Some thoughts on different types of gameplay

[Battlefront.com]

Heh... I see there already is a new thread discussing UI specifically. If that's what you're interested in discussing, then please go to that thread and not post UI comments in this thread

Steve

[Secondbrooks]

I'm bit everything, depends of my mood and depends of game ofcourse. Combat missions are something which i usually like to play for challenge, but for experimenting too. I like Red side more, because it's (usually) more challening.

What i'm not is big battle freak. Smaller is better. company size in enjoyable in great degree, but batallion size is already starting to bug me severly.

[Peter Cairns]

Steve,

Fair enough i'll stick with the theme.

I thing the key to asymmetric combat is really asymmetric objectives. A US player needs to target the enemy while doing the minimum of collateral damage and the minimum casualties while the Syrians need to maximise US casualties while keeping their own as low as possible.

In addition the US should by and large need to take and hold ground.

In this respect the US has to use self restraint effectively limiting the use of the firepower it has available while focusing on certain parts of the map, while the Syrian's have more tactical flexibility but poorer forces.

If scenarios are well designed with this in mind you should get both balance and realism while giving players in effect two different games in one.

To many games may have different forces but when you look a bit deeper they are functionally identical with different skins. Real wars not like that particularly in this day and age.

Peter.

[orwell]

Just thought I'd chime as with what some other players have said, that seeing my guys out there on the battlefield and the design that to me says, each one of these guys has a family I'm gonna need to write home to if he dies. I find keeping all my guys alive a HUGE part of what goes into my planning. While I wouldn't suggest representing civilians directly, perhaps you could add more personal affects around the buildings so that you get the feel that people live here when your tank is blasting through their walls.

[handihoc]

Still on the civilian thread, how about a simplified version whereby the player gets an icon, either at game start or discovered in the course of the battle, that lets us know civs are in a particular building/area, which may or may not also contain hostiles?

Any attempt to simply blast that building would result in severe penalties for the attacker. This would leave two alternatives: a) cautious infantry ingress to take out the hostiles (if present), which would carry the risk of possible civilian casualties (translating as penalties) or ignore the building/area entirely, which could also provide the enemy with a (maybe limited) victory.

I'm just putting this forward as a suggestion for increasing realism. At the moment the gung-ho approach of blasting almost any building to smithereens does seem a touch unrealistic. I know it's been said that civilians tend to evacuate any threatened area, but from what I've seen that ain't necessarily so. There are plenty of examples of the enemy using civilians as cover in the hope/belief that it will stall a full-on coalition attack.

I'd certainly not want to see anything that in any way enables or encourages players to indulge in a civporn bloodbath, but the current Preserve designation, from what I've experienced as a player, doesn't serve as much of a deterrent. eg I have returned concerted fire on a mosque from which hostiles are attacking my troops, and not suffered any significant penalty.

Perhaps the designer had simply not designated it as Preserve. I don't know. If so, then perhaps the answer is that simple: designers could put more emphasis on Preserved buildings or areas to discourage mass destruction.

Whatever, I'd like to see something that makes me think more carefully about simply blitzing any building that cocks a snook my way, and obliges me to consider the consequences of doing so.

OK, time to hit my cosy civilian bed now.

[Battlefront.com]

What you described is what Preserve does, but it must be specifically indicated by the guy making the map. However, I do think that some sort of random assignment of Preserve might be possible and enjoyable. I've made a note of this and at the moment that's all I can do with it.

Steve

[Paper Tiger]

Yeah, that Preserve victory condition is a beauty for constricting the US player. I expect I'll be returning to MOUT after 1.06 arrives and do a standard Blue v Red situation, I'll be using that one a lot. It's not much use for a Red v Red situation as I suspect that they wouldn't give a s@*t about the civvies.

I would like to see the civilian density somehow matter more in the game. I suspect that a larger density of civilians makes it more difficult for the Blue side to spot IED's. If the random 'preserve' command you're thinking about was somehow linked to civilian density, that might make it a bit more relevant.

There's a lot of potential in the existing victory conditions that hasn't been fully explored yet (by me!). I've been experimenting with some of them for my campaign and had some interesting results. I'd like to see an exit option added at some point in the future so that I can create some interesting hit and run missions. At the moment, both sides are stuck on the board until

a)

The night game is a very different baby from the day game, I'm surprised that it doesn't get brought up very often. I can't really play any scenarios when there's no moon with Syrian infantry because they can't see anything (yeah, I read that this is a bug and will be fixed with 1.06). But it rocks for vehicle engagements. The T-72Turms comes into it's own at night when playing Red v Red and the BMP-2 is superior to the BMP-1 at night too.

