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What do we want in the new CM game, Part Deux!


MrSpkr

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Originally posted by ladie_from_hell:

...not too many farmer shacks had basements...

In Europe, most farmers did not live in anything I would call a shack. And many, if not most, of their homes did have basements. For one thing, they were useful for storing home-canned foods, and dry storage for other foods. Drive into one of those and you'd end up among the green peas and taters.

Michael

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I would like a "flank zone" to prevent edge hugging effects. Something like a zone on the map edges where a scenario designer can designate what forces are on either flank. These forces never enter the game unless you go out of your designated map area then the adjacent units become available to the enemy player or something. But as long as you play in the right zone, those units never appear.

Unrelated: the ability for tanks to have arty spotters inside as was a fairly common german practice.

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This falls under the rubric of interface requests.

I would really like to have something akin to a reverse spotting button. What I would like to do is to highlight an enemy unit, and see all of the line of sight lines that can be drawn to it.

I think it makes sense that if I can see an enemy on the map, even with limited intelligence I should know why I can see him.

I was playing a game the other day with what felt like a hundred small units, when suddenly, on the other end of the map, an enemy tank appeared. I wasn't ready to shoot at it, but I really wanted to know who had spotted it. I ended up drawing lines of sight from all of my units one at a time, and still didn't find it. Drove me nuts (which is pretty easy to do these days).

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A couple of things I would love to see is:

1) All scenarios played marked as such, as I've often come back to CM after a long break trying to remember which scenarios I've completed.

2) During PBEM video playback of same scenario not having to type my password every time, why not just once, unless you exit game of course?

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Does anybody like the concept of company commander waypoints, or battalion commander waypoints, which give a radius within which platoons may manouvre freely with no command delay? The battalion commander orders his companies axes of advance with x delay, the company co orders his platoons axes of advance within the battalion waypoints with x delay. Platoon CO orders squads around within the company waypoints with little/no delay.

This will help combat borg effect, although from the link in the other "what is borg spotting" thread it seems these ideas have been discussed years ago.

Combine this with individually calculated spotting by units and you have a decent compromise I think. You would still reveal all units to the playeras it is now.

As suggested above you could limit how many orders a HQ can give. You could simulate what the commander knows by giving him more orders based on reports he recieves about enemy activity.

Example: A squad spots a tank at the front. The player sees the tank from the squad's POV as happens now. The Platoon commander can respond to the situation with no delay, because he is on the scene.

The company CO has Platoon 2 in reserve, but cannot assign orders to Platoon 2 to move up and deal with the tank, unless a report reaches him from Platoon 1 about enemy contact. When it is "simulated" that the company commander recieves a report about enemy activity, he recieves "order points" to enable him to send Platoon 2 forward to deal with the threat.

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Hoolaman, i offer 2 simplifications. For the map flank, you wouldn't want to introduce gameyness. If free forces could be triggered, you'd have everyone finagling free reinforcements.

Far simpler would be for units on map edges to randomly---and rarely---receive bad combat effects. A squad gets inexplicably pinned or suddenly breaks and runs, a tank loses its commander or gets a track hit. See this happen just once or twice and you will learn to not take map edges for granted. It wouldn't affect play---many times I have lost a vehicle without ever learning who got it, or not until much later. You'd hardly notice if you didn't know.

For the borg spotting, what if the quality of information started lower and increased with the number and rank of units spotting it? Consider this confirmation of a sighting. A ?tank? that a forward squad could see at 100M would only harden with time, contact, additional squads spotting it, or the HQ spotting it. To some degree, this is already the system, certainly for enemy infantry. LOS would then be affected as well, as you already can't blue-target a ?tank?. that is, perhaps the forward could target it but the HQ could only area-target it until the next turn or 2. This would roughly simulate the delay in both IDing and reporting a sighting to HQ(s). especially if radio contact is gone.

On another note, I'd like to see an AI victory judge that can step in (if turned on) to end a QB that has reached exhaustion. Surely few battles outside Stalingrad were fought until everyone on the map was exhausted and out of ammo. Although maybe this is what a cease-fire is for?

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Dave,

I like your map-edge random combat results idea.

To refine it, I'd like the scenario designer/QB engine to have some control over the level of "edge effects". I.e., if the scenario simulates an assault/probe/advance/whatever against a surrounded enemy, then there should be no edge effects. Continue that thought through the possible continuum of positions and you see where I'm going. If your units are in a surrounded spearhead, pushing forward, the edge effects would be much greater. Etc.

Command and Control: I like the idea of Platoon/Company/Battalion movement areas. I'm not sure if that's the best implementation. I certainly have nothing better.

Increasing delays for waypoints is not the best solution. I, too, have been frustrated by having my T-34's incur a 3 minute delay just to follow a road. RRRRRrrrrrrrrr.

