The only irritating thing about CM......

[Greg Scurlock]

Is having to move a colomn of vehicles over some distance especially when there are turns and twists in the roadway, path etc. It really caused me to tire of CMBO especially when there was city fighting with many AFV's involved. Nothing has changed in CMBB. I'm just one of those gamers that do not enjoy plotting the path individually through turns and/or various terraines types for any number of vehicles. I don't care if it's two or 15. If you give a movement order to a group, even if they start on a roadway, to move from this point to that, it ends up looking like something from a three stooges movie. Can anyone comment on the possibility of putting some sort of "move road column" order for vehicles so that they move at the same time, at the same speed, and follow the road and not leave it to run through scattered trees then move back to the road. At least until they are fired upon. :mad: You all know what I'm talking about. This may not be possible without some major engine change but the folks at Panther Games sure figured it out. Excuse my rant but otherwise I enjoy this game too much. :mad: :confused:

[MasterGoodale]

yeah this is true. I often find myself replotting paths to make them much more simple.

[JonS]

Originally posted by Greg Scurlock:

... city fighting ... Can anyone comment on the possibility of putting some sort of "move road column" order for vehicles so that they move at the same time, at the same speed, and follow the road ...

Yeah, that might be good, but think about this:

Say BFC included a 'follow road' command, and you use it in an open map to go from one side of the map to the other. There is only one road, so the unit follows the road. No problem.

Now, take the same order, and try and use it in a city. At the end of the block there is an intersection and another road. Which does the AI use? Well, it doesn't really know, so you tell it "at this intersection, go this way" with a way point. Which get's you to the end of the next block and the same problem comes up, so you put in another waypoint to tell it to go this way. And so on.

But how is that different to what we have now?

Granted, it overlooks the problem of column movement, but consider the real world situation that this is representing. Most posters saysomething along the lines of "hey, I can drive down the motorway with hundreds of other cars, and we all maintain our spacings and there's no problem". Except of course that isn't true - every day there are hundreds of crashes caused by people who couldn't maintain their spacing, and they were just driving down the motorway.

Now try the same activity within a km or so of someone you know is activly trying to kill you. See how much road disciplne there is.

There is the otherside to it though: gameplay. I agree that it can be a pain to micro plot long road moves involving lots of vehicles.

What's the best answer? Traffic-jammed if I know

Regards

JonS

[MikeyD]

What? Why, half the FUN is placing your tanks on one side of a complex city map, selecting them all and clicking "fast move" on the opposite side of the map!

I suspect a lot of human-input movement commands are unnecessarily complex, considering how far the vehicle's REALLY going to move in 1-2 turns before it gets distracted. CMBB is made to play at a more measured pace than CMBO. Why mess with all the plot points? Just move it 1-2 points and then check how the scenario's progressing.

Lazy, ain't I! I think I'll hit 'play' on this turn then come back after my nap.

[ November 13, 2002, 04:22 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[Boo Radley]

And if you have a veteran or crack driver behind a green or regular driver, he will usually run into the back end of the green or regular driver's truck because his pause time is less. How realistic is that? It's very tiring to micromanage to the point where you are plotting points, pauses, moveand fast all on the same vehicle. Some kind of follow command would be sweet.

[White Phosphorus]

What about if there is no intersection, and the road is twisty? In some game my command delays were as high as 140sec just to be able to tell them to follow the goddamn road until you get to the bridge!. Which in reality should be, only 3 or 4 commands. I.e. go here, turn left, go there, turn left, go through the next intersection, and you'll see the bridge. But in the game its, 5 meters to the left, 5 meters to the right, 5 meters to the left, 5 meters to the right, 7 meters to the left, 100 meters strait (oh god thank you!), 10 meters to the left, ten meters to the right, and so on. And if you don’t take the time to plot that properly, the trucks will drive off the road into scattered trees, and into soft ground and constantly bog.

Vehicles will seek the path of less resistance when dealing with impassable terrain and will plot their own moves. Why can’t we define the concept of less resistance. And say, follow only open or better, or follow only road or better.

[lcm1947]

I for one like MikeyD's idea. I do the same thing plotting enought for 10 turns or so just to turn right around and have something make me change my mind anyway. I don't know why I never thought of that. Guess I'm just not as lazy minded as MikeyD but I think I'll start being. Makes sense to me and thanks MikeyD for the good advice and idea.

