CM: The Painful Road Movement

[kump]

Movement Plotting - Roads

I’ve searched, can’t find. I’ve checked CMBB FAQ, can’t find.

Please, don’t take the following as a slam on my favorite all time game. Its just little ole’ me making some noise to call attention to an aspect of CM that I think could take a little more chrome.

One of the things a CM player must resign themselves to doing is a lot of move plotting, especially for the attacker. Once battle starts and the “front” forms, this is interesting and fun. This is tactical plotting for this post, though many may consider all movement in CM as tactical. Even before the action starts, its interesting by deciding what goes where and what flank, what tree line, what hull down positions, etc..

But its the strategic plotting that I find monotonous and sometimes down right irritating. That’s right. Another word for strategic plotting, road movement. You know it, you’ve seen it, you’ve had to correct for it. Road movement. The reinforcements appear and you have to plot every turn, every bend, every curve, till the troops get to the point where you take them off the road and start the actual tactical plotting. That is when it gets interesting. But up to that point? And after the twenty fourth unit I’m plotting, I’m almost a clicking zombie.

Its not just that I have to plot every little thing for each unit over the same stretch of road again and again, but the TacAI can’t drive or march on roads! I mean, how many times have you plotted a multiple turn road for quite a stretch to find the TacAI deletes the next waypoint because it went bump into another vehicle, thereby driving off into scattered woods! At the end of the turn, you have to re-plot the entire path again, the first waypoint to get it back on the road, then repeat the previous turn plot.

Even if all the units are at the same experience level (and I groan when they are not), there is some randomness to when vehicles start moving. Argh!

IMPROVEMENT #1

It would be real nice to have a “road move” command for the TacAI. It means, stop when path is blocked by active vehicle (not wreck) and remain stopped until way is clear. Do not delete, add, or adjust waypoints. Remain in place unless come under fire, then use self defense TacAI mode. If I change my mind, I’ll cancel the move order later. But please, stay on the road!

ALTERNATE IMPROVMENT #1

Leave the current the way it is, but if the “bump” occurs on the road, then pause a bit, and try again. Do not delete, map new, or move waypoints, unless off road.

IMPROVEMENT #2

The other more difficult thing that would be nice is for me to group a whole mess of units (reinforcements usually), issue strategic or road move, and select a point on the map to which they must go. Maybe the point selected must be a connected road. This would require the TacAI to intelligently set waypoints that would take the fastest road movement possible to the desired location.

I learned to live with it the way it is, even in the winter battles. But it doesn’t hurt to complain, cry, beg, sweet talk, or what ever a fan has to do, to call attention to an aspect of the game that I don’t think gets a lot of attention.

Hope this wasn't too negative a post. CM is still a dream come true and I love it as it now stands. But everything can get better, no?

Now where are those reinforcements? I’d gladly plot road movement till the cows come home, because I’m getting murdered at this particular moment.

[Treeburst155]

Road movement for large groups of vehicles can be very tedious, but it's also very rewarding to watch it all work out. I've come to really love it. I only have fender benders now when the enemy interferes. I'm just a super-micro-manager at heart, I think. I consider convoy movement a game within the game. If I have a collision, I lose the little game. If I don't, it looks oh so beautiful watching two dozen vehicles operate in complete harmony in close proximity to one another.

Treeburst155 out.

[ July 02, 2002, 11:20 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

[Sybaris Angst]

Yeah, what Kump says.

[ July 02, 2002, 11:19 PM: Message edited by: Sybaris Angst ]

[zukkov]

road movement for large columns is tedious indeed. i was wondering how you micro-managers handle vehicles of different experience levels on the road. easy enough i suppose if it's at the start of the game where you can place them according to their experience. but what about reinforcents?

[chrisl]

Originally posted by zukkov:

i was wondering how you micro-managers handle vehicles of different experience levels on the road.

A combination of multiple paths and pause orders. I generally do this with "show movement paths" turned on and the scale set to x1 so I can get the real size of vehicles, and more importantly, obstacles like wrecks. I then will plot one set of vehicles along one road edge, another set more in the middle, and another set on the other road edge. Sometimes I stagger vehicles in the same group so that if one overtakes the next it will pass, rather than bump. It also helps to have enough waypoints that you can slide the parallel paths sideways to avoid wrecks as your vehicles get shot while moving in the line.

[Michael Emrys]

I endorse kump's suggestion. But I have to say that this kind of thing has rarely (to the point of almost never) been a problem for me. That's because I usually play with a company or two of forces and never more than a reinforced battalion, which is the size force CM was designed to handle. Taking on more should be clearly understood to be done at your own risk.

Secondly, I rarely have a lot of vehicles, and those that I have are seldom going very far by road or in large groups. That said, I nevertheless agree that the capability should be present in the game.

Finally, even when I need to move a column down a road or a bunch of vehicles through a tight bottleneck, I seldom have problems because I try to give an ample space cushion between vehicles to allow for little irregularities in their movement rates. Judicious interspersing of Move and Fast commands also helps to get them in proper line at the start so nobody is running up on anybody else's bumper.

I truly suspect that most of the complaints heard on this subject are due to players' attempts to excessively and ahistorically compact their columns into insufficient roadspace. ["Maintain your interval!"]

Michael

[ July 03, 2002, 04:14 AM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]

[lcm1947]

I certainly agree with you kump on this subject and unless I'm wrong they said something about fixing or at least improveing this in CMBB. Or just wishful thinking on my part. Hell, there's been so much talk about CMBB I can't remember what is going to be in the game and what was only suggested/asked for and shot down. I also however like emrys somewhat limit the size of my battles to a large degree due to this problem and or pain in the ass. Now when I do however have to move 6 or 7 vehicles down a road I do what chrisl does in that I plot some down the right, some down the middle and rest down the left of the road.

[JMcGuire]

It makes bridge crossing a pain (weirdly, more so when you're not under fire, since you're more likely to be moving in groups), and my latest pet peeve, accidentally walking them too close to a line of buildings ("shopping" -- CM replots the moves to bob in and out of EVERY building... drives me nuts...)