operations very weak in CMBO, improved in CMBB ?

[LGMB]

Soldiers,

Oi! This is getting mighty complex. As I've stated before, I would love to see operations treated as multiphased battles (essentailly what they are now, but with a few minor changes). I'd like to be able to place objective flags, as they realy do give the players/player an idea of what to shoot for, and more importanlly, what will be heavily defended by the computer. I'd like to see shorter battles, or the ability to set varaible turns for operations (maybe 5 turns instead of 10 min- and the abiltiy to randomize the endings, so you could simulate quick withdrawls, or prolonged firefights, etc).

[von Murrin]

This has to be my most watched topic. I think I've read nearly every post in every Op thread, as they are what I would be playing most. So, after reading much and thinking long, here's my take on Ops:

Anybody here (having posted that is) played the HASL modules? I think the system for establishing setup zones in the KGP modules was extremely good.

For those who may not know what the heck I'm talking about, the idea is that there is no real front line. Essentially, every key point on the map that you occupied or otherwise controlled gave you a setup zone of a certain diameter. In the case of overlapping opposing zones, you got no-man's land. There were rules for isolation, etc., but that's not my concern here.

What was interesting was that scattered units tended to get moved to the larger areas, and the setup areas would eventually look like a bunch of overlapping circles. Isolated units tended to die and hence not be a problem. The end result was that the setup zones for the next battle looked very like a standard, real company deployment.

Does any of this make sense so far?

So here's my thought:

Would it be possible to somehow "tag" units with the ability to project an "area of influence" that, in combination with other units, determine a setup zone? The idea here would be that you would need more than just a handful of units to create the zone (the more the greater the diameter is where I'm going here), and all the scattered ones would just be moved to the nearest one. Isolated units would be moved at loss, or just eliminated if they are too small. As for map advancement, smaller groups that might not realistically be expected to hold in the rear would just be eliminated outright.

I realize this would probably be an ungodly nightmare to do, but what of it? Has it been tried? Has it been brought up before and discarded? Is it possible that I thought of something no one else has?

As a further disclaimer, I do realize that it's way too late to expect anything even remotely close to this in CMBB, but what about in an engine rewrite? Aside from adding flags in Ops, this is something that has been growing in my mind for some time. So, thoughts anyone?

Nathanael

[PeterNZer]

Originally posted by wwb_99:

Play Steckenroth Roadblock, avaliable at The Scenario Depot and find out.

WWB

Steckenroth?? I bet you got the name from Warphead, right?

[kipanderson]

von Murrin,

yup, I have all the ASL modules, including KGP. I agree that the system you describe may well have something going for it. Before the re-write BTS would do well to just take a look at how some of the Historic Advanced Squad Leader games handled what CM calls operations. However, I do sympathise with Steve and co. It must be very difficult/impossible to code a system that can handle all situations.

All the best,

Kip.

[ February 15, 2002, 06:37 AM: Message edited by: kipanderson ]

[WWB]

Yes, Lindan, I did get that name from Warpie. He took great pleasure in reducing it to rubble.

I too am glad we had a nice, civil debate on this subject. Very rare on this BBS, and all the more constructive.

I too hope for massive improvements in the Operations Engine for CMII, but lets worry about the task at hand: CMBB.

Steve, I claimed in a previous post that I had one last request, but I lied. I was drinking heavily and discovered one more little, simple expansion which would help designers greatly: Give us more setup zone colors. 3 is not enough, especially for larger battles. Moreover, it would help one 'guide' the AI's deployment a bit more. I suspect this is a bit more involved than my last couple suggestions, but would be well worth it in the long run.

Thanks for listening.

WWB

[Battlefront.com]

Misc. answers...

CMBB supports variable battle turn endings. Not sure if this extends to Operations or not. Could be some problems there. However, we have made several other changes regarding end game stuff so that might do the trick for you indirectly.

The original system for figuring out a frontline was actually quite simple and sound. However, in reality it was a bear to program. One benefit of a paper and dice game is that both players can agree (hehe... in theory!) about how to deal with oddball situations. For us, it has to be coded or else it screws things up. What we experienced was a lot of oddball things which, given time, could have been coded around. But time was something we did not have, so it got ripped out.

For the game rewrite we are planning on redoing Operations from the ground up (just like everything else). While we like Operations, and don't find them to be as bad as some think they are, we definately agree there is much room for improvement.

