Some questions

[CptSwampy]

Yes, I've looked in the FAQ and browsed the boards here for answers to these... What can I say? I'm a newbie!

1) Are the U.S. forces using British Radios by Lucas? Why is the C2 range of my HQ units so short? Would be nice to be able to comunicate more than 10 yards from my HQ/Spotter to my Mortars!

2) "Abandoned" vehicles... why can't I send a crew back to man them?

3) Why am I unable to "enter" the house with my soldier-level view and see out the windows? It is real hard to determine placement for proper line of sight when all I see is grey walls from inside.

4) I know units dig in where they are first placed, but...Why can't I get a squad/team to dig in if they are sitting in one place (not in contact) for quite awhile?

Should be SOP.

5) I send my POW's to the rear in accordance with SOP (5 S's) Search, Secure, Silence, Segregate, Speed to the Rear. Is this modeled? Should I seperate HQ units from others to minimize flight risk? If I send them to rear without escort will they escape? It would be nice to be able to set up a hasty POW collection point back there with some concertina.

6) Ideas to model in CM2...

a) MP units and POW procedures (see above).

Medical units and casualty evacuations.

c)Replacement procedures... Unit must submit personnel and ammo status report at end of turn, that report/req (as verified by the TARO ...Theater Replacement Ops up the chain) will produce replacements (in later turns based on scenario driven availablity in theater). Casualites must be reported by MOS (i.e., you better report 3 tank crewmen down to get tank crewmen back). Have replacements dropped off at designated depo and unit must pick them up or at least send an escort for them... (gotta allocate your resources)

d) Ammo crossleveling? Again, make your leader manage his information and allocate reasources available.

The TRUE fog of war occurs when leaders up the chain of command don't have an accurate picture of what is happening with THEIR units!

Enough rambling from the newbie.

[This message has been edited by CptSwampy (edited 03-22-2001).]

[Cybeq]

Well, I can't answer all your questions but I have some input on a few things:

Q1: The command radius is larger for an elite unit as opposed to regular or green. Also an HQ unit can have a command bonus which will increase command radius. Click on HQ unit, hit enter. It might say command +1 or command +2.

Q2: CMBO battles are fairly short. since each turn equals one minute a 30 turn battle is only 30 minutes. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a crew which has been forced to abandon a vehicle or weapon due to enemy fire to be able to recover, turn around, adavance, and re-crew said vehicle/weapon in such a short amount of time. It seems BTS agrees with me on this matter. This ability to re-crew is modelled in operations. If your abandoned vehicle is undamaged and your crew survives you may get it back at the start of the next battle.

Q3: Dunno. I use the top-down view and LOS tool. Works fine for me.

Q4: This pretty much goes with the scale of CMBO. In a typical battle they really wouldn't have time to dig in.

Thus ends the bulk of me knowledge

[109 Gustav]

2. The vehicle has sustained enough damage to make it useless until it can be repaired after the battle. Besides, you just watched a shell lance through the armor of your tank. The commander's dead, he's bleeding in your lap. The gunner's taken shrapnel through his leg, and the ammo might cook off at any minute. I don't know about you, but I'd head for the hatch, and I wouldn't get back in until the battle's over.

3. For proper LOS, place the Move marker near the wall you want. Use the corners for bigger fields of fire.

4. It would take too long to be a part of the battle.

5. Just exit your POWs off the back of the map. Unless they get rescued by their comrades, they won't run away, so don't worry about seperating the officers. If you have a spare crew that won't be any good in a fight, go ahead and use him as an escort, if you want.

6. A and B. Out of the scope of CM.

C. Calculated in operations for you.

D. Waste of time, and more or less calculated in operations for you.

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[GriffinCheng+]

Hello Captain,

Welcome aboard. I think I can answer some:

2) Nope, same for abandoned guns. However, in operations, the next "battle" may be able to obtain replacement vechicles/guns for survived crews. That depends on how "successful" your current battle is.

3) You mean the view "1"? I am sorry I do not follow exactly what you mean. But CM does not model LOS tool from any point like some other games.

I hope this helps: when you use the LOS tool, you shall see red + black line when you point to a location. Red portion means the section of the view where LOS can be obtained and the black portion does not. So, you may wish to reposition your squad based on the hint provided.

4) CM squads do not dig in automatically when "idle". It is because the time scale of the game. Moreover, squads get dug-in if they are on defense and will only have foxholes where they are placed in the setup phase.

5) IIRC, the captured enemy will only be relived by their own troops so sending any PoW to rear will not "run away", even without LOS from any units.

About the "true fow" issue, there has been a lot of disucssions about the "relative spotting" in a number of threads before. BTS has mentioned "relative spotting" is there in CMBO, but I am not sure if changes are made in CM2.

Griffin.

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"When you find your PBEM opportents too hard to beat, there is always the AI."

"Can't get enough Tank?"

