1:1 representation & soldier names

[vincere]

Michael Dorosh wrote in Theatre of War forum:

Matt is quoted as :"The fact that he actually survived the battle and I was able to issue him extra skill points, promote him in rank and even award him a medal and use him in subsequent campaign missions really gives the game a cool persistent world type feel as you become attached to various units and even individual soldiers."

Tsk, tsk, wasn't that something Steve was against in the CM series?

Seriously, though, great interview and I know what Matt meant by the desire to recapture the magic that surrounded CM in 2000. Here's hoping we can do it again

This came up a while ago abd I think that battlefront said that a company commander was not likely to know each individual's name.

I was just wondering if there had been any change in this? My undersatnding is that even battalion commanders know many soldiers names, especially key soldiers names, and those that do remarkable things. Which is what the player would remember if the pixel troops were named.

IMHO would add to the imersion.

[M1A1TC]

I like how individual soldiers are tracked in Theatre of War. I hope to see similar system in CMSF. Trust me, Company commander knows everyone by name, especially the trouble-makers. He might not know the new additions to the company for several days

[C'Rogers]

company commander was not likely to know each individual's name.

A company commander would also not know what was going on with every unit of his during a battle yet in the game (as the god commander) we do, so I don't see why it is a reality issue.

Personally I am just against useless information clogging up the screen (where would the names be put? an additional window for each squad).

[Battlefront.com]

CMx2 is not just about following one organic company through a particular bunch of battles. I estimate that you will command roughly 2 battalion's worth of troops from organic and attached units by the time the campaign is over. Some units might only be with you for 1/2 of 1 battle. So while it isn't wrong to say that a company commander would know all his soliders, it is wrong to say that he'd know all the names of everybody in 2 battalions

C'Rogers

Personally I am just against useless information clogging up the screen

Which is another reason why we do not track names for individual soldiers The UI has enough stuff going on in it that sticking soldier's names in the primary UI is out of the question. Our philosophy about secondary dynamic information (i.e. stuff that is limited to a unique unit) is if it isn't important enough to put in the main UI, then it probably isn't important enough to put in the game at all. Static stuff, like weapons capabilities, real numbers for offroad performance of a particular vehicle, etc. make more sense to put in secondary UI.

Oh, and Grog Dorosh seems to have forgotten the main reason why we felt the stuff wasn't necessary for CMx1... different scope/scale, different type of game. Why he thinks that translates into not finding value in that for all games in general is... well... daft

Steve

[WineCape]

Soldier attributes

"What I can tell you, for absolute sure, is that very few of the individual soldier attributes will be known to the player. As a couple of our military experienced testers have said "I don't give a crap if Pvt. Pyle has a +2 strength modifier and 3 more rounds than Pvt. Jones. All I care about is if the unit is functional and can it get the job done." This is our philosophy too.

The player simply does not have the time to be obesssing over the minutia of individual soldiers. There is a battle to be fought! Plus, all that crap takes up a crudload of screenspace to display attributes because of the compounding nature of it. For example, 5 attributes for a 12 man Squad means having display space for 60 bits of text or icons. Egads!

Currently the only displayed attributes for an indvidual soldier are weapon, specialty, and physical condition (tracks wounds). All the rest of the attributes are displayed in unit fashion. We tried to squeeze names in there too, but for several reasons (mostly UI space) we dropped them. Only the Leader of the unit has a name.

- From the Synopsis thread (Steve)

[Battlefront.com]

Hey, I remember that post

I will say that when a Leader is taken out of action another one replaces him and a new name is used. Same with rank. This means you might lose SGT Rock to a sniper's bullet and have him replaced by the next highest ranking soldier within the unit. This might mean that 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, C Company, 2nd Brigade's new Squad Leader is CPL Numbnuts

It gets tricky with chain of command stuff, so that's why I didn't use an HQ as an example. We're still working on that design so I'm not able to answer more questions on that front. The important thing for this discussion is to know that there is less abstraction with names and soldier attributes than CMx1 games, but much of that is hidden from the player so he can concentrate on the battle.

Steve

[vincere]

Battlefront.com

Good points, I must admit many games have cluttered UIs and overdone the information available. Thanks for the quick clarification.

[MikeyD]

If we're cmnparing and contrasting, one thread on the Theater of War site contains an AAR where a Russian 45mm AT gun crew which had recently abandoned its gun rushed to a KV tank which had itself recently been abandoned, boarded it, and got off a few shots with the main gun.

There was some discussion about how the troops in CMSF would be able to pick up discarded equipment. I had speculated (its all speculation!) that it would probably apply to small arms & crew served weapons, but not heavy equipment. It looks like Theater of War (shorted to ToW?) went for the big stuff too.

[Battlefront.com]

Yeah, no heavy equipment swapping for sure. But yes, CM:SF already has the ability for Teams to retain their most important weapons. CMx1 had this but it was more abstract. Ammo scrounging is not abstracted any more. Neither is ammo carrying.

In CMx1 a MG team, for example, would lose some of its ammo with each guy lost. In CM:SF this is handled very specifically. If the Ammo Bearer (yes, that is a position we recognize!) gets nailed, and he was carying 400rnds of ammo, someone in the Team will attempt to pick up what he can. Since weight is tracked by individual, if the Team is fresh then chances are nobody will be able to pick up something dropped. Everybody is already at or near their max load.

