CMx2... a little more to chew on...

[Wartgamer]

Originally posted by BulletRat:

Guys, guys, guys, seriously - stop yapping for a minute and let Battlefront.com go back to slaving over a hot computer coding CMx2 or whatever he does.

The less time he has to spend on these forums the sooner we get CMx2!

Someone said earlier that the coding is only done by one person, is that person posting anything?

[jeffsmith]

No Charles is just a Brain that lives in a Nutrient filled Jar

Newbies

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by JonS:

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

The problem with tying victory points to ammunition usage is that it is artificial.

Perhaps, though I'm not so sure about that - re-read what I wrote about opportunity cost. That's the more important concept involved, rather than ammo usage per-se. Ammo usage is just the metric used to measure the opportunity cost involved.

Regards

JonS </font>

[Tero]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

A couple of bombs spent taking out a command and control center will cause far more damange to the enemy's ability to fight than the same amount of bombs dropped over a random military unit.

That is dependant on the timeframe though. Taking out Yamamoto (or Churchill for that matter) will have a profound effect but not necessarily in the CM scale. In CM scale losing Audie Murphy or Otto Carius can hurt the force more than losing Captain Stransky. Not to mention that losing Sargeant Steiner may even have a positive initial effect in the morale of the unit as the remaining men may go berserk.

Will there be a "golden" tank crew/command unit/other unit whose performance and fate will effect the global morale of the entire force ?

Military strategists are always on the lookout for things like this and we need to make sure that CMx2 allows realistic options and results for successful application of such tactics.

Will that be reflected in the players ability to ID key unit types more readily than now is possible ?

[Battlefront.com]

The whole notion of opportunity costs is indeed a good basis for determining part of a game's victory level. In CMx1 there is no disincentive to using all your ammo, in particular big stuff (tank, artillery, mortar), but in real life there most certainly is. Just because it is available doesn't mean that its use comes at no cost in the bigger context the battle is a part of.

Tero,

Scale is unimportant to the theory of a well placed strike yielding greater results than the effort expended would have if used in a more general way. A sniper hitting a platoon leader might have a profound impact on the firefight which is going on (might not), but it won't affect the front like taking out an Army Group HQ and all its staff would. But in theory it is harder to take out that Army Group HQ and thereofre the effort expended will probably be a lot more than that of taking out the platoon leader. It is a rather balanced system in theory.

Since we are doing a more detailed simulation of C&C, yes... taking out leaders/HQs will have more of an impact on combat ops than it does in CMx1. If you want to know how, simply look at historical CM scale battles and you'll find the answers there since that is what we are modeling.

As far as IDing key units... that should be related to the type of unit and how obvious it would be that it is what it is. The Germans did a lot with dummy guns on tank turrets, for example, to hide the fact that the turret was jammed with radio equipment and not a gun. To the average enemy soldier, it is a tank and only a tank. To a trained eye, however, there might be tell tale signs such as radio antennas or its position in a formation. So in real life the IDing depends on the unit being spotted and the unit doing the spotting.

Steve

[Tero]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Scale is unimportant to the theory of a well placed strike yielding greater results than the effort expended would have if used in a more general way. A sniper hitting a platoon leader might have a profound impact on the firefight which is going on (might not), but it won't affect the front like taking out an Army Group HQ and all its staff would.

Granted. I just think that the impact of losing the AG HQ may not be take effect instantly relative to the loss of the platoon leader.

But in theory it is harder to take out that Army Group HQ and thereofre the effort expended will probably be a lot more than that of taking out the platoon leader. It is a rather balanced system in theory.

True. Then again with a bit of clever sig-int you can pinpoint the critical assets (at any level and scale) and have appropriately ranged assets deliver a blow which may or may not do the job. Radio equipped FO's would be one such target.

Since we are doing a more detailed simulation of C&C, yes... taking out leaders/HQs will have more of an impact on combat ops than it does in CMx1. If you want to know how, simply look at historical CM scale battles and you'll find the answers there since that is what we are modeling.

I guess you will not spill too many beans on the actual differences between CMx1 and x2 C&C ?

