Was WEGO an afterthought?

[James McKenzie-Smith]

H.W. Guderian, you have give good reasons for liking WEGO, and I am glad for you that there are games that allow you to enjoy wargaming in a manner that suits you.

I am in fact one of those (rare?) gamers who plays one style of CMSF, but at least understands the other. Both types of play suit different types of gamers. RT possibly appeals to people who like the time pressure and dealing with the fog of war on a moment by moment basis. WEGO is especially good for the analysts and historians. There are also many similarities, and many other reasons to like either way of play.

As an RT gamer, it would be silly for me to look down on WEGO players, any more than I can look down on people who prefer Natalie Portman to Keira Knightley. It's just a matter of taste, and frankly, it's of little concern to me.

As for WEGO being an afterthought...no, I don't think so. The implementation of WEGO did not make everyone happy, to be sure, but when the game was announced, there was no mention of RT. The eventual inclusion of RT might have necessitated the changing of WEGO, but it seems to me that WEGO play is in fact possible. It is just not the same WEGO play that was presented by CM1. Those who thought that CM1's WEGO was perfect - and there were more than a few such people - might naturally look on any changes as being retrograde steps. Maybe they are right, I do not know. I can say that the RT experience in CM2 is rather better than in most competing products.

[thewood]

Sorry, but it is a given that WEGO was released with a fairly significant known bug. Replays are only partial due to issues with ammo, unit status, and terrain changes.

I am curious what you consider competing products. I assume these are tactical simulations.

[James McKenzie-Smith]

You are partially correct in your assumption. I would probably expand my definition of 'competing product' to include 'RT wargames', with an emphasis on modern tactical warfare, but not exclusively.

Examples would include Eric Young's Squad Assault, Close Combat Modern Tactics and Road to Baghdad and the rest of the Close Combat series, Air Assault Task Force and Armored Task Force, and Steel Beasts (while strictly speaking a tank simulator, the tactical wargaming aspect of the latter can be rewarding).

There are other games, dealing with similar topics in RT, such as JTF, Act of War, and Will of Steel, but these are barely wargames at all. There is also the Chain of Command mod of OFP and ArmA, but as it is a mod, I will not call it a competing product; Full Spectrum Command would be a competing product if ever it had a public release.

From this RT wargamer's point of view, CMSF compares very favourably with most of the above, although the Close Combat series and EYSA are both easier to navigate and use.

[thewood]

EYSA while not a disaster is what really puts it to me that CMSF should stay WEGO. It and to a lesser extent, CC, all had similar issues to CMSF in squads finding cover and pathfinding. They also had OOBs that were pretty limited compared to the CM series. CC was no more than 15 units/side and EYSA was also limited.

AATF and its kin are all more abstracted in some ways than even CM1. SBPro is in reality a sim with some scenario capabilities, not a tactical wargame.

So what is the point: CMSF falls out of all these as a peer for different reasons:

Large number of units

Morale model

1:1 modeling of squad

detailed ballistics

True 3D

If you look at these points, none of the games you listed have more than three and most don't have more than 2.

So, my point is that trying to do all of that in RT is the killer for RT. You can artificially overcome to some extent by limiting the number of units. Steve even said eons ago that he preferred WEGO in the CM world for those very reasons.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Stirling:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Vanir Ausf B:

I don't know that it was a deliberate decision, but when the lead designer plays RT almost exclusively, and reportedly so do most of the beta testers, it was probably inevitable.

But those statements were made when WEGO was totally broken. RT was the only way to play.</font>

[dalem]

Originally posted by H.W. Guderian:

[Hmmmm . . . what DID I ever do with those little Tigers?]

I have spares. Plus others.

-dale

[James McKenzie-Smith]

Hello, thewood. Squads finding cover has little to do with WEGO. It has everything to do with 1:1 representation vs. abstraction, which is a different issue altogether. AATF also does not have the problems that CMSF has, for the reason you mentioned. Once again, nothing to do with RT/WEGO.

I'm not too arsed about limited OOBs, although I am sympathetic to those who would like more variety. I also would not actually dislike having more units to play with.

As you point out, there are significant differences between CMSF and the other games I listed. However, for me, they attempt to scratch pretty much the same itch.

You are right that RT works better with smaller units. Not really an issue with me, though; I have never been big on brigade or even mere battalion command. Platoon, reinforced platoon, or maybe a company on an ambitious day is about it for me. That held true even for tactical board wargames, years and years ago.

[H.W. Guderian]

Originally posted by dalem:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by H.W. Guderian:

[Hmmmm . . . what DID I ever do with those little Tigers?]

I have spares. Plus others.

-dale </font>

[C'Rogers]

As an RT gamer, it would be silly for me to look down on WEGO players, any more than I can look down on people who prefer Natalie Portman to Keira Knightley.

Personally I like to think I can appreciate the differences of the two, and learn to live, and enjoy, both at the same time.

But that is only one issue ... the RT/WEGO is a little trickier.

