To much happens in CMBO 30 min QB?

[legend42]

I've heard several times from various people the opinion that too much happens in a typical 30 min QB in CMBO.I've heard that what happens in the 30 min QB might really happen over the course of 1-3 hrs or more.I don't understand this premise.Can someone please go into greater detail and explain exactly how this can be?

[Schrullenhaft]

I won't offer a lot of detail here, but the premise is one of players acting on a time limit that is very short. It's not that things physically occur faster than possible in CM compared to real life, but that most players will engage their forces in a far more faster fashion than they would in reality. Most engagements would probably take longer because the belligerants would rarely run at each other the way they can in a CM QB.

Flags are a necessary evil in games for many reasons, but one of their problems is that it focuses the player on particular spots on the map (and in a QB these may not be strategic spots if the computer generates them). This focus, while not necessarily unrealistic in all cases, does allow the player to concentrate their forces on taking limited area - not something you can always do in real life.

In CM you have the added advantage of having a limited battlefield where your flanks are safe (at least on the edges of the map) and you have a general idea where the enemy is. In fact you may have a fair guess as to what his force composition may be and a knowledge that it is limited and somewhat 'on par' with yours, something that real life reconnaisance may not be able to identify with such consistency. With this info players are allowed to exercise their forces on a particular goal with only a small window of time to worry about. In real life commanders would have to worry about how long they could hold an objective rather than just attaining it within 30 minutes. The Germans pretty much had a doctrine of a swift counterattack to retake key positions that they had lost. This 'doctrine' was most important in the East since the Germans considered the Russians almost impossible to root out of prepared positions once they had occupied them for 24 hours. In real life a commander would have to withdraw (preferably) with most of his forces intact - something that doesn't have to be considered in a QB.

There are a host of other reasons, but these are a synopsis of some of them.

[Chad Harrison]

Originally posted by legend42:

I've heard several times from various people the opinion that too much happens in a typical 30 min QB in CMBO.I've heard that what happens in the 30 min QB might really happen over the course of 1-3 hrs or more.I don't understand this premise.Can someone please go into greater detail and explain exactly how this can be?

For a brief answer, its because troops really did not run around that fast when they had made contact with the enemy. A 30 turn QB forces each side in this *GAME* to move at an increased rate to ensure that something will happen in this *GAME*.

This would be especially true when a formation was advancing to a objective miles away, and meet heavy opposing forces right away. They would engage the troops, exploite what they could locally, but mostly just hunker down and await the brass to decide what to do next.

Chad

[legend42]

Thanks for the insight, so then playing a set scenario with historiacl objectives is a more realistic interpretation than a normal qb.Also if I understand what your saying a QB with a much longer time limit or no time limit at all and played on the largest map possible so the flanks are not map edges and not safe would slow this game down to a more realistic pace.

Give me your idea settings that would cause the most realistic battle time frame.

[JasonC]

There are many other reasons for the relationship. First among them, the fact that one unified player has absolute control over the actions of a score of subordinate NCOs. Each of which has absolutely perfect control over his local unit. All of which obey their orders within about 30 seconds. All of which is completely known to one's own side. With universal "borg" sighting and intel on the enemy. Also, units all fire every 10-12 seconds whenever any enemy are within their field of view. They are practically never looking the wrong way. Camo is virtually nonexistent, and spotting happens almost instantly.

Units react to fire by getting tougher and rushing to the next cover instead of eating dirt or hightailing it to the rear for five solid minutes. Units think nothing of expending all available ammo in less than ten minutes, even though it leaves them practically defenseless. Losses of 30%, 50%, even 70% are tolerated with the overall large scale unit continuing its mission. Realistic losses per division per day in the real deal are exceeded by single companies in CM firefights in half an hour. Everyone not positively wounded continues their direct combat mission, with nobody sidelined to deal with wounded, haul supplies, run messages, move equipment or dig emplacements, etc.

