Ideas: What can BFC do to give CMAK a different feel?

[HarryInk]

OK. Here's my two pennies worth:

1. Multiplayer (ie. more than just 1vs1). Can't wait for a game to allow me to get more frustrated by the guys on my side than my enemy! It was one of the best aspects of old multi-player figures battles... You had to contend not only with your enemy's skills, but with the various skills of your friends. FOW on your own side to would be very fine, but also being able to see all your own side, even what you don't control, would be ok.

1.2 Being able to watch other people playing, maybe even with spoken commentary from them! Does TACOPs have something like this option? If so, couldn't it be tacked onto CMAK etc....or will that add another 436MB to the program?

2. Visual wishlist: tank tracks! Probably not a really possibility, but look at all those old photos of tanks going cross country: parallel lines of crushed grass and mud. It'd be a neat visual feature.

2.2 Definitely being able to watch battles with the moves stiched together as an integral part of the game. This is the feature I hear everyone pleading for.

3. Group control...mentioned in an earlier mail. In larger battles it'd be so useful to order a platoon to move from A to B in column, or echelon left refused, and for the AI to do the work of sneaking/running/whatever the troops forward just as it does for its own troops. This sort of feature would give the game a double level kind of feel...a real new twist. You could play games at the usual micro-management level we're all addicted to, or try a game at a level where you give orders not to squads or half-squads but to platoons.

4. Changing weather. I know it's easier to code a stable weather mode for an entire battle, but the arrival of rain, or its cessation, made big differences to combat. Maybe 'showers' as a weather option?

5. The terrain in CMBO has always been nice but more or less gamey...each side gets a little cover to start with; the hills roll prettily, if not in any geologically sensible way. I'd like to see ridges with spurs radiating out of them. Hills that make geological sense. Maybe creeks that don't affect movement or cover, but which do indicate the bottoms of gullies. Plenty of times I've seen swamps half-way up hill sides!!?? Badly written is the above, but I'd like to see terrain that makes less game sense and more 'real sense', if you get what I mean.

Well, at that standard of english, it's time for me to go to bed!

Ciao

[SgtMuhammed]

Originally posted by Andreas:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

I always thought you mountain troops were strange. Mules Andreas?

Then and now. Check this out.

For German-speakers, here is the homepage of Gebirgsjägerbrigade 23 of the Bundeswehr. </font>

[Andreas]

Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

I know you have them, just like the 10th Mountain in Italy, what I meant was I didn't realize you guys "did things" with them. Eating Edelweiss is bad enough but "doing things" with mules will get you talked about, even here in Bayern.

They are bavarians - anything is possible, nothing is unexpected. I am from the North myself.

[Lou2000]

HarryInk,

Item 1,2 and 3 are good but more like items for a new game engine than the current BB engine ....

#1 is a great idea and something I really hope they include in the next game along with a good campaing mode.

Item 4 ... changable WX would be nice but as 'most' CM battles actually cover a 25 - 30 min period there wouldnt be too much change ... certainly not something like the ground drying out .. though LOS may change due to rain !

Item 5 ... Good premade maps will solve most of this ... though with the QB generator its a little less certain.

[SFJaykey]

Nippy's request for a light bridge is a good one. I'd wager that _most_ rural bridges couldn't handle a KT.

A tweak in the automatic unbuttoning would be welcome even in CMBB 1.03. My TCs too often unbutton just as they drive near nice infantry/sharpie cover, usually (it seems) early in a turn so they have a good chance of getting nailed before I can correct it.

[MikeyD]

Don't have to worry about KTs and small bridges in CMAK, none were shipped to the Mediterranian theater of operation! ...Oh, but we do have Ferdinands to contend with, don't we.

[David Chapuis]

It looks like this post is getting back more to the original topic, so I better chime in again and head off down the "wish list" path (although, honestly, this small IMO, but more than a tweak as defined above).

Add friendly units completely controlled by the AI. I am thinking of a scenario where you have a group of friendly paratroops stuck behind enemy lines, calling for help. Your objective is to save the paratroopers (the time frame would fit into CM). If they die, you lose. But you dont get to control them, AI does. And you dont get their line of sight. That would be cool, eh?

Of course that would be better played as a 2v1 game, but if we cant have that, maybe this????

[ May 14, 2003, 03:39 PM: Message edited by: Cpl Dodge ]

[SFJaykey]

Since interest in my "Tweaks that would add fun" thread was, um, limited, I thought I'd try this idea here, since I do think it'd be helpful in the desert environment:

I'd like to see an "Advance" order that was useful for advancing troops some distance (perhaps 100-200 meters) while under light, long range fire. The current "Advance" is too tiring for that situation. We have Move to Contact, but most often I don't want my units to stop upon contact, but rather use sub-tile-scale cover and press on to their destination. The tweaked "Advance" would include a small morale boost and be faster and less tiring than the current one (but still slightly slower and more tiring than "Move"). The tradeoff would be less outgoing fire: that'd be the role of a tweaked "Assault" command.

Adjusting "Advance" in this way would help counter the paralyzing effects of defensive MGs, which may or may not be overmodeled. It would allow players to bring up reserves by setting a single waypoint, rather than several as the player tries to use cover while not tiring his units excessively.

With this command available, "Move to Contact" would become more like a "fast sneak." To reflect this, units under "M2C" could move just a little slower than when ordered to "Move," but gain increased spotting ability and better use of cover. But no morale bonus or outgoing fire. Perhaps "Move" for vehicles should be paced to match movement rates of the tweaked "Advance" and "M2C," since that's when I'd expect it'd be most used.

