BFC, when will we know the next project?

[flamingknives]

A pity we don't have a casting vote in what BFC do.

Besides, I'd prefer to see something a little different.

Cold war turned hot would be good.

[vbfg]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

Cold war turned hot would be good.

If it's to be a fictional situation I'd like it to be as early as possible rather than later whilst the weapons are as much under human control as possible.

[Michael Emrys]

And I say that if we are going to opt for fictional situations, we should start with The Lord of the Rings!

Michael

[Becket]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

And I say that if we are going to opt for fictional situations, we should start with The Lord of the Rings!

Michael

Egads! Think of all the gamey hobbit rushes!

[Boroughboy]

If wishes were fishes...but what the Hell! I would like to see an engine that uses a higher level of opereations. The smallest units being platoons. That way there would be no such thing as Off board artillery you would have to set them up. The possibilities are enles. Battlefield re-supply, engineereing enhancements (finally get to use all of those funkey British engineereing tanks! ) twenty four hour battlefields, paradrops, etc..etc...

I used to play alot of Command Decision so handling a division or two over a two day battle sounds like fun.

[aka_tom_w]

This thread just would not be complete without this feature request list

The NEW CMII engine possible new features like:

* NO more Borg Spotting (Relative Spotting)

* LOS & LOF blocked by LIVE AFV's (i.e. infantry have "some" cover behind live and dead vehicles that are not burning)

* Same as above, vehicles and other units CANNOT shoot through other live or dead vehicles that are not burning. (Dynamic LOS)

* Full movie replay

* Roster (for those would think they need it)

* Multi-turreted vehicles like the Allied Grant and Lee

* Amphibious units

* Dynamic lighting effects (two fold:

i. As visual effect and more important

ii. Integration into fire- and detection algorithms

*Change PBEM format to only require two e-mails per turn

* Realistic modelling of visibility at night

* Collision detection for all projectiles, even those that would hit

*Smaller terrain tiles ( 10 x 10 m or better )

*Terrain FOW (Terrain EFOW ?)

*Risk of bogging calculated and determined by greater fidelity in Mean Maximum Pressure theory (Model?)

(Note: One example he gives is the Elephant having only 12% heavier nomimal ground pressure (NGP, weight per track area) than a King Tiger, but having a mean maximum ground pressure (MMP) approx double, at 370 compared to 184. They more or less have the same weight and track area, but the suspension designs are quite different.)

From:

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=003157;p=1

* Programable SOP's for all units:

(e.g. "Wouldn't it be great if an order could be given to the commander of company "A" to "take that hill" or "move to that position and set up a defense" and watch as the orders are dissiminated down throught he ranks and the varios platoons begin to try and carry out your orders. Yes, much as it happens with "Airborn Assult".)

"with a little help from my friends"

-tom w

AND

TSword

Member

Member # 7457

posted October 25, 2002 08:00 AM

1. It is absolutely necessary to give the Scenario-Designer more control over AI behaviour and setup.

Example: AI in Operations usually does a very poor setup (If there is wood AI will cramp everything in it), true one can work around, but with open maps this becomes a problem of first order.

Solution: The designer can suggest zones of terrain suitable for setup.

Also some guidelines for attacking/defending AI would be great, like areas of approach, objective zones, type of general AI behaviour like stubborn defense, counterattack, timings and the like.

This is a wide field but in general leave AI as is (No hope of much improvement in this field) but enable more options during scenario design

All this together would enable much more challenging AI-battles and more possibilities to generate more historic acurate battles (I mostly play the AI, since PBEMs go forever and need a lot of discipline especially for the loosing side...). Covered arcs set by scenario designer would be great.

2. Atleast direct firing Artillery pieces should be able to fire delayed fuzed shells (when firing a flat trajectory shell bounces off the ground, at first impact fuze is activated). This was done very often on the german side with tanks HE, 88 AT, and all Artillery pieces. If used correctly this results in devastating fire.

3. It is principally wrong not to enable on-board artillery to fire indirect. In the case of german heavy howitzers (150 mm) the guns were very seldom placed farer away from the front then 4 km and often relocated only below 1 km. This of course fits into the dimension of CM. Again this would allow for additional realism and more possibilities in scenarios (Gamey inbalances can be corrected by

purchase prizes easily).

4. More terrain types with variyng degree of concealment together with further refined LOScalculations. More possibilities for open terrain battles. More terrain which give Inf concealment when being prone while only partly restricting LOS for AVFs.