As far as IDing key units... that should be related to the type of unit and how obvious it would be that it is what it is. The Germans did a lot with dummy guns on tank turrets, for example, to hide the fact that the turret was jammed with radio equipment and not a gun. To the average enemy soldier, it is a tank and only a tank. To a trained eye, however, there might be tell tale signs such as radio antennas or its position in a formation. So in real life the IDing depends on the unit being spotted and the unit doing the spotting.

I expect stuff like experience level will have an effect on that too.

Do you plan on including stuff like dummy positions, mashirovka style spoofing and high level sig-int and other type of (both accurate and inaccurate) intel data being passed on to the units ?

I think it would be kinda cool to have a certain degree of uncertainty about the type of mission the player is actually conducting. You could have the probe against the enemy of pre-recced strenght you are supposed to be making with a slight advantage in numbers turn into a meeting engagement. Or worse.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

The whole notion of opportunity costs is indeed a good basis for determining part of a game's victory level. In CMx1 there is no disincentive to using all your ammo, in particular big stuff (tank, artillery, mortar), but in real life there most certainly is. Just because it is available doesn't mean that its use comes at no cost in the bigger context the battle is a part of.

But that isn't up to the man on the ground commanding the battalion. He doesn't decide what is best for the brigade, and doesn't care. He cares about his battalion - and that is the role the player has. I would think a simple cutoff of ammunition - perhaps randomly determined within certain parameters set at game start - would provide more of a realistic decision making matrix than tying cost to ammo usage - something a battalion commander wouldn't do if my understanding is accurate.

Unless someone can provide examples of battalion commanders actually using the principle of opportunity costs in a real life setting?

[FGM_Smashing]

Can we have a spectator mode...for IP battles....

[Tero]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

The whole notion of opportunity costs is indeed a good basis for determining part of a game's victory level. In CMx1 there is no disincentive to using all your ammo, in particular big stuff (tank, artillery, mortar), but in real life there most certainly is. Just because it is available doesn't mean that its use comes at no cost in the bigger context the battle is a part of.

But that isn't up to the man on the ground commanding the battalion. He doesn't decide what is best for the brigade, and doesn't care. He cares about his battalion - and that is the role the player has. I would think a simple cutoff of ammunition - perhaps randomly determined within certain parameters set at game start - would provide more of a realistic decision making matrix than tying cost to ammo usage - something a battalion commander wouldn't do if my understanding is accurate.

Unless someone can provide examples of battalion commanders actually using the principle of opportunity costs in a real life setting?

IMO opportunity costs would work best when determining time rather than ammo usage. The mission a commander would have is more likely be centered in for example delaying the enemy or pushing the enemy back during a certain amount of time. To fullfil that mission the force is allocated assets. If some of them is not used and the mission is fulfilled I think the remaining ammo is not relevant since in CM the battles are separate, unique entities. The ammo usage criteria would work at some level for campaing games though.

Of course the ammo usage is important but so is the general level of supply in general. If the battle parameters deduct ammo and other assets I see no harm in giving extra points for fulfilling the mission with less assets than you would normally have. But there should be no penalty if you fail with a depleated force either.

And speaking of the big, off map stuff, I think a commander could have them yanked off to other duties. The FO is sporting now 150 rpg I could imagine a more realistic representation would be X number of fire missions. The number of fire missions would depend on the type of firemission ordered. The FO could have, say, 10 short fire strikes at his disposal but there would only be, say, one to three barrages. There could be 20 harrasing fire fire missions but as the game wears on they would eat up the number of other types of missions.

[Battlefront.com]

Sure, the commander on the ground doesn't care as much about what happens next door as he does in his front yard. However, any commander that doesn't care about his neighbors is unfit for command, if for no other reason that what happens to the other units DOES matter to him.

For example... in the Yelnia Salient battle in the summer and fall of 1941 the supply situation for the Germans was critical. They had artillery and AT rounds inventoried down to the last round because... well, they were pretty much down to the last round. If a battery was assigned to a sector it might only be allowed to fire 10 rounds per tube and not a round more. If the commander used these rounds they would NOT be available for anybody else. Therefore, the commander knew that he had to avoid using the artillery even though in theory he was allowed to. By not using it now it offered him the chance of using it some other time or to have a neighboring unit use it in a more effective situation. And since a breakthrough in a neighboring unit usually has direct consequences for the units in the general area, it's not like what happens to the rest of the front has no effect.

