Ok. What we'd like to see in CM2?

[Guest Ol' Blood & Guts]

I started the last thread "Combat Mission needs...", when I was known as Wehrmacht. Since BTS has put a freeze on CM1, no need to beat a dead dog.

Let's start thinking of features we'd like to see in CM2 Eastern Front. But since we haven't seen the release CM1 yet..This might be a little too early.

Also, what things should go in as a patch?

I'd like an option for different textures. Although it may not be needed...Don't know yet,

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"Wars are not won by dying for ones country. Wars are won by making the other poor bastard die for his country."--George S. Patton

[killmore]

Thats a controversial subject. Be careful

How about operation where you are suppose to slaughter as many cows/sheep as possible during one turn? (ala Warcraft?)

Before you start flaming me - This is a joke!

By the way are there any cows in CM?

[Guest hunt52]

A feature I think might be interesting is another fog of war setting: "excessive" you would recieve information about your own troops much like you recieve information about enemy troops. Stemming from the highest ranking unit on the map, you would only see unitl in LOS or in los of command units in your C&C range. Further, low quality commanders would (mis)report or not report unit status, ammo and the like. When you couldn't see your men, they would proceed under the auspices of the Tac and Strat AIs. Would make the game much more challenging, but probably less interesting.

Just rambling. Really I want CM to be released... that is all. Waiting is soo hard.

- Bill

[Guest Babra]

Friendly fog of war... I like that. It would require a VERY competent A/I though.

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Floreat Jerboa !

[Guest Ol' Blood & Guts]

Well, I've seen that in other wargames, the friendly FOW, and I don't really see a benefit in gameplay. It's more frustrating than anything to me, so I've never used it.

Because how could you not know about your own units? I mean, when you select a particular unit, shouldn't it be able to report on its condition correctly? Unless the unit was composed of a bunch of escaped lunitics from a bombed-out asylum. (scene from A Bridge Too Far)

Actually I noticed a bug concerning LOS in the demo. LOS thru buildings. In Chance Encounter, I had one of my Shermans along side of one of the houses. It shot at one of the StuGs, but my orders were to reverse a little bit to get out of its LOS. It started to reverse and it was clearly out of its LOS when I got hit with the StuG's shell, thus knocking me out. 'Course I said, "Oh BS!"

Anybody else experience this sort of thing?

And what's with the Embark order for the 88mm FlaK units? That doesn't work.

[Colin]

Yeah I've had the Tiger shoot through the StuG at a distance of about 3 meters.

[Guest Babra]

I'm guessing you'll need a prime mover or some other suitable vehicle to embark an 88.

Friendly FOW makes sense if you're trying to simulate a higher level commander. Sure you'd have some info, but would you really know EVERYTHING about some obscure squad deep in the woods?

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Floreat Jerboa !

[oddball]

My personal choice would be to have

coordinates of some sort depicted at

whichever point the mouse pointer is

currently at on the battlefield.

Too often, in using the "Tab+F1" key

to get "into the trenches" to locate

a good position for my troops, I find

myself having lost it when zooming

back out to assign movement orders to

my sections/squads.

Having exacting coordinates displayed

as one moved the cursor over the battlefield

would go a LONG ways towards alleviating this

problem.

The utilization of such would also make

the implementation of movement and position setup orders much more exacting and easier in such things as the upcoming "meta campaign" of which many of this boards posters will be participating.

For example, "Squad B1 is to move into

positions on the reverse of Hill 123 at coordinates 1358.2316" seems much more

definitive than: "Squad B1 is to move

to the reverse slope of Hill 123, about

a third of the way from the top."

Regards,

Cliff

[Colin]

I really don't want to see CM add the friendly FOW. It's a wargame. If you want to simulate real FOW for a high level commander then you can delay the intelligence by at least 20 minutes and not show any shells or small arms bursts.

[W583]

Didn't we already talk about these ''what will cm 2 should have'' long time ago????

[Major Tom]

I would like to see some flaming demon monkies shooting out of the skies installing terror in their foes with every insaine utterance from their pasty bowels.

What I would like to see is to have multiple orders to be given in the 60 seconds. I would like the stug to fire Smoke in this direction, then, I would like it to fire HE in this direction, or, I would like you to fire two smoke charges, one here, and one over here instead of firing in one, in one area.

[Sgt.Morgue]

Something i would like to see in CM2 or even better a patch for CM1. This was discussed in an earlier thread. In the earlier thread the reason for mortarmen and others not having hand held weapons was the TOE. But i know from expernince even if the TOE gave a frontline man a pistol he still had a hand held weapon to sleep with. Just today in CM i had two mortar crews with emeny inside their range , they had no defense , one bit of realism that could be added to this already great game is for each of these frontline men to have a carbines or something.

