CM:N content

[Battlefront.com]

MikeyD,

That's a confounding statement. Realtime play, 1:1 representation, working vehicle suspension, deformable terrain, multiple building types and individually tracked bullet trajectories is "less"? If that's less then "Hey BFC, GIVE ME LESS!"

Well, as much as I don't understand it... some people do have a quantity vs. quality mentality when it comes to wargaming. So it is valid for someone to say that they rate a game's value based on how many types of tanks, infantry squads, AT guns, etc. that are included. For some breadth is more important than depth, which is fine. However, for us we feel depth is more important and that's why around 2002 we decided to change course for CMx2.

Steve

[SlapHappy]

For me the answer to the question "how many vehicular units is enough?", is answered with the statement "As many as it takes to reasonably represent the time period in the game scale". And that's mostly because I feel that CMX2 isn't and never was about a plethora of armored "goodies". What makes it special is the new focus on complete representation of squads and squad tactics - Even more so as we move into the WWII versions.

What I hope continues to happen is that BFC pushes the envelope of what the TACAI can do to better simulate better squad behavior and realism. This has always been the attraction for me - and a source of frustration and letdown with other wargaming titles. Many games do a decent job of simulating armor at this scale on the battlefield (some obviously better than others). Few offer the possibilities or seem interested in exploring a realistic 1:1 scale system for infantry. Why? Probably because it's HARD to do!

Most publishers promise a tactical combined arms game, but when you actually get your hands on it, it's just another tankfest with next to no thought put into the squad simulation. Infantry are pretty much just there to be squashed under the tracks.

[Battlefront.com]

SlapHappy,

For me the answer to the question "how many vehicular units is enough?",

That's the same question I ask myself, and it's VERY dependent on the game I'm playing. For example, in a tank sim I might only need 2-4 playable vehicles. As long as there is a pretty good variety of things to shoot to pieces then I'll be happy. For an RTS game it might take a couple dozen or so before it's enough. For a wargame covering a specific battle, like Cobra, then I want pretty much everything that was in that battle. For a larger campaign, like Normandy through breakout, ultimately I want enough stuff that I don't get bored with the options.

And there's the key... the interest level in any specific unit can be maintained sorta proportional to the game's overall depth. Shallow games require more units because the game itself has little variety. Panzer General is a perfect example of that. Super deep games, like Steel Beasts, can get by with only a few things because each one of them (and the environment itself) is really rich with detail. CMx1 is a bit more towards Panzer General, CMx2 is a bit closer to Steel Beasts, but both are more towards the more detailed spectrum.

Few offer the possibilities or seem interested in exploring a realistic 1:1 scale system for infantry. Why? Probably because it's HARD to do!

Damn straight it is That was true even for CMx1, not to mention CMx2. That's why I chuckle when someone claims we stuck infantry in almost as an after thought. I really doubt any sane developer would spend the bulk of their development time on an "after thought" feature! Vehicles are just soooooo much easier to deal with than infantry.

Most publishers promise a tactical combined arms game, but when you actually get your hands on it, it's just another tankfest with next to no thought put into the squad simulation. Infantry are pretty much just there to be squashed under the tracks.

Yup! On that score I think both CMx1 and CMx2 have more depth in them than pretty much any tactical level wargame of this scale ever. Combined arms is CM's continuing strength and always will be.

Steve

[ASL Veteran]

I totally understand about the more for less thing. It's kind of like "Tastes Great!" vs "Less Filling!" Basically, the way I see it (and sort of how I think Steve has explained it) gets down to basic economics. It costs you so many man hours to produce something and you are only going to make X dollars off of sales of that something. So, logically, the more dollars you can make vs the man hours it costs means an increase in productivity (and better profits). Just to toss some numbers around - if you can sell say 100,000 units at 45.00 per unit that gives you a gross profit of 4,500,000 before Uncle Sam takes his cut, all your employees are paid, operational expenses are paid, Steve gets fuel for his Weasel etc. If you have five employees and if we assume that each has a maximum of 2,000 man hours to contribute per year (assuming four work weeks a month for twelve months at 40 hours a week, plus a little overtime) then that means it cost you 10,000 man hours to produce 4,500,000 bucks gross profit if you complete your project in one year. If it takes you two years to produce your product then it just cost you 20,000 man hours to produce 4,500,000. So, if you want to increase your profits you can either increase your sales or decrease your expenses. By reducing the man hours to produce your product from two years to one year you have basically just cut your expenses in half (just tossing numbers - it's more complicated than that I know). Of course, by cutting your time to finish a project from two years to one year not only do you save expenses on the product you are making but you can also make twice as many products and hopefully sell twice as many products as you could before (assuming your market isn't growing much - which it probably isn't for wargaming niche stuff). Maybe then you can afford a second programmer instead of just having one, which means that you would be able to put another 2000 man hours into future products. Hopefully that would then mean that you can produce even more products even faster. The critical element is to discover the part of the process that is consuming the most man hours and to streamline it so that it takes fewer man hours (such as the TO&E thing). So, perhaps you are paying the same amount for fewer manhours applied to a product, but overall you will be getting more because they can produce more as they make those manhours get used more efficiently. If it really starts to take off, then you may even end up getting more for less because the process may get so streamlined that what used to take 1000 manhours to produce now only takes 500 manhours to produce. So you would be paying for the same product but now it take half the time to make it. So in effect, you are getting way more for less. See how that works? lol

