Some thoughts about the next generation of this engine....

[Eden Smallwood]

Originally posted by wwb_99:

[QB]One big thing no one has mentioned: Make victory conditions more flexible. Flags, KO points, bonuses and exit zones are really, really limiting.

Not sure what you have in mind, (?), but I've got a beef of my own with the VICCON. If I complain about the "VicAI" one more time they might throw me outta here. THIS time, though... *I've got a solution*.

I just played one of the CMBO converted to CMBB scenarios... Reigsburg? Kriegsville? Reigersburgers something like that. It was beautiful- I thought I was just barely managing to eke out a Major Victory. Or better!

But I was wrong- it was a "Draw". Apparently CM felt that the big flag in that building was controlled by the two enemies in there... One was a Cautious Inf Squad of some kind, and one was a Panicked HQ.

Being Cautious or Panicked, or course, makes perfect sense, since that would surely be the natural reaction to being inside a building which is completely on fire. Add to that the fact that it was set on fire in the first place by the surrounding horde of healthy enemies and their ISU MotherTanks, and then it really makes sense. Now WHO is really CONTROLLING that territory?!??!?!?!?![/RANT]

OK, Ok... here's the *solution*, the compromise in lieu of really sophisticated AI compromise, which would be really simple to do compromise. As it stands now, if one of the flags changes hands during the last turns, an additional length of turns is played. Fine.

I submit that if *another* flag changes hands during that sudden death period, then *another* quantum of turns is tacked on. That simple. Keep the Sudden Death Overtime ongoing until flags are no longer changing hands. Easy. In fact, add some number of turns for each flag taken, perhaps. So whaddayathink???

Eden

[ October 23, 2002, 01:40 AM: Message edited by: Eden Smallwood ]

[energy76]

Originally posted by Schoerner:

IMO it's also not necessary to display everything like it is calculated in the engine.

It's part of CM's charme, that you only have a roughly visualization of the real action on the battlefield - what's important for a TACTICAL wargame is shown already - that's by far enough.

Just how exactly is everything calculated anyway?

An engine rewrite implies to me that there will be major upgrades and changes, in either the gameplay or the graphics, or maybe both. It seems to me the graphics will probably get a major overhaul, and I think there are things that could be done to improve the basic gameplay, but such an upgrade would be major. It all comes down to BTS's creativity, I suppose. I wouldn't be suprised if they came up with something as revolutionary as the original CM. The pack _is_ starting to catch up, you know(emphasis on "starting"), and if BTS wants to remain competitive they've got to stay ahead.

However, I am sure of this: the next version won't have just a few new features, as some have suggested. Rewriting the engine essentially means they are starting from scratch. It is a complete rewrite, correct? I could be mistaken...

Whatever they do, I'm hoping the next release be placed in Africa and Italy, since they won't do Pacific theater. North Africa especially was a crucial front with many large scale battles, and well suited to the playing styles of many CMers, I guess, because of all the tank battles.

[Abbott]

* a pathing system for use by scenario designers in creating custom strat AI behavior. Even something as simple as waypoints assigned to grouped units would be great. This would really complement the current very good automated tac/strat AI, although it would have to be used judiciously. Would allow for multi-prong attacks, flanking manuevers, covered route approaches, etc. Obviously would affect replay value.

and..

A simple “programmable” setting would be a boon to scenario designs. A pop-up menu just like the orders menu during game play would do nicely. Even a platoon pop-up off the headquarters would work well in many instances and fight the platoon as a whole.

1. Hide (until attacked) or the normal fighting radius kicks in.

2. Defend (no move)

3. Cover arc

4. Cover armor

5. XXXX

6. XXXX

7. XXXX

..and so on…

[Ozzieboy]

Regarding Victory Conditions, I think of alternatives like we have in ASL scenarios.

Examples:

-Take specific buildings

-Cause specific % of casualties on the enemy

-Clear buildings of enemy presence

-Kill Private Ryan

[Ace Pilot]

Originally posted by Bone_Vulture:

Ok, could someone explain me "Borg spotting" in short? Still makes no sense to me? :confused:

Excellent question. From what I’ve read on these boards, “Borg Spotting” refers to the player’s god-like overview that permits information obtained by one unit to be instantly communicated to all units on the battlefield. This phenomenon manifests itself in two primary effects in CM.

