1:1 abstraction workaround - split syrian squads too

[panzermartin]

Ok, I cant use my syrian squads effectively around corners, hill crests, walls etc. You want to fire an RPG at that Bradley sitting on the next corner? You either dont attack, or you get your whole squad killed in the middle of a flat street trying to bring the anti-tank man in LOF. Would it be too much of a realsim drawback if you could also split the syrian squads, in assault, AT-team etc, maybe with a bigger hit in morale/HQ link or some other distance restriction? Its frustrating to have a 9man squad killed when the only one you want to use and expose is the RPG man.

[Chelco]

I didn't know you couldn't split the syrian squads.

Thanks,

[Statisoris]

.... You cant

[Sgt Joch]

There was a thread about that a year ago, I think the Rudel.Dietrich Syrian TO&E thread. It apparently has to do with the TO&E of real Syrian infantry squads, AFAIR they do not have teams and would never split a squad in RL.

[thewood]

So are Syrian squads chained together? Do they never send a couple of guys over into and building and say, watch that road while we watch this one. This may be a case of the OOB dictaters are a little too much in charge. Make it like CM and give them very harsh penalties for doing it, but let them do it.

[Sgt Joch]

I personally have no problem with syrian squads being split or not, just mentioning the rationale as explained by the powers that be.

I also remember that they wanted it to be that way to reflect one of the advantages the U.S. has with their flexible TO&E and C2...although that fine point is usually overshadowed by the massive&overwhelming firepower advantage of the U.S. player ...

[thewood]

SO what you do is give those split squads massive command delays, make them unresponsive, take away C2, etc. Oh wait, we don't have command delays.

[John Catsack]

Syrian squads need to be able to split as an abstraction in order to make the game more playable. Imagine you have a syrian squad hidden behind a wall and there's a stryker on the other side. You would want to tell your AT soldier to go peek around the corner and shoot it, but you can't in CMSF. If you tell your whole squad to move to the side of the wall and shoot, they'll probably end up spinning in circles and dying. The ablility to split syrian squads would help resolve these situations in a more reasonable way.

And what about the syrian squads that can use assault movement? That involves splitting the squad, too?

[panzermartin]

I find the current limitation less realistic that it was supposed to be. Maybe you can restrict them for how far they can go from their leader and make them unresponsive beyond that. Right now it prohibits something as simple as using your AT weapons without exposing the whole squad.

[Battlefront.com]

The solution to the issues raised here is NOT to give the player more micromanagement control. That would be a massive mistake. Whatever abstractions are currently in effect pale in comparison to the frustation that would ensue from too much control. If you don't understand why that is the case, we can get into that discussion if you want. However, generally gamers understand that increased micromanagement is a bad idea so I'm going to skip it unless it proves necessary to step in

The logic for keeping the Syrian units together as a whole is not our idea... it is Soviet Doctrine for which they are trained to obey. US Doctrine, on the other hand, is all about two Fire Teams acting independently of each other. Yeah, that's got some very serious ramifications at the tactical level... deal with it, don't try to worm out of it.

As for the "why can't I have a Syrain AT guy peek around a corner" issue... the same is true for the US side. OK, so let's follow the logic...

I have a 9 man Syrian Squad and I want it to be able to be in two pieces. Well, then the US Squad should be able to break into four, because they are actually trained to work in pairs within a Fire Team. So now Syrian Squads have doubled and so have the US ones. That means the workload for your computer has doubled (in relation to squads moving, doing LOS, etc.).

OK, now I want the 3rd Syrian dude on the right in that Squad to move 10 meters across the street. Well, now that's a new unit as far as CM is concerned and not only do you, the player, have to control him but now the game has to keep track of him as a seperate entity. Raise the minimum system specs up another notch.

So not only is this totally undesirable from a user playability standpoint, but your computer would have something harsh to say about it too

Steve

P.S. CMx1 behaved with even less fidellity, you just didn't know it. So let's not get started on yet another off base thread about how 1:1 in CMx2 is less realistic than abstracted stuff in CMx1. It isn't.