5. Active visible camouflage of all sorts of weapons for same reason as point 4.

6. Ability for mounted troops to shoot from vehicles, and proper loads for trucks (much more then 1 Squad infact).

7. Dynamic lighting visible and taken into LOS calculations

8. Turret down for tanks or generally fighting vehicles for observation purposes.

9. "Debug"-Mode to check AI-behaviour for scenario designers. Simply an additional battle parameter where the player can see all the AI units all the time while AI behaves according to set FOW settings.

10. Vehicle crews can remount an abandoned vehicle

11. Horses, bicycles, bikes

12. A small API-set:

- To read unit database (all values currently

visible during unitselection)

- To write to the map generator or map

selection (All the values currently

editable by the user)

- To write to the unit selection

Thus allowing 3rd party extensions for

campaigns and the like

13. Correct representation of relative plate

sizes on AFVs for hit determination. (eg.

Large T-34/85 turret, small T-34/76 turret).

14. Option to allow same "casualty"-rules as in night battles also for daylight battles. They are obviously much much more realistic then the daylight rules.

15. More finetune options for Operations in determing new setup zones for next battle. (For instance in the "Assault" mode the possibility to determine the weight of flank and middle and treshold for cutoff units), now it's easely possible to have the whole force being cutoff although not a single enemy unit was behind their line when previous battle ended).

16. New operation type "mixed" where scenario designer can determine the sequence of attacker (thus operations where attacker can actually change from battle to battle) either unknown or known to the player. To simulate counterattacks something completely missing now. Actually the same should also be possible in battles where a certain formation (for instance reinforcments) event triggered would counterattack.

17. Moving vehicles produce dust dependend of region and groundconditions. Heavy weapons like tanks, artillery shells and the like produce a lot of smoke which could change a battlefield dramatically LOS wise..., nice to see in open terrain battles...

Greets

Daniel

[ January 13, 2003, 11:45 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[SgtMuhammed]

Longer range for command link between mortars and command unit. Often mortars have to be within minimum range in order to be in command in which case they are useless if spotter doesn't have a long LOS.

[von Paulus]

Why you American people only think of your army ? Cold War is uninteresting at the level of tactical battles : There is nothing known !!!!!

FRANCE 1940 Would be Combat Mission 3, with Netherlands, Belgium, the BEF, French troops and Italian soldiers hmmm ... with the Balkans and Greece ... good ... better than Korea and/or Vietnam.

Stop to think only of your army's actions please, there are more interesting subjects for the moment.

However, BTS still decides the final subject

[Barticus]

My 0.02 pfarthings, for what it's worth;

CMBO when it first appeared was a dream come true for me, ASL in 3-D. As far as I know, most of us here had little to no input with BFC up until the first Beta was released (June '99?). Steve, Charles and the rest of the gang managed to do a pretty bang up job when just about everyone else was screwing the pooch on what a tactical level WWII game SHOULD be. They had vision (and guts) to do the game right before any one of us whined about what the engine should/should not have. CMBB is, as far as I am concerned, more of the same with as many improvements as could logically be included given engine and time constraints.

Hows about we back off a bit and trust them to do it correctly, like they've done TWICE BEFORE!.

I understand we all want the perfect wargame, but we have to realize that NO-ONE would be able to produce (profitably) such a beast.

BFC(and a precious few others) have gotten it just about as right as it could have been. Have a little faith, brothers, have a little faith. Whatever theatre the engine re-write encompasses, I will be there.

B

[SgtMuhammed]

We can dream can't we?

[vbfg]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

And I say that if we are going to opt for fictional situations, we should start with The Lord of the Rings!

There's no way they can kill a Balrog with that ring! It's only 18 carats! BFC! Please fix or do sumfink!

[Lou2000]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Gents...

.................

1. The current game engine is basically "dead". We will not add wish list features and such to it now (i.e. 1.02) or into the future. Tweaks and bug fixes that we feel are necessary... sure thing.

2. The new engine will not be ready for 2 years....

Steve

Steve, I appreciate what you have just posted ... but is there ANY remote chance of an improved campaign mode being released as a patch or add-on, Giving the ability to take a core force through a series of battles, with replacements etc - - -similar to Biltongs Campaign Rules.

It would keep many of us happy for a couple of years until the next big thing arrives - If not then its going to be at least 2 years before there is even a remote chance of seeing some sort of proper CM campain mode.

