How often do you use Area Fire!?

[Secondbrooks]

Yankeedog' and Other Mean's suggestion are intresting. I give a thought to area fire as well: That what has been suggested would be only for unplanned situations (without new-age communications like with Stryker troops me figures). Forexample defenders should get minimal if any area fire penalties even without CoC their leaders have been there watched their area of fire and named the terrain etc. Defenceplan has been practiced multiple of times.

Their actions can be expected to be planned, they are expected to know the terrain, they are expected to understand orders from one or two single words (shouted words travels long distances) they can be expected to be able to improvise better something which has not been planned. Current chain of command should be increased for defenders, maybe add option for hasty defence to make CoC to act like by default.

Then again attacker knowing the terrain (by intel and/or first hand experience) planning and maybe even tranined, someway somehow should gain minimal CoC punishment and even improvise their actions without CoC.

Question is that is current system better than making system far too complex? I think i forexample would neither care or be aware even half of things affecting this. One thing i know is that i'm on side of defender mostly

Other case.

What could we excpect to happen is we would be behind big gun and saw thru our optics that our guys are firing at building with their puny small arms? Or our guys from different platoon are requesting firesupport as we heppen to be around. Do we need CoC for help guys out or do we just fire our cannon at building? I quess there are early given orders which makes us do what we would, fire or not. Does CMSF include these orders? Well no, but Could be exected that ROE is allowing us to fire at anything suspicous or requested by forexample different company's guy and it doesn't require CoC.

[ April 26, 2008, 02:04 AM: Message edited by: Secondbrooks ]

[Martin Krejcirik]

Steve, the current Area fire system nulyfies most benefits of relative spotting. Why have you spent all the time doing relative spotting ? It's totally unrealistic.

Simple proposal:

- no delay for area fire to action spots where there are currently spotted, recently spotted, or network spotted enemy markers.

- fixed delay (1 minute minimum) for area fire to any other action spot. Possibly higher fixed delay, or not allowed at all, if firing unit is out of command.

[Secondbrooks]

Because guys don't communicate in realistic fashion, they are slaves of their chain of command: "Me not talking to you without link to my company commander, you guy from 2nd platoon". It would tie them even closer to chain of command rendering them even more useless without ability to communicate with their leader. For US it's much more okay due good reliability of maintaining CoC... For Syria definedly not.

[gibsonm]

Does all of the above relate only to RT?

Sorry but the posters don’t specify one or the other.

Again, FWIW, I think the current Area Fire modelling in WEGO is fine.

[Battlefront.com]

Martin,

Steve, the current Area fire system nulyfies most benefits of relative spotting. Why have you spent all the time doing relative spotting ? It's totally unrealistic.

Replacing an unrealistic system with one that is even MORE unrealistic is not the answer. That's what I've been saying throughout this entire thread The idea of imposing artificial delays on targeting is just not an improvement and, IMHO, a step backwards.

I understand how players think.... they latch onto an idea that seems, on the surface, to provide an improvement. But that's why there are so few game developers and so many game players... it's not that easy You have the luxury of being able to ignore the downsides of a particular proposal, we do not. We have to implement it and then deal with the outcry if it doesn't work. So when we see something that we know won't work, it's an idea that we are OBLIGATED to pass on.

If there is a better idea on how to solve this problem, in all my years as a player or as a game designer I've yet to see it. Maybe someday someone will figure out a good work around for some of these traditional wargame problems (I have noted a couple others on the previous page), but this idea isn't it.

I also do not agree, at all, that Relative Spotting is nullified by the issue of Area Fire. It's not perfect, that's for sure. But then again, nothing ever is. There are many flaws in the Relative Spotting system we have now, and Area Fire is one of them. But compared to Absolute Spotting its a vast improvement and we're glad we broke new ground by making it. I'll take a flawed Relative Spotting system over a flawed Absolute Spotting system any day of the week. I'm sure most would agree.

Steve

[dan/california]

The only real solution is multiple players per side who then have to communicate what building they want obliterated to their compatriot in charge of the tank platoon.

With very small tweaks to the relative spotting system as currently implemented this will provide more realism than most people can stand.

The AARs should be fascinating reading. As in train wreck fascinating. I can't wait. :eek:

[Battlefront.com]

dan/california is correct. The only way we have figured out to mitigate some of the traditional wargame problems (area fire, Borg control, God view, etc.) is to have more people wearing hats on one side instead of one guy wearing all the hats. The more people play on one side, and the fewer the units, the more realistic things can become. Obviously having 10 players controlling 500 soldiers isn't as good as having 500 players controlling 500 soldiers, but it is a start in that direction.