Real firefights involved long lulls of 15 minutes to an hour during which both sides avoided all contact, or where nothing more than occasional rounds of sniper fire were exchanged. Single machineguns chattering occasionally held entire companies pinned to the ground while leaders tried to work out some coherent plan before trying to move again. Friendly artillery barrages were given 500 yard wide berths, awaited for half an hour, then followed up tenatively by field patrols who found the enemy had left as soon as the shelling started and were a mile away from where they were expected by now.

No tactical combat game has ever shown even a tenth of the realistic confusion, fog of war, indecision, and muddle of actual run of the mill combat. Strategy gamers would probably find much of it quite boring, as the realistic ability of a single low level commander to grasp, let alone influence, what was really going on in say a regiment or battalion sized battle over several hours, was next to nil. Make a dozen seemingly critical decisions, see only one of them chosen purely at random have any effect whatever on events around you, and for the rest suffer in ignorance and impotence as events swirl past - wouldn't be much of a strategy game.

To create the strategy game interaction, in which the rival decisions of the commanders determine the outcome, as in a game of chess, the level of control both sides have over their own forces has to be artificially inflated. Principly by allowing one person to make perfectly coordinated decisions where in reality dozens of men would make uncoordinated ones. And then have their subordinates follow those decisions very exactly, when in reality most of them would never know of them, understand them, or impliment then at anything like the right time or in the right place, or at the right target, or other circumstances.

One "squad" marker on the map has about a 4x4 meter footprint, with all its weapons about it, its actions perfectly meshed together. In reality, 2 scared young NCOs are herding a half dozen bewildered and exhausted privates across a desolute battlefield where they can scarcely keep track of their nearest neighbor - let alone all of the enemy, whom most of them can't see at all from moment to moment. If you think CM is pure sim, think again. It is a strategy game, with all the abstractions and antiseptic easy control of the genre, closer to chess than to real combat.

[legend42]

Jason C

Starting at your 3rd paragraph it sounds like you might be talking more about an operation.And maybe we shouldnt call them QB, maybe we should call them QF for quick firefight because what CMBO is simulating is a firefight within a battle within an operation. Perhaps CMBB's new extreme fow combined with realistic mgs slow the pace to a more realistic level.

[nijis]

My impression is that platoon-sized engagements in CM play pretty close to descriptions of platoon-sized firefights, and company-sized battles aren't bad. The bigger the board, the more the player's perfect knowledge of his troops' condition and borg spotting distort results. If you want a more realistically-paced battle, stick to small actions (and use green troops).

[Silvio Manuel]

Originally posted by nijis:

If you want a more realistically-paced battle, stick to small actions (and use green troops).

Less-than-perfect visibility helps too, i.e. dawn/dusk, night, fog, snow, etc. I try to avoid playing in Day/Clear conditions as much as possible b/c I don't like get perfect intel so easily, it's fun for me to not know quite what I'm up against (lots of sound contacts and Tiger? markers).

[ August 25, 2002, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: Silvio Manuel ]

[nijis]

I gather that the system is supposed to incrementally improve so that a CM game resembles more closely, although never perfectly, an actual battle, examples being extreme spotting for CMBB and relative spotting for the engine re-write. However, BFC has said that a command sim is not what they are designing.

I'm sure this has been proposed before, but it seems that a relatively simple system of company axes of advance -- troops are hit with whopping C&C delays to move too far away from them and maybe can't deliberately target enemies that are outside of them -- would help slow down the pace of battle, allowing the player to plan an attack like a battalion commander, micromanage the small-scale firefights like a platoon or company commander, but reduce the effects of the telepathic link between battalion and company commander.

Also, if you want a game that really gets into the pace of battle and C&C issues, get Airborne Assault.

[ August 25, 2002, 12:21 PM: Message edited by: nijis ]

[JasonC]

I agree with Nijis. The smaller actions are much more realistic, and green troops likewise. Greens at the reinforced company level are about the limit in CMBO. Once you get to battalion sized actions - or use of veterans at even the company level - the level of coordination each commander can bring to bear has become unrealistically godlike. The forces get mashed together too fast, too hard, and willingly sustain too high casualties as a result.

