Area fire: ideas for more realistical results

[Steiner14]

Since the original thread is closed, i'd like to throw my 0,02 ct. into the discussion:

Maybe a simple compromise would already reduce the unrealism of immediate and perfect aimed area-fire orders? What about a (optional in the game preferences) general delay of a few seconds for area fire orders - say 15 or 20 seconds? (maybe dependant on troop quality and equipment?)

And if it is easily implementable certain modifiers of the command-chain could additionally reduce it: i.e. is the unit in command of a HQ?

2nd idea:

Make area-fire a bit fuzzy-logic controlled: a certain chance, that the unit does not fire exactly where you order it to fire (instead it fires at another group of trees nearby, adjacent window/house). Appearance of this faulty behaviour could also be weighted by troop quality, equipment, HQ-command, incoming fire,...

[Dietrich]

The comments made by James Crowley and Lethaface on page 27 of the now-closed thread in question (http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=86106&page=26) reminded me of my experiences playing the demo of Firefight, which is apparently based on/inspired by the Close Combat games. One thing I noticed about Firefight was that it was impossible to issue orders to out-of-contact units -- for example, if a squad was out of contact with the platoon HQ, you had to move the HQ unit to within range of the squad to be able to give it orders.

To put this 'no commands to out-of-contact units' idea in CMSF terms: You have an MG team in overwatch position on a crest with the rest of the platoon moving to contact a couple hundred meters down the slope. Suddenly the lead squad spots enemy units moving amongst the houses 200m ahead and reports such (by radio or shouts) to the platoon HQ following. Wanting to recon by fire on other houses, you move the camera to the MG team's position and click on it... and there's no radio icon in the C2 box. Since the MG team is out of C2 (at that time, at least; it could get its radio working again), it can't receive orders from HQ, so no area-fire.

Just an idea, of course. Some would say that being unable to issue commands to out-of-contact units would eggregiously hinder Red, especially Uncons, since they have no radios, but that would just mean you can't have your units positioned unrealistically far from one another.

I think it would make sense for a unit which has only radio/RPDA contact to not necessarily fire right where it's ordered to.

[Michael Emrys]

I think it would make sense for a unit which has only radio/RPDA contact to not necessarily fire right where it's ordered to.

I believe that's an issue that Steve and Dan have already addressed. Regardless of how desirable such a feature might be from a certain angle, apparently for the foreseeable future a majority of player would not like it and the development time it would require is estimated to be unrewarding commercially. That's the breaks.

Michael

[Pandur]

a time option you could set in multiplayer with, lets say, minumum 5 seconds maximum 60 seconds delay(or random ) would be a good start and simple to introduce i guess.

[Panzerfest]

How about having Area Fire commands target wider areas, like all floors of a building or group of buildings or all surrounding action spots to the targeted one. This would simulate uncertainty about the location of the target?

[Battlefront.com]

When trying to solve a problem, one should start by identifying exactly what the problem is. Since the problem of Area Fire has come up since the CMBO Beta Demo, I feel experienced enough to address this topic head on

Area Fire is the ability for a unit to use its weapons on a location instead of a unit. This allows "recon by fire", peppering a place where a previous identified unit has gone to unknown status, to hit near a known target that can't quite be shot at directly, or to ensure that suppressive fire is placed on a known or suspected location while doing something else.

The realism problem comes from WHY a unit is being ordered to use Area Fire (note the "why" part is CRITICAL to this discussion). There are three possible WHYs:

1. The unit, through its own senses, suspects or knows about an enemy position but, for whatever reason, can't use direct fire on it at that particular moment that the player has to assign a Target Command. Maybe it was visible the second before, perhaps it is just a spot that looks too obvious for the enemy to occupy. The reason is irrelevant.

2. The unit places fire on a location as directed by another unit even though it has no first hand knowledge, or even suspicion, that firing at that location is the right thing to do. The more sophisticated the ability to communicate, the more versatile the weapons are, the greater opportunity for this type of thing to occur. The most common example is indirect fire, since the artillery units obviously are doing Area Fire on something it can't see or couldn't possible have sensed on its own.

3. The unit places fire on a location that it doesn't know about and wouldn't know/suspect to shoot at if it were not for the intervention of the God like player. In this case fire is being unrealistically manipulated to yield the best possible result regardless of the realistic chance of such fire happening in real life.

