Jeep Recon Redux

[Slapdragon]

Jeeps were used in recon! I have read that just recently and and looking diligently for the place I read it, but they were recon vehicles.

They were not of course high speed roll around the enemy lines things, but they were quiet, hard to spot, and failry good off road. They were used totally differently than they get used in the game. They would be driven up on a hill and concealed: easy to do since they are small. Then they would radio back info.

So, maybe if they sit in one place for a bit they would sight as good as infantry, but hell for leather driving is no good for recon.

[Jarmo]

Almost 300 posts around this are to be found from

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/010574.html

It's a living thread.

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Now, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of

our trenches and walking slowly towards the enemy sir?

[:USERNAME:]

Its a Jeep thing.

[Slapdragon]

Actually I read it and although it is not really living when I made this post, it mostly ignored the use of Jeeps as recon units.

However, I bow that better heads are involved and will keep out of the debate.

[Guest Michael emrys]

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

They were not of course high speed roll around the enemy lines things, but they were quiet, hard to spot, and failry good off road. They were used totally differently than they get used in the game. They would be driven up on a hill and concealed: easy to do since they are small. Then they would radio back info.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, the SAS and Popski's Private Army (yes, there was such a thing) used very heavily armed jeeps (sometimes as many as three or four machine guns) in a truly rip-roaring manner. They would appear unannounced in some German rear area installation, ride through gunning everything in sight and then vanish back into the woodwork before the defenders overcame their shock. If the Americans or anybody else did anything like this on a regular basis, I have yet to hear of it.

Michael

[Guest Scott Clinton]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>If the Americans or anybody else did anything like this on a regular basis, I have yet to hear of it.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

WHAT!!!!!

Where did you go to school?!? Or are you an ill-informed foreigner?

Have you never seen the TV series "Rat Patrol!" Sure, there were Bits in it...but the Americans ran the show. I can't count the number of "PzIVs" they sent up in flames with .50 cal fire from high-speed jeeps!

(ie I am not serious)

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Please note: The above is solely the opinion of 'The Grumbling Grognard' and reflects no one else's views but his own.

[Guest Michael emrys]

Rat Patrol came out after I left school, and so formed no part of my education. I am the helpless victim of the American education system which left me permanently impaired. I am not responsible for my ignorance. Don't blame me if I have an irrepresible urge to kill, maim, and destroy.

I didn't even know the man. I was out of town at the time. And besides, Your Honor, it was self-defense.

Michael

[Guest Mirage2k]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Scott Clinton:

Have you never seen the TV series "Rat Patrol!" Sure, there were Bits in it...but the Americans ran the show. I can't count the number of "PzIVs" they sent up in flames with .50 cal fire from high-speed jeeps!

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Is that anything like "The A-Team"?

I still don't understand how, despite the hundreds of thousands of rounds those guys must have expended through that series, I have never seen any man (enemy or friendly) get hit.

-Andrew

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[Kanonier Reichmann]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mirage2k:

Is that anything like "The A-Team"?

I still don't understand how, despite the hundreds of thousands of rounds those guys must have expended through that series, I have never seen any man (enemy or friendly) get hit.

-Andrew

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What I vividly remeber of the series was the fact that the German commander would regularly lose his armoured column to a bunch of unarmoured MG equipped jeeps and at the end of the engagement shake his fist at the Rat Patrol muttering something along the lines of "I'll get you next time Gadget".

Th most absurd yet somehow enjoyable series I remember from my formative years. BTW, that German commander...was he the same guy who later appeared regularly on Daze of our Lives? And another thing, how come that German commander was never court martialled despite losing the equivalent of a Divisions worth of Mark IV's to a bunch of bleedin' Jeeps!

Regards

Jim R.

[Bruno Weiss]

He was Hermann Goering's Brother-in-Law.

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"Wer zuerst schiesst hat mehr von Leben"

Moto-(3./JG11 "Graf")

Bruno "Stachel" Weiss

[aka_tom_w]

This is a repost but it seemed appropriate here too...

OK I've been thinking, yes actually intellectualizing, the entire

conceptual basis, of this jeep recon issue.

And now after I have read all this " its so nice to have this BIG

HUGFEST" I would like to discuss some of what I consider some of the

ROOT causes here.

First off if any of you stduents out there are wondering what you need

to know about writting a good essay (and this one is likely to be

lengthy) let me start off by sharing what a VERY good Military History

University Proffesor at the University of Toronto once told us. He said all

you need to write a good paper is to rememeber these four points:

Tell me what you are going to tell me.

Tell me.

Tell me again.

Tell me that you have told me.

Well now I'm going to tell you.

Lets start with the premise that MANY players like to play CM to model,

excersise and explore Real World Military Tactics ™ (RWMTs). And to

these players the the use of other effective tactics in the game that are

not viable RWMTs, like the deep fast suicide jeep recon joy ride

(DFSJRJR), represent "gamey tactics" which they find unrealistic and

offensive when they play.

Ok all that has been made VERY clear.

BUT, the premise that RWMTs can be accurately modeled, excersised

and explored is compromised at the Most fundamental level by two

game design decisions that I now understand and support.