1. Once an enemy unit is spotted, any friendly unit with a LOS to that position may target the enemy unit, whereas in real life, the friendly unit would first have to spot the unit on its own based on information relayed to it from other sources.

2. Once an enemy unit is spotted, the player can instantly respond to the threat in an unrealistic manner. For example, you spot an enemy Sherman on your right flank. At the very next opportunity, you can order all your armor, your panzerschrecks, and any anti-tank equipped infantry sitting way on your left flank, to immediately start moving to your right flank in response to this new threat.

I believe most people are trying to address the first point when referring to “Borg Spotting” or “relative spotting” solutions. In my opinion, trying to solve the second point would require too much control being taken away from the player.

Anyone with different/additional views, please jump in. We may get some "We've been over this a hundred times before" comments, but with so many new people brought in by CMBB, I think it's worthwhile.

Ace

[ October 23, 2002, 07:28 AM: Message edited by: Ace Pilot ]

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Bone_Vulture:

Ok, could someone explain me "Borg spotting" in short? Still makes no sense to me? :confused:

Borg Spotting comes from a comment by Charles a long time ago that said that Like the BORG (from star trek) EVERY friendly unit knows (instantly) when one friendly unit spots an enemy unit. This was refered to as Absolute spotting.

What we are looking for is the more realistic Relative spotting which is a concept where every unit MUST spot (on its own) an enemy unit which means that units that might think they know where the enemy is (because the player knows) BUT who have not actually spotted that enemy unit for themselves would NOT have the opportunity to target that unit.

In the game it would be something like clicking on a unit and the only enemy units the Player would see on the map would be the units that the specicific unit had indepentantly spotted on it own (and then could target directly). Therefore (in one theory or implementation) selecting differing friendly units would display different enemy units that each friendly unit had independantly spotted on their own. ( this suggested implementation is only one way to do it, I'm sure that no only really knows exactly how Relative Spotting will actually work in the NeXt Big Thing, but its fun to speculate.)

-tom w

[ October 23, 2002, 08:20 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Dschugaschwili]

Ok, some of my suggestion were already posted by aka_tom_w, but here's another one:

* Get rid of the overtime at the end of the turns. Aka: Save projectiles in flight when the clock reaches 60s.

* Let infantry units whose self-preservation behavior kicks in consider moving to a place out of LOS to the unit firing at them instead of always heading for the nearest cover.

Dschugaschwili

[WWB]

Eden:

Think outside of the box. This concept goes way beyond end game flag rushes for points. Flags might well become semi-moot if one could give more realistic victory conditions. Conditions like "take control of area up to this line on map" for example.

Moreover, the ability for a designer to create a battle where both sides can have different and not necessarily mutually exclusive victory conditions. This could even be extended for the multiplayer aspects of the rewrite where 2 commanders from the same side could have separate victory conditions.

A few other ancilliary things would be per-side map labels (or even per-player map labels for that matter) as well as triggered events.

The one thing I really do not want to see is a scripting based AI. I have seen a few wargames that have such an AI and it aint pretty in the end. You end up with very limited control, yet are forced to attempt to script AI actions for all troops greatly adding in effort of creation. Not to mention it becomes a very predictable opponent. I also conted that the AIs weakness in the attack is not pathfinding but coordination, which is very difficult to script indeed since it requires concept it is not likely aware of. Like establishing fire bases and the like.

WWB

[Eden Smallwood]

Originally posted by wwb_99:

Think outside of the box.

The other VICCON ideas you and others responded with are nifty stuff; sounds cool. But the problem I'm addressing is inside the box; the solution I propose is very easy, direct and straighforward way of letting the battle continue while there is true motion, *in the game as it exists now*. I know, this is CM::The Next Generation thread, but...