[Panzer76]

I didnt know that moving the entire Syrian sqd in view of the vehicle to get the RPG guy to fire of a shot was realistic. Guess you learn something new every day.

[Abbott]

Originally posted by Panzer76:

I didnt know that moving the entire Syrian sqd in view of the vehicle to get the RPG guy to fire of a shot was realistic. Guess you learn something new every day.

That has always been how those tough assed Russians fight, ask Big Duke6 if you don't believe me. Heh, Russians and their doctirne ain't scared of no tank!

[Bigduke6]

I don't know about Syrians...

But Soviet doctrine does not have a problem with an AT specialist using his weapon while the riflemen lie low.

Soviet doctrine considers the concentration of AT weapons a Good Thing. A company commander in a defensive position with a single armored avenue of approach, would be expected to concentrate his RPGs along that avenue. "Well, I can't break up the squad" would not be an acceptable excuse.

Soviet doctrine thinks (thought) specialised units for specialised tasks is a fine idea. For instance the mission-oriented "combined arms companies" during city fighting in Berlin and Stalingrad.

Certainly, Syrian and Egyptians infantry with RPGs have stalked Israeli tanks over the years.

However, perhaps modern Syrian infantry is less flexible. Maybe they cannot conceive of an RPG man stalking a tank on his own.

Given Syria's modern experience in Lebanon, I would personally not expect that to be the case. But though I have learned a bit about the Soviets over the years, I am far from an expert on Syrian doctrine.

[Abbott]

Hehe, you mention that guy and he shows up!

[Battlefront.com]

Panzer76,

I didnt know that moving the entire Syrian sqd in view of the vehicle to get the RPG guy to fire of a shot was realistic. Guess you learn something new every day.

Something I didn't learn today is low brow sarcasim isn't very useful, nor especially interesting. It's also an admission that you lack the intellectual capacity to engage in discussion. Instead of reasoned response to what I wrote you tried for a cheap shot laugh. I'm sorry if I'm underwhelmed by your response

If you want to take some sort of black and white approach to combat as it relates to real life, then take every wargame you've ever played, declare it "crap", and never play another wargame ever again. Either that or you'll forever make yourself, and others, miserable with the inability to reconcile the fact that wargames can not simulate everything to the degree necessary to 100% duplicate real life. If you can manage to keep up with people who use their noodles about these issues instead of what they sit on... think about this...

The degree of control a player has on a unit is directly proportional to the amount of attention he has to invest in that unit's actions. The more control, the more that is invested on an individual basis. In a game, the sum of the parts is equal to the whole. Therefore, the more control you have over each unit, the more time you spend on each unit, and that means the more time you spend per turn managing all your units. At some point the amount of time spent managing the units becomes a chore and detracts from the enjoyment of the game. The more it crosses the line, the more it undermines the enjoyment. The problem is gamers all have different thresholds for this balance. Wargamers, compared to other gamers, have a pretty high threshold and it is why wargames tend to appeal to a very small segment of the market place. Same with serious sim games, such as flight and sub sims.

One of the problems with wargamers is that their first reaction to everything they don't like within a game is to request more control. It's about as close to a Golden Rule as one can come up with to describe wargamer behavior patterns. The problem is that control has more theoretical appeal than actual appeal, therefore to give into wargamer requests in general means making the game less enjoyable overall. At some point the wargamers start dropping out and all the game developer is left with is 2 guys that think "this is the best game in the whole world!". Not a winning model for a commercial enterprise Therefore, we must resist requests for more detailed control in general for the sake of everybody.

OK, so what about the behavior problems with CM infantry teams "sticking together"? Keep in mind that CMx1 was even worse than CMx2, so please don't even start with me about how it was better before because it most definitely was not in terms of this discussion (i.e about the whole unit being exposed or not to do something). Here's an example:

In CMx1 a 9 man Squad moves as a solid group from a 20x20m Woods "tile" into an adjacent 20x20m Grass tile. It reaches the middle (10m) and gets hit by enemy fire. The entire Squad is treated as being in Grass and everybody in that Squad can become a casualty regardless of LOS/LOF if the enemy can spot the unit. To retreat it has 10m to go (slightly more on the diagonal) before it has a possibility of getting to some other type of terrain for cover.