It seems like one of the bottlenecks now is on scenarios and stuff like that. Maybe there are some old professional scenario designers from ASL days or other game systems rattling around that they can hire to help with the modules since it seems like that kind of stuff is going to become actual product. If someone were doing scenarios as a full time job then it may eliminate a bottleneck. Who was that guy who made the Streets of Stalingrad ASL module? Just tossing it out there - not sure how it works now obviously. I think a professional scenario designer would probably pay for himself once the module system gets going.

[mike_the_wino]

Oh, and quick thing about the total content with Modules. Since we're breaking the Western Front up into two Families it's pretty clear that neither one of them will have the same, or more, units than CMBO since CMBO covered that entire period. However, I think when the two Families are added up they will have more units than CMBO did. Either Family will have more terrain possibilities than CMBO, and combines they'll dwarf CMBO's variety.

That was my initial thought as well. Thanks for confirmation.

Truth be told, I hadn't factored in the underlying improvements to game play. I also forgot about the increased bits in terrain and flavor bits.

[Redwolf]

The first Western Front game, including all modules for the first game, will it contain snow?

It's my understanding the second game starts with the Bulge but playing CMx1 in snow was cool, plain and simple, and the wait for the third(?) game wouldn't be pleasant.

[Michael Emrys]

I am an insensitive bastard.

Confession is good for the soul.

Michael

[Battlefront.com]

ASL Veteran,

Good synopsis, but there are actually four ways to improve the bottomline:

1. Sales volume increase (getting more people to buy)

2. Contribution margin improvement (keeping more of each sale made)

3. Reduce direct expenses (the cost of making the product)

4. Sales revenue increase (raising the price per unit)

Speaking strictly for CM products, we've always pursued #1 and #2 as top priorities and continue to do lots of things to help those causes. Many of those things are completely invisible to you guys.

As you've pointed out, the CMx2/Module concept effectively reduces direct expenses per title. However, it's not through a net reduction in what is in the product. On the contrary, we feel there is more going on in CMx2 now than ever went on in any single CMx1 title. And it certainly cost more to make CMx2 than CMx1 (as a reminder, I did most of the CMBO artwork ). In this case we have set up the code so we can pack more stuff into a single game in less time than we ever could in CMx1. Now, it might not necessarily be just one thing (like vehicle counts), but games that are "just one thing" don't tend to survive very long anyway. Just pointing out here that it is definitely possible to reduce expenses through efficiency rather than delivering less.

The only thing we haven't tried is raising our prices. As stated before, at some point we'll have to do that because each year it costs us more to do the same things than it did the year before. There are very few industries on the face of this Earth that keep their prices arbitrarily pegged to where they were 10 years ago, but our industry is one of them. Not much we can do about that without risking a reduction in sales volume.

It seems like one of the bottlenecks now is on scenarios and stuff like that.

Nah, the bottleneck is mostly on the stuff that has to be put into place before scenarios stuff can be made for real. We're working through that by improving how we do TO&E, having campaign saves separate from campaign data, and other things over time. Getting more scenario folks involved would just slow everything down instead of speed it up.

Mike The Wino,

Truth be told, I hadn't factored in the underlying improvements to game play. I also forgot about the increased bits in terrain and flavor bits.

Cool As I said above, I don't mind people who measure a game simply by a narrowly defined sense of volume. Personally I think that's really silly since I bet most of those people really don't think that way. For example, do you think CMx1 diehards would be thrilled to death to get all the units in CMBO/BB/AK in one game at one time with a game engine like Sudden Strike? I think not Sudden Strike guys might go nuts over it, but they would have bought the game with 1/10th the amount of stuff anyway.

