Melee?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by RMC:

Because most combat deaths were from artillery and small arms fire, not kung fu grip.

Amen.

[Hpt. Lisse]

True that, but a great deal of time and effort was spent coding soldiers for close-range combat - even gun crews and the such. This quote is from a IGN E3 article back in '03:

"When a unit is told to throw a grenade, it'll have to put down or stow its gun, take out the grenade, and then chuck it (The first time this was demonstrated, the guy with the grenade actually got shot while throwing the thing, causing the thing to do a lame duck straight into the laps of some friendly units)."

Fun stuff - it certainly leads me to be somewhat surprised that basic hand to hand combat wasn't covered. Or again, perhaps they played with it but couldn't get a satisfactory result from the AI, etc.

[Tarquelne]

But now I see that this game seems to be quite a ridiculous tank fest.

Well, not if all the air-strikes get them.

What was the word again on a scenario editor?

If the game handles pure infantry battles OK and we have an editor coming down the line in the future I think grogs will be OK: They can play the tank-fest campaign once, for fun, and then move on to playing more realistic user made scenarios. (Assuming some other factor doesn't bite us in the ass... and assuming the tank fest battles aren't too much fun to give up.)

I'd like to see an AAR for an infantry-only battle.

[Megakill]

Wow, guys to post your comments too fast.

Answering what happens when soldiers run out of ammo? Well exactly as it happend in real life - they desperately search for new weapons and ammo on the bodies of fallen comrades or enemies. Thats' why there is a feature to pick up stuff from the ground.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Originally posted by RMC:

Because most combat deaths were from artillery and small arms fire, not kung fu grip.

Well, yeah, but didn't German mortars kill more Allies then all other arms? WHERE ARE THE MORTARS!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:

[WineCape]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

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

Because most combat deaths were from artillery and small arms fire, not kung fu grip.

Amen. </font>

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by Megakill:

Well exactly as it happend in real life - they desperately search for new weapons and ammo on the bodies of fallen comrades or enemies.

ok so we have two opposing squads near the end of a battle, both low in ammo, rushing to the tiberium source victory location.

just kidding. they both rush to the top of a hill which features an unoccupied 8.8 as the prize.

they use up the rest of their ammo while closing in on each other and the VL.

so they stand around at the destination, groping each other for "weapons" ?

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by BCW:

Why have beautifuly designed soldiers...but have no melee at all?

Originally posted by RMC:

Because most combat deaths were from artillery and small arms fire, not kung fu grip.

coincidentally thats also the reason why armies all over the world do not teach close quarters combat in basic training.

[RMC]

The Marines are big on what are sometimes called "Combatives." They run it like judo or something, earn belts and shizzle.

US Army teaches some hokey bayonet drill.

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by RMC:

The Marines are big on what are sometimes called "Combatives." They run it like judo or something, earn belts and shizzle.

US Army teaches some hokey bayonet drill.

but if the concept of hand-to-hand combat has not yet been discovered

(btw which science branches/project do you need to develop that ? - is that when you have "conscription" and "rifles" but didnt invent "gunpowder" yet? Or do you need "commerce" and "Sommerschlussverkauf" ?? ),

why then does the Army bother to do even their phoney bayonet stabbing stuff?

are you seriously saying you have never been tought all that "attacker with knife, attacker without knife" etc. bull****?

was that only you, because your brain was too big so they had already earmarked you for REMF duty as a Major Power-Point Gunner at some think tank?

I know the Army is constantly lowering PT standards and all so they offer equal opportunities even for female obese tetraplegics but still I *am* - or would be - surprised if they didnt teach hand-to-hand and rifle-clubbing/bayonet in boot camp any more at all.

even then...so the Mrines are big in those melee skills, and the Army isnt.

I gues thats also the reason why the regular Army soldier is widely regarded as a much tougher fighter than a Marine, and also the reason why when push comes to shove its always the Army that gets selected to get the job done...eh?

[ August 07, 2006, 07:43 AM: Message edited by: M Hofbauer ]

[RMC]

Originally posted by M Hofbauer:

I never went through basic training, but no I don't think they cover those kinds of things in basic. Commissioning through ROTC takes a different tack. I got some combatives training at the extracurricular ranger platoon from an SF Captain. He said that what he'd taught us would be good enough for 80-90% of what we'd run into in the field, but anyone with serious study would mop the floor with us.

In the officer's basic course for infantry we ran the Bayonet Assault Course after getting instruction on the basic sequences. "Butt-stroke to the head series! Execute!"

We spent most of our time learning to lead a plpatoon in action. We spent a lot of time at the range shooting to get expert quals (so we could test for the EIB), but in the live fire and STX lanes the platoon leader would never shoot. To busy directing the fight to actually shoot at anything.

Later in Ranger school I got some hand to hand stuff too.

The marines are different. They train this stuff at Boot and TBS and Marines are encouraged to continue study to move up the belt ranks. It's particularly emphasized for the JNCOs looking for promotion. Self-development and all that.

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by RMC:

I got some combatives training at the extracurricular ranger platoon from an SF Captain. He said that what he'd taught us would be good enough for 80-90% of what we'd run into in the field, but anyone with serious study would mop the floor with us.

so you're not exactly a cc2 sniper, then.

but you are not representative.

you are endstufe in cc terms.

[RMC]

I checked with a marine buddy (being at a joint command has its perks). He says that the marine combatives program was very strongly emphasized before OEF/OIF and has since lost commmand emphasis.

