1:1 abstraction workaround - split syrian squads too

[Cpl Steiner]

To my mind, forgetting all the internal workings etc., a corner should function in a similar way to how a window works now. When a squad enters a building, men are positioned at the windows automatically.

Once the internal mechanics had been figured out, I would expect to see a group of men position themselves automatically at the corner, facing around the corner at about a 45 degree angle and scanning for targets. With some abstraction the group could even be as large as a whole team. When so positioned, the men would have LOS/LOF to any target around the corner and also good cover with respect to those targets.

[panzermartin]

Beyond the Los/Lof problems I think currently splitting at least the AT team of the syrian squads could serve as a temp solution. Its no more micromanagement than zooming to see where is the RPG man positioned and trying with click after click to bring him to the desired spot by repositioning and jeopardizing the whole squad. I would prefer to split the whole squad ala the US ones to assault, LMG and AT teams because with the current system limitations/bugs a syrian squad can actually do less than in RL. So splitting will be a step towards more realism imo. If the TacAi is unable to decide which are the best spots for the squad then the player should take over, the same way we use reverse to get away from threats the AI doesnt do anything about. Let the player decide how much to micromanage while Charles improves things with time.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Ali-Baba:

Beyond the Los/Lof problems I think currently splitting at least the AT team of the syrian squads could serve as a temp solution. Its no more micromanagement than zooming to see where is the RPG man positioned and trying with click after click to bring him to the desired spot by repositioning and jeopardizing the whole squad. I would prefer to split the whole squad ala the US ones to assault, LMG and AT teams because with the current system limitations/bugs a syrian squad can actually do less than in RL. So splitting will be a step towards more realism imo. If the TacAi is unable to decide which are the best spots for the squad then the player should take over, the same way we use reverse to get away from threats the AI doesnt do anything about. Let the player decide how much to micromanage while Charles improves things with time.

Overall, the ideal end state is having the Tac AI decide which weapon is best for each situation and putting them in the correct position to take advantage of the fact. This includes infantry spotting for corners, MG's in windows, AT teams where they can hit AFV's, squads following breaching procedures etc.

IMHO it'd be best to pursue that rather than introducing a half-way state of splitting squads against doctrine, introducing all the factors of design, coding, testing, release etc for what will essentially be thrown away when the final solution is available.

Although I see your point, it's something I'm prepared to wait for the best solution for rather than diffuse the coding effort.

Unless it can be done in a day of course - in that case go for it.

Bear in mind, this response is just to the question of positioning within a squad (and the greater issue surrounding it), for the argument of having them separate for flexibility and just because, I've no opinion either way.

[panzermartin]

I know it sounds like a half baked solution but I'm not very optimistic about when we will see such impressive improvements to the TacAi. CMSF might never see them and when WW2 is out the syrian squad behaviour will be pretty much history. I guess a command like "move to/follow target" combined with the type of the target can bring to LOF only the appropriate weapons to deal with it, could be a solution but sounds like a lot of work to code and who needs another command anyway? It wont work either when you know there is a tank around the corner but you have no LOS and unit ID to execute the order.

[SlapHappy]

Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

To my mind, forgetting all the internal workings etc., a corner should function in a similar way to how a window works now. When a squad enters a building, men are positioned at the windows automatically.

Once the internal mechanics had been figured out, I would expect to see a group of men position themselves automatically at the corner, facing around the corner at about a 45 degree angle and scanning for targets. With some abstraction the group could even be as large as a whole team. When so positioned, the men would have LOS/LOF to any target around the corner and also good cover with respect to those targets.

I posted a long thread about "free-form" vs. "static" positioning of infantry units inside of buildings in the Theater of War forum...The gist of it was that the downsides of free-form positioning outweighed any realism benefit due to sloppy TAC-AI which inevitably hoses the whole concept. Happily it seems that 1C is leaning toward static positioning when the implement infantry in buildings in their add-on.

[rudel.dietrich]

Below the platoon level most Syrian units do not carry radios

How do we let the player split squads but keep them from abusing the function?

