1:1 Representation in CMx2 (Part II)

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by RMC:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Or, at the very least, unit stats should disappear so you no longer have the running tally of how many men are left (as we have now) in each squad. That information simply wasn't reported up the chain of command as the fight progressed. CM right now only gives that info to the player based on the level of spotting - not on the level of activity or the ability of the unit to report it, in real terms.

Interesting idea and one that could be extended to more than just close combat. It seems you're thinking of a digital on/off thing where a unit can either report or not. When you mention the ability of the unit to report it makes me think of tying the accuracy of the reported information to the quality/experience level of the unit in addition to its current level of engagement.

But how many CM players want to have to make decisions based on bad info? </font>

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Panzer76:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Animations? No. Disappear? Yes.

Following your logic, the unit should then disappear on a number of various occations, unit break down does not only limit itself to CC situations.

While this may be realistic one can ponder of the wisdom of such a move in terms of gameplay. Wonder how appricated it would be by the player to see his units fade in and out of vision all the time.. </font>

[PseudoSimonds]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Close Combat wasn't something normally encountered between formed squads of men - that is what CM is about, incidentally, formed squads of men and your control of them.

Hand-to-hand combat means that something has gone wrong somewhere. Generally speaking, when infantry were in close contact, it means that one side or the other has had its unit integrity shattered. The fight has dissolved beyond the ability of the NCOs to control their men. At this point, far more realistic if the depictions on the screen vanished. A company commander would not know what his men were doing at that point in time (ie if they are literally knifepoint to knifepoint with enemy soldiers). There would be no way to report this back to him, until the close combat was over.

So from the CM standpoint, the animations would be rather self-defeating from a realism standpoint. As Steve has pointed out, there is a line to be drawn between realism and eye candy. What they decide to do will be based on their programming ability, the capabilities of the machines they are programming for, the time they have to do it in, and the relevance they feel it has to the project as a whole.

To address the lack of control in close combat I'd be in favour of not allowing further orders to the squad until the close combat is resolved. Having the unit just up and vanish would look a bit bizarre to me.

Trying to think out the details is a bit futile anyway since we don't know to what degree the locations where this might occur (houses, trenches) will be abstracted.

[dalem]

Originally posted by RMC:

But how many CM players want to have to make decisions based on bad info?

Interesting question. The more decisions based on bad info, the more realistic the game would be I think. But again you are highlighting the "how much fun are people having with Concept A?" question that BFC will have to answer for every feature, old and new, that is on the list for CMx2. I'd hazard a guess that players like Michael and I are pretty far over on the "Yes O Mighty OP AI - take my squad and fog it out for 6 turns, then have it reappear 200m away with 3 casualties and a bunch of dead enemy troops around it" side of things.

But I doubt we're a big enough niche group to market to.

So as I think a lot of us are agreeing, we're going to get a very playable, very "realistic" game that will satisfy most of us in the most ways.

Except for Seanachai of course - nothing ever satisfies that little capering cowpie of a man.

-dale

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Depends on the player, and how well the game system performs these duties.

Indeed, but it seems that CMx2 is aiming for a larger market than CMx1, as it should do. And Steve has said eye candy will play a larger part in CMx2 than in CMx2, for whatever reasons.

An example is 1-1 representation, which is important for a realistic sim, but also from a eye candy POV. They are thus removing CMx1 "abstractations" and replacing it with specifics. to a lesser or greater extent.

Thus, aiming for a bigger market and removing some CMx1 abstractations seems to imply that the gamer they are aiming for may not be very forgiving on fading units (abstractations).

In the end, this is a different topic than 1-1 scale, its the borg spotting. And If Im not mistaken, there already is a thread about that?

[Battlefront.com]

No idea if there will be an upper limit on how many units can be in CMx2's battles. We thought a battalion was a stretch for CMx1 games, yet we know people that pushed beyond that and apparently liked the results. So who knows

Yes, we do feel that the more abstractions we can remove the better for both regular gamers and grogs. The only questions lie around how we can do it in the practical sense. But in general, we aren't planning on abstracting much with the 1:1 portrayal. It is counter productive to our goals (which includes increasing realism and reducing abstractions).

All I can say is that we're WAY ahead of you guys. Think of how many YEARS we have been thinking about CMx2. We're on top of things

Steve

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

It is counter productive to our goals (which includes increasing realism and reducing abstractions).

You make it sound like the two are mutually inclusive.