For me, I would much rather see a "programmer's" release in one year, an internal rewrite with a few of the things we're screaming for, rather than something huge and glorious in two years. The other fellow mentioned that an engine rewrite implied to him that it will have dramatic changes. I disagree, it implies to me that an enormous amount of work is going to go into doing exactly what we have now, only it will be more efficient and extensible, easier to add models, etc. The effort to make a next-gen product for the *user* will be over and above the effort to rewrite the engine. A new engine AND a new theater?!? That sounds like three years to me.

For a game which has an armor penetration model so exact it includes the brittleness(forget the name) of the metal, it's somewhat of a farce that the SOPs we have available for units are so limiting that we can't differentiate between Sneak and Crawl.

"take control of area up to this line on map" for example.

Nice. Now tell me if this sounds familiar- what does it mean to have "control" of that area? Do two Routed peons in a burning building who are surrounded by tanks constitute control? Six of one, half dozen of the other, my friend.

Moreover, the ability for a designer to create a battle where both sides can have different and not necessarily mutually exclusive victory conditions.

Agreed- the Axis must take the hill; the Allied must attrite the Axis forces, say...?

The one thing I really do not want to see is a scripting based AI.

I can't tell here whether you're implying that my Take A Flag, Get Five Turns idea sets the precedent for putting scripting into the game...?

Can't really comment on scripting, except that I hope that BTS puts the desires of scenario designers as a top priority.

Eden

[Renaud]

Originally posted by wwb_99:

The one thing I really do not want to see is a scripting based AI. I have seen a few wargames that have such an AI and it aint pretty in the end. You end up with very limited control, yet are forced to attempt to script AI actions for all troops greatly adding in effort of creation. Not to mention it becomes a very predictable opponent. I also conted that the AIs weakness in the attack is not pathfinding but coordination, which is very difficult to script indeed since it requires concept it is not likely aware of. Like establishing fire bases and the like.

WWB

WWB:

I agree that wargames depending primarily on pathing (aka programmed routes) does not work well at all. I suggested pathing as an optional or additional scenario design tool which would complement the existing strat AI plotting, not replace it. I can't count the number of scenarios that would benefit tremendously from a few simple route commands for the AI. Note that after reaching the end of a path (series of waypoints) the default strat AI automatic pathing would take over again.

Designer specified pathing for groups could be used by authors to time the arrival of AI groups at objectives to achieve coordinated attacks. Obviously the human opponent can and should interrupt this by intercepting one of more of the groups en-route. But that's the objective in human-vs-human play as well.

Ren

[dalem]

I'd like to see weather effects that change during a scenario/QB. That would be a nice bit of "fluff" for me.

-dale

[76mm]

I have two major requests:

--AAR results by squad/vehicle (including casualties & kills) exportable into Excel/Access (for use in campaigns). It would also be nice to be able to import such files into scenario OOBs.

--Road Movement command!

[Pfc Joe]

One thing I and my Buddy would like to see in the next incarnarnation or a patch to this CMBB is a TRUE LINE OF SITE TOOL. Consider the Squad Leader "Thread" as the model. We want to draw a LOS from anywhere on the map to any other point on the map and see the LOS as those two locations are 'pinned' to the map. As CMBB currently stands we have to have a unit in place to get a LOS from that point (only). Even a 'reflective' LOS would be good (what is the LOS from the point I am LOS'ing?) But a 'Thread' LOS would be IDEAL.

[Captain Wacky]

Originally posted by Pfc Joe:

One thing I and my Buddy would like to see in the next incarnarnation or a patch to this CMBB is a TRUE LINE OF SITE TOOL. Consider the Squad Leader "Thread" as the model. We want to draw a LOS from anywhere on the map to any other point on the map and see the LOS as those two locations are 'pinned' to the map. As CMBB currently stands we have to have a unit in place to get a LOS from that point (only). Even a 'reflective' LOS would be good (what is the LOS from the point I am LOS'ing?) But a 'Thread' LOS would be IDEAL.

