Normandy: Immobilisations

[MarkEzra]

How I judge Bogging: If it both surprises and annoys me it's about right.

[Battlefront.com]

PaulAU,

I think you should reread this post of mine from back at the bottom of Page 10:

There is materially NO DIFFERENCE between losing a tank to bogging or losing one to any number of other game reasons. There's no way we're going to special case bogging % as some sort of user toggle and not a couple dozen other things which people perpetually complain about. And I've restated the reasons for that.

What I see here is the same thing I saw in the previous thread. There is one group saying "I don't like the bogging the way it is because it affects my gameplay. I don't give a rat's behind about realism, I just don't like it the way it is". The other side says "realism is realism, suck it up and deal with it". What both sides are lacking is some sort of strong statistical argument to back up their claim.

This address why we're not going to put in a toggle for bogging even if it is just 4 lines of code (which I sincerely doubt because rarely is it ever that simple ).

I would like to try, again, to show you that there really is no material difference between bogging, lucky shots, panicked crews, getting caught in a rain of enemy artillery, having friendly aircraft take your stuff out, etc. You said...

I see (no, I feel) (as I’ve said twice), there’s a difference between something you must do, ie, move, and enemy action. You don’t. Well, ok.

You must engage the enemy as much as you must move. There's no choice in either of these things. As a result of each various things happen and they are influenced, but ONLY influenced, by the decisions you as the player make. Just because you say "I want this tank to move here to get to there" is no guarantee that it will make it there because it could get bogged, shot up by an enemy tank, whacked by your own aircraft, panic when it suddenly spots enemy infantry 10m away, etc. etc. You have little control over any of these elements because if you did, then what would the point of playing the game be? You'd simply maneuver your forces without any negative ramifications and you'd win every time because everything you did would work out precisely as you expected.

Well, I can see that from my perspective this is going nowhere. I did my best strategic nagging, and it made no impact. I’m immobilised.

If you want to convince people that bogging is somehow unique, and should be treated as such by a toggle, then you need to somehow make a case that it is somehow different than everything else. If the only difference you can come up with is that the variables for bogging are based on terrain and the other variables aren't... not good enough because it's splitting hairs. Plenty of hairs to split when you get down to this level, especially with the example of CMx1 style air attacks since neither side has any more control over those than they do terrain.

(At least I haven't been called insane, yet)

You're not... you're just more emotional than you're admitting to Again, I don't dispute that there might be a different emotional reaction to bogging than any of the other things I've listed. The problem is you're trying to argue that there is a material difference and that we should offer some sort of special coding to deal with it. Since you're argument is based on material reasoning which is flawed, there is no reason to implement the solution you have requested. Not that we'd implement it if you made an emotionally based argument either since we feel that this particular element shouldn't be removed even as an option. That's our emotionally based argument

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

URC,

like said, i do understand that point and personally would like to see more bogging and immobilizations in CM what comes to bad terrain conditions.

I'd love to see you and PaulAU in the same room after 20 beers. Drunk Finns and Aussies probably shouldn't mix even under the best of circumstances

i don't find it likely that there had been around 400 two hour CM level "immobilization" fixes for every single recovery & repair that took long enough to be seen in daily reports. rather, i believe it's physically impossible. even if a division sized armored unit would have only 10 tanks in repair for one day (ridiculously low number), it would mean that there had been 4000 quick two hour repairs. so a 100 tank division would have had each of the 90 not-in-daily-repair experience CM level 2 hour "immobilization" 44 times during the 24 hour period. this is somewhat problematic.

But you are once again mixing up the variables behind the data. There is a huge difference between road marches and tactical off-road movement under combat conditions. You can't compare the stats you've dug up for that 100km roadmarch with the extremely small sampling that Flamingknives did in the post you linked to. What you are doing is akin to comparing the stats of a marathon with a company of infantry moving through a thick forrest while being shot at. The differences of things like progress and non-combat injury should be vastly different. So no, you can not use that higher level data to extrapolate what happens in a particular tactical combat situation.

yes, crews could still get some tanks running on their own, after a couple of hours of cursing, but it is a bit questionable explanation as when nobody is going to tow or pull them out or give them tools or spare parts i don't see what much they are going to accomplish during those extra two hours that they couldn't do during the first 30+ minutes.