[ January 31, 2005, 07:51 PM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[Battlefront.com]

They can be, depending on what kind of realism In my head I was thinking increasing simulation realism and reducing graphical abstractions. One can also make a more realistic abstraction model without reducing the overall level of abstraction, but that is a finer point I'm sure I don't want to get into at 3am

Steve

[Zemke]

The key to all this is maintain a balance. I lean to more realism, but like a flight sim or other games out today, let the player decide at what level of realism he wants to play at. If CMX2 can achieve a level of improvement like CMBB did over CMBO in realism, then I say you did it. One thing that I think would change the face of this game, and make it truly great, is::::the ability to have more than one player per side, like SPWAW could. The "team" would get a certain amount of points that could be split between the players anyway they wanted. THIS would revolutionize the game in a way nothing else would. Also, PLEASE fix the artillery model. During an attack or assault the attacker should have the abiltiy to use TRPs. We do it real life, but not in CM. As an old grunt, I would never order a deliberant attack without preplanned fires on call. In the American we call them priority targets, and a Company may get one, a Battalion two or three, but this all depends on what fire support assets are availible. Make losing a HQ hurt, in real life if the Company HQ or worse the Battalion HQ is "killed", depending on that nations doctrine, the battle could go to hell really fast.

[Tero]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Vote me among the "less is more" crowd. The absence of borg spotting will be nice;

That is IMO the single most excellent improvement in its own right.

I was thinking about this in the car on the way to work today. Say you put a squad of GREEN soldiers on outpost duty on the far side of some woods, on the very flank of his position. They are out of command.

IRL that would not count as one but two mistakes which would ruin the force commanders day (and possibly career).

Your enemy runs a platoon of tanks around that flank. Should they even be reported to the player until the GREEN squad reports back to his platoon commander? (This has been discussed already and I don't claim to be the first one to think of it).

Realistically we must assume the commander would be able to hear some of the commotion. If he is any good he would be able to discern between friendly and hostile ordnance, like tank guns and MG not in his OOB, being fired (or not if the squad decides to haul ass).

This is why we had so few surprise attacks in CMX1.

Using pickets is all too easy to determine the axis of attack.

Less information for the player means harder decisions for the player to make. Again, seeing everything 1:1 may be nice for the Level Zero movie crowd, but it has naught to do with imposing a realistic challenge on the player.

IMO there could be level zero and overhead map view. Coupled with some sort of "snap to unit" view mode after deployment phase would be a nice toutch. That way roaming over unoccupied terrain would be minimized. This would of course mandate the use of an OOB screen so the player would be able to find his own units which have not fallen out of CC. For units out of CC this OOB screen would indicate "last known position" marker with last orders issued and last known direction of travel and status being noted.

[aka_tom_w]

IMO there could be level zero and overhead map view. Coupled with some sort of "snap to unit" view mode after deployment phase would be a nice toutch. That way roaming over unoccupied terrain would be minimized. This would of course mandate the use of an OOB screen so the player would be able to find his own units which have not fallen out of CC. For units out of CC this OOB screen would indicate "last known position" marker with last orders issued and last known direction of travel and status being noted.

That idea was put VERY clearly and so succinctly it could form the basis of a whole new thread.

If this idea/proposal akin to the Ironman Rules or Frankco True Combat rules?

It sounds interesting but would it make the game MORE tedious to play?

" roaming over unoccupied terrain would be minimized. "

I think this is a big issue for sure

I would like to see "roaming over unoccupied terrain" severly limited but I am REALLY not sure how best to do it in the scope of the game?? (Exactly what would the in game "mechanism" be??? I Don't think Ironman rules are the solution. IMHO)

The Idea had merit, but to see the map ONLY from level 1 of each of your units would HAVE to be a FOW option because FOR SURE it would be VERY unpopular amongst the VAST majority of players and new players (NEW and GREEN to CMx2) would be VERY frustrated indeed because these Ironman rules would make the game VERY hard to navigate and play for the novice.

Interesting idea none the less..

-tom w

[ February 01, 2005, 07:50 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Michael Dorosh]

That's a great idea Tero, so I agree with tom on this one. However, I would limit that to in-game play - for set up, I think roaming the country and setting up lines of fire, etc. would still be necessary and "realistic".

You misunderstood my point about pickets (though you got my main thrust correct) - in my example, I was supposing that an infantry squad would not engage the enemy tanks, but lie low. So the company commander would not hear any commotion at all (assume the woods and other terrain mask the sound). In CM as we have it now - as you realize - the tanks would be spotted instantly.

[kipanderson]

Steve,

“Given 1:1 representation, in whatever form it ultimately takes, and the addition of a more stringent set of C&C rules, will these put an effective cap on the number of units/formations that can be used in CMx2 (as opposed to CMx1, where the theoretical C&C limit is a battalion but in practice this can be exceeded many times over, albeit without upper echelon C&C)”

I agree with Tom, good question from Jim. I certainly hope that there will be no upper limits coded in.

I would like to see CMX2 optimized for the same scale as CMX1. I imagine this as something around one company v one company over a 1,500m by 1,500m map. But who knows what scale BFC were thinking of when CMX1 was developed.