What I would love to see is the ability to show the LOS from a unit to the entire field. I would imagine clicking the LOS button, and an overlay appears on the map that shows highlited areas (say green and blue) where all green areas are places I have LOS to, and all blue highlited parts are those which my unit doesn't have LOS to. I think this would be a whole lot better than what we have now, where I often find myself slowly moving teh LOS tool all over the field trying to find those places I can fire on. Imagine one click doing all that work for you.

[AUSSIEJEFF]

......

Damn. Figured out what I was gonna request!!

AJ

[ October 25, 2002, 02:21 AM: Message edited by: AussieJeff ]

[Lt Bull]

Originally posted by wwb_99:

One big thing no one has mentioned: Make victory conditions more flexible. Flags, KO points, bonuses and exit zones are really, really limiting.

and

Think outside of the box. This concept goes way beyond end game flag rushes for points. Flags might well become semi-moot if one could give more realistic victory conditions. Conditions like "take control of area up to this line on map" for example.

Moreover, the ability for a designer to create a battle where both sides can have different and not necessarily mutually exclusive victory conditions. This could even be extended for the multiplayer aspects of the rewrite where 2 commanders from the same side could have separate victory conditions.

I totally agree with you WWB. I think there is room for some very innovative and workable ways in which a CM battle victory can be determined to get away just having to deal with the basic "points for control of the flag", "points for kills" and "points for exiting" that are the building blocks for establishing victory in the game at the momemnt.

Here are some background threads that dealt with this: Ideas how to solve the VL 'problem' in CM2? and A CM "victory": What is it really trying to model?

Originally posted by Eden Smallwood:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />"take control of area up to this line on map" for example.

Nice. Now tell me if this sounds familiar- what does it mean to have "control" of that area? Do two Routed peons in a burning building who are surrounded by tanks constitute control? Six of one, half dozen of the other, my friend.

</font>

[TSword]

1. It is absolutely necessary to give the Scenario-Designer more control over AI behaviour and setup.

Example: AI in Operations usually does a very poor setup (If there is wood AI will cramp everything in it), true one can work around, but with open maps this becomes a problem of first order.

Solution: The designer can suggest zones of terrain suitable for setup.

Also some guidelines for attacking/defending AI would be great, like areas of approach, objective zones, type of general AI behaviour like stubborn defense, counterattack, timings and the like.

This is a wide field but in general leave AI as is (No hope of much improvement in this field) but enable more options during scenario design

All this together would enable much more challenging AI-battles and more possibilities to generate more historic acurate battles (I mostly play the AI, since PBEMs go forever and need a lot of discipline especially for the loosing side...). Covered arcs set by scenario designer would be great.

2. Atleast direct firing Artillery pieces should be able to fire delayed fuzed shells (when firing a flat trajectory shell bounces off the ground, at first impact fuze is activated). This was done very often on the german side with tanks HE, 88 AT, and all Artillery pieces. If used correctly this results in devastating fire.

3. It is principally wrong not to enable on-board artillery to fire indirect. In the case of german heavy howitzers (150 mm) the guns were very seldom placed farer away from the front then 4 km and often relocated only below 1 km. This of course fits into the dimension of CM. Again this would allow for additional realism and more possibilities in scenarios (Gamey inbalances can be corrected by purchase prizes easily).

4. More terrain types with variyng degree of concealment together with further refined LOS calculations. More possibilities for open terrain battles.

More terrain which give Inf concealment when being prone while only partly restricting LOS for AVFs.

5. Active visible camouflage of all sorts of weapons for same reason as point 4.

6. Ability for mounted troops to shoot from vehicles, and proper loads for trucks (much more then 1 Squad infact).

7. Dynamic lighting visible and taken into LOS calculations

8. Turret down for tanks or generally fighting vehicles for observation purposes.

9. "Debug"-Mode to check AI-behaviour for scenario designers. Simply an additional battle parameter where the player can see all the AI units all the time while AI behaves according to set FOW settings.

10. Vehicle crews can remount an abandoned vehicle

11. Horses, bicycles, bikes

12. A small API-set:

- To read unit database (all values currently

visible during unitselection)

- To write to the map generator or map

selection (All the values currently

editable by the user)

- To write to the unit selection

Thus allowing 3rd party extensions for

campaigns and the like

13. Correct representation of relative plate

sizes on AFVs for hit determination. (eg.