More Setup Areas? Hehe... I wanted that from the very first time I thought up the feature But for whatever reason Charles decided against having more than 3 per side. Not sure if that can be changed or not, but I certainly would be in favor of it (as I was 3 years ago! )

Steve

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Big Time Software:

Misc. answers...

More Setup Areas? Hehe... I wanted that from the very first time I thought up the feature But for whatever reason Charles decided against having more than 3 per side. Not sure if that can be changed or not, but I certainly would be in favor of it (as I was 3 years ago! )

Steve

You've already adressed the number of reinforcement slots - basically, the way I see it, more is more...The more reinforcement slots, setup zones, exit zones (why only one board edge? Why only one player? Why the entire board edge instead of specific zones), the game supports, the more flexibility and hence creativity the scenario designer has in the long run.

[WWB]

Originally posted by Big Time Software:

Misc. answers...

More Setup Areas? Hehe... I wanted that from the very first time I thought up the feature But for whatever reason Charles decided against having more than 3 per side. Not sure if that can be changed or not, but I certainly would be in favor of it (as I was 3 years ago! )

Steve

I think 3 setup zones might have made sense 3 years back, when 1000-1500 point battles was in the mid- to high- end of engagement sizes. But now, that has become the low end, with most scenarios and many qbs being significantly larger. I can hardly count the number of times I sat there, stared at the map, and wished I had but one more color to make this deployment work.

I understand that you might well run into the problem of a lack of distinctive colors. Most of us here are males, and see about 8 colors according to reports, but I am sure we can handle it somehow.

Another thing has come to mind: In CMBO, a cease-fire during an operation just makes one play that battle over. It would be nice if one could cease-fire their way into the next battle.

I wholeheartedly agree with Michael's statements above. He pretty much sums up my main point: give us more options and we designers will make you look real good.

WWB

WWB

[russellmz]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

I'm wondering (and yes this is TOTALLY unrelated to this thread) would there be a way to somehow flag threads the BTS adminstrators are posting in?

I would like to read the posts in threads where I know Steve or Dan or Matt or Charles or Martin (did I miss anyone?) are posting.

As it is now I have search through all active threads to find comments from BTS.

Just a Thought

-tom w

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=recent_user_posts;u=00000042

here is steve's. you can find it in tiny text in his profile: "View recent posts"

can do the same for charles, madmatt etc

[SlowMotion]

About all this more stuff: can you imagine the extra thrill if things like exit zones and target flags could be decided and told to the player in the middle of the game, not in the beginning? The initial task could be to move your men to some area. Once arriving there (or after some number of turns) you would receive new orders and were allowed to see new flags/what_ever related to those orders.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by wwb_99:

give us more options and we designers will make you look real good.

heehee...how about flag control points that can be set by the scenario designer?

Options to include:

a) standard points from 0 to 10000 - would be used in conjunction with exit and casualty VP

how about a percentage option from 1 to 100?

Say Flag A is designated as worth 50 percent of all victory points awarded. You take the Axis VP (say 500 points through enemy casualties and friendly exits) and the Allied VP (say 300 via enemy casualties).

You have 800 points - Flag A has been designated as 50 percent of this, so if neither side has Flag A, the score is 500 to 300 in favour of Axis.

If the Axis controls Flag A, they have 1200 points to 300.

If the Allies control Flag A, then the score is 700 to 500 in their favour...

Or something like that??

It would be easier to use this, then to try and figure out how many "points" each side has and then put a proper amount of flags out to balance things, especially with the confusion we've seen over out casualty and exit points "really" work.

c) Flags only counting as points for one side or another - if they count only as, say, 500 points per flag for the defender, and 0 for the attacker, the attacker can concentrate on killing enemy units or driving them off the flags and not worry about garrisoning them in an attempt to get extra points

Well, the more I look at this, the more I realize it must have all been discussed before, but yeah - flexibility is good, and the more flexible and entertaining the scenarios are, the better BTS looks, the better sales will be, and the more we all benefit.

[WWB]

Michael,

All that stuff is very sound, but we have to think in terms of what is possible. Now, I do not have a copy of cmbb, or intimiate knowlege of the code, or can speak for Steve. But I suspect that anything like messing with flag values would be difficult to do, because once you mess with that, you have to tell the AI how to deal with it, and that can become quite painful and time-consuming. I think Steve would call it a "Black-Hole for our time."

That said, some more options with flag values would be cool. Such as:

1) Currently you can have only one active Dynamic Flag, and you can only have dynamic flags on a map. It would be nice to have more than one active flag, especially given the nature of the AI, which works alot better when led by a series of flags. And larger battles need multiple flags to keep things spaced out.