The foundation of this GREAT game is fundamentally build on top of two

fundametally

non-Real World principles, (this is not new and Steve and Charles

Designed this game with these issues in mind from the start)

#1 Absolute Spotting (the borg-like instant tranmission of ALL recon

intel to all other friendly units)

#2 LOS determination according to Steve's "Method 2" "#2. The

trajectory itself is only a binary LOS calculation. Either the shooter can,

in theory, get a round from the gun to the target or it can't"

Here's a refresher:

Quoting Steve:

"Method 2 -> On average will come up with the same results as Method

1, but only spews out a realistic number of calculations on the CPU to

crunch. What you lose is the ability for the shell to accidentally strike

something between A and B other than terrain. As the link Iggi gave will

explain a bit more. Thankfully, the cases where this matters are few and

far inbetween.

So there you have it Method 1 and 2 yield pretty much the same results,

with the exception of variable blockage (i.e. vehicles). Oh, well, the

other difference is that Method 1 would make CM tedious to play and

Method 2 works just fine.

(tom w opines: I interpret this to mean that Steve is saying that CM was

designed to use Method 2 to save time to process or "crunch" the result

of the round being fired, hence it does not, and cannot account for live

or dead vehicles which are not smoking and burning in between the

shooter and the target. It should also be noted that Pillboxes and

bunkers are treated as vehicles and do not offer any form of cover and

do not block LOS or LOF)."

So we can see here that two of the fundamental foundation priciples

that the game was designed around are at their VERY core, abstractions

or approximations of the physics of REALITY to begin with. I personally

think these approximations of WWII Combat reality are the VERY BEST

approximations and abstractions I have ever seen in a War Game so I

am by no means complaining about them.

This is in no way a critiscm of the game just my personally explanation

as to why it is not entirely realistic to expect other faccets of the game

to be a completely accurate simulation of WWII combat.

These two abstractions from reality are BOTH necessistated by

hardware limitations of our current crop of consumer level computer

hardware.

So this leads me to wonder why so many other players and folks who

post here EXPECT so MUCH more REALITY out of the game when these

two fundamental prinicples compromise the actaul degree of integrity or

reality this game can actually offer.

My main point after all this is that I am philosophically opposed to

gentleman's aggreements and "house rules" that attempt to ban certain

tactics because they are unrealistically effective. The DFSJRJR jeep recon

trick is one such tactic, I know other such tactics will raise their ugly

heads in time. To attempt to patch, with self impossed "house rules" a

game that is at it core (due to current hardware limitations) not capable

of Modeling Relative spotting AND not capable of modeling True Method

1 LOS Determination (refresher:Quoting Steve: "1. Use a whole bunch of

variables (like weapon accuracy, guner training, suppression, etc) to

determine a trajectory to the target.

The trajectory would then be "traced" and wherever the shell hit

damage would be done. If the hit whacked a vehicle then CM would go

through all the armor pentration stuff to figure out what the impact

did.")

Seems like any attempt to model Accurate WWII Combat reality on top

of this contruct that is inherently unrealistic to begin with.

Its a GAME!

IT attempts to model the reality of POST D-Day WWII small unit combat

tactics, it does this BETTER than other game out there!

This thread and for the most part (flaming and personal insult and mud

slinging, aside) this entire Forum, and the contributors here can all help

to make this and the coming CM2 a MUCH better game by posting

thoughtful and contructive contributions.

I would like to conclude on a postive note and mention that while CM1

was designed with today's Computer hardware standards in mind, we

can all hope that one short year down the road Moores law (brief

refresher:

Moore's Law is that the pace of microchip technology change is such

that the amount of data storage that a microchip can

hold doubles every year or at least every 18 months. In 1965 when

preparing a talk, Gordon Moore noticed that up to

that time microchip capacity seemed to double each year. The pace of

change having slowed down a bit over the past few

years, the definition has changed (with Gordon Moore's approval) to

reflect that the doubling occurs only every 18

months.

In September, 1997, announcements by Intel of 2-bit flash memory and

by IBM of chip circuitry of copper rather than

aluminum suggested a return of the original version of Moore's Law.")

will bring us a new faster base standard of a home computer system

that will be TWICE as capable as today's base line standard and maybe

then CM2 can be designed to include BOTH Method 1 LOS determination

and Relative Spotting and (my personal Favourite ) Terrain Fog of War.

In my opinion I wish Combat Mission WAS Recon Mission as it is one of

the aspects of the game that I enjoy the most.

Some one else said it best, No other game models the "Holy Crap!

Where the Hell did that come from!" factor like CM currently does.

If CM2 could be designed on a foundation that included Relative

Spotting and Method 1 true LOS/LOF determination the game would be

TRULY revolutionary and the ""Holy Crap! Where the Hell did that come

from!" factor would go right thruogh the roof as would the Sales figures

of CM2

AGAIN this was in no way a critiscm of the current state of CMBO, just

my personal opinion of the fundamental foundation of abstraction from

reality that is the basis of the game design.

