Killing two cows with one stone

[CMplayer]

This is a suggestion for how to improve CM. Hence I expect to be ridiculed, pilloried and have my loyalty to and love for BTS called into question. But it's a good suggestion, as I think you all will agree.

To me, fog-of-war, and its converse gathering information, are among the most interesting aspects of the game. Hence they are well worth putting 'quality' programming time into.

As it is now, those little 'last seen' markers disappear when a unit is destroyed or reappears. This is pretty silly. But if they remained forever the same unit could start many last seen markers and it could get too confusing, as well as making the map too cluttered.

So here's an elegant solution which fixes both problems.

Last seen markers would remain on the board, like they are now, but with a time stamp. What I mean is that when you click on it, you see in the info window how many turns old it is.

Also, a command in the game will allow you to set the age, or expiry date of last seen markers that will be displayed. This could be a little slider window that you get up with a hotkey for instance.

So if you set the expiry date to zero, you get a board free of those markers and you can take beautiful screenshots. If you set it to 'never' they will all be shown. You can choose anything in between and change it any time to check which are more recent or which are older.

This is actually a very important change, which can increase gameplay value and simulation value.

How?

Because it would be more possible to bluff about your force size. A squad could move around and reveal itself from several different points to try to appear bigger and more ferocious than it really is. This kind of thing was done for real. Often.

In the current system, each time the squad reveals itself, the previous last seen marker disappears, so it doesn't work.

Above all, this system would model how a 'siting' would be remembered in real life, rather than the arbitrary, bizarre and unrealistic current systems of sightings magically being erased when the unit that caused it exits the map unseen, is KIAd by a treeburst unseen or any other number of things.

Again, this may seem like a pain to program, or of marginal importance, but I believe that it is small improvements like this that will gradually take CM from being a good and pioneering game, as it is now, to a truly excellent and mature game like it will be in the future.

Any effort spent on the FOW/intelligence-gathering aspect of the game will always be well spent IMO.

[ April 07, 2002, 11:35 AM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

[Michael Emrys]

Okay, I'm sold. But how do you make it work against the AI?

Michael

[AUSSIEJEFF]

Ahem!

Point of order........

iiv) I fail to see where the killing of two cows comes into this hypothesis...

Part 4) Why use a stone when 14" arty is so munch mooo-re effective??

:confused:

Please explain.

AJ

[ April 07, 2002, 07:39 AM: Message edited by: AussieJeff ]

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

Okay, I'm sold. But how do you make it work against the AI?

I don't understand the question, it's too vague for my head.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by AussieJeff:

iiv) I fail to see where the killing of two cows comes into this hypothesis...

That's okay, sheep will do just fine.

Part 4) Why use a stone when 14" arty is so munch mooo-re effective??

You think every scenario with cows takes place in June/July 1944? You think every cow in Europe lives in Normandy, or within a few miles of the coastline? Are you going to make me hunt down a bunch of sources and quotes?

Okay, look here. I've got a bar of Milka chocalate and it shows cows grazing in the Alps. The ALPS! You think the USS Missouri is just going to float on into lake whats-its-name outside of Lausanne just so you can have your sick little fun?

Take my advice and stick with sheep.

[ April 07, 2002, 08:20 AM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

[CMplayer]

Double post. Blame microsoft.

[ April 07, 2002, 08:23 AM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

[lcm1947]

Sounds like a worthwhile addition and makes a lot of sense. I really appreciate the idea of being able to track a unit just like the mind would do. As far as to trying to fool the enemy into believing that your force is greater then what it really is, is also realistic. The other thing you could do would be to trick the other side into believing where the attack was going to be directed. Fool them to commit their reserves or at least reenforce the wrong area. Cool idea CMplayer. So you're not just another pretty face. Just playing against the AI might not be that big of deal but when playing against a human it would be really interesting and add to the overall game. I like it.

[flamingknives]

I believe that the Swiss have a Navy. I'm sure you could hire one of their ships to carry out your genocide against cows (bovicide?)

[Boo Radley]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

I believe that the Swiss have a Navy. I'm sure you could hire one of their ships to carry out your genocide against cows (bovicide?)

I have two questions:

A) Why do the Swiss have a navy?

2) In "The Sound of Music", Capt. Von Trapp is in the Austrian navy. Austria is a land locked country. Why do they have a navy?

Seriously, I think the marker idea is pretty spiffy. I'd love it just for the ability to take screenshots without the markers showing up all over the place.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

I believe that the Swiss have a Navy. I'm sure you could hire one of their ships to carry out your genocide against cows (bovicide?)

Oh right, like the Swiss Navy had 14" guns on their ships...in 1944. Get real.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Boo_Radley:

2) In "The Sound of Music", Capt. Von Trapp is in the Austrian navy. Austria is a land locked country. Why do they have a navy?

They have the Danube.

Sorry if that's not a very good answer but it's all I can think of.

[Navare]

Originally posted by Boo_Radley:

2) In "The Sound of Music", Capt. Von Trapp is in the Austrian navy. Austria is a land locked country. Why do they have a navy?

IIRC Capt. von Trapp was an officer in the old Austrio-Hungarian Navy during WW1. The Austrio-Hungarian Empire did have a Navy and access to the Med.

