My opinion about this game

[Pak40]

Quenaelin,

Moon answered the "waypoints" question before I could, but I'd like to elaborate and enforce the fact that adding pause time to each waypoint is more realistic:

In the two examples below, a platoon commander is ordering a squad to occupy a house on top of a hill. However, example #1 is a straight march while example #2 is a more non-direct approach using cover.

1. Platoon HQ: "Sarge, take you men straight up that hill and occupy that house as fast as possible"

Sarge: "Yes Sir"

Total time for orders: about 8 seconds

Number of Waypoints: 1 Run waypoint

2. Platoon HQ: "Sarge, I need you to take that building on top of that hill. Move your men quietly along that treeline, don't let the enemy know you're coming. Once you get to the end of the treeline, you'll have to use that small ravine as cover while you close the distance to the wall surrounding the house. Once your men reach that wall, assault the house as quickly as possible.

Sarge: "Wait, I don't see the ravine you're talking about"

Platoon HQ:"It's just to the left of the end of the treeline."

Sarge: "OK, I see it"

Total Time for Orders: about 25-30 seconds

Number of Waypoints: 2-3 Walk waypoints in the woods, 2 Walk wayoints in the ravine, 1 Run waypoint from the wall to the house.

Example #2 shows the time consuming complexity of giving orders. It also shows that when orders get more complex, the unit being given the orders may not understand them without further clarification. CMBB abstracts all of this by adding time for each waypoint. This is definitely more realistic than CMBO.

[LightningWar]

I got the game the week it came out. Tried it and havent played it much since. I was bad at CMBO and I really sucked at CMBB

But I am going to try it again. In the few times I did play. I found the game to be much tougher than CMBO. The troops do get tired much easier and break much easier. The tiredness can be alleviated by not running them across the entire map but having them walk until they find the enemy. Send out a half squad a few hundred meters in front. When they get waxed you know where to drop the slow arty

But I am going to try it again this afternoon and get into this time. Just had to much going on when I first got it and didnt have the time or energy to actually learn how to play.

LW

[White Phosphorus]

I never found the infantry death sneak to be much a problem. However when heavy teams do it, it is unbearable. It takes only two turns to exhaust them, and you get only one chance to stop the sneaking insanity. Because the rest of the time you just stare at the screen and wait for the turn to finish. The wego system is what causes the problem.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Panzer Leader:

I hate it when my troops gointo AUT-SNEAK-AUTO-EXHAUST mode and are then useful for the rest of the battle. It irks me. Other than that, I guess I don't mind tiring, oh except just maybe advance is a bit too tiring, and sneak definitely is. Except for that though, well..

Exactly.

Also worth noting that it mostly applies to troops which cannot run for more than a jump. i.e. heavy weapons. Squads cover larger parts in run when panic'ed, but the heavy weapons are screwed, they crawl all the way.

[Moon]

Good example, Pak40.

White Phosphorus, it's not the game system. Heavy weapons should not be moved within sight and much less within effective fire range of the enemy. Simple as that. When you get your HMG pinned down by enemy fire, well, it ain't pretty. These guys are loaded with heavy stuff to carry around, and crawling, ducking, sprinting from cover to cover isn't something you can expect from them realistically.

Often people seem to vastly underestimate the TIME factor in CMBB (I don't mean you specifically, WP, just a general statement). Let's not forget that all the action happens in REAL time. Not only the continuous time of RTS games, but one second in the game does equal one second in reality. Sometimes some people seem to forget how long things take to do. Being pinned, or out of breath, isn't a status that can be switched on and off by the snap of a finger. A pinned unit after crawling 30 or 40 meters into cover after being thrown hot lead against isn't going to be fully combat capable and rested 1 or 2 minutes later.

A line has to be drawn here between the frustration with the GAME and the frustration of COMBAT. Some things in CM will NEVER change, because they indeed simulate the realities of combat, even if they can be frustrating when you get a whuppin'. Personally, I fully understand when some people voice their frustration and rather go blow up stuff and rack up "victory points" and manage to "finish a level". CM might not be for them. Or at least, not for those that are not willing to be challenged. But - blaming the GAME for the "shortcomings" of tactical WWII style combat is, in my opinion, shortsighted...