Since the US forces train to fight at night so that they can "own" it, it would be nice to see the night game developed a bit more from both sides' perspective. Flares will add so much to the night game when they arrive.

[Paper Tiger]

Oops, hit the TAB key by mistake and it sent my post while I was editing it. Never mind.

[Pandur]

I would like to see the civilian density somehow matter more in the game.

acually this matters big time i found out recently. it was when i played an "Town" quick battle directly after an "open" one.

in the open you have the usual spott as soon as the guys are exposed to LOS. but the uncon´s(and i guess it only matter for them) can sometimes walk up as close as 50 meters along a street towards a vehicle of yours, for example, in a "town" setting(point is you would have had LOS on them since longe time, still they are just a "?" counter).

important is that they must not do any hostile acts, ofcourse, and units wich where once spoted as "enemy" wont get this "bonus" again.

at that point i guessed that the civilian density setting is responible for that behaviour.

i dont know it for sure ofcourse, but well its pretty close i guess.

[Battlefront.com]

Pandur is correct that the civilian density setting matters a LOT if there are Uncons in a scenario that has sufficient density of buildings.

Steve

[Paper Tiger]

Wow! I haven't tried anything like that. I'll set something up this weekend and see how that works. Thanks for that.

[Pandur]

i dont know if it acually would matter if they "run"(quick, fast) or "walk"(move/normal for technicals). i guess the more they behave like normal civilians, the harder they are to ID as "enemy" up to the point they come too close or open fire.

maybe keep an eye open for this if you run some tests, like repeating same tests with "move" and "quick"!?

[Battlefront.com]

The specific Command used, terrain, and distance should all matter. Someone running within a few meters of a friendly unit would be presumed hostile and treated as such, even if it was just some poor sod rushing to get home to watch American Idol

Steve

[A.E.B]

I'm a challenge/fun player, by which I mean it’s the battle that is the important part, winning or losing is secondary (though winning is better).

So for me what is important is:

That a game be internally consistent - .i.e. to follows a consistent pattern where you are able to predict and thereby control what happens in the game rather than relying on "dumb luck" or for things to go right.

The game must be fun. Fun means that the challenge comes from the game play not from bugs, the UI, or bad/unexplainable design.

The game must offer variety and balance. Hence you should be able to do things differently, and stand some chance regardless of side.

I never bought CMSF but have now been given a free copy. So I thought I'd give it another chance.

Sadly it fails on all three levels.

While 1.05 is better than the abysmal original demo, it is still impossible to separate out bugs from bad design from correct but non-understandable design. I won't bore everyone with a reiteration of the issues, but at no point do I feel confident when giving orders that I can predict something as simple as movement.

Fun: CMSF isn't my idea of fun. Going past the above, micro-management of a few units in an urban setting is worse than commanding a whole battalion in CMX1. You need to baby sit units given the bad pathing and almost absent AI. The UI certainly does detract.

For god sake I play EvE Online - so my tolerance for bugs and bad UI is high - but CMSF is a turn off. Too much work for too little fun!

Variety and balance: CMSF doesn't offer much variety. Too few settings, too few units. As for balance, any modern sim or wargame featuring the current US Military is obviously going to be about asymmetric warfare, and hence not balanced at an individual unit level. If CMSF had handled real asymmetric warfare properly it may well have been a great game. It doesn't and it isn't. Instead it is like playing CMBB with the reds only having 1941 conscripts and the blues 1944 German elite.

The fact that people mention playing Red v Red or Blue v Blue merely highlights this.

Note that this is only my subjective opinion and I am sure that plenty of people enjoy CMSF.

Note that I am not comparing CMSF to CMX1: I am comparing it to other games I can buy and play now that are not necessarily wargames.

Also feel free to tell me that "I just don't get it". Maybe I don't.

[Paper Tiger]

Well, I won't say that "you just don't get it". You just don't like it and that's fine. I've never played a PBEM or online game so I can't comment on that. There certainly seem to be plenty of people who would agree with you there though.

Perhaps you should spend a bit more time with the game if you really want to find it's depth. The pathfinding AI does take a bit of time to get used to, especially if you are accustomed to the CMx1 pathfinding. I was a bit surprised that my units didn't literally follow my path along the line like they did in CM1. Instead, they usually zig zag a bit. But if you're not into micromanaging every units movement over a long distance in RT, the pathfinding AI is really good. Asa long as there are no enemy units in sight, I can give them LONG paths to a destination and they'll negotiate the terrain effectively. Movement in sight of the enemy should be shorter and more careful, naturally.