Same thing with tanks. Do you really think a higher commander would be happy to hear that you, the local commander, took an attached tank unit and squandered it for something that really wasn't all that important? No, you might find yourself demoted. Yet in CMx1 if you have the tanks you can do with them as you please. Sure, you do get penalized for losing them, but you don't necessarily get penalized for misusing them. Such as wasting their AP ammo to get some beat up squad to evacuate a building instead of using infantry or just letting the unit evacuate on its own.

This is one of the reasons why CM battles are frequently faster and bloodier than their real world counterparts would have been. There is not enough incentive for the two sides to pull back or to at least sit tight and call it "good enough". Opportunity costs, of some sort, factoring into the overall victory conditions would simulate some of that quite nicely. Though there are many different ways this can be acheived.

In short, assets and ammo very often have strings attached to them in real life. Especially when "times are tough". CMx1 simulates only the immediate shortage, such as not giving the player full ammo counts or withholding certain normally available assets (such as 81mm mortars). What CMx1 does not simulate is the long term shortage situations that exist more often than they do not.

Steve

[Wartgamer]

Is there going to be a cmx2 forum?

[Tero]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

And since a breakthrough in a neighboring unit usually has direct consequences for the units in the general area, it's not like what happens to the rest of the front has no effect.

Very true. But in such a case I think the local commander would only be able to request a fire mission and since chances are there are several fire missions on order simultaneously a higher echelon commander would be ultimately the one to determine where the fire mission would be best used.

Same thing with tanks. Do you really think a higher commander would be happy to hear that you, the local commander, took an attached tank unit and squandered it for something that really wasn't all that important? No, you might find yourself demoted.

Yet in CMx1 if you have the tanks you can do with them as you please. Sure, you do get penalized for losing them, but you don't necessarily get penalized for misusing them. Such as wasting their AP ammo to get some beat up squad to evacuate a building instead of using infantry or just letting the unit evacuate on its own.

You could also be demoted even if you excercised proper caution and conserved your ammo and assets while fulfilling all the objectives to the letter. The only thing you would have wasted was time. And time is often the most valuable asset of them all.

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by Wartgamer:

Is there going to be a cmx2 forum?

Yes when the time is right.

[dalem]

Steve-

1) RE: Opportunity cost. Is it reasonable for me to assume that you are floating something similar to what the (old but classic) V4V: Utah Beach game did for the Allied naval gun support and reinforcement points? They were both available throughout the entire campaign, but your victory level was adjusted downward for every replacement point you used, and for every Naval support mission used after the first week or so.

So you could still "win" on points even if you used that support and used it well, but you could win bigger if you managed without them.

2) Is there any way to introduce friction between armor and infantry to make cooperation more difficult? Maybe another scenario toggleable feature to allow for the wholesale withdrawal of armor platoons after a certain number of turns or casualties? Again, not the kind of thing I'd want to see in every QB, but we both know that in some units in some periods, the tankers were not always good at working and playing well with others.

-dale

[Battlefront.com]

Dale,

No, not like the V4V per se. But yes, what you use might affect your score.

The difficulty of coordinating armor and infantry is hard to simulate once they are in the game and working together. But yes, we will allow the scenario designer to have more control over reinforcements. That can mean things are unreinforced

Steve

[Cull]

Originally posted by Wartgamer:

No. Fire missions are typically called in with rounds per tube IRL. In the rare case where unlimited fire might be called for (FFE), the battery commander might call it off to preserve ammo.

The FO has radio/commo contact with the firers. The FO is not in the dark about how many rounds are coming in. You can't plan assaults and not know how many rounds will land on the enemy.

I don't know about how it was done in WWII, but in my brief service in the mid-eighties we did artillery/FO training a few times. Here's how it went:

Call the guns (we would have been calling Brigade arty assets, IIRC), give a grid coordinate, describe the target.

They'd reply by repeating the info, then "shot out". That'd be the spotting round.

We call "adjust fire" with adjustment ("up 200, left 100" or whatever), if necessary, until the spotting round was on-target. Once the spotting round was on we'd call "FFE". We were told that we'd generally have three opportunities to adjust spotting rounds, then the battery would expect "FFE" or the mission would be cancelled.

So, "Fire for Effect" had nothing to do with "unlimited rounds", it was simply the request to put the full load on the target, whatever that might be.

