CMSF & Bad Company: Features from the latter?

[John Kettler]

An odd pair to be sure, but I think the latter has some great features in it, also some huge issues. For starters, be grateful for CMSF AI running your soldiers. It's head and shoulders above what Bad Company has, where it's so bad you can't even order one of the other guys in the unit to engage an AFV with his AT4 type weapon, forcing you to do it yourself via other means. Your men can and will walk right into your line of fire but can at least be forced out of doorways and what not. Nor do they need to remunition, worry about wounds or death. You do. Amazingly, men can clamber over obstacles and crouch, but I think there's no prone capability. Enemy SA regarding you is ridiculously high, but it will keep you on your toes.

The terrain is simply incredible in its realism, as are the goodies on it, and most of it's deformable. Successive failures will rapidly deplete your tactical options, as various items, to include trucks in a park, get used up and aren't replaced. One of the really immersive elements is that when you're in the trees and shots are hitting high, things start falling down on you. This can be very bad when a 12.7's involved, with whole branches crashing down. Likewise, a traversing Ma Deuce, against trees approximately 6" in diameter, makes a terrific chainsaw while firing. Talking trees toppling, blocking LOS/LOF! Physics model seems very good, allowing things like ramming tactics against vehicles on a bridge. Cover protection factors vary considerably, firing effectiveness is strongly affected by exertion (hard to hold a sight picture), and sound FX and VO seem very good. House to house is absolutely hair-raising, with fire coming through windows and sometimes walls if a heavy weapon, and combat creates a dust and smoke pall making it even harder to see what's going on and fight effectively.

Buildings have skeletal interiors (looks like former occupants took nearly everything with them), stairs, ladders, and platforms, but no doors. Even so, interior action can be instantaneous and fatal. Just try running into someone at spitting distance and not immediately recognizing the heavily armed and armored man as foe! Curtain walls can be stripped by explosions, but load bearing elements won't collapse. Expect to see buildings with corner walls blown off, exposed interiors, etc. Sandbags and other obstacles abound, and the region specific (looks like Balkans) buildings and street layouts will delight. There are bridges, walkways, functional rivers, etc. While it's cool you get to plant demo charges and command detonate them, you don't need such extremes to take out an already crew neutralized ATGM firing point. A few shots from even a pistol would do. Likewise, the DMD type affair that brings down "mortar fire" is not technically correct, features near-zero time of flight rounds, in a very tight pattern, and they'll even trash an MBT. No concept of Danger Close, either! Target ID is not easy much of the time (easy to get killed, despite body armor, while trying to do so), and there are wrecks that can and will confound the observer. Is it live or dead? Whose is it? There are no invisible walls, but you do get a "Leaving the battlefield" warning, the ignoring of which may lose you the game. BTW, the manual is awful, at least the booklet we got with the rental. Didn't explain how to use many key items.

My friend played as the U.S. mercenary on the attack, but the opposition is well VOed Russian, and the cut scene introing the game features a Russian armored attack of tanks and BMDs storming over the ground. In one scenario, the U.S. mercenary group is point for elements of a U.s. armored division. I can't speak to the tank on tank side of things, for my friend clashed with nasty ACs (dying 4 times) and later nailed a tank with the mortars. ATGMs rip up buildings nicely, but have a grotesquely unrealistic autoload feature and ridiculously high ROF.

All in all, I'd recommend BFC and other interested parties take a look at Bad Company in terms of some features that would be really cool if doable in future iterations of CMSF and its successor games. Sadly, Bad Company has some major issues which seriously detract from it. Why, oh why, can't someone take all the great, useful, well-established successful features and put them into one game? Am starting to believe my own waggish remark about the operations of the shadowy computer game unit called Useful Feature Removal, whose business it is to ruin fantastic new designs by taking out key tried and true game features before the game hits market. An example is the first BiA, in which elite paratroopers couldn't climb over a 3' stone wall. In many other games, troops can't go prone. Star Wars Battlefront had that many moons ago, but GoW doesn't. Fortunately, CMSF does.

I fully realize we're talking two entirely different types of game, different tactical levels, approaches, etc. Even so, there is significant overlap between these two different animals, and the environmental issues, structures, vehicle dynamics, force mix, deformable terrain and European environment seem highly pertinent to new developments in the works. BTW, though Bad Company lacks split screen coop, it does have online multiplayer, also relevant to CMSF and beyond.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Cpl Steiner]

Call of Duty4 with Bad Company's deformable terrain, larger maps and vehicles would be the best 3D Shooter ever in my opinion.