A game that isn't larger than the sum of its parts isn't a good game. Therefore, tallying up how many tanks or small arms a game isn't a be-all-end-all evaluator for if the game is any good or not.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Redwolf,

The first Western Front game, including all modules for the first game, will it contain snow?

Nope, no snow since the first WW2 Family ends around September or so. Which is one reason why I didn't mention Weather as a specific where the first Family will outshine CMBO, because obviously it won't.

It's my understanding the second game starts with the Bulge but playing CMx1 in snow was cool, plain and simple, and the wait for the third(?) game wouldn't be pleasant.

Snow is cool, but only if done well. If you want us to not release a perfectly complete Normandy to early West Wall game for another year so we can add snow, and everything related to that time frame (units, terrain, models, etc.), my guess is you'd be outvoted And no chance all that work is equal to a Module, so that's out as well. I think as early as 2005 I stated that Modules would not include major environment shifts, and now that we're in Module making Mode we know for sure that was the correct call to make.

As I said above, in some ways CM: Normandy will have more than CMBO, in some ways it won't. But overall it will have more to it than CMBO did. Heck, even CM:SF has more terrain variety and detail than CMBO did and it's in the fek'n desert

Steve

[Sequoia]

Redwolf,

Snow is cool,

Steve

You should know living in the backwoods of Maine as you do .

How's the Weasel?

[Pvt. Ryan]

How's the Weasel?

That is a question heterosexual men do not ask each other in a public forum.

[Sequoia]

That is a question heterosexual men do not ask each other in a public forum.

That may be true but Steve has a whole page devoted to his Weasel.

[hcrof]

Does it have any pics? I would love to see Steves Weasel!

[Battlefront.com]

Snow left early this year, which was a surprise considering we had a lot of the beautiful white stuff this year. Weasels, unfortunately, are all gone as of 0930 yesterday morning when #3 departed for a 12 hour ride to its new home in PA. Took a while to find homes for all 9 of 'em (5 went for scrap after being stripped), but it's time to move on. I simply don't have the time to keep 65 year old vehicles running and not rusting into the ground. Plus, contrary to many people who think tracked vehicles are the most awesome things in the whole world, I find them to be a royal pain in the arse

Steve

[Lee]

I have no problem with the way that BTS is handling this. I think once we get CMII: WWII - Normandy (plus the 3 expansion packs for Normandy) and then CMII: WWII - After Normandy (plus the 3 expansion packs for After Normandy) we'll have every vehicle and unit we had in the original CM, hopefully even a few more (Flakpanzer Kugelblitz! ).

That gives BTS 8 separate releases to equal or surpass the original CM in terms of sheer quantity of units, vehicles, variations, etc. I think that's a fair expectation. BTS gets plenty of time/compensation to deliver a truck load of WWII west front goodness at the highest quality levels (visual, technical accuracy, etc.), and in return we get a *ton* of cool WWII west front stuff to play with at levels of detail and accuracy never before seen in a computer wargame. And that's fine by me.

[ChrisND]

Took a while to find homes for all 9 of 'em (5 went for scrap after being stripped),

HERESY!!!111

[mike_the_wino]

......we'll have every vehicle and unit we had in the original CM, hopefully even a few more (Flakpanzer Kugelblitz! ).

That gives BTS 8 separate releases to equal or surpass the original CM in terms of sheer quantity of units, vehicles, variations, etc.

Which is what I was thinking as well but wasn't sure so I was asking for clarification. I guess the 'don't expect another CMBO' comment didn't land that way with me. I was looking at the sum total of all of the games (family 1+ 3 modules, and family 2 + 3 modules) and couldn't see how BFC could contain themselves from throwing everything imaginable into the mix.

....we get a *ton* of cool WWII west front stuff to play with at levels of detail and accuracy never before seen in a computer wargame. And that's fine by me.

All very good points. In fact, until Steve mentioned it I had forgotten about the terrain improvements, funky little doo-dads and foliage improvements. But those facts are worth remembering as well.

