v1.05 Curious how you feel about small arms accuracy now.

[Pandur]

yesterday i had a quick battle meetingengagement as US Stryker unit vs. +150% strength medium "combatant/fighter" mix in rough, smal size.

i had two full stryker platoons, i used one to sit down in the objective while the other one hunts down the dust-darts.

i suprised RED pretty bad, i smoked them totaly with 50% of my force.

at that point this thread came to my mind...i lost 2 man while getting about 160 baddies on the deathlist and used half my force. all engagements where at 50 to 350+ meters.

thats the moments i dont think anything is overmoddeled specificly. yes, 2 of my guys where poped from 200m+ maybe but how many guys i killed at quiet longer ranges for that!?

can it be called "bad luck"!? id say so. i cant repeat the syrien sniper shot out of their unadequat 47´s or more adequat 74´s(not even SVD´s).

in fact the many times i play red i would like to see all the stuff you guys describe more regulary. its there but most of the time i have to wait some good time befor some noticable casualties pile up. thats not nessesarily bad, but make the worse even more worse!? wheres the point!?

[SgtMuhammed]

Originally posted by Neepster:

One game playability note to interject on this. The rest of the comments are very interesting and I tend to agree lethality is probably a bit overmodelled.

However, without this, given that squads and individuals do NOT surrender (unlike CM1), I anticipate the scenarios lasting crazily long times if the lethality is significantly reduced.

Thoughts?

To me this hits directly at the issue that this is, after all, a game. Players would probably be ok with winning a battle while only inflicting a handful of casualties and causing the enemy to rout, but when your platoon becomes combat ineffective because it has suffered 4 to 8 casualties people are going to scream.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by SgtMuhammed:

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

One game playability note to interject on this. The rest of the comments are very interesting and I tend to agree lethality is probably a bit overmodelled.

However, without this, given that squads and individuals do NOT surrender (unlike CM1), I anticipate the scenarios lasting crazily long times if the lethality is significantly reduced.

Thoughts?

To me this hits directly at the issue that this is, after all, a game. Players would probably be ok with winning a battle while only inflicting a handful of casualties and causing the enemy to rout, but when your platoon becomes combat ineffective because it has suffered 4 to 8 casualties people are going to scream. </font>

[c3k]

aka_tom_w,

Regarding your football field analogy and your ability to shoot: how do you think your accuracy would be affected if those 9 guys AND THEIR 21 FRIENDS were shooting at you and your friends?

Heart-pounding, stomach-flipping, leg-shaking, sweaty-palmed, afraid-to-die, adrenalin. Yeah baby!

Regards,

Ken

[jomni]

In modern combat, once you're spotted, you're as good as dead. I've seen lots of modern wargames that implement this kind of logic (Flashpoint Germany, TacOps4 (no modeling of morale whatsoever), POA4, Close Combat Modern Tactics). So I'm not surprised about CMSF's modelling. I think they should just focus on fixing LOS and cover instead. Because it's so easy to shoot someone inside a building.

[ December 20, 2007, 06:12 PM: Message edited by: jomni ]

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[molotov_billy]

Originally posted by Neepster:

However, without this, given that squads and individuals do NOT surrender (unlike CM1), I anticipate the scenarios lasting crazily long times if the lethality is significantly reduced.

I for one would love longer scenario times - people have been asking for them for quite awhile now. Right now the time limits are multiple times less than what the real guys get on similar missions. Tell a battallion commander he has 45 minutes to clear a city suburb - he'll laugh at you.

I'd prefer two settings - one timer, shorter, for PBEM folk, and another timer with a realistic setting for singleplayer use. Both decided by the level designer.

[molotov_billy]

Originally posted by Adam1:

Read the book, and now I think CMSF is even farther from reality than before. And that has nothing to do with tactics or bugs either. If you want details ask, but I'm not inclined to write much unless it's really desired. You guys have a looong way to go.

Have to agree with you here. Once BFC chimes in, he rarely, if ever, concedes a point to anybody over anything. It's a done deal unless Charles takes a wack at it.

RPG accuracy is another one that's way way WAY off the mark. There's plenty of real-world video out there, and most RPG gunners are trained as well as they can be. (Chechen RPG gunners do nothing in an ambush except fire the RPG. They take extreme caution in preserving the lives of those guys, and they end up maintaining many experienced gunners. Same with the taliban. The notion of hordes of RPG weilding maniacs firing at random is a complete fallacy.)

That said, given all of their training, hits on a stationary vehicle even at 150 to 200 yards are rare. See the video I posted earlier - roughly 8 RPG's fired, only one of them struck near a vehicle, hit the berm beside a humvee. Humvee rolled on despite the near hit, and after having taken the full brunt of an IED.