It occurs to me that this demand for a fully realized melee in this game is simply not a realistic expectation. No other game has yet managed to do this in any significant way. In your standard RTS games you've got models going through a sequence of animations that are for show and have no relation to the actual results of the combat.

Dawn of War probably does the best job, but what it does is replace a pair of models with a new combined model when it wants to show the two locked in combat. This is almost exclusively used for the big, late-game melee giants from all sides grabbing the smaller grunts and tossing them around.

No FPS that I've seen does a realistic hand-to-hand representation. America's Army, generally regardy as a fairly realistic shooter, doesn't have any melee or hand-to-hand at all.

Even the silly fighting games like Mortal Kombat and all its progeny don't do what is being asked for here.

[Thomm]

Last week I forced a 4th Dan Jiu-Jitsu into submission! And, yes, he was even heavier than me!

Of course this is irrelevant here, so what!?

Regarding melees, I recall that episode in Band of Brothers where this one guy is lost and hides inside a barn, later killing a German in there. I remember that he appeared to be (or at least acted) very well trained in close-combat!!

Best regards,

Thomm

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by RMC:

No other game has yet managed to do this in any significant way.

oh excuuuuuse me,

I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a *new* game, you know, as in "new" things included, not just a rehash (or even loss) of things already done in other games.

Originally posted by RMC:

In your standard RTS games you've got models going through a sequence of animations that are for show and have no relation to the actual results of the combat.

better than nothing, I guess.

CC did it that way (generic stabbing/fighting animations). did it bother you so that you rather not have it at all? it worked fine for me and I guess most other players, too.

why does ToW's combat model, eleven years later, have to fall behind even such a generic animation ?

Hell, I could even do without generic looped animations. Just do it like CM where the zombies stare at each other and you hear some melee sound and some drop dead.

Just dont have them stare at each other doing nothing at all.

[RMC]

Originally posted by M Hofbauer:

CC did it that way (generic stabbing/fighting animations). did it bother you so that you rather not have it at all? it worked fine for me and I guess most other players, too.

Little pixelated sprites doing some gyrations is in a completely different class from what we're getting in ToW. Now we get 3D soldiers viewable from any angle.

why does ToW's combat model, eleven years later, have to fall behind even such a generic animation ?

Combat model and animation are two different things. The combat model can be fairly detailed and accurate enough (btw, where are the Redwolf-like data charts on melee?) to give reasonable results unlike your morale-based kung fu of CC. The problem is then animating in real time to make it look believable and match the actual combat results. Given the relative rarity of melee I can live without a half-assed generic animation.

Maybe the solution is the same as the proposed building issue solution. Soldiers into melee and a furball is created. You get a big cloud of dust and smoke to encompass all the soldiers. When combat is resolved, the dust clears and the winners emerge. It would be just like the cartoons on TV.

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by RMC:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by M Hofbauer:

CC did it that way (generic stabbing/fighting animations). did it bother you so that you rather not have it at all? it worked fine for me and I guess most other players, too.

Little pixelated sprites doing some gyrations is in a completely different class from what we're getting in ToW. Now we get 3D soldiers viewable from any angle. </font>

[76mm]

Soldiers into melee and a furball is created. You get a big cloud of dust and smoke to encompass all the soldiers. When combat is resolved, the dust clears and the winners emerge. It would be just like the cartoons on TV.

Brilliant idea, but wait, there's no smoke either...

[RMC]

Originally posted by 76mm:

Brilliant idea, but wait, there's no smoke either...

Ok, we can go with the tried and true SL/ASL approach in which a large cardboard counter with "Melee" written on it falls from the sky to cover the combat area. I think this is the easiest to implement.

The alternate option is to use the RT battlespace as the strategic environment in which the squads maneuver and when they get close enough, we jump into a tactical melee combat engine that uses an updated version of Fallout:Tactics man to man tactics game.

[ August 08, 2006, 12:27 PM: Message edited by: RMC ]

[Arkel]

Or the soldiers could just do rock-paper-cissors to decide who dies

[von Lucke]

Originally posted by Hpt. Lisse:

True that, but a great deal of time and effort was spent coding soldiers for close-range combat - even gun crews and the such. This quote is from a IGN E3 article back in '03:

"When a unit is told to throw a grenade, it'll have to put down or stow its gun, take out the grenade, and then chuck it (The first time this was demonstrated, the guy with the grenade actually got shot while throwing the thing, causing the thing to do a lame duck straight into the laps of some friendly units)."

Fun stuff - it certainly leads me to be somewhat surprised that basic hand to hand combat wasn't covered. Or again, perhaps they played with it but couldn't get a satisfactory result from the AI, etc.

Don't believe everything you see at E3.

Like most hype-fests, it's 50% BS.

[Megakill]

Originally posted by von Lucke:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Hpt. Lisse:

True that, but a great deal of time and effort was spent coding soldiers for close-range combat - even gun crews and the such. This quote is from a IGN E3 article back in '03:

"When a unit is told to throw a grenade, it'll have to put down or stow its gun, take out the grenade, and then chuck it (The first time this was demonstrated, the guy with the grenade actually got shot while throwing the thing, causing the thing to do a lame duck straight into the laps of some friendly units)."

Fun stuff - it certainly leads me to be somewhat surprised that basic hand to hand combat wasn't covered. Or again, perhaps they played with it but couldn't get a satisfactory result from the AI, etc.

Don't believe everything you see at E3.

Like most hype-fests, it's 50% BS. </font>