We had no say over type of round (the battery would decide based on the target described---"armor in the open", "troops in woods", whatever) or number of rounds per tube or any of that. That was all the battery commander's decision based on assets, other needs, etc.

So...the FO was pretty much in the dark.

I suppose if the company/battalion commander was on the horn it would probably be a little different.

This is only my experience---like I said I am no expert on how it was done in WWII.

Anyway, I like Dorosh's ideas. I was going to say similar things for scenario designer's options. Obviously, if a battalion or such is going into a planned attack you can bet they have artillery assets available, probably both a preperatory barrage and some further assets during the mission.

I also think it would make sense that during the battle (assuming perhaps that your battalion/company is part of a larger scale offensive) that in-mission artillery could be denied, or limited. In other words, maybe on a pre-plotted (setup phase) mission you might get 100 rounds or mortar or whatever, but half way into the scenario you may get denied (assets needed elsewhere along the front or whatever), or a limited mission.

By the way, I did get to actually fire an M109 (155mm self-propelled artillery piece) one time. I was an MP (I know, boo hiss) and my partner and I were out patrolling the training area and had stopped to observe a battery. Suddenly their commander was calling to us and waving us over, so we parked the Jeep (yeah, we didn't even have Humvees yet) and started across the road, thinking "great...what the hell does he want?". So he says something like "Hey MPs, want to fire a couple of rounds?", to which we said "Uh...huh?....um....hell yeah! I mean, yes Sir!"

They got us all set up and went through their routine for calling a mission. Lots of yelling and clanking and scurrying about and what appeared to me to be chaos, but the next thing I know I'm pulling the lanyard (doubt they do that anymore) while standing on the back of it, facing backwards. Embarassingly, it took me two attempts. You had to wrap the thing tightly across your upper legs and twist your whole body. The second try did it, at which time I nearly tumbled off the backend (or actually the front end, as they would swing the barrel to the rear in a fixed position emplacement) and nearly soiled myself in the process.

It was pretty sweet, and be sweet I mean totally cool.

I think the arty guys got a kick out of our excitement/awe as well.

Needless to say, we didn't forget that particular unit and figured we owed them a break or two should we have any run-ins with them down the road.

Sorry to share that off-topic and probably not terribly interesting tale, but I'll never forget it!

We now return to our regularly scheduled grogfest.

[junk2drive]

I enjoyed the post Cull. Beats most of the banter lately.

[JonS]

Cull - what you describe sounds pretty much the way US artillery was handled in WWII. The FOs were merely eyes for the bty, and all decisions were made back there (or at the Bn FDC). Tero - same for you. The uber-Finns unter-thought this one

The CW handled things differently, in that the FO ordered the number of guns, the type of guns, and the amount of ammo to be fired per gun. CW FOs were also typically far more senior and experienced than US FOs - largely because they had to be to handle the responsibility entrusted to them.

Regarding ammo, usage and opportunity cost. Steve - glad to hear you are contemplating it. It'll be interesting to see how it gets implemented. Dale - the V4V example is a good one, and pretty much the concept I was thinking of. Dorosh - I imagined it as a tool in the kit, not a always-on kind of thing. If a designer wants to use it, because it fits inot the kind of battle being created, well and good. If not, well and good too since it doesn't have to be used.

Jon

[Tero]

Originally posted by Cull:

So, "Fire for Effect" had nothing to do with "unlimited rounds", it was simply the request to put the full load on the target, whatever that might be.

In the Finnish parlance that would be "unit of fire".

http://www.winterwar.com/forces/FinArmy/FINartiller.htm#uof

I'll have to dig up the actual unt of fire definition in terms how it related to the general supply situation and how long it was supposed to last (IIRC it a unit of fire was allocated on a daily/weekly bases but don't quote me on that).

[dalem]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Dale,

No, not like the V4V per se. But yes, what you use might affect your score.

The difficulty of coordinating armor and infantry is hard to simulate once they are in the game and working together. But yes, we will allow the scenario designer to have more control over reinforcements. That can mean things are unreinforced

Steve

No chance for spontaneous recall?