The only one of these three that anybody should have a problem with is #3, correct? I hope so And how common are #1 and #2, from a realistic standpoint, within the course of a battle? I hope you also agree VERY common.

Now, the trick of a "solution" is finding something that works to curb #3 and NOT interfere with #1 or #2. The other trick is to make the penalty, which affects only #3 and not #1 or #2, be plausible in terms of realism. In other words, a "solution" that penalizes all three types of Area Fire, or penalizes #3 in such a way that is not at all realistic, then it's not a "solution" worth pursuing. Especially since any solution, no matter how simplistic, involves bumping some other feature off the development schedule and, quite likely, causing unintended consequences that also have to suck up development time to fix.

What are the possible solutions that fit what I've said above? Well, if we had a solution it would already be in the game, so obviously we don't have one And in nearly 11 years of talking about this issue nobody else has come up with one either. Is it possible to come up with something that would work? I don't think so.

What I do know is that slapping an arbitrary time delay on Area Fire is absolutely not a good thing. There's zero realism behind that idea, so it is inherently gamey. A gamey solution to a gamey problem generally just creates more gamey issues. And it certainly screws with types #1 and #2 which penalties are decidedly harmful to in terms of both realism and gameplay. So absolutely, without any doubt in my mind at all, time delays for the use of Area Fire are not up for consideration.

Time delays for moving, like CMx1, are an entirely different matter. In that case time delays simulate the problems with internal coordination of movement, which is an established issue which soldiers train very hard to overcome. Time delays are not necessarily easy to assess fairly based on conditions (we had complaints/problems with CMx1's implementation, to say the least!), but they are at least pass the test in terms of being inherently appropriate. And yet we purposefully decided to try CM without them since even our modest implementation was quite problematic from a realism standpoint.

Wider area covered also fails to pass the test. What this does is water down the suppressive effect #1 and #2 should be getting for no legitimate reason. It also means unrealistic wasteful ammo expenditure for all three situations. I say all three because what we're trying to do here is PREVENT #3 from happening at all, so allowing it to expend even one bullet is unrealistic. So penalizing #1 and #2 with reduced suppression and higher ammo useage so the player can STILL get an unrealistic (though slightly reduced) results from #3 doesn't get us further along.

Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting topic and I for one would love to find a magical solution to this issue. I just think it's about as likely to happen as me winning Mega Bucks (I don't play, so that gives you an idea of the odds I'm giving this ). The only thing we can do is mitigate the problem through other game features, such as Realtive Spotting and the eventual CoPlay. The problem will still be there, just like it is now, but it will be more difficult to leverage it to an unrealistic advantage.

Steve

[Steiner14]

Steve,

with all respect, I don't get the argumentation.

The AI does not recon by fire. So IMO the arguments regarding realism do not fit, because the player has to order area fire anyway. But if the player orders it, command delays have been an exceptional good abstraction to simulate somthing more complex behind it.

And i'm also quite surprised, that you judge something gamey by the game's internal measures, instead of the result.

CMx1 is full of that gameyness - but the results are good and theygive the impression of realism.

You even were proud of things that gave great realistical results, although the mechanism behind was not realistical at all. The impression of realism of the result counted and not the way how it was achieved. Now you rule out suggestions, not because of the results they could produce in the game, but because of comparisons to reality.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Steiner, how would you allow for fire being given off when an enemy drops out of sight in a known location? It would be unrealistic to prevent the unit from immidiately opening fire on the bushes where the enemy just went to ground in.

Another example. Squad A returns aimed fire on the enemy inside building X. Squad B doesn't see that enemy but observes squad A shooting at house X. My expectation would be that squad B opens up on house X immediately without asking what the fuss is about.

I feel the suggestion is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[Drusus]

We have the question marks already in game. Solution: allow immediate area fire if there is a question mark nearby. If not, then a delay based on whatever is seen fit.

Then this would not affect WHY #1. WHY #2 would be affected, but we have already C2 in the game. You could place immediate area fire only if there is some information passed through C2. This would make C2 much more vital, as should be. Why #3 would of course be affected.

In my opinion immediate area fire is extremely gamey, especially in real time mode. Would it be more gamey if sometimes you had an extra pause because the information about the target unit had not arrived through C2? I think not.