I echo your comments regarding CM:SF. I hope that one day the CMx2 engine will have evolved to a point where building walls are gradually reduced to rubble by each successive tank round rather than being fine one second and then completely gone the next.

[cabal23]

Throw in a little Ghost Recon in the form of tactical options for your a.i. and you really would have the coolest games ever.

[meade95]

Ground Branch when it comes out next year will likely be the best true tactical FPS (squad level) game we've yet to see....... The true next generation of Origional R6 /RS/GR.

[The_Red_Rage]

Gents,

Check out Flashpoint 2 and ArmA2. Both look to be the new Meccas for fans of realistic war simulations. Trailers and screenies look jaw-dropping.

[cabal23]

Ground Branch when it comes out next year will likely be the best true tactical FPS (squad level) game we've yet to see....... The true next generation of Origional R6 /RS/GR.

Wow Ground Branch looks amazing!! Sky Gods also looks pretty freaking awesome. This is definatley the company to watch for 08/09.

[John Kettler]

My friend resumed his Bad Company fight last night, and as a result, I got to see a most impressively rendered T-90 mit Kontakt V (no entry or interior animations--either outside or in it; never on it) and a HIND D. While you could use the actual gunsight on the tank, as opposed to the generic cursor box, magnification wasn't modeled, nor was the LRF or the FLIR, greatly reducing military utility against a foe with near perfect SA, incredible gunnery accuracy and focused on killing the player directly and personally. No TLGM is modeled, either, nor is there an ammo selection made. Sound FX were excellent, to include the stub case ejection. The remote 12.7, whose designation I forget, was under AI control and acted as a threat cueing device, blazing away at targets not yet visible to the main gun. The HIND had ordnance quantities that would've done credit to a squadron of AH-1 Skyraiders, and used same in such immense quantities as to absolutely confirm the unkillability of the NPCs, who were time and again knocked flat by a curtain of overlapping explosions (friend got trapped in a concrete garage while the idiots stayed outside and got blown up). Should add that the player's character has the worse of both worlds: can't command, and isn't commanded, save during cut scenes. Thus, the player fights effectively solo (no one's watching out for him, nor can any tactical deployment be made), while burdened by idiots and directly targeted by practically every weapon the foe has. Very exciting when a BMD is flattening buildings to get YOU! The enemy AI is smart, aggressive, and very quick reacting, in marked contrast to the near zero AI your side has. OTOH, you're the only one doing anything worthwhile, generally speaking. The much craved ZU-23 is in Bad Company and did good work during its all to brief service life, only to perish in a hail of 57mm rockets when the gunner lost track of the HIND. UI ACs will chew up your tank, but even more dangerous are BMD-3s? mounting BMP-2 turrets. Luckily, the devs left off the ATGM. Absolutely terrifying to be on the receiving end of as infantry! Haven't seen any console video game before which so beautifully depicted the chaos of combat.

After seeing some of what I saw last night, I wish there were some way to move the structures to CMSF, for they were unbelievable: barns, silos, repair facilities, chemical plant, catwalks, ladders, docks, heavy cranes, a cargo ship, warehouses, pipe tiers, timber cribs, mechanical detritus, dragon's teeth, hedgehogs, road barriers, guard posts, those portable highway things, sandbags, dinner and cafe tables, chair, lamp posts, telephone poles, towers, pillboxes, etc. The foliage is enough to excite a poet, especially with the wildflowers! The modeling of smoke, dust, atmospherics and related matters is most impressive.

I'm well aware BFC doesn't have the kind of monster budget that produced Bad Company, but I see many items and features in it I'd love to see in future CMx2 based games. While parts of the game made me want to weep in frustration because they were so awful (sneaking into position only to be surrounded by the idiots standing fully erect and talking loudly; one got stuck dancing on an exposed ridge), the visuals were literally stunning and awe inspiring, with some levels I'd say as big as CMSF ones (firing at a dot way out across the valley). The terrain was the stuff of wargamer dreams in terms of natural appearance. Reminded me of the hours I used to put into building sand table terrain, painstakingly putting down the lichen trees and brush, laying out road, etc., all to create a soon to be destroyed rural environment for the combat to come, first in Roco MiniTanks, later, MicroArmour. Memories!

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Oops! That should've read A-1H, as in Skyraider. I inadvertently listed a Huey Cobra when I meant to list the plane that could carry its own weight in ordnance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-1_Skyraider

Regards,

John Kettler