Regards,

Ken

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Originally posted by c3k:

To refine it, I'd like the scenario designer/QB engine to have some control over the level of "edge effects". I.e., if the scenario simulates an assault/probe/advance/whatever against a surrounded enemy, then there should be no edge effects. Continue that thought through the possible continuum of positions and you see where I'm going. If your units are in a surrounded spearhead, pushing forward, the edge effects would be much greater. Etc.

Yes, and since we already have control of the "friendliness" of map edges, why not control simple effects that lend some meaning to it? The game already has a means of observing when units cross the edge, and I believe the "green zone" for exiting can be turned off. A 10-meter or even variable (editable) "red zone" to signify random danger (better, yellow for "caution") would seem a no-brainer.

Too bad we're not in charge here! tongue.gif

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Hi, I'm new to CM, but not new to gaming. I have only just upgraded to be able to run CM. I was intrigued to learn that CM is directly descended from ASL, and it shows. So here I am. Now I can't wait for CMx2!

I have a thought about borg spotting, (a problem that also plagues Close Combat, my game of choice for many years).Excuse me if I repeat an idea, but I've been reading all afternoon on this forum and haven't come across it. Lots of very interesting discussion though!

A simple adjustment to spotting might be be able to see all spotted units only when the player is not clicked on a friendly unit. Clicking on a given unit would light up only those enemy contacts currently seen by that specific unit. Combat results could be specific to that unit's degree of identification, which might be very different from a neighboring friendly.

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Originally posted by Dave Stockhoff:

Hoolaman, I offer 2 simplifications. For the map flank, you wouldn't want to introduce gameyness. If free forces could be triggered, you'd have everyone finagling free reinforcements.

Far simpler would be for units on map edges to randomly---and rarely---receive bad combat effects. A squad gets inexplicably pinned or suddenly breaks and runs, a tank loses its commander or gets a track hit. See this happen just once or twice and you will learn to not take map edges for granted. It wouldn't affect play---many times I have lost a vehicle without ever learning who got it, or not until much later. You'd hardly notice if you didn't know.

That is a much simpler, (and therefore probably better) idea, but it would be good to be transparent to the player. If something kills your tank, you want to be able to engage it.

My idea was just a half-baked concept (like a lot of my ideas!), but I will elaborate on what I meant. The basic idea I am getting at is that if a similar battle is raging on your left flank over the map edge in invisible land, the battle going on the "map" next door is somehow simulated, and if you stray into it, all sorts of crazy things may happen.

The concept of a laser-straight edge between your units and those in the adjacent sector is a bit silly. Not sure exactly how this would happen. Maybe an AI vs AI battle could be simulated on the map next door, and the further your units go into that battle, the more of these AI units are unlocked for control by both the player and the enemy.

Sort of a floating map edge.

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I see sometimes with the current system, a huge map, with a smaller battle area in the middle. the side areas are cut off by water and woods, etc to prevent afvs from going into the edge areas. Troops can still go there, but it is risky and slow going and without your afv support. It is also risky because you are spliting your forces if your main objective is straight ahead. Works for me.

Your idea above, combined with the game engine creating a random sides map to the designers original map, might work somewhat like this example.

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Okay, here's one I just discovered that I REALLY would like fixed in CM2.

I am updating my favorite CMBO scenario, Der Hexen Kessel, into CMAK (with author Justin Claxton's kind permission). Unfortunately, I cannot do a straight up conversion because (1) British Airborne Forces are not allowed in Italy in September 1944 and (2) the most recent British airborne forces allowed are Airborne Squad '42, which have nine rifles and an LMG (as opposed to 5 rifles, 4 SMGs and an LMG). Obviously, this means the British firepower is markedly lessened in close quarters (and thus I am playing with some different forces to make a fun ahistorical battle on a high quality urban map).

I would like BFC to provide a full range of unit types for the entire war so that, even if there were no comparable forces in theatre for a given time period (such as British Airborne in Italy in 1944), one could still select British AB in 9/44 and those would be properly equipped for that type of troop in that time period. In order to use those ahistorical troops in multiplayer mode, BOTH players would have to agree to the selection.

The work load shouldn't be that much greater -- after all, BFC has done a yeoman's job in gathering this information over the past four or five years -- but it would make converting old CMBO, CMBB and/or CMAK scenarios to the modern engine.

Steve

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I don't know if I'm too late or if this has already been suggested (don't really care that much either) but here goes:

When designing a desert scenario, I can simulate a preceding creeping barrage by placing lots of nifty craters and adjusting the number of casualties on the defending side. However, I cannot simulate the dust kicked up by the bombardment which the attackers are supposed to advance behind, without creating dust storm weather conditions.