I can't be more specific than that right now since my wife has hid all of my WW1 referance books in her current "reorganization" of our library.

[sebastian]

Last seen markers would remain on the board, like they are now, but with a time stamp. What I mean is that when you click on it, you see in the info window how many turns old it is.

dozens of markers, and i have to click on all of them? not very user friendly. my idea:

the age of the marker schould be visualised directly by the marker graphics(fading to transparent or somthing like this). a pictogram showing the type of the unit would be much better, than the national-marking (i know whom i am fighting, from the briefing ).

but there schould be an realism option, to switch between realistic and auto-removed last-seen-markers.

[ASL Veteran]

Originally posted by Boo_Radley:

2) In "The Sound of Music", Capt. Von Trapp is in the Austrian navy. Austria is a land locked country. Why do they have a navy?

Perhaps he was in the Austro - Hungarian navy? If so they would have the whole Adriatic coast to play on

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by sebastian:

dozens of markers, and i have to click on all of them? not very user friendly.

Well you already have to click on them as it is, so there is simply more information to be gathered now than before.

As for the other idea...I was trying not to change the basic feature of the engine that a marker is a single .bmp file. I'm trying to think of something that is at least somewhat consistent with how things already work.

[sebastian]

Well you already have to click on them as it is,

wich is bad enough, even with few markers. with non-auto-removed-markers, fading the older to transparent would be a must.

I'm trying to think of something that is at least somewhat consistent with how things already work.

i see. i would like to avoid the marker clicking at all. all the information(age, unit-type) could be represented by the marker graphics itself.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by sebastian:

Well you already have to click on them as it is,

wich is bad enough, even with few markers. with non-auto-removed-markers, fading the older to transparent would be a must.

The other part of the idea was that you can set an expiration date so there wouldn't need to be more markers on the board than there are now at any given time.

[ April 07, 2002, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

[sebastian]

The other part of the idea was that you can set an expiration date so there wouldn't need to be more markers on the board than there are now at any given time.

i got that. "fading to transparent" is just my idea of making them disapear. when they are 100% transparent, they can as well be removed. but inbetween, you can see very fast wich markers are newer(more opaque) and wich are older(more transparent).

[CMplayer]

I see. Yeah thats a very nice idea.

[Compassion]

Originally posted by CMplayer:

[QB]Last seen markers would remain on the board, like they are now, but with a time stamp. What I mean is that when you click on it, you see in the info window how many turns old it is.

Also, a command in the game will allow you to set the age, or expiry date of last seen markers that will be displayed. This could be a little slider window that you get up with a hotkey for instance.

So if you set the expiry date to zero, you get a board free of those markers and you can take beautiful screenshots. If you set it to 'never' they will all be shown. You can choose anything in between and change it any time to check which are more recent or which are older.

This is actually a very important change, which can increase gameplay value and simulation value.

Nice set of ideas, though I would make the following suggestion. Battlefield intel is vital and has been pricticed for quite some time. I would say that for a majority of units spotted at distance, you idea is very good, But the existing system has it's points too when a unit is seen close up and identified. In those cases, having the last seen marker disappear when an identified unit pops up in a position that a positive id can be made (wheater that's a tank with specific markings, or a platoon of men with the paltoon sgt. with the weird bloodstain the shape of Rhode Island on it or whatever).

[Juardis]

too lazy to read past the first post in this thread. Sooooo....I like your suggestion in the first post. I brought up the very same point about a year ago, but did not offer any solutions. I like your solution. Basically, having the stars/crosses disappear when that same unit appears on the other side of the map makes it too hard to bluff your opponent. Keeping the stars/crosses around helps solve that problem.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Compassion:

But the existing system has it's points too when a unit is seen close up and identified. In those cases, having the last seen marker disappear when an identified unit pops up in a position that a positive id can be made (wheater that's a tank with specific markings, or a platoon of men with the paltoon sgt. with the weird bloodstain the shape of Rhode Island on it or whatever).

That makes sense. I'm not sure about WWII but in the Civil War, with the lower lethality of the long arms, troops often recognized individual enemy soldiers who they'd fought against many times. So if there was some guy in a squad with a distinctive big nose, and he turns up again you wouldn't be fooled next time you see him.

Still, in practical terms I think you could figure that out for yourself (or guess) using my system as proposed.

[sebastian]

In those cases, having the last seen marker disappear when an identified unit pops up in a position that a positive id can be made (wheater that's a tank with specific markings, or a platoon of men with the paltoon sgt. with the weird bloodstain the shape of Rhode Island on it or whatever)

you could take the

- distance between the last-seen-marker and the new position

- the age of the marker

into acount, to determine if the marker gets removed.

if a tank pops up only 20m from where he was last seen, it is natural that your units consider it to be the same one.

[Lars]

But CMplayer, if I have my computer set to not show the markers (or have them disappear) , how well will your idea of having one unit generate multiple deceptive decoy markers work?

{Although I like the idea of you wasting all that time plotting fancy maneuvers.}

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Lars:

But CMplayer, if I have my computer set to not show the markers (or have them disappear) , how well will your idea of having one unit generate multiple deceptive decoy markers work?

It will work exactly the same. The markers only appear after you have seen something. So the things you saw would have been there to observe even if you have the markers turned off. If you aren't paying attention anyway, then it makes zero difference.