When people are shooting at you it sometimes makes it rather difficult to change a spark plug or jack up a vehicle.

There's a good example of this in the battle for either Schmidt or Kommerscheid during the battles along the West Wall. The germans lost a tank or two in an open field due to mechanical problems of some sort (probably a broken track for whatever reason). The attack was at some point in the day. At night the Americans heard clinking and clanking going on and they figured that the Germans were out trying to repair the tank under the cover of darkness, many hours after it was stuck there. So the Americans lobbed some mortar rounds in and that ended the repair attempt.

So yeah, there are tons of battlefield conditions which come up. Heck, I just highlighted one with my Tiger report that said, and I quote:

The unit’s diary is filled with entries about pulling out “bogged” Tigers and there

is one instance where the recovery took three days

This shows two things at once. First, that your supposition that fixes were either done right away or not is false (but I already knew that ). Second, the author noted SPECIFICALLY that the journals were "filled with entries" of Tigers getting bogged. And we're talking about a battalion sized unit, not a Tank Army.

third, not all the reports are daily level statistical stuff. reports by smaller level units don't descibe the kind of "immobilization" levels as seen in CMBB tests (or at least I don't remember reading such). the worst i remember is the 80% of brand new Tiger IIs breaking down in minutes during a 50 km roadmarch. it may sound catastrophic (and it is of course), but if you do the math you see that it's better than T-34 performance in CMBB.

Again, you're mixing apples (road marches) with oranges (off road). So I can't do the math because you're not giving me data that is relevant. It's also a major distraction from this discussion to have to keep pointing out what should be obviously bad argumentation. We need apples to apples comparisons or (since that isn't likely possible) something relevant to extrapolate in a way that is logically sound. Anything short of that is useful as saying "I don't like it, change it to X because I like X".

i believe those annoyed by immobilizations would be happy if it was made more rare in good terrain. to compensate for it you could make bogging more frequent and perhaps make immobs higher for bad terrain. as modifiers already apparently exist for different terrain and ground conditions it would not perhaps require coding new stuff, just tweaking of numbers that already exist?

Yes, that is easy to do. It's also easy to change the percentage of Boggings that turn into Immobilizations. That was even easy to do in CMx1, not to mention CMx2.

Oh, and something I've been meaning to note. Remember that the terrain in CMx1 was extremely abstract and therefore the effects of interacting with that terrain had to be pretty abstract too. In CMx2 we not only have vastly more types of terrain and terrain combos, but we also have those bits of terrain chopped up into much smaller pieces. That means inherently our bogging/immobilizing system is far less arbitrary than it was in CMx1.

Steve

[Dave H]

Yair Iny

Do you think they don't do "toggles" out of the meanness of their hearts, that it's only 4 lines of code but they are just being spiteful or dogmatic? really dude...

Well I kinda do. All the best games have toggles. It’s part of what makes them the best. Because they’re easy to put in.

Value “x” – you toggle it. Four lines. I explained how, previously.

I respectfully disagree. I don't have any idea what you consider the "best" games but I don't think any game that has the slightest pretensions of realism allows the player to arbitrarily toggle real-world behavior on or off. Turning off bogging (and all the circumstances it represents) for WW2 armor is equivalent to allowing Napoleonic cavalry to charge for 20 miles or allowing sailing ships to move directly into the wind. It could be a game that's fun. Checkers can be fun. It sounds to me that you want your CM armor to be toggled to act more like a simple checker that always performs flawlessly than a complex machine like a tank. Would that be the "best" game? Not for me. The inclusion of real-life flaws in men and machines is what makes Combat Mission BY FAR the best wargame I've ever played in 35 years of gaming.

[JonS]

I don't have any idea what you consider the "best" games but I don't think any game that has the slightest pretensions of realism allows the player to arbitrarily toggle real-world behavior on or off.

AIUI, a lot of flight-sims allow one to turn off 'real world physics' or such other things as make flying difficult.

[Apocal]

AIUI, a lot of flight-sims allow one to turn off 'real world physics' or such other things as make flying difficult.

Falcon 4, IL2, Strike Fighters series, LoMAC... I can't think of any flight sim that doesn't actually. That being said, those with thriving MP communities (IL2, LoMAC) typically deride servers that offer anything less than full physics as "training wheels."