I will be the first to admit not being able to split squads is less than realistic

But just as unrealistic is letting the player split the squad and then run them all over the place outside of visual or voice range.

Once you get past that range the squad leader would no longer be able to issue orders.

This may be a case of the OOB dictaters are a little too much in charge

OOB dictater...I like that

I think I have a new title

[H.W. Guderian]

Originally posted by 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.

I find this quote above a somewhat insightful distillation of the issues that, IMHO, limit the enjoyment of CMX2 and sometimes cause pure frustration.

Seeing as CM:SF is a warGAME maybe the metrics of "enjoyment" or "player immersion" are a better topic of discussion than "realism" or what is "more realistic"?

It appears that the typical number crunching power of current systems can't truly keep up with the apparent "commercial demands" for a CM game that "looks good", AKA has "1 to 1" representations, without LOS / LOF abstractions that become painfully obvious and dissonant given all the above mentioned "good looking realism"?

One wonders how small must a map get or numbers of troops get before we could do away with the LOS/LOF "spotty" abstractions on "current systems"?

I might take this opportunity to again remind Steve / BFC that some of us have access to supercomputing facilities and we'd love to see an "Abstractions? We don't need no stinking abstractions" module ported over to a Cray. Maybe sometime after 1.05?

[FinnN]

Strikes me that LOS/LOF calculations are something that could utilise multiple processors well - but as I understand it CMSF only uses one processor. There'll always be abstractions but I'm sure they can be reduced from where they are now if the game scaled itself to whatever hardware it was running on. Whilst game support for multiple processors is still pretty sparse it's only a matter of time before dual, quad or more core processors and support for them becomes common. I hope that BFC explore doing that in the future.

On the Syrian thing, it seems to me that no-one would argue that the US forces shouldn't perform much better than the Syrian when the units are split. At the moment though it's all or nothing. Maybe if a Syrian unit splits it should be subject to a heavy penalty when split which doesn't apply to US forces?

Have fun

Finn

[KNac]

If I recall it right, Steve said in soem thread that Charles was looking fordward into multiproccessor optimization etc.

There are few applications (at least in the more general audience and gaming community) which take real advatage of multicores yet, you can observe this cause single core proccessors with an higher clock cycle a lot of times give better performance than multicore ones which have a lower clock cycle. But is a natural steep that have to be done, afterall parallel proccessing is quite old and have been there since the beginning, the assault to home computers was a matter of time.

Splitting the syrian squads would be just a workaround, with no dealys in game (a 'non-feature' which hasn't been discussed much, probably cause there are bigger problems now) it would be unrealistic, and in anyc ase as I have said, it's only a workaround. Better let's wait for a more pwoerfull AI which can bring the AT asset fordward and seek better cover, and let's no do new problems out of nothing.

[kipanderson]

Steve,

I am a big fan of CMX2 but in time it does need a bit of tweaking to give back some of the tactical precision that was possible with CMX1… and currently, is not possible with CMX2.

With CMX1 it was possible to set up ambushes at corners such that one knew exactly at which point an enemy would come into site as it approached the corner. Using the LOS tool. This was a very good presentation of a unit very carefully sneaking a look around the corner without exposing itself too much.

Something along the same lines needs to… in time… become possible again with CMX2.

More tactical precision, one way or another, is needed. When developed nearer its full potential CMX2 will far outshine CMX1… but it is not there yet due in part to the lack of tactical precision. Nearer that a squad leader may expect from his unit when issuing orders to them. This was possible with CMX1 and was part of the magic.

It will come with CMX2… .

All good fun,

All the best,

Kip.

[hoolaman]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Hoolaman,

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />But nobody here was talking about CM1 or comparing it to that game but you Steve.

Obviously the reason why people, like yourself, object to me brining CMx1 into this discussion is that you want to think of it as a Sacred Cow that is beyond criticism. Because afterall, if you are arguing that CMx2 is not good enough because it isn't realistic enough, and I can show how CMx1 is less realistic than CMx2, then by carry through of logic you must also find that CMx1 wasn't good enough either. Since you don't want to face the reality of your own line of reasoning, it bothers you that I keep bringing CMx1 into discussion when someone is trying to argue that CMx2's realism is crap.</font>

[John Catsack]

CMSF already has some kind of voice, near visual and far visual communication modeled (it has icons for them). Maybe Syrian squads could split, but sub squads would be unable to receive orders unless they have communications with their parent unit.