[Sitting Duck]

I like WEGO because I like the replay. Not just because it helps digest what happened, but also because I like the "movie" for it's entertainment value. WEGO gives the only movie option around - even if it's only 60 seconds and I only get my point-of-view.

I think BF.C missed the boat by not including the capability to fully replay an entire game in God Mode (everything visible). Yah, 1:1 is nice (in theory), but if they had spent that time working out the "God Mode Movie" (GMM), I think they would have had a winner. Many battles have a few crucial moments in them, and having the ability to save/share those moments via some format would have made CMx2 the "killer app" in this genre.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not unhappy with my purchase and I don't begrudge BF.C my $70 (deluxe version), but I confess that I'm not as delighted with CMx2 as I was when I started playing CMx1. There was certainly some amount of disappointment with the bugs, but I know BF.C will eventually make that good. But I had hoped we'd see something a little more revolutionary...and the ability to replay an entire game with everything visible would have spun everything around.

S'Ok.

[thewood]

One thing I keep forgetting about with WEGO is hotseat. May not sound like a big deal til you want to test something or see what the AI does.

[Rod]

Originally posted by James McKenzie-Smith:

Hello, thewood. Squads finding cover has little to do with WEGO. It has everything to do with 1:1 representation vs. abstraction, which is a different issue altogether. AATF also does not have the problems that CMSF has, for the reason you mentioned. Once again, nothing to do with RT/WEGO.

Hey James,

Are you sure about that. What if in RT only 100 computer cycles can be allocated for this to maintain a certain framerate while in WEGO 10000 cycles could be dedicated or theoretically as many cycles as you deem necessary.

Rod

[Battlefront.com]

An interesting, and quite pleasant discussion

To first answer Thewood's burning question...

I meant to ask Steve this, but never did. If you never zoom in and stay at a high level, what's the point of 1:1 graphics.

Because they aren't just graphics Let's forget about the visuals for a sec and remember that the simulation itself is vastly more advanced than CMx1. Not without its teething problems, to be sure, which incidentally are the result of the system being more complex. So, I like the 1:1 representation simply because I know what it gives me in terms of an overall improved simulation.

The graphics, however, are very important to me. Even in RealTime, even tough I'm generally not Tabbed onto a unit and following it around. From high up I see guys streaming down streets, hopping into and out of trenches, and other behavior that one expects from real Soldiers. Sure, it is imperfect at times, but compared to CMx1's Three Amigos moving in lockstep with each other... it's vastly more engaging to me even if I'm not seeing guys change clips or take handgrenades out from the correct pouch. I know that stuff is happening and that's good enough for me.

As for your list... most of the issues you mentioned are fixed in v1.05. You can be the judge for yourself when v1.05 comes out Some of the others are potentially equally relevant to RT players, so they really don't belong on a list specific to WeGo. Things like movable waypoints, for example, would be better suited for a general "I miss this feature" list since they aren't specific to WeGo.

As I said in another thread going on presently, WeGo was not an afterthought, but it was always designed to be based on a RealTime engine. The reason for this is that you can have a WeGo option with a RealTime engine, you can not have a RealTime option with a WeGo engine. Moreover, when you have a WeGo (or turn based of any sort) engine you suffer massive limitations in what can be done because real life does not start and stop, rather it continues without respect to a clock. From a programming standpoint this is a VERY important concept, even if it isn't all that apparent to Joe Average gamer. Suffice to say that many of the annoying bits of CMx1 and the lack of improvement in some areas were the direct result of the engine being inherently broken up into chunks of time instead of continuous time.

The idea that WeGo allows for more detail because of no constraints of time is, basically, correct. However, it is less efficient and inherently limited, so sometimes WeGo needs a lot more resources to do things than RealTime. This is especially true for programming. Lots of things that were not in CMx1 could have been added, in theory, but weren't because trying to shoehorn in features that were essentially real time in nature was very difficult to do. Exceptions to rules suck, so the more exceptions needed, the more it sucks to program them

WIth a RealTime engine tons of things are inherently taken care of without extra coding. Real flight path tracking, TacAI remembering things that disappeared for a few seconds, shells landing when they should instead of after the turn ends, etc. Again, it might be possible for a programmer to make it difficult for a player to tell the difference between a WeGo game with a RealTime game, but if one took 5 years to make and the other 3... yeah, he'd notice that for sure Not that I have any idea it would have taken 2 more years to shoehorn RealTime type simulation benefits into a WeGo game system, but I suspect it might.

So in the end it was a choice between making a RealTime engine with a WeGo capability, or making a RealTime engine without WeGo. We never thought of making a WeGo game without RealTime. It simply wasn't a viable or desirable choice for us.

Steve

[H.W. Guderian]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

. . . Steve

OMG! :eek: Steve, how's the sun and Mai Tai's? I didn't know they had pool-side wireless in Acapulco?

Seriously, all the best with efforts on v1.05. [. . . and, ehem . . . do you think the Blue AI facing a solo-human Red player will be able to use Javs in 1.05? . . . while playing natively on an OS X box??? OK now I'm really pushing it, I know . . .]

Enjoy the sun.