Those that allow the most customization of the game experience have small or non-existent MP communities.

[Paul AU]

(Now, I told myself I was done with this thread, but…)

Kwazydog said: most people don’t’ consider this an issue at all…

Actually I got a high agreement rate in the original thread. I think most of the CMx1’s aren’t reading this, but 40% would be on my side if they were. (I’m just saying that I don’t agree that democracy is on your side. Necessarily).

I thank you for your polite and insightful responses. You’ve been giving Steve lessons? Because he’s looking pretty good in this thread.

BFC said:

I think you should re-read this post of mine from back at the bottom of Page 10:

I think you should re-read my OP, page 1.

Quote: “I understood BFC’s opinion to be: ‘the current immobilisation regime is realistic. End of argument. “Do you think we should mitigate lucky random shots too?”’

No change. Ok.

Steve said:

So when one looks at this rationally, empirically, and gamewise... it's better to have a vehicle get a fluke bogging than it is to get taken out by a fluke shot, even though the circumstances leading up to each are nearly identical.

Well, we disagree. I guess that’s the heart of it. Moving is… I was about to repeat myself. Again.

“Emotional”? Yes… but games are about emotions. (Plus I hate spending 40 minutes setting up a game that has to be abandoned on turn one). Frustration is an emotion too.

(That wasn’t so hard? You replied to ‘criticism’ with wit and good humour).

I’d like to thank BFC (and others) for bothering to reply in such a comprehensive way.

[Kwazydog]

1134297Actually I got a high agreement rate in the original thread. I think most of the CMx1’s aren’t reading this, but 40% would be on my side if they were.

Maybe, maybe not, to be honest Id say many commenting here have also played Cmx1 to some extent. Either way though those that are taking the time to post here are obviously more interested in the topic than those that arent, and as such in this particular case their opinions hold more value. If others have valid input though I hope they will provide it.

Dan

[Sgt Joch]

I am still playing CMBB after almost 7 years and I have never seen bogging/immobilizations as more than a minor nuisance (just like CMSF). Of course, I did learn over the years to become very leery of driving my AFVs over terrain or at speeds that increase the chances of bogging. ..

... basically, if you stay off the problematic terrain: mud, deep mud, light snow, snow, deep snow, scattered trees, rocky terrain, wet terrain, soft ground, marsh...

...basically, if you stay on the roads and drive slow, you should be ok...

The modeling in CMSF is already more refined and it is easier to predict the chances of bogging, although I had a game recently where I managed through careful planning (and a bit of luck) to get 4 humvees over soft/marshy low ground only to have one bog down and become immobilized driving down the main road of the next village :mad:....but then, dealing with vehicle breakdowns is as much a part of modern warfare as shooting up the enemy.

[Sivodsi]

Well, as one of the silentish who almost never contributes to this kind of thread, I'd like to say that I'm quite happy with the way bogging is handled. I played CMX1 from 2001 to this year, and bogging is a curse, but one that in no way subtracts from my immersion in the game, and the vast majority of my game time has been H2H.

Since it is only the minority of CM players who actually bother to contribute to these forums, and it is only a minority of the minority who complain about bogging, I submit that the percentage of players who are actually bothered by bogging is far far less than 40% claimed earlier in this thread.

Indeed, if I were to hazard a guess at the number of CM players for whom bogging is a serious issue, I would put it at closer to less than half of 1%, but have no way of verifying this figure.

[Secondbrooks]

Oh so CMx1 player's opinions desired? I know that no-one cares, but i'm loner so that is okay (and i don't mind spitting either).

Bogging wasn't issue for me in any of them. It was juuust fine.

[Battlefront.com]

Apocal,

Falcon 4, IL2, Strike Fighters series, LoMAC... I can't think of any flight sim that doesn't actually. That being said, those with thriving MP communities (IL2, LoMAC) typically deride servers that offer anything less than full physics as "training wheels."