[Flanker15]

Splitting the squad should be unnecessary if the squad can be made to behave properly.

The senario should be like this:

Squad spots APC or hears it and knows where it is. Squad leader tells AT man to engage the apc. AT man steps into LOF and fires then goes back to cover. APC doesn't know what hit them! No amount of Soviet doctrine training would prevent that scenario.

Currently it happens like this:

Squad spots APC. Squad engages APC. Entire Squad moves into LOF and maybe lasts long enough to fire the AT weapon. APC has fighting chance.

[Battlefront.com]

Hoolaman,

You repeatedly tell us that CMSF is a completely new game, and yet you constantly compare it to the old game, and somehow seem to want to try to justify problems in this game with supposedly even greater problems in your previous games (which most people don't see).

No, not justify at all. I do it simply to give perspective. It is very difficult for me to have discussions with you guys when we're not pulling from the same knowledge base. Many, perhaps not you in particular, think that CMx1 had little to no problems, and therefore are seeing some of the downsides in CMx2 as being "steps backwards" or "fundamentally flawed". For us to have a discussion on even ground everybody needs to understand that many of these issues were WORSE in CMx1, even if people didn't see it. And yes, there is a very large list of things "wrong" in CMx1 that were deliberately covered up by the ambiguity of the system. We simply didn't have any reason to mention them until now

Most people don't care whether CMBO did this or that. Many here have not played or no longer play the earlier games. They care that they can't play this game properly (yet). CMSF should be able to stand on its own merits.

For sure it should be able to stand on its own, but people also have to be realistic about what can be achieved. We can, and will, make improvements to CMx2's basic elements, though there is only so much we can do.

OK, so the obvious question is what can we do? Well, this thread (and a couple others) have pointed out some valid rough edges in the infantry behavior. Since we've never said that the game is perfect, we're perfectly willing to see what we can do to improve things. Therefore, allow me to tell you that version 1.05's primary focus will be on clearing up various infantry related issues. The ones I would like us to find solutions to first are as follows:

1. Corners of buildings that do not conform to the underlying grid. As we all know this can produce some negative effects when circumstances aren't exactly friendly around the corner. This will be difficult to fix completely, but improvements are possible.

2. Some sort of simulated "peeking". This is a lot harder than it might appear because LOS/LOF inherently must be a two way street. Meaning, for someone to see around a corner SOMEONE has to stick their head out far enough that someone can shoot it off. Anything short of that unbalances things in the opposite direction. Not to worry... we have an idea about what we can do

3. Better internal shifting of Soldiers to establish LOF (offensive) or get out of LOF (defensive) when engaged in a firefight. This is probably the easiest of all things to do, believe it or not, because it is fairly straight forward and is not likely to have negative side effects since the system is already there. It just isn't being used in the way it needs to on an individual Soldier by Soldier basis as often as it should be.

4. There is a very specific problem that can crop up when a unit is on the move and spread out between multiple Action Spots and not all of them have LOS to an enemy unit that starts shooting at the moving team. This can cause a fracturing of the moving team's firepower and (coupled with #3) cause a few guys to suffer the brunt of the enemy's wrath. This is not inherently unrealistic, but we do agree that the potential for this within the game is too great. Therefore we have an idea to help minimize this in a realistic way.

All of these things have already been looked into and a rough plan of attack developed. I can't promise what, exactly, the results will be until we've implemented them, however I think it is reasonable to think that there will be at least some improvements in all four of these areas.

Back to the Syrian Squad splitting request... allowing the RPG guy (with or without an assistant) to section off would allow "gamey" behavior. What I mean by that is the Syrian Squad structure is not 7 men + an AT Team, rather it is 9 men with an AT capacity. The doctrine calls for the RPG to be used to support the Squad, not to act independently of it. If we allowed people to section them off then they would (not could, would!) be used inappropriately to the extent of perhaps undermining the simulation aspect of CM (as well as the game aspect, in all likelihood).