An example from a scenario I'm currently designing: Blue forces attack and clear a village and move on to their next objective. Some reinforcements arrive and I can just give them one 'Move' or 'Quick' order from their starting positions to the village which is secured and they move there following the roads without me having to input lots of waypoints. That's a lot less micromanagement which I really appreciate when the action is getting exciting.

It also makes the AI a little bit more challenging. Again, another example from another scenario under development. Blue must ambush a Red force moiving through some lightly forested hilly terrain at night. I created one AI plan to test it out and so far, that one plan has sufficed every time I play it because the AI tends to maximise the cover available to it and does some surprising things when given an order to move 500m from one zone to another. They don't just go in a straight line from A to B but use the terrain, sometimes going way off on the flanks. The first time I tested it, I got slaughtered because I expected them to do precisely that, go in a straight line.

Well, that's the pathfinding AI. as for variety, well, it took me some time to figure that this is not a Modern Era combat simulator, it's a Modern era combat between Syria and the US simulator. Once I 'got' that, I found that there is a great variety available. Yes, the US will slaughter the Syrians in the open. that's indisputable, except by Syrians I suppose. To really hurt the US, you have to hit them in urban terrain. Now, so far, MOUT operations haven't really grabbed me because of some bugs. And I have a predeliction for open terrain combat and I find that Red on Red works really well there. The game allows me to do pretty much anything I want, as long as it's in a 'Syrian' setting. The Syrians do actually have some quite good stuff to play around with and it makes for a good Red on Red game. And if you're not worried about 'combined arms realism' there are plenty of good scenarios to download at CMMODS with infantry only bashes which are a LOT of fun.

Maybe you should try again next wekk when 1.06 comes out and that horrible low wall bug gets fixed. I think the game is worth the effort to get to know.

[BigDork]

Originally posted by handihoc:

One example of this is, when playing Blue v Red (to date my preferred mode), as the Blue side I generally accept that I almost certainly have vastly superior firepower and weaponry, and probably better trained and equipped soldiers. BUT the big difference here, compared to say WW2, and very much in tune with the political and social pressures of today, is that every Blue casualty is for me a potential 'news headline and a tragedy' that has serious repercussions, even if imaginary or abstracted in game terms. So I play with force preservation very much in mind; every loss of friendly life detracts from the overall satisfaction of winning, and so affects my battlefield tactics. In previous games I would fight on, no matter the casualties, as long as I had at least a chance of winning. Now, that is not enough.

I am right along the same mindset as what I quoted but an experience I just had has added to that.

Yesterday morning after work I participated in a "Patriot Detail" here at Baghdad Airport. We formed up and honored a fallen soldier as his was placed on a C-130 for the flight back to the states. It was one of the saddest things I have ever participated in.

Later on I tried to play a little CM to take my mind off it but found it difficult to play. Every casualty I had was another casket being loaded onto a plane for that one last flight home. It sure does make me slow down and really try to save each and every soldier I command.

[the Fighting Seabee]

Yeah big dork. The stark reality of death is a smack in the face. That's why we call him (and all others that die for us) Heroes. They make the ultimate sacrifice for us. When you witness such tragedy it can be sobering, and make you realize that war is not a game (or if it is, it's the game with the harshest rules and is played for keeps).

But that terrible gut feeling is the reason (imo) that we are there. We have to neutralize the people that cause this pain to us and the people of Iraq. Imagine a suiced bomber... how many lives he takes, how much sorrow he causes, how much pain he unleashes. That's why we are there fighting. And that's why our guys are heroes.

Hoorah to you my brutha, and to all the other guys over there. Stay safe, keep your head on a swivel, do the right thing, and come home in one piece.

[Battlefront.com]

A.E.B.

The fact that people mention playing Red v Red or Blue v Blue merely highlights this.

Heh... well, it was a MASSIVELY requested feature for CMx1 games, so I would be careful about drawing conclusions from people talking about this feature now vs. back then.

Note that this is only my subjective opinion and I am sure that plenty of people enjoy CMSF.

"Fun" and "challenging" are extremely personal, highly subjective conclusions for someone to reach. If they weren't, we would all be happy with one brand of car, one form of government, one type of soft drink, etc. I drink Pepsi only if I have to, but that's just my personal tastes

Also feel free to tell me that "I just don't get it". Maybe I don't.