In CMx2 a 9 man Squad moves as a dispersed group from an 8x8m Woods tile into an adjacent 8x8m Grass tile. It reaches the middle (4m) and gets hit by enemy fire. The entire Squad is treated as being in Grass and everybody in that Squad can become a casualty provided the enemy can draw LOS to the unit AND LOF to the individual Soldier. To retreat each Soldier has a differing amount of distance to travel before reaching better cover. Some only have to go a single meter, others more. The furthest any single Soldier has to go is about 8m. As in real life, those closest to better cover get the benefit of it before the ones further away from that cover.

To make the CMx1 system more realistic we coded things so the chance of getting hit and/or suffering casualties was lowered as the unit got nearer cover terrain. So by and large the CMx1 and CMx2 systems should be about equal in terms of numbers of casualties. The one exception to this would be that in CMx2 the unit inherently has to travel shorter distances between possible cover (because every 8m there is a new terrain possibility as opposed to 20m in CMx1), which is quite significant.

So as CM:SF is right now I'd say it is slightly more realistic than CMx1. With some changes it will be more realistic still. Perfect? Not possible, but definitely it can be made better. The CMx1 system, on the other hand, had no room for improvement at all, which is why we abandoned it. If this were the ONLY place where the 1:1 features of CMx2 mattered, we probably would have stuck with CMx1's system. However, that is not the case (as I've detailed in countless threads) so taking this one example where CMx2 is (currently) marginally better than CMx1 and saying "see, there's no benefit to 1:1" is a non-starter argument because it lacks context.

Over time Charles can improve the TacAI within the unit to do more things with the individual Soldiers WITHOUT burdening the player with having to fiddle with yet more stuff. In fact, I hope that v1.05 will have some of these improvements, though this will be a long term feature set that we will work on (it will never be perfect, after all).

Steve

[ September 29, 2007, 12:27 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[M1A1TC]

I would like to be able to position my squad along a wall or a building wall, so everyone is under cover. I then would like to give a command close to a building corner, so just one or two soldier peek from cover to recon. If they get LOS/LOF to a tank for example, I want TAC-AI let others in the squad know about the threat, and move AT soldier automatically to the corner so he gets LOS/LOF and get a shot off.

Can all this be done just by combination of move/TAC-AI without micromanaging? I think it could/should be

[yapma]

well, as i see it, the problem is that useful information (e.g., unit firepower info, chance to hit, unit status, etc.) was properly conveyed to the player in CMx1. The LOS/LOF lack of fidelity was apparently kept secret from the player in CMx1.

By contrast, in CMx2 useful information is kept secret from the player, whereas the shortcomings of the LOS/LOF are enthusiastically communicated.

Hence, to me, CMx2 is a step backwards, not forwards.

[Cpl Steiner]

Steve,

Can you explain how an action spot relates to the grid in the scenario editor? Is each square of the grid an action spot? If so, how come we can position buildings so that their centre is either on a grid square or on the intersection of 4 grid squares? This would imply 9 action spots per grid square, the centre, the edges, and the corners.

The reason I ask is that a wall corner is always exactly in the middle of a square, but a building corner can be in the middle of a square or on the corner of a square. Does this have any implications for how squads can be positioned to take advantage of building and wall corners?

As M1A1TankCommander said above, I would like to be able to order a squad to a building or wall corner and know absolutely for sure that only a couple of men in the squad will be exposed to whatever is around the corner.

Can this be achieved one day with the action spot system?

[dan/california]

Somewhere, in some thread that i don't have time to find Cpl Steiner had the basis of a workable Idea. If the computer can just keep track of all the action spots a squad is spread over and give it LOS based on that almost all of the problems go away.

Then instead of the entire squad advancing into the action spot on the far side of the street before realizing that it is in the field of fire of a heavy machine gun, just in time to die messily, the first squad member into that action spot could tell everyone else to stop, or duck or do something other that the current march out there and die approach. If the engine can keep track of enough stuff to allow that first guy to get shot at great, if it can't it would still play about a thousand times better.