What does CMSF tell us? RPGs fired from anyone and anywhere at a vehicle will get at least a 50% hit rate, with hits meaning 100% casualties to the vehicle's occupants. Completely reproduceable and absolutely wrong.

[ December 20, 2007, 07:08 PM: Message edited by: molotov_billy ]

[SgtMuhammed]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

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

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

One game playability note to interject on this. The rest of the comments are very interesting and I tend to agree lethality is probably a bit overmodelled.

However, without this, given that squads and individuals do NOT surrender (unlike CM1), I anticipate the scenarios lasting crazily long times if the lethality is significantly reduced.

Thoughts?

To me this hits directly at the issue that this is, after all, a game. Players would probably be ok with winning a battle while only inflicting a handful of casualties and causing the enemy to rout, but when your platoon becomes combat ineffective because it has suffered 4 to 8 casualties people are going to scream. </font>

[General_solomon]

I've been asking for way a to lower the lethality since the beginning. All i want is the option or show us how to tweak the system to bring down the lethality.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Ketil]

FWIW, and I have not played CMSF nor have much interest in doing so, I knew an awful lot of folks in the Army that weren't very good shots. And that was on the range, with no one shooting at them.

You can give a bad shot an Eotech or Aimpoint, and he will still be a bad shot. It's not about the gear nearly so much as it's about the guy.

[The_Capt]

You know guys I am getting a little tired of everyone flashing "opinion" like it is hard fact.

So run a test for me and show what you see. Take a section in a bald ass open field and have it run toward another section (it can't see) starting at 500m.

Now keep track of when the moving section starts dropping. Also keep track of how much ammo the static secion uses.

This first shot "hand-wringing" is nonsense...the best shot you are ever going to get is your first shot. The enemy doesn't know you are there and you have time to lead etc.

I have run these same test and the moving section dies at around 3 mins and the static section near emtpy.

Now are you all telling me that you want a moving section over open ground to be able to go to ground at 300m and not sustain casualties before the static section runs out of ammo.

If you do then I would recommend the you never take job training troops for war.

We know what happens in a firefight and we train (spending millions of taxpayers dollars btw) troops to do what we want them to do.

Reality lies somewhere in between.

[molotov_billy]

Originally posted by SgtMuhammed:

Unfortunately the few of us who know that this is actually realistic aren't enough to keep BFC from going bankrupt.

What information do you have that would suggest they "go bankrupt" after such a change, a change that in fact keeps in line with their general game design theories.

[Battlefront.com]

Molotov_billy,

You might have missed my post that I'm not going to take much abuse from people any more. Frankly, I'm tired of it. If you want to be critical of the game, by all means be CONSTRUCTIVELY critical. If you want to be abusive, that is against forum rules and you will be bounced out of here quickly. You've not been a model poster before, so I'm even less inclined to put up with abuse from you. But to respond to your charge:

Once BFC chimes in, he rarely, if ever, concedes a point to anybody over anything.

Only if you don't read very well. I absolutely said that there are things we need to look into. Here is the part you apparently missed:

Now, this is not to say that there isn't some sort of combo of things that is out of whack. In fact, I've asked the lads to test a couple of things in particular. Instead, what they are saying is many of the things they see customers complaining about don't look wrong to them, just wrong to the customer.

I then went on to outline areas where incorrect perceptions come into play. Look, we've been over this again and again since the CMBO Beta came out. Some people have incorrect assumptions of how combat is modeled and how game issues can affect the outcome in a negative way. That does not mean to say that there isn't something that needs tweaking in CM:SF, because there very well might (as I stated above). But one must be careful to throwing the door wide open to uninformed opinion. Like this:

What does CMSF tell us? RPGs fired from anyone and anywhere at a vehicle will get at least a 50% hit rate, with hits meaning 100% casualties to the vehicle's occupants. Completely reproduceable and absolutely wrong.

Hubris. I can't take a comment like this seriously because I know it to be false from my own playing. You COULD be right that RPG accuracy and casualties are modeled incorrectly, but your commentary isn't very useful. Plus, v1.05 did change the casualty determinations so I'm pretty sure you're not even talking about v1.05 when you say this.

Another example from Adam1:

It's not the lethality that needs tweaking, it's the whole bloody model.

Then why do people that have been in actual combat disagree with you? After all, you were the one that asked what they thought and they don't seem to agree with you.

This is what I'm talking about folks. There could very well be some situations that need tweaking. I've said this directly, contrary to Moltov_billy's snide comment. But the notion that the whole thing is completely off the mark is just not so. Whatever situations we identify that aren't correct can be tweaked in about 1-2 minutes by Charles. The issue is giving him very focused feedback, that is vetted by people who know what they are talking about, instead of Charles making blind changes based on rants seen on this Forum.