Elmar,

In your second example how is the spotting unit going to know if there is somebody in that building or not? It could be area fire. The problem is a spotting problem, not area fire problem, and it should be dealt with in that way. Maybe give a good chance of getting a question mark on that location, after that area fire would be immediate...

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Drusus,

They wouldn't see the enemy, and wouldn't care that they didn't. What many term as unrealistic area fire can be explained as sympathetic fire. Sure, I myself have hideously stretched this excuse to maximize firepower on a vital area. But severly limiting area fire is IMHO as bad if not worse then allowing unhindered area fire.

And, I'll admit, I do kinda enjoy using area fire to gain an advantage over the AI. It's fun to use/abuse the possibilities. I'd hate to be completely straight jacketed by command delays for every action. As a gamer, it's just not good for a game to tell me "you can't do that (yet)".

While your suggestion sounds good, it seems to me to be a whole lot of work for very little reward. Giving "a good chance of getting a question mark" sounds very good indeed, but will most like force Charles to completely overhaul the spotting mechanism. Given the gains of the system, I just doubt it's worth doing. I mean, the "to do" list is already very long, and filled with stuff I would rather see.

[Drusus]

I do realize that "giving a good chance of getting a question mark" might be difficult to implement. Most likely one would add a boolean variable (or time stamp, or some data structure needed) to the unit under fire (indicating "unit under fire") and when doing next LoS check there would be increased probability of getting a question mark. If this would work, then not that difficult change to make.

But this is not the point. If the delay for area fire would be at maximum 30 seconds for a unit in C2 then I don't see this as huge issue. Actually, there is (statistically) a 30 second wait in turn based mode already...

As I see it, area fire is gamey and it will be gamey as long as there is God view for the player. In other words, forever. I personally think that small pauses, at maximum somewhere around a minute, usually somewhere in the 5-30 seconds range, would make area fire a bit less gamey. It would also make C2 more important.

I haven't seen reasoning why this would be completely unthinkable. Of course, it could be that it doesn't work in practice, but I do not see why.

[Steiner14]

While your suggestion sounds good, it seems to me to be a whole lot of work for very little reward.

Elmar, what could be easier, to try that out in a beta version, by adding a simple timer for that command? How long would Charles need to code it? Two minutes?

You know, for the defending side often a few seconds can decide about annihilation of a unit or it's escape, when the delay for the retreat command kicks in. Especially when the defender is outnumbered.

So what is more realistic: immediate area fire on almost surely doomed defending units, or defending units, that can shoot and can retreat alive?

If i think further about the great possibilities that emerge from that in conjunction with the decreased borg-spotting with enhanced commands when it comes to tactics of small & medium AT-guns (immediate retreat after x shots), defenses could become much more dangerous than they ever were in CMx1.

And with that more realistic danger of defenses, also correct attack tactics would become more important.

Not worth the effort?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I do realize that "giving a good chance of getting a question mark" might be difficult to implement. Most likely one would add a boolean variable (or time stamp, or some data structure needed) to the unit under fire (indicating "unit under fire") and when doing next LoS check there would be increased probability of getting a question mark. If this would work, then not that difficult change to make.

I reckon the bulk of the work would be hooking up the thing to existing code.

As I see it, area fire is gamey

Ah, but it isn't always gamey. I feel that while there there are good ideas out there to fix the issue, not enough attention is spend on the problems caused by the solution.

and it will be gamey as long as there is God view for the player.

And here we come to what I feel is the crux of the matter. Not the game mechanics but how you experience the game. For many people the god view causes problems. And while my brain says that they have a valid point, for me the god view and the advantage I can get from that are kinda the point of playing.

Interacting with the game, influencing the battle is what I enjoy most. In this instance i would be slowed down from reacting and influencing the battle at points. And sometimes there will be a good realistic reason for me to be slowed down, but sometimes not. In balance, I'd rather be allowed to get unrealistic advantage in some instances then be unrealistically duisadvantaged in others.

Compare it to the huge command delays for early war soviets in CMBB. On first glance defensible but in the end it got on my tits because it prevented squads moving in situations where it should have been obvious they would have moved out of their own volition without delay. Instead they sit there waiting for a delay that simulates faulty CnC.

[Drusus]

At the moment we are at the far edge of the scale: immediate area fire to any place the unit has LoS to. The other extreme is no area fire or huge delays always. In my opinion there is a better choice in the middle. Fast area fire to question marks, a small delay when firing at empty locations and a little bit bigger delay when the unit is not in CnC.