It is squad members on multiple action spots which can be targeted, while there own response is tied to their action spot, which can't shoot back or even spot what is happening that is queering the whole deal. The ugly details on the performance hit to address this I leave Charles's immortal brilliance, but IF I understand the engine correctly most of the data to make this change is already there.

[John Catsack]

I think that a big part of the problem is that there isn't much movement inside a squad. Soldiers don't reposition themselves based on the situation (very much anyway). That kind of thing was abstracted in CMx1, so even though it wasn't direcly modeled, everything worked out (roughly) the way it should.

Has anyone else noticed that sometimes soldiers do move to bring weapons to bear on particular targets? I've seen javelin troopers move from one side of a building to another to target a tank. If only troops could do more things like that, and outside of buildings, too.

I've never seen Steve make such snippy comments towards legitimate complaints. Which evil alien overlord abducted our Steve, and will we be able to rescue him in CM: Space Lobsters?

[Cpl Steiner]

The way troops "snap" to certain types of terrain, such as ditches and windows, but not to others, such as corners and walls, is part of the problem IMHO. This does not seem too difficult to fix.

[KNac]

As I said in other thread, it's justa matter of input more data into the code, and program an answer from the AI to each combination of cirucntances to behave like they should.

There is not fundamental flaw in this, is a matter of fine tunning, and we will see odd stuff or low responsiviness dissapeir with time. For the WWII title game engine should be good enough to be times better than CMx1 in all factors including enjoyment.

Some future additions in middle term which will favour game mechanics that have been mentioned like activating all the action spots for LOS calcs that a squad occupes (if the squad is spread moving on, over 2 action spots) could help a big deal.

I'm very interested to the question Cpl Steined asked, is soemthing I though the other day, maybe if a building corner it's spread between 3 action spots, checking corners etc w/o overexposure would be easier. Some testing requiered, but each square in the editor is 8x8m so is an action spot.

[M1A1TC]

See my thread "Testing Infantry Modeling 1.03" and check out the testing scenario

[KNac]

Just did a quick test... will post on your other thread too, let's continue there the discussion

[KNac]

Ok, I think this is more relevant to discussion on this thread so finally will post it here.

Tested in RT elite mode, this is the map.

Involves couple of MG teams overwatching on red side, and one rifle squad advacing to a corner from blue side.

Ok, so here is the result in upper case:

I'll post later the other case result, but some conclussions and advices I can give you:

- For scenario designers: whenever is possible, USE THIS, it will give more options to the player on how to check streets w/o exposing full squads/teams. You will see easy WHY when I post the other result.

-For developers (easy): add some sort of grid turn on/off option or optional ground textures with grid. This will make life easier for the players regarding to where is the squad positioned and how we can solve this situations. If we know if the corner is in the center of an action spot, or in the corner of an action spot, it can make a big difference and we can minimize casualties. Moders can do this when they can actually mod, ala CMx1

-For developers (hard): porobably you have discussed this allready when designing the engine, and probably it was discraded for various reasons, but in the future would be nice if you refined the LOS checking algorithm. What I'm talking about:

as now LOS is checked from action spot to action spot, if LOS is positive, then LOF is checked per each squad member. Adding an intermediate level would be nice: if LOS is positive to the unit, divide the action spot in four quadrants and fine check LOS again. This way we an avoid weird disonances between LOS & LOF most times, as some squad memebrs may have LOS and others don't. Additionally I think is very important, more than what I suggested before, to activate all the action spots a squad is spread and check if LOS is positive while the squad is moving, this way, in this case for example, the squad wouldn't be suddenlly wouldn't have LOS to the enemy, because when the first squad memebr moves to teh final waypoint action spot that would be activated and LOS would be checked to see if the unit has or no LOS to the enemy, if youa dd to this the intermediate steep to fien tune LOS, we could have much better results.

Probably I'm talking a lot of **** and mayeb this si not technically possible, but just some suggestions.

[ September 29, 2007, 04:37 PM: Message edited by: KNac ]