Or put another way, Relative Spotting helps reduce the traditional wargame problems... it doesn't eliminate them.

Steve

[Pandur]

The only real solution is multiple players per side who then have to communicate what building they want obliterated to their compatriot in charge of the tank platoon.

well, until this comes into play it will take a quiet long time. and than you "need" at least 3 or 4 people to play a game of CMSF. i dont think there will be too many played compared to the classical 2 player match, wich is intitiated faster and easier.

also i can hardly think that "co play" will be compatible with WEGO, wich makes it reduntant for me.

other than that, yes, you are right. it would partly solve the problem.

[Martin Krejcirik]

The idea of imposing artificial delays on targeting is just not an improvement and, IMHO, a step backwards.

I can accept your opinion, but couldn't you make it optional? Knowing your natural resistance to optional things I anticipate negative answer, but since multiplayer is not a solution too (the problem is only reduced to a smaller force commanded by single player), there is no other way.

[El Hombre]

By now I'd have expected players to have learned their lesson... After all, some of us have been playing computer wargames since the days of SSI

The basic issue here boils down to one of the core tenets of computer gaming (and probably gaming in general):

Do not, ever, prohibit the player from doing something that might be construed as meta-gaming when there's a decent chance of it not being the case.

It's better to leave the meta-gaming in than alienate the non-meta-gaming player.

In other words, if you can't know for sure wtf the player is thinking, don't bother acting on it.

[Battlefront.com]

This thread slipped off my radar, but got back on today so I'll answer

Martin,

I can accept your opinion, but couldn't you make it optional? Knowing your natural resistance to optional things I anticipate negative answer, but since multiplayer is not a solution too (the problem is only reduced to a smaller force commanded by single player), there is no other way.

You are correct that we resist "optional" things. The reason why is they take time away from doing other things. If something is not important enough to make mandatory, then it probably is less important than something that should be.

The easier it is to support an optional feature, the less of an issue it is. But this is a rather huge and fundamental change to the gameplay. If we put it in as an option people will either not play it all because it sucks so bad (I think most will reject it) or the people that play with it will insist on various changes, tweaks, or other things that further distract us from other things. We can not make several different games for several different player types all at once.

I also agree that the multi-multi-player (what we call CoOp) feature, whenever we manage to support it, will only partially fix this problem. It will also partially fix some similar problems, such as the over coordination of unit actions. But the limitation is that as long as you have one person commanding more than one unit at a time, the same issues still exist. Reduced, yes, but still very much there.

El Hombre,

Do not, ever, prohibit the player from doing something that might be construed as meta-gaming when there's a decent chance of it not being the case.

I was going to bring this up, so I thank you for doing it on your own. VERY correct.

We break wargaming conventions all the time when we feel that we can offer a definite improvement over what has come before it. For example, making a 3D wargame We don't fear doing this, even when we expect resistance to it. Like going to 1:1 representation. We knew it would not appeal to people, we knew we couldn't do it perfectly (nothing we ever do is perfect), but we felt strongly that the improvements were significant enough that such a move was worth doing. We are more convinced of this every day.

For something like trying to fix the problems with Area Fire... we don't think we have an idea that is overall better than the way everybody is used to playing. Therefore, we think it is a bad idea regardless of the development ease/difficulty.

Not that I wouldn't mind finding a way to improve the unrealistic aspect of Area Fire, just like I would like to find a way to reduce map edge hugging, over coordination of units, etc. But these things have been discussed to death in the past, with input from hundreds of wargamers, and we've never found a solution to any of them. Some things just can't be fixed.

Steve

[Splinty]

I have to disagree with the delay suggestion, at least for the U.S. forces. With FBCB2s, BFTs, and CITVs, plus handheld radios down to the team level, the only delays should be related to moving the support unit into a decent firing position or LOS.

[nijis]

Just to review, what specifically are the likely problems that could be caused by an orders delay?

[Battlefront.com]

A unit that should be able to unload on a suspected position not being able to when it matters. As I've said, there is no way (none) for the game to determine when a unit should be able to fire at a spot based on its own knowledge and when it's doing it based on some information that isn't known to it.

Again, this problem has always existed with CM and every wargame that I'm aware of. It is in the same class of artificial shortcomings as map edge hugging, no connection to a larger battlefield, ability to over coordinate unit actions, time compression, etc. We'll never solve these issues, though we can make them a bit better sometimes. Relative Spotting makes Area Fire a bit more error prone, and that's the best I think we can do.

Steve