Large T-34/85 turret, small T-34/76 turret).

14. Option to allow same "casualty"-rules as in

night battles also for daylight battles. They

are obviously much much more realistic then

the daylight rules.

15. More finetune options for Operations in

determing new setup zones for next battle.

(For instance in the "Assault" mode the

possibility to determine the weight of flank

and middle and treshold for cutoff units),

now it's easely possible to have the whole

force being

cutoff although not a single enemy unit was

behind their line when previous battle

ended).

16. New operation type "mixed" where scenario

designer can determine the sequence of

attacker (thus operations where attacker can

actually change from battle to battle) either

unknown or known to the player. To simulate

counterattacks something completely missing

now. Actually the same should also be

possible in battles where a certain formation

(for instance reinforcments) event triggered

would counterattack.

17. Moving vehicles produce dust dependend of

region and groundconditions. Heavy weapons

like tanks, artillery shells and the like

produce a lot of smoke which could change a

battlefield dramatically LOS wise..., nice to

see in open terrain battles...

Greets

Daniel

[TSword]

Another one:

Grouping of units according to their formation during setup.

18. Group platoons, companies and battailons so they are easily selectable during setup, nothing more annoying then sorting out all the squads and support weapons for half an hour. Maybe an OOB tree would also help in this but not exclusively.

Use patterns for platoons, companies and the like, and use the setup zone also in depth.

19. 3D trenches, craters and infantry-bunkers in varying shapes and forms (deep, shallow, heavy, light).

20. Special terrain objects like small rivers, fences (wood, stone, bushlines (bocage like), treelines variying in size and dense), small depressions beneath roads and new Doodads like streetlights or radiomasts beneath roads and streets and even fountains. Those objects do not occupy a 20x20 m tile of ground but are instead very limited in one dimension and act mostly as LOS barriers or just eyecandyness and do not change the basic 20x20m tile -> Combinations with tiles and "special" objects must be possible.

21. Together with dynamic lighting possibility for lightflares to illuminate the terrain at night -> new ammo for Artillery, especially mortars and floodlightinstallations on vehicles for instance.

22. Dynamic vegetation. After firing a 30 cm rocket salvo into a piece of wood, this wood would look quite different after the smoke has gone...... -> Dense wood -> Destroyed wood with different LOS and camo properties.

23. Dynamic damage on buildings in 3D with animated debris and again varying cover, LOS and Camo properties.

24. better smoother,rolling terrain scenario-editor setting with different transition curves

25. A new Bird wav, the current one drives me mad !!

Greets

Daniel

[Echo]

I want to see tank turrets blowing off their mounts, and flying bodies.

Oh yeah, and pub signs at all the victory locations.

[Andrew H.]

Grouping units would be very nice, especially if the player could select from various defaults for platoons and companies.

Flares, etc., for more sophisticated night battles, although reality in this and other matters will depend upon

RELATIVE SPOTTING

Also, wrt eye candy, some sort of easy way for modders to construct specialized buildings. If a modder wants to build a scale model of the Kremlin and put it in a game, they should be able to do so, and make it look like the Kremlin. (It would be incongruous in the Med, I know, but still).

Related to this should be some sort of way to connect various mods to scenarios - maybe each scenario could have a mod folder associated with it, and if you copied mods to that folder, it would load them rather than the defaults when the scenario was started. (It would have to use defaults if the folder was empty, or half full).

[Bartokomus]

What we are looking for is the more realistic Relative spotting which is a concept where every unit MUST spot (on its own) an enemy unit which means that units that might think they know where the enemy is (because the player knows) BUT who have not actually spotted that enemy unit for themselves would NOT have the opportunity to target that unit.

and then we would see the advantage of armor/inf formations with radio comms over forces that do not have them. this would make fighting the Russians MUCH more easy, as a platoon of german tanks could respond much more quickly when the fur starts to fly

[xerxes]

I would like to be able to influence what the strat AI considers important. For example, set an invisible flag that says, "make a firebase here" or be able to designate a VL as more or less important.