What Red players have to get used to is that their infantry is, inherently, organized in a way that is inferior to US infantry in terms of maneuver and freedom of action. This doesn't mean they aren't a threat to US forces, it just means they are not as much of a threat as they could be in theory. Since we always aim for simulating things as they are and NOT as they might be, the Syrian Squads will not be altered in a way that we feel runs contrary to real life.

Steve

[ September 30, 2007, 09:25 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Manx]

This is all good news Steve. Thanks.

[LongLeftFlank]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

the Syrian Squad structure is not 7 men + an AT Team, rather it is 9 men with an AT capacity. The doctrine calls for the RPG to be used to support the Squad, not to act independently of it. If we allowed people to section them off then they would (not could, would!) be used in appropriately to the extent of perhaps undermining the simulation aspect of CM (as well as the game aspect, in all likelihood).

...Since we always aim for simulating things as they are and NOT as they might be, the Syrian Squads will not be altered in a way that we feel runs contrary to real life.

Well you've got to admit there's a pretty big difference between doing things as a unit and doing things like the Three Stooges on a chain gang. I won't presume to argue that a line Syrian squad would approach an AFV as a unit. But then -- in real life -- the riflemen would seek cover and watch the RPG team with bated breath as it moved the last few meters into position for the final shot.

Syrian line troops (and any other unit not trained to modern US/NATO levels) would do much the same thing in assaulting a suspect building -- neither a SWAT-team style ballet nor a mass headlong rush (unless explicitly ordered), but rather 2-3 "gutful men" approaching and entering the building with grenades while the majority passively watches the outcome.

In game terms, what has occurred in each case is that the squad has temporarily become 2-3 effectives. The remainder are converted to some kind of "pinned and hiding" status -- unable to spot, fire or receive orders (or do anything other than be targets) until the squad reunites. This saves PC power and also provides a deterrent to gamey tactics.

The detachment ends and the squad is instantly reunited in the parent location (I can live with the abstraction of a "teleport" which represents the guys scurrying home) as soon as:

(a) the cancel orders button is hit

( the detachment tries to move more than 1 tile away from the parent.

© either the detachment or the parent is fired on resulting in a casualty

(d) an enemy enters the parent location

Or sumfink like that...

[Battlefront.com]

LongLeftFlank,

3 years ago I proposed a similar idea and dubbed it "Bommarang Units". It was nixed about 2.5 years ago by Charles as being a nightmare to code. Your guess is as good as mine about the chances of getting it in now. Well, unless your guess is that there is a chance in Hell of it happening, then your guess wouldn't be as good as mine

I can say, however, that thinking people would be satsified with the rest of the Squad doing nothing but hiding is overly optimistic. I can already hear the wails of agony and screams of outrage of gamers if the saw their guys doing nothing (or at least not moving). Trust me... it would happen! There are also issues like, what happens if the detachment doesn't return, but isn't dead? What happens if an enemy unit is spotted in the street just out of LOS but headed for the back door to the spot the rest of the Squad occupies? And just think of how many more I could think if it weren't 03:35 and my brain completely mush?

So on that score alone this isn't viable, even if it were practical to implement.

BTW, we had these same discussions in CMx1 development for the same exact reason. And that is in real life a Team/Squad is a LOT more flexible than a wargame wants it to be. Running one guy back for extra ammo, sending a "runner" to pass along intel, having 1 guy stay upstairs to spot while the rest of the unit spreads out around the building, etc. etc. etc. The problem here is that where does one draw the line? How does one simulate whatever is considered for inclusion? How to do this without killing the hardware or the player's tollerence for micromanagement? So on and so forth.

It's an age old problem for any wargame that simulates more than a handful of men (which by definition is probably not a wargame). We're now 10 years into the CM design process and we have yet to figure a way to solve it. CMx2 does a better job than CMx1, but it still has significant breaks with realism when it comes to individual soldiers. The trick is to recognize this and not break the system that we have to attempt a system that we can't adequately do in the first place. In short... abstractions are here to stay for a long time to come.