Correct. And there is an inherent difference. With more complicated, realistic flight modeling it is actually more difficult to play the game itself. This is different than toggling off features which have no impact on playability, but instead have an impact on realism only. Fog Of War setting is akin to the flight model options, while Bogging is not. Having increased FoW makes in more difficult to do just about anything in the game no matter what happens within the game, while having vehicles bogging or not is just one of dozens of battlefield variables which may or may not appear for a given scenario. Having Bogging turned off doesn't make the game any easier or harder to play (more or less than anything else, that is), while having FoW set lower makes the game a lot easier to play. And CMers also refer to people playing with lower FoW settings as "weenie mode"

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

PaulAU,

(Plus I hate spending 40 minutes setting up a game that has to be abandoned on turn one). Frustration is an emotion too.

Sure, but why don't you abandon a game when you lose a vehicle to a fluke shot? Why do you not abandon a game when you see you're opponent has a King Tiger and you have Stuarts? Why not just call it quits as soon as you start up a game and realize you bought the wrong units for the randomly generated QB terrain? Do you end a game when you're best unit Panics and runs away at the moment of truth?

That's the point I keep trying to make and you don't appear to understand. Bogging is ABSOLUTELY AND EMPIRICALLY NO DIFFERENT THAN A DOZEN OTHER THINGS. If you don't like a challenge, then why the heck are you playing CM at all? Battlefields aren't tidy little places.

I really am not trying to bash you or your motivations here. I'm simply trying to point out that you're asking for something based purely on emotion and that your rationalizations of your request are pointless because they don't hold any water. So it boils down to you not liking one of a couple dozen realistic battlefield results and you want to be able to disable it for emotional reasons. Fine, request heard and request denied. We don't want to go down the slippery slope of changing things willy nilly just because some people can't handle the challenges they present. That's not what CM is about any more than having power ups added.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Sivodsi,

Indeed, if I were to hazard a guess at the number of CM players for whom bogging is a serious issue, I would put it at closer to less than half of 1%, but have no way of verifying this figure.

No more than PaulAU can come up with 40% But in any case, I am sure there is a significant number of people that would like Bogging to be turned off. I'm also sure there are a large number of people that would love to have automatic "do overs" when they lose something in combat. You know, "re-roll the results". But we don't want to do that either. The solution to things like this is for the player to revert to the last turn's save and try again.

Steve

[Rod]

Eisenhower should of called a do-over when the DD-Tanks failed to make the beach.

Some of my most interesting games have been when things don't go right. It forces you to adjust your plan and your goals but when it works it's just that much more satisfying. IMHO.

Rod

[flamingknives]

I'm faintly bemused as to how it's possible to spend 40 minutes setting up a battle with only one or two tanks.

[Pvt. Ryan]

He takes a lot of time to position his vehicles so they can avoid crossing soft terrain.

[Battlefront.com]

Rod,

Some of my most interesting games have been when things don't go right. It forces you to adjust your plan and your goals but when it works it's just that much more satisfying. IMHO.

I couldn't agree more! I also think some of the most tense games, the ones I remember sitting on the edge of my seat for, had to do with me picking up the shattered pieces of my plan and trying to figure out a way to salvage victory. I definitely don't care about winning or losing, I care about how I play the game. If I get crushed and manage to pull off a minor defeat or a draw I'm VERY happy. In fact, I'd rather play a game where my back is to the wall in ways I never expected than to have a battle go exactly as planned. Not that I don't like winning easily, I just like being challenged more.

BTW, there is an old saying that you can't win by being lucky, nor can you lose by being unlucky. You win by having the ability to adapt to circumstances and overcome serious problems, you lose by not rising to the occasion.

Again, I'm not trying to slam PaulAU for wanting to play CM the wants to play. There are tons of CMers that won't play QBs at all, won't play as the Americans, won't play with wooded terrain, won't play with bad weather, etc. because it takes them outside of their comfort zone. I don't think ill of such people, but I do think they're missing out on a Hell of a lot of fun by staying comfortable.

Back to an earlier point... a good scenario designer should very rarely make a scenario hinge on the success/failure of a single unit or two. Ocasionally a "you must get/hide a terrorist/commander" thing can be fun, but that's a sort of different thing that too much of becomes boring. What I'm talking about is making a scenario where the attacker can't possibly win if he loses his one tank, or the defender can't possible win if his one AT Gun is taken out. Setting up a scenario like that can waste a player's time because if he gets his one tank stuck before the game really begins, or he puts his AT Gun in the wrong spot, he won't know he's completely screwed until investing several hours (WeGo) or an hour or so (RealTime) into the game. There's nothing worse than finding out that you just played something that you had already lost within the first 5 minutes.

