moving.

Any fire from a unit moving Fast would be greatly reduced, and unit would be very susceptible to incoming fire. movement speed would be high.

I see this as a dash, sacrificing firepower and protection for speed.

Move - Go from here to there, but do not become too exposed in the process. Fire if a target presents itself. If fired upon, try to keep moving, but slow down in order to take better advantage of cover.

Any fire from a unit using this command would be considerably reduced in effect. Movement speed would be moderate, cover would be poor.

I see this as high crawling, while returning fire and trying to provide some amount of cover fire.

Assault Move - Move very slowly, maximize cover, fire at your target while advancing.

Movement speed would be very slow (little more than crawling), protection would be high, firepower would be high.

I see this as a coordinated fire and movement drill using a mix of low and high crawling.

Move to Contact Just like move, except stop when fired upon and return fire.

Sneak - Try to avoid detection at all costs. Do not fire at enemies under most circumstances.

Speed would be very slow, firepower would be fine if the unit fires, but it probably would not unless under threat of imminent destruction. Stop and return fire if detected.

What would be nice about some of these is that you could then modify some of the values based upon the weapon. One of the advantages of submachine guns and assault rifles is that they can be fired while moving much easier than a regular rifle. So you could have the firepower modified based on the type of weapon. SO, for example, an M1 would lose 70% of its firepower when fired under a "Move" command, but an MP44 would only lose 35%. Or whatever.

Summary:

<LI>Fast High speed, poor firepower, poor cover, poor concealment.

<LI>Move Moderate Speed, poor firepower, moderate cover, moderate concealment.

<LI>Assault Move Slow speed, good firepower, good cover, poor concealment. Will not stop if fired upon.

<LI>Move to Contact Moderate speed, poor firepower (but will stop when fired upon), moderate cover, moderate concealment.

<LI>Sneak Slow speed, good firepower (but will not fire unless detected), good cover, very good concealment.

Of course, all of these are intent. The actual result would depend on the quality of the troops involved and all the other factors.

Jeff Heidman

[Scrogdog]

Interesting.

I have a question. When using overwatch movement on this level in real life, would one *platoon* watch while the other moves? Or is it that some elements of the squad watch while others move?

[Jeff Heidman]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Scrogdog:

Interesting.

I have a question. When using overwatch movement on this level in real life, would one *platoon* watch while the other moves? Or is it that some elements of the squad watch while others move?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Do you mean would one squad watch whil another moves?

The overwatch strategy can apply at almost any level. From a company paracticing overwatch while another moves, down to one person providing overwatch while the other one moves.

My post was in reference to tactical movement within the squad itself, since anything outside the squad can be simply implemented by the player. Of course, within the squad this is abstracted to a great deal.

Jeff Heidman

[Jeff Duquette]

Interesting question. From what I have read "overwatch", as we know it today, had not been formalized in WWII US ARMY doctrine.

[Scrogdog]

I ask because I’ve been using one platoon to watch another. I just wondered if I ought to try using some elements of the platoon to move while other elements watch. My guess is that the answer would be that that decision would be based on situation. If I needed to advance along a broader front, for example.

[This message has been edited by Scrogdog (edited 12-20-2000).]

[Jeff Heidman]

It may not ahve been called "overwatch", but I think the idea of me watching while you move is not exactly ground breaking!

However, I would really like to keep this thread on topic. Perhaps we could move any discussion about the history of tactical movement to its own thread?

Jeff Heidman

[Scrogdog]

Sorry. I’d be happy to stay on topic.

In any case, I like your ideas. However, it sounds like a major AI re-write given that this would greatly effect how individual squads react to given situations.

[Jeff Heidman]

Absolutely. My proposal is probably more aimed toward CMII. It would involve major work.

But that's ok. That is how things get better.

Jeff Heidman

[Snake Eyes]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

But that's ok. That is how things get better.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I like your recommendation. Infantry needs more flexibility in order to simulate real battlefield tactics. It surely will be more work for the programming team, but it would be a big improvement to the game. CMBO is a great start, but it is still pretty basic.

------------------

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance. -Aesop

[Guest Big Time Software]

Hi Jeff,

Good suggestions. Out of the five you have listed, 3 are already in the game and working as described (more-or-less). So the two that are not in the game are:

Assault Move

Move to Contact

Assualt Move is an interesting concept. It is something that we have kicked around since Beta actually (I think we were calling it "Combat Move" or something like that). I personally would like to see such an order, especially for dense terrain fighting (woods in particular). This wouldn't be that difficult to program.

Move to Contact is also something that many people have requested. Unfortunately, this one involves a lot of TacAI work. In fact, we were just discussing this very thing over the last couple of days.