Slowing down the game a bit would not be that bad. It would make attacking slower, but my gut feeling is that attacking is much faster in the game than what it is in real life.

[Battlefront.com]

Steiner14,

with all respect, I don't get the argumentation.

Then I will have to try again

Simple question... what are we trying to prevent here? Players from unrealistically using Area Fire on targets using units that shouldn't have any way of knowing they should put fire on a particular spot. Correct? That's Situation #3 that I listed on the previous page.

So the question to you is... what does time delays have to do with this? We're talking about a behavior that shouldn't be allowed at all, not one that needs a rather miniscule delay slapped onto it. Therefore, putting all other arguments aside... the proposed solution doesn't even make sense. It doesn't enhance reality, it doesn't really change the in-game effect for the undesirable situation (#3), but does produce an unrealistic and negative in-game experience for legitimate situations (#1 and #2). Therefore, it's not a good idea.

The AI does not recon by fire.

Not relevant. The Human Player is able to do tons of things the AI Player isn't, such as think To say that a Human Player should be as braindead and inflexible as the AI Player is not a good argument. It also ignores the fact that a Human Player might be playing against a Human Player, so why should both Human Players be hindered by something that isn't relevant to their particular game?

But if the player orders it, command delays have been an exceptional good abstraction to simulate somthing more complex behind it.

But Area Fire itself is not a complex thing in terms of coordination. That's the argument I made on the previous page. Getting the information necessary to use Area Fire for Situation #3 could take a few seconds, a few minutes, or an hour or perhaps longer. But for Situations #1 and #2 the delay would be somewhere between zero and a few seconds. The problem I outlined in my previous posting is that there is no way to assess which situation is in effect. Spotting information is not a valid indicator because Recon By Fire, an extremely common tactic (especially in WW2), is intended to fire on positions which have no known enemy activity.

And i'm also quite surprised, that you judge something gamey by the game's internal measures, instead of the result.

CMx1 is full of that gameyness - but the results are good and theygive the impression of realism.

When making conscious decisions about feature design, we always use realism as the primary consideration. Otherwise we could have shaved a year off of our CMx2 development schedule by just designing stuff to be gamey So the gamey stuff in CMx1, and CMx2, is there by necessity, not by design.

You even were proud of things that gave great realistical results, although the mechanism behind was not realistical at all. The impression of realism of the result counted and not the way how it was achieved. Now you rule out suggestions, not because of the results they could produce in the game, but because of comparisons to reality.

That's completely untrue. I've argued against the notion of delays for Area Fire because they are both unrealistic *and* negative in terms of gameplay. When I have a unit that suspects the enemy is in the trees, but hasn't spotted them, I'm going to be baffled as well as pissed when my guys sit there for 10 minutes not firing at the target. If the delay is less than 10 minutes, I'll still be pissed. If it's even 10 seconds I'm going to be wondering what the Hell is going on. Realism be damned... I want to put fire on those trees because I think it will further my pursuit of victory. And the idea of delays denies me that capability, even though what I'm trying to get my unit to do is not only expected but also realistic.

I'll put it quite simply... we will not entertain any "solution" to the Area Fire problem #3 if it significantly interferes with #1 and #2 as outlined on the previous page. Period. Trading off one set of gamey things for another is a bad idea. The way we have it now generally works realistically and generally works to reasonable player expectations. Sure, it can be abused... but so can a dozen other things. Like the time honored Map Edge Hugging issue that we also can't do much about.

The best thing is to realize that some things are inherently impossible to "fix" because of the artificial nature of the wargame itself. So far Area Fire Situation #3 is one of those things that for more than 10 years has defied a workable solution. I suggest that one isn't possible. If it was, it would likely have occurred to someone (us or otherwise) long before now.

Steve

[Martin Krejcirik]

1. The unit, through its own senses, suspects or knows about an enemy position but, for whatever reason, can't use direct fire on it at that particular moment that the player has to assign a Target Command. Maybe it was visible the second before, perhaps it is just a spot that looks too obvious for the enemy to occupy. The reason is irrelevant.

2. The unit places fire on a location as directed by another unit even though it has no first hand knowledge, or even suspicion, that firing at that location is the right thing to do. The more sophisticated the ability to communicate, the more versatile the weapons are, the greater opportunity for this type of thing to occur. The most common example is indirect fire, since the artillery units obviously are doing Area Fire on something it can't see or couldn't possible have sensed on its own.