You may "get it" but not like it. That comment I made ages ago was directed towards the people that rejected CM:SF simply because it wasn't a carbon copy of CMx1 with better graphics. I don't fault someone for not liking CM:SF any more than I fault myself for disliking Steel Panthers after a fairly short period of time. I know people STILL play that game, so bully for them. For me, it didn't grab me and is in no small reason why CMBO was born. So in effect, I "got it" and simply didn't like what I got. Each to his own, no hard feelings.

I do strongly disagree that CM:SF "doesn't handle asymmetric warfare properly". I think it does a great job at it, and I don't know of any other tactical wargame that even comes close to doing an equal, not to mention better, job of it. Perfect? Nothing we have ever done is perfect and nothing we will ever do is perfect, so I sleep fine at night knowing that

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

BigDork,

I have mixed feelings about making a game that makes people who do the real thing for a living associate CM:SF with their "day jobs". On the one hand it makes me uncomfortable for getting that close to something I personally don't know anything about, on the other hand I'm a bit flattered to know that we did get the game's core close enough for there to be that association. It's a strange thing that more distant subject matter can't do.

Steve

[bwgulley]

Speaking of game play, I want the Squad Leader campaign game. "You" start off as a corporal or sgt at the start of the campaign and based on how well you do during each scenario you can earn better skills and promotions. Yes I realize the scope of CMSF is way to short for that to happein in RL. This is a game and the purpose of a game is to have fun. Since most people play solo what could be better than watching "yourself" on the battlefield. As I recall the SL campaign was only 6 scenarios, of course the player could make it as long as they wanted. A 2 player version would have both players start off at the bottom working their way up. If one guys is killed then his replacement starts off at the bottom again. The winner would have the highest rank or skill at the end of a set number of scenarios. Sounds like fun to me.

[Paper Tiger]

bwgulley:

As I recall the SL campaign was only 6 scenarios, of course the player could make it as long as they wanted.

Wow, that brings back memories. You're talking about the original Squad Leader game aren't you? Man, playing SL, (not ASL) was a real DOG but for some strange reason, I couldn't get enough of it.

[bwgulley]

I never got pasted Cross of Iron, the rules just got too tough. We spent more time re-reading rules than playing. Set-up was also a major pain, not to mention moving the stacks to check LOS. As has been stated a 1,000,000 times before CMx1 was the ASL players dream.

I really thing the single player campaign is the way to go. Like I said it's a game, this would be really cool in a EF WWII version where the war lasted 4 years and the toys kept getting better.

You could do it now I would think, change the names of one of the leaders to yours and devise some sort of scoring system based on battlefield performance. The bear would be keep track of everything, WeGo would be a must so you could re-play the action to see what your guy did.

[Plugger]

Goodaye,

Interesting thread. Going back to the civilians issue and the suggestion that a building can be given an icon showing whether it has civilian occupants or not.

I think that this is a great idea and a fairly (?) simple means of incorporating one of the major limiting factors to Western Military Supremacy on todays middle eastern battlefields.

Having to think twice before automatically flattening / shooting up every building in sight would really change the game mechanics.

Could I suggest that the prevelance of civilian occupied buildings be tied into the scenario civilian density and that you wouldn't know if a certain building has civilians in it or not until you were within a set distance. Off course the scenario designer could tell you up front about certain buildings but others would require some reconnaissne.

Steve's point about the nightmare of having to control and move civilians around the map is well taken but on an active battlefield it would be a safe bet that any civilians would be holed up in their houses / buildings as a matter of self preservation.

The icons over the buildings method would give you civilians and all the related tactical decision making that this entails without the need to actually visually represent farmer fred sprinting across the street to visit his girlfriend.

Cheers,

Plugger

[ January 26, 2008, 05:51 PM: Message edited by: Plugger ]

[Pandur]

Could I suggest that the prevelance of civilian occupied buildings be tied into the scenario civilian density and that you wouldn't know if a certain building has civilians in it or not until you were within a set distance.

i find that most exellent! so you could spare excessive "preserve" zones and still have civilians represented without them beeing acually "represented" on the map.

the fact that a scenario designer could show certain civilian occupied houses right from game start and/or the abiity to not do it and keep it random, governed by civilian density is great.

iam all for it

[Paper Tiger]

Crescendo of Doom killed it for me sadly. Just when we got the Brits, we also got Bypass Movement. That's when it all got too much for me. I liked the armour game in COI and some of the scenarios were really good too.

yup, CMx1 was my dream come true. It could only have been bettered had AH or Hasbro done a killer version of ASL for the computer. An ASL heads up for you if you're interested, cplsteiner is trying to do Hill 621 for CMSF. You should check out his map in the scenario forum. It's a beauty.