Because CMX2 will be a generational leap from CMX1 I guess most machines will not be able to cope with games much larger than the above company v company size, with all the graphics on their highest settings, at the time the first CMX2 game is released. But I expect all the CMX2 games to have a very long shelf life. Within a couple of years there will be those wishing to play games hugely larger than the “optimum” size for the engine. It is called human nature (As I have with CMBB, played a near realistic breakthrough operation game.)

It would be a shame to put limits on the size of games, of any type, just include a very strongly worded warning in the manual as to the likely bottle necks people would hit with their machines, and some of the limits of the design. “At their own risk” type warnings.

All the best,

Kip.

[Tero]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

That's a great idea Tero, so I agree with tom on this one. However, I would limit that to in-game play - for set up, I think roaming the country and setting up lines of fire, etc. would still be necessary and "realistic".

This is actually what I intened to be woven into the sentence

"snap to unit" view mode after deployment

[dalem]

Originally posted by kipanderson:

But who knows what scale BFC were thinking of when CMX1 was developed.

I believe I recall Steve noting that CM was always intended as primarily a company+attachments game, with a battalion on each side as a max.

Recall that one the first CM patches gave an increase in maximum point caps across the board because BFC was surprised by the clamors for the ability to do regiment-sized battles.

A lot of things - interface simplicity, initial map sizes, initial point caps, lack of a clickable list of in-game forces, not to mention comments by BFC, indicate that CM was intended for, and is at its strongest when playing as, a company-level game.

-dale

[Michael Dorosh]

Not to mention logistics, scale of reconnaissance, engineering and artillery tasks - a brigade would simply not go into action and slug it out in an hour without having very complex plans for these types of issues, none of which is represented in CM. You can put 10,000 men on a map and call it a Division battle if you want - but it really isn't.

[junk2drive]

I think I have burned out on the big stuff.

I have gone back to 1-2 platoons plus support per side and find it enjoyable.

[Tero]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

That idea was put VERY clearly and so succinctly it could form the basis of a whole new thread.

Feel free to start it up if the BFC show interest in it.

If this idea/proposal akin to the Ironman Rules or Frankco True Combat rules?

It was sparked by Michaels post and at the time I did not even remember the rule sets.

It sounds interesting but would it make the game MORE tedious to play?

IMO no. Lets say most (all ?) unit orders like movement, cover arc and off map fire missions would have to be plotted in the over head map view mode. This would be realistic. What would be affected more would be the resolution phase and how it would be represented. In the most extreme case the player would see precious little about what happened until it is his turn to issue orders.

There could also be different zoom levels for issuing battalion, company and possibly platoon level orders.

I think this is a big issue for sure

I would like to see "roaming over unoccupied terrain" severly limited but I am REALLY not sure how best to do it in the scope of the game?? (Exactly what would the in game "mechanism" be??? I Don't think Ironman rules are the solution. IMHO)

That would depend on the stucture of the game dynamics they are going to implement.

The Idea had merit, but to see the map ONLY from level 1 of each of your units would HAVE to be a FOW option because FOR SURE it would be VERY unpopular amongst the VAST majority of players and new players (NEW and GREEN to CMx2) would be VERY frustrated indeed because these Ironman rules would make the game VERY hard to navigate and play for the novice.

Indeed. One solution would be a variable sets of game play rules and options ranging from Green to Grog plus of course Custom. The Green level would be like the CM is today and the Grog level would have the view locked to level 1 and over head map view.

Interesting idea none the less..

Yep. Hope Steve is open to suggestions and ideas at this stage.

[aka_tom_w]

This is NOT exactly a 1:1 issue

BUT it sort of is

So I would Like to mention it here:

gibsonm

Member

Member # 715

posted February 01, 2005 04:12 PM                      

quote:

Originally posted by General Colt:

IRL doesn't the jeep, AC etc drive up to some protected spot and park. Then a true scout or two gets out, slithers on his belly up to the edge of town, pulls out the walkie-talkie, and says, "Check Mate King Two this is White Rook Over" (Insert static here)...

Yes usually and most recce units have / had a dismounted element (Assault Section / Assault Tp) for such a task (and other things like checking a bridge for mines BEFORE you drive over it, or whether the bridge can take the vehicle’s weight, etc.). I normally use a HT with a squad on board (or a couple of universal carriers).

The “problem” with this though is that it:

a. slows things down so much that many players I suspect get bored (since things aren’t exploding every 10 secs), and

b. you currently can’t dismount a crew off an AC to conduct dismounted recce and then get back on to proceed (hence the need for dedicated dismounts).

The other option could be to allow recce units to move to “turret down” which is similar to “hull down” except the turret is masked too. However, the commander can still stand in the turret (or on it) and observe the far side. This has the vehicle protected by the feature and the enemy only sees the commander’s binoculars (if anything).