(helps if you say this in an E.G. Robinson/"The Frog" voice from the cartoon "Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse")

Say you're modelling them as platoons, see; and say the AFV platoon has a morale like a squad, see, yeah; and say they are rated as "poor" or something for their "commitment" rating in the scenario or QB, see; yeah, see; and say one of the tanks, "Red Dog Three-four" gets flamed, see; maybe the platoon has to check and see if it will stick around, see; yeah, see?

Or is that, as my wargaming buddy's daughter is wont to say, "poopy-stupid"?

-dale

[c3k]

On Arty,

Didn't the Soviets work on the whole quantitative school of effectiveness for artillery? Meaning, they determined, based on target type and position, EXACTLY how many rounds of a given caliber would result in a specified casualty level to the target. Using their theories, they'd assign different tubes/shots to targets. That was for pre-planned missions. I'd imagine as they gained flexible comms with FO's that the Soviet FDC would maintain the tight control over # of rounds fired based on target type.

Cull - that was a nice anecdote you shared. Thanks.

Regards,

Ken

[Bannon DC]

On artillery, is there a concept of the "beaten zone?" That is an area that needs to be targeted, say a 200m wide edge of woods. I saw this concept in a game under development yeeeaaarsss ago back when Arsenal publishing was around. It differed from CMx1 where the arty is hitting a "spot" instead of an area to be raked over. I forget the name of that game... but it was ultimately vaporware.

On reinforcements in a battalion level engagement with some sort of point system -- Sid Mieirs' Gettysburg had a system where the reinforcements would be available to you, but if you called for them earlier than a certain turn, you would be penalized. This sort of system might work for any sort of assets being requested -- tanks, troops, arty -- the more you call for the more points you loose. Opportunity cost -- you better make up the point deficit you incurred by calling for the platoon of Shermans ahead of schedule.

If you are getting into coop play (sounds great!), will there be a player on a team who is the designated team captain (or general) who may have control over the deployment of reinforcments? The team captain could also control the requests for arty missions as well. This might be pretty cool to decide which part of the battlefield needs more attention and which subordinate player really needs the help most. Think of the bruised feelings and the "I'm never playing with that guy again" or "He's a good company commander but really sucks commanding a battalion" comments. A new forum could be opened for promotions and demotions and sniping from the ranks! ehehe

[Battlefront.com]

Cull, thanks for the story. I enjoyed it and found it to be more on topic than you apprently did

Ditto what you guys are saying about the subtle, yet important, differences between the various national approaches to artillery usage. In the end it boils down to pretty much the same thing, but WHO is directing the fire and to what degree are important facets of CM scale combat.

Reinforcements at CM's scale should be far less variable than some of you are suggesting. In a 1/2 hour to 1 hour engagement pretty much anything not on its way to the battle would not be involved in that battle. Once in battle an asset would likely stay in combat until a lull developed. Again, this is at the CM scale, totally different once you go up to larger scale/scope simulations.

In CMx1 a scenario designer can specify reinforcements to come in on a given turn and then set a random chance it will actually show up. What I was thinking was to keep that system pretty much the same, but also allow the designer to specify the same exact thing for removal of particular unit/s. For example, the player will have a chance of losing a platoon of tanks 10 turns in, but of course not knowing this This is not the ONLY thing planned, just a way to extend a feature that worked quite well to another concept (i.e. leaving the battle instead of entering it).

Steve

[RMC]

To tag onto Cull's post about FOs.

A distinction needs to be made between two types of Forward Observers. In the modern US Army every infantryman is trained in the basics of calling for fire. When these guys are the ones calling for fire, it is as Cull described. They identify a target and adjust the fire, but the Fire Direction Center of the firing battery is the one that determines sheaf, round type, fuzing and total numbers of rounds to be fired.

The other kind of FO, is a trained artilleryman who is attached to the infantry for a mission. This guy can call in a fire mission with more particulars. He can select fuzing, sheaf and can also select to have the battery fire on "At My Command" or Time On Target.

[Tarkus]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

[...]In CMx1 a scenario designer can specify reinforcements to come in on a given turn and then set a random chance it will actually show up. What I was thinking was to keep that system pretty much the same, but also allow the designer to specify the same exact thing for removal of particular unit/s.[...]

Do you plan for the scenario designer to have control on how reinforcments appears on the battlemap ?

Also, how about allowing organic units to be split through various reinforcements? Handy if you plan to get into campaign oriented scenarios.

Cheers