Also, or perhaps alternately, change what happens when "Move to Contact" is not the last waypoint in a unit's order sequence. Right now, when I order "M2C," then "Advance," if my infantry make contact before reaching the first waypoint they stop. Changing this so that the contact triggered the "Advance" would also help in bringing troops forward under light fire. These two changes would be especially useful in open country like the steppe, or desert.

Tweak "Assault" to be somewhere in between where "Advance" and "Assault" are now, in terms of speed, fatigue, and outgoing fire.

Change the name of "Move" for infantry to "March;" isn't that a little more descriptive of what the units are doing?

Truth is I'd like to see these changes in CMBB 1.03 but fear that train may have already left the station.

[Lady Roxanne]

1) Unit information box access while purchasing units.

2) Lock camera angle

3) Invisible flags

4) Toggle 20 meter grid

[Sergei]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

Don't have to worry about KTs and small bridges in CMAK, none were shipped to the Mediterranian theater of operation! ...Oh, but we do have Ferdinands to contend with, don't we.

I'm sure there were plenty of bridges too weak even for a Sherman. I mean, how many bridges of the day had been designed to support more than 20 tons without suffering structural damage? Well I don't know for sure, but I would suppose not too many.

[Lou2000]

Originally posted by Cpl Dodge:

......SNIP........

Add friendly units completely controlled by the AI. I am thinking of a scenario where you have a group of friendly paratroops stuck behind enemy lines, calling for help. Your objective is to save the paratroopers (the time frame would fit into CM). If they die, you lose. But you dont get to control them, AI does. And you dont get their line of sight. That would be cool, eh?

.....SNIP......

Cool indeed :cool:

Actually I asked for something similar when BFC were working on the first patch for BB.

I wanted to see games where the player only controlled a portion of the forces on his side (50% 75% etc) and the AI had the rest.

Then a player would have to decide to go for the objective or support the AI controlled forces if they get stuck on their advance. There were also a few other things like requests for armour or arty support.....

..... to cut a long story short.... BFC were good enough to reply (as they often do), but although it sounds easy there is just too much involved in making the AI do this

[Thin Red Line]

1) Terrain

2) Terrain

3) Terrain

And i'm not talking about QB generated maps, but true innovations to allow scenario designers to recreate the Med battlefieds.

[Nippy]

Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by MikeyD:

Don't have to worry about KTs and small bridges in CMAK, none were shipped to the Mediterranian theater of operation! ...Oh, but we do have Ferdinands to contend with, don't we.

I'm sure there were plenty of bridges too weak even for a Sherman. I mean, how many bridges of the day had been designed to support more than 20 tons without suffering structural damage? Well I don't know for sure, but I would suppose not too many. </font>

[Bengal6]

Camel Poo shaped mines....

[David Chapuis]

I thought of a "tweak" (which I am sure has been mentioned before). How about an undo command, or better yet, a "restore unit to start of turn" command? Many times a unit of mine has been in the middle of a move, and I have tried to change what he is doing, and I end up losing the entire command. Then you have to go through the delay period again. Sooooo frustrating! So you hit this button, and that unit is restored to the move it had at the start of the turn.

[ May 15, 2003, 05:17 PM: Message edited by: Cpl Dodge ]

[Sergei]

Alternative reinforcements: scenario designer could designate your force to be reinforced by a platoon of PanzerIV's - or, with a 25% chance, one Tiger. Or with 6 M13/40 should you get extra lucky...

This would add great extra replay value to scenarios.

[Marlow]

Originally posted by Nippy:

The larger tanks like the Sherman 76, Churchill III, and Panther are at 40 to 50 tons. Lets not even get into the Elephant and Tiger Is.

Only the Sheman Jumbo was 40 tons. The Easy 8 weighed in at about 34 tons.

[SgtMuhammed]

Reinforcements available on turn 1. Actually I should say optional starting forces. You could have a base force of whatever and then a random chance of another force also being available. Good for what if type scenarios without having to rewrite the whole thing.

[MikeyD]

Um... isn't it possible to get reinforcements on turn 1 already? I suppose you mean in QBs, not constructed scenarios.

As for bridges, you're talking about southern Italy. A good number of small-but-strong stone arch bridges were built 2,000 earlier by the Romans. I'd bet bridge safety was a worse problem in rural Russia than it was in the Med.

I can think of another tweak. The ability to import old saved QB maps during new scenario construction. I've seen some remarkably clever QB maps generated, and I think it's a shame they can't be utilized for more permanent purposes.

[BeauCoupDinkyDau]

Brests. Perky young ones with erect nipples to be precise. That would make CMAK feel diffrent, and much better IMHO.

[HarryInk]

Oh dear, I was going to say grid toggle and an UNDO command...but V/Jester has thrown me right off course.....

I get frustrated when I've stuffed up a plot and can't delete the last bit without deleting the entire plot (yes yes...I do like plotting a LONG way ahead). I'm so used to being able to back out of actions in Word that it seems unnatural not to have that option in other applications!...

PS. Would tank tracks across the countryside really need a new engine?? I was thinking how craters/shell holes get dumped all over the terrain during battles...too difficult to do that with tracks? Ah well...next time.

[HarryInk]

PS. And when is someone going to do a Napoleonic version of CM??!! There's 23 years of good fighting in the Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars, not just the 6 years of catastrophe in WW2!