Convoluted Argument

[T34Rules]

Many individuals who are against having a unit list available to locate personnel and vehicles on the battlefield argue that it is not realistic. I pose the following question to them: How realistic is it to be able to defoliate (remove trees)the battlefield with a single keystroke? I think this option should be made available as an option to those of us who would like to use it.

[Chuckd]

I think the key to what you said was "option." I'm personally not real fond of the idea of unit rosters but I support the idea of making it an option to those who want it. Why should anybody have to suffer? Just assign a hotkey to enable/disable it.

Chuckd

[Guest *Captain Foobar*]

Here you go guys...there's probably more discussion to check out if you do a search, but this is what BTS had to say....

Originally posted by BTS

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>1. The lack of an OOB in CM 1 was an intentional design decision. Because of that, there are reasons for not having one. We do not expect everyone to agree with them, but we DO expect people to understand that it wasn't blind oversight.

2. Since most everybody appears to agree that we have pushed wargaming into an entire new arena, we therefore must know what we are donig. Great games of detail are not made by some sort of freak accident. Therefore, agree or not with our decision, we deserve a decent level of respect for it. Enlightened people can respectfully disagree.

3. Yes, many people have asked for OOBs. Many people also asked that we make CM 2D instead of 3D, use sprites instead of poligional figures, have continous time as the heart of the game, etc. So simple head count does NOT mean the feature is either good or necessary. We are the keeper of the vision, and it damn well better stay that way or future CMs will get muddled.

4. Large numbers of requests does mean we need to listen to the well reasoned arguments to see if we should do something differently. Perhaps not exactly what those users are directly asking for.

5. Whining and abusing us doesn't count for anything in our books If anything it INCREASES our desire to keep things as is. Best to state your case clearly and rationally, debate it in the same way, and then leave it be at least for a time.

6. The lack of an OOB has not hurt our review ratings OR our sales. Nearly all reviews have put us over the 90% mark, which is damned impressive.

7. An OOB feature, even if rather simplistic, would be a significant investment of programming time. If the feature is worth the investment, then it would certainly go in. But this is debate

And finally...

We have stated in the past that we are keeping in mind a PURE OOB feature for future CMs. This would be something that would allow you to see little more than the unit's name, type, and command structure relationship. You would also be able to "jump" to a particular unit by double clicking (or something) on the entry in the OOB. We have no firm design in mind, but this is one thing we have kicked around as a possible compromise.

The time to debate this is really over for the moment. Try again in about 6 months when we know better what we might or might not do

Steve

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[T34Rules]

Please understand Steve (and others) that my comments are purely constructive critism. I think CM is the ultimate wargame.......hands down.

However, as a player, we are the Command Post, and we should have the ability to know, to some extent, where are personnel are. I am not blind to the fact that in the confusion of battle, this is not always realistic. However, artillery spotters are

equiped with radios.......that is how they do their job. And certain units warrant constant location. You could even introduce an aspect to the game where radio communications, and therefore specific locations, become unavailable by virtue of the battle situation. Perhaps that is the way we should look at it.

[tss]

T34Rules wrote:

However, as a player, we are the Command Post, and we should have the ability to know, to some extent, where are personnel are. I am not blind to the fact that in the confusion of battle, this is not always realistic.

Actually, I'd put that as: a commander would sometimes know where his men were. And in most of those cases, they were not in a battle.

Lately I've spent some time in the Finnish Military Archive reading combat diaries of the units where my grandfather fought. Here are few interesting quotes from the attack of I/JR37 to Särkisyrjä 18.7.1941:

"07:35 The 1st company reached the Auvila fields where the advance was halted by strong enemy fire from stone cow houses and other buildings. The 2nd and 3rd companies had advanced too much to left and lost contact to the 1.K. The batallion commander was with the 1.K."

and later

"13:45 2.K reached its objective and reestablished the contact to with the batallion".

and still later:

"14:00 Three platoons of 3.K established contact to the batallion".

So, the batallion commander Major Larko lost contact to one of his companies for about 6 hours and to another even longer. (BTW, my grandfather and his brother who was killed in that battle were with 1.K.)

A Finnish researcher Lasse Laaksonen went through a lot of unit diaries and compared them with reports and orders. He noticed that batallion commanders usually approximately knew where the front line was but with no details. Company commanders would have better knowledge but they would also know it in more general level, as in "the first platoon is holding the farm X". The situation knowledge of higher level HQs could be _really_ inaccurate.

- Tommi

[Jeff Heidman]

Do people who object to the OOB as unrealistic also object to the fact that enemy units are kind enough to draw a bright yellow line to you when they are about to engage your units?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Jeff Heidman

[Mannheim Tanker]

Good point, Jeff. I personally would like to have the yellow lines removed. It would be far more realistic for the player to have to determine where the fire was coming from by watching the tracers.

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"The real groundbreaker of CM isn't the 3D modeling, it's the 'holy crap! what the heck was THAT' factor." - Dalem

[Guest Germanboy]

It may be a convoluted argument, but we still won it...

Any bets on how long it will take until this thread turns into a pointless rehash of what went on before and will be locked down?

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Andreas

[Slapdragon]

The only thing in unit screens I want to see is an end of game one for compaign games to allow PDs to set up the next battle.