Get the CMSOD at Combat Missing Command Post (CMCP) at http://www.angelfire.com/games3/CMCP/

[kburns24]

Spoken like a true military man. There are

several things that go on in CM that do need

some attention such as the abandoned vehicles

and soldier-level viewing through the house

walls. But in all fairness, it does do quite

a good job in most other areas. But that begs

the question, "How far in the weeds do you

want to go with this simulation"? POW's are

addressed, but not the handling of security

or even the transport of the prisoners is a

big concern.

Your concerns are possibly being addressed

while CM2 is in production. There would

probably be quite a bit of additional coding

that wouldn't really make the game any better

than it already is. Unless you are a

logistics man and would really enjoy seeing

these additional aspects added into CM2.

- (Former Army of One)

HUA!

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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. - E.B. White

[Guest Ace]

I don't have all the answers, but I can give it a brief stab. A lot of these points have been discussed in earlier threads, so a more thorough search might help...

1) Are the U.S. forces using British Radios by Lucas?

Don't know.

Why is the C2 range of my HQ units so short? Would be nice to be able to comunicate more than 10 yards from my HQ/Spotter to my Mortars!

C&C varies with LOS, so it will be much greater in open ground than in woods. Some HQs have Command bonuses that incease their effective range. The exact distances have been documented somewhere on this forum...

2) "Abandoned" vehicles... why can't I send a crew back to man them?

Apparently the time scale is too short. Having just fleeing their vehicle for whatever reason, it would be unreasonable for the crew to return within the 30 min or hour that is depicted. Additionally, bailed crews generally have casualties. One casualty causes the vehicle to button, two causes the crew to bail (since they can't operate the vehicle or their morale is shot), so a crew with two casualties wouldn't be able to reclaim a vehicle in any case.

3) Why am I unable to "enter" the house with my soldier-level view and see out the windows? It is real hard to determine placement for proper line of sight when all I see is grey walls from inside.

Windows would not affect your LOS anyway. The buildings themselves are just graphical representations of the computer modeling. You can very easily determine the LOS by looking from above and using the LOS command.

4) I know units dig in where they are first placed, but...Why can't I get a squad/team to dig in if they are sitting in one place (not in contact) for quite awhile?

Should be SOP.

This one's been discussed before, and the consensus was it would take too long for a unit to dig in effectively (30 min is a conservative estimate), thus it's not within the scope of the battles in CM.

5) I send my POW's to the rear in accordance with SOP (5 S's) Search, Secure, Silence, Segregate, Speed to the Rear. Is this modeled? Should I seperate HQ units from others to minimize flight risk?

Good question. I can't really answer this one.

If I send them to rear without escort will they escape?

If unguarded they do tend to wander some...

It would be nice to be able to set up a hasty POW collection point back there with some concertina.

The best way to do it seems to be to send a crew (from your abandoned vehicle ) to watch guard. They have limited ammo and firepower anyway, but it seems to be enough to keep the POWs in line.

6) Ideas to model in CM2...

Can't really comment on the rest.

[CptSwampy]

Thanks for the responses!

One clarification on the abandoned vehicle issue. I understand that the crew that just left the vehicle would have to recover before getting back in their steel coffin... but by the end of the battles there are usually some orphaned crews running about. Seems any of them should be able to do the task.

And, yeah, I'm a Adjutant General weenie, so I'd love to model replacement operations in detail and use this as a training tool. Now how could we model the postal operations?

Hehe.

[Guest wwb_99]

Regarding Question 2:

Try turning the walls off occupied buildings, I think it is done by SHIFT-O.

Question 4:

Unfortunately CM is limited to one type of entrenchment, a well built foxhole. Not too quick to dig under fire. But it would be cool if there could be a 'hasty foxhole' for CM2. Also, I would not mind seeing assaulting units begin dug in, or at least their heavy weapons.

WWB

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Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say,

Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus.

[Maximus]

Originally posted by CptSwampy:

1) Are the U.S. forces using British Radios by Lucas? Why is the C2 range of my HQ units so short? Would be nice to be able to comunicate more than 10 yards from my HQ/Spotter to my Mortars!

Lucas radios? CM is detailed, but not that detailed. C2 range? Range is extended by quality of unit and by HQ bonuses. For command radius IIRC is the little star icon. A star is +1, a star with a box around it is +2.

2) "Abandoned" vehicles... why can't I send a crew back to man them?

As has been mentioned above, a vehicle is abondoned when it has recieved sufficient damage to both itself and possibly its crew. Also with the relatively short time scale of a CM battle, there would be no time to repair it.

3) Why am I unable to "enter" the house with my soldier-level view and see out the windows? It is real hard to determine placement for proper line of sight when all I see is grey walls from inside.

This is just a limitation of the game rendering engine as it doesn't render the inside wall textures of a house as it does the outside. Which is also interesting because all other textures in the game are rendered on both sides. But IIRC, there was some coding issue with this why they couldn't render both sides. But as for positioning purposes for LOS out of buildings, most small houses can be sighted out of in any direction if the unit is within the middle to the edge of which it is trying to sight out of. (ie. A unit can't sight out of the left side if the unit is on the right side.)