Martin

[Redwolf]

The proper fix for the waypoint delay is to add delay for changes in direction, but treating simple, one-direction curves without punishment.

A curve which is constantly to the right should only be one "punishment unit" and only if you add waypoints which introduce a curve to the left after that, you get the penality.

That would allow player to send tanks around a cover in a smaooth curv, which is way more realistic that stop-and-right-angle-turn we now see all the time. Still, players who want to get fancy in a "go there and then there and the check out this" have to (and happily will) pay for it.

[Krazy Canuck]

I've followed the majority of these so called whinge threads and have commented in a few so I will not take to much space here.

How about a toggle switch with different levels of difficulty? Some settings that come to mind are; elite(realistic as hell), veterans(for those of us that are not elite), green(doh) or I'm sure someone has a better idea as to names. This *toggle switch* seems to me an acceptable compromise.

Not everyone is comfortable with the settings as they exist, BTS has commited to some tweaking with the patch.....perhaps in CM3 the elites would not need to compromise, the veterans could become elites, and the greens, well their learning curve would be more gentle and the dropout rate may shrink.

KC

PS. for the spelling and grammer grogs, if there are any errors, sorry....my secratary does my proofing and she ain't here.

[Moon]

Redwolf, yup, not a bad idea, but not easy to code in the current engine (says Charles).

For the record, we've discussed a bunch of systems for providing a more realistic C&C (especially since tanks were now supposed to be part of the mix) before deciding on the one used currently. One of those concepts was to base delays on the distance of a movement order and not the number of waypoints, but this wasn't quite right either. The current system, out of the 3 or 4 discussed in depth, seemed (and still seems) to provide the best mix of realism and ease of play. An abstraction without question, and punishing some players more than others probably - but if anything, punishing those that want to exert an unrealistc amount of micro-management on the battlefield.

BTW, I am not sure if this is quite clear to some, but the increases in command delay are non-linear for the various unit experience levels (meaning that the first few waypoints cost only a few seconds, but after a certain number, each additional point adds a lot more) AND the delay for one-waypoint orders has been reduced vs. CMBO. You should be safely able to order a regular Inf squad to move using 2 or 3 waypoints before more noticeable delays kick in. So it's not like it isn't possible to order a tank to move down a curve without a 1 minute delay...

Martin

[Pak40]

Thanks Moon,

I agree with CMBB's phyical fitness modeling. I generally havn't had a problem with it in CMBB simply because I always took my time on the attack in CMBO. It was just a habit I developed because it made sense to move forward slowly or in leaps and bounds; this is necessary to avoid ambushes.

However, I think there might be one small anomalee in CMBB. It may be a bug: There have been a couple of instances where a FO (wire) was ordered to run or sneak. The unit exhausted EXTREMELY quick(like 10-20 seconds). I don't have a problem with it tiring quickly because I understand that they are carrying a spool of wire. However, it did seem a bit too quick. But the real problem that I had was that the unit took an unreal amount of time to recover from being exhausted. In one case I didn't move the FO for about 25 turns until it finally upgraded to 'tired'. The game was over by that point.

As far as I know the unit was fit and a Veteran. I just have a hard time believing that any unit can't recover from exhaustion after 5-7 minutes of rest.

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by redwolf:

The proper fix for the waypoint delay is to add delay for changes in direction, but treating simple, one-direction curves without punishment.

A curve which is constantly to the right should only be one "punishment unit" and only if you add waypoints which introduce a curve to the left after that, you get the penality.

That would allow player to send tanks around a cover in a smaooth curv, which is way more realistic that stop-and-right-angle-turn we now see all the time. Still, players who want to get fancy in a "go there and then there and the check out this" have to (and happily will) pay for it.

This is pretty much right, I think; another way of thinking of this is that every time you tell a unit to do a different "thing," it should increase delay. But an order like "follow the road" is just one "thing."