[Chris Jenkins]

I think that showing all of the people as a replay option is a good thing. The computer would not have to handle it during play, but gives great eye candy afterwards. Soldiers from a nine-man squad dissapear one-by-one.

Penal battalions, human wave attacks, 100% fanaticism, massacres, piles of rubble, sniper teams, advanced river crossing rules, extreme cold, extensive captured weapons in the TO&E, deep mud, anti-tank ditches, cavalry, three-story buildings, sewer movement, and trenches should all be simulated. Many are already "on the list."

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Climb to Glory!

[Dschugaschwili]

This has been posted before somewhere, but anyways:

I really would like to have the possibility to watch a movie of the game so far. Think about watching the whole battle afterwards.

Oh well, this will most likely not be in CM1 (too much additional information required to get it done quickly ).

Dschugaschwili

[Doug Beman]

Bill, friendly FOW would make CM not a game any more. Unless you're absolutely fanaticaly about keeping all units within the command radius of an HQ (and that would make any sort of long defensive line impossible) you'd have a couple minutes of giving orders. Then, when the units moved out of command, the game would sit there and crank away turn after turn, while you were able to see maybe a squad here or there. Finally, there'd be a results screen saying "you lost" or "you won." That's a recreation of non-command.

OlB&G, any weapon that is movable in reality will be movable in CM; 88s will be able to load up and relocate, as long as they have a heavy enough vehicle to hitch up to (they don't in Riesberg, which is why Embark does nothing) However, I'm thinking that the time needed to make a gun ready to move, move it, and then get it ready to shoot will still demand an accurate first-placement. Moving will probably be solely to get them off the battlefield in emergencies.

Oddball, you don't get detailed, super-tactical level coordinate maps because tactical (platoon/company) commanders didn't get them in WW2. They didn't tell their men "okay, you men advance to gridpoint 34545.34343/485884.5858485." That kind of coordinate movement was for the movements of companies (and above) on the batallion map and above. This kind of thing will happen in the meta campaign, but will be "Batallion 317 is to advance to the town of Blah and occupy the hills around it at map points X Y and Z." The batallion commander would tell his companies "Okay A goes to X, B goes to Y and C goes to Z." Then the guys in individual platoons got "okay Johnson, you guys run to that tree and hunker down to wait for the Jerries. Wozkazinski, you get into that hedgerow and watch for their tanks."

Chris, "showing all the people" has been discussed zillions of times. Current consumer-level computer technology simply cannot handle that much of a graphics load. Remember that the computation of a turn and the playing of that turn's movie are two totally separate things, taking place non-simultaneously. CM does all the physics, AI etc BEFORE showing the movie, so all the CPU's available power is ALREADY being used to show the movies. "Showing all the people" is still going to require a huge increase in CPU power that we home users just don't have. Please don't dispute this, as BTS has made this decision and will not change it.

Tom, "no" to orders like "fire smoke, then turn, then target, then move, then area fire" because it's micromanagement that a unit commander (us) would be unable to do in reality. Company (even platoon) commanders couldn't sit and direct every action of every second personally; they had to rely on the smarts of the grunts in their command. CM's TacAI provides those smarts. Again, BTS has made this decision and it's final.

DjB

[This message has been edited by Doug Beman (edited 02-01-2000).]

[Thomm]

Things I would like to see:

<ul>

[*]Ability to use the LOS tool within a small range around waypoints for better unit positioning in houses and trees.

[*]Less regular 3-man-representation: They are too close together and always in a perfect triangle, which looks artificial. It would be nice to add some random noise to the movement of the individual figures. Also, at normal scale, there should be bigger distances between them.

[*]Restriction of minimum camera level based on proximity of friendly units

[*]Artificial smoke that looks different from combustion smoke

[*]Tracers which are vectors, not polygon bodies.

Regards, Thomm

PS.: The explosion (debris) effects on these dog red POTD look really great !

[tss]

I recently read a study that in part focused on the FOW problem. In particular, the author compared the situation reports of various HQ levels with each other and with unit diaries. His time period was the few final weeks of Winter War when the Finns withdrew from the main battle line to the rear line.

To (over-)generalize his findings:

- a company commander nearly always knew where the front line was and how the battle was going. (Not to the extent of the situations of individual squads but the general situation).

- a batallion commander would usually know the situation relatively well, unless something really dramatic happened. (Like a major Soviet breakthrough)

- a regiment commander would have the general idea of what was happening

- during heavy fighting the division commander would not have a clue about the current situation in the front. He would have only incomplete reports that were in the best case three or four hours old.