2) Probably not do-able, but what about a 200 point 'Medium' flag to help one flesh things out and give yet another option. This would definitely involve some AI coding as well, to get it to see the 'middle' value, but it might be simpler than having complex sliding scales.

WWB

[Tomb]

Hmm I would suggest perhaps the wrong thing is being attempted or done in “operations”

First what is a front line…. Not the neat little line beloved of news papers or what is drawn in CMBO ..there is no way you would give up an advantages postion the way it occurs in CMBO as is.

The more modern terms of FLOT and FEBA are nearer to reality . what would perhaps be a more accurate way in CMBO is to link the placement of troops to flag capture in that an area surouding the “flag” is owned by which ever side has it..the other is forced to withdraw.. it behoves the designer to place flags on important tactical postions…tops of hills dominating buildings..fortifications etc. this would be more “realistic” as especially at this tactical scale the troops are not standing shoulder to shoulder and thier is no front line as such since the troops are intermingled in the Forward Edge of the Battle Area ..key postions would be largley tactical in nature ..and so would supply…perhaps one flag at your edge could be your line of supply..lose it and your units are not resupplied or are forced to withdraw , It would also be obvious that if you own no key points “flags” you are forced to withdraw (ala CC) since most units will be unlikely to remain out of supply and will generally retreat to obtain supply ..in the special circumstances such as para drop etc where you start out of supply they perhaps allow some two or three “battles” allowed in an out of supply situation ..but then I would argue that even companys would have a supply line back to some battlion source etc. not every man would carry every round the unit had, some would be left at their smaller unit areas an MG fires a lot of ammo..more than perhaps a well supplied team could carry..and even the longest battles in CMBO are what less than two hours..no way would a unit fire or even be able to carry every round the unit had in two hours and be “out of supply” ..their would be a constant stream of supply trucks every two hours ..not likely..the supplies are disbursed from higher echelon units to the lower ones during the course of action are are availble over a longer period than two hours… its more likely to be days supply than hours . …if you insist in staying “out of supply” then those days will count down and may well become hours ..and eventualy withdrawal or surrender for the player concerned. Supply need not be checked for every unit but for the map…is the supply link open yes = in supply, no = not, if you want to keep it dead simple force the unit out of supply to withdraw or add a number of battles in an operation where this may be so..then forced to withdraw .

In CMBO I actually don’t play for the flags since they opposing player is often drawn to them like a moth to a flame..its very advantages to set up your fire lanes and arty strike points on them..after you have caused sufficant damage, him owning them wont make up for the losses he suffered getting them ..how diiferent that would look if in an operation I knew he would be setting up their..the game is about points and that means killing things ..not fighting for position..unless the postion allow you to kill even more..the flag just makes it conveniant so you know where he is heading…in all but a small battle the flags are worthless as such.

CC had its problems but in CC 4 they did sort the bridge problem out..hope fully something that will be sorted for CMBB since its rather good to shoot at the player as he drives through his own burning tanks but cant shoot through them..but you can hit him as his nose pokes through..a very intersting pile of burnt tanks do not block the bridge or stop inf passing through ..not just CC has problems with bridges second weakness is to fire at 90 degrees to a bridge or line of travel since tanks in CMBO have the limitation of pointing the turret in the direction of travel and not in the direction of a known threat ..the player needs the “rotate turret “ command I feel …the turrent will turn in CMBO..not in time usually but if you could have your turret pointing down an anticpated threat line (rotate to)…you would be more tank than Stug with a turret..

thats my thoughts on tactical manovering and supply

Shall we save operational manovering and supply for another time

I gotta go

Tomb

[von Murrin]

Originally posted by Big Time Software:

...The original system for figuring out a frontline was actually quite simple and sound. However, in reality it was a bear to program. One benefit of a paper and dice game is that both players can agree (hehe... in theory!) about how to deal with oddball situations. For us, it has to be coded or else it screws things up. What we experienced was a lot of oddball things which, given time, could have been coded around. But time was something we did not have, so it got ripped out.

For the game rewrite we are planning on redoing Operations from the ground up (just like everything else). While we like Operations, and don't find them to be as bad as some think they are, we definately agree there is much room for improvement...

Steve

Thanks, that pretty much answers all my questions.

Nathanael

[Battlefront.com]

Tomb

.there is no way you would give up an advantages postion the way it occurs in CMBO as is.