I'd also like to be able to set the aggressiveness of the AI in a scenario as a global variable and as adjustable for each unit.

AI that can use HQs to spot for mortars.

I totally agree with the more diverse and flexible victory conditions.

[Renaud]

Originally posted by Pfc Joe:

One thing I and my Buddy would like to see in the next incarnarnation or a patch to this CMBB is a TRUE LINE OF SITE TOOL. Consider the Squad Leader "Thread" as the model. We want to draw a LOS from anywhere on the map to any other point on the map and see the LOS as those two locations are 'pinned' to the map.....

This would be nice except for me it would hurt the realism feeling a little so I would not want to use it. Is it realistic to know what the line of site is from a choice hull-down position before any of your troops actually go over and scout the position? Not having a point-to-point LOS tool means you have to do what they did in reality: dismount a scout team to check the LOS before moving the tank up. (For the germans it was often the TC, but we can't do this in CM - yet). It's already bad enough that we can float around godlike and check LOS from spots where we have no actual troops... In other threads folks have went so far as to champion TERRAIN FOW! That's right, terrain elements are more-or-less hidden until your guys actually get LOS to that piece of ground. I'd have to see it to know whether I liked it or not...I enjoy looking at those beautiful maps all-at-once.

Ren

[OddjobXL]

I'm new to these forums and here I go with a post out of left field about a future iteration of this product. Of course, I'm sure these suggestions are nothing new but I haven't seen them yet in this thread.

To take a broad view of squad level WWII games and what makes them so successful and beloved by a wider market one has to consider Close Combat and Steel Panthers.

Close Combat's unique contribution was the idea of tracking individual soldiers both graphically and throughout the battles they'd live through. I'm aware that the designers of CM feel that the poor rate of survival makes this an unrealistic feature but it's definitely one very compelling one. Whenever folks talk about CC this feature comes up with wistful adoration and it does help put a human, almost roleplaying, face on an otherwise abstract struggle. That can only make a reinvented engine more attractive to a wider public and it doesn't have to detract from realism either.

While many love the premade scenarios, campaigns and megacampaigns for SP:WaW there's a huge body of fans that live for the random campaigns. This is one thing that could be created within the parameters of the current engine (tracking unit stats and calculating replacements, resupply, for a particular historical unit type between randomly generated 'quick' battles) it would take on much more significance if combined with a the detailed individual and unit based system mentioned above.

I imagine something like Across The Rhine where missions are generated along a track, rather than some hokey CCish operational or strategic element, and overseeing maintenaince and juggling attached elements between battles is the balance of the connecting activity. I don't know that I'd allow the SP practice of just allowing players to buy units but allowing upgrades (or even a stores of ammunition, parts and replacements) to come naturally available based on historical circumstance and random factors would be a more realistic system. In fact, a detailed events index based on factors that influenced supply and readiness or morale should be created and applied as special circumstances both between battles and before them (along the lines of randomized 'complications' in the solitare boardgame Hornet Leader or the Squadron random events in the Pilot Personality Profile fan mod for Red Baron 3D).

These two suggestions taken in tandem or even just the latter one would open up markets and gameplay in some pretty astounding ways without sacrificing any existing aspects. You've already got the grogs, the modellers, the scen designers and the early mainstream adopters. Why not the world? Take it from a mainstream gamer who's also a wargamer.

PS Improving graphics has already been brought up but that would be the third thing on my list. The improvement between CM:BO and CM:BB is noted and appreciated. Now, mortgage the house and hire the best graphic designers you can - I want flares, realistic smoke, and humans that don't look like toys. Thanks.

Oh, and thanks for a great game as it stands. I love it. Want more. Can't help myself.

[ October 25, 2002, 08:00 PM: Message edited by: OddjobXL ]

[Bruceov]

To Louie the Toad. That's probably the best idea of all. Thats like Total War Medieval. However, the game has to be multiplayer in campaign mode. Otherwise add exhaust smoke for the tanks and vehicles and they don't need to rewrite the engine.