How will Air be modelled, please?

[Bahger]

Thanks for your hospitality; this is my first post although I was a regular here in the early days of CM.

I'm wondering how air assets are modelled in the game. I've done due diligence with the search tool but only found vague references to A-10s. I know it's a tricky issue, both technically and in terms of game balance. For this reason I would not expect extensive air support but what about battlefield assets such as attack helicopters, AV8s (if there are marines) and other such CAS platforms? Also, will air transport be modelled, i.e. for insertion of special forces, quick response, that kind of thing?

STEEL BEASTS held out against incorporating air for years, mainly because, in spite of some use of infantry, it saw itself as a pure armor sim. I'm not sure how you could do company-level combined-arms warfare without some fixed-wing and rotary air assets, however, and I'm looking forward to finding out what's what in this area, many thanks.

[ June 04, 2007, 05:22 PM: Message edited by: Bahger ]

[JonS]

How will Air be modelled?

As a gas?

BTW, there is a recent thread about helos - consensus seems to be "not during a scen" ... although I suppose a scen designer could pseudo-model it by plunking reinfs down in the middle of the map, rather than away over on the edge.

[JaguarUSF]

No transport aircraft, copters or otherwise. The designer could do, however, what JonS suggested.

Air support is essentially the same as artillery support: pick a spotter (usually a JTAC unit), pick a plane, pick a target type, pick a mission, pick a munition type, pick a delay, BOOM.

[MikeyD]

If we check out their excellent how-to-use-artillery video (most convenient one for me is on Youtube) that might give us some kind of idea about how they might do air too, like JaguarUSF said. Same *might* go for directing drone overflights too if they make it into the game. Considering standoff ranges & bombing heights for most munitions there wouldn't be any real point in reproducing full-scale replicas of every aircaft in the U.S. inventory. You'd have to crane your neck just to see a distant dot . I recall the promotional video for one of those big WWII shooter games. Normandy 1944 and they had a Stuka flying at treetop height down the middle of a street! Yeh right, happened every day

[Bahger]

Yes, I don't need to see A-10s flying overhead at treetop height but ideally I'd like the game to reproduce the specific challenges of placing a FAC (or whatever the acronym is) and challenging the player with the command responsibilities of calling the mission accurately and in time for it to do some good. If the FAC is silenced, the missions should be a lot less accurate. And then I want to see stuff blow up!

There should be some fog-of-war modelled, too, so that the tactical commander has to consider the possibility of blue-on-blue given the less than pinpoint accuracy of visual CAS.

Pity about the helos. In any asymmetrical conflict involving U.S. forces in a hostile environment, helos seem to have become indispensible as both a force multiplier and for battlefield SA.

Thanks for your helpful replies.

[JaguarUSF]

The quality of the spotter, including line of sight and whether they are under fire, has a direct effect on how accurate an artillery or air strike is. Anyone in the field that has communication to the higher-ups can order a strike, but that doesn't mean they should

As always, my preview is an excellent source on information; specifically, I discuss support operations near the end of the 3rd paragraph under ET AL.

[Bahger]

Originally posted by JaguarUSF:

The quality of the spotter, including line of sight and whether they are under fire, has a direct effect on how accurate an artillery or air strike is. Anyone in the field that has communication to the higher-ups can order a strike, but that doesn't mean they should

As always, my preview is an excellent source on information; specifically, I discuss support operations near the end of the 3rd paragraph under ET AL.

Well that's a coincidence, as I just read your preview -- without suspecting the author was present in this thread -- and was very impressed by both the quality of the analysis and of the potential of the game itself. I've bookmarked your site.

In an even greater coincidence, I followed the link to your ARMED ASSAULT review and found myself completely in step with that, too. I enjoy sophisticated tactical coop in ArmA whenever I can find enough like-minded individuals on voice comms but this is easier said than done, meanwhile my efforts to achieve any level of tactical gameplay involving the AI have caused my blood-pressure to rise precipitately. Much of what you write in your CMSF preview is music to my ears for this reason; it seems that much thought has been put into harmonising the interface, orders menu and the capabilities of the friendly AI to allow for the possibility of genuinely tactical gameplay from company level down. In ArmA you cannot so much as organise an ambush with the AI; they cannot find effective cover, their fire discipline is lax, they move when they shouldn't and enemy spotting and marksmanship is preposterously good. If you cannot use terrain and movement/fire orders to gain the initiative in an assault maneuver as basic as an ambush, or the orders interface for doing so is too cumbersome and time-consuming, then the capacity of the game to lend itself to tactical play with even squad-scale AI is very limited and I've often considered throwing the disk out of the window. My only salvation may be a bunch of British ex-military gamers with a well-organised tactical approach to coop multiplayer.

Anyway, thanks for your erudite and helpful previews of both games, one of which may well replace the other on my hard drive if my patience is tried any further.