As I said, we're looking into it.

Steve

[ December 20, 2007, 09:57 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Omenowl]

Steve,

Could you put an option somewhere to tweak up the accuracy or down the accuracy depending on how lethal we want the battlefield? Maybe depending on the level we like to play (elite, veteran, etc).

Currently, while I think the accuracy is high for all sides I am also worried that if we make the accuracy much more realistic we won't be able to kill anything without javelins or vehicles at medium ranges.

[LongLeftFlank]

Agree wholeheartedly on the RPG accuracy. Makes MOUT with vehicles virtually impossible even against a complete rabble.

While I feel that BFC are doing a great job, that CMSF is the only game worth playing right now and that it is getting better by leaps and bounds, I've got to agree that the basic infantry combat model -- even as of 1.05 -- makes it very difficult to replicate real world behaviour (and yes, there's ongoing argument over what that is in different situations) of men against fire.

As BFC and others point out, lethality is EXTREMELY high in the first few seconds of a fight, particularly in modern warfare... whole squads will just melt away in the kill zone IF they stay there.

What happens then, however, reminds me of the old high school explanation of calculus: your dog does it rapidly and instinctively when she spots a squirrel... as does the squirrel.

In other words (as JasonC pointed out earlier), anyone who isn't hit or caught exposed on the worst kind of pool table pavement figures out nearly instantly where to go to be safe and goes there, tout suite. Except in the very worst cases, there's no drawn out "crawl of death" (except by those already wounded), and no weird milling around the action spot.

If the unhit guys have to sprint back 20 meters into the next room or the trees to get out of the kill sack, that's what they'll do, then rally from there. Some more guys might get shot in the back during the bugout if the unit was badly exposed, but thereafter lethality falls steeply (though not to zero) for both sides. Until the next "bump"; lather, rinse, repeat.

That's where the CMx2 model still falls short IMHO... squaddies under fire remain stubbornly mired in their "hex" even when it's patently obvious that staying there = inevitable death. There needs to be a "bug out" vs. "go to ground" (or even "charge the enemy if it's a point blank ambush and we're high quality troops") decision logic baked into the AI.

[Battlefront.com]

Omenowl,

That's not a bad idea, actually. I'm not sure when we might try to introduce something like this (it will take coding time, but I'm going to guess not outrageous amounts), but I'll definitely pass it onto Charles.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

To recap, the difficulty with assessing infantry modeling is that there is a wide range of circumstances and an even wider range of opinions of what should happen for each. This is compounded by the various game elements that we simulate, such as Experience, Morale, weapon variants, etc. because a SINGLE variable may be enough to produce a wildly different result than with a different variable present.

Therefore, it's important to approach this from a position of "there is probably no one right answer", because that is indeed the case. We certainly don't think there is any one right way to look at things.

For example, we have The_Capt who does this sort of stuff for a living saying that he doesn't see anything wrong with the game as it is modeled currently. We have others who disagree, though they lack first hand experience. It could be that both are right, but the circumstances that each are correct about are different.

Which is why we are looking into things. The_Capt could be right that the modeling is overall fine, but it could also be true that Adam1 has found a particular situation where some value (like cover or accuracy, for example) could use a tweak. It wouldn't surprise me in the least that something needs a tweak. This is an extremely complex environment we have here, so it would be egotistical and pigheaded to say there isn't anything at all wrong with it. However, I also don't agree that the basic model is crap and we need to start over from scratch. And just because I don't agree that the sky is falling doesn't mean that I'm denying that something may need fixing.

Steve

[molotov_billy]

You might have missed my post that I'm not going to take much abuse from people any more. Frankly, I'm tired of it. If you want to be critical of the game, by all means be CONSTRUCTIVELY critical. If you want to be abusive, that is against forum rules and you will be bounced out of here quickly. You've not been a model poster before, so I'm even less inclined to put up with abuse from you.

Battlefront.com,

This is somewhat of an unfair position that I'm in, but in any case, looking back at every word that I wrote, I fail to see the type of meaning that you're getting out of it. Maybe you're pulling on past experiences rather than literally looking at what's there?

In the future, I would ask that you take an objective look at my post, which was a responce to Adam1, not yourself, and then to at least give the benefit of the doubt before threats are made. It doesn't seem like that kind of language is productive in solving any problems, and at least on this end of the forums, those types of decisions tend to show poorly on the company as a whole. You may not care about that, but I don't know either way, so I'll pass the information along anyway.