Big fights can still be a lot of fun of course, don't get me wrong. But it is recognizably a strategy game rather than a sim of 30 minutes of action at that game scale.

As for things that would help it besides scale and quality, sure extreme fog of war will help some. My experience of it (limited to a day of preview in Chicago) did not reveal any truly dramatic impact in that regard, although it was certainly noticable in the armor war. More important, rapid pinning of infantry under any kind of fire makes for more tenative and careful plans - something like the effect of playing greens in CMBO, actually.

A more basic issue is the absence of meaningful morale effects beyond single units, with a minor partial exception for loss of commanders. Global morale has little impact in CMBO, until hitting rock bottom in a surrender result when almost everyone is dead and the rest are broken. Much lower loss tolerance, and units becoming more brittle after global morale gets worse than n%, would help. There has been talk about that in CMBB, but I haven't seen the details.

Campaign CM also helps, because it reduces tolerable losses dramatically and eliminates the tendency to hurry. You can fight another day, but only if alive. So losing a platoon matters enourmously, but not getting that flag does not. You can get something of the same effect from battles with few flags, or with exit VCs for part of the attacking force if you want to force the defenders to stand fast (since that makes attacker losses very important, as well as stopping the attacker).

But in the end, there is a command span that will break any set of rules that players would find interesting enough to play. A small scenario has to give the player a fair degree of control over his men, or he is just a spectator watching a movie of a fictional battle the game and scenario designers are writing and directing. Give that same degree of control to one person over every squad in a division, and there is no way for the result to be realistic. It will always involve a godlike level of mutual coordination of the actions of very large numbers of real sub-commanders.

A couple of echelons of "free", added command can make a strategy game interesting without breaking realism too much. A pure sim of only one person's role wouldn't give enough control to be interesting; you couldn't alter the outcome in the role of just one guy. Too many, and it is chess; not enough, and it is passively watching a movie. "You will go safer by the middle course". CM is best at handling company level actions.

[Michael Dorosh]

The best way to understand how a small level infantry battle works, unfortunately, is to be in one - or a simulation of one, either a peacetime exercise or in some cases a battle re-enactment (though WW II re-enactments tend not to be very realistic). I think JasonC has hit on all the salient points. I think the game is most realistic when played in operations, with each game being 10 turns or so. This allows a realistic simulation of the "down time" between firefights, where ammo is brought up and the platoons reorg to carry on an hour later or so. Unfortunately, the limited ability of the operations in CM to accurately map out start lines between battles, as well as other concerns, make this less useful than it might be.

[nijis]

Any recommendations for operations that do the pace of battle well, where the front line redrawing problems aren't too pronounced?

[ August 25, 2002, 12:42 PM: Message edited by: nijis ]

[dizee]

hmmmm..havnt the operations been reworked?

playing improved operations in cmbb was one of the points i was looking forward to the most.

:/

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by dizee:

hmmmm..havnt the operations been reworked?

playing improved operations in cmbb was one of the points i was looking forward to the most.

:/

It does bring out the point of one of my biggest disappointments with operations in CMBO - that I hope gets addressed in CMBB. As it is now, any units at the start of an operation stay to the end, no matter how battle worn - each side is considered to be a homogenous unit. There is no ability to represent seperate companies/battalions/brigades - when one gets worn out in real life, they are often withdrawn, not simply thrown in with another unit (I am aware of the concept of kampfgruppen, but these were not often formed at the drop of a hat in the space of an hour or so - beaten units were still withdrawn to regroup).

This is another way in which CM is a bit unrealistic at having troops fight to the death. A battalion that fails to take its objective usually pulls back, to either try again, be relieved in place, or reorganized, etc. In CM Operations, all forces that start the game keep pushing on, and the regimental and divisional "reserves" (reinforcements) are simply thrown into the mix, not actually replacing other units.