3. The unit places fire on a location that it doesn't know about and wouldn't know/suspect to shoot at if it were not for the intervention of the God like player. In this case fire is being unrealistically manipulated to yield the best possible result regardless of the realistic chance of such fire happening in real life.

Steve

Only #1 requires instant action and could be solved if you allow to target "recently spotted but no longer visible" unit markers using regular target command.

#2 and #3 should be subject to a delay, even recon by fire. It's just another form of artillery.

[orwell]

To throw in my cent (It's the economy), I wonder if the problem could be addressed by liberal use of those markers to represent enemy forces, and limiting area fire to require a marker in the range. It wouldn't be a problem for situation 1, in situation 2, C2 should be spreading the information of a suspected target and creating situation one allowing area fire, while situation 3 would be removed as an option. If you wanted to retain the commanders right of using area fire to flush out an ambush where no one else suspects anything, what about a command that'd allow you to flag an area as potentially hiding hostiles. The delay created by using this option would address the need to organize the area fire first and put, if not a end to it, a obstacle that would probably lessen the abuse of area fire to flush or suppress previously unknown targets. Perhaps this flagging would be a new kind of marker that would require some sort of unit evaluation of the situation instead of just now allowing area fire.

Of course, whether this would be worthwhile to code up in lieu of other features is another subject entirely. There's a reason I'm down to my last cent.

[McIvan]

Steiner, how would you allow for fire being given off when an enemy drops out of sight in a known location? It would be unrealistic to prevent the unit from immidiately opening fire on the bushes where the enemy just went to ground in.

Another example. Squad A returns aimed fire on the enemy inside building X. Squad B doesn't see that enemy but observes squad A shooting at house X. My expectation would be that squad B opens up on house X immediately without asking what the fuss is about.

I feel the suggestion is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

To me the solution would be to make area fire delay contingent on the presence of an enemy marker within a set distance of the area fire target.

Because we have relative spotting, if the shooter is targeting an area where it personally never saw anything nor was it told about anything (cos otherwise it would have a "?" marker available to it) then it gets the delay, say 30 secs. Doesn't stop this sort of gameyness, just delays it a little.

Likewise it can area fire at known or last known locations immediately.

Edit: Agree with Orwell, except that I think banning area fire without a marker is a cure worse than the disease. Penalising it a bit for effect is the best you can do.

[Lethaface]

Altough the ideas of delays in general can have my approval, it seems that in this subject the cure has become a goal itself. The goal should be to cure the problem, not to 'just have the damn cure'. The proposed cure (area fire delays) cant really cure the problem (gamey area fire); its more like a heavy painkiller with strong side effects (temporarily fixing the problem, delay when it shouldn't be)

RED forces would be uninteresting to play with since delaying their already slow actions would turn playing RED as frustrating as watching a movie in slow motion without sound. Since RED is sort of supposed to be out of command in some situations, RED would be severely punished by this (The full #2 situation would be affected for RED troops). And they are already punished generally by their lack of c2 (so no target info passing) not to mention inferior gear, support and training.

I think that one could have the most realistic version of CMSF playing RT in Iron mode and NOT(!!!) pausing the game at all. In heavy firefights it would cost too bloody much time to unrealistic 'fire by proxy' because you:

- First have to find an enemy unit. (while not having selected the unit you wish to fire with)

- Choose and select the fire unit.

- Then, making sure you remembered the enemy position correctly, place the area target command.

Rinse and repeat if you placed it slightly off into a different action spot.

Hey, wait..... MMMM...Guess what, there you have it! A 5 sec delay at least

For troops that are all close together the above can be done fairly quick, but they would also probably both see the action since they are close together. For units far apart this can be quite cumbersome because it might be necessary to change the camera position, which will cause some delay.

I feel area firing sometimes can make up for 'blind' pixeltruppen. The spotting in CMSF works really nice but ofc isn't 100% perfect, so it happens that in 'reality' soldiers would see what the pixeltruppen can't. Area firing makes it possible for me to correct these grave errors!!

Nobody in the game has to give gamey area fire orders, they can decide themselves to only do it when it is appropriate (i tend to do it whenever i can ). Playing the game in RT on Iron mode without pausing it, is quite hectic and comes (by average) closest to realism as I can think of it.