Steve

[MikeyD]

"...the only displayed attributes for an indvidual soldier are weapon, specialty, and physical condition (tracks wounds). "

This brings up the memory of the dreaded 'Health bar' in Shooter games. I assume CMSF will not include hidden medipacks that restore the player to 100% health! By 'tracks wounds' I assume anything above superficial injuries are going to put a man out of action. Sure, there are the 'Congressional Medal of Honor' cases where the brave wounded soldier drags his shattered body over to the pillbox and throws a grenade through the slit, but I hope medal-worthy heroics are kept to a minimum.

[ August 03, 2006, 08:52 AM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[Battlefront.com]

Mostly correct. There are no healthbars (shudder), but there is a "light" that indicates if the guy is fine, lightly wounded but still (mostly) fit for action, and that's it. Right now if the guy is anything more than that he is dropped from the Team's roster.

Steve

[vincere]

Mostly correct. There are no healthbars (shudder), but there is a "light" that indicates if the guy is fine, lightly wounded but still (mostly) fit for action, and that's it. Right now if the guy is anything more than that he is dropped from the Team's roster.

Can you confirm whether this includes individual vehicle crew members?

[Battlefront.com]

Yes, there is no difference between individual crew members and members of any other unit. CM does not play favorites

Another little bone... in real life some vehicles do not have a dedicated crew. Instead, the team is assigned a vehicle and they use it to move themselves around. CMx2 allows this. That means some vehicles can only be driven around when their team is onboard. For CM:SF think Humvees with small specialized teams, for CM:WW2 think British Mortar Carriers.

Steve

[Homo ferricus]

i was meaning to ask, i am still not clear on the issue of a wounded soldier's future, is he carried back to a field hospital(highly unlikely) is he treated by the squad medic and then disappears? Does he just disappear?

just curious

[vincere]

Battlefront, thanks for the clarifaction and bone.

Homo ferricus

There is an old thread with this discussed. Some thought Casevac was a key part of combat simualtion, others, including BF thought that while RL important it didn't warrent the coding time over other stuff.

BF didn't give a definative answer because the details were still to be worked out; but it was likely some abstraction along CM1 lines was most likely?

[Battlefront.com]

Vincere's post is accurate. We have to abstract casevac in CM:SF. The programming (AI) and art (animation) requirements to do casevac even remotely well are rather large. I'm sure it does not look like that to many of you, but from a simulation standpoint it is almost a parallel simulation to combat. It is not, as such, a simple adjunct to it.

On top of that there are a myriad of user interface issues that ride along with any non-abstract system. Players do not want to be saddled with casualties any more than real life commanders, so we're sure that if we did not come up with a pretty much "hands free" automatic system we'd find you guys asking for the option to turn of something that probably would take us 2 months to make.

Steve

[C'Rogers]

The UI has enough stuff going on in it that sticking soldier's names in the primary UI is out of the question.

Reading over a lot of people's posts they seem to want more and more information about every soldier in the game and the CM series does (to my understanding) track in detail more things than players know about.

I do agree that trying to present all this information is silly and ultimatly counterproductive. However if I may offer a possible solution by stepping outside the genre.

Many business and railroad based games track data that is, while interesting, virtually useless to the average player. A good example would be the Railroad Tycoon series. You can access a ledger outside the main screen chalk full of information, mostly of minor use (average cost of maintence per foot of track if I am remembering correctly, though you can't do anything about it).

Now while this data is, mostly, useless, it is interesting and it serves as something to check on while the game may be in a slow spot. All the data is put on its own screen so it doesn't clog up the main interface. It seems to serve the purpose of giving certain players all the information they want, yet without obstructing the game flow.

It does have its problems I am aware. It could lead to obsessive players taking extremly long amounts of time per turn and I don't have any idea how much the programming time for such a thing would be.

Just thought I would throw out a possible idea (additional information on its own seperate screen) and ask if Battlefront has ever considered anything like that.

[Battlefront.com]

C'Rogers,

Reading over a lot of people's posts they seem to want more and more information about every soldier in the game and the CM series does (to my understanding) track in detail more things than players know about.

Gamers want all sorts of things BEFORE the game comes out, then they find they don't like them after. Do a search on the Forum Archieves on the Simpsons and you'll see many posts made by me explaining this in detail

The names would be included if they did not excessively clutter up the UI, even though they are not relevant. If we had RPG elements in the game then we would find a way of putting them in. But because it badly clutters the UI, makes the UI space larger, and means absolutely nothing... there is zero chance that individual names are going into CM:SF. None, zero, nada, nunca, nil, nicht, etc.

Just thought I would throw out a possible idea (additional information on its own seperate screen) and ask if Battlefront has ever considered anything like that.

Yes, and it violates one of our longest standing principles. If it isn't important enough to be in the main UI it likely isn't important enough to be shown at all. Since everything takes time, and time is limited, it is best to focus on other things that really are important.

BTW, the early UI designs (2+ years ago) had names for each soldier. But then the game's design started to take form and more and more things were needed in the main UI. As time went on it was clear the names had to go. I tried putting them back in a few times, and always found the design terrible looking.

I'll soon be able to send around some UI for you to check out. You'll see what I mean. It is full of critical info and, although rather full, it works well. Just names alone would kill it.

Steve

[vincere]

Gamers want all sorts of things BEFORE the game comes out, then they find they don't like them after.

I must admit I've played games with too much info in. Sometimes looking at stuff just because it's there. I've also witnessed what I believe to be a developer that acted too much on what forum people wanted in- the game completed without being focussed enough and was unplayable due to micro management hell.

Steve, you guys appear to have the right balance of listening and keeping your own focus clearly in mind.