FOW and the CM gaming experience

[John Kettler]

In rereading DARs and AARs from the Invitational Tourney and various early ROWs, I couldn't help noticing the amount of color and richness of detail

being reported. By contrast, the ones played under CMAK and CMBB's EFOW seem much less detailed, and in my battles with NG cavscout, I've found that also to be true. After ten minutes of fire, I get Infantry squad? as the ID for a unit only tens of meters away on the steppe or lying out in the open below me in the rocks. I even had to wait more than a minute to ID the corpses in a small house I captured. Taken in toto, I'm really starting to wonder whether EFOW may be too much of a good thing. What do the rest of you think about this, please? Links to CMBO and CMBB/CMAK battle reports are here, with the early stuff on page two.

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=30;t=003745

Regards,

John Kettler

[ January 08, 2007, 12:18 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[Aco4bn187inf]

From my point of view, the difficulty in identifying units in EFOW is acceptable. Sound cues are often a big help, even before the unit is officially ID'ed. You always know the enemy unit's division type by pressing return. Also, many squad types have a reasonably similar mix of weapons, so realistically that wouldn't be a sure giveaway of it's exact identity. Sure, there's less concrete information to put down, or more guess work, in the AAR's and DAR's. But when I'm writing them I write about the clues I have and my speculation and planning based upon them, which I think is a pretty interesting aspect of play.

Also, since the game (unavoidably) gives the commander an unrealistically thorough knowledge of all his own units, and of the terrain, at all times, I have no problem accepting some gaps in what is reported about the enemy.

(I'm writing this off the cuff without having looked at the link.)

[Other Means]

I think that even with EFOW we get too much information, especially about AFV's. Unless you were very experienced I don't think you'd be able to tell a Panther from PzIV, let alone a D from an E.

It should be made plain after the fact, not during.

[bitchen frizzy]

The speed at which "corpses" get ID'd is also very generous. Consider that a "corpse" icon marks the spot where the last few members of a unit fell, not the entire unit. It takes only a minute of observation (during combat!) for ordinary riflemen - not intel types - to deduce the unit details from the sprawled corpses of two or three men and communicate that info to their CO.

[Redwolf]

John, do you realize that in CMx1 the "extreme FoW" setting only makes the identification texts less reliable, but that the markers appear with the same probability at the same distances?

[GJK]

I don't think that you should be made aware that the gun on the enemy tank has malfunctioned.

I think that sound contacts for infantry are too sensitive; you can "hear" them coming in noisy conditions from farther away than I would expect.

I think that the direction that sound contacts for vehicles approach should be more random; when you see a "?" tank moving along an imaginary road, it's not hard at all to guess what real road it's really moving down.

I don't think that you should be able to tell the experience level of the enemy units or how many of how many are alive/dead (just how many you see).

Probably others that I can't think of at the moment.