Lou2000

[Thin Red Line]

Originally posted by Von Paulus:

Why you American people only think of your army ?

Paulus,

1) US troops are not present in CMBB.

2) Free french were in CMBO

2) When will the French be able to create a napoleonic game of the same quality as CM ?

Regards

N

[kipanderson]

Hi,

Von Paulus,

“Why you American people only think of your army ?”

As the guy who started this thread and an unhinged fan of the thought of a Cold War scenario, I should point out that I hold both a New Zealand and British passport but have never been to the US. Canada many times, not the US. No problem , I am the same, tend to assume all fans of CM are Yanks, apart from a small number of Brits .

All the best,

Kip.

[Battlefront.com]

Lou,

Steve, I appreciate what you have just posted ... but is there ANY remote chance of an improved campaign mode being released as a patch or add-on, Giving the ability to take a core force through a series of battles, with replacements etc - - -similar to Biltongs Campaign Rules.

Totally out of the question. Doing this means pushing the new engine off our plates until it is done. The main problem we face is we can not do more than one thing at a time. So if we do x, then y doesn't happen until x is complete. And no chance of starting on z at all.

It would keep many of us happy for a couple of years until the next big thing arrives - If not then its going to be at least 2 years before there is even a remote chance of seeing some sort of proper CM campain mode.

All depends on what you define as "proper" Ask 100 people on this Forum to define a "proper" campaign and you are likely to get 127.5 different answers. We can't distract ourselves with something that, while possibly cool, pales in comparision to the new engine. Our ability to focus is what led us to CMBO and then CMBB. Bluring our vision will not get us CMX2 (the engine rewrite's development name) in a reasonable timeframe and/or in the shape we want it in.

Steve

[flamingknives]

If it's to be a fictional situation I'd like it to be as early as possible rather than later whilst the weapons are as much under human control as possible

So no landmines then? The computers and such generally make weapons more accurate, and little else - the really high tech stuff that might spoil it is late '80s onwards. Plus some of it's still classified, so it might be hard to code a game for it.

Up to early '80s would be fantastic.

Longer range for command link between mortars and command unit. Often mortars have to be within minimum range in order to be in command in which case they are useless if spotter doesn't have a long LOS.

Or spotters being able to spot for on board mortars.

Why you American people only think of your army ? Cold War is uninteresting at the level of tactical battles : There is nothing known !!!!!

1. Wrong. I'm British, thank you very much. Call me a Yank again and I'll slap you round the head

2. Wrong. A great deal is known about conflicts between Soviet and Western equipment, as these faced each other in Israel in the late 60's . There was also a spat in Vietnam (formerly French Indo-China, if Vietnam is too recent for all the WWII Grogs )

[Edited to prevent backfiring smart-arse comment]

[ January 13, 2003, 02:55 PM: Message edited by: flamingknives ]

[Battlefront.com]

Er... I think some people are forgetting something called Desert Storm This pitted US/GB/French equipment against Soviet/Chinese stuff. If that isn't a relevant test, I don't know what is Also know that more tests have been done on ranges, labs, and classrooms than the run of the mill wargamer knows of. In other words, there is a LOT of information out there if one knows where to look. Oh... and it is much easier to ask questions since the answers can come from people who are still alive and working with the equipment/organizations right now. Try asking about a T-34/76 (1943) quirk and see how far you get compared to asking someone like SgtGoody about an Abrams detail.

Not to say that doing a current conflict would be easy. Plenty of issues there. But not as many as one might think. Perhaps even less than doing WWII.

Steve

[Lou2000]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Lou,

.....Totally out of the question. Doing this means pushing the new engine off our plates until it is done. The main problem we face is we can not do more than one thing at a time. So if we do x, then y doesn't happen until x is complete. And no chance of starting on z at all.

Then totally forget 'X' i'd rather see 'Z' completed sooner :cool:

In fact stop reading this forum - dont you have work to do on the enging re-write

...... I'd love to see a new campaign mode ... 'proper' or otherwise

but not if it meant even an extra days wait for CM3

Lou2000

[kipanderson]

Hi,

Yup, when it comes to what is known about modern equipment, very nearly all of the technical stuff is know. Why, because the real armaments race was always between arms companies, as it is today. And they advertise their kit in order to get countries, including their own, to buy it. If you follow these things, subscribe to some of the arms trade journals and such, know where to go on the net, it is all out there. Some would be shocked by how much is known. Certainly for equipment up to the second half of 90s, nearly all of it is known. I mean armour thickness, types, penetration of rounds and such. Two weeks ago Jane’s Defence Weekly had the penetration figures for a new German round.