While I agree that the way CM does things is far too arbitrary, it is foolish to argue that once a guy takes a square inch of territory that he is wedded to it for the next hour or so inbetween battles. That is just not how things work in the real battlefields, then and now.

What might be "advantageous" at the end of one battle might be a VERY bad place to be soon there after. It could also be that where you wound up on the last turn is NOT where you wanted to be at all. Therefore, defining what "advantageous" is does not come down to a simple "I am here, therefore it is important to be here" mentality. Which is exactly what we had problems coding.

what would perhaps be a more accurate way in CMBO is to link the placement of troops to flag capture in that an area surouding the “flag” is owned by which ever side has it..the other is forced to withdraw.. it behoves the designer to place flags on important tactical postions…tops of hills dominating buildings..fortifications etc. this would be more “realistic”

I beg to differ. It would reduce the map to flag hopping and nothing more. Totally unrealistic unless you have a flag on every tuft of dirt. Ironically, your suggestion would always force someone to move from their "advantagous" positions which you appear certain that they never left. Well, again unless you had flags on every tuft of dirt.

and so would supply…perhaps one flag at your edge could be your line of supply..lose it and your units are not resupplied or are forced to withdraw ,

This sounds mighty gamey to me. Rush that tank to the rear and sit on his supply flag, then everything else crumbles. Not at all realistic. Units often didn't even know when they were cut off for some time. And when they did, they didn't all just pick up and go home, abandoning their "advantageous" positions. Nope, they sent someone from one side or the other (or both) of the blockage to deal with it. Or they simply got their supply from some other route.

It would also be obvious that if you own no key points “flags” you are forced to withdraw (ala CC) since most units will be unlikely to remain out of supply and will generally retreat to obtain supply

Which is exactly why we made the decision to go with a straight frontline rather than a crooked one which would likely leave units out of supply.

not every man would carry every round the unit had, some would be left at their smaller unit areas an MG fires a lot of ammo..more than perhaps a well supplied team could carry.

The loadout for CM units is based on what each man was supposed to carry into combat. You are correct that a smaller loadout was kept by each of the next higher commands. This is not simulated at all because the typical battle duration is supposed to be short. Also note that no small arms units EVER run out of ammo, which is an abstraction (of course) to simulate the fact that infantry generally always found ways to have at least a shot or two ready to go.

and even the longest battles in CMBO are what less than two hours..no way would a unit fire or even be able to carry every round the unit had in two hours and be “out of supply”

The longer battle idea was not our doing I think the original max length was 60 minutes. But some folks wanted to create HUGE maps in bad weather where it took about that long just to come into contact with the enemy. People should not play with that game length unless they know what they are doing in terms of sceanrio design. For us, we suggest the average battle length to be between 30-60 turns, terrain/weather/size dependent.

In CMBO I actually don’t play for the flags

Good thinking. Victory conditions were intentionally designed to be of secondary importance. Real life has no flags to capture, but they are good game way to indicate specific areas of abstract higher importance. However, if you play well you can win a battle without being in possession of all, or even any, flags. And that is the way it should be.

CC had its problems but in CC 4 they did sort the bridge problem out..

Oh boy I know a lot of people (and game reviewers ) that would STRONGLY disagree that core problems were addressed (which was my previous point, not just about bridges). However, I distinctly remember a review of CC4 panning it because of the inability to cross tanks over bridges with any degree of certainty WITHOUT micromanaging their paths. Which of course meant that the player wasn't doing anything else Not sure if this was fixed in later patches, but it shouldn't have been there seeing as this was the FOURTH game using the same engine.

I think many gamers felt that the tactical level battle of CC was largely frozen after CC2 and the bulk of development effort after that was on the strategic layer. Yet I know that many people had serious complaints about CC4's strategic layer, and few people I know of played CC5 (that is not all Atomic's fault as their publisher abandoned it). So this is again a good example of why we shouldn't attempt this. Remember, CMBO is our FIRST release, not our FOURTH or FIFTH.

hope fully something that will be sorted for CMBB since its rather good to shoot at the player as he drives through his own burning tanks but cant shoot through them..but you can hit him as his nose pokes through..a very intersting pile of burnt tanks do not block the bridge or stop inf passing through

Not sure what this all means since in CMBO destroyed vehicles do block motion and, if on fire, block LOS. This works both ways so neither side has an advantage or disadvantage while moving through, near, around, or whatever.