In my opinion, the biggest gamey thing is that the player is able to suck up info from 'out of command' units and sort of beams it back into the pixeltruppen after processing it into commands. Moving a tank to a favourable contact position because your out of command team has located an enemy tank, can not be helped by any area fire delay. Command delays also wouldn't work because the tank probably is not out of command. It is the player who can use info from out of command units and re-wire it back to the commander as a telepathic intelligence officer. So I guess James idea about not having control over out of command units would be the only real cure for this. I doubt however how much fun that is to play, after watching it the first time.

[stikkypixie]

I just don't area target "?" until the unit has received information via C2. The only exception to this is when I recon by fire.

[Battlefront.com]

Martin Krejcirik,

Only #1 requires instant action and could be solved if you allow to target "recently spotted but no longer visible" unit markers using regular target command.

Then how do you instantly fire on a patch of ground that you think might have an enemy unit waiting in ambush? There is absolutely no justification for a delay, even a short one, any more than there is justification to delay targeting a known unit.

#2 and #3 should be subject to a delay, even recon by fire. It's just another form of artillery.

The problem is there is absolutely no way to tell the difference between #1, #2, and #3. It is true that some sort of delay penalty for #2, like communicating artillery strikes, is justifiable. However, it's not nearly so easy to determine since two units side by said would have nearly instantaneous communication between each other, while two units on the opposite side of the map probably wouldn't. Or at least there would be more time required to orientate the fire. As for #3, it shouldn't be allowed at all, under any circumstances.

McIvan,

Because we have relative spotting, if the shooter is targeting an area where it personally never saw anything nor was it told about anything (cos otherwise it would have a "?" marker available to it) then it gets the delay, say 30 secs. Doesn't stop this sort of gameyness, just delays it a little.

Why 30 seconds? Why not 30 minutes? That's the point I keep coming back to... not only is it impossible to use markers to direct when a delay may be appropriate or not, but delays are completely arbitrary and artificial. The point is to prevent #3 from happening at all, not shifting it to 30 seconds or some other small arbitrary point in time. I think most people would agree that even a 1 minute delay doesn't really do anything. If I find someone's AT Gun in the woods, and I can't get at it with my wee little pop gun squad, then I halt ops until some unit of mine that shouldn't know it is there can get some Area Fire on it. Waiting an extra minute to neutralize something I shouldn't have been able to shoot at doesn't change the net outcome... I got fire on that AT Gun that shouldn't have been there, which in theory (and often in reality) gives me an advantage that I shouldn't have.

Delays don't do anything to fix the underlying problem here, but will cause harm to the most important, and frequent, use of Area Fire. So there's no point in pursuing delays as a solution since it solves nothing.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

I've mentioned that CoPlay is a partial solution. Perhaps by explaining why it might help you guys better understand why such problems are difficult, if not impossible, to work around when a single player is God.

If Player 1 is in command of B Company and Player 2 is in command of C Company, the game system can easily not show any of B Company's units to Player 2 and vice versa. Likewise, the units that Player 1 knows about can be hidden from Player 2. If the two players have no means of communicating with each other, in real life or via game C2 system, then it is absolutely impossible for Player 2 to use one of his units to suppress something that is bothering Player 1. ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. So in this case the problem is 100% solved.

What isn't solved is the behavior within each player's experience. That would remain identical to the way it is now for the same reasons as we currently have. That's because CoPlay is basically several single player experiences running in parallel.

Now, if Player 1 and Player 2 have some communications between each other, the ability to share information and coordinate fire starts to become practical. If the game is WeGo, and the players are doing something like talking on the phone or in the same room on a LAN, then they can duplicate the gamey Area Fire stuff we see now. It will be a bit more difficult to achieve, perhaps, because it requires more effort and runs into problem with natural selfishness (i.e. "hey, I sympathize with your situation, but I need that fire for my guys"). That sort of stuff doesn't happen with single player. So while multiple players can circumvent things, at least in WeGo, it's still more difficult.

In RealTime it becomes very, very difficult because the less information each player has in their view of the battlefield, the more problematic it becomes to get coordinated fire going. There's just too much stuff going on, usually, to have some detailed conversation about where this or that fire would be best employed and why. And if that discussion does happen, then the rest of the player's collective combat efforts grind to a halt. Which isn't good, and therefore is a disincentive.