I have only my own experiences and the experiences that people have shared with me, and in that sense, everything I've said is absolutely true. If that information doesn't jive with your own, that's what I would call a disagreement, not a personal insult. I'm certainly not insulted by your point of view, there's no reason you should be insulted by mine.

As far as the RPG stuff goes - I was sharing my point of view with a fellow forum poster who is interested in the same topic. What I wrote was absolutely true based on my experiences in the game. 1.05 has not changed those experiences, and based on past patch launches, it is certainly possible that a bug which was thought to be fixed was actually still there. It's happened a number of times, so I would certainly say it's unfair to dismiss my findings as "Hubris."

I was simply sharing with Adam1 my experiences with this type of situation, and there was nothing personal or abusive about it.

[ December 20, 2007, 10:08 PM: Message edited by: molotov_billy ]

[jomni]

As for the RPG issue... I played OPFOR (Irregulars) armed with RPGS (3 teams) and ATGM (1 team). I only managed to destory one Stryker for the whole battle and lost. Of course the enemy was suppressing me each time I left a trail of rocket smoke. So is it me or the model?

[Battlefront.com]

OK, that sounds good to me. The issue I had with your post was highlighted by me and I'll simply refer back to that.

As for you thinking that something should be changed, no problem with that at all. See my last few posts about this. I'm not saying that everything is 100% perfect 100% of the time. What I'm saying is that it is VERY difficult to separate suggestions that could take things in the wrong direction vs. things that could put it in the right direction.

For example, if I were to tell Charles, right now, "RPGs are hitting targets 50% of the time. That's too much" he'll rattle off about 20 questions and then say he's not going to touch anything until I get more specific. He's also bound to take a bold statement like you made and kick it to the curb, as would I, because it is obviously not a true reflection of game experience. It may be a true PERCEPTION of game experience, but that's entirely different. Perceptions may mean everything, as the saying goes, but we won't make changes based on them. We'd rather take the flak

So the "hubris" I referred to is putting out numbers that are supposedly from experience when they are pretty certainly from perception. THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOUR PERCEPTION IS INCORRECT, it only means that at face value your point has to be called into question. And that gets us debating perception instead of focusing on the sorts of specifics Charles requires before he tweaks anything.

From our tester's experience, and my own, the number of casualties caused by RPG hits has gone down considerably. This was the result of Charles rewriting that section of code because he wasn't happy with it once he examined it. Therefore, I doubt your comment about 100% casualties being the norm is accurate. Maybe there is a special circumstance that you're seeing when this happens, I don't know. But more information would be needed before anything could be done about it.

In short... we can not go tweaking things willy-nilly. We need to know, as exactly as possible, what sorts of things are unrealistic (which gets into a whole 'nother debate) and then figure out which element/s contributed to that problem. There are dozens of variables that can be tweaked, so tweaking things blindly is apt to make things worse.

Steve

[molotov_billy]

I wouldn't expect anyone to make decisions based upon a single data point.

So in that sense, dismissing something as Hubris certainly isn't productive, as you're just throwing data out because it doesn't line up with your own data. Gather as much of it as you can and from as many sources as you can. The real story is most certainly somewhere in the middle.

With as many variables as there are in this game, I would never expect a single data point to be perfectly accurate, and you would never know which data point that is.

I would certainly disagree that perceptions are somehow skewing my data to any significant degree in any specific direction. Tracking RPG hits vs misses isn't exactly rocket science, and I've been fairly astute in keeping track of that data since it's an important influence on the enjoyability of this game. Tracking crew losses has been pretty easy, because, well, in the 50 hours or so that I've put into the game, I've seen a total of three RPG hit survivors. Not a lot of math to do there!

[molotov_billy]

Originally posted by The_Capt:

You know guys I am getting a little tired of everyone flashing "opinion" like it is hard fact.

So run a test for me and show what you see. Take a section in a bald ass open field and have it run toward another section (it can't see) starting at 500m.

I'm not so sure that this is an entirely accurate test given that it only handles a very small subset of the variables that exist in an actual game of CMSF, or in the actual real firefights that CMSF is attempting to simulate.

[dan/california]

A fair bit of this could be cured with one more line in the unit selection editor.

This would be equipment level AWFUL!, this would reflect the relatively common real world situation where the red sides ammo has been stored in pit of something unspeakable for a couple of decades and two consecutive RPG rounds have a range differential of 50 or 60 meters even if the launcher is bolted to the remains of an immobile T55. This kind of inconsistency obviously makes it bloody hard to hit anything past 75 to 100 meters. Throw in a dud rate of 50-60% and all of a sudden you can write a scenario based on Black Hawk Down that plays somewhat like the real battle.

Whether it is a decent game or not is a different question.