What do we want in the next Combat Mission game

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Panzerman:

CMBO gave SMG's just as much ammo as rifles, but this was called unrealistic as well. BFC cannot win either way it seems.

Dammit. Tunrning history around a litte, are we, Panzerman?

We bashed CMBO SMG troops because they overrun enemy troops against constant heavy MG fire over open fields.

And we bashed CMBO ammo levels because the rifle sqauds couldn't fire longer than the SMG squads.

Nobody demanded reducing the SMG ammo load, in the "full ammo" battle settings no less, to something they can shoot in less than one minute.

Firing the full load that people were carrying through an MP40 in less than one minute was just not possible in real life, or realistic, much less a full squad doing it all at the same time.

[Pzman]

I know we didn't ask for it. What we did bash CMBO for lead to the current system though, did it not?

[Redwolf]

Uh, it's not our fault if BFC goes overboard with the ammo limitation. Nobody demanded a limitation to 25 ammo points, much less at the same time as an increase in maximum ammo points expended per turn.

I recollect the history of that pretty well, the public word was that long-range shots from rifle squads would count down less than one ammo point so that you could use them to do continuous supression at long range.

[ September 13, 2004, 08:34 PM: Message edited by: Redwolf ]

[Le Tondu]

Originally posted by Halberdiers:

"Can already be done. If you play a QB just load the auto save file in the quick battle when it asks to generate a map or load one.".............

Are you saying that this is useful in the middle of a TCP/IP or hotseat game?

[Halberdiers]

Le Tondu,

the post is not mine , but I think that Panzerman says that you can load a Quick Battle from a savegame of QB or a scenario. As it is.

[dieseltaylor]

Iron MAn rules as an option.

Fire for Efeect with Artillery.

PbemHelper to be integrated , as as option , into the game. Scenarios are not secure anyway so if you are trusting your opponent that much you may aswell benefit from PBEMHelpers trusted mode to get the most enjoymant[2 movies 2 moves per sent email]

Lastly - it seems very few people play CMAK at a minute a turn which is the real life speed. It does mean in the AI you trust giving long term orders to most of your force, really quite entertaining Cp?IP or better still LAN

[jadam]

What would be COOL!

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

Allow more than 1 player per side.

Each player may only control their assigned force.

This would include some command co-ordiantion challenges.

You might also have a key leader unit for each player. Elimination of this unit would introduce some command-control difficulties.

What would be LAME!

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

Please don't do an RTS/Simul-turn based combo as previously mentioned. It just ain't worth it!

[Sergei]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

Fire for Efeect with Artillery.

PbemHelper to be integrated , as as option , into the game. Scenarios are not secure anyway so if you are trusting your opponent that much you may aswell benefit from PBEMHelpers trusted mode to get the most enjoymant[2 movies 2 moves per sent email]

DT, what do you mean with fire for effect with artillery?

It has been suggested before that the PBEM process could be as safe as it is now and be as fast as PBEM trust mode, if the process was such that:

1) A plots

. . B plots, processes 1

2) A views 1, plots

. . B views 1, plots, processes 2

3) as 2

The best of two worlds?

[Pzman]

Originally posted by Halberdiers:

Le Tondu,

the post is not mine , but I think that Panzerman says that you can load a Quick Battle from a savegame of QB or a scenario. As it is.

Now if you guys would read the manual that came with the game you wouldn't have ask.

[dieseltaylor]

Sergei

More secure system but you only get one film and plot per e-mail : ) STill a major improvement though. : )

Having both would be ideal - one for trusted - and one for tounies etc.

Fire for Effect -- I think, probably wrongly - that you tell your battery to fire say 6 rounds and ceasefire. Particularly useful I would think with on-board aswell where small mortars can get through most of their ammo in two turns ...

[Sergei]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

Sergei

More secure system but you only get one film and plot per e-mail : ) STill a major improvement though. : )

But the way it is done with PBEM Helper is not any faster.

How many files need to be sent back and forth to complete a single turn is what matters. In the current CM way it is three files. PBEM Helper allows this to be squeezed into two files. The mechanism I mentioned would also do it with two files (you can't get below that!), but with security.