I think that CM can't recognize a road as a contiguous thing that can be followed the way that a human could; presumably this will be fixed in the rewrite.

At which point we will complain because our tanks won't know how to "follow that ridge" or "follow that wadi."

Really, though, this has not been much of a problem for me; I don't need to stay on the road that much, and the two or three extra waypoints I need aren't really much of a delay.

I think for the rewrite I would prefer to have additional movement options other than waypoints - such as selecting the destination point, choosing a "style" of travel (follow road, take fastest route, take most covered route), and still having the normal movement commands such as hunt, move, fast, etc. In addition, some sort of SOP should be available as well to deal with encountering enemy troops.

Ideally, after you've given this order, the computer computes the waypoints for all tanks in the platoon (or all selected tanks, or whatever), and you have the option to alter the waypoints by dragging, albeit at the cost of an additional delay. To simulate: "Smith! Make sure you stay to the left of that big building there - there's supposed to be an AT gun in that field over there."

Now the neat thing about this movement system would be how it would tie in with more advanced C&C and relative spotting - SOPs, for example, could dictate how a tank behaves when (1) it encounters an anti-armor asset; (2) when another tank in its platoon encounters an anti-armor asset; or (3) when some other unit in C&C detects an anti-armor asset.

Of course, for this to work right, CM's pathfinding would have to be extremely good. Which is probably what sucks about programming CM - the glamour part is the armor penetration bits, but 90% of the work is probably something tedious like making sure that tanks don't collide.

[Battlefront.com]

You know... I had to look and relook at the time stamps on this thread and convince myself that I am not having Deja-vu. Why? Because

Quenaelin started up a nearly identical thread a couple of weeks ago and very detailed responses from many people (including me) challenged his various "flaws" he found as instead being entirely realistic. The thread died when it became clear, I think, that the argument for über troops was shot down quite nicely by historians, soldiers, and regular gamers that have zero problems with CMBB's modeling.

Also, there was another thread at the same time regarding waypoint delays. Very detailed responses there and that one died when it became clear that the criticism of the existing system is, at best, only partially valid. And when faced with the question about how to realistically simulate both COMPLEX PATHS and COMPLICATED ORDERS realistically there was the usual sound of crickets and white noise that accompanies such challenges

Besides saying that it is REALLY annoying to keep having the same discussions over and over and over again about "flaws" that aren't, all I have left to say is use the Search function.

Steve

[Quenaelin]

I forgot to add some plus for CMBB

+ infantry is actually getting killed in MG fire and in artillery fire.

I don't say that this game isn't any good, Combat Mission is best strategy game there is and only strategy game which intrests me. By adding more countries I meant that there could be all those countries from CMBO included, and I like to play those good old CMBO battles with CMBB engine.

[BulletRat]

Originally posted by Joe Shaw:

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

I hate it when I go through a face...

Keep trying, perhaps you'll find one that won't frighten little children.

Joe</font>

[edgars]

Originally posted by Quenaelin:

I forgot to add some plus for CMBB

+ infantry is actually getting killed in MG fire and in artillery fire.

I don't say that this game isn't any good, Combat Mission is best strategy game there is and only strategy game which intrests me. By adding more countries I meant that there could be all those countries from CMBO included, and I like to play those good old CMBO battles with CMBB engine.

What's a problem with CMBO artillery? Last time i checked it killed (my) grunts with ease.

Ouch, CM is strategy game? I was thinking...

Never mind.

[Quenaelin]

Sorry, if I sounded too offensive to somebody, that is just my style to handle these things. I am not anykind of poetry writer myself and my native language is Finnish so maybe I cannot express myself so clearly as others in this forum.

I just meant that there is few tunable things in this game and my opinion is that these are: too tired infantry and too much waypoint pauses with tanks, otherwise this game already quite good, in the other words the best war and strategy game I have played.

It's nice that you remembered my opinion before, becouse I have only dim memory that I wroted my opinion about this game before, if so, that must be about the CMBB demo.