4) I know units dig in where they are first placed, but...Why can't I get a squad/team to dig in if they are sitting in one place (not in contact) for quite awhile?

Should be SOP.

Again, not enough time in a CM battle. I don't have any experience in digging a foxhole, but I can probably safely assume that it takes longer than your average CM battle.

5) I send my POW's to the rear in accordance with SOP (5 S's) Search, Secure, Silence, Segregate, Speed to the Rear. Is this modeled? Should I seperate HQ units from others to minimize flight risk? If I send them to rear without escort will they escape? It would be nice to be able to set up a hasty POW collection point back there with some concertina.

Not really necessary in CM. CM doesn't model the intricate procedures in dealing with POWs. In all my playing of CM I very RARILY see POWs being "rescued". Besides, usually when a unit surrenders, they are usually rendered combat incapable anyways. ie, low in ammo, very few active men left. Only when morale is very low and enemy units are surrounding these units do large units surrender. ie. I've had squads surrender that still have yet to take a casualty because my units have overrun their positions and enemy morale is very low. These are usually units that the AI was using as a rear-guard.

a) MP units and POW procedures (see above).

Medical units and casualty evacuations.

This has been mentioned before by others. This request seems to stem from a line of thinking that CM is a true war similuation or a wargame with FPS elements like H&D was. CM is first and foremost a wargame, so MPs, POWs, and especially Medics, and WIA Evacuations are unnecessary.

c)Replacement procedures... Unit must submit personnel and ammo status report at end of turn, that report/req (as verified by the TARO ...Theater Replacement Ops up the chain) will produce replacements (in later turns based on scenario driven availablity in theater). Casualites must be reported by MOS (i.e., you better report 3 tank crewmen down to get tank crewmen back). Have replacements dropped off at designated depo and unit must pick them up or at least send an escort for them... (gotta allocate your resources)

d) Ammo crossleveling? Again, make your leader manage his information and allocate reasources available.

This is already done behind the scenes between Operation Battles.

The TRUE fog of war occurs when leaders up the chain of command don't have an accurate picture of what is happening with THEIR units!

This is still an on-going discussion and its is being looked into.

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[Guest wwb_99]

Well, the fundamental problem with true FOW is that you still have one person playing one side. And until computers can plug into your head, and wipe parts of your memory, the All-Seeing player will know much more than any individual unit would in battle.

WWB

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Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say,

Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

Your mortars do not have radios. The officer is shouting the corrections.

The abandoned vehicle has limited damage. A busted sight, etc.

PWs can indeed escape if they leave LOS of your units, or if enemy come close while no guards are around. They will run in those cases. I've certainly had it happen to me, particularly in woods where the LOS is so short. I generally order them to move to near some relatively inactive unit who can keep an eye on them, and if I can spare them, send a guard with them to the rear. You can order them off of the map and have the guard come back. Since fights are usually short, though, they often are just watched by front-line guys until after the firefight.

Most of the others are just not in the CM scale. Nothing a man can do in combat in 10 minutes deserves the foxhole level of protection.

As for friendly fog of war, you have mistaken CM for a mere sim. CM is a strategy game, in which the player does not "role play" a single commander, but makes all of th decisions of a few dozens junior officers and NCOs.

With all respect, the lives of single officers in combat are simply not interesting enough to make a strategy game out of them. Why? Because their decisions pass through too many other wills, and too much confusion, to have an appreciable impact on a mid-sized battle. A realistic "sim" of the impact of one man in a firefight, would allow him 3 decisions - one of which would likely be wrong because of bad info - that were actually carried into effect. Picked at random out of the dozens of things he tried to bring about. Which, sorry, isn't a strategy game.

Strategy games are about pitting the wits of one fellow against the wits of another, with the outcome mostly determined by said wits. That is the entire attraction of the things. And it is why, e.g. chess is a fine strategy game even though it simulates nothing. While, e.g. a sim of a single Marine's life on Guadalcanal, would be excruciating rather than fun.

Wargames create good strategy games simply by giving the player control of more levels simultaneously, adding together the decisions of a few dozen men in the corresponding "reality". That makes enough decisions, control, and coordination of them, to create a strategy game, meaning one that will largely be decided by matched wits. Rather than decided by larger outside forces, fate, luck, and decisions made blind-folded and random in their execution.

Of course there is a balance. The right command span, the right level of coordination and control, the right level of fog, and you get a fine strategy game with enough uncertainty and atmosphere to keep it interesting.

The point is simply that a compromise is needed, lest a fine strategy game degenerate into a mere sim. Sims are a hundred times easier to make than good games; all it takes is literalism.

[GriffinCheng+]

Sir,

Here is some pov on "relative spotting":

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/003974.html

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/014083.html

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/006510.html

and issues on "recon":

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/003938.html

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/010595.html

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/014705.html

They make good reads!

Griffin out!

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"When you find your PBEM opportents too hard to beat, there is always the AI."

"Can't get enough Tank?"

Get the CMSOD at Combat Missing Command Post (CMCP) at http://www.angelfire.com/games3/CMCP/