BTW Steve, do remember that in the Gulf, Desert Storm, we are talking latest 1990 NATO kit against 1970s Soviet kit. The model of T72 used was the late 70s model. Also the ammo used by the Iraqis was the late 70s round. Take similar generation Soviet /Russian kit v NATO or US kit and I it’s a very equal contest. By 1990 the Soviets were using second generation heavy reactive armour which in test was immune to the 1990 DU US round.

Anyway… if anyone thinks the technology of even the 1990s is not understood, it certainly is,… also very evenly matched until second half of 1990s.

I will have stop to know or will get too enthusiastic… .

All the best,

Kip.

[Dazey]

Ok, since i believe this hasn't already been suggested, i have to say it:

The Spanish Civil War.

I think it is a very interesting conflict to explore, terrain and battle circumstances were amazingly varied, and i think it was different enough from WWII to become something more than a CM3.

On a personal note, my grandfather was 14 when the war begun, and he recalls so vividly the sound of stukas falling down on them that i wish i could grasp a bit of what he experienced.

Another CMBB lover.

[MikeyD]

When you think 'modern war' you've got to think outside the box! Modern War may be Abrams vs T80s, but it's also Reagan-financed mercinary death squads terrorizing El Salavador civilians in the 80's. The next CM game engine has definitely got to have a civilian component. The civilian component IS 'modern war'!

[Battlefront.com]

Kip,

BTW Steve, do remember that in the Gulf, Desert Storm, we are talking latest 1990 NATO kit against 1970s Soviet kit. The model of T72 used was the late 70s model. Also the ammo used by the Iraqis was the late 70s round.

Yes, but this is of course the most likely force that current NATO troops will encounter (i.e. Iraq, Afgahnastan, etc.)

Take similar generation Soviet /Russian kit v NATO or US kit and I it’s a very equal contest. By 1990 the Soviets were using second generation heavy reactive armour which in test was immune to the 1990 DU US round.

I personally saw a Javlin ATM do quite a number on a totally current T-72, which even the Russians are still using. KABOOM. Reactive armor doesn't do squat when the missle comes from above. Unless of course they have a roof/deck kit, but this can't give 100% coverage.

My only point here is that there is a HUGE gap in technology between US, British, French, Italian, and German weapons compared to "top of the line" Soviet equipment. There is a reason that recently the UAE purchased newly produced BMP-3s with French targeting systems

Steve

[kipanderson]

Steve,

“I personally saw a Javlin ATM do quite a number on a totally current T-72, which even the Russians are still using. KABOOM. Reactive armor doesn't do squat when the missle comes from above. Unless of course they have a roof/deck kit, but this can't give 100% coverage.

My only point here is that there is a HUGE gap in technology between US, British, French, Italian, and German weapons compared to "top of the line" Soviet equipment. There is a reason that recently the UAE purchased newly produced BMP-3s with French targeting systems ”

The first Javlins turned up in tiny numbers in 1996, hence my comment on “until the second half of the 1990s”. The Javilin was the system I had in mind. Understand absolutely about the thermal imagers in BMP-3s. But still we are not talking British, Italian and German, only US with the Javlin. A fire and forget top attack AT missile. But even there the Russians have the Arena hard kill self defence system that was demonstrated to the Germans in 1997 and works as advertised. The new Indian T90s may be the first tanks in the world to have a “real” hard kill self defence system.

All good fun,

All the best,

Kip.

[Fionn]

And you simply couldn't pay me enough to be in the infantry squad near thaat tank when the Arena system's "active defence" activates .

Definitely NOT a crunchy friendly system. I always liked Shtora myself.

FWIW Modern CM would be my vote ( or, 1960s/70s... although I think that time period would be a harder sell).

[Scipio]

Well, I guess the current CMBB engine has still lost of 'errors' and 'problems' and limitations. To name something, the visibility engine is...you know? No starshells, fire doesn't change something, too, always static view range, no real dusk/dawn effects (don't tell me that visibility doesn't change within an half hour or more). The artillery system is still simplistic. The weather is always static. No horses , no motorbikes, no multi-turret tanks. No moving weels.

The graphic is maybe the best of all wargames, but it's engine is somewhat 'clumsy'.

...to be continued...