[tar]

I have had a couple of thoughts that could be added, perhaps even relatively simply, that would slow the pace of the battles:

1) Make the command delays a bit more random (so that it isn't always exactly 13 seconds, etc.) This would be particularly good if there were some very low chance of occuring, rather long lead times.

2) Make the command delay for HQ units much higher than it currently is. This alone would make it rather difficult to move the axis of attack as easily, without greatly diminishing the ability of tactical control of the main combat squads in a limited area. It would contribute to having the attacker get delayed a bit more in the pursuit of the enemy forces, since the HQ controlling the units would have to wait. Ideally, this HQ command delay would be higher with a larger force in play. The out of command delays would also probably need to be increased as well, including that of support troops.

Suggestion number 2 would, I think, also give a bit more advantage to defenders, which is as it should be.

3) More difficult, requires engine rewrite: Add additional levels of command, so that platoon leaders near company commanders could react quicker, and similarly for company commanders near battalion commanders.

[Jim Harrison]

Seems to be alot of experts on combat posting here??? I wonder how many have actually been in a combat situation themselves?? I am sure there are more than just one vet playing this game, I know I am a vet and I enjoy the game. No computer simulation can ever portray the real fear of combat or the massive confusion of a firefight.

To ask the programmers to develope such a game is not really a fair request, this game comes as close to the command and control problems as any war game I have ever played and I think the next one will be even better.

Some abstractions are inevitable any war game and this one is no exception but it is head and shoulders over whatever is second

BigJim

[ August 26, 2002, 04:06 PM: Message edited by: Jim Harrison ]

[YankeeDog]

A friend and I are currently working on a QB system that randomizes the force size between 500 and 5000 points and then adjusts the scoring to account for the relative strengths of the forces involved. The system includes intel briefings that might (or might not!) give some idea of your opponent's forces size, but the briefings are not necessarily reliable (as in real life).

The system is still a work in progress, but we're playing a battle under it right now, and I can tell you that not knowing for sure whether the force you're opposing is larger, smaller, or about the same size as your own REALLY slows down the action and results in what seems to me (to my own non-combat veteran way of thinking) to be a more 'realistic' game.

I can see how this kind of game would be less fun for many players, though as the action is generally much slower. Thus far, I'm really digging it.

Cheers,

YD

[CombinedArms]

My view is that while time is definitely compressed in CM compared to a real battlefield, that compression is very reasonable in the context of what is, after all, a game. If things took as long as they do in real life the game would be a lot less playable and a lot less exciting.

What CM has managed, rather miraculously, I think, is to give the game a very realistic feel in terms of elapsed time, while compressing that time into playable dimensions. I agree that the operations are problematic, but this has less to do with the handling of time than with the placement of troops and no man's land areas between battles in an operation.

[ August 26, 2002, 08:22 PM: Message edited by: CombinedArms ]

[JonS]

Originally posted by legend42:

Thanks for the insight, so then playing a set scenario with historiacl objectives is a more realistic interpretation than a normal qb...

Possibly, but it depends a lot on teh scenario designer. There are some very talented map-makers out there, and getting realistic OrBats isn't too hard, but creating a good scenario requires more than simply combining the two. IMHO most scenario designers try to cram too much action into a single scenario, and/or set the time limit too low which effectively forces the attacker to use their forces in unrealistic ways.

In a good scenario the mission should IMHO* be simple and small. For example, if you want the attacker to take a hill, have them take one hill, not two or three seperated by hundreds of metres and lots of open ground.

Some examples of good scenarios, again IMHO, are the ones at Der Kessel (particularly the Byte Battles), and McAuliffes BotB scenarios. Those latter ones are mostly rather big, but the force concentration isn't too extreme, the briefings are very sound, and he allows lots of time for the scenarios to play out in a reasonable fashion.

Regards

JonS

* It should be noted that I haven't designed any scenarios for public consumption, but I have played many of the ones that are out there

[Thin Red Line]

Originally posted by JonS:

I do agree with that ; low number of turns are real scenario killers. Scenario designers give us time to develop a proper tactic, an hour is not so long after all!

