Firepower

[John Kettler]

Even CMBO did a good job of modeling the disruptive effects of a well-excuted ambush. Don't believe me?

Then please read my AAR for Fire on the Mountain, a ROW II scenario.

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=31;t=005882#000001

The ambushed unit, despite counterambush measures by survivors and all nearby units, was rendered all but useless through most of the game. That's hardly "ineffective" in my book. With fatigue and temperature modeled in CMBB and CMAK, a savvy ambusher can do even more damage than before, especially considering that charging an MG, which often worked in CMBO if close enough, will get you chopped to pieces, thanks to both better modeling of suppressive effects and the fact that MGs being charged go to intensive fire mode and really put out the lead.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Caesar]

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by mav1:

Open ground should mean open ground. In real life you get areas of ground which offer no protection.

This should be represented in the game.

Where do you live, on a billiard table? Most of the world is neither perfectly flat nor totally uncluttered. The ground rises and falls, and for a man lying down, even an irregularity of a few inches reduces the probability of being hit. Add in the occasional stump or moderate-sized boulder and you begin to have some modest degree of cover. Not great, but not negligible either. If on top of that there is tall grass that makes it hard to see a lying or crouching man, hitting him with aimed fire becomes noticably problematical.

</font>

[mav1]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

Let's not forget CMx1 is abstract-abstracted-abstracted!

Infantry in a still position means they've taken the opportunity to find proper cover - abstracted cover. We wouldn't assume they'd just be standing the the middle of a room waiting to be shot, would we? I understand being on a city street in CMx1 gives almost as much protection as being in scattered trees - all those abstracted fire plugs and granite front steps I guess. Abstracted means the designer picks a percentage of how likely X or Y will happen to a sqaud of men under a given circumstance. We get to extrapolate-out the imagined granite steps or the firing position behind the fire plug from the results.

CMx2 promises 1:1 representation and a whole suite of placeable objects to hide behind, but I've got to imagine its stilll going to be highly abstracted. We're probably still going to see that grenade going off directly under the figure with no effect, or two opponents nose-to-nose blasting away unscathed. What we don't see on-screen are the assumptions, probabilities and percentages controlling the game engine.

Abstraction explains a lot of what I mention, it just looks weired on a screen. Like when you get a direct hit with a mortar and it causes no casulties.

But abstraction dosn't explain why it's harder to cause casulties on machinegun crew or while routing mortar and machinegun crew carry on carring their weapons.

Even in a long firefight, casulties are very rare or none at ranges over 50 metres. It seems that morters and guns are just there to rout infantry and not inflict major casulties.

[mav1]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by mav1:

Open ground should mean open ground. In real life you get areas of ground which offer no protection.

This should be represented in the game.

Where do you live, on a billiard table? Most of the world is neither perfectly flat nor totally uncluttered. The ground rises and falls, and for a man lying down, even an irregularity of a few inches reduces the probability of being hit. Add in the occasional stump or moderate-sized boulder and you begin to have some modest degree of cover. Not great, but not negligible either. If on top of that there is tall grass that makes it hard to see a lying or crouching man, hitting him with aimed fire becomes noticably problematical.

Michael </font>

[Peter Cairns]

Mav1,

Yes but where do you live.

I live on the Black Isle in Scotland, and as i have said here before, the field beside my house, looks flat from a distance, and slopes down north to south on a map, by about 20m over, 500m, but when you walk around it it's full of dips and bumps, that you could sit a tiger hull down in.

A good way to look at it although it's not 100% accurate, is to use GoogleEarth to find a field near you that you think is flat and then run the cursor over it to see the height change, you often find that things that look flat are anything but.

Peter.

[mav1]

I live in Yorkshire. You can run or sneak across the fields I was mentioning Peter, I will throw stones at you, I can say, I will be able to see you with ease and hit you with my stones.

Iam not even talking huge distances, even ground with no cover for 50 meteres is going to be trouble. It's 200 meters from one end of my street to the next. If you want to run across the street, you got no cover unless you sneak across. You would make an easy target even attacked from 200m away.

At Stalingrad you could'nt move in the street, it would mean instant death, why because at some places no cover existed.

[C'Rogers]

If you hide a couple of men on top of the hill in a scattered trees and wait for enemy troops over the fields you will get a massacre.

I have seen a squad massacre a whole platoon how you describe. The key is they have to be using the 'move' command. Instead of the scene you are picturing instead imagine a squad of ten men 'advancing' at you. As a couple guys are moving they are being covered and the group of ten is well spread out. Also the guys in the back who are not moving have their guns ready to fire at your woods. Soon as your men fire they shoot one or two of the men before they have return fire.

You are in an obvious advantage but it won't be a massacre. But if you have two guys trying to ambuh ten, not so much of even an advantage. Your guys will likely take the human reaction and duck for cover as well soon as fire comes at them. This will allow advancers time to find some of that sparse cover, retreat, or even advance into your woods.

Even in an area with no cover a guy lying down is a hard target to hit.

At Stalingrad you could'nt move in the street, it would mean instant death, why because at some places no cover existed.

There are a few differences about this compared to moving across a field. One is that the guy may be getting hit with a sniper rifle. Second there may be more people shooting at him then were on his side. Third they have a height advantage, which nullifies the laying down ability that could be used in the field example.

[SgtMuhammed]

If an infantry squad is moving across a piece of ground like that unsupported then someone f***ed up. Still you would be amazed at how hard it is to target guys moving properly across even such open terrain

[mav1]

Yes that's all true C'rodgers, I don't dispute what you have written. Actually in cm I think it's too hard to suppress a unit, than it is in real life.

The point I was making is that no cover existes. That does not mean you are automatically hit by enemy fire if you are in no cover. It all depends on the acuretsy of the enemy soldiers and wether you have covering fire. Just like sgtgoody wrote its hard to target men even in open terrain.

But some people think that open terrain dosn't exist and that every area is covered with cover. Like in cm were open terrain is not actually open terrain, so that no open terrain exsists in the game.

Its all abstracted in cm and would be better if it was less so in CmX2. Were you could create liitle dips in the land and individual rocks other individual cover. So that you wont have to abstract dips and individual cover into a terrain square tile. The problem being that every square terrain tile in cm has some form of cover.