TCP/IP game play

[walpurgis nacht]

As far as I'm concerned I'd follow BF into hell with overflowing Jerry cans I've had so much fun with the CM series to date. That said the new theme makes me as squeemish as the next guy.

Within the context of giving BF the benefit of the doubt, I have a question. How will game play balance work vs other human opponents? Specifically, how does a war simulation based of a philosophy of technical accuracy make a battle between an antiquated military and an uber one, work (in terms of balance/fun)? Other games get around this by spiking the performance of the antiquated military's equipment. I can only assume this will not be the approach for CMX2.

[mattpeckham]

My assumption - and I didn't get a chance to finish this thought at work because too much was going on - is that when you scale modern combat operations down appropriately to company (or smaller) size strike force material, the missions will end up balancing nicely. Just look at Iraq today and all the American casualties, despite our obviously superior technology and combined weapons capabilities. Those casualties are fractional compared to opposition losses, but if you pick and piece the battles apart, they're occurring in specific situations where parameters are - for various circumstantial reasons - temporarily equalized.

Scale it up too high in modern combat and it's boring, IMO, but with attention to scale and mission parameters, it could be successful, at least with the core WEGO base (notice I'm not saying core CM base).

My skepticism has more to do with whether the CM WEGO engine is really appropriate for modern combat at all (or ever could be). I have more of a philosophical issue with WEGO these days. It's a great retro nostalgia crowd-pleaser, but it's not at all necessarily the best way to implement even the most scientifically accurate simulation possible with current processing power. Someone else is going to wake up and realize this sooner or later, and we're going to climb out of this stubborn groggy morass and into better, freer, and far more realistic game design.

[wadepm]

Someone else is going to wake up and realize this sooner or later, and we're going to climb out of this stubborn groggy morass and into better, freer, and far more realistic game design.

Please enlighten us as to how this might be done...

[Treeburst155]

Mr Peckham wants "continuous time", I think. No pauses to grab a beer, etc.. I'd also guess one would need to have a high end gamer's mouse to play his "far more realistic game design". Of course I could be wrong about all this. Perhaps he will enlighten us.

Treeburst155 out.

[mattpeckham]

I'm thinking about something that's been a pipe-dream of my own (and others, with whom I used to debate in friendly fashion on the old CDMAG forums) since before CMBO hit, sort of an "open-source military simulation database" linked to a scalable interface, shelled out and premised on an equally scalable continuous time system. Note that scalable is the key term to making any of this work. I trust grogs to know at which scale they wish to play, not a developer with an eye toward arbitrary gamey strictures, and who have to invent AI workarounds, emasculations, weapons "balancing" vs. realism, etc. in order to compensate for their systemic abstractions. Note also that I'm not saying such a system would necessarily define "fun" in the same way most of us mean it when we use the word "game."

This type of system would have play strata, allowing in practical application a gamer like you or me to zoom down to squad level to take command of a group of 8 to 12, right back up to grand-strategic level, with the computer AI scaling dynamically and accordingly at whichever scale. At the squad level, grand-strategic AI calculations would be abstracted to contend with integer crunching limitations, and vice versa scaled out.

The key to making such a system work is open source, with groups of historians and military tacticians working at it in modular fashion, with everyone accepting that the basic premise is squad-level fidelity and extrapolation back up the chain from there.

The key to keeping it as flexible as possible would be to untether engagement dynamics, physics and ballistics and such, from the visible engine itself, and make them as scientifically accurate as possible, something the military has already accomplished - there is a theoretical mathematical ceiling on combat fidelity, after all. Graft any 3D engine you like onto this core system - think about it like a car engine whose performance characteristics change relatively little from year to year, but whose vehicular exteriors change dramatically.

Like I said, it's a pipe dream. I've been playing with UGO/IGO/WEGO games since the 1980s. With all respect to Chess and its ongoing reflections in contemporary military (abstractions) simulations, I'd like to see some work done on really *really* simulating the dynamics of warfare, in whatever era. Yelling across the battlefield at a suppressed squad of Fallschirmjager "hey, it's your turn now!" just doesn't do what it used to for me, personally.

[Treeburst155]

Wow!! Thanks for the enlightenment, Matthew. I hope someday we'll have such a wargame.

Treeburst155 out.

[Battlefront.com]

Well, I personally wouldn't mind playing out a scenario where I am completely "overmatched" and have to use my superior intellect (hehe) to lay waste to my adversary. In fact, I loved playing games like this with CMx1. Try doing an assault with a realistic 1941 Romanian force or defend against a major Soviet offensive with a depleted Italian force. Some find this not fun at all, but I find it ten times more exciting than being given a couple of King Tigers on an open map I suspect a lot of players will relish the idea of using their noodle to overcome the Toy Gap.

Steve

[walpurgis nacht]

Originally posted by Treeburst155:

Wow!! Thanks for the enlightenment, Matthew. I hope someday we'll have such a wargame.

Treeburst155 out.

Don't let my brother's witchcraft fool you. We had this debate earlier at work and I told him to go to hell.

I prefer chess

[Treeburst155]

Ah, Walpurgis Nacht, you play chess. I should have known. I used to study the game. I lost too many tournaments to guys who could really play though. Therefore, I...um...retired.

Assuming CMSF has PBEM, I'd love to take you on. I'll take the tanks, choppers, MOABs, jets and such. You take the Syrian teenage homicide bomber. You can have a couple rusty old RPGs too. I think that would be a good matchup for us, no?

Treeburst155 out.

[juan_gigante]

Well, in the desert there are few trees to burst.

[Flenser]

Swell. Two Peckhams, when one was more than enough.

I'll cast my vote in line with the non-walpurgian Peckham. Sorta.

A straight-up (no air/arty support) company sized fight between Syrian and U.S. forces could be pretty balanced, given restrictive terrain. At that level, it comes down to the ground pounders, where the tech is roughly equal.

Throw in some heavier armor on the US side (Bradley on up) and things go completely to hell for the Syrians. Syrian armor is only scary for the 2 minutes or so it takes to set up the Javelin team.

I'll be curious to see how this addressed in TCP play. To me, it doesn't seem like Syrian VS US quick battles will be terribly popular.

[Steiner14]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Well, I personally wouldn't mind playing out a scenario where I am completely "overmatched" and have to use my superior intellect (hehe) to lay waste to my adversary. In fact, I loved playing games like this with CMx1. Try doing an assault with a realistic 1941 Romanian force or defend against a major Soviet offensive with a depleted Italian force. Some find this not fun at all, but I find it ten times more exciting than being given a couple of King Tigers on an open map I suspect a lot of players will relish the idea of using their noodle to overcome the Toy Gap.

Steve

That makes hope!