#'s of soldiers in future CM titles - will modern tech help?

[The Commissar]

Heya guys,

I know this is just a nitpick of mine (and I'm sure several others as well) but it sometimes bothers me (when I'm not madly involved in the action) that a squad is represented by only 3 men at most.

Yes, I know it has no real effect on the game play. What it DOES have an effect on is the "coolness factor". Nobody can disagree - CM is one of the most realistic and intense wargames, no, games out there. There is something very very cool about watching a squad's positions being punded by artillery with the trench cam. Or a tank battle with one of the combatants exploding into a flaming wreck. Or a close and bloody forest fighting with enemy squads leaping out as if from nowhere, grenades flying in all directions. Or..well, you get the idea.

This would all be enhanced with realistic proportions of units, and the much heralded "coolness factor" would go through the roof.

Now, I know the reasons for it being the way it is. CM was started 3 years ago, made to work on older machines, using 4MB video cards. So my question is this - would it not be possible to increase the number of men along with the graphics of CM with processor speeds going over 1Ghz and Video crads like the GeForce about?

Just a question, if it can't be done it can't be done. I still love the game and I am busy recommending it to everyone I know.

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...Every position, every meter of Soviet soil must be defended to the last drop of blood..."

- Segment from Order 227 "Not a step back"

[Chupacabra]

I'd personally worry more about the clutter than about the performance hit. Some of the larger scenarios have thousands of men running around. Well and good if you're playing at realistic scale. But it's nearly impossible to see units at any sort of distance using realistic scale. Which means that you bump the scale up to +3 or +4. Can you see where I'm going with this? It'd be impossible to see the terrain, let alone pick out individual units from the throng.

This is naturally just my take on it, and I know others feel differently, but I think that BTS got it right with the three man squads.

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Soy super bien, soy super super bien, soy bien bien super bien bien bien super super.

[David Aitken]

Even if you could have your ten men per squad, the question is whether it would make sense in the game's context. The behaviour of individual men is not modelled - squads and teams are averaged out, so even if you had ten men, they would all be doing exactly the same thing. Three men doing the same thing looks okay, but ten would be strange.

This could be resolved by modelling the behaviour of individual men, but even if the processing power was there, it would take you days to play the smallest battle. It's complicated enough managing a few platoons, let alone every single man therein.

Combat Mission is essentially a squad-level simulator, and I think it is best as such. Sure, it looks like you can see what's happening to individual men - but you can't really. The 3D models you see are simply representing the squad, not the men themselves - it could equally be a boardgame-style 'counter', but BTS have chosen a more realistic option. It would make more sense to use the one-man-per-squad option, but the three-man option is just to make the unit more obviously recognisable as a squad.

I'm not sure modelling individual men is the way forward - maybe you could do it, but to make it convincing would require a ridiculous amount of programming, and processing power. In my opinion, the three-man squad placeholder is the most logical and practical way to represent squads in CM.

David

[Guest Germanboy]

Another one for the FAQ, shurely.

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Andreas

[Jeff Heidman]

I agree with David. Even if it were capable, I would not want the game to show me ten little men instead of three.

I like three because it allows me to easily distinguish squads from teams. But the game using a squad based model, so what would be the point of showing ten men? Would you reduce the counter by one each time a casualty was taken or soemthing? Same with squads with 12 (or 9) men?

Unless you modelled them men individually, a squad counter with 10 men on it would either look silly or really congested. Probably both.

If it is a question of processing power, I would rather see that power spent on better looking graphics in general (higher resolution, more lifelike counters, better terrain, etc., etc.), rather than arbitrarily trying to represent every single man on the board.

Jeff Heidman

Jeff Heidman

[The Commissar]

That's an excellent point David, and one I did not consider! Then again, I never knew that battles got so big as to include thousands of men. Well, better get the game and find out then.

Jeff,

I think picking off men from a sqaud as it takes casualites is a pretty safe thing to do. Doesn't require too much coding I should think. And distinguishing between teams...well, once clicked upon it gives the unit info, and since the game is turn based you can take all the time you want id'ing units.

Morale effects are harder of course...I'm not sure how hard it is to prog a man or two cowering away from the rest of their unit or things of that sort, so I won't pretend I have a solution to this.

Thanks for your replies, everyone!

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...Every position, every meter of Soviet soil must be defended to the last drop of blood..."

- Segment from Order 227 "Not a step back"

[Bertram]

The fact that a squad is represented with three men makes it acceptable that they just walk over a street, walk into a house through the wall, etc. You know that this is an abstracted view of what is really happening.

If you are going to show each soldier in the squad those ten men walking over the street, or into a house through the wall are just going to look sily. Not to mention 12 soldiers standing around in a room.

So if you want to let this look a bit realistic you would need a whole new level of AI to represent the moves of individual soldiers who cover each other, kick in doors, work in fire teams etc. Above that you would need to build lots of animations to let the figures actually do this kind of thing.

This would be some sort of Rogue Spear with a thousend men on each side. The programming and the computing power needed would be awsome, and the result would be only a layer of visual vanilla over the system as it is, because you will still give orders on squad level.

Unless of course you want to order each soldier around, but with a thousend soldiers the I wouldn't want to wait for a PBEM return mail in that case.

So I like the solution just fine as it stands, three men is enough to give you a feeling that there ar lots of people involved, but not so much that they look silly doing the things the way they are shown.

Bertram

[ntg84]

I'd like to see one man for each weapon, so about 4-6 men per visual image. One for an M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, Thomson SMG, and a BAR. Or Germans Kar98, Mp-40, Mg42, Mp44, and Gew 43. 10 men would be cluttered, but one for each weapon a squad has would be cool. Also full SP gun crews inside? 2 arty spotters, full mortar/machine gun crews?

[guachi]

I sent off a FAQ to Colin I wrote a month ago. In it I answered this question and I was hesitant in answering it because I was unsure if my answer would seem reasonable.

Turns out my answer is identical to what the responses here have been.

My only suggestion would be rather than three men per squad, have each 'soldier' represent three men. The net effect isn't much different, but it does give some variability in number of soldiers shown.

As it stands now, a 7 man British Airborne squad has three men as does a 13 man sturmgruppe squad. 2.33 men per icon in the former case and 4.33 in the latter. VISUALLY, the squads look to be the same size, but this isn't so.

CM is built on providing as much information VISUALLY as possible. But as it stands, a sturmgruppe squad at 7 men would have two icons and a 7 man airborne squad would have three! VISUALLY, the airborne squad looks bigger, but they are the same size.

Under my proposal, a 13 man sturmgruppe squad would have 4.33 icons (rounded up to five) and and airborne squad would have 2.33 (rounded up to three). Not only does the sturmgruppe squad have more men, it would LOOK like it had more men.

This would provide valuable info for the player. Also, while it would mean more infantry icons, the increase isn't that great.

Jason