--------------------

Regards,

Mark (}-;

MAJOR - RAAC

How about that for 1:1 The TC can Stand on top of the turret DOWN vehicle and peer over the crest standing on the top of the turret with the binocs.

An interesting note from the other gamey recon thread...

Thanks to Gibsonm would has REAL LIFE experience in these matters

-tom w

[John Kettler]

There are plenty of wartime accounts of the TC, either solo or with one or more crewmen, conducting armed dismounted recon prior to advancing the vehicle, especially in close terrain. TANKS FOR THE MEMORIES(free download at www.tankbooks.com) has a bunch of examples, as do several of the interviews available for perusal at that site. From what I can tell, Jeep recon was done that way, too, with the Jeep in defilade or at least decent cover, overwatched by a 60mm mortar brought up on a Jeep.

Love the idea of turret down! About as doctrinally sound as it gets.

Regards,

John Kettler

[edgars]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Say you put a squad of GREEN soldiers on outpost duty on the far side of some woods, on the very flank of his position. They are out of command.

My main source of studying the WWII is CM series and this board, so i would be interested to know, how the above situation would have been handled in Real Life.

Clearly the defending forces can't cover the whole frontage that is given to them (and LOS is very limited). It probably means that there is a mobile reserve force which will respond to threat, so it's important to know where the threat will come from. Which is what those picket platoons are for.

Now, you say, they're out of command. By that you probably mean, that the squad is out of physical command range of Platoon HQ. But there are other forms of communication (let's leave walkie-talkies aside for now).

Like phonelines. It would seem that for a prepared defence, with trenches, mines etc., there would be lots of phonlines, including one running to that squad in the example.

Also there are non-verbal communication possibilities. One example that comes to my mind is rockets. If that poor squad sees armor, they fire red rocket. If infantry - green.

That way you, as a company commander know, that there are enemy forces coming from that direction, but you don't know the size of that force, nor any other more specific details. What's great about it is, that you can't judge, whether it is a faint attack or the real thing.

Of course i'm not implying that there should be candy-colored rockets in CMx2, they could also be abstracted in this or that way. What i'm saying is that there are other forms of communication on the battlefield, rather than spoken word. Am i right?

If you're talking about squad-to-platoon communication, it also raises another question: how is platoon-to-company communication done?

[Michael Dorosh]

Platoon to Company comms was usually done by runner. Some units had radios at that level - the CW used the 38 set, but it wasn't universal. The Germans usually had no radio comms.

Field phones, as you suggest, were common, but only on the defence - and probably not in a hasty defensive position (line vehicles didn't accompany forward infantry during an assault and the consequent reorg).

[Le Tondu]

Originally posted on 01-31-2005 by Battlefront.com in another thread:

..........In other words... there is no one right answer to this debate you guys are having. We need to have a balance between the two, and that balance is in part determined by how easy/hard it is to program and/or how well it functions from a performance standpoint (eye candy and underlying sim stuff BOTH!). Not even we have the answers to all these questions at this point, so I might suggest that both sides of this debate keep that in mind. NOTHING is decided except for the fact that we are seeking a balance, which inherently means some grog stuff and some eye candy wish list items won't be happening.

Steve

It seems to me that the perfect balance would be to keep it scalable. Make it so we can toggle off the 1:1 representation and make it more like CMx1 when we toggle between a 2 or 3 man representation of a full squad. In this case a 3 man representation would be the only choice.

For those that don't want 1:1, they can turn it off. For those that do want it, they can keep it going.

I believe that both sides should be happy with that.

[stikkypixie]

Originally posted by Le Tondu:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted on 01-31-2005 by Battlefront.com in another thread:

..........In other words... there is no one right answer to this debate you guys are having. We need to have a balance between the two, and that balance is in part determined by how easy/hard it is to program and/or how well it functions from a performance standpoint (eye candy and underlying sim stuff BOTH!). Not even we have the answers to all these questions at this point, so I might suggest that both sides of this debate keep that in mind. NOTHING is decided except for the fact that we are seeking a balance, which inherently means some grog stuff and some eye candy wish list items won't be happening.

Steve

It seems to me that the perfect balance would be to keep it scalable. Make it so we can toggle off the 1:1 representation and make it more like CMx1 when we toggle between a 2 or 3 man representation of a full squad. In this case a 3 man representation would be the only choice.

For those that don't want 1:1, they can turn it off. For those that do want it, they can keep it going.

I believe that both sides should be happy with that. </font>

[dalem]

I don't know about the toggle-a-bility except for slow-running machines. What I mean by that is that I am, right now, an "anti-1:1" guy. All that means of course is that I have yet to see how BFC will implement it and remain skeptical - Steve has already stated clearly that 1:1 is happening. I am confident, however, that if they do it, they will do it at least "pretty well", and if seeing 12 GIs per squad works pretty well, why would I toggle it off except for CPU performance?

-dale