- the corps commanders could as well have been in another planet.

When analyzing these factors you have to remember that it was a period with very heavy fighting and that Finns had a _severe_ lack of radios.

The author found cases where regimental or batallion HQs "beautified" their reports and one case where a division commander either actually lied to the corps commander or he was criminally neglecting his duties.

- Tommi

[JoshK]

I would like to see a two-tiered ambush order.

You could set a general ambush, or specify an anti-armor ambush or an anti-personnel ambush.

This could instill more realistic fire discipline in units that are within a command radius of an officer and have a primary role (e.g., AT Guns), but may carry some dual-purpose munitions.

[Boris Balaban]

What I would like to see is giving orders to Infantry to evade the enemy while moving.

Like Tanks are given the HUNT orders Infantry would crawl, sneek, hide behind trees hills and use gullies to move were they are told to. It colud be called EVADE. The disadvantage is you would use up your time to move.

[EScurlock]

I did a "CM 2" search before posting this so don't shoot.

1)I'd like CM2 to cover the entire War in the East 41 - 45.

2) I'd like a long campain ability. I understand that in CM the "Campain" is realy an operation. I want to be able to take my survivors and transfer them, along with experience gained, into the next operation etc, going through as much or as little of the war as desired. Each operation would be created with a random generator based on terain type likely to be encountered during the time frame (or selected by player) and opposition would be based on total points of the frendly units. Units would be resupplied between operations based on how well they did. I realize this was beyond the intended scope of CM 1, but I think it has some relevance for CM 2 considering the vast expanse of Russia.

3) I'd like a prebombardment phase in the beginning of an opperation based on available intelegence info. When appropriate (i.e. durring planned out offensives)I want to be able to select air stikes, and artillary bombardments to soften up the enemy.

4) In operations I'd like to see support modeled. For instance if I'm on the offence and I get into the enemy's rear area, I want the enemy to suffer the effects of supply and communications problems. The same would be true for me if I'm on the defensive and my forces are "cut off" due to enemy penetrations. This may require more "abstraction" than BTS is willing to go for. If so I understand.

This also goes for the start of an opperation. If the enemy is poorly organized and supplied from the get go, as was the case with the Russian Army at the beginning of Barbarrosa it should reflect right down to the ammo each squad has available, the number of operational tanks etc.

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He who gets there the fastest with the mostest wins.

[Jarmo]

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

2) I'd like a long campain ability. I understand that in CM the "Campain" is realy an operation. I want to be able to take my survivors and transfer them, along with experience gained, into the next operation etc, going through as much or as little of the war as desired. Each operation would be created with a random generator based on terain type likely to be encountered during the time frame (or selected by player) and opposition would be based on total points of the frendly units. Units would be resupplied between operations based on how well they did. I realize this was beyond the intended scope of CM 1, but I think it has some relevance for CM 2 considering the vast expanse of Russia.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I second this, it would be a huge benefit for single player gaming.

I'd also like to have battlemechs and Abrams tanks availlable

Lessee if those Köningstigers are so tough

[rwcanuck]

I would like in CM2 the ability of Mortar or gun crews to re-man their mortars or guns if they had abandoned them earlier and if the

guns are still in working order and of course the men are not in any apparent danger.

As mentioned earlier in this thread the ability of the above crews to use carbines instead of pistols when confronting the enemy at close range. ie. As the 88 crews did in the movie "When Trumpets Fade".

The second man in a Schreck or Bazooka team should also be carrying a carbine slung over his shoulder for use in close action engagements.

The ability to have a tank crew bail out of an immobilized vehicle if in real danger or gun crew abandon their gun to seek shelter and to re-man their position once the danger has passed, or if necessary to have the crew withdraw.

Even if these enhancements are not added for certain reasons the game still ranks as number one.

[Los]

Guys in the current beta version (not the demo) crews have small arms...

Los

[killmore]

T-34, KV2, IS3

How about that 3-turret tank?

[Bamse]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

Originally posted by EScurlock:

2) I'd like a long campain ability. I

understand that in CM the "Campain" is

realy an operation. I want to be able to take my survivors and transfer them,

along with experience gained, into the

next operation etc, going through as much or as little of the war as desired. Each operation would be created with a random generator based on terain type likely to be encountered during the time frame (or selected by player) and opposition would be based on total points of the frendly units. Units would be resupplied between operations based on how well they did. I realize this was beyond the intended scope of CM 1, but I think it has some relevance for CM 2 considering the vast expanse of Russia.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This sounds like CC3