So on this point I agree completely with PaulAU that scenario designers should always give both sides multiple ways to combat the enemy successfully (not necessarily equally so). To me that's not a problem with bogging, lucky shots, bad timing, etc... that's a problem of a scenario design.

Steve

[stikkypixie]

He takes a lot of time to position his vehicles so they can avoid crossing soft terrain.

Roads aren't that hard to spot? Sure you can still bog on roads, but if conditions are set to wet then you can't expect the roads to stay dry either.

[flamingknives]

It isn't like the vast majority of CMX1 roads were metalled either.

They were dirt tracks.

[Battlefront.com]

Correct. I keep hearing "roads" an have already attempted to point out that unless it is a "paved road" then it's a dirt road. Anybody that's driven on dirt roads should know that their condition varies depending on season and level of maintenance/use ratio. I've seen otherwise very good, high tech constructed dirt roads turned into impassible axel breakers in just a few days.

For example, check out this video starting at 1:25 or so:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-RN6oWPiC4

That's the sort of thing which makes dirt roads less than predictable in bad conditions Even in good weather you have the damage left over from bad weather. Think about cars that break down on paved roads due to hitting bad potholes, then think that dirt roads can be much worse.

Steve

[akd]

Correct. I keep hearing "roads" an have already attempted to point out that unless it is a "paved road" then it's a dirt road. Anybody that's driven on dirt roads should know that their condition varies depending on season and level of maintenance/use ratio. I've seen otherwise very good, high tech constructed dirt roads turned into impassible axel breakers in just a few days.

For example, check out this video starting at 1:25 or so:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-RN6oWPiC4

That's the sort of thing which makes dirt roads less than predictable in bad conditions Even in good weather you have the damage left over from bad weather. Think about cars that break down on paved roads due to hitting bad potholes, then think that dirt roads can be much worse.

Steve

And of course unimproved roads and trails can even become more difficult to travel on than the surrounding terrain after some traffic has passed over them in adverse conditions.

[Paul AU]

I'm faintly bemused as to how it's possible to spend 40 minutes setting up a battle with only one or two tanks.

I'm including negotiating with your opponent, settling on a map, 'buying' troops. And yes, then 39 minutes placing your two Marders so they don't have to move for the rest of the game in case you sustain 50% casuaties from firm dry ground.

Firm dry ground is your worst enemy. Because there's *nothing* you can do about it.

I'm bemused by that.

[flamingknives]

Ah.

I wonder if there was a time of year modifier as well, because that would have made sense. i.e. it isn't muddy right now but given this time of year it probably was recently. Probably not though - that's for the scenario designer.

There's very little you can do about anything based on random factors, being as they are random. Out of interest, how many games were forcibly aborted in this fashion on those ground conditions.

[Paul AU]

BFC continued with:

Sure, but why don't you abandon a game when you lose a vehicle to a fluke shot?

I might. But I might not, because it was enemy action, not my action.

Because you ask that question, I see you don’t get it.

Why do you not abandon a game when you see you're opponent has a King Tiger and you have Stuarts?

Because I love a challenge.

Why not just call it quits as soon as you start up a game and realize you bought the wrong units for the randomly generated QB terrain?

Because *I* chose the units, and I love a challenge.

Bogging is ABSOLUTELY AND EMPIRICALLY NO DIFFERENT THAN A DOZEN OTHER THINGS.

I can see that my time here has been well-spent.

I'm simply trying to point out that you're asking for something based purely on emotion and that your rationalizations of your request are pointless because they don't hold any water.

(I’m counting to ten).

Ok. In other threads you’ve all talked at length about the balance between realism and the Game. Your dumb “realistic” immobilisation regime, every now and again, kills the game. It really does. (‘Dumb’ as in – no one’s controlling it).

But that’s realistic, and anyone who thinks that can be fixed is “emotional” (Hey! was called insane!).

You can easily give the players control over this, but you are emotionally fixed on not doing so.

(It’d suit me if you close the thread, because I just can’t help Replying, even though it’s all been said before)