Therefore, I humbly ask BFCdotcom to endow scenario makers to allow dust to hang around for a few turns at the start of a scenario to simulate a pre-game barrage.

While we're on the topic of what I'd like to see in future:

Vichy French for the Syrian campaign.

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Originally posted by MrSpkr:

The work load shouldn't be that much greater -- after all, BFC has done a yeoman's job in gathering this information over the past four or five years -- but it would make converting old CMBO, CMBB and/or CMAK scenarios to the modern engine.

Steve

Hi Steve

is it reasonable to expect there will be ANY possibility of conversion of ANY CMxx scenario into the CMX2 engine..

I guess if you had all the details and unit types you might be able to make a WHOLE new scenario but I cannot image that any old (legacy) maps or scenarios will be able to be imported directly into the new engine.

In fact I hope they won't be directly importable into the new engine.

;)

-tom w

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Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

is it reasonable to expect there will be ANY possibility of conversion of ANY CMxx scenario into the CMX2 engine..

I guess if you had all the details and unit types you might be able to make a WHOLE new scenario but I cannot image that any old (legacy) maps or scenarios will be able to be imported directly into the new engine.

In fact I hope they won't be directly importable into the new engine.

;)

My guess is BFC will not provide us with such an option. You can't even transport anything between CMBB and CMAK which are practically the same game, architecture-wise and you would only have to substitute some terrain elements.

However, CM enthusiasts started writing all kinds of remote control utilities and if more scenario designers would use Mapping Mission the maps would be a non-issue. Sadly, few do.

However, recently people also started writing tools which OCR (read) the screen to extract scenario information, so all might not be lost.

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And some more, although I expect this sort of thing to be on the drawing board already:

Varying types of terrain, as in twenty different degrees of woodlyness between woods and scattered trees.

Maybe it would be easiest to choose the level of undergrowth separate to amount of trees. So you could have scattered trees with thick scrub, or forest with clear pine forest floor.

Another perameter might be the bumpiness of the terrain. So you could have broken lumpy ground through to smooth flat ground. Ten different types of scrub, ten different types of trees, ten different densities of trees, making about...... a million different combinations.

This takes away some of the black and white chess style issues, where you know to pour arty on that patch of forest because that is the only place to be.

The variation in terrain, as well as historical accuracy of terrain and natural, realistic appearance of terrain, are not just eye-candy graphical issues. Terrain is integral to warfare as we all would know, and accurate simulation of it is vital.

That is all. Until next time.

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1) CM is a really good game - I hope the new one keeps the as many of the current neat featuresas poss.

2) I'd like to vote for a 'low gore' game just like CM is now.

3) I like the way the battlefield is not too cluttered, which makes command a lot easier in large battles. And with 'figure bases' etc, it feels like a wargame, these features are really cool and enhance CM as a 'strategy game'. In fact I'd even like a 'super-simplified-terrain' view to help during command moves.

4) But I also like the idea of a greater degree of 'low level' detail, eg. showing all the guys in the squad, but I think this could be handled much better by a separate window.

In CMAK/BB, you have the little window that shows 'wall' and 'crater' etc. - this is nice and could be used to animate where and what the squad is up to. eg, you have a little anim. of all 12 guys leapfrogging through cover, sheltering behind wall, blasting way into house etc.

Since it would only show one squad/team/vehicle you could make it a higher resolution and animated - add battlefield colour without CPU overhead. (but low gore please).

Within the context of the whole game, it wouldn't need to particularly high res or a particularly stunning anim. to add a lot, both in excitement and strategy terms, and it would convey more than the current 'pinned', 'taking cover'

5) I also like the panel that shows pictures of the weapons a squad/team/vehicle has. You could really build on that, it's cool and very interesting.

6) I love the terrain/map idea in the earlier post. Great idea!

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Originally posted by Karl Anderson:

I have a thought about borg spotting, (a problem that also plagues Close Combat, my game of choice for many years).Excuse me if I repeat an idea, but I've been reading all afternoon on this forum and haven't come across it. Lots of very interesting discussion though!

A simple adjustment to spotting might be be able to see all spotted units only when the player is not clicked on a friendly unit. Clicking on a given unit would light up only those enemy contacts currently seen by that specific unit. Combat results could be specific to that unit's degree of identification, which might be very different from a neighboring friendly.

I recently read an old post where the person suggested exactly that to one of the designers. It seems that long ago, there was quite an exchange between the designers and people who appear to be advising the company but not employees.

In any case, the idea was shot down and the party line was that it was not a absolute spotting fix so therefore not good enough.

But just to make sure you are saying that this only happens during the orders planning phase correct? The game would then do an LOS check at this point?

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