Now Will the Hug fest we were chatting about continue or will this long

winded rant be largely ignored for being far TOO long and mostly to

theoretical perhaps boarding on rhetorical?

Your comments, suggestions and even flames are always welcome.

I do indeed hope Steve and I will continue the positive and cordial

dialogue even after I have perhaps exposed some of the more

controversial issues at the core of the CM game design.

-tom w

[Guest Michael emrys]

Tom,

While your argument indeed contains true statements, I am going to try to explain why in the end it doesn't stand up logically.

You are right to say that the game is not 100% historically accurate, partly for the reasons you mention. Moreover, it never will be, no matter what the technical advances in computer science provide us.

But you seem to go on from there to claim that throws the door open to whatever ahistorical gambit a player can come up with. But all this does is land us slap-dab right back in the middle of the HWG vs. VG imbroglio presently under discussion in another thread.

If one is a VGer, your rationalization is unnecessary. If one is an HWGer, it justifies nothing. Since I fall primarily in the latter camp, I will proceed to argue along that line.

I would say, as I did at the outset, that no game is going to perfectly duplicate the historical conditions of WW II. Personally, that's fine with me as I no longer have the desire to sleep in a soggy foxhole, eat cold Spam, and get shot at. But as an HWGer, I want the game to represent reality as closely as human ingenuity can make it. That means eschewing "gamey" tactics.

Now, as it happens, I am not entirely convinced that the DFSJRJR is in every case unjustified by historical usage. On the other hand, it was clearly not a standard part of combat, especially not at the level represented by CM. So, in the end, I should say that among those players seeking a historical game, the use of DFSJRJR should be confined to only those scenarios specifically designed to explore their use. Any other use would be considered illegitimate.

Of course, if one is a VGer, he/she is not going to feel bound by those considerations.

Michael

[Slapdragon]

Tom's argument also fall flat on logic in another way. her is a simile:

We cannot save anyone at hospitals, and it really isn't about saving people but making a profit for the corporation, so why don't we just shoot everyone that comes in.

I cannot succeed in teaching each of my students how to be a communicator. They are not really hear to lean anyway, but to drink beer. So I will just show them movies and forget the whole thing.

[aka_tom_w]

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

Tom's argument also fall flat on logic in another way. her is a simile:

We cannot save anyone at hospitals, and it really isn't about saving people but making a profit for the corporation, so why don't we just shoot everyone that comes in.

I cannot succeed in teaching each of my students how to be a communicator. They are not really hear to lean anyway, but to drink beer. So I will just show them movies and forget the whole thing.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi Slapdragon,

OK, Now I must respond to that. (in good humour)

The point of my long winded post above was to explore the foundation of some of the game design descisons as they relate to Simulation of WWII combat simulation in this game. I simply pointed out two fundamental underlying game design decsions that lie at the foundation of the way CM models the "reality" of WWII combat. I thought my conclusions clearly suggested that I was looking forward to moving the future of CM2 much closer toward accurately modeling LOS determination by using Method 1 (not in the enar future I understand) and incorporating Relative Spotting to somehow (I must admit that how this will be done in a video game has me COMPLETELY stumped) remove the borg like omniawareness of all spotted and identified enemy units by all friendly units.

I thought I was encourageing all participants here to continue to contribute to makeing this a MUCH better game than it already is by starting at the begining and clear identifying what in my opinion were good game design descions (necessitated by current hardware constraints) that compromise the current level of reality in spotting and recon and LOF and LOS determination we can expect at this time in the latest version of Combat Mission.

I thought my conclusions in included comments to the effect that this was a GREAT game and that if we all communicate and contribute in a mature manner the collective BrainTrust of this BBS might come up (by working together) with some truely exceptional suggestions the Steve and Charles and now Dan and MadMatt can attempt to incorporate into furute versions of the game.

I was not really solveing any problems or really proposing any solutions mearly IMHO identifing where the abstractions necessary at this time to make this game work, begin to compromise the degree of reality we can legitiamately expect to realize by contineuing to patch the original game engine.

Nothing more, and they are only my opinions and Maybe I'm totally wrong....

But I am enjoying the disccusion.

-tom w

[ScoutPL]

Tom W., I'm getting concerned man...

Judging by the number and length of the posts you put on here daily you need to just sit back more and enjoy some CM!!

[aka_tom_w]

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

Tom W., I'm getting concerned man...

Judging by the number and length of the posts you put on here daily you need to just sit back more and enjoy some CM!! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks your right!

I should be playing more and chatting less.

-tom w

[Guest Michael emrys]

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

They are not really hear to lean anyway, but to drink beer.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

But if they drink enough beer, whether they hear or not, leaning should come quite natural to them. I know it does for me!

(Couldn't resist. )

Michael

[Slapdragon]

One gave me a note last week. Please excuse Robert from class Tuesday, he was drunk... from his mother no less.

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[Guest Michael emrys]

Gee, I wish I'd had that kind of mother. I could have gotten an eary start on becoming useless and debauched instead of having to struggle most of my adult life to achieve that goal.

Michael