[Le Tondu]

Originally posted by Panzerman:

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

Le Tondu,

the post is not mine , but I think that Panzerman says that you can load a Quick Battle from a savegame of QB or a scenario. As it is.

Now if you guys would read the manual that came with the game you wouldn't have ask. </font>

[Philippe]

Irregular buildings and crooked streets.

As I understand it tiles will be a lot smaller in the next game, making this kind of thing a lot easier to model.

I was looking at a few different CMBO scenarios yesterday, and though part of the problem was uninspired map-making, some of the towns I looked at resembled American suburbs built out of shoe boxes. And I was using a good mod.

The problem is the shape. European towns are very irregular with twisty little streets and alleys. It's hard to show that when you only have to angles of streets to play with (45 degrees and 90 degrees) and the buildings are painfully rectangular. You can mitigate it somewhat by putting two buildings in an L-shape, but the fact remains that the design steers you into too many right angles, especially if you're a lazy designer.

So at very least, instead of having streets and roads running N, NE, and E, add NNE and ENE. And have a set of buildings with orientations to match. That in itself would produce a set of weird curves in the streets that would accomodate a lot of realistic irregularity.

Then, to make things a little more convincing, have a set of buildings that are not shaped like rectangles. What is probably needed are trapezoids and lozenges that would fit into some of the strange geometric shapes produced by the twistier streets, two stories or more since you would encounter these in urban areas. And for the country-side a few L-shaped buildings and long narrow barns and sheds would be helpful.

This won't keep the unimaginative from building 1500-year-old towns as rectangular grids, but it will make it a lot easier to follow an actual street plan if the designer takes the trouble to look for one. As it stands now there is often not much he can do even if he makes the effort.

[Pzman]

Originally posted by Le Tondu:

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

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

Le Tondu,

the post is not mine , but I think that Panzerman says that you can load a Quick Battle from a savegame of QB or a scenario. As it is.

Now if you guys would read the manual that came with the game you wouldn't have ask. </font>

[dieseltaylor]

sergei

"How many files need to be sent back and forth to complete a single turn is what matters. In the current CM way it is three files. PBEM Helper allows this to be squeezed into two files. The mechanism I mentioned would also do it with two files (you can't get below that!), but with security."

I agree with what you say - but you are ignoring trusted mode in PBEMHelper - that way you get two move turns and two movies every e-mail ----- TWICE as fast as your secure system.

I was astounded to find that people playing at the Proving Grounds were not automatically using it ---- testing scenarios surely is a trustworthy occupation and time testing should be precious. Also the ability to follow the thread of the battle without reloading previous files should not be underestimated!!

[Sergei]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

I agree with what you say - but you are ignoring trusted mode in PBEMHelper - that way you get two move turns and two movies every e-mail ----- TWICE as fast as your secure system.

No, it couldn't possibly be faster, because then it would require that the other player doesn't even give any orders - which would make it solitaire. With PBEM Helper it can be made to one turn per two files sent, instead of the normal three files sent - but it would be impossible to do it any faster, or you'd ignore the other player. See the explanations here.

[ September 15, 2004, 11:21 PM: Message edited by: Sergei ]

[dieseltaylor]

Sergei ----the link - it will not let me read your E drive!! : )

I swear that I get two movies and two moves per e-mail when using Helper in trusted mode. And so do my opponents!

[dieseltaylor]

As I cannot read your link the way trusted works is I receive an e-mail

I watch the movie

I do my move and a movie is generated

My opponents movie is run on a grey screen at 20 times speed

I get to see the new film from my point of view

I do my new orders and send the file

I assume my opponent gets "his greyed" movie to watch, plots his turn , his machine calculates the movie and my greyed out movie runs.

He then watches the movie, and plots his turn and sends it to me.

Beautifully elegant and time saving AND it also keeps track of staus of each of your games, puts the files into folders, and though I have not tried it you are meant to be able to cycle back through all the battle movies!!!!!

I have run 11 games at once, all with status either PLAY, WAIT, SEND - idiot proof.