..not just CC has problems with bridges second weakness is to fire at 90 degrees to a bridge or line of travel since tanks in CMBO have the limitation of pointing the turret in the direction of travel and not in the direction of a known threat ..the player needs the “rotate turret “ command I feel …the turrent will turn in CMBO..not in time usually but if you could have your turret pointing down an anticpated threat line (rotate to)…you would be more tank than Stug with a turret..

CMBB now allows the player to specifically rotate just the turret. However, if you think there is no difference between having a turreted tank and a non turreted tank in CMBO, I am at a total loss to understand that position. Sure, you can't specifically order your turret to turn 90 to engage a target. But the TacAI will do that for you when the situation arises. And in GENERAL it is best to have your tank facing the threat because side armor on all tanks suck compared to their frontal armor. So this is not as big of a problem in a real game as you make it out to be. Even now in CMBB with the ability to rotate the turret independently I can only think of needing to to this once or twice. I think you will find the same thing when you play it.

Steve

[Caesar]

Just a thought, you could possibly have 'Position' flags, set by the designer, that are invisible to the players (to prevent deliberate flag hopping). Once a player holds a position flag it would not be abandoned. You could even build in dependencies of one flag on others to simulate supply.

However - I am a programmer myself and attempting to stick new features into an almost complete project is called feature creep (at least here in NZ it is) Feature creep is like the bubonic plague to project deadlines and as I want CMBB NOW - please don't even consider adding any of these really cool ideas (that I keep reading on this board - not necessarily mine) if it means delaying my new toy. There's always Service Pack One for such things!

[killmore]

Originally posted by Big Time Software:

Killmore,

You have no idea how much this has been discussed both internally and externally. The simple truth is that we can not snap our fingers and spit out an export file. If we could, it would have been done last year when you and two others were harpping loudly for it It might happen in the future, but I can promise you it will NOT happen for CMBB 1.0.

Steve

Well - thanks for discussing it at least...

I am a bit suprised that it is hard to do but I understand - adding a feature that was never planned is sometimes very hard/time consuming...

I know it from my own experience...

[Cauldron]

Hy Folks,

This has to be the best discussion on campaigns to date, not least because Steve and others actually answer.

I just wonder if bronze would suit Steve, or would you prefer brushed gold.... :cool:

Please though folks don't make it a grab bag for "everything I ever wanted" , as far as I understand it the MAIN objective is to allow more flexability in how attacks happen ( more reinforcement slots, and more hopefully multiple directions of attack))and how the AI treats the end of a turn ( al la perimiters).

I should say I have no objection to a human having to draw the front line should it ever be coded that way.

I cannot stress enough for myself that "straight perimiters" ( appart from the fact that they favour the attacker) are what is killing it for

me. Maybe the KGP solution might work. IT IS THE UNITS THAT ARE IMPORTANT not the b$%*y flags.

I totally agree with Steve's view that the flags are an abstaction, the idea that perimiters or supply etc should depend on flag posession is just nuts. Why the hell would anyone want to control the top of a hill (atop a flag) only to be hit with 150mm OBA ?? Would you as a commander ask your men to commit suicide in this fashion???

The perimiter will have worked when it resembles what a normal commander would base the next days operation etc ...

I think that the new engine is already stepping in the right direction (what to base a front line on). The idea of incorporating encirclements is just too awsome for words !!!! [should it ever happen].

The FOW is something I am aslo keen about and THAT was fixed in BB !!!

So imagine what a dedicated rethink is going to be like

So PLEASE don't distract this discussion , stay focused people

The programer(s) is/are human not a fairy godmother .......

[Battlefront.com]

Caesar, we also call it "feature creep" in the US. Charles and I also have a specific term, which as far as I know we "intented", which is "scope creep". I think most people participating in this discussion have an idea of what this term means and why it is we actually had to coin a new saying

Any wargame, when you get down to it, is an artificial deliniation of real combat in terms of scope. No matter where someone wants to draw the line, someone else can always argue with near equal (or even better) vigor that the line should be drawn elsewhere. The key thing for a game designer, and even MORE key thing for a game developer (we are, of course, both) is to clearly define what the scope is and stick to it. Otherwise, things will turn to crap really quickly.

Killmore, we really do want to add this support. Trust me on that. So at some point it WILL exist, even though for certain it won't be in CMBB 1.0.

Cauldron, thanks for the additional commentary. I think you guys will be quite pleased with the changes we have announced (and others which have not) regarding how games play out vis a vis "outside" factors. CMBO did a great job with making sure that the game didn't boil down to flag grabs and other cheapshot moves, but of course since it was our first release there is certainly room for improvement. And "improved" is an understatement when looking at CMBB

Steve