[JaguarUSF]

Thanks for the kind words about my site.

Yeah, the AI in ArmA could be a lot better: "Hey, we're getting shot, let's all go prone in the middle of this street here."

[Taki]

I would be intreset if there will be any Airtransport in the Game? Like Uh-60 or something to Transport your Troops?

[flamingknives]

No air transport, helicopters or otherwise.

Regarding your sig., CMBO was a 1-2 company-sized game.

[Michael Dorosh]

I think once again we have the dichotomy of a heightened sense of perception on the part of a mass market audience whose visual and auditory senses have been whipped into a frenzy by youtube videos of videogame snippets set to heavy metal rock tunes showing tactical aircraft flying impossibly close support missions with dizzying arrays of munitions set in time to the music, quite at odds with the rather mundane reality of internecine power struggles between international contingents or even national contingents, technological gaffes and communictions blunders such as characterized Tarnak Farm, and plain old human endurance limits which would render real world tactical air support of rather limited value to an infantry commander scrabbling away in an area one thousand metres square and requesting assistance from aircraft capable of traversing that space in a matter of seconds, carrying ordnance with a danger radius of approximately half the total area of the playing surface.

[JaguarUSF]

That is a long sentence.

[ChrisND]

Say that five times fast!

[FM Paul Heinrik]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

I think once again we have the dichotomy of a heightened sense of perception on the part of a mass market audience whose visual and auditory senses have been whipped into a frenzy by youtube videos of videogame snippets set to heavy metal rock tunes showing tactical aircraft flying impossibly close support missions with dizzying arrays of munitions set in time to the music, quite at odds with the rather mundane reality of internecine power struggles between international contingents or even national contingents, technological gaffes and communictions blunders such as characterized Tarnak Farm, and plain old human endurance limits which would render real world tactical air support of rather limited value to an infantry commander scrabbling away in an area one thousand metres square and requesting assistance from aircraft capable of traversing that space in a matter of seconds, carrying ordnance with a danger radius of approximately half the total area of the playing surface.

So you get pnwed at Battlefield 2 as well

[Seanachai]

Originally posted by JaguarUSF:

That is a long sentence.

Pile five more like it one atop the other, and you've got the Dorosh Royale. Normally you can only read and enjoy it in Amsterdam when you're ripped right straight to the tits.

Add a lot more personal invective and remove at least 50% of the informative content, and you've got me.

Make the same post but add in two or three sentences about the relation of the whole matter to International Conspiracies, and you've got Kettler.

Feck. I miss Emrys.

[Homo ferricus]

Originally posted by Seanachai:

Feck. I miss Emrys.

whatever happened to him?

[Bahger]

Originally posted by Seanachai:

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

That is a long sentence.

Pile five more like it one atop the other, and you've got the Dorosh Royale. Normally you can only read and enjoy it in Amsterdam when you're ripped right straight to the tits.

Add a lot more personal invective and remove at least 50% of the informative content, and you've got me.

Make the same post but add in two or three sentences about the relation of the whole matter to International Conspiracies, and you've got Kettler.

Feck. I miss Emrys. </font>

[Soddball]

Originally posted by Homo ferricus:

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

Feck. I miss Emrys.

whatever happened to him? </font>

[Speedy]

Soddy was the one that got away.

[sage2]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

I think once again we have the dichotomy of a heightened sense of perception on the part of a mass market audience whose visual and auditory senses have been whipped into a frenzy by youtube videos of videogame snippets set to heavy metal rock tunes showing tactical aircraft flying impossibly close support missions with dizzying arrays of munitions set in time to the music, quite at odds with the rather mundane reality of internecine power struggles between international contingents or even national contingents, technological gaffes and communictions blunders such as characterized Tarnak Farm, and plain old human endurance limits which would render real world tactical air support of rather limited value to an infantry commander scrabbling away in an area one thousand metres square and requesting assistance from aircraft capable of traversing that space in a matter of seconds, carrying ordnance with a danger radius of approximately half the total area of the playing surface.

So many words. Brain shutting off.

[H.W. Guderian]

Originally posted by JonS:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />How will Air be modelled?

As a gas?

</font>

[Bahger]

Some of the strangest people in the Internet gaming world appear to live on this forum. Can't quite fathom why.

[ChrisND]

Originally posted by Bahger:

Some of the strangest people in the Internet gaming world appear to live on this forum. Can't quite fathom why.

Go to a Counterstrike forum, I think you may find them there.

[rune]

Acutally, air is modelled as a gas, unless moving, where is comes under the fluid dynamics jurisdiction, especially if flowing over a curved surface.

Oh, I just added the firepower of two apaches into a scenario. You don't see the copters, but they have some bang for the buck for some reason.

Rune

[Thomm]

Do the Syrians get farmers with shotguns for air defense?

Or are those abstracted?

Best regards,

Thomm