[Ichthys]

I think perhaps there is a miscommunication over email counting. Two emails is one send and one receive -- so you're getting two turns per two emails.

[JonS]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

Fire for Effect -- I think, probably wrongly - that you tell your battery to fire say 6 rounds and ceasefire.

If you are talking about Real Life , then you're correct. Well, partially. Generally, when ordering FFE, the FO* will specify:

1) the number of rounds (per gun) which will be fired as fast as possible (in practical terms 8-10 rounds per gun per minute), or

2) the number of rounds (per gun) and the rate (the number of rounds per minute per gun), or

3) the rate (the number of rounds per minute per gun) which will be continued until the FO orders checkfire.

Standard rates are quite low - 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, with 2 and 3 being vanilla by far.

Quite what the current CM arty model is supposed to simulate - apart from providing a simple interface - is unclear.

What would be nice in future CMs would be to seperate the adjustment process from the FFE process. The player would then have the option to cut short or overide the adjustment process at their discretion (for example in an emergency), but would pay an accuracy penalty. At the completion of the adjustment process the player would explicitly order FFE by specifying a number of rounds and a rate. In this way, a target could be adjusted, then the battery left 'hanging' while the FO (=player) waits to order FFE at the appropriate time.

An additional option - or perhaps the default with the above as the option - is that the player selects a target, and may specify the rate and the number of rounds, then leaves it to the engine to go through the full adjustment process and then immediately switch to FFE automatically with the player selected settings. If the player chose not to specify a rate the engine would use the rates we currently see in CMBB/CMAK. If the player chose not to specify the number of rounds the engine would keep the FO firing until it ran out of ammo. IOW, by default the FO would behave exactly as we see now in CM, but the player has the option to apply considerably more control and finesse if they so wish.

Delays between initially ordering a targeting and receiving FFE could probably be upped too, but there is a difficult balance here between fidelity and playability. Battles in CM generally run far faster than ther historical conterparts (eg, Brecourt Manor took E/506th ~6 hours from go to whoa). Therefore, slowing down artillery response rates to historically justifiable times would paradoxically have the a-historic effect of over-neutering artillery.

Regards

JonS

* Usual caveat about this being particularly specific to RA Field Artillery (25-pr.) doctrine, with general applicability to other nations.

[Philippe]

Originally posted by JonS:

Battles in CM generally run far faster than ther historical conterparts (eg, Brecourt Manor took E/506th ~6 hours from go to whoa).

What I would like to see in the next CM is for battles to take place at their real pace, or at least at something closer to their real pace. This would mean making a lot of little changes along the way.

How can we have serious debates about the accuracy, rate of fire, and lethality of different weapons systems that really mean anything if the pace at which everything is occuring is distorted ?

It's up to the scenario designers to make their scenarios long or short enough, but the underlying system should be accurate enough to encourage realistic behavior.

But not too realistic. Much that goes on in war apparently consists of sitting around bored to tears waiting for something to happen (and hoping that it doesn't).

[JonS]

Originally posted by Philippe:

What I would like to see in the next CM is for battles to take place at their real pace, or at least at something closer to their real pace.

That puts you firmly in a very small minority.

[Pzman]

We have talked about this before. Yes some battles took place over days, but at the same time some were very high paced like in CM. A balance of the two, or a choice would be nice, but not necessarily possible for CM.

[Cthulhu Dreams]

Balancing QB prices to depend on the performance of the unit in the time period, rather than the current system which seems to ber constructed via a formula with no account of how good the thing actually is.

These prices are only to generate a balanced battle, and hould have nothing to realism.

[Cos]

Well I didn't read all 11 pages of this, so if someone's already mentioned this sorry.

Just played a scenario with a 150 mm gun in a trench doing fairly well, but could see that it was only a matter of time before I was going to be overrun by an infantry and armor push. So my crew and it's supporting infantry are taken prisoner with the gun intact with around 20 rounds left.

Figure in real life the crew would try to destory the the gun and ammo and retreat to the next defense line. Would be nice for an option to be able to abandon the gun and try to blow up the ammo dump. Wouldn't always work and could use a random count down clock once you give the order so you're not sure if and when it's going to blow up.