Steve

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by C'Rogers:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Thing with cmx1 was that it might have been very unrealistic, but since it was abstracted to such a high degree, we imagined what were happening, instead of watching our 1:1 soldier behaving like idiots.

The argument seems to be you didn't actually like CMx1, you were just tricked into liking it. The things you didn't like just weren't noticeable. Now there are less of those things that you shouldn't like (abstractions) but they are more evident because of the increases in realism. </font>

[Thomm]

I hope that by the time I play the CMx2 "Market Garden" module, the CMx2 infantry model will be as good as the one from CC2, released on September 30, 1997, that is, TEN years ago!

Best regards,

Thomm

PS: I know this post is bull, but I am too tired to rephrase it!

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Steve,

i think we are getting confused because we don't realize that there are two different meanings for splitting a squad.

i think what people are talking about is technical game term of splitting a squad: ability to position a part of the squad separately from the rest. they are not talking about military doctrine.

commander's ability to order the positions of squad's MG and AT pairs is one of the very fundamentals of any modern military doctrine (including the Soviet one). it's one of the primary tasks of the commander of a squad.

doctrinally, a squad's formation is several tens of meters wide even in a standard formation. in CMSF squads are bunched up in quite unnatural ways.

in game terms the Syrian player needs to be able to adjust the positions of MG and AT pairs in order to use the squad realistically. the same applies to US player as well, but US side already has some split functionality.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by John Catsack:

CMSF already has some kind of voice, near visual and far visual communication modeled (it has icons for them). Maybe Syrian squads could split, but sub squads would be unable to receive orders unless they have communications with their parent unit.

exactly.

[thewood]

The funny thing is I would have thought that the great lengths CMSF went to to simulate C2 technology meant that it would be easy to simulate the Syrian disadvantages in having their squad spread out. I still can't believe that Syrian squads get their orders almost immediately. What's the point of simulating C2?

Also, why can't Syrians just split MG and AT assets, with all the penalties and more of no good C2.

[thewood]

My first double post...ever, I have sunk to the low of the unclean masses

[ October 01, 2007, 06:25 AM: Message edited by: thewood ]

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by undead reindeer cavalry:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by John Catsack:

CMSF already has some kind of voice, near visual and far visual communication modeled (it has icons for them). Maybe Syrian squads could split, but sub squads would be unable to receive orders unless they have communications with their parent unit.

exactly. </font>

[Sekra]

How about just making a new type of order; AT-attack or smth which would tell only the RPG guy from the Syrian squad to attack (and also make a range limit to this order so you couldnt order the guy to run half a map to its target) the AFV or whatever its facing. Make it so that if the RPG guy cant find a valid LOF to a target within 10m of his squad he would return back to his squad. This would not require splitting the team and would also imo follow the doctorine and real life too.

Also another thing which albeit is a bit off topic here is sort of annoying to me. And that is the level of supply in the campaign. I have seen in a few maps that the casualties I had sustained affected the number of men I had in my use but not once did the Strykers NOT have a full load of javelins and ammo with them. I have no idea how the supplies in the campaign are taken in account if at all but it would make a nice touch so I couldnt rely on the fact that if I have a small village I can totally waste on a map I'm currently playing using javelins and be 100% sure that I will have a full set of javelins on the next map. I'm not sure if that sentence made much sense since I'm quite tired and ready to go to sleep but I think you can get my point here. Specially when the task force is a spearhead they shouldnt be able to be 100% supplied at all times. Sorry if this is something that has allready been covered somewhere but it would "increase the value" of javelins so you wouldnt be busting every small outhouse with a javelin if you suspect an enemy to be doing his nasty stuff there. I'm positive that even with the massive machinery the US army has they wouldnt appreciate you blowing up small shacks with javelins. So maybe make the supply status a more persistent one throughout the campaign so you would be saving those precious javelins against armor instead of using them against infantry in every possible corner (like I actually do specially when you get closer to the end of a map and if you dont see any armor around).