[StellarRat]

I totally understand about the more for less thing. It's kind of like "Tastes Great!" vs "Less Filling!" Basically, the way I see it (and sort of how I think Steve has explained it) gets down to basic economics. It costs you so many man hours to produce something and you are only going to make X dollars off of sales of that something. So, logically, the more dollars you can make vs the man hours it costs means an increase in productivity (and better profits). Just to toss some numbers around - if you can sell say 100,000 units at 45.00 per unit that gives you a gross profit of 4,500,000 before Uncle Sam takes his cut, all your employees are paid, operational expenses are paid, Steve gets fuel for his Weasel etc. If you have five employees and if we assume that each has a maximum of 2,000 man hours to contribute per year (assuming four work weeks a month for twelve months at 40 hours a week, plus a little overtime) then that means it cost you 10,000 man hours to produce 4,500,000 bucks gross profit if you complete your project in one year. If it takes you two years to produce your product then it just cost you 20,000 man hours to produce 4,500,000. So, if you want to increase your profits you can either increase your sales or decrease your expenses. By reducing the man hours to produce your product from two years to one year you have basically just cut your expenses in half (just tossing numbers - it's more complicated than that I know). Of course, by cutting your time to finish a project from two years to one year not only do you save expenses on the product you are making but you can also make twice as many products and hopefully sell twice as many products as you could before (assuming your market isn't growing much - which it probably isn't for wargaming niche stuff). Maybe then you can afford a second programmer instead of just having one, which means that you would be able to put another 2000 man hours into future products. Hopefully that would then mean that you can produce even more products even faster. The critical element is to discover the part of the process that is consuming the most man hours and to streamline it so that it takes fewer man hours (such as the TO&E thing). So, perhaps you are paying the same amount for fewer manhours applied to a product, but overall you will be getting more because they can produce more as they make those manhours get used more efficiently. If it really starts to take off, then you may even end up getting more for less because the process may get so streamlined that what used to take 1000 manhours to produce now only takes 500 manhours to produce. So you would be paying for the same product but now it take half the time to make it. So in effect, you are getting way more for less. See how that works? lol

It seems like one of the bottlenecks now is on scenarios and stuff like that. Maybe there are some old professional scenario designers from ASL days or other game systems rattling around that they can hire to help with the modules since it seems like that kind of stuff is going to become actual product. If someone were doing scenarios as a full time job then it may eliminate a bottleneck. Who was that guy who made the Streets of Stalingrad ASL module? Just tossing it out there - not sure how it works now obviously. I think a professional scenario designer would probably pay for himself once the module system gets going.

I want to be a lion tamer!

[Pvt. Ryan]

I'm looking forward to seeing the animation of troops jumping out of a halftrack. Will they go over the sides or just out the back door?

[ChrisND]

I want to be a lion tamer!

But do you have your own hat?

[Battlefront.com]

So what I'm getting here is StellarRat is an accountant?

NormalDude,

Not to worry, the hulls that were scrapped were... how should I put it... "not restorable", so no violation of the Weasel Convention on preservations were incurred. When you have a sheet metal bathtub sitting in the woods for 30 something years, Mother Nature does some rather unpleasant things to it. Fortunately some bits hold up OK even if the hull doesn't.

Steve

[StellarRat]

Maybe I should have said, "He wants to be a lion tamer!" ASL's post was worthy of any cost accountant.

[ASL Veteran]

Maybe I should have said, "He wants to be a lion tamer!" ASL's post was worthy of any cost accountant.

whoosh (passes hand over head) . In case anyone got the impression that I was looking to become a full time scenario designer for Battlefront and I was angling for that spot, then you definitely got the wrong impression . For one thing, I doubt Steve could pay me a salary that would be similar to what I'm making now (I would love to be surprised though). For another thing, Steve wouldn't be getting nearly the return on his investment from me that he would get from a 'real' scenario designer . Besides, I'm happy where I'm at (close enough to Wall Street to see it, but not exactly 'on' it ). As long as the TARP money keeps on coming then I feel pretty safe lol.

No, what I was thinking of was a 'real' scenario designer like the people at Multi Man publishing or Critical Hit, or the various original designers on Red Barricades (I believe that was Charles Kibler but it's been a while) Kampfgruppe Peiper, and Pegasus Bridge, etc. People who have designed and published scenarios as a business. That's what I mean by a 'Professional' scenario designer. I'm sure there are people who are in or were in that line of work that would be happy to put their skills at the disposal of BFC. Sure, they design and build scenarios for ASL, but I'm sure there are a lot of skills that would be transferrable to CM. If BFC either contracted one of those guys for X number of scenarios by a certain date or got one guy on full time to do nothing but scenarios I don't see how it would be a bad thing. Well, unless Steve couldn't afford him of course .

[ChrisND]

whoosh (passes hand over head) .

Our little exchange was from a Monty Python skit.

[Michael Emrys]

Does it have any pics? I would love to see Steves Weasel!

Now wait a minute! This has gone quite far enough!

Michael