The main problem is determining what is "contact". Is contact a MMG firing at you from 1000m, or is it only another Squad in effective small arms range (oh... say 100m)? And depending on what terrain you are in, and the type of "contact", does the unit stop or keep on going?

Harrassing fire is so hard to define and even harder to know what to do when it is identified. Often the best thing to do is to ignore it and keep on moving. But on the other hand, harrassing fire is often a precursor to worse things to come, so sometimes it is best to sit it out and take another look around before advancing. And depending on where you are at the time the fire is first encountered has a lot to do with it too.

The problem here is that situations like this are VERY difficult to "get right". As we can see with target prioritization for vehicles, there are always situations where the existing behavior isn't optimal.

So Move to Contact is desirable, for sure, but rather tricky to implement. At the moment we have erred on not having it at all because we feel the frustration level with its results would probably result in it not being used AND "demands" that we fix it ASAP. We have so many other things to do we decided that this is a headache we can, and in fact need to, put off for a while.

Forgot to respond to this:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>What would be nice about some of these is that you could then modify some of the values based upon the weapon. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This already happens. Unit firepower while moving is based on the ease of use of their weapons under these circumstances. Bolt action rifles hardly ever fire while on the move, for example.

Steve

[This message has been edited by Big Time Software (edited 12-20-2000).]

[aka_tom_w]

Great Reply Steve!

I thought this part was especially enllightening:

"So Move to Contact is desirable, for sure, but rather tricky to implement. At the moment we have erred onnot having it at all because we feel the frustration level with its results would probably result in it not beingused AND "demands" that we fix it ASAP. We have so many other things to do we decided that this is a headache we can, and in fact need to, put off for a while."

that should just about sum up the issue of "Move to Contact"

Great idea, just difficult to implement to the very HIGH standards of BTS and this community of gamers.

-tom w

[This message has been edited by aka_tom_w (edited 12-20-2000).]

[Jeff Heidman]

Great reply, Steve.

Just how big is the CMII re-write going to be? I could come up with all sorts of other suggestions...

For instnace, I think the entire order screen needs to be re-done. The way I see it, you should seperate movement orders from state orders, and seperate fire orders from those.

For example, "Move" is a movement command, "Area fire" is a fire command, and "hide" is a state command.

I would love to see a multi-tiered (well, two tiered anyway) orders screen. Basically, if two commands are not mutually exclusive, they should go onto different selection areas. You cannot "Move" and "Sneak" at the same time, so those are both in the same selection area.

If you had a seperate "Fire" sub-menu, you could have different types of fire commands. it would be nice to have an "Area Fire", "Harassing Fire", and such. I might be going to far with this though. Don't want to overload the player, or give them to fine of control...

It would be nice to be able to assign fire sctors however. One annoying thing is that if you have a MG covering a bridge, and 5 squads are racing across, the MG will decimate one squad while the rest get across almost unscathed. I would much rather be able to tell the machine gun to defend an area, rather than just targetting the first guy through and focusing on him.

OK, I think I am beginnig to ramble...

Boy, isn't it easy to desing software you don't have to actually implement yourself?

Jeff Heidman

[Doug Beman]

Jeff, CMII is going to be an entirely new engine, completely and totally.

CM2, East Front, is going to be the engine we have now + all the improvements BTS can devise and shoehorn in there.

DjB

[Guest Big Time Software]

Thanks Tom

Jeff, just to make sure... what Doug wrote is correct. CMII is quite a ways off, and too early to really discuss since we haven't done more than plan on doing it.

For CM2... the range of change will be limited in some ways.

The highest priority for change is reserved for things that are needed to better model the Eastern Front specifically. This ranges from Command and Control treatment to simple OOB and TO&E grunt work. We expect this to chew up most of our time and quite possibly will result in fundamental changes in how things work.

Next priority goes to more overall game feature improvements (like PBEM setup improvements). The more localized the change, the more likely we can do it.

The last priority is for things that people would LIKE to see changed/tweaked, but few are likely to think of as "critical". Without any input from customers or testers, Charles and I alone could make a list longer than we could possibly do in a timely fashion, so the line must be drawn

The rewrite of CM's engine (CMII) will involve changes that we wouldn't touch, and can't touch, with a 100m pole right now. The main concern is TIME. Major changes take major time. Combat Mission took THREE YEARS. A rewrite is likely to take at least half of that. The more we try to make CM2 into CMII, the longer the delay for BOTH.

Steve

[MadmaN]

hmm. it could be like:

<ul>

[*]Rifle squad farly close = stop, fire and run.

[*]Machine gun fire from way off = goto crawl