Is this gamey or realistic?

[WEAPON42]

When playing a human opponent recently I was defending a small village.I was aproximatley in the center of town and rushed to the edge and torched up some prime cover wher he might advance to.This made my opponent somewhat upset.My question is does he have a right to be upset or was this a real ww2 tactic?If it was not a real tactic can someone please tell me why?It seems to make perfect real world sense when you are on defense and outnumbered?

[Gates-slut]

As the answers start to roll in you will find that the opinions ae mixed.

I am one who falls into the "denying the enemy cover and concealment by torching it" is NOT gamey.

Someone will come along shortly and present an argument as to why it IS gamey.

I suspect that relatively soon there will be a discussion on exactly what you mean by "gamey."

one of the defenitions of "gamey" is using your knowledge of the way the game engine and mechanics work to your advantage by exploiting the neccesarily abstracted bits. Using this loose definition "denying the enemy cover and concealment by torching it" ALSO is not gamey as you really aren't using game mechanics to your advantage.

Is it realistic? Bet you a nickle that some will say it is and some will say it isn't.

Discuss your thoughts on gameyness and troop selection and what are exceptable parameters with your human opponents before you play and you can avoid upset. Find people who have similar values regarding these topics and play them. Avoid those who have different gaminess values or agree to play by one person's value system prior to commencement of hostilities. That is the best way to avoid actual off board hostilities.

Hope this helps.

Gates-slut

[Captain Wacky]

Your opponent is a spaz. For $20 I'll make sure you never hear any bitching from him again. He may walk with a slight to moderate limp though

[Croda]

Slut

Nice sig.

Who said that?

By the way...

Not gamey. If his entire attack plan revolved around using that cover, then he was screwed from go.

[JasonC]

In a CM scenario, you can't sit and wait 4 hours for the fires to burn down and then attack into the rubble. In a CM scenario, you are given precise information that, out of five years of war over whole continents, the enemy shall attack this particular village in precisely the next 30 minutes, and if not finished within 30 minutes will go off and cry. In CM, fires begin instantly, blaze forever, and are impassable. But you can't start them with a zippo, only a flamethrower or lucky HE round, or occasional backblast inside a building.

None of the above has anything to do with reality. Yes, torching the cover at the start is gamey. Waiting for the enemy to arrive in the cover, and then torching -him- with flamethrowers, and perhaps sending up the cover with it, is fine.

Ideally, cleared field of fire tiles might be bought as fortifications, like wire or mines are now, and would reduce pines or woods to scattered trees, trees to brush, brush or wheat to clear, and rubble buildings if placed on top of them.

But the FT pyromaniac's alternative to that ideal, is not in the least realistic. Anybody who does it regularly deserves to be buried in a swarm of 8 inch artillery shells, overrun by swarms of M8HMCs or Hetzers, or shot to bits by 37mm Flakwagen conventions.

[flamingknives]

Granted you may not know exactly when the enemy is on his way, but if you spot a battalion of infantry heading for your village then it seems perfectly reasonable that you would deny the enemy cover - you paid for those FTs.

Anyway - you do seem to know that there is an assault in the offing, as all your men are sitting in foxholes with weapons ready, and not having lunch, sleeping or playing cards

Regardless, CM is a game, and doesn't allow some things that were possible in real life (blowing trees to break up columns, booby trapping houses etc) Flaming cover is simply a tactic, and if your opponent complains because he didn't think of it, that implies poor sportsmanship. If you don't want it to happen, say so before the game, otherwise assume it's gloves off and anything goes

[Monty's Double]

I'm with the slut. Nothing is gamey unitl you have agreed it is. In a recent PBEM game I gently ribbed my opponent about his edgehugging. He replied that it had never ocurred to him that this could be considered gamey, and consenting adults that we are we agreed to carry on, but that next time we'd use a bigger map and shorten the game length to discourage said activity. Both happy, both dummies still firmly in mouth. If you were playing in a tournament you might expect to have some published house rules, but part of the joy of friendly games is finding out what other people find offensive. So, burn away I say, but if your opponent objects, either agree not to do it in future, or play somebody else.

[newlife]

next time, wait in the second row of buildings with your FT, wait till he occupies the first and set them ablaze then and see if he prefers that tactic. Either that or play a second game with him on defense and allow him to purchase all the FTs he wants to.

Pete

[Wreck]

Gamey. I agree with the points Jason makes.

However, if you did not agree not to do it, it can also be seen as clever. I don't mind people doing it with man-packed flamers, since they have little fuel and are a point-sink in any case; it makes up. I mind it with vehicle flamers, which have tens of shots, range, and which are damned cheap. These days I routinely ask for no vehicle flamethrowers as a condition to play, just as I ask for no armed soft vehicles, no SMG infantry, etc. Removing these things from the game subtracts little other than gameyness.

When I do get a vehicle flamer, as in a scenario, I restrict myself to only use area fire with it on squares that I know the enemy is in. Simple enough.

[Mark Dyson]

It's gamey. Totally. Lurk in wait outside his house, then Flame On just as he enters. That'd be realistic.

[Wreck]

Here is an shot from the game that turned me against vehicle flamers.

My enemy, the ever slimy Ghost342, got the bottom (west) side of the map; I came from the top. Both sides could get into their side of the wood in the initial charge. I then attached across, only to find wasps, so I backed out of LOS to my side. I then maneuvered my hetzers to act as support, and called for arty. But I could not see behind the wood, and Ghost just sat on his side and flamed it from end to end, an impassible wall. This put me in the position of having to go completely around the end of the wood, across 20m of open ground, charging into his guys in woods at point blank range. Alternatively I could push into the center, but of course Ghost by that time had the majority of his force there, since he only needed a handful to hold his right.

Clever play, or slimy? I would say both.

[Bruno Weiss]

Ofcourse it isn't gamey, anymore than the game itself is gamey. I've had opponents do precisely the same thing to wit, I simply found another avenue of approach. As someone pointed out, if your action ruined his whole plan then it wasn't much of a plan to start with.

[ February 13, 2002, 12:56 PM: Message edited by: Bruno Weiss ]

[Gen-x87H]

"Using this loose definition "denying the enemy cover and concealment by torching it" ALSO is not gamey as you really aren't using game mechanics to your advantage. "

The problem is when you torch the tile it makes it completely impassable. That is using the games mechanics to an advantage. This is not realistic. In theory if you had enough flame tanks or throwers you could flame a line across the map and prevent your enemy from ever firing a shot at you.

When did the Germans or Americans ever have the ability to light up entire areas of groud and then string them together in order to stop the advancing enemy?

This tactic is found to be guilty of gamey.

Gen

[Thermopylae]

I have always always, always believed this to a massively gamey technique. Your men don't want to be in a burning village any more than your enemy's, so if you randomly light up your location, real fires with real soldiers would probably end with the attacker just advancing over the charred rubble you had to abandon.

[lassner.1]

Couldn't disagree more: its decidely NOT gamey.

[xerxes]

Great pic there Wreck.

I do believe I found a photo of something similar just the other day.

:rummage:

:rummage:

Aha!

It's labeled Dresden. I think that was a German city attacked by a horde of wasps manned by some drunk brits or something. It's all burning. So, there's proof - waspish walls of flame are not gamey!

_____________________

But seriously now, creating a wall of flame is gamey as in it abuses well-known modelling weaknesses in CM. Whether that's bad or clever is entirely up to the two players in the game.

Gamey doesn't equal bad, anymore than historical equals good. They're just different, and people often prefer one over the other.

And just like an electrical fire and water, gamey and historical don't mix.

-marc

[Gen-x87H]

Couldn't disagree more: its decidely NOT gamey"

Tell me what about this technique is realistic and not taking advantage of the fact that the game engine applies situations to an entire tile instead of an area inside the tile. Ya I throw down some flame and suddenly a 20X20=400 meters of area is just ablaze, impassable, and never ending.

Gen

[CMplayer]

It's gamey because fire is not modelled in detail in CMBO. In the image above you have allies hunkered down on the VL behind a wall of flame. What this comes down to is that they have started a forest fire in their own cover, but they know that it won't spread to where they are hiding. That is pure gameyness.

[Battlefront.com]

I gotta agree that this is "gamey". Totally unrealistic, and therefore it can be nothing but "gamey" by definition. To state for the record for the millionth time... Gamey does not equal Bad, Historical equal Good. But that does not make it any less unrealistic.

CMplayer will be so happy to know that fires spread in CMBB, so Wreck would happily see Ghost's troops lose their cover as they run away

Fire is not meant to be a tool of war like currently used. It is supposed to be an unintended consequence of a realistic action. Setting fire to an enemy occupied building with a flamethrower MIGHT be realistic (depends on higher level goals). Setting fire to buildings prior to their occupation is not realistic. This was done in war as part of "scorched earth", which was decidedly NOT a frontline action.

Steve

[murpes]

Originally posted by Gates-slut:

As the answers start to roll in you will find that the opinions ae mixed.

I am one who falls into the "denying the enemy cover and concealment by torching it" is NOT gamey.

Someone will come along shortly and present an argument as to why it IS gamey.

I suspect that relatively soon there will be a discussion on exactly what you mean by "gamey."

(snip)

Gates-slut

heh. good call.

[jshandorf]

The way I see it is that you said he "might" advance to that position so you flamed it up. The way I see it is that you are using the game engines representation of an "area on fire" in a gamey way. The reason is that in CMBO squares on fire are completly impassable, which is totally unrealistic.

Fire is a variable, and areas that are on fire behave differently. Some rage out of control and are totally impassable while some just burn alittle and alow even infantry to carefully pick thier way through. So in effect you are using the "impassable barrier" effect of fire in CM to your advandtage which falls under gamey.

Jeff

[ February 13, 2002, 06:04 PM: Message edited by: jshandorf ]

[newlife]

Originally posted by Big Time Software:

Fire is not meant to be a tool of war like currently used. It is supposed to be an unintended consequence of a realistic action. Setting fire to an enemy occupied building with a flamethrower MIGHT be realistic (depends on higher level goals). Setting fire to buildings prior to their occupation is not realistic. This was done in war as part of "scorched earth", which was decidedly NOT a frontline action.

Steve

Sun Tzu gave a whole chapter to the use of fire as a tool in war. Thankfully CMBB will include the spread of fire by wind and therefor Sun Tzu's advicse on fire will be usable (i.e. Don't piss into the wind). I know that what your saying is fire was supposed to be a side product in CM, but a good tactician ues whatever is available.

Hey Steve, on calm days will fire spread randomly? Now THAT will be fun. The other related question is will wind change randomly. I can see why that might not be modeled for coding reasons, but you can realistically expect a wind shift at a moments notice. Not likely, but possible, and would give those pyros out there something to think about. Either that or have the random fire spread against the wind as long as the wind isn't very strong.

Pete

[BeauCoupDinkyDau]

US troops burned both cover and concealment for enemy troops in the Pacific and later in Nam. I think it is an excellent use (and one of the intended uses) of flamethrowers IMHO.

[acrashb]

From one of my favourite games:

This turned an infantry fight into an armour and machine gun fight. Since I brought armour and machine guns and my opponent didn't... his troops didn't last long advancing up the open streets.

Flame in buildings is adequately modelled. It's too hot to get in or near, and it lasts a while. Spreading is an issue, and CMBB will address this.

Moreover, flame vehicles (most of them) are lightly armoured and vulnerable to counter attack. An aggresive response (this was a meeting engagement) would have wasted all my flame HT's and dramatically changed the outcome.

Not always acceptable: some people go nuts, so I know who I play and adapt. If we get one game where I do something they think is outrageous, I don't do it again.

'know your opponent', and then enjoy the crackling warmth of the flames. Or play in wet conditions and don't worry about it.

[Gates-slut]

Originally posted by murpes:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Gates-slut:

As the answers start to roll in you will find that the opinions ae mixed.

I am one who falls into the "denying the enemy cover and concealment by torching it" is NOT gamey.

Someone will come along shortly and present an argument as to why it IS gamey.

I suspect that relatively soon there will be a discussion on exactly what you mean by "gamey."

(snip)

Gates-slut

heh. good call.</font>