I'm really sorry to see that 30/35 turns seem to be a standard, maybe because of TCP/IP requirements ?

[LightningWar]

What is they came up with a battle type of capture the map. Instead of capturing flags one side or both sides tried to capture as much of the map as possible?

And of course there are no time limits on the game. But instead of making them go to the total death you get a performance ratio of land to casualties.

-LW

[WWB]

Originally posted by Thin Red Line:

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

I do agree with that ; low number of turns are real scenario killers. Scenario designers give us time to develop a proper tactic, an hour is not so long after all!

I'm really sorry to see that 30/35 turns seem to be a standard, maybe because of TCP/IP requirements ?</font>

I am a designer, and I am of the opposite school of thought. I really hate 45 turn battles where there is not any shooting until turn 25. I don't have the time nor the desire to wait for things to develop. In my opinion, the shooting should start no later than turn 3, and things should not wrap up much more than a half hour later. CM does not simulate recon well anyhow, so why bother with the probing game.

One big factor is getting things playtested. A 45 turn battle might take a two to three months for people to get done. A 25 turn furball can be TCPed in an afternoon, significantly speeding up production schedules. The thing about TCP play is that most people can find 2-3 hours at a stretch, but much more is pushing it.

I would still chalk this up to different strokes for different folks, and it is not like there are 1000+ scenarios at the depot.

WWB

[ August 27, 2002, 11:14 AM: Message edited by: wwb_99 ]

[WWB]

Originally posted by LightningWar:

What is they came up with a battle type of capture the map. Instead of capturing flags one side or both sides tried to capture as much of the map as possible?

And of course there are no time limits on the game. But instead of making them go to the total death you get a performance ratio of land to casualties.

-LW

No time limits is not really an option. Time limits are very handy anyhow, without them a patient attacker would always win.

They type of battle you are talking about does exist. It is called an operation.

WWB

[James Crowley]

Ammo expenditure seems to be a major factor in CMBO, especially in QB's where, of course there can be no reinforcements. Which is why, presumably, the default setting is 30 mins.

I wonder if there will be any change to this (default time) in CMBB? From what I have seen, read and inferred, the combat in CMBB will be more realistically timed (with more effective MG's, fitness, vehicle morale, reaction to incoming fire, etc.etc.)but if the default for QB's is the same (i.e. 30 mins and not connected to map size, terrain type or mission type) it may exacerbate the problem, causing even more desperate end game tactics than we tend to see now (and which the computer-as-player is just as guilty as the human player).

Perhaps we are stuck with the 30 minute QB. That would IMO be a great shame and the waste of a valuable resource of unbiased battles.

[TSword]

In reality (well, reading through the heaps of books...) it seems that a typical battle, for instance the capture of a tiny village by a Kampfgruppe usually took several hours.

Only surprise attacks lasted sometimes for minutes. As soon the enemy has digged in and is ready for defense it takes hours.

Something of a grief to me in respect to CM, and a major reason why the manouver element is so under represented in importance in CM (you usually don't have the proper time, or speed of manouver elements relative to normal CM battle length is to small).

Usually the german Kampfgruppen had 1-2 objectives assigned to them for a day when the enemy was known to be weaker.

It's important to know that a single company seldom had objectives assigned to them separately but instead were part of a Kampfgruppe (taskforce) (meaning a conglomerate of units and weapons for a specific task under a unified command), this was the tactical unit given an objective no matter what the size was on the attack or defense. So this is in fact the smallest meaningful tactical entity to be represented in a tactical game.

CM should give us unrestricted turn numbers even for QB's. To the problem of ammo expenditure, i think in CMBB the problem will be much lower, since efficiency of MG's is bigger, firefights will be more tight and effective (for one side atleast..), beside that it should of course be possible to refill units during the battle (Designate some men and vehicles and send depleted units to them to refill). For tanks it was common to be refilled during battle at specific points or within platoons themselves.

CM should be able to recreate the battle for an objective (several hours or at average half a day).

Greets

Daniel