All of these things, if you notice, involve removing information from the player and imposing upon him practical restrictions that are more-or-less natural outgrowths of the system as it is today. Yet it still doesn't do anything for the single player experience because I just don't think it's possible to do that.

Steve

[Steiner14]

Steve,

i don't know why you talk about "10 minutes" delays. Nobody was talking about such huge delays.

Then how do you instantly fire on a patch of ground that you think might have an enemy unit waiting in ambush? There is absolutely no justification for a delay, even a short one, any more than there is justification to delay targeting a known unit.

1. How realistical is a delay for a simple move command?

2. Or how realistical is a 1 minute "pause" until a unit can be given important commands? It is so incredible unrealistical, that i suggest you abandon WEGO.

3. Even under best circumstances the order for suppressive fire given from the NCO in the group will need a few seconds: who and where to fire.

Why 30 seconds? Why not 30 minutes?

Why not 30 minutes? Because the player's experience is the answer what works?

I think most people would agree that even a 1 minute delay doesn't really do anything. If I find someone's AT Gun in the woods, and I can't get at it with my wee little pop gun squad, then I halt ops until some unit of mine that shouldn't know it is there can get some Area Fire on it. Waiting an extra minute to neutralize something I shouldn't have been able to shoot at doesn't change the net outcome...

Is that an implicit defense of the lack of realistical movement orders for AT-guns?

If an AT-gun has realistical retreat orders, then even a few seconds would decide, if it can be supressed, before it can move into safety.

[Battlefront.com]

Steiner14,

i don't know why you talk about "10 minutes" delays. Nobody was talking about such huge delays.

But that's my point... we should be. The desired result is to have the behavior of #3 be impossible, not to delay it. Correct? So a 30 second delay is useless because it doesn't change anything for the better, only the worse.

1. How realistical is a delay for a simple move command?

Depends on the unit and the circumstances. Also depends on the rationale behind the move. We did a decent job of it in CMx1, we chose to not have any delay in CMx2. We are revisiting that for WW2.

2. Or how realistical is a 1 minute "pause" until a unit can be given important commands? It is so incredible unrealistical, that i suggest you abandon WEGO.

Straw man argument. Might as argue "wargames on computers are unrealistic, so why have wargames".

3. Even under best circumstances the order for suppressive fire given from the NCO in the group will need a few seconds: who and where to fire.

No different than a visible target, a suspected target, or a suspected location. This is completely and utterly separate from the circumstances we all would like to see eliminated... and that is the ability to put Area Fire on a unit that the firing unit should have no idea it should be shooting at in the first place.

Why not 30 minutes? Because the player's experience is the answer what works?

I don't understand what you mean.

Is that an implicit defense of the lack of realistical movement orders for AT-guns?

If an AT-gun has realistical retreat orders, then even a few seconds would decide, if it can be supressed, before it can move into safety.

AT Guns take 5 to 15 minutes to move, depending on the gun. So no, I don't think a 1 minute delay means anything. Plus, how would the player with the AT Gun know that he was about to get hit with unrealistic fire? What you're saying is that as soon as your AT Gun is spotted you should move it. That's nuts... that's the quickest way possible to lose it.

OK... so basically you've given up trying to justify why delays for Area Fire are either realistic or a net gameplay benefit? That's the sense I'm getting from you now. You've not challenged my basic premiss that delays are not realistic, do not address the bad behavior we all would like eliminated, and do in fact harm good practices that people would certainly miss (either for realism or gameplay reasons). And that's exactly what's happened the previous times delays have been suggested for Area Fire, and that's also exactly why we have no interest in them... they don't do anything positive in any way to address the undesirable behavior. So why do it when it absolutely comes with negative effects?

Steve

[SlapHappy]

I'd have to go with Steve on this one. While it's true that the problem mentioned in the thread is a viable issue considering realism aspects, I don't see how a delay of any sort alleviates the underlying problem.

I think the 'move delay' feature was intended to be a game handicap for the control of lower quality troops. Now one could argue that another tack might be having them do something entirely different, or ignore you. I'm not a CMX1 vet so I couldn't say. My best guess would be that commanding low quality troops in real life might be even more frustrating than anything that a game developer might be willing to foist onto his customers in a game environment. Screaming obscenities, cracked monitors, etc.