[Eden Smallwood]

Originally posted by lcm1947:

Guess I'm just not as lazy minded as MikeyD but I think I'll start being. Makes sense to me and thanks MikeyD for the good advice and idea.

I'm way ahead of ya- been plotting the absolute minimum of arguably viable path needed for awhile now, but unfortunately that will not avoid all traffic insanity.

We've been over this topic before, of course. It's a bummer, and a "Follow" command like TacOps "Get Add Orders" would help alot, but I think they said Rewrite. And we already have "Follow Vehicle"! Just let my friendly vehicles use the "Follow Vehicle" command, and don't shoot them!

Ah well. It's sad, but I may not be playing anymore scenarios where this will be an obvious problem. It's just too aggravating to lose tanks because your TCs are still learning how to drive.

Eden

[Greg Scurlock]

Good comments all. Thanks. Since this game has so few faults, this one really stands out like a turd on a birthday cake. Hope we hear from some of the "creators".

[General Panic]

How about a "follow" command? i.e. plot the moves for one vehicle. Then give the second vehicle a "Follow" command and drag a marker to the first. Repeat for the next in line, telling it to follow the second.

[Schoerner]

i.e. the 6.Armee lost (the decisive) two weeks due to the traffic-jam that was caused by turning from south torwards Stalingrad.

Although it's frustrating, the traffic problems in CM are simulated very well.

[Cull]

How about a "follow" command? i.e. plot the moves for one vehicle. Then give the second vehicle a "Follow" command and drag a marker to the first. Repeat for the next in line, telling it to follow the second.

That seems like a damned good idea, and not too difficult to do. But, I'm not a programmer. They have done the same thing (in fact, more complex, I would guess) for the new "infantry assault tank" command.

Now that I think more about it, it would be a really handy thing to have. It could be used to move a platoon (several squads) through a spot that affords the best cover, say, across a road where there are a few trees on either side, a low spot, etc. Then you could just plot the first squad's move, and use "follow" for each unit, um...following them. Maybe even use a "delay", then "follow" when you wanted each squad/vehicle/whatever to put some space between their movements. I LIKE IT! I guess you would have to account for what happens when that first vehicle takes a AT round off the turret and makes a hard right off the road, but maybe you could just have the whole series of commands abort when the lead unit abandons it's movement order.

Although it's frustrating, the traffic problems in CM are simulated very well.

Well, I'd have to disagree, but yer talking about something entirely different anyway. Sure, if you've got two hundred tanks packed into 1000m, it shoud be a cluster f*#$. But we're talking about moving ten or so vehicles across a couple hundred meters of road. One, it's annoying to have to plot each vehicle's move. Two, in "real life", a traffic jam is a traffic jam (vehicles having trouble moving at a reasonable constant speed), not vehicles running into each other, pivoting, backing up (ala "Three Stooges"), etc. That's what we're trying to cure.

[ November 13, 2002, 08:29 PM: Message edited by: Jack Arilliac ]

[Brian Rock]

Originally posted by Eden Smallwood:

And we already have "Follow Vehicle"! Just let my friendly vehicles use the "Follow Vehicle" command, and don't shoot them!

This is a good idea.

You could even go a bit further and change "follow vehicle" to "follow unit". I can see many situations where you want the infantry to lead the way for tanks.

[Schoerner]

Originally posted by Jack Arilliac:

But we're talking about moving ten or so vehicles across a couple hundred meters of road

...and within a few seconds all should be on the way.

It's not that easy in reality, too.

Therefore CM gives a good impression about the problems and consequences that can occur due to traffic problems.

When i was new to CMBO, this was one of the fascinating things, that moving units to a certain location in a very small time-window, could become that difficult and dangerous.

And furthermore this problems can be minimized with careful commands.

A "follow unit" command is not that easy to program and completely different to an "follow for attack" command.

I.e. should the distances, directions and angles be preserved? What happens when ground conditions for several units are changing? What happens if the leading unit gets destroyed?

Only to mention a few.

Syncronizing the traffic is one of the more difficult parts in CM and i don't wanna miss it.

[ November 14, 2002, 12:21 AM: